[MD] Indeterminism

[david buchanan]

It remained for William James, Peirce's close friend, to assert that CHANCE CAN PROVIDE unpredictable alternatives from which THE WILL CAN CHOOSE or determine one alternative. James was the first thinker to enunciate clearly a two-stage decision process, with CHANCE in a present time of random alternatives, LEADING TO A CHOICE which selects one alternative and transforms an equivocal ambiguous future into an unalterable determined past. There are undetermined alternatives followed by adequately determined choices."The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative possibility, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass is, after all, only a roundabout name for CHANCE...What is meant by saying that my CHOICE of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but only one, and that one either one, shall be CHOSEN." (James, The Dilemma of Determinism, in The Will to Believe, 1897, p.155)


We find that William James was the first of a dozen philosophers and scientists who have proposed a two-stage model for free will and creativity. The first stage involves chance that generates alternative possibilities for action. The second stage is an adequately determined choice by the will. First chance, then choice. First "free," then "will." 



JAMESIAN FREE WILL, THE TWO-STAGE MODEL OF WILLIAM JAMES __________________________________________________________________BOB DOYLEABSTRACT Research into two-stage models of “free will” – first “free” random generation of alternativepossibilities, followed by “willed” adequately determined decisions consistent with character, values, and desires – suggests that William James was in 1884 the first of a dozen philosophers and scientists to propose such a two-stage model for free will. We review the later work to establish James’s priority.By limiting chance to the generation of alternative possibilities, James was the first to overcome the standard two-part argument against free will, i.e., that the will is either determined or random. James gave it elements of both, to establish freedom but preserve responsibility. We show that James was influenced by Darwin’s model of natural selection, as were most recent thinkers with a two-stage model.In view of James’s famous decision to make his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is free, it is most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates by naming the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free will.