The Bad American!

[Dawg]

Well, Norwegian, I have to disagree with your comment that "personal responsibility" does not exist. I'm no physicist, but I am aware that the current theories being bandied about are a mix of cause-and-effect and chaos theories, depending on whether you are talking about macro- or micro- aspects of the physical universe.

I'm also aware that we're talking more about societal rules than we are physical ones. Morality, if you will. Your arguments may well be valid for talking about atomic energies and stellar motions, but they have little to do with members of society behaving in a manner either beneficial or detrimental to that society. Physics (and other logic) often have no influence over behavioral issues like that.

You also are only presenting the first part of an argument. I've read through your post a couple of times and don't see your point. You seem to be saying that nothing happens by chance, that all things are dictated by cause-and-effect, even behavior. But that's all I read, there's nothing concrete to back that up. Human behavior is not by chance, each individual makes conscious (or unconscious) decisions. Human actions are deliberate. I understand (and 100% agree with) Bombadil's statement that we live in a society where it has become easy to blame others for your own actions, actions you have decided to take. I take responsibility for the actions I choose to take - that's the right way of doing things. Too many people blame others for their actions.

Physics doesn't have anything to do with that.

My two cubits.

I am
Dawg

I'm no physicist, but I am aware that the current theories being bandied about are a mix of cause-and-effect and chaos theories, depending on whether you are talking about macro- or micro- aspects of the physical universe.

My point is that neither of the allows what are known as personal responsibility. If everything is cause and effect, everything one does is determined by external factors, either genes or the environment. And you can`t blame anyone for that, can you? Alternatively, if it is pure chance, nothing is responsible for it, neither the person or the environment it lives in.

Morality, if you will. Your arguments may well be valid for talking about atomic energies and stellar motions

That is relevant, because the brain is buildt up of atomic energies! The brain obeys the physical laws and constrains that everyting else in the universe is affected by. Why should the human brain be so special? Actually, there are several signs that the human brain is affected by cause and effect relationships. Lobotomy alters the way a person thinks and acts. Chemical substances alter they way human beings act. Depression can now be seen on brain scans! How could all this be possible if human emotions and actions were not to a large degree governmed by cause and effect relationships.

but they have little to do with members of society behaving in a manner either beneficial or detrimental to that society.

This is mixing up the issues. It one thing to punish or reward people for doing things that are detrimal or beneficial to society. this can be done without personal responisibily existing. Personal responsibility is that people are somewhat to blame for their actions. Even if free will does not exists, it would be rational to reward and punish. This is not the same as the person that does the act is evil and desverve to be punished!

The practial difference is the harshness of the punishment. You get a lower income if you don`t work in Norway, but you don`t starve. We have punishment for crimes, but no death penalty. That is because many of us think that punishment and rewards are rational, but they don`t neccessarily "deserve it".

Human behavior is not by chance, each individual makes conscious (or unconscious) decisions.

Which is not an argument for free will per se. These decisions may very well be the direct effect of a number of earlier causes that has affected the human being in question.

I take responsibility for the actions I choose to take - that's the right way of doing things. Too many people blame others for their actions.

Well, that depends on the action. Sure, you decide to use drugs or chop your leg off, but your economic status is actually not your choice alone! If you are to get money, you either have to sell your product or get someone to hire you. That implies the acceptance of other people, which means that your economic status is not a direct consequence of your choices alone, but a combination of your choices and the choices of other people, implying that conservatives are actually holding people responsible for the choices of other people, and not just their own.

[bsg1fan1975]

personal responsibility does exist. What about criminals taking responsibility for their actions and paying their debt to society? Its not up to the taxpayers to make the criminal take responsibility.

We can't just turn our faces away from things and blame it on society because the person who did wrong may have had a bad childhood!

Where does string theory fit in?

By the way, you are so cool Norwegian. I don't agree that there is no such thing as free will, but seeing the effects of disease and other external factors I have been thinking of what constitutes personality and choice. I had never thought of them in terms of theories. I had been concentrating more on sprituality and psychology.

