What is freedom?
People kill and die in the name of Liberty. People march and protest to extend their legal freedom of action, speech and association. People fight ferociously, make sacrifices and take risks to secure their personal freedom. We talk a lot about liberty, but we don't seem to define it very precisely.
May I assume that we all distinguish positive and negative freedom - freedom to do something and freedom from restraint by another ?
Is it possible for anyone to have total freedom?
What kinds of freedom can a person have?
What kinds of freedom can subgroups have within a greater society?
Are there natural, insurmountable limits to individual freedom?
Are socially imposed limits necessary?
Can and should all people have the same amount of personal freedom?
How do we distinguish a freedom from a right?
I wonder how clear everyone is on what we mean by this word and to what extent our understanding of the concept overlaps.
Please add any other facets of the question that I have overlooked.
May I assume that we all distinguish positive and negative freedom - freedom to do something and freedom from restraint by another ?
Is it possible for anyone to have total freedom?
What kinds of freedom can a person have?
What kinds of freedom can subgroups have within a greater society?
Are there natural, insurmountable limits to individual freedom?
Are socially imposed limits necessary?
Can and should all people have the same amount of personal freedom?
How do we distinguish a freedom from a right?
I wonder how clear everyone is on what we mean by this word and to what extent our understanding of the concept overlaps.
Please add any other facets of the question that I have overlooked.
Comments (93)
A short story on the 2 concepts of freedom or liberty:
'Imagine you are driving a car through town, and you come to a fork in the road...'
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/#TwoConLib
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes, but excluding illegal acts in a liberal society.
Quoting Vera Mont
The freedom to pursue ones interests or happiness as long as theyre legal in the state the individual operates and lives in.
Quoting Vera Mont
Freedoms that allow for greater or lesser freedoms by changing the laws of that society.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes but only in terms of immoral or illegal acts such as murder, theft and other types of criminal acts that impact someone else and are prohibited by law.
Quoting Vera Mont
Sometimes, for the reason to your last question.
Quoting Vera Mont
Absolutely, given that were all born of equal capacity.
Quoting Vera Mont
Through legal frameworks.
Well, that put a quick end to my desire for definitions! This* covers the subject admirably. Of course, having read it, I can't comment here, since much of what I might have said was expressed better than I could have done. So I recommend to anyone else who is interested that they read it only after they have added their own thoughts.
*Thanks, I've bookmarked it.
For sure! But I'm feeling like I can't be bothered to think, right now. Freedom to be lazy?!
Also bookmarked 40 types of freedom:
https://helpfulprofessor.com/types-of-freedom/
You're asking great questions over and above the 2 concepts.
There will be quite the conversation, I'm sure of it!
A wide net cast...
Quoting simplyG
Doesn't the exclusion of a category negate 'total'? Isn't every law a limitation of individual freedom? Why does 'a liberal society'? All societies have laws, and usually conservative ones have more laws, more restrictions on individual action.
Quoting simplyG
Those are hardly insurmountable limits, since some people transgress every one of them every day. The law that forbids those acts is an artificially imposed limit. By natural I mean something like a physical or psychological obstacle.
Quoting simplyG
I question that given. Society rejects it altogether, setting more legal limits on the freedom of some categories of person than of others, and depriving some people of any freedom of action.
Quoting simplyG
Do you not have your own idea of the difference? I think the difference is between the signatories to a social contract: the state and the citizen. Freedoms are what state allows the citizen to do unhampered (in return for which the citizen does not abuse his own freedom or violate that of his fellow citizens); rights are what the state guarantees the citizen (in return for which the citizen undertakes civic duties, such as paying tax and providing necessary service) .
... tends to land in the Lounge and disgorge sundry marlin, kelp and old boots.
Not with your keen eye and focus it won't. It's placed specifically under 'Political Philosophy'.
Now, get back on topic, pronto!
Looking forward to a great exchange of views and arguments.
Its interesting that we have laws that protect and also restrict certain freedoms, for example most people wish to not pay tax yet these are traded in for policing and maintenance of infrastructure of society as well as welfare in terms of healthcare or other types of monetary benefits that citizens would get that would not restrict the choice on their lifestyle were they to lose their jobs say.
But that some social contracts are forced does not mean an erosion in liberty or freedom even though certain governments may be incompetent in how they operate in redistribution of tax income or defending your freedoms from say another aggressive state which might have different aims such as China which operates high levels of censorship when it comes to free speech.
Quoting Vera Mont
The right to bear arms for example is not the same for every country you live in.
I have settled on a modified version of Axel Honneth's typology of freedom in Freedom's Right, based on Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right.. I think Isiah Berlin's positive/negative distinction is a bit too vague, and leaves an important element, social freedom, off the menu as a main type.
My five types would be:
Negative Freedom as defined by an agent's freedom relative to the external world. It is freedom from external barriers that restrict ones ability to act, e.g., the government or thieves seizing your tools so that you cannot work.
Reflexive Freedom is defined by subjects freedom relative to themselves. To quote Hegel, individuals are free if their actions are solely guided by their own intentions. Thus, man is a free being [when he] is in a position not to let himself be determined by natural drives. i.e., when his actions are not subject to contingency.
Note that self-control is not enough here. We need self-control to get what we desire, but we also sometimes desire things we do not want to desire. Someone who shows tremendous self control covering up an adulterous relationship they don't want to have begun is not free. Frankfurt's "second order volition" concept is helpful here. We need to be able to desire what it is that we want to desire. Then we also need to the willpower to make our desire to desire X (as opposed to Y) effective.
Authenticity - we can have self-control and allow our selves to want what it is we want, but this is not freedom if we are not true to ourselves. Imagine a person raised in a cult, drilled in exercises of self-control. They may be able to engineer their desires, stop drive and instinct from being effective, and yet if they have not had space to discover their authentic selves they cannot be free. This sort of freedom has been described as bildung, development (Hegel), self-actualization (Maslow), and individuation (Jung).
Social Freedom is required because reflexive freedom only looks inward; it does not tie individual choices to any objective moral code. This being the case, an individual possessing such freedom may still choose to deprive others of their freedom. (This the contradiction inherent in globalizing Nietzsches revaluation of all values).
Since individuals will invariably have conflicting goals, there is no guarantee than anyone will be able to achieve such a self-directed way of life. Negative freedom is also contradictory because the rational [reflexive] can come on the scene only as a restriction on [negative] freedom. E.g., being free to become a doctor means being free to choose restrictions on ones actions because that role entails certain duties. Positive freedom necessarily constrains negative freedom. We must identify with and desire duties that constrain negative freedom to be free.
Social Freedom then is the collective resolution of these contradictions through the creation of social institutions (the family, professional associations/guilds, markets, the state, etc.). Ideally, institutions objectify morality in such a way that individuals goals align, allowing people to freely choose actions that promote each others freedom and wellbeing. The free market does this (imperfectly obviously) by making the general health of the economy a matter of concern to all. Institutions achieve this by shaping the identities of their members, such that they derive their feeling of selfhood from, and recognize [their] own essence in, membership.
In the language of contemporary economics, we would say that institutions change members tastes, shifting their social welfare function such that they increasingly weigh the welfare of others when ranking social states. In doing so, institutions help resolve collective action problems. They allow citizens to transition into preferencing social welfare over maximal individual advantage.
Moral Freedom is the freedom to do what we think is good. It requires all the prior types to be perfected.
No. We can't fly or turn back time, right? Absolute freedom requires a flight from any determinateness, as all determinations are constraints. For example, you cant make a shape that is a triangle and also have it have 4 sides. Definiteness implies its own constraints.
Absolute freedom is a contradiction. If our choices never effect our other choices, if we can save our cake and eat it, move up while moving down, then we effectively choose nothing. Freedom collapses into the absolute lack of freedom. This is a classical Hegelian dialectical collapse. Freedom must sublate this lack of freedom, resulting in a modified conception where we "choose between" things, such that our freedom to choose necessarily constrains us from doing the things we do not choose.
Freedom also only exists in the context of change (becoming). You can only be free in the becoming present, in the moment of now. The past is already fixed, it must be so for it to give us a ground for determining our actions. The future cannot yet have been decided, else where is freedom? So, where is freedom except in the becoming present? Thus, freedom itself requires the ongoing passage of any decisions into the already decided. Freedom exists only in the mysterious twilight between already has, and not yet.
