On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Ian Murray wrote:
> Individuals and groups/classes are capable of
> creating subjectivities/modes of intentionality that afford breaking out
> of their institutional roles, no? Or is that something that's caught up in
> "the law of unintended consequences"?
>
> Ian
>
The free will/determinism debate has gone on for thousands of years, and will continue, because there is no satisfactory way of empirically resolving the question. (No matter how much I insist that what I write here is a product of my free, creative subjectivity, a radical behaviorist can quite logically claim that my behavior is completely determined by reinforcement contingencies in my past. --In fact, even my insistence that I have free will can be explained by observational learning, punishment, reward!) So the question of free will isn't an interesting theoretical question for me. I think it's much more useful to ask: Why the incessant focus on individuals and subjectivity in our society? How does this individualization reinforce economic and political structures?
Miles