Posted by PseudoName on September 30, 1999 at 02:50:08:
In Reply to: Re: the aristocrat, the bohemian, and thoughts on chicken soup posted by Tal on September 28, 1999 at 00:02:51:
Of course, you cannot determine what circumstances you will find yourself in. You can determine what attitude you will take toward those circumstances. I am not saying, 'free will is absolute'. My point is that at the level of thought, independent to what happens to you, the world around you, etc. you CHOOSE what your attitude will be. This is about what happens at the level of thought and the internal process. It is only at this level, that we have any real control at all. You choose, how you will react. You choose, how you will act. This is the difference, between the person who lays down and dies and the person who CHOOSES to fight. It's not about outcome, guys. It's about choice at the level of mind and will.
: You're effectively creating two boxes and saying "we here, in one box, have freedom. Those people over there, in the other box, have no freedom." PN and Deecee are taking the opposite stance and sticking everyone in one box, complete with freedom of choice, batteries included. Myself, I don't think it's either. I think the question of free will is tricky enough in itself; to me it seems quite plausible that our brain is nothing but a computer forever searching for the best possible course of action (something that would negate free will). I'm not saying I believe this, just that to argue over who has free will and who doesn't depends on what exactly you accept as axiomatic about free will to begin with. Because if, in keeping with the computational theory of mind, we are essentially just machines in search of a fix, then the only difference between me and a starving African is that his conditions predispose him towards more misery than mine do. And that has nothing to do with free will, or choice, or anything of the like.
: If, on the other hand, you take the existence of free will for granted, then I think what you get in any case isn't two boxes of yes free will and no free will; I think you get a gradient. External conditions may certainly *limit* your choices, but, unless you're dead, there's no way to eliminate them entirely. Really, it's no different than a rat in the maze. If there only two ways to go at each junction, the rat has less choice to make than if there are seventy or eighty.
: So sure, your average African child probably has, in a certain context (and an important one, no doubt) less choice than the average Westerner. But again, it's a gradient. All human beings have the ability to make choices. Some are more limited than others in terms of the potential outcome. Obviously, it's our duty to try and remedy this.
: But then the thing is it can become much trickier if you start to look at things from a group perspective rather than an individual one. You could say that you and I have the freedom to post on this board because our forefathers or whoever fought for those liberties and so on and so forth. Yet, if you take an African nation at random, you can see clearly that the people at the top, who have just as much 'choice' as a Westerner (hell, if choice is based on living conditions, they're in luck) are responsible for the people at the bottom being more limited. So the question is: can you say, on the one hand, that our freedom is really ours, given that other people's actions ensured we would have it? As opposed to a different society where the situation is reversed and the rulers keep a short leash on the people? I don't know. It's difficult to call these things. It's certainly not as simple, I don't think, as either you or PN and Deecee make it out to be. I don't have an answer. I'm just pointing out that both arguments are fairly elementary, given that there are many other things you might want to consider before coming to a conclusion.