this thread has the potential to change your life

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Gordon Gekko, Jul 21, 2006.

  1. pattersb

    pattersb Guest

    praise or blame this man, for, since his actions are not
    regularly connected with his motives, reinforcing or
    inhibiting certain motives will have no effect. More-
    over, a man is held responsible for those acts that
    reflect his character rather than his casual or unpre-
    meditated acts. The latter two, unlike the former, do
    not give us insight into the enduring personality and
    character traits that form the basis of judgments of
    responsibility. Hence, responsibility requires a regular
    connection between character and action that leaves
    no room for the liberty of indifference.
    The freedom we do have is the power to act or not
    to act, depending upon our decision. As Hobbes and
    Spinoza had pointed out, all human beings possess this
    power whenever no external impediments stand in
    their way or whenever they are not being constrained
    to act in a certain way by an external force. Later
    reconciliationists will add certain internal constraints,
    e.g., psychological compulsions like kleptomania, to
    the list of impediments to liberty.
    Finally, freedom is compatible with determinism
    because a free act is determined by a decision that
    is itself determined by the operative motives. A free
    agent, in other words, is one whose acts are caused
    by his own volitions rather than external sources. Rec-
    onciliationism has been and continues to be a subject
    of heated philosophical debates.

    The approach of Immanuel Kant to the free will-
    determinism problem has reconciliationist aspects in
    that he wishes to deny neither. Determinism or the
    view that all events are caused certainly holds in the
    empirical world, including the psychological domain
    of inner experience. Like many of his predecessors,
    Kant was not disturbed by the fact that determinism
    precludes the liberty of indifference, for the latter
    notion is not genuine freedom. Freedom does involve
    the absence of external constraints. Hence, if man's will
    is free, it is neither subject to external constraints nor
    are its decisions determined by chance, i.e., by nothing
    real. Freedom, therefore, must be self-determination,
    i.e., determination of the will by its own laws. These
    laws are not natural laws, i.e., laws governing experi-
    enced events, for such external determination is in-
    compatible with freedom. Experience tells us that
    man's decisions are often governed solely by his desires
    and inclinations, and, on that level, he is not free.
    Hence, Kant does not agree with those recon-
    ciliationists who say that freedom is ordinary determi-
    nation by desires. Freedom, therefore, must be a special
    type of causality or determination.
    As stated above, experience tells us that human
    beings are subject to determination by natural law. But
    this conclusion is formed from the vantage point of
    judging human beings as empirical occurrences in time
    or, in Kant's language, as phenomena. Human beings
    as noumena, i.e., as things-in-themselves, are outside
    time and, hence, free from ordinary determination by
    events. Although we do not know human beings as
    noumena, they must be noumena to be free. Man as
    phenomenon is determined; man as noumenon is free.
    Although we cannot be conscious of freedom, we
    can be conscious of the moral law and the moral law
    implies freedom. Since experience tells us only what
    is the case, not what must always be or ought always
    to be the case, moral laws must originate in man's
    “pure practical reason,” i.e., his reason as transcending
    empirical inclinations. Hence a rational being who
    acknowledges the moral law must acknowledge that
    his will is being determined by his practical reason and
    this is freedom. A moral agent must, therefore, con-
    ceive of himself as free. Man, however, is both rational
    and natural, and he, therefore, has natural inclinations
    that may conflict with the dictates of reason. His expe-
    rience of morality, therefore, is an experience of obli-
    gation to the moral law within his deeper “noumenal”
    self.

    Freedom, in fact, is the essence of morality. For if
    freedom is determination of the will by the laws of
    its own reason, then freedom is autonomy, legislation
    by the self for the self. And one of Kant's formulations
    of the moral law is: act according to the principle that
    rational beings are lawgivers to themselves, i.e., as
    autonomous. If human beings do not create the laws
    they obey, they might be bound to them by an interest
    (e.g., God's laws might be obeyed in order to go to
    heaven), in which case morality would not be truly
    unconditional and necessary.
    Many philosophers have rejected as unintelligible
    Kant's attempt to preserve both freedom and deter-
    minism. Since the rational determination of the will
    of man qua noumenon is always in accordance with
    morality, it is not clear why men act immorally. Pre-
    sumably, they act immorally because they are deter-
    mined to do so by their desires and inclinations. But
    then only moral acts are free and people ought never
    to be blamed, therefore, for their immoral acts. Also,
    since every human act is part of the empirical world,
    it is determined. Hence, all free acts are determined.
    Now, how can man qua noumenon freely determine
    the will to perform a specific act that it is necessitated
    by antecedent conditions to perform?

