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Freedom precedes Morality Herman Ong Upper Iowa University
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Abstract While many people keep judging who done morally right or ethically wrong in this world, they have missed the critical and fundamental question – “Can morality exist if human has no freedom?”By the same token, we proved that morality cannot be existed when there have no freedom as well as the free will of human. Due to the determinism, human is only the machine of operating the program without any responsibility as well as unnecessarily to be judged whether moral or immoral. Therefore, freedom doesn’t merely precede morality, it can even override the morality because where there has no freedom, there has no morality at all.
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Freedom precedes Morality “In the year of Berlin wall down and most of us celebrating the freedom, someone try to build a wall at the street to block it in Cincinnati and take away that freedom, is it amazing?”, this is the very first claim said by a lawyer in the movie – “Dirty Picture”(2000). And this sentence also emerged the hot debate of “Is pornography legal?” in the movie. Nevertheless, this sentence was only one of the questions of the core argument, and the most important argument of the entire film is “Does freedom override the morality?”This is also the controversial topic which struggling the philosophers for thousands year. However, the question “freedom or morality” is unnecessarily to ask and meaningless to debate for the thousands year in my school of thought. As Alison Neilans, the famous English suffragette said that “Where there is no freedom, there can be no morality”. This represented the core idea of this study as freedom always precedes morality. And if there has no freedom, there is no way to clarify the morality such as which picture can be shown, which cannot be; who doing morally right and who doing ethically wrong. All of these questions are underlined in freedom, if someone has no innate freedom at all, every action of him are determined by someone or something else, he is just the operator to run the program as a computer, will we judge the computer which merely follows our order and operating the program? No. Then why do we judge the Dennis Barrie in the movie whether he showed something is right or wrong? If all of us, including him are determined, how much
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responsibility he should take for his action? And can we say that he doing right or wrong? More precisely, how can we judge the human’s morality without clarifying what is freedom? Driving Force for human - Determinism Traditionally, we granted “freedom” as an innate right and asset to human, we have freedom to do think, to act, to eat and even create (Sartre, 2000). However, this thought of freedom was changed by some philosophers. According to the hard determinists, the reality is determined and everyone and even every “time” is determined regardless of the past, present and future. All are caused by the “butterfly effect” (Palmer, 2005) and determined by the previous causation. Thus, no one is free. This school of thought dominated the middle age of European for about one thousand year due to the prevalence of theology and power of God. Therefore, people attribute their body, their fate, their action and even their thought to the God and this is called Theological Determinism. However, there have another school of thoughts suggested that freedom more or less is exist in human, they proposed the “Compatibilism” in which it suggested that while some of the individual’s choices are determined by previous experience, we can choose what experience we going to have, this is the tolerance of freedom. For example, although one death-row prisoner is condemned to death penalty, he had the freedom whether to kill or not kill before the crime. Besides, those proponents of against determinism have attacked the theory of appealing to God. And there have no sound evidence of God existence, regardless
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of philosophy or science. Jean-Paul Sartre (2000), the French Philosopher, argued that human is being-for-itself, but not being-in-itself as tree or rock, if anyone who denies the freedom and responsibility are in “Bad Faith” and behave unreliably. If God doesn’t exist, human are all responsible for their action and faith. Therefore, these philosophers refuted the determinism. However, by the prevalence of DNA and rising of evolutionary psychology, the claim and example of Compatibilism cannot stand. In fact, the death-row prisoner has no choice at all because the decision he made to kill or not kill is already pre-existed and determined by his gene. And all of his 46 chromosomes are coming from his father and his father’s father; as well as his mother to his mother’s mother and so on and on. What he acted was just the operation of his family decision and genes. His aggressive characteristics and personality was determined (Darwin, 1895). More and more evidences to prove that our features and characteristics can be understood by DNA and genetic code. One genetic code goes wrong in a person; he/she may get the serious sick and perhaps determined he/she has to lay on bed forever the entire life (Watson, 2004). Therefore, it is no so-called “free action to become experience”. Instead, our actions are also determined by more fundamental substance – DNA and its program, and this is “Biological determinism”. Despite the DNA explained the possibility of hard determinism, there still have some philosophers refused it and advocated “Indeterminism”. Some scientists used the quantum
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mechanism theory and proved that the reality is random and unpredictable (Bishop, 2005). Moreover, Rudolf Steiner (2000), the Australian philosopher, divided the freedom into 2 parts which are inner freedom and outer freedom in his famous work – “Philosophy of freedom”. Inner freedom means the freedom to think while outer freedom means the freedom to act. He asserted that the true freedom can be achieved when human can unify their thought and action. However, there has no free will at all, so there has no freedom of thought or inner freedom, as well as the true freedom. Even thought the reality is random as quantum mechanism asserted, J. Smart, the another Australian philosopher claimed that "Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug” (Smart, 2003). What drives us to think may be the idea, but there have no evidence to prove these ideas are driven by us. Instead, it may be independently-exist, just like the quantum mechanism in our brain and randomly create the idea to drive our will. Or, it is preexisted in our mind before birth as Plato or Socrates said (1992). Prototype is not limited by objects or substance, even the perceptions, ideas, planning or attitudes have its prototypes in outer world and our actions are all determined by these prototypes. Thus, will is just remembering and operating, not free at all. Conclusion Conclusively, morality is no more than a behavior judgment when assume people have
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freedom to behave. Any question of morality is unreasonable to ask if there has no freedom in human. Now we proved that there has no freedom, only determinism and causation. As suggested by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814, the French mathematician, if we can understand and reveal the momentum and theory of every single atom in the universe, then the past, present and future of everything in this world can be calculated and determined. This is the famous Laplace’s demon. By the same token, now we still debate the case whether Dennis Barrie is legal or illegal, he is moral or immoral, because human are misled by their noble ego. They thought they have the free will and power to create everything. They deliberately breed the animals (Dawkins, 2010) and control them but ignore to admit we are one of them - One of the things which control by something else. Again, the right question to the movie as well as the entire world is whether human has freedom or not. However, the answer is already out here.
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Reference Bishop, R. C. (2005). Determinism and Indeterminism. Retrieved from http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2324/ Darwin, C. (1895, 2009). On The Origin of Species. England: Penguin. Dawkins, R. (2010). The Greatest Show on Earth. England: Black swan. Palmer, T. (2005). Quantum Reality, Complex Numbers, and the Meteorological Butterfly Effect. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86(4), 519-530. Plato. (1992). Plato: Republic. Hackett Publishing Company. Sartre, J. P. (2000). Existentialism and Human Emotions. Citadel. Smart, J. J. C., & Haldane, J. J. (2003). Atheism and Theism, p. 63. Wiley: Blackwell. Steiner, R. (2000). The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception. Rudolf Steiner Press. Watson, J. D. (2004). DNA: The Secret of Life. New York: Arrow book limited.