Up@dawn 2.0

Monday, October 23, 2017

Free will?

"John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a bottle of shandy was particularly ill..." -Monty Python, Philosophers Song
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John Stuart Mill begins On Liberty by distinguishing free will from freedom per se.
The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual...
They are conceptually distinct; but can we be fully free in the civil/social/political sense without presuming ourselves to possess the power of volition?


The history of philosophy has been dominated by competing arguments around the ideas of Free Will and Determinism. Simply stated, the issue hangs on whether human beings should be thought of as fundamentally free to choose their actions and mould their lives – or whether they should be deemed as being at heart determined by forces beyond their control, be they fate, biology, politics or class.

The debate has been long-running and hugely vicious. It began in Ancient Greece, was picked up by the Romans, dominated Christian philosophy and rumbles on to this day among philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists... (SoL/BoL, continues)
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Following up on the Incarceration report in #9, here's the "60 Minutes" segment I mentioned...

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