praise or blame this man, for, since his actions are not regularly connected with his motives, reinforcing or inhibiting certain motives will have no effect. More- over, a man is held responsible for those acts that reflect his character rather than his casual or unpre- meditated acts. The latter two, unlike the former, do not give us insight into the enduring personality and character traits that form the basis of judgments of responsibility. Hence, responsibility requires a regular connection between character and action that leaves no room for the liberty of indifference. The freedom we do have is the power to act or not to act, depending upon our decision. As Hobbes and Spinoza had pointed out, all human beings possess this power whenever no external impediments stand in their way or whenever they are not being constrained to act in a certain way by an external force. Later reconciliationists will add certain internal constraints, e.g., psychological compulsions like kleptomania, to the list of impediments to liberty. Finally, freedom is compatible with determinism because a free act is determined by a decision that is itself determined by the operative motives. A free agent, in other words, is one whose acts are caused by his own volitions rather than external sources. Rec- onciliationism has been and continues to be a subject of heated philosophical debates. The approach of Immanuel Kant to the free will- determinism problem has reconciliationist aspects in that he wishes to deny neither. Determinism or the view that all events are caused certainly holds in the empirical world, including the psychological domain of inner experience. Like many of his predecessors, Kant was not disturbed by the fact that determinism precludes the liberty of indifference, for the latter notion is not genuine freedom. Freedom does involve the absence of external constraints. Hence, if man's will is free, it is neither subject to external constraints nor are its decisions determined by chance, i.e., by nothing real. Freedom, therefore, must be self-determination, i.e., determination of the will by its own laws. These laws are not natural laws, i.e., laws governing experi- enced events, for such external determination is in- compatible with freedom. Experience tells us that man's decisions are often governed solely by his desires and inclinations, and, on that level, he is not free. Hence, Kant does not agree with those recon- ciliationists who say that freedom is ordinary determi- nation by desires. Freedom, therefore, must be a special type of causality or determination. As stated above, experience tells us that human beings are subject to determination by natural law. But this conclusion is formed from the vantage point of judging human beings as empirical occurrences in time or, in Kant's language, as phenomena. Human beings as noumena, i.e., as things-in-themselves, are outside time and, hence, free from ordinary determination by events. Although we do not know human beings as noumena, they must be noumena to be free. Man as phenomenon is determined; man as noumenon is free. Although we cannot be conscious of freedom, we can be conscious of the moral law and the moral law implies freedom. Since experience tells us only what is the case, not what must always be or ought always to be the case, moral laws must originate in man's âpure practical reason,â i.e., his reason as transcending empirical inclinations. Hence a rational being who acknowledges the moral law must acknowledge that his will is being determined by his practical reason and this is freedom. A moral agent must, therefore, con- ceive of himself as free. Man, however, is both rational and natural, and he, therefore, has natural inclinations that may conflict with the dictates of reason. His expe- rience of morality, therefore, is an experience of obli- gation to the moral law within his deeper ânoumenalâ self. Freedom, in fact, is the essence of morality. For if freedom is determination of the will by the laws of its own reason, then freedom is autonomy, legislation by the self for the self. And one of Kant's formulations of the moral law is: act according to the principle that rational beings are lawgivers to themselves, i.e., as autonomous. If human beings do not create the laws they obey, they might be bound to them by an interest (e.g., God's laws might be obeyed in order to go to heaven), in which case morality would not be truly unconditional and necessary. Many philosophers have rejected as unintelligible Kant's attempt to preserve both freedom and deter- minism. Since the rational determination of the will of man qua noumenon is always in accordance with morality, it is not clear why men act immorally. Pre- sumably, they act immorally because they are deter- mined to do so by their desires and inclinations. But then only moral acts are free and people ought never to be blamed, therefore, for their immoral acts. Also, since every human act is part of the empirical world, it is determined. Hence, all free acts are determined. Now, how can man qua noumenon freely determine the will to perform a specific act that it is necessitated by antecedent conditions to perform? Nineteenth-century idealists tended to be libertarians on the free-will question, and F. H. Bradley is a good example. (A libertarian identifies man's freedom with his ability to interpose himself into the causal order by directly causing a decision or act. The decision or act is not caused by some state of or occurrence within the self, e.g., a desire or belief, but by the self directly.
