This is what divides the left wing and the right wing, its the concept of "free will"

It's not their fault. They are born with enlarged amygdalas.

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The right may believe in equal opportunity. They just don't practice it.

 

equal opportunity is a myth...

 

fiscally right and socially progressive, we still have some of those in canada I dont know about usa...

 

the right believe they should be able to force people to believe as they do... they do not believe in free will

if your poor the right thinks you should be treated like dirt and paid dirt for a salary


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Free will exists: The fact that you're typing this is proof, unless you were 'forced' but I doubt it.

 

It's not just this one thing that separates the left and the right but I think you are correct that this is a fundamental philosophical disagreement. As I've written in other threads (possibly even to you) it's impossible to have coherent laws that also reject the existence of free will because it's necessary to hold people responsible for their actions. If you won't do that, you have no punishments and no order. Meanwhile, government's role is the creation and maintenance of laws, so it would be impossible to base government policy upon a rejection of free will. The government would be unable to claim legitimacy when it punishes people if it also rejects the concept of free will. For if it did that, government would be admitting that it has no interest in punishing the true source of the crime. Finally, whether or not free will exists is logically moot from the liberal point of view because if we are going to reject our own agency then it makes no sense to place value upon something like pleasure seeking (that is fundamentally tied to agency) and pleasure seeking is something that liberals highly value. This is just one of many reasons why liberalism is in truth nihilism dressed up in platitudes and excuses.

I think you ignored this the last time I wrote it so let's try another approach, try to answer this question: if there is no such thing as free will, what's a legitimate reason to punish someone for robbing another person, to a sufficient degree that said robber will be dissuaded from ever doing it again? Isn't the entire point of punishments that fall short of crippling or killing someone, to manipulate their will?

Put more succinctly, if your laws admit that punishments are falling short of the death penalty (guaranteeing they won't break the law again) because that punishment can manipulate people into not committing the crime again without needing to kill them, how can that same body of laws reject the concept of free will? If you admitted they can be manipulated and therefore you don't have to kill them to stop them from doing it again, you just acknowledged that they have some control over their own actions and it's only a baby step from there to acknowledge that free will exists.

The inability of the "there's no free will" crowd to answer the above question is probably why far-leftists inevitably end up doling out incredibly harsh punishments for minor crimes. Without the concept of free will, you must have either anarchy, extreme punishments that cause their own hosts of problems, or no legitimacy in the law.

 

How bout this? I am going to exercise my free will and not respond to such an immature post.

 

Would politics be included under "environmental influence"?

Some are born into poverty. But a person of free will, who is free to make decisions free from influence, can decide being poor is not acceptable to them. They can use their will to make a change. Is this true or not? If not, then you don't accept free will as a force in our lives.

I love it when anyone overcomes limitations. Every time I've broken free of limitations, I've grown as a person. I believe some people accept their place in the world, and they are free to do this. Their free will gives them the choice to believe what they want about themselves. I would hope they choose something better and many people do. The segment of poor is a fluctuating population. People enter it by birth or by situation. Personally, I've taken chances in life that have landed me in poverty, twice now. They grow older and find work and leave poverty.

I accept you definition of free will. So as far as that goes this is settled.

I'm confused. You combine free will and climate change, adding in for good measure the idea that people like me are lost causes. I don't know where you get the idea that the right denies science. We put a man on the moon and we deny science? We have the most powerful military on the planet and we deny science? We use iphones and computers, but we deny science? And with climate change, their are discrepancies in the science as far as the baseline used and the method of modeling. Why? Because science can be proven if it is based on solid ground.

 

Well Mani, whom I'm beginning to think is some sort of munter alter ego, has created for himself another self serving op in which he almost comes into contact with reality but ultimately backs away from it. I knew of a man in my sojourn in Alabama. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade. He was now retiring as one of the richest men in town. He was turning over the business that he'd started and built to his son. One of the ladies at the party said to him, "Imagine how much more you would have accomplished in life had you just ahd a high School Diploma."

