Q&A: Free Choice and Souls
Free Choice and Souls
Question
Hello,
If we assume that free choice exists because each of us is a soul with free choice,
the question is: how are these souls created, and what is the difference between them?
If some souls were created better or worse than others, then there also isn’t really free choice, because a soul is bound to the traits with which it was created. One soul was created this way and another that way.
If we claim that all souls were created equal, then that means each of us would act identically if we were in a certain body at the same starting point.
If we take a person who murdered and say that in a deterministic world there is no reason to be angry at him, since he was necessary and had no choice but to murder—if we add that a soul exists here, we still haven’t solved the problem. Either his soul was created more “evil” than others and therefore he murdered, or his soul is identical to others but reality forced him to murder.
And if we assume that souls are created randomly according to some random regularity, then souls still act only by virtue of the random mechanism that generates them.
I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on this issue.
Answer
You are asking the common question that the soul too is subject to the same dichotomy between determinism and chance. But there is no such dichotomy, because there is a third possibility: choice. The need to posit a soul is only because matter is subject to causality and determinism (the laws of physics), whereas a soul perhaps is not.
Discussion on Answer
The assumption that equal souls must choose equally implicitly assumes determinism. When you ask about the motives for the choice, you are again assuming determinism—that a choice must have a motive, that is, a cause.
It is still not clear what the motives are that cause one soul to choose this way and another soul to choose that way, unless we assume that souls are created differently from one another and that is where the different choice comes from.