Free Will and St. Augustine: Liberum Arbitrium

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words, "Man can indeed
do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants," accompany me in
all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others,
even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free
will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and
judging individuals, and from losing good humor. Albert
Einstein 1932.

A great deal of my free-pondering time has been devoted to the question of free will. I know this may not seem a question that matters in every day life, but I think it does. If there is no free will, the criminal justice system is founded on a false premise. If no one, when we look hard enough, acts intentionally or knowingly, but only as they must based on determinism, there is no basis for the mens rea that is usually required for punishment. Punishment itself is undermined. The whole federal guideline scheme based on "just deserts" is wrong. Criminal defense work apart, rejection of free will impacts how we interact with other folks in day to day life.

An anonymous comment to my last blog on "free will" refers to a Catholic Encyclopedia entry that affirms "free will." I take this response seriously. A great deal of my understanding of "free will" comes from Augustine, Aquinas and other Scholastics, and Pascal. However, I am persuaded none of these would embrace the modern concept of "free will" as we use the term and as we wield the term, as if it were a bludgeon, to kill our fellows. I say this in a quite literal since; a juror to whom I spoke after the verdict, justified his decision to kill with the term "free will."

The usual translation of "LIBERUM ARBITRIUM" into English is "free will." However, when Augustine writes of liberum arbitrium, he describes something very different from the excuse we today use to imprison and execute each other in the penal system. Augustine discusses liberum arbitrium in the Book V of "The City of God." Augustine leaves no doubt that the will or power of God determines everything in the world and that God knows what the future will be before hand. Augustine even reconciles himself with those who call it "fate." "If anyone attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language."

Augustine discusses the twins, Esau and Jacob, to show that astrology cannot be true. (My translation calls the astrologists "mathematicians.") They were born at the same time, but had completely different predetermined lives. Our question though is why one son was loved by his mother (and God), and the other was not, and whether either Esau or Jacob had any control over the outcome of their lives?

Augustine tells of those who believe in determinism, that is, those who believe those who believe fate is "the whole connection and train of causes which makes everything become what it does become" are not in disagreement with him, but merely in a verbal controversy, "since they attribute the s0-called order and connection of causes to the will and power of God most high, who is mostly rightly and most truly believed to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordained...."

Augustine qoutes verses of Annaeus Seneca, "The Fates do lead the man that follows willing: But the man that is unwilling, him they drag."

So then, if "the order and connection of causes" leaves nothing unordained, what room is there for Augustine for this thing, Liberum Arbitrium? To begin with, this word "will" which in Latin is "voluntas" and not "arbitrium" should probably be "decision" or "judgment" or "discernment." (Look at the franciscan-archive. org linked under the title).

God's will is something different, but in the Augustine writings regarding man, substitute the word "decision" for "will."

God creates the will of man. Augustine, says, "In His supreme will resides the power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not granting it to others."

And, "Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should have...."

Our decisions are ruled by necessity, according to Augustine. "But if we define necessity to be that according to which we say that it is necessary that anything be of such or such a nature, or be done in such and such a manner, I know not why we should have any dread of that necessity taking away the freedom of our will."

So, I don't believe Augustine or the Church embrace what we today call "free will." Pascal devotes "Provincial Letters" to this argument and makes it much better than I can.

Thoughts About Free Will

The first exposure I had to the determinism-free will discussion was in elementary school when we attended the Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen, Texas. The argument was if God knows everything and is all-powerful, he knows ahead of time what we will do and he made us that way, so we can't really be making choices. Differently put, no one really chooses the next step in life if it has already been decided by an omnipotent, omniscient God.

As a little boy, intuitively, I thought I was making choices, but I also had a strong sense I was being tossed around by powers far greater than me.

