The Pragmatic Vision by Rescher Nicholas;

Author:Rescher, Nicholas; [Rescher, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Free Will in Pragmatic Perspective

Freedom of the will is as self-evident and clear as anything we can know.

—René Descartes, Principles, No. 39

1. The Problem Setting

The freedom of an act is not one of its descriptive features such as its duration or its utilization of a certain tool. Rather, what is involved is something very complicated. As regards free will, there actually are two very different questions: (1) What is it—or would it be—to have free will: just what would a realization of this condition consist in? and (2) Do we humans actually have a free will; do we indeed possess this capacity to act freely sometimes? The first issue is fairly simple. An intelligent agent exercises free will whenever one of its choices is ultimately under the control of its thought—and especially when control of its choices is exerted deliberately and wholly without intervention by external forces or constraints. The second issue, the prime focus of the present deliberations, is rather more convoluted, and involves not just conceptual but pragmatic issues.

2. Understanding Free Will

Discussion of these matters often focuses on free agency. But free will is in fact more closely bound to choice than to action. The pivotal issue is less one of “could have acted otherwise” than one of “could have chosen otherwise.” The salient consideration here is John Locke’s example of the man who decides to remain in a room where—unbeknownst to him—all exits are barred. Here it is false that he “could have acted otherwise,” but the key fact remains that he could have chosen otherwise and can therefore stay freely. The crux for freedom lies in what one tries to do rather than in what one achieves, which—often as not—is something outside of one’s control.

Some of the things we do are determined by entirely unconscious biological processes (e.g., sneezing). Here the issue of free will does not come into it. But others are under the control of our thought (e.g., greeting someone) even though this may proceed subconsciously, without explicit thought or deliberation. Here free will becomes relevant.1

In discussing free will various distinctions are crucial, and none more so than that between metaphysical and moral freedom. With metaphysical freedom the crux is that agent’s operational control via thought, with moral freedom it is the agent’s motivational autonomy. For moral freedom the motivation of an action must be the agent’s own, formed in the normal and ordinary course of things without external determination pressure, undue influence, or malicious manipulation: a choice is morally free to the extent that its motivation roots in the agent’s own autonomously developed and self-expressive goal-agenda. When the Godfather tells you to get out of town “or else”—the decision to leave is doubtless metaphysically free—the product of your aims and goals. But it is not morally free. For metaphysical freedom it suffices that the agent has those motives (goals, aims, objectives): they are his own through being accepted by him, the how and why of its formation being at this point irrelevant.

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