    Nineteenth-century idealists tended to be libertarians
    on the free-will question, and F. H. Bradley is a good
    example. (A libertarian identifies man's freedom with
    his ability to interpose himself into the causal order
    by directly causing a decision or act. The decision or
    act is not caused by some state of or occurrence within
    the self, e.g., a desire or belief, but by the self directly.
     
    #21     Jul 27, 2006
  2. pattersb

    pattersb Guest

    Hence, not all occurrences are caused by antecedent
    conditions, states, or occurrences. Kant is not exactly
    a libertarian because he did not view self-determination
    as incompatible with ordinary determination.) Bradley,
    like many reconciliationists, rejected the liberty of
    indifference. If a man's choice proceeds not at all from
    his motives, he is an idiot rather than a responsible
    agent. If, on the other hand, determinism requires laws
    that enable prediction of a man's character from data
    available at birth, determinism too is incompatible with
    responsibility. The dilemma is resolved by the concept
    of the self. The accountability of an individual for a
    past act requires an abiding self, since the man who
    did the act must be identical with the man held
    accountable. Hence, responsibility requires a concept
    of the self as something more than a stream of changing
    states and experiences. The determinist, who seeks laws
    connecting these various states and experiences, there-
    fore ignores the self. The self's creation of its character,
    thus, is not completely determined even if a man's acts
    can be predicted from a knowledge of his formed
    character. Even in the case of a formed character, the
    self can always change it and thereby thwart the
    determinist.
    In the twentieth century, the position of the logical
    positivists on the free-will problem, viz., recon-
    ciliationism, held sway for a number of years. Moritz
    Schlick, for example, argued that the concern about
    freedom and responsibility arises from the confused
    assumption that laws of nature compel or necessitate
    human beings to behave in certain ways, when in fact
    these laws just describe what people actually do.
    Schlick enumerates the typical reconciliationist posi-
    tion: (1) freedom is the absence of compulsion; (2)
    freedom actually requires, rather than precludes deter-
    minism—freedom as the liberty of indifference is nei-
    ther real nor desirable; (3) determinism is compatible
    with responsibility because the imputation of respon-
    sibility requires only that the man's motives for doing
    the action be amenable to change by the introduction
    of rewards and punishments.
    In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill is per-
    haps the outstanding representative of reconcil-
    iationism. Mill and Schlick agree on fundamental
    doctrine. Mill does, however, emphasize the fact that
    we can often modify our character if we wish to do
    so, a fact whose recognition constitutes the feeling of
    moral freedom.
    C. A. Campbell has argued for libertarianism against
    Schlick's reconciliationism. He concedes that there is
    a real difference between causation and compulsion,
    but insists nonetheless that freedom is incompatible
    with causation. Freedom requires self-causation and,
    like Kant, Campbell cites moral experience as the
    possible source of the knowledge of self-activity. He
    also agrees with Kant that the experience may be
    delusive. Unlike Kant, however, Campbell is a genuine
    libertarian because he maintains that self-activity is
    incompatible with determinism.
    The major difference between Bradley and Campbell
    has to do with the relation between self and character.
    For Bradley, man is free because the creation of char-
    acter by the self cannot be understood determinis-
    tically. A man is accountable, therefore, for acts that
    flow from his formed character. For Campbell self and
    character are less intimately connected. Self does not
    create character; it “watches” its creation with delight
    or dismay. If a man's character disposes him to act
    in a way his self views as immoral, the self may produce
    a decision in favor of duty. Only when the self over-
    rides character or lets character override it is the man
    free. Campbell is forced to maintain, therefore, that
    a man's moral outlook is not determined in the ordinary
    way in which his character traits are determined.
    Most contemporary philosophers conceive of free-
    dom as the power or ability to choose (or act) differ-
    ently from the way a person actually chooses (or acts).
    There has been a great deal of debate, therefore, on
    the meaning of: “He could have acted otherwise.”
    Reconciliationists, like P. H. Nowell-Smith, argue that
    the expression can be analyzed hypothetically, e.g.,
    “He would have acted differently if he had wanted
    (or chosen) to.” This hypothetical statement is consist-
    ent with determinism because it does not preclude the
    possibility that his actual act was determined by his
    actual desires or choices. Campbell and others reject
    hypothetical analyses in favor of analyses (categorical)
    that make freedom incompatible with determinism.
    Many contemporary philosophers reject both recon-
    ciliationism and libertarianism and yet claim to find
    room for freedom. They reject the reconciliationist
    conception of freedom as action caused by desire and
    the libertarian conception of self-activity. They view
    human behavior as explicable in two radically different
    ways. As movement, it is subject to ordinary determi-
    nation. But some behavior can be understood as action,
    as something done. Although the movement of a man's
    arm can be deterministically accounted for in terms
    of physiological conditions, the explanation of the fact
    that a man raised his arm in terms of his desires, beliefs,
    purposes, and intentions, is not a deterministic ex-
    planation. In fact, it makes no sense to request a deter-
    ministic account of action. The libertarian concedes
    to the determinist the possibility that all actions are
    determined and then argues that some, the ones caused
    by the self, are not. According to A. I. Melden, a
    representative of this approach, this concession is a