He responded. "Ma'am, I've often thought about that very thing, and how often opportunity comes disguised as a closed door. You see I know exactly where I'd be today if I'd had a high school Diploma. Rather than retiring a millionaire with my own business, I'd be retiring as the janitor of the local high school, where I was denied a job as the janitor because I didn't have a high school diploma."

What you accomplish in life is as much a function of where you are willing to settle as much as anything else. The more time you spend yelling, "Woe is me the." less time you'll have to spend doing something constructive.

 

I do not believe the left/right dichotomy is useful for this purpose. I see it more as a dichotomy between rule-based theory (like natural law, but not necessarily with a religious or even objective source), and political utilitarianism. On this view, the left and right take a little from each category: drug legalization and gun liberty are examples of positions taken from the rules-based perspective, but they lie on different sides of the political fence. Flip the issues (drug prohibition and gun control) and you have utilitarian reasoning from either side.

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Free will is irrelevant. Nobody gives a concrete explanation of exactly what they mean by it, neither can they point to any sort of change over time which doesn't involve either deterministic or indeterministic causality. It would seem unlikely that either case satisfies their definition of free will. The only sort of free will I desire is deterministic free will: acting in accordance with one's nature isn't restrictive at all: nothing has really changed from the free will position; people still seek their preferences in every decision they make. Whether the origin of these preferences suits some abstract concept of free will is beside the point.

Science is also of no use to us (in this sense). Science tells us what is, not what ought to be. We are unable to determine how the world should be based on how it is. At some point you come back to a subjective value call. Don't get me wrong - once you've determined your preference science is a very useful tool for obtaining your goal, but it cannot determine that goal through experiment.

 

Well, I find that the opposite is true. I think right wingers appreciate the scientific method more than leftwingers do. In arguments with leftwingers, I rarely find them to produce credible evidence at all to back up their theories. Most leftwingers on here don't even read the articles that they link and comment on.

That said, I do agree that belief in free will is a major difference between the groups.

 

Some, but certainly not all. I think the difference is that right wingers actually believe that people can succeed on their own. Left wingers believe that people are doomed without help.

I worked in a rough, ghetto school for five years. Some of the poorest kids there I know had a great mind and the mental capability to do whatever they wanted. They didn't want to do anything but sell drugs......

When I was teaching at that high school, one of the counselors pulled up a quote out of one of the vo-tech journals. The gist of the quote was that employers don't fire people for being ignorant. Employers fire people for being late to work, being absent from work too many times, and for not doing what the supervisor asked. Those were the same troubles we had with students. IMHO, if we could instill those kinds of habits in the poor, half the battle would be won.

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Nice strawman, but most Christians in the U.S. believe in evolution.

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Under this administration, no. Why? Well, this administration would find that there aren't enough shovel ready projects, and instead shunt the money into other areas.

 

So tell me, does good parenting effect a child's chance of success in life? What about good schooling? Proper nutrition? Good role models? Safe environment?

If you admit any of these affect a child's chance of success than that means you dont believe in free will, you believe in "influenced will" which is different from "free will". The decision you, me, and everyone on this planet makes are directly influenced by what we have been through in life, we dont make decisions entirely free from nature and all outside influences, every single aspect of our attitudes and thoughts are determined by our environment and our genetics. Do you know what you are going to think before you think it? Do you decide what to think about? No, you dont, thoughts appear in your head its impossible to think of something before you think it, and to do that it would require free will the ability to think whatever you want. You may "feel" like you think whatever you want, but if you pay close attention you are not thoughts will just pop in your head randomly. Free will is an illusion, just like with everything else in life. You are a human being, do you honestly believe you are free from all natural influences? You are not a God, you are an animal, just like me.

This is the same reasoning the religious use against Atheists, they say "if you dont believe in the Bible where could you possibly get your morals from? You must be ok with raping and pillaging if you dont have any morals and atheists cant possibly have any morals they dont believe in anything!!!" this is exactly what you are doing here with the issue of free will.

