Free Will and the Problem of Disappearing Agents — Part 2
A Defense of Free Will
Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas
For years I have struggled with the conception of libertarian free will, the main reason being that it seemed to reduce to one of two things. That either in deliberating between A and B, I had prior cause to pick A over B (or vice-versa) or I had no prior cause. If the former, I was determined by those causes (be they my prior thoughts, events, experiences, etc), and I was not free. If the latter, then I randomly chose some outcome, and that’s not freedom either.
According to the website, The Information Philosopher — run by astrophysicist Bob Doyle, containing all things related to the topic of free will- Richard Double separates those in the free will debate into the following positions.
Compatibilism — The view that the theses of free will and determinism can both be true.
Incompatibilism — The view they cannot both be true.
Soft determinism — Technically, compatibilism plus determinism, but in fact, the view that we have free will not as a result of indeterminism, whether or not determinism is true.
Hard determinism — Technically, incompatibilism plus determinism, but the view that humans lack free will because their decisions are determined, again, whether determinism in its fullest generality is true.
Libertarianism — The view that humans have free will as a result of indeterminism in their choices. [1]
Among the camps of Libertarians (metaphysical, not political), we have the following schools.
Event-causal — The view that some events are uncaused or indeterministically caused. Note that eliminating strict determinism does not eliminate causality [2]
Agent-causal — The idea is that humans have a kind of agency (an ability to act) that cannot be explained in terms of are physical events [3]
Non-causal — human freedom is uncaused…This would eliminate causality. Some philosophers think “reasons” or “intentions” are not causes [4]
The school of thought I’ll be defending is agent-causality. What will be required is a metaphysics where the mental does not reduce to the physical. This will require some insight into the philosophy of mind to explain. Here, I’ll defend the traditionally held Catholic position of hylomorphism.
On this viewpoint, human beings are substances (which is just a fancy way of saying ‘things which can causally interact in some way’) composed of ‘matter’ and ‘form’. The form is the structure of a substance, and the matter is whatever takes on that structure. The substantial form are aspects of that structure which are essential. The structure (or form) of a chair can be it has four legs, a round seat, and a back, but it is wood (the matter) which is structured. While a ‘round’ seat is not essential (making the chair’s roundness a part of the accidental form), having a seat is, thus the seat is part of the substantial form. Matter and form require one another for most ordinary substances, but they are not reducible to one another [5].
The form and matter interact because every substance has four causes, the final cause (the purpose or end to which something exists for), the material cause (what is structured), the formal cause (the structure), and the efficient cause (what created the substance) [6]. As Edward Feser explains,
A heart, for example, cannot be understood except as being an organ having a certain material constitution (its material cause), as possessing a certain form or principle of organization (its formal cause), as serving a certain function — to pump blood (its final cause) — and as having been brought about by antecedents such as the genetic programming inherent in certain cells that led them to develop into a heart rather than a kidney or liver (its efficient cause) [7].
The soul (the substantial form) interacts with the body because the soul is a cause of the body. Human beings, unlike chairs, pants, and lower animals, have a ‘rational soul’, which is the substantial form of the human body. This enables us to use reason, and animates the body, these are among the powers which it grants us[8].
According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, free will is a power of the intellect, and we can use it to choose between options [9]. He says,
The proper act of free-will is choice: for we say that we have a free-will because we can take one thing while refusing another; and this is to choose [10]
So, why doesn’t agency fall under the dichotomy of either randomness, or physically determined? It could not be physically determined because agents are not reducible to physical explanation. It also could not be random. Random events are events which cannot be forcasted or predicted. The power to choose between A and B is not random, because there is a way to predict (although not perfectly) the tendency of their choices. Their final cause is in seeking their happiness, so humans make normal choices of social love, food, drink, work, and the like, even though they might choose extra-ordinary options. Random events do not have a final cause.
References
[1] Bob Doyle, Determinism, link — citing Richard Double’s The Nonreality of Free Will (Oxford University Press, New York, 1991), 18
[2] Bob Doyle, Libertarianism, link
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Edward Feser. Philosophy of Mind. Oneworld Publications (academic). Kindle Edition. 219–220
[6]Ibid, 221
[7] Ibid
[8] Ibid
[9] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 83. Free-will, Link
[10] Ibid
