So, Ersig Fein, you can't see us. Yes, I can hear you. Yes, perfect. You can't see us. It's full house here. We are really happy to have you with us. Thank you very much. But we see you properly, okay? Excellent, thank you. Thanks a lot. So, welcome. Reza Negaristani. Thanks, everyone. So, I'm going to... I have written down some notes. I'm going to read over my notes. As I read, I try to unpack some of the main points. Then once I'm done, it would be great to go to questions and answers
and hear if there is any question. So, the title of this talk is Causality of the Will and the Structure of Freedom. Does the neuroscientific dissolution of phenomenal immediacy of selfhood and the intuitive concept of free will admit the exercise of freedom, or in fact given the severity of the challenges posed by cognitive neurobiology against the most allegedly transparent facts of experience, the talk of freedom is unmasked as something more akin to the talk of magic and miracle.
The claim put forward in this presentation is that we can't coherently answer this question without identifying the type and locating the proper locus of the causality of the will as distinguished from the capacity for choice, will curve. But this task is far more demanding than it's usually assumed in rationalist philosophies of normativity. A significant part of this task rests on how far and how meticulously we can differentiate reason as the site of the will, the form of intentional action, and freedom as a positive
determination from understanding an ordinary consciousness. In effect, continuing the Hegelian gesture of wresting reason from the residues of Kantian account of reason as a faculty that is still bound to the structure of experience. Drawing on the works of Kant and Hegel on the role of the causality of the will plays in forming the structure of freedom as well as the more contemporary disquisitions provided on the subject by the likes of John Findlay and Sebastian Roth. This talk examines the concept of autonomy, rational personhood, the form and causality
of the will, in connection to philosophies of action and freedom. The conclusion we will arrive at is that the rational interpretation of the will as a power to act in accordance with the concept and positive freedom as rooted in the formal, that is, non-substantive autonomy of thought, not only withstands the cognitive science's assault on phenomenal selfhood and the relative autonomy of the individual subject, but also mobilizes the de-individualizing vector of the cognitive neuroscience as an opportunity for a true, collectively determined freedom. So as implied in this synopsis, the focus of this presentation is the philosophical
inquiry into the notions of the will, autonomy, and freedom, particularly as constructed, as conducted by the philosophy of German idealism, specifically Kant and Hegel, as well as the continuation of their work in the 20th century and 21st centuries by the like of Wilfred Sellars, Findlay, Sebastian Vogue. Now the reason for this choice going for German idealism is twofold. It's twofold firstly because it is German idealism that integrates these concepts within its system as core theoretical components.
And in that, it is the first methodic inquiry that breaks away from the ordinary talk about the will and freedom, whose fuzziness and lack of proper definition have contributed and will contribute to endless perplexities and absurd claims about the nature of the will, action, and freedom. Given the sociopolitical implication of such claims bear upon the role of the agency in thinking and acting, or more broadly, the question of what it means to strive for freedom through collective action and thought, the astringency and systematicity of the theoretical work and these concepts should not be treated as an intellectual hubris, but a necessary step
or a coherent and consequential practice. While contemporary cognitive neurobiology will undoubtedly continue to advance and shatter our intuition of ourselves in the world, its philosophy, namely philosophy of neuroscience, continues to piggyback on ordinary concepts of the will, self-consciousness, mind, and action. Having dispensed the philosophical rigor necessary to differentiate, define, and present key theoretical concepts under which the empirical achievements of neuroscience are elaborated, philosophy of neuroscience as the interface between science and culture in the broadest
possible sense has, to a certain degree, become not only a naive materialism peddling pre-critical philosophy at the expense of science, but also a politically unconscious handmaiden of today's politics of collective enfeeblement and methodical individualism. But the second and more important reason is that at the core of German idealism of Kant and Hegel, transcendental psychology for Kant and phenomenology of spirit and science of logic for Hegel, what we have is a fully elaborate and conceptually advanced inquiry to the the structure of mind and subjective capacities. It is not only that this facet of German idealism is a precursor to cognitive science, philosophy
of mind, language, and artificial intelligence, among others, but also, and more importantly, the conceptual problems posed within the philosophy of German idealism, which should be seen as a philosophical system addressing the broad issues concerning how various aspects of mind, and knowledge hang together are in fact problems of fields like theoretical, computer science, and artificial general intelligence. With this brief introduction, I would like to provide a rough view of Kant's transcendental psychology and by moving across a few key concepts attempting to address the problems posed in the synopsis.
