James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 2 - Yawns and hiccups

The latter part of the second volume of Mill’s book concerns the active or volitional part of the human mind. Mill notes that the cognitive and volitional sides of human mind share the same structure - for instance, volitional side also deals with sensations and ideas. The difference is, Mill suggests, that while sensations of the theoretical part are, in a sense, indifferent to the mind, the sensations of the volitional part are not, being either pleasant or such that the mind would want prolong, or painful or such that the mind would want to stop them. Mill makes it sound like the trivision of sensations would be hard and fast, while one might object that e.g. a sensation pleasant now might become indifferent and even painful, if it has to be endured too long.

Like indifferent sensations, pleasant and painful - or interesting - sensations can also be revived in ideas, Mill says, and such ideas of pleasant and painful sensations are called desires and aversions. This choice of nomenclature seems peculiar. Mill himself points out one possible point of contention: we also say that we desire things like cake, which are not sensations. In fact, Mill says, in all such cases we ultimately desire some sensation, e.g. the taste of the cake. Yet, there is a more important point of contention, because we can think of a pleasure we’ve had without desiring it. Mill offers the explanation that desires are actually only ideas of future pleasures. This explanation seems insufficient, because we could think of future pleasures and still not yet desire them. Indeed, it seems far more plausible to take desire as a primitive concept, especially as Mill’s explanation of pleasures already implicitly referred to it (pleasure is a sensation we would want or desire to continue).

In case of pleasant and painful sensations, Mill continues, we also make associations to their causes. In fact, thinking about such causes might affect us more than thinking of the pleasures and pains themselves. For instance, we might think of a past stomach ache with indifference, but still avoid the food that we think caused this sickness at the time. Mill appears to think that such affections are not just caused, but also defined merely by such associations, which seems again insufficient - surely they also contain the aspect of us wanting to gain or avoid something.

Mill notes that we often have stronger affections toward more remote causes of pleasures and pains. For instance, people often desire wealth, power and dignity more than, say, food. Mill has a quite convincing explanation for this peculiarity: remote causes, like money, allow us to gain more and a larger variety of pleasures than mere immediate causes.

An important subset of affection toward remote causes concerns other persons. In some cases, Mill notes, such affections are awakened by shared experiences and common interests. Then again, he adds, we also have a general compassion toward all humans, because the similarities with them make us associate their pleasures and pains with our own pleasures and pains. The more similarities we have toward some group of people, the more affection we have for them, for instance, in case of people from the same class (in a pre-Marxist fashion, Mill insists that only privileged classes could have such a class consciousness).

Mill touches also aesthetic affections, but unfortunately, not in any great detail. His main point is that we call sensations beautiful and sublime not because of themselves, but because of associations they convey in us. Thus, the humming of a beetle is found beautiful, not because of any intrinsic feature, but because it awakens in us the notion of summer. Because such associations may vary from one person to another, there is no universal criterion of beauty, Mill concludes: black seems ugly in a culture, where it is associated with death, beautiful in a culture, where it is associated with festivities. What is especially lacking in Mill’s account is the explanation what kind of associations are required for calling something beautiful or sublime.

When we have an idea of ourselves as the only possible cause for gaining some future pleasure or for averting some future pain (or some of their causes), we have a motive, Mill defines. Clearly, this definition works only if we assume, like him, that all thoughts of future pleasures involve desire. In any case, motives can work against one another, and indeed, Mill insists, only another motive can prevent us putting one into action. Different people are affected in different measures by same motives, and a particular affinity to some motive is called disposition. Mill notes that in common parlance we often confuse affections, motives and dispositions: thus, we may speak of lust when speaking of a positive affection toward sex (idea of sex as causing desirable sensations), of a motive for engaging in sexual relations (idea of ourselves as instigators of sex) or of a disposition to engage in sexual relations.