Hence, not all occurrences are caused by antecedent conditions, states, or occurrences. Kant is not exactly a libertarian because he did not view self-determination as incompatible with ordinary determination.) Bradley, like many reconciliationists, rejected the liberty of indifference. If a man's choice proceeds not at all from his motives, he is an idiot rather than a responsible agent. If, on the other hand, determinism requires laws that enable prediction of a man's character from data available at birth, determinism too is incompatible with responsibility. The dilemma is resolved by the concept of the self. The accountability of an individual for a past act requires an abiding self, since the man who did the act must be identical with the man held accountable. Hence, responsibility requires a concept of the self as something more than a stream of changing states and experiences. The determinist, who seeks laws connecting these various states and experiences, there- fore ignores the self. The self's creation of its character, thus, is not completely determined even if a man's acts can be predicted from a knowledge of his formed character. Even in the case of a formed character, the self can always change it and thereby thwart the determinist. In the twentieth century, the position of the logical positivists on the free-will problem, viz., recon- ciliationism, held sway for a number of years. Moritz Schlick, for example, argued that the concern about freedom and responsibility arises from the confused assumption that laws of nature compel or necessitate human beings to behave in certain ways, when in fact these laws just describe what people actually do. Schlick enumerates the typical reconciliationist posi- tion: (1) freedom is the absence of compulsion; (2) freedom actually requires, rather than precludes deter- minismâfreedom as the liberty of indifference is nei- ther real nor desirable; (3) determinism is compatible with responsibility because the imputation of respon- sibility requires only that the man's motives for doing the action be amenable to change by the introduction of rewards and punishments. In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill is per- haps the outstanding representative of reconcil- iationism. Mill and Schlick agree on fundamental doctrine. Mill does, however, emphasize the fact that we can often modify our character if we wish to do so, a fact whose recognition constitutes the feeling of moral freedom. C. A. Campbell has argued for libertarianism against Schlick's reconciliationism. He concedes that there is a real difference between causation and compulsion, but insists nonetheless that freedom is incompatible with causation. Freedom requires self-causation and, like Kant, Campbell cites moral experience as the possible source of the knowledge of self-activity. He also agrees with Kant that the experience may be delusive. Unlike Kant, however, Campbell is a genuine libertarian because he maintains that self-activity is incompatible with determinism. The major difference between Bradley and Campbell has to do with the relation between self and character. For Bradley, man is free because the creation of char- acter by the self cannot be understood determinis- tically. A man is accountable, therefore, for acts that flow from his formed character. For Campbell self and character are less intimately connected. Self does not create character; it âwatchesâ its creation with delight or dismay. If a man's character disposes him to act in a way his self views as immoral, the self may produce a decision in favor of duty. Only when the self over- rides character or lets character override it is the man free. Campbell is forced to maintain, therefore, that a man's moral outlook is not determined in the ordinary way in which his character traits are determined. Most contemporary philosophers conceive of free- dom as the power or ability to choose (or act) differ- ently from the way a person actually chooses (or acts). There has been a great deal of debate, therefore, on the meaning of: âHe could have acted otherwise.â Reconciliationists, like P. H. Nowell-Smith, argue that the expression can be analyzed hypothetically, e.g., âHe would have acted differently if he had wanted (or chosen) to.â This hypothetical statement is consist- ent with determinism because it does not preclude the possibility that his actual act was determined by his actual desires or choices. Campbell and others reject hypothetical analyses in favor of analyses (categorical) that make freedom incompatible with determinism. Many contemporary philosophers reject both recon- ciliationism and libertarianism and yet claim to find room for freedom. They reject the reconciliationist conception of freedom as action caused by desire and the libertarian conception of self-activity. They view human behavior as explicable in two radically different ways. As movement, it is subject to ordinary determi- nation. But some behavior can be understood as action, as something done. Although the movement of a man's arm can be deterministically accounted for in terms of physiological conditions, the explanation of the fact that a man raised his arm in terms of his desires, beliefs, purposes, and intentions, is not a deterministic ex- planation. In fact, it makes no sense to request a deter- ministic account of action. The libertarian concedes to the determinist the possibility that all actions are determined and then argues that some, the ones caused by the self, are not. According to A. I. Melden, a representative of this approach, this concession is a mistake. The determinist who applies his doctrine to human action is guilty of conceptual confusion. Melden's position is strikingly similar to Kant's. For Kant a man's decision may be conceived of as part of the phenomenal world, in which case it is deter- mined; and it may be conceived of as part of the noumenal world, in which case it is free. For Melden an arm movement is determined if conceived of as movement, and free if conceived of as action. And both agree with the libertarian against the reconciliationist that man cannot be conceived as just a natural object (albeit quite special) if we are to view him as free. BIBLIOGRAPHY Saint Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. A. C. Pegis (New York, 1945). Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Harmonds- worth, 1955), Book III. Saint Augustine, On Free Will, in Augustine, Earlier Writings, trans. J. H. S. Burleigh (Philadelphia, 1955). F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (London, 1927), No. 1. C. A. Campbell, In Defence of Free Will (Glasgow, 1938). Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. P. Ramsey (New Haven, 1957). Thomas Hobbes, Of Liberty and Necessity, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 5 vols. (London, 1839-45), Vols. IV, V. Sidney Hook, ed., Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (New York, 1961). David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York, 1955), Sec. VIII. William James, âThe Dilemma of Determinism,â in The Will to Believe (1897; New York, 1921). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L. W. Beck (Chicago, 1949). G. W. Leibniz, Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York, 1951). John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C. Fraser, 2 vols. (New York, 1959), Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XXI. A. I. Melden, Free Action (New York, 1961). John Stuart Mill, An Exami- nation of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (London, 1867), Ch. XXVI. P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (Harmondsworth, 1954), Chs. XIX, XX. Plato, The Republic, trans. F. M. Cornford (London and New York, 1945). Moritz Schlick, Problems of Ethics, trans. D. Rynin (New York, 1939), Ch. VII. Benedict Spinoza, Ethics, ed. J. Gutmann (New York, 1949). Philip Wheelright, Aristotle (New York, 1951). BERNARD BEROFSKY
I think this is what gordon was trying to say ... I guess plato, aristole, etc ... where ahead for their time as well. (You're in good company Gordon ) How this effects the price of eggs, I haven't the foggiest. If anyone can reduce this down to a discernable sentence or two, I'm all ears.
Thanks, I was way off. I arrived at "What's good for the goose is good for the gander". One day, I hope to be one of those rare humans that truly understands how the universe operates.
ANYONE that does not realize determinism is true, is simply lacking knowledge, period. the info i posted on page 1 is how to get it.
Tendencies are true, but those with a functioning intellect know that determinism the way you describe it is false.
btw, whenever i say i'm ahead of my time, i completely realize there are others..and that there were others before me. what i mean is, today probably way less than 1% of the world's population gets this stuff.
ZZZ you're probably just angry because you clearly have had shit determinism so far, or you wouldn't be the bitter bozo that you are. but as determinism says, it's not your fault. i don't hate ya. just don't take it out on me, fucker.