Free Will Versus Determinism

1995

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One of the main problems concerning the debate between free will and determinism lies in the underlying structures of rationality.  A good deal of insight may be gained about free will if a slightly different way of rationalizing it is implemented.  For instance, in the debate as it stands a very strict conception of either/or is used; that is, either free will is the correct stance and determinism is wrong or free will is incorrect and determinism is right.  Changing this substructure of argumentation slightly and employing Heideggerian ontology yields a wealth of understanding.

Heidegger tried to revolutionize thinking by revealing an ontology along more ancient lines, he sought for new answers in the ancient soil of Pre-Socratic Greece, a terrain in which the origin of reason and the world itself was dynamic.  Instead of keeping with contemporary ontology which functions akin to Platonic Idealism, Heidegger recommended an ontology of “usage.”  That is, the being of an object or idea should be defined by the way in which in works, or interrelates, with other objects.  This ontology is one of change, movement, and dynamism.  An example of this conception might be elucidated by the image of a bicycle.  If one was confronted with a new group of people who had no knowledge of bicycles then how would he explain the object to these people?  A common Western method would be to caricature the appearance of a bicycle.  According to a Platonic schema this should be quite sufficient.  Upon beholding the picture of a bicycle the neophytes would make an “intuitive” comparison between this bicycle and “the bicycle” of the Ideal world and immediately insight would follow ignorance.  However, performing this thought experiment one will probably come to the more realistic case that these new people wouldn’t understand what a bicycle is simply by its image.  To really learn what a bicycle is people must not be educated in the Platonic sense of the word, but rather, the object must be demonstrated.  The following quote elucidates this stance:

Evidently in a world the arche, or origin, of which, however intelligible, is not stationary but itself in flux, the mode of knowledge... is not going to be that of gazing upon or contemplating an object which is stationary and changeless.  That conception of knowledge was set out in detail by Plato in his discussions of the Ideas, or Forms. 1

 According to this, an object becomes “real” only when it performs its use; in an important way it ceases to exist when it is static.  Without usage, a bicycle could never be understood.  This, incidentally, is why Heidegger so intimately conjoined being with time: for a bicycle to be understood through usage, be it in the real world or an imaginary world, the bicycle must be used along some span of time.  A bicycle can’t move-thus come to exist-unless it performs in a temporal reality.  Back to the matter at hand, how does this relate to free will?

Free will comes to be only when it is used.  One can’t define an agent as being free or not free, an agent is both at different times.  When an individual stops at a corner, considers whether to turn right or left, defines his motives for doing each, and then acts he, at that moment, is a free agent.  On the other hand, when the same individual walks down the street, one foot after the other, going straight ahead, then for that moment he is determined: he is either not thinking about what he is doing or strictly following a preordained pattern or habit.  Once again he may jump into the existence of freedom by amending his course at any time.  The point is that man exists   as a free agent from moment to moment; for an eyeblink he is free and at a heartbeat he is yet again but a cog in a clockwork universe.

Using this ontology strange things come to be.  For instance, man through thought alone can become “freer.”  He can also, by choice, let himself live more of his life according to patterns and trends thus lessening his own ability to will.  One might object to this statement, surely if he chooses to follow these patterns then that again proves that he is a free agent.  This objection is mistaken, however, because it is regressing to the more ingrained ontology of either/or.  Truly implementing Heidegger’s ontology means that the individual is periodically existing as a willing being and not existing as a willing being at different points in time.

The debate between free will and determinism often creates confusion in the mind of the listener.  Deep down, issuing forth from an intuitive well-spring, comes a revolt against determinism, or rather, to be more equitable, a realization that both free will and determinism are true to some degree.  The philosophers’ snapshot of human agency is flawed: it attempts to understand man in a vacuum, motionless, timeless, and lifeless.  Nietzsche addresses the fundament of man’s intuition: “...intuitive thinking embraces two things: one, the present many-colored and changing world that crowds in upon us in all our experiences, and two, the conditions which alone make any experience of this world possible: time and space.”2  Taking man’s existence and intuition into account, the free will versus determinism argument becomes revitalized from its academic desiccation.

Despite the employment of Heidegger’s ontology and an awareness of plurality, the free will versus determinism argument will always remain somewhat of an enigma.  Its polarized battling has too long been the subject of myth and legend; a belief in God summons the recurring primordial question of man’s agency in an orderly universe.  Truly, just how can man’s unpredictable presence exist in a rational reality?  To this question, perhaps no philosophic change can occur.  Some things will always be mysteries.

Works Cited

1Hyland, Drew. The Origins of Philosophy. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1973.

2Nietzsche, Friedrich.  Trans. Marianne Cowan.  Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.  Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1962.