Is Free Will an Illusion? Not by These 5 Rules

“Is free will an illusion?” Four of 6 philosophers surveyed by the online Chronicle of Higher Education in 2012 agreed that free will is an illusion. One said no, and one gave an in-between answer.

The majority answer derives from an arbitrary assumption of objectivity. That assumption, even when recognized as arbitrary, remains difficult to discard.

Not only in 2012, but from the earliest time I can remember thinking about GSOT, the question of free will and its arbitrary answer has provoked in me the long search described in these blogs.

Five Rules for GSOT: a Preview

Where do our lives fit in the Grand Scheme Of Things – GSOT? Karl seems to have found his bearings. Can a place be found in GSOT for you and me?

We live in a time called postmodern. The very term reflects insecurity, as if the present moment no longer exists and we live somehow in a future cut loose from all moorings. What was modern – current, up-to-date – is gone, and we identify this time, our time now, only by the absence of something lost.

This blog is the second in a projected series of more than 50 that I will post 2 or more per week. My hope is that we may glimpse a new framework for understanding GSOT, now that the towers of modernity are collapsing.

It would be presumptuous to call this search philosophy, because GSOT expresses a more modest goal. These blogs aim to appeal to the general community of people who look for meaning in their busy lives, people whom we meet on a daily basis, rather than those who make philosophy their life’s work. Here I want to give a preview of the entire series of blogs – the format as well as some recurring themes.

“Deconstruction” is Jacques Derrida’s method for postmodern thinking, and some deconstruction will be necessary to clear space for the new. But deconstructive thinking is too close to destructive, directionless thinking. I hope we can discern some kind of vector that hints at progress in human affairs. “Postmodernism” fails for me in several ways, and yet it represents a great improvement on what came before.

And what was that? This series will begin by describing what came before, namely, the ideas that I grew up with in the fifties and sixties.

The first topic to cover is positivism, which I identify as the dominant philosophy of the late modern era extending from the latter 19th century through most of the 20th century. Positivism will be explored in the next 6 blogs.

Positivism did not stand alone as an expression of modernity. Modernism encompassed a variety of human intellectual projections in art, architecture, education, social movements, and even religion. The strongest alternative expression of modern thought – religious fundamentalism – stands in conscious opposition to atheistic positivism, yet I contend that it unconsciously shares many of the same attitudes and operational tactics. Fundamentalism, I shall urge, is an alternative framework within modernity and not an alternative to modernity. Four blogs will look at fundamentalism.

The world of modernity has been ruled by governors in both camps who pretended to have transcendent oversight on every law and process. The thought leaders of that world toiled in laboratories and taught in university classrooms, or preached to fervent religious believers and organized politically. The knowledge promulgated by the governors, whether atheist or evangelist, claimed to extend to everything actually existing. Whatever might escape comprehension by the methods of their camp they came to regard nihilistically, sometimes not so much declaring it false, but instead describing it as having no consequence at all.

We do not have transcendent oversight. By assuming an humbler stance, an immediate fruit is that overarching declarations of “no consequence for ideas of that sort” – a selective nihilism – can be disregarded. There are limits on knowledge which paradoxically may allow meaning to bubble up from the depths. The task in postmodern culture is to learn to work within certain limits of knowledge, extending beyond them only in the manner of explorers trying out new ideas and relationships, and coming home to rest in judgment of the gains and losses. In this way we might discover a surprisingly rich GSOT to guide our lives individually and together.

The reader should not anticipate a progressive justification of religious faith in these blogs. I confess that I believe in God, but I believe myself competent neither in philosophy of religion nor in theology. These blogs will concentrate on the philosophic side of GSOT.

But you should expect to find revived here some almost forgotten concepts of the will, human will, or most specifically my will and yours.

A foundational project will be to propose 5 rules to guide the search for GSOT, perhaps even philosophy. The first 3 can be stated briefly as follows:

1. Every sentence is first person.
2. The overarching viewpoint is not allowed.
3. Unless it makes a difference in somebody’s disposition to act, then it makes no difference.

The 4th and 5th rules are even shorter; they will be presented in due time.

Rule #1 looks dangerously like subjectivism, even solipsism, but I contend that those labels do not fit. Rule #1 simply acknowledges that every human expression of meaning comes from some person or some group of people.

Importantly “first person” in this context includes singular and plural – I/me/mine and we/us/ours. I do not think it is necessary to ascribe ontologic authority solely to human individuals and not to groups.[1]

Rule #1 embraces science. Science is the enlarging framework of knowledge produced by an ongoing community of people who interrogate the real world of nature by reliable methods.

Rule #1 even gives some credit to positivism. Positivism, which is related to and inclusive of science, is the body of knowledge developed by people who agree to agree.

We owe much to scientists and positivists. However, apart from the people who agree to agree, there are others who seek to differentiate and who agree to disagree. Positivists err when they count the contribution of these people as nothing.

