III THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN ITS By W. R. BoYCE GIBSON PART I. FREEDOM: A DEFENCE AND A STATEMENT 1. Much of the perplexity attaching to the problem of Free-Will arises from the wide-spread belief that free-will and universal determinism are not necessarily incompatible. Dr. 2. In upholding this view the theory of 'soft' determinism, as it has been called by Prof. James, makes such concessions to the theory of 'hard' or mechanical determinism as render freedom logically impossible. Bosanquet and M. Fouillée, for instance, make concessions of this kind. 3. The crucial concession is made when soft determinism concedes that only matter in motion can be a determinant of material changes; for the consequence of this admission is a logical dilemma which compels the conceder to own that he must be either a materialist or a supporter of the conscious automaton theory. 4. To escape from this dilemma, we must either retract the concession which led to it, or show that the conclusions to which the concession logically drives us are all absurd. 5. The retracting of the concession is virtually a challenge to the mechanical determinist to prove his own statement instead of pressing us to accept it as axiomatic. 6. To this demand for verification the mechanical determinist answers by pointing to the growing fruitfulness of science wherever the proposition in question is accepted as a regulative principle. Such verification is, however, by no means complete, and cannot disprove the reality of effective psychical initiative. 7. The attempt to waive this demand for verification on the ground that the typically individual element involved in an act of free-will eludes by its very particularity the possibility of a scientific handling, cannot be regarded as valid. 8. The alternative way of escape from the original dilemma by showing the absurdity of its conclusions is the simplest so far as the positive indictment of absurdity is concerned. It is palpably absurd to deny that 'meaning' is a determinant of material changes. 9. The more difficult task consists in answering the counter-indictment of absurdity brought forward by Naturalism in self-defence. But we are able to show: (a) that the principle of psychical initiative is in no way incompatible with the principle of the Conservation of Energy, properly understood; and (3) that it does not violate the meaning of the causal concept, inasmuch as the idea of causal nexus does not presuppose either a measured equivalency or a homogeneity in nature between cause and effect, and the idea of psychical causality in particular is no more open to the charge of inconceivability than is the idea of causality through material agency. 10. If Freedom is not Soft Determinism, neither is it Indeterminism. The necessity for choosing definitely between these two rival theories arises only when the issue is restricted to the abstract consideration of some specific volitional act. It is therefore imperative to clearly define the issue at stake by insisting that freedom is the essence not only of self-conscious volitional activity but of consciousness itself, and that we cannot profitably discuss its possibility unless we start from the relation in which the conscious subject stands to its object within the unity of experience. II. From this fundamental standpoint we can make a distinction between two forms of Psychology, only one of which is justified on the ground of its fundamental postulate in treating the Ego as a free agent; the postulate in the one case being the deterministic assumption of the physical sciences, and in the other the assumption of a mutual independence of subject and object which is at one and the same time relative and real. 12. A criticism of Prof. James's indeterministic position shows that Indeterminism errs in three main ways: 1° in its restricted, abstract point of view, 2° in its recourse to the Deus ex machina, and 3° in its formalism. PART II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FIRST CAUSES: A FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTION STATED AND APPLIED I. STATEMENT OF THE DISTINCTION 13. It is customary with psychologists to look upon the deterministic assumption as a necessary postulate of scientific inquiry. This is true of what is known as Empirical Psychology, whose method is essentially inductive. But Psychology may be treated from another and more inward point of view as a Science of Free Agency, and as such accepts as its fundamental assumption a certain relation between subject and object, which guarantees the real though relative independence of the subject. This distinction is marked not only by a radical dissimilarity in the nature of the postulate, but by a correspondingly radical difference of method. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISTINCTION 14. A complete definition of Psychology should include a reference to the points of view from which it is to be studied. For the point of view determines the method, and the radical difference of method referred to above constitutes the best differentia between the two main forms of psychological treatment. The Inductive Method is not the only method for investigating the facts of the mental life. It is the method proper to the spectator's point of view. From the point of view of the experient himself, what is truly explanatory of his mental activity is not laws inductively reached, but final causes, ends of action, the synthetic principles through which the agent helps in creating his own destiny. 15. Consciousness has for long been regarded as essentially a synthesis, but its unity has been persistently conceived as a combining form rather than as a causal agency. It is only recently that Dr. Stout's con ception of the unity of consciousness as conative unity or unity of interest has brought the causal factor to the front. 3. APPLICATION OF THE DISTINCTION 16. Ambiguities of a fundamental kind arise so soon as we ask ourselves what it is that we really mean when we call Psychology a Natural Science. Is it merely descriptive, or is it explanatory as well? Is it a mechanical science or a teleological science, or both? In what sense is it natural as opposed to normative? In what sense is it natural as opposed to metaphysical? The distinction already traced between the Inductive Psychology and the Psychology of First Causes will help us to unravel these ambiguities. 