One cool aspect of really old books is there are several ways to try them cheap or gratis. They are available online (because of PD status) and to be lent from a library (because they are classics). So no wondering “Should I buy it?”, just grab it and try it.
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Yep, easily accessible on Gutenberg:
The other whale-themed game I played is a visual novel called “South Scrimshaw.” The first part is free on Itch io, GOG, and Steam. Or you could just watch it on YouTube, because it’s pretty much entirely linear.
The game description keeps its cards very close to its chest. The plot is very developed and gripping to a degree that I didn’t expect.
It’s the story of an alien whale with unusual biology. There are tons of speculative evolution videos on YouTube, which I guess are derived from books like published pre-Internet like Dougal Dixon’s “After Man.”
But those seem kind of cold and calculating IMO. “South Scrimshaw” is closer in emotional ambitions to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Galapagos,” though with less humor (apart from the tongue-in-cheek title cards). I guess you could also compare it to “Finding Nemo.”
Structurally it’s very good, especially for an episodic game. The first few chapters are entirely linear to get you invested and there are a few footnote-like digressions later on that you can see if you like. Plus, the latest version of the game ends at a logical point without a cliffhanger, so it feels like a complete story despite being only partially finished.
This is one of the best things I’ve seen this year and I look forward to seeing where it goes next.
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Happy New Year.
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That video is cheating! You can’t skip halfway through the book, directly to one of the most homoerotic chapters, and act like you’re just innocently reading along.
Now, if you actually started from the beginning…
ETYMOLOGY.
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.
…you’d get as far as the second sentence. Or arguably the first!
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I’m currently 60% of the way through Moby Dick. I’ve been taking it very slow and reading each chapter occasionally, usually while I go somewhere.
There’s an interesting extended metaphor in which weaving a mat is used to describe free will and fate. It gets its own chapter, but here’s part of it:
… This easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free will, and necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.
It’s a nice image, and probably the most memorable of the times that the book has touched on free will.
It’s especially relevant because the novel consists of a bunch of interwoven threads rather than a straightforward plot. And now, in its middle section, the book is starting to get into other ships’ stories rather than the main characters and set up.
There are, so far, two chapters about other ships that encountered Moby Dick. These provides parallels to, but also contrast with, Ahab’s quest. Those are the story of the Town-Ho and the story of the Jeroboam.
These chapters are pretty demanding and I’m still working through the two blog posts that explain them, linked above. But to put it bluntly, the fate of Ahab’s voyage is in some way necessary (either because the story as written leads to it, or because Moby Dick exists for that purpose) but also not strictly necessary (as the two other stories provide counterexamples).
In Philosophy 101 terms, I don’t think Moby Dick’s view of free will is compatibilism as it is usually thought of. Compatibilitism considers free will as independent of determinism. Compatibilitism is closer to ‘wilfulness’ in my opinion — ie. a desire for something regardless of the possibility of action or ability to actualize it. It’s been a while since I’ve studied the Philosophy 101 version of this so I’m basing this on Wikipedia.
Moby Dick instead treats free will and necessity/fate as subordinate to chance. “Chance” doesn’t really make any logical sense in this context, unless I’m missing something. As far as I can tell its more a suspension of disbelief to illustrate an exchange between apparent fate and apparent free will. A lot of Moby Dick is relational explorations of ideas rather than fully resolved arguments.
There’s also the religious aspects of free will. As I understand it Melville moved away from Calvinism to a sort of universalism, and both of those are reflected in the text in some ways … though that doesn’t say much about each theology’s position on free will on its own.
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The passage you quoted sounds more like free will in the dualistic sense, that humans can operate somehow beyond physical constraints. The compatiblists seem to want to eat their cake and have it too and say that determinism is true but redefine free will as somehow not being affected by the fact that physics underlies and determines all our thoughts. Of course the concept of free will has never been very well defined in the first place so I suppose you can define it to be whatever you want.
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@gfaregan The passage you quoted sounds more like free will in the dualistic sense, that humans can operate somehow beyond physical constraints
I think the idea that we can operate completely beyond physical constraints is metaphysical idealism or some relative of that.
The way I understand it, mind-body dualism generally suggests both the mind and the body are affected by physical causes — just affected differently.
More explanation here
As the Wikipedia article on compatibilism notes, mind-body dualism is one non-naturalist theory that is “within the laws of physics.”
I am out of my depth here… but here is an example outside of free will. In Descartes’ wax thought experiment, he notes that impermanent qualities (shape, smell, liquid/solid state) are part of any given sensory impression of the wax.
He concludes that wax is ultimately a “certain extended thing which is flexible and movable.” It’s not that there are no physical qualities affecting his mental (or purely rational) perception of the essence of the wax – just that the wax’s few essential physical qualities do not distinguish it from other objects.
Similarly, in the context of free will, Descartes suggests that God (ie. a deistic first cause of the physical world) has a will that “ranges over a greater number of items” but says that this is not greater than his own human will in an “essential and strict sense.”
