I appreciate your attempts to clarify your argument. Enough to say that I don't see freedom as a duty or moral freedom as a climax. The hierarchical model whereby the preceding freedoms are considered 'lower' doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps this is where a diagram might come in useful.

The perfection of moral freedom in terms of the preceding levels of freedom would be a "climax" because such a perfection would entail that society as a whole, a society full of developed, self-actualized individuals, looks at itself and says "yes, this is good, I would not have it any other way." Could such a thing ever happen!? It seems impossible, but if it was achieved, it seems worthy of the name "climax." It would be the peak you cannot move off of without descending, the summit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is idealistic and heavy with absolutism.
I will leave it here, having given the argument enough time and attention. Thanks.

And in plain English? — Amity

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/839851 :smirk:

Anyway, I suspect our seeming disagreement here might be mostly a matter of how we use language and what concepts/stories/metaphors we use to try to make sense of ourselves. Talking about parts of a person being master and slave is somewhat figurative. That said, I would argue that if something has parts, if it has a shape or form at all, it isn't an indivisible single or simple. You can, for the sake of convenience, draw a line around this collection of parts and treat it as one singular thing. But the fact remains that it is divisible. Even a perfect circle is divisible. A clump of clay is divisible. If something has form at all, there are internal relations. — petrichor

Very well explained. And supported by personal experience. Observation of mental states, emotions as they relate to the physical body, environment and circumstance is key to understanding issues of internal and external obstacles and freedoms...I think. Problem-solving as in pragmatics?

I knew you would re-direct. So predictable, but appreciate the brevity!

Kierkegaard takes a different approach by acknowledging that a person is limited by possibilities of the world one must live in but that the personal is not reflected in it as a possibility. Freedom is the capability to do things. That requires a movement from oneself and an education through the school of possibilities. — Paine

Good to read another perspective. That freedom is a capability to do things makes sense to me.
The individual and their life move and are moved in cycles of birth, growth, loss, deterioration, death.
Life is the school whereby we become aware of possibilities and potential for growth, or otherwise.

Thanks. Perhaps we just have different definitions of the word "duty." We can have more concrete duties that we choose to take on. For example, to be a good doctor entails having certain duties to one's patients.

But with knowledge and freedom I am thinking more abstractly. A duty is simply "what do I need to pursue in order to be able to bring about good states of affairs and prevent evil ones" (as the subject sees good and evil). Well, they need to know what their actions entail (knowledge) and be free to make the actions they want (freedom). Our attempts to "do good," get frustrated when we lack either of these.

Because in the abstract sense, a "duty" seems to be just "what am I obligated to do if I want to fulfill x role." Of course, not everyone fulfills their duties or even recognized them. Many parents don't seem to much internalize a "duty" to be a good parent (I think of the Ike Turner biopic).

I think you're intuitions are right, lower and higher might be bad terms because of the connotations of those words. We could think of either side of the spectrum as lower or higher in this case. Really, we're talking about "more or less abstract."

I don't think what I've laid out in any ways precludes arguments in favor of pragmatism and pluralism, thus leading to idealism or absolutism.

Moral pluralism is how history develops our conceptions of rights. E.g., liberal democracies now have universal education, rights to unionize, laws against child labor, etc. because of the conflict between liberalism and socialism, which resulted in liberal democracy sublating socialism and making many of its policies a core aspect of liberalism. Here, pluralism begat a synthesis that improved the provision of rights.

If anything, I think the point of investigating freedom in the abstract is to help us in the messy business of moral decision-making and policymaking, where there is always nuance, complexity, and disagreement, by allowing us to ground our thinking in general principles that either flow rationally from bare concepts or can be found empirically "out in the world," (e.g., the concept of biological harm).

My background is working in government for a while, first with FEMA, later as a deputy city manager. The real world is full of nuances. I didn't always agree with my boss, the mayor's policies, but I had a complex set of duties to advocate for the administration's policies and implement them to the best of my ability if my feedback was overruled, to answer city councilors honestly to the best of my ability even when they were in "political attack mode" (thankfully no one watches public access TV so no one saw me getting yelled at) and to generally work for outcomes that were fair for the citizens and my employees.

In that world, the abstract idea of freedom and duty is easy to lose and can seem to have negligible practical value. What can it tell us about if it is worth giving some developer a tax break to get some abandoned factory cleaned up and turned into apartments? Nothing much. But what it can do is support guiding principles so that we don't become total cynics, completely disheartened, as this seems to be what causes people to make truly bad choices (and earn their all expenses paid vacations to Fort Leavenworth lol. You see this with Senator Mendez, who had similar problems when I worked in NJ...). The abstract view also helps us understand the historical progression of rights through history, which gives us a lens through which to understand current events as well.

