Hi Deepak,
I greatly appreciate you sharing your paper. Freedom is a concept that I find crucial to comprehending us ontologically, which I am compelled to do.
I was a bit lost toward the end of your paper, so I am unsure if I agree or disagree with some of your premise. I wholly agree that freedom is equivalent to choice because I see it as an act, not as a thing to possess. So if choice is not possible,
freedom is without meaning if not also simply nonexistent. But I prefer a wider view of choosing and spontaneity. I think that those arguing against freedom have polluted the argument with the idea that choices are individual events. The worst of it arrives
with the “could you have done otherwise” argument. Otherwise when?
For instance, what work of visual art I might create this hour is the sum totality of choices made over the duration of minutes, hours, days, weeks and years. Every prior choice is within my every current choice. Each choice is like a new current
in the flow of my being, modifying, building on, subtracting from, coloring, influencing, each new choice. So my choices, and my spontaneity, exist with far greater breadth than just the next moment of choosing.
Also no choice occurs in a vacuum. No being is free without an environment in which to be. So the occurrence of freedom is a shared event beyond the confines of the organism.
Thank you again for sharing. I hope my thoughts are constructive.
Peter
Peter Lloyd Jones
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Enjoy. Marvelous conversations,
Tyler
PS - what is meaningless and according to who ?