A Third Concept of Freedom of the Will by Ulrich Steinvorth The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website It is
useful, to say the least, for philosophers
within one language to make their way
occasionally into the
contemporary philosophy in another language. They may find that their
thinking
can do with stirring up, even that it is congealed. They may find that
what is
alive and what is dead in Oxford, London, Boston and New York is not
exactly
what is alive and dead in, say, Hamburg. Nor is it possible to sustain
the
illusion that there is more philosophical intelligence in Oxford than
in
Hamburg. Prof. Dr. Ulrich Steinvorth of the philosophy department of
the
University of Hamburg is aware of and not content with the
English-language
idea that there are two ideas of free action -- roughly speaking,
action fully
in accord with the agent's desires, and action in accord with free will
in a
traditional and obscure sense. There is, he believes, another good
idea. It
should not have disappeared in the time when Kant was confuting Hume. ----------------------------------- Abstract:
Contemporary neuroscience has
developed interest in the idea of free will, stimulated by questions of
a wider
public whether it is detecting that there is no free will. In the
discussions
between neuroscientists and philosophers there is a tendency to oppose
two
conceptions of free will, a so-called libertarian one, which is rarely
defined,
considered incompatible with science yet affirmed to defend a strong
notion of
free will, and a compatibilist one which is more or less convincingly
presented
as being in accord with science and determinism and affirmed to defend
a weak
notion of free will and responsibility. Such an opposition does not
take
account of a third conception of free will that up to Kant’s time was
generally
accepted both by the adherents and the critics of free will. I present
this
conception (which I call scholastic), distinguish it from the Kantian
conception
which still underlies most contemporary thinking about free will, and
point out
its virtues.
Here are some of the definitions and descriptions of free will taken from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: 'a special kind of causality in virtue of which events in the
world
happen',[1]
'a causality of starting a series of events completely by
itself', [2] 'a faculty of really and truly starting a state, hence a
series of
consequences of it',[3] 'a spontaneity which by itself can start acting and excludes
the
presupposition of another cause that would determine its action
according to
the law of causal connection'.[4]
There are two elements in Kant’s conception: causality
and spontaneity.
Free will is a faculty of causing events,
yet its agency is spontaneous. What
does that mean? First, that it is not caused by other causes. Second,
that it
works 'completely by itself'. You’ll see shortly that we must
distinguish these
two points, though Kant probably did not. I’ll call a spontaneity that
is not
caused conditioned spontaneity, and a
spontaneity that works completely by itself, absolute spontaneity.
Both the idea that free will is a causality and that it is a
spontaneity
are not new in the history of philosophy. What is new is the way Kant
combined
them. Hume taught modern philosophers
that to understand free will we must understand it as a causality. If
we
ascribe free will to men without admitting that men cause their
actions, actions would just happen to them and they
could not be their authors nor be made responsible for them. But if
they cause
their actions, they are, as Hume presupposes in agreement with
Newtonian
physics, elements in the chain of causes and effects that binds nature
together. Hence free will cannot be free. Hence, it is one of those
'confus’d
ideas and undefin’d terms, which we so commonly make use of in our
reasonings'.[5] Kant
hoped to escape this consequence by
arguing that there is another kind of causality beside the natural one,
a
causality by freedom, which is spontaneity.
We find the idea of an uncaused causality already in Aristotle.
Aristotle explained motion, the fact that the world is
not dead but in development, by the agency of movers that are
themselves unmoved.[6]
Yet Aristotle’s unmoved movers act in space and time, which for a
Newtonian is
impossible. Hence Kant declares that the causality of free will is of a
completely different kind than the causality of the objects of nature.
It is no
causality that we can use to describe and explain observable events,
but 'a
pure transcendental idea' never to be met in experience.[7]
We must postulate it for recognising
the faculties by which we are capable of following the moral law. Most
contemporaries agree with Kant that free
will in the strong sense must be an absolute spontaneity, something
that produces
an action out of nothing, since if there is something from which it
will
produce an action, it is caused or determined by it. I think it is
obvious, as
in fact most contemporaries think, that an absolute spontaneity is
impossible.
From nothing arises nothing, not even an absolute spontaneity nor its
acts. There
is another defect in Kant’s conception.