[Proximo]

I'm not america, but apparently I'm a bad brit...

Some of my ancestors were vikings, who came in and demanded taxes in exchange for not killing stuff. I wonder, should I be paying back the Danegeld to all those poor oppressed celts out there?

[bsg1fan1975]

Proximo, that was centuries ago. In alot my reading of history I have done some of the vikings preferred not to kill the people of the lands they raided but some actually decided to blend their culture with the people they conquered.

Originally Posted by kat

By the way, you are so cool Norwegian. I don't agree that there is no such thing as free will, but seeing the effects of disease and other external factors I have been thinking of what constitutes personality and choice. I had never thought of them in terms of theories. I had been concentrating more on sprituality and psychology.

Well, this is a difficult theme. Certainly, nothing is clearly decided either way. I do hovewer think that "complete free will" is an impossibility. There are just to many indications that the human brain is to some degree governed by cause and effect. That does not hovewer imply that we have no free will. There is still possible that there exist some room for some choice, but I don`t think that the notion of "complete free will" is feasible any longer.

You mentioned string theory, and I have never seen that discussed in the context of a debate about free will. The problem that has not been adressed, what implications quantum physics have for the debate about free will. Some will claim that the will is free because decisions that are affected by pure chance is not governed by outside intervention. I disagree, if something is pure chance, it has no cause, and if it has no cause, can it really be the result of a defined "will"? Actually, the physics of free will is hard to define. The concept is older than any notion of physics, and it shows!

If free will is to exist, there has to exist something that we just not are aware of, and that is certainly a possibility. I do hovewer feel that cause and effect without any doubt play some part in human action. How large part it plays is a whole different matter though.

Originally Posted by Proximo

I'm not america, but apparently I'm a bad brit...

Some of my ancestors were vikings, who came in and demanded taxes in exchange for not killing stuff. I wonder, should I be paying back the Danegeld to all those poor oppressed celts out there?

Where did I claim that?

Anyhow, how do you know your ancestors were vikings?

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.

Well, this to me appears to be "appeal to emtion". It sounds fine and inspiring, but really doesn`t contain any arguments at all.

Even if you believe in free will, you do not control your own destiny a hundread percent. Whether others choose to hire you, hurt you, which genetic abilities you got and illnesses affect your possibilities to a very large degrees.

The concept of personal responsibility really is just an ideological instrument of opression, legitimising the appaling conditions for the poor in countries like the US.

Norwegian, I also believe in personal responsiblity. I believe everyone in a democracy has a responsiblity to vote, even if it is to spoil the ballet. I also believe I have a personal responsilbity to speak out for things I believe in. I don't really think of blameing oneself/others for the things that go wrong in life as "personal responsibility".


As for the Viking stuff. I am of Irish descent and my husband is Viking. I figure we give as good as we get. Either way there is obviously some sort of attraction there

If free will is to exist, there has to exist something that we just not are aware of, and that is certainly a possibility. I do hovewer feel that cause and effect without any doubt play some part in human action. How large part it plays is a whole different matter though.

I understand cause and effect is one of the ways that our brains can learn and store information. I don't believe it is the only way. People who have learning disabilities and true devients have shown signs of truly unique thought process.

Norwegian, where can I find information on the relationship of physics and the human brain? Is this a school of philosophy? How have you reseached this theory?

[Proximo]

Originally Posted by Norwegian

Where did I claim that?

Nowhere, it was aimed further up the thread.

Anyhow, how do you know your ancestors were vikings?

Proximity. My family has lived in and around this area for many hundreds of years and only married in with the Irish about 90 years ago. Where I live (north west of england), I'm likely to contain a lot of danish and scandanavian blood. Most of the north of england was heavilly colonised by the vikings. My ancestors are a blend of the norse raiders, ancient scots and picts, plus now northern irish - who, oddly enough, are also heavilly laced with the viking blood.