I would just note on this point that the privileged class, the nobility, etc. are often made unfree by their special freedoms. The dictator can do many things the billionaire cannot, punish enemies more directly, drag women off the street, etc. But he cannot treat all his people as equals lest they use that freedom to remove him and he becomes the one with the boot on his throat. Minority rule makes the ruling minority unfree in this way; they cannot pick any path because they must always fear falling out of that elite group. You see this in the widespread status anxiety of economic elites today.
Second, the lord is unable to get recognition, thymos, from the bondsman. They have made the inferior person an "other" who cannot give them the recognition they crave. You see this best in "Manosphere blogs" and with "Pick Up Artist" communities. I have never read one of these where the author seems happy. They continually chase and manipulate women to get validation from them, but then that validation is never enough because they have othered them. Simone de Beavoir is great on this.
Hegel covers this phenomena in the Phenomenology with the Lord-Bondsman dialectical and Saint Augustine covers it in the City of God when he explains why Rome is not a "common wealth."
Sadly. Still waiting on those Star Trek transporters. But determinism itself is a prerequisite of freedom. Leibniz originally formulated the Principle of Sufficient Reason to explain, not preclude freedom. For us to be free, our actions must be based on reasons. Arbitrariness is not freedom. If you play a video game, and every time you press a button something different happens, then you have not been given choices, just the sensation of action.
Freedom is contradictory in this way. Our actions must be determined by the world to be free. But as Bohr said, "the opposite of a truth is a falsehood, but the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth."
See above, re social freedom
No. Because freedom requires development and development sometimes means doing things we don't desire. Would I have learned to read and analyze texts if no one made me? Probably. Would I have learned much mathematics? Nope. But knowing mathematics has made me more free.
Children are a prime example, but in the US we also have Casey's Law, such that relatives can force their drug addicted relatives to go to rehab.
Tough question. I would tend to think of the rights as the general principles that help promote freedom. But since society is a complex system, such rights aren't absolute, but rather guiding tendencies that should be brought towards perfection over the course of civilization's and individuals' development. Thus, early civilizations ensured few rights, and children have few rights, but as we progress more emerge (granted backsliding happens, it is a chaotic system).
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Anyhow, I think there is a moral element to freedom too. We aren't free if we are doing what we think is wrong, since obviously in an ideal world we would tend to want to do the right thing, right?
But morality is a limit on our reflexive and negative freedom, telling us what our desires should be and constraining action.To do good and to be free requires understanding the world, understanding the consequences of our choices.
We have a moral duty to be free then, so that we can choose the good. This is why criminals have a right to be punished. We do not punish merely to deter crime. To do this is to treat another human being like an animal to be domesticated.
Freedom requires knowledge of nature, and so we must study the sciences. We are natural creatures and must understand nature to understand ourselves. Likewise, we must master nature, subdue it and have dominion over it, in order to enact our will.
Freedom requires knowledge of the Logos, and so we must study philosophy, logic, and mathematics.
Freedom requires knowledge of the self, and so we must study psychology, the great works of art, etc.
For the individual, I think the path to freedom climaxes in moral freedom, in a paradox. To paraphrase Luther, "A free man is lord of all, subject to none. And yet he is servant to all, lording over none."
Apologies if this is a bit long. I have thought a lot on this and have some articles to draw on:
https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/why-freedom-is-the-key-to-happiness-be274bf5135c
https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/why-francis-fukuyamas-last-man-is-not-a-paradox-55310474e1fd
https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/freedom-requires-determinism-3cf4025d3c3d
I started on the first article and stopped short at this:
Quoting Why freedom is the key to happiness - tkbrown
What is meant by a duty to be free?
And how does it follow that 'criminals have a right to be punished'?
It is a collection of short things I wrote for someone, so perhaps it needs a bit more context. See:
If we don't do what is good, it seems like we will very likely trample other's freedom. But when we make ourselves lords over others, we become unfree ourselves. First, because we now must fear them rising up, taking vengeance, etc. Second, because we aren't free to treat them like equals and get recognition from them as equals. Think, the king who can never know if his poetry is good because everyone has to blow smoke up his ass.
But establishing broad based equality requires moral action, since obviously we often desire to do immoral things that harm others, and their freedom.
Punishment has a deterrent aspect, a training aspect, but that can't be all there is. We want people punished to come to understand justice so that they will freely be just, not just trained to be just. If all we do is train them, then as soon as the lash is out of our hand they rise up to inflict punishment on us. We also want to restore justice. If our punishment leaves the criminal still better off, say they do a year in minimum security but make off with $20 million, then our society has clearly not restored justice.
Thanks.
But then I've just gone on to read, under the same heading:
The Essence of Freedom is What is Essential to It
I really don't see how this follows.
***
Edit: since writing the above, I note you added significantly more to your originally brief reply.
This is less in topic, so I didn't post any of that in the response, and I don't want to derail the thread by getting into that in depth, although I can send a PM if you're curious. Maybe I should have put the links at the bottom in case people were curious.
Very short explanation is it is a theological reference to the concept of the Church as the immanent body of Christ. The church is created by humans, physically, in a way that parallels pregnancy, thus the "Marian mode." In a Christian context, the Church is obviously supposed to be an immanent force for good (something it has failed at often) and thus plays a role in advancing freedom. But you could say similar things about the state (e.g. Hegel) from a secular standpoint, and the role of the citizen in terms of social freedoms, but the Church and state obviously have different domains they interact in vis-á-vis the individual.
I never expected anything so exhaustive! And impressive. I'll have to mull over a few particulars, but I certainly get the main points and have no arguments at this time. I may need to revisit moral obligation and punishment.
For now, I especially liked this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That should be elaborated in terms of social organization and relationships. Not necessarily by you - unless you're so inclined - I'm pretty sure everyone has a perspective on this.
Well I do.
No. Free acts are necessarily constrained by consequences.
Liberty. Morality. Freethought. Agency Ecstacy.
Individuals, not (sub)groups are free.
Yes.
No.
This question doesn't make sense to me.
The latter limits protects the former (aka "liberty").
Quoting Vera Mont
1. No. Death might be the ultimate freedom.
2. As many as can be thought of but usually limited and categorised, as per: https://helpfulprofessor.com/types-of-freedom/
Freedoms to read, reflect, write, choose, roam and wonder...desire, fear, vote, pray, eat leaves.
3. What 'greater society' are you thinking of? Subgroups or tribes, there are many. Freedoms limited.
4. Quoting Vera Mont So, yes.
5. What specifically do you mean by 'social' and 'imposition'?
6. How do you quantify 'amount' of personal freedom? The 'should' suggests an ethical component, as in @Count Timothy von Icarus's 'Duty and Punishment'. A squiggly can of worms, probably worth a thread of its own.
7. They are related; complex and overlap, according to type and context:
Bookmarked:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/
section 4 - Rights and Freedom
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#RighFree
We. Must. Must we? Really? So much freedom...for all...
It does seem that people are quite 'free' not to do so. :wink:
Better than a PM, perhaps your thinking and writing on certain aspects of freedom warrant their very own thread!? I agree that it would be easy to derail this one. Freedom to explore! But best to keep focus...I think. And yes, it helps that the links are now at the end.
Praise be and hallelujah!
Anything else you'd like to add? Feel free...-ish...
I assume 'freedom' presupposes the existence of human 'freewill,' for anyone who employs the word.
At any cost
But how long
Can you search for whats not lost?
Everybody will help you
Some people are very kind
But if I can save you any time
Come on, give it to me
Ill keep it with mine[/quote]
When I am most free, I am least concerned about freedom and have no feeling of freedom. I make no choices at the crossroads, but dance to the rhythm of my heart.
I am in free-fall, glad at the next moment to be arrested by my parachute, and strung up in the sky. Perhaps to be unburdened, to be without connection, is not after all to be free.
But instead to want to be nowhere else but right here, right now, laboriously explaining the obvious again.
Right! A lot of musts for freedom. That's the paradox of freedom [I]within[/I] the context of human society and world history. It turns out that being free [I]requires[/I] much of us.
Let me explain how I think this makes sense, without being contradictory.
Obviously, at the individual level we are free to learn very little about the world and how it works, and free to not spend time in self-reflection.
Just as obviously though, this has some effect on our freedom "to do things," because our ability to bring states of affairs about that we prefer is totally grounded in what we think the causal impact of our actions will be. E.g., if you don't have any idea how a car works, you aren't free to fix your mom's car for her no matter how much you want to [I]unless[/I] you learn how to do it. Thus, the mustof knowledge. You aren't fully free to improve your health if you have scant understanding of diet and exercise, and indeed people fall for unhealthy fad diets all the time and don't get the results they want for lack of knowledge.
