From: doug@uuisis.isis.org (Doug Thompson)
Subject: Re: Free will
Organization: International Shared Information Service (Ottawa)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 03:55:57 GMT

farris@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Lorenzo Farris) writes:
> Free will in thought implies, IMHO, just what you suggested.  A
> relatively simple freedom we have is that of attitude, and what we
> choose to experience mentally.  However, even this seems to require a
> great deal of self-knowledge, at least in my experience.  Hence, my
> quote from Jung.
> For myself, the only worthwhile purpose in this life is to awaken from
> this somnabulist consciousness, and see reality as it is.

The capacity to exercise will - or choice - does require training,
awareness, patience, self-understanding, if one wishes to do it in
'complete freedom' with a reasonable amount of awareness of the
implications of your various alternatives.

Nevertheless, even a stupid and uninformed excercise of will is still
free will, I'd say. 

For instance, you walk into the corner store with a fiver in your hand.
You see a bag of chips. You begin to salivate. You want those chips.
Without thought you grab the bag and pass your fiver to the clerk.

Now this is habitual, programmed behaviour, I'd say. But could  you
really say that the customer did not *choose* to spend his money on the
bag of chips? And if the customer did not choose, who did?

The following comment may surprise you, but I'd say that yes, the
customer chose - but he didn't choose to buy chips, he chose to allow
himself to be made into a victim of the junkfood marketing experts. By
not choosing to think about what he was doing, he did choose to let
himself be a victim.

I'll grant you that out hypothetical victim was not aware of making any
of these choices. Free will can said to exist because the option of
awareness was one option that was open to him, and he failed to choose
that option.

This makes him a victim and makes him tragic, but it does not relieve
him of moral responsibility for his own choices.

So with Eve and so with all of us. We are all confronted with choices
all day long and when we decline to think about them or make informed
decisions we have chosen to be victims - or objects - of the prevailing
cultural winds. In so doing, we have given up much of what it means to
be human (or could mean) and we deserve whatever we get.

I have noticed in my own life that while I put a lot of thought into
certain choices, and make them in a way that is at least somewhat
conscious and informed, many of the most important decisions or choices
in my life were made by fluke or chance.

A chance meeting, an improbably coincidence, a casual remark - something
entirely unpredictable and unlikely led to something very important.

Which brings up Karma, and how it works through predispositions. We are
inclined in this way or that and Karma organizes circumstances to lead
us to the experiences and people we need.

So we have here two kinds of spiritual ideas, which appear at first
almost contradictory. On the one hand we have the idea of free will, and
the alert aware person who considers important decisions with great
detachment. On the other hand we have karma leading us along by the nose
and bringing us into contact with the people and the situations we need.

A point of reconciliation might lie in the fact that whenever
considering an important choice, such as shall I live in this city or
that city, or shall I marry this person or that person, all the
information and awareness in the world - the natural sort of awareness
anyway - can't really tell us much about the future. At every life
crossroads, such as shall I move to a certain other city or shall I stay
here, we really can't know much about what the decision means in terms
of what alternative futures each venue presents.

All we really know is that we are *drawn* in a certain direction. We can
evaluate the character of the appeal and the objective nature of that
which appeals to us, but since we don't really know the full
implications of the decision or what it will mean to our future, we
cannot really make an informed decision in relation to the things that
we are likely most concerned about.

In other words we cannot choose among ends because the ends are always
imponderable and unknowable, but we can choose among means. And we
always have the choice as to how - or whether - to think.

It is my conclusion, having watched the lives of many people, including
myself, for a few decades on this planet, that the choice of means is
the ultimate choice. When we choose good means, good ends result. When
we choose questionable, selfish means, bad ends almost always come upon
us, quite irrespective of what our calculations of the like effects look
like.

For instance, it is often the case that one finds one's self in a
situation where telling the truth is going to be embarassing, and
telling a little white lie gets one off the hook. Or so it appears,
looking at ends.