Well, this to me appears to be "appeal to emtion". It sounds fine and inspiring, but really doesn`t contain any arguments at all.

That was my signature. But hey...

Even if you believe in free will, you do not control your own destiny a hundread percent. Whether others choose to hire you, hurt you, which genetic abilities you got and illnesses affect your possibilities to a very large degrees.

So your argument is really based around the fact that nothing is 100% certain? Hmm. Well, I take issue with that kind of argument. I know I have free will. Your argument as I've read it in this thread is very enticing, because it allows people to cast off their personal responsibility for their actions - "society made me do it" they can say. "My genes made me do it," they can yell in court. Well my genes dictate a lot of things to me, one being a very specific form of dyslexia. I'm terrible with numbers a lot of the time. My handwriting is horrible if I don't make sure to keep it clean, but I've made the conscious choice in spite of what people have siad about me to improve myself and become a greater person. That's what free will is. I was told when I was young that I would never be able to read or write properly, because I was a late developer. By your theory, I wouldn't be able to read your posts and write this rebuttal, because 'society' had decided I was unable to do so.

The concept of personal responsibility really is just an ideological instrument of opression, legitimising the appaling conditions for the poor in countries like the US.

Hah. That's a laugh, that is. So, the poor are poor because they were predestined, then? Or are they poor because that's society's place for them? No, they're poor because felgercarb happens. They can, if they want, abdicate their responsibility and blame society for what has happened to them, or they can, like my family, work their way out of it. Ah yes, I haven't mentioned this have I? My father lost his business in 1989, a rather successful business it was, until the government decided to put a bypass around our town and destroyed almost 90% of his trade. That was an environmental factor, to be sure, and it left us on social security benefit and unable to afford half-way decent food. In your society of no free will, we would have simply existed at that state forever because we had no choice in the matter. But no, my father, after a long recovery from the shock, decided he didn't want to be reliant on the government for survival and set about creating a new business. This, was his own choice. Society pushes against non-conformity, against the entrepreneur, against the man - or woman - who wishes to forge his own destiny. My father, in fact my whole family, is working to improve the condition of our lives. Am I, in doing this, oppressing someone? Am I, in going against hte grain of society, merely acting out of random chance?

You've mentioned elsewhere in this thread about the idea of choice. Choice, by implication, implies free will. Even if you have but two options, it's your own will that makes the choice. Not society, not the environment, not random chance. Your mind. Your consciousness. Your will. This exists independant of, yet at the same time intrinsic to the human mind. Your mind is the ultimate exampe of something being greater than the sum of its parts, and this is what makes it so amazing. Cause and effect naturally takes some place within the human mind; at the physical level, a brain cannot function without conforming to the laws of physics. It's impossible. But, again, it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. At the metaphysical level, in the realm of self-awareness, your mind can function in a process of cause without effect, and effect without cause. Imagination does the impossible of creating something from nothing, substance from the insubstantial. Your thoughts follow set patterns and at the same time race off along tangents that have nothing to do with the cause of the thought.

Creativity is the expression of free will. You can't tell me that the cubists, or the ipressionists, or that whole modernist school of art were simply functioning without will. They chose to defy conventions in their art. They took the contrary course, the one that wasn't predicted by cause and effect. Tell Picasso he had no free will and he'd simply laugh at you.

Your arguments are enticing, but I have to say that I find the logical conclusion appaling. I can demonstrate this as well - though I admit right now I'm breaking the cardinal rule of internet arguments by mentioning the nazis. I'm not comparing you to a nazi, and I'm not calling you one, but... Hitler himself argued in a similar way to you. He spoke of the need for people to conform to society for the greater good. To him, the idea of free will was something to be destroyed, removed and supressed, since it made for a highly compliant society that could be easilly moulded in to whatever shape you wanted. After all, he would argue, the individual will die eventually. It is the nation that must be preserved at the cost of the individual. This is the unfortunate logical conclusion of your argument. The concept of individual freedom might allow for some short-term problems, but when you teach people that they have no individual will and are instead only parts of the collective whole, then you have a much more dangerous situation. The tribe, the mob, the nation. These are collective entities. When the nation takes precedence over individual choice, you have a dictatorship in everything but name.