With YouTube and free books it's hard to remember that guilds and other groups often fought hard to hide knowledge from the public. The fact that we can get so much information easily enhances our freedom in this way, so there is a social "must" as well.
I was actually thinking about a more global "we," in those cases, of which the individual is one part. "We" as a society must cultivate knowledge about the world, how to irrigate crops, how to create fertilizer, etc. to be free from the contingencies of nature. For a great deal of human existence, humanity was at the mercy of weather patterns. Humans died in droves when weather patterns shifted too much outside the norm.
Moreover, societies with more advanced military technology have had a consistent habit of conquering all those peoples without them. So, the collective we has a hard time being free to return to the primordial forests, even if an individual can. The flow of history shows that better organized states and more advanced ones tend to extend their influence over those that are weaker, damaging their freedom.
So, the "must" of knowledge is related to both the individuals causal powers and society's. But also to the fact that societies where basic needs are met, largely through advances in knowledge, have haltingly progressed at providing more development to their citizens and more negative freedom.
When mass starvation starts, man taking away the freedom of man follows. You're not particularly free if you're murdered, and mankind's natural homicide rate is estimated at around 2,000 per 100,000, about par for similar mammals, but the equivalent of 6.6 million homicides a year in the US, 10 times the nation's death toll in WWII in a single year.
It's not clear to me that greater capability for doing things successfully is an indicator of greater freedom. Contrary to your suggestion that 'we must master nature, subdue it and have dominion over it, in order to enact our will', my experience shows that nature never bends to my will. Getting things done as an engineer is substantially a matter of understanding that nature is going to be nature and working with it to the extent that I am able to understand how to.
However, this is a good thread and I don't want to derail it into a free will vs determinism discussion.
I think we're talking about the same thing. All I mean is, "part of freedom is being able to do what you desire." What is a common desire of man? "To have enough food." Well, here noticing ways in which nature works allows us to do that. E.g., if we put seeds here, the plants will grow, animals are "like father, like son," and so "if we breed the gentle sheep they will be easier to shepherd," etc.
Obviously we are part of nature, so the distinction is artificial. But freedom is, in part, using our knowledge of cause and effect to bring about states of affairs we prefer. A person with no understanding of cause and effect (hard to envisage) has no grounds for thinking any action will bring about their will better than any other (or non-action). The more we know, the more we are able to shape states of affairs such that circumstances we desire obtain. "I would like to get from NYC to LA in a day," for example, is currently only possible through understanding lift, metallurgy, etc., all the things that make airplanes possible.
Or we could try shaping our desires to the circumstances.
But personally, I prefer to leave things the shape they are, and not be a slave to circumstance or desire.
I meant constitutional clauses, enacted legislation, enforceable laws. The rules of a country or bylaws of a city by which all residents are expected to abide, and face formal reprisal of some kind if they break.
Usually by specific rights and freedoms. Children are not free to choose their occupation or buy cigarettes; mental patients have no freedom of association; prisoners on parole may not leave the jurisdiction. Non-residents are not allowed to seek employment. Some societies place restrictions on women or ethnic minorities. There is also a great variation in enforcement of theoretical freedoms and rights. A child may have freedom of speech and under the law, yet the law will not step between him and a disapproving father to enforce the child's right to curse.
I meant only to ask for opinion, whether on ethical, rational or sentimental grounds.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's clear now, and a valuable insight, I believe.
I keep reflecting back on the little I know of First Nations philosophies.
IMO, this is where moral freedom, the freedom to pursue what we think is good, comes in. To be sure, we could come to agree with all natural circumstances, overcoming instinct and desire. But we might think some circumstances we find in something approaching a "state of nature," for mankind are not good: widespread food insecurity, constant band level warfare, thralldom and slavery for the vanquished, male relatives exerting undue control over their female relatives' romantic relationships, infanticide etc.
In moral freedom, freedom becomes a moral imperative in that, to do the good, we must be free to do so. So, if there are ways of enhancing freedom, we should enact them.
But this really ties into the idea of progress in history, Eusebius, Hegel, etc., which I think is worth its own thread.
The suffix -dom indicates that it is a condition, so we can understand that someone examines their own brain for imagery of a state of affairs, or they keep multiplying nouns to make any sense of it.
The suffix also indicates that the word is an adjective made into a noun. Adjectives can be used to describe the world. The adjective is free. When used to describe a person, this person is free to the extent that he is not interfered with, if others leave him alone. He is free if others do not censor him, coerce him, enslave him, attack him, imprison him, and so on. So the condition of freedom is only possible when the arbitrary wills of countless people align in such a way that they will all, each of them, refuse to interfere in the life of another. So it could be said that freedom is a condition dependent on the good, freedom-loving will of others, traits which are currently in short supply.
Just to add, Neo-Republicans Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner propose that there exists a kind of liberty distinct from its negative and positive varieties. This Republican version, though rarely explicated, courses through the European and American traditions all the way from the Roman constitution until today, according to them.
Republican liberty finds its footing on the premise of non-domination, defined as the independence from anothers arbitrary will. It differs from the liberal tradition of liberty as non-interference insofar as one neednt rely on anothers good will in order for Republican liberty to manifest.
Professor Pettit always uses Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House as an example.
The banker Torvald was so enamoured with his wife, Nora, that hed let her get away with anything. Despite the glaring disparity in the equality of the sexes at that time and setting, both legally and culturally, Torvald never got in her way, so Nora had a kind of liberty not available to most women. She lived in that state of non-interference as defined by the liberal tradition because Torvald rarely interfered in her life.
But was Nora really free? Not according to Pettit. If at any moment the good will of Torvald went parabolic, he would have all the legal and cultural right to interfere with Noras life. In other words, Noras liberty was dependent on the arbitrary will of Torvald. If Torvalds will was good, she was not interfered with; if it was bad, she was interfered with, and Torvald would have every right to do so. Thus, Nora was in no state of liberty at allquite the opposite. Her status was that of the Roman servus. Her slavery was hung above her head, always present, even while Torvald refused to interfere.
Nora was still in bondage to her masters will because she was forever dependant on it. This dependency is important to the neo-republican. Nora toiled towards keeping Torvald happy, and serving him in order to retain some semblance of her liberty. She had to self-censor. She had to be nice and pleasant even when she would prefer to do otherwise. This sacrifice, in combination with her status in relation to Torvald, is why Nora had no liberty despite Torvalds non-interference in her life.
The Republican relies on the Rule of Law and the good will of the State to protect him from anothers arbitrary will, finally setting him free. For someone like Nora to be free, to have Republican liberty, the state must protect her status, and remove all the legal and cultural forces someone like Torvald might use to dominate her.
[quote=Toni Morrison]The function of freedom is to free someone else.[/quote]
[quote=Slavoj iek]We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.[/quote]
We do think it, and we are ruled by that thinking. But what of freedom?
My suggestion is that freedom is the starting place, and we immediately make rules about it.
That makes sense to me. And then we fight about the rules...and what our natural rights are...
And so on. What would make a just society? When is it right to break the law?
As some of us have just discussed in the Crito thread...all questions still relevant...masters and slaves...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14629/crito-reading/p1
The repeated themes/arguments of Socrates, Crito and Socrates' 'Voice of the Laws' in Plato's Dialogue:
How are we free unless our actions are ruled by our thoughts, unless we act for a reason? Surely, completely arbitrary action isn't freedom, right? I am not ruled by my thoughts when I have a muscle spasm or when I unconsciously scratch an itch, but these don't seem like freer actions because of this.
Likewise, an alcoholic isn't more free when they feel a twinge of anxiety and unthinkingly pour themselves some scotch versus when they decide to throw out all their liquor one night after reflecting on the negative effects of their drinking.
I agree, but the "rules" are, counterintuitively, necessary to becoming free. Freedom, pure freedom if you will, is the starting place, but it's a starting place that collapses into contradiction.
Imagine a blank plane, endless white in all directions. Now draw a shape. Whatever you choose, your choice will constrain you. Drawing a triangle means your shape couldn't have been a square, etc. You can't have drawn "just points A, B, C" and still have also have drawn points Y or Z.
To be absolutely free, you must never have to choose between anything. But this means our choices are never effective, and we are in the exact same place no matter what we chose. If we are absolutely free, our choices become irrelevant to us, choosing anything and having no choice become identical, a contradiction.
