I hope everyone will forgive me, but this is going to be densely packed. One reason is that I know everyone is eager to move on to epistemology (or, in some cases, the debate). But another reason is that those of you who have followed along do not need a lot of CS-Lewisish narrative. I’m going to define terms as I go. If this becomes hard to follow (and it probably would be for me in your shoes), just ask questions or clarifications. I will be using terms we have already defined, and if I remind you of their definitions, I will do so only parenthetically. (Thanks for the indulgence.)
My definition of freewill: the ability of free moral agents to make aesthetical decisions (decisions about value and worth) freely and volitionally. A free moral agent is an agent whose morality (subjective rules of thought and behavior) is unrestricted by any other agent or circumstance. The circusmtance part is important because the question of whether Mr. Smith or Master Jones are free moral agents can become a bit murky. If Mr. Smith has suffered severe brain damage, then his moral code might be anything from quirky to sociopathic, through no fault of his own. And there is the question of whether young Master Jones, a three-year-old, is a free moral agent. Is he capable of formulating a moral code? Most likely not, at least not completely. Now, he might be aware that it’s wrong to toss his toys at the TV screen, but it is suprising how many times he needs to be reminded of it.
I state those caveats up front because they don’t matter. It is not our place to judge the morality of anyone else, as established in Part II. We lack the necessary objectivity to judge. Therefore, whether any particular person is a free moral agent is moot. It is necessary only to know what a free moral agent is.
Now, why do I keep refering to free moral agency with respect to freewill?
That’s because the question of freewill can take (at least) two paths (1) the question of whether the brain can make free choices in the context of what the universe will allow; and (2) the question of whether the person in se — that is, the essential person can make free choices in the context of morality.
The first one does not concern us — despite that it has arisen in Great Debates a hundred times — and is controversial mainly because of opposing viewpoints about everything from relativity to the Copenhagen interpretation. Does the universe offer finite or infinite choices, and are any (or all) of these choices compelled by causes? We don’t care. We are not concerned with whether you were free to choose chocolate ice-cream over vanilla. Or whether taking the left fork over the right fork was a free decision of the will.
Our concern is about free moral will. You will know, therefore, that when I talk about freewill, I am talking about free moral will. (A better term might be free aesthetical will since the decisions made are aesthetical in nature, but the free aesthetical will itself eminates from free moral will. And so, let’s stick with that term.)
The question then arises as to whether moral will (free or otherwise) is made by the brain, or else by some other aspect of the agent, such as his essence (the identity that preceded his existence). This question will be answered in Part IV, when we learn of the nature of man and his agency. So don’t fret over this for right now, please.
Another question arises as to whether a person can have “real” free moral agency if he is under a cloud of perceived coercion. For example, if he believes (perceives) that God will send him to hell if he smokes a joint, then does he have freewill? Again, this is of no concern at this point because, well really because of two reasons (1) we don’t need to (and can’t if we wanted to) identify any paricular person and examine his internal struggles with his conscience or deity, and (2) the smoking of the joint is of the type of freewill that we said is irrelevant anyway — i.e., whether to smoke a joint or hit some crack is equivalent to whether to take the left or right fork. It is merely a question of permutations that the universe makes available, and we don’t care about that.
We’re going to bring back a distant but familiar prop for our discussion: the little old lady standing on the street corner whom we encounter. (Whether we encounter her by chance or because we were predestined to is of no concern.)
Free moral agents make these kinds of aesthetical decisions (decisions about value) with respect to the little old lady. She is worthless (the aesthetical decision), and therefore I will kill her, mug her, rape her, or otherwise do with her what I would do to things that have no value — i.e., abuse them, walk right over them, or even destroy them (the moral decision that spawns an ethical decision). The aesthetical decision that she is worthless might just as well lead to the moral decision to ignore her, much in the same way we might ignore an ant on the sidewalk while we move along busily toward our place of employment. We might make the aesthetical decision that she has some value, whereupon our moral decision might be to nod at her, smile at her, or otherwise indicate to her that we do not find her to be entirely worthless. Finally (and I’m moving on to the end of the continuum; there are all manner of things in between), we might aesthetically value her so much that our moral decision is to see to her safety — to help her cross the street, or make certain that she is not lost, or speak words of affirmation to her that leave her feeling good about herself.
The point has been made before that we could just as well say that we find her aesthetically valuable as a target of our psychopathic tendencies. In other words, we’ve been looking for someone to kill, and we decided that she is a fine specimen. But let us not forget that goodness must edify both agents. She must be edified by your moral decision, and so must you (e.g., that “feel good” feeling that lifts your spirits when you help someone in need.)
And so freewill is merely the question of whether you were free or coerced in your evaluation of the little old lady’s worth.
Now, almost hidden in the comments above was the notion of a moral decision spawning an ethical one. This simply means that a person acts out his moral decision. Recall that when morality becomes externalized, it moves into the territory of ethics. I might believe that it is morally okay to kill a stranger who breaks into my home, but until I actually shoot him, no ethical deed or action has taken place.
Questions? Comments? A barrage of rotten tomatoes?