So your argument is really based around the fact that nothing is 100% certain? Hmm.

Anyone who claim to have the whole truth and nothing bout the truth on this subject matter is a liar. Therefore, I am not claiming that I know everything.

Well, I take issue with that kind of argument. I know I have free will. Your argument as I've read it in this thread is very enticing, because it allows people to cast off their personal responsibility for their actions

Well, to the middle classes I would rather claim that your point of view is enticing. but it implies that you doesn`t have to care for anyone but yourself, because anyone who is poor, working class, mentally ill or has other problem is an evil lazy bastard, and deserves all the suffering they get. I would rather say that it is your point of view that breeds cynism and class hatred.

Anyhow, the non existence of personal responsibility does not imply that people should suffer no consequences for their actions. It still is sensible to make sure that actions have consequences, so the actions of people are directed in a manner that are positive for society as a whole and other people.

Well my genes dictate a lot of things to me, one being a very specific form of dyslexia. I'm terrible with numbers a lot of the time.

Well, such defects certainly gives people a disadvantage. The problem is hovewer, that you doesn`t just make people responsible for their own actions. It is one thing to blame people for stealing, drinking, taking drugs, smoking and other actions that people can take on their own. The real problem is that you keep people responsible for their economic situation. Your economic situation is a combination of your choices, and the choices of other people! To get to a certain economic position, you either have to be able to make other people hire your or buy your services.

That's what free will is. I was told when I was young that I would never be able to read or write properly, because I was a late developer. By your theory, I wouldn't be able to read your posts and write this rebuttal, because 'society' had decided I was unable to do so.

No, that is no proof of free will. It may just be the case of you being lucky, of some "good" genes compensating for your bad genes, or you experiencing positive external stimulus. Free will is not a question about what other people decide, it is a question about what really happens inside the human brain when a human being makes decisions.

They can, if they want, abdicate their responsibility and blame society for what has happened to them, or they can, like my family, work their way out of it. Ah yes, I haven't mentioned this have I?

No, it is not that easy. There is just a limited number of decent jobs at one time. Sure, their numbers can be increased, but they are not increased a huge number overnight. Actually, most of the decent jobs need someone doing the mennial jobs to exist. Without factory workers, cleaners, construction workers, shop workers and the other people you think "fails to take personal responsibility", society wouldn`t go round. Therefore, there will always be people that have to take these jobs. If one manages to better themselves and escape these jobs, the outcompete someone else who will have to take these jobs instead.

I think this focus of "opportunities" is a large defect off the rightwing. If you have fifty workers working for $5,5 an hour, and three of them have progressed in the span of twenty years, it is okay the the other forty seven lives because they had an "opportunity" to progress? Opportunites is the best instrument of oppression ever devised by man.

My father lost his business in 1989, a rather successful business it was, until the government decided to put a bypass around our town and destroyed almost 90% of his trade.

Actually, that makes the rest of your paragraph a rather poor argument. Here, you show that your father had already started a business earlier, and knew very well how to handle a business and become successfull. This implies that the odds of him starting another business very well above those who have never started or owned a business at all!

In your society of no free will, we would have simply existed at that state forever because we had no choice in the matter.

Of course not, here you use a straw man. The lack of free will does not imply that you cannot succeed, only that you have to have some sort of factors or luck on your side to succeed. Determinism implies that if you know everything about the situation and the factors that are relevant, you can be able to calculate the outcome. All that you says is possible even if free will does not exist.

You've mentioned elsewhere in this thread about the idea of choice. Choice, by implication, implies free will.

