The What, Why and Basis of Freedom
What is Freedom?
The freedom spoken of here is the right to live your life as you see fit, seeking to acquire and keep your own values while respecting the right of others to do likewise. In short you may do anything you like as long as you don’t initiate force to remove freedom from others or cause them actual harm. These limits to freedom of action do not deny you freedom in general but server to keep freedom consistently applied to all human beings.
You are free to form any voluntary arrangement with other persons that you wish.
Freedom at its heart is being able to choose between alternatives and implement your choice in all things.
Basis of Freedom
What is the basis of freedom? What supports the idea of freedom? How is the concept of freedom grounded? What does freedom even mean?
Many speak of freedom and seldom is there a conversation of much depth that addresses these questions.
Some speak of freedom as just a given, an “of course”. Perhaps it is spoken of as just a tradition or a common belief or enshrine in government document. But many today question freedom and just seeing it as a tradition is not likely to satisfy such questioners or deniers of freedom as being even a valid concept.
Some believe that their religion or perhaps some subset of all religions are the basis for freedom. Perhaps that God created humans with “free will” to choose between good and evil or to choose to believe the right doctrine or not. This may satisfy some believers in the religion[s] but it doesn’t satisfy anyone that doesn’t believe in that religion. So it is not as strong a basis as an argument would be that is universal to all human beings without appealing to religious belief. If freedom is by the decree of God then by decree of God, or those that claim to be spokespersons for the Divine, it can be taken away.
Some think that freedom is the gift or decree of a State. That some State has declared that its people are free in the context of some founding documents of that State. But this makes freedom only applicable at the sole discretion of a State and only for its own citizens. If freedom is by decree of the State then by decree of the State it can be taken away.
Some seem to take freedom as based on personal whim that they should just be able to do whatever they want without any notion at all of why this is justified and right beyond simply their whims.
Grounded Basis for Freedom
Human beings have a particular nature as does everything that exists. In particular human beings have a particular main differentiating means of survival and thriving. Human beings can apprehend abstract patterns from experiences and observations and form concepts and ideas about how various aspects of reality work. In short human beings survive and thrive on their ability to think.
This ability to abstract and to think gives the ability to make predictions about how relevant parts of reality work and thus to make choices as to what actions and other decisions are likely to be most conducive to survival, thriving and attaining their personal values and goals.
In short in order to maximally thrive each person must be free to think and choose for themselves and act on that choice.
One might object that not all people think as well or as rationally and many will choose foolishly or poorly and suffer for it. This is true. However how does a person learn if not from mistakes and less than satisfactory outcomes? How does one learn what notions of how relevant parts of reality work result in better outcomes from choices based on them? How does one learn which of one’s notions seem more or less true and inline with how things really are and how they work?
As the person hones their thinking and choices how do they reap better results if somehow others seek to make sure all results work out more or less on average ok no matter what different choices and actions were involved? Where is the incentive at a deeply personal level for improvement in such a scenario? Is it not a nightmare where one has no agency or ability to predict or influence any outcome whatsoever?
Some Objections
Determinism
Some will argue that the concept of freedom is devoid of meaning because free will is impossible. The argument is usually from either a certain kind of understanding of science or from some religious doctrine concerning God’s will and perfect knowledge or from the fact that one cannot in reality do absolutely anything one could dream up.
The notion of determinism is based on a spurious understanding of cause and effect. Yes cause and effect exists in reality. But it has long been discredited that this is some clockwork universe in which one could predict with perfect accuracy anything at any level one wished with enough knowledge of starting state and all relevant causes and effects. Many of the causes and the effects are highly probabilistic for one thing and subject to chaotic perturbations where a very small change in some cause can have a drastic and unpredictable effect. When that drastic effect will occur is not predictable. So determinism of outcomes in detail, which arguably is the kind meant as an objection to freedom or free will, is not viable.
What does this determinism say? Taken to its logical conclusion it says that all communication about ideas and such is completely meaningless because what you and I believe is totally determined whether we think we do thinking and choosing or not. If this is true there is no point in doing anything. It will happen as it is predestined to happen no matter what. There would be no point in any human thought or action to hopefully improve upon anything at all. No point in choosing to make an effort at all.
Predestination in religion says, in for instance Calvinism, that God decided who would go to Hell or Heaven when they were born. If this was so then there would be no point in the person deciding how they would act or whether they would choose good or evil. Indeed the secular version claims the person is determined by factors outside their control and has no ability to choose and thus no moral agency. For religion especially this is a surprising place to go. Now if God transcends space and time one could say that God sees it all and knows, being outside of time, what happens. But that is a good deal different from claiming that humans have no ability to make choices that have different outcomes of different desirability.
The “scientific” determinism is similar. If one conceives of a block universe model with one axis being time then within that model everything that happens in the universe is contained. But note that it is only a model! It says nothing whatsoever about whether the human beings inside that model or similar intelligences get to make choices among alternatives that effect whether they thrive or not.
Both make the mistake of trying to apply a “God’s Eye” POV outside the realm of human beings and human actions as determining the nature of what is relevant for the the aspect of human action we are considering — freedom to choose between alternatives and act upon them. They completely drop the context.
Reality Imposes Limits
Some claim that because reality is not fully mutable to our desires that we are not free and that the concept of freedom is meaningless.
The argument that for instance I am not free because I cannot flap my arms and fly into the sky is completely specious. Choices are in the context of reality. In reality in a gravity field of this strength it is not possible to generate sufficient lift to counteract gravity by flapping my arms. In short it is a hypothetical choice between non-existent alternatives Freedom is in the context of reality not some free floating assertion that grants the power ta make reality whatever one wishes it to be. So this argument denies reality and the context of freedom from the beginning.
Bottom Line
All of there argue something contrary to that which is obvious — that human beings are able to think, see that there are alternatives choices, and to choose between them and that different choices have different consequences. As long as human beings are so able, no matter how delimited their abilities to conceive alternatives is and no matter what is and is not possible in reality then they should be free in reality to make choices, act on them and adjust their thinking and choices on that basis. They must be free to do so to maximize human positive outcomes — to thrive.
Human beings are able to conceive of and choose between alternatives. This is all the “Free Will” required. Arguments denying reality or claiming no ability of choice are groundless.
Why Freedom? Because human beings thrive on the basis of freely making choices between alternatives and acting upon them. Freedom is essential to human thriving.
Future Discussions
Having set a basis in reality for freedom in general terms subsequent discussions will flesh out the implications of freedom and more specific questions.
Choice between alternatives in order to thrive leaves open the discussion of whether the individual or some specialized group, or State or other collective is better able to make choices that lead to human thriving. Is the answer to individual or collective decision making something that varies depending on the kind of choices? If so under what circumstances and how best delimited?
A preview consideration is that given equal human intelligence (within the range of such intelligence) a relatively few of these intelligent beings cannot process as much information and certainly not in detail relevant to each individuals as well or with as much variation and innovation as all the individuals concerned with this area of choices. The few become a information flow and decision making bottleneck at best.
Originally published at https://freedomalways.net on January 8, 2021.
