Is Freedom an illusion?

This post is in response to our last discussion. Some were claiming that the concept of freedom is an illusion or fiction. I will demonstrate that this claim is false.

First, clarifying some definitions is necessary before we proceed.

I use the words, “negation”, “absence”, and "not" synonymously. I also use the words, “restriction” and “binding” synonymously. Thus, they are interchangeable.

I take the word illusion to mean not “real”. That is, illusions do not have ontological status. Another word people used during our discussion was "fiction". I use the word fiction and illusion synonymously since they both relate to things that are not real. Consulting any dictionary will bear this out. For example, Unicorns and Santa Clause are fictions. If I claimed that I have really seen these things, then it would be an illusion since they are not “real”.

I take freedom to mean that something is unbounded or unrestrained from something else. Freedom=X is free, if and only if, it is not the case, that some other thing Y restricts X.

This is the most metaphysically neutral definition of freedom. It does not rely on any metaphysical presuppositions or theses. It is broad enough to apply to any set of objects. For example, it can apply to prison bars and people. Prison bars restrict people from leaving their cell. Alternatively, it can apply to laws and people. It restricts people from certain actions (e.g. laws against murder). Simply put, freedom is the negation or absence of these restrictions. The notion that freedom is context relative should be evident here.

The word freedom, like many words rely on a particular context to have a clearer meaning. Although, the definition given above is general enough to capture the basic meaning, we must put it into the relevant “context” of particular things to make sense. It may have political, metaphysical, scientific, or economic contexts depending on how we use the word.

Anyway, enough of that and now onto the argument.

My argument below has the following form, which is deductively valid.

A→B

~B
______
~A

(Premise 1) If freedom is an illusion (i.e. does not exist), then there are NO instances of things NOT restricting other things. Justification: This is a substitution of the definition of freedom outlined above. That is, freedom= Y not restricting X.

(Premise 2) There are instances that demonstrate the absence of restrictions. Justification: There are innumerable examples of this being the case. Here are a couple.

The absence of prison bars restricting people is instantiated when a prisoner’s cell door opens, allowing the prisoner to leave. Similarly, the absence of civil laws restricting peoples’ actions is instantiated in some parts of the world. Particularly, Rome’s absence of traffic laws is a fine example. That is, people in Rome are “free” to drive as they please!

(Conclusion) Therefore, freedom in many instances are NOT illusions, and hence are real. Justification: premises 1 and 2, & Modus Tollens. QED

Perhaps what people meant is that we are not free as much as we think we are. That is, we think we have fewer restrictions than we actually do. Another meaning could have been that freedom in some instances are illusions. However, these interpretations are entirely different from the claim discussed during our meeting. One cannot infer the claim that freedom is an illusion from the more charitable interpretations just given. Hence, the claim that the concept of freedom is an illusion is patently false as demonstrated by the above argument.

Addendum

Regarding our previous discussions on determinism vs. freewill, it seems that freewill is the unrestricting of the will by prior causal antecedent conditions (whatever those may be). To what degree these conditions both affect our will, and how deep the effects are to our will, is the question that philosophers have been trying to answer for over two and a half millennia.

Jason