In fact, I have never been sorry about telling the truth, even when the
obvious implication was considerably embarassing to me. And I have often
been sorry for 'little white lies' that, while avoiding an immediate
unpleasant consequence, created a whole edifice of falsehood and reality
denial that became a real problem.

Now I think this 'moral virtue' is simply a matter of having been alive
for a while and having paid a certain amount of attention to what was
going on and the more overt cause-effect relationships. But I have
observed such relationships.

From this view, will can only be exercised on means, not ends. We cannot
choose the *result* because we cannot know the result in advance. We can
however choose the ways and means by which we will pursue our desires
and inclinations and predispositions.

Back to Eve in Eden for a moment.

Eve was presented with a choice of both means and ends. The serpent
offered one end "BE LIKE GOD". Hmmm. Tempting. And God offered a
different one "YOU SHALL SURELY DIE". Well, I like Satan's 'end' better
too. Eve chose the more appealing end.

However, let's look at the choice of *means* that Eve faced.  There are
various ways of characterizing this, but one way is the classic question
of obedience.  Eve had a choice between choosing the means of living and
acting in obedience to God, or the other means, of living and acting in
disobedience. 

Ok, so she didn't understand the full implications of her choice. But
then *no one ever does*. You can never really predict what will come of
any given choice. 

But there was an implicit contract between Eve and God. God offers "you
can live in this great garden with this neat guy Adam and you can have
anything in here except this one thing." And Eve, by virtue of living
there at all, and accepting all the benefits basically has agreed to
abide by those terms. She knows the rules.

I am making a bit of a legal judgement here that by virtue of being
there she has accepted the terms of the contract. One might want to
quibble on that point.

But anyway, let's run with that hypothesis for a moment.

By choosing the means of disobedience, or defaulting on an implicit
contract between her and God, she has chosen a foul means. When she
draws Adam into her petty larceny as well, she has chosen yet another
questionable means. She doesn't really solicit his cooperation by
informing him of the implications of the choice she asks him to make,
rather she elicits his complicity by using her influence with him to get
him to do something which, if she gave him a reasonable chance to
choose, he might well choose *not* to do. So she, in this way, rather
violates Adam's will by prempting his decision-making process.

What might have been a *reasonable* means for Eve to choose, when
presented with the serpent's tempting offer? A very reasonable thing to
do would be to discuss the pros and cons with others - at least Adam.
She should have at least been aware that it *could* have an affect on
him. She and Adam could have sat down and examined the conflicting
claims of the serpent and God and made a deliberate choice about whom
they found to be the more credible. Whom to trust, whom to believe.

A slow and deliberate and honourable decision-making process probably
would have led Adam and Eve to put the serpent off for a few days while
they thought about it, and possibly even consulted God about it.

But that is not what Eve did. Instead she made an impulse purchase. The
means she chose was to give in to a momentary impulsive desire. Ok, she
was seduced by a liar who deliberately misled her, but hey, such
creatures exist. 

So the moral character of Eve's decision and act of will is complex and
really very important because we all face decisions of a similar sort in
life. When we see conflicting claims do we choose the one we like or do
we stop and consider, and seek counsel of others about which, in our
best collective judgement, is trustworthy and true?

The question is rhetorical.

It is my view that evil is very well represented in the story of Adam
and Eve in the Garden of Eden and it almost always works thus. The story
is therefore a powerful and potent myth, and a prototype of a great deal
of the human experience of wrestling with options, conflicting claims,
conflicting desires, and a choice of means which are honourable or means
which are purely selfish.

We don't have to understand the full details of the implications to know
that questionable means are likely to lead to questionable results.

Yet, aren't we all like Eve? Don't we all fall for the promise of a fast
buck, a cheap thrill, a quick cheat?

I dunno about you, but if the serpent had hit on me instead of Eve,
chances are good that I would have done just what she did.

=Doug