You can, for the sake of convenience, draw a line around this collection of parts and treat it as one singular thing. But the fact remains that it is divisible. Even a perfect circle is divisible. — petrichor

But then it is no longer a circle, not even an imperfect circle. A lump of clay would just be smaller lumps of clay, but a human brain would be several lumps of dead tissue. It's true that a person can still be the same person with some little piece of their brain removed, but if you take out or electrocute a significant chunk, that person becomes a zombie.

I suspect that even in waking states, we are not as integrated and consistently "ourselves" as we think. — petrichor

We are not all the same. Some people - yogis for example, ascetics and obsessives - choose to cultivate one aspect of their personality and submerge or at least restrain all other interests and desires. They then have superlative discipline, at the expense of balance. They seem to those of us who take a more inclusive approach to 'self' and 'integrity' somehow admirable but in other ways less than a person.

I don't think that's a statement about their freedom or ours. Just different choices.

1. Freedom is the unknown, and the unthought. It is creativity. — unenlightened

2. When I am most free, I am least concerned about freedom and have no feeling of freedom. I make no choices at the crossroads, but dance to the rhythm of my heart. — unenlightened

3. I don't think I have defined it, except negatively. Even in mechanics this applies; the 'free' wheel is the one that is not tied by belt or gear but can move in- dependently. — unenlightened

Your thoughts remind me of the Tao Te Ching. Also, Zen.
I can't remember all the details but the freedom you describe seems similar. Would you agree?

1. Creativity. Its source and process seem to involve a letting go. An intuition or action which
arises when we don't think too hard. Or perhaps it comes after we have thought too hard. There is a tension and then a release. A freedom.

The following article notes 10 of Zen's antithetical traits which are often found in creative people.
Paradox being part of both; opposing characteristics held together in the growth of the whole.
The Zen concepts are in italics and come first. Excerpt:

1. Stillness in Movement. Highly creative people are intensely alive with an abundance of physical energy and a healthy dose of eros—and they seek stillness and quiet. They alternate enthusiasm and great concentration with periods of solitude for rest, reflection, and incubation. They are highly motivated yet need to withdraw periodically to tap their sources of insight and inspiration. They often seek the still point at the center of the wheel of action and exercise some form of contemplative practice. — Creativity and Zen - The Slender Thread

I'm not sure this is applicable to all creatives but worth considering?
The symbol of the wheel returns in 3.

2. No thoughts or feeling of freedom just relaxing or dancing in the moment. A blending and flowing.

Zen understands its freedom as expressed through an integrated mind and body. In order for this sense of freedom to be embodied, however, Zen emphasizes that a performer of any kind repeatedly undergoes mind-body training. Takuan calls this the “body’s learning,”—that is the core meaning of self-cultivation—because in the “body’s learning,” both the mind and the body are brought to action in one integrated whole. (The “body’s learning,” neurophysiologically speaking, is closely related to an activity of the cerebellum in conjunction with the hippocampus, although it is not only that.) When a skill or performing technique is learned through this method, one’s own body moves freely as it is habituated to move without waiting for a command from the mind. — Zen Freedom - SEP

I think the same kind of thing occurs in rock climbing and other sports. Being in the zone.

3. The Tao Te Ching. The negative space or 'emptiness' of the axle is necessary for a wheel to function.
Is this the same thing as a mental space without desire? The freedom of an open mind without judgement? Contemplation for wellbeing and balance.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 11

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there. — Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu Ch11

I think our difference lies mostly in the respect of feelings, and what parts of the body we identify with. I hold the view that feelings don't offer us much information when it comes to the biological facts. I can't even see, feel, or hear a vast majority of it, and the sensations biology provides are often fleeting, even misleading. So to me, any feelings-based, first-person account of the self is entirely limited, and often wrong.

But where other people, instruments, and examinations of the biology are involved, we never discover such notions as hierarchies and conflicts. When I look at the biology it's difficult to observe where one organ ends and another one begins. What is the brain without the heart or lungs, or the skull and spine, for example?

Your story about getting in shape does not indicate to me some internal competition, but biology working as it should. The physiology of your hunger is indicating that you want food, while your pre-frontal cortex is deciding whether you should eat. Since all of it is biologically interconnected, none of it foreign or parasitic, it's much easier for me to conclude they are working together in service to the whole.

As for the divisibility of persons, wherever a person is divided, one or both parts die. One doesn't need to draw a line around it because it is already contained within itself, in this case by an epidermis. And the only way to divide it is by brute force, to destroy it. So while we might be able to imagine that a person is divisible, actually dividing a person says nothing in regards to his divisibility, but in the brutality of the one doing the dividing.

Your depiction of a "divided person" as literally cut into pieces makes me curious how you view the experience of desiring incompatible things, weighing competing loyalties, dilemmas of conscience versus self-interest, and times when you knowingly choose what is bad for yourself.

