Are we free to choose? A psychological analysis
Particular Pete, General Geraldine, Universal Ursula and Absolute Abdul walk into a cake shop each with enough money to buy one cake. It's the end of the day, and there are only three cakes left. There are:
Eccles cake 1
Eccles cake 2
An Iced Finger
Particular Pete ONLY likes Eccles Cake 1 - therefore, if offered the choice of the three, he MUST choose Eccles cake 1. Is that right?
General Geraldine likes cakes in general, but not iced fingers, therefore if offered the choice of the three, she MUST choose one of he Eccles cakes, but is free to choose which. She cannot choose the Iced Finger. Is that right?
Universal Ursula likes all cakes. She is free to choose any of the three cakes on offer, but she MUST choose one of them. She can't choose none. Is that right?
Absolute Abdul likes all cakes and none. All is one - or none - to him. Absolute Abdul is free to choose any of the cakes, or not choose any. Is that right?
The conclusion here is that there are gradations of free will, of choice, from particular to absolute, depending on our preferences/values.
Is this a good analysis?
Eccles cake 1
Eccles cake 2
An Iced Finger
Particular Pete ONLY likes Eccles Cake 1 - therefore, if offered the choice of the three, he MUST choose Eccles cake 1. Is that right?
General Geraldine likes cakes in general, but not iced fingers, therefore if offered the choice of the three, she MUST choose one of he Eccles cakes, but is free to choose which. She cannot choose the Iced Finger. Is that right?
Universal Ursula likes all cakes. She is free to choose any of the three cakes on offer, but she MUST choose one of them. She can't choose none. Is that right?
Absolute Abdul likes all cakes and none. All is one - or none - to him. Absolute Abdul is free to choose any of the cakes, or not choose any. Is that right?
The conclusion here is that there are gradations of free will, of choice, from particular to absolute, depending on our preferences/values.
Is this a good analysis?
Comments (52)
uh no not necessarily. someone can of course have reasons for choosing something that isn't their preference.
Quoting bert1
I wouldn't even say that this example illustrates that. Just because someone likes one option more than another doesn't mean they aren't exercising as much free will as another person. I keep on hearing the idea from various people that free will only comes into play when the options presented are equal or near-equal. I don't think that's the case.
If that were the case, then that would mean someone WASN'T exercising free will every time they did something they really wanted to do, or avoided doing something they didn't want to do, and thus they deserve no blame or praise for those actions. So if a rapist really wants to rape, and prefers that strongly above all other options, that means they have no free will in that choice? And thus can't be blamed? Mmmmm I think that misses the mark by quite a lot.
Desire is a projection of memory.
Thus the determinism of the mind is an introjection of the determinism of the world , which is a projection in turn of the need for stability and predictability. The storyteller is constrained by their need for neatness.
Wilful Willy hurls a brick through the cake shop window showering the remaining cakes with glass fragments - the other poor lost souls all die of internal injuries, caused by greed, except Abdul who dies of a brick to the head. "Just what I wanted", says Wil.
Quoting bert1 In your story, you are god and always correct.
Quoting bert1
So Pete does not determine his choice, but is determined by it?
Sure, I'm trying to keep the universe simple to make it easier to think about. But these other reasons, are they anything other than competing preferences? In which case must Pete choose the option that his strongest preference inclines him to?
Yes and no, it's relative. Geraldine, for example, is chained by her desire for a cake, but is not chained by her indifference to which Eccles cake she prefers.
Quoting unenlightened
The storyteller is a philosopher who wants to start with a simple OP that is easy to comprehend but serves as a basis for exploring some ideas. :)
Wilful Willy is a significant complication to the universe.
That is indeed the intuition, yes. For the avoidance of doubt, I do think that rapists should be prevented from raping, but perhaps not that they should be punished because they are to blame.
Is this a psychological fact? As I believe it cannot.
Sure, but my artificial universe is intended to be a simplified version of this one, and therefore meaningfully critiquable. I'm happy for people to complicate it to make it more realistic.
I don't immediately understand this. Could you elaborate a little?
I think "will" consists of just two parameters:
Direction and magnitude.
"Will" is a vector. "Freedom" is not a parameter of a vector.
