Agency or Determinism.

[Oswy]

How far do people here think that a Marxist interpretation of human societies is one which limits or even prevents us from exercising agency or free-will in the things we think and do? Does a materialist understanding of human society make humans an effect of processes or can we still in some way be a 'cause' of them?

[ZeroNowhere]

Of course humans can be a cause. An uncaused cause? Well, no.
IIRC, Marx did express a rather 'hard determinist' position in The German Ideology, at least in terms of humans and such, if that helps. He did believe that 'freedom' was compatible with the absence of free will, which makes some think of him as a softy compatibilist shite, but he used 'freedom' in a different sense than the 'soft determinists', that is, to mean control upon the external forces controlling you. Though yes, a materialist understanding of human society does mean that free will is bollocks.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, as I have shown in the Philosophy section, determinism imples that the universe is run by a 'cosmic will' of some sort, and that this theory can only be made to work if one is prepared to anthrompomorphise nature (i.e., attribute to it characteristics that only human beings display).

And, because the idea that we have a 'free will' depends on opposing this theory, it too is afflicted by similar problems: it can only be made to work by attributing human capacities to nature and then denying that these always have a decisive influence over our actions.

In short, both options are based on projecting human agency on to nature, and then denying it of human beings themselves!

This is, of course, part of the reason why this 'problem' has remained unsolved now for over two thousand years, and we are no nearer a solution than we were in Aristotle's day.

More details here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/freedom-state-mind-t56836/index.html?t=56836

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=894937&postcount=2

http://www.revleft.com/vb/legitimate-argument-determinismi-t101608/index.html

Anyone tempted to ask what my solution is will be sent away disappointed, since there can be no solution to a bogus problem.

In short, this is not a 'problem'.

[Hegemonicretribution]

As Rosa said, in metaphysical terms the free-will vs determinism problem is a result of the debate itself. It supposes two unsupported positions which cannot be verified either way, and then creates a system of complex arguments in favour of one or the other, neglecting the fact that we have no means of determining the truth of one or the other.

It does not matter though, because we don't have knowledge of all of the causal proccesses at play in the world, so we cannot blame determinism for our actions. Just becuase we don't know of all of these causes, does not mean they are not at play either, so we cannot assume a metaphysical notion of free-will either.

The closest you could come (in my opinion although I do not necessarily believe it and I am sure that others will jump on this) would be to treat the existence of free-will (or even determinism) as a phenomenological claim, rather than a metaphysical one. That is to say that we claim that free will exists insofar as it is how the world strikes us. This would not be a claim about the underlying structure of reality though, which is what most people mean when they think about these issues, but simply states that we view the world as if free-will holds and that this is all that matters.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Heg:


It supposes two unsupported positions which cannot be verified either way, and then creates a system of complex arguments in favour of one or the other, neglecting the fact that we have no means of determining the truth of one or the other.

I'd not put it this way myself, since verification is not the problem (it's not even an option).

What is at stake is more profound: we cannot even frame or describe the 'problem' without projecting human characteristiscs onto nature.

So, that means that this 'problem' is based on a serious misuse of language, which makes it non-sensical (i.e., it is impossible to make sense of).

In that case, we have as yet no idea at all what we should be trying to verify, or even look for! This 'problem' is far too confused to it to make it that far.

A bit like trying to find off-side, say, in chess!:lol:

By the way Heg, if you check this out, you will see where I derived my view of this topic from:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1362050&postcount=24

The references I give might help you with some of your essays.