Pill Pod 198 - Three Philosophies of Freedom

The Pill Pod debates the philosophy of freedom from Merleau Ponty, Sartre, Peirce, and Post-structuralism. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You are good. Yep, looks good. I think so the
way form is flowing. Baby, Hey out.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
There, listeners, wave goes in, wave goes out. I'm in
your ears. I'm with Eric, Hey, Eric, Hello, and Victor yo.
I thought it would be It's not something I necessarily
want to talk about, but I thought it'd be more
weird to pretend like America isn't happening this week than

(00:36):
to acknowledge it. So if we could just quickly acknowledge it,
this is the timeline. I didn't see all I didn't
see all the headlines, but I saw trumps President Elon
Musk is lying about cheating at video games and hiling Trump,
and the ADL said, no, hiling, That's that's fine. Now
that's the world this week. Did I miss anything?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, I mean he's back. I haven't really mercifully. Maybe mercifully.
I don't know. I've just been too preoccupied with other
stuff that I just haven't been paying that much attention
to the Trump inauguration. But I've caught a few tidbits
here and there, and uh, I quite enjoyed an interaction
he had with a journalist about about NATO and NATO spending.

(01:19):
I don't know if you guys saw it, but uh,
I think someone asked him, you know, oh, you know,
what are you thinking about countries and NATO that aren't
paying their fair share for like defense contracts, and in
particular Spain, Spain only spends. And then Trump was like, oh, yeah, Spain,
you know, they're they're basically getting away from free and
you know, they're a bricks country. It's like, you know
what bricks is, right, He's like, you know how the

(01:41):
guy's like why. The journalist is literally like what He's like, bricks.
He's like, they're a bricks country, of course, So like
you know, and just by the way, for the listener
in cases not obvious, like Spain is definitely not in
the bricks.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
And I think that it's a Belgium, Romania, Yeah, actually
India and Spain. Yeah yeah, that's the Canada is the seed.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
That's why, that's why he's gonna do it. He's gonna
impose the twenty five percent tariff on on Canada because
we're a bricks country. So right away I was like,
oh great, this is it's a it's a nice reminder
of like how poorly informed Trump really is. Like right away,
right off the bat, he says something that's just patently false,
and and then you know, in moments like that, I'm
kind of like, I'm old enough, and you guys are

(02:29):
probably old enough to remember when everyone used to mock
George W. Bush for being an idiot, But I actually
more and more obviously it's just, you know, part of
it's just comparative, but part of it is I realized
that that that, if anything, Bush was more performing stupidity
to like appeal to his base. But I don't actually
think that he was that dumb. I mean, this is
real dumb. This is this is real like like lack

(02:50):
of information, like lack of understanding of like of like
basic geopolitical concepts. So yeah, well I must.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
I glance at the news every now and then, but
I'm finding it much easier this time around. In twenty sixteen,
I was like glued to the fucking news, but this
time it's so much easier just to just to be like.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Okay, I feel like I know how this is gonna go.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yeah, I'm still gonna like keep up with things, but
I'm not gonna do the twenty sixteen What the fuck's
gonna happen today? Kind of anxiety thing. I'm just gonna
be like all right, just let it wash over me.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
It kind of just feels like first is tragedy than
as farce. It's just farce this time.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
So it's like, yeah, I mean we need another saying
first is farce and now is just theater of the absurd.
I don't know, it needs to go deeper.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
It seems like it could be more dangerous this time around,
like there's a there's an emboldening there.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Could they learned from their mistakes and now they're gonna
They're gonna make sure the right people are in the
right positions and they can take down what they want.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
He just Trump just withdrew.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
From the World Health Organization, which is surprising.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Is it surprising?

Speaker 4 (04:07):
Well? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, no, no, it's not on one level, but in
another level, it's like a big surprising move.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
I guess, like I didn't know what he was going
to do.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
And he pardoned all the January sixth people. He partnered
our favorite, our favorite QAnon Shammon, who said he's going
to go and buy a gun.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Now, Oh that's that's that is perfect. Well, you know what,
paying attention to it or not paying attention to it.
And I would say this generally speaking for everyone, whether
you pay attention to it or not doesn't really make
a difference. Well, my favorite thing, though, my favorite thing
that he did was, I think it was yesterday or
two days ago, signed an executive order mandating that government

(04:52):
architecture has to be classical. So what do you think
that means because it's stipulated.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Classical as in Greek, or classical is in like neo Colonial.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Well probably just probably just classical, like all those other
buildings in Washington.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
I'm glad you asked, because most of if I'm not mistaken,
I think most of Washington is Neo Classical, which is
like Greek Greek Revival. But when when this executive order
says classical, it includes Neo Classicism, the Georgian Style, the
Greek Revival, and Gothicism. So just whatever you have that's old,

(05:32):
as long as it's prior to modernist architecture, it's allowed and.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
European, just like Greatest Hits minus Rococo.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, I guess you cut it off at art. Anything
before Art Deco is okay. But this is perfect for
like America, which is a simulation of legitimacy. This is
like fake old is the thing that's now allowed, not
not the architectural styles that were actually developed in the
country now, just the imported ones simulating a past.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
What was even developed in the country. I guess, I
guess like anything modernist, but I mean did was there
also some kind of some kind of colonial architecture that's
sort of associated with America that like a lot of
buildings at like Harvard or like colonial. I don't know
all the columns.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
I think the columns are mostly Greek Revival.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I'm gonna ask the big columns with the colonials.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Those are Greek Revival. But like, but I thought that
there's also like a more muted architecture that some people
call like American colonial or something. I don't know, but
that's obviously just European stuff anyway.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
That's why I asked if that was classical, because even
when I went down to Mexico and saw like Cortes's
house and stuff, that's all like kind of colonial styles
as well.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
I just like that Gothic is thrown in with like
Greek revival. These are from three hundred years apart, even
in their original iterations. And then they're allowed to be
revived and old them. How insane will it go? That's
what we're all wondering. But that's not what we're talking
about to I like.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
What about the zig Kile? I mean, do you guys
have strong opinions It.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Wasn't Nazism, it was autism. They're easily confused.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, what do you think?

Speaker 4 (07:19):
He's just waving?

Speaker 2 (07:21):
I don't know, if anything, his goal is to make
people mad. Yeah, but it also if you watch it,
it didn't really seem like he was thinking it through.
It seemed more kind of spur of the moment. I
just wish that we could take away the power from
images like that so we wouldn't have to focus on
that bullshit, because really it's a smoke screen for what

(07:41):
the administration's real goals are.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Well, I think the real goals do a line with
with doing a Nazi salute and then claiming it wasn't
a Nazi salute. That's kind of been the mo of
Republicans for a long time, coded racism.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
It works, but it works so well because then the
liberal media goes crazy and like gets the exact reaction
that they want. That's the thing that like I found
kind of it's kind of like a double bind that
it's like you have no option for how to react
to it, because like if you think that it's a
purposeful Nazi salute, then you just end up being that
liberal or lefty who just points Nazi Nazi and just

(08:19):
plays into their hands in some other way, or you
just like stay silent or I don't know. It's. One
thing that was funny though, is to see Nick font As,
who's like, you know, clearly a white nationalist, be like
on his stream like laughing about how like that was
just an unambiguous like Roman Nazi salute, like that was
he was like, oh man, he's like that was just
like a I Love Hitler moment.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Well, Hitler did like take a like pastiche of things, right,
like you know that the Buddhist symbol the Roman salute, and.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
And Hitler was also a class assist himself.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
But I look this up. Apparently there's no evidence that
the Roman, real Romans did that salute. That this was
like taken from some like play or movie where like
some some player.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
Rect ben her.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah sounds about right. I think I would like to
take it. I would like to take a deflationary stance
towards the Nazis because he's just getting the reaction that
he wants, whether or not he has Nazi sympathies, And
in so far as he does or does not have
Nazi sympathies, what he cares more about than any Nazism

(09:27):
is pissing off the people that got pissed off. So
he won.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah, because because the conservative.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
And liberal spheres are so separate too, it's like, yeah,
you push the buttons of the liberal sphere, they react.
The conservative sphere claims nothing wrong happened, and look at
this reaction they're having, their lying about us, they're painting.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Us as evil.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
It's like they just have this system going of making
them react and then claiming they're reacting over nothing, and
then all, look how terrible the liberal press is full
of lies.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
I will admit that I am surprised, and maybe I
should be embarrassed that I'm surprised, but I'm surprised. The
a d L was like, no, that that's that's fine.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Wait, who's the ADEL?