By his opposing causality by freedom and natural
causality, Kant commits
himself to rejecting any empirical criterion for distinguishing actions
of responsible
persons and actions of lunatics. If free will is a transcendental idea,
it is a
necessary condition of all action. If
we can never meet the properties of a free action in experience, we can
no
longer say of a certain action that it lacks or shows such properties.
Ascribing someone free will and, hence, responsibility, becomes a
matter of
belief or arbitrary conventions. I
conclude that if
the so-called libertarian conception of free will conceives free will
as an absolute
spontaneity it is incoherent indeed and we must reject it, as most
contemporary
neuroscientists do. Yet it does not follow that we must prefer a
compatibilist
conception, as is implied by the popular opposition of libertarian and
compatibilist ideas of free will. For there is a third conception that
has even
prevailed in philosophy up to the time of Kant. I call it scholastic.
It does
not conceive free will as an absolute spontaneity and is yet
incompatible with
the understanding of determination that prevails up to our days. I
present you
the definition given by the late Spanish scholastic Luis de Molina
which seems
to have been the best known in the 17th and 18th
centuries. Molina defines freedom of the will as 'that
which, if the
conditions of doing so are met, is capable of acting and not acting, or
of doing
something in such a way that it might as well do its contrary'.[8] This
definition
presupposes that that which is capable of acting and not acting thinks of, or deliberates about, that
which it might do or not do. The object of
deliberation was called proposition.
Propositions we deliberate about are thoughts, but thoughts that
incline us in
a direction. They are conscious or reflected impulses.
That is why the capacity of acting and not acting is a
capacity of saying both yes and no to
the proposition or the thought of
an action we incline to. Let
us formulate the scholastic conception of
free will thus: x has free will as regards action a iff
x is capable of saying both yes and no
to the proposition
that proposes to do a. The condition
used in this definition to
define free will is today often called the principle
of alternative possibilities. Let us
note the most important differences to the
Kantian conception. First, free will in the
scholastic conception is no faculty of an absolute spontaneity.
It does not produce an action out of nothing.
Rather, it
responds to a thought that can be motivated
or caused by natural causes or may happen by chance to a person.
Therefore, it
is a power of responding to thoughts. It is not a creative power but a power of intellectual criticism. Second, in spite of being a
responding faculty, its responses are not determined since they can be
both
affirmative and negative. Its liberty consists in its capacity of both
following
an impulse and blocking it. It is a power of denying
any impulse we can make the object of deliberation, hence
of opting between at least two
possibilities. That is why the scholastics called it a power of indifference, i.e. a power of making
oneself indifferent to the attraction of an
impulse. What is
most intriguing in the scholastic conception
is its idea of a conditioned spontaneity. Free will presupposes stimuli
to act
on, yet it responds to them by choosing among alternative
possibilities. Though
its choice is unpredictable, it does not render the agent a lunatic.
Rather, authorship
and autonomy spring from free choice among possibilities. Before
considering
this point, let us test the claims of the scholastic conception and
ask, first,
does it, unlike the Kantian conception, define free will by an empirical criterion? Second, does it,
like the Kantian conception,
define free will? Third, is it, like
the Kantian conception,
incompatible with determinism? 2. Does the scholastic
conception use an empirical criterion? Take
the case of solubility of a solid in water.
What you ('directly') observe is that it either dissolves or does not,
never
its solubility. Yet this does not imply that there are no empirical
criteria to
decide whether a solid is soluble. If it dissolves when placed in water
it is
soluble. We use its dissolving as an empirical criterion for its
solubility. In
the same way, capacities, although unobservable, have empirical
criteria for
its identification. A man can swim if
when placed in water he is not drowned. In the same way, a man can say both yes and no to
a
proposition if when exposed to certain observable stimuli he responds
in a certain
observable way. The way he responds to them is the criterion we use to
decide
whether he has free will. There
is an objection against this argument. The
logical relation of the capacity of swimming to its empirical criterion
is
different from the relation of the capacity of saying both yes
and no to its
empirical criterion. Even before looking at what this criterion is, we
can see
the difference. We may formalise the definition of the capacity of
swimming by
reducing the modal operator can to a when-sentence:
a can swim =df a
is not drowned when thrown in deep water Yet we
cannot define the capacity of saying both yes and no to a proposition by reducing can
to when. For we obviously
cannot define it this way: a can say both yes and no
to p =df
a says yes to p
when in s1 and says no
to p when in s2 What
the scholastic definition claims is that if or
when a has free will, he can, in the same
situation s, say both yes and
no to p. Thus, the can
implied
by the capacity of free will as conceived by the scholastics cannot be
reduced
or dissolved. This
difference
distinguishes the capacity of free will from the capacity of swimming
and other
capacities. Yet does it show that there are no empirical criteria for
the use
of the term free will? Certainly not.
