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Freedom as Uniquely Human Enterprise
While working on my theory of freedom, this is just a brief note to remind me of a number of points that I am going to flesh out at a later occasion.
While working on my theory of freedom, this is just a brief note to remind me of a number of points that I am going to flesh out at a later occasion.
From a certain stage on, the propensity to seek freedom becomes a uniquely human enterprise. Animals seek freedom, in much the same way that humans exercise anthropocentric freedom, i.e. engaging in acts of personal autonomy - following one's own choices.
However, at some point in time, the human species takes a decisive turn toward being able to imagine and realise a far wider range of choices than any other animal.
Uniquely Human Higher Levels of Language
With the development of higher levels of language that allows humans, unlike other animals, to describe their situations elaborately and to argue over these descriptions, human intelligence takes off in a big way. We are able to learn from one another, partake in and improve the experience even of fellows that we have never met. We turn our subjective inner experience out, allowing us to compare, test, and judge our ontological (what is real) and aetiological (what causes what) theories.
Far beyond the dictates of instinctive disposition and intuition, we are able to control our own reasoning and the reasoning of others for indications of falsehood and error. Eventually, the documentation of thought in written form universalises what advanced human oral communication had already started: mankind becomes so interconnected as to constitute a living socially organised hyper-intelligence, where pertinent and valuable information and insight has a high likelihood of being processed by those equipped to advance the mutually useful application of such knowledge, even without any such intent by those whose information and insights are being taken advantage of, as when the most recent engineering feats are undertaken without the inventors of algebra and other mathematical tools having intended any such use of their contribution to human knowledge.
Far beyond the dictates of instinctive disposition and intuition, we are able to control our own reasoning and the reasoning of others for indications of falsehood and error. Eventually, the documentation of thought in written form universalises what advanced human oral communication had already started: mankind becomes so interconnected as to constitute a living socially organised hyper-intelligence, where pertinent and valuable information and insight has a high likelihood of being processed by those equipped to advance the mutually useful application of such knowledge, even without any such intent by those whose information and insights are being taken advantage of, as when the most recent engineering feats are undertaken without the inventors of algebra and other mathematical tools having intended any such use of their contribution to human knowledge.
(Animals are also capable of learning, but not in a way that uncouples learning to such a large extent as the faculty of human criticism is capable of. Animals are closely tied to their instincts in learning new things. They lack the ability to systematically criticise the messages of their instincts. Relativity theory is about as far away from the messages of our instincts as it gets.)
Adaptation by Creation and Pursuit of New Needs
Adaptation by Creation and Pursuit of New Needs
The unique versatility and "trans-instinctual" capabilities of specifically human intelligence are of great import for the evolution of liberty. Human beings are the only species whose distinct strategy for environmental adaptation consists in
(a) developing, inventing or discovering new desires, and
(b) pursuing (at a high rate of success) the satisfaction of such self-generated, novel needs.
As a consequence, human beings have a very high and zoologically unique disposition toward autonomous acts.
Suppression and Furtherance of Anthropocentric Freedom
Anthropocentric freedom is always an outstanding factor to be dealt with in ordering human relationships, as this urge to act according to one's own propensities is strongly present in every human being.
Perhaps one ought to divide human history in two parts; the epochs that feared, despised, and sought to suppress anthropocentric freedom, and those that organised that fundamental human resource so as to utilise it as a systematic contributor of personal and public benefits under a regime of sociogenic freedom.
Perhaps one ought to divide human history in two parts; the epochs that feared, despised, and sought to suppress anthropocentric freedom, and those that organised that fundamental human resource so as to utilise it as a systematic contributor of personal and public benefits under a regime of sociogenic freedom.
Even under conditions of sociogenic freedom, the restriction of individual autonomy remains necessary, a difficult and contentious issue.
This entails an important implication: under sociogenic freedom, freedom in its diverse aspects, especially as represented by personal freedom, is always intertwined with unfreedom. This is because anthropocentric freedom must be restrained by unfreedoms to be able to coordinate a community of people in such a manner as to be endowed with maximal (and therefore not total) personal autonomy.
Freedom should not be conceived of as
- an accumulating stock to be maximised until full capacity is achieved, but as an
- equilibrating process producing constant change among the customary, legal and other relationships that conditions human interaction.
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