Speaker 2 (10:16):
The Anti Defamation League?

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Oh really? Oh they came out and said they didn't
think that was a Nazi slit.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Nope, they said he's a great friend to Israel. So
there's no.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
That's a whole Okay, those two things mutually exclusive.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Close up the can now that we have video, okay, yeah,
over there. That's that's our news update. If it gets
we're gonna have to come back Touchstone. But we're dealing
with something else, same thing we did last week, and
though today's format it's gonna be a little different than
normal because we did some homework. We're going to be

(10:55):
throwing our ideas into the battle ring, and the fight
is over freedom. We have to find out if it
means something. It's a big concept in many kinds of philosophy,
for many centuries of philosophy. It's a religious concept. It's
a bunch of concepts. But we wanted to figure out

(11:16):
what freedom is because in the summer. Over the summer,
we were looking into and researching the religious origins of
society and religion. If you weren't there, religion doesn't mean
any particular religion. It just means the chain of symbols

(11:36):
and signs that people metaphorically gather around. And it's not
also the case that wocism is religion, nothing like that.
We mean gathering around signs totems what makes a society
a society, and they need to be at least looking
in the same direction once in a while to be
considered part of the same socia.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Sure, they're not totems in wocism, though that would qualify
also potentially.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Well, they wouldn't be a The society that adheres to
them would be very small. So it's not like America
is woke or the university right is woke, because there's
that's a minority view at best, and then the minority
view gets I'll explain this. I think you turn a

(12:22):
group of people into a crowd using a totem. This
is Durkheim's theory. They identify with the totem, and that
creates enemies out of everyone who is not facing the
same direction as you, or potential enemies. Not everyone is
straight up an enemy, but if they're not facing the
same totem, they become a potential enemy, a potential enemy

(12:46):
to your group. So we came to the conclusion over
the summer that if we have a totem socially, the West,
the left, the right, the Trump is the Marxist, everyone
agrees that they to be free right. So in that case,
our totem would be something like freedom and yeah whatever

(13:07):
that means.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, just not to But I'm I guess I'm just curious,
like just reminding myself of this account, but there can
be so yeah, I get that. Like, I think the
reason why freedom is such a compelling totem is because
it doesn't matter what your political persuasion is, right, Like,
everyone seems to accept some version of it, or at
least speak to it.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
No one will say, like freedom, I don't want that. Everyone. Yeah, freedom,
yes I.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Want nah, not for me, yeah, not for me exactly exactly.
And I think that's why it makes it such a
compelling totem. So yeah, I agree, I guess, just like
on the wokeism or even other subcultural examples, I guess
the reason that's stuck in my head is because I
am currently like applying for jobs, right, and I'm thinking
about like having a right diversity statement, and I don't know,
that just seems like some kind of a totem or something.
I don't know, it's just like some kind of like

(13:53):
a compelled thing that I have to do that like
feels like an ideological like uh, I don't know, like
like showing that you're on the same team basically.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Well, I agree with that. But the problem is if
we're dealing with like these micrototems and there are is
the word I.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Was looking for. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was looking for.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Which is not a term that exists in the literature.
It's one we just invented. But if you want, if
you want micro totems, you have totems down to the
level of the family and your friends group. Right, But
if we're speaking of a cultural totem and we have
to find the things that we agree with the trumpists.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yes, exactly. No, that makes perfect sense to me, which
is why I started by saying freedom is like a
perfect example because like no one will no one says
no to it pretty much, I mean you know pretty
much no one says no to it. Yeah, good hm.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Fun fact this I was just looking up, like what
the ancient Greek word for freedom is, and it's uh
personified of course as a goddess l Etheria, And so
the ancient Greeks had this concept of freedom, but it
belongs to the gods, like the gods are free and

(15:03):
humans are sort of faded to you know, if you've
seen Greek tragedy, right, the gods are sort of always
guiding the principal human characters towards their fate, which is
kind of this ineluctable, unavoidable outcome of the tragedies, which
is usually death and misery for all. But yeah, el Eutheria,

(15:29):
you are just.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
You are stepping on my toes here, Eric, because I'm
going sorry, I'm going third, and I will present the
semiotic philosophy of language of what I think freedom is.
Then before me, we'll have Eric give a Persian semiotic
view of what freedom is. Or maybe it's not semiotic.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Doesn't touch on semiotics too much, but I'll try to
make the connection if I have time.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
But first we are going to hand it over to Victor.
Victor has chosen to take on the existentialist slash phenomenological
account of freedom, so that will be the order. We
said in the rules that we have ten minutes each,
but let's let's stick to it as well as it
works too too.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
I mean, I should be able to be pretty brief.
I did actually prepare some writing, actually, like full disclosure.
This is the first time I've ever done this, and
I found it actually to be quite useful, which was
I kind of had some rough notes and then I
was like, you know what, I'm going to put them
into chatcheapt And I actually ended up having a back
and forth because I wanted to, and I've never done
this extensive of a back and forth conversation with chat cheapat,

(16:39):
but I felt like it really helped me actually clarify
like what I wanted to say, what I wanted to
include in my account of freedom. So some of this
is like rewarded my words from chatchapt, but I'm not
really necessarily going to read it verbatim. But I do
kind of have the overall view that I want to advance,
and I think this view is probably the one that's

(17:01):
maybe closest to the common sensical view of like what
are everyday Joe would think is freedom. So I'm going
to try to defend it from kind of an existentialist perspective. Okay,
So I think on this account, a crucial starting point
is that it's not about the metaphysical debate about whether
objective free will exists. Instead, I'm concerned with a lived,

(17:25):
embodied sense of ownership over my habits, dispositions, and tendencies.
So to feel free is to feel that one's actions, desires,
and self conception are aligned, that one's life is genuinely
one's own. So this sense of ownership is not a
static or given but I think it's cultivated through moments
of growth, reflection, and deliberate effort to reshape our own

(17:49):
habits or tendencies and to reflect things that we kind
of have higher ordered desires for. You know, I want
to be better at this thing. So I think MARYL.
Ponte's is You Full here because of his account of embodiment.
So freedom is not purely a matter of intellectual deliberation,
but it's enacted through our bodies and lived experience. So,

(18:10):
for example, a process of learning a new skill like
playing a musical instrument or developing a healthier routine. Right,
the kind of habit we might want to cultivate to
be better shows how freedom emerges through navigating and internalizing constraints.
So at first, the rules and techniques you know, are discomforting.
We start to exercise. It sucks, but over time, you know,

