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Determinisim and Meaning

The problem of whether or not our lives are ultimately determined by natural forces, whether we have the power to choose a new path besides the one set out before us at the genesis of time, is the most intriguing philosophical problem. It involves questions of spirituality, identity, language, science and ethics - and we must inquire into all of these subjects with a reference of meaning that we have to define for ourselves. The answer, in short, is no - there is no free will. Everything about my life is predetermined by the nature of the reality around me, and there is nothing within me that reaches beyond my life conditions to change this. This does not negate conscious decisions and responsibility for our actions - in this sense, "free will" is a paradox, illuminated by a better understanding of personal identity that calls one to see the depth in things.

Most of my behavior results from natural responses to stimuli. These responses, such as to jump when hearing a jarring noise, are determined by my mind as it unconsciously consults a conditioned set of ideas that I hold about the world, and choses an appropriate course of action. To use another example, I will often be so immersed in a conversation with somebody that my replies are completely unconscious until I've said them, and yet they are perfectly coherent and agreeable. In these situations, I will often spontaneously say something even more profound, or funnier than I've known myself to be capable of with conscious effort. All of the causes for this type of unconscious response are out of my control, occurring spontaneously in my environment. My conscious decisions, as Sartre makes clear, are determined by "the value which I implicitly give" to the motives for those decisions (Condemned to be Free, 230). Ultimately, however, I am still consulting a similar set of values when giving meaning to whatever phenomena acts as the motive - it is just that in these cases I am aware of the underlying surface processes involved in arriving at the decision, such as a logical thought pattern. The values used in this process are mostly created at a young age, and are based on observations I have made of my social environment. Some of these observations occurred unconsciously, while others I have arrived at through a conscious logical process. For example, my high school had a tradition which restricted all non-seniors from walking on the campus grass, and contradicting this rule resulted in severe punishment - thus I consciously conditioned myself not to walk on grass while at school. Being a boarder, however, this meant I was always seeking out paths instead of taking the usually shorter route, and this behavior became an unconscious routine. Even out of school, I would unintentionally avoid walking on any patch of grass, and often I would catch myself taking a far longer path to reach my destination. In such cases, I could consciously update the set of values which governs my decisions, and trod confidently on the soft lawn, and to this extent there is a faculty within me that can make conscious decisions. However, for these times which I am conscious of the decisions I make, in no way are these decisions "free". For instance, when I consciously decided to walk on the grass, I am still doing so only because I have in my mind the idea that it would be quicker to do so. If I choose to stay on the path, it is only because I am trying to disprove an idea proposed to me, I.E. that I have no free will. In both cases, there is something which pulls me towards one decision or the other, and those external factors determine my course of action. Even if I subjectively just "feel" like walking on the path, there is nothing within me that chose to acquire this partiality. As Locke puts it, "What is it that determines the will? The true and proper answer is, the mind" - but the processes of my mind, and the variating factors used in these processes, are beyond my control (651). Thus there is no room in this system for such a concept as subjective freedom; "man cannot be sometimes slave and sometimes free; he is wholly and forever free or he is not free at all" (Condemned to be Free, 231). By this logic, that there is no human freedom, it is implied that if the progression of the universe in time was to begin again, at this exact moment in time nothing would be different from what it is now. We did not reach this situation by random chance, but rather through patterns of growth that can be broken down recursively to simple, logical sequences. This calls into question any decisive power that I have - am I really no more than just that which is consciously aware of the processes that determine my actions?

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Quick Thoughts

• Let go of wanting to control other people's experiences