In the critique of pure reason, Kant sets to refine and tackle the question of transcendental deduction. Now, what is transcendental deduction? It's, roughly speaking, it's a question asking by what right the meaning of deduction, quid juris. By what right can we have the objective a priori knowledge of the law? by a priori knowledge Kant means a knowledge that is not just irreducible to particular instances of experience, but is in fact the guarantor of having experiential knowledge itself. Now, the conditions which are necessary, so as soon as it becomes obvious to Kant that
This question can't be answered, the question of transcendental deduction cannot be answered without a thorough analysis of the conditions for the possibility of having mind, namely transcendental psychology. He shifts the focus of the project. So the conditions which are necessary for having mind in its capacity to know via judgments are the same conditions that warrant a priori objective knowledge. So essentially the question of transcendental deduction inevitably stumbles upon the question
of transcendental psychology, namely the investigations of conditions necessary for the possibility of having mind. So, these conditions can be roughly thought as a multi-level complex hierarchy, beginning from sensibility, then imagination, then understanding, and then reason from bottom. Sensibility, what Kant means sensibility, is the capacity to be receptive to the impingement of items in the environment and can be laid out purely in causal structural terms. You might say the question, it's basically the question of a sufficient causal structure,
a nervous system capable of regulating and mediating between environmental inputs and the very own outputs. So sensibility is then comprised of two layers, outer sense and inner sense. or inner perception. Outer sense is what you may say to be a causal structure for being affected by the impingement of items in the environment, namely a stimuli. Inner sense, on the other hand, is an internal model associated with a constructed memory capable of reporting to the mind how it is being thus and so affected by items or objects in the environment.
The manner in which these external impediments are reported can be seen as models organizing a longer temporal series. past and future temporal series. What the sense impression was, the previous encounter, what it is now, the transformation, is that the original sense impressions have undergone due to the situatedness of the organism, and what the sense impressions will be, namely the anticipated model of action in the environment. So the second necessary condition is imagination that comes in at least two forms.
The more rudimentary form of imagination as a capacity for organizing sense impressions spatially and temporally. And that's what imagination means, not only comes inside the concept of imagination. namely organizing a singular representation for image of an object. By organizing and synthesizing, basically, products of outer and inner sense. Now, and this more complex form of imagination is the so-called productive imagination, which is merely understanding, in the case of imagination,
brought about by the application of pure or general concepts, that is, categories are said, to the products of the more rudimentary imagination. So the third and fourth levels of these necessary conditions for possibility of mind are understanding and reason. This is where we have something like synthetic unity of a perception or the eye that not only accompanies all the instances of experience, but also is the very condition of having a spatially and temporally uniform perceptual experience or encounter.
Now, the question of the subject and subjectivity only arrives at the level of understanding and reason, and so as Hegel. The capacity of forming and applying categories or general concepts, having perceptual judgments about the content of our experience, and the capacity to have more advanced, namely non-perceptual judgment and a specific concept without which high inferences are impossible. The question of the will, the question of autonomy and action only surface at these two levels, where we have something called the knowledge of the subject, which is itself
a realist in the interaction of different kinds, levels of subjectivity. Now, it's important to note that in the critique of pure reason, Kant uses two different words when he refers to the will. One is the will, and the other one is will, or capacity for choice. However, at different times, he uses the word will, defining the power to act, to refer to capacity for choice, vice versa. He doesn't make a proper distinction between these two concepts, in will and capacity of choice, until his more mature work, the groundwork of morals, where the will is associated, albeit
not meticulously, the way that Haipel does, with reason. Before moving forward, it's important to point out that through a careful engagement with cancer war, one can easily come to this conclusion that consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon. The core of consciousness is sensibility, outer and inner senses, a sufficient causal structure regulating and mediating within environmental inputs and behavioral outputs. And thus it can be thoroughly laid out in terms of causal neural mechanisms whose origins are in evolutionary processes. Consciousness is thus an empirical phenomenon, and for that reason it is the object of empirical
studies such as science. What Kant and Hegel call self-consciousness, on the other hand, is not a knowledge of the empirical self, or simply an introspective consciousness of the phenomenal properties of selfhood is a consciousness issued from and licensed by the powers of understanding and reason, concepts and judgments, which are enmeshed in intersubjective, formal, and inferential linguistic activities. The self of self-consciousness is not the self, in Kant and Hegel's sense, the self of self-consciousness is not the self of the moment or reality,
The self, the self is the decider also of judging, being judged, that is a socially instantiated and an inferentially demarcated self, which is the formal locus of claiming rationality, authority, and responsibility for what is said and what is done. that is a RAS concept, or the being of a concept. In the sense of that, by being of a concept, I mean in the sense of both falling under the concept and exhibiting it.