17. 1o. A discussion of the first difficulty shows us that Psychology is descriptive or explanatory according as it is studied from the spectator's point of view and by the Inductive Method, or from the inward point of view of the experient himself by the help of what may perhaps be called the Synthetic or Teleological Method. 18. 2°. As a solution of the second ambiguity, we see that as a science of first causes Psychology is primarily and essentially teleological in its method, but that as an inductive inquiry its method is essentially mechanical. 19. 3°. With regard to the relation in which Psychology stands to the Normative Sciences, it can be shown that the Psychology of first causes stands in a far more obvious and intimate relation to such a science as Logic or Ethics than does the purely empirical Psychology. 20. Finally, 4°, touching the relation in which Psychology stands to Metaphysics, we find that whilst Inductive Psychology stands to Metaphysics in precisely the same relation as do the physical sciences, it is otherwise with the Psychology of first causes. It can, in fact, be shown that the distinction between the inductive and the teleological Psychologies affords a basis for a corresponding distinction in the relation of Metaphysics to Psychology. PART I. FREEDOM: A DEFENCE AND A STATEMENT § I. THE question of free-will owes its obscurity far less to its own inherent difficulty than to the perplexities which have been thrown in its way by the theory of universal determinism. Though there is overwhelming positive evidence in favour of free-will, evidence at least as strong in its own sphere as that of the inertia of matter in the sphere of abstract mechanics, there is still in many quarters a strong disposition to hold it as an illusion because of the difficulty it finds in adjusting itself to the demands of this insatiable theory. The problem is moreover gratuitously obscured through a certain overconsiderateness on the part of the free-willists that completely succeeds in defeating its own end. minism of the strictest mechanical kind-so the agreement Deter runs-shall have free sway over all the lower realm of matter in motion, provided only that the free subject be left to develop apart along spiritual lines according to its nature. This concession hard determinism smilingly accepts, and, on the strength of it, triumphs as assuredly as it does with all those schemata of psychophysical parallelism which are at bottom of its own making. It concerns us then to show that that soft determinism which fights freedom's battle whilst keeping aloof from the true fighting line and complacently yielding to the mechanical philosophy all its heart's desire, cannot possibly secure the freedom that it claims. We must insist on the fact that the only true champion of freedom is the hardhitting anti-determinism that joins issue with mechanism along its own frontiers, stoutly maintaining its right to reclaim much of the ground that has been unlawfully appropriated by the mechanical philosophers. § 2. As an instance of what Prof. James so aptly calls "soft" determinism, we may take the attitude adopted by one of our foremost thinkers. "Why object," writes Dr. Bosanquet, "to the mind being conditioned by the causation or machinery of the sequence of bodily states? The important point is, what the thing actually is; ie., what is its nature, and in what does its organisation consist? We are quite accustomed to find that the things we value most have been able to develop through a system of mechanical causation," and he adds elsewhere: "If you think the whole universe is mechanical or brute matter, then we can understand your trying to keep a little mystic shrine within the individual soul, which may be sacred from intrusion and different from everything else—a monad without windows. But if you are accustomed to take the whole as spiritual, and to find that the more you look at it as a whole the more spiritual it is, then you do not need to play these little tricks in order to get a last refuge for freedom by shutting out the universe." 2 Now in answer to this we must say, with all respect, three things (1) We do not object to the mind being 1 The Psychology of the Moral Self, p. 124. 2 Ibid. p. 9. conditioned by this mechanism, but object only to the indifference shown as to the amount or extent of the conditioning. The most exalted conception of my spiritual nature will be poor consolation if I have to recognise that my being here and not there in the body at any given instant is a fact determined entirely by mechanical considerations. (2) It is quite true that from the point of view of mind's capacity for freedom, its nature is the most important consideration, but whether such freedom is an illusion or not, depends entirely on whether it remains throughout this life of ours a mere capacity and nothing more, or an actual energy that does work after its own nature. But whether this is so or not depends again on whether the exigencies of mechanism really leave scope for it or not; a permanent possibility of freedom is of no avail if a rigorous mechanism does all the work in its own rigid way. From the point of view of the free-will controversy the positive nature of mind is therefore not the essential thing, but rather its relation to matter and the laws of matter. (3) The question cannot be decided from the watch-tower of spiritualistic monism, for such spiritualism has no basis, much less a superstructure, except in so far as it has won the ground it builds upon from the rapacity of a theory that claims the whole universe for its exclusive footing. And so long as that footing is held uncontested, no amount of spiritual complacency can avail anything. 1 M. Fouillée is another soft determinist. Like Dr. Bosanquet and others of the same convictions he has in reserve a most valuable armoury to be used in freedom's cause when once freedom can find ground to stand upon and room to move in. "We are indeed children of the Cosmos," he says, "yet, once brought forth and dowered with a brain, we possess stored up within us some of the conditions of change and movement which are found in Nature, a share in the causality of the universe, interpret that expression as you will; if anything is active in this world of ours, we too are active; if anything that is itself La Psychologie des Idées-Forces, Introduction, p. xxiv. |