Greetings,
I'm going to present to you an argument that human beings have free will. I have not seen this argument composed elsewhere, but if you uncover a similar argument from another source, I'd love to hear about it.
Here's how it will work. There are three "sets" of arguments. The first set has 5 premises, and should yield "C1"-- conclusion 1. The second set has 3 premises, and shoudl yielf "C2"-- conclusion 2. C1 and C2 should form an additional argument to yield C3. If you think my argument is wrong, it would be great for you to either attack one of the premises or argue that one of the conclusions do not follow from its respective premises. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
SET 1:
1. Either human beings can freely will or they cannot freely will.
2. If human beings cannot freely will, they either cannot will or they can will without freedom.
3. Human beings can will.
4. If a human being can freely will, we say that such a human being has "free will".
5. If a human being cannot will with freedom, we say that the human being is subject to "determinism".
C1: THUS, human beings either have free will or they are subject to determinism.
SET 2:
1. If human beings are subject to determinism, they perform the actions they perform but do not do so freely.
2. If one performs an action but does not do so freely, they do so because they were compelled.
3. If an entity is compelled to perform the action of evaluating an argument, they did so because they were compelled, regardless of beliefs about the validity of the argument.
C2: THUS, if an entity evaluates this argument to establish its validity, one was not compelled.
SET 3:
C1. Human beings either have free will or they are subject to determinism.
C2. If an entity evaluates this argument to establish its validity, one was not compelled.
C3: THUS, if an entity evaluates this argument to establish its validity, it did so with free will.
So, now we have C3: "If an entity evaluates this argument to establish its validity, it did so with free will". It's a conditional, and I'm fine with that. Let me ask you: did you evaluate my arguments to determine their validity? According to C3, if you cannot, you cannot reject arguments for free will. If you can, you have free will.
What are your thoughts? Is there a problem? Is it convincing, or do you find it lacking in some regard?
Friday, September 24, 2010
An [Ontological?] Argument for Free Will
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34 comments:
Your first premis, that human beings either have free will or are determined, may not hold a truth value.it seems to not be the case that human beings have free will, and it seems not to be the case that human beings are determined.A human being must refrence him/herself in order to be discussed. From what I remember this self reference is a paradox that does not yeald any a priori or a posteriori knowledge leaving your original premis baseless.
So basically, your first premis is neither true nor false, I think.
To clarify C1 looks like it was concluded from a valid argument but its use in the final set is the premis I'm challenging.
I think the vulnerable point in your argument is premise 3 of argument 2. Why is the compulsion to evaluate independent of one's beliefs? Why couldn't my act of evaluating your argument be both compelled and also the result of my beliefs about its validity? If my beliefs are not under *my* control, I can both evaluate and be compelled to evaluate.
Ray seems to be arguing that the reference to human beings is self-referential and therefore presumably paradoxical. But why is self-reference necessarily paradoxical? My belief that I am hungry now is self-referential but probably not paradoxical (and actually rather obviously true to me).
Maybe what I was trying to say was that one cannot have aquaintal or descriptive knowledge of the concepts 'human being'or 'free will' and its negation. Joining these concepts into either 'human beings have free will' or "human beings do not have free will" seem impossible to actually know.one can only have a justified belief in them.
Thanks for the comments, Ray and Dr. Papazian!
Ray, I'm not sure that I understand your justification for saying that "one cannot have aquaintal or descriptive knowledge of the concepts 'human being'or 'free will' and its negation". Why can humans not have this knowledge? It seems like there is some knowledge we can have. For example, my very first premise is a tautology-- it states "P or Not P", and regardless of what P is, the premise is true. That seems to be a justified, true belief about any P, which means that we can have a justified, true belief about any premise (namely, that either it is true or it isn't).
Dr. Papazian, I'm going to quote your comment here for easier reference:
"Why is the compulsion to evaluate independent of one's beliefs? Why couldn't my act of evaluating your argument be both compelled and also the result of my beliefs about its validity? If my beliefs are not under *my* control, I can both evaluate and be compelled to evaluate."
