[lit-ideas] Re: Do You Have Free Will?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 12:39:23 EDT
In a message dated 4/4/2011 12:49:35 P.M., jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx
writes:
>The price of free will
>An excerpt from a lecture on the freedom free will by Michael Geary in
Freedom Hall. Admission
----- Speranza had suggested we called this "Eleutherian Hall" -- "More
classy, no?". Geary's reply is not on record.
>Admission was free to those willing to freely admit they have no free
will. Others were not admitted.
----- (Speranza had complained that this would result in a 'biased'
audience ("You'll only get a deterministic, noncompatibilist sort of audience
--
and 'for free', too. But I suppose you know who you need to educate").
---
Excerpts:
Geary writes:
""Free at last, free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!" But
will it last? That's the question. Freedom's not free, they say. Ah!
But do they say so of their own free will? There's the rub. We all like a
good rub down, but no one likes to be rubbed the wrong way. Wrong? The
word makes me think of "right". Notice I said: "makes me think." The key
phoneme here is "ke". KE is what turns the potentiality [the MA(Y)] of make
into the done deal. What is it that makes me think anything? Right or
wrong, I think. I think Decartes said that. We can't not think. Not even
for a second. I've tried. Everybody here, in this hall, try right now,
empty your mind of all thoughts. Don't think anything for ten seconds.
Ready. Start....one.......[4 second delay]................................
two............[5 second delay...................three....... [A shout from
the audience: "That's too slow."] Too slow, the man says. A show of
hands -- how many of you thought I was counting slower than a second? [all
in the audience raise their hands] Thank you for proving my point. You
people have no control over your own minds. You do not have free will. Will
has free-you. Will uses you freely to effect its own desires and
devices. You're not YOU, you're the servant, nay, the slave of Will. Where
do
you think the term "willy-nilly" comes from? Nil, means none in Latin. To
go about willy-nilly is to go around and without any will. Willy-nillyitis
is the itch to "do" but with no controling agent. It's like being in a car
with a broken steering wheel, but you don't know it's broken because you
don't have a destination. I think that about sums it up. Or divides it
down the middle or maybe it's all total loss. Is life a zero divisor? Who
knows? Who cares? End of Lecture. Go home. Mike Geary (nee Fred Freeman)
Memphis Motivational Ministry
-------
"Freedom's not free"
--------[ (Speranza offered a Strawsonian formalisation.
Suppose we formalise 'free' by the letter or predicate "f"
we say
x is f
Something is free.
This is what Strawson calls first-order predicate calculus. The options are
multiple but best seen as a square
A ---- E
I ---- O
For A, we have, "all is free". In symbols (x)Fx
For E: Nothing is free.
For I: Something is free.
For O: Something is not free.
----- ("Balloney", murmured Geary).
"The fun comes when we transfer this to a second-order predicate calculus,
as per Geary's casual,
"Freedom is not free, they say".
Where 'they' does not require contextual anaphorisation (It is obvious he
refers to his mother. If Geary's mother is NOT included by the use of 'they'
in "they say" how _they_ can 'they' be?)
The statement,
"Freedom is not free"
allows for what Strawson (in "Subject and predicate in logic and grammar",
Methuen) calls 'first-grade reduction".
Consider
the relation " = "
we say
"2 = 2"
but also
"2 = 1 + 1"
We say that 'identity' is symmetrical. This sort of claim also involves
this higher-order predication which should ALWAYS be reduced to a first-order
predication.
In the case of
"Freedom is not free"
there is an implicature ('but merely an implicature, not an implication"
Geary hastens to stipulate) of paradox.
"How can freedom not be free?"
It would seem that if we start from
A (x)Fx --- all is free
Then, freedom HAS to be free.
------ "Non sequitur." Geary commented. "By the same token you would say
that redness is red. But it ain't. Apples are red, and lips are red. But
redness ain't red. Mutatis mutandis, freedom."
------
A participant of the seminar objected to the focusing on 'free' as applied
to 'Will".
