Looking at Freedom Face to Farce

A reader asks if we would be so kind as to "explore further the paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom" in human beings. This is of course a Big Question, as it is fundamentally linked to Everything. Indeed, to say or even think the word "freedom" is to have situated oneself totally outside any model of reality. 

Wait what? You heard me: people tend to either take freedom for granted or make it go away by denying it altogether (a la scientism or Marxism), but its presence changes everything. I suppose we could throw in a third ideology -- existentialism -- but this simultaneously affirms freedom while utterly negating its meaning and significance, so it's a nonsartrer.

I first became aware of the ontologically explosive nature of freedom in a passage from a book by Stanley Jaki called Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth. The book is a meditation on various fundamentals of existence such as objects, change, causality, mind, history, and purpose. 

Obviously, any complete metaphysic -- better, metaphysic, full stop -- must account for each of these in an intellectually satisfying way: no dodging, spinning, reducing, explaining away, our going wobbly at key junctures. Chapter 4 is on the category of Free Will, right between Science and Purpose (and to champion the obvious, neither science nor purpose are conceivable in the absence of free will).

Now, by way of context, when I first read this book I was a psychoanalytically informed psychologist, and in all my training, we didn't talk much about freedom. There was plenty about causation -- in particular, unconscious causation -- but not much discussion about what was supposed to happen once we were (allegedly) liberated from this pathological causation. It leaves the question: okay, I'm free from my neurotic conditioning, now what? Why even be free? What are we supposed to do with it?

I know: let's do some science! But according to science, free will isn't possible. Or, supposing we are free, there is no conceivable scientific explanation. Shouldn't we be a little more curious about this, if not frankly alarmed?

A side-thought just trickled into my head: ever notice how the same people who insist that sexuality is fixed from birth want to shape it from kindergarten? Big Groomer, like Big Homo, wants to have it both ways. 

Anyway, some passages from the book:

in the final analysis, the elemental registering of free will almost exhausts whatever can be said about its reality. Everything else is embellishment, very useful and informative as it may be, because it is irrelevant unless achieved and articulated freely. 

It's as if the registering of free will encloses us in a tautology, except it's the opposite: it liberates us from absurcularity, for the intimation of free will "belies mere material existence," and here we are, existing immaterially and thinking about it (which amount to the same thing): "All arguments against free will are so many proofs of it," nor does the most determined determinist argue deterministically.

Now, everyone believes in miracles, for there are no less than three: existence, experience, intelligence; or objects, subjects, and the flow of intelligibility between them: the universe never stops speaking, nor do we ever stop hearing and understanding it in diverse modes and on various levels. Free will is subjectivity itself, for the latter is at a right angle to mere material existence, ultimately leading all the way up to its nonlocal source. Bottom line:

far more grippingly than one's immediate grasp of reality does one's registering of the reality of one's free will bring one face to face with that realm of metaphysical reality which hangs in mid-air unless suspended from that Ultimate Reality, best called God, the Creator. 

I'd actually like to draw back from that conclusion somewhat, and stop with Ultimate Reality. We'll eventually get to Creator, but let's first marinate in this question of how ultimate reality must be in order for free beings to be here in it (and therefore simultaneously out of it). Not to belabor the point, but it's an exceedingly queer situation.  

Remember when Helen Keller suddenly grasped the significance of water? It literally changed everything, ushering her into a new cosmos transcending the material prison to which she had been confined. The recognition of freedom should do something similar to us. But I suppose this is where Genesis 3 comes in. Adam and Eve (AKA we) were free, but chose badly. Our freedom, it seems, is somehow compromised near the source. We'll no doubt return to this conundrum. 

Come to think of it, Genesis 3 speaks to the intrinsic bond between freedom and responsibility. In short, freedom has a vector and a telos, so we appreciate right away that it can be misused. Indeed, if it can't misused, then it's not freedom, now is it? So in order to have freedom we must have the possibility -- even inevitability -- of its misuse. Nevertheless, woe to those who misuse it. 

But this too (i.e., woeful consequences for misuse) must be considered a gift in the overall scheme of things, because otherwise freedom is reduced to meaninglessness: if our acts don't matter, then neither does freedom. The point is, without freedom there is no ought, only is, and is is not guilty by reason of inevitability (and not meritorious for the same reason).  

So, "Freedom is a mystery on the natural level in the sense that it cannot be reduced to anything else. It is a primary datum, a supreme, most immediately known reality." 

But a true mystery on the natural level is not to be equated with mere ignorance -- as if the accumulation of natural knowledge will eventually eliminate the mystery. No, this is one of those Primordial Mysteries that point beyond themselves, above and beyond the material. 

To what? Let's stipulate that we are free. This being the case, we are free to create stuff, like machines and works of art. But are we free to create freedom? Obviously not. We can create robots, computers, and NPC progressives, but we cannot conjure freedom. Jaki concludes his chapter by suggesting that only what (whom) we call the Creator could 

create something, an act of free will, which is both fully created and in that sense "physically," that is, fully determined, and yet genuinely free at the same time.

Thus,

The mystery of free will ceases to appear a contradiction in terms, or a wholly unmanageable conundrum only when seen in the context of the infinite power and goodness of God. He created man to be free so that man's service may have that merit which only a freely performed act can have. 

Now that is a heavy responsibility. No wonder humans reject it. (We're not done with this subject, so To Be Continued.)