Here is the premise in question:
"If an entity is compelled to perform the action of evaluating an argument, they did so because they were compelled, regardless of beliefs about the validity of the argument."
I may be misunderstanding, but you seem to be hinting at an odd situation: can a human compel oneself? If free will is the norm and a human compels himself or herself, was the action a member of the set of freely-performed actions?
I would respond in the negative. The decision to compel would be freely chosen, but by definition (and thus necessarily), that which was compelled was not freely chosen. For example, let's say (strictly as a thought experiment) that I freely chose to allow myself to be sold as a slave to Dr. Briggs. If Dr. Briggs decided to use me as a full-time secretary, I would not have freely chosen to be a secretary, even though I did choose to allow Dr. Briggs to use me as he sees fit.
I suspect that some refinement of the premise could occur. Perhaps, instead of compulsion, I could phrase it to the effect of, "If an entity is compelled to perform the action of evaluating an argument, there did not exist any possible world where they did not performed that action and were still an entity." I'm not sure if this will carry the argument where it will need to go; I might have to ponder it and present a second series at some point.
In reply to Zach, I was suggesting that determinists would say that my beliefs are determined by external causes, so I can be compelled to evaluate an argument to be invalid as a result of the externally-caused beliefs I hold. Imagine a computer programmed to evaluate arguments in first-order logic. It's evaluating beliefs even though it's a fully deterministic machine. Why are we different from such a deterministic argument-evaluating machine?
The problem I was trying to bring up in my comment is that the statement 'human beings have free will' is similair to the statement 'the emperor of armuchee has a sword'. In both cases either the statements are either true or false (my earlier comments were wrong and Zach corrctly pointed this out);but the problem is that 'the emperor of armuchee' and 'human being' do not correspond to anything real. I realize that humans do exhist but the state of 'being'is similair to concepts of the ego or soul. I don't consider either to be real. So in a sense my comment is not evaluating the validity nor specific premises in your argument. Rather it is annoyingly questioning the problem you propose itself. Sorry about that. Third time is a charm
Thanks for the responses!
Ray, your objection is fair-- you're objecting not to the validity of my argument (that the conclusion follows from the premises), but its soundness: whether the premises are true. Sounds like you might have a great objection to Set 1, Premise 3 (that "Human beings can will"). It's obviously an important question, and while I tried to begin with relatively non-controversial premises, there are certain assumptions that I needed to make. I'm certainly willing to concede that the argument requires acknowledgement of "human beings" being entities that will. It would take an altogether separate argument, if you deny that premise. Good catch-- maybe another blog post! Or you could write it, yourself. :-)
Dr. Papazian,
A computer programmed to evaluate arguments in first-order logic can certainly evaluate arguments. What it cannot do, which appears in both C2 and C3, is evaluate an argument to establish its validity (emphasis on establishing its validity). Such a machine can perform a vast number of arguments, but its motivation-- the teleological justification behind the action-- cannot be to establish the validity of the argument.
In effect, I'm trying to force teleology upon the determinist. To roughly paraphrase, if there is an end to an action, there must be an actor. Normally, this isn't a convincing argument. However, if I apply it in the context of the arguer itself, it seems to me like it holds a certain sway. People are comfortable denying teleology-- except when you ask them about the teleological import of their own argument.
Or, at least, that's my response to your objection. I know it was somewhat rudimentary; do you believe it was insufficient? Was I not clever enough to slip in the teleological element, or is it insufficient to force the conditional in C3?
One problem with denying 'being', 'ego', and 'soul' is that it leaves the answer open to the materialist and men of science to figure out what is real. While I am confident in the scientific method I think that it would be ineficient to wait for psycology to answer questions of free will in relation to humans. Perhaps an xphi experiment can help solve this question? I think that one would need to be set up for both being (maybe consciousness?) and freedom.