It is for this reason that it's really necessary to differentiate, when I'm in the book of self-consciousness, differentiates the concept of self-consciousness from the ordinary use of the word consciousness, which usually refers to, basically, a knowledge of phenomenon, self-image, and knowledge is initiated by phenomenon, self-image. At the level of consciousness, which as I said, a natural phenomenon, which is fully built upon causal structure of sensitivity is no spontaneity or unethicality that we can hold in any meaningful sense of freedom. This is because sensibility is itself a causal structure that is passive with regard to external
causes inhinged on it by ITEM in the world. Now however, one might object that this causal mechanistic view, the issue of non-spontaneity, only holds for the outer sense. When it comes to what Kant calls inner sense or inner perception, that is the capacity of the mind to be affected by its own states, we can indeed talk about spontaneity of autonomy. For what is the spontaneity of the mind if not its ability to be affected by itself rather than for its cause, acting in accordance with its own states rather than dictates something from the outside. But as Kant points out regarding the causality of nature,
in which the causality of the cause is caused, here also we have the causality of nature rather than a form of a spontaneity of the time. For even though in inner sense or inner perception the mind is affected by its own inner states as a something of a friend, This inner causality is itself caused by its causes. Put differently, even though the mind is caused by itself, its inner states, the very fact that it acts, represents, in accordance with one state, as opposed to another, the state. It's just that it is not a spontaneous, and that we cannot characterize it as a free agency.
since being in this or that mental state is itself caused by something else, namely a foreign cause. The empirical self, as an object of knowledge, can therefore be represented as a passive self rather than an autonomous self. A passive, I mean being caused to be in the state in which it is caused to be in by something external that is not meant by it. Now, it follows that even if the inner perception, the core of consciousness, is the capacity of the mind to be caused by itself rather than by something else, the states from which the spontaneous causality of the mind is inferred, the states from which the spontaneity of the
mind is inferred are themselves caused by four causes. Thus, at the level of inner perception, which is the causality of the mind, its capacity to be affected by its own states, the spontaneity is only a figment of the causal structure, which in our case, happens to be the brain. And an illustrating example of this alleged spontaneity at the level of inner perception is given by Wilfred Sellars. And I hope that illuminates this idea of why at this level, which is the level of consciousness, we cannot really talk about non-relative form of autonomy or freedom in the sense that we think about freedom.
He says, consider a pure, which embodies a certain logical program, a set of computational dispositions, even if turned on and humming readiness. It still does nothing unless a problem is fed in. Furthermore, once this happens, it moves along in accordance with its logical disposition. At certain stages, it may search for its memory bank, The search, however, is itself the outcome of the initial input and its computational development. And although with this qualification it initiates the search, the information it gets is information which as computer it is caused to add by more inputs.
Here also it is added. Now, so at the level of consciousness and the empirical self, the spontaneous activity of the mind, akin to the seemingly spontaneous search of a wearing computer, is set in motion by a causality that even though appears, the causality of the mind is in reality a causal routine. Its causality is being caused, and thus a causality of nature, where autonomy is at relative and the will is passive. Now having ruled out the question of autonomy from the realm of consciousness and the empirical self, it is now time to return to the domains of understanding and reason, whereas, as mentioned earlier, we can speak of subjectivity, self-consciousness, the will, namely the power, the concept of autonomy and freedom.
