A Defense of Libertarian Free Will

Currently reading: A Zen Life: D. T. Suzuki Remembered by Masao Abe, ed.

So, I figured that I need to do more than simply reading this summer and start writing. Hopefully, I can get out a good enough paper to send off to grad schools after a few months of editing. At any rate, I'll start posting bits of what I'm working on here on the off chance that someone has sources to direct me to, or on the good chance that my logic is flawed.

What I'm working on first is a defense of libertarian free will (LFW), based largely on Scotus' thought. I've been thinking on and off about this for some time, so I'd like to try ironing it out. I will differentiate between the formal and material aspects of my proposal. On the one hand, under LFW the will must (at least sometimes, this can be highly qualified) be able to do otherwise than it does in order to be free. On the other hand, critics of LFW often point out that simply having more choices doesn't make one free. I'd like to incorporate both insights here: the principle of alternate possiblites (PAP) is necessary for freedom but not what actually constitutes said freedom.

The first step is to show why LFW cannot be explained rationally. This unexplainability further I believe can be rationally shown. This would make it simply a brute fact. I further will look at Scotus' notion of superabundance to further specify what sort of indeterminacy the will has, but again this cannot truly explain the matter.

To start trying to get an idea of what the will is, it is helpful to look at cases in which the will is used. This will form the content of free will, or at least suggest it. I will look at Scotus' ethics and the place of harmony in it, Scotus' differentiation between the affection for justice and the affection for the advantageous, and the way in which Scotus incorporates elements of virtue ethics. In all of these there will be places that simply cannot be fully rationally explained (otherwise, the point above would be contradicted), but which can point to places in experience where we can get an impression of how the will works.

In the end, I do not have a argument to prove LFW, merely a defense that it is not open to charges that are routinely brought against it. I do not think it unreasonable to expect that some things cannot be rationally analyzed, nor do I find it objectionable that a philosophical concept should be grounded in experience. Once these two principles are accepted (and I intend to provide some support for them), there is room for some understanding of LFW.

Thesis (Again) and Tutoring

I may actually have a thesis topic. For real this time. I think I've become almost embarrassed to state that at this point. However, I have reason to believe that this time, it might really stick. Why? Because it's not my idea. I finally gave up my own intellectual ramblings which were leading nowhere; the only topics which I could have come up with that were any good would have required a reader who will be on sabbatical next Fall. So, taking the advice of Uncle Win (I believe I did this for my senior paper too), I simply asked my adviser for something that he was interested in. He said that he didn't have any specific research projects of his own going on right now, but that a thesis on D. T. Suzuki may be interesting. He then proceeded to email me a bunch of resources for the topic. Given that someone who knows more about the topic than I do thinks that it would work, and it sounds interesting, I think I'll stick with it. I really have no reason not to at this point.

Some of you may be asking who D. T. Suzuki is. He's the guy who is more or less responsible for bringing Zen to the West. As such, he's also been a pretty important influence on American conceptions of religion and spirituality in general. The thesis would focus on Suzuki's contextualization of Zen (though I don't know yet what specific angle to take, whether Suzuki's own historical context and how that influenced him, the modifications he made, or differences with mainstream Japanese and Chinese Zen/Chan Buddhism). There have even been some scholars who have questioned the status of Zen as a form of Buddhism, which runs directly counter to Suzuki's claims that Zen is going right back to the founder himself. So there's a lot of material to work with.

In other news, I have been signed up with my first student to tutor. I'm slightly apprehensive; I've always been a bit shy, and this job will force me to go out and have to deal with people. On the phone, even (I despise phones). Oh well; it's good money doing something that I generally like doing which will be of use to someone, and who can ask for more from a job than that?

Ninjas. And zombies. On Mars.

I'm procrastinating before going to training for work today and taking the ACT (btw, I'm now a tutor for StudySmart in the Chicago area, teaching math and test prep), so here are the fruits of my labor for everyone else's head-shaking. It is the start of an epic poem which may very well go down in history (at least speaking in terms of logical possibility):

Now hearken to a tale of times gone by
Of harsh yet glorious days of battle won
Of robot ninjas at the dawn of time
Ninjutsu and lasers, by the shrunken sun
This war, you see, was fought upon the soil
Where feet of man had never trod till now
The ground soaked through from all their bloody toil
A crimson red from werewolf zombie cows
Ninja airships, bovine tanks, and more
Strove eagerly to prove themselves in war
Where lycanthrope and metal spirits soar

Understanding

Currently reading: The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

Understanding is a form of love. I don't mean pure, disinterested intellection, but rather an inward knowing; knowing that may issue forth rational knowledge but sometimes can only show forth as the vagueness of a soft, light mist. I think this is in the end why I've never gotten fully into modern philosophy; it seems to remove this aspect of understanding, settling for a mere, objective account of what there is, and thus displaying a certain hollowness. Maybe this is how Scotus accounts for theology as a practical science.

More importantly than that, however, is that I think this may be an insight into what it is to know and love God. We see God work throughout Scripture, and in particular we see Jesus in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. Jesus said that whoever has seen him, has seen the Father. I doubt that this plumbs the depths of that statement, but could part of this be that through seeing Jesus' life, through understanding him in the gospels, through learning what matters to God through the actions of his Son, and through our own imitation of Christ, through these we find what it means to know and love God? This seems to tie together the words