My hunch is that consiousness, whether it be sober or not, is a thing that one can know without inference as a series of cognitions that hold a phenominological continuity. To be more clear, certain actions of the brain (cognitions) are known immediatly through a succession of sensibilia (phenominological continuity). As far as freedom is conscerned, I'm not sure what it means to be free other than being unaware of of ones limitations. Like Papazian said, one may be able to act purposefully within these limitations without these limitations dictating the act, but who's to say purpose is not its own set of sub-limitaions.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense to yall maybe I need more time to think about it; but a collaborate xphi experiment could be more fun.
Ray,
If you deny "being", "ego", and "soul", I'm not sure that there are materialists or men of science to figure out what is real. Assuming that psychology is a science (a highly contentious topic, I have observed, at least among Berry psychology majors), can you propose what an experiment in the context of psychology would look like to answer questions of free will?
Psychology might be able to judge consciousness, but to equate consciousness with being might not be legitimate. Similarly, to say that "to be free" means "to be unaware of one's limitations" might be misunderstanding what is meant by "free". If one is unaware of gravity, but is still restricted by gravity, it does not follow that one is free from gravity. I explicitly deny an epistemological link between knowledge of free will and the presence of free will.
If you need a definition of free will, I'll see if I can help, although I'll warn you that this will require refinement. Presumably, we can agree that "free will" refers to a will that is free. "Freedom", in this context, means that the will is not compelled/forced to respond in a certain way. I currently will to type this message. However, if my will is free, I can volitionally choose do do otherwise. If I have a will and that will is required/compelled to perform certain functions, it is not free. If I don't have a will, I have neither free nor unfree will, although I question how one can be both consistent and thorough with such a premise.
Zach,
So if I understand you rightly, your argument is based on the intuition that goal-directed behavior is not deterministic. We are supposed, at the least, to be made uneasy by the combination of believing both that we are actually doing something for some purpose (evaluating an argument, playing a game) and also believing that we are compelled to do this. A computer that appears to be playing chess is not really playing chess because it is not playing to win (or to do anything). We do play to win (or whatever), so therefore we can't be computers or deterministic machines.
Is that an accurate representation of your position?
Dr. Papazian,
Yes, I do believe that your comment accurately reflects the position I am defending. I should mention, of course, that I differentiate between epistemology and ontology in the application of this principle. For example, let's say that I believe that I am playing chess to win-- but, it turns out, I am playing chess simply because (this is a causal, not a teleological, "because") I was compelled. This is consistent with my conclusion. However, based on my conclusion, if I was (in fact, not merely in belief) playing chess to win, it would seem that I must have free will. That is how I intended the argument to work.
I think a Russillian response would utilize logical atomism which explains physical objects cause logical constructions. These constructions are composed immediatly by sensibilia (this phenomenon is observed as nerves firing). Certain sensibilia we associate together are said to be a logical facts (ideas). complex logical facts and ideas are said to be constructed in a logical way. So if this idea of the will, as composed by specific and immediate combinations of sensibilia(nerves firing), are observable phenomenons then a scientist can prove or disprove the idea of the will.
My prediction is that the idea of the will is never consistently a specific occurance of certain sensibilia and is influenced by other randomly occuring ideas and emotions. The same experiment is done for the idea of the conscious and a variety of other abstract concepts. The conslusion of such a mass experiment would indicate certain concepts are confusing and refer to no observable data consistently. Therefor the idea of the will is incoherent. The interesting thing is that much of language uses these concepts. But any policy, decision,or normative phrase based on these concepts alone may be misunderstood and improperly used without providing context to physical things for reference. This puts knowledge as necessary for understanding philosophy universally. so the phrase 'human beings have free will' has an aristocratic epistemology. Do philosophers want this?
Ray,
You make an interesting argument; I think you aptly noted that it boils down to this: "if this idea of the will, as composed by specific and immediate combinations of sensibilia(nerves firing), are observable phenomenons then a scientist can prove or disprove the idea of the will". You argue that, if the antecedent of the conditional is true, "the idea of the will is incoherent", which seems like a reasonable conclusion (although I don't necessarily concede to it). The important question, then, is whether the antecedent is true.