In a Humean manner, Mill considers cause and effect to be nothing more than a name for a regular association of certain events. Thus, he sees no problem in saying that sensations cause certain bodily actions - we can say that a pungent odour makes us sneeze, while a certain sensation in our stomach makes us hiccup. These examples might make Mill’s analysis of causation seem suspect, since it seems more likely that in such cases the sensation is not really the cause of the bodily movement , but merely shares with it a common cause (some bodily process).

In any case, because Mill thinks sensations can produce bodily movements, he sees no difficulty in ideas causing them also. In fact, he points out laughter caused by humour or weeping caused by sadness as examples of this kind of causation. Of course, Mill adds, such uncontrolled weeping is still not voluntary action. What is still required is the presence of a desire: when motives make us act, they are called will.

Mill does not then believe in any motiveless will. He insists also that will cannot awaken its own motives - this would be like baron Munchhausen lifting himself from his own hair. This rather plausible suggestion makes Mill go even so far as to suggest that it has no effect on the train of ideas, being just a process of translating ideas into action. Mill considers two possible objections. First is the notion that we often seem to will to recollect something. Mill’s answer is that actually we always only desire to do so. Similarly, to the second objection that we often will to attend to some sensations or ideas, Mill answers that attending means just that we find these sensations or ideas interesting. Mill’s answers seem just verbal confusions, since he admits that the very element that makes acts into acts of will (desire or interest) is involved also in these two cases. One might even rephrase the objections in a manner suggesting that there is a choice involved. Suppose we are attending to something complex, like a bicycle. The idea we have of it has different aspects, and we may then choose to attend to one of these aspects, say, one of the tires. Couldn’t we then say that we willed or wanted to attend to the tire?

Arthur Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation 1 - Resignation of will

The final book of Schopenhauer’s major work could be called a treatise of practical philosophy. Yet, Schopenhauer notes that in a sense philosophy is never practical in the sense that it always just describes the world, but never prescribes any rules to it. Indeed, going against Kant, Schopenhauer notes that there can be no categorical imperatives based on mere pure reason, but all maxims of practice must assume some end, which a human being is aiming for.

Schopenhauer begins by noting that what he has thus far called simply will could as well be called will for life. His idea appears to be that life is what corresponds to will in the phenomenal level of the world, and of course, especially in the case of organic entities. Since will is outside the chains of time, Schopenhauer says, life will continue eternally - or as long as there is will. Of course, individual living beings might die, but this is just a natural part of the ever-going cycle of life, consisting of fluctuation of birth and death.

Now, a person who has understood that individuals are mere phenomenal embodiments of one and same primordial will might just embrace this will and happily live her own individual life to its inevitable end, in the full knowledge that this same will will live on in some other form. Yet, it is not inevitable that such is the result of this moment of enlightenment. Will is not in any manner determined, so some person might do completely opposite - will in this embodiment might actually cancel itself and the person would not anymore have urges to do anything. The only explanation for this choice would be the character of the person - and this character itself would be just an inexplicable fact, a free choice of the primordial will.

Although Schopenhauer thus accepts the freedom of will, this has nothing to do with freedom of individuals. Indeed, he is quite convinced that individual human beings, just like all phenomenal entities, must follow the principle of sufficient reason. In case of human actions, this principle says that all actions are based on motives and the inexplicable character - this type of person must do so and so in these and these circumstances. At the same time, while the actions of a human being are predetermined, they still have a feeling of freedom, due to being embodiments of a completely undetermined will.

Although Schopenhauer starts by saying that the choice of embracing or resigning will is completely free, his own character appears to fall on the resigning side of the equation. Indeed, he emphasises that will has no real end and merely drives forward without any hope of finding any final goal. In case of physical world, this just means that gravitational pull etc. will go on for the end of eternity, but with animal and human life results are more drastic. Because the animal urges are driven by pain and suffering, pain and suffering will continue forever.