This becomes evident when we remember how we decide whether someone is
either
capable or incapable of saying both yes
and no to the same proposition. There
are cases when such decision is difficult, but there are paradigm cases
when it
is not difficult. A neurotic who does not leave his home without
checking
several times that he did lock the door is a paradigm case of the lack
of the
capacity of saying both yes and no to
a proposition. For he cannot say no to the
proposition that he check the
locking of the door. By
contrast, the
cured neurotic is a paradigm case of this capacity. He can say no to the proposition that he check his
locking the door. It would be silly to argue that he is not also able
to say yes to the same proposition. If someone
doubted this ability of his, the former neurotic could prove his
ability by
checking his locking. If he proved unable to do so, we would attribute
him
another neurosis or a new form of the old one. So
there are empirical criteria for the application
of the scholastic conception of free will. The fact that this
capacity’s can cannot be reduced to a when-sentence
whereas the capacity of
swimming can does not show that the scholastic conception is not
empirical.
Rather, it shows that even capacity terms whose can is
irreducible may be
applied by empirical criteria. 3. Does the conception
define free will? In a
way, this question is curious. If someone is
able to say no to a proposition
although he might as well say yes to
it, his option is open and hence, it seems, his will is free. But let
us be
cautious since we want to know what has been understood by free will in
the
history of philosophy. Perhaps only the scholastics have understood by
free
will the capacity of denying. At least, Ernst Tugendhat and Jürgen
Habermas,
have explicitly rejected the identity of free will with the capacity of
denying. According to Tugendhat, this capacity is not freedom of the
will but freedom of action;[9]
according to Habermas, the idea of free will belongs to the
'pre-Kantian
philosophy of consciousness' and cannot be defined as the capacity of
denying.[10]
So let
us ask what the freedom of action is under which
Tugendhat wants to subsume the capacity
of denying. The common definition is that it is the capacity to act
according
to one’s nature or will. It has never been controversial that men have
this
capacity nor that animals have it. Hobbes ascribes it even to water
that acts
freely if its flow is unimpeded.[11]
Nor was there controversy that this freedom looks different in men than
in
animals and children. The controversy was over whether, to take account
of
men’s responsibility, we must, in
addition to freedom of
action, ascribe them freedom of the will. The determinists argued we
need not.
Hobbes argued against Bishop Bramhall that men are justly punished
because their
actions are noxious, not because they do not happen necessarily.[12]
The advocates of free will argued that determinists can understand both
punishment and reward only as a means to form men’s will the way
society or its
ruling class wants it formed, and that this understanding is
insufficient. Now
looking at the history of philosophy for the
origins of the distinction between freedom of action and of the will
we’ll
detect that the distinction depends on harder facts than on how to
understand
responsibility. It is to the third book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics that the definition of freedom of action is
usually traced back. Yet we can detect there even the origin of the
scholastic
definition of free will. Aristotle distinguishes voluntary
actions and actions that are chosen after deliberation.
