Freedom, It's Whatever

In 1945 the state of New Hampshire adopted the state motto "Live Free or Die". How vague. Dictionary.com has 36 definitions for the word 'free'when used as an adjective (there's an additional 13 definitions for free when used in other forms). So which one does New Hampshire want? "Exempt from external authority?" "Unrestrained by decency?" "Without cost, payment, or charge?" All of these are definitions of free. It's seems New Hampshire needs to give this motto a little more thought before they go putting their lives on the line, but that's just an opinion.

But what this blog is really about is John Locke and his definition of free. Or more specifically, his definition of free will which he gave in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". First Locke gives a humorous if not sound argument explaining why the term "free will" is illogical. 

For if I mistake not, it follows from what I have said, that the question itself is altogether improper; and it is as insignificant to ask whether man's will be free, as to ask whether his sleep be swift, or his virtue square: liberty being as little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue...and when one well considers it, I think he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power. (Bk II Ch XXI Par 14)

Locke further explains what the will and freedom are in the next paragraph.

And is that faculty [will]  anything more in effect than a power; the power of the mind to determine its thought, to the producing, continuing, or stopping any action, as far as it depends on us?...Liberty, on the other side, is the power a man has to do or forbear doing any particular action according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in the mind; which is the same thing as to say, according as he himself wills it. (Bk II Ch XXI Par 15)

 In plain terms, Locke is saying that liberty (used here interchangeably with freedom) is the ability to act in accordance with one's desires or will. Seems reasonable right? WRONG. The flaw in Locke's definition is revealed in his example of the man in the locked room. He tells a story of a man carried while asleep into a room where there is a person he longs to see and speak to. Unbeknown to the man is the fact that he's locked in the room. When the man wakes up he is happy to be where he is because of his current company. By Locke's definition this man is free. The reader has to admit that the man is in the room voluntarily since he would rather not leave the other person. So if you agree with Locke and say that liberty is the ability to act on the desires of the will, he's free, despite his inability to leave the room. This is the part I have a problem with because it just doesn't make sense. Freedom is a state of being. It is generally agreed that a person is free or not free based upon the situation they are in. In Locke's example, the man can go between being free and not free while still remaining in the same situation with the same person. It follows then that his being free is no longer tied to his actual state of being.

So here's my counterexample to further demonstrate the absurdity of the claim. The man wakes up and is excited to see his friend, he's free. The man gets hungry and wants to leave, he's not free. The man finds a bag of chips in the corner, he's free. The chips are stale, he's not free. With his definition, Locke reduces freedom to a state of emotions rather than a state of being.  Thus reductio ad absurdum (thank you Intro to Logic) shows that Locke's definition doesn't work. According to Locke, if I'm happy I'm free and that's just not enough for me. Especially in today's day and age when happy can be swallowed with a glass of water or injected intravenously. But I suppose his definition runs a little deeper than that to say if I have all I desire I'm free. Just the same, obvious examples can be given to counter this. What about the starving slave. According to Locke if his master hands him a steak the slave is suddenly 'free' because his most pressing desire is to be there eating the steak. But having food doesn't change the fact that the man is a slave, perhaps a happier slave, but a slave just the same.

This is the moment that separates the critic and the philosopher. A critic will tell why you're wrong. A philosopher will tell you why you're wrong and they're right. I am a philosopher. The flaw in Locke's definition can be over come with a simple addition: liberty is the ability to act according to or in contrast to ones desires. This eliminates absurdities where a person is restricted, but still counted as free. So rather than the traditional idea that to be free is to be able to do whatever you want, I say to be free is the ability to do whatever.




**Let me just clarify and say this is only a part of Locke's definition of free will. There's a first half in which Locke describes how the will isn't freely determined, but man's actions in response to his will are his own. It's from that point that Locke goes on to say that liberty is the ability to act in favor of one's will/desires and it continues on from there.

Why Aristotle is a Coldpaly Fan

In case anyone in the world doesn't know, I'm a Coldplay fan. I've noticed that any time I hear a song of theirs that I haven't heard before, it becomes my favorite song. Right now, my favorite song is A Rush of Blood to the Head. In the chorus there's this great line that says, "Start as you mean to go on." It would appear that Aristotle agrees with Chris Martin (the lead singer for Coldplay). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that virtue has to be learned through habituation. One would have to start off being trained up in virtuous way. In a sense, one should start off virtuous to go on virtuous.

