what's your definition of FREEDOM???

Ren said:
Ok, so let me attempt to clarify because I feel like many different understandings of "value" are being jumbled here.

A) I suggest that there is objective moral value, subjective moral value, objective aesthetic value, and subjective aesthetic value.

B) I understood the question about the value of freedom as: "Does freedom have objective moral value as a good thing?" I personally believe it does, but this is a difficult topic that philosophers don't agree on. I commit to the idea that in order to have objective moral value, something must objectively exist. Something can exist immaterially (a concept, a fictional character) though of course, the fact that something exists does not automatically ascribe it objective moral value.

C) A work of fiction, to me, can be argued to have either objective or subjective aesthetic value, but I have difficulty imagining that it could have moral value. If you think that a work of fiction has moral value, it's likely that it's not the work itself that has the value, but the ideas that it re-presents. Now maybe the "idea of freedom" could be valuated, but it would be different than "freedom" itself.
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Is there not though an argument to be made that there is something beyond an idea in fiction that we connect to- at least on an emotional and spiritual level. See I keep coming back to fictional characters and the impact they have on us, because before we're even old enough to understand what a work of fiction is and what "real" and "unreal" mean we have a sort of connection to characters that is as basic and obvious as our connection to other human beings.
 
Reason With Logic Filling said:
Is there not though an argument to be made that there is something beyond an idea in fiction that we connect to- at least on an emotional and spiritual level. See I keep coming back to fictional characters and the impact they have on us, because before we're even old enough to understand what a work of fiction is and what "real" and "unreal" mean we have a sort of connection to characters that is as basic and obvious as our connection to other human beings.
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No for sure, I agree with that. But at the very least, this impact that a particular character has on you would be subjective. So it would always be some deeply personal thing that cannot be applied across the board as the basis of a "valuation". When you asked "does freedom as an illusion have value" you were implicitly asking "value not just for myself, but for all humans". The same is not true of your example regarding fictional characters.
 
Reason With Logic Filling said:
Is there not though an argument to be made that there is something beyond an idea in fiction that we connect to- at least on an emotional and spiritual level. See I keep coming back to fictional characters and the impact they have on us, because before we're even old enough to understand what a work of fiction is and what "real" and "unreal" mean we have a sort of connection to characters that is as basic and obvious as our connection to other human beings.
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Yes, I was thinking about this too Reason.
But I believe that is exactly because we (going to invent a word here) "conceptualize" human beings and characters in fiction alike. The same neural pathways must be in play. Real and 'fictional' becomes 'humans' in the mind.

Like, I care about you Reason, but I've never met you. You are, essentially, a work of fiction to me: words on a screen. But I conceptualize you as a human being, and you behave (more or less) as a human being would. And as such subscribe all characteristics of a human being to you, which allows me to care.
 
Lady Jolanda said:
Yes, I was thinking about this too Reason.
But I believe that is exactly because we (going to invent a word here) "conceptualize" human beings and characters in fiction alike. The same neural pathways must be in play. Real and 'fictional' becomes 'humans' in the mind.

Like, I care about you Reason, but I've never met you. You are, essentially, a work of fiction to me: words on a screen. But I conceptualize you as a human being, and you behave (more or less) as a human being would. And as such subscribe all characteristics of a human being to you, which allows me to care.
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Thank god you're here to say what I was driving at more elegantly and effectively.
 
What are people to us really? If we judge what a person is by what they make us think and feel then people are just neurons firing in our brains. That's a little bit of a neurotic thing to reduce a person to isn't it? lol.
 
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Ren said:
Here's a little challenge for you. Suppose you are "only as free as your mind allows you to be". Does that not imply that you are either completely free or completely unfree?
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Ok I'll bite. No, it doesn't?
The mind is our cognitive abilities. (Thoughts, experience, sensation, memory, consciousness.) In our mind we hold beliefs about the world and about the self. Beliefs can be true (in that they correspond to reality) or false (in that they don't). Beliefs that are false, are inherently self limiting. Self limiting beliefs reduce freedom. ("I can't do math because I'm a girl and girls are bad at mathematics, so I won't even try", "I'm a soldier, I must follow all orders unquestionably", "all men are pigs so I'm staying single", etc). But people differ in the amount of false or self limiting beliefs they hold. So, a person who holds less self limiting beliefs has more freedom.
Thing is, we are not always aware of the beliefs we (our mind) holds. So in a sense, yes, you are only as free as your mind allows you to be? (And you can increase your freedom by becoming aware of false or self limiting beliefs and changing them accordingly.)
 
Ren said:
I think the reason why you're having trouble finding the word might be because "freedom as an illusion" simply lacks a referent. If freedom is an illusion, freedom does not really exist, and so it cannot be ascribed any value, whether positive or negative. But I have a sneaking suspicion that you meant "if the experience of freedom is an illusion, does it make it less valuable than other experiences" - to this I would say no, it does not make it less valuable. But that's because of the kind of philosophical system I (by and large) subscribe to, as @Lady Jolanda knows (^^) which is a version of existentialism.

