I assume you realize that you’re buying into Pascal’s wager. This wasn’t meant as an insult - it’s just a statement of fact.
And I agree that one does not choose what they believe or not. The brain holds beliefs like they’re stored on a hard drive, and there’s no delete command. The way beliefs are changed is not through conscious modification, but rather through a subconscious examining of the facts and weighing of the interpretation of those facts. When the subconscious mind decides the evidence outweighs its various biases towards resisting influence, only then will the belief begin to change.
So one cannot choose to change a belief, but they can choose to put themselves in a position to examine the different facts and sides and consequences of things that relate to the belief. Given time the belief may change. Or it might not.
Because that’s the mechanism by which one overrides fear of religious consequences. Choosing to rationalize sinning over following the religious dictates is freedom of choice.
monstro:
I think that the situation you set up, as defined, means that the first person has inherently less temptation in his life than the second one. As such, any minor lapses that he has need to be judged more harshly than a minor lapse by the second one - more equivalent to a major lapse on his part.
I also believe that in real life, peoples’ lives have enough different facets that ultimately all human beings of mental fitness have roughly similar amounts of temptation to sin in one way or another. We likely don’t see the complete picture, but G-d by definition can. (That is, sin as defined by the person’s particular cultural context. Obviously what Christians would consider sinful blasphemy is something that a Hindu or Buddhist does as a matter of course without thinking it sinful.)
I’m not sure what you mean by “character”. I mean, I think you’re trying to imply that Baddington is demonstrating better character because he’s demonstrated it by resisting his terrible character, but on the other hand, that.
I do.
When defining free will, one has to decide what influences you hope to be free from. One possibility is “your own mind”. And while there are conceptions of free will where you’re supposedly trying to be free from the influence of your own mind (libertarian free will, for example), I think that all such conceptions of free will are stupid. Which leads me to your example.
In your example, all the troublesome influences that the person is dealing with are coming from their own mind. Mr. Goodytwoshoes likes chocolate, chooses to eat the chocolate, and is fine. No external factors are at play here. Mr. Baddington likes sugar cookies at a basic preference level, but also recognizes that sugar cookies are the devil. So he tries to resist his basic urges - one part of his mind is at war with the other. But, still, both sides of the war are his own mind.
Your description of Mr. Baddington portrays his entire struggle with vice and sugar cookies as being self-initiated - you don’t speak of him being pressured to change by his church or his parole officer. You mention Christian counseling, but it seems that Mr. Baddington goes there of his own free will. That being the case, I don’t see any argument for his free will being abrogated - who would you think is abrogating it?
There are a number of thoughtful and interesting responses here, but I think a number of them strayed from the OP’s thread title, " Freedom of choice when one’s behavior is compelled by one’s religion". Unless a person is living in a situation much like the Spanish Inquisition, I think the quoted response above is correct. When we freely choose to follow a religion, we have freely chosen to follow all of its mandates and restrictions. We are free to change our mind, if we wish. Following rules that pertain to what was a voluntary choice cannot be viewed as suppression of Free Will. It makes no sense.
I’d define it as choice that is made without fear of consequences. For instance, choosing to buy a purple T-shirt or green T-shirt at Walmart. Either or neither is fine.
If one wants to take gun shots at a presidential candidate, that is not a free choice - sure, you can *physically *do it, but you will face prison time.
So, in terms of religion, if a Muslim fears divine punishment should he eat pork, he isn’t free to eat pork.
So you only lack free will if you don’t choose to resist your fears, then?
Supposing I fear the most dreadful of punishments, worse than prison time or the wrath of an angry god: rejection by a woman. Suppose there’s a woman I like. Suppose that I want to profess my love to her, but the threat of certain rejection holds me back.
If I remain silent then, according the definition you propose, then I was unable to make a free choice because of my fear. But what if I do tell her? What if I overcome my fear? Was my decision still unfree?
Can one say “I was unable to freely choose because I was being coerced, yet I chose what I wanted anyway”? And if not, what does that mean about how coercion affects freedom of choice?
