WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: “What is Free Will?” / John Searle ☮

1 thought on “WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: “What is Free Will?” / John Searle ☮

  1. Really nice conversation and explication on Free Will, enjoyed it. I would just like to add, however, that notice that Free Will, versus something like volitional agency, is really rooted in Christianity and especially in Augustinian Christianity. The battle in Christian theology over Free Will was whether–if you grant to humans the idea of their being able to completely exercist Free Will–it lessened the authority of God who, of course, must be omnipotent and omniscient. How could a mere human be a partner with God in such a decision. Augustine battled mightily with human agency–and with others on the point. On the one hand, humans had to have the ability to, through some type of cognitive process, to make a decision to accept Christ and thus God. That way, if you did not “choose” God, then your fate in hell was of your own making, not because God lacking mercy and compassion. And yet the idea of humans having such power of choice got in the way of Augustine’s ultimate idea of Predestination and God’s omnipotence. My point here is that the western conundrum of freewill (notice I spell it differently here, a kind of secular spelling) is based in Christian theological battles.

    I think Schopenhauer has it about right, however, when he argues that the seat of the will or human agency lies in our most animal like desires, fears. You might call that the determinist position. But we try to “cage” or civilize or socialize that id-like engine through cognitive processes because if we all acted out our most carnal needs, we would all kill each other. This cognitive process–denying the carnal–appears to be a kind of agency or freewill imposed on the carnal. Maybe I got Schopenhauer wrong here–didn’t go back and double-check but was my takeaway.

    Anyway, debates over Freewill, freewill, or human agency vs. determinism are always a good way to waste a perfectly good hour or so.

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