Finite Freedom

The traditional view within Christian theism holds that God is fundamentally sovereign over creation, but also that He grants certain freedom at points. I would say God made creation fundamentally free, but also that He has the sovereignty to intercede and unilaterally take control of creation if He so desires.

But even if man is free from God’s sovereign control – that is, if God does not causally determine man’s actions and decisions, there are still arguments against the idea of human freedom. Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the books Fight Club and Choke (now made into films), says:

“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we cant decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable.”

Palahniuk makes a good point, which would easily lead to Nihilism if true. If all of man’s actions are causally determined by someone or something other than himself, he is not free, and he does not have free will. If the causation of my actions makes them unavoidable, I truly have no free will.

Human freedom requires what are called future contingents, which are basically possibilities. If human H is free, there must be at least one future contingent X, and human H must be able to choose X or choose contrary to X. The possibility for either X or not X must be there. If that possibility (which is essential for human freedom) exists, the future must exist, at least in part, as future contingents (possibilities).

I need to start from the beginning, and argue against a few myths and false ideas about human freedom.

— Finite Freedom vs. Sovereignty

I’ve heard argued from some proponents of human freedom (e.g. Josiah Warren, on political and social freedom, and Stefan Molyneux, on free choice) the idea of the “sovereignty of the individual,” that humans possess ultimate power and freedom over their own lives. This belief led some proponents (Josiah Warren) to other beliefs, like polyamory (free love) – “the purest way to show love for someone is giving them freedom to leave at anytime.”

A fact which I think would be wise to realize is that humans are extremely limited in their ability to “freely” make decisions. Not all possible free choices are set before us. We do not, for instance, have the free choice to fly; we are bound by gravity and other factors (we don’t have wings, our bodies are not meant to be aerodynamic like those of birds) to the ground. Our freedom is limited by natural and physical laws.

Our freedom cannot in any sense be called “the sovereignty of the individual.” This phrase is misleading. It leads one to believe that the human individual has the power to control all elements of his life, which he does not. A man, for example, cannot read other human individuals’ minds or force them like his pawns to feel a certain way about him and do certain things for him. If one were to accomplish this, it would destroy the freedom of the human pawn whom the subject is sovereignly controlling.

And besides, though we do have control over a sizable portion of our actions and decisions, our individuality as human persons is largely determined by social conditions (childhood environment, peer pressure, workplace, etc).

— God’s Sovereignty vs. Man’s Freedom

Some doctrines of God preclude any form of genuine human freedom. (The philosophical term for genuine human freedom is “libertarian freedom”, but some theists would contend that libertarian freedom is not necessary for humans to be labelled as “free creatures” or morally responsible. I would argue against that.) Theological determinism stands on the opposite side of the spectrum on the issue of human freedom, stating that God has pre-temporally decreed every detail of what is to happen, that time itself is either completely subjective or illusory, and that future contingents do not exist for either man or God. Most, if not all, forms of Calvinism fit within this category of theism.

As the American psychologist William James said:

“The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.”

The point that James is making here is that God can have the ability to dictate “fatal decrees” or unilaterally bring His will about, but He is not restricted to this; God does not always have to be in sovereign control of every atom in the universe. He has the ability to delegate power and responsibility to the genuine others that He created.

Real power is not the God who can do nothing but overpower His creation at all times. Real power is the ability to show restraint, like a father being gentle and holding back the full force of his might as he wrestles with his son. Real power is the ability to empty oneself, to make oneself nothing even, as Jesus did, all for the sake of others.

I would also like to add that while some might find my view too deistic, the traditional view can likewise be accused of being too Muslim or too (theologically) deterministic.

— Problems in Physics

The main problem for those who believe in libertarian freedom posed by physics is that human bodies are physical systems of various parts that work independently but in reaction to one another. For instance, veins and capillaries distribute blood throughout the body, but only if the heart pumps blood into the blood stream. The heart does not have free will, and neither does the blood stream or the muscles or the skin or anything else.