Furthermore, he acknowledges the possibility that his free will may come either from his reasoning or from deterministic causes, seemingly in line with what we now consider compatibilism.
… The more I incline in one direction - either because I clearly understand the reasons of truth and goodness that points that way, or because of a divinely produced disposition of my inner thoughts - the freer is my choice."
I get the impression that you think mind-body dualism is not convincing and I agree with you, maybe for partially different reasons. Mind-body dualism also doesn’t leave much room for chance as expressed in the mat-weaving metaphor, IMO.
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Back to this quote:
… This easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free will, and necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working together
Diving into Wikipedia a little more, chance is closely related to indeterminism. This is the idea that a predetermined set of conditions could produce multiple outcomes.
I don’t think this is quite the point of the mat-weaving metaphor, because the metaphor reserves a partial role for fate, and because “Moby Dick” kind of oppositely suggests that different situations can converge on a single thing (Moby Dick itself).
There’s another passage on Moby Dick that’s explicitly about free will. There, Ishmael describes capturing a whale while tied to Queeqeg and expresses a loss of free will. It’s a long quote.
(Open quote)
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*
That passage describes a “interregnum in Providence” (ie. suspension of divine fate) and, again, a role for chance. However, despite Ishmael thinking “metaphysically,” it’s seemingly describing narrow social conditions for free will rather than the broader metaphysical conditions for free will. So any single explanation will probably fall flat.
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I certainly used the incorrect word (dualism) since I can’t remember the right one. Idealism may be it. The idea of a mind separate from the body which is still constrained by physics does not make sense to me. What does this mean? Why postulate a non physical soul which is constrained by the physical world? Perhaps this refers to Calvinism which is a kind of deterministic religion? In any case, you are right that I find all of this unconvincing. Most useful philosophy has been removed to others subjects and what remains is meaningless debate. The scientific method has prevailed. Although it has been pointed out that this attitude is itself a metaphysical position, to which I have yet to come up with a devastating retort.
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I certainly used the incorrect word (dualism) since I can’t remember the right one.
Not necessarily, depending on how thoroughly you mean “beyond” physical constraints.
I think you could reasonably say that dualism allows the mind to operate beyond physical causes in a way that materialism doesn’t — even if dualism doesn’t consider the mind totally unbound by physics.
The idea of a mind separate from the body which is still constrained by physics does not make sense to me.
For Descartes, dualism was an attempt to build a Catholic belief system from scratch, but he arguably didn’t get any further than a more general deism and virtue ethics.
Without acknowledging he set out to do that, it doesn’t make sense. However, acknowledging that Descartes set out to do anything seems to always run into the Cartesian circle, since he’s trying to prove from scratch what he already believed based on philosophies and theologies that long predated him.
Note
Descartes’ arguments accommodate Catholicism, but they also accommodate a lot of other things, like the Platonism that Catholic philosophy borrowed from. Quoting this Pearson article:
“… in the case of physical death, Descartes believes (as did Plato) that your soul continues to exist, seeking union with the spiritual realm and God’s infinite and eternal mind.”
As this relates to free will… I think free will in Catholicism is minimally concerned with cause-and-effect determinism. It’s more about having two separate wills (body and mind) that can act “freely” or independently of one another — even as both are more distantly bound by its conception of God, meaning both a ground of existence and a system of values.
Perhaps this refers to Calvinism which is a kind of deterministic religion?
From what I read, Melville was raised Calvinist and moved toward a type of universalism, so you’re probably right that Calvinism influences his perspective on free will.
If Calvinism is in there, it’s less explicit than the universalism, I’d say … though a quick Google search shows that Calvinism is heavily related to Ahab’s character and his eventual doom. Maybe it only seems less explicit because I’m less familiar with it.
Most useful philosophy has been removed to others subjects and what remains is meaningless debate. The scientific method has prevailed.
One of the big things in “Moby Dick” is the fact that Ishmael is often indifferent — even in a ditzy way — to the distinction between the material and immaterial.
He’s scientifically and materially minded insofar as he catalogues everything (mostly whales), but he also goes off onto idealistic tangents (ie. humanistic and religious ones) at every possible opportunity.
There’s even a chapter called “On the Whiteness of the Whale” that kind of resembles Descartes’ wax argument. There, Ishmael attempts to argue, using pure reason, to argue that the color white is inherently fearsome by comparing a bunch of specific things and trying to get at its essence.
Note
Ishmael gets into pretty purple prose toward the end as he describes the essence, stating:
“When we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects … with its own blank tinge.”
Anyway, since this is a story where Moby Dick is God (ie. the reason for the story’s existence), Ishmael comes to the conclusion that Moby Dick is the ultimate symbol of this fearsomeness whiteness, noting "And of all these things the Albino whale [ie. Moby Dick] was the symbol. In fact, he even puts Moby Dick’s fearsomeness above specific examples that use religious iconography.