Aristotle starts of making the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. Basically anything you do out of ignorance or compulsion is involuntary. If you do an action for the action itself it’s voluntary. So, in order to be virtuous, you would have to voluntarily do virtuous things. That seems simple enough. But it gets more complicated. Humans don’t have a natural tendency to be virtuous. We almost always lean toward some extreme such as anger, greed, selfish, or whatever. Luckily, according to Aristotle, we can still become virtuous through practice. First, do the right thing for the right reason. Second, do the right thing for the right reason again. Third, do the right thing…well you get the picture. The point is humans are creatures of habit. Whatever we start of doing we will likely keep doing. Hence Chris Martin suggesting that you start as you mean to go on, and hence Aristotle strongly suggesting you start of virtuous.

If only Aristotle had been born several hundred years later, we could have traded iTunes.

Um... WRONG Zeno

Zeno of Elea thought himself quite clever when he came up with his paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise which is funny because when I heard it all I could think was WRONG! If you haven't heard the paradox it can be found at this link: LINK.

Now that you know what I'm talking about here's what I have to say:

In his paradox of the runners Zeno completely ignores the laws of physics. If I’m following him correctly, his paradox is based on the idea that the by the time the fast runner reaches the spot where the slow runner is, the slow runner would have already moved to the next spot. This is true, but Zeno is not accounting for the difference in time v. distance for the fast runner and the slow runner. Let’s say that the fast runner (FR) moves at 2 inches per minute, and the slow runner (SR) moves at 1 inch per minute (just pretend the runners are ants or something). Now, SR starts two inches in front of FR and runs like crazy. In one minute, FR will travel 2 inches and is where SR was, but, because SR was also moving, in that one second he will have traveled 1 inch away from his original position. Now, FR is at SR’s old position, and SR is one inch away. When they start running again it takes FR 30 sec to get to SR’s position because SR is only 1 inch away. In that same 30 seconds, SR will travel half an inch from his old position. Now FR is at SR’s second position, and SR is only half an inch away. See the trend? It will take FR less and less time to reach SR’s position, so SR will have less and less time to move away. Eventually, the distance between FR and SR will disappear. Or another way to look at it is, the time it takes FR to reach SR’s position will diminish to 0. Either way, the slow runner is not winning this race!!


I know what you’re thinking; I totally missed the point of the paradox. But if you ask me, next time Zeno makes a paradox he should take physics into consideration. Creating a paradox by ignoring key facts of life isn’t deep, it’s asinine.

Heraclitus the Tree Hugger

I had the idea for this blog a few months back, but haven't gotten around to writing it until now. In my environmental science class, we learned about the three major ethical views you find among environmental scientist. There's the anthropocentric who is human centered, the biocentric who values living things, and the ecocentric who values whole ecological systems. The easiest way to explain the different views is to explain what each person would do in a given situation, so I'll use the example we got in class.

Imagine you're on a safari and you run across an elephant with its foot stuck in a whole. You know the elephant can't get out by itself and will die either from starvation or attack without any help. At the same time, it would be dangerous for you to help the elephant as you could get seriously hurt in the process. You remember that you have a rifle in your car so you could shoot the elephant and put it out of its misery. What would you do?

The Anthropocentric would say it's best to shoot the elephant because it would be too risky to help it, but they wouldn't want to be left with the guilt of knowing the elephant was later attacked by predators or starved to death. The biocentric would choose to help the elephant despite the risk because certain living things (namely all animals) have value and should be protected. The biocentric still values human life, but they don't necessarily place humans above other living things. The ecocentric would likely leave the elephant, preferring to allow nature to run its course. In their view, everything happens for a reason. If the elephant lives good for it; if the predators find it good for them; if the elephant dies and decomposes good for the soil. Either way, it's not the human’s job to get in the way.

So where does Heraclitus come in? I am convinced that Heraclitus is an ecocentric. Its claims like, "Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony" that make me believe he would take the c’est la vie approach of an ecocentric to nature. The claim "out of discord comes the fairest harmony" only makes sense through the eyes of an ecocentric. It's about the checks and balances in place in the natural world. For instance, we all love deer (if you don't, watch Bambi and you'll change), but we don't want them running all over the place causing problems. That's why when Discovery channel shows us a video of a tiger hunting a deer and having it for dinner no one freaks out and calls PETA. We understand that the discord between the deer and the tiger is necessary to maintain harmony. After all, if we went around protecting the deer all the time, they would run amuck and the tigers would die. Heraclitus understood this. That's why he wrote his philosophy around the importance of opposites and opposition.

All this time he we thought he was just throwing around random paradoxes for us to think about. It turns out he was coming out of the closet as a tree hugger.

