![]() ![]() All we can say is that it is he who is making the choice, but we must grant that this is incomprehensible. Because we cut off the past so that we can assure pure freedom, we cannot ask “he makes a choice based on what?” If we did, we’d be looking to the past, and that is where the causes live. Liberated from the shackles of prior causes and not being subject to chance, he makes a free choice. It cuts off the causal chains of nature and culture and has the person start fresh. Think about the implications of the hard libertarian view that free will is an uncaused cause. ![]() If it can be said that the evildoer freely chooses evil, without being coerced or conditioned, then the evil choice is truly his, and we can (freely) proceed to wreak vengeance. The clinging to the doctrine of free will justifies and rationalizes punishment. Why did they choose evil? They didn't have to! In contrast, evildoers are strangled with the doctrine of free will. Interestingly, and in direct opposition to the doctrine of free will, many rescuers and lifesavers maintain that they did not have a subjective experience of choice-that instead they simply did what needed to be done. It is rarer to claim that a person who did good could have freely chosen to do bad. They find it even easier to assert that others could have acted differently, especially when what they did do was destructive or despicable. People feel that they have a choice in many behavioral matters, and after they did one thing, they often remain convinced they could have done the other. It has become a cliché to say that virtually all humans believe in free will, indeed that they can’t help but believe in free will, which is in odd contraposition to the doctrine itself. Of these, the doctrine of free will is the most pernicious (and most readily encountered in the self-satisfied person see epigraph). People love their shortcuts-brief, off-the-shelf statements that sound like explanations but aren’t. What they find is complex and attention spans are short (another finding). This is because psychological and other behavioral sciences study the causal networks of the natural and the cultural world. Psychological science has much to say about the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of the perpetrators, the victims, the politicians, the pundits on TV, and the rest of us. ![]()
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