Freedom revisted

[Hereandnow]

I have always rejected claims about human responsibility, accountability, guilt, innocence, and so on; simply because I was absolutely convinced of the coercive nature of causality that had no room whatever for a causeless effect. It is apodictically so that every effect must have a cause, and Kant was right, it seemed, that Hume's thesis of contiguity, whereby all one ever has evidence for in any given causal event is one thing coming on the heels of another, the cause of the one upon the other never being actually witnessed at all. Kant made it clear that cause is a necessity built into the event. this is made clear by merely acknowledging the intuitive impossibility of a causeless effect, which presents itself apriori, not empirically. This makes causality more like a logical rule, like modus ponens, than an empirical observation.

So I always bought Kant's apriority of causality and rejected Hume. Until I noticed what a big deal existentialists were making of freedom. Sartre was, I thought, a little crazy in thinking all conscious acts were free because our essential Being was nothingness. How could any act issue from anything if not the matrix of background experience that we call memory? (It was especially galling to hear conservatives go on so adamantly about individual responsibility just to avoid the cost of addressing structural poverty and ignorance!) I think differently now, though I am still no fan of Sartre on this. Now I see the real possibility of freedom lying within the form of a conscious disposition to think and believe. Though as a rational agent I am bound to deploy reason in all I do, I nevertheless see freedom as a meaningful concept. I am with Dostoevsky: I am not a piano key.

Admittedly, the behind the scenes of a conscious act or thought there are "things" we can never see (currents of memetic substrata?) make the machinery of our reason and feelings what they are. But these will never be "seen" because the seeing of any observational occasion is a matter of precisely those things we're trying to observe at work, doing their job. And these are also behind the scenes producing the certainty, the apriority, of our understanding of causality. And this makes causality as a concept an extrapolation from what is seen, Hume-wise, and intuited apriori, Kant-wise. Certainty itself is not certain by any standard outside of itself, and this makes for a dubious case for unquestioned faith in what it does.

But put aside the apodicticity of causal events, and take a look at the way freedom manifests itself. It is through choices. (The difference between me and a tree is that, Heidegger tells us, we have choices, possibilities and trees don't. Trees are trees. And never anything but. The counter here has always been: but choices are only perceived to be free. I may say raising my hand is an act of freedom. But seriously, what motivated, read "caused," me to do this? Choices, by this line of thinking, are reducible to causal invents, just very complex ones.

I have usually put the matter to rest right there. But i see that this does not address the matter of whether freedom is possible, only that much or most behavior, physical, cognitive or otherwise, is grounded beyond our sight, and, as per the above paragraph, what is beyond our sight cannot be causality because this term issues from "sighted" refection. This is Wittgenstein and Kant, both; and i do not want to go into the latter's rationalism. Rather, I want to focus on the one thing that seems to make all the difference between freedom and causality, which is inquiry.

Putting aside the mysterious, the invisible, and looking only at choice, I find the act of inquiry itself to be the essence of freedom. I raise my arm, and if this is done spontaneously, thoughtlessly, I admit, there is little freedom in this. It's like typing or sawing wood. But enter (and the inspiration comes from Heidegger) inquiry and so ceases behavior under review. Now we can follow this dialectically: But the second guessing is also motivated second guessing. True, but there must be an interruption in the causal sequence for second guessing interrupt some affair. Yes, but this is more like a comet on its path being struck by an asteroid. New path. Nothing acausal here.

BUT: inquiry knows no end to its belief/action pathway interruptus! Comets may collide with asteroids, but even complex causal events, like tomatoes growing in the garden absorbing sunlight and nutrition, end in some natural resolution. Inquiry is free. It settles nowhere in and of itself. I may recognize doxastic coercion (a nice bit a jargon) in believing 5+5=10, and I do believe this, but I can reject this by putting inquiry to its basis in belief coercion: why should I accept the authority of reason? There is nowhere inquiry cannot go. It invades all beliefs, for all beliefs are contingent only,and subject to question.

And what is freedom if not freedom from all that binds in belief? I may be convinced that this argument is right, but I can question it still. It is in that moment of inquiry that the world loses its control. This is where it gets interesting: True freedom therefore lies in the free expression of inquiry over all things. and we all knows where this leads: Omnipresent doubt. But NOT the sketpic's doubt! No; that would be to settle in "I am a skeptic."

This takes one, once again, to the door of mysticism, where all belief is suspended. Inquiry, followed to its logical end, leads to absolute doxastic freedom.

[Atreyu]

The gist of this post is quite correct. It reveals that you understand the general idea of what you call "mysticism" (I prefer the term "esotericism") and why it is important. It sounds as if you are ready to begin learning the principles of a mystical (esoteric) teaching.

The only question is what particular teaching(s) you have, and/or will, delve into?

[Hereandnow]

First I have to say that coming to a conclusion that our ideas about the world are grounded on thin air, that is, theory upon theory, none of which can ever touch "the world" rests with many or most as useless. I remember Rorty's autobiographical confession that philosophy was simply a choice among others; he could have been a historian, or anything, really, as he had substantial intellectual gifts. Rorty taught me a lot about our epistemic relation with the world, but for him, it was business as usual. He got tired of philosophy, which he relegated to a more general discipline, literature. He certainly was not a conservative thinker in the usual, sense, but he was as I think of such things a dogmatic ....errrrr, agency of thought. I mean, when he saw a cloud or a pen or a desk, whatever, there was no question at the perceptual level. He theorized it to be a pragmatic object; he learned from Heidegger, and Dewey, Wittgenstien, Peirce, and others that the world was an interpretative body out of which there was no escape. But in his world, no difference was acknowledged, at least this is what is implied in his thinking.

But if you're not like Rorty in that analysis of the world at the level of basic assumptions leads to an undermining of real time cognitive structure, then the world will be a very different place for you. There is only one next step if you find that the world is further alienation. The way can be fascinating. See Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience by Anthony Steinbock. He takes Husserl's epoche to be a way into a kind of enlightenment. This is what, if you ask me, jnana yoga is all about. Inquiry annihilates the world. Lots of names: neti, neti; apophatic theology

There is something extraordinary here, more than mere negation, though saying what that point is would provoke the Zen master's ire.