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But it seems our environment and our past decide our actions, what do we mean by free will? Do we mean uncoerced?

Full Question:

Hello,

I am a sophomore at Wheaton College, and I have a question. I cannot quite figure out what a free will would look like. The concept of an innate power within me to create and to be autonomous baffles me.

For instance, yesterday I chose to drink peach juice during my supper, but I don't see this as a free choice. Since I came from a small town in Wisconsin, I cannot bear to see milk coming from a machine, so I don't get milk from the cafeteria. Also, the lines for the soda machines are always too long, and I am too impatient to wait for soda. I did not value the taste of soda enough to wait in a long line. I never could stand drinking coffee or tea, so I don't get either of those, and I already had two glasses of water on my tray. I knew that I wanted a glass of juice based on previous knowledge. I like grape juice the best at the cafeteria so I tried that dispenser first, but the machine was temporary out of it. My environment didn't allow me to make this choice. My other choices on this side of the cafeteria (there are two juice machines in Wheaton's cafeteria) were grapefruit juice, orange juice and cranberry juice. I strongly dislike the taste of grapefruit juice and cranberry juice, and drinking orange juice with my spaghetti wasn't sounding too appetizing. For some reason I am predisposed to liking certain tastes and disliking others. So I went to the other side of the cafeteria where I found a machine that dispensed apple and peach juice. I value the taste of peach juice more than apple juice, so I tried that one first, and seeing that there was juice there, I chose to get a glass of peach juice instead of the apple juice. It seems to me that all the choices that I make are in some sort of context as well. The way that I make choices is based on previous knowledge and is limited to my current environment. There was no other drink that I would have picked. If I had picked another drink, then the context would have been changed, I would have been changed, or I would not have been true to myself.

To see a free choice, then, I would need to see a random choice. That is, in order to see a choice that is not bound by what I know, who I am or my current surroundings, I would have to see a choice that doesn't fit into a context. As I think about the word random, I cannot come up with an example of something in the created order that is random. Taking an example from Jurassic Park, if I drop a drop of water on my knuckle it will run down my hand according to a vast array of factors. It may appear that the course of the drop is random, but in effect it is the product of various factors. There always seems to be a context in the created world even if it is too complex for us to completely understand.

One friend of mine directed me to think about how God has a free will. The question then could become what caused God to create the world. It is clear that it fits into Gods nature to create a world, but most Christians would not want to say that God would not be being true to himself if he had not created the world because this would indicate that God was dependent upon his creation. Of course it would be impossible to make an exhaustive answer of why God created the world due to our limited knowledge, but the possibility exists that God's act in creation was without a context and was random.

Now I admit that I assume that the world works in terms of causes and effects. That if I flick a light switch and a light goes on, something in my flicking eventually caused the light to turn on. But I also see that there was something causing me to desire light in the room in the first place. Whether this cause was the memory of the repeated commands of my father to never read in a dimly lit room, or if I thought it was a necessity for the very finding of my book in the first place, or even if I am emotionally attached to brightly lit rooms as opposed to dimly lit ones. I cannot prove that the world really works in causes and effects, so this could very well be the source of my confusion.

Following this line of reasoning then, the will becomes a point of synthesis inside a person. It is the part of the person that takes a bunch of raw influences and stimuli and organizes it, based on a set of values, into a course of action. Even the ranking of values seems to be the result of previous knowledge and experiences. As I look at how I came to value what I value, I end up seeing the reasons why I don't believe that soda is a drink that is worth a long wait. The will is very much of a personal process and is therefore enough reason to hold a person responsible for the courses of action that he chooses. According to this paradigm, I do not see how the will could have creative power.

My question then is how should I understand a free will in light of all this. Am I correct in thinking of it in terms of it being random, or is this line of thought problematic? How can we make a choice that is not the product of various factors? What should be different in my understanding of the will that would allow for it to be free? Any insight into what a free will looks like will be very appreciated.