Interestingly enough, your conditional-- IF [this idea of the will, as composed by specific and immediate combinations of sensibilia(nerves firing), are observable phenomenons] THEN [a scientist can prove or disprove the idea of the will] can be phrased another, logically equivalent way: IF IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT [a scientist can prove or disprove the idea of the will], THEN IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT [this idea of the will, as composed by specific and immediate combinations of sensibilia(nerves firing), are observable phenomenons]. I'm not sure whether or not you would like the rephrasing, but it's logically equivalent to the original. In this manner, it seems like the question becomes whether or not the will can be proven or disproven to exist by scientists.
It doesn't seem to me that the will can be proven or disproven by scientists? Why? Well, you said it yourself-- this account of things makes "the idea of the will is incoherent". In other words, IF [this account is true] THEN [the idea of the will is incoherent]. However, the idea of the will is not incoherent. How can I assert this?
When you say that the idea of the "will" is incoherent, you presumably have a coherent mental account of what you are speaking of; if I deny the existence of midichlorians but don't really have a grasp-- a coherent account-- of what they are, I am not really making a good argument, because I am arguing about something I have no coherent concept of. In order to assert that the will is incoherent, you must have a a coherent account of the idea of the will in order to argue against it, and this means that the idea of the will is coherent.
We're left with a decision: either "collective scientists" (as I will call them) can or cannot prove/disprove the will. If they can, the idea of the will is incoherent-- but then, they did not have a coherent idea of what they thought they were disproving. If they cannot, the idea of the will is not necessarily incoherent. In other words, I think we're left with the conclusion that the idea of the will is not incoherent.
I think it is obvious that collective scientists can prove/disprove the idea of the will. All they have to do is ask a test subject to think of the idea of the will and observe the specific and immediate combinations of sensibilia(nerves firing). Such an experiment if conducted numerous times and recreated by many different scientists would show by way of an inductive principle (which by the way can be changed if enough experiments to the contrary are conducted) that ‘idea of the will’ is not universally known and is different to each individual person. If “collective scientists” had a coherent grasp on the concept of the will, they would be performing pseudo science. While it may be a good way to practice sophistry, setting up an experiment to confirm what one already knows defeats the purpose of science. It seems to me that the only way around this would to say that ‘the will’ is not an idea held in the minds of humans. This seems to be the way you are going correct?
Let me rephrase my original objection: ‘human beings have free will’ is kin to ‘the emperor of armuchee has a sexy dance’. Is there a perfect ‘sexy dance’ out there that all other sexy dances originate? I know that I may be digressing but I don’t know if this problem can be solved. There seems to be a fundamental divide between our two positions.
Ray,
I'll tell you what-- I'm still not convinced, but I'll try to lay out what my issues are. Hopefully the divide between us will not turn out to be so fundamental that communication must abruptly cut off. Let's go back to your original objection:
"‘human beings have free will’ is kin to ‘the emperor of armuchee has a sexy dance’. Is there a perfect ‘sexy dance’ out there that all other sexy dances originate?"
I'm not sure what your objection is doing-- are you denying that there "human beings" (as there is no emperor of armuchee)? I'm not sure how the "sexy dance" portion of your argument relates. I'll try to give a counterexample, and see if it's on topic with what you were presenting.
Let's pretend that we asked a large amount of people who the supreme god of Hinduism was. We would probably get all sorts of answers-- most would say that there is no supreme god of Hinduism (polytheism), some would probably take wild guesses (Shiva!), and a few would answer correctly (Vishnu). Let's assume, as well, that a psychologist could verify that the references of the three response-categories were substantially different. Could we show, therefore, that there is not a coherent idea of the supreme god of Hinduism? Not at all-- rather, we would be showing that a vast minority of people have a proper understanding of the idea of the supreme god of Hinduism.
Similarly, if free will exists, all that "collective scientists" (which I will abbreviate to "scientists") can show, given what we have assumed so far, is what opinions people hold or what knowledge they presumably have. It's unclear to me why scientists, if they proved multiple instantiations of the idea of free will, would have thus discredited free will any more than they would discredit the idea of Vishnu by showing that few people understand it.
