Take this simple proposition; every state has sufficient cause. By this we include every state of mind that drives us to act as we do. So where does that leave our sense of free will, our pride and guilt? I have experienced having to make decisions and sometimes the decisions become a dilemma. I have experienced regret with some of the decisions I have made also relief where a decision helped me avoid an undesirable outcome. But then I have experienced addiction, where I have lost the ability to chose in actions that look like decisions made freely to many of those around me.
Many argue that our self-determination is an illusion of created by the temporal nature of time and that we are in fact unwilling participants in a process over which we have no control. But when the early Enlightenment scientists came to the conclusion that the Sun traveling around the Earth was an illusion of relative perspective created by the Earth spinning on it’s axes; they didn’t point to the sun set and say that it didn’t exist because it was not what it first seemed.
This is not a quandary that arose in recent times; philosophers have been pondering its mystery since ancient times. Christian theologians grappled with the paradox of human free will in a universe governed by a God that had all power and knows every decision you are going to make in advance. Predestination, the idea that all events are the product of destiny, is incompatible with the idea of humans being able to decide a course of action.
The Post-enlightenment philosopher has the same dilemma. He abandons faith in an all powerful God in favour of faith in a rational scientific view. Determinism gives us a universe where all outcomes are governed by preexisting causes, a chain of events leading one from another from a singularity at the beginning of time leading into a predetermined future. Aristotle was pondering this two and a half thousand years ago in his Metaphysics. He argued that the action of one object moving another moving another could not go back forever and if you went far enough back there would have to be an unmoved mover. A notion not nearly as well developed as modern cosmology’s big bag but clearly he was thinking along a similar line. Many smart people have thought deeply about this for a very long time and have failed to come up with a satisfactory answer.
Many in modern times put their faith in the claim that a valid idea must come from and stand up against a rational and objective system. But this system makes some broad metaphorical assumptions as its foundation. It’s best defence is that it works: when you make airplanes using scientific principles; they fly. When you make medicines to scientific principles they cure disease. When you make smart phones according to scientific principles they work. So too; every day we have to make decisions and it it is easier to manage our lives if we disregard reason and assume our choices make a difference.
We are pondering human behaviour and motivation which often fails to be rational, and human choice is governed by subjective influences. The modern Christian theologian battles with this; if the universe is governed by an all powerful and perfect God why isn’t the world perfect? The answer to this is human that sin leads to bad outcomes. God has given us free will so he can have a relationship with us. God made us in His image and God is a creative God so we are also creative beings. Most of what’s around us is there because some one had an original thought that he acted on and that made a difference.
Your’e options are: you can believe that the only knowledge of value is derived from a system of objective reason and you are an ongoing process over which you have no control. Or you can believe you have been given free to chose, that you are a creative being capable of original thought, that your free choices make a difference and there are greater things than cause and effect.
Bibliography
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
Clown Artist Philosopher 