Let's see if understanding, the subject of understanding, maybe the conceptualizing mind can enjoy a relative spontaneity of autonomy of the will. So, the question we should now pose is, is the subject of the understanding realized that what Kant calls the synthetic unity of our perception a true autonomous subject, or like the conscious empirical self, only enjoys a relative autonomy? To answer this question, we should note that the faculty of understanding is a particular
domain of the a priori. It is the faculty of both applying the general concept of understanding, the so-called categories of quantity, quality, modality, to particular invariances or rudimentary representations organized by the faculty of the imagination and bringing the intuitive under the generality of pure concepts or categories. The a priori concepts of understanding, or what more modern lexicon can call general invariances required for the stabilization of representation of object construct, are not derived from any particular instance experience, which are basically provided by inner and outer
utter and inner sense. This is how they fundamentally differ from the particularities of the experience and by extension the inner sense and imagination. Pure concepts of understanding are derived not from particular experiential encounters which as we saw are passive with regard to foreign causes but from manners by which the mind organizes its experiential presentation. So is the understanding subject, the aperceptive self capable of engaging in perceptual judgments through the application of pure concepts, a
genuinely autonomous subject, a true candidate for freedom? The answer is is negative, even though the subject of understanding is irreducible to particular experiential encounters, it is still in reaction to foreign causes and stimuli, the influence in our company, for example, or in that make the autonomy of, sorry, it is still in reaction to foreign causes and stimuli, since categories of understanding are still conceptual extensions of material co-plays that make the autonomy of the conscious mind relative. Looking back at the computer example,
we can say that the perceptive subject of understanding is still a causal mechanistic automaton whose conceptual activities or responses are initiated by causal states and not just a particular cause. To the extent that the subject of understanding, or category of judgment, is still bound to the experience, and to the extent the realm of perceptual experience can only have at best a relative autonomy, we can conclude that even though the aperceptive self, the subject who engages in conceptual activities, that extend beyond the horizon of pure phenomenal consciousness, It is still bound, in virtue of its experiential constitution, to the realm of four causes.
In this respect, the subject, who has an upright objective knowledge of the world, can be portrayed in terms of causal mechanisms and routines. It's a spontaneity, which is the spontaneity of the constitutionalized mind organizing and representing the raw materials of perception, also acting in accordance to such organized perceptions, can be expressed in terms of a cause whose causality is caused by fourth causes, and thus as a phenomenon that belongs to the domain of natural causes, if not being merely a phenomenon of them. Therefore, the spontaneity of the conceptualizing mind, and with that, the autonomy of the
understanding of the subject of understanding constituted by the synthetic unity of our conception, are also not appropriate sites of freedom and autonomous will. Now that we have further ruled out the candidacy of the experience in the subject of understanding, the conceptualizing mind as in contrast to mere phenomenal consciousness, for genuine autonomy and freedom, we can ask then what is exactly the subject of autonomy, will, and freedom? Isn't it more fruitful to declare the non-relative account of autonomy, genuine freedom, the pure will, as obsolete concepts and move on to something more worthy?
The answer is not at all. The non-relative account of autonomy and the freedom of pure will are not attributes of consciousness, phenomenal selfhood, or even, as argued, the fully aperceptive subject of understanding or the conceptualizing mind. Locating the roots and reality of these concepts in experiential rise of subjectivity and particular are individuals is at once a misplaced anti-scientific, precritical ambition and a categorical misattribution, which is an end source of logical, philosophical, and socio-political befuddlement.
The non-relative account of autonomy, freedom, and the pure will are not to be found in the subject of consciousness, phenomenal or conceptual, but in the subject of reason, that is, the subject that is bound by and realized by a recent and transnational ideals. Autonomy of the will is an attribute of the rational self, constituted by the formal rather than subtendly, constituted by the formal, logical, linguistic, social, and impersonal domain of reason and laws, a species of laws rather than the case. The subject of reason is neither natural kind nor supernatural. It is formal, logical, linguistic, notive,
and social, as in contrast to the quasi-individual horizon of the experiencing subject. The world is not a property of consciousness, but of thought as formally and not substantively differentiated from the order. The autonomy of thought, its causality, is the spontaneous causality of what it means to represent something as true in the judgment, and what it means to represent an action as good, the form of the will. It is to say theoretical and practical reasons. The form of the will, the power to act, is not a correlate of individual experience in subject,
but the collective self-determining subject instantiated by form of causality of thought, for autonomy. It is the correspondence between the field and autonomy expressed in terms of the form, for a logical, linguistic, in French, and sense of causality of thought, which is the key in grasping the concept of freedom. Now, both Kant and Hegel speak of a certain form of causality for thought, without which the notion of freedom is meaningless. This is the formal causality of thought, sustained by a formally represented, rational, and self-conscious order, which is the order of reason.
