Return to the Glossary Alphabet
Fairness Doctrine: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fairnessdoct/fairnessdoct.htm Free will: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says free will is a "philosophical term of art" to describe the faculty of "rational agents" to choose to act with volition from among alternatives. Its existence has been disputed for millenia, because of the tenet of naturalism that proposes that rational agents are fully caused by every event that has had an effect in creating their lives.These events include such things as plagues, politics, wars and other acts of men before and/or during the agent's birth; also genetics, environment, nurturing, nutrition, health, physical or mental injuries, etc. Therefore the will power of rational agents is not "free" of any of those things that caused volition where alternatives existed. Advocates of free will point to the volitional nature of actions as proof that will power is free while maintaining that no will can be free from existence itself within which are contained all those events that transpired to make a rational agent what he/she is. To be free of existence would free the agent from all causes, and therefore the agent could not be fully caused by those events. In effect, to be free of existence would place the agent outside existence, and the mind would contain no experiential data from which to make volitional choices. Indeed, it would not be aware of any choices because none would exist. Deterents of the belief in free will say that, to be free, the will would have to be contra-causal, in other words, it would require the faculty of dismissing the prior events from one's physiological and/or psychological make-up. When a rational agent must make a volitional choice of actions without being able to dismiss his/her choice of the prior events in order to cause the outcome of the volitional act to be such as the agent would have it without the prior event
Free will is metaphysically no more mysterious than any natural phenomenon. Hopefully in time psychology and neuroscience will succeed in understanding better how the brain gives rise to volitional consciousness and how free will functions. But that we have it is self-evident to those who do. "The lack of free will, sometimes called determinism, maintains that peoples' decisions are the result of an unbroken chain of prior occurrences; each action is caused by the previous one; individuals don't really have choices." – news story from The Vancouver Province, 2/28/08. See also: Determinism Must Be Fought With Metaphysics, Not With Science from The Academy Blogger Fully caused: the deterministic proposition that "being" is a process, that every creature is in "process," that every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself. So we are fully caused creatures whose choices are beyond our control because those choices are themselves fully caused; it does not deny that "will" has power over which choice is made, but it asserts that because the choices themselves are beyond our control, our will is not "free will." (Statement On Naturalism) Fourteenth Amendment: whereby "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This Amendment created the "citizen of the United States." Prior to this Amendment, only the States were "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Residents of the several States now had dual and sometimes contradictory citizenship. This dualism and the fight by the States to maintain their individual sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment has given rise to Nationalism, replacing the original system of Federalism. Domestically, American Nationalism is ostensibly about extending freedom as the Fourteenth Amendment intended, but has actually been detrimental in securing such freedoms, in some cases limiting them more severely in order to maintain the control of the Federal government.
|