He distinguishes them because, as he says, we call voluntary not only
the
actions of people who can be virtuous and vicious but also the actions
of
animals and little children who cannot be virtuous or vicious. [13]
As the essential property of a voluntary action he points out that it
must have
its origin 'in the agent';[14]
as the essential property of the deliberately chosen action, that it is
done
when we deliberate 'about things that are in our control and are
attainable by
action', not about things that we cannot change or do not want to
change.[15]
This
distinction appears quite convincing, since we
may well say that children and animals can act voluntarily and
involuntarily
yet cannot choose after deliberation nor say both yes and
no to the
execution of the thought of an action. Therefore, Aristotle provides us
with a
solid argument first that we should distinguish between freedom of
action and
freedom of the will, second that philosophers after Aristotle have
understood
freedom of the will as the faculty of deliberation about things that we
might
as well do as not do. Aristotle
provided even the scholastics with the
principle of alternative possibilities. For to describe a specific
property of
deliberately chosen actions he uses the description 'when the origin of
an
action is in oneself, it is in one’s own power to do it and not do it'.[16]
Moreover, he defines the voluntary not only by the concept of an
action’s
having its origin in the agent, but also negatively by defining the involuntary. An action is involuntary,
he says, 'when done (a) under
compulsion or (b) through ignorance',[17]
an example of the latter being Oedipus’ killing his father. Hence we
can
define, with Aristotle, voluntary actions as actions that are done
neither
under compulsion nor through ignorance, and such actions do not
presuppose
choice after deliberation and can be attributed to children and
animals.
Therefore, the Aristotelian distinction between freedom of action and
freedom
of the will would be this: freedom of action is the faculty of acting
without
compulsion and ignorance; freedom of the will is the faculty of
choosing to
both do and not do an action, which is the faculty of choosing after
deliberation or of denying a proposition. We may
conclude that Tugendhat’s and Habermas’s
theses on the meaning of the terms capacity
of denying, free will and freedom of
action do not stand the test of investigating its historical use.
But we
must also conclude that belief in free will is not that exciting. For
it may
seem pretty clear that we better distinguish between acting without
compulsion
and acting after deliberation than reduce the latter to the former. Why
then
did so many philosophers want to reduce freedom of the will to freedom
of
action? The answer is that they rejected the idea that choosing after
deliberation is a choice that might have been otherwise. Locke is a
classical
representative of this rejection. He agreed with the scholastics that
free will
is a power of denying or blocking an
impulse by reflecting and deliberating about it: '… we
have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or
that desire, as every one daily
may Experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty;
in this
seems to consist that, which is (I think improperly) call’d Free
will.'[18]
Nevertheless,
he rejected the principle of
alternative possibilities. If freedom consists 'in a power of acting,
or not
acting', then a man who exerts such a power 'cannot be free.
The reason whereof is very manifest: … he cannot
avoid willing the existence, or not existence, of that Action; it is
absolutely
necessary that he will the one, or
the other, i.e. prefer the one or the
other: since one of them must necessarily
follow; and that which does follow, follows by the choice and
determination of
his Mind, that is, by his willing it:
for if he did not will it, it would
not be.'[19] Locke
is attacking the very essence of the
Aristotelian distinction between the voluntary and the deliberately
chosen and
their corresponding definitions of freedom of action and freedom of the
will.
He rejects the idea that deliberation gives actions a quality of
freedom that
voluntary actions lack. Yet his argument fails. True, we cannot avoid
choosing
if we must act in some way or other; true, the action would not be if
we did
not will it. But it does not follow that we must choose the way we do;
rather,
we would not deliberate if we could not choose to both do
or will the action and not do or will it. Leibniz
put forward a
more convincing argument.[20]
He admitted that after deliberation, we are not determined by causes
but by
reasons. Reasons, he said, do not 'necessitate' the way causes and
motives
necessitate. Nevertheless, they 'incline' us to choose what we choose,
and they
do so deterministically. Hence, freedom of the will is either
compatible with
determinism or an illusion. So, Leibniz allows us to distinguish
between the
voluntary and the deliberately chosen but rejects hopes of finding in
the
deliberately chosen the place of free will. Yet
even this
criticism has found an answer in the history of philosophy. The answer
was
given already by Descartes. In fact, Leibniz argues against Descartes’
defence
of free will. When asked to explain his wavering remarks on free will
in his
Fourth Meditation, Descartes explicitly defended the conception of free
will as
a faculty of indifference, that is as a 'positive faculty to determine
oneself
to either of two opposites, that is to the following or avoiding,
asserting or
denying'. What is more, he says what is implied by the use of such a
faculty.