Perhaps you can help? If I misunderstand your argument, I apologies, and appreciate your clarifying it for me.
I like your counter example though I’m not quite sure what a ‘vast minority’ is. So in the case of the supreme god of Hinduism, does it mean that the fractured understanding of their supreme god is the correct understanding collectively? Or does it mean that only one type of response has it correct? Regardless, I think I know what your getting at with free will.
My response would be that if the actual idea of free will (as a cognition) held in the minds of humans is varied and without concensus with the actual or original concept of free will, then a philosophy using such a concept without some sort of description for a frame of reference will not have the publicity necessary to solve problems in the ‘world’. Without this publicity, philosophy takes on an aristocratic bent that seems more like a theology.
I would like to add that this conversation is especially interesting in light of the next few philosophy meetings concerning the good, the bad, and the ugly...i mean the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Ray,
"So in the case of the supreme god of Hinduism, does it mean that the fractured understanding of their supreme god is the correct understanding collectively? Or does it mean that only one type of response has it correct? "
I intended to imply that only one type of response was correct. It's possible for a majority of people to have an opinion, and that opinion be wrong. In fact, I would not be surprised (this would be an interesting X-Phi experiment, albeit monumental in scope) to determine if there is an inverse correlation between a statement's truthfulness and the majority of people's opinion about the truthfulness of that statement. If 99% or 1% had the epistemologically correct idea about free will (regardless of what the correct idea is), it would not have a bearing on the ontology of free will. Or so I would argue.
I find your response intriguing (which, as a side note, is for me a notoriously difficult word to spell correctly). I somewhat agree that, "if the actual idea of free will (as a cognition) held in the minds of humans is varied and without concensus with the actual or original concept of free will, then a philosophy using such a concept without some sort of description for a frame of reference will not have the publicity necessary to solve problems in the ‘world’". I am unclear, however, of the significance of this point. What is the motivation of philosophy-- for example, to have practical results in public policy, to edify, to discover "truth", to create "truth", or et cetera? If the primary purpose of philosophy is to cause positive public change (as you seem to propose), why should we prioritize truthful philosophies over wide-reaching ones? I would tend to argue that Heidegger was a better philosopher than Rand (in terms of method and content), but I enjoy the actual works of Rand far more than Heidegger, and it's unlikely that the public would embrace Heidegger-- while Randian philosophy could, arguably, have had tangibly positive effects.
I'd really like to write a post, sometime, on the motivations to practice and study philosophy. It wouldn't be comprehensive, of course, but I could explore a few possibilities and it could be a great platform for dialogue. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend tonight's meeting, as my wife and I are meeting with a real estate agent to possibly make an offer on a house. We'll see how it goes. :-)
Zac,
I don't have time to read this large plethora of comments from yourself, raven and papazian. However, I did read your defense of free will and I am inclined to agree with you except I don't understand how you possibly believe what you do seeing how you have a religious foundationalism... How is that not contradictory? How can you presume that any sort of metaphysics allows for free will? Is it not the negation of metaphysics or an anti-foundational approach that allows from free will.
Now i'm not even talking about psychological free will because that is something which we know for fact is untrue. We have impulses we are unaware of, we call this the unconscious. we have reactions we are aware of but cannot explain we call that the subconscious. but thats not what were talking about. were saying, in general, does the idea that we are free, more specifically a dualistic approach, our ideas are free and can head in directions (see hegel on history). This is important and i agree with hegel but again its anti-foundational i.e does not rely on a god or absolutes. How do you possibly get around that?!
-ben
Quick side note-- this is comment #22; wow!
Ben, thanks for posting. You may have made a good objection, but I'm somewhat unclear about how to respond. In what way does free will prove problematic for religious foundationalists? If one assumes that there is an omnipotent deity that can perform any action (including warp free will), it proves problematic, but fans of omnipotence would need to assume that logical contradiction is acceptable, anyways (a la Descartes). I don't, however, see any reason why you must have an account of a completely sovereign/omnipotent deity to slide religious foundationalism into the door.
an anti-foundationalist wish:
I wish I had two foundations. one to poop on and another to cover it up.
