Words ===== We begin by looking at words, by reflecting on the meaning of words. We know very well the distinction between words and objects, between words and the experiences that they represent. Experience ========== Some experiences are reliable; others are not. Some experiences are immediate to us, some are remote; some are recurrent and/or reliably reproduceable, some are unique. Of all experiences, those which are unique are, for obvious reasons, most difficult to confirm. In general, we cannot communicate our experiences or our understanding of them except by referring to words. Experience is inherently evanescent and we use names to anchor it. Thus spoken words or the concepts to which they refer are indispensable (unentbehrliche) concomitants of our intellectual activity. Free Will ========= It is when we experience ourselves, when we try to understand our feelings, that we encounter the term will. Will is the hypothetical instrument by which we bind our actions to ourselves. Eines Menschen Wille ist sein Drang zum Leben, sein elan vital, der vielfaeltig zum Ausdruck kommt, ohne jedoch an der kausalen Gebundenheit des Menschendaseins irgendetwas zu aendern. We speak of will as being free?. Is free will a redundancy? Is there an "unfree" will? Apparently Martin Luther thought so. Is the term "unfree will" an oxymoron which reflects the irrationality of religious experience or of religious hypotheses? What happens to our actions when our will is *not* free? Do we then cease to act? Do we carry out the purposes of another? When we act under threat, under coercion, compulsion, when we act under duress, are we acting of our own free will? The paradox of the market is that precisely when we are "free" to choose, we submit ourselves to the contraints of reality and demonstrate the narrow bounds of our freedom. What does it mean when a notary certifies that someone made oath that he was acting of his own free will? What does indecision, ambivalence, tell us about the freedom of the will? Tatsaechlich gehen wir ziemlich verantwortungslos mit der Vorstellung vom freien Willen um. Wir bedienen uns des Ausdruckes um alles moegliche anzudeuten, wovon wir lieber keine Rechenschaft ablegten. Wir reden vom eigenen freien Willen, weil wir unsere Gebundenheit an eine Kette der Ursachen nicht anerkennen wollen. Wir beurteilen die Handlung des anderen als freiwillig wenn wir ihn verantwortlich halten wollen, sonst aber als unfreiwillig oder von Umstaenden bestimmt. Dabei lassen wir prinzipiell auszer acht, dasz wir im Laufe der Tage und Stunden nicht nur manches sondern fast alles was wir tun aus Gewohnheit tun. Ob was wir aus Gewohnheit tun als freiwillig zu betrachten waere, selbst wo es nicht in unserer Macht steht, gegen die Gewohnheit einzulenken. Tatsaechlich wissen wir wenig oder garnichts darueber, was den anderen Menschen zur Handlung draengt. Die Strafe die wir ihm auferlegen soll seine Handlungsweise beeinflussen, und tut dies denn wohl auch. Aber was jemand aus Furcht vor Strafe tut oder unterlaeszt ist alles andere als freiwillig. Die Verfassung der Dressur in welche ein Mensch durch Furcht versetzt wird, ist gleichfalls unfreiwillig. Free will implies that we act voluntarily. Determinism implies that we act involuntarily. Free will as a legal concept, in the context of the law. Does one act freely, when one obeys the law? What if anything does it mean that the law should be a source of freedom: "Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben?" Will is a subjective claim which links my action with my awareness of myself. This linkage is less reliable than we assume. For there are many things that I do from habit, absentmindedly or unconsciously about which I am unable to say with clarity, unequivocally, whether I do it voluntarily or involuntarily. To the extent that free will is ambiguous, it is irrational to punish a person for acting voluntarily, but to forgive him his faults if he was acting involuntarily. It is more plausible to argue that all our actions are both voluntary and involuntary, which is so much as to say, that the distinction between voluntariness and involuntariness is (relatively) meaningless. We are trapped by language. It usually expresses only one of numerous facets of experience. And this facet is then interpreted as being representative of reality. There is surely an aspect of experience where I assert my self, where I prove myself real in what I do. But there is no action, no matter how profoundly tinged with heroic fervor, to which the compulsion of circumstance does not contribute. The law and the lawyers of course always speak of