He says that 'morally speaking (moraliter
loquendo) we are nearly incapable of moving ourselves to the
opposite, but
absolutely (absolute) we are. For it
is always possible for us to renounce following a clearly recognised
good or
affirming an unmistakable truth, in case we think it good that thereby
the freedom
of our choice (arbitrium) is demonstrated.'[21] What
is implied by
deliberation, according to Descartes, is this. First, it turns causes
and motives
into reasons. Second, reasons are reasons only if they leave us the
liberty to
reject them. Only because we can choose after
deliberation do we act on reasons. But what we then act on are reasons
only if
we have deliberated about what the reasons are reasons for and are
capable of both following and rejecting it. So,
although we normally follow the reasons that convince us and are
determined by
them in a way similar to the way causes determine us, considering
things 'absolutely'
we must recognise that we may reject even the most convincing reasons.
As a
proof of this, Descartes refers to our capacity of acting on reasons
that make
our actions unpredictable, in particular to the reason of proving one’s
freedom. Before
commenting on
Descartes’ argument, let us consider Leibniz’s counter argument: '… they say you still have, even after having
recognised and considered everything, the power not only to will what
pleases
you most but also to will the contrary, just in order to demonstrate
your
liberty. But mind that also this whim or spite or at least this reason
that
hinders you from following the other reasons enters the deliberation
and makes
you be pleased what otherwise would not have pleased you.'[22] Here
I think it is
evident that Leibniz is right. Descartes did not (nor wanted he to)
show that
we are not determined in our actions. Yet Leibniz is wrong in what he
inferred
from that fact. What he inferred was that „A mind that would have the
property
of willing, and being able, to do and will the opposite of what can be
predicted of him by whomsoever, belongs to the set of entities that are
incompatible with the existence of the omniscient being, i.e. with the
harmony
of the things, and hence entities that have not been nor are nor will
be.'[23]
Leibniz
is wrong
because we know by experience that it is possible for men to do the
opposite of
what is predicted of them, if only they know what is predicted of them
and want
to prove their liberty. Children in their many spite phases of
development
demonstrate this capacity much to the trouble of their stressed
parents.
Because of this capacity, our actions are unpredictable if only we know
the
prediction. This is an unpredictability that results not from an
overcomplexity
of causes but from the fact that our deliberation about the prediction
enters
the causes. Though in normal circumstances we can rely that people do
what they
promise and what suits their characters, they become unpredictable if
they are
challenged by a prediction or the claim that they cannot but act the
way they
are supposed to. According
to
traditional determinism, earlier world states determine later ones with
necessity
and without exception. It implies predictability of later states by a
Laplacean
demon or an omniscient being and desists from factual predictability or
predictability by man only in (the probably factual) case of an
overcomplexity
of causes of earlier world states which precludes human intelligence
from
predictions of later world states. Yet the unpredictability of human
action
does not result from any overcomplexity. The same property that renders
human
actions predictable under normal circumstances, their controllability
by promises,
education, reason and reasons, makes them unpredictable when they feel
they are
supposed to be necessitated to act as they are expected to. In that
case, they
can, but need not, use the expectation as a cause or reason to do the
opposite.
They can act on the reason not to be determined by pretended
unchangeable
causes. How
are we to
describe this curious situation? Deliberation, it seems, brings in a
reflexivity
of action causes that decouples our actions from potential past causes.
Acting
after deliberation would be determined by the reasons we follow, yet
would not
be predetermined. Free will would
include determinism but exclude predeterminism.
Yet can there be a determinism that is not predeterministic? What is
sure is
that since Lucretius, determinism has been understood as predeterminism,
as a theory that whatever happens is not only
somehow determined but is determined by the very first state of nature
or the
will of its creator.[24]
Let us have another look at Descartes’s argument to learn the
conditions of a
non-predetermined determination of an action. The
first condition
is that the action result from a deliberation in which the agent gets
conscious
of impulses and motives for actions he inclines to. The second and
critical
condition is that in deliberation the agent suspend his inclinations.