No, it certainly does not. A computer programs makes a lot of choices, but the outcome of all of them are in the end predictable. The same thing goes for the choices of humans. You can get the choice between two options, but it the basis of that choice is taken based upon previous experience and causal and effect relationships, the choice is not free. The fact that you have a will does not imply that that will is free.

Even if you have but two options, it's your own will that makes the choice. Not society, not the environment, not random chance.

Because? This implies that the human brain is governed by something that is either chance nor cause and effect. How is this possible?

The rest of that paragraph really felt like appeal to emotion, without me seing the direct relevance of any of it.

Creativity is the expression of free will.

No, it isn`t. Creativity is taking parts of the know, and putting it together in new patterns. Actually, it is provable that creation does not need free will. Did free will exist before human beings? Look at the evolution of the earth! It evolved an atmosphere, the first animals appeared and the first plants apperad, heck, the whole solar system came into being without any free will working in it at all! The existence of a free will is not a precondition for creation or evolution.

Hitler himself argued in a similar way to you. He spoke of the need for people to conform to society for the greater good.

Well, that`s exactly what the marked does! In a market economy, you get money by satisfying other people needs. If you don`t satisfy the needs of other people, you get now money. If that doesn`t breed some kind of conformity, what does? What I think is that people should have the right to live, regardless of what other people may think. Actually, here communists, libertarians and nazis are just the same, the individual exists to satisfy others. If you don`t satisfy other people in a market economy, you starve. Actually, what you are expousing is one of the core principles of nazism, social darwinism. Actually, the nazis got a lot of inspiration from libertarian thinkers like Herbert Spencer and Bernhard Sumner.

To him, the idea of free will was something to be destroyed, removed and supressed, since it made for a highly compliant society that could be easilly moulded in to whatever shape you wanted.

Actually, that is not true. The nazis actually appreciated individual initatives. Of course, critizising the state was an excemption from this rule, but other initiatives were greatly appreciated. An example being the german command structure, which was the most decentralized command structure of any major army during WW2.

It is the nation that must be preserved at the cost of the individual. This is the unfortunate logical conclusion of your argument.

No, it is exactly the opposite. The conclusion to my argument is that human beings have an unconditional right to live. Not a right "not to be killed" like you believe, but the right to live. The right to live regardless of whether the collective appreciates it or not. The right to live a decent life regardless of other people/the market thinks that it deserves to live a decent life.

These are collective entities.

The market is also to a large degree a collective entity. The market is a collection of people bound together by mutual dependence, and affected by the decisions that other people make.

When the nation takes precedence over individual choice, you have a dictatorship in everything but name.

Actually, I think that it is your position is nazi, in that you think that society should "dump" those who does not fit int and do not to a large enough extend satisfy the needs of other people.

[Proximo]

Well, to the middle classes I would rather claim that your point of view is enticing. but it implies that you doesn`t have to care for anyone but yourself, because anyone who is poor, working class, mentally ill or has other problem is an evil lazy bastard, and deserves all the suffering they get. I would rather say that it is your point of view that breeds cynism and class hatred.

Who's creating straw men now? Class hatred eh? Well, some of my best friends are middle class... that was a joke, by the way. I don't distinguish people by class. It's divisive. I distinguish by those willing to take their life and make something of it, and those that aren't. You may be surprised to learn that those middle class people are a lot less likely to try and break out of their comfortable little lives because it threatens their comfortable little income. What is generally referred to as the working class - my class, if you wish to classify me, is a lot more likely to take the risk and grasp opportunity when it presents itself.

You seem to be misinterpreting what I said. It's more than likely I didn't explain my position properly, so I'll do it again, and try to be concise.

My points are thus:

1) We are individuals. We have individual will.
2) Yet we are a society, and have a responsibility to others as well as ourselves. This i no way diminishes our individuality nor our free will.
3) That we have a responsibility to ourselves for our own actions. We do not operate in a vacuum, that much is true, but neither can we simply lay responsibility for our situation entirely at the feet of society.