One might say that Schopenhauer exaggerates the suffering intrinsic to living - most animals can endure feelings of hunger, thirst, tiredness etc., if they do not rise to overwhelming levels. Especially in case of humans Schopenhauer raises then another line of offence. The supposed happiness is just a momentary feeling of a pain passing by and cannot last for very long. Thus, Schopenhauer suggests, if all our needs are satisfied and no urge drives us forward, we are bound to feel bored, which is no better than being in constant pain. We might say that Schopenhauer is here complaining about a first-world problem: a pessimist will grumble, even if everything would be fine.

Schopenhauer does have something more in his side. Will, in Schopenhauerian philosophy, is what really drives human beings forward, while our cognitive side is merely a tool of will. Human cognition is tied to the individual outlook of the space-time world, while will is not. Will tries to renew itself and doesn’t really care about what happens to this individual. According to Schopenhauer, this is especially clear when we think of sexual urges, which do not follow any conscious control. Cognition then merely provides the rationalisation for the urges of will and tries to find means for realising these urges.

Now, due to the restriction to individual outlook, human beings care only for their own urges or only of this particular embodiment of will. Thus, all humans, Schopenhauer says, are natural egoists, caring only for their own agenda. Hence, they are quite willing to nullify the will of others, which leads naturally to Hobbesian war of everyone against one another. Interestingly, Schopenhauer admits that a Hobbesian warfare is a state of unrightness, and indeed, that a violation of anyone’s will, whether through violence or deceit, is a wrong. Indeed, Schopenhauer thinks the concept of wrong is the basis of ethics, in that rightness is just a derivative concept - without possibility of violation of rights, there would be no rights to speak about.

After describing the wrongness inherent in the natural egoism of humans, Schopenhauer takes a long detour to discuss the origin of states. In effect, he is just following the Hobbesian account, where state power comes about, because of attempt to restrict the field of wrong committed, thus actualising natural rules of justice. While state offers a sort of solution for all the wrongs caused by egoism, Schopenhauer also suggests that the primordial will has also an inherent sort of justice. In effect, this is just a butcher’s justice - everyone will die at the end, thus, an egoist who is completely deluded by her own self will fear her impending doom.

Schopenhauer notes that sometimes humans can win their egoistic outlook and tragically suffer or even die for the lives of others - it is in character of these humans to break their individual viewpoint. Yet, he is quick to point out that some characters do much worse than regular egoists. They are not just trying to fulfill their personal will, no matter at what cost, but they also actively want to kill and torture other individuals. Schopenhauer ties the existence of such characters to his own pessimistic outlook of life - these undeniably evil persons try to silence the suffering in their own life by making other embodiments of will suffer instead.

One might get the impression that Schopenhauer is trying to make his reader commit a suicide, just to escape all the suffering in the world. Yet, he notes, killing oneself wouldn’t solve anything. The result would be just the destruction of this one individual, who is just an embodiment of primordial will in the phenomenal world. But just like sun will rise again, after seemingly swallowed by night, so another embodiment of the same will will just take place of the deceased person. Indeed, Schopenhauer suggests that suicide is just one kind of appearance of will - person killing herself still wants to live, just without the confines of her bodily situation.

We now have four possible human characters. There are the evil monsters, driven by their own pain to cause suffering in others. There are unjust people, who are willing to hurt others, because of their own egoistic desires, although they have no specific desire to hurt others. There are just people, who are willing to ignore their egoistic desires, if they would hurt others. And there are good and virtuous people, who want to do good for others, out of love and compassion for them, that is, an instinctive feeling that these others are just embodiments of the same primordial will.

In addition to these four characters, Schopenhauer finally delineates a fifth one, which like the virtuous character might get its start from universal compassion. But unlike virtuous person, who is spurred to action by the suffering of others, this final character is just disgusted by all the suffering around her and feels the futility of the whole primordial will behind this horridness. And what happens now is a sort of miracle. Will, as embodied by this particular individual, sees and understands its own contradictoriness and nullifies itself - this person does not want anything anymore. This does not mean that her body wouldn’t have any urges - quite the contrary, sexual and other drives continue even after this enlightenment. Instead, this person falls into ascetic behaviour and consciously tries to cancel all these drives.

