Freedom of the individual

Liberalism is concerned first and foremost with the preservation of the freedom of the individual. Freedom is understood as the absence of constraints on individual action and is exercised in the private sphere. The role of government is to protect this private sphere and its rights and freedoms, so government should not interfere in the actions of individuals unless such interference is warranted by the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others, in other words where the individual s actions cause harm to others this is the harm principle. 

Hampshire, Stuart. 1965. Freedom of the Individual. New York Harper and Row. Hoffman, Paul. 1995. "Freedom and Strength of Will Descartes and Albritton." Philosophical Studies 77 241. 

In many countries the freedom of the individual investigators to decide the details of their research programme is well protected. Control of day-by-day activities is inappropriate. Nevertheless, in cases such as the above, a preferable procedure would be for two or three selected laboratories to attempt confirmation of the claim. They would then communicate the results to others. Again this massive duplication may be regarded as a corollary of the large number of well-staffed and well-supported research laboratories around the globe. 

A process that contains two or more interconnected units has fewer degrees of freedom than the sum of the degrees of freedom of the individual unconnected units. Suppose, for example. 

In general, the number of degrees of freedom of a system of linked units equals the number of degrees of freedom of the individual units—that is, the total local degrees of freedom—minus the number of ties (variables common to two or more units, and hence overcounted), minus the number of any additional relations that were not counted in the individual unit analyses. 

Proper records, analyzed by a computer, Gould concludes in a burst of enthusiasm enough to frighten anyone but the truest of believers, .. . could even reveal the people who ought not to be allowed to drive a motor-car, or have a seat in the cabinet. Ahl But what about the sacred freedom of the individual Freedom, my foot. We survive as a community or not at all, and doctors today are as much servants of the state as of their patients. Away with humbug, and let us admit that all secrets are bad secrets. It is time we were shown for what we are— warts and all. i (Italics added.)... 

Since then, there has been a reproductive advantage to those whose genes encode altruistic, rather than aggressive or violent behavior. Survival and reproduction are enhanced by societal rules, freedom of the individual, and secular governments. Genes that encode kindness and altruism supplement those encoding selfishness and violence. 

Oyama et al. [92, 93] conducted admittance measurements of a montmoril-lonite clay film and a montmorillonite clay/poly(vinyl alcohol) composite film in various concentrations of Na2S04. A drastic change in the equivalent circuit resistance was observed at the concentration of ca. 0.2-0.3 M, and was attributed to a structural change in the clay film from a face-to-face structure in a higher concentration to an edge-to-face structure in a lower concenhation. The latter structure is considered to be relatively flexible, swollen and viscoelastic, and therefore, acts as a resistance to the oscillation. In the case of the clay/PVP composite fihn, the motion freedom of the individual clay platelets... 

An. 2 Para 1 All persons have the right to freely develop their personalities provided this does not violate the civil rights of others or contravene the constitutional law or the moral code. Para, 2 Each individual enjoys the right of life and to physical integrity. The freedom of the individual is inviolable. Any intervention of these basic rights must be based on an existing law. 

In general, molecular assembly formations are believed to be enthalpically driven, where favorable binding forces (enthalpy) compete with energy loss due to the decreased freedom of the individual subunits (entropy). The increased guest binding character of 2 at elevated temperature is due to the fact that more than one solvent molecule is involved in the initial complex and their substitution by a single large molecule is entropically favorable. 

For more on the freedom of the individual and democratic majority decision see Freeman (1999), p. 362. 

The basis on which the TLVs are set may differ from substance to substance. For some, such as levels for silica dust, a guiding factor is protection against impairment of health. For others, it is the comfort level of the individual, such as freedom from irritation, nuisance, or other forms of stress for example, the TLV for sulfur dioxide is based on irritation and not on toxicity per se. The TLV list is reviewed annually resulting in some revisions in values and some additions to the list. 

As reviewed thermoplastics (TPs) being viscoelastic materials respond to induced stress by two mechanisms viscous flow and elastic deformation. Viscous flow ultimately dissipates the applied mechanical energy as frictional heat and results in permanent material deformation. Elastic deformation stores the applied mechanical energy as completely recoverable material deformation. The extent to which one or the other of these mechanisms dominates the overall response of the material is determined by the temperature and by the duration and magnitude of the stress or strain. The higher the temperature, the most freedom of movement of the individual plastic molecules that comprise the... 

The sums of squares of the individual items discussed above divided by its degrees of freedom are termed mean squares. Regardless of the validity of the model, a pure-error mean square is a measure of the experimental error variance. A test of whether a model is grossly adequate, then, can be made by acertaining the ratio of the lack-of-fit mean square to the pure-error mean square if this ratio is very large, it suggests that the model inadequately fits the data. Since an F statistic is defined as the ratio of sum of squares of independent normal deviates, the test of inadequacy can frequently be stated... 

In response it might be argued that restrictions on the actions of companies should be regarded as restrictions on the actions of the real human persons who own or run them, and that therefore the harm principle can appropriately be applied. However, it is questionable whether a company is the human individuals who own it or run it, and thus that the freedom of these individuals is restricted by restrictions on the company. A case for the identity of a company with particular human individuals can probably be made with respect to small, private companies. In such companies one or a small number of individuals is clearly responsible for what the company does and can be said to be the company. But this case is less easily made for large corporations, owned by anonymous shareholders, where it is difficult to hold to account any particular individuals for the actions of the company.10 In such companies all the key individual human beings may change while the company remains the same company. 

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