voluntary and involuntary actions, as if they were capable of the distinction, which they are not. The rational test of voluntariness of action might be that if the agent had been made aware of the consequences, such awareness might have sufficed to cause him to forego the action, or to act differently. But, of course, if the agent was *not* aware of the consequences of his action, we cannot reasonably say that he was acting voluntarily. The control which our perceptions and expectations have over our actions is clearly an essential element of our psychology, - of our psychological makeup. In this perspective, not acting is also a form of action. One refrains from action similarly because one is aware of the consequences. Much of the discussion about free will might be restructured as a discussion of sensitivity; of levels of awareness. But our fear, our determination, our need to control our environment - socially - leads us to disregard the realities of choice; to punish and to destroy those who are insensitive to our values, in that their actions are not shaped by these values. The arguments of the Reformation about free will were apparently different. Then the issue was whether human action was determined by free will or by the predestination of God. The predestination was translated first into mechanical causation, then into more subtle physics and chemistry; today neurophysiology and molecular biology. Whatever field of science happens to be in flux or "progressing", attracts our phantasies and we worship it by projecting to it the solution of our problems, the answers to our questions, the incarnation of our highest hopes and our deepest fears. The transformation of the force that rules the world from a pseudopersonal deity, who speaks and acts and wills, and God said, let there be light, and there was light, the world as a subjective process (we can imagine how, but we can't imagine who) has been replaced by the world as an objective, passive process. (we can imagine who, but we can't imagine how) The kinds of historical generalizations that we trace from Descartes through Leibniz, Montesquieu to Locke and Adam Smith. So now we try to resolve the confusion and to lighten the burden of our responsibilities by postulating that the poor are poor by choice, by an exercise of free will, so that it's their fault and not ours, in particular, that we shouldn't have to pay for their poverty or their illness. The concept of free will has been used for political purposes. What the term free will meant in the Reformation and what it means now, have at least this in common, that both were political in animus, were weapons sharpened honed to serve in ideological conflicts. The issue of free will, not the exercise of the will, but protest against governmental or economic forces that that impair the exercise of that will. Traditionally, in the Judaeic-Christian tradition, the deity was the repository of free will. To be godlike was to be possessed of limitless free will. The substitution of God by laws of nature represents a shift from the individual, personal subjective, to the impersonal, social, objective interpretation of nature. Such an interpretation is already implicit in the theology of the pre-socratics. As the objective view of the world has become more pronounced, outweighed the subjective view, ... the laws of nature have taken the place of deity, and purportedly objective systems, evolution, the market, statistical distributions, probabilistic reasoning, measuring and counting; the laws of nature as expressions of God's will. the laws of nature were poetic, were poetry, also subjective. We deceive ourselves when we presume to know about the freedom of the will or lack thereof in others. We even deceive ourselves when we presume to know about our own freedom of will. Fuer die Reformatoren bedeutete die Unfreiheit, die Gebundenheit des menschlichen Willens eine Verlagerung der Willensfreiheit ins Goettliche. Fuer den aufgeklaerten Menschen bedeutet die Gebundenheit des menschlichen Willens eine Verlagerung des Handlungsgrundes in die Urgrungsgesetzmaeszigkeit der Natur. Bei Sebastian Franck ist der Urwille Gott anheimgegeben, Den Menschen ueberlaeszt er einen beschraenkten freien Willen, welchen er jedoch derart steuert, dasz alles zun Besten der Gesellschaft, (der Welt) verlaeuft. Bei Adam Smith ist diese erhaltende Kraft in die natuerliche Gesellschaft selbst, in den freien Markt uebertragen. Es ist aber nun lediglich ein Glaubenssatz bei Adam Smith, dasz die gesellschaftlichen Einschraenkungen der Marktwirtschaft nicht auch zu einem Guten, zu einem Positiven fuehren.