What then is the final fate of the ascetic in Schopenhauerian philosophy? Surprisingly, life of ascesis does something suicide couldn’t - it doesn’t destroy just the phenomenal individual, but also will itself. One might well wonder wouldn’t the world as a whole would have then disappeared altogether, once Christ or Buddha or some other saint had gone through this road. Indeed, Schopenhauerian emphasis on ascesis is in a sense way to incorporate religion - especially Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism - in his philosophy. Yet, Schopenhauer concentrates merely on the idea that the material world is full of suffering, and he seemingly ignores all ideas of a heaven beyond. But most confusingly, he still leaves open the possibility that after the resignation of will something might remain - something that must be better than this life.

Arthur Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation 1 - Will behind the phenomena

While the first section of Schopenhauer’s book was nominally Kantian, but in reality something else, the second section is a clear move beyond limits set by Kant. One of the most central thesis in Kant’s philosophy is that we do not have any access to things as they are in themselves. Schopenhauer flatly denies this and states that we indeed have such an access. If we were mere disembodied subjects, such an access wouldn’t exist, but we are not. In fact, we are very much embodied persons. Now, we can regard our bodies from an external viewpoint, as a mere object. Still, we also have access to what our bodies are, not as objects, but as things in themselves - through our will. For instance, we feel an urge to do something, and at once we can see this urge fulfilled in the movement of out body.

Superficially taken, Schopenhauer’s attempt to go beyond Kant’s limits for cognition resembles Fichte’s philosophy in the sense that both philosophers base their attempts on a practically understood self-consciousness. Yet, there are clear differences. While Schopenhauer’s justification is quite crude and seemingly based on nothing more than mere self-feeling, Fichte’s assumption is based on an interesting transcendental deduction: whole experience would not be possible without being set up by a practically understood self-consciousness.

Now, Schopenhauer distinguishes his primal will in itself from all motives seemingly guiding our actions. Such motives are mere phenomenal circumstances, which at most explain why we act at this moment and in this situation as we do. Primal will, on the other hand, is equal to action itself and is, according to Schopenhauer, ultimately explicable, because all explanations occur on the level of representations. In fact, no phenomenal restrictions apply to the primal will. Thus, on the level of will, Schopenhauer concludes, there are no separate individuals, but each and everyone of us is as well a representation of the primal will.

In fact, Schopenhauer goes even further and insists that animals, plants and even bare material objects are all just embodiment of will. At first sight, saying that e.g. gravity is a form of will is just replacing one difficult word (force) with another (will). Yet, it contains at least one description of such a force - it is somehow similar to the urge that we feel in our actions. While forces as such are just closed from us, will we know intimately well, and it is just a matter of extending this familiarity to, first, motiveless urges of animals and plants, and finally, to strivings of all material objects.

Although Schopenhauer then in a sense upholds an ontological monism - all is will - he does not endorse any monistic explanations in the level of science. On the contrary, science works at the level of appearance or representation, so there is no guarantee, he says, that e.g. organic phenomena could be reduced to chemical terms. In fact, Schopenhauer appears to suggest that no reduction of any kind can happen between different sciences. And indeed, if any type of reduction is to be effected, this should happen to a direction completely opposite from the usual attempts of reduction. In other words, inorganic phenomena, like gravity and magnetism, should be understood through an analogy to our own volitional efforts. In fact, Schopenhauer suggests that phenomena could be arranged in a hierarchy according to the level of resemblance they have with human volition. Such levels would then show different levels in the process of becoming apparent of the primordial will - mere material phenomena would show their origin in will least clearly, while human volition would show it most clearly.

We have already remarked about the resemblance of Schopenhauer’s notion of will with Fichte’s practical self-consciousness. Even clearer affinities Schopenhauer’s theory has with the romantic notion of phenomenal world as an appearance of forces of life. Like romantics, Schopenhauer notes that individuality is mere delusion, that everything originates from a unified source and that this source is embodied in a hierarchy of levels, where humanity holds the highest place. Even Schopenhauer’s insistence that at the level of phenomena different embodiments of primordial will strive against one another is not unlike e.g. Hegelian insistence that basic forces contradict one another and even cancel themselves in some circumstances. Furthermore, Schopenhauer’s statement that will can never completely fulfill its strivings, but is always driven to do more and more, is quite on line at least with the ideas of some romantics - although others imagined that at some level (perhaps with humans) such a primal need could be balanced by harmonious reason.