Freedom, in this sense, does not suggest a lack of determination by any cause. It does not signify this absurd, vacuous, and arbitrary idea of being free from any and all determinations and constraints, to act as one reason to not be determined by anything. However, being determined by the formal causality of thought is also not the same as determination by natural causes, as is the case for the order of consciousness and the experiential subject. Freedom is the matter of determination by the causality of thought, which is neither the causality of nature implicit in consciousness, or it belongs formal, formal order of sin, nor is it the lack of determination causes.
Now, the core of freedom is to be constrained and caused by the order of reasons and laws. But these are laws that are not natural in the sense that they are the laws of the rational agents over collective legislation. These laws are not merely one's own laws. insofar as they are derived from one's own nature, as in contrast to a law imposed by a foreign cause. But they are one's own laws, because they are laws that reconstitute, that reorganize one's nature, nothing despite of what is naturally given, but despite of it.
Accordingly, freedom or the ability of doing and thinking, not by what is given to us by nature, but by what we ourselves collectively determine, constitute, and legislate, cannot be thought in terms of a national birthright or a given law, but an ongoing, continuous, and enriching historical struggle. For one, collective self-determination, as in contrast to natural organisms, which all organic life forms possess in different degrees, and two, self-constitution that is conceiving and transforming ourselves in spite
of our given biological constitution into a constitution that is, even though still steeped in material and causal structures, it's in upward demands of the collective legislative reason. Now, freedom is accordingly not what can be identified as something that is given in advance in consciousness for the conceptualizing mind, but a continuous labor of the ethical and practical reasons, which is to say the internet and the ill. Now, the attempt to ward off the threats of the neuroscientific disenchantment of freedom of experiential subjectivity is as ill-founded as the attempt to scientifically and philosophically
locate the pure will and freedom in our biological structure and experiential subjectivity. Freedom belongs to the former order of reason, and its realization is a matter of a rational struggle enmeshed through the intellect and the powers of judgment enable the former and the powers to act about by the latter. To apprehend the structure of the own, then it is necessary to examine in addition to the powers of intellect, namely what it means to represent something in belief and intention maximus truth, the powers of the will, or what it means to represent an action as good.
But this account of the will is not simply the capacity for choice, the individual's will whose autonomy is always relative, as we saw, but the will as the manifestation of autonomy, for the formal causality of thought, which is as much the ground of the individual's choices as it is a condition for the possibility of objective and intelligible freedom. Autonomy is neither the absence of determination nor causality. It is determination by causality of thought is the formally represented and representing order of reason and self-consciousness. It signifies a boundless to laws and constraints which are involved neither by nature nor by
by the individual subject of experience and understanding, but by the socially constituted interpersonal subjectivity of the reason. The autonomous subject in this sense is not part of the larger individual, but the will given itself to the order of reason and its laws, and acting subject, whose subjectivity is realized by the small mentality of self that is but the order of reason. The self-consciousness of this subject, the field, as Sebastian Wood remarks, genates from the eye, not being subject to anything, not even my particular experience, Jesus. It says, a subject represents acts of hers falling
under a form-represented order in unmediated first-person post. Her acknowledgement of this order contained in these acts in these acts is an unmitigated first-person thought as well. Hence, a formally represented order is one's own, in the sense that one's only here is a first-person pronoun. So the eye of reason is very different from the eye of experience. As a formally represented order is an order of reason, being autonomous in this stronger sense is being subjected to laws of reason. being under laws of reason, I am subject to nothing other than myself in the sense that these laws
constitute the nature of that which I refer first personally. Now, the order of self-consciousness expresses a form, presence, of life that exists by virtue of its causality of thought, that is its cause or explains its actions. Its actions not only fall under its thoughts, but also exhibit the very thoughts to which they are identical. This normative causality of thought that explains the actions of the subconscious subject and undergird the unity of thoughts and actions is called the order of reason, which is also the order of what can handle all consciousness.
