We Are Always Free!

A Defense Against Deterministic and Partially Deterministic Approaches To Human Freedom RASHMI FERNANDO Email: ramifdo@gmail.com Visit : ramifdo.blogspot.com

rguing for this stand, I am free to disagree with what you say, but I

will always defend your freedom to assert your stand, either for We Are Arent Free, or We Are Neither Free Nor Arent Free To begin with, who can talk about freedom? It is only a conscious being, and it is only in the ability of becoming conscious that one becomes a free being. Can a toddler talks about freedom when it is not conscious about feeding itself which is fundamental to its survival? Then, it is only when one is a conscious being, can he or she claim for his freedom. There may be multiplicity of choices in life, but the act of choosing has only two options. Either one chooses, or refrains from choosing. If you are indifferent about choosing, then the choices will slip away without having being claimed or accounted for by a conscious being. For example, one can either choose to kill or not to kill, marry or not to marry, become pregnant or not to become so. There is no mid way here. Can you kill an entity and in the mean time not to kill the same? Can you marry a person and not to marry at the same time? How can you become pregnant and not pregnant simultaneously? Thus, whatever may be the choice, the choosing is done by a conscious being in freedom, and therefore, he or she is a free being. Taking the same example above, I am free either to kill or not to kill, and not I am either free to kill or not free to kill as the Deterministic Approach goes, nor I am not free either to kill or not to kill as the Partially Deterministic/Indeterministic Approach goes . For example, I have freedom even to say, I dont have freedom or I am neither free nor nonfree. Had you not being free, how will you have any right to claim and stand for your own postulations? No one has right to take away ones freedom! This is the assertion and belief of the free beings. If we are not free, then the above preposition would imply Anyone has the right to take away ones freedom. If this is true, may I urge the bench of determinant non-freedom fighters to shut your mouths and sit idle, because you believe an external force (For example I) can take away your freedom to defend your stand, because it has a right to do it? Moreover, based on the above implied preposition, Anyone has the right to take away ones freedom of the Non-Free party, and their alleged claim that Human beings are, therefore, conditioned creatures, I would urge the bench to focus their attention on ones own act of Eating? Again, either you eat (take food) or dont take it. There is no third alternative. There is no neithernor position here as the bench of
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Indifference Party would argue, but only eitheror stand or the freedom stand. That is, either you are free to eat or to perish in hunger. Did anyone force you to do it? Moreover, if you have ever fasted, then wasnt it your own freedom that led you to forgo food, the basic need of your survival? Then, in what way are you conditioned? If you have the freedom to deal with your own life and death, what type of conditioning do you talk about? If you say that you are baptized in to a religion and therefore your religion is ascribed than acquired, dont you have a freedom to go out of your present religion and find your own source of consolation? Who stopped you from doing it? If your parents, clan, kith, and kin, and simply put, your culture and tradition is your hindrance, dont you realize you made a choice in freedom to stay where you are and be happy, rather than facing the discomfort you would face if you were to decide otherwise and make you unhappy? So, you were free to choose your happiness right? Moreover, if you are trying to say, you dont have enough freedom within the Society of Jesus, I would love to know whether the same society forced you to enter into it, or you made a choice in freedom to do so. If you were free then, how come you are not free now? You may say that sex is biologically determined, and gender is socially determined. Didnt you know that there is freedom today even to choose your sex, and to practice your own comfortable Anima or Animus? Can your sex be Neither Penis Nor Not-Vagina as the Indifference party would say, or Not Penis (that would anyway imply it to be Vagina) as the Non-Free Party would say, or wise-versa? Isnt it directly correlating to your own non-viable stances, We Are Not Free or We Are Neither Free Nor Not-Free, when you have already utilized the freedom to form your stance and defend it?