tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post3076355981824049491..comments2024-03-28T17:44:11.289+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: The function of free willBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-50329836351587844612011-09-09T23:49:42.872+01:002011-09-09T23:49:42.872+01:00Ruling out the possibility of freedom, like ruling...Ruling out the possibility of freedom, like ruling out the possibility of consciousness, gets a thinker into all sorts of problems because freedom is basic. It is an axiom of thought. One can’t reason properly, or understand anything, without presupposing it. In this respect, it is like actuality or potentiality, being or becoming, many or one, part or whole, consciousness or knowledge. They can be defined, their relations can be understood, but their existence cannot be proven, because they are the foreconditions of existence as such, and therefore of reason as such, and therefore of proof as such. If there is no such thing as consciousness, then no one can know that there is no such thing as consciousness. Likewise if there is no freedom, then no one is free to think about freedom, and therefore no one does think about freedom. <br /><br />If alternative states of affairs are really possible, then events per se necessarily have freedom built into them. But if no alternatives are really possible, so that only one state of affairs is can happen, then really the notion of possibility is vacuous: if only one state of affairs can happen, then that state of affairs must necessarily happen, and so it actually has happened, in its entirety, and from all eternity; so that it cannot *possibly* happen. <br /><br />Freedom, then, is just the fact of possibility. <br /><br />Obviously one can’t begin to think at all if “possibility is impossible” is numbered among one’s premisses. But since freedom is the facticity of possibility, this means that one can’t think properly about anything without presupposing the facticity of freedom. <br /><br />The presupposition of the facticity of freedom is just like the presuppositions that one actually exists, can understand, can reason, that there is an actual world and that it is a fit subject of our knowledge, that there is a causal order to things, and so forth. Unless all these things are presupposed, thought devours itself; for, to dispense with any one of them is to arrive instantly at the conclusion that one can’t justify any conclusions. <br /><br />If it is really possible that either A or B should happen right now, and if an entity e has the power to bring about A-or-B, e has the freedom to bring about A, or B. If we find that A has happened, and now exists as a fact, then we know that the relevant entity freely brought about A. So, to be is to have been decided upon.Kristornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-37697021588831019702011-09-09T18:10:10.107+01:002011-09-09T18:10:10.107+01:00I had thought the background colour to be signifyi...I had thought the background colour to be signifying the especial gravity of the post :) <br /><br />Not only humans have free will... <br />A raccoon, seeing my approach, scoots up a tree, no matter how well it knows me. This is automatic survival behavior. <br />But after evaluating what I am, it decides it knows me well enough, and comes right back down to see if I am a food-source, as I often am. <br />There is one raccoon that seems to have no clue: I call it The Retard. It is like a guileless child, and may curl up, suddenly, beside me, and fall asleep. <br />But it may decide to stay awake, too, and watch me, or to play un-self-consciously with an ant.<br /> <br />Free will is the ability to do things consciously, as opposed to automatically. <br />To make decisions based upon evaluation. The freedom to get it wrong, as well as right. <br /><br />Nearly everything that lives would appear to have some degree of free will. Certainly they might not have it, without the unifying phenomenon behind life. But then, would they exist at all? <br /><br />I rarely see humans as the be-all and end-all of existence. Actually never. <br />If we could stop this habit of focusing entirely upon ourselves, what then might we achieve?The Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04323413604073160469noreply@blogger.com