In your model I see various wills and a variable range of options. Omni Otto steers the vector to a direction according to Otto's desire (by the way, avoiding the worst case in the long run can also a be desire). I think, freedom, in this context, is a metaphor for the range available, and this range doesn't lie in the vector per se; a vector is not a range but an "arrow", so to speak. Still, Otto's "decision device" is not really free; his desires are caused by something or occur at random. In either case -- causal or random -- it's not Otto's "will" that generates Otto's desire. "Will" is neither free nor unfree; "will" is just a force. Can a gravitational force be free? Can a magnetic force be free? No, it can only be forceful. It's something else that can influence a force. The force itself cannot influence itself.
So, are there gradations of free will? I would say there are gradations of will; to be precise: Gradations of the will's direction and the will's magnitude. If we talk about the gradation of options, then it's about options, not about will.
A cake is a complex thing.
Ten X-cakes don't neccessarily represent a greater option bandwidth than one Y-cake.
You can visualize ten X-cakes by drawing this bandwidth:
XXXXXXXXXX
Now you could add a will-vector that can point anywhere within this bandwidth.
Similarly, you can visualize that one Y-cake by drawing a bandwidth of its Y-elements (cherry particles, sugar particles, chocolate particles etc.):
CSHFGXCBNVMUIOQPLYP
Add a will-vector that can point anywhere within this bandwidth.
Now which bandwidth is greater? The one of the ten X-cakes or that of the Y-cake?
It cannot be answered. It's all relative. The degree of freedom (of options) requires a reference.
When something is free, it's free of what? Free of certain limits. On the other hand, these limits are relative, not absolute. Even God's enormous freedom, if he exists, is not unlimited: He doesn't have the freedom to be a non-God, because if he were a non-God, he wouldn't have that enormous freedom.
No you've got it, they would be competing preferences I think.
I desire ecclesiastical cakes because I have enjoyed ecclesiastical cakes in the past AND I expect ecclesiastical cakes to be the same in all relevant ways. So my desire is predicated on the assumption that ecclesiastical cakes and my tastes are predictable and consistent. {I decided to leave that autocorrection just for fun} In other words, desire presumes determinism. The next eccles cake might make me ill, or taste foul because it was made with palm oil instead of butter, or I might have developed an allergy to currents, but my desire already presumes consistency.
So mind projects consistency onto the world even to the extent of mechanising the production of eccles cakes and regulating by law the ingredients, in order to back-project as it were, that consistent predetermined nature onto itself as desiring ego. It is the mind and only the mind that predetermines what it will 'inevitably' decide.
One does lose in choice if they go with the predecided factors but the choice was already made at some point. But limiting yourself to safe choices because you know you like that 1 option is how limited some people are. Sometimes we make choices not at the precipice of the moment. Where as true spontaneous choice in the matter requires us to be free from preformed decisions.
This is reminiscent of Nan-In's Cup of Tea story...
How can one be taught anything when their head is already convoluted by preformed decisions about that something.
Your set-up is confusing, though. If Pete were to decide to buy an Eccles 2 cake, would he be General Pete or Universal Pete. Would he know?
My intuition is that restricitions are what makes any particular will descernible as will. So if Absolute Abdul has no preference at all, in what way could we say there's will? He's certainly free to chose between four equal opportunities - but the choice doesn't matter. There's no will here, only randomness.
Your set-up feels like one of those logical puzzles: the optimal outcome is:
Pete: EC1
Geraldine: EC2
Ursula: IF
Abdul: None
But viewed like that, both freedom and will appear to be a social-distribution category. But your categories don't say anything about the social dimension. It's just sort of implied in the three-cakes/four-people set up.
For example, Absolute Abdul could choose Eccles Cake 1, as the social dimension is not part of the "Absolute" modifier, and thus undefinied. Your set-up doesn't tell me what happens if Particular Pete, General Geraldine and Absolute Abdul all choose Eccles Cake 1. I suppose the Universe terminates in an error?
In addition to what I wrote above: I would distinguish between will und the ability to reach the will's goal.
Arnold's goal is to become an astronaut. That's his will.
Arnold is imprisoned in Alcatraz. This doesn't inhibit his will to become an astronaut.
Will is a mental function. The police can imprison the body but not the mind.
Geraldine wants to eat a cake. That's her will.
There are no cakes, so her will's goal cannot be reached. But her will is still there.
Maybe yes. Pete's choice might change his nature perhaps.
I think I'm pretty much happy with that. Makes sense to me.
Quoting Quk
It seems to me that particular desires just are will-vectors, no?