You mention choice, and then dismiss the ability to choose as not free will, using a computer as an analogy. I know computers pretty well. They don't have free will. They are bound by strict instructional guidelines, and are limited only to specific choices. We humans, on the other hand, aren't limited to the choices presented. We can choose to not choose. That takes a will, to deny that either choice is correct and to take a completely different path. Choosing an option that isn't present implies free will.

Finally, I have never never said that society should 'dump' those that are really unable to care for themselves. We do have a responsibility for people who fall down, as it were, but that doesn't change the fact that people need to take responsibilty for their own state whenever possible. By implication, this requires that from time to time the individual will take precedence over the collective. This, of course, works both ways. The individual without the ability to survive will take precedence over those that do have the ability. The individual choice is required to care for those that cannot care for themselves. In the real world it is the individual that makes things happen, not the collective. The nation is an entity that only exists becuase of the individual. Now, Hitler and his nazis thought in the reverse. To him, the individual existed only because of the nation, and therefore lived and died to serve the nation. Of course he was a nationalist and a socialist, so he would say such things...

It isn't 'nazi' to say that people should take responsibility for themselves. It isn't 'nazi' to say that people should try to care for themselves as far as possible. It's common sense. If people become reliant on the state for their life, they become vassals to the state, and are obliged to follow along with the wishes of the state if they wish to survive. If people take their lives in to their own hands - again, the definition of free will - then they are not obliged to submit themselves to any entity unless they choose to do so. This is free will. The choice to submit, the choice to give up your will. The choice to take a different path than those presented to you.

I shall reiterate (in fancy words); when the individual will is sublimated to the will of the state, or the corporation, or the collective of 'society', you have a dictatorship in everything but name.

It's common sense. If people become reliant on the state for their life, they become vassals to the state, and are obliged to follow along with the wishes of the state if they wish to survive.

Well, it isn`t the state that make people work for 70 hours a week for a lousy wage and horrible working conditions to make ends meet. People are dependent on other people whichever way you put ut. There is a great difference between being dependent on the state, and being dependent on other people. That state MUST give help if the recipient satisfies certain criteria. Because of that, people on welfare may still critize that state. Heck, people on welfare is one of the most vocal groups in critizing the holy cows of the left here i Norway, like immigration and state sponsorered art. The difference is that a private person or employer can revoke the bond whenever the wish. A privat employer can in a free market fire someone because of their opinions or choose not to hire someone because the way they look or talk. That state hovewer, may not choose to deny welfare based on such criteria. With welfare, you have an unconditional right to live. With the marked, you have a right to live as long as other people think that you satisfy their needs.

Actually, the people on "Permament welfare", like those on disabillity, are in many ways less responsive to external pressure than any other group in society, simply because the state does not have the possibility to revoke that support. For dependence to be used as a tool of oppression, the state has to able to revoke the support it gives to the dependent on will, something the state in most welfare states are not able to do.

Actually, I find your arguments in this paragraph to be rather dishonest.

If people take their lives in to their own hands - again, the definition of free will - then they are not obliged to submit themselves to any entity unless they choose to do so.

That dependes on your options. If you are not attractive on the labour market, your options are severly limited! And you MUST take a felgercarbty job to survive. In a moderne society, you HAVE to work to get money. If you don`t work or go on welfare, you starve.

Again, you argue as if people were independent of each other, something they are not. You only get a job if OTHER PEOPLE agrees to hire you. You can only create a successfull business if other people decide to buy your services. The fact that people are so dependent on each other in a modern society, means that you can get power over other people without useing any form of coercion whatsoever. Simply because you control what other people need to fulfill their goals, in this instance jobs. Actually, I think that a market in itself bars people taking control of their own life, because in every trade in the market, there is two parties, and as long as both parties are not coerced into agreeing on the trade, none of the parts are in complete control of the situation. As your possibilites in a society with a division of labour are governed by the trades you do with other people, you cannot possible be in control of your own destiny in a society with a division of labour, because you are dependant on the decisions on other people on every turn.

