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What's freedom?

10:36 / 10.04.02

Definition, position, derivation. A good, a bad, a right, a dream, a construct, a natural state?

Morlock - groupie for hire

11:34 / 10.04.02

Ouch, tricky one, but I'll have a go. I've always defined it as the ability to make choices. The more options available to you, the more free you are. Not that it's all that simple. Choices bring consequences which may make any particular option less palatable, but I don't think that negates the degree of freedom entirely. I am free to break any law I choose to. I may get proscecuted for it, but it's still a choice available to me.

Hmm, just realised I'm creating a distinction between mental and physical freedom here. Could get nasty. The problem with physical freedom is that you have to deal with restraints imposed by the nature of reality, and i'm not sure where that fits into all this. I might like to be able to fly unaided, but this seems physically impossible at this time. In that sense, am I not free? Not sure.

Then there's the fact that we are not alone here. The mere presence of others closes some options while opening others. The 'breaking the law' example for one. Whose law am I breaking?

A good, a bad,...
Neither, I'd say. It just is. Except when it isn't, in which case it's bad.

...a right,...
Yes, but no more yours than the next person you meet.

...a dream,...
Total freedom? Reckon so. Not that that makes much of a difference. Man's reach and all that.

Hmmm, not much joined up thinking there. May come back with more later.

18:23 / 10.04.02

Just another word for nothing left to lose.

No, really. It's pretty damn subjective, in everyday use, and basically has to do with your current happiness levels and whether you perceive some sort of bad authority making you do things you don't want to do.
Like waste time sleeping, or have objects you drop hover in midair rather than fall to the ground and break.
Maybe it's a collusion between what you imagine could be and what you perceive that is.

18:59 / 10.04.02

A sanitary towel (with wings) which allows you to sleep peacefully at night and take everything in your stride.

Seriously, this is a toughie. I'd say freedom should incorporate at least some of the World Health Organisation's definition of 'health': 'a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'.

We're free to do what we want any ol' time...

05:37 / 11.04.02

I have no particular opinion, right now, as to what freedom might mean, but I do want to take up something in Dao's definition of 'freedom as rules' in the Prisons thread. This seemed as good a place as any...

There, Dao wrote "'Society' is a set of ground (i.e. consituitive) rules - from the very subtle (Garfinkel's analysis of bodylanguage and speech patterns revealing the massive importance we put on obedience to basic rules of comportment in ascribing sanity, politeness, intelligence etc.) to the very obvious such as respect for the physical wellbeing of others."

Now, it seems obvious to me that the word 'rules' here is being used to mean a number of different things. In the first example, 'rules' appears to refer to statistical averages, more or less; the fact that certain forms of comportment tend to be more common, and that deviations from these attract socially-determined value judgements. The second describes a fairly nebulous concept - 'respect' - which presumably functions prescriptively (and perhaps proscriptively) to limit and/or produce social relationships. By conflating these examples, Dao seems to be arguing that any social tendency can be considered a 'rule', whether implicit or explicit, apparently organic or apparently cultural, spontaneous or juridical, universal or specific.

If this argument merely states that we can describe statistical tendencies in 'free' group behaviour as rules, I have no problem with it's attempt to offer a specialised definition of the word 'rules'. On the other hand, if it is an argument in favour of centralised authority - which presumably merely administers the 'rules' derived so innocently from human interactions - well, if that's what you're saying I'm up for an argument.

15:08 / 11.04.02

Not so much an argument in favour of authority as a demand that self-regulation be acknowledged as such. Remember, I was responding to Gozer's depiction of a society constructed on a notion of 'total freedom' which nonetheless mysteriously possessed considerable constraints on action and comportment, and, apparently, moral notions as well.

I'd say these examples of 'self-restraint' and 'civilised behaviour' are evidence of internalised notions regarding rules of conduct, as such derived from centuries of ideas of morality and social thinking, rather than springing Athena-like from the forehead.

I'm holding back on putting forward my idea of 'freedom' until there are more counters on the board. Otherwise this is just me winging off, which, entertaining though it is for a while, swiftly just becomes more noise.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:29 / 11.04.02

freedom is the name they gave our prison so we would be content with it

Freedom is what they tell us they are defending when they kill people i have never met

Freedom is the ability to ignore what they tell you is right, and get the fuck out of dodge, really

gozer the destructor

15:54 / 11.04.02

If a human is born without morality and social boundaries then surely that natural state is total freedom, a blank sheet without the psychological restrictions that the social contact (especially by those who rear us) creates ie. our super-ego, not some platonic ideal that exists in some metaphysical netherworld.

I did not say that society should be based on an individualistic attitude of 'I do what I want and sod everyone else' or pure id.

I agreed with you that for society to work there has to be a common and central idea of respect for others. My original gripe were the reasons people were held in prison, other than anti-social behaviour.

Dao put forward the proposition that freedom as a concept HAS to exist THROUGH rules and cannot exist any other way.

Morlock - groupie for hire

16:30 / 11.04.02

Or, alternatively, any concept of freedom creates its own set of rules for sustaining that freedom. If freedom is all id, the rule is survival of the fittest. If freedom is 'do what thou wilt, provided thou harm none' (or however it goes) subjective rules of 'respect' pop up automatically as you try to work out what harm your actions might cause.

Hmm, that needs some more thought.