And it occurs to me that desire in general is perhaps a restlessness of the will. Will is such that it tends to pick an object, at random if there is no pre-existing particular desires that already condition it in a relevant way.
Perhaps the freedom of the will is the portion of will that is not committed to an end, not desiring something.
An individual has free will perhaps is a couple of senses: (1) they have uncommitted will 'spare' perhaps (2) there are things that s/he is free from. I passed a copy of 50 Shades of Grey today in a bookshop, and I was free not to buy it, as it has no hold on me, I don't have a will-vector committed to obtaining it. In the scenario, Geraldine is free from having to buy an Iced Finger and one of the Eccles cakes. Not caring, and indifference (which have negative connotations) might describe a kind of psychological freedom in relation to the objects one is indifferent to.
Quoting Quk
That's interesting. I'm not sure. What about an unmagnetised bit of iron? There's no overall force - the forces of the crystals average to zero over the whole thing (or something like that - please correct me). That might be analogous to the person who desires/wills many things simultaneously to an equal degree, and therefore is unable to choose any of them (except at random) - the vectors cancel.
Quoting Quk
Yes that sounds reasonable and more precise than my original wording.
As everyone knows, cake stores serve customers on a first come first served basis. Since Petes first, he takes an Eccles cake. Geraldine is second, so she also takes an Eccles cake. Ursula takes the iced finger. Nothing for Abdul.
No philosophy needed.
Part of the point of the OP is to look at the level of abstraction to see if it has any relevance to the free will/determinism debate. Is somebody who likes cakes in general any more free than someone who likes a particular cake only? The generalising person has more options, no?
Is the educated person, who perceives causal societal structures in the world and can more effectively strategise and make choices based on this invisible underlying structure, any more free than someone who doesn't see any of that and only perceives what is happening in their immediate concrete particularised environment? That may be a different kind of question than the one posed in the OP, I'm not sure.
My earlier post was whimsical and silly, and I sort of wish I hadn't made it, but there is a point hidden away in there and it concerns this:
We make distinctions and attach our desires to them. So it's not necessarily true that, from the perspective of the person in question, that they have more options. It depends on the categories that are meaningful to them. Maybe they just like "cake": their options would be equivalent, while the "texture" of their desire would be less rich, if that makes sense.
There was a second point, too, but it was even more implied:
What's the relationship between desire and will? Do they have the same target, or is will the result of a synthesis of bundles of conflicting desires? So when you reply to Patterner thus:
Quoting bert1
I would say, taking the desires (known or unknown) of the other three people into account can be part of the will (as some sort of social desire: the desire to be looked upon well, the desire to see others happy, etc.). If you want to bracket the social element, that's fine, but you depending on what you think will is you might have gotten rid of the opportunity to see the whole picture. The question is: if we focus simply on the desire for cake, did we get rid of "will"? Does will emerge from the conflict of desires as some sort of synthesised compound?
Quoting Dawnstorm
Good questions. Two thoughts:
1. Desire and will have the same meaning. From now on I just use the word "will", but that's a synonym for "desire" too.
2. Will is not static. There are dynamic bundles, trees, branches of multiple wills. A certain will may last for several years or just for a few milliseconds. Example: I want to eat cheese (will A) and I want to lose weight (will B). This is a dilemma. Here comes will C which wants to compare will A with will B: What's more important now and in the long run? The hedonist-meter indicates: Will A is greater than will B. Here comes will D which wants to rely on the hedonist-meter; will D makes the final decision: Eat that cheese now and lose weight later!
Now, are A, B, C, and D all free?
A --> Eat cheese. Reason: It tastes good. The eater hasn't the freedom to deactivate this reason.
B --> Lose weight: Reason: The latest fashion dictates that slim bodies look better. The fashion follower hasn't the freedom to deactivate this reason.
C --> Compare A with B. Reason: Joy maximization. The joy maximizer hasn't the freedom to deactivate this reason.
D --> Make a final decision: Reason: Someone else is about to take this cheese. The final decider hasn't the freedom to deactivate this reason.
None of those special wills have the freedom to unlink themselves from their special reasons. The reasons generate the wills, and whether they're going to be fulfilled depends on the options available. The occurance of a special will may also be a reason for another will and so on -- like a chain reaction. Random events may disturb the chain's causality. In any case, I find it hard to integrate the word "freedom" in this system.
If I may desire whatever I want, but it is altogether impossible to will whatever I want, then the two concepts cannot have the same meaning for me.
