REALLY, DID HE DECIDE FREELY?

An unfree choice? (Taxidriver)

Toni "Poika" Illi left the office when he was 55 years old. Everybody respected him in the government machinery. But nothing stopped him from leaving there. Nothing compelled him  to stay. He didn't want to be like everyone else. Human nature didn't coerce to be like an everyman. "Does it generally cause to be?", I wandered looking at these human beings over there, in their planet Earth.

Illi was sitting in the chair twiddling with his chubby fingers when his thoughts started live their own life.

"It would be easy to use violence, if I wanted to use. To beat, to hit to pieces... But I don't want to be cruel. A jerk. Yeah. That is! Going bananas," Toni Illi snarls like an urban jungle.

"I could come and smash you like... like a mirror scattering all over the floor. However, I just don't want. I don't want to plan... to decide to kill you. 

Nothing external to me, demons or madmen, hold back from tearing apart you. No, I don't acknowledge. I have no inner inhibitions. I just don't want. Don't yell. Come on let's no yelling!  

I walk in your home, open the door, throw away a blanket and start strangling. But I said it already. I don't want."

Possibilities exist beyond the natural reality. And he has been thinking a while. He is free to go. It is possible him to leave his home. Going is a possibility, but it does not appear now in space. Freedom possibilities are in human thoughts. Toni Illi causes them within his own psyche.

ON UNFREE persons

A human but a dogmatic mind

1) A person x is not able to think than in one way.

2) Free act requires possibilities to do otherwise.

3) However, a person x has not a possibility to think than in this one particular way. (Maybe x is brainwashed or a mind of x is political.)


4) Therefore, x is not free, and x is not a freethinker (from 1, 2 and 3)

(free Mr. Gaddafi´s mind!)

A Personal Problem

A word "a face" and the face

A person x grasps a meaning of the concept "a face", and grasping it causes an image of a face in the consciousness of x.

But how is that causality possible in the Universe? Further, how does the connection of grasping and a mental image connect with a person's physical body or its central neural system?


I have not been understanding that.



(René Magritte, "The Rape", 1934)

IS PHILOSOPHY USEFUL?

The Death of Socrates: but why?

Philosophizing -> Mental healthy or better reasoning are final goals.


Exercising -> Healthy or look or admiration or sex are final goals. That is, one exercises because of wanting to look good. One believes by exercising one will look good.

According Socrates virtue is sufficient to happiness meaning to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. But the choice is your personal - problem, a mental problem.
(A program on Socrates - to listen) 



Ville: Well, tell me why philosophizing would be useful?

Marjatta: Nobody is home. A man's question you boy.

V: Thus, what's it?

M: So where it?

V: That' is.


M: Tee! What it?

V: So, where it?

M: No, get it!


V: Could it? Wank it?

M: Yes I told it already!


V: So what is it?

M: If nobody is home, then philosophizing is.

And she points a finger at her head at the same time.

A goal as a cause: doing A because of B. B is a goal and doing A is an effect which would lead to the goal B, or so a Marjatta believes in, and thus she chooses to do A. However, Marjatta does not grasp why B materializes in her thoughts to the desiring thing. What materializes B, is a mysterious choice within her body.

SEEING CAUSALITY

You meet a tiger.

Seeing a hand or an image in front of a mind

First, a politician sees a hand and infers from inner feeling "It's my hand". He perceives that he points then to himself by his little finger and starts slowly moving it towards his ugly stomach. He sees how his hand is moving. Finally, a politician feels touching within himself.


Those are descriptions and thus they are not causal explanations. For example, moving a hand is not the same as interaction of cells inside of his hand. Similarly, seeing a hand in front of one's eyes is not the same as eyes' moving due to sexual desire. In brief, we report what appear to us. We do not perceive relations between a hand, light and eyes and their optic nerves.

