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Syamsu  Suspended Member (Idle past 5615 days) Posts: 1914 From: amsterdam Joined: |
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Author | Topic: the intellectual enemies of freedom | |||||||||||||||||||
JavaMan Member (Idle past 2344 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
Mohammed, I have a number of questions about your opening post:
1. Freedom, as far as I am aware, means freedom to do what I want. Anything that restricts that, like someone holding a gun to my head, is a restriction of my freedom. Similarly, to me, 'intellectual freedom' means freedom to think and say what I like. Does it mean something else to you? Can you explain to me how a scientific theory restricts my freedom? 2. There is nothing about a deterministic world-view that necessarily precludes free will. All determinism means is that events are linked by an unbroken chain of physical causes. So my free choices, like anything else in this world, have causes. Is there necessarily anything problematic about that? In fact, would you still consider your choices to be your choices if they didn't have causes grounded in your desires and emotions? 3. What gives human beings greater freedom than other animals is a complex brain that allows us to override immediate stimulus-response mechanisms. And ironically it is natural selection that has provided us with that complex brain, selecting for greater 'freedom'. If 'freedom' confers a selective advantage, then doesn't the evolutionary account of human development provide quite an inspiring vision, not at all the clanking, mechanical vision that you seem to observe? 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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JavaMan Member (Idle past 2344 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
There is nothing about a deterministic world-view that necessarily precludes free will. To the contrary, hard determinism means there are no free actions. By definition, since everything is causally determined; noone acts freely. No, that isn't true. What is important about my freedom to act is that I do what I want to do, not that I act without cause. If I act without cause I am being arbitrary, not free. Now, if you can show me a different meaning of freedom, one that requires causeless actions before my will can be considered free, please let me know.
If 'freedom' confers a selective advantage, then doesn't the evolutionary account of human development provide quite an inspiring vision, not at all the clanking, mechanical vision that you seem to observe? With choices that are endowed only through natural selection, limited through one's environment? Freedom doesn't mean having an infinite number of choices, it means doing what you want to do. We're limited in all kinds of ways - I'm male and not female, British and not Iranian, born in the 20th century not the 12th. All of these genetic and environental factors limit what I'm free to do. But, as far as I can tell, I'm the only kind of creature in existence that has any real freedom of choice. My culture protects me to such an extent that I can afford to spend a few idle moments this evening composing messages to you. Instead of listening fearfully for the sounds of predators in the woods outside, standing guard over my wife and daughters, I can relax, drink a glass of wine, and spin out a letter to you over the internet. And the only reason I have this freedom of action is because I belong to a species that has a brain selected for freedom of action. And there really isn't any other meaning of freedom other than this. 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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JavaMan Member (Idle past 2344 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
If you want to debate compatibilism with -messenjah of one, I suggest either of you propose a new thread. It seems a little remote from what Syamsu wanted to discuss. Will do. Oh, and thanks for pointing me in the direction of compatibilism. Embarassingly, I've never come across the term before . Now I'm off to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to get an education. Edited by JavaMan, : too many commas 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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JavaMan Member (Idle past 2344 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
As before, I expected to debate whether or not Darwinists are destroying knowledge of free behaviour. As before, all you have done really is to provide evidence indicating that it is actually true. Regardless of whether or not any knowledge of free behaviour is valid (which is basicly a non-issue in my opinion), it is still wrong to surreptiously corrupt those words away from their original and intended meaning. It is wrong for a dictator to say people have a choice when he rigs the election, and it is wrong for a Darwinist to say the rabbit has a choice when the rabbit doesn't have any alternative but to do what it does by it's genetic programming. 1. Do you believe that free behaviour can only be ascribed to human beings? 2. Do you believe that ascribing free behaviour to rabbits is insulting to human beings, or cruel to rabbits (because they're being offered the illusion of freedom, when they actually don't have a choice but to behave in the way they do)? 3. Why do you think a hard determinist (who doesn't believe that either rabbits or men exhibit free behaviour) would seriously ascribe free behaviour to a rabbit? Why is it in his interest to do so? 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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JavaMan Member (Idle past 2344 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
I consider atoms, in the way they spin and shake, to behave freely, so that is basically everything. On a micro-scale, atoms do actually basically behave in a similar way to dice being rolled when you look at them. 1. Are you sure your account of free behaviour is correct? Generally there are two things required before you can talk of something having free behaviour: (a) A set of alternatives(b) An agent capable of choosing between those alternatives In the case of the atom and the dice, (b) is missing so they wouldn't generally be considered examples of free behaviour. 2. Are you sure that determinism necessarily implies a denial of free behaviour? This issue has been a matter of debate for centuries, and in the English empiricist tradition it is generally considered that determinism and free behaviour are compatible. I can't speak about Gould and Dawkins, but Dennett certainly takes this position, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if Gould and Dawkins did too. 3. Are the words "choosing", "success" and "selfishness" really limited only to religious discourse? From my experience they seem to be more commonly used in discourse about economics. In any case, I can't see that they have any particularly religious significance at all. 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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JavaMan Member (Idle past 2344 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
I don't think agency, identity-issues, are part of science. Who somebody is in their heart is not a scientific issue, whether a choice is selfish, loving or hateful is not a science issue. Whether the structure of nature shows "benevolence" like creationist Paley said, is not a scientific issue, as I also don't believe Paley himself considered to have a science of "benevolence". I'm not sure I understand which part of my post this is responding to. My mention of 'agency' in that post was in the context of defining what free behaviour means. To most people free behaviour can only be ascribed to agents capable of making choices, it can't be ascribed to inanimate objects like atoms and dice.
If you say it's predetermined that 6 will turn up, then it's not possible for any of the other numbers to turn up, and it's not free. This is just normal understanding of things. No it isn't. Nobody believes a dice capable of free choice. If the dice rolls 6 it's because a series of events (being thrown, rolling across the floor, stopping) happen in such a way that the dice lands with the six uppermost. The movement of the dice is entirely defined by physical laws, so theoretically, after the event, you could trace back through a sequence of cause and effect to the starting conditions. That's all that determinism means. Whether the process is predictable is another matter; in the case of a non-biased dice, the rolling of the dice is a chaotic system and therefore, theoretically unpredictable.
You seem to be questioning all knowledge about free behaviour (with possible alternatives) in general, not just mine. Why do you do that? Is that because of natural selection theory? On the contrary, I think your position on a lot of these issues is rather strange, and doesn't represent standard knowledge about free behaviour. Philosophical interest in the question of determinism and free will is much older than the theory of natural selection. Maybe I could recommend this article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
Compatibilism 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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