I think not, insofar as that situation whereby a choice MUST be made contradicts the fundamental idea of choice itself.
MUST choose. The impossibility of NOT choosing. Therefore, MUST choose is the same as not NOT choosing. Which answers the thread title: apparently we are not entirely free to choose, because we are not free to make no choice.
But of course we are.
I can't desire what I want. For example, I'm heterosexual because my genes are programmed like this. I can't switch my desire for women over to men. That's impossible. My desire and my will is directed towards women. I don't have the freedom to change that.
Well, I can write some desires on a paper and send them to Santa Claus. I may wish to get a unicorn although I hate unicorns. These lines on that paper may all sound like desires. But I'm talking about real desires, not fake desires nor desires in the grammatical sense.
I've read C, but I'm stopping here for a reason. I'm not convinced an analytic combination of desire/will creates a fine-enough tool to look at the situation. There are a couple of dimension here I'd like to address, unsystematically for now:
1. Trigger. A sudden craving for cheese vs. seeing a piece of cheese and wanting to eat it. The object triggers the situational instance of will/desire, vs. something else (some association? a random firing of neurons?) triggers the will/desire. The target is ideal if not present, and specific if present (but also ideal, because to recognise cheese as cheese is to have expectations for a category that overlays the instance). It's far easier not to eat cheese if there isn't any and you'd have to go to the fridge/shop etc to get it. [Aesop's Fox and Grapes is instructive here.]
2. Complexity of what you call "reason" here: "tastes good" seems less complex than fashion dictates. But where there's complexity, I'd need analytic categories to account for components. Would a conflation of desire and will make things clearer or cause confusion (note that this might differ from person to person, since people have different thought habits).
3. What you call reason seems to split up into two modes: legitimisation and motivation. Even "tastes good" can be some sort of legitimisation; if you're eating cheese out of habit and have no real other reason you might want to convince yourself of liking the taste more than you actually do. If you were to kick the habit and then go back to eating cheese later, you might find you no longer like it (I'm speaking from experience, though not with cheese). A question here is: was I ever motivated by taste, or was this an easy-to-understand and not-too-implausible rationalisation for an indecipherable bundle. In any case, the vector (a pretty good choice of word, thanks for that) of the desire does point towards cheese.
So given that, what's the advantages/disadvantages of having one category or two, here? My own position so far is that I'd intuitively like to keep them separate for now (call this a weak instance of "desire/will"), so I'm biased. But this particular question (dis/advantages) is an open one with no concrete answers or even models in my mind. Still thinking.
(Part of the background context is that I consider "free will" both an unimportant and vague concept, so I don't usually think about it, and I never bring it up of my own accord.)
I agree that the system is way more complex. I just wanted to show a simplified sample section of a dynamic "will" network that actually consists of a zillion wills. For the purpose of simplification I decreased the amount of wills to four.
The examples you added -- "go to the fridge" etc. -- are all fine. These are some of those zillion reasons and will-generators that I excluded in my simplified illustration. I'm not trying to say that reality consists of just four wills; I was just trying to illustrate the principle of this network.
Desire: in general, a subject's capacity to become, by means of his ideas, the cause of the actual existence of the objects of those ideas.
A related effect does not necessarily follow from having a causal capacity, but for that subject attaining the effect related to an idea, a causal desire for it is necessarily presupposed.
A guy passes up a parking spot, without knowing the availability of any other, has immediately the idea of a shorter, post-parking, walk, the desire for which can only be satisfied by causing himself to look for a closer spot.
A guy takes the first parking spot he comes to, the idea of cruising the lot in vain hope of finding a better one insufficient causality for a very contingent effect, expresses a more relaxed desire, but a desire nonetheless.
Quoting Quk
Yet, there are instances of record of those that desire the switch, and of those there are some that will themselves to cause the attainment of the idea contained in that desire. From which follows that the concepts of desire and will having the same meaning is not necessarily the case, and if not necessarily the case, then possibly not true at all.
Do I understand this definition correctly? I can only desire something that is feasible?
"I want to become Superman" is therefore not a desire, as it's not feasible?
By the way, on Leo.org these four words seem to be synonymous:
[b]desire
request
wish
will[/b]
No, I think the definition implies one can desire in accordance with whatever idea crosses his mind, but that desire doesnt mean he has the capacity to cause, or to will, those ideas to manifest objectively.
