A Conversation About Clockwork Orange

[thoughtsmile]

When I went to see "A Clockwork Orange" the other night, I went with my friends Justin and Henry. The day after, Henry had sent me an e-mail, and so I wrote him back. It covers a few of the issues I referred to thinking about the other day (like free will). Allow me to present that e-conversation

Comments

Free Will will not set you free

[jwh2o]

I think the free will debate is made up of many confusions. Clearly a fully deterministic system (please don't say cause!), where every state N(x) (State of N at time x) can be known from all (or some of)the previous states enumerated as N(earliest) through N(x-1), or that there are some equations or rules that calculate all subsequent events from any time period (or dimensional state), is incompatable with any kind of freedom.

But the question is ... is anything compatable with freedom? Lacking a fully deterministic system, such predictions are impossible in principle, but the person is no more free. Either his behaviour at time t is determined by his personality, in which case it is not free; or there is an element of it that is not so determined; but, if our own personality, our own self, do not make our decisions - then to that degree we are not free. So freedom is not possible.

Finally -- would free will look like anarchy? Well, if free will is inconsistent then that question is meaningless. But -- would freedom from rules

Re: Free Will will not set you free

[thoughtsmile]

What does freedom mean when there are not any restrictions in place? We can't fly, that's a restriction on our freedom. The word/concept 'freedom' would probably not exist if there were no restrictions to offset it.

I think a lot of people envision true freedom looking something like anarchy, myself included.