conform = prison
Sophia wrote:
Would you define what free will is for you? You see as I was reading your post I got a little bit lost. At the start your stand seems clear that man is not free but as you were closing your point you seem to have shattered that stand. If what you mean by free will is absolute freedom then yes you’re right for man can never be absolutely free. But I believe that man can choose to have a certain amount of freedom even if there is the ever imprisoning presence of society. If a man does not want to conform to the “norms” of society then that’s freedom. If he does not mind to be a deviant even if the people around him are making fun of him because he is doing things not in the “normal” way then that man is exercising his freedom. If a person does not just accept everything that society says is right and if he uses his mind in reflecting what is wrong and right then that man is free. Further, if you deny the idea that man has freedom you construct this notion that God is a mere puppeteer.. That we are just his puppets. Now do you want a god like that? Certainly the God that I believe in is not like that. He gave us a choice: be free or be a prisoner.
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Hehe this is what I and my girlfriend has been debating on for a month already. Absolute freedom is precisely what I have told her.
Would you define what free will is for you?
Free will is defined as the ability or discretion to choose; free choice. But I refuse to stop there. Free will is the power to decide without external and internal interventions. Free from external interventions meaning that no man or any external circumstance can qualify a man's ability to decide. Free from internal intervention meaning, no circumstance should a man's decision be compromised by anything that troubles his conscious being. Therefore, if a man's decision is qualified by anyone, by any circumstance and by his fear of being rejected by the society or anyone for that matter, then man has no free will.
Free will is the power to make free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate, divine will or societal pre-conceived notions.
Freedom is absolute so to speak. It is the liberty from external and internal oppressions. There can be no freedom with such oppressions and there can be no free will without freedom. Man is a conforming animal, only selected few, I included, chooses not to conform to nature and society. And if man chooses to conform, he conforms absolutely with society, thus imprisoning himself in what the society thinks as moral or immoral.
If you deny the idea that man has freedom you construct this notion that God is a mere puppeteer
Man makes God his puppeteer. Surely, God gave man the ability to think for him to become ultimately accountable with his actions. God further teaches man His words to set the criteria good and evil. However, man perverts God's teachings and imprisons himself in the dogmatic world of his religion. God's teachings are often perverted and propagated by mere mortals and fellow sinners. Had man refused to accept each and every dogma that he thinks undermines his being rational, then he makes his God his puppeteer.
posted by ray john @ 1:40 PM
19 Comments:
So it is clear then. If you equate free will to absolute freedom then yes it does not exist in this world for absolutes are for gods not for mortals like us. But when I say “freedom” without the adjective “absolute” I believe we mortals possess this for freedom has certain degrees depending on how a person can be so daring and courageous as to oppose the existing “norms” and laws in the world.
About “God as a puppeteer”, I meant to say here that He gave us minds for us to think and reflect about what is right and wrong. Puppets do not think, they follow blindly… without thinking about what the puppeteer is saying. So therefore since God gave us the freedom to think, re-think, reflect and re-reflect things that He says, He is no puppeteer. You see you are right that some of His teachings have been perverted and misinterpreted by those who have the power in religions. Maybe God perceived this that is why He gave us the power to think about what the Church says. And through this thinking and reflecting, a person then shall see what are the perverted teachings and the clean and true ones. Therefore that person will believe and live through those teachings that he thinks are not perverted. For me this freedom is His greatest gift to mankind.
working on your argument, suffice to say that man has choices and that is both rational and empirical enough to make a choice out of his reasons and senses. but such choice is necessitated by external circumstances and not by his will to make one out of his own free volition. only non-conformists have freedom for they liberate themselves from what
other "free" people are imposing on him.
no man is free who is not a master of himself, so did epictetus say.
and no man is a master of himself who is a prisoner of what his fellow sinners have imposed on him.
yes, there nothing debate on the argument that God is no puppeteer. my only pint is that, man makes his God his own puppeteer, when man follows what faithful mortals impose, but does not really feel like doing so.
OK, but I think I only got confused with your last line with you saying:
“Had man refused to accept each and every dogma that he thinks undermines his being rational, then he makes his God his puppeteer.”
I think there is some kind of an error here. When man refused to accept and follow the laws that his rationality says is wrong then he does not make his God a puppeteer unless I have misunderstood what you really meant by saying such so pardon me if I did.
Another thing, I think it was Pythagoras who said that “No man is free who can not command himself.” unless my limited memory betrayed me again. Anyway yes that is true and I agree with that.
So I guess there really is no argument here. Yes there can be no absolute freedom but we can have a considerable amount of it if we wanted to. It is just a matter of choice.
