DJP
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Actually Hobbes was what in modern parlance a compatibilist
– the universe is deterministic but freedom could still exist since freedom for him is the ability to do what one wants in the absence of impedimentshttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#FreeAccoClasComp
This is a summary of PF Strawson’s “Freedom annd Resentment” I put a link to the full article a few posts back.
“Although the central issues involved in the problem of free will and moral responsibility have remained the same since ancient times, the emphasis of the debate has changed greatly. Contemporary compatibilists in the vein of Frankfurt and Strawson tend to argue that moral responsibility has little if anything to do with determinism, since it arises from people’s desires and attitudes rather than from the causal origins of their actions. Humans may not be free to as great an extent as the intuitive notion of free will suggests, but there is no other freedom to be had. Addressing the problem of free will and moral responsibility requires establishing guidelines for holding people accountable, not lunging after some impossible notion of free will.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/free-will-and-moral-responsibility/CompatibilismI don’t think any magical or religious meanings have to be read into it.
Perhaps you should have spoken to some Calvinists or Lutherans.
Of course no one ever made a choice without being influenced by some external or subconscious factors. I know some people define “free will” that way.
But the plainest common garden use of “free will” just means something like an uncoerced choice made from alternative possibilities.
But I have the feeling we’ve been over this before…
My opinions infuriate you.
I can’t help thinking that this discussion is baren for at least two reasons.
1. If I hit you on the nose because I found your comments annoying, you’re going to feel resentment towards me regardless of how much you think that free will is an illusion and that everything is the result of cause and effect. See P.F Strawson’s 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment”
https://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/P._F._Strawson_Freedom_&_Resentment.pdf2. People exist at the level of society in a world of agents that have beliefs and intentions, not at the level of atoms or sub-atomic particles. It’s a mistake to think that social explanations can, or should be, reduced to explanations about physics. See this video from Christian List below for example:
I didn’t have a choice about being a socialist. My brain did that.
“It wasn’t me, it was my brain that did it”. Interesting line of argument, and a good example of Poe’s law too.
If “you” are not your brain are “you” any other parts of your body? If not I guess there’s no need to worry about the nuclear apocalypse.
Incidentally, Heinrich was one of the examiners for Soren Mau’s PhD thesis, from which ‘Mute Compulsion’ is derived. It’s freely available here:
Mau’s book isn’t about socialism, or how to achieve it, but about how market relations are necessarily a form of domination or ‘mute compulsion’. Listening to him talking about his book here, I don’t think it’s fair to describe him as an idiot (even if he has no clue about how socialism might come about)
https://pod.link/1544487624/episode/c66ba1020402cecd75dcc8af75d30f8c
Edit: Another reason I thought a review would be good is that it could draw a bit of internet traffic from interested parties.
I guess as I started I may as well continue… Avidor Dro were a popular and influential band during the post-Franco era ‘La Movida Madrileña’. This is a track from one of their albums from 1983.
“We will distribute the means of production
between producers and
urban worker associations.
With science on our side,
the hierarchies will disappear,
the paternal hand of the old state.”Lyrics here:
https://www.letras.com/aviador-dro/806420/Some Argentinian Anarchist Guajira for you. Lyrics, in Spanish, below:
Well?
It’s a very long text. Have you had a chance to look at it properly? Worth spending the time to look at?
I notice it makes reference to Søren Mau’s book “Mute Compulsion” book. This should be reviewed in the Standard; it’s a very popular work right now.
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds”
According to Wikipedia these lines were taken from a speech from Marcus Garvey.
Perhaps I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, but if the argument is that production goods cannot be effectively allocated without a pricing mechanism how is saying “planning will be decentralised” an answer to that? Surely Von Mises could just say that even in a decentralised system this problem would still persist, there is still no way to compare dissimilar goods and make efficient allocative decisions in the face of competing demands.
If Von Mises is saying something like “only markets can effectively allocate production goods, and you can’t have markets without prices” then I would have thought it would be better to target the assumptions he’s making about needs and market efficiency. Or is he saying more than that?
FWIW – “For what it’s worth”. I.e I don’t think this is worth making much out of. I’ve not read the Mises essay, and was just responding to the short paragraph you mentioned. The whole of which is below:
Under socialism all the means of production are the property of the community. It is the community alone which can dispose of them and which determines their use in production. It goes without saying that the community will only be in a position to employ its powers of disposal through the setting up of a special body for the purpose. The structure of this body and the question of how it will articulate and represent the communal will is for us of subsidiary importance. One may assume that this last will depend upon the choice of personnel, and in cases where the power is not vested in a dictatorship, upon the majority vote of the members of the corporation.
The “powers of disposal” just means “abilities to decide how to make use of”. Looking at the last two sentences, it seems Von Mises thinks his criticism would apply equally whether this power is concentrated or not.
But as far as know, Von Mises is just saying that without a single unit of account (i.e prices in units of money) you wouldn’t be able to make calculations and allocations based on this single unit of account. The question for us to ask is if such a single unit of account is as necessary as he thinks.
