Complexity
Being & Becoming
I remember near the end of Solaris the main character discussing that the only God he would believe in should have been an entity totally unlinked to anything else.
How does this relate to the question in the title?
Well, first of all we could try to define freedom.
First of all it's something you can only speak about by it's relationship to something else. A life of Freedom. Freedom of speech. Freedom itself is inherently abstract.
Second, it's boolean, when someone is specific enough. Suppose there are two topics, A and B, and they are the only topics in the domain of speech. There's Freedom of A, but not of B. This doesn't mean Freedom of speech lies in some weird gray area. It just simple mean there is Freedom of talking about A, but there's not Freedom of talking about B.
A good definition of a free act is "an act that is not confined or moved by other acts".
Freedom, regarding the human condition, could thus be seen as the possibility of an individual to act freely.
But I think this is never the case.
Think of a regular person: how many duties does he/she have, due to his job, his family?
Now think of some unusual person, and outcast such as Diogenes of Sinope: he's free from the previous, he could have even intellectually escaped the coupling instinct, but he's still confined by the limitations of his body. If he gets too starved, he doesn't have the freedom to choose to stay alive.boolean
And now, try to suppose a human with no instinct, no physical need, due to some kind of hypothetical sci-fi genetic manipulation or something like that. What about his actions? Would they be free? What's a choice?
He would still be influenced by his culture. And even by rejecting culture, he would still have just defined a new domain of action, but which arises from the rejection of the previous, and as such can't be seen as something "on its own".
And now you should understand the reference from the beginning.
Would like to hear your opinions.
How does this relate to the question in the title?
Well, first of all we could try to define freedom.
First of all it's something you can only speak about by it's relationship to something else. A life of Freedom. Freedom of speech. Freedom itself is inherently abstract.
Second, it's boolean, when someone is specific enough. Suppose there are two topics, A and B, and they are the only topics in the domain of speech. There's Freedom of A, but not of B. This doesn't mean Freedom of speech lies in some weird gray area. It just simple mean there is Freedom of talking about A, but there's not Freedom of talking about B.
A good definition of a free act is "an act that is not confined or moved by other acts".
Freedom, regarding the human condition, could thus be seen as the possibility of an individual to act freely.
But I think this is never the case.
Think of a regular person: how many duties does he/she have, due to his job, his family?
Now think of some unusual person, and outcast such as Diogenes of Sinope: he's free from the previous, he could have even intellectually escaped the coupling instinct, but he's still confined by the limitations of his body. If he gets too starved, he doesn't have the freedom to choose to stay alive.boolean
And now, try to suppose a human with no instinct, no physical need, due to some kind of hypothetical sci-fi genetic manipulation or something like that. What about his actions? Would they be free? What's a choice?
He would still be influenced by his culture. And even by rejecting culture, he would still have just defined a new domain of action, but which arises from the rejection of the previous, and as such can't be seen as something "on its own".
And now you should understand the reference from the beginning.
Would like to hear your opinions.