Daniel Dennett - Freedom Evolves - a Dangerous Idea Part 2

Freedom Evolves - a dangerous idea. Indiana University 07.03.2006

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Daniel
• Dennett
• Atheism
• Philosophy
• Morality
• Freewill

[rawrock24]

I wish I didn't have a hang over right now.

[82abhilash]

Can they act freely, in a social sense? Well, those who are also using their free responsibly have to tow the party line, or they get killed. Getting yourself killed is not very responsible. The trick for successful totalitarianism is to artificially remove all but one option when for being responsible, the one option that you have power over. In time people will forget that there was a time when you had many options. Read Animal Farm and 1984.

[lazmindotcom]

Thanks for your (very) many comments. I don't agree either with Dennett's definition of free will or the need for it yet, but I think I understand it better, and you certainly seem knowledgeable on the subject.

I'm going to go on to part 3 now. I'm sure I'll have more questions if you'll take them. :)

[lazmindotcom]

Okay, I'm attracted to this example. I'm actually in South Korea, so I know a little about the extent of the oppression. Apparently, they believe that Kim Jeong-il was a great Olympic athlete, that he invented the airplane, stuff like that... really goofy.

Now, You've expressed the idea that the agent has to be making a reasonable reaction to a "real" environment for "free will" to occur. However, their social environment is horribly twisted.

-Can they act freely, in a social sense?

[82abhilash]

"Harm" and "well-being" being subjective assessments - yes, it means different things to different people, that is why people use their freedoms differently. Those are the right words to use. You may for reasons that you know best decide that enduring pain enhances your well-being. What if you are taking a flu shot?

[82abhilash]

...Lot of North Koreans may never know that the extent of their oppression because they have never known and have never known how freedom tastes, they do not have information about its absence. When the US defeated Japan in WW2, lots of Japanese soldiers committed mass suicide. These victims will in fact fight and die for their way of life, because it is the only one they have ever known. May I recommend George Orwell's Animal Farm. The inalienable rights can be indefinitely suppressed.

[82abhilash]

'Might not a highly patriarchal society create non-brick-duckers... What if the reality is that victims would most benefit by revolution, but they remain victims?'

Sam Harris has referred to this situation. Once institutions that assume our lack of individuality takes over our society, then the people who run it will conspire to suppress and if possible even weed out that sense of individuality, that sense of myself....

[82abhilash]

...Now if human being did not have an innate sense of individuality, no one would have to artificially impose a communal narrative. And even in the narrative it is the implicit to the individual and his sense of identity with his body. So, I think we are born that way.

[82abhilash]

'To what degree is our "narrative" imposed on us by our parents and our respective cultures?' Take this example. In Islamic societies, there is no concept of individuality. There is the concept of the community or 'Ummah' and every muslim is supposed to treat those of their ummah as part of their own body. Dividing the ummah is a high crime and is compared to a person severing off his own limbs.....

[lazmindotcom]

"Harm" and "well-being" being subjective assessments, as processed through the complex narrative of self? i.e. not just survival, avoidance of pain, etc?