Antoine Destutt de Tracy: Elements of ideology, parts 4 and 5. Treatise on will and its effects (1815)

The unfortunately final piece of Destutt de Tracy’s Elements of ideology seems like a patchwork or a combination of disparate parts. Firstly, Destutt de Tracy uses the occasion to introduce a supplementary topic that should have been included somewhere in the first three parts of his work, namely, probability. The aim of this supplement is merely to show that probability requires no independent science of its own, but instead, all sciences should contain a part which deals with uncertainties.

The topic of the book proper is volitional part of human consciousness. Just like in his study of the cognitive side of consciousness, Destutt de Tracy divides his topic into three different parts, yet, he now also begins with a general introduction for all of these parts, dealing with will in general. We have already seen that Destutt de Tracy regards will as a completely passive faculty - it is mere perception of what one finds preferable or what one desires. We have also noticed that Destutt de Tracy considers our self-conception to arise from this volitional perception - we identify these preferences as belonging to ourselves, whereas all hindrances against attaining the preferable seem contrary to ourselves. Despite this rather passive view of volition, Destutt de Tracy admits that there is something active in human nature, namely the muscular system, which serves as our means for fulfilling our desires.

Going somewhat further with the basic concepts, Destutt de Tracy introduces such familiar notions like richness, freedom, right and duty. Richness means for him simply owning things one finds preferable (one wonders how this definition could be used as a basis for actual measuring of one’s riches). Freedom, on the other hand, is for Destutt de Tracy merely the absence of any constraint for one’s actions (what later would be called negative freedom).

Even more peculiar is Destutt de Tracy’s idea that desires determine our rights. Simply put, he says that all basic rights come back to the fact that living entities should have the right to fulfill their desires - a somewhat rash statement, since surely then many rights of different people would clash with one another, like the desire of having some slave serve you would contradict the slave’s desire of walking freely. Similarly, all duties should be determined by our actual means of obtaining things (one might suppose that Destutt de Tracy thinks here that one is morally obligated to use all means to gain what one desires).

The first part of the general science of volition Destutt de Tracy calls economy, which he defines as a study of human actions. Evidently, he is not speaking of just individual actions, but of the actions produced by the society in general. Indeed, Destutt de Tracy indicates that group work is a necessary ingredient in human manner of doing things, since it gives certain advantages to everyone, such as the ability to let each person concentrate on one aspect of a certain work process.

Destutt de Tracy goes even so far as to suggest that society can be divided into three classes according to the parts of a general scheme for all work processes. That is, since all work processes require at most three types of people, a theoretician knowing the general laws governing world, applicationist knowing how to apply theories and a practical person performing the actual work, society should be divided into three parts: scientists, entrepreneurs and workers. In practice, Destutt de Tracy quickly incorporates scientists into the workers, or generally, hirelings of entrepreneurs, and he also introduces a third class of sterile owners, who get their money e.g. from rents and do not actually produce anything new.

Why are the renters then sterile? This statement just reflects what for Destutt de Tracy is the goal to be sought in economy, that is, the production of useful things. This seems quite a materialist dream, although obviously a lot might depend on what is meant to be useful. Unfortunately, Destutt de Tracy’s answer just avoids this issue - the utility of something is evaluated by the number of sacrifices one is willing to make to obtain it. We seem to be walking in circles here - we should do things that are valuable, but valuable are just those things we are willing to do most.