Also, capitalism actually implies the use of coercion to force people to work for other people. People are dependent on resources from the enviroment to live like food, water, timber for housing and so on. When you have property rights, people own what other people need to survive. If you own a field, you deny other people the right to farm that land by use of force. Which means that in a society with property rights of any kind over land and resources, you MUST work for others or sell products to others to get all that you need.

This is free will. The choice to submit, the choice to give up your will. The choice to take a different path than those presented to you.

No, that is not free will. That is your decision not being governed be the decisions of other people, which you actually have not persuaded me is the case in a purely capitalist society.

Free will is that your decisions is determined by something else than cause and effect relationships or random quantum physical phenomena. That there exist some kind of consiousness that both can enforce it`s will to determine what decisions you shall take, and at the same time is not governed by outside forces.

I actually prefer the physical definition of free will: "Free will implies that a certain mix of particles reacts differently in the context of the human brain, than that same composition of particles would function elsewhere in nature", or something like that.

when the individual will is sublimated to the will of the state, or the corporation, or the collective of 'society', you have a dictatorship in everything but name.

The only way that human beings can be really free, is in a primitive anarchistisc society with no property rights and no division of labour

Of course he was a nationalist and a socialist, so he would say such things...

Well, Hitler actually killed or exiled all the socialists in the party. Many decent people like Ernst Røhm and the Strasser brothers fell victim to that purge. What really is interesting is that the nazis got nearly all their votes form the right. The working classes continued to vote for the communists and the SPD, while the liberals and conservatives all but dissapeared. After the final free elections, the liberals got only a couple of representatives in the reichstag, and the conservatives were wiped out, having lost almost every voter to the nazis. Also, the conservative nationalist party, the party of the german bourgoise, was the party that acutally got Hitler enough votes to get into power. The nazis were also pro family and very anti "affirmative action", good conservative values. Unlike the socialdemocratic countries, economic differences actually increased in Germany during Hitlers reign, while the western countries including the US became more egalitarian.

The individual choice is required to care for those that cannot care for themselves.

Privat charities aren`t anything but a cruel joke. Charities hasn`t got anything near the capacity to handle the poverty problems in a modern country. And all it does is to give the needy a bowl of soup and a bed to sleep in in the same room as hundread other homeless people. Private charity does not increase the wages of the lowly skilled, something that state welfare programs do.

They don't have free will. They are bound by strict instructional guidelines, and are limited only to specific choices. We humans, on the other hand, aren't limited to the choices presented.

Yes, computers are still very primitive, but it`s quite possible that they may be so advanced in the future, that the can do everything that a human being can. The point was that choices does not require free will, something that computers, though they still are simple, actually can do. And human choices are also limited. We can`t chose to fly to the stars or dig our way to China with our bare hans.

We can choose to not choose.

Well, that is also a choice in a way. The brain still has to process the "request" and decide not to decide anything.

That takes a will, to deny that either choice is correct and to take a completely different path. Choosing an option that isn't present implies free will.

No, it does not imply free will, because the option can be known, even if it isn`t present. We can chose the option to fly to Mars, but the thought of flying to Mars is know to us. And as I stated earlier, new ideas are often new sensory data and old ideas arranged in a new manner.

That we have a responsibility to ourselves for our own actions. We do not operate in a vacuum, that much is true, but neither can we simply lay responsibility for our situation entirely at the feet of society.

I made a distinction on that in my previous thread. Something you can blame the individual for, but other things you can`t blame the individual for, even if it has free will. You can`t blame someone because others choose not to hire them, even if they have done what they can to make themselves attractive. You can`t blame anyone for not having the IQ to handle complex math or get a masters degree in some other subject.

