“They may take out lives, but they’ll never take out FREEDOM!” – William Wallace
One of the highlights of rock climbing in a gym is the moment when new routes are put up. Route setters take a lot of flak for putting up trash routes, but they are equally celebrated when they put up the good stuff. It’s pretty fun watching climbers slowly congregate to a section of new routes once they see the setters packing up their gear for the day. There is something to be said about getting a first ascent on a hard new route, even if it’s just plastic bolted onto plywood. It’s even more fun when the setters deliberately take their time cleaning up and taking down the safety ropes. They absolutely play with the anticipation of the climbers. It’s kind of like saying the words “Do you wanna” to a dog, just to see the head tilt. Eventually you’ll finish with “go for a walk”, and the dog forgives the playful torment as it rushes for the door.
Setters intentionally take a few extra minutes just to enjoy the head tilt, and climbers always forgive the playful torment, because like a dog going for a walk, the payoff is exhilarating! When that safety rope comes down, we are free to climb. But are we really?
Here are five things to consider about freedom!
- Philosophers have been discussing the notion of free will for thousands of years. You’ll find the topic addressed in Plato’s Republic as well as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Epicurus and the Stoics embraced a causal stance on the notion of free will. We see the topic addressed at length again and again in almost all avenues of philosophy. From discussions about ethics to discussion about art, from the philosophy of science to the philosophy of religion, questions of freedom always pop up. Are we free? What does that even mean?
- There is as much debate about the meaning of that question as there is about the definition of freedom. There are a lot of technical terms that populate the history of the discussion, including terms like determinism, indeterminism, compatibilism, incompatibilism, causation, and pessimism. In spite of, and in light of all the different definitions of freedom I am inclined to accept something similar to the following… Freedom1: Having the desire to do ‘x’, then being able to do ‘x’, but could have done otherwise.
- In terms of climbing, one is free to climb if they have the desire to climb, they are able to climb, and they could do otherwise. If I have the desire to climb, but there is nothing to climb, then I am clearly not free to climb. If I have the desire to climb, I am able to climb, but I am chained to a route thus prevented from leaving, then I am not free. I’m not free in this latter case because I cannot do otherwise. The first two conditions of this definition are easily digestible, i.e. desire and ability are easy to understand. Essentially desire and ability amount to I want and I can, but the final condition is where the conversation gets interesting. Is there ever a point in which a person ‘could do otherwise’?
- Strong arguments against ‘the ability to do otherwise’ generally stem from some notion of universal causation. For every cause, there is an effect, and once a cause takes place the effect necessarily must follow. 18th century philosopher and physicist Baron D’Holbach lists four fundamental causes for human action. 1. We are born. 2. We are raised. 3. Society shapes us. 4. Our nature does the rest. None of these causes were selected by us, they are the outcome of prior causes, yet they determine (negate the potential for free will) all that we say, think, and do. In other words, we didn’t pick to be born, that is based on a biological process that is outside of our control. We didn’t pick how we would be raised, we didn’t pick the demands of society, and we didn’t pick our nature or DNA. All these things are a direct link to everything we say think and do, and we didn’t have any control over any of them. This of course directs us to the conclusion that there is no point in which we could ever do other than that which we have done, are doing, or will do. In other words, we are not free.
- When that safety rope comes down, we are free to climb. But are we really? It doesn’t seem so. According to the conditions of universal causation and the definition of Freedom1 stated above, I have a desire to climb, I am able to climb, but I cannot do otherwise. The prior conditions of Carrot have led me to this exact moment. Prior conditions have led all of us to this exact moment. I am not (we are not) in control of those conditions and cannot escape those conditions. I didn’t pick to be the type of person who enjoys climbing, I don’t pick a positive social or biological response to climbing. I never had a say in how I would be reinforced or what is reinforcing. Now, one may say; “Carrot you could just leave the gym, you can do otherwise”. To which a proponent of universal causation would respond “not unless there is a cause, in which case Carrot, you must leave the gym, and you could not do otherwise”. If the gym caught on fire, or if I received an emergency notice, then I would certainly leave, but the reason for my departure doesn’t come from my own volition, my departure is an effect, an outcome based on prior causes.
If universal causation is the correct interpretation of the demands that the laws of physics lays upon us, or even if local causation is the correct interpretation of those demands, then it would be tough to conclude that we are free to climb once the safety ropes come down. If this is the correct interpretation, then maybe William Wallace was right all along. It’s tough to take something that we never had to begin with!
V5 (5 things, 1 topic!)
thedihedral.com 
Could I have chosen not to write a comment?
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HAHA…it appears not!
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I agree that we’re never truly free. Whether we’re tethered by monetary issues or job obligations, or whatever else occupies our lives, most of us can’t be truly free. I’m not sure if I can fathom what truly free means.
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That is such a great way to put it!!! I don’t think I could imagine it either!
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I dunno — it seems freedom exists only in opposition to not-freedom which would define it. There is no freedom without bondage. I don’t know if that makes any sense at all but feel free to tell me it doesn’t. I’m cool with that.
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Or, as Kris Kristofferson said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” But you made sense to me.
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I hate that song, but there’s something to that lyric that I reject completely and simultaneously see to be true. Sigh. That came true in 2014 when I saw I had no certainty of an income that would support my life (I lost everything, in a sense) and I had to get out of California. Was I free to go within the reality that I was compelled to go? I think so, in a way, but I still haven’t figured it out.