The more we get to the details of Destutt de Tracy’s economy, the more quaint it appears. He divides the work to be made into two different types - the one or industrial produces new things (Destutt de Tracy includes agriculture in this type), while the other or commercial moves things to where they are most needed. It is very notable that the service sector is altogether missing from Destutt de Tracy’s scheme, which just accords with his notion of where the true value in economy lies. Indeed, the only place where he speaks of service work is in connection with the sterile renters, who pay for other people to serve their needs. Since such a service does not produce any new goods, Destutt de Tracy condemns it as a mere luxury, which just consumes the wealth of the society.

It is not surprising that Destutt de Tracy thinks government resembles more the sterile property owners who merely consume without adding to the wealth of society. State in his eyes is just a necessary evil, and indeed, its only function appears to be just to protect its citizens from other states. The inevitable conclusion then is that the state budget should be restricted as much as possible and that the state should not meddle with the economy any more than it needs to. One can raise many obvious objections, the foremost being that there is no a priori reason why state couldn’t also be productive in the sense demanded by Destutt de Tracy; it is then a different question whether such a state-controlled production of goods is as effective as private production, but since he is not treating this as an empirical question, neither need we. Furthermore, we might well also ask whether state could not have other important functions, not involving production of goods, such as construction of infrastructure, education etc., which are handled by many modern states.

Despite the rather right-wing attitude toward state and his enthusiasm for the entrepreneurs, Destutt de Tracy does not forget the salaried workers. Although he does state that some inequality of wealth is almost inevitable, inequality is still unjust and an inherently wrong state of affairs. Despite this, he still denies that the poor would need any special economic policy. Instead, the general development of economy should help also the salaried workers, by giving them more work and cheaper goods.

What developments Destutt de Tracy then expects of the economy? His general attitude is anti-mercantilist in that he advocates for a completely free foreign trade, which in his opinion just serves to combine all parts of the globe, moves goods to where they are most needed and incites even internal trade. He is also somewhat Malthusian, because he thinks population shouldn’t increase unless the means of sustaining them also increase - unemployment does no good for workers. Despite these at the time modern attitudes, deeply conservative is his idea that valuable metals, gold and especially silver, are the only possible form of currency and that especially paper money just encourages swindling and causes disturbances in the economy. One might hear people proclaiming nowadays that we should return to gold standard, but Destutt de Tracy speaks for an even great leap backwards in history. He is again speaking especially for the workers, who apparently are best served by stable prices - this would be a controversial statement nowadays, when a low, but steady inflation is taken as the best state in economy.

Although Destutt de Tracy has emphasised more the means of action instead of its goals in his economy, he might have said something about the latter in the fifth part of his ideology, which would have covered morality, by which he meant the study of human emotions. Indeed, Destutt de Tracy himself suggested that the two books would have been complementary, regarding the same topic from different viewpoints, in a manner reminiscent of Adam Smith. Unfortunately, Destutt de Tracy managed to write only a small part of the beginning of morality, leaving his whole ideology unfinished.

What Destutt de Tracy did manage to complete was an introduction to the book, describing his view on the metaphysical underpinnings of our will in particular and our personality in general. He endorsed the idea of Cabanis that one’s physiology in large part determines what one is like and especially what one fancies and desires. Interestingly, Destutt de Tracy still in a sense upheld the Leibnizian pre-established harmony. Of course. his interpretation of it was rather original - Destutt de Tracy suggested that Leibniz had tried to express the notion that within human body happen some yet unobserved movements, which cause both our experience of wanting something and the corresponding perceivable movements of body attempting to achieve what is wanted. Indeed, if one just replaces Leibnizian soul with the far less ontologically loaded consciousness, this interpretation appears not that far-fetched.

When it comes to the actual emotions of a human being, Destutt de Tracy managed to just begin a chapter on love, which he called the most positive emotion possible. One might speculate that love might have offered him a similar basis for goal of human being as general sympathy did for some British moralists, but this is all a mere speculation. Even less to say we have of the planned sixth part of ideology, which would have completed the section on volitional part of human consciousness. We do know that this part would have dealt with the art of governing societies, but since we have already seen that Destutt de Tracy wanted to restrict the role of government, it would probably been quite a short work.