Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
- Isolosophy
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Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
Premise 2: Education and knowledge broaden our notion of possibility
Premise 3: Our notion of possibility creates our will
Premise 4: More will entails more obstacles from achieving our own will
Conclusion: Education and knowledge decrease our degree of freedom
For instance, North Korean 1, who has never left North Korea in his life, has fewer obstacles from achieving his will so has greater degree of freedom than North Korean 2 who has been to the US and has returned to North Korea.
If this argument is right, then should education and knowledge be decreased in favour of increasing our freedom? If not, why?
- SimpleGuy
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Re: Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
- Burning ghost
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Re: Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
Seems a tad hedonistic to me.
Also, I think your premises are broken. I think you'd need to look at terms like "obstacle" for starters. We can reason quite easily that certain "obstacles" in life present us with new opportunities that may have gone completely unattended if they had not fell in our path. For this reason I don't idealise the position of being a slave without responsibility under the guidance of some supreme flawless master.
And of course, if you think more about this you'll notice you'd first need to acquire the ability to discern the best possible master for you. This would be to effectively hand over all life decisions to someone else.
Not even finished with premise (1) and premise (2) seems equally problematic it is presentation.
note: As an overview are you simply asking if we miss what we don't know about? Obvioiusly we do not. I would say that we have certain "expectations" and cannot help to question our experiences though. Make of that what you will.
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Re: Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
If you define freedom as the number of options that we are capable of taking divided by the total number of options that we are aware of, then yes education and knowledge could potentially decrease our freedom. It depends on the speed of growth in our abilities versus speed of growth in our knowledge of possibilities.Conclusion: Education and knowledge decrease our degree of freedom
But if you define freedom not in this relative way but simply as the absolute number of options available to us, then no it doesn't.
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It's a good OP because it examines a classic problem of modern life: how it's possible for human beings to become materially more and more comfortable and have more and more life opportunities, but not necessarily be any happier than when we spent our whole lives in a single small community living hand-to-mouth.
- Isolosophy
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Re: Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
To be fair, I think you are making the link between happiness and freedom by yourself here. I am not intending to show the contradiction of hedonism, but that of the cult of freedom. Also, could you explain why you think premises 1 and 2 are problematic?Burning ghost wrote:A happy slave is a happy slave. An unhappy slave is an unhappy slave. If happiness is the main pursuit of life then being a happy slave without responsibility is probably an ideal goal to strive for. This would require seeking out a worthy master.
Seems a tad hedonistic to me.
Also, I think your premises are broken. I think you'd need to look at terms like "obstacle" for starters. We can reason quite easily that certain "obstacles" in life present us with new opportunities that may have gone completely unattended if they had not fell in our path. For this reason I don't idealise the position of being a slave without responsibility under the guidance of some supreme flawless master.
And of course, if you think more about this you'll notice you'd first need to acquire the ability to discern the best possible master for you. This would be to effectively hand over all life decisions to someone else.
Not even finished with premise (1) and premise (2) seems equally problematic it is presentation.
note: As an overview are you simply asking if we miss what we don't know about? Obvioiusly we do not. I would say that we have certain "expectations" and cannot help to question our experiences though. Make of that what you will.
- Isolosophy
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Re: Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
I have not read the work of Aristotle you mentioned, but as far as I understand, eristic opinions/arguments are ones that are more concerned with refuting another's argument, while dialectic arguments search for truth, but I cannot see how those distinctions relate to my arguments, so would you please elaborate on that? On the contrary, would dialectic arguments not broaden our notion of possibility (see premise 2) better than eristic arguments and therefore potentially limit our freedom even further?SimpleGuy wrote:The problem that you talk about is the problem that aristotle coverd in his work topos as the problem of division between eristic opinions and dialectic , logical deducable opinions. With the existence of eristic cognitiono the education doesn't enhance the insight and the perception. Just a dialectic view of reality in order to deduce real replicable , logical consistent theorems enhances the freedom of will and insight. Thus education itself can after the presented content of aristotles topos not be the only way due to it's principal possiblity to cover real world problems with eristic theorems.
- Atreyu
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Re: Do education and knowledge limit our freedom?
Freedom is achieving will. Having it. Getting it. The obstacles to acquiring it are a separate issue. They are simply the things which must be overcome if one wants to have will (freedom), and they will always be there. In fact, obstacles are necessary to achieving will, for will is acquired by overcoming obstacles. If there is nothing to overcome, then there is no opportunity to acquire will. So the absence of obstacles have nothing to do with freedom, and, in fact, are a necessary prerequisite for acquiring it. Freedom is acquiring the power (will) to overcome obstacles. And this is quite impossible if there are no obstacles to overcome in the first place.Isolosophy wrote:Premise 1: Freedom is absence of obstacles from achieving our own will
Yep. Self-evident truth.Premise 2: Education and knowledge broaden our notion of possibility
No, not at all. Being aware of possibilities only creates the desire to overcome any obstacles which hinder realizing those possibilities, i.e. it can create the motive to acquire will. But actually getting will entails overcoming certain obstacles in our path.Premise 3: Our notion of possibility creates our will
Quite the opposite. More will just means more power to overcome even bigger obstacles.Premise 4: More will entails more obstacles from achieving our own will
They often do, but they shouldn't. Ideally, they would just give us new tools and perspectives in our pursuit of freedom. But in practice they can actually make the situation worse. It all depends on the usefulness and practicalness of the particular "education" and "knowledge" under consideration. If one has more knowledge than one can make use of, then that knowledge can become a distraction to using the knowledge one can make use of. And this state of being "overeducated" is a typical problem for modern man.Conclusion: Education and knowledge decrease our degree of freedom
It's not right, but regardless it's not possible to decrease education and knowledge. To understand why, let me ask you: How would you go about decreasing it?If this argument is right, then should education and knowledge be decreased in favour of increasing our freedom? If not, why?
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