Reality and language, philosophical discussion
The strong sensation of existential vacuum, together with the constant reflections that from an inner perspective can future of the self, are recurring experiences from the questioning about the true possibilities that human being has to achieve full freedom. Indeed, there are different theories that from philosophical understanding can bring these questions closer to an expressive plane of language and critical reasoning. From this assumption, language will devise a material reality that would facilitate the discussion about these assumptions and their possibilities of extension in our lives.
Freedom, for various classic authors and founders of the most successful theories of the last centuries (Locke, Kant and Mill, to name a few examples), induce us towards a theoretical framework which ensures the social possibility of the human being to live in freedom, respecting certain limits of coexistence that are closely linked to a sufficiently strengthened sense of inner responsibility to understand gregarious existence (otherwise, liberalism itself says, it would be difficult to specify). From this approach, others arise somewhat more abstract in terms of the true spirit of such freedom and the material possibilities of achieving it. Indeed, during the course of the semester we have witnessed how some of these approaches induce us to think of premises such as those presented in currents such as determinism, being that a modern theory which ensures that the individual is in a state ofAbsolute dependence both to the knowledge of its reality and to the perception (material interaction) that could access in this scenario. Therefore, it follows that both the identity and will of the human being – which emanate from their natural possibilities of reasoning and the institutional social coexistence – would be strongly linked to a context outside the decision power that emanates from individual autonomy, whatthat would lead us to raise the assumption that determinism excludes the possibility that we are fully free.
The present essay aims to analyze these factors and the relevance of this discussion to understand social problems that today evidenced in political contingency, around the limits of freedom and full capacity to access a state of personal autonomy. Therefore, in the following plans we will address the theoretical ability to prosecute such discussion by deterministic thinking, for the purpose of further elucidating the hypothesis of this essay, using practical examples that emerge from authors such as Carlos Moya (freedom, determinism and determinism andMoral responsibility), García-Encias (metaphysics and causality analysis) and P.F. Strawson (analysis and metaphysics). Finally, we will conform to expose a brief reflection on the current parameters of both civil and individual freedom, to later conclude in a series of challenges that we still have pending in that context for the next decades, which according to many statesmen and philosopherspresent, they would be crucial to ensure the survival of our species.
To begin, I would like to address the question regarding what the modal status would be regarding the factors of human behavior, that is, how we could abstract from this preliminary idea of freedom conditioned by determinism, a standard behavior pattern that explainsIn a way this link between material facts and human actions. It is undeniable that our environment and everything that constitutes it (culture, personal relationships, productive methods) causally affects our reality, in terms of lifestyles and generation of habits it is treated. In a way, that determines the way in which we behave for ourselves and those around us, therefore we could in advance a state of conditionality to full freedom, in the purest terms of the concept. However, it is not clear that these causal factors that affect our behavior in a necessary way, that is, given their occurrence, they necessarily follow a certain pattern to constitute a form of behaving. This would be explained, we could continue, because causality could occur without an exogenous action interfere. There are several examples and in the following lines I would like to address a couple of them, in order to even better support the thesis proposed in this essay.
The causal relationship is necessary as if one of the terms, let’s put the cause, it was different, the effect would be another effect, and therefore would not be the same entity;And vice versa, if the effect was different, its cause would be different, and therefore it would not be the same entity but another. And the identity relationship is necessary. Therefore, the causal relationship is also necessary although the elements that relate are different entities (García-Encias, PP-225).
Indeed, the fact that the human being is subject to the causes and consequences of any element that surrounds it or is inside (for example, the exercise of reasoning), hinders the remote possibility that the full autonomy of the individualcan develop. There will always be a conditioning (social, cultural, material, formal, etc.) which will deprive the individual to subtract from the analysis of causes and consequences in his perception of reality. “But only if we can more or less vaguely conceive the background and consequent phenomena as if they were connected in a more or less remotely assimilable, or analogous way, to that of the models of the action and the causal reaction that we already have, we are willing toConsider the first causes of the second ”(Strawson, pp.183). For Strawson, the cause-consequence relationship is a fundamental pillar to distinguish effects and provides possible action alternatives, this being an exercise of reasoning necessary for the purpose of distinguishing the elements that constitute the material scenario in which the individual develops. For authors such as Moya, on the other hand, freedom necessarily consists of the active conjunction of 3 fundamental requirements: lack of chance (intentionality), capacity and will. Without them, necessarily the individual could not assert that he is free to act by virtue of something. However, the complexity of the matter becomes when variables such as the following are analyzed:
However, volitional-rational control is not enough either for a decision or action to be free. A subject can exercise that control over their decisions and actions without being a free agent. If, for example, the desires, motives and values of a subject are the fruit of a process of brainwashing or a systematic psychological conditioning, or perhaps of a programming or even a direct manipulation of its brain, we do not consider thisSubject as a free agent, even when he keeps intact his deliberation and rational choice capabilities (Moya, pp.366).
