In response to Avery - full post here

You can often see that attitude on youtube; people can be fairly aggressive when dealing with music tastes. Some people will look up artists that they do not like just to talk about how any person who does like that artist is a terrible person and has no taste in good music. Meanwhile, those same people are downright offended when someone posts something negative about their favourite artists.

I saw a post recently which stated that any person who does not like My Chemical Romance should burn in hell. People cannot help it if alternative rock music doesn't fall as nicely onto their ears. Some people are more prone to certain kinds of music, and exposure as a child can have a heavy influence on the person's music tastes. Interestingly, people have been researching the relationship between personality and music interests, and I suspect that there is some correlation. I don't think that people can change this, though some exposure to these categories is good because maybe there will be a song or two that one does like in that genre.

Does radical freedom make a mockery of ethics?

I think that radical freedom does indeed make more of a mockery of ethics than determinism would. Objective and/or evolutionary morals could still fit nicely into determinism. However, radical freedom, if it were reality, would suggest that our morals are completely subjective and malleable depending on the values and whims of society.

If  we can agree on a basic claim like "it is bad to be the agent through which harm is dealt." Once we agree on that we can determine what sort of things would be contained in that statement, and agree that we should work to prevent people from harming others, and since we acknowledge that a person is not responsible for making a choice, we can work to make even prisoners more happy. For an example of how this can work, please see this website on Norwegian Prisons <click here>. Additionally, we can acknowledge that our species does not evolve if we kill each other, and that, therefore, it would be best not to kill other people.

Alignment

Given that our current society revolves around the idea that we have radical freedom, would it be appropriate to acknowledge that we don't have radical freedom?

I do not think that it is every bad to align our views with reality. I think that the universe is indeed determined, and that thereby we do not have free will. As such, our current society is operating under an incorrect view of reality. This causes us to treat people differently - in that we hold them responsible for things that they are not responsible. This feels right to us, likely because society has held that opinion for thousands of years, and as such many people are hesitant to leave it. Many people would suggest that acknowledging determinism makes a mockery of morals. I think, however, that this is something that we ought to work out. I cannot see a negative aspect of aligning our views with reality. Many philosophers of the past have made an effort to do so. even if the truth threatens to undermine our current view of reality, we ought to align it with reality to assure that we are appropriately dealing with our problems.

Pre-Determined Freedom

Do we have radical freedom and is that compatible with determined nature of the universe?

I am not of the opinion that we indeed have radical freedom. Freedom, as I understand it, is the ability to, after birth, imagine options and consciously choose one action provided that it is within the confines of the laws of nature. While I think that we certain have the ability to imagine options, I cannot agree that we have the ability make a choice independent of other forces. In an earlier chapter, and in a class past, we discussed determinism. I agree that the universe is completely determined and that thereby we have no power of choice. As such, cannot agree that we have radical freedom. We certain have a wider range of capabilities and have the ability to conceive of more choices that we could make. Though, I think that we were determined to have those thoughts and to act upon whatever choice it is that we act upon.