I Love You Like a New Pair of Shoes

It's 12 am and I've got a cup of coffee, what more does anyone need to be inspired? I just read Bethany's blog "L is for the way you look at me" and it's got me thinking. When we read Plato's Symposium in class we (or at least I) treated it like a search for a needle in a hay stack. It was a challenge to sift through all the beautifully worded definitions of love to find the one that was actually right. It didn't occur to me until tonight (you can blame the coffee or the lack of sleep) that they may all be right. Perhaps each description was of a different kind of love. Maybe in the back of our minds we know that these several types of love can't be represented by one word, so we sift though and try to decide which will be called the "true" definition.

In my French classes these last two semesters, my professors have made sure to teach us not only the French language, but the French culture as well. If I learned anything about the French, it's that when they make a commitment they mean to keep it. For instance, on the French resume (called a CV) you are likely to find only one job listed. They don't jump from job to job trying to find the one that makes them happy like Americans often do. In fact, it looks shady if a prospective employee has two or three previous jobs listed. It makes the job seeker seem restless and unreliable, which kind of makes sense.

The French put a similar level of commitment into their personal relationships. When they develop a friendship it’s meant to last forever. My first semester professor told us about a family he met in France that stays in contact with him more frequently than some of his American friends. Another example would be dating. People don't really "date around" in France. When they date someone it starts off serious (there's no need to sit your boyfriend or girlfriend down to have "the talk").

We (or I, I realize that sometimes it's best to only speak for myself) instinctively want to decided who's got it right. Is American love or French love the "real" definition? In actuality they are two different things that don't cancel out. Just like the definitions provided by Socrates and friends don't cancel each other out. Everyone is just using the same word to describe different emotions, because no other word is available for use. Let's look at real world examples. I love Coldplay. I love shopping. I love chocolate covered anything. All three of the previous statements are true, yet my feelings towards the three items vary greatly. If given the choice between a Hershey's Bar, a trip to the mall, and a Coldplay concert it wouldn't take but a second for me to decide which one I wanted. Using the same word to describe my feelings toward all three objects would seem to suggest that I desire each choice equally. In reality, I have a preference, but the English language gives me no way of sharing that preference with the reader (save adding the word "really" in varying numbers before the word love in each statement, but that's just poor grammar). This is why I say French love and American love don't cancel out. The French simply add a few unstated "reallys" to love when they use it.

This is the point where I make some judgments and decide which way is the best way to approach the word love. In one corner, the French have chosen to use "love" sparingly to convey a deep commitment and affection for another person (either family friend or true love). All other types of relationships are ignored and go without title. In the other corner, Americans chose to use "love" freely to describe various degrees of commitment, affection, admiration, and whatever else. Because of this we feely develop more in between relationships (in between best friend and mere acquaintance) that sometimes have less substance than our other relationships. In my opinion, the French way is the better way. Though it can limit the amount of relationships one develops, it makes those precious few friends worth even more (it's the difference between the best friend you’ve had since high school, and the best friend you've had since kindergarten). Plus, there is something fundamentally wrong with using the same word to describe my feelings toward my boyfriend or husband that I would use to describe my feelings toward a new pair of shoes. :)

Okay Pythagoras, I See Where You're Coming From

Here's my take on Pythagoras (Pyth). I don't know if I fully grasp his idea that Number is the arche, but I agree with the theory that everything in the world involves, and can be explained by, numbers. When reading about Pyth I was reminded of a lab I did in my high school physics class. Each team had to roll a marble down an incline, off the edge of the table, and into a cup. The catch was we got everything but the marble to work with. We had to first gather all of the other materials, take a few measurements, make a few calculations, and then place our cup where we thought the marble would land. Once we requested the marble from our professor, we had three chances to make it into the cup. The crazy thing is it actually worked. Every team's marble either made it into the cup or at least hit the rim. When reflecting on the assignment, I suddenly realized that almost everything (if not, everything) in the world could be calculated if you knew how to do it. I think the realization Pyth made was similar to my own, though he took the theory a little further than I did. I'm hesitant to say Number is the under lining, unchanging mover of our world, but I can see why Pyth wouldn't be.

Consider this for a moment. Everything is measurable by numbers (as my professor showed in the experiment). But what are numbers? They're symbols we made up to count things. Then again, the symbols themselves are the only part of numbers that's human made. Even before we had the symbols "1" and "2" we knew if you took a pencil and placed it next to another pencil the result was a larger group of pencils. This idea can be expanded. Even before my class knew how to measure where a marble rolled down an incline would land, the calculation was possible. The marble was always going to land in the same spot. Since the beginning of the universe, that marble has been subject to the laws of gravity, friction, energy, and whatever else. Everything on Earth operates under these laws and measurements and always has. That's how we predict the weather, build bridges, fly... It's easy to see how Pyth came to the conclusion that everything comes from Number. It's always been here. We've always been operating by it. How can it not be the arche?