Thank you very much,
Tim Arentsen

Reply:

Tim, Perhaps you are looking for free choice in the wrong place. It would not occur to me (unless there are unusual circumstances) to think your choice to drink juice for lunch was free in a libertarian sense. C.A. Campbell's work in On Godhood and Selfhood can help us see what a responsible exercise of libertarian free will would look like. Imagine yourself in a situation of moral temptation, i.e., a situation in which you are reasonably convinced that you have a moral obligation to do X but in which you are strongly inclined to refrain from X (either because you are strongly disinclined to do X or because you are strongly enclined to do Y and your doing Y is incompatible with your doing X. If you perceive your situation as one of moral temptation and you are a morally serious person, then you will believe (1) I can rise to duty and do X (where "can" is understood categorically; not analyzable in terms of "will...if"). If you did not believe (1), you would not be perceiving your situation as one of moral temptation, but as one in which you are doomed to fail to do what your acknowledge as you moral obligation. Further, if you perceive your situation as one of moral temptation, you will believe (2) It is possible (again in the categorical sense) that I will fail to rise to duty; it is possible that I will submit to the inclination to refrain from doing X. If you did not believe (2) you would not be perceiving your situation as one of genuine temptation, but merely as one in which you have a strong inclination to refrain from doing what you ought to do but in which you assuredly will rise to duty and do X. Finally, in so far as you perceive your situation as one of moral temptation and in so far as you are a morally serious agent, you will believe (3) It is up to me here and now to determine which of these two open possibilities will become actual. If you perceived yourself to be in a situation of moral temptaion and as a result come to believe propositions (1) & (2) (which in conjunction entail indeterminism) and did not believe (3), believed that something other than you here and now will determine which possibility would be actual, you would not perceive yourself as a serious moral agent. Now I am not claiming that (1)-(3) are true; rather, I am claiming that in so far as you perceive yourself as a serious moral agent and perceive yourself as in a situation of moral temptation, you will find belief in (1)-(3) to be quite natural. As Campbell says, the important thing is to try to see the situation not from an observer point of view but from the participant's point of view. When I try to remember/imagine what it is like to face a serious choice in a situation of moral temptation, I can neither think as a determinist (i.e., I find myself inevitably believing (1) & (2), nor can I avoid believing that I am being summoned to determine here and now by responsible choice whether I will rise to duty or whether I will yield to the contrary strong inclination.

Larry Lacy
Rhodes College

Tim's question is an insightful one; it accurately represents the thinking of many of those who have questioned the existence of free will. Let me try to explain why, in my opinion, his reasoning is not conclusive.

One basic point Tim is making is that when we choose, we choose *for a reason*, and the reasons we have (for instance, what kind of juice appeal to us for dinner) are largely the result of our previous experiences, conditioning, and so on. That is entirely correct; we do not experience our choices as being random, and advocates of free will do not consider that our free choices are random.

Where we "free-willers" disagree with in Tim's thinking, however, is his view that it is always pre-determined *which* of our various reasons we will follow out in action. Sometimes, as in his choice of the peach juice, the outcome seems inevitable, in the light of our interests, desires, and the circumstances in which we choose. Consider, on the other hand, the following quotation from philosopher John Searle. (Interestingly, Searle himself was a determinist at the time he wrote this, but he was just trying to honestly describe what it "feels like" to make a choice.) He writes:

"There are all sorts of experiences that we have in life where it seems just a fact of our experience that though we did one thing, we feel we know perfectly well that we could have done something else. We know we could have done something else, because we chose one thing for certain reasons. But we were aware that there were also reasons for choosing something else, and indeed, we might have acted on those reasons and chosen that something else."

My question for Tim is, does it never seem to you, concerning your own decisions, the way Searle describes? If it does not, then your experience is quite different from mine. On the other hand, if it does sometimes seem to you that your experiences are like that, what is your reason for thinking that such experiences are deceiving, that there really is nothing else that you could have done?

William Hasker