Existentialism takes experience as the basis of its valuation, so it doesn't really matter what is taken to be "real" or not, and in any case in Existentialism, a lot of what would be traditionally be taken to be real or unreal would be called into question. But if I were, say, a Kantian, then for sure freedom as an illusory experience would have little value. Personally, I would question the Kantian's ability to prove the truth of the illusory nature of freedom.
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I dunno, I think that if someone stuffed you into a little metal box and locked it, depending on the number of years you were locked in said little metal bawks you might start to ascribe a certain negativity to it. Then if asked if you would like your freedom back do you think you would respond with "freedom is an illusion" or " Yes, dear God please yes?"
 
Lady Jolanda said:
Ok I'll bite. No, it doesn't?
The mind is our cognitive abilities. (Thoughts, experience, sensation, memory, consciousness.) In our mind we hold beliefs about the world and about the self. Beliefs can be true (in that they correspond to reality) or false (in that they don't). Beliefs that are false, are inherently self limiting. Self limiting beliefs reduce freedom. ("I can't do math because I'm a girl and girls are bad at mathematics, so I won't even try", "I'm a soldier, I must follow all orders unquestionably", "all men are pigs so I'm staying single", etc). But people differ in the amount of false or self limiting beliefs they hold. So, a person who holds less self limiting beliefs has more freedom.
Thing is, we are not always aware of the beliefs we (our mind) holds. So in a sense, yes, you are only as free as your mind allows you to be? (And you can increase your freedom by becoming aware of false or self limiting beliefs and changing them accordingly.)
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Thanks for this, LJ :) I have bolded the last part of your argument because it will help me show later that, although mostly compelling, it is made circular by a false premise. Correct me if I’m simplifying too much, but what you are saying in a nutshell is this:

1. The mind is our cognitive faculties
2. Our cognitive faculties are not infallible (as is exemplified in false beliefs)
3. The fallibility of the cognitive faculties, as exemplified in false beliefs, limits freedom
4. Therefore the mind limits freedom
5. Therefore you are only as free as your mind allows you to be.

The fallacy happens in the transition from 4 to 5. Insofar as the cognitive faculties are used in the formulation of judgements and those judgements inform actions, the cognitive faculties do have an impact on what actions we choose to perform. I understand that this could be said to amount to a limiting of freedom. But it’s not really “the mind” as a separate entity that limits it, or “allows” the self to be more or less free. It is mistaken, I think, to assume that the locus of freedom is inside the mind.

The first reason is circularity of argument: you can’t impact upon those fallible faculties by “becoming aware” of their fallibility without making use of those very faculties, i.e. you can’t become more free by using what limits your freedom in order to improve what limits your freedom. The second reason is infinite regress: if we envisage that the mind has the power to “allow” the self to be more or less free, we must inevitably ask what gives the mind that power, and come to the conclusion that the mind itself has freedom. But this seems absurd. Surely the cognitive faculties do not belong to the mind as a separate entity, but to human being itself, and “the mind” is only a manner of referring to those cognitive faculties insofar as they feature in the everyday decision-making of human being.

Incidentally, this is close to what Sartre called the transcendence of the ego. The ego (the self) must not be thought of as “benefiting” from some kind of magical access to mind, or consciousness, or whatever word may all too quickly be assumed to exist as a separate entity that “contains thoughts” or “possesses freedom”; instead the ego, according to Sartre, is the transcendental unity of the cognitive faculties that you mentioned in your post. It is essentially a neo-Kantian argument but so far as the discussion of freedom is concerned, I still believe it to be the most convincing one. A useful way to consider this is to suggest that my mind is not an entity separate from myself, to which I have access to, but simply one way of looking at myself, and of talking about the single entity that is I. The I, the "subject" of freedom, is not the mind but the transcendence of the ego.

Let me know your thoughts!
 
"I'm sick", "I don't have enough willpower", "I'm going go back to youtube"...

I am such a fearsome opponent :sunglasses:
 
Ren said:
"I'm sick", "I don't have enough willpower", "I'm going go back to youtube"...

I am such a fearsome opponent :sunglasses:
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i remember at a young age dreaming that one day i'd be free, i have no idea where the idea came from but it has been persistent. freedom is kind of a constant longing for me. as for what it means? uhhhhh i don't know, hard to say. i guess no longer obstructed, not feeling bounded in by anything, including myself. there's like an energy, a passion inside me that i sometimes struggle to get out, because it feels like there is nowhere it would be welcomed, no where it can just go rather than rebounding back to me in some way. Ok that didn't really answer the question but whatever.
 
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