Q&A: Free Choice?
Free Choice?
Question
Free choice
With God’s help
Hello,
I wanted to ask how free choice can be reconciled with the fact that our thoughts are deterministic.
For example, when I think about something, the brain associatively connects it to a new topic, after which one thinks about yet another thing, and so on and so on.
So this can be described as a kind of long wheel of thoughts, connected to the imaginative faculty.
But the point is that all these thoughts are in fact deterministic.
Likewise, when we think about something, one can always think of a prior cause that led to it—for example an association or something else, not something without any cause at all…
Answer
First, you need to distinguish between thoughts and values. According to many views, thoughts are forced upon us (by the truth). That, for example, was Leibowitz’s view. According to his approach, this has absolutely nothing to do with free choice, which deals with value-based decisions and not with truth.
I also do not agree that thoughts are forced upon us. True, the sequence of thinking has an associative influence, but what matters is the content of the thoughts, not their order. And even the order of thoughts is not necessarily forced upon us. The fact that we have associations does not mean that they alone determine what we think and what we think about.
See column 175.
Discussion on Answer
A person does not determine the values, only whether he responds to them. See columns 456–7.
The fact that it’s a loop changes nothing. Choice does not mean the complete absence of constraints. The question is whether the constraints dictate the outcome or merely influence it. In my view, they merely influence it.
But according to Leibowitz, a person also determines his own values, so how can that be if there is free choice? At most, that would be random.
You mean that in practice we can decide what topic to think about, but within it there are many parts without choice—associations or purely logical calculations?
(Kind of like how many of the things we do in daily life are done on autopilot while we decide, broadly speaking, what to do?)