Overview
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Free will. What does free will mean? Does free will exist? Do you ultimately have choice? Questions surrounding free will have long been a concern of philosophy, religion, science, psychology, and just about any school of learning and question out there in the human realm. Free will by definition means “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion” (Oxford Languages and Google). This ultimately means you are in control of your life and the choices that you make. Arguments about this abound. With free will, also come the questions of what is considered to be right and wrong activity in the world in the form of morality. Is morality the underlying principle of being in us that checks how free will operates? Is this what is meant by having a moral compass? Is morality innate or is morality taught? If morality is an innate characteristic of being human does this support the argument that free will does exist? If morality is taught does this show that a degree of free will is taken away or supplanted for another’s plan or idea?
In Western religious circles there is a belief in predestination. Predestination means that God has predetermined your life in accord with a greater plan and knows exactly what you are going to do. The philosophical challenge lies in asking, if God has predetermined your existence and commanded you to live in a certain way, then how can free will exist? Western religion will argue that free will does exist in that God has also given you the ability to make choices concerning relative existence and your life activities. Right and wrong will show you the way through systems of punishment as illustrated in the story of the Garden of Eden. Repercussions for activity surrounding choice and free will manifest in the form of sin and judgement. If there is sin and judgement, can there be free will?
In Eastern religious circles there is a belief in karma. Karma works with all of your activities as being the causes that result in your experience of the present moment as conditions. All activity in this life is in your hands. Life is your bed, you have to make it, sleep in it, and what you do will have cause and effect in this world. This will determine what kind of bed you sleep in and how good that sleep will be based on choices you have made personally and collectively. Karma puts the responsibility for life, living, and choice in human hands and not in the hands of a higher being(s) at all. Here it is argued that free will does exist in terms of choice on both relative and ultimate levels of existence.
Buddha taught that all karma is a form of mutual causality in which all actions lead to the spontaneous arising of this present moment. The present moment then, changes in an instant, thus providing the ground for new forms of mutual causality to replace the last. It is in these mutually causal conditions that free will exists. An individual is always able to make “new” choices in what direction to take the energy of life. Karma exists as a check and balance system for choice, responsibility, and activity. Karma is the natural force of the universe acting simultaneously with the arising of cause and effect. It is argued that this is how an organic universe operates (many schools of science will agree). If all is cause and effect dependent upon conditions, can free will exist?
Philosophy will approach the question of free will from a number of different directions which include causality, determinism, and morality. Causality studies the relationships existent between cause and effect grounded in the argument that everything in life has a cause (i.e. Karma in Eastern religions/science). Nothing in the organic universe can be devoid of cause. Determinism holds that everything, all actions (including human), are determined by causes outside of any individual’s will (i.e. God in Western religions). In determinism there are some philosophers that will argue that human beings do not in fact have free will and are not ultimately morally responsible for their activities (Wow! The arguments can get really rich in this arena). Morality deals with right and wrong activity. It is in morality that human beings do work with the question of free will concerning the making of choices. You will make right and wrong choices. Activity in the world, through causes and conditions, will show you how your choices play out. Individual right and wrong choices are often determined by religion, belief, laws, customs, mores, cultural and social institutions, and immediate family. Morality, it can be argued, is there to check what kind of activities are born by a human being enacting their choices via free will. It is argued by some circles of philosophy that responsibility is attached to the making of choices. This argument is based on your being aware of the ability you have to be free in choosing to do, or not do, that bright idea that may be brewing in your head.
In our reading for this week by Susan Wolf called Sanity and the Metaphysics of Reality the question of responsibility, morality, and free will are examined in the context of sanity. (Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of things in terms of cause, time, space, identity, knowing and being, etc.). Wolf approaches the question of free will by asking how sanity and responsibility play a role in determining acceptable parameters for individual’s to exercise their freedom in this life. Wolf defined sanity as, “the ability cognitively and normatively to understand and appreciate the world for what it is. According to our commonsense understandings, having this ability is one thing and exercising it is another…” (p. 468). It is argued that one must be “sane” to fall within morally defined parameters concerning the exercise of healthy free will within a society. This means that degrees of free will are maintained by individuals within, or without, the constrictions of religious or socially institutionalized restrictions through being personally responsible for their actions. In order to be personally responsible a person has to be sane.
Wolf on being sane: “Being sane, we are able to understand and evaluate our characters in a reasonable way, to notice what there is reason to hold on to, what there is reason to eliminate, and what, from a rational and reasonable standpoint, we may retain or get rid of as we please…then, we are able to change the things we find there is reason to change. This being so, it seems that although we may not be metaphysically responsible for ourselves – for, after all, we did not create ourselves from nothing – we are morally responsible for ourselves, for we are able to understand and appreciate right and wrong, and to change our characters and our actions accordingly” (p. 467).
Free will, acting on free will, and the product of free will, are all tied to morality as a driving force in determining if one’s exercise of free will can be determined to be sane and safe for the individual and society. Therefore the exercise of free will does exist, is exercised by human beings, but remains grounded in moral structures that dictate if said activity (as product of free will) is right or wrong. All of which is based on the determination that a person is actually sane (as structured by religion, social structures, science, psychology, family, etc.).
With these thoughts in mind reflect on the following questions for our discussion this week:
*What is free will?
*Do you believe free will exists? Why or why not?
*What do you think of Wolf’s argument for free will based on the exercise of free will through morality and sanity via responsibility as a reality check?
Post created by Dr. Mike Lees