Another good reason to not believe in free will

I'm addicted. To many things. One of them is reading about why free will makes no sense. I ingest books and essays on this subject with delight. Until another one comes along. Then I eagerly imbibe it also.

This morning I got my No Free Will fix courtesy of a chapter in Galen Strawson's book, Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, Etc.

The chapter, "Luck Swallows Everything," started off in a familiar fashion.

Strawson, a philosopher, picked apart the easily pickable argument that free will exists in the form of compatibilism, an incoherent argument that we humans have free will even if determinism holds true, because free will is compatible with determinism so long as our determined actions take place without us being forced to act that way, such as by someone holding a gun to our head.

He says about compatibilists:

Free will, they say, is simply a matter of being unconstrained in such a way that one has genuine options and opportunities for action, and is able to choose among them in the light of what one wants or thinks best.

It simply doesn't matter if one's character, personality, preferences, and general motivational set are entirely determined by things for which one is in no way responsible -- by one's genetic inheritance, upbringing, historical situation, chance encounters, and so on.

Einstein also found this point of view absurd.

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will do something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will light up my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills.

Strawson expands upon the point Einstein alludes to in this quotation. Free will requires genuine unfettered freedom. Sure, just as the compatibilists argue, we all carry out lots of actions every day. I drive my car into Salem.

Like an annoying three year old endlessly asking a parent, "Why?," the question becomes, why did I drive my car into Salem. Answer: to go to my Tai Chi class. And why do I go to Tai Chi classes? Because I like Tai Chi. Why do I like Tai Chi? Partly because I like Taoist philosophy and Tai Chi can be viewed as Taoism in motion. And why do I like Taoism?... on and on go the string of Why's, which are rooted in determinism, causes and effects.

Strawson says that the basic reason we decide to do something, why we decide to do anything, is that this is simply the overall way we are. I guess this is akin to an exasperated parent finally saying, "Just because, that's why!"

But Strawson argues persuasively that free will requires that a person be able to trace it to a self-caused state, causa sui. 

In order for one to be truly or ultimately responsible for how one is in such a way that one can be truly responsible for what one does, something impossible has to be true: there has to be, and cannot be, a starting point in the series of acts of bringing it about that one has a certain nature; a starting point that constitutes an act of ultimate self-origination.

There's a more concise way of putting the point: in order to be ultimately responsible, one would have to be causa sui -- the ultimate cause or origin of oneself, or at least of some crucial part of one's mental nature. But nothing can be causa sui in any respect at all. Even if the property of being causa sui is allowed to belong unintelligibly to God, it can't plausibly be supposed to be possessed by ordinary finite human beings.

Obviously we don't originate ourselves. We are born because we were conceived. After our birth, countless influences other than genetics determine how we are. These experiences all have their own causes.

So nothing is self-caused, and nothing has free will.

Comments

[Kranvir]

It is very difficult to have free will with peer pressure of the rssb society. The initiated blind parents pressure, the plagerised and heavily doctered books, the 2 satsangs ( means company of the truth, which in the case of rssb is a complete mockery), then the seva, which is nothing but slavery to propagate their fake cult, takes away the free will you are born with. You need strong guts, strength , and be free enough to use simple logic carry out some basic research to get out of gurinder singh dhillon spell. Once your out you are free again as long as you keep the rssb agents at bay. Realise that Gurinder singh dhillon is a murderer, a narcissist, an angry jealous man - do your independent research. He is the very opposite to God.

[La Madrugada]

From the book -Free Will- by Sam Harris:

...Free will IS an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.
Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cabnnot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

[Ron E.]

Ah, free will, always an interesting subject. Advocates of free will essentially support some type of agent or agency that is free of influence from our biological, physiological and psychological processes. To date, no such agent has ever been found – just assumed, believed in or perhaps hoped for.

The illusion of free will goes hand-in-hand with the illusion of having a separate self. They are two sides of the same coin. Quite readily, the self can be co-opted as the vehicle that is above and separate from the biological processes, so understanding the self-structure is needed to dispel the myth of a separate self as an agent that has free will. Which means to understand the mental processes, primarily the mind – the part of a person that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons – is imperative if one is interested in self-study.

It is probable that intellectual understanding (though important) can only take one part way. Possibly, what else is required is an honest introspection, an aware enquiry into the processes that produce the mind – in fact, into what is the mind. Maybe meditation can be of help here or perhaps just cultivating an attitude of just watching, observing the total organism – both mental and physical – in its relationship with itself and its environment.

The result may be that for ourselves, we can begin to lose the sense of being a separate self (along with all the egoistic sense of specialness that arises) and reclaim our naturalness – and interconnectedness with ourselves and our environment.

[I’m down with it]

No free will = no guilt.

[JD]

I think existentialists wrestle with this problem from similar sounding premises. What does it mean essentially to be human. We can see from our own self experiences and the perceived experiences of others that there are limiting facts that confine our being. Ie. Height, intelligence, athleticism etc.. Historically we've wrapped up a lot of these facts into metaphysical realities ie. Character, personality, motivation etc.. Religion gave us a language for soul, spirit, notions of permanence. Typically most come into notions of self with assistance of learning right and wrong good and bad. Pretty early as self is still an extension of the adult caregiver. We really need to feel on the side of right and good just to survive. The premise that existence precedes essence vs essence precedes existence flipped earlier western notions and metaphysics. Yes freedom, individual choice, and exercising an overarching plan for a self, is rare, often futile and probably fleeting - but not necessarily pure fabrication. Questioning the value of holding others to the impossible standards of free will is worthwhile. Separating the baby from the bathwater is also