The Mathematics of Freedom

Carl H. Flygt

October, 2005

The pure categories of the understanding, when combined with the modes of pure sensibility, or with one another, yield a large number of derivative a priori concepts. To note, and, where possible, to give a complete inventory of these concepts, would be a useful and not unpleasant task.

-Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Is it possible, in theory, to represent human freedom by a number? If it were, one could imagine some significant social benefit, the most salient of which would be widespread humility. Who in the world, after all, is truly free? A world in which everyone was humble by nature, and free of arrogance and envy, would be a little closer to heaven.

Consider the difference between a man with $10, call him A, and a man with $1,000,000, call him B. Clearly there are ways in which B is substantially more free than A. With his capital, B can fly to Acapulco for an extended stay, whereas A cannot. With the same capital, B can buy a nice house in Bakersfield, and have something substantial left over, but A cannot. And so forth. In general, it seems clear that B is more free than A because B can take more types of action than A can. If we could come up with a comprehensive index of possible types of action available to the human being, and produce an action profile for both A and B based on which actions they were each able to take with the resources available to them, it seems that we could assign a number both to A and to B that would give a fair reflection of how free each man was at time t.

Now action in contemporary philosophy purports to be well-defined, at least if one follows John Searle’s commonsensical ideas. Action is an indeterminate gap followed by a prior intention followed by another gap followed by an intention-in-action followed by another gap followed by a bodily movement. Freedom enters action at the three gaps. I am free to decide to take an action, I am free to intend (or try) to take the action and I am free to sustain the action. Clearly our model above only treats the first kind of freedom. Any number we get at that level will need to be supplemented by numbers derived from the other two levels.

Now consider the difference between the same A and B, but suppose A is a self-realized Christian saint and B is a man who idolizes Donald Trump, seeks to emulate him, but inwardly senses himself to be a failure and is generally full of self-doubt and feelings of inferiority. Here I think A will have the numerical upper hand, because he will genuinely enjoy taking every action he does, whereas B, by hypothesis, will loathe himself for taking a good many of the actions he does. Clearly actions not taken out of enjoyment should not count as genuinely free, and although Searle’s model does not make this distinction, I think it needs to. Only actions which are initiated and sustained out of enjoyment are free actions, and if we are to succeed in producing a freedom index, we will need to find a way, in principle, to count these. I think the general solution here involves a conception of the good will, a will whose maxim of action universalizes its intentional content, thereby making it essentially a moral action.

Now suppose A is not a Christian who seeks to glorify God through good works, but is a Hindu who finds the greatest good in non-action. For him, every breath is an action, and he finds himself fully occupied just by sitting, breathing, eating a little when necessary and discharging a few social duties to his devotees. How free is he? What number would we assign him? I think he would top the scale, because if each breath is self-conscious and blissful, he is taking many more free actions than anyone else is.

So to count actions, it seems we need a measurement not only of the categories of possible movement of which one is capable, but also of the intentional content with which one can be sympathetic and finally of the degree of physiological or embodied self-consciousness one enjoys. To get an index of the first sort will require some heavy psycho-lexicography, but I think it can be done. It was more or less what Kant had in mind when he asserted the Transcendental Table of the Categories of the Understanding, and he clearly believed this table could be extended. I have attempted something along these lines in my theory of conversation, asserting the list of principles that apply a priori to any conversational interlude, and presumably that are presupposed by any conversational mind.

To get an index of possible moral actions may prove either forbiddingly complex or altogether simple and trivial. In pure conversation, we stipulate that everyone is trying to do the right thing all the time, and we assume that a mechanism exists in all rational people to detect deviancies from this norm. Perhaps a similar standard can be applied outside pure conversation and in general. For example, I do not take Donald Trump, who, constituted as he is, could not possibly survive the circumstance of pure conversation, to be particularly pure in his moral underpinnings, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

On the third level we will probably need help from someone like Cristof Koch. If it starts to look like we can pin consciousness down to certain brain states, then it seems all but certain we will be able to measure degrees of freedom in those states, particularly as they involve the emotions and the hippocampus. Emotional freedom is the beginning of spiritual freedom, and spiritual freedom essentially is the experience of novelty. In meditation, there is nothing more novel and more profoundly satisfying than the cortical image, full of unanticipated complexity, detail and fearsome beauty, of the spiritual being who regulates access to the world beyond the senses, and ensures that an individual’s social actions conform to the higher supersensible laws of the cosmos. This is the experience of the Guardian of the Threshold (of the Holy Guardian Angel), and it is something that , hypothetically at least, in most normal Westernized people is experienced consciously only at or near the gate of death.

On my theory, real conversation depends on everyone involved being self-conscious and free, and in one way or another intimate with his (her) Holy Guardian Angel. If we were to establish the protocol for sustaining self-conscious speech actions, for stipulating conditions under which universal moral law applies to every gesture of the brain and body and simultaneously make measurements or other objective assessments that establish how the brain is performing self-conscious actions, then we would be in a position, in principle, to measure human freedom and to apply that measure broadly to educational and social situations. That measure would be sufficient, moreover, if it were applied correctly and in the right institutional context, to transform global culture into a world much like the dreams of our fondest desires.