Zac,
I agree with you insofar as it only makes your position, I believe, problematic or in the words of Occam, excessively complex. It merely seems to me that free will more lucidly manifests itself from an anti-foundational approach more so than a religious foundational approach. I am not asserting that such a position is blatantly contradictory, merely potentially so... or more specifically, more easily contradictory considering the corpus of work that religion brings to the table about the potentiality of free will being, if not circumvented then at least tempered or incomplete. This is my only objection, otherwise the logic as discussed in the ensuing conversation seems valid. I hope you nothing but the best in your endeavors to demonstrate not only the validity but the importance of free will for us the "free spirits" ...
Scat,
Despite the fact that you clearly find that funny -- it is utterly incoherent and moronic.
Anonymous speaks like a true conservative; anything that defends your original conclusion is worth upholding. Here is a poem for some perspective.
Do metaphysicist believe there is meaning behind the words they use? Or are they insensitive knaves and comedians of logic? Does the analytic have a goal? Or are they nihilists, clowns of value?
-chinese philosophy
Anonymous, (who I believe as Ben and will address as such,)
Certainly, I would agree with you that any corpus of religious texts that argue against the existence (or for the subversion of) free will would need some method of dealing with this argument, or they have a standing objection against them. At any rate, in Christianity, one could argue that the primary forces aligning themselves against free will such as Calvinism are, in fact, deeply heretical and cannot be harmonized with scripture. Note, as well, that the existence of free will does not preclude the notion of responsibility. You may not be compelled to make the choices you do, but that does not preclude you from being held responsible for those choices.
Zach,
I would like to get your response to a piece of work I am reading which deals with Kierkegaard's defense of freewill. What distinguishes him from say Hegel is that he believes 'progress' is acausal and indeterminate: consisting of qualitative 'leaps' which disrupt 'continuity.' this "dialectic qualitative" is sharply contrasted with Hegel's "linear dialectic" in that every 'leap' represents a entirely new way of looking at the world. However, as Hoffding argues
"but it might be asked, cannot this jerk or this leap itself be made an object of psychological observation? Kierkegaard's answer is not so clear. he explains that the leap takes place between two moments, between two states, one of which is the last state of the world of possibilities, the other the first state in the world of reality. it would almost seem to follow from this that the leap itself cannot be observed. but then it would also follow that it take place unconsciously -- and the possibility of the unconscious continuity underlying the conscious antithesis is not excluded"
thus would you agree that he even concedes we are not entirely free based on the quote I offer?
Personally, i find the idea that "in this way the principles of totality and discontinuity are in perpetual conflict, a conflict whose finest fruit is progress" and is given great support by quantum physics.
YES I am continuing my work on quantum physics and am reading a fantastic book "The Innermost Kernel" which is helping me tremendously on my endeavor!
-Ben
Ben,
So that I can best understand the account you're giving of Kierkegaard's defense of free will, would you mind letting me know your source? Many of his works were written pseudonymously, and knowing the context of the argument will really help me give a good response.
Thanks!
The primary source i am using i already cited. however that source is using three sources one lewis feuer two harald hoffding and his work a history of modern philosophy as well as jan faye. As to the exact work of kierk they are citing he offers stadier paa livets vej and enten eller
Ben,
Ironically, I strongly deny Suzanne Gieser's account of Kierkegaard's philosophical paradigm in "The Innermost Kernel". My entire senior thesis was focussed upon dispelling the idea that Kierkegaard proposed an "either/or", an enten-eller, between different "viewpoints" (as Gieser calls them), and that an individaul must belong to no more and no less than one. It's an interesting argument, but involves the wholesale slaughter of Kierkegaard's goals, and isn't representative of his philosophical contributions. I can provide examples/arguments if you would like, but it would be a bit off-topic from the free-will thesis, even though her account of K's free-will defense hinges upon this flawed understanding. I think that she's wanting the dialectic of Sartre in the poeticism of Kierkegaard, and misses the points of both. So, no, I don't give the argument much credence.
zach,
I am aware that was the topic you discussed in your thesis and is why i brought it up (forgive the potential irrelevance to the topic at hand). However, if she is wrong then what is Kierk's position of free will if not what is described here. I understood that free will manifested from the acausual indeterminist position. is this not the position that kierk takes?