(18:32):
you can become a sense of kind of fluidity and mastery.
You know, it can get to the point where it
becomes so habitual that it feels weird not to do
this thing, right, it feels weird to not exercise. So
in this sense, freedom is not about the absence of limits,
but it's the ability to engage with and integrate them
meaningfully into your life. So moments when we push ourselves

(18:54):
closer to this alignment, when we develop a better habit,
we overcome a limiting tendency or make a deliberate change
that feels I think, especially free. Those are moments when
we feel most free. These are moments of progress in
integrating who we are with what we aspire to be. So,
you know, I think another example, we're distracted too much,

(19:16):
we're endlessly scrolling online, but maybe we shift that to
reading more, to being more creative, to reinforcing you know,
these more deliberative or thought provoking habits as opposed to
just going with the flow. So in this sense, I
think it's we can understand it as a practice and
a process of striving rather than a destination. So again

(19:40):
I want to return to this point about like, how
does this cohere with kind of an objective free will?
So on this view, it doesn't depend. We actually don't
care about objective free will. In fact, the notion of
absolute freedom, I would claim, like, for example, the ability
to choose every thought that comes into my mind. Right,
I think Nietzsche points this out in one of his books,

(20:02):
would be horrible, It's undesirable, impractical, the idea that every
single thought. So instead, freedom is situated partial, emerging from
attension between our given circumstances and our efforts to take
ownership of them. So even in constrained situations conditions, there's
always room to push to strive for a stronger sense
of ownership. So that's like the basic account I have.

(20:27):
But I kind of also had this example that was
maybe anticipating things that I thought potentially pills would bring up,
maybe because I think consumer culture. I know, we've talked
about consumer culture a lot, you know that, you know,
critiques that maybe come from people like Beaudriard argue that,
like consumer culture these other things, they script our desires

(20:49):
and our subjectivities, right, reducing freedom to kind of illusory
choices offered by markets and media. So while this critique
highlights I think real influences, I I guess I want
to say from an existentialist perspective, the presence of consumer
culture does not negate freedom. It simply becomes another domain
where the challenge of ownership arises, and I think here

(21:10):
Jean Paul Start's concept of bad faith can be useful.
Bad faith occurs when individuals evade responsibility for their freedom,
passively adopting roles, values, and desires as if they were
externally imposed. So in the context of consumer culture, bad
faith manifests when people uncritically absorb narratives and advertising. And
you know, to some extent, I think, on the existentialist view,

(21:32):
we all do this to some extent, We're all shaped
by these things. But I guess I want to say
that there's a way in which you can take up
an attitude and take ownership of those things, even though
they're kind of imposed, because it's just like everything else,
just like our body, just like the culture of the
family were born into. We didn't choose these things. We
don't choose the consumer culture, but we can still choose

(21:53):
a way to react to them, I think, is what
I want to say. So we can reframe consumer culture
as just another site of struggle, just like the struggle
with our bodies are bodily constraints that undeniably shapes us,
but it also offers opportunities for engagement. Right, we can
be you know, a connoisseur of eating McDonald's or something

(22:14):
like that. Right, we can try to adopt a different
attitude to it. That still, I think takes up the
existential is ethos. And then I guess the last thing.
I don't know how I'm doing for time, but I
guess the last thing I wanted to touch on was
maybe some of the political implications of this. So, you know,
when applied to a political realm, I think this view,
this view suggests a preference for systems that expand the

(22:37):
horizon of freedom to create conditions where individuals can pursue
ownership in diverse and personal ways. So such systems respect
and support idiosyncrasies of individual preferences, individual tendencies. And I
think this perspective also recognizes subtle, pervasive systems of oppression
often constrain freedom. It acknowledges the way cultural value patterns,

(23:01):
as I said before, consumer culture can you know, seemingly
limit people. But I think for existentialism, addressing these constraints involves,
you know, trying to point to systemic barriers. I know
Simone de Bovar talks a lot about the way feminism
does this is trying to expand the horizon of freedom

(23:23):
for women. But I still think it's important to acknowledge
that I don't think existentialism, actually, you know, strongly asserts
one political system over another. I think, you know, And
I wanted one thing I wanted to add was just
that I think that on an existentialist account of that

(23:43):
I was talking about earlier, of kind of like the
way that we feel free when we exert ourselves, when
we push past something. I think in some ways this
question of the kind of political freedom we want gets
complicated because I think from this account we can understand
why authoritarian systems can be kind of of appealing, because
they often narrow the scope of choices, compelling individuals to

(24:07):
act in specific ways. This narrowing of options can paradoxically
foster a sense of freedom as people are forced to
exert themselves in certain ways. And I think, thinking back
to the last episode, we can remember starts provocative remark
that the French were never as free as under occupation.
I think under the constraints of occupation, the act of
resisting oppression required individuals to exercise their freedom through defiance,

(24:30):
giving them a heightened sense of purpose and ownership. So
by contrast, in societies with expansive freedoms, individuals often face
an overwhelming abundant of abundance of choices or the illusion
of choices from consumer culture, these different messages, and I
think this can lead to alienation and paralysis as people
struggle to navigate that. Yet, from an existentialis perspective, this

(24:53):
ambiguity and difficult difficulty of navigating broad horizons of freedom is,
I would still argue you preferable from to the artificial
clarity imposed by oppression or authoritarianism. That's kind of how
I see that dynamic, and I think those are like
the main comments I wanted to make.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
So, yeah, okay, I have some clarification questions that are
not criticism questions. So you're kind of saying the least
free person is the reactive one, and I want to.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Tell yeah, it's about the it's about a subjective feeling too,
So right, so.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
This is my my question for clarification because of where
you started and where you ended up. You said freedom
is more physical than mental or is it mental too?
But there's conscious choices, So how does the it's both,
how does the embodied part relate to thinking about freedom.
I know where you're getting it from, but I don't
know if everyone else was Y.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah so so, so I would say that like on
my view on this view, I mean, it's not really
my view, it's really Mary la Ponti's, and to some
extent start in these other existentials view. I mean, there
is no division between the mind and the body. I think,
like like Mary L. Ponti repeatedly says that like an
an embodied attitude, a mental attitude is actually an embodied attitude,

(26:09):
that like there is no separation. But I guess I
just wanted to emphasize it kind of in a common
sensical way that we're not really talking about this kind
of purely mental activity. We're talking about changing our attitudes
to things in an embodied way. And I think the
reason why it's important to bring up embodiment is because
you know, the body, there's I think there's somehow this

(26:30):
like subjective sense or illusion that like our mind is
this realm of freedom because we can think about whatever
we want, or at least it seems like we can,
but then our body is like this barrier, this limitation.
It's like I have to push myself to do these things,
and I guess I just want to say it's one
and the same thing because all of it is actually
limited and contextual and partial, and it's part of all
part of one system. I think. I don't know if

(26:51):
that answers your question.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
But that's yeah, that's the That's the other thing that
I wanted to clarify that I got out of what
you said is the normal death of freedom often is
like an absence of limits. This one is having limits
but almost being aware of them and then being able
to choose and break the lens that aren't working.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
As best you can. Yeah. And it's and it's about
the subjective feeling that follows from when you are like,
holy shit, I had to push myself to do this.
And it doesn't matter what the objective truth of the
matter is. It's about what it feels like when you
do it. And I think, and I think common sensibly
everyone can identify with that feeling when we've overcome something,
and I think that's freedom.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Do you have any questions, Eric, Yeah, I would just
sort of ask the basic question start would get asked,
is so if all freedom is is to choose, and
choosing is good? Then any choice you make is good,
you know, send them to the gulags, because I'm choosing
to bring about communism or something like that, which which

