Free Will As Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It,” Mind, New Series, Vol
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R. E. Hobart, “Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It,” Mind, New Series, Vol. 43, No. 169. (Jan., 1934), pp. 1-27. two are irreconcilable, as they are popularly supposed to be, except by a theory that delivers us from the conflict by taking us out of time. FREE WILL AS INVOLVING Our view on the contrary is that from the DETERMINATION AND natural and temporal point of view itself there never was any need of a reconciliation but only INCONCEIVABLE WITHOUT IT of a comprehension of the meaning of terms. R. E. HOBART (Dickinson S. Miller) (The metaphysical nature of the self and its identity through time is a problem for all who The thesis of this article is that there has never confront memory, anticipation, etc.; it has no been any ground for the controversy between peculiar difficulties arising from the present the doctrine of free will and determinism, that problem.) it is based upon a misapprehension, that the two assertions are entirely consistent, that one I am not maintaining that determinism is true; of them strictly implies the other, that they only that it is true in so far as we have free will. have been opposed only because of our natural That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, want of the analytical imagination. In so a fact of experience. That broad fact is more saying I do not tamper with the meaning of assured than any philosophical analysis. It is either phrase. That would be unpardonable. I therefore surer than the deterministic analysis mean free will in the natural and usual sense, of it, entirely adequate as that in the end in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that for the purposes of the personal and moral life there are no small exceptions, no slight the term is ever employed. I mean it as undetermined swervings, no ingredient of implying responsibility, merit and demerit, absolute chance. All that is here said is that guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an such absence of determination, if and so far as act has been performed, that one “could have it exists, is no gain to freedom, but sheer loss of done otherwise” than one did. I mean it as it; no advantage to the moral life, but blank conveying these things also, not in any subtly subtraction from it. — When I speak below of modified sense but in exactly the sense in “the indeterminist” I mean the libertarian which we conceive them in life and in law and indeterminist, that is, him who believes in free in ethics. These two doctrines have been will and holds that it involves indetermination. opposed because we have not realised that free will can be analysed without being destroyed, By the analytical imagination is meant, of and that determinism is merely a feature of the course, the power we have, not by nature but analysis of it. And if we are tempted to take by training, of realising that the component refuge in the thought of an “ultimate”, an parts of a thing or process, taken together, each “innermost” liberty that eludes the analysis, in its place, with their relations, are identical then we have implied a deterministic basis and with the thing or process itself. If it is “more constitution for this liberty as well. For such a than its parts”, then this “more” will appear in basis and constitution lie in the idea of liberty. the analysis. It is not true, of course, that all facts are susceptible of analysis, but so far as The thesis is not, like that of Green or Bradley, they are, there is occasion for the analytical, that the contending opinions are reconciled if imagination. We have been accustomed to we adopt a certain metaphysic of the ego, as think of a thing or a person as a whole, not as that it is timeless, and identifies itself with a a combination of parts. We have been desire by a “timeless act”. This is to say that the accustomed to think of its activities as the way in which, as a whole, it naturally and obviously knower in general (irrespective of just what behaves. It is a new, an unfamiliar and an particulars it knows) is similar in all men. The awkward act on the mind’s part to consider it, relation of subject to object, whatever it may not as one thing acting in its natural manner, be, is the same with you and with me. But the but as a system of parts that work together in a self as it interests ethics is not the same in complicated process. Analysis often seems at different persons. It is the concrete, active self, first to have taken away the individuality of the existing through time and differing from thing, its unity, the impression of the familiar others. The whole stress of morality arises identity. For a simple mind this is strikingly because moral selves are not alike, because true of the analysis of a complicated machine. there is need of influencing some moral selves The reader may recall Paulsen’s ever to make them refrain from certain acts or significant story about the introduction of the neglects, that is, in order to make them better railway into Germany. When it reached the moral selves. How do we express the village of a certain enlightened pastor, he took difference? We call it a difference of moral his people to where a locomotive engine was qualities, traits, or character. We are having standing, and in the clearest words explained regard to the question what acts will come from of what parts it consisted and how it worked. these selves. By character we mean – do we He was much pleased by their eager nods of not? – the sum of a man’s tendencies to action, intelligence as he proceeded. But on his considered in their relative strength; or that finishing they said: “Yes. Yes, Herr Pastor, but sum in so far as it bears upon morals. there’s a horse inside, isn’t there?” They could not realise the analysis. They were wanting in Now the position of the indeterminist is that a the analytical imagination. Why not? They had free act-of-will is the act of the self. The self never been trained to it. It is in the first instance becomes through it the author of the physical a great effort to think of all the parts working act that ensues. This volition of the self causes together to produce the simple result that the the physical act but it is not in its turn caused, engine glides down the track. It is easy to think it is “spontaneous”. To regard it as caused of a horse inside doing all the work. A horse is would be determinism. The causing self to a familiar totality that does familiar things. which the indeterminist here refers is to be They could no better have grasped the conceived as distinct from character; distinct physiological analysis of a horse’s movements from temperament, wishes, habits, impulses. had it been set forth to them. He emphasises two things equally: the physical act springs from the self through its volition, The reason for thinking that there is no and it does not spring merely from character, it occasion for the controversy lies exclusively in is not simply the result of character and the analysis of the terms employed in it. But the circumstances. If we ask, “Was there anything several analyses must all be taken together, that induced the self thus to act?” we are realised jointly, before the position can be fully answered in effect, “Not definitively. The self understood. feels motives but its act is not determined by them. It can choose between them.” Self and Character. — We are not concerned with the total nature of the self, but The next thing to notice is that this position of only with the aspect of it strictly involved in our the indeterminist is taken in defence of moral question. We are not dealing with the problem conceptions. There would be no fitness, he of knowledge and therefore not with the self as says, in our reproaching ourselves, in our mere knower. It is clear that the self merely as feeling remorse, in our holding ourselves or anyone guilty, if the act in question were not approve and like and wish to see more of, or the act of the self instead of a product of the the contrary. All the most intimate terms of the machinery of motives. moral life imply that the act has proceeded from me, the distinctive me, from the manner We have here one of the most remarkable and of man I am or was. And this is the very thing instructive examples of something in which the on which the libertarian lays stress. What the history of philosophy abounds — of a indeterminist prizes with all his heart, what he persistent, an age-long deadlock due solely to stoutly affirms and insists upon, is precisely the indisposition of the human mind to look what he denies, namely, that I, the concrete closely into the meaning of its terms. and specific moral being, am the author, the source of my acts. For, of course, that is How do we reproach ourselves? We say to determinism. To say that they come from the ourselves, “How negligent of me!” “How self is to say that they are determined by the self thoughtless!” “How selfish!” “How hasty and — the moral self, the self with a moral quality.