Ben,
In my opinion, Kierkegaard's take on free will is odd. That's not to say it's wrong, but it's not reducible to the sort of axiomatic expression that those on either side of the equation often like. I'll give an overly reductionist account; apologies for the necessary consolidation of the argument. Kierkegaard probably wouldn't like the fact that I did this, were he able to communicate. Here is what I believe that he argued:
1. It is possible for humans to sin (to "sin" in this context can be understood ethically, rather than religiously. "Sinning" refers to performing an action, whether external or internal, which one ought not have performed).
2. It is nonsense to say that sin occurs necessarily (in other words, it's a contradiction to state that one ought to have acted otherwise but was unable to).
3. Thus, sin need not have occurred.
4. Thus, it is possible for sin to occur, and possible for sin to not occur (remembering that there is an intrinsic "ought", something imperative to the individual, built into this notion of sin).
5. (Ontology) Individuals are thus responsible for their sin, because they ought not have performed it, and it was possible that they do otherwise.
6. (Epistemology) The individual must choose whether or not to acknowledge their responsibility for sin; this is a choice, itself.
Thus, Kierkegaard affirms the existence of free will, but argues that we do not know we act under it until we choose to act under it. If we have not chosen to act under it, we possess the potential for free will, but do not act in accordance with it. Thus, if X does not accept responsibility/free will, they can be legitimately said to act outside the scope of free will, even though they themselves chose to act outside of that scope.
On the other hand, we are not radically free. We can choose-- emphasis on the "we". Each person has a historical context in which they act, which restricts the available choices in a temporal setting. However, to choose freedom involves a rejection of that temporal history and an acceptance of what he would call the "eternal", which moves us outside ethics into the religious.
Suffice to say, he argues that:
1. All people can choose free will.
2. Some (most) people choose to live per fatalism.
3. A few (Christians) choose free will, but it requires an acknowledgement of accountability/responsibility before the eternal.
There's theology built in there, but it's primarily a philosophical paradigm, and I did my best to leave it as such. Make sense? Have questions? Critiques?
Zach,
Well my obvious critique is that you didn't actually answer my question about his belief as acausal and indeterminate. It sounded like he is and that you agreed with my thesis but u didnt come out and say that. is that what you're saying if not how does what u just posted disagree with my proposal?
Ben,
Apologies if I did not sufficiently respond to your query. Obviously, much hinges upon the definition of "acausal" and "indeterminate; thus, I will provide what I believe to be standard definitions from dictionary.com. If you are not satisfied by the definitions, feel free to provide your own and I will respond accordingly.
1. Acausal: "having no cause".
Zach thinks Ben is asking: "Per Kierkegaard, if an individual's action X was freely willed, was the willing itself without cause?"
Certainly not. Kierkegaard argues that individuals are "called" to choose-- that is, they are faced with a choice, and this calling forces (and thus causes) the will to make a decision, whether the willer wants to, or not. However, the willer is free to choose whatever response they wish to give, remembering that apathy/choosing not to choose is a choice itself.
2. Indeterminate: "not determinate; not precisely fixed in extent; indefinite; uncertain."
Zach thinks Ben is asking: "Per Kierkegaard, if an individual's action X was freely willed, was the outcome of the action unable to be determined before the action occured?"
It's interesting to consider this in two ways: epistemologically and ontologically. Epistemologicaly, the answer is, "yes"-- one cannot know (although one can guess) the choice of another person before they commit that action. Ontologically, the answer is also "yes", because the person has not yet made their decision. Unless you're asking if people can see the future... but I don't think you're talking about foresight. Rather, I think you're talking about entailment. Per Kierkegaard, the choice that has to be made (whether to accept freedom) is forced, but one cannot know beforehand the response of another, because the choice is freely made. One could probably, however, make a pretty good guess. :-)
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