Q&A: The Argument from Free Choice
The Argument from Free Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I would be glad if the Rabbi would share his opinion on the argument from free choice.
Premise A – I have will and free choice.
Argument A – Will must come from outside, because this world is deterministic. (And even according to the one who says it is teleological, it is certainly teleological, not volitional.)
Argument B – My will is created and not primordial, because I have no memory of that.
Argument C – Someone must have created this will.
Argument D – Whoever created this will must himself possess will, because he must contain within himself the property of will—just as only a more complex thing can create something less complex than itself.
Conclusion – There is a God who creates will and possesses will.
Answer
I don’t see anything here that is distinct from the usual physico-theological argument. There is something special, therefore it has a creator. There is an electromagnetic field. It cannot be explained solely from gravity. From here, there is something else that created it.
Discussion on Answer
Not true. Free choice too could be primordial, like the world.
It seems to me he means that in the physico-theological argument, the complexity existed throughout the whole process in the laws of nature, and only at the end was embodied in life and in man.
Which is not the case with free choice: there is no place where it could have been preserved except in the great spirit that is God, because deterministic laws of nature cannot create free choice, which is plainly a spiritual characteristic.
I wrote that free choice could be primordial, like the laws of nature, and therefore it requires no creator and need not be preserved anywhere.
How can that be? Man is not primordial! Where did free choice suddenly emerge from in the process of evolution? The laws of nature, by contrast, are primordial.
From the same place that biology emerged from physics. There is a primordial law of nature that a certain biological constellation develops free choice. When that constellation came into being, free choice appeared.
? How can free choice emerge from biology?
Physics is not volitional.
And in general, since when is a rule something different from its particulars?
Is the Rabbi retracting what he wrote in the article “A Systematic Look at Freedom of the Will”?
1) Fine, but it sounds strange that a deterministic system would create a choosing creature.
2) Does the existence of free choice prove the existence of the soul?
A deterministic system does not create a choosing creature. Rather, when some biological system is formed, it receives the property of choice. That is a law of nature in its own right. It only means that there is no reduction of biology or the mind to physics. That’s all.
Exactly the same way biology emerges from physics, even though it is not a property of inanimate physical particles (according to one who is not a reductionist).
Think of a primordial world of souls. When a complete human being is formed on the biological plane, a soul enters him. The world of souls is primordial, like the material world and/or the laws of nature.
All right, this hair-splitting has already gone too far. I stated my opinion about this argument, and it seems to me everything is clear. If you disagree—then you disagree.
So then we’ve already found an advantage in this argument: it proves the existence of a primordial world of souls. Let us call it God. Q.E.D.
No. You cannot call it God because it did not create the world. Otherwise you should also call the primordial laws of nature God.
And in fact that is what the Rabbi does.
No. Only if you decide they have judgment and will, and that they created the world.
The Rabbi’s way of dodging the argument—even though it is weak, because it is almost obvious that the soul is not primordial—
is by claiming that the soul is primordial.
But if so, we arrive at a vise against the physico-theological argument.
After all, if the soul is primordial, then why should it enter the human body? Here the Rabbi introduced a new idea: that there is a random law that links soul and body.
But if the law is random, what would justify a law linking body and soul such that there would in fact be a body?
If so, if we remain with the assumption that the law is random and primordial, then the universe must at least be planned, so that it fits the random and primordial law.
You lost me. It’s hard for me to jump back into threads after such long gaps once we’ve left them. I’m dealing with masses of threads in parallel. Sorry.
Premise A – I have will and free choice.
Argument A – Will must come from outside, because this world is deterministic. (And even according to the one who says it is teleological, it is certainly teleological, not volitional.)
Argument B – My will is created and not primordial, because I have no memory of that.
Argument C – Someone must have created this will.
Argument D – Whoever created this will must himself possess will, because he must contain within himself the property of will, just as only a more complex thing can create something less complex than itself.
Conclusion – There is a God who creates will and possesses will.
Refutation – Will is primordial. And what puts will into the body is a random deterministic law.
If so, we run into another problem.
Argument 1 – The law that links the soul to the body is a created law—it needs a creator.
Refutation to Argument 1 – The law is primordial and random.
—————–
If so, here we have reached a new vise:
Premise A: I have will and free choice; it is external to matter and primordial.
Premise B: There exists a random law that links the soul to the body.
Premise C: The laws of nature are not entities, but a description of matter; they are primordial and random.
Argument A: If the process of the formation of man is also random, then it is not plausible that there exist two separate and uncoordinated random laws that create a planned reality. After all, it could have happened that man would not be formed, etc. etc.
Conclusion: There must be a planner for at least one of the laws.
I don’t see anything here beyond the argument from laws. If they are primordial, then souls too can be primordial, and so can the laws that connect them to the body.
Certainly—that was also my assumption. “Premise A: I have will and free choice; it is external to matter and primordial. Premise B: There exists a random [primordial] law that links the soul to the body. Premise C: The laws of nature are not entities, but a description of matter; they are primordial and random.”
My difficulty is from the side of coincidence: namely, that the law linking the soul to the body would somehow foresee in advance that a body would come out through the other laws. (If everything is random.) Because this is a law that enters the picture very late, only after a human being is formed. So how did it foresee at all that a human being would be formed!? That compels a planner for this law.
The law does not foresee anything. Just as the law of gravity does not foresee that there will be masses. If there are masses, they attract; if not—then not. But the law of gravity is always true.
Yes, but there is an improbable coincidence here, no? After all, there could have been lots of other laws that would not lead to man.
True, like any other law of nature. It seems to me we’ve exhausted this.
It is an improved cosmological argument. Because against the cosmological argument one can claim that the universe is primordial, and that what caused the Big Bang was an energetic imbalance. And against the argument from complexity one can claim that God would have to be more complex than the world, so it is better to stop the regress with the world.
But here the atheist is caught in a vise, because according to his own view every creator must contain within himself the capacities of the things he creates (a complex thing requires a stronger composer). Here there must be a creator—the soul is renewed. And he must contain will within himself.