Okay, here we go.
I have been planning, since I started this blog, to write out my five arguments showing that free will is possible. I have been putting this off because of the last semester, which was crazy-busy . . . Which you can tell from my utter dearth of posts throughout April. So, to make up for it, over the next few days I am going to write my long-awaited Free Will Cycle.
In this post, I am just going to lay some groundwork concerning the issue of free will. There is no doubt that free will is a big deal, whether it exists or not. Whether we should be held accountable for our actions is a huge, fuzzy bear-question grumbling over the heads of our judicial system every day. Do we see people as in control, and therefore punishable for what they do? Or do we see them as programmed by society, genetics, chance, whatever . . . and if not, therefore, in control of the persons they are, then do we find some means other than punishment, or notions of responsibility? If there is free will, there is responsibility. If there is no free will, we must figure out how to preserve justice without it.
This political dilemma is not my goal to solve. As I see it, to err on the side of caution we should probably always treat people as if they are badly-caused when they do something wrong, and not assume they are freely acting badly - and that when someone does something good, we should treat them as freely acting well. This may seem paradoxical, but I believe this not because of my direct beliefs about free will. I believe this because I think it promotes a healthy social environment. For running a society, the question of free will offers little in terms of personal satisfaction or whatever; the problem of free will for society is basically, how do we mete out justice fairly? For me, we should always treat mistakes as if they were resulting from bad causation (or at least almost always), and we should probably always treat people as accountable for the good they do. This seems reasonable. But I am not offering a real, solid philosophical argument here - just what I think will be practical and less likely to cause problems in the grander scheme of things.
Instead, my question of free will is not starting at the social level, but the intensely personal level. Do I have free will? I am asking this for all of us, in a sense. Do all of us, personally, privately, have free will? Is this concept possible? We must admit that as humans, it doesn't seem that we are completely free. Things seem to impinge our "wills" all the time - whatever a "will" is. If what we want is so often difficult to obtain, even sometimes against ourselves, then we can't possibly be completely free. So, we must decide whether we think free will is at all possible.
Personally, I find individual responsibility to be extremely important. I feel very responsible, and it seems too deeply rooted, to common sensical a position to relinquish on the grounds of any philosophical argument. The feeling of responsibility I get at having made a mistake is simply too overwhelming for me to dismiss as an illusion of poorly understood causation. I will assume, therefore, that my feeling of responsibility is pointing towards something real. If responsibility is real, then I can be held accountable; if I can be held accountable, then somehow I am acting in a way determined by me, not by outside forces, bad upbringing, bad circumstances, etc. Somehow, some way, I act freely.
Here is the argument against free will:
1. If we are completely caused, we cannot be free. If one hundred million different factors go into causing my actions, then all of those different variables make me act. It is not me who acts, as it were, but my causes which form me into myself. My genetics, my environment, my imbedded beliefs, and so forth. Therefore, to be wholly caused is to be wholly unfree.
2. If we are partially random, we are still not free. The part of us that is caused is not free because it was determined by circumstances prior; the part of us that is not caused and happens sporadically is not free because by definition randomness means 'lack of control.' If I act randomly, without my own consent, I am not responsible. Imagine, for example, if suddenly your body started ignoring your mental commands and started killing people against your will. This would be random, perhaps, but not free in any sense. Therefore, randomness is in no sense more free than causation.
This, I admit, is a forceful, amazingly succinct argument, probably the cleanest philosophical point ever made. But, it stands so diametrically opposed to our experience. Whenever I act according to my will, I feel that I am doing so freely. Sometimes, I act against my will; sometimes I act because of forces within me I that make me feel unfree, but I feel as if my freedom is being impinged by my own nature, not that I do not have freedom in those moments. Somehow, we must reconcile our intense perception of freedom with our rational argument above. Our options are to either say that "free will" is an illusion caused by our lack of understanding of causation, and perhaps randomness, which goes into our behavior, or that somehow, inspite of our understanding of causation and randomness, we are still free.
Our challenge, then, is to, somehow, show that free will is neither caused nor random. This is an almost ridiculous challenge. How can anything, at all, be neither caused nor random? I believe I have an answer, though it will come later. All I will do in this blog is list, in order, the arguments for free will I will be presenting here.
1. The Nature of Experience Argument: "That hurt!" "No, it didn't!"
2. The Nature of Qualia Argument: "This is what blue feels like."
3. The Romantic Argument: Coleridge's Imagination
4. The God Argument (Not what you think, I promise!)
5. The Metaphysical Argument: Possibility, Probability, Actuality
With these five arguments, I hope to prove that the case against free will has been weakened. I feel that all of these arguments have valid points and make it so that the idea of hard determinism is perhaps less certain than it is usually presented as. Generally forms of #1 and #4 are highlighted by Free Will Defenders, though my form is slightly different than what you're probably used to. Anyway, I hope they will be enjoyable.
Quickly, I want to mention that there are other kinds of arguments for free will. None of them satisfy me, and so I will not be going into depth on them here. The most interesting, perhaps, is the "cognitively closed" argument: that perhaps our minds can't graps HOW we are free, even though we can grasp that we ARE free, just like we can't grasp the WHOLE of infinity, but we can grasp the IDEA of infinity. Another is the idea that it is impossible to, while making a choice, also believe that we are not free: "Hmm, what choice shall I make? Butter, or margarine? Of course, what I will choose is determined by causal forces, but, still . . . Hmmm . . . Which shall I choose?" These arguments are interesting, so far as they go, but they are really only variants of #1 and do not at all tackle the main argument presented by hard determinists. My five arguments, at least some of them, intend to do so, or at least to prove that such a thing is not necessary to defend free will.
