D9: On Free Will

Discussion Nine: On Free Will

Q: Who do you think is right in this week's readings?

A: I think Richard Taylor is most right this week. We do deliberate things for ourselves, and we do and must make decisions all the time. If we do not do these things, no outside influence does them for us! As we cannot be reduced out of the equation of getting things done in our lives, it is much easier to allow that determinism is wrong, than to accept the possibility that our seeming decisions are illusionary. Not opposing the idea of influence frees him from a defending a huge mistake, as it is an obvious thing that we are influenced, and leaving the door open to the possibility that he may be wrong, and more importantly that the world and a man is far more mysterious than we may allow frees him from having to defend hubris. While he does not WIN, per-se, he cannot lose and, most importantly, he is -relate-able-!
A: Holbach blithely teaches a fatalist determinism, from our text hardly seeming at all soft, suggesting that we are not free to choose anything, because we [our faculties] restrain our freedom. He does less than Mill with much, much more, but it just seems like so much mental gymnastics desperately and quite decoratively working to defend the position of moral unaccountability, while not being explicit about it.
A: Indeterminalist Compatibilism proposes that indeterminism & determinism may be compatible, and that while most things, mainly the external, are determined by causality, some personal or internal decisions may be freely made.
A: John Stuart Mill posits his views seemingly from the Compatibilist perspective (although many names are offered for his views). While we are subject to external influences, Mill argues that our internal motivations and tendencies are within our control. He's actually quite concise, especially in comparison to Holbach's flowery verbosity, and I am tempted to agree with his Necessitarianism/Soft-Determinism. He puts forth a really tight argument!
A: Indeterminalist Philosophical Libertarianism argues that choice can & should be free from external & internal psychological cause & effect. As I understand imperfection and the world, this is not practical or conducive to the process of growth.

A: William James professes indeterminism by a two-pronged refutal of determinism: 1. We cannot predict actions perfectly from mere causes, and 2. that the determinist consequence as-he-sees-it of moral unaccountability is unacceptable.

A: Robert Kane states that any belief in human free will necessitates an indwelling immaterial soul not bound by the causal rules of the physical world.

Discussion Nine: Free Will, cont'd

Q: Is Holbach correct?
A: Holbach is not correct. Reading (trudging) through his words, I could only think “Which Red is more Red: the Red that opposes Red, or that Red that is opposed by Red?”. Holbach divides a man's brain, motives, and thoughts from the man, attributing their functions to something else as external causes. Can they belong to another, if not the man? If they were to, would they first belong to another before them, and another, ad infinitum? A man's thoughts and motives, however informed, are -informed-, not controlled, or subverted. He says our motives and acts are limited by... our new motives and acts? In not so few words, Holbach says we get in the way of we, but then, “Who are the We?? Lots of SAT words, but not nearly enough sense, unless I really misunderstood him, which I own is possible. Pretty sure I am not alone in this.

Q: Is it impossible to choose without being influenced?
A: Information is influence. It is not possible to live without being influenced, so it is not possible to choose without being influenced. We are intelligent animals, not merely instinctual. We learn, explicitly and implicitly (I'd argue mostly implicitly, even in organized systems), and all the information we learn may be thought of as influence. Where our choices are decisions between comparative values, influences inform our decisions, and that information we use to change our perception of the comparative worth of values we decide upon, given the circumstances in which we believe our decisions will take effect.

Q: What does it mean to be free?
A: I agree somewhat with Taylor in this, in that I believe freedom is not merely feeling you can decide who you are and what you do, or having the capacity to make these decisions, but that being free is actualizing, and enlivening these things into being, in our own irreducibly unique way. Freedom, then, is not an idea, or a capacity, but healthy and intentional living.

Q: Are people free?
A: We are free inasmuch as we conscionably act aright, to the degree our act is right.
To the degree and inasmuch as we do wrong, or withhold from doing that greatest right within our power -- be it by error, poor choice, or through compulsion -- we are more slave and subject than free, be it to a poorly-informed conscience or intellect within, or some dominating force without.