    mistake. The determinist who applies his doctrine to
    human action is guilty of conceptual confusion.
    Melden's position is strikingly similar to Kant's. For
    Kant a man's decision may be conceived of as part
    of the phenomenal world, in which case it is deter-
    mined; and it may be conceived of as part of the
    noumenal world, in which case it is free. For Melden
    an arm movement is determined if conceived of as
    movement, and free if conceived of as action. And both
    agree with the libertarian against the reconciliationist
    that man cannot be conceived as just a natural object
    (albeit quite special) if we are to view him as free.
    BIBLIOGRAPHY
    Saint Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas
    Aquinas, ed. A. C. Pegis (New York, 1945). Aristotle, The
    Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Harmonds-
    worth, 1955), Book III. Saint Augustine, On Free Will, in
    Augustine, Earlier Writings, trans. J. H. S. Burleigh
    (Philadelphia, 1955). F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (London,
    1927), No. 1. C. A. Campbell, In Defence of Free Will
    (Glasgow, 1938). Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will,
    ed. P. Ramsey (New Haven, 1957). Thomas Hobbes, Of
    Liberty and Necessity, in The English Works of Thomas
    Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 5 vols. (London,
    1839-45), Vols. IV, V. Sidney Hook, ed., Determinism and
    Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (New York, 1961).
    David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
    (New York, 1955), Sec. VIII. William James, “The Dilemma
    of Determinism,” in The Will to Believe (1897; New York,
    1921). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans.
    L. W. Beck (Chicago, 1949). G. W. Leibniz, Selections, ed.
    Philip P. Wiener (New York, 1951). John Locke, An Essay
    Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser, 2 vols.
    (New York, 1959), Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XXI. A. I. Melden,
    Free Action (New York, 1961). John Stuart Mill, An Exami-
    nation of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (London, 1867),
    Ch. XXVI. P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (Harmondsworth,
    1954), Chs. XIX, XX. Plato, The Republic, trans. F. M.
    Cornford (London and New York, 1945). Moritz Schlick,
    Problems of Ethics, trans. D. Rynin (New York, 1939), Ch.
    VII. Benedict Spinoza, Ethics, ed. J. Gutmann (New York,
    1949). Philip Wheelright, Aristotle (New York, 1951).

    BERNARD BEROFSKY
     
    #22     Jul 27, 2006
  3. pattersb

    pattersb Guest

    I think this is what gordon was trying to say ...


    I guess plato, aristole, etc ... where ahead for their time as well.
    (You're in good company Gordon )

    How this effects the price of eggs, I haven't the foggiest. If anyone can reduce this down to a discernable sentence or two, I'm all ears.
     
    #23     Jul 27, 2006
  4. One sentence:

    Monkey see, monkey do....

     
    #24     Jul 27, 2006
  5. pattersb

    pattersb Guest


    Thanks, I was way off. I arrived at "What's good for the goose is good for the gander".

    One day, I hope to be one of those rare humans that truly understands how the universe operates.
     
    #25     Jul 27, 2006
  6. ANYONE that does not realize determinism is true, is simply lacking knowledge, period. the info i posted on page 1 is how to get it.
     
    #26     Jul 27, 2006
  7. Tendencies are true, but those with a functioning intellect know that determinism the way you describe it is false.

     
    #27     Jul 27, 2006
  8. btw, whenever i say i'm ahead of my time, i completely realize there are others..and that there were others before me. what i mean is, today probably way less than 1% of the world's population gets this stuff.
     
    #28     Jul 27, 2006
  9. I AM REALLY LIKING THIS SPINOZA DUDE:
     
    #29     Jul 27, 2006
  10. ZZZ you're probably just angry because you clearly have had shit determinism so far, or you wouldn't be the bitter bozo that you are. but as determinism says, it's not your fault. i don't hate ya. just don't take it out on me, fucker.
     
    #30     Jul 27, 2006