As an amateur philosopher, my primary areas of interest are ethics, theology, and political philosophy. I have a very complex, original take on these areas of interest. I am confident that what God has shared with me is of fundamental importance for human progress.
On the other hand, I have put the cart before the horse. My philosophy, as semi-explicated in my earlier books, though seminal and profound, is not fully explained by me in clear, concise language as a unified, interconnected whole.
To remedy this defect, I have embarked, for some years now, on an ambitious "getting-caught-up" project that entails a need to achieve some level of philosophical adequacy and professionalism (roughly say a master's degree level of proficiency, comprehension and ability to wield formal and technical language and argumentative technique on such subjects as ethics, ontology, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, etc.) basic to conveying the ideas that I am eager to convey for public consumption.
I am now deep into epistemological self-education. One pattern emerging is what I wish to relay to the reader this morning.
It seems that much of our free agency, our rationally perceiving and wielding practical syllogisms internally and privately to make sense of our incoming sense data, and to express these impressions as ideas, concepts, and theories about the world, goes on almost unconsciously, instinctively, without being captured, categorized, and shared in the human community as intellectual knowledge that is communicated by formal or informal language.
Ernest Sosa is the epistemologist that I have spent the most time studying. Sosa asserts, as a virtual perspectivist, that our first order beliefs, based in common sense, need to be tested and validated so each belief may be categorized as knowledge or as mere opinion.
The crucible in which each belief is to be tested is second order rational, syllogistic testing of each belief to see if one should accept, reject, or suspend judgement about each weighed and tested belief to see if it meets his epistemic, externalist standard as reliably true belief.
Sosa suggests that much of this second order assessing and judging the character, type and worth of each of our basic, raw beliefs occurs functionally or teleologically, an implicit, un-self-conscious psychic process that is logical, intellectually normative, and voluntary.
The act of applying practical syllogisms to each of our beliefs does not happen often intellectually and internally, in an explicit, self-conscious, rational exercise, verbally, linguistically, and consciously expressed by us. This is what Sosa seems to suggest.
The pattern that emerges from his epistemology, as so stated by him, is that much of what humans think and choose, and how they think and will--voluntarily and culpably--is undertaken without being done out loud or formulated as linguistic content.
For me, this is empirical and psychological proof that humans are beasts as well as angels. So much of what goes on privately and communally operates without our being consciously and linguistically capturing what is going on and what controls our lives and behavior.
Like our mammalian cousins, we are guided and determined by instinct, our animal natures, and our semi-conscious rules of living, far more than we realize and wish to admit.
I have long realized and tried to awaken people to the dangers and limiting effects that our herding, conforming and altruistic instincts. If we knew that we were depraved, pack beasts, all conspiring to lie and live in illusions to keep all in the pack, and to keep all down and back, then we could make prefatory efforts for people to raise their consciousness and self-awareness so that they could reason and think for themselves, no matter what elites and their pack are ordering them to believe and conform to, to the contrary.
Then, having gained this level of self-awareness, self-control and self-development, people would be ready to reason about how they will maverize their personhood, their lives.
I would like, at another time when I have the time, energy and expertise gained, to examine how this rich, semi-conscious, semi-instinctive mental, behavioral, and social activity applies to my theory of free will.
Quickly and roughly, I have long disliked the existential view that people wield complete free agency, for which they are morally and legally responsible and accountable before others, humans and on Judgement Day.
I have argued that free will is a weak, recessive power at work naturally in all of us. We are born depraved and are born into and try to function as adults in a world rewarding collectivist ethics and group-living. We are joiners and that entails that we have little self-esteem, weak wills, little taste for personal power acquisition and power-wielding (By contrast, we love power-acquisition and power-domination as joiners, an offering at the altar of our group, our cause and this power-addiction is demonically derived and reinforced.).
We are filled with resentment, anger, hatred, ingratitude, arrogance, foolish beliefs, and lust to destroy outsiders. What amazes me is that society functions as peacefully, law-obeying and smoothly as it does. It is not accidental but the result of moral adults agreeing to cooperate and self-restrain themselves to keep things functioning peacefully and smoothly for the sake of everyone that lives here.
I have argued that people are not educated with the Mavellonialist values that would awaken them so that they would have fully functioning free wills as rational, moral, conscience-applied free willers.
To individuate is to have a free will, a good will, a good developing character and articulated, fully conscious understanding of right from wrong with full appreciation of one's full responsibility now for being awake and knowing right from wrong and realizing that the community, the law, and God will hold us accountable for what we do and do not do.
With Sosa's epistemological study of human thought processes, it has become clear that much of our thinking, our voluntary choice-making and our understanding accepting and living in accordance with rules of discourse and expectations about private and communal standards are comprehended by us instinctively and semi-consciously.
At that level of understanding, humans have and do wield free will even thouh the agent is not fully awake, fully individualized with conscious, clear functioning free will and logically operating thought processes abut decisions made. What was operating pre-linguistically in us privately and during our public social transactions is where we wield primordial if undeveloped powers of agency and thinking and individuation. We are responsible for our choices even at that primitive level of moral choice, and are fully responsible for our choices as maverizers, highly developed.
We, others, the law, and God should judge our personal actions proportionately and as freely chosen and lived by in proportion to how self-actualized we are. We exercise complete free will when we are smart, educated value-rich deciders.
An individuated will is a free will and usually a good will, but not necessarily so.
Satan is an individuator with free will with a complete understanding of consequences but he chooses to be bad though he knows the consequences and dangers of imminent hell fire.
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