Just to add, freedom is also about having choices. These can vary from the mundane such as what type of shoes you buy to who you marry. Contrast this with some cultures where brides are given to marriage without their choice.

It’s also the fundamental right not to be coerced into doing something against one’s will unless of course that individual has committed some sort of crime which allows the state to deny his freedom for a period of time.

Weighing ideas and other exercises in “high-order thinking” is one of the easiest activities to accomplish, in my opinion. It is the least evolved, doesn’t involve much energy, and is the easiest to mimic in artificial intelligence. So I view that experience as highly overrated, even inconsequential.

An interesting counterpoint to the libertarian ethos you proclaim in other places.

How so?

You have located many of the problems of human experience within grounds presuming a determinism of conditions related to the possibility of our existence so far flung from why people talk about freedom that only a very fertile imagination could recognize it as an idea.

This thread has been so interesting and informative, I hope it doesn't become personal.

Do you think free will and freedom are the same thing and where do you think would be a difference between the two?

My apologies for simplifying the question slightly

I do not believe in determinism. These presumptions sound like your own. But if you wish to ever know what I believe about any given topic, feel free to ask.

You just dismissed the discussion of what "freedom" is about upon the basis of the conditions of our existence as an organism. Your beliefs are whatever they are.

I’m trying to participate in the discussion of what freedom is. I haven’t once dismissed it, I’m afraid.

Do you think free will and freedom are the same thing and where do you think would be a difference between the two? — simplyG

No I don't think they're the same.
Free will is a sort of illusion we can't avoid. While everything that happens, including our own actions and decisions, is a result of all the events, processes and interactions that preceded it, we do not have knowledge of these causative factors or the outcome. Therefore, we experience life as if we considered and formulated decisions, made judgments and calculations, had desires and impulses entirely of our own and acted on them. We also judge one another's actions as if they were taken by a autonomous agents. So, for all practical considerations, we have free will.

Freedom is an abstract concept regarding the range of actions available to humans under various conditions. It is a concept we value, explore, debate, make laws to limit and fight revolutions to achieve.

So I view that experience as highly overrated, even inconsequential. — NOS4A2

I don’t get the complaint. But I’m still interested to read how what I wrote is a counterpoint to what I have proclaimed in other places.

You don't get other people's problems. And yet you want them to help you argue against them in other places.

The perfection of your form makes me wonder if you are an algorithm.

Though not the same thing they seem inter related somewhat. Free will, if we do have it and is in fact real rather than illusory means my choices are undetermined by (my) past actions, freedom on the other hand according to the dictionary is the power to act, think, or speak as one wants.

Now you wouldn’t be able to do or not do those things if you didn’t have free will right ? I could have chosen not to make this post but I did …does that not constitute both freedom and free will and merge the concepts somewhat ?

You don't get other people's problems. And yet you want them to help you argue against them in other places.

The perfection of your form makes me wonder if you are an algorithm.

Odd accusations, and as usual without argument. I’ll pass.

I provided the argument. I accept your surrender.

Though not the same thing they seem inter related somewhat. — simplyG

Of course they are. The concept of freedom - all the freedoms: freedom from restraint and constraint, freedom of movement, speech, association, freedom to act, to choose - is predicated on the assumption that we do have free will. It is an article of faith and a cornerstone of law.
It doesn't matter that this is an illusion, because we have always experienced it as real.

Freedom as a practice rather than a 'thing' or value. Is it a commodity or an accommodation?
How free are we really? When do we realise we are not free?

Priyamvada Gopal (Faculty of English) discusses freedom as a practice rather than a value to be worshipped.

Freedom. A word redolent with benevolence. We like the idea of being “free”. We are outraged at the thought of being “un-free”. It is often presented to us as a polarity: free expression, free choice and democracy, on the one hand – and repression, censorship and autocracy on the other. We are to guard the former from the latter.
[...]
“Free speech” – rather than being the nurturing and encouragement of real courage and the opening up of the imagination to new possibilities – is in danger of becoming one of the great banalities of our day, trotted out much more by the establishment for explaining its more degraded moves than a channel for producing meaningful dissent that could lead to material alternatives for the majority.

As something “thingified” – to borrow a word from Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism – freedom isn’t seen as a practice which requires constant, vigilant exercise on all our parts. It becomes, for example, something that must be transmitted through teaching from an already free West to the un-free zones of the world. — Opinion: How free are we really? - University of Cambridge

Yes!
This has been one of my contentious issues with the American notion of freedom. "The land of the free and the home of the brave" had a population of which two thirds lived in some form of bondage, from marriage through forced relocation to outright slavery.
The American mythos doesn't just objectify freedom (something we own and they envy) almost to the point of believing they invented it, but iconizes freedom as the brass ring on the merry-go-round; the ultimate prize that all peoples must strive for. You don't hear much, in American legends or entertainments, about the abuses of freedom.