De-liberation
De-liberation exploits an alternative etymology for deliberation to emphasize the idea of freedom implicit in it, and especially the sense of both setting free one possibility and yet fixing or freezing it as an actuality in the immediate simple past, so "un-freeing" it as well.
The meaning of "de-liberation" can be drawn from the observation that free will is a temporal sequence of "free" followed by "will."
First comes the consideration of
alternative possibilities, which are generated unpredictably by acausal events (simply noise in neural network communications). This free creation of possible thoughts and actions allow one to feel "
I can do otherwise."
The
de-liberation and determination by the will, the
unfreeing of possibilities into actuality, has made the decision that directs the tongue or body to speak or act.
After the
de-liberation of the will, the true sentence "
I can do otherwise" can be changed to the past tense and remain true as a "hard fact" in the "fixed past," and written "
I could have done otherwise."
The Etymology
The usual etymological derivation of deliberate is from the Latin
deliberare, to weigh well, to ponder, which is thought to come from prefix
de- +
librare, to weigh, from
libra, scale, or pound.
Thus we have the strong connotation that deliberation is a balancing of two alternatives.
But there is another critical Latin word,
liberare, to liberate, from the root
liber, free. Another meaning of Latin
liber is book.
The English word
deliver also comes from middle Latin
deliberare, at which time it was thought to mean
set free, apparently a reference to the root verb
liberare.
We can restore that sense with our own coinage
de-liberate, from prefix de- + liberare, to free or un-free.
Then we have the desirable connotation of un-freeing possibilities and determining one of them as actuality.
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