(27:58):
to most people.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
Would be bad.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, I certainly agree with that, that that that would
be bad or you know, I mean, I don't think
that there is like a clear answer. I mean, I
think that Simone de Beauvoir has a much better account
of ethics in the Ethics of Ambiguity, which I think
we did read, which still leaves some questions unanswered. But
if I recall, I mean, I think that the existentials

(28:20):
would be quick to point out that the thing that's
kind of scary about like objective, kind of unambiguous moral
systems is that it's actually like the kantient person or something, who, well,
I've followed the rules, so now I can do anything
that's outside of those rules. Right now, I can do
anything that conforms to those or like, you know, the
the utilitarian who's like, well, this is maximizing happiness, so

(28:44):
I'm going to do this thing. It's kind of the
certainty that those systems grant is the scary thing, I
think from an existentialist perspective, because from an existentialist perspective,
it's all about ambiguity. It's all about that you don't
know you have to take. It's scary every choice you make,
there's like the consequences of it are. The weight of
the consequences of it when you're kind of in your

(29:04):
best moments of reflection should cause you to think twice
about the choices that you make, because there are no certainties.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
I think it seems to me like the sorcery and position.
It requires so much thinking and evaluating and reflecting and
being like, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, Whereas the
merleu Pontian thing, it's like for him, the artist is
much more free with a pencil than someone who's not

(29:33):
an artist. So the freedom is almost an automatic, unthought
quality towards the world, as opposed to the existentialist choice,
which is like, make the right choice otherwise you're an
authentic So I yes, do you see how they go together?
I like the merle Ponti and one better as well,
But I don't see how they go together.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, I think, but I think there's still a choice
for Mary la Pontia. But putting yourself in circumstances where
you can start to develop these habits, right Like, that's
still a choice, Like there's still a choice there to be, Like, Yeah,
I'm gonna work my ass off to start to be good.
I'm gonna do art every day, and at first it's
going to be like every single day, those early days
when you're doing it, it is going to be a choice,

(30:11):
right Like, it is going to be like a sarchry
and choice because you because you're you're you're so uncoordinated,
you're so bad at it, you have to be so
deliberate with your actions that those are sarchry and choices
at first, and then the further along you get, the
better you get, the more automatic it becomes, the better
you are at it, the more free you are. But
like the less you have to think about it.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Yeah, yeah, No, I like that account because it almost
brings it close to to Marx. For what's good for
Marx would be, you know, the free development of the
human being in a well rounded kind of way, rather
than the sort of constrained, one sided development that that
being a being a laborer under capitalism forces onto people.

(30:56):
But then putting on my existentialist hat and thinking, I
remember you saying you're not you kind of reject absolute freedom,
I would think from.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
The metaphysical freedom.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yeah, well yeah, just the way you know, Sart says
we're absolutely free.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Oh yeah, I mean I don't like buy nothing. But
then in other places he admits that with that, that
like the our facticity limits us a whole bunch of
a whole bunch of different ways. So maybe he's just
not consistent in how here he articulates it. I don't
want to defend the way that Start articulates it. Again,
I think I'm first and foremost to maryly Pontian.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Let's stick to mearly Ponty, and for the sake of time,
if you want to reflect on it more in your presentation, Eric,
but why don't we move in that direction?

Speaker 1 (31:41):
I guess I just want to say one one thing quickly, though,
which is just that I think what's intuitively appealing about this,
about the view that I presented to is that I
think that even though there's not like a metaphysical account
of freedom, I think when I say, I mean, maybe
you guys will disagree, but when I explain, oh, those
moments when you push yourself and you can overcome something

(32:02):
like I think most people or almost everyone would be like, yeah,
it feels really good when those things happen. So I
guess I just think there's an intuitive appeal. I think
it's it's articulating something that I think is at the
core of the human experience in a way that like
other accounts, I just don't think do as good a job.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
But in your account, America is not the only free
society in the world.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
So obviously, I mean, they might not even be the
most free.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
We'll see by the end of the episode. What do
you got for us?

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Eric, Well, I'm gonna be riffing a little bit on
pursus philosophy. I wouldn't really call it a philosophy of freedom.
It's sort of part of his cosmic philosophical architecture. But
freedom in perse right, Okay, so that's associated with the

(32:55):
first of his three categories, which is conveniently called firstness.
I guess just generally, I would describe it as a
kind of I won't I won't steal pills his word
and say it's deflationary, but it's it's this interesting nineteenth
century debate where the idea of like infinitesimals comes into play.

(33:16):
You know, things that are like non zero but approaching zero.
They're sort of unmeasurable. What we know, it's a non
zero quantity, but it's like infinitely approaching zero. This this
idea of infinitesimals, it came from mathematics Leibnitz, and that
and freedom is associated with firstness, which can also mean

(33:39):
chance or spontane eighty right, freedom for Purse is very
very minute. Chance departures from law. So he doesn't see
natural laws as these iron clad things that determine every
little part of reality, the down to the last molecular movement,

(34:03):
down to the last atomic movement. He sees constant, infinitesimal
departures from the from natural laws. Right, So think about, say,
the second law of thermodynamics, right, the entropy law.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
Right, everything moves.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Necessarily from a state of order, maximal order to maximal disorder.
But he says, if you, he says that most scientists
of his day who study gases would agree that the
atoms move randomly, not according to laws, but almost by chance,

(34:45):
and that there are moments, infinitesimally small moments where actually
the particles may gather into a kind of order before
then going. So the general trend is still towards disorder,
but there are little moments where actually the reverse process happens.

Speaker 4 (35:07):
But it's again it's it's.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Infinitely quick and infinitesmly small. But for pers it's the
possibility of life to emerge in the universe. That's that's
the stake of this question of either denying or accepting
this sort of quantum of absolute chance or spontaneity in

(35:30):
the universe. Is the possibility of life for Perse, because
what does life do? Life organizes itself on a higher
order than physical matter, and it gives itself structure, and
it is almost like a reverse entropy kind of movement.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
It maybe you say.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
It locally reduces entropy while universally increases it, but that
still goes against the second law of thermodynamics for Perse.
So again you'll already notice this is extremely like math
and technical heavy stuff he's pulling from.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
To construct this philosophy.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
But and he does go into the weeds sometimes and
it gets really bogged down and difficult, but he generally
stays at this more philosophical level when he's presenting these things.
So that's the basic sort of outline anyway, And so
person's philosophy of freedom, as I said, makes freedom sort

(36:31):
of coincident with absolute spontaneity or chance, which he sees
as an operative element in the universe, one of those
three universal categories he has right. So for Purse, there's
a little bit of a Sartryan kind of ontological story

(36:51):
there too, where we suppose there's like an initial state
of nothing, pure zero, not the nothing of negation, but
just pure z, your own nothing, because persus negation implies
a second right, a second something negating something else. So
but we're in the realm of we're trying to get

(37:12):
from pure zero to first here, So we say, what
immediately follows from this sort of nothing, this pure zero
is not something actual. We don't go straight to actuality,
straight to existence, but potentiality, unrestrained, limitless potentiality becomes limited.

