[MD] Free Will

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
I would say that a Jamesian pragmatic evaluation of the situation goes like this: if determinism were true, we would behave exactly as we already behave and have no choice in the matter even though we have the feeling of willing some of our acts. If free will is true, then we would behave exactly as we behave but _do_ have a choice in the matter. If determinism is true, then your belief in free will is causally determined. If free will is true, then I am freely choosing not to be able to make sense of it. Either way, we behave exactly as we behave. This so-called metaphysical problem is a difference that makes no difference in how people behave in practice. The feeling of having a choice points to something that is either real or illusory, but either way, we still do what we do, so this problem is a fake problem with no consequences.

dmb says:
Well, no, that's not true. As a young man James was so depressed over the idea that determinism might be true that he very nearly killed himself. And he mocked the logic trap you point to by saying his first act of free will is to believe in free will. Further, one of the most important ways James's PRAGMATISM is supposed to settle metaphysical disputes is to ask what practical difference it makes to adopt one view or the other, as you point out. But what most people don't quite realize about James's pragmatism is that depression and suicidal feeling are among the practical consequences. In fact, James doesn't talk about pragmatism as such until the second lecture. The first one is devoted to the role temperament and affect play in the construction of our philosophies and the rival schools that have developed as a result. As he saw it, temperament is the reason we have so many dilemmas in philosophy; empiricism and rationalism, humanism and theism, materialism and idealism, classic and romantic, determinism and free will, tough-minded and tender-minded, Aristoteleans and Platonists, etc., etc.. And how we feel about these rival visions is part of what he means by practical results. 


Steve said to John:
You assert that we are free to act upon our values, but I read the MOQ to be saying that someone can't help but to act upon his values.... Please demonstrate your ability to value something you don't value as a matter of will by, say, willing yourself to value theocracy over democracy or something simpler like willing yourself to prefer chocolate when you already prefer vanilla. We don't choose our values, we are our values. ...In fact all a person is is a bunch of values, so it is even wrong to say that they are _his_ values. Lila doesn't have Quality, Quality has Lila.  ...I've always granted that we make choices. My question for you has been, what does it mean to say that this choosing is "free"? We certainly have will. We have moods, preferences, intentions, etc. But where do these come from? In what sense are they "free"?


dmb says:
Maybe it would be helpful to be more explicit and specific about the meaning of the term "will". It seems that there two different ideas about what the "will" is and both of them have some fairly serious problems. As a metaphysical entity, it seems to be something like the immortal soul but I think we agree this is a Modern, Cartesian, Kantian kind of thing that disappears when SOM is rejected. But then you seem to be replacing that metaphysical sense of "the will" with a sense of "will" that means preferences and desires. I'm pretty sure that's just not what the term means. In fact, I'd say "the will" derives its meaning by contrast with preferences and desires. It is defined as the power or capacity to resist one's impulses, to choose NOT to act upon our desires, to defer, delay or even deny them any satisfaction. In other words, free will is NOT the capacity to change your preference from vanilla to chocolate but the capacity to act on that preference or not. Free will is NOT the capacity to choose your preferences or control what you like but rather the capacity to choose from among the conflicting, competing values and preferences. It is the capacity to decide which values you're going to act upon, not the power to control the preference itself. You can't choose to dislike ice cream but you can decide whether or not you're going to buy it or spoon it into your mouth. This is the ordinary dictionary definition and the common sense notion of the will, as in "it takes a lot of will power to resist my favorite dessert." 

I think the MOQ's slogan wherein we don't have values so much as values have us is a way of saying persons are not autonomous or independent or singular. In the same way that James denies the existence of consciousness as a thing or an entity but does not go so far as to deny its existence as a process and a function, so it is with Lila or any other person. To say Lila is a complex forest of static patterns is not to say she is a ridiculous fiction or that she does not exist at all. Instead, that description says that Lila and everyone else is engaged in a battle against the static patterns of her own life and she is not separable from those patterns because that's what she is, as opposed to the Cartesian self, the substantial, autonomous subjective self. It's that metaphysical notion of a distinct, singular entity that is rejected by the MOQ's slogan but there is still room for the small self and Big Self and living beings who care. In this picture, the idea of moral responsibility is infinitely expanded and tremendously enriched. In this picture, freedom is the highest good, the most moral goal of all - but this aim depends on the stability of the so-called determining factors, the static, stable features of life.  I think this is the sense in which the MOQ's self is dependent rather than independent and a complex living system rather than a singular entity. You see? I mean, we don't have to posit a metaphysical self or an immortal soul to believe in the self or in personal responsibility, to believe this life is a real fight and that it matters what we do.