Joe Cobb

by Joe Cobb

Materialists since Thomas Hobbes have questioned the idea of free will in human agents. Everything has a cause, and the efficient cause, like billiard balls, is what most people think about.

Billiard ball (1) hits Billiard ball (2) and (1) stops or slows down; (2) begins to roll at some angle from (1). You know that, basic mechanics.

The problem is you don’t ask whether that is the only way “things” can happen. There are more ways that things can happen.

“Free will” as a claim (assumption) in human psychology was challenged by Harvard professor B.F. Skinner in the 1950-70s. Skinner was a behaviorist, and perhaps the most extreme one although Karl Marx was not much different, with his materialism theory and his slander about “class” as it would influence ethical conclusions. This is determinism applied to the human mind and the whole idea about individualism.

Free Will Obviously Exists

This is not a claim anyone really needs “to prove.” If you don’t agree, it makes no difference because you were just determined to disagree with me, who (in your view) was just determined to hold an absurd position. Good bye. Have a nice day.

But, aside from trumping the argument, let me offer an example of free will. Poetry is an art form. We have all understood the beauty of some poetry (not all of it!), and we have all tried it – with limited success.

My high school English teacher in 10th grade emphasized that poetry was the art of placing the words, in harmony, rhyme, etc. as well as the choosing of words to make the best use of metaphor and visualization by the reader.

Sandburg writes, “The fog comes on little cat feet.” You know what that means, although the words do not specify it; they suggest it.

Knowledge is an interesting thing, in the human mind, and poetry is evidence that human free will exists. One might get the same, one idea out to others with different words. And some might be as lovely as Sandburg.

To take a single concept or proposition, like fog rolling in, and put it into words could have been done many different ways. The beauty of Sandburg’s formula, however, is unique. I claim it is superior, without claiming some universal super-duper. It is at the top, relatively.

Even to suggest the idea of “relative” good is another example of Free Will in our affairs, and in our minds. People disagree over economic values, and often also we disagree over moral values, like “fairness” or “happiness.” Interesting disagreements like these cannot just be determined like billiard-ball motion.

Neuroscience is an interesting new field of study. I do not expect it to bring us to some Skinner box of determinism. Science will instead bring more evidence of how individual human agency works. Some writers, generalizing, say this is like quantum mechanics with statistics. Free will is randomness. But that would not produce logical deduction or analysis. Most people live fairly successful lives by using practical wisdom, which is systematic because it needs “objective reality” to work. Behaviorism doesn’t answer that, and again, why do they care? Only we, who want to use free choice to decide questions, really want to know different answers.

So, go out tomorrow and make some totally free choice and ask yourself, “why?”