Free will an absurdity
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the most vital argument that the Socialist advances against free will is that its acceptance precludes the possibility of a science of sociology. The Socialist expounds the principle of laws acting behind social causation. If man, individually and en masse, is a creature of caprice, if he thinks and acts independently of his heredity and social milieu, then the search for laws supposed to govern human history, economics and social relations is forever doomed to futility. The acceptance of free will is a flat denial of social science."
THE WESTERN SOCIALIST.
So you reject the Western Socialist article by W.C. Currey?You say that one is free to will? In other words, one wills to will?Furthermore, you reject Godwin, Shelley, Holbach, Diderot, La Mettrie, and all the pre-marxian materialists, and dispute that the Currey article is a socialist classic?And you affirm that we only have thoughts and feelings that we want to have? Consequently, you could cease to be a Socialist this afternoon and be a Catholic instead, with no reason compelling your will?For not only do you possess will, which I would agree with, but your will is free to will, which by definition frees it from causation.You want to want.
So you reject the Western Socialist article by W.C. Currey?You say that one is free to will? In other words, one wills to will?Furthermore, you reject Godwin, Shelley, Holbach, Diderot, La Mettrie, and all the pre-marxian materialists, and dispute that the Currey article is a socialist classic?And you affirm that we only have thoughts and feelings that we want to have? Consequently, you could cease to be a Socialist this afternoon and be a Catholic instead, with no reason compelling your will?For not only do you possess will, which I would agree with, but your will is free to will, which by definition frees it from causation.You want to want.
Sorry about the save button malfunctioning here. On the other hand, if you agree that will is motivated, as I think you do, and that we are at cross purposes, then I put this to you?1) Why are you and others so desperate to keep the TERM free will, when to keep a term that indicates an idealist concept breaks with the materialist tradition which socialism builds on?2) How do you suggest the materialists be read, when they clearly understand free will to be a fallacy? Should we rewrite them for new readers?
John Oswald wrote:Furthermore, you reject Godwin, Shelley, Holbach, Diderot, La Mettrie, and all the pre-marxian materialists, and dispute that the Currey article is a socialist classic?Ideas move on and develop. These people are who Marx refered to as "the old materialism" in the Theses on Fuerbach. We live in the 21st century, not the 19th.
Quote:And you affirm that we only have thoughts and feelings that we want to have?I can certainly have unpleasent thoughts, and am subjected to external and internal influences I am not aware of. That does not mean that all my actions are no different to reflexes and I do not have "free will"
Quote:Consequently, you could cease to be a Socialist this afternoon and be a Catholic instead, with no reason compelling your will?There would be no freedom in doing that. There is no freedom in being a butterfly fluttering about changing direction every second for no good reason. Free will means being able to act accordingly to our desires and currently held beliefs.
I'm pretty sure no social science denies agency. Denying free will is equally absurd, and nobody actually does deny it – they just try to convince themselves that they do. To deny free will would mean viewing cold calculated premeditated actions and reflexes as essentially the same.The mistake is to think that "free will" has to be some kind of uncaused cause. It doesn't. "Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves — two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control. Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity" Engels – Anti-Duhring
When we meanigfully talk about "free will" we are not dependent on any particular metaphysical stance."Free will" in the sense of being an uncaused causer is incompatible with both a determined and indetermined universe. But when it comes down to it being an uncaused causer is not what we are talking about when we are talking about freedom of the will.
So a butterfly changes direction for no good reason?…that you can see.You do not determine to have unpleasant thoughts then?Time moves on, ideas change, but cause and effect are essential to materialism.It doesn't change its basis as a philosophy, no more than Man ceases to be an animal because he operates computers.Let's ditch the word socialism. Dontja know it now means state control?
What do you say when people read the Western Socialist against free will?Is the Western Socialist pre-marxian?
Currey appears to know precisely what free will means and so do Shelley et al.They would wonder why you are using that idealist term at all. What is your need to hold on to it, when just "will" is shorter?Or is language of no importance any more? Let's all just be loose with it and no longer bother with intellectual discipline!
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