According to rule #2, a certain kind of first person plural sentence goes too far. That sentence begins with a royal, universal “We….” Often its purpose is to assert an objective fact or pose an objective hypothesis. Rule #2 says that this kind of sentence is illegitimate.

Rule #3 you can easily recognize to derive from pragmatism. Charles Peirce, the originator of pragmatism, provides guidance for some key ideas to be pursued. Pragmatism is not so much a theory of truth as it is a theory of belief and clear thinking.

My maternal grandfather grew up a Lutheran preacher’s son in Pennsylvania, taught philosophy in Minnesota where he married one of his students (my Grandma), played the banjo in Mississippi, wrote some books, and subsequently became mostly an academic administrator in New England. In a memoir he wrote the following personal note about pragmatism:

From about 1907 to 1910, in company with the general run of mankind, I had an attack of pragmatism. I…expounded the movement before various groups of folk who were curious about it, just as groups have since been curious about Coue’s practice of autosuggestion, Watson’s behaviorism, or Freud’s psychoanalysis. But I never quite succumbed to pragmatism and in due time recovered.[2]

What would Grandpa say if he knew that I have succumbed to pragmatism? I suppose he would tell me again, as once he did, to read A. E. Taylor and Elton Trueblood. I have read both and Trueblood repeatedly. But I shall not review their work in this series, because they primarily discuss religion at a depth that lies well beyond the notion of GSOT to be explored here.

Behaviorism and psychoanalysis, which were novelties to my grandfather, became bulwarks of positivism by the mid-20th century. Both behaviorism and Freudian psychoanalysis deny the concept of will, or free will. Positivist thinkers today generally do likewise. In 2012 a featured set of articles in the U.S.-based Chronicle of Higher Education gave the responses of 6 philosophers to the question, “Is free will an illusion?” Four agreed that free will is an illusion, one said that it is not. The sixth gave an in-between “compatibilist” position. Those articles provoked my thinking greatly. Their premises are largely incompatible with the first 3 rules described above.

A book that Grandpa wrote and published in 1911 reveals a forceful notion of the will as part of the human mind.[3] However, his arguments for the will need updating. Let’s see what we can do. Asking whether and how a valid concept of will can be framed is going to be a major current in this series, especially toward the end.

Next we’ll take a close look at positivism.

 

Next post: Positivism I. Starting Point

Previous post: Searching for GSOT in a Time of Suspicion

Searching for GSOT outline: Home

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[1] I’m influenced here partly by a great book, Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah and colleagues (Univ. of California Press, 1985), which emphasizes the validity of first-person plural viewpoints that remain less than the universal viewpoint of science and theology.

[2] The Glory Days: From the Life of Luther Allan Weigle. Weigle, R.D. Friendship Press, New York, 1976, p. 21.

[3] The Pupil and the Teacher. Weigle, L.A. Hodder & Stoughton, New York, 1911, pp. 80-87.

Searching for GSOT in a Time of Suspicion

A short phrase spoken by a friend stuck in my brain decades ago, and it pops up now as I try to name the goal for this long-planned series of blogs.

During a road trip my friend Karl spoke about the “grand scheme of things.” Our conversation had rambled into questions of purpose and meaning in life, and he wanted to name their source without invoking science or revelation. So he called it the grand scheme of things. To make it brief – GSOT.

These blogs will describe a search for GSOT. You won’t find here any proclamation of truth. Nor should you expect a convincing argument for faith. GSOT is a modest goal; it might actually lie within reach.

It will help for you to know a little about Karl – a hands-on medical scientist working deftly in the lab, a home brewmaster before that craft became fashionable. Karl’s passion for road cycling is legendary – “Put your nose on the white line and just keep it there.” Over the time I have known him, I cannot recall a single regret or complaint.

Sometime in the 1980s we drove from Houston to a research conference in San Antonio, with a side trip to Enchanted Rock, a mammoth granite formation near Fredericksburg, Texas. The long trip had some anxious moments when a dense morning fog made high speeds on the interstate unsafe and low speeds equally unsafe. Perhaps it was the fog and our relief when it lifted that helped push the conversation further, deeper, almost down to religion.

Karl’s natural approach to life does not derive from formal faith, but his roots nonetheless course deep. He confided with me then, although he has no certain knowledge of God, he does have a sense of something, a power or a set of laws or both, that grounds the world and our place in it. That’s his grand scheme of things.

His intuition is foundational, yet flexible, less than totally committed. It strikes me as very contemporary. The Jedi knights sought guidance from the Force, a theme that resonated among millions of moviegoers. But the Force appeals more to imagination, fitting the role of guardians of far-flung galaxies. Closer to home, as if constructed from earliest, almost pre-existing memories, Karl has it better named, grand scheme of things, or GSOT.

GSOT! Has any person lived who never asked why we find ourselves in such a world as this?