The five types of freedom I mentioned also each contradict one another. Self-control is itself a form of constraint. Social freedom helps construct authenticity, because people often get their sense of identify from the social institutions they belong to. However, when institutions work to shift individuals preferences such that they harmonize, this at times requires a coercion that runs contrary to authenticity.
Moral freedom always acts as a constraint on our actions, at both the individual and social levels. It is a check on the types of things individuals and institutions ought to do. In this way, it constrains all the lower types of freedom.
The fact that each mode of freedom contradicts prior modes is what leads to the necessary emergence the other, higher levels. These harmonize the existing contradictions, while introducing new ones. We could map these out via Hegels dialectical, but Ill spare you of that! (Note: my philosophy is not entirely Hegels and he had no explicit typology of freedom, I think some of his core intuitions here are correct).
Do you think that anything that is not thought is arbitrary? I would say rather that thought is mechanical, and not free at all. You see I suggested that desire controlled us and you replaced it with fear. and now it is thought. It seems to me that freedom is what you want rid of, what you want to control and fix. But freedom isn't like that; from freedom comes the new, whereas desire and fear and thought are always about the past. Freedom is the unknown, and the unthought. It is creativity.
No. An act not being entirely arbitrary is a precondition of its being freely chosen. However, this does not entail that anything that is not arbitrary is free or that only thought is not arbitrary.
Freedom is when we do what we want to do. When our actions sync up with our desires. It is a state.
Modifying Lynn Rudder Baker's definition, an act is free when:
We want to do x and we actually do x.
We want to want to do x.
We do x because we want to do it (it is not a coincidence, our wanting is causally involved in the process)
We would still want to do x even if we understood the full provenance of why we want to will x (i.e., there is not some fact we might discover that would make us no longer want to do x)
These conditions, particularly the last, are difficult to meet entirely. This is no issue, an act can be more or less free; freedom is not bivalent.
I'm not sure what you mean by "mechanical." Thought is mechanical to the degree that nature as a whole is "mechanical." But mechanism as a metaphysical model also has fallen out of favor because our concept of the mechanical has only a crude overlap with the way the law-like aspects of nature manifest themselves. In any event, the ways in which nature is mechanical do not seem to prohibit some level of intentionality, since we exist.
If thought was causally sui generis, unconnected to the world, then it would seem to preclude our being free. First, because our intent could never be causally efficacious, since it doesn't interact with the rest of the causal world, and second because we could never learn anything about the world, and thus know how to enact our desires. Thought has to connected to cause for there to be freedom, but also to avoid other philosophical problems such as solipsism.
I don't know what you mean here; where did I suggest that fear controls us?
And I'm not totally sure what you mean by "thought" here. Do you mean, "mental life?" Obviously, mental life involves a great deal our actions, but not all of them. We're often not aware of our own heartbeat and we're not free to start and stop it at will like we are with our breath (granted we can do so via other means). We fall asleep without intending to, etc., and so it's clear that thought, in this sense, doesn't dictate all our behavior, and so "control" us at all times.
But I don't see how we can be free in actions that don't enter subjective experience in the slightest.
Anyhow, the type of pre-thought freedom you seem to be invoking seems to be "the flight from all definiteness," no? As soon as we will anything we have constrained ourselves with thought. My point above is that this sort of freedom, aside from having no relevance to practical life, also collapses into a contradiction. Any act constrains. To act means you have given up not acting. To do A and not B entails not doing B and not A. So the only way to be absolutely free is to never act. But then, you are not free to act without becoming unfree, a contradiction.
It might be freedom, but where would completely arbitrary action come from? We - I include all sentient beings - don't act without motivation and there is always a cause and purpose to our actions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Maybe you don't need to think about these things, but if you were in restraints and not free to ease a spasm or scratch an itch, you would certainly think about them.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Addiction is a whole kettle of fish by itself. If traced to its origins, it may well have been caused by external constraints and imposed limitations, or an unsuccessful struggle against internalized constraints (such as religious or ideological dogma or negative self-image). Substance dependency is formed, most often, through self-medication for a real or perceived disability. Overcoming addiction is a process of self-empowerment, that begins with the realization that one is captive to the substance and a desire to be free of it.
___
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think that's an entirely accurate description of all humans living in nature for 100,000 or so years. There was a great variety in social organizations, cultures and mores, as well as physical circumstances. In fact, more variety than there has been in historical civilizations.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think that idea depends on separating parts of "self". Desires, or drives are animal, or 'lower'; thought or reason is human and 'higher'. Emotion and instinct must be some kind of invisible buffer between the two layers. I don't subscribe to a theory of duality or divided self in normally functioning individuals; I think we operate on a constant interaction and feedback system, all parts of the brain contributing to what we experience, feel, think and do.
Freedom, here, is related to its purpose.
One purpose lies in responsibility to self and others; a kind of personal quest to improve life.
We tend to take the freedoms we have for granted until they are removed.
Sometimes it takes a song to get the picture, along with an explanation:
Quoting Big Yellow Taxi lyrics with footnotes - Joni Mitchell
***
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
[emphasis added]
Of course, knowledge is power. But there are many ways to learn about human aspects of life.
Even if I were to accept the 'we must' pre-requisites for freedom, it takes freedom to access certain types of knowledge. This and the capacity to study academic subjects are only available to those already free of obstacles.
Why would 'we' need to, far less, feel obliged to study psychology, the great works of art, etc. - when there are other ways to learn about self, life, humans; intra and inter-relationships?
The presentation here of freedom is that from a superior and elitist view. Dogmatic.
I question it and the moralistic attitude: Quoting Amity
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
[emphasis added - to question]
The description of the concept of freedom as 'higher' and 'lower' troubles me.
I understand the view that we have 'higher' and 'lower' selves; the latter to be mastered.
I agree mostly with: (underlined the questionable part)
Quoting Vera Mont
1. Emotion (lower) was viewed as the opposite of 2. Reason (higher).
Unfortunately, it was related to the intellectual capacity of 1. Females v 2. Males. This prevailing attitude had consequences for freedom. It placed social and legal obstacles in the path of women in academia, medicine, in arguments for the freedom to vote etc. Gender inequalities.
Bridging the gap (or not):
https://philosophynow.org/issues/144/Reason_and_Emotion
With regards to 'moral freedom' acting as a constraint and a tickbox for what we must or ought to do - Who gets to decide? God or any equivalent deity?
***
Quoting unenlightened
Yes. It seems that way, given that the climax is 'moral freedom':
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Why is it a climax for you? And what, or who stimulates or seduces? Religious belief?
Quoting Moral freedom - life persona
[emphasis added]
***
An interesting article with prize-winning answers to the question:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/143/What_is_Freedom
Yes, you said that, and then you said it is when we avoid doing what we don't want to do, and then t
you said it is when we do what we think to do.
I disagree.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Why do you think that? I say thought is mechanical because it is binary (true or false) operates with opposites and the nearest it can come to freedom is 'choice'. But choice is just an unresolved conflict. whereas freedom is beyond thought, it is the new.
Quoting NOS4A2
It is an odd idea. But the ideas of slave and master are already very odd. But one experiences things, and then finds ways to talk about them. Men put other men in chains and beat them if they do not obey. One learns to obey, because one cannot escape.
One is enslaved by the master, but one is enslaved equally by one's fear of a beating. And if the slave is enslaved by his fear, the master is also enslaved by his desire. The master is addicted to power and luxury, and his fear is that the slaves will revolt and enslave him in turn and beat him. This is the story of unfreedom, of being a slave to desire and fear. This is the life of a well trained dog; this is not freedom for slave or for master. So it seems that no one can be free, while another is a slave - maybe one day...
Excellent summary and a well-chosen song.
An aside: I hadn't posted a YouTube of Joni Mitchell because I thought there was some TPF 'rule' restricting that - in a 'serious' philosophy discussion! Perhaps one or two in support of a position is fine...?
Yeah. Who could possibly disagree with that?!
But in practice...if everyone felt free to post any old 'freedom' song...hmmm...food fight!
You know that's largely hypocrisy. At the same time the 'rational' man disparages the emotionalism of women, he extols the flaming passion of a lover, the patriotic zeal of a soldier, and the consuming rage of a proud man wronged. At the same time he dismisses feminine intuition, he follows his own 'gut feeling'. And the dishonesty goes far beyond that: he also takes his wife's best ideas and sells them as his own. The whole 'women are intellectually feeble and emotionally unstable' bulltwaddle has only one purpose: to retain control (if possible, outright ownership) of the resources women provide for men's undertakings. The 'philosophy' is a flimsy cover for brute force.