Another aspect to consider is that indeed, as some of the authors studied throughout the semester argue, there are certain behavioral patterns and provisions inherited from the social existence of the individual, which precedes the own existence of the rational being and that, of someor another way, determine their behavior, opportunities and development conditions, and even long -term life projects. All this amalgam of causal events and that are conditioned identity with an action, there are many times external fruits of the individual will and awareness of being. The same would lead us to think that the possibility of being free in society is somewhat complex, since the social pact that precedes the existence of the being co -rt in a certain way the full autonomy of the will, thereby determining models of behavior that they later generatereactions in the individual. As Moya advanced in his book, the subject must necessarily be a genuine author of his decisions and actions. That is, it must have the inner power sufficiently developed and critical to deliberate and impose for its existence the most convenient and efficient. These last two aspects are necessarily weakened when it exists in society. Indeed, without these delimitations, a lifestyle would hardly be tolerable with another, because the collision of personal conveniences would be sufficient, attempt to coexist. Centuries ago, the social pacts consolidated by the modern contractualists pointed in this same direction, since they recognized the limiting exposed above and the need to “leave a state of nature in which full freedom was exercised”, to later build a willing agreementwhere each party gives a space of full debauchery to later be able to live together under an autonomous, civil and determinedly fair power. “The assumption of strong or robust survival of mental properties about physical is important for the strength of the argument, because without it we could have the possibility that we had power over our decisions even if we did not have it on physical processes, including physical movementsthat at every moment constitute our actions ”(Moya, pp.373).
This social construction, previously raised in a descriptivelysanctioned by those who have agreed in that as a direct attack on the freedom of the other). For this reason, it is evident that this conventional imposition has left the full freedom of which we referred from the beginning and that, without a doubt, it is excluded by deterministic thinking. "Any reasonable conception of freedom and moral responsibility must accept, as a starting point, that we have no control or choice on the factors that initially configure our personality" (Moya, pp.398).
As a conclusion, I would like to reflect on the complexity of this philosophical discussion and the relevance that in turn has to understand our spaces of civil autonomy, together with what an effective exercise of freedom entails, in the terms that we haveagreed to respect during the last decades. Although the foundations of this Western thought have been based on the theories of classical authors such as those mentioned in the introduction of this essay, we must not neglect that the constant implementation of the postulates present there and the supranational protection of said precepts, in the form of international and public principles and guarantees, they are fundamental elements for the social future of the individual, especially in a worldwide context in which interdependence relations (fruits of the globalization process) are increasingly more and more qualitatively morerefined.
Indeed, discussing the material possibilities of achieving absolute freedom, not only nourishes our thinking and critical ability to argue, but also focuses on the social scenario under which we are inserted and empowers the individual’s conscience to seeThe reality from a perspective although somewhat pessimistic, landed in terms of conclusions and true possibilities of autonomous action. What can never be deprived of the individual are their personal and interior attributes. When not, although these could be moldable to a certain behavioral culture or pattern, the interior to our times is complex to completely subordinate, in a kind of action completely related to the will of another individual. Although there are instances that were institutionalized for such purposes (a specific example is slavery), our modern societies do not tolerate these types of actions or find any justification, that is moderately convincing and in tune with the promotion of fundamental rights.
For such purposes, in effect, I consider as appropriate the fact that we give us these spaces for discussion and reflection, since lately the risk of finding in the history of the human being to totalitarian doctrines -which evidently tends towards the restriction of consciousness of the individual- It is more latent than ever. “We explain ourselves and others in terms that we could qualify as humans and social. We refer to inherited features, to social influences, for the purposes of education, learning and experience, to the particular circumstances in which people see themselves. We talk about the character, personality and influences that make up and modify them ”(Strawson, pp.202). As this author points out, the influences of the human intellect in this eagerness to know and allow social spaces of freedom must be understood as consequences of cognitive and pedagogical processes, which would reaffirm the central idea that a restriction of freedom should necessarily be usedabsolute to instruct our minds and warn about possible risks that could end up restricting it absolutely. Therefore, I consider that determinism is a kind of alert, both to realize that full freedom and that often reappears in political slogans and social demands does not exist in the practical terms that has been raised, and to take action on the matterand recognize us as conditioned, limiting beings but with the potential of being aware of that own need for restriction, by virtue of a life in society and the active combat of inequities that become unfortunately of these relations.
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