(37:36):
It becomes a potential for this or that to happen.
It becomes specified without yet becoming actual. Right, because to
have actuality we need secondness, we need we need something else.
But in this realm of pure firstness, we have this

(37:56):
limiting of a limitless freedom, of a bound potentiality into
a freedom for potentiality of this or that. And he's
arguing with the necessitarians of his day, who believe what
I said earlier, that you know, you have this initial

(38:22):
state of the universe that operates by ironclad laws, and
if you just knew everything about the initial state of
the universe, you could divine everything about the future, including people,
including what people are doing, thinking, and feeling. And first

(38:45):
rejects this view to make because in that necessitarian view,
there would be no freedom, no chance, spontaneity, nothing like
that operative in the universe, or at least for them,
chance would just be a lack of knowledge of causes
or something like that. Right, it wouldn't be an actual

(39:06):
operative element which pursuses lots of words to describe it freshness, newness, originality,
which is constantly with us. Right, And he has a
whole load of arguments to go against that.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
Well, let's see. So the necessitarians person says.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Is is that the state of things existing at any time,
together with certain immutable laws, completely determine the state of
things at every other time. Thus, given the state of
the universe in its original nebula, and given the laws
of mechanics, a sufficiently powerful mind could deduce from these

(39:48):
data the precise form of every curloque of every letter
I am now writing.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
So that's this.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
He also calls that the mechanical philosophy that arose after
Calilex and became very popular and by the by the
nineteenth century, it was everywhere. They were materialists, they were necessitarians,
they were the mechanical philosophers and persons arguing against them.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Because obviously, first of all, you're at time. Second, I lost.
I lost the plot. So I understand the indeterminacy part,
but where I don't understand which freedom is attached to.
So could you maybe explain if freedom is firstness and
this is a non reflective decision, do I have that? Right?

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Uh, it's not reflective or decision.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
It's not tied to No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Mean I mean like even material distinctions, making distinctions amongst
other material Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah, at this point there would be distinctions would emerge
between possibilities, right, So.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
And in that state is the is the possibilities the
freedom or is the action of the freedom? That's where
I got lost.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
The freedom itself would be like absolute freedom, I would
say in purse would be associated with boundless potentiality. Right,
It's not a it's I'll sell this by saying it's
a non anthropocentric view of freedom.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Right.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
So the freedom of the human being, the freedom of
the will, is intimately tied to the freedom that per
sees operating cosmologically.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Right.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
So if the necessitarians deny that there is any chance
spontaneity in the universe except maybe at the beginning when
things were created or originated, but after that nothing new
under the sun, then that also implies that there's no
freedom for humans either.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Our freedom is a quantum or a microcosm of the
cosmic freedom that person is talking about. Right, So if
you have free will, there must be freedom in the universe.
To put it in a terrible crude way, yeah, there
must be an actual operative I guess, not not objective freedom.

(42:13):
I don't want to use that language, but yeah, absolute
pure freedom would be that sort of starting point between
zero and one.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Victor do you have any questions?

Speaker 3 (42:27):
Mmmm?

Speaker 1 (42:28):
I mean I think that I don't know. I think, like,
I guess my kind of existential mood given that I've
been that's what I've been reading, and you know, makes
me kind of my ears perk up at the at
the kind of like non anthropocentric kind of thing, because
I guess, like for me, it's like thinking about freedom

(42:51):
only makes sense in terms of how it relates to
human concerns. I guess it's like, how is it going
to help me figure out what makes sense of my
ambiguous life? And I guess when you kind of look
at it from like this sort of like non human perspective,
it just feels like it's like no longer in the
realm of human of like helping me make sense of
my life. And maybe we're just talking about maybe it's

(43:14):
like two levels of description, right, Like one is kind
of like feelings, you know, to put it crudely, kind
of like like abstractly philosophical, and then the other is like
self help to put it crudely or something like that,
uh m hm, right, because it's just like from kind
of like an existential like self help, like I'm trying
to make sense of the ambiguity of like the weirdness
of being alive. And then it's like we're talking about like,

(43:37):
you know, molecules and particles, and I don't know, almost
seems like a crudely like like building up to this account.
It's like, well, how does that help me, you know,
make sense of my life. So I don't know, I
just wondered what you thought about that. It's not necessarily
a criticism, but I'm just curious. It's maybe like a
meta question about like what's the point of of like
describing freedom from in one abstract way versus another astray?

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Why did you pick this one?

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, that's maybe an even simpler way of asking that question. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Well, the the simple answer is because I'm familiar with
purse and that it was an easier choice for me.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
The the more the more difficult answer is because I
on the on the point of that, I think person
has a good argument on the point of that that
anthropocentric concern because.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
You know this, this this idea that.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
There is.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
An element of chance in the universe. Freedom, not necessarily
just human freedom, but freedom in the sense of of
departing from ironclad laws.

Speaker 4 (44:49):
Right.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
So this is a hypothesis, right, person says this, this
is this is something that must be the case for
there to be, say life, for there to be a
human being, for you to be conscious, right, for there
to be consciousness in the universe at all. Right, So

(45:12):
it's a generalization from within experience and only provisional knowledge. Right,
Our knowledge is always derived from experience and trials and
encountering the world and thinking about it, and it's always provisional.

(45:32):
We can't be certain about anything. But in the necessitarian philosophy,
in order to get around this and say, there is certainty,
you know, everything is determined ahead of time and everything
is certain, everything is etched in stone.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
And the fact that.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
We, you know, are still surprised by things even today
with our like amazing knowledge is just our own ignorance.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
It's it has nothing to.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Do with any fundamental principle of chance in the universe.
It's just human ignorance, explains it. And so person is
trying to counter that argument by saying, well, yeah, of course,
like our our knowledge is incomplete. Yeah, but but you

(46:18):
know all these all these other things, like if everything
was you know, there in the beginning, everything was put
into the universe and nothing new under the sun, everything's
determined by ironclad laws, then how is there, say, the
great variety of the universe? Right, it says, you know,

(46:42):
the the universe nature is full of this insane variety,
and things actually seem to be moving towards more variety
and more complexity, not less. So if the necessitarian account
is true, then we should actually be seeing movement towards
uniformity and a movement towards homogeneity. But what we actually

(47:05):
see is uniformity constantly punctuated by divergences and variety. And
what we actually see is is is a good measure
of heterogeneity. It doesn't seem like the universe is tending
towards homogeneity and the sameness of all things. And for first,

(47:25):
laws or the result of this evolution from this state
of indeterminacy to towards a determinacy. Right, But if you
trace laws back, they become more indeterminate and less ironclad.
So and those laws continue to operate, they're not erased
by the more determinate laws. That's That's the best I

(47:46):
can sort of do with that.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Fair enough, I want to hear the deflation.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
I have questions about the implications of that, but you
talk too long, so I can't ask them. Okay, yeah,
if we're gonna get to the end of this, I
got to start. I have called it deflationary. If it's
it's probably on the anti philosophy side of philosophy, which
is a technical definition, not a I'm not against philosophy,

(48:17):
but this take is. So I'll begin with the obvious
before we enter my little research program, my in depth
research program, which is to say that freedom is a word,
and more than that, freedom is a sign. And with
most words, the best way is to consider it semiotically.

(48:38):
And it is kind of deflationary because freedom is one
of our loftiest words. It's one of the loftiest words
we have. We worship it, we agree with it, we
all gather around it, as as we said before. So
I began by typing the word freedom into Instagram just
to see what popped up, because it's such fun. This

(48:58):
would demonstrate some some degree of freedom. Of course, I
saw tits right away, some ads for being a day trader,
some AI images of Biden giving Messi a medal, which
I don't know why they were AI, because I think
that really happened. He got the Medal of Freedom. An
Argentinian soccer player got the American Medal of Freedom. So

(49:21):
that didn't help much, or did it. Then I went
to etymology, so I looked at the Bible, because you
know Western civilization. I looked up a syclists and freedom
appears I think in both those sources. I found like
twenty instances or so. Freedom appears virtually always the same

(49:43):
in those sources in the Greek terminology, which is it's
opposed to slavery, and most of the time, I'd say
over ninety percent of the time it's opposed to literal slavery.
So if you're a free man, that means you're not
a slave. If you're a slave, you're not a free man.