On the other hand, one can attain only that which is feasible, or possible, which could be said to be the limitation of practical desire.
Does this agree with Dawnstorm's idea regarding "trigger"?
Quoting Dawnstorm
I take these "mind-crossings" and other "triggers" into account in my illustrations, I just call them "reasons" (or "causes") instead of wills or desires. A trigger itself is not a will nor a desire. When the rising sun triggers my will to leave the bed, that trigger is 150 million kilometers away from my mental location. My will doesn't generate the sun. It's true that my will can generate another will, but -- vice versa -- my will cannot generate that same will's cause or reason. An egg cannot generate its mother.
Ehhhh .dunno. Maybe. Smacks of psychology to me, while Im more inclined toward speculative metaphysics for its explanatory power.
The clearest example of a free choice is a choice made against and despite all biases, drivers, necessities and forces. Choosing the cake that no one wants, that you don't need, that you think will taste horrible, that you are told not to choose, that will kill you, and without any need to choose anything at all - choosing that cake, can only be an act of freedom. Giving ones life can be an act of freedom.
There are gradations of course. Choosing the cake that you hate but for someone else who loves that cake, knowing that other person doesn't expect or even know about the cake (so no cake is needed), this might be a cake chosen out of free will and no outside forces.
So what is freewill then - what is left to drive the choice if one is choosing outside of all biases, drivers, and forces?
I don't know, but describe it this way - we create the thing called "will" in the same instant we choose against forces that demand we choose something else. When we seek all three cakes, see our drivers and biases towards this cake or that one, and then choose something else, the choice is the physical manifestation of the now created "my will" that consents to that choice belonging to "me".
There's a reason to choose that horrible, toxic, useless cake. This reason leads the will. The will doesn't have the freedom to deactivate this reason. You may think there is no such reason, but I'd say there is one; you just need to take a closer look.
And if there's no such reason, then the cake selection is pure random. In that case too the will has no freedom; it's just controlled by a random trigger instead of a reason.
The problem with this statement is that the expression "free" is incomplete.
Free of what? That's the missing part. The will can only be free of special reasons and causes.
So, I think the issue cannot be generalized; it needs to be specialized.
Example:
If I'm indifferent to cakes, there's no reason to eat one, nor is there any reason not to eat one. In this special case the will is free of cake related reasons.
But the will is not free in general. There's always a cause or a reason for a decision. It's impossible to inhibit all causes and reasons of the universe.
"My will is currently free of cake related reasons."
That is a complete statement because it gives the word "free" a reference. The word "free" makes sense now. Cakes are not influencing my will at this moment.
If it is impossible to inhibit all reasons, is there a single reason, or a manifold of reasons under a particular rubric, necessary in itself, to cause any decision? Is there one reason impossible to inhibit for decision-making?
To arrive at the possibility of a singular condition is the very epitome of specialized, insofar as the wills freedom, and the wills limitations thereby infused into it, are given.
Is there any reason among all reasons which cannot influence a decision? -- I don't think so.
Can all reasons influence a decision? -- Yes, I think so.
But Im asking about the possibility of there being one reason which always influences any decision.
1. Logic in general
2. Causality in general
3. Random in general
Yes, I think I agree with you. I was speaking very loosely and I'll come up with a different formulation to express the gradation I was thinking of.
I'm interested in non-vague concepts, that is, concepts that do not admit of degrees, and do not admit of borderline cases. It seems you think that the line between free will and unfree will is sharp (or perhaps the line between will and non-will is sharp), and also the line between alive and dead is sharp, perhaps? Other possible concepts that are perhaps not-vague are consciousness, space, and less-than-7.
The vast majority of concepts are vague - they admit of borderline cases. Famous ones are heap/pile and baldness. Others could include human, chair, lawnmower, male, female, liquidity, planet, wall, food, kidney, brain, and pretty much any concept you care to think of.
Oh, and welcome to the Philosophy Forum :)
Quoting flannel jesus
I will say yes, there are degrees of free will. Some people have a lot of self-awareness and others have none. How much free will we have depends on how self aware we are. Also, the greater the degree of empathy, the greater our reasoning and therefore, our free will. In general the boarder our consciousness is, the greater our reasoning and the greater our reasoning is, the greater our free will.
I chose this because I think it is right, rather than I chose this because I feel a desire for it.
