Exam 7: Freedom

"The only liberty which can be a real thing [is] the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State" was stated by

People who conceive of the self as an isolated individual self will typically view freedom as

If every choice or action is fully determined and fully explainable, then no choice is really free and in fact is not really a choice.

W hen Sartre said, "We were never more free than during the German occupation," he meant that

David Hume, a "soft determinist," believed that an action was free if it followed from a person's "character," because a person is responsible for her own character.

One implication of the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty is that

What is the difference between rational freedom and emotional freedom?

When Immanuel Kant said, "Ought implies can," he meant that without freedom there could be no morality.

It is clear that the concepts of moral responsibility and freedom are linked. Consider the following four cases: A. Dave was having an affair with Todd's wife Ethel and wanted her husband out of the way. After weeks of planning and stalking Todd, Dave shot and killed him as Todd left the gym. ​ B. One night in a bar, Dave had way too much to drink. He got into a vicious argument with Todd, who was also drunk and verbally abusive. In a state of alcoholic rage, Dave went to his car, got a gun, and came back to shoot Todd. ​ C. Dave, a combat veteran, was suffering severe conditions of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Waking up from a blackout, he hallucinated that he was on the battlefield and that Todd was the enemy. Thinking he was acting in self-defense, he shot and killed Todd. ​ D.   Dave is kidnapped by terrorists and told that unless he cooperates with them in attacking and possibly killing innocent civilians, his family will be killed. ​ Now write an essay in which you imagine you are on a jury charged with assessing Dave's guilt or innocence in each case, where guilt implies being morally and legally responsible. Applying Aristotle's two criteria for free actions, how would you assess Dave's guilt or innocence in each case, and why? If more information is needed, what is that information, and would its provision help you decide the case? Can you think of any other cases that serve as interesting test applications of Aristotle's framework?   What general conclusions can you draw about the relationship between freedom and moral responsibility?

To have chosen A means that one could have chosen B.

Kant argued that whether we are free depends on our standpoint, and that we can adopt two different standpoints toward the world:

What is the difference between negative freedom and positive freedom ?

Even if indeterminists are right in claiming that it is impossible to predict what a subatomic particle in our bodies might do, this does not imply that it is impossible to predict what our bodies will do.

Freedom is always a good thing for those who have it.

Aristotle argued that an act could be free only if it was both free from "external compulsion" and

Some soft determinists agree with determinists that if we knew everything, we could predict a person's actions with certainty (or at least a very high probability).

According to Frithjof Bergmann, our culture

If we assume that the self is a social entity that depends on others for its existence, then what will count as freedom will necessarily involve our relationships with others.

Soft determinists deny that human beings are morally responsible for their actions.

In Dostoevsky's story of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, after Jesus returns to earth, he is arrested by the Grand Inquisitor because he offered people the path of freedom.