A question of "essentials"

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 120933


Lupinlore wrote:
"Free will, if the definition is pushed to its logical foundations,
becomes an illusion, in that no one's will operates outside of forces
that condition, channel, and limit the will."

Del replies:
Another interesting post for me :-)

I quite agree with you Lupinlore, though I wouldn't go as far as
saying that free will is an illusion.

My own idea of free will would probably be more accurately called
restricted free will. In my idea, people are free to choose within the
limits of completely personal parameters that nobody (but God) can
figure (nobody including themselves quite often). So for me problems
arise when someone starts arguing that a RL person or a character in a
book was free to choose to do or not do something, because we don't
know what that person's parameters are, we don't know where their
limits are, and this matters enormously to me.

It seems to me that many people believe in some form of such
restricted free will for the Potterverse characters. But it also seems
quite obvious to me that we tend to be more or less generous with the
limits we grant characters depending on how much we like those
characters or not.

For example, I often tend to give larger parameters to Harry than many
other people, because I don't like him as much. This means that I tend
to argue that he was able to make choices very different from some of
those he took, when many other people argue that his free will was
much more restricted by his nature/nurture/environment than I pretend. 

Another example is Kneasy's theory that Harry's choices are not really
choices because DD is making sure that Harry makes those choices by
manipulating his environment. This translates into : DD does his best
to restrict as much as possible the limits within which Harry can
exercise his free will. It doesn't mean that Harry doesn't have any
free will anymore, just that the extent to which he can exercise it is
quite small.

A third example is the war/not war problem that is being discussed in
another thread. Whether one is at war or not is a major influence on
one's parameters. For example, killing another human being is
generally wrong in times of peace, but it can be the only right thing
to do in times of war.

And last but not least, my most problematic example of restricted free
will is Tom Riddle. If he was a child psychopath, then his parameters
were widely different from those of other kids. He still had his free
will, but he wasn't able to exercise it within any normal kind of
limits : whatever he did, he would never be normal. And if JKR meant
it when she said he never loved, one could even argue that Tom could
never be good, because his parameters didn't include love and
compassion. He could be right by deciding to comply to society's
morality just for the sake of avoiding problems, but he would never be
good. And this takes us back to the issue of innate goodness and
innate evilness.

Del