But I’m having another thought. You equated freedom with conforming, right? I think we should not stop there. You see I think we are being bias for people who do not conform with the society (I don’t consider myself as a pure non-conformist for there are times that conforming is inevitable and not all norms are bad). I think some of them but definitely not all (conformists) are also exercising their freedom in some ways. How? Maybe they find rationality in having a complete faith in their God (regardless that that faith looks irrational at times). Maybe they reflected and thought that this is what I want to be, to be a faithful being and not to question the existing norms and laws. Maybe they are happy being like that and it saves them the effort and time from reflecting and thinking too much. And maybe those norms and laws that we feel are wrong are actually right for them. Whew, now I am confused. But then I know some of them do not really think for they just follow what others are doing and these people are the real prisoners. So I guess it goes down to thinking and reflecting things over and having your own stand and choice on matters to be called “free”.
sorry mali nga.. it should have been "accept" instead of "refuse to accept".typo..i stand corrected, thank you..
phytagoras said what you have just posted, the thing i posted was the exact words of epictetus.. same line of thinking, differing levels of verbosity.hehe
its ok for a non-conformist to conform because being a non-conformist is not absolute anyway.you see, i think that conformity and non-conformity comes from man's rationality. such norm or law may solicit man's approval, some may not, depending on how man's reason sees as such.
i also am a practicing catholic and i have my God to believe in to. yet i dont believe in everything that the church professes. i dont believe in saints, i dont believe in priests vow of chastity, i dont believe in all of the church's icons of symbolism. i.e. ash thing, palm sunday, the no-meat thing every holy week ( i cant remember the term, sorry to all of my theology professors since high school) and a lot more because i believe that these things are in contravention to what God has really said.
a decision to conform is in contingent if such norm or practice is acceptable to man. there is no clear cut criteria as to what makes man a non-conformist.
indeed i said that conformists are not free because blah blah blah.. but i did not say that non-conformists are free because no man is really free. even i am not.
man's choice is necessitated by man's need to make a decision, therefore, it is not, in any way, freedom.
well depending of course on what aspect do we use freedom here (as if naman hindi obvious. hehe) if we way politically free, then id say US is, we are not.hehe
hala lumayo na..
Ah, OK… thanks for the info. I also had a typo error there I mean you equated “prison” with “conform” but anyway you seem to have gotten the idea.
Hmmmm… so you think those practices transgress the real teachings of God? How come? I mean, how do you know? Now, don’t get me wrong I am also a Catholic and I go to church (well not every Sunday but whenever I could) but like you I don’t practice all those religious practices that the church says. I am just curious to know how you come to know that they are wrong for maybe it is not the same as mine.
“there is no clear cut criteria as to what makes man a non-conformist.”
Yes this is true for you see what is “normal” here may not be “normal” there. I mean societies differ from one another so it is hard to say what really the normal way of doing things is but yes in some matters there seem to be this likeness among them thus we call them “norms” but still maybe in some far away society it is actually not. No matter how hard we try to see things in black and white, things are most often than not in gray.
OK.. ok. I forgot that freedom is absolute for you so yes no man is really free if you look it that way.
Hmmm.. you really think that US is politically free? Wait, what do you mean when you say “politically free”?
At first glance the US seems very powerful that they can do whatever they want (which yes what they are actually doing considering what they did to Iraq and other countries) but I think the US is not really free politically speaking. Why? They are slaves to their political interests. Also they are dependent to their “slaves” or rather to other countries (which includes our beloved country big thanks to Gloria). Anyways.. that is just how I see it. Yes the US is acting like they are the king of this world but as Leo Tolstoy said: “Kings are history’s slaves.” Well US isn’t history yet but soon they will be.
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for example:
thou shall have any other God than I... thou shall not praise any other God than Him. thou shall not praise=thou shall not kneel=thou shall not pray at icons, statues, saints...
go and procreate... therefore procreation out of premarital sex is not immoral...
you see, the catholic church's views on certain issues are so clouded by their desire to remain the strongest religion in the land. all of the teachings that were perverted by human were done in the time that the state and the church are inseparably; where for one nation to gain territory religion should first be imparted; where religion then was equated with political power.
how do I know that these are wrong?
I think therefore I am
I agree for in the first place I don’t believe on marriage or at least not on the conventional way we do marriage. My only stand against PS is when people do it for lust and not for love.
You are quite a rationalist, I should say. But I think using Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum.” on that context is not that appropriate for he used it to prove existence. But yeah maybe you used it simply to imply that you use your reason more than your senses. I was a great fan of Descartes until I met Heidegger’s ontological approach to existence though I still use his “doubting method”. Anyways I think I’m going too far already.
in thinking you become a man and in being a man you are to know what you ought to and believe in it because it is a product of reasons
You are a rationalist, all right.
