Q&A: Real Free Choice?
Real Free Choice?
Question
You feel an absolute freedom of choice, but on the other hand you agree that circumstances affect choice. You also hold that value-based considerations carry weight.
I’ll ask about two very practical situations:
Did the Nukhba terrorists, whose brains were programmed from age zero with ideas about the “sons of apes and pigs,” that we stole all their land, and that if they die it will be a martyr’s death and they’ll merit 72 virgins—did they have a real value-based choice whether to go out and murder “wicked” Jews?
Because of hormonal secretions I fell in love with a very small number of women out of the thousands or tens of thousands I encountered in my life. Did I really have a value-based choice about which woman to marry, or was I basically just a puppet on a hormonal string that allows only very limited play within the space of value-based considerations (a few dozen women out of thousands)?
Answer
If you read what I wrote, all of this is answered by the example of the topographic outline.
I don’t know how to give a general diagnosis of who has choice and who doesn’t. But the default assumption is that a person does, until proven otherwise.
Nobody’s brain was programmed. Education and environment are circumstances that may mitigate punishment, but they are not an argument that removes responsibility. Moreover, precisely if they chose to do this, I do see them as coerced. Coerced in their mindset.
Discussion on Answer
I already answered that. Do you even read what I write before you ask? Doesn’t look like it.
“The libertarian agrees that a person’s decision is not free of influences. It is free only in the sense that the environment does not determine the outcome in a unambiguous way. Therefore, in his view, the genetic and psychological-sociological-psychiatric findings relate to a person’s tendencies, but do not provide a full explanation of his behavior. At most they describe the average behavior of a group, not the behavior of an individual person. All these create the topographic outline within which a person operates, but beyond all the influences lies the person’s free decision, and that has no scientific-causal explanation.”
I read it. It’s really not convincing. If you have anything to add beyond that, feel free.
If we take your story—it’s exactly the opposite of what you wrote—the psychological-sociological findings about you provide a full and perfect explanation for why you chose specifically ultra-Orthodox Judaism. There’s no need to assume any choice at all, even if that illusion really is very strong.
If you had seriously examined Reform Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and given them all the same weight and intensity that you received for more than twenty years regarding ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and still you chose Judaism (or something else), then maybe one could say there was a real choice here (and even that could be debated).
But you didn’t, maybe because there also wasn’t enough time to give everything equal treatment. The wiring in your brain and considerations of convenience steered you toward ultra-Orthodox Judaism, exactly the way close to 100% of Jews who become religious through a certain path end up there. Very strange . . .
It’s so simple. I really don’t understand how anyone can think there is real free choice, certainly not like the full and broad freedom you describe.
You just have to read and try to understand, and not insist. That’s all. I have nothing to add.
Nuno, you’re not talking at all about the kind of choice the Rabbi is talking about. He’s talking about choosing a certain physical act, whereas you’re talking about an intellectual decision.
By the way, it’s not clear to me why you classify Rabbi Michi as ultra-Orthodox Judaism.
I wasn’t talking about punishments. What I meant was whether there is real free choice, or whether these are constraints pulling in different directions, and in the end the stronger constraints win.
If we take you as an example—
Did you choose to go to an Arachim seminar in the sense of real free choice, or was it decades of strict Jewish-religious-Orthodox education and study that preceded the “choice,” plus the physical proximity of the seminar, plus a language you know and can handle (Hebrew), plus relatively low cost (compared to flying to the Far East), plus convenience in terms of Israelis who are similar to you?
Did you *really* choose to go to the Jewish-Orthodox seminar, or did mountains of constraints built into you from infancy lead you there, and you only “chose” to go?