Thursday, August 27, 2009

Two ideas of Freedom

Let's call this the Hinton Problem. I don't know if anyone has ever thought about it before, but I came up with it in class, while I was thinking out loud about what Professor Hinton was saying. Turns out he really didn't mean this at all, but it's a cool paradox nonetheless, if I can spit it out.


The problem is supposed to reveal a key and important feature of double-dipping two definitions of free will. As you're doing a chosen action, that choice is an act of freedom, but that freedom is really at the expense of other freedoms.


Premise 1:
So the first major definition that we have is a sort of before-the-choice-happens freedom. It's the freedom of choice, but it looks like the potential to choose one or the other.


Illustrative example:


Michelle's Choices:


Choice 1: chocolate ice cream

Choice 2: Vanilla ice cream


But she only has this choice as it happens before she chooses.

Once she chooses say chocolate ice cream, there is no way that she can have both at the same time. The choices are mutually and definitively exclusive.

Premise 2:

'Michelle chooses the chocolate ice cream' is an act of freedom. She is certainly not free to be without the ice cream at all.

For example of the previous sentence: Michelle, not knowing whether to go to the park or the beach locks herself in her room. (I realize that she could stay in her room, and that's part of the freedom thing, but just run with me on this one).

This does not look like freedom.

Therefore, the freedom is the freedom to take action.

There is no freedom to do that action unless that action is taken or capable of being taken.



Conclusion 1: Because of the exclusiveness of Premise 1, one option or the other must be selected at the expense of another option. This seems to greatly and paradoxically intrude on our definition of freedom. Because of premise 2, one option or the other must be taken, because freedom to not act seems like the opposite. The freedom of imprisonment just does not work.

Therefore, I conclude that there are two different definitions of freedom at work here, a precursor definition, and a subsequent retrospective (or during the action) definition of freedom.


Conclusion 2: It might that freedom is so huge that it encompasses both of these definitions.

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