""Freedom", he said, "is more general than 'free' as when we apply 'free'
to 'free will'"
-------
"In fact, the correct suffix should be -ness. Free-ness. -Dom is an archaic
suffix."
"The latinate suffix is -y, as in 'libert-y'"
"But liberty ain't freedom"
------
"Plus, what _is_ 'libert'?
-----
At this point Geary expanded on the formation of Latin nouns. ""Libertas"
was the nominative in Latin. It was represented as a woman, hence the
feminine gender. Whereas Freedom, in Anglo-Saxon, was neuter or epicene. When
The
French brought the statue to New York, the point was made to call her
"Freedom" -- but we thought "Liberty" was better since it ("liberty", feminine
in Latin) was appropriately represented by a female. And the idiom stuck."
-----
"Why is it that _will_ need to be 'free'?"
"It need not. But you are free to think otherwise."
At this point, Geary repeated his slogan, "Go home."
----
JLS
----- for the Swimming-Pool Library
Appendix.
Eleutheric constraints!
From an online source:
_http://yessenin-volpin.org/onthelogic.pdf_
(http://yessenin-volpin.org/onthelogic.pdf)
I appreciate the attempt to disambiguate 'free' by sticking with the Greek,
'eleutheric'"
"By the term ‘freedom1’ (svoboda) [Since there are no English terms which
convey the contrast of svobodny and vol’ny, subscripts will be used: ‘
free1’ and ‘free2’] I mean the quality of acts of not being obstructed, i.e.,
impeded by obstacles; I call such act free1 (svobodny).
I call an activity free1 if in any of its situations every one of its acts
is free1, etc. I call an agent free1 if his activity is free1.
In this way the term ‘freedom1’ signifies a quality of both an action and
an agent.
In this case, in particular, ‘obstacles’ are understood as eventual
obstacles.
The organic possibility of an act or an activity is compatible with the
presence
of an eventual obstacle which will not be realized. Therefore one may have
the
possibility of performing unfree1 acts and carrying on an unfree1 activity.
An activity encountering obstacles is not free1, but if these obstacles are
overcome, a wider activity, including overcoming these obstacles within
it, may be
free1.
A free1 act can be compelled. This often happens since a person compelling
an
act usually does not obstruct this act and may even eliminate obstacles.
I call the quality of an act’s not being compelled its freedom (vol’nost)
and the
activity consisting only of free2 (vol’ny) acts free2,— in which case I
ignore
compulsions deriving from the requirements of the activity itself (i.e.,
describing its tactics). I call an agent free2 if his activity is free2 and
if, in addition, he has not been
compelled to choose it. I call this capacity in an agent his freedom2.
A free2 act may be unfree2 , and the same is true of an activity or agent.
Ordinary language uses these terms inconsistently, creating a powerful
obstacle
to their correct usage.
"Therefore, a term is needed designating the combination of
freedom1 and freedom2."
"I will designate this combination by the Greek word
e/eutheria, and I will call acts, activities, and agents which are both
free1 and free2 eleutheric."
"Even this term is not felicitous in all respects. I call the absence of
obstacles to
the opposite act the independence of an act (understanding opposites as a
pair of acts
[A, not-A]—not-not-A-acts can usually be identified with A; in the
contrary case the
question becomes more complicated)."
"I will call an act which possesses this property
independent, an activity made up only of independent acts independent, and
I will call
the doer (agent) of an independent activity independent if the very choice
of the
activity is independent for him or if this activity is not selected by him
and he did not
have obstacles to prevent his selecting it."
"Acts compelled by the rules of an activity
(including rules of external activities) are not considered as obstacles
here.
Independence is certainly a narrower quality than freedom2 (i.e., an
independent act
must he free2, etc.)."
"Sometimes it is convenient to consider ‘eleutheria’ as the
combination of freedom1 and independence."
"I prefer to call this eleutheria in the
narrower sense, keeping the previous meaning for eleutheria."
"Morality can be established for the most varied purposes."
"It may he as hostile to
the freedom1 and freedom2 of an activity as one could wish."
And so on.
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