I wonder if freedom is measured by the number of choices one has

If it is we are all very very free. Even within the highest security prison in a 2.0mx2.0m room I can choose to make an infinite number of noises or move in many many ways- wriggle a finger, push a wall, and that's just for starters.

How does one gauge how free one is? A suggestion I found in a delightful book called 'do you think what you think you think?' is that we can measure how free we think some one is by looking at how much responsibility we charge them with. Here is a copy of a couple of the questions, see what you think. Your supposed to answer how responsible you think the subject of the scenarios is, and then you get a score at the end telling you how free you think people are.

Well, scenario A demonstrates how problematic it is to try and measure ones freedom by the amount of choices or potential choices one has. As you said 'I wonder if freedom is measured by the number of choices'. What I think might work better though is to measure the amount of responsibility we would endow on someone for their current situation; if we could claim someone is 100% responsible for their current situation what would it imply about their freedom and choices?

Responsibility, choice and freedom are all intrinsically tied and I think it would be healthy to establish how, so that we could control our situation better.

I get the impression I don't express myself so good .
Dan.

Personal Notes: How do we decide the level of responsibility we endow someone with?
By the impact an action has? No, that's unfair because a man who accidently kills a child while windsurfing is not as responsible than a man who intentionally breaks a child's legs.

Responsibility has more to do with the intent of actions, we can intentionally do something (choose/act) or accidently do something (not choose/react).

Human action is a temporal illusion created by communication of ones actions (e.g. an anecdote) to another person, here we invent the beginning of time (where our story/anecdote begins) and imply that the conditions present at the start of our 'story' are what cause the events entailed in the story. If there is no human actions, there is no choice and therefore no responsibility, just die hard determinism.

You are free to make a choice out of the unlimited number of choices available to you. The concept of Self-responsibility remains intact.

Hi Y'all!!


In a world where the understanding of how things work, such as cause and effect, is replaced by the understanding of the relational nature of all reality.
With cause and effect it is possiable to entertain determinism, so to, it is possiable to do so with the concept of a relational world. In a relational world your destiny is as baffling as determinism, the complexity of possiabilites of a world held together by its relations is perhaps infinite. It does not logically follow that because in a relational world you can do nothing but react, that you in any sense are not free. You are free to make a choice out of the unlimited number of choices available to you. The concept of Self-responsibility remains intact.

Read and consider my young students, for this man knows what he is talking about!

You can only choose what you know you should:
That which you need to chose
That which others need you to choose
That which you are obliged to choose
That which you would preffer to choose

Without those values you have no choice, just a random pick which is determined by the fact that you didnt have the knowledge to choose better.

Does the choice becomes non-existent if not limited to what we know?

I'm coming at your question from a different angle so hopefully it will have value for you. I don't want to engage in semantics but definitions are quite critical here. Freedom is considered the ability to act on choice. Biff does not have the choice to leave his cell BECAUSE he is not free to leave. So you are semantically combining the two. Freedom literally equals choice. If you assume them as separates then through a universal mojo Biff may only choose to move his right toe and go outside. He is only free to move his toe. He has few freedoms. The mojo lifts he sees a choice to either go out, or move either his right or left toe. His freedom has exponentially expanded with more choice. In that light choice becomes a numbers game, the more choices you have the greater the liklihood that your freedoms increase. But I fail to see a practical application. If you aren't free to avail yourself of a choice you don't have it. It's binary. Yes or no. The rest is psychology: the ability to recognize your choices (actual freedoms) and your perception of restraint. You can choose to step in traffic rather than wait, but prioritize choosing life over that. Traffic didn't restrain your freedoms as much as force your priorities. You remained able to act on choice throughout but you perceived that you HAD to wait, a perceived restraint.

My brother got angry that there was no hot water last weak and threw a can of hairspray at a window in the house and broke it. Before any one could shout at him he noted that every window in the house was double glazed apart from the one he broke and proceeded to tell off my mum...



Without realizing it my mum used the same trace-back-to-big-bang technique to blame the window not being double glazed on money issues that existed at the time she paid to have the others double glazed. The blame will go back and back referring to what was specific about the environment at the time 'choices' were made until we reach someone's birth, in which case they will be able to pass blame to their parents for conceiving them, lol.

So yes I guess I do think it exists in reality, because people use it all the time to invalidate assertions that something is their fault. Furthermore I think it has big implication on freedom and choice which seems to have a huge effect on responsibility and blame.

Following the above train of thought your responsibility is either (a) non existent or (b) not yours.

So how lost am I? I was thinking along the lines that if we really do can chose, we stop and initiate an action based on a selection of actions (that is the choice being made), the infinite knock on effects of that action are then all your responsibility, and we seem to judge responsibility on how noticeable the actions are, for example if someone dies you can guarantee someone is getting sued, even though their actions were, in my opinion, predetermined by the environment.

So I was looking to the way people use blame/responsibility on each other for an insight into when people differentiate between a action/choice or reaction/non-choice. In my opinion it is all the latter, reaction and non-choice, therefore responsibility, choice and action are non existent or illusionary but, this won't stop me analysing the way we treat 'blame' in an attempt to unlock what people assume freedom, choice and responsibility to be.

Sort me out:D,
Dan.

I've got a nagging feeling that B's mental re-action- 'I should not alow myself...' is a self judgment which still exists for one reason and one reason only... because he was shoved and therefor reacted by analysing the situation, the analysis of which he reacted to with 'I shouldn't let myself be shoved' or whatever.

Dan.