If Free will does not exist, which it doesnt, we can get our rules from the Golden Rule, treat others how you yourself want to be treated, as long as everyone follows that we are fine. The Golden Rule has existed much longer than Christianity, its a natural part of biology evolution has created this rule through natural selection, the humans/animals who went around killing their own kind for no reason were far less likely to survive due to all the extra danger they put themselves in by fighting people they dont need to fight. Evolution is what keeps us from murdering each other, not religion, not free will. Do bee's have free will? No? Than why dont they murder each other? Why do they all work together? You dont need free will to be a good person, you just need a good upbringing. If you were born in Saudi Arabia you would think its ok to behead Apostates, would that be cause of your free will decision? No, its because you were born in (*)(*)(*)(*)ing Saudi Arabia.

Its blatantly obvious free will doesnt exist.

No I said you guys deny science the way Christians deny science, Christians are fine with science until it goes against their God, the Right wing is fine with science until it goes against their business. If someone is making money off polluting the environment, oh and believe me they definitely are, than is it really that far fetched they would deny the science that says their business is hurting the environment? Of course they would. Christians dont deny gravity because it doesnt deal with religion, they deny evolution because it DOES deal with their religion. The same goes with right wingers when it comes to their business, and God because most right wingers are religious theocrats.

 

I don't think you answered my question, what's a legitimate reason to punish someone in a way that falls short of eliminating their capacity to repeat the crime, if you don't acknowledge that they have a will which can be manipulated?

 

No thats the thing you have my position mixed up, they DO have a will that can be manipulated, that is my very point im making. Im not saying people have no will at all, people have "influenced wills", not "free wills", so yes you can very much so "manipulate" someones will, that is the exact point I am making here. Im not saying we are all mindless drones, we do have wills and make decisions, the thing is though that those decisions, whether we realize it or not, are being DIRECTLY affected by the things we have learned in life. This is not my opinion, its a scientific fact, its called "Nature vs Nurture".

 

From a punitary standpoint, what's the difference between "will" and "free will"? You are holding someone responsible for their own actions, aren't you?

You are approaching this from an economic position, which probably rejects the idea that someone could be genetically smarter than someone else, but there are reasons besides economics that nearly everyone acknowledges free will.

 

"Will" can be influenced, "free will" cannot, hence the word "free". Yes people should be held responsible for their actions, as I said your environment determines your behavior, so if your environment punishes you AND rehabilitates you for a crime than it INFLUENCES you not to do that anymore, sure you can still decide to keep doing crime but thats only if the bad influences outweigh the good influences, it has nothing to do with free will, its all about how you have been influenced in your life, that is why parenting and education is so important to a childs development.

 

Well, what I want to communicate to you here is that the distinction between "will" and "free will" is technically meaningless. To punish and enforce you need culpability and you may have never considered that, if the poor are merely human animals who lack "free will" and are victims of the rich, since the rich are human too, then the rich don't have "free will" either and you have no argument for why they are more culpable than the poor.

 

Sex education, financial education, drugs and alcohol education - education not "just say no" bull(*)(*)(*)(*) indoctrination. A decent education in the realities of life would be a good start for people who don't have informed and aware parents.

 

Reading back through the thread I think I'm seeing evidence of the right refusing to believe that a social environment has any influence on human development.

 

Making excuses for failure only begets more failure. ISIS are theocrats. Most Christians, even conservative Christians are not. We would prefer that you not murder your children in the womb, or dope yourself into oblivion, but that isn't even in the general vicinity of a desire for a theocracy.

 

I disagree, coming from a desperately poor childhood, most people are poor because they screwed up something in their own lives somehow. The mentally and physically disabled aside.

Everyone gets a free K-12 education, and many states have low cost tuition for in-state college, so anyone in this country who wants to get a basic education can easily do so.

People ruin their lives thru bad decisions they make, or a bad turn of luck where they end up getting caught up in the wrong place with the wrong people. wheter it's being a single parent thru divorce or just being stupid, or going to prison on a felony conviction, or becoming a drug addict, or any number of ways, people can turn a promising future into a tragic string of bad choices or bad luck.

Poverty has not one damn thing to do with your hatred of the phantom "right-wing" bogeyman.