I see what you mean. The OP wasn't intended to be a total refutation of determinism. The idea is that our choices are determined, but the thing that determines them can range from the particular to the universal. I'm wondering if that's interesting and relevant to the free will/determinism debate as it allows for freedom from some determinants but not others. And it's possible to become more free (perhaps) by valuing more universal things than particular things. Are we free to choose our values? Maybe not, but if we are determined, perhaps by our education, to value the general and universal, then perhaps we are more free as a result.
Quite possibly, but what decision exactly? Was the decision to like cakes (in the cases of Geraldine and Ursula especially) made by them? Or was it made by their ancestors desire for calories in order to survive? Do we carry on the decisions of our ancestors? Or is that just a weird way to think of it?
Yes, so your decisions are influenced by education perhaps? So you want to survive, that's instinctive, perhaps a decision made by ancestors and carried on in you. Now in the modern world, this instinct to acquire calories, works against the overall will to live. Once that is learned, by means of acquiring a concept (say, of diabetes), then a choice becomes available when it wasn't available before. One is no longer determined just by the instinct to acquire calories, the overall desire to live can allow one to decide not to consume the calories. Is this later state more free in any sense? It's still determined, but there are more options, and each alternative is, perhaps, possible.
Would such a choice be random/arbitrary, then? I'm open to the idea that that's what free choice is, and that's OK.
Cant we choose, anyway, despite our slavery? Cant we willingly do the will of others, even unto death? This is like if someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles.
We have to build and create our freedom - it doesnt sit there in some sort of faculty of the soul waiting to be exercised.
We may be driven by physics.
We may be driven by desires, instinct, sub-conscious forces and the stars.
But if we reflect on as many of these slaveries as we can consciously identify, and then act, seemingly randomly, but willingly, anyway, we might start to create a free will.
Quoting bert1
How external to the free chooser do you see the universal or the particular? This is interesting. I need to think about thinking in between universals and particulars to find freedom.
Freedom, it seems to me, cant make sense of that freedom is grounded within the system that the free thing participates in.
Like in a political system - we arent free because of the laws that protect our freedom. The laws cant create freedom, only limit it. We are free first, regardless of any government or laws (if we are free at all). Government, laws and systems have nothing to do with my freedom. If I have freedom.
So it seems (to me), freedom has to be imposed, created, new, unsubstantiated, unfounded, from outside of, despite, any system at all.
So it is easy to see how freedom must be impossible. We are always within some system, so there is always something that drives and forces us to be where, what and even who, we are. It seems.
It think psychological freedom starts with the notion of consent.
We arent free, we are strapped into a rollercoaster and have no choice but to take the ride, and no choice but to go up when it goes up and down when it goes down. We can struggle to free ourselves from these chains, which is impossible it seems to me. Wed have to use chains as tools to break our chains. But freedom doesnt come from our relationship to the chains. Instead we can accept the chains, consenting on the way up to the higher, and consenting again on the way down to the lower. We start to see where we are going before we get there. If we learn to do this, we can learn how to deny consent to the higher, even though we are going up, and that is when we might start to find a space for freedom. Freedom is first born in the space in between where we are (by necessity) and where are going (by necessity). But living in the space between where we are and where we must be going is living somewhere where we are not yet, and so akin to living in a space of possibility, more open to something new and unpredictable.
Freedom is just me, unattached, not driven by anything nor able to be touched by any force, existing in the space ahead of where I am before I get where I have to go.
The only possibility for freedom seems to be a freedom created from nothing. Seems impossible. But because phenomenologically my freedom seems so obvious, and because I desire to know, I am forced to continue to wonder how I seem to have freedom.
Personally I believe free will is actually very limited, and that most of the choices we make are done by subconscious algorithmic thought processes that mean the thing we choose we likely always going to be the thing chosen in that particular instance. I believe only in the rare cases where the mental algorithm comes back with equal percentages does free will truly exist.
Quoting Fire Ologist
This seems correct to me, and accords with the meaning in the game of 'go'. A stone or a configuration of connected stones has degrees of freedom corresponding to the unoccupied spaces around and within it. In order to survive permanently a configuration needs two degrees of internal freedom - two separate internal spaces so that even entirely surrounded, both cannot be filled because the fill of the first would be itself surrounded, and not survive until the second space could be filled.
Humans, it appears, have only one such internal empty space a singular awareness, and thus our freedom is temporary. Hence the inadequacy of the individual and the necessity for relationship. Hence the desperation of the narcissist and psychopath.