Why do you think so many people are bad at maths?

[Eriny]

To people saying "justify freedom being self-evident", I direct you to Alan Gewirth's logical argument which proceeds as follows:

1) Every agent must regard freedom and well-being as necessary goods, as without them we cannot act – cannot be an agent – at all.

Logically, every agent then either

(2) must regard freedom and wellbeing as rights or

(3) must accept that others can curtail his or her freedom and wellbeing.

However, (3) would contradict (1) so therefore every agent must accept (2) to avoid a contradiction.

I disagree with that. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. My freedom is being curtailed every day by these things called laws that don't give me the freedom to steal, to kill, to marry several people at once. Gewirth's (implied) definition of freedom is unrealistically simplistic.

I don't think the deductions are flawed, really. It's an interesting 'proof'.

BUT I would argue with the premise of that argument. It's true that agents must view themselves as agents, but there are many people in the world that assume that their lives have already been determined. They don't view themselves as having agency in the first place. It seems to be that freedom can only be considered to be a 'right' for those who already see themselves as being free to begin with.

There is also nothing universal about concepts like 'freedom' and 'agency' or even a word for 'right'. Seriously. In languages other than English, rough translations may exist but they don't actually quite mean the same things. Most significantly is a concept like 'right' (on which lots of international treaties are based) which is not at all easily translatable. Also, many languages don't capture the duality 'freedom' has in English - namely it entails both 'freedom from' as well as 'freedom to'. The West - especially English speakers - value personal autonomy a lot, we are even use 'whimperitives' (could you do this?) as opposed to imperatives (do this!), which is seen unnecessary and even odd in other cultures.

This isn't to say that freedom and rights aren't important. When people are tortured, when they are imprisoned or killed because they express how they feel about it, when prisoners involuntarily get organs taken out of them while they're still alive, and etc. something is very wrong. But they aren't wrong because they restrict freedom or because they go against human rights, they go against something more fundamental and universal than that - namely the concept of good and bad (which all languages share).

[Ahmad]

If you haven't already read it (twice) you might like to (re)read Lockhart's Lament which criticises aspects of maths education in the US, many of which are possibly shared by the Australian system, from the eyes of both a mathematician and school maths teacher.

[xXNovaxX]

haha, some1 went back on topic! LOL. good one

maybe i should change the name of this thread to "random rants" LOL.

STOP DEVIATING FROM THE TOPIC. Yes you.

deviating form the topic? its MY THREAD which i posted, it's you guys talking about philosophy, china, FREEDOM (WTH?), and other stuff. I find it interesting, but i just thought i should point out to the otehr poster, thanks for going back to the point. Don't know why u would say stop opposing/avoiding topic. *sigh* I have contributed to many of the arguments put forward.

Toothpaste/pick/brush is synonymous with sarcasmpaste/pick/brush. Lighten up

oooo, thx Mao, im still new here, so i haven't been here long enough to understand the characteristics of people. thanks for clearing it up