As we
have seen, Locke admits we have a power of suspension and yet sticks to
the
traditional predetermination of actions. Up to this day, many thinkers
follow
him. Their argument is that in the end, necessarily, we stop suspending
action
and decide either for the strongest motive or the most convincing
reason or
argument. In either case, they conclude, we are predetermined. What
is most
important in Descartes’s rejection of this approach is that he analyses
what it
means to be determined by a reason. Once we suspend an
impulse, Descartes argues, we cannot but decide for a
reason that we
must always be capable of replacing by another one. Once we
enact
the power of suspension, we can no longer follow an unreflected cause
or a
motive. We turn the predetermining power of unreflected causes and
motives into
the determining power of a subset of causes, namely, reasons. But it
would not
be reasons we then must follow if their power were necessitating or
determining
our action in an inescapable way. Rather, it is their specificity
always to be
replaceable by other reasons. This specificity gives actions that
result from
deliberation the peculiarity of being determined without being
predetermined. It
may surprise the
reader that the author who gives so much prominence to the
inescapability of
the argument that because I doubt the existence of anything I therefore
must
exist myself, nonetheless maintains the escapability of any argument.
Yet
Descartes relied on sound empirical evidence that men can act against
the
reasons they judge the best.[25]
We know from ourselves and other people that we may reject the most
convincing
reasons without ceasing to follow reasons. The reason we follow when we
reject
the most convincing one may be the reason just to try an unconvincing
reason or
to prove our negligence or coolness or capability of acting against
reason or
our independence of reasonable reasons or our power to prefer
sentiments or
passions to reason or to replace reason by pure arbitrary will. But
rejecting reason does not mean escape from acting
on reasons or a reason. What it
implies, though, is that acting on reasons is
inseparable from a decision for a reason which yet always might be a
decision
for another reason. If
it is true that we
cannot act on reasons without being able to replace a reason by another
one,
then actions that result from deliberation cannot be predetermined. But
then,
aren’t they undetermined? No, they
are determined by the agent’s choice among the reasons he can produce
to
himself. An action that results from a deliberation is never something
that
happens to the agent. Hence, Hume’s argument that unless actions are
determined,
they are at best actions of lunatics, proves ambiguous. If we
understand him as
he wanted to be understood, namely, that actions must be predetermined,
he is
wrong. If we understand him as we better understand him, he is right:
unless
actions are determined, they are not actions at all, but events that
happen to
the agent. But such actions need not be predetermined if they result
from
deliberation. Determination of actions by the agent is of a different
kind from
determination of billiard balls by causes. This
result exposes
the scholastic conception to another objection. Isn’t it an obscure
idea of agent causation and perhaps even a
timeless self that it depends on? What or whom are we to understand as
the
agent that decides for or against a reason? To neuroscientists this
question
does not pose a serious problem. They will find out an excitatory brain
pattern
that represents what folk psychology calls self or agent. The pattern
will be
excited when a subject deliberates; it will be connected to loops and
inhibitions in neuronal processes and be determined by the subject’s
history
and endowment. Yet if it is given, it will in principle exclude the
scientist
from predicting which of alternative possibilities a subject will
choose. Its
determination of efferent neurons may be called agent causation. But
this term
can be explained by the description just given. The
notion of agent
causation is problematical only if we presuppose that the agent has an
absolute
spontaneity. Yet starting from a conditioned spontaneity we need not be
puzzled
how there can be a self or agent that initiates motions 'completely by
itself',
as Kant said. Rather, we can think of chains of causes that determine a
special
link to a peculiar effect. The effect is a split in the chain that
otherwise
would predetermine the future. The split is performed by a particular
animal’s
faculty of suspension, of imagining alternatives to the original
determination
and of choosing among them by reasons, i.e. in the end arbitrarily and
autonomously. There would be no unpredetermined determination nor self
or agent
without conditioned spontaneity, and vice