22:58 / 11.04.02

What if you thought about freedom as an emergent or immanent structure (using the word 'structure' loosely) produced through unconstrained social interactions? In which case you could accept that respect - whatever that means - exists and works, without reducing it to some sort of internalised moral code; moral codes could be re-thought as rough attempts to codify and/or distort the spontaneous emergence of solidarity (or whatever).

In this case, you could point to specific incidences of non-freedom - national borders spring to mind - but not to an ideal state 'of' freedom - freedom is relative, an aspiration, the giving part of politics, rather than an object to be achieved or imposed.

Please note that the first words of this post are 'what if', not 'i think'.

gozer the destructor

07:55 / 12.04.02

That sounds interesting, could you elaborate a bit more?

10:06 / 12.04.02

Interesting - though what an 'unconstrained social interaction' is I'm not sure. I'd actually be more likely to support the notion that moral codes are attempts to solidify internal patterns than vice versa, but I don't think it alters my position regarding Gozer's world. Those internal patterns, or prejudices or desires to act or be perceived or whatever, have to come from somewhere - and whether that somewhere is one's own cogitation, or that of others, or, as you posit, an emergent property, it doesn't alter that we've come a long way from freedom as a first principle.

gozer the destructor

10:48 / 12.04.02

Im attracted to the idea of freedom as process, a learning exercise that can only be achieved by allowing certain circumstances, this being where the unconstrained bit would be applicaple...also if we agree with Dao's point of moral code solidyfying internal patterns doesn't that then imply that these internal patterns or rather the unconstrained appreciation of these would sit parralel to my original definition of total freedom? also, with reference to the earlier discussion of central ideas of respect, the hierachy of needs and the desires that every individual has, im thinking Maslow now, would that not be relevant when discussing the development of a society that has unconstrained social interaction...what i'm getting at is that it is our desires that control our attitudes and actions and so if the lowest rung of the hierachy of needs is being met ie food, shelter then that would create a community that felt safe (in the knowledge that they won't starve, be cold)-thereby pushing it to the next rung-a society that is safe and feels secure would be able to concentrate more on it's personal relationships (especially without state/religous expectations regarding marriage relationships)...i'm working through this as I write so i'm looking forward to people attacking it like hungry wild animals...some ideas to kick around though...

09:19 / 14.04.02

Dao sez:

"Those internal patterns, or prejudices or desires to act or be perceived or whatever, have to come from somewhere - and [even if that's] as you posit, an emergent property, it doesn't alter that we've come a long way from freedom as a first principle. "

1) Um, how? I don't see it - esp. coming from someone who was arguing that freedom = rules.

2) What is freedom supposed to be the first principle of? I thought the question was 'what does/might freedom mean' - am I missing something?

3) Come on - where did I argue [i]anything[/i] about internal patterns, prejudices, or desires to act or be perceived or - as you say - "whatever"? All I was saying was that you don't need to posit any particular cause - beyond social interaction as such - for the emergence of statistical tendencies or behavioural norms; that they are not necessarily constraining or 'rules' in a juridical or prescriptive sense.

03:19 / 15.04.02

I'm a little confused, so I propose one looking at one specific issue related to freedom: take the case of literacy, for example. You are not free to participate in this conversation if you do not have at least a basic level of literacy, both the standard, linguistic, print-based literacy and computer literacy. Most people who are literate in the Western dominated global world that all of us here inhabit--arguably--are more "free" than people who are illiterate. (However, it's also true that we lose some skills by developing literacy; the ability to produce and recite oral epics, for instance, it would seem is closely tied to pre-literate cultures.) But becoming literate means learning to negotiate written language, which generally requires most of us to 1) sit still 2) concentrate. Most of us only do that when we are told to, in our current cultural circumstances. It is a "freeing" discipline, in many ways, although it can, of course, and is used to support a system of cultural and economic domination. But it's not just that, I'd argue...

Discuss?

09:29 / 15.04.02

1. If freedom is an emergent property, it has to emerge from something. I was assuming you intended to suggest (and I notice we've switched from 'suppose' to 'I think') that it emerged from human interaction and thought - hermeneutic reinsertion; the world influenced by thought which in turn is influenced by the world and so on.

That being the case, freedom isn't a natural state from which we depart by introducing rules, but a product, albeit a natural rather than an artificial one - although exactly what the distinction between natural and artificial, emergent and made, would be in this context is something I find deeply problematic.

And even if freedom is emergent, it does not follow from that that it has no rules. It may emerge from rules and unverbalised self-restraints. I think the ideas can fit around one another quite readily.

2. Sorry - you're catching the back end of an earlier phase of the debate in the 'prisons' thread, where Gozer (or possibly aussieintn) asserted that freedom is a natural state from which we are alienated by the system, and that real freedom is in the absence of rules.

At which point, I suspect, we may need to clarify how we're all using the word 'rules'.

3. I'm not entirely happy that I understand your use of 'statistcal tendencies' and 'behavioural norms'. Perhaps you could clarify how these make a picture of human action? Humans, as a group, may act in ways which can be analysed along those lines, but the individual functions in a context, and will often refer to laws, rules, desires, rights or morals - attempts, as I see it, to make a more predictable environment by setting ground rules for contact between individuals and between the individual and society. This system may be more or less reflexive, and may base itself precedent or 'theory'.

I'm going to stop. I suspect we're about to bump up against a divergence of opinion about how to think about human action - if I'm wrong, we're in the clear. If I'm right, we'll need a new thread...