As I See Freedom and Destiny Part 1

I have never understood the term “free will.” Not because I don’t understand each of the words, “free” means unobstructed and thus uncontrolled by outside forces or influences, and “will” means the operation of choice. See how easy that was? But “the unobstructed and thus uncontrolled by outside forces or influences operation of choice?” What in the dickens does that mean?

Okay, it’s a straw man. I lay out my own definitions and then put them together to show that they are confusing. Yet, at the same time I can’t be too far off, can I? I mean, doesn’t “free” mean something like I have described? And doesn’t “will” concern itself with choice? So “free will” is an obstructed and uninfluenced choice. But wait. Some of you are squirming. I can tell. You don’t like the term “uninfluenced.” And to some degree neither do I. The problem is once you allow influence to, well, influence choice you have to answer the question of how much the choice was influenced. For instance, suppose I walked into a bar, held up a gun and said to the bartender, “give me all your cash.” Would the bartender do it? Would you? Probably. The presence of the gun influences the bartender. Of course you could argue that it obstructs the bartenders’ range of choices by implying something bad might happen if he didn’t stuff the money in the bag, pronto. But either way you are measuring the influence of the gun on the choice the bartender makes. So the question is not if influence is restrictive of freedom, but if influence is sufficient to deny freedom. Or the flip side is, of course, if I chose A rather than B to what degree am I to blame for choosing A?

What degree indeed. I mean if A is chocolate I have no degree of responsibility whatsoever, period. I’m like Pavlovs’ dog. Ring the chocolate bell and I indulge. Of course, there may be influences that cause me to choose to ignore the chocolate. Like my spouse, who frowns on being married to a 400 pound gorilla. Or my kids who really do want me to live long enough to baby sit their kids. But all these influences are outside of me. I do not control them, they influence me. For good or ill I choose under the influence of my immediate surroundings.

Now those influences are divided into a couple of groups. Environment, (like is my spouse looking?) and genetics (I am convinced I have a genetic disposition toward chocolate). Neither of these classes of influence are within my ability to fully control. So to the degree a choice is made under the influence of these two uncontrollable influences, I am not responsible.

But wait. I do have a choice. I could refrain from eating that chocolate bar. Really, I could….not. Not unless some other set of influences are stronger. Let us suppose that my family is nowhere around. I see a piece of chocolate cake. Do I take it? What exactly is the process I go through in deciding?

If you are like me you do exactly what I do, you rationalize after you decide. You seldom weigh the genetic (I love the taste of chocolate) and the environmental (my spouse will find out) before you actually choose. Instead you just go with your sense of propriety. It is only in complex decisions that your mind actually engages. Then you might consider physical, emotional, (which are largely a product of genetics), philosophical and rational evidences. But even then the ultimate decision is made at a moment in time, under the immediate thoughts, perceptions, feelings and sensibilities. And logic, which is a metaphoric enterprise, seldom has much to do with it. It is not a rational choice most of the time, it is a sensed choice. And you go with it. In short, the choices you make are not at all choices, but pathways. You see a route, it appeals to you over the other paths you could take, and you take it. But you take it based upon your genetic makeup, your perceptions of what you could do, the immediate state of your emotions and your immediate perceptions of the situation, all of which you have little control. Decisions, and thus choice, are largely a response to things outside your control and to the degree that response is shaped by those things you cannot be said to be free.

All this has gotten me to the place of seeing free will as not free at all. Just because we cannot see to any real degree why a person makes a choice does not mean a choice was not made. But the outcome, the path selected, was largely predetermined by the complex of uncontrollable influences surrounding the person at the time of the choice.

I touched on another way of looking at it above. I said, and rightfully I believe, that for a choice to be truly a free choice it must be outside the undue influence of the un-chosen things surrounding it. In other words, if it is influenced in any significant way by the things surrounding it then it can be said that the chooser is a machine preprogrammed to respond to the inputs. This largely accounts for the choices we make. However, they are still choices. Alternatives are presented. They are real alternative paths we could take – meaning that we, as moral agents, are not physically restrained from taking those paths. However, given the inputs and processes we have been given the actual path we choose is predetermined. Having said that another way of looking at it is to say that if those influenced did not determine the outcome what did? There is nothing left to measure. And if there is nothing left to which we can point as the predictor of a choice being made, then there is no cause for the choice. Every choice is caused. It is made within a context of inputs and processes. But if you have freed the moral agent from making choices via the influence of external causes then you are left with a choice without cause.

Now a choice which is without cause is an “uncaused cause.” The choice causes a change in our state and the state of our surroundings. Thus, it causes something. But it has, itself, no cause. It is an “uncaused cause.” The phrase, “uncaused cause” is Aristotle’s definition of god. God, to Aristotle, was the uncaused cause. God started everything. God was the prime mover. To give people truly “free” will is to make them the uncaused cause of their own destiny’s. It is to make them their own god.

Another problem, related to this, is theological. If God gives us a truly free will, as described above, then He cannot know, via prediction, what we will choose until we choose it. He cannot do so because there is no mechanism by which our choice can be predicted. This leads us to the point of saying that God must “wait and see” what the outcome will be, or look into the future.

Now if God looked into the future and saw the choices we made, but could not unduly influence them (because that would mean the choice would not be “free”) then the outcome of history is not in God’s hands, but in ours. If we choose to support God, he wins. If not, He doesn’t. In this all of His creation is under our control, not His. This makes us gods, or at least gods of our own destiny. It is my opinion that this is exactly what Eve was doing when she “freely” selected the fruit.