The real debate of the physical possibility of free will comes from research on the human brain, which is the main organ of the central nervous system. It is also the core of all cognitive functions, including thinking and reasoning. It is certainly possible that humans could have a cognitive ability to weigh out certain options for a future choice they have to make, thus allowing some form of libertarian freedom, but at the same time science has not been able to pinpoint the location in the brain where this faculty might originate. Neither can science really explain the function of freedom in decision-making in the brain. This has been left primarily for philosophy.

But perhaps this is not a problem for scientists to face at all.

— Monism vs. Dualism

The problem of defining human freedom scientifically may not be a problem at all, for the problem presupposes humans are monist (strictly materialist) systems, that is, that the entirety of the human being is physical and there is no immaterial essence.

A contrary position, dualism, claims that humans have some form of immaterial mind (or, perhaps, soul), which is utilized in order to carry out agent-caused (which I will explain later) acts and decisions. As many philosophers, including open theist Alan Rhoda, argue, human freedom is only made possible by a dual human nature – a material essence coexisting with an immaterial essence.

(There have been debates over how dependent or independent the immaterial essence of the human being is on the material essence, which I am interested in, but they are not necessary for this argument.)

— Problems in Philosophy

There have also been numerous problems posed to libertarian freedom in philosophy.

For instance, it is extremely difficult, nigh impossible, to deny that every act and decision of humans has causation of some kind. Humans have reasons or reasoning for everything they do, whether they consciously know those reasons or not. One might argue from this that humans are not free, in a libertarian sense, since their every choice is caused. But this argument can be rebutted simply by the counter-argument that all causes for human choices are not necessary causes. That is, at least in some instances humans have causation for multiple incompatible decisions. This causation for each of these must not be necessary, for each of them are incompatible with the others and only one can be chosen.

There must be, at least sometimes, non-necessitating causes.

But even if we understand this multiple causation theory, a problem still lingers: the problem of inclination. If a person is faced with a decision between two incompatible possible choices, and he has an equal inclination toward each of them, what dictates which possible choice he will choose? This is known as the “luck problem,” for it posits that only luck or chance decides which possible choice will be chosen amongst equally disposed options.

The luck problem, however, assumes that all choices must be event-causes, or choices determined by causes imposed on the human person – outside of the human will. The luck problem ignores the possibility of agent-causes, those choices made without outside causation but spawning from a self-deterministic human faculty.

— Agent-Causation

There are two reasons, according to Alan Rhoda, why we should accept agent-causation:
1. Our sense of our own agency. In other words, we can only begin to grasp concepts of “cause” at all through understanding ourselves as causal agents. We are beings with the ability to conjure or invent causation, though not out of thin air, only through prior knowledge or thoughts on morality, justice, pragmatism, etc.
2. Avoiding an infinite causal regress. If every event was caused by another event there must have been an infinite series of past events. It also raises both empirical (Big Bang) and conceptual problems (how can an infinite series elapse?). To avoid a regress, says Rhoda, we need to either posit brute, unexplained events, or we need efficient causes of a non-event sort (agent causes).

If I could add a third reason to accept agent-causes, I would say that it neatly allows for moral responsibility. If we have a moral responsibility to do certain things, but have no ability to escape event-causation, we have a very pleasant excuse for bad behavior: it was inevitable based on the infinite regress of events leading up to my bad behavior. Paul in Romans 1 states quite clearly that we will be left without excuse on the day of judgement.

According to Rhoda, there are two popular objections to agent-causation as well:
1. It is mysterious. Harvard Philosophy professor Roderick Chisholm responds to this by granting that it is mysterious while also saying it is no more mysterious than causation generally.
2. It also leads to an infinite regress of causation: what causes an agent’s agent-causing of a free choice? Rhoda responds by stating that the agent is the initiatory cause of his free choice. More exactly, agent-causings are basic actions, one doesn’t have to do anything else to agent-cause a free choice. One just does it.

There are far more complications, of course, but those can be saved for another day. A basic defense of human libertarian free will has been established, I believe.

For further reading about this subject, check out my Libertarian Freedom: Multiple Causation and the Deliberation Process.