Ok, just to settle the matter. So you don’t believe that man has free will and freedom is absolute for you. But you don’t believe on fate too? So what is left for man, then?
For me, freedom exists though it is not absolute. It exists in certain degrees which shall depend on man. Yes, there is no free will in the absolute sense but there is will. There is no free will but there is will. So man has the capacity to affect and direct his or her life.
huh? how did you know that i dont belive in fate as well?
i never said that there is not will. there is indeed and that man has the capacity to control his life. only, he is not free and he will forever be burdened by his conformity with everything that he does not really want to conform to and by the things that nature imposes on him.
man is rational, that case in point, sufice to say that he can control his life. but this is necessitated by his survival not by his own free volition.
“…there is no such thing as fate.” You wrote this on your post entitled “adieu”.
“… (man) he is not free and he will forever be burdened by his conformity with everything that he does not really want to conform to and by the things that nature imposes on him.” Ok, I’ll start here. We have agreed that there are some people who do not conform to norms when they think that those rules and standards are wrong and that they are the non-conformists. So what do you call that “non-conforming” of those people? Yes, it is a choice which is accompanied by freedom which I know you would disagree for as you say “freedom is absolute” for you. But then how come you said on one of your comments here (the first one you posted) that: “only non-conformists have freedom for they liberate themselves from what other "free" people are imposing on him.” Let me get it straight now. What’s your real stand regarding freedom? Is it absolute or not?
Now, regarding free will. Free will for me means absolute freedom which I agree does not exist for us humans. But freedom exists. It is when you use your reason and decides to follow it even if it is against the norms. (I think I’m just repeating myself here but I’ll go on anyway.) A philosopher would even extend this freedom as to obeying moral laws. Immanuel Kant believes that man is a dual creature: he has a body and a mind. Since we have a body, we are not free for we are slaves of our needs. We do not have a choice of whether to eat or not. We have to eat in order to survive. But we also have minds which give us the capacity of reason. Now this is where humans can exercise their freedom for then they are given a choice as their reason would give them. Kant says that we exercise freedom when we obey moral laws which of course are universal. How can conforming to moral laws be an expression of freedom? A good example of a moral law would be: Thou shall not kill. When a person decides that he should not kill this particular person even if not killing that person may do him harm in the future, then he is free. Why? For he makes a moral choice from a law that is innate to him (moral law). Thus, he is acting freely for when he does the opposite of a moral law, he becomes a slave to his own interests and desires which obviously is not freedom at all.
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wait lemme flex my dull mind which was inactivated by series of accounting problems i solved......
We exercise freedom when we obey moral laws, which of course are universal - who says that moral laws are universal? Kant? Standards... not everything that is moral to the majority is moral to all, and what is immoral to the majority is not necessarily immoral to all.
I believe it is also Kant who said that philosophy couldn’t say that there are no real contradiction between physical necessity and freedom, because philosophy cannot give up the notion of nature more than that of freedom. (Something to that effect) therefore Kant did not really distinguished freedom from non-freedom (due to lack of more politically correct term)
You see, man really has a choice, but, likewise, ill repeat what I have been saying; such choice is not free for it is necessitated by causality.
Working on your argument, man has the power to move or not to move, to act or not to act, to think or not to think according to the dictates and preference of his mind. It is in this context that man is free.am I right with what I understood from your arguments?
However, any performance which are not equally in the man's power; any actions or non-actions that does not follow the preference of his mind, no matter how voluntary the action maybe, devoid man his freedom.
Therefore, it is in this context that man, though may have the capacity to think and to choose, is not free.
ooopppsss sorry for the "did not really distinguished" thing.. lapses... tired
So you don’t believe that there is a universal morality? Let me define terms first. “Standards” are what we call “norms” which are man-made laws or rules. Morality on the other hand deals with laws that are made not by man but by God. Morality is not the same as the standards set by mere mortals. Wait, do you believe in the existence of God? You see, morality is something innate to us. Do you think that God created us with no rules or laws to guide us? If that is true then He does not care about His creatures at all. So I believe that when God created man, He implanted ideas that would guide us on our lives. The law “Though shall not kill” for example, don’t you feel that it is something inside you that is telling you it is wrong to kill someone? You obey that moral law not because the government says so but because something inside you tells you to. Some says it is conscience, for some it is reason, and for others it is soul. But whatever terminology you want to call it, it is something inside you therefore other people have nothing to do with it. So it must be from God, don’t you think? You see, I understand your argument. I also had that kind of stand before but then I realized that I have fallen to the trap of relativism. You see you are arguing that everything then is relative. There is no truth anymore… only relativism. This kind of thinking rejects the idea of God’s existence for in the first place God is absolute. And if everything is relative then there is no absolute. Also, if you say morality is relative then don’t you think that man has free will? Since if God did not give us any rules to live by then don’t you think that we have absolute freedom? You see the other reason why man is not absolutely free is because of God’s existence. There is Someone up there who is greater and much more powerful than man… the One who set some of the rules in his life. Some people deny His existence for they don’t want someone to be greater than themselves. They make their own selves their “gods”… they think that no one is above them thus they “make” their own laws to live by which if you ask me is kind of absurd.