Here's my answer. To me, the ruling force can't be Number itself. Numbers are not an active thing, they just are. Number may be something the universe acts within, but it doesn't cause the universe to act. The arche needs to be something actively directing and moving the universe. That's at least how I define it. I say the arche made Number and then used it to design the universe. But I see where Pythagoras was coming from.

Why I'm a Philosopher, Not a Storyteller

I'll skip the introductions and jump right into my ideals. Besides, the best way to know someone is finding out what they believe they know.


In my ancient philosophy course at Baylor, we started the year with Hesiod and Homer. That is to say, we read enough of their works to know where they were coming from. We also got an introduction to David Roochnik, the author of our text book Retrieving the Ancients and found out what he thinks of Hesiod and his myths. Now I've only read the first 17 pages, but I think I'm going to like this Roochnik character. There is one big point that we both agree on, myths are not philosophy.

In his text Roochnik started off by saying that in the west, philosophy started with Thales because Thales correctly predicted an eclipse in 585. At first I was confused. What does an eclipse have to do with philosophy? If Thales had discovered the meaning of life he would have had something. As I read on and reflected on the reading it became clearer. Philosophy isn't just unknown questions, its answers too. Of course, unless you're in my head that last statement makes little sense, so I'll explain.

When I see the word philosophy I think of it in the today's sense which is finding answers to questions like "What it the reason for life?" or "What does it mean to be moral?" Basically, philosophy’s finding the answer to questions that don't seem to have answers. What I forget is that the unanswered questions of today are not the same as the questions of 585. Whereas today I would classify the cycle of solar eclipses as science back then it was a mystery. They didn't have NASA around to tell them it was simply the moon trying to upstage the sun, and I'm sure there were a whole lot of Homers and Hesiods around saying the gods are doing it. What separated Thales from the rest is that he didn't settle for some casual explanation. Anyone could take an afternoon to make up a story, say the Muses told them, and go on about their day. But Thales didn't. He went after the truth because he was a lover of truth, a lover of knowledge, a lover of wisdom. Now that we have the answer, it's easy to say that an eclipse falls under the rim of science, but back then it was just as perplexing as the meaning of life. As a question without an answer, it fell (and still falls) under philosophy. That's what I mean when I say philosophy is unknown questions AND answers because it includes the answers to questions previously unknown.

To bring my wondering mind back to the point of this post, I am a philosopher and not a storyteller because I, like Thales, search for truth. Homer and Hesiod were storytellers, Hesiod especially. For class we read lines 1-139 of Hesiod's Theogony. This guy starts off by saying that this story isn't his own, but rather it was given to him by the Muses. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but if someone's telling me a story and starts off by saying his beliefs are not his own, but something he heard from a mythical creature in the middle of a field somewhere, I'm thinkin' shady. To make it worse, these very same Muses told Hesiod they could be just as soon be lying as telling the truth. This is quintessential storytelling. Roochnik put it well when he wrote, "By invoking the Muses the poet [Hesiod] denies ultimate responsibility for, and therefore knowledge of, his own poem." It's as though Hesiod was adding that disclaimer you find at the front of fictional novels saying all of the characters of the story are the product of the author (the muses) whether or not they reflect the real world. Hesiod was simply the publisher.

The difference in a philosopher is there is no disclaimer. When a philosopher tells you something they are taking full responsibility over what they say, be it right or wrong. They don't feel a need to disconnect themselves from the belief by saying they heard it somewhere else because what their telling you isn't something they just made up. Where a storyteller comes up with an answer, a philosopher finds an answer. They search for what they want to know. Even when they think they have it right, they give their new found answer careful consideration and, if possible, testing before they share it. That's why when Thales predicted the eclipse he was christened a philosopher. It was obvious he had thought about and discovered the eclipse’s true cause as opposed to just coming up with something.

Every question won't be as black & white as "What is the cause of a solar eclipse?” Inquiries about the source of a person's moral or ethics for instance are quite gray. You can't determine if your answer is right by simply looking at the sky. So how does one consider and test these answers to ensure that they are philosophizing, and not just telling stories? By sharing what they know, without qualification. You know you're talking to a philosopher when they will willingly take responsibility for their answers and tell you where they're coming from. Not only that, but if you expose a flaw in their reasoning, their answer changes. Some people call this wishy-washy, but I call it smart. If you find out something you believe to be true is in fact not, why would you continue believing it? That's just stupid.

I end this post by saying, I am a Philosopher. What I post I have considered, if possible tested, and take full responsibility for. If you leave a comment that exposes a flaw in my thinking, I revise my thought and thank you for making me that much closer to the truth.