Q&A: Free Choice
Free Choice
Question
Hi, how are you? I enjoy reading everything here very much, and it’s very enlightening.
I have a question. I went over your articles here about free choice, etc.
I don’t understand how there is free choice. After all, even according to the picture of choice that you call teleological, where a person chooses not because there is a cause for his choice but because there is a purpose to his choice — meaning that he succeeds in translating the future purpose into a reason for his present action — all this only explains to us that the principle of free choice does not contradict the principle of causality. But seemingly it still comes out that the will is not free, because even if a person decides on the basis of a purpose that is important in his eyes, such as the desire to meet a friend, etc., still the fact that the friend is important to him and that he wants to meet him is connected to previous events with that friend, such as shared experiences they accumulated, or a certain belief in the value of friendship. Or, for example, in another case, a person who decides to give charity in order to realize some value and purpose, such as the value of helping others — the very fact that this purpose is important in his eyes is connected to the fact that he reflected and thought deeply, or was educated, about the importance of that value, or to all kinds of experiences and insights he accumulated over the course of his life that caused him to value that ideal.
What I mean is that even if we call it teleological choice, we still haven’t gotten out of the tangle that everything has a cause, and therefore there is no option to choose, because every choice there is — even a choice for the sake of a purpose (choosing in order to, not choosing because) — happens because of prior causes, and if we trace them back we will reach the moment the person was born, the experiences he went through, and the environment in which he was raised.
In other words, you came to argue that a person does not choose because of his impulses, but rather that he has the genuine ability to choose future values and goals, and that he has some ability to weigh a purpose against his present efforts and decide, etc.
So I’m asking: that isn’t true. After all, the fact that he has that purpose for the sake of which he chooses, or that the purpose is strong enough in his eyes for him to choose it, is seemingly entirely connected to the experiences he went through and the insights he learned in the course of his life, etc., in a chain that, if we follow it, reaches back to the moment he was born.
Answer
Hello. My claim is that the choice of the values themselves is not made out of a cause. Moreover, the decision to give charity is not causally produced by the value. It is the realization of the choice of that value. When you give charity, you are choosing that value. You assume that the choice of purposes/values is made deterministically due to the influence of circumstances. I deny that. If you assume determinism, then of course you will be a determinist. But that is not a necessary assumption, and the intuition of choice contradicts it, so I do not accept it.
Discussion on Answer
That is, every person who chooses something can also explain why he chose it, so how is that not a contradiction?
I don’t know whether in your eyes I’m “a person who is very self-aware,” but I assume you’ll agree that I’m at least included in “every person.” For me, it isn’t like that. And in my opinion, for you too. What exactly did you learn and delve into that led you to the conclusion that it is forbidden to murder or that it is proper to give charity? Nothing at all.
I think the questioner misunderstands the concept of freedom (free will) as though it means a state of affairs that has no necessary conditions to rest on. But in my opinion that is an absurd conception. Freedom necessarily means being grounded in a person’s free will (as opposed to the mechanical causal forces that also exist within him), that is, being grounded in teleology. It’s as if the questioner is saying: fine, there is liberation from mechanical causality, but that’s not enough for me, because I also want to be liberated from teleology…
A response to Rabbi Michael,
I didn’t understand.
I think you don’t murder because it is deeply ruled out for you for a thousand reasons: education, environment, logical conclusion, emotional difficulty in causing suffering, religion, etc.
But it doesn’t seem to me that you would answer me (as someone whose self-awareness I value) that one of the reasons you don’t murder is simply because you chose not to murder, without any reason.
At least from myself, I don’t recognize that I ever make a choice and can’t explain why I made it — of course not precisely and not always.
But just as I have a strong intuition that I decide by choice and am not merely being operated by myself, I also have a strong intuition (not that everything in the world has a cause, etc., but) that everything I do has a reason — an internal reason, etc. — but still a reason that causes me to decide.
Or in the words of the one who commented after me,
There is no difference for the issue of free choice between my being compelled to do something because of a certain causality and my being compelled to do something because of a certain teleology.
You are mistaken. You will never be able to explain your value-choices. Intuition is not a reason. We are looking for why there is intuition. You assume that it is the outcome of causes, and I claim that it is a choice.
You don’t murder simply because you chose?
You can’t explain your choice?
And when you explain it to me, won’t I be able to ask you, “Maybe you have an explanation for why the reason you provided is significant in your eyes”?!
Professor Leibowitz emphasized that a volitional decision cannot be justified by reasons.
Maybe that will help make the matter clearer.
I don’t understand what Professor Leibowitz meant.
Do you understand?
If we take a person who is very self-aware and ask him why he gave charity, he will say because he believes in the value of helping others. And if we ask him again, why do you believe that, he’ll also have an answer — that he learned and arrived at that conclusion, etc. And then if we ask again, why did you learn and delve into it, he’ll always have an answer, until we get to his birth.