Free Will and Choice...Stick with Me on This
Ok, so I have been thinking about this ever since I had a class discussion/assignment on this. Couple this with my interest in theology, religion, questions of authority/authorship, and contradictions in doctrines and dogmas and we have the following. I would love your thoughts (especially Amanda and Tucker).
So, most of understand or were taught to understand that free will meant the freedom to make a choice. And therein lies the problem. There is a difference between freedom of will and freedom of choice. The latter means you are free, able and capable of making a decisions when offered two or more options. The first implies and literally means that there are no boundaries to the choices that are being given. They are simply there. The second someone tells you, "Here are your choices. Decide," your free will has been compromised.
Take for example Adam and Eve. They were given the free will to make their own choice, but that is not true. They were told that either of their choices had consequences. By someone else's design their ability to freely make their own choice was influenced and colored by someone else's warning and impediment. Had God never said anything about the tree and had Satan never tempted Eve, THAT would be an example of free will. Eve, beind idly curious, would eat the apple and suffer the consequences as a result of her freely making a choice. Of course, gaining knowledge is not really a punishment. A doctrine I will attack at some point on in this blog as it speaks of so many problems.
I mean consider Plato's "Crito," or even better, Walter Stace's essay on determinism and free will. If there is no free will there can be no morality. Morality is concerned with what men ought and ought not to do. But if a man has no freedom to chose what he will do, if whatever he does is done under compulsion, then it does not make sense to tell him that he ought not to have done what he did and that he ought to have done something different.
Stick with me...
The difference is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion about meanings of words. It is a semantic problem. A problem created by the fact that people have assumed an incorrect definition of free will.
A certain definition of actions done from free will was assumed, namely that they are actions not wholly determined by causes...free will was defined as meaning indeterminism. This is the incorrect definition which has led to the denial of free will.
For example:
Mr. Jones fasts because he is lost in a desert and has no food. He does not do this of his own free will. He has no choice.
Ghandi fasted because he was passively protesting. He could have gone on eating. He used his own free will to choose not to eat.
The only reasonable view is that all human actions, both those which are freely done and those not, are either wholly determined by causes, or at least as much determined as other events in nature.
If this is confusing...welcome to the wonderful world of rhetoric and semantics.
So....your view?
Ok, so I have been thinking about this ever since I had a class discussion/assignment on this. Couple this with my interest in theology, religion, questions of authority/authorship, and contradictions in doctrines and dogmas and we have the following. I would love your thoughts (especially Amanda and Tucker).
So, most of understand or were taught to understand that free will meant the freedom to make a choice. And therein lies the problem. There is a difference between freedom of will and freedom of choice. The latter means you are free, able and capable of making a decisions when offered two or more options. The first implies and literally means that there are no boundaries to the choices that are being given. They are simply there. The second someone tells you, "Here are your choices. Decide," your free will has been compromised.
Take for example Adam and Eve. They were given the free will to make their own choice, but that is not true. They were told that either of their choices had consequences. By someone else's design their ability to freely make their own choice was influenced and colored by someone else's warning and impediment. Had God never said anything about the tree and had Satan never tempted Eve, THAT would be an example of free will. Eve, beind idly curious, would eat the apple and suffer the consequences as a result of her freely making a choice. Of course, gaining knowledge is not really a punishment. A doctrine I will attack at some point on in this blog as it speaks of so many problems.
I mean consider Plato's "Crito," or even better, Walter Stace's essay on determinism and free will. If there is no free will there can be no morality. Morality is concerned with what men ought and ought not to do. But if a man has no freedom to chose what he will do, if whatever he does is done under compulsion, then it does not make sense to tell him that he ought not to have done what he did and that he ought to have done something different.
Stick with me...
The difference is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion about meanings of words. It is a semantic problem. A problem created by the fact that people have assumed an incorrect definition of free will.
A certain definition of actions done from free will was assumed, namely that they are actions not wholly determined by causes...free will was defined as meaning indeterminism. This is the incorrect definition which has led to the denial of free will.
For example:
Mr. Jones fasts because he is lost in a desert and has no food. He does not do this of his own free will. He has no choice.
Ghandi fasted because he was passively protesting. He could have gone on eating. He used his own free will to choose not to eat.
The only reasonable view is that all human actions, both those which are freely done and those not, are either wholly determined by causes, or at least as much determined as other events in nature.
If this is confusing...welcome to the wonderful world of rhetoric and semantics.
So....your view?
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on Monday, May 02, 2005 at 11:00 PM.
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