The usual source says, “Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.” I see a fairly simple decision tree.
IF some entity physically forces our actions
OR divine forces predetermine all actions
THEN we lack free will
ELSE we possess free will; we make our choices and go with the results.
Maybe someone pushes you off a cliff - that’s not your decision. But if they just hold a firearm to your head and tell you to jump, you can choose your death. Yes, people can and do consciously change their beliefs. You need not obey the voices in your head. You do so voluntarily.
I think this is far too black and white. I would modify Velocity’s definition to be that a choice is not free if the definite consequence for making one of the choices is so severe so as to effectively make the notion of choice illusory.
I will not shoot the President, first because I believe it is morally wrong, and second I don’t want a lethal injection or spend the rest of my life in prison. If I am a Muslim, I will not eat pork, first because I believe it is morally wrong, and second because I do not want to suffer eternal damnation.
The consequences of these choices are so severe that for all intents and purposes, I do not have a free choice.
Rejection by a woman, while embarrassing, is not a such a severe consequence to make a choice whether to ask her out illusory. First, I am doing nothing wrong by attempting to get a date, and second there is a risk/reward balance. Maybe she doesn’t reject me. Maybe she ends up being the one I marry. There is an element of risk in any choice, but this example is different than a choice with known, certain, and severe consequences.
I think you are equivocating on the word “choice.” In an absolute sense everyone has a choice about everything. I can choose to stick my arm into a wood chipper. I can choose kill someone. I can choose to do anything so long as I accept the harsh consequences. You could even say that people choose to be gay, right? Not a thing in the world stopping Pete Buttigieg from divorcing his husband and starting to sleep with women. But nobody uses the word “choice” in such a fashion.
When someone says “I didn’t have a choice” they don’t mean that in such an absolutist sense. They mean that they did not have a realistic or meaningful choice without harsh consequences.
No letting the guy into the vault is a pretty foolhardy choice. So foolhardy that it would be appropriate for someone to say that they did not have any reasonable or meaningful choice but to comply.
I’m not equivocating; I’m trying to determine if you are. (Whether Velocity was, originally.)
And honestly, it appears you are. In consecutive sentences you say that people don’t mean it when they say they didn’t have a choice - but it’s appropriate to say anyway.
I’m trying to nail down what it means to have “free choice”, in the “free will” sense, in the context of this thread. (In other threads “free will” means something entirely different, of course.) In this thread it’s been argued by some (including both me and you) that the threat of negative consequences can be considered an abrogation of free choice - you were compelled and thus weren’t able to choose freely.
Of course it later occurred to me that the possibility of not complying screws up the definition. If how you choose determines whether or not you had a free choice, then the term “free choice” and “free will” in this context are just a meaningless post-facto way of saying “There were pressures on me when I made my choice, so I abrogate some level of responsibility.” It isn’t really a statement about the choice itself, but rather how you decided, as demonstrated by the fact that prior to the moment of making the decision you can’t know whether you have free choice or not.
No equivocating, no equivocating, you’re the one equivocating (you’re the puppet)
Again, no English speaker uses the word “choice” with such an absolute meaning. Every choice has at least minimally negative consequences even if that consequence is the missing out of the alternative. Take Velocity’s green shirt v. purple shirt example. If I choose the green shirt, then I have missed the opportunity to buy a purple shirt and vice versa.
But nobody would say that the negative consequence of losing out on either the green or purple shirt meant that you were denied free will in your shirt selection.
So in the absolutist sense every choice is a free one, yet every choice has a negative consequence. So it is meaningless for this type of discussion to use such absolutist thinking and it is not what anyone is talking about anyways.
Free will vs. “no choice” runs on a continuum. A choice can have such minimally negative consequences that we consider it a free choice, or free will. If someone offers me a european vacation for $1 nobody can say it wasn’t really a free will choice because they forced me to give up a $1 in order to make it.
