David B.: “Perhaps it's not that we lack free will but that we merely
choose to exercise it in predictable ways.”
Jonathan: “Maybe free will is more of a goal to attain, as opposed to a
given state for all.”
It is all a very contentious business, but, as you have seen, I have no patience with those who subscribe to that pathetic phenomenon known as free will. Though the tendency in question is I believe more a matter of the past. It has attracted a good deal of attention, indeed, fromphilosophers of all kinds, determinists and idealists alike. Avoiding that debate, it seems clear nevertheless that, according to the universal understanding of mankind, some actions result from effective choices and hence are free, while others do not and are predetermined. But in all cases on record,
the outcome is essentially determined by the number of choices at hand: When the telephone rings, you can let it ring, or you can pick it up. Full stop! Nor does it make any difference to the overall pattern of a given frame of reference whether individual choices and events are causally determined or in any way free, for as long as the ratio created by dividing the sum total of such actions is part of the probability distribution. And this is self-evidently so. One might expect a certain disproportion where the numbers are low, but given a large number of decisions that essentially only fit the logical choice of yes or no, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
Jonathan: “Perhaps, though, it depends on what is meant by free will.
Do we mean the freedom to choose between two or more available options according
to our inner promptings and tastes. Or do we mean something deeper and more
truly free than this.”
Nor must we fall into the trap of supposing
that a greater number of alternatives in any way affects the distribution of
individual events. Where issues of principle are concerned, free will perishes
in the finite and predetermined confines of a closed system. The obvious failing
of the idealist is a concern for individuals rather than principles. But, in his
rendering of a sanguine and wonderful faith, neither he nor any possible choice
or event ever succeed in seriously embarrassing statistical method and
contextual constraint. Even to assume it may, is utopian. The measure of the
volitional freedom of human society is to be found at the core - against all his
own intentions - in the limitations of the individual himself. He springs forth
from his mother‘s womb and is ushered onto a stage. He’s become a performer
reading from a cue, a mere player in some eternally revived production. To be
human is to live in the country of the blind, the land of sealed and closed
perceptions. What intrigues one about it, is not so much its apparent
determinism as the air it seems to possess of being both, finite and unbounded,
indicating claims to a personal freedom which is deprived of significance by
limiting the conceptual context in a way which conditions individual responses
and entails actions that are always predicable en masse.
Schopenhauer summed it up: ‘We can will, but we cannot will what we
will!’Dreamy