The contra factual analysis of causality may have a form "If not A, then not B". Can we then insist: if there won't be seeing a hand, inferring "It is my hand", pointing by a finger, starting move a hand, seeing a hand's moving, then there won't be feeling touch?  A politician sees a hand. However, it does not follow from his seeing he will feel touching soon. He touches his left hand by the fingers of the right hand.That is, he experiences seeing, moving and touching but sees no causality  among them. It just seems to him that the hands are over a table appearing round and hard, the walls of a room seems to be yellow, although the surfaces of the walls have no colors, and the form of the hands emerges from  the material structures of tiny elements.

Finally, 

1) One perceives deciding to move one's own hand and moving it 


2) They both are effects


3) One misrepresents that deciding causes  moving


4) Nevertheless, there are only two effects because


5) Their cause is one and the same subject: a bodily person with faculties of experience and thinking


6) There are two acts which are effects: I decide and I move my hand (from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)


7) These acts have a same cause but 
between them there is not a causal connection (from 6, 5, 3)


NOT: One's deciding -> one's moving 

Two hands in two different places behind two eyes?

BUT


A person -> deciding 

AND


A person -> moving 


(From experience but I'm not sure about the text above. Please explain.)


You have been meeting a tiger.

PHILOSOPHY OR DRINKING WINE?

Philosophy as simple living: Diogenes of Sinope

Matti: "Philosophy! But for what reasons? It's no use!"                                

Maria: "I don't know... It gives a faculty to recognize when a man or a woman is indoctrinated and brainwashed. I mean... I mean a prisoner of some world view. A prisoner of science, politics, economy, nature, men or... or whatever."

Matti: "Bitch! What on earth is philosophy of any use for anybody? Explain."

Maria: "Yeah... The use is such that one grasps that a man being able to think nothing but work and money is not free. How is that? By philosophy... Can you?"

Matti: "Can what fucking what?"

Maria: "To reason... Or being able to think something else."

Matti:

Maria: "Thanks! Bitch."

Matti: "Hey come on! That's not fair."

Maria: "One educates oneself... That is philosophy about. And a mean to the peace of mind. Philosophy is a lifestyle. But philosophy as a lifestyle and a culture is disappearing due to the academic philosophers deifying science and matter."


Matti: I wanna... No! Wanting is good.


THE CYNICS: FREE ONESELF FROM CONVENTIONS
(A radio discussion about the Cynics BBC 45 minutes)

On Categories: Entities Imply Things and Wholes

That is a thing or a whole.

X is one and  many. 

A controversial claim! If Mrs. Jones is one person, how can she be many too? And if a group of politicians consists of many individual politicians, how can it be one when it is actually five persons? One is not identical with five.

Next, metaphysical categories:


A thesis: Two different categories x and y differ in each other absolutely, E.g. they are neither identical with nor similar to.


From a thesis follows:


if a category x includes A, a category y does not include A (self-evident when contemplating and grasping the implication). But then it is entailed A is also a category and x is not the same as y.

A question: Is a thing in the same category as a whole?

From a question:

No, because they are two different categories. A whole is more abstract than a thing, a contingent thing like a book of Kafka.

How would many books be one Book?

A claim 1: A thing inheres its attributes and its identity remains over change and time.


A claim 2: A whole is its parts, simple parts, but it loses and gains parts during its existence. So, its identity doesn't remain over change and time, such as a human body or the nature.


A conclusion: A is a substance and A is not a whole because a substance is not identical with a whole (from a thesis, a claim1 and a claim 2).

WHAT IS VIOLENCE AGAINST HUMANITY: A SUGGESTION

The representatives of every species have a natural way to act. So have human beings too, a woman or a man, and vice versa.

For instance, for birds flying is a natural habit. For fish it is natural to swim in the seas, rivers and lakes. For humans thinking is natural and practical habit to survive in the nature - and big cities.


If birds' wings are cut off, their natural function is prevented. If a human being is not allowed to report what he or she sees, his or her natural instinct of being in the world has been destroyed. What one sees may be an illusion and what masters tell him to see is an illusion -->                  Seeing is possible a being in illusion.

