Free Will and Romantic Imagination

In the previous post, I involved the imagination in the defense of free will. It was more of a sideline premise in supporting my argument; here the imagination takes center stage.

Recall that the hard determinist's metaphysical argument against free will is, roughly summarized, that because things in the universe can only be caused or random (or maybe some combination thereof), free will is an incoherent notion. My reply is that causation and randomness are both concepts created by the mind in order to understand the universe; while they may have a basis in reality, "cause" is a narrative created by an observer to "explain" an event. The first argument I posted attempted to posit a third way things can exist, that is to say, in a state of "fixed arbitration" which is somehow neither caused nor random. The second argument I posted argues that free will seems metaphysically possible from the fact that it is imaginable, regardless of our status as free or unfree. My argument here is that, as a method of understanding the world, the logic of hard determinism, while generally valid, becomes problematic when applied to the function of human thought in a draconic fashion. It is generally a good precept to assume that there is a logical reason for phenomenon in the universe, but this precept is one used for apprehension of the ostensibly non-conscious universe. For consciousness to work, logic must be assumed to work. However, if we are to join the hard determinist in attempting to explain conscious thought in a formula such as theirs against free will, then the logic which they use to disprove free will is as much available for philosophical attack as free will itself.

So, then, why should our beliefs be logical? A "logical" reason is not enough. We could say that the reason beliefs should be logical is that is what rational beings do; they use logic. But "rational" has the word logic hidden in it. Indeed, it seems difficult to answer the question, "Why should beliefs be logical?" without sneaking in the word logic somewhere. Certainly, the logician can reply, well, logic is to be augmented by the senses and emotion, and this is to be agreed. But why should we believe that this pairing is to be trusted? After all, the senses and logic have, when working together, failed human beings in the past. And, if we are going to let the senses enter into this philosophical conversation, we could possibly suggest that I "sense" that my actions are free; should not our logic admit the truth of that perception?

However, the logicians attempt to answer that beliefs should be logical ultimately pushes us either into a circle, or admit that there is another sort of faculty which we must look to. "Experience" which shows us that logic is reliable is not a good enough explanation, for it takes logic to show us that experience is valuable, much the same as it takes logic for repeated exposure to phenomenon to ever become induction. Without logic, any senses are simply inarticulate blobs of experience which cannot admit knowledge; but why does belief seem more trustworthy when it is supported with logic than not? There is no way getting around this fact: beliefs which are shown to be logical to the mind are more believable. But the belief, "Beliefs are better if logical," cannot come from logic, for circular reasoning is forbidden by logic. And sensory experience, as well as cultural experience, cannot supply the answer, because without logic these are all merely amorphous, unconnected feelings that have no "logic" to them - that we are so convinced that these disparate experiences can be bound up in logic suggests a faith which, in some sense, goes beyond logic. I propose this belief, "Beliefs should be logical," comes not from a principle of logic (or it would be circular) but from a different sort of belief-forming principle or faculty, the imagination.

Now, it may seem too quick to assume that there is a whole faculty from the discovery of a single principle which is not strictly logical. Again, some exchange between reason and the senses could be argued to create this principle, but I believe that position devolves into incoherence, as I hope I have sufficiently shown above. In case not, let me repeat it in another way: Should we say that belief in logic's place in belief forming comes from the senses, we are pre-supposing the role of the senses as supplying fuel for logic to work with, thus implicitly admitting logic into our answer. We need to fully abolish logic for a brief moment to satisfy the logician's demands of non-circular reasoning, and the only way to do so is to suppose a mental faculty which is non-rational. This faculty must, in some ways, be sort of like reason and sort of like the senses. It is like reason in that it is not experienced as part of the world as the senses are; we do not "sense" mathematics in the world, strictly speaking, much as we do not "sense" the fact that "beliefs should be logical." However, like the senses, this faculty has the inability to disagree with what it experiences. So, while rationally someone may posit that not all beliefs need be logical, whether they believe this is controlled by this other faculty. Reason is, in some ways, more at our disposal, because we can let it move out of the realm of our actual beliefs. This faculty, in a strange way, is out of our control (though not completely), but is at least difficult for us to manage, as the senses are difficult for us to manage, because we cannot argue with what it tells us to belief very easily. So when we are told, "Beliefs should be logical," it comes with a force which is so powerful, even asking the question seems preposterous, although we cannot clearly articulate why.

Further, I argue that since this faculty exists, we should suspect that it will be involved in other belief forming activities. It may be the case that "Beliefs should be logical" is the only use of this faculty, but that would be odd, and once admitting to the existence of the faculty, ruling out its use in other cognition seems baseless. After all, if I can prove to you that only one unicorn exists, or only one Hittite, then you will be less skeptical that other unicorns or other Hittites do in fact exist. As it stands, I have no unicorns, but Hittites have been found, so it will be easy to convince you that Hittites other than thee ones we exactly know about have been around; as for unicorns, it's hard to convince you of the third and twentieth unicorns if I haven't proven the first. Should the role of the imaginative faculty in "Beliefs should be logical" draw any support from my reader, then it should be agreed easily that the imaginative faculty must have a role in other belief forming principles. I argue, then, that free will is one of these beliefs. Free will is a belief which we may disagree with rationally, and yet even the hard determinist thinks about things to make decisions on them. They may not want to call this free will, but if a hard determinist is thinking, "Should I turn off the television and go to bed, or watch one more episode?" the hard determinist has the experience that either option is possible. He may not rationally belief this to be free, but that experience is, indeed, the definition of freedom: that two different options are actually possible at one moment. And indeed, the hard determinist does, I think, experience that both are possible, even if he would rationally tell us that he believes this experience to be an illusion. This demonstrates, I think, that the free will belief is like the "Beliefs should be logical belief," and other beliefs which arise out of the Romantic imagination proposed by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake. Should we have come this far, to admit the existence of the imagination and admit its role in the premise of logical beliefs, to reject its validity in its role in the belief of free will would undermine its role in the belief of logical beliefs. I submit, therefore, that free will is a power of the mind discovered by the imagination, which makes sense why the hard determinist, in attempting to explain decision making through logic alone, must necessarily fail.