Quoting Moral freedom - life persona
This sentence struck me as peculiar, not only because the last bit is nonsense, but how its truth resonates in the context of life. No other animal has a concept of freedom, simply because no other animal has ever been unfree, until humans trapped, domesticated and subjugated them. Once a finch is inside a cage, he thinks of nothing but flying free. Even budgies, bred generation upon generation in affectionate captivity, escape if they can. We have the moral freedom to do what is right in human terms, but no dog is allowed to do what would be right in a canine pack, no cow is allowed to kick the farmer who killed her child so he can take her milk.
Also based on a lack of knowledge or false beliefs about female physiology, behaviour, and roles.
The particular culture and societal norms; the need of/for males to show they were not emotional.
So, males too had limited freedom. Fine to have zeal and courage, a sense of righteous indignation but the feminine side had to be squashed.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes. It wasn't the reason I chose that resource. Using google is a bit of hit or a miss. It can give limited results. I tend to go for the likes of SEP. But lighter alternatives can give pause to think and question.
Does it make sense to say that: Freedom is a human capacity? Is it a tool/ability to be used? How and in what respect?
Earlier in the discussion:
Quoting Amity
This depends on access to the best knowledge available and the capacity to take action.
Capacity: legal competency; an individual's mental or physical ability; the faculty or potential for treating, experiencing, or appreciating; the facility or power to produce, perform, or deploy.
Back to the troublesome sentence:
Does freedom (or human capability to know or free 'self' or another) exist because 'the species is aware of its existence'? Does the 'its' refer to 'freedom' or to our own existence? Both?
Awareness of ourselves and a sense of freedom. Isn't that a natural state of affairs? What we do with it - or our perception of it is what matters. It might be an illusion and we need to think or dig deeper:
@180 Proof provided this quote but not its source.
I found it in his 'Five Jokes'. Click on the link to read the first! It helps in understanding this:
Quoting Five Jokes by Slavoj iek - MIT press reader
***
Finally, here's something about capability, as it relates to freedom:
Quoting The Capability Approach - SEP
I'm not buying that excuse. Most of the men who made up the philosophy and the rules were married. Besides, how come the highly educated gentlemen of Europe knew less than the savage redskins of America? How come the same men who fought for Maud and venerated Elizabeth refused to let their daughters into university? The rationale has always been rickety, at best.
Quoting Amity
Except at football games and taverns. You can have the same feelings, as long as you call it by a different name. The righteous indignation of one is the shrewish scolding of the other - and there is a head-cage to remedy the latter.
Quoting Amity
The sense of freedom is articulated and celebrated only by humans, because only humans knowingly inflict and accept bondage. Free animals cannot imagine any other state; they live in fear of being hunted and killed. Free humans live in constant fear of losing their freedom to other humans, and constant hope of gaining more freedom.
All human freedom is conditional and provisional. Free to do or be or say something; free from something; free of something, free within some predetermined limit or free as long as a contract is honoured. For other species in a state of nature, freedom is limited by their capabilities, their environment and their fortune: it doesn't require examination or explanation.
I am always troubled when someone cites a 'moral' aspect to freedom; its purpose; what we should do, what we must do. Surely, those imperatives don't refer to what we individually experience as a sense of freedom?
Excellent point. , this is what I refer to when I talk of the involvement of "thought" in freedom. Of course, thought its self has causes, and so this is only a proximate explanation for our actions.
Now I understand that you, (Unenlightened), take freedom to be something more abstract, something that must come before or above thought. I don't disagree with you there (see my thoughts above on "pure freedom").
However, from an empirical standpoint, it's also hard to see any evidence that such acausal freedom exists, nor how it could exist. And yet some of our actions appear to me to be "more or less free." It seems to me that most people generally understand coercion versus empowerment in terms of their own lived experience, culpability versus accidents in terms of moral behavior, and experience volition as a sensation.
Hence, the typology of freedom I began with, which you may or may not find useful, is an attempt to elucidate what we mean by "freedom" in these imperfect contexts. It is to help explain the senses in which we use the term "freedom" vis-a-vis our world. I personally, like to think of these different "modes" of freedom in terms of dialectical "refinement" through sublation, but I think you could also think of them in strictly pragmatic terms, as how we operationalize the imperfect freedom we see in the world. We might also consider the different meanings of "freedom," or "free action" in the context of metaphysics versus, say philosophy of law and justice, political philosophy, or the philosophy of history.
Indeed, a good example of how there is cause prior to conscious thought. What you bring up is interesting because here it is our very limits that serve to bring a facet of reality to our attention, which is counter-intuitive, but I would say it is so in a deep way.
:up: Your words remind me also of the concepts of internalized sexism and internalized racism as well. I'd argue that society is indeed necessary for all freedom, at the limit the infant dies if abandoned, but at the same time society is also corrosive on freedom in these ways. I think this sort of internalized limit on freedom also ties into the concept of authenticity that many authors have developed.
Right, I should be more careful in phrasing that point. There is a great deal of disagreement as to levels of violence in human society and the likely impact of humanities' major periods of biological "self-domestication," prior to the emergence of behaviorally modern humans.
Unfortunately, questions of early anthropology are very political, and one can read books describing the lost Eden of the "noble savage," published right along side documentaries on the "vicious state of nature," that man once lived in.
I don't want to get side tracked on that because it is an open question. How violent man was is sort of ancillary. Obviously, evil acts have always existed that people wished they could overcome. And whatever the reality of man's early societies, almost all hunter gatherers were conquered and displaced by expanding state level societies that could wage war more effectively. The role of technology in warfare is one of the places where knowledge intersects with freedom, since deterrence and self-defense sometimes play a role in safeguarding freedoms. We are where we are in terms of looking at how to perfect freedom at the social level, for better or worse.
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Exactly. How will we read if no one has taught us? What do we read if we have no access to books?
So, to answer your question about why I rank the freedoms as "higher and lower," it is because some serve as prerequisites for others, but moreover because some are more abstract than others.
Let's take the first part first. Pragmatically, one needs some level of negative freedom to have any other sort of freedom. If you are being choked, you can't engage in development, etc. Likewise, to be part of society requires some degree of self-control, as does authenticity.
Now consider abstraction. Negative freedom as "pure freedom," freedom from all constraints, I put first because it is completely abstract. Any definiteness constrains, limiting negative freedom. By contrast, reflexive freedom presupposes the existence of the self and the will. Authenticity presupposes this self-control, and considers if it is invoked in a way that is true to the self. Social freedom already presupposes the existence of a society, a collection of selves. Moral freedom, in the context of both the individual and institutions doing what they think is good, presupposes both the individual and society, as well as concrete actions in the world.
So, "higher versus lower" is not a moral or aesthetic ordering, but rather an ordering in terms of how the types of freedom emerge from considering "pure, abstract freedom." Of course, one could conceptualize the order differently perhaps, but I find this sort of dialectical unfolding to be useful in considering the ways in which contradiction defines the nuances in the concept of freedom.
Hopefully this explains the other parts you quoted. I haven't articulated myself the best clearly, but I don't think the ordering comes from "higher and lower" parts of the self, re Aristotle, because I think the self is a composite unity and we become freer, in many ways, but harmonizing aspects of the self, not setting them against one another.
I didn't intend the list to be exhaustive. I think you may be reading things into this that aren't there; the word "study" being a poor choice on my part perhaps. For instance, I mean "psychology" in the broad sense, simply "the discourse of the soul," not in terms of the narrowly defined academic discipline. The point I was trying to make was merely this: "knowledge is power, including self-knowledge- self-knowledge both at the individual level and at the social level." When I wrote "great" works I had two different meanings in mind.
1. Those works that move us. These empower us because they bring us to understand ourselves or others better.
2. Those works that have shaped our society. These help us better understand the flow of history and why we have the problems we have.
Plays, books, shows, etc. can be great in both of these ways or just one or the other, and to varying degrees for different people. Obviously, the social context varies less between individuals. For example, I really do not like Ayn Rand's philosophy in many respects, but I suffered through Atlas Shrugged because it is a work that seems to have had a profound effect on the society I live in (many US politicians love it).
Knowledge is a duty because how shall we try to bring about states of affairs that we think are good if we don't know how to predict the consequences of our actions? That's all that is meant by duty.
