Free Will, Determinism, Fatalism_1
During BA days when my professor Dr M Parviz Alam was talking on Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, he introduced these terms. Later while working on my MA thesis on Transcendentalism I, once again, came across these words. Now a couple of months ago when I decided to give The Human Stain a serious look, the terms appeared in my life but this time with a demanding urge to finalise a firm tenet in my dubious mind. To this end, I am trying to move towards a cogent answer.
Fatalism doesn't exist outside our mind. There are different factors as causes whose interference and co-work in a given field produce an effect. Man, too, is free to act and decide _Sartre's saying that 'man is condemned to be free' leaves man's free will in a deterministic halo_among possible options (Bourdieu's Habitus limits the number of options bound with family, origin, ethinicity, religion while Sheffy and Swidle blieve that Itama Even-Zohar's PST's Repertoire leaves more room for freedom of choice for an agent in a field to line up actions using available options as 'Toolkit'). I can't believe that 'human book is written and we have no influence in its workings' and as my new British friend, Conrad, keeps saying 'we are all programmed.' There are forces as causes like biological, genetic, social, political, psychological which are influential in the shaping of an action, but man has his own say, too: whether it is action or reaction.
The sum of causes which give rise to an action (itself being the cause for consequent actions) is made up of factors named above plus human cause. Death by being drowned in a pool is easily prevented if the victim knows swimming or there is at least a lifeguard nearby. Death of hundreds of thousands in Tsunami has nothing to do with the will of God (Voltaire wrote Candide as a reply to Rossau's connecting Lisbon earthquake in 1751 with people's lack of faith), it could have been well prevented if the local guards would take transatlantic warnings seriously in time.
There is naturally nothing as total free will of course ('man is condemned to be free'). There is always a cause which determines an effect. The effect in turn is the result of many causes interacting and overlapping one another within the pot. If man has enough power to change an expected sonsequence of merging factors (like an earthquake which in LA killed only two but with the same force killed more than 50,000 in Bam) it's because he is smart enough to take all in account and make his impact in time. If man fails to turn the tide to his liking, it's because other factors are more powerful. Some of these factors limit our options drastically. A coloured person's options in a WASP community is widely limited in the 19th century, a Jew is not able to meet justice during the second world war, but all these don't prevent man's free will to choose. A poor man who rubs a bank may think that he had no other way, more like Catholicism which imputes the responsibility of man's guilt and failure on God. In other words it's shirking your responsibility if you belive that God or any other phenomenon acts over your free will and you can't do anything about it. The thief can easily decide not to rub the bank.
Each of engaged factors limit the probability of possible options on the table. It's a world of demarcation and Newtonian determinism. Dorris Day's "what will be will be" is only trying to disown responsibility for what we do. The presence of causes on the table or in the pit limits our free will, this is determinism. If you offer your vegetarian guest an option between a meat dish and a vegetarian dish, he certainly chooses the latter but he is free to choose the other one, too. This is of course different from a convict's choosing a desired way of death (being hanged, shot etc).
An action as the result of a number of causes co-working with our decision in entering the pit as a cause and force (exerting our free will) will not take place if we do not play in the game. But when we play the chess game, each of our moves is out of our free will and certainly either limited or influenced by a determining factor: we may lose a piece but may gain something better or perhaps worse instead but it's we who decide to take action. There are different drinks on the table, but only after we mix some of them according to our taste and knowledge, are we going to have a coctail. Otherwise there would be no coctail.
to be continued
Fatalism doesn't exist outside our mind. There are different factors as causes whose interference and co-work in a given field produce an effect. Man, too, is free to act and decide _Sartre's saying that 'man is condemned to be free' leaves man's free will in a deterministic halo_among possible options (Bourdieu's Habitus limits the number of options bound with family, origin, ethinicity, religion while Sheffy and Swidle blieve that Itama Even-Zohar's PST's Repertoire leaves more room for freedom of choice for an agent in a field to line up actions using available options as 'Toolkit'). I can't believe that 'human book is written and we have no influence in its workings' and as my new British friend, Conrad, keeps saying 'we are all programmed.' There are forces as causes like biological, genetic, social, political, psychological which are influential in the shaping of an action, but man has his own say, too: whether it is action or reaction.
The sum of causes which give rise to an action (itself being the cause for consequent actions) is made up of factors named above plus human cause. Death by being drowned in a pool is easily prevented if the victim knows swimming or there is at least a lifeguard nearby. Death of hundreds of thousands in Tsunami has nothing to do with the will of God (Voltaire wrote Candide as a reply to Rossau's connecting Lisbon earthquake in 1751 with people's lack of faith), it could have been well prevented if the local guards would take transatlantic warnings seriously in time.
There is naturally nothing as total free will of course ('man is condemned to be free'). There is always a cause which determines an effect. The effect in turn is the result of many causes interacting and overlapping one another within the pot. If man has enough power to change an expected sonsequence of merging factors (like an earthquake which in LA killed only two but with the same force killed more than 50,000 in Bam) it's because he is smart enough to take all in account and make his impact in time. If man fails to turn the tide to his liking, it's because other factors are more powerful. Some of these factors limit our options drastically. A coloured person's options in a WASP community is widely limited in the 19th century, a Jew is not able to meet justice during the second world war, but all these don't prevent man's free will to choose. A poor man who rubs a bank may think that he had no other way, more like Catholicism which imputes the responsibility of man's guilt and failure on God. In other words it's shirking your responsibility if you belive that God or any other phenomenon acts over your free will and you can't do anything about it. The thief can easily decide not to rub the bank.
Each of engaged factors limit the probability of possible options on the table. It's a world of demarcation and Newtonian determinism. Dorris Day's "what will be will be" is only trying to disown responsibility for what we do. The presence of causes on the table or in the pit limits our free will, this is determinism. If you offer your vegetarian guest an option between a meat dish and a vegetarian dish, he certainly chooses the latter but he is free to choose the other one, too. This is of course different from a convict's choosing a desired way of death (being hanged, shot etc).
An action as the result of a number of causes co-working with our decision in entering the pit as a cause and force (exerting our free will) will not take place if we do not play in the game. But when we play the chess game, each of our moves is out of our free will and certainly either limited or influenced by a determining factor: we may lose a piece but may gain something better or perhaps worse instead but it's we who decide to take action. There are different drinks on the table, but only after we mix some of them according to our taste and knowledge, are we going to have a coctail. Otherwise there would be no coctail.
to be continued
posted by exile | 10:55:00 pm
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