Peace doesn't mean silence inside of mouths and lack of contradictions in human relationship. Peace in society doesn't collapse when people criticizes a leading bloc and claims our real life is not what authorities, news and movies tell us and when people disagree with and rebel. In brief, to prevent one's thinking by force is violence, not peace.
"Freedom" of speech occurs  in China

and

"Freedom" of speech doesn't occur in China

So, what do you think about ideologies?
 
But is to protect one's thinking peaceful then? Let's think it together, dear friend:

1. If one must protect peace, it is not violence (Protection: why not a violent act? I don't know... this seems to be a weak premise.)
2. If two parties or persons have a quarrel, peace disappears (from experience)
3. If peace disappears, one must protect peace (Peace is better than war; self-evident)
4. They start to fight
5. Peace disappears (from 2 and 4)
6. One must protect peace (from 3 and 5)

     7. So, the protection of peace is not violence (from 1 and 6). 

But the protection of peace by violence is violence (the logic of despotism).

IS THERE ETHICAL ABSOLUTE?

Most people think themselves in situations as agents but not as objects of act of someone else. Many thinks also that everyone's own moral beliefs are valid and that different cultures' moral beliefs about the same act are as "true". Thus, my moral beliefs are true for me and your beliefs are true for you.

Let's consider next Friedrich Nietzsche's claim on "On the Genealogy of Morals": "According to slave morality, therefore, the 'evil person' arouses fear; according to master morality, it is precisely the 'good person' who arouses and wishes to arouse fear, whilst the 'bad man' is felt to be contemptible."

Does mental illness strengthen? (The ill Nietzsche, 1899)

So, although you do disagree with Nietzsche, you must acknowledge he is right if you are an ethical Relativist or Subjectivist. "I do whatever I want", shout Nietzscheans. (However, it's controversial whether that opinion was really Nietzsche's personal opinion. May be it was a test for the future people.)

"Oh!", you shout and tell, "It's morally right to cut one's hand if one writes something bad about people and its loving ruler." But, but, but! You must accept your hand is also cut, if the ruler wants so. It's not fair to exclude yourself, if a group is treated roughly by some culture. Put yourself in a group!


An ethical absolute could be such a principle: Persons are always both agents and objects. When considering on goodness or badness of acts, put yourself too in the situation of human beings who are done something. 


If you claim that cultural relativism is true, you must accept what other culture do to you because from their perspective it is right to treat you some way, although you blaim it is wrong. In general, when somebody says to be a Relativist, he means only "I am allowed to do in this way". Listen, for example, to governments led by an ideology - or to the radio.

RESPONSIBILITY 2: KIDS DESERVE BETTER

There are not blocs in children's minds.

Kids and their actions are, in partly, their guardians' responsibility. Kids must be educated as autonomous and critical citizens who are capable to reason their own ends, not politicians' or guardians' ends. That's because responsibility entails freedom, which means non-determined action and autonomy from the external causes in the material world. Kids deserve to become better thinkers. Caring for is not leaving.

Likewise, to form one's ends requires freedom from actual desires and impulses. But kids are dependent on guardians' choices. That's why children can't be morally accountable for their acts to norms of the society. Their parents are...  


It is said kids mirror a society. That claim may be true. But does school shooting mirror a society and adults? Actions, that is, mirror ourselves: we are in our actions, our internal essence is visible in  our actions. We are responsible for our kids actions, if Kids mirror a society's and their parents' world view, values and behavior. Absolute school leaving?


If the responsible action is the action expressing self-adopted ends and being free from previous physical contacts which forces one to act, kids can't be fully responsible for their actions, harmful or fruitful. Adults choose what their girls or boys do next. However, girls and boys are agents who cause their own actions. So, agent-causality would be the act without determining previous causes before an effect: kids' actions which determining causes are actors themselves.

A LITTLE IDEA ABOUT FREEDOM

If a person has been freed from conceptual thinking, then is he or she free? May be you don't grasp the question.

