JeremyStangroom.Com

Another nail in the coffin nail of free will.

Probably.

Also explains ‘rock star behaviour’.

So here’s a puzzling thing. Suppose a friend tells me he is desperate to be a father, and I notice he isn’t having sex with any women. So I say to him:

“Look mate, at least there’s the potential you’ll be a father if you shag a few women, but if you don’t… well, there isn’t. Stands to reason, don’t it!”

Not sure why I’ve started talking like an oik. But anyway that’s not the point. The point is this. Suppose my friend, captivated by my wisdom, then spends thirty years having sex with women. But – luckily for them! – they don’t get pregnant. He then comes back and says:

Oi, you said I had the potential to be a father. I’ve wasted thirty years of my life shagging women when it’s obvious I never had that potential!

So the question is: did he ever have the potential to be a father?

Okay, so let’s rule out the obvious point. He isn’t infertile. He’s just been unlucky. So maybe the thought here is we can say he had the potential since what we mean is something to the effect that if he had made choice x, and then y had occurred, he would have become a father. He had the potential – in fact, probably there were a large number of paths he could have taken which would have resulted in fatherhood – it just so happened he inadvertently made the wrong choices. But he could have made the right choices. So the potential was there.

Except maybe he couldn’t have made the right choices. It is not particularly counterintuitive to suppose that the choices we make we were always going to make. It’s a fairly standard line for people who think determinism is true. It doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t have free will – because it is possible to think that free will is compatible with determinism. But I’m not sure it leaves intact the idea we possess potentials we will never realise. If it doesn’t, then – assuming determinism is true (and perhaps even if it isn’t) – my friend was never potentially a father. It’s just neither of us knew it at the time.

(I’ve been musing about this stuff because of statements to the effect that: there’s more chance that x will happen if you do y. Presumably what we mean when we say that is something like: given 1000 people, more out of those who do y, will achieve x, than out of those who don’t do y. No problem. But just because it is true for an aggregate doesn’t mean it’s true for a single individual. And yes, I say this realising quite well that an aggregate isn’t anything other than a collection of single individuals.)

Okay, so this story is pretty unedifying all round. But surely, the judge is confused:

Judge Alexander said: “This is not a usual case. You [the defendant] were bought off by the child’s parents, who received £18,000 from you in order not to go to the police.
“That is reprehensible behaviour on their part. But you complied with that position.

Unless I’m missing something, the defendant wasn’t bought off, rather he bought off the parents in return for their silence.

It’s easy to judge here. And I hope that I wouldn’t have taken the 18k. But, but… I don’t know, I wonder if I would have found excuses as to why it was the right thing to do?

It’s nice that Baroness Uddin has been cleared of any wrongdoing over her expenses claims.

However, it is certainly arguable that she ought to be shamed for having (jointly) written – or at least for having put her name to – the following:

No religion of the world restricts choice, and we believe that good parents cannot either.

No religion of the world restricts choice!!!! And I’m not quoting it out of context (see Page 1).

What on earth were you thinking, Baroness?