Attitude freedom

In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), the Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, invalidated a school requirement that compelled a flag salute on the ground that it was an unconstitutional invasion of the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from official control. The First Amendment, declared the Court, gives a constitutional preference for individual freedom of mind over officially disciplined uniformity for which history indicates a disappointing and disastrous end. At the center of our American freedom, is the freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds, the Court explained, only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. ... 

Deciding to take a risk puts us, and perhaps others, in a risky situation. This situation may or may not afford opportunities to act so as to avoid harmful outcomes. Our attitude to a risky situation in which there are such opportunities will depend on our assessment of our abilities to avoid the harm. If people are successful at avoiding harm in risky situations, then the risks (the harm that actually results) may be low. However, the inherent riskiness of the situation has not been reduced. The fact that certain activities have been made more risky than they were, and perhaps therefore have to be avoided, is a restriction of people s freedom of action in the world. This restriction is caused by human action and is therefore of moral and political concern. 

Here is my view on what freedom of the will is (the first question above). I see our practices and interactions with others, in which our reactive attitudes like resentment have their place, as basic to answering this question. These practices make sense only if people are seen as free and... 

I distinguish between freedom of action and freedom of the will, and I argue that freedom of the will requires critical, reflective, rational self-governance. To possess critical, reflective, rational self-governance, we need to satisfy strong requirements upon attitudes to value in time. 

Explanatory approaches to addiction typically concentrate on attitudes to value over time in order to get the explanatory machinery going. The upshot is that people who are prone to addiction are in a way not fully free to begin with. Still, becoming addicted should be represented as a further reduction in freedom, a reduction that does not occur in those who do not consume enough to become addicted. 

We may now make the direction in which we intend to go more precise. All problems related to decaying atomic states or unstable particles involve interacting fields (or atoms and fields). Two extreme attitudes are possible (a) Fields are treated as mechanical objects the difference due to the existence of an infinite number of degrees of freedom are hoped to play a minor role. (b) The mechanical equations of motion are completely eliminated and replaced by the study of the -matrix. It is amazing how much has been achieved in this way (see especially the beautiful monograph by Eden et al.5). 

However, it would be unwise to take this attitude too far although some freedom of choice among alternative nomenclature systems is desirable, it is seldom wise to apply an individual system other than in a completely rigorous way, and it is not at all advisable to mix systems i.e. to use names such as 5,6-benzo-2-azabicyclo-... 

It is a bad idea to take drugs in school. Even if school bores you, you have to be there, and mastering classroom skills is your ticket to freedom and independence in adult life. Drugs can interfere with your education by making it hard to pay attention, concentrate, and remember, or by involving you with people who reinforce negative attitudes about school. 

In many parts of the world, the public perceive the chemical industry as polluting and are concerned about the impact of chemical products on health, safety, and the environment [7]. This poor perception has become more significant since the mid-1980s. This is despite the fact that measurable improvements have been achieved in the reduction of emissions. There is thus a link between the public s attitude and their behavior as consumers. A further contributor here is the increase in freedom of environmental information for instance easier access to public registers of pollutants. 

Finally, American officials harbored a basic mistrust of Chinese Communists with nuclear weapons because of their perceived irrationality and inhumane attitude. For instance, Mao had said that in the event of a nuclear war, even if half the world s population were killed, in a number of years there would be 2,700 million people again. 4 Kennedy told a French minister that a nuclear China would be the great menace in the future to humanity, the free world, and freedom on earth because the Chinese would not be restrained by nuclear deterrence - they would be... 

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