The economy gives ready-made answers what to do, so it has released people from thinking. Has the economy made them free citizens, socialist or market economy? Don't you grasp the question?


No, no it hasn't. They're not free citizens because she or he was freed from thinking*.

*WARNING: don't be upset if you grasp the text above.

ON RESPONSIBILITY 1

Responsibility exists as general abstract idea although one can't see it: one grasps it. Reasoning persons become under the idea of responsibility when acting without brainwashing, pressure of threat, or acting and reasoning as the autonomous mind. 

It's a fact we distinguish responsible from irresponsible people, like wise from ignorant. But if the word "responsibility" is nothing but a subjective belief and one's belief is true for him, then everybody is as responsible as somebody else. So each person's private beliefs would be true: what things seem to each person to be like, that is also what they really are like.


But then nobody can distinguish responsible persons from irresponsible ones. That claim would not correspond with the visible fact: people have objective properties. We know that somebody is smart and that somebody is stupid. So knowledge is not relative.


We don't see Mrs Jones is responsible: she hasn't "being responsible" as visible quality such as color red and form tight are.

                      The electric lights mean the urbanized areas. Human beings go 

                          towards light. Happiness? Who faces the concequences?

When asking "Who is responsible for this mess?", we want to know the guilty who is the first cause in an institution: they who command can't shift the act on someone else. The chain of causes ends in managers.

We are all responsible to the future human race, according to Bertrand Russell.

The Condition of Free Society

A society without public criticism is not worth anything.

Public criticism means ability to evaluate independently the thought repeated by majority. Repeating means "only one choice open".


                            One can be liberated but is not free from the liberator

                          (Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix; 1830; Louvre)

The embraced is not free to choose. He or she is programmed to repeat. It is: repeating single truth. Thus the brainwashed can't criticize publicly. 
                                                                                      
If the masses have embraced one doctrine, then ...                                
                                                                                                                                                               

HUMAN'S SECURITY NOT STATE'S SECURITY

Hey come on! A state's most important goal is not to guarantee its military security by armed forces in the system of sovereign powers. So, in the present global world, the balance of Great Powers is not the essence of international relations of nations. 

                  Negotiation is the main institution between leaders, not

                    states (UN Climat Summit in 2009; David Karp/AP).

More exactly, says the libertarian, there are only individuals and societies, not states, nations and fatherlands which are ideas within Russian, Chinese and American nationalists' minds. 

Yes but that doesn't prove the claim that states' main goal is not the military security.


I'm sorry. Very sorry. I mean... I mean that now the economical well-fare is the main goal for most political leaders. The central problem for them is not war and the use of force, like it or not Mrs. Realism. Pure anarchy doesn't prevail in the global society because people do have peaceful contacts across borders and because global context, like international law and United Nations, sets moral judgments for states' behavior in which the use of force is not the automatic reaction. For example, nuclear weapons affect every humans when using. So, any national leader doesn't really want to use them in real conflicts. They are too costly. It follows from that nuclear weapons entail negotiations and peaceful interactions between the societies rather than very dangerous interventions.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/201039185911248940.html

To my mind, humanitarian issues and individual humans' security have become more important from the cold war to the post cold war era than the security of some state. The picture of pure anarchy is insufficient for evaluating the present international global society. 


That is, everybody in the globe are affected by nuclear weapons, transnational terrorism, the climate change and the organized crime. From that follows that nobody can protect against these phenomena by armed forces. Not even Great Powers! For instance, the transnational terrorism forces Great Powers to cooperate. 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8592968.stm         Mr. Chavez: People 

                                                                                              consists of individuals!

Only if every individuals, including artists, writers and philosophers, have protection in a society, people's security exists. There are many societies in which a man and a woman are not in safe. Therefore, some governments doesn't protect the people's security when claiming that they secure states' security by the use of violence towards some citizens and minorities.


The goal of the domestic politics is people's security not state's existence in the system of the sovereign nations. By means of the use of force the governments don't solve the problems of human's life but create more problems. War and violence against individuals and states are nowadays more morally unthinkable than in the past. 