Also a choice can have such harsh consequences that we consider it effectively no choice at all. If I would like to watch a movie but someone calls and tells me that they have kidnapped my daughter and will kill her if I watch the movie, but return her unharmed if I don’t, it begs belief to say that I had a real meaningful choice to watch the movie or not.
And we can have many things in the middle which are “tough choices” or actually what people mean when they use the word choice. Should I move halfway across the country for double my current salary but that means less time to spend with my ailing parents? That’s a tough choice. But even though it has real, non de minimis negative consequences either way, it is still a choice and it still represents free will.
And in keeping with the OP, if I believe that selling a gay wedding cake means I don’t get into Heaven, then that is such a coercive choice that I really did not have a meaningful one. Again, it doesn’t matter whether that belief is objectively true or can be proven. If I believe it, then my decision-making process has left me without a true choice.
As you can see, the second post rebuts the first. This is because the concept of “no choice” here is incoherent gobbledygook used to justify decisions that are garnering criticism.
There is no qualitative difference between the two choices. One choice is more obvious than the other, but as you say that’s a continuum with no inherent distinction between “choice” and “no choice”. Which means that whether or not you have “no choice” is always, necessarily, just a matter of arbitrary opinion.
Which means that it would be entirely correct to say there wasn’t no choice, but rather that the cake-baker had the choice of doing the right thing, but chose not to because he didn’t wanna. Did he have reasons for not wannaing? Sure. But reasons aren’t justifications.
Disagree. It is only contradictory if we stick with your absolutist definition of “choice” which nobody uses in common parlance. Nobody.
Yes it is a subjective opinion which may be the difficulty we are having. We could come up with hypos where many people believe that there was a real choice and others believe that it was too coercive to make a real choice. The law of confessions in the United States is a pretty good example. Given a fact scenario some judges will say that the defendant’s will was so overborne that his confession was not a real choice while other judges will say that it was a voluntary choice. The fact that it is subjective does not change the analysis in my mind. Why would you say that it does?
You’ve sort of leaned over to get your drink and exposed your cards here. You say that the baker can do the “right thing”* but in his mind, he is committing an immoral act and exposing himself to punishment in the afterlife for doing so. Why does your outside opinion of what he is doing impact the internal feelings which are acting upon his free will?
*In these cake cases, I personally do not see any Christian values being compromised. I think a person can oppose homosexual conduct, homosexual marriage, yet still realize that gay marriage is the law of the land and bake a cake. It’s not like he is marrying these people personally, nor will his refusal to bake a cake cause them to turn to Christ and renounced their sinful homosexual ways. But, again, I am not these people, so who am I to say what compels their behavior.
Except that everyone, including you, starts speaking if it as though it’s an absolute the second they’re not trying to defend against the obvious counterarguments to the idea of having “no choice”.
The goalposts are on wheels here, and it’s annoying.
Which analysis, specifically? You just straight-up said that a judge may or may not agree that somebody had no choice. Presumably you’d agree that in this case, the judge’s ruling is dominant - it doesn’t matter what the baker says, if the judge says he had a choice, then he had a choice.
This pretty much answers the OP, with “Religion can’t abrogate your free will - unless you find a friendly judge. So, objectively* speaking, Religion can’t abrogate your free will.”
objectiveness, of course, precludes a judge making a ruling. Or the baker, or me, or you, for that matter.
Me showing my cards doesn’t weaken my argument; it just demonstrates that the baker had damned well better hope he doesn’t get me for a judge.
Or any honest person at all for a judge, because an honest judge has to put aside his own feelings and take the position that when the law dictates that equal service be given to all customers, then obeying the law is “the right thing” - meaning that they have the same cards as I do.
There is no goalpost moving. When people talk about having a choice, they mean a reasonably free one. Nobody says that I have the choice to commit murder, even though from an absolutist perspective I do.
Take abortion. Many people are pro-choice. Does that mean that they are okay with laws banning abortion because obviously women have the “choice” to go to illegal abortion doctors and risk prison or health consequences by doing so? So illegal abortion is consistent with “pro-choice” right? Or does choice mean a reasonably free one?