versa. The distinctions of absolute and conditioned spontaneity and
of
predeterminism and determinism imply one another. So
the answer to our
third question must be this. The scholastic conception of free will,
unlike the
Kantian one, is compatible with determinism but, like the Kantian, is
incompatible with predeterminism. Therefore, it is compatible with
science and
a scientific world view that understands the present world as the
result of a
natural evolution starting with the big bang. But it does not
presuppose the
truth of this view. Many of its adherents did not believe in natural
evolution
and yet have not been incoherent. It can be accepted by both dualists
and
monists. This independence of an influential metaphysical watershed is
another
point in the list of its virtues. Let
me condense the
lessons of history of philosophy on free will to four theses: 1. Free will is the
capacity not of initiating
something absolutely new but of acting after deliberation. 2. Acting after
deliberation is acting on
reasons. 3. When acting on
reasons, we are determined
by causes that we can replace by other ones, even by causes that did
not belong
to the original potential causes deliberated about, e.g. the wish to
prove
one’s freedom. 4. When acting on reasons, we
are determined by reasons without being
predetermined by them. [1] Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 445, B 473: „eine besondere Art von Kausalität, nach welcher die Begebenheiten der Welt erfolgen'. [2] ibid. A 534, B 562: „eine Kausalität, ... eine Reihe von Begebenheiten ganz von selbst anzufangen'. [3] ibid. A 445, B 473: „ein Vermögen, einen Zustand, mithin auch eine Reihe von Folgen desselben, schlechthin anzufangen'. [4] ibid. A 533, B 561: „eine Spontaneität, die von selbst anheben (kann) zu handeln, ohne daß eine andere Ursache vorangeschickt werden (darf), sie wiederum nach dem Gesetze der Kausalverknüpfung zur Handlung zu bestimmen' [5] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature bk 2,
pt 3, sec 1, ed. Selby-Bigge, Oxford (Clarendon) 1978, 404 [6] Aristotle, Metaphysics Λ 1071b 3 – 75a 10 [7] Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 536, B 564: 'Wirkung in der Welt … aus Freiheit', and ibid. A 533, B 561. [8] Luis de Molina, Liberi
Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis ... Concordia, Antwerpen 1695 (Lisbon 1588),
quaestio 14,
art. 13, disput. 2,
S. 8 (my translation). For the scholastic conception of proposition and
will,
cp. Anthony Kenny, Will, Freedom and Power, Oxford 1975. [9] E. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie, Frankfurt (Suhrkamp) 1976, 110. [10] J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt (Suhrkamp) 1981, I 370, vgl. II 113f. [11] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ch.21, ed. Macpherson
(Pelican) 1968, 262f [12] Th. Hobbes, Of Liberty and Necessity. English
Works ed. Molesworth vol. 4, London 1840, 253 [13] Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics III 1111a
26, transl. H. Rackham, London 1962 (Loeb Library). [14] ibid. 1110a 17 [15] ibid. 1112a 33 [16] ibid. 1110a 17. Rackham translates incorrectly
'power to do it or not'. Aristotle
curiously gives the description when he discusses not the deliberately
chosen,
but the voluntary. But if Aristotle was consistent, he cannot have
wanted to
say that all voluntary actions spring from the 'power to do it and not
to do
it'. He wanted to say that only deliberately chosen actions spring from
it. [17] ibid. 1109b 35 [18] John Locke, An Essay concerning the principles
of human understanding bk 2 ch 21, § 47; ed. Nidditch, Oxford
(Clarendon) 1979,
263 [19] ibid. bk 2 ch 21 §23; p. 245. [20] G.W. Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais, on Locke, Essay bk 2, ch 21, § 49; ed. C.J. Gerhardt, Die philosophischen Schriften, vol. 5, Berlin 1982, 184. [21] René Descartes to Father Mesland, February 9,
1645; Œuvres de Descartes ed. Adam et Tannery vol. IV, 173 [22] G.W. Leibniz, loc.cit. on Locke, Essay bk 2,
ch 21, § 25, p. 168; this and the next translation of Leibniz are
mine. [23] Leibniz ibid. p. 84f: „A mind that would have
the property of willing, and being able, to do and will the opposite of
what
can be predicted of him by whomsoever, belongs into the set of entities
that
are incompatible with the existence of the omniscient being, i.e. with
the
harmony of the things, and hence have not been nor are nor will be.' [24] Lucretius, De rerum natura, bk 2, ll 251-7:
„Again, if movements always is connected, New Motions coming in from
old in
order fixed, If atoms never swerve and make beginning Of motions that
can break
the bonds of fate And foil the infinite chain of causes and effect What
is the
origin of this free will Possessed by living creatures throughout the
earth?'
(transl. R. Melville, Oxford UP 1997) |