More on Free Will and Freedom

 

Do we have Free Will? by Swami Sarvapriyananda

In today's class (22/6/22), we continued our discussion on Free Will based on the above video.  

We will continue our discussion on Free Will next term.  The documents below should help us with our discussion:

• Free will jam board
• Right & Wrong Ch. 1 by Hugh Mackay

Being alive - can we be free?

 

Philosophy Vibe: Free Will and Determinism

Liberty and freedom are often mentioned in the news and everyday discussion.  However, if we can't even think freely, if we do not have free will, then how can we be truly free in anything anyway?  

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robots can do virtually everything that human can do, and generally can do it better.  Do human brains just run like computer programs anyway?  Perhaps the reason that people think differently is because they have different computer programming codes?  Is free will just an illusion?

You may find the following videos on free will also interesting:

Do We Have Free Will? - Philosophy Tube 

Christof Koch - Can Brains Have Free Will?

Thalia Wheatley - Philosophy of Free Will

Being alive - Do we have souls?

 

L3. Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part I

For the next few classes, we will attempt to answer the question: "Do we have souls?".  We will consider the arguments for and against having souls. In addition to the above video, we will based our discussion on the following videos:

L4. Introduction to Plato's Phaedo; Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part II

L5. Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part III: Free will and near-death experiences 

The transcripts for the above videos are attached below:

L3 transcript 

L4 transcript 

L5 transcript , figure 5

 

Being alive - What am I?

 

2. The nature of persons: dualism vs. physicalism

For this term (term 2 of 2022),  the theme of our discussion is "Being Alive".  Much of our discussion will be based on a series of lectures by Professor Shelley Kagan at Yale University.  Our first discussion topic is "What am I?".  

The transcript of the lecture is attached here.

Should he kill the fat man?

At the last class in term 1 on 6/4/22, we had fun discussing the scenario called "Should he kill the fat man?" in the following website.

https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/

The following were the voting results in class that day compare to other people , shown as % in ( ), using the website.

                                                                                                    YES                        NO

1. Is torture is always wrong?                                                 8 votes (65%)          0 vote  (35%)

2. Should we maximize happiness?                                        5 votes (48%)          3 votes (52%)

3. Is it always wrong to cause another person's death?          8 votes (59%)          0 vote (41%)

4. Should we save lives of innocent people?                          8 votes (77%)          0 vote (23%)    

5. Should he turn the train (kill 1 to save 5 people)                 7 votes                     0 vote

6. Should he push the fat man to save 5 people?                   0 votes                     8 votes

7. Should he push the fat saboteur onto the track?                 5 votes                     3 votes  

8 Should he torture the fat man to save many lives?               8 votes                     0 votes

Zhuangzi chapter 1 - Some questions

Chapter 1 - Free and easy wandering

The following questions are based on the translation of Zhuangzi by Burton Watson.

What is the meaning of the story of Peng flying south?

• In particular, the following:

• Northern darkness and southern darkness,

• Transformation of the fish Kun to the bird Peng,

• "When the sea begins to move...",

• Lake of Heaven.

• The cicada and the little dove,

• The analogy of the need to have deep water to raise up a big boat,

• The need to prepare more food for long trip,

• Little understanding and big understanding,

• Short lived and long lived,

• The pitiful attempt of people trying to ape Peng-tsu.

• The story of Peng is repeated three times in Chapter 1.  The first time, the author is telling the story to the readers directly.  The second time, the story is recorded in the book "Universal Harmony".  The third time, the story is discussed among the questions of Tang to Chi.  What might be the reasons for the story to be repeated three times?

• What do you think of the statement "the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame."?

• What might be the meaning of the following:

• The story of Yao wanting to cede the empire to Hsu Yu,

• The story of the Holy man living on faraway Ku-she Mountain,

• The story of the man of Sung who sold ceremonial hats,

• The discussion between Hui Tzu and Chuang Tsu about usefulness of things?

Zhuangzi - hippie or counsellor

 

The book Zhuangzi is an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (476–221 BC) which contains stories that exemplify the carefree nature of the ideal Daoist sage. The book is named for its traditional author, Zhuangzi, which means Master Zhuang (2).

The Zhuangzi consists of a large collection of stories, which are often humorous or irreverent. Its main themes are of spontaneity in action and of freedom from conventions. The stories in the text attempt to illustrate the falseness of human distinctions between good and bad, large and small, life and death, and human and nature. 

Though primarily known as a philosophical work, the Zhuangzi is regarded as one of the greatest literary works in all of Chinese history.  A masterpiece of both philosophical and literary skill, it has significantly influenced writers for more than 2000 years from the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) to the present. 

In the introduction to his Zhuangzi translation, the American scholar Burton Watson concluded: "Whoever Zhuang Zhou was, the writings attributed to him bear the stamp of a brilliant and original mind."  In the Preface of Watson's book, the following poem was quoted.

讀莊子 - 白居易

去國辭家謫異方，中心自怪少憂傷。

為尋莊子知歸處，認得無何是本鄉。

Read Zhuangzi - by the famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi

Leaving homeland, parted from kin, banished to a strange place,

I wonder my heart feels so little anguish and pain.

Consulting Zhuangzi, I find where I belong,

Surely my home is there in Not-Even-Anything land. 

The above video is a wonderful reading of the first seven chapters (the inner chapters) of the Zuangzi translated by the American scholar Burton Watson.  

Additional Resources

• The book "Chuang Tsu (2), Basic Writings" translated by Burton Watson, can be borrowed from the Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/basicwritings00zhua
• The following video on Youtube - The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton - is also quite interesting listening: https://youtu.be/noYXmItAvKA
• The Chinese text and translation can be found on the following site: https://ctext.org/zhuangzi

Note:

1. The above introduction was based on information from Wikipedia.
2. The following words are different ways of describing the same person or thing.  The differences are due to the use of different Chinese phonetic systems. 

• Zhuangzi / Zhuang Zhou / Chuang Tsu
• Dao / Tao
• Daoist / Taoist
• Daodejing / Tao Te Ching
• Bai Juyi / Po Chu i