Now regarding Kant. Uhm.. he actually used the term “free will” rather than freedom. You see the problem of freedom can be very vague if you do not define what you mean by saying the term. Kant actually believed that everything obeys the law of causality. Now where is freedom then? As I have said, man acts freely when he obeys the innate laws inside of him and if he does not then he is a slave of his interests. That is freedom at least for Kant. I believe that this is a form of freedom for the mere fact that we are given a choice which is necessitated not by other people but something inside us. You see it goes down again to freedom not being absolute for it to exist.
I want to ask you this question. Do you not think that there is some sort of freedom involved when you are given a choice? The fact that you chose for example a over b, don’t you think that’s freedom?
hey, sorry ngayon lang, super busy with my review and other acad stuffs. anyway...
the standard morality thing is another issue, ill post my stand tomorrow. in the meantime, ill use your thou shall not kill illustration...
supposing mr x killed mr y, who's the son of mr y. in mr y's fury, he mauled and wanted to kill mr x.however,his desire to kill mr x was hindered by the written law against murder or homicide and the unwritten law of the church and by the words of God.
you see, this is what i am trying to point. no matter how voluntary the action is, if such goes against the intention of the person, then such imprisons man.
choices are illusions of those who have the power. but the mere choice between a and b devoids man the freedom that it hollowly uses to empower himself. the mere choice between a and b indicates that man is a prisoner of a and b. it is like a choice between philandering and not philandering. both imprisons man for the former has to take into consideration the moral views and in the latter, man has to take into consideration his personal desires.
it is in this context that man is not free.
you see, based on my observation, what is happening in this forum best exemplifies jean paul sartre's argument that existence precedes essence. (ah, tama ba? mukhang baliktad. got my mind entangled a bit) whatever. everything in this world is subject to man's subjectivity. you see freedom the way you do, i see mine the way i do. maybe this is because no one has really defined freedom, thus creating a gray area as to what constitutes it or what does not.
wait for the my morality post tomorrow. just to add another to debate on. hehe
ay mali, my apologies. mr x killed mr z, who is the son of mr y rather
Sorry for the typo error too.. it’s “thou” not “though”. Anyway..
Ok, so you are sticking to your belief that freedom is absolute, right? Hmmm.. all right.
Let me start with you saying: “the mere choice between a and b indicates that man is a prisoner of a and b.” Yes, I am aware of this that is why I keep saying that the freedom I am talking about is not absolute. It kind of reminds me of those survey questions that are “biased”. There should be “none of the above” or “abstain” choice from the choices for it to be fair but anyway there are instances in life that we simply have to make a choice and yes it is quite imprisoning. But freedom manifests itself even with these kinds of circumstances when man uses his own judgment and reason in choosing. This of course is my point and I am sticking with this too.
Ah, yeah… Sarte. Hmmm… yes, he did say something like that. He said that existence takes priority over essence. Wait, I think I can use his philosophy to elaborate my point. You see he said that man creates himself in the sense that we choose what we want to be.
He does not believe that we have an innate nature, we have to create it for ourselves. This means that he does not agree that there is such a thing as “human nature” and that man can never blame that so called “human nature” for his actions because in the first place it does not exist. We are responsible for all of our actions and for our becoming. Remember his famous line: “Man is condemned to be free.”? He believes that we are free beings and that this freedom condemns us from making choices. You see this is my point, though we are condemned to make choices, there is freedom there. He also said that in perceiving, we use our own interests and we put our own interpretation or meaning to it. This is important because since we do not have an innate nature, we then must really create our very own nature or selves by choosing what values to adopt. You even pointed this yourself by saying: “everything in this world is subject to man's subjectivity. you see freedom the way you do, i see mine the way i do.” Do you not think that when we are being subjective we are exercising our freedom? You see when we are being subjective it means that we use what is our own, our own beliefs, reasoning, and judgment, and we do not care about the others. Do you get my point? In this sense, as I was saying, that man has freedom. Though yes Sarte does not believe in the existence of an eternal and universal morality for you see he is quite an atheist. But still, if man is condemned then who condemned him? Did he condemn himself? I don’t think so. Anyway… it is up to us to convert the “curse” into a blessing or something good. Now that is freedom.
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