[Proximo]

... and still, nothing you say actually disproves the concept of free will. All it proves is that, like all human beings (myself included) you've taken a viewpoint and you're sticking to it, damn the consequences. Personally, I think you're wrong. If we have no true free will then we aren't any better than... well, rocks. Or trees. Or crap like that. Determinism, which is what you're talking about, requires that we take paths because that's our destiny. In that case, it is simply the destiny of some to be poor. This is where your argument goes, not mine. Yours. If we have no free will, if all our choices are predetermined and predictable, then why fight it? Why try to lift the poor out of their state? Indeed, why try to remove these class barriers that have been erected? It is, after all, determined to be thus.

Your argument, logically concluded.

But, again, it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. At the metaphysical level, in the realm of self-awareness, your mind can function in a process of cause without effect, and effect without cause. Imagination does the impossible of creating something from nothing, substance from the insubstantial. Your thoughts follow set patterns and at the same time race off along tangents that have nothing to do with the cause of the thought.

proximo, I really enjoyed reading this and it has aspects of the spiritual in it. I also enjoyed your reference to art in this debate. Interesting tangents.

I dont understand how the agruement surrounding the free will is conected to forms of government. Futher to that it seems like it took on morale aspects to that effect. If human brains are effected by physics and our free will is limited isn't this a scientific arguement not a morale arguement? There have been many different types of societies, everyone of them produced by the human brain. So if we have free will or not(or even occaisionally we have inspired moments of free will) these societies are all products of this brain.

Why try to lift the poor out of their state? Indeed, why try to remove these class barriers that have been erected? It is, after all, determined to be thus.

On all the educational programs that I watch regarding first humans, one of the first things that is mentioned is that there is evidence of people caring for one another. In one program it talk of finding a body of one of man's ancestors. This body had a broken leg that had been mended before he had died. They explained that someone else would have had to look after this man in order for his survial to have taken place and the wound to have mended. I believe that caring for one another is a centeral part of being human.

Norwegian,

I find that you are talking more about social control than the therory of free will. I am not clear on your arguements. I agree that our survival instincts might force our choices in certain situations. I am not sure if the fact that I choose to conform my style of dress so I get a good job and can eat precludes me from having a free choice in an area where my survival is not at stake. I also believe that the more we are conceouis of those forces that work upon us the more oppurtunity for free choice exists

[Proximo]

Originally Posted by kat

proximo, I really enjoyed reading this and it has aspects of the spiritual in it. I also enjoyed your reference to art in this debate. Interesting tangents.

Thank ye. You've made some good points yourself, and I'd like to have a go at addressing them if I may...

I dont understand how the agruement surrounding the free will is conected to forms of government. Futher to that it seems like it took on morale aspects to that effect. If human brains are effected by physics and our free will is limited isn't this a scientific arguement not a morale arguement? There have been many different types of societies, everyone of them produced by the human brain. So if we have free will or not(or even occaisionally we have inspired moments of free will) these societies are all products of this brain.

My experience has often been that authoritarian societies promote the subjugation of the individual in favour of the collective, whereas liberal societies often promote the exact opposite. The latter also promotes the idea of free will, which ties in to freedom of thought, freedom of speech and all the other freedoms that people generally like to bang on about. In an authoritarian government, you have little choice in anything important, because it's assumed that the average person either can't make choices, or doesn't have the capacity to choose right and wrong. A liberal government leaves as many choices as it can to 'the people' who, admittedly, often operate as a group regardless.

So yes, the societies are the product of the human brain, but in some cases they're the product of a small set of people who think they're superior to the average and know better. Ultimately that again comes down to a moral, not a scientific judgement. The science behind it is, as I said, more metaphysical than physical since, at the quantum level, cause and effect aren't always a given.

I mean obviously, we're driven in a large part by our instincts and our genes, but there's enough of the brain devoted to finding novel ideas to push us in to the realms of free will.

Not to mention, I have a great deal of trouble with a world that doesn't have free will. If this is such a world, it negates the very foundations of my own faith, and that disturbs me greatly as I'm sure you can imagine.

I believe that caring for one another is a centeral part of being human.

Definitely. But, that doesn't negate free will, since it's possible to decide not to care... but you're right, it is part of us to a greater or lesser degree.