(50:04):
The free the free man has freedom and the slave
does not. So it does extend metaphorically, especially later on,
like in what is it first century Greek as opposed
to third century BC Greek. It does extend, and we
find a lot of this in the Bible. The Greek

(50:24):
term what did you say before you you said it
Eric is Eleutheria. I think it is, yeah, yeah, So
in the Boston Elutheria it's the name of a festival
when when slaves are given special privileges, some are set
free if they've done some good service, and it's associated

(50:45):
with a goddess. It might be the name of a goddess.
I didn't go that far in but in the Bible,
by three hundred years after the the term first appears
to us, it's used metaphorically, so you're free, not in
a sense of not being a slave, but in a
metaphorical sense you're no longer a slave to the law,

(51:07):
or you're no longer a slave to sin. And I
found this interesting in terms of freedom, because freedom at
first just means something very concrete. It's a designation for
a certain type of person who lives in your society.
And even in the first two hundred years, we can
see it drifting to become more metaphorized, and of course

(51:30):
by the time we get to the English language, and
the word freedom really explodes at the end of the
eighteenth century for the reasons of probably America. I'm not
sure I just did. This is my other bit of research.
I did google n Gram. It explodes at the end
of the eighteenth century, and freedom means now today all

(51:52):
the things that of course America does, freedom of speech.
That one makes the headlines. So I'll skip to the
end here Before I justify how I got there, I'm
going to say that freedom at this point is a
floating signifier. It means whatever the interpreter wants it to mean.

(52:17):
It can mean whatever the person appealing to it wants
it to mean, and usually in the same conversation, you
get what the term means. Freedom of speech means something
quite particular today that has nothing to do with its
original use. But I noticed another thing is that we
arrive at a certain new duality where freedom always has

(52:41):
a flip side, and the flip side of that freedom
is restriction. So I heard a little bit of this
in Victor's presentation, but I thought it'd be useful to
get the very basic freedoms that we claim to possess
out of the way, which is the freedom of conscience
and religion, freedom of expert Russian of speech and the press,

(53:03):
freedom of assembly. And there's another one, freedom of association.
I think that's different from assembly. So all these freedoms
are we call them freedoms, but they do not have
positive content because they are actually negations. They are restrictions
on the state. That's changed a little bit. But every
freedom is its flip side, which is you can't or

(53:27):
someone else is restricted from doing something to you. The
state cannot compel your religion, punish you for speech, or
break up your assembly. And I think this is more
than just playing a word game here, because each time
we move freedom one hundred years forward in the future,
from the Greek definition that's translated into English. The proto

(53:48):
Germanic word free basically means the same as the Greek one,
which is you're not a slave. But the reason I
think this works so well as a floating signifier is
that it doesn't have positive content. Now, your version, Victor,
I think, and maybe Eric's as well, did give some

(54:10):
positive content to the word freedom. But I think the
reason the word is so flexible outside of philosophy is
that it just relies on whatever opposing version you don't like.
So freedom becomes the opposite of what you do not like.
So freedom, for this reason, for the floating signify a reason,

(54:34):
is perfect as an advertising term. I'm glad that you
brought it up. Car commercials love freedom, drug commercials love freedom.
Vacation commercials. And one of the first major campaigns of
the twentieth century in advertising was Freud's nephew, Edward Brenez,
who started advertising cigarettes to women by calling them torches

(54:56):
of freedom. And he paid women to go out into
parades and smoke, and they were expressing their femininity by smoking.
And this example, I think is true to what freedom
actually means. It's not a cynical deployment. I think this
is more in line with what the word freedom actually
means when it is used today. We have a bunch

(55:18):
of more examples that I won't have time to go into.
But of course Operation Iraqi freedom, freedom fries. This word
really just means whatever anyone wants it to, which means
the opposite of the bad people that you do not like.
So Christians, Liberals, Americans, they all have their opposite term,

(55:45):
Like Protestants love freedom more than Catholics, I think. So
you have Catholics and Protestants their freedom to practice their
religion with their own Bible. You have tyrants for liberals,
you have communists for capitalists. You have the USSR for
the free world, Muslims for the free world. After nine

(56:06):
to eleven, you have the patriarchy for feminists, the left
for the right, and the right for the left. Everyone
gets to point at someone else to say that is
not freedom, and I, therefore I have it basically by
a process of negation. So to boil it down, got
to skip some stuff. I see, I actually do see.

(56:28):
I said this was a little bit an anti philosophical definition,
but I see in here also what most philosophers, most
of the time have said about freedom, namely that the
philosopher saying the word freedom is the one who's free,
and their counterpoint, their counterparts, sorry, the masses, they are
not free because they're beholden to their herd instincts and

(56:52):
they just flow down the stream of life without any awareness.
That's why I asked the both of you whether you're
your definition that you are borrowing, needed to have people
who are aware of it or not, because I think
philosophers fall into the same camp here as advertisers, so

(57:13):
in some that the lofty view of freedom is just
big theatrics. It's one of the best. It's kind of
one of the only terms that can be used like
this where anyone who hears it here's what they want,
which is to be on the good side of a distinction.
And the distinction is up to the here more than

(57:34):
even the speaker. So you get to you get to
be good. At the same time, you also need to
point out the designation of who's bad here, Nazis, Buslims, Liberals, fascist, communist,
whoever is the unfree group. They are the one that
makes you free by a process of negation, and it's

(57:56):
kind of perfect. So you can see it in religion.
God will make you free, self help, your true self
is your your free self. Jingoism, we've seen that deployed politics,
and that is what freedom means to me.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Good do you think can you think of an example?
Because I think you're right about this, especially about like
the fact that it very rarely has positive content that
seems right to me, And it's usually like the absence
of some kind of of something that one side describes

(58:36):
as being a constraint on seeming choices or freedom. But
I guess, like I wonder if you're under selling the
fact that that is a pretty consistent structure that it's
like a perceived because I guess the question I was
going to ask is, do you have an example of
like freedom being used where it's unrelated to like accusing

(58:59):
something or some group of constraining choices, right, Because like
in the case of like even with the cigarette ad, right,
it's like torches of freedom because it's like, you women
should have the choice to smoke, they should be and
it's like maybe culture is telling them that, like women,
you know, it's I don't know what the cultural milia was.
I wasn't alive back then, but I'm assuming the implication

(59:19):
of that ad is that, like some people were maybe
saying that like smoking is unfeminine, right, So that's.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
They thought it was tawdry and that harlots would smoke
in publish.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Sure, because because I guess like if it if it
always shows up in cases where you know, one side
is saying, oh, this other thing that people are saying
or this cultural norm is actually constraining your choices, And
in that sense it's negative, right because it's saying, like,
be free from that thing that is telling you not
to do that thing. Isn't there more of a like
isn't it more consistent than just that it's like literally

(59:50):
any floating like a floating signifier that could mean anything
like I'm with you on the negative content and like
a lack of positive content. But I just wonder if
I don't know, do you have an example.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Well, the way that it's used as opposed to the
opposition to slavery, because slavery is a very like forcible
literal restriction. But even in the case that you described
tortures of freedom, there's no one telling women that they
can't smoke. It's just kind of looked down upon. So

(01:00:21):
the imposition is the person's conscience, we would have said
in old terms, and this is the same with freedom
of speech. Today, freedom of speech means I get to
do a Hi Hitler salute, and if you say anything
bad about me after that, then I you know, you're
impinging upon my freedom of speech. So there are no