Ahab meanwhile is indifferent to the same distinction but in a more aggressive way. For example, in his famous “pasteboard masks” quote, everything, whether material or immaterial, is something for him to fight against.
On its own, those themes are quite a bit distant from free will…but if you are considering how we engage with reality in a world where free will is limited by most definitions, both Ishmael and Ahab’s tendencies might reflect our own.
Even a strict materialist would probably agree that being a split-minded artist or a very angry person are both ways of (sort of) dealing with our limits, though obviously Melville endorsed the first.
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I believe the word I was looking for was libertarianism (in the philosophical/free will sense).
I’m not sure I understand your last paragraph. A determinist would say there isn’t any way to escape determinism. At best we are successful or unsuccessful automata. Being constantly angry is generally not a successful strategy for most things. And I’m not sure what a split minded artist is - my best interpretation is someone who is flaky or doesn’t think too much about the issue?
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I believe the word I was looking for was libertarianism (in the philosophical/free will sense).
Possibly … now I’m out of my element.
A determinist would say there isn’t any way to escape determinism. At best we are successful or unsuccessful automata
True, but most determinists still go about their lives and entertain ideas in the arts as a way to suspend disbelief. It’s not a real escape, you’re correct.
And I’m not sure what a split minded artist is - my best interpretation is someone who is flaky or doesn’t think too much about the issue?
“Flaky” isn’t too far off (I did describe Ishmael as ditzy) but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if the stakes are low, like in art and creative pursuits. Of course you eventually have to commit to something you come up with while daydreaming etc., or there’s nothing there in the end …
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Maybe another word would be agnostic. I’m not sure there are any stakes at all - the world is what it is regardless of what one believes about it. John Searle discussed what he calls the problem of the gap (again, I’m probably getting the name wrong), in which he claims that even if we know determinism is true we must believe we have free will in order to function. My first thought is that it’s nonsense - does an intelligent computer program need to believe in free will in order to function? But maybe the argument is more sophisticated than that.
As for libertarianism it is just the opposite of compatibilism, that free will is not compatible with determinism, so if we have free will then it is not subject to determinism.
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John Searle discussed what he calls the problem of the gap (again, I’m probably getting the name wrong), in which he claims that even if we know determinism is true we must believe we have free will in order to function
I have determinist leanings, so on the surface, I agree with you that people don’t explicitly need to believe they have free will to function.
However, I do think that even the hardest determinists demonstrate some sort of agency-like beliefs in the real world. Slipping into fantasy to avoid the way things are and being angry at the way things are both qualify as “almost agency” in my opinion. Or, maybe more accurately, “failed agency” or “doomed-from-the-start agency.”
At a bare minimum I’d say those things show a desire for something resembling free will, even if every fantasy/anger episode is cosmically predetermined, and even if free will doesn’t actually exist.
Some would probably say the fantasy/anger tendencies are wholly implicit beliefs in free will — ie. people believe in free will but just can’t or won’t express it. I’m not too familiar with Searle so I’m not sure if he’s getting at something similar. Anyway, I wouldn’t go that far.
(On top of everything else, this also depends on whether the concept of “free will” can exist simply by consensus, even if free will doesn’t really exist. It sounds like you believe the concept of free will is totally incoherent, whereas I just believe it’s impossible in practical terms.)
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I don’t want to misrepresent John Searle’s ideas, but I do think there is something to them. Perhaps intelligence requires or benefits from the kind of self awareness and activity one may associate with an implicit belief in free will.
The typical formulation of free will is the statement that “you could have done otherwise”. In some ways this is an incoherent mess. Who is the “you” exactly? It is all entirely unscientific, and seemingly designed for endless philosophical discussions that do not actually yield anything resembling truth or knowledge. In other ways perhaps it is coherent - it is hard to see how it holds up in a clockwork universe.
You seem interested in art so perhaps you should look into Schopenhauer who had things to say about it.
You seem interested in art so perhaps you should look into Schopenhauer who had things to say about it.
I should really get around to reading some of it, especially since some of his work is aphorisms that I could just glance at occasionally as if it were 1800s Twitter :P.
My very basic understanding of Schopenhauer’s position is that art is about sublimating the will due to the impossibility of truly satisfying the will. In other words, losing yourself in it.
That’s something I’d certainly agree with, though I expect he has a more thorough grounding for that belief than I do.
Inspired by this conversation, I’ve been making my leisurely way through Moby-Dick again. Just finished today, and it really does get better every time. New depths open up. I appreciate the structure more and more. The ending used to feel somewhat abrupt to me, but this time it felt perfect.
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Now I feel bad for planning to finish the last third in the fall. 
It’s easier in small doses, that’s for sure. And the thing I feel like I can come back to at any time.
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I think one of the reasons the ending hit so impeccably for me this time is because I was taking my time. In the past, I’d get so engrossed that I would often just plow through the book at a breakneck pace in the second half. Kinda like swallowing without chewing because you’re so hungry and the food is so good. But it makes sense to slow down a little when you’re out at sea, after the story leaves the land behind.
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