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I only know that lyric from my intro to philosophy teacher, but he gave it to us through Janis Joplin in a song called Bobby McGee. I think that was the name of the song. Martha your time in 2014 sounds like that song for sure. Although I don’t think I listened to it since freshman year of college, so I could be way off.
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That’s the song. Freedom in this sense is heart-breaking. I remember the last time I walked through the parking structure at my university, a place with which I had the longest relationship of my life outside my family. I didn’t want to go. I touched every post in that parking structure on my way out and thought to the university at large, “I love you. I will miss you forever.”
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I’m not in the business of making sense…but if you are laying out the foundation of a freedom spectrum that would be an interesting way to look at it!
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OK — I’m bound to my giant breed dog, Bear, by ties of love and a way of living. When she’s gone, Teddy and I will be free to travel in a motor home. Life seems to me a process of gaining and losing this kind of relative freedom. And I’m not in the business of making sense, either.
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That is an excellent description of leaving the university, I am not great at remembering moments like those, but the moment I read your description a few examples came flooding back. Strange things happen to the perception of time in cases like that. Thank you for that reminder!
Bear is such a good dog!!! Not much to add to that statement, just that dogs are the best!
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Dogs are the best.
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This should be Colorado’s new State Motto. No context, just a blanket statement!
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I like how you’ve laid out your case for not being free. I suspect freedom only comes from lack of expectation, much as the Buddhists teach. You can’t be tethered to outcomes or possessions (do we truly possess anything?). That said, I am still in the free will camp.
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Eilene, looking at this from the Buddhist tradition is such a great idea, thank you for bringing that up. Now I kind of want to write a part 2 exploring that concept and the what that entails. Thank you for your insight, it’s really spectacular!
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Sorry but this got to be a bit long, but it’s all true, really!
Freedom , like several other aspects of human life, seems to be intrinsically paradoxical for the reasons laid out in the topic by Captain Carrot. IMO our consternation about this stems from some misunderstandings. One of these is how we think about ourselves: we identify with our on-going experience of being here now and take the experience as being “me” here looking at, hearing, touching, tasting, etc, the world and people around me. We are being naively realistic when we take the world to be exactly as it appears to be, ie this my body, really is seeing what really is “the world”; and this is ordinarily a good thing. It’s good in the same way that is was good for all our biological anscestors over the last several hundred millions of years: it helped them to find and eat dinner rather than becoming dinner for some other creature.
In reality however, our experience is what it is like to be the updating of a model of self in the world which one’s brain has created – from memories – and which is constantly being brought up to date from perceptions which show where predictions based on memories were no longer correct. IE consciousness is the registration of novelty significant enough to be modelled and incorporated into one’s model of the world with oneself in it. I call that the primary paradox: our subjective experience is what it is like to be a *model* totally contained inside one’s own head but *about* everything (of significance) outside one’s head. To get the “full picture”, LOL, next time you climbers are somewhere sitting on the highest summit around, try reciting to yourself: Just beyond the furthers distant thing I can see…over there….. is the inside surface of my skull!
How this relates to one’s human freedom is that our mental activity, which all occurs ultimately in order to make our muscles move in the right way at the right time, evolves within the opportunity space, if you like, between total chaos and total crystaline stasis. This is the same for all living processes. Without definite limits to what is possible, there could be no world, biological or cutural. But if there was no flow of energy (from the Sun mostly) and thus no change, then again there would be no life. We have evolved within the Earth’s ecological opportunity space such that we are forever sampling environmental information and weighing up the situation in terms of how current processes and events can or will effect our potential for surviving and thriving. IE, we must detect and avoid dangers while taking advantage of life sustaining resources. And this is happening *all the time*!
So yes, the laws of physics and chemisty are valid and useful precisely because they describe a real world of causes and effects BUT nobody can possibly know everything which can happen, never mind being certain of what *will* happen; Murphy’s Law is one way of acknowledging this, particularly within the baleful boundaries of bureaucratic entities! Furthermore many if not most processes within biological life, and ecological communities, and within human societies, and certainly within the human brain, involve some of their outputs/results becoming inputs into the next iteration of the process. This results in truly unpredictable consequences, ie there is nothing in the universe which could possibly know for certain what will happen downstream from virtually all particular living processes. Ergo, talk of anything at all like predestination is basically bunkum! The universe itself does not know what is going to happen next. Which means it is up to each of us, and all of us collectively where possible, to *choose* as wisely as we can.
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While I don’t really understand it, I love reading about this topic. I like Sean Carroll’s argument about the difference in the micro vs the macro as it applies to free will, but I’ve never really understood how he resolves the two. If the laws of physics predict our actions then how do we still have a responsibility at the macro level?
The Kris Kristofferson reference made me smile. I used to listen to Silver Tongued Devil and I on record up until I finally got rid of my 1970s Fisher stereo that still worked great sigh. I miss listening to records and having to get up and flip the side. Anyway!
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It’s really fun to think about for me too…the Kristofferson thread is a good example of what I was thinking about here. I never heard of Kristofferson, until I posted this article, so following a chain of causes, I write this piece, then Kristofferson get’s mentioned once, that leads to a second mention, and then to your thoughts. With three different mentions of Kristofferson I am now going directly to Spotify to listen to his work. Post –> Kristofferson –> Spotify. Thank you for the reccomendation, Silver Tongued Devil is underway!
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I hope you like it!
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Keep it up
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Thank you!
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Welcome
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