But where shall we look? Is the path to GSOT mostly a search in the individual mind, or is it best viewed as the effort of a community or a culture?

Most of us should admit that our ideas about GSOT have come largely from those who taught us – parents, mentors, friends. Through them we began to receive the larger influence of community and culture. As a child I glimpsed GSOT on a breakfast cup Mama had ordered from a cereal box; on that cup Davy Crockett said, “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.” Later I was shaped by the words and actions of Paul Tournier, Katie Mae Wilson, James Meredith, Charles Peirce, and others.

Faced with a multitude of ideas about GSOT, we cull out whatever seems nonessential and thus form our own identity. Sometimes we oppose rather than accept the viewpoints presented. Even this opposition has its own rich heritage among rebels of the past, and how we bump against unchosen ideas ends up shaping the response we make.

Now in 2016 the choices that form GSOT for individuals and for culture are changing. Nobody knows where we will end up.

One thing seems certain – choosing won’t come easy for most of us. Few have Karl’s disposition, and even he admits to difficulty. For the great majority, the search for GSOT will engage what philosopher and theologian Tyler Roberts has called a hermeneutic of suspicion. Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, involving reflection on the methods by which we seek to understand phenomena and communications. Roberts declares that we have become much more demanding of evidence, much less willing to accept anybody’s theories on nature or life – even our own.[1] He’s right. We live in a time of transition driven by suspicion.

The most influential voices of our time have rebelled against a broken-down GSOT that goes by the old, odd name of modernity. The third segment of the modern age, lasting from the late 19th century through the entire 20th century, is cracking and crumbling.

Modernity, which informed the beliefs of our parents and grandparents, featured confidence rather than suspicion. Two towers of belief in the latter modern age – scientific positivism and reactive religious fundamentalism – though bitterly antagonistic to each other, nevertheless shared key operational attitudes.

For the positivists, only scientific knowledge is secure. Only those hypotheses that can be tested in a public manner are worth pursuing. The answers are plain, though admittedly limited.

Fundamentalist theories of knowledge actually fit the attitude of modernity almost as well as positivist theories. For fundamentalists, only the truths found in the Bible or perhaps another sacred text are secure. Fundamentalists declare that those truths are plainly stated by God in the text. Everything else, even science, is valid only to the extent that it conforms to God’s word.

It would be wrong to label as fundamentalist everyone who believes that the Bible, the Koran, or some other sacred book is true. Instead fundamentalism should be identified on the basis of a person’s approach to theories and evidence outside their own sacred text. The person who allows some credit to those outside the strict interpretive frame is not fundamentalist.

Positivists and fundamentalists share a key characteristic which I hope to demonstrate in subsequent blogs. They despise every attempt to understand GSOT that originates outside their chosen frame of experience. To them the only answers that should guide our lives are plain and accessible through their chosen methods, and everything else has no meaning at all. Their descriptions of alternative explanations are marked by disrespect and selective nihilism.

Before going to the research conference, Karl and I drove a little north of Fredericksburg and took half a day to explore the geologic wonder of Enchanted Rock, a pink granite monadnock covering 640 acres and rising 425 feet from surrounding terrain in the Texas Hill Country.

Near the edges of the mammoth rock, erosive forces have split the granite, creating free-standing boulders 20 feet high and sometimes 30 feet across, separated by 1 to 8 feet of crevasse. Karl was jumping from one accessible boulder to another and encouraging me to follow. Heights don’t terrify me, as long as I can stay away from the edge. I jumped a few, but mostly watched him acting the role of a Basque mountaineer. Then for a good while, we sat near the summit and looked out over the scrub- and tree-covered hills. “It’s good to get out in nature,” he said, “Restores your spirit.”

Suspicion is an appropriate response to the certainty of the positivists and the fundamentalists. But where does that leave us? Can we believe in anything? Where shall we look for GSOT? Can we find it in places like Enchanted Rock? Or in friendship?

We can apply suspicion to the nihilistic aspects of modernity. Suspicion undercuts the terse denial from positivists that any singularity has meaning. Suspicion turns a deaf ear to the vehement refusal of fundamentalists to consider validity beyond the pages of their text.

Let’s use the crowbar of suspicion to pull down needless walls of disrespect. If we can deconstruct the negative parts of modernity, we may uncover a new foundation for GSOT. Suspicion, replacing confidence, could eventually lead to wonder. Sharing of doubts is, after all, still sharing, which may progress through friendship to community. I see no reason to be pessimistic about the end of modernity.

With his own hands, Karl is building a new home in a wooded area in the Carolinas. He’s looking forward to living there, connecting with nature, and exploring GSOT.

 

Next post: Five Rules for GSOT: a Preview

Searching for GSOT outline: Home

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[1] Roberts, T. Religion and modernity, in Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition. The Great Courses, The Teaching Company, 2009.