Hi everyone … i hope i can get some good inputs/inspiration on how to approach my “issue”.
I am writing an essay about “freedom of choice”, a point of view says that :
“a choice can never been absolutly free, if it is based on factors that cannot be freely choosen”.
to illustrate that i came across this exemple :
“i am in my grandma’s house” … being there, is it really a free choice ?
taking in consideration the abouve point of view the answer is no, because the CULMINATION of factors that made me / contributed
to my choice are not freely choosed.
the factors that made me choose could be:
A) i have holidays ( i didnt choosed that )
B) my grandpa recently died ( i didnt choosed that )
C) my gradmother is alone ( i didnt choosed that )
so the factors A + B + C together contributed to taking my choice of being in my gandma’s house.
but since ( A + B + C ) → not freely chosen, then the choice that is caming out of them is not free as well
My question:
Somehow the above exemple, doesnt seem quite right, but i cannot find how to approach the argumentation of that
Even if ( A + B + C ) are not freely chosen, it does not mean that necessary the choice that is made in NOT freely chosen.
I think you’d have to define what “absolutely free” means. What could an absolutely free choice be? We only ever make choices in real life, faced by events and situations in real life.
If I ask you to pick a number between one and six, what factors are forcing your choice? What are the consequences that drive you to pick three over five?
Regarding your grandmother example, your sympathy/caring or otherwise for your grandma is the factor that enters into free choice. There are people who’d ignore her feelings, who wouldn’t care about their family’s judgement at leaving her to be sad alone. You’re not one of those people - something about you, a part of your character, made you choose to respond to the factors outside your control (holidays, death, grandma’s loneliness) in a certain way, when you could have responded another. It’s a part of you that you (at least feel you) can choose to nurture or neglect.
I think that the entire mess concerning free will and determinism revolves around the sloppy definitions of the word ‘free’.
I think ‘free’ should simply mean that a person’s choice was made of their own will, even if based on their present circumstances. Meaning that freedom should not denote freedom from the causality of natural laws (that would be absurd), but that it should denote freedom to make one’s own choices without being interfered upon by other entities, or circumstances intentionally created by other entities. This would blend free will and determinism in a way that makes sense given our current level of knowledge of science, instead of the usual free-will denialism and appeals to mystical transcendentalism. Of course, since we all affect each other to various degrees, so too are we free to various degrees, and freedom, or the lack of freedom, is never absolute.
Come to think of it, the absolutist/binary way of thinking really is what creates much of these conundrums in philosophy. Perhaps it indicates that we are trying to oversimplify and force into just two categories something complex that is about gradations and degrees, and that itself goes to show how the absolutist/binary way of thinking is inappropriate and ought to be abandoned in favor of a more nuanced methods of thinking.