Physicalism and Self-Control

According to Physicalism, one’s choices are the effects of proximate neural 'firings', themselves the outcomes of processes that began long before one’s birth.  Just like the rest of one's mental life, there is supposed to be a scientific explanation of their occurrence.  It doesn’t take much ratiocination to realize that if such an etiology is true, a man’s choices are not unavoidable, nor even brought about by him at all. Once the distant events of which they are merely the approximate effects occurred, they were inevitable. Moreover, one doesn’t really make one’s choices. They are made for one by said neural events in the guise of beliefs and desires, the motives to which they are ascribed by what physically deprecate as 'folk psychology.' That is to say, his choices are not dependent upon he himself as unmoved mover, but neuronal activity of which he is only the subject; along for the ride, so to speak. He is like a harried executive who not only has his subordinates make recommendations; but, abdicating his authority, allows their implementation sans vetting.

Alvin Goldman, defending Physicalism in A Theory of Human Action, says that beliefs and desires as motives don’t “compete” with an agent. True enough, since, if that philosophy is true, they have no empowered agent to compete with in the first place!  He has been reduced to being a spectator of his own volitional doings.

Free will demands an agent who chooses on the basis of his beliefs and desires, rather than having them doing all the work. Further, he must be capable of nullifying even the strongest urges.  Our dignity as creatures depends upon such power.  If at the end of deliberation, one is merely left to seek the object of the strongest conatus neurally asserting itself, we are utterly devoid of respectability.

Compatibilism and Self-Control

Compatibilistic control- deterministic, event causation of one’s choices by one’s beliefs and desires- is obviously greater than the volitional power accorded to an agent by Indeterminism, which is nil.  The latter simply cannot succeed in meeting the Mind objection: the outcome of deliberation, given only a probabilistic connection between it and preceding events, seems lucky or accidental. (http://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Mind_Argument)  Yes, evaluation of  one's propositional attitudes is necessary to foster (the making of a) choice, but it must prove indecisive or there would be a deterministic connection between it and the latter.  Thus, there is nothing about a person that is responsible for how he ends up volitionally; there is no explanation for it at all- it just happens, beneficently or detrimentally depending upon his interests and concerns.   At least with Compatibilism we can cite beliefs and desires belonging to a person as the proximate causes of his choices.  He must be acknowledged as the experiential subject of what brings about his volitions; along for the ride, so to speak, if nothing else.  Indeterminism, on the other hand, not only eliminates the executive element in decision making, found only in Agent Causalism, but renders us the victims of luck or chance as we go about trying to do the right thing by ourselves and others.  Probabilistic relations between mental events could not amount to responsibility entailing causation.  Choices are rendered random, hence, neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy, if deliberation proceeds in such a manner.  Bottom line: if I can’t be an Aristotelian hand mover, I’d rather be a clockwork orange than a roulette wheel.

Reasons and Choices

We are not responsible for being responsible.  God bestowed free will upon us, in creating Man in his own image and likeness.  We are only praiseworthy or blameworthy for the products of (exercises of) that faculty, viz., choices.  No particular choice emanates of necessity from the will, or any other source.  As Aristotle intimates in Metaphysics Bk.6 Ch.4, our 'motive power' is the source of the undeniable contingency in Nature: not everything can happen of necessity unless there is no efficient causation at all, an absurdity.  A choice will have been determined by the will itself, in opposition to a real alternative, another choice that could have been made.  These alternatives are made possible by the will's two innate desires: for happiness and justice.  This Aristotelian cum Anselmian understanding of volition refutes the following skeptical argument:

1. A free choice would be supported by reasons.
2. The reasons for a free choice would have been themselves freely chosen prior to that choice having been made.
3. Choices of a finite being could not satisfy 1 and 2: the atempt to justify them either terminates irrationally (~1) or with "impositions," that is, innate desires or the remnants of one's upbringing (~2).
4. Finite beings cannot make free choices.

For premise 2, it shows, is false: should one exercise the above power on a state of mind consisting of innate desires one would yet choose freely, since they would not be the resulting choice's efficient cause, only its material principle.  Further, the duality of this conatus provides genuine axiological alternatives to prioritize in moral deliberation: two different types of value, both available on demand, one to reject, the other to select.  The will itself determines itself to be such willingness by reducing either the desire for happiness or justice- volitional potential- to act as choice.  Further, a choice justifying reason is part of the very choice it justifies, freely chosen as its reason by the very same act of will by which it is made. If I freely choose the object of a certain desire in preference to that of a 'competitor', I am ipso facto attaching greater significance to it- choosing it as the more compelling concern or value.  Along the same lines, Bl. Duns Scotus sees our freedom appearing most clearly in the way in which we shift our attention from one concern to another.  (Ditto, much more recently, E.J. Lowe, Personal Agency, p. 189.)

The human will is a self-moving, rational power, capable of bringing about opposite effects as the terminus of deliberation: more than one choice, supported by reasons supplied by the intellect.  Those beliefs and desires it also chooses, validating them as it decides upon the various courses of action rationalized, even if not justified, thereby.  Thus, free will advocates may to respond to Galen Strawson's charge that 'if the nature of the agent-self is a matter of grace, it cannot be a causa sui in such a way as to be ultimately responsible.'  (Oxford Handbook of Free Will, p. 457.  See also: https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-galen-strawson/)  The basic idea is that while the above power does not originate with us, we initiate its exercises, commencing novel, morally significant causal sequences.  God bestows freedom upon us; we then use it to create good or evil contingencies.  Our desires for happiness and justice are divinely instilled, but their development as vices and virtues is wholly up us.  Thus, the human person is a causa sui in the sense that he has been given the ability to, as Gregory of Nyssa put it, become, morally speaking, 'the parent of himself.'  (De vita Moysis, II, 2-3; cited in Veritatis splendor, no. 71)  We should not think less of such a wonderful attribute for it being a gift.