(01:00:42):
real restraints that are being well, I shouldn't say that.
Often there are real restraints that are being responded to,
you know, like part of the justification for invading Afghanistan
was they're they're they're locking their women into in burkas.
But most often the freedom just means there should be

(01:01:03):
no consequences to what I do at all. There should
be no social response to me doing what I want.
Even when you're already free to do what you want,
you just might face some consequences for it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Well, that's where I think maybe I'm not I guess,
I guess it does feel like but cultural norms are perceived,
I think, as a constraint. Aren't they like sure like
like physically like materially like they're not actually a limit.
But I guess, like norms, do you have a weight
to them that I think like does to some extent

(01:01:41):
seem to interfere with freedom. I don't know, Like, like,
like the way that people.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Are like freedom is like what what more do you want? Though,
like you you are free to do the thing, but.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
You want the norm to change. Like so I don't know.
Like my brother, for example, he's like in a polyamorous
relationship and like he enjoys like shocking people kind of,
but like, you know, like but the way that people
tense up when they like, you know, when he's talking
about like the benefits of it or whatever, Like there's
a weight to that. There's a weight that like it
narrows the perceived field of possibilities for people, right they

(01:02:15):
like where it's like so so like the fact that
I think, like cultural norms do sort of have a
kind of weight to them. And I don't know, Like
I don't know. I I mean, I don't entirely like
I mostly agree with you. I just I just wonder
whether there's some kind of like a trivialization of like
the weight of cultural norms as constraining freedom, because I
think that's more than the way that you're in my opinion,
at least, I feel like it has more of a

(01:02:37):
weight than just like well, you can do it if
you want, like, like I don't know, like like it's
like call out culture online, Like sure, people could say
whatever they want, but there's gonna be consequences, and like
the awareness of those consequences does kind of subjectively, it
does make people think twice, it does make people feel
not comfortable. I don't know. That seems like a constraint

(01:02:57):
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Well, I don't disagree that it is a constraint. But
if you're calling for freedom of speech, but what you
mean is I want people to be nice to be
on Twitter? What do you want? You want the law
to change so that people can't call you a dumb ass?

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Well, I think you can have opinions on both sides
or at two levels, right, So like, obviously those people
say I want freedom of speech, what it's like, obviously
legally you already have it. So like you're an idiot
if like you think that you don't. But I mean,
I think you could make a different kind of argument.
You could just be like, people shouldn't be mad about
this because it's like it's a stupid cultural norm to
like be mad about whatever X thing. And then we

(01:03:31):
could be like, well that's stupid, but it works.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Right, So my main point would be it works. If
you say my freedom of speech is being repressed because
people were mean to me, then other people will agree
with you. And this maintains like a not a not
a pretend imaginary force.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
I mean sometimes they sometimes they don't, but yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
It it borrows from a social substance that is definitely real,
but still the form of freedom. The use of freedom
is still to create a distinction between bad things and myself.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Go, I mean that's that's not part of it. I
totally agreed with. Yeah, that part I totally agree with.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
Okay, Eric, well I yeah, well is this thing on?

Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
I would ask, well if if you're if I'm getting
it right, and your thesis is kind of just like
freedom is just a word. It's a sign, it's a
floating signifier.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
It's empty of content.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
It kind of just is a is a is a
positively emotionally charged word that's just convenient to deploy in
situations where you feel like you're not getting what you
want and you're saying it has no content, But what
it really means is just the common sense version of
the freedom to do or get what you want and

(01:04:57):
then I guess all the classic complaints, you know, and
this just lead to relativism, And what would be the
difference in any of those cases Instead of saying you're
you know, you're you're cramping my freedom, you say you're
preventing my destiny from coming to fruition, right you just
you could just take out the word freedom and put
any other positively charged word there. You're you're, you're preventing

(01:05:21):
my fate from being fulfilled. You are destroying my fortune,
Which is just to say, if it's just a question
of words, then why is the popular way more important
or why is the common sense version more important than
starts definition of freedom for example? And how do we

(01:05:44):
decide sort of what freedom is and who's right as
opposed to just you know, freedom is just a question
of verbiage and arranging the facts to suit your goals
or just switching out language.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
You know, Well, I don't know what you mean by facts,
because I think it's expressive of the use of the term.
I don't think it's expressive of part a fact. So
our definitions are in conflict with each other because yours
definitely has a factual basis, but based on your definition

(01:06:23):
the term freedom fries doesn't make any sense, and based
on my definition, freedom fries makes perfect sense.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
But you know, if you're like in terms of a fact, right, Okay,
So you do something, you buy those freedom fries, and
you eat them, and you feel sick afterwards, and you
look back on that decision and you say, could I

(01:06:51):
have done otherwise?

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
Was that a free decision I made?

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
The fact is that I bought those freedom fries and
they made me sick.

Speaker 4 (01:06:58):
That's the fact.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
The question of freedom is by an effort of the will,
could I have done otherwise? Or in every case, would
I have made the same decision?

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
That would be the question of freedom as a fact,
And you can just say no, I would have made
that decision anyway because I was hungry. I was faded
to make it like in sorry, you just you can
just shirk responsibility if you want to.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
I'm not concerned with the eating or the purchasing of
freedom fries. I'm concerned with the fact of the freedom
fries because they are called freedom fries.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Well that I mean, a fact is in something that's happened.
But you know the fact of the existence of freedom fries, Well, okay,
call them what you want. They're French fries, they're not
freedom fries.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
But in that case, it just seems like you France
refused to join the Coalition of the Willing, so they
are no longer free. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
So in this case, freedom is just an arbitrary, very
sort of sound that is actually bound up with the
kind of like geopolitical history or a cultural history and
has no meaning.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Oh it does have meaning. It's the it's how you are,
not the thing that you dislike.

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
It's like an identity kind of decision.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
So the context of your freedom depends on who you
are disliking or or declaring unfree at the time. Okay,
And I think if I can lest like extrapolate from here,
we're having a lot of problems with the term freedom
because if you have the USSR there, then we can
all be Americans around the same totem of freedom together

(01:08:43):
because we're all not the USSR. And they're trying to
they're trying to do that with or they tried to
do that with Iraq and Afghanistan. They're trying to do
it with Iran and China still, but it doesn't have
the same bite. I don't think people are not accepting it,
So then they turn onto the people that call them

(01:09:04):
out on Twitter and say they are the ones who
are unfree. So having a unifying totem like this is
socially significant. I do think the shift is like symptomatic
of prospects for future employment things like that. But still
the totem falling apart is no, it's nothing to scoff at.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
I think, how do you think your deflationary account connects
to my existentialist account? Do you think there's inconsistency? There's
one sense when I was listening to Utak where I thought, well,
I thought, one way in which they could be consistent
is like, I think that the existentialists would be similarly, like,

(01:09:47):
I don't know, judgmental or like, similarly dismissive of people
who are like you know, who are complaining about not
having freedom right, because they'd be like, well, you do
have a choice, actually, you know, you could. You could
do that, You could, you could. You just have to
you just have to be aware of what the consequence
are going to be. But that's at least one way.
But I don't know, what do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Well, I related to it because because it has this
long history and of course, the Greeks were not saying
the word freedom. This is a proto Germanic term, but
it generally has the same cognate across languages. I know
it's not the same exactly, but the same situational root,
which is in a world that includes slavery. But I
liked your Merleu Ponti description that describes the elevation or