Freedom is a duty because how can we do the good if we aren't free to do so? The idea is just that these seem to me to be broad prerequisites for moral action, even if we can never perfect either. I have certainly done things I no longer think were good because I lacked understanding, or because I was giving in to social pressure. That's the sort of thing I mean here.
I will save this for another thread when I have time, but I think we have to look to ground morality in principles at work in nature. Deontological morality that is born of pure abstraction fails to connect to the world, while relativism seems to ignore objective ways in which "harm" can be defined about as well as anything in the life sciences.
The other questions would probably be better answered when I have more time.
Briefly, moral freedom is the "climax," because it is the most definite, least abstract, since it ties to individual acts. There is a sense in which we are unfree when we do what we think is bad, unjust, evil, etc. The perfection of moral freedom in terms of the preceding levels of freedom would be a "climax" because such a perfection would entail that society as a whole, a society full of developed, self-actualized individuals, looks at itself and says "yes, this is good, I would not have it any other way." Could such a thing ever happen!? It seems impossible, but if it was achieved, it seems worthy of the name "climax." It would be the peak you cannot move off of without descending, the summit.
I guess my question is, do you think your definition of freedom collapses into contradiction. If not, why? In what ways does definiteness not result in constraint?
I don't agree with this. I lean towards dialatheism, the belief that one can have "true contradictions." Bivalance and the excluded middle are useful heuristics for simplifying logics. But we can also think through paraconsistent logics, and indeed most of the mystics I enjoy reading make their case through unfolding paradoxes. I would argue that thought operates with opposites because one idea, say "good" is incoherent without an opposite, the possibility of "ungood." But I see this as the emergence of higher levels of nuance from contradiction and harmonization, rather than a preexisting set of antipodes.
I agree, you phrase it well. Our difference might be partly in word choice. I continue to use the word "freedom" to describe more constrained modes of freedom that exist for us in our lived experience and in human history, e.g. "social freedom." But negative freedom, in its purest form, is the most basic conception of the idea, and thought does limit that sort of freedom.
It only seems like a problem if you think of yourself as a perfect, indivisible mereological simple, as a single thing that has no parts. But if you are a complex entity, you can certainly have different parts that come into conflict. One part could be enslaved by another part. It's hard, for example, to imagine that someone with Tourette Syndrome is as free of irresistible impulses to blurt things out as someone without the condition.
I think it is useful to think of an addict as being in some sense the slave of their cravings. Perhaps it is possible for them to resist their particular drug, but certainly not as easy as it is for someone not an addict.
What is undesirable, it seems to me, is for a person to be a slave to their baser impulses, the lower gaining dominance over the higher.
That's why I prefer anthropologists with a comprehensive view. I also refer to native mythologies for a sense of how peoples thought, behaved and related to the world.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As well as in restricting and denying freedoms. There is always a contract in society. Sometimes that contract is grossly lopsided; sometimes it balances quite well over the whole interactive network of human activities and aspirations.
Nietzsche refers to the ego as a "congress of souls," early in Beyond Good and Evil. It's an apt metaphor. I've always found research on split-brained individuals quite interesting, the ways in which each hemisphere of the brain can seem to act as a separate mind when the connections between the two are severed. What is often missed though, and is as amazing to me, is how they harmonize when linked.
Personally, my intuition is that part of the mystery of conciousness stems from this back and forth, the way in which parts of the mind are other to some parts. In ways, the mind acts like a computer, but computation itself involves communications, semiosis.
But as I mentioned before, I don't like the "higher/lower" ordering, although I think it does have some pragmatic uses. I tend to think of it in terms of discord and disharmony. When my executive function wants one thing, my drives and desires another, I am divided. If we are like a congress or society, then we are most free when all desires become harmonized. I think this is partly where "authenticity," enters the picture re self-control.
Like, , this
[Quote]well as in restricting and denying freedoms. There is always a contract in society. Sometimes that contract is grossly lopsided; sometimes it balances quite well over the whole interactive network of human activities and aspirations.[/quote]
... can apply to the self in ways. Think about how the executive can tamp down on sexuality, when social pressures tell people they must express their sexuality in inauthentic ways. This is sort of an oppression of the self, as opposed to a harmonization. Discipline is part of harmonization, but tyranny is not.
A human being is one entity, and no person is divisible, certainly not into master and slave, lower and higher. We can spend eternity categorizing him into parts, but it will forever be a poor accounting of the brute reality.
Its better to say that an addict has cravings rather than is a slave to them, in my opinion, because to do otherwise suggests that these impulses are not his own.
Indeed. And yet again, so can tyranny promote self-discipline. Who can retain his dignity when caned by an overzealous headmaster can also retain his integrity under an oppressive political regime. Unfortunately, for every survivor, a hundred others bend double or break. But it's that one supremely disciplined survivor who will lead the rebellion. Societies, even stable ones, are never static. There are a million transactions, significant and trivial, in every minute; a million microscopic shifts in power and liberty.
That is a metaphor, like the monkey on his back. This is how addiction and compulsion feels; this is how the addict or compulsive behaves. Of course they are his cravings, not he their man, and when he realizes this - not simply recognizes it as true, but actually realizes it, he begins to gain mastery over the craving. This is also a fairly effective approach to depression, obesity and chronic pain: own it, so that it cannot own you.
I don't think I have defined it, except negatively. Even in mechanics this applies; the 'free' wheel is the one that is not tied by belt or gear but can move in- dependently. One cannot from that say what it will do.
There is necessarily restriction implied by the finitude of human beings; lambs gambol in an ecstasy of freedom, but they do not fly.
For humans, I think the limit of individual freedom is the limit of individual responsibility. they are, psychologically, two sides of one coin. To be totally free is to take total responsibility for the world. This is how i would account for morality, while keeping it personal. So it is not my business to tell you what is moral, that would be to usurp your freedom; but in drawing that line I am taking responsibility for you even while you are free to be irresponsible.
I am aware that this is not very clear, but I am at the limits of both my understanding and my ability to communicate. So I will have to leave it there, unsatisfactory though it is. I will go quiet and read along and see if anything gets any clearer.
I think you articulate it well. I would, however, push back on the idea that it cannot be our business to tell others what is moral. No man is an island onto themselves, and through our actions we implicitly show others what we think is appropriate. You see this in the ways norms shape behavior, or more explicitly in political settings. If we ever feel we should protest injustice, we explicitly express sentiments about other's actions by doing so.
Plus, people often ask us, implicitly or explicitly about our moral judgements. In the context of raising children, its inevitable that you have to explain why stealing things is wrong, etc.
But I agree that in this way we act as a constraint on others. However, we face the problem were silence is its own sort of action. If a child is never taught any moral reasoning, that itself seems like a constraint on their ability to achieve social freedom, just as forcing a child to read is both a constraint and an enhancement of their freedom in other ways.
At the limit, the constant is harsh. If someone thinks they are entitled to take others' property as they please, or to violate others' bodies for their pleasure, then it seems society has a moral obligation to stop this behavior, to attempt to force a lesson on thieves and rapists, and to do what it can to restore justice after it is violated. But to jail a rapist is inevitably to tell them something about how they should see the moral order.
You bring up a good, underappreciated concern though, which is that, when we only focus on behavior modification, we are stealing responsibility from the individual, treating them like a dog that must be trained.
Through Hegel, this dynamic is expressed as a doubling of consciousness, where the conditions forced upon the slave are replicated in their treatment to themselves and fellow slaves. This points to a crossroads where the possible, as established by the power of the master, has a second life in the individuals framed by those conditions. There are some, like Georg Lukács, who saw the public and the individual bounded in the same topos or means of each side reflecting the other. There are views like that presented in the Invisible Man where the alienating dynamic is front and center but the 'personal' is decidedly not a reflection of those imposed conditions. And then there are the starting points for Freud and Jung who formulated these elements into conditions undergone by individual psyches.
Kierkegaard takes a different approach by acknowledging that a person is limited by possibilities of the world one must live in but that the personal is not reflected in it as a possibility. Freedom is the capability to do things. That requires a movement from oneself and an education through the school of possibilities. This is noted in one of Kierkegaard's notes:
Kierkegaard argues that the personal is fundamentally different from other categories to the point where psychology, as the attempt to generally understand the human condition, must give way to the theological. But his view is sharply at odds with a Stoicism that carefully marks out the borders between the regions. He clearly expects to change what is possible in the world.
