Good day for a massive topic or two or three ehh CE?
1: the correct understanding of the concept of freedom (Freedom and Liberty is usually used interchangeably)
2: How does one achieve maximum freedom in the modern nation state (with the interesting side topic whether it is desirable to maximise freedom)
3: And finally the separate topic of whether we have freewill.
Uhmm starting with 1.
In 1958 Isaiah Berlin delivered his famous lecture ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ where he draws a distinction between what he calls positive and negative freedom.
I belive this what you are aluding to here.
Originally posted by C Elegans
freedom in the form of offering opportunites (freedom to, as in the US) and freedom in the form of removing obstacles that restricts people's personal freedom (freedom from, as in the Scandinavian model)? Being able to choose is freedom. Not being too poor to choose an education is also freedom.
If we look at Negative freedom first. The central notion is basically absence of interference from others and since freedom is often associated with absence of interference there is a clear basis for this concept.
"So freedom from…" Thus many have claimed that they wish to protect peoples freedom from an interfering government - this is a hall mark of right wing politics especially in the US.
Hobbes is a clear example of this - Liberty is ‘the absence of external impediments’ (John Stuart Mill is another with a similar position I think).
Many have argued that the Hobbsian notion of freedom is flawed. Clearly hobbes’s notion of negative freedom is compatible with the absents of choice. Does this sound strange? A man on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean have plenty of negative freedom but he cant actually do anything.
So what is positive freedom!? well that is a lot more complicated and would involve looking at the theories of Rousseau and Hegel. I wont do that because that would involve too much work. So very simple we can say that positive freedom is "freedom to …"
The discussion about negative and positive freedom is a complicated one and some might some might say that I have just made a caricature of the complex issues involved. That might be so but I don't think that there is a distinction to be made between two separate concepts of freedom.
There is only one concept of freedom and it is a relationship between three things the "the person - free from … - and free to …". Negative and positive freedom are just a relationship between two things "the person - free from…" or "the person - free to …".
On this view there is room for a lot of discussion about how to increase freedom using laws set down by government and no easy solutions using slogans based on increased freedom. If we ban handguns we certainly interfere with our citizens but perhaps it will increase peoples freedom to walk down the street without fear. Or if we increase tax we again interfere with the citizens but if we use the money to improve poor peoples education we now make some people free to go to university.
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Freewill is another tricky subject since it seems there is no room for such a strange thing in this world. A good place to start is to look at what Thantor3 says:
Originally posted by Thantor3
I was recently watching an interesting animated feature called "Waking Life", which dealt mainly with the question of whether "reality" as we know it is actually a form of dreaming. In the picture, the question of whether people have free will was touched upon, since it appears within certain scientific models (Newtonian for example) and religious models (take your pick) that the universe is deterministic. I think the whole conundrum of whether free will exists is a bit of a snipe hunt.
I'm not sure what you are saying here. It seems that you think that if the universe is indeterministic then we can have free will. While it is true that,
Originally posted by Thantor3
quantum physics, supports not a deterministic universe but one that is both non-local and indeterministic.
But that doesn't seem to us finding freewill. In a deterministic universe situation A must lead to situation B - so if the atoms in your brain and body is in a certain state and position at time t1 then at time t2 the atoms will be in a new state and position depending only on their previous position and the laws of nature. So clearly there is no room for freedom in that scenario but it seems that things don't improve if we add randomness into the equation. It is true that we cant predict the state and position of the atoms at t2 but randomness is not ‘choice’.
Originally posted by Thantor3
Looked at logically, the whole conception of a rigidly deterministic universe is problematic. For one, the old dualistic issue of whether the mind is simply an epiphenomenon the brain would have to be conceded to the reductionists.
There is a problem here. Epiphenomalism is the view that consciousness is just a by product of the machinations of the brain and that consciousness have no inpact on the brain at all. Reductionism about the mind brain relationship is the theory that all statements about the mind can be translated into statements about the brain without loss of meaning. Another view again is the mind-brain identity theory which states that the mind simply IS the brain. It is controversial whether one can be a a non-reductionist and Identity theorist at the same time.
Originally posted by Thantor3
In other words, the vague and often chaotic dynamic of the mind would need to conform to the rigid structure of a deterministic universe such that every mental event had an antecedent in a neural event. Not only does this potentially lead to impotent series of infinite regressions as one seeks the "ultimate" prime causal factor that galvanizes this unwieldy juggernaut, but there is currently no unequivocal causal scheme that allows a mental event to map directly onto a physical event.
I don't understand the bit about infinite regression - why an infinite regression?. It is true that it is at the moment hard to see how one could explain something like an individual belief by appealing to neurones but it might be possible in the future when we know more about the brain.
Originally posted by Thantor3
For myself, I believe that free will exists for the same reason I believe God exists. In the face of no definitive evidence, I find that I must take a radical stance -- that is, a stance on which I stake a portion of my life without the benefit of evidence.
This sounds a bit like Kirkegaard. I too would like to believe in freewill but it seems to me that it is not the lack of definitive evidence that is the problem but rather that lack of any kind of evidence for the existence of freewill.
Logically I can see no room for freewill but then the world is an extremely strange place so maybe…
I didn't really bounce Eeyore. I had a cough, and I happened to be behind Eeyore, and I said "Grrrr-oppp-ptschschschz."
Tigger