(01:10:29):
the satisfaction, And I don't even think it needs to
necessarily be called freedom to still have that same truth
to it. When you change something or fix something or
something's going wrong in your life and you change your
habit and you realize that you did that, even if
it's not called freedom, there is a sort of euphoria

(01:10:50):
in that, and I think the feeling of using the
word freedom for yourself has a similar euphoria. But yeah,
I would just I would say my definition is more
dependent on the social situation, whereas yours could be done
alone in your.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
Room, you know, if you yeah, it's totally subjective. Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
Guess my criticism would just be kind of the standard saying,
you know, okay, so the cultural linguistic approach is relativistic,
and freedom is just what you want it to be.
So you know, the Muslims are right that the women
wearing bikinis on California Beach aren't free because they have

(01:11:33):
to display their bodies, and the and the Americans are
right about the Muslim women because they're not free because
they have to cover their bodies. And whether who's right
about freedom is a question of well, it's not a
question of truth or falsity at all. It's just a
it's just a relative to that culture like truth. So

(01:11:54):
whatever you want it to be, and that you know
that that obviously leaves that relativism problem because then it's like, okay, well,
well definitely you can't build an ethics on this, because
who would. Ethics can't really be through and through relativistic.
It has to have some sort of i don't know,

(01:12:17):
common common basis of understanding between people. But the other
thing I would just say from a more.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Person I respond to that because I just say, yeah, sure,
relativism not my problem. I'm trying to find I'm trying
to find the meaning of language in its use in
this sense. Yeah, Like, like I just described, I know
the thing that Victor's talking about. Do we call it freedom? Well,
merleu Ponti does or whatever. The French version of that

(01:12:47):
is liberty. But we also have to account for freedom fries.
So I wanted to account for both of those things.
And that doesn't mean that all meanings are all relative
to each other. But I think language is relative to itself.
So I wouldn't even take that as a criticism.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
It's yeah, well, uh well, other people would say, now
language isn't a closed system. It deals with the world
just like just like everything else. But I'd say, yeah, okay,
So then furthermore, furthermore, there's no responsibility connected with this
concept of freedom e there because you know, oh it's

(01:13:25):
not my problem, as you said, so there's no responsibility
there either. So it's not very existentialist by start standards.
But I was just going to say, from the Persian perspective,
then you know where we're really just stuck at the
first grade of clarity, because the third grade of clarity,

(01:13:46):
the pragmatic grade of clarity, is consider what effects which
might conceivably have practical bearings we conceive the object of
our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects
is the whole of our conception of the object. In
other words, you know, the difference that makes a difference.

(01:14:07):
And if freedom is just a sort of you know,
you're stuck on this first definitional level and you can't
really agree on the definition, then it just seems like
then freedom really just makes no difference. It's a difference,
you know, the difference between freedom and necessity is a
difference that makes no difference, and we should probably just

(01:14:29):
stop talking about it entirely. It would be kind of
the case of a pragmatist, you know, getting that third
level of clarity, you know, when pers gives that example
of Okay, a diamond appears, it's never discovered by anybody,
it's never touched, it's never altered, it just sits there,

(01:14:49):
and it's a little bed of cotton until it burns up.

Speaker 4 (01:14:52):
Was it hard?

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
Is that diamond hard? Well, it was never tested, it
was never scratched. It really makes no difference whether you
call it hard or soft. It would make no difference
in my life or my future conduct, whether whatever these
words mean, because they have no fixed meaning.

Speaker 4 (01:15:10):
That would be the sort of pragmatist. Maybe, if if
I make.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
An attempt at a parroting a pragmatic a person in
pragmatic criticism.

Speaker 4 (01:15:19):
That would be it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
I think there is some connection between your two definitions.
That's more life helpful because if Merleu ponty Is account
is accurate, and I think it is accurate. But Mertleu
Ponty wouldn't have a problem with freedom being an emergent property.
I don't think he would go all the way down
to matter, but he'd at least he'd be okay with

(01:15:45):
going down to biology. Maybe, yeah, probably, But yeah, we're
coming at this from different perspectives. While I'm saying that
the meaning of language is in its use, that's not
something I'm saying cynically. That's something I believe. So if
you just called the freedom of particles something different, that

(01:16:06):
would solve the problem of the of the freedom fries,
which is glaring here. But if you change the word,
it wouldn't be the same type of word or same
type of totem that is so easy to get people
riled up about. We have half of a country south
of us that's extremely concerned with freedom of speech that
has not changed in any in any legal sense at

(01:16:30):
all for two three hundred years.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
So yeah, it's interesting comparing the different perspectives yeah, person
has a foot. It seems to me in both the
sort of philosophy of language side and almost like a
proto existentialist kind of take on it. And I guess,

(01:16:53):
I guess the only concrete difference with Perse is he
would say that that you know that that association element
you're talking about associating freedom with, like the word freedom with,
I don't know, freedom fries or freedom this or or
whatever kinds of freedom, that that mental association is made

(01:17:16):
possible by this element of chance. It's like it within
the necessitarian account, we just preserve this kernel of freedom, chance,
spontaneity that's constantly operative in the universe. And for Percy
sees that as as this like this germinating kernel where

(01:17:38):
mind emerges in association. Arbitrary associations between things become possible
because of this moment. And then your account becomes possible
on this basis because mind makes associations between disconnected events
and you know, builds them up into sense and meaning

(01:17:58):
for our lives. And and I mean, it's a long
road to anywhere from there, but that's where pers kind
of starts.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
I also want to just say, I wasn't it wasn't
completely arbitrary, Like the thing that freedom always has is
a split, meaning freedom for you is restriction for someone else.
And I think that's a little more interesting than being
purely arbitrary.

Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
Yeah, I chose the wrong word there.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
It shouldn't be arbitrary because that's like sort of a
technical word from so sir. Yeah, no, like it would.
It would be a meaningful connection because it's something you've
experienced together, like when you know, like Pavlov's dog, right,
Pavlov's dog rings the bell, gets the food.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
Ring the bell get the food.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
Eventually an association is created between those two things, and
all you have to do is ring the bell and
the dogs slobbers everywhere. You don't even need to present
the food, right, right, Yeah, So it's not arbitrary obviously.
It has to be in some experiential, concrete thing happening
like that, and then the mine learns and makes associations,
so they are Yeah, arbitray was the wrong words.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
You're right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
I don't even want to say wrong word. I just
meant to say, there's two there's consistent element there. But anyway,
that's I think that's good enough for now. That went
kind of well, we might have it's worth doing. I
like bringing something to the table, but maybe we need
to give ourselves more time to discuss it and to

(01:19:27):
really ask ask these questions because we're at like we're
we're at time and there's still more to say.

Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
Yeah, and the feedback will be important.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
All right, So we haven't really solved anything. We know
what it means. I gotta say I'm partial to Victor's
self help definition because it's self help, not to be demeaning,
but it's actually like the most Oh, I can experience
myself as free and connect myself to a project and

(01:19:57):
it feels good, whereas you can use freedom in my
sense to make yourself feel good. But it's stupid. I'll
be honest, it's stupid.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
But I'll be curious to what the listeners think. I'm
obviously a bit of a of a stand for existentialism
and phenomenology.

Speaker 3 (01:20:15):
But it's potentially clarity through contrast and mutual criticism, friendly criticism,
which is the best kind of clarity.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Yeah, and I'd like to investigate what you mean by
non arbitrary language, if there could be such a thing.
But we can't get there to do it now.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
We can't do it now.

Speaker 2 (01:20:33):
No, no, Eric, he's thinking about it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:41):
Our story goes back to the ancient.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Until next time, guys.

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
Yeah, man,