Sure somebody has to make the call whether I am bullshitting about the coercion or not. No law could survive if I can just say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster made me do it and I go home (even if I don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster). And maybe the judge gets it wrong. It still doesn’t change the commonly used definition of choice. The judge is looking for facts about whether the individual believed he was under coercion or not.
The judge is not (supposed to) make value judgments. He decides if the person was coerced or not; he does not decide that the guy was a little wimpy sissy for being coerced.
It seems like you are fighting the OP. I fear that you have decided the ultimate gay wedding cake issue and have therefore retrofitted your beliefs about choice to maintain your ultimate conclusion. The law of the state is indisputably the “right thing” and any religious belief to the contrary is therefore the “wrong thing” and how could anyone see otherwise?
And even if that is what you do believe (which you seem to indeed believe) how does that chance the choice/no-choice calculus for someone who disagrees with your assessment?
Of course you have the choice to commit murder. It’s absurd to say otherwise. Heck, people choose to commit murder all the time.
No, “pro-choice” means “in favor of the law and country recognizing that the woman should be able to choose to get an abortion if she wants to.”
Do you have any other questions to ask that you already know the answers to?
Not really seeing a rebuttal here, other than an oblique reference to “the commonly used definition of choice” alongside a dubious implication that I am changing the aforementioned definition.
If you’re a judge, then damn right it is. Unless you think it’s the job of a judge to legislate from the bench?
I mentioned judges pretty explicitly. It wasn’t the most subtle of goalposts when I planted it, and the attempt to move it also isn’t subtle.
As for fighting the OP, I’ll get back to that in a moment.
My beliefs have no impact whatsoever* on anybody else’s mental calculus, as I think I’ve been pretty clear about this whole time.
(* unless my beliefs are leading me to effect the world around the other person, like say threatening to arrest or attack or frown at them if they go against my wishes. Their awareness of my reactions will, of course, be part of their mental calculations. How large a part, of course, is up to them.)
This does play into the OP, though. From the OP:
This passage asserts that society can’t expect to persuade religious people to do things by making laws, because religious people care about their religion more than they care about the law.
And this applies to everyone: society can’t expect to persuade murderous people not to murder by making laws, because murderous people care more about murder than they care about the law.
In cases like this, society does indeed accept that some people can’t be persuaded to comply with the law. For those sorts they make jails.
The OP also says this:
This is, of course, wrong, as the scenario above indicates. The law is not particularly concerned about how strongly you wanted to murder that guy; it doesn’t consider your strong belief in the importance of murder to be any kind of mitigating factor in your murderous acts. If society decides that you had enough of an awareness of the law to know that murder is illegal (aka “wrong”), and your reasons for doing it aren’t ones that the law considers to be persuasive justifications (aka self defense, etc), then it doesn’t accept any assertions that you had no choice but to murder the dude, no matter what your reasons were.
The same goes for religion. You can be as scared as you want of divine punishment over your cake-making (and let’s be clear - virtually nobody is that scared of divine punishment) but that doesn’t mean you didn’t choose to break the law.
Can you help me find this “law of confessions”? I found 18 USC § 3501, which describes a neat little test for the judge to decide whether a person voluntarily gave their confession. It doesn’t touch on the issue of compulsion, eg: if a gun is literally held to the suspect’s head, but one component of the test is whether the suspect knew their rights when making the confession.
But apparently that law is ignored by every court and prosecutor everywhere, in favor of… Miranda? Which was decided two years before Congress passed § 3501?
Then you have Colorado v. Connelly where a schizophreniac claims his disease removed free will from his confession. The Court declareth, We need not consider this question of free will, because in the eyes of the law, a confession is voluntary in the absence of police coercion.
Bring it back to the topic at hand: if your religion “compels” you to confess, unless your religion is the police, or unless you can get the court to recognize a priest-penitent privilege, your confession is going to be read before a jury. Am I right?