Disorder is formal. Its formality signifies an explanatory causal relation or loop between thoughts and actions. According to each, the order of thought causes actions and actions exhibit and make it split the thoughts. Autonomy expresses this causal loop in which the relation between the formal, spontaneity of thought and action is not per accident or external cause, but in accordance with the only reason. The will, or more accurately, the pure will, is precisely practical expression of the causal loop between the formal spontaneity of thought and action, between the general, infinite,
the accidental ends of reason, and the action which at once emanates from and makes manifest such a different ends. So to conclude, we have finally arrived at a stage where we can answer the question of the reality of will and the freedom of a subjectivity that is endowed on. It is not the experiential subject of the will for our rechoice, which always happens to be ultimately arbitrary, which is worthy of cultivation and path toward freedom. Instead, it is the will that should be understood by the type of subjectivity that reduce the experience of individual subjects. Cannot coherently think freedom if we can't treat the will
itself as a subjectivity, a form of subjectivity realized by the order of reason manifested in the domain of action. The candidate subject for that anguishing historical struggle, which is freedom, as a concretely universal project, is not the individual subject shackled to its belief or particular experiences, but the collectively and rationally constituted practical subject of reason, which is the will. Now, what the will is the power to act in accordance to the word of reason is not really sufficient condition for the realization of freedom, unless it is with the collective general intellect or the rational power of judgment, which belongs to the order of truth,
norms of representing something, a belief, a claim, an intention, a maximum, a thing. So if the will in the above sense defines the very subject of freedom, and if the will is not the experiential subject, the subject bound by the order of reason, and furthermore, if the order of reason is formally instantiated, not by the experiencing individual, but the self-determining collectivity that one's bound to his legislative norms and is capable of then to invest all revolutionary ambitions in the experience of the individual is but a misguided enterprise.
It is a delusion that is no less acute than the illusion of the phenomenal selfhood in treating itself as the spontaneous odds of impressions and actions. Now, having examined the site of the will and autonomy, we are now confronted with a far more complicated question. If the will is the subjectivity that originates from the form and collect for the reason as differentiated from experience, and if freedom is unrealizable without will, then how can Can we, by we I mean us as individuals, who are both burdened and moved by our own respective lived experiences, think about freedom?
In our vastly incommensurable experiences, can we think about a concrete account of freedom capable of delivering us from the relative spontaneity of our own selves? Or should we abide by the notion of freedom as an unattainable ideal, a regulated ideal permanently sold off to the individual subject of experience, akin to a mirage that is at once weakened and an illusion? Now the answer of course depends on how seriously we take the idea of freedom that is not given
in advance in any way whatsoever. How far we are willing to treat freedom as that which is not given as an object of a soul rather than as something that can be found in the constitution of the conscious subject of experience. The practical subject of reason is neither foreclosed to the individual experience nor is given to it in advance. The task of the experiencing individual that is each one of us in reclaiming its freedom beyond the illusions of the empirical self is to adapt to the practical subjectivity of the will, which is the power of action and importance, to reason as that for which
nothing has ever been will be given or settled. Nevertheless, we experiencing and cognizing subjects cannot treat the subjectivity of the pure will as a given subjectivity either. Just as for the subjectivity of the pure will, there is no freedom as a given, when it comes to the experiencing subject, there is no pre-established conformity with the subject of the pure will either. Indeed, between the two, the experiencing subject and the subject of the pure will, lies immense tensions. It is in resolving these tensions that we can impute a certain concreteness to our thoughts
of freedom and bring the contingencies of our own experiences under the horizon of autonomy and self-determination. But to resolve such tensions, we can neither dispense with the achievements and conclusions of neuroscience, nor forego with the powers and ideals of rational subjectivity. Having surveyed the nature of rational subjectivity and the will, as well as the nature of individual experiencing subject, there is no viable justification anymore to not think of the de-individualizing vector of the cognitive neuroscience as an opportunity for a true collectively determined freedom.
Nor is there any more an excuse for not thinking what it means today to bring our individual experiences under new collective rational comments to regard seizing the means of cognition as a scientific, philosophical, and political project of necessity. Thank you very much. Thank you.