>Re Diane Weston's comment, and Jack Hirschfield's on cultural myths
>surrounding freedom, free will, determinism and responsibility:
Seems to me this is a VERY old debate, around free will and determinism -
certainly the Christian Church Fathers exercised themselves over it for
centuries! The dilemma: if human behavior is indeed "determined," then we
cannot hold individuals responsible for their own behavior; if we
acknowledge personal responsibility, then we must in fairness assert free
will. (As I recall, the original debates turned on whether the Christian
God could be omnipotent and have complete foreknowledge of outcomes - like
whether individuals would be saved or damned - if people indeed had real
free will to choose their behaviors. If God knew about it all in advance,
could humans really have free will? And of course the Calvinist doctrines
of predestination also enter the debate.)
For our purposes in discussing manipulation, defined here as the
influence of one party upon another to insure a preferred outcome, with
implications of covert action: If manipulated, can an individual be said
to have free will? I like Robert Heinlein's comment, in one of his novels:
"Just because the other guy incited you to riot, doesn't mean you had to
go along with it." I tend to favor responsibility & free will notions as
most productive of self- and socially-enhancing behaviors and social good
order.
Sam
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Mariann Jelinek, Ph.D.
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Richard C. Kraemer Professor of Business
Graduate School of Business Administration "The most enduring
strategic advantage
College of William & Mary
comes from changing the game."
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