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Z. M. Davis
Joined: 01 Jul 2006
Posts: 38
Location: alternately Walnut Creek and Santa Cruz, California
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 Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:00 pm Post subject: Fiona Apple, crypto-compatibilist? |
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Or: "I'll Make the Most of It": "Extraordinary Machine" and the Free Will Problem
The song "Extraordinary Machine," by Fiona Apple, brings to mind important philosophical insights related to the Free Will Problem. "Extraordinary Machine" can be heard as a striking example of an artwork displaying a compatibilist sense of life, even though it seems unlikely in the extreme that Apple intended the song to be interpreted as such.
Compatibilism, in the context of the Free Will Problem, is the view that any reasonable definition of free will is compatible with determinism, the idea that everything that happens is necessarily determined by the past. On a macroscopic level (ignoring quantum phenomena for the purposes of this basic discussion), the universe does indeed seem to be deterministic. Inanimate objects behave in predictable ways. For instance, if one lets go of a Fiona Apple CD in calm air near the surface of the Earth, it will fall downwards with an acceleration of about 9.8 meters per second per second. The CD cannot possibly do anything else. Intuitively, it may seem that humans cannot be like the falling CD: we certainly seem to ourselves to have the ability to freely choose between possible futures. Thus--intuitively--people cannot be like the falling CD. Many people are convinced there has to be more than one future possible to them--else where would our sense of glorious freedom come from? Determinism seems like a threat to meaningfulness in life.
It's easy enough to immediately dismiss determinism as utterly incompatible with free will--but before doing so, consider the alternative: indeterminism. In an indeterministic universe, there is more than one possible future. Intuitively, this would seem to give conscious beings freedom--a person (call her "Fiona") can do action A or action B. But is this really freedom? If Fiona's future action really could go either way, and no present condition determines it (which would necessarily include Fiona's current mental state), in what way could Fiona herself be the source of the action?--wouldn't she just be the victim of some cosmic coinflip? I'm with Hume here: a causeless event is necessarily random.
At this point, one is inclined to take the pessimistic view, and conclude that free will can't possibly exist: it's obviously incompatible with determinism, and it has just been demonstrated to be incompatible with indeterminism as well. (Note that by the Law of the Excluded Middle, determinism and indeterminism are the only possibilities.) But this pessimistic view seems wildly at odds with reality. Free will refers to the power of people to choose their own fate--and people certainly seem to do that. So, the compatibilist's conclusion is that whether or not a person actually, physically could have done otherwise is not a precondition for free will. And it is a very reasonable conclusion: there is no reason a meaningful life should be dependent on an entity being its own first cause, which is (essentially) what libertarians demand.
All determinism really means is that some hypothetical infinite intelligence, if given all the facts about everything in the universe, could perfectly predict the future. Predictability is hardly a property that could rob us of our free will. Imagine that Fiona's best friend (call him "Tesla") knows Fiona so well that Tesla can usually guess just what Fiona will do in a particular situation. Surely the fact of Tesla's knowledge of his friend does not demonstrate she has no free will. Fiona can do whatever she chooses; that in the broader scheme Fiona's future is inevitable doesn't change the fact that it is still up to her. Intentionality, not evitability, is the standard.
So, for a compatibilist, the cultural goal is to decouple the intuitive link between moral responsibility and the ability to have actually, physically done otherwise, if the situation were to occur all over again with the initial conditions being exactly the same in every way. This decoupling is handled well in "Extraordinary Machine."
"Machine" is naturally heard on a literal level as a paean to independence. The song's protagonist shuns the meddling of outsiders in order to travel in her own way. The spirit of the song is captured in the refrain, heard four times.
| Fiona Apple wrote: | If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine |
Notice that the protagonist metaphorically (and quite proudly!) refers to herself as a "machine." Yet the fear of being like a machine motivates a lot of the intuitive disbelief of determinism, and more broadly, materialism. The computers and robots we know have nothing like consciousness, and rigidly (and deterministically) follow the instructions programmed into them. Surely, it seems, we are nothing like machines! And yet, the human brain is a physical thing--and as neuroscience advances daily ("inspecting the workings of the machine"), we are getting to know more and more about how it actually works--the entirely physical processes that are our every thought. If our most personal feelings are "mere" physical processes--which certainly seems to be the case--the unseemly parallel of minds to machines might be rather apt. But the protagonist of "Extraordinary Machine" doesn't seem bothered by it--perhaps because she knows the state of being something somehow "above" physics and causality is not one of the things that give life meaning (because it doesn't exist, for one thing). We already know that we can think, which cannot be an illusion ("cogito ergo sum," natch)--and whatever thinking turns out to be in terms of neurons and their constituent atoms, is important, but shouldn't undercut our sense of meaning.
The concept of not actually having been able to do otherwise occurs more than once in "Machine." In addition to the second line of the refrain, the relevant lines from the verses are: "But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so / I can't stop changing all the time" and "But he's no good at being uncomfortable, so / He can't stop staying exactly the same."
Notice that the protagonist explicitly states that she "can't help" what she does, but there is no suggestion she is abandoning claim to responsibility. Such an abandonment is antithetical to the song's attitude of calm, malice-free defiance. In the song, "I can't help it" is not said as a hysterical attempt to escape punishment for one's actions, but merely uttered as a relatively inconsequential fact of the matter. All the grandeur and glory traditionally associated with the mystical, incompatibilist conception of free will is present, but absent is any claim to any supernatural ability to defy causality. That the protagonist can't, in some sense, "help it", is simply not considered important. What's important is that she is an active ("I still only travel by foot and by foot it's a slow climb"), dynamic ("I can't stop changing all the time"), responsive ("Be kind to me, or treat me mean / I'll make the most of it") intelligence with independent judgment and intentions ("I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way"; "I don't want the bail"). Nothing else is needed for life to have meaning.
Even the instrumental aspects of the song can be very plausibly construed to promote a compatibilist sense of life. The song starts out with a very brief rhythmic sequence repeated three times, followed shortly by a bell, suggesting a the regular clock-like workings of some complicated machine setting off a bell. The bell is heard again five other times throughout the song, including the very end. This mechanical motif forms a brilliant contrast with the rest of the orchestra, which provides a springlike feel reminiscent of the natural world. Certain instrument flourishes remind one of blooming flowers. The identification of the natural and "spiritual" with the artificial and mechanical is thus strengthened. Much like how in reality, at the finest levels, it's all the same thing--mechanical or biological parts (ultimately made of quarks and leptons) performing mindless functions--but, at the macroscopic level, it's everything we see around us, as meaningful as it has ever been. Even Apple's slight emphasis on the second syllable of the word "extraordinary" makes it clear that it's the aforementioned meaningful properties that are important, not that she is, at some level, like a machine.
The compatibilist aesthetic canon, should there be one, would be richened by the inclusion of "Extraordinary Machine." |
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Katie Kolodzie
Joined: 16 Jul 2006
Posts: 48
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| Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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I personally think the question of Determinism or Free will depends on teh situations. I choose what kind of sandwich I want to have for lunch: chicken or cheese? Assuming I like both equally, the choise depends solely on my free will.
However, other times the options do "bottle neck" and only one is probable. I can't think of an example now, but I'm pretty sure you know what I mean.
This is a very godo example of how a godo peice of art can be read on many, many levels, and are in a way created by the viewer as much as the artist.
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Despair is for those who can see all ends. Can you? Then hope.
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