Although Baptists tend to believe in Free Will, there has long been a Calvinist contingent among the Baptists:
"...the earliest Baptists were not Calvinists, even though they had their beginnings in a Calvinistic environment. It was a quarter of a century before Calvinist views appeared in Baptist life. Even then, for a considerable period of time there were two different groups of Baptists in England, General Baptists (non-Calvinistic) and Particular Baptists (Calvinistic). Later (1891) the two groups merged, but many congregations on both sides were suspicious of the merger and remained separate. In America, the first Baptist church (FBC of Providence, Rhode Island) had both Calvinists and non-Calvinists in its membership."

The big issue is whether God picked those who were going to hell and those going to heaven before birth.

We are long since Catholic converts, but that does not really resolve the issue, even though the Catechism now state,

"Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts."

The anti-Calvinist protestants accuse Calvin of having cribbed from the Catholic St. Augustine for a reliance on determinism. And The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (cited in the link) discusses the issue as far from settled. I discussed Pascal's falling out of favor with the powers of his day because of a Catholic belief in determinism.

Mostly now, people talk about biological and psychological determinism, but I think it is largely the same discussion as God's determinism.

My first exposure to this type of determinism was when I read Walden Two by B.F. Skinner when I was still in High School. I kept the intuition that I was making free choices, but I could not find an strong argument against Skinner's determinism.

In the decades since, I have seen little evidence that people have choice in life. At most, we have an illusion that we are making a choice, but that choice is determined by prior causes. Recently, I read Living Without Free Will by Derk Pereboom. He makes the case for "Hard Determinism" and "Hard Incompatibilism." That is, factors beyond our control produce all of our actions and this fact is incompatible with a belief we are praiseworthy or blameworthy for our actions.

If this is true (and Pereboom argues it as scientific fact), the implications for life and society are huge. For starters, it demonstrates our criminal justice system is based on a false premise.

Free Will and Determinism

I have been chewing on the idea of "free will" since I had a conversation with Mark Bennett last month. An abridged version of Mark's argument is presented in one of his blog postings: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2008/07/congratulations.html#comments

Mark raised the issue of Free Will and my initial response was to agree with him that there is none. Of course, as is my wont, pondering the question, I have waivered back and forth a dozen times. I can't decide if I have the power to decide if I have free will. Oh well.

I first resolved this issue in my mind in high school. I read Skinner's Walden Two and was persuaded that we become what we are because of heredity and environment.

I think I have been especially tolerant of other's foibles as a result of this view, but I am open to the possibility that I wanted to set the bar low for forgiveness for my own foibles. In this case, the philosophy would have followed the personal need, which of course would say less about the truth of the philosophy than the nature of the believer.

Other beliefs I have held, though at some times to me the pellucid truth at other times seem only a convenient justification for my shortcomings. I have often doubted the existence of hell, but was this because I could not face the prospects of finding myself there? I have long had socialistic tendencies, but has this arisen because of a suspicion that I have no knack for making money?

Anyway, determinism (at least by heredity and environment) has had its appeal for me. It helped me love people I was supposed to love although they were severely damaged human beings. It let me off the hook on my own damage.

My problem with determinism of the heredity and environment type is it appears to have lot in common with determinism of the Calvanistic, God has chosen us but not you people, type.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church endorses free will:

1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good."7

But the teaching of the Church seem to be more complex than this. As I recall my muddled reading of Augustine, he rejected free will. And I have previously written about Pascal's dispute with the Jesuits in which Pascal defends something very much like determinism.

Lord, why have you not blessed me with the environment and heredity to give me a better mind to figure this out? Or even prearranged environment and heredity would keep my friends who understand this better than I do alive and healthy and nearby, so they can explain it to me?

Mark Bennett says,

I’d like to congratulate the lawyers who prosecute, and the judges who sentence them, for the “choices” that they’ve made that put them at the top and my clients at the bottom. . . . and, for that matter, anyone else who is smugly self-righteous about his lot in life.

Generally, he views the determinists as tolerant and the free will crowd as intolerant. I'm not sure this is true. Even winning the argument that heredity and environment has put us where we are, what is to keep the winners in society from fighting to hold that position?