What Do You Mean by the Word "Free" ( or Freedom )

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What does "free" mean?

If it is, like most abstract terms, a value judgement, what does the judgement consist of?

If you believe that noone is truly free, ( eg. because we live in and are directed by a determinative universe, or because we live in a non-determined/random universe ), what do you mean?

If you believe that everyone not actually in prison, slavery, or other confinement "against their will", is free, does that mean that your idea of freedom is limited by physical force and/or political and judicial systems?

If you believe that you are "free" what would it take to make you "not free"?

How do you measure freedom? Does it come in categories? Can you ever be free absolutely, or have no freedom at all?

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The term usually has political connotations. To live in a free country. For example you can vote- choose who you want for leader. Free speech, free choice of religion, this sort of thing. The ideal of having the right to be yourself and being allowed to choose.

Of course free speech does not work, there needs to be some regulation on it. Free religion doesn't work so good in a country where the political leaders refer to their deity (the US and God). Voting for whoever you want doesn't work in a 2 party system either :/

Really I just think its a fruity term to make people feel loyalty to their country and not to some other country. If every country was democratic they would find a way to divide each other somehow.

There are specific freedoms. Franklin Roosevelt spelled some out in his presidential term. There is no total freedom nor would it be desirable.

And that is interesting in itself, because I immediately think that I understand what you mean, ( people doing whatever they wanted to irrespective of others ), but wouldn't have if you had said that "absolute love" or "the whole truth" was undesirable.

Is it true that absolute freedom is undesirable? What would "absolute freedom" really look like? That is what I would like to know, because I am actually not at all sure that I know what freedom, absolute, or in small amounts, "is".

If absolute freedom really would be undesirable then freedom is a curiously ambiguous value judgement; in fact it is not an unconditionally "good" thing, ( compared to truth or love or justice ).

How much freedom is a good thing? What proportions of other things must be mixed with it to render it "good"/harmless? Is freedom only ever a relatively "good" thing, ie. even in small quantities it is still somewhat undesirable?

Is it in fact intrinsically a "bad" thing? Which like sweeties we may be allowed a little of, but no more or our teeth will rot.

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Every action, material, possibility in the universe has limitations of one kind or another. Absolute love, for one thing, would turn you into a mindless slave. Absolute truth has no meaning for me.

Yes, I think that like a lot of abstract terms it is a value judgement which apply to things which approve of/believe in, whether or not the "thing" really "is" whatever the term says. But that requires that the value judgement should be a positive one, and "freedom" sounds almost as if it might be good or bad, thus meaningless.

I have tended to think that freedom was something positive; to me it has meant "independence", but as I realised a few years ago 100% independence is actually death. Like Sand says, "limitations".

But what does it mean, to be "free"?

I don't think that I believe in "freedom" anymore. It doesn't make any sense to me.

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I suppose it means you can choose your limitations but it must be realized that the action of choice itself is conditioned by limitations.

That is an interesting angle. Freedom is the experience of having the "space" to impose what one perceives to be one's own limitations on oneself/behaviour/surroundings, ( however genetically or environmentally determined the choice of limitations may be ). I like that definition.

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Communication policy advocate/facist alert.

Giving a word a strict definition will only lead to confusion when you meet
someone who does not share your strict definition (i.e. practically
everyone!).

Giving it a lose definition will lead to confusion when you use it to describe
a specific concept. (i.e. practically all useful concepts!)

This is because the meaning of the word changes dramatically depending
on the context in which it is used. There is no definition that will be useful
for all uses of the word because they will either be too strict or too lose.

That's no problem however. Language is flexible enough to use one word
to describe a multitude of different concepts depending on the context in
which it is used. Only an today's artificial intelligences struggle with this.
Most humans are able to create their own, on-the-spot definitions that
react to the context of the word in order to discover the concepts and
meanings it is being used to convey.

It's a good system. Don't fight it.

First question:

What is the opposite, or the response to "free religion"?(or freedom of religion, meaning, not persecuting someone for their beliefs).



Second question:

What ills does free speech bring upon a community/society?



Third question:

Why would democracy keep countries united to each other?

Can I just say that I love your comment?? I love your comment.

Unrestricted, unconstrained.

In human societies, total freedom is never found

ruveyn

Having total freedom would mean that you could do absolutely anything you wanted. This would include things like flying, breathing in space, creating universes, and moving mountains with your mind. Nobody except God (assuming there is one, anyway) has total freedom.

But even here, "anything you wanted" is a limiting phrase. What determines what you want?

I see "unrestricted, unconstrained" as "restriction and constraint removed", but I would see "freedom" as "non-restricted and not restrained" from doing as I will as long as my doing so does not cause any loss or threat of "life, liberty and happiness (ownership of property)" for anyone else ... and I consider that as true freedom since I have no will to cause (and I also have a specific will to *not* cause) any "loss or threat of 'life, liberty and happiness (ownership of property)'" for anyone else in the first place. But I suspect you are correct, Ruveyn:



And, the simple "driver's license" would be my own first example of that: Even though one's personal travel does not in even the slightest way threaten or take away anyone else's life, liberty or property, it is under a gunpoint threat of one's own life, liberty and property that a license must first be acquired.