How do you make sense of a person resisting their impulses? I don't know about you, but I often find conflict and disagreement and tension in myself, different aspects of myself competing for dominance. Sometimes one part wins. Other times another part.
There have been times in my life when I was trying hard to get super-fit and lean to maximize my rock climbing performance. I had this distinct feeling that there was a part of myself that was almost like a dog begging for food, whining at me, and I had to forcefully and firmly say no to it. And that part would feel kind of wounded and neglected. It really felt like the two parts of myself were like an overly stern master or father and an appetite-driven dog or child or something. When I was resisting food and taking cold showers and running hard and working out with strong self-discipline, it was as though this executive part of me was dominant and I was identifying with and feeling myself to be this part primarily. At other times, when I was more lax and indulgent, it was like I was the dog, happily raiding the food bin, with the master nowhere to be seen.
It seems to me that if you believe that what you are is basically a brain/body in an environment, it isn't hard to see the brain as a multitude with different networks and tendencies and regions perhaps even having different goals. I tend to think that we are not nearly as unitary as people normally think. Our brain activation patterns are much different in different contexts and in different modes.
But some people might believe that a human being is fundamentally a soul inhabiting a brain/body, and by extension, a world, and being a soul, a human is thus fundamentally a singular, eternally distinct entity, a monad. I don't subscribe to this view, but even then, it seems to me that you could characterize your relation to your body or some aspect of it as one of master and slave. In that case, it would seem better for the soul to master the body rather than the reverse.
Anyway, I suspect our seeming disagreement here might be mostly a matter of how we use language and what concepts/stories/metaphors we use to try to make sense of ourselves. Talking about parts of a person being master and slave is somewhat figurative. That said, I would argue that if something has parts, if it has a shape or form at all, it isn't an indivisible single or simple. You can, for the sake of convenience, draw a line around this collection of parts and treat it as one singular thing. But the fact remains that it is divisible. Even a perfect circle is divisible. A clump of clay is divisible. If something has form at all, there are internal relations.
Also, as mentions, split-brain patients provide an interesting situation to consider. In some cases, it seems that each hemisphere has its own distinct identity.
In my misspent youth, I experimented with a variety of psychoactive chemicals. Occasionally, I experienced bizarre situations where my mind fragmented into different parts in radical dissociative states and then came back together as the effects of the drug wore off. I remember once having a fearful thought about my safety as the effects kicked in, and I sort of inwardly asked this seemingly intelligent space around me what would happen to me if I were to die. As I fully transitioned to the new state, it was as if I was no longer the person who asked the question. I was now the one who had been asked. Even then, this space that I now found myself as became fragmented into several beings who were conferring, talking about the guy who took the drug and trying to decide if his question made any sense. It was like there were several separated perspectives. I/we/they interpreted the question in such a way that led me/us/them to ask, "Can he fall out of this?" The answer was this: "No, a window we have on the world simply closes." And from this strange space, there was an image in some part of it of a small opening through which could be seen, from the point of view of a human, a lower torso and legs, with feet up on the coffee table (this was the view from my eyes). There was a sense that if he were to die, this opening would simply close forever, and I/we would simply not see the world from that point of view any longer.
It was strange to observe what happened as the drug wore off. It was as if these separated parts reintegrated and I then remembered the experience from each of the several perspectives, as if I was them all along, and so as remembered, it felt like I was all of them at once. But I suspect that during the dissociation, there was no such integration. I imagine it might be like that if multiple humans were to somehow join and integrate their brains. They might merge into a single entity that would remember the lives prior from all of the perspectives. It such an entity were to remember a conversation that happened between all of the members, it would remember the conversation from multiple angles at once and integrate them. The only way to experience the memories would be with this integration and comparison present. It wouldn't remember the experiences as they were when they happened, as that would require being once again isolated as one of the individuals at a time. So it might seem to you, if you were this entity, that you were all of the members all along.
In observing my dream states and hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, I have sometimes witnessed the transition from "unconsciousness" to "consciousness" or the reverse as being like a gathering up and concentration of dissociated parts or smeared-out-mind or a relaxation or dropping of such a concentration or integration, like water spilling out of a cup into the ocean.
I suspect that even in waking states, we are not as integrated and consistently "ourselves" as we think.
And in plain English?
Thanks for that. I think I need to read some Kierkegaard. No one seems to argue with him - perhaps it's the intimidating Big Guy standing at his shoulder. It seems obvious that people are not in general single-minded, and so there is a sense in which that freedom one seeks is the freedom from mental conflict (as illustrated by @petrichor above).
"... expects to change what is possible in the world." This! Evolution does it very slowly and laboriously The disciplined imagination of the architect or the engineer does it in almost no time. If there is a technical meaning to freedom, it must I think be that the future is underdetermined by the past. There is wriggle room. And the wriggle room seems to grow, as life complexifies - like a final frontier.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is idealistic and heavy with absolutism.
I will leave it here, having given the argument enough time and attention. Thanks.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/839851 :smirk:
Very well explained. And supported by personal experience. Observation of mental states, emotions as they relate to the physical body, environment and circumstance is key to understanding issues of internal and external obstacles and freedoms...I think. Problem-solving as in pragmatics?
Good to read another perspective. That freedom is a capability to do things makes sense to me.
The individual and their life move and are moved in cycles of birth, growth, loss, deterioration, death.
Life is the school whereby we become aware of possibilities and potential for growth, or otherwise.
Thanks. Perhaps we just have different definitions of the word "duty." We can have more concrete duties that we [I]choose[/I] to take on. For example, to be a good doctor entails having certain duties to one's patients.
But with knowledge and freedom I am thinking more abstractly. A duty is simply "what do I need to pursue in order to be able to bring about good states of affairs and prevent evil ones" (as the subject sees good and evil). Well, they need to know what their actions entail (knowledge) and be free to make the actions they want (freedom). Our attempts to "do good," get frustrated when we lack either of these.
Because in the abstract sense, a "duty" seems to be just "what am I obligated to do [I]if[/I] I want to fulfill x role." Of course, not everyone fulfills their duties or even recognized them. Many parents don't seem to much internalize a "duty" to be a good parent (I think of the Ike Turner biopic).
I think you're intuitions are right, lower and higher might be bad terms because of the connotations of those words. We could think of either side of the spectrum as lower or higher in this case. Really, we're talking about "more or less abstract."
I don't think what I've laid out in any ways precludes arguments in favor of pragmatism and pluralism, thus leading to idealism or absolutism.
Moral pluralism is how history develops our conceptions of rights. E.g., liberal democracies now have universal education, rights to unionize, laws against child labor, etc. because of the conflict between liberalism and socialism, which resulted in liberal democracy sublating socialism and making many of its policies a core aspect of liberalism. Here, pluralism begat a synthesis that improved the provision of rights.
If anything, I think the point of investigating freedom in the abstract is to help us in the messy business of moral decision-making and policymaking, where there is always nuance, complexity, and disagreement, by allowing us to ground our thinking in general principles that either flow rationally from bare concepts or can be found empirically "out in the world," (e.g., the concept of biological harm).
My background is working in government for a while, first with FEMA, later as a deputy city manager. The real world is full of nuances. I didn't always agree with my boss, the mayor's policies, but I had a complex set of duties to advocate for the administration's policies and implement them to the best of my ability if my feedback was overruled, to answer city councilors honestly to the best of my ability even when they were in "political attack mode" (thankfully no one watches public access TV so no one saw me getting yelled at) and to generally work for outcomes that were fair for the citizens and my employees.
In that world, the abstract idea of freedom and duty is easy to lose and can seem to have negligible practical value. What can it tell us about if it is worth giving some developer a tax break to get some abandoned factory cleaned up and turned into apartments? Nothing much. But what it can do is support guiding principles so that we don't become total cynics, completely disheartened, as this seems to be what causes people to make truly bad choices (and earn their all expenses paid vacations to Fort Leavenworth lol. You see this with Senator Mendez, who had similar problems when I worked in NJ...). The abstract view also helps us understand the historical progression of rights through history, which gives us a lens through which to understand current events as well.
But then it is no longer a circle, not even an imperfect circle. A lump of clay would just be smaller lumps of clay, but a human brain would be several lumps of dead tissue. It's true that a person can still be the same person with some little piece of their brain removed, but if you take out or electrocute a significant chunk, that person becomes a zombie. Quoting petrichor
We are not all the same. Some people - yogis for example, ascetics and obsessives - choose to cultivate one aspect of their personality and submerge or at least restrain all other interests and desires. They then have superlative discipline, at the expense of balance. They seem to those of us who take a more inclusive approach to 'self' and 'integrity' somehow admirable but in other ways less than a person.
