On Freedom

I am rather absurdly liberal (as you might be able to tell from by veiws on that whole 'democracy' thing*). As such, I have a general sense that freedom is probably a Good Thing. But before I start raving madly about why it's a good thing, I thought it might be a good idea to define my terms. There's nothing more annoying than having a five minute argument then discovering that you and the other person have been arguing different things**.

So the first place to go is obvious. Merriam-Webseter. Or dictionary.com. I'm not going to bother printing them here, but the links are here and here.

Well that was bloody helpful wasn't it?*** Maybe some of you think that that pretty much clears everything up. I respecfully disagree. Here's the first problem: Am I free to take a piece of pencil and a piece of paper, and draw on the paper a square circle? One answer is 'yes, you're just unable to'. But does that mean that we could increase people's freedom by allowing them to do anything as long as they have with them a piece of paper with a square circle drawn on it? That seems rather counter-intuitive, so for now I'm going with 'you aren't free to do the impossible'.

Next, if I'm standing next to you holding a knife, am I free to stab you to death? If yes, then the law places far fewer limits on my freedom, since I can do almost anything - the law will only respond later on. So I'm going to go with 'any limit imposed on action by any authority with the power to enforce that limit is a restriction of freedom.' Since 'do not murder' is a limit on action, and it is imposed by the government, which is an authority with the power to enforce that limit, the answer is no. I'm not free to stab you to death. There are, of course, questions here, like 'what exactly constitudeest 'the power to enforce that limit'. But I'm going to deal with that issue by pretending it isn't there, and saying that my current rule is good enough for now****.

Lastly, what are acceptable limits on freedom? Fortunately, on this there is general agreement. It is acceptable to limit someone's freedom in order to prevent them from hurting others or restricting their freedom, and it is acceptable for limits to exist based on limits which they've placed on their own freedom in the past. The only point of debate is really whether or not it's acceptable to prevent someone from restricting the freedom of their own future selves to too great an extent*****, and even that can be folded into the above by counting the future self as to some extent a different person. You might think that thre are other reasons some people think it's acceptable (such as for the greater good of the society, but that really just gets down to the exact definition of 'hurting others or restricting their freedom' - whether or not seeing a drowning child and not helping falls into that category or not, for example. There might be examples of limits that people think are acceptable that can't be folded into these categories, but I honestly can't think of any.

So, if we count the laws of physics as 'authorities with the power to enforce limits on people' (which doesn't seem too much of a strech, I've basicly defined freedom as 'the state in which limits are not placed on behaviour by an authority with the power to enforce those limits'. And the only acceptable reason for those limits is that they're self imposed, or to prevent harm to others.

Which, of course, leads me to the conclusion that the laws of physics are devistatingly immoral, and should be abolished as soon as possible.

*For the record, I seperate 'political liberty' and 'civil liberty'. Since Bentham's 'On Liberty' did something similar, I think my liberal credidentials are fairly safe.
**Actually, strictly speaking, there are several things more annoying, including but not limited to having a ten minute argument of the same time and the other person explaining that men can't be raped.
***For the sarcasm impared: No. No it was not.
****So, you know, basicly the same as my approach to homework.
*****There's a very obvious suicide joke here. I'm not going to make it.