So is the world moving beyond the anarchy of the sovereign state system?

ON ANARCHY IN WORLD POLITICS

The concept "anarchy", strictly speaking, means the absence of governments and rulers. But "anarchy" doesn't mean total chaos because in international relations between countries chaos doesn't prevail but mostly order. That is, there is order in the political world due to the balance of power between states.
 

  He's not a world's leader

but a leader of North Korea. (beloved?)

After cold war period in the world's stage there aren't only states as actors but also other players: multinational corporations like Nokia, human rights movements like Amnesty International, terrorist networks, organized crime, etc.  
                                                                 
                                                                           He's not a world leader. (beloved?)                                                                                                      
 
But the structure of world politics is an anarchic system of states meaning that 1) there is no higher government over states and 2) it's a self-help system. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/staging_site/in_depth/georgia_russia_conflict/default.stm

"Anarchy in world politics" could be defined also, like a famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes did, as a war of all against all. That is, there's not higher ruler to enforce order. A good example about that kind of situation would be a town without a sheriff in the Old West or Somalia at present time. In Somalia nobody has a monopoly to keep in order as different clans and groups fight against each other.
                                                                                                                                                                  So, if there is not the international police enforces sanctions against lawbreakers or states and political leaders,  then world politics is a self-help system. And that's true because in international relations no one has a monopoly to use force. As a result, especially Great Powers such as China, US, Russia and some European countries, the governments don't trust each other and feel suspicion. In domestic politics, however, police and courts, by the government's power, can pass sanctions to lawbreakers and prevent their freedom to act.


Finally, althought political leaders and peoples have their right to self-determination, there is always possibility to intervene in other sovereign state's political system in world politics by the armed forces. It occurs due to anarchic system of states: look at Georgia, Iraq and Afghanistan! So, there are expectations to the rule: one hasn't right to intervene in the affairs of another state.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/12/2009121194338739472.html

ON VALUING

When talking about valuing we have in mind some objects which we value, appreciate, respect and regard highly. So we respect what we value. We can say valuing is some kind of relation because there are a person, valued objects and a relation "valuing" between these things. In general form, that is, "x value(s) y".

It is, of course, banal to tell that we value our money, cars, a house, clothes, food, children, a spouse, lovers, friends, work etc. It is as banal to notice different people value different things. Most of us value beautiful material goods but what we regard as beautiful varies.

But a valuing person and a valued object can be one and the same: a person x values him or herself. We, that is, care about ourselves. However, most of people care about their appearance, own body, faces: looking after one's looks is very important in Western democracies. How do you know that?, someone asks. By watching humans' behavior in cities. By observing, my friend. And what are we seeing? We are seeing different actions: they take a shower, brush their teeth, take exercise, buy new clothes, go to the hairdresser. "I don't go out without make-up", many women exclaim.

The valued objects, however, aren't always concrete stuff but immaterial. The abstract objects valued by persons can be love and goodness, a poetry or a play of Shakespeare, theorems of logic and mathematics, values like Rights and Liberties, traditions, some lifestyle being religious or not, a country and subcultures etc. For instance, the idea of nationalism is powerful but it is clear that ideas are not physical moving bodies such as rocks.

Yet, what is this relation "valuing"? Valuing is wanting to maintain or keeping up something. It is caring about and caring for somebody. If one maintains friendship, one respects friendship.

Valuing is also not wanting to part from somebody. If we really value our car we don't want that somebody touch it or take it. The problem is that other persons don't necessarily value relationship with us or care about us. Cars haven't own will and interests. So cars don't leave us but other persons may want to do so. Therefore, valuing is a personal mind's state being grounded on some belief-system. And it matters whether valued objects are lifeless material things, other person or a relationship, or an abstract object.

Finally the most important thing. Everybody wants to be respected. Sometimes. Everybody wants to get respect for his or her activities. From somebody and sometimes.