I don't think that's a statement about their freedom or ours. Just different choices.
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Your thoughts remind me of the Tao Te Ching. Also, Zen.
I can't remember all the details but the freedom you describe seems similar. Would you agree?
1. Creativity. Its source and process seem to involve a letting go. An intuition or action which
arises when we don't think too hard. Or perhaps it comes after we have thought too hard. There is a tension and then a release. A freedom.
The following article notes 10 of Zen's antithetical traits which are often found in creative people.
Paradox being part of both; opposing characteristics held together in the growth of the whole.
The Zen concepts are in italics and come first. Excerpt:
Quoting Creativity and Zen - The Slender Thread
I'm not sure this is applicable to all creatives but worth considering?
The symbol of the wheel returns in 3.
2. No thoughts or feeling of freedom just relaxing or dancing in the moment. A blending and flowing.
Quoting Zen Freedom - SEP
I think the same kind of thing occurs in rock climbing and other sports. Being in the zone.
3. The Tao Te Ching. The negative space or 'emptiness' of the axle is necessary for a wheel to function.
Is this the same thing as a mental space without desire? The freedom of an open mind without judgement? Contemplation for wellbeing and balance.
Quoting Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu Ch11
I think our difference lies mostly in the respect of feelings, and what parts of the body we identify with. I hold the view that feelings don't offer us much information when it comes to the biological facts. I can't even see, feel, or hear a vast majority of it, and the sensations biology provides are often fleeting, even misleading. So to me, any feelings-based, first-person account of the self is entirely limited, and often wrong.
But where other people, instruments, and examinations of the biology are involved, we never discover such notions as hierarchies and conflicts. When I look at the biology it's difficult to observe where one organ ends and another one begins. What is the brain without the heart or lungs, or the skull and spine, for example?
Your story about getting in shape does not indicate to me some internal competition, but biology working as it should. The physiology of your hunger is indicating that you want food, while your pre-frontal cortex is deciding whether you should eat. Since all of it is biologically interconnected, none of it foreign or parasitic, it's much easier for me to conclude they are working together in service to the whole.
As for the divisibility of persons, wherever a person is divided, one or both parts die. One doesn't need to draw a line around it because it is already contained within itself, in this case by an epidermis. And the only way to divide it is by brute force, to destroy it. So while we might be able to imagine that a person is divisible, actually dividing a person says nothing in regards to his divisibility, but in the brutality of the one doing the dividing.
Your depiction of a "divided person" as literally cut into pieces makes me curious how you view the experience of desiring incompatible things, weighing competing loyalties, dilemmas of conscience versus self-interest, and times when you knowingly choose what is bad for yourself.
Its also the fundamental right not to be coerced into doing something against ones will unless of course that individual has committed some sort of crime which allows the state to deny his freedom for a period of time.
Weighing ideas and other exercises in high-order thinking is one of the easiest activities to accomplish, in my opinion. It is the least evolved, doesnt involve much energy, and is the easiest to mimic in artificial intelligence. So I view that experience as highly overrated, even inconsequential.
An interesting counterpoint to the libertarian ethos you proclaim in other places.
How so?
You have located many of the problems of human experience within grounds presuming a determinism of conditions related to the possibility of our existence so far flung from why people talk about freedom that only a very fertile imagination could recognize it as an idea.
Do you think free will and freedom are the same thing and where do you think would be a difference between the two?
My apologies for simplifying the question slightly
I do not believe in determinism. These presumptions sound like your own. But if you wish to ever know what I believe about any given topic, feel free to ask.
You just dismissed the discussion of what "freedom" is about upon the basis of the conditions of our existence as an organism. Your beliefs are whatever they are.
Im trying to participate in the discussion of what freedom is. I havent once dismissed it, Im afraid.
No I don't think they're the same.
Free will is a sort of illusion we can't avoid. While everything that happens, including our own actions and decisions, is a result of all the events, processes and interactions that preceded it, we do not have knowledge of these causative factors or the outcome. Therefore, we experience life as if we considered and formulated decisions, made judgments and calculations, had desires and impulses entirely of our own and acted on them. We also judge one another's actions as if they were taken by a autonomous agents. So, for all practical considerations, we have free will.
Freedom is an abstract concept regarding the range of actions available to humans under various conditions. It is a concept we value, explore, debate, make laws to limit and fight revolutions to achieve.
I dont get the complaint. But Im still interested to read how what I wrote is a counterpoint to what I have proclaimed in other places.
You don't get other people's problems. And yet you want them to help you argue against them in other places.
The perfection of your form makes me wonder if you are an algorithm.
Though not the same thing they seem inter related somewhat. Free will, if we do have it and is in fact real rather than illusory means my choices are undetermined by (my) past actions, freedom on the other hand according to the dictionary is the power to act, think, or speak as one wants.
Now you wouldnt be able to do or not do those things if you didnt have free will right ? I could have chosen not to make this post but I did does that not constitute both freedom and free will and merge the concepts somewhat ?
Odd accusations, and as usual without argument. Ill pass.
I provided the argument. I accept your surrender.
Of course they are. The concept of freedom - all the freedoms: freedom from restraint and constraint, freedom of movement, speech, association, freedom to act, to choose - is predicated on the assumption that we do have free will. It is an article of faith and a cornerstone of law.
It doesn't matter that this is an illusion, because we have always experienced it as real.
How free are we really? When do we realise we are not free?
Priyamvada Gopal (Faculty of English) discusses freedom as a practice rather than a value to be worshipped.
Quoting Opinion: How free are we really? - University of Cambridge
Yes!
This has been one of my contentious issues with the American notion of freedom. "The land of the free and the home of the brave" had a population of which two thirds lived in some form of bondage, from marriage through forced relocation to outright slavery.
The American mythos doesn't just objectify freedom (something we own and they envy) almost to the point of believing they invented it, but iconizes freedom as the brass ring on the merry-go-round; the ultimate prize that all peoples must strive for. You don't hear much, in American legends or entertainments, about the abuses of freedom.
Yeah, my mind has been infected since almost forever
Quoting Amity
Yes indeed, the source is the process of letting go. The idea of freedom becomes confused and confusing because it is a buzz-word that everyone wants to claim, but to the extent that anyone succeeds in claiming it, they are succeeding in enslaving freedom itself. Whatever one holds onto becomes a tether, even the idea of freedom: "Therefore the sage lets go of that, and chooses this."
Anyone who knows anything about Taoist or Zen practice though will not mistake this for a descent into mere chaos. On the contrary, the discipline is very austere, the responsibilities are great. Likewise, it takes a really disciplined and masterful musician to play free jazz.
:100:
In its strict and basic sense, freedom is absence of obstacles.
Most definitions and descriptions of "freedom" can be reduced to that simple truth. Most examples of situations involving freedom can be reduced to that simple truth.
Now, obstacles can be anything one can imagine and name that stands in front of or counter-forces to an effort in performing an action or accomplishing a purpose in general.
Based on this one can draw a lot of conclusions and answer a lot of questions. So, lets see:
Quoting Vera Mont
No. Life is plenty of obstacles. There are always counter-forces.
The best way I believe to see how freedom and obstacles work, is to think of games. Any game, team or individual: sport games, board games, card games, puzzle and brain games, etc.
In most games you have opponents. They act as obstacles for achieving the goal of the game. And you also have rules about what you are not allowed to do. They also act as obstacles. And you also have rules that allow you to do things. These act as "freedoms", i.e. they are part of your freedom in playing a game. Then there are personal factors that can also act as obstacles and freedoms: both physical and mental. Experience and skills or lack of them can also act as freedoms and obstacles..
Quoting Vera Mont
Covered above.
Indeed, all your questions can be answered based on the freedoms-obstacles equation. I won't do that in this comment though, lest it becomes too loaded.
Yes, this is true, and a comprehensive definition.
It is, however, very little help in formulating a political philosophy. When discussing freedoms within the structure of a society, we need to tackle more specific questions regarding the distribution of obstacles placed before segments of the population; who can/ should/ is entitled to place what obstacles before whom; and whether the governing group can / should / is entitled to remove natural or previously imposed obstacles from some classes of citizen.
I didn't ask those questions in any detail, but some posters have already extra dimensions to my originally question. I has grown wider and more interesting than my original intent.
Thanks for adding another perspective.