I will be posting #1 soon, probably in the next day or so. Take care!
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Four-Lettered Word
Should you smilingly tell even a casual friend to f-off, he will probably smirk and let it slide. Flip a co-worker the bird in a joking context, as long as no manager sees you, you're fine. But if you have made a good friend, and you use this four-lettered word, watch out.
The word is "love." I do not understand why a word so essential to the human experience, to who we are and what we do, has become anathema. I believe ardently in the Greek word for love among all humans, "agape." And yet, it is more acceptable to swear in public than to tell a friend that you love him or her. This seems like a heinous crime to me.
I spend my days reading the words of the greatest minds in the world, who in many cases ostensibly wrote out of love. The sole purpose for their agonistic endeavors, I would imagine, even if they wouldn't phrase it in such a way, is that they loved humanity and felt they should share what insights they had found. To be a student of literature is to dedicate yourself to the echoes of love; to be an academic is to try and peer into the hearts of brilliant minds. That love that should be shared between all people, that should warm us inside, that should make us feel connected even to the random stranger on the other side of the world, that is a love we all acknowledge in private, when we sit and watch people walking on a sunny day.
But to actually say it, to form the words to another person, is maybe "too intimate" for them to handle. Why? I just want to know: Why can't humans express that basic, unmotivated compassion without it being turned into something grotesque? I remember once telling my stepfather over the phone that I loved him, and my coworker acted as if I had done something bizarre, even wrong. It's an attitude that catches me off guard because, well, isn't that the point of being on this planet? Aren't we supposed to seek a sort of intimacy with our human family? Isn't that what makes us beautiful, more than just animals, that makes the dark and painful halls of life bearable, worth it?
Emersonian discourse demands that we be open, that we speak ourselves. I've found it dangerous to be Emersonian in my lifetime. Being open leaves you vulnerable, and when people get a good glimpse into an open person, they are scared that they, too, might have to be open. I could take one route, and stop being Emersonian, stop being open to others with my honest perceptions. I could. But "the doctrine of hate must counteract the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." Well, the doctrine of love is puling and whining: Love, it is saying, just don't have the balls to say it.
Well, screw that. I will not be a coward. I will not be afraid to tell someone I care about them. This is not a sin, not a travesty. This is why we're here. This is part and parcel of the reason God made us, I believe, and if you don't believe in God, well, all the more reason to find sanctity in love. Real love, not eros, not familia, but agape: the love for each other's humanity, that is the key to a better world. If you're reading this, I challenge you: let others know you care. They might not like it at first, but if they're willing to be brave and open up, take them by the hand and show them a world that isn't calloused and cold, but real and filled with compassion.
Love is not a swear word.
The word is "love." I do not understand why a word so essential to the human experience, to who we are and what we do, has become anathema. I believe ardently in the Greek word for love among all humans, "agape." And yet, it is more acceptable to swear in public than to tell a friend that you love him or her. This seems like a heinous crime to me.
I spend my days reading the words of the greatest minds in the world, who in many cases ostensibly wrote out of love. The sole purpose for their agonistic endeavors, I would imagine, even if they wouldn't phrase it in such a way, is that they loved humanity and felt they should share what insights they had found. To be a student of literature is to dedicate yourself to the echoes of love; to be an academic is to try and peer into the hearts of brilliant minds. That love that should be shared between all people, that should warm us inside, that should make us feel connected even to the random stranger on the other side of the world, that is a love we all acknowledge in private, when we sit and watch people walking on a sunny day.
But to actually say it, to form the words to another person, is maybe "too intimate" for them to handle. Why? I just want to know: Why can't humans express that basic, unmotivated compassion without it being turned into something grotesque? I remember once telling my stepfather over the phone that I loved him, and my coworker acted as if I had done something bizarre, even wrong. It's an attitude that catches me off guard because, well, isn't that the point of being on this planet? Aren't we supposed to seek a sort of intimacy with our human family? Isn't that what makes us beautiful, more than just animals, that makes the dark and painful halls of life bearable, worth it?
Emersonian discourse demands that we be open, that we speak ourselves. I've found it dangerous to be Emersonian in my lifetime. Being open leaves you vulnerable, and when people get a good glimpse into an open person, they are scared that they, too, might have to be open. I could take one route, and stop being Emersonian, stop being open to others with my honest perceptions. I could. But "the doctrine of hate must counteract the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." Well, the doctrine of love is puling and whining: Love, it is saying, just don't have the balls to say it.
Well, screw that. I will not be a coward. I will not be afraid to tell someone I care about them. This is not a sin, not a travesty. This is why we're here. This is part and parcel of the reason God made us, I believe, and if you don't believe in God, well, all the more reason to find sanctity in love. Real love, not eros, not familia, but agape: the love for each other's humanity, that is the key to a better world. If you're reading this, I challenge you: let others know you care. They might not like it at first, but if they're willing to be brave and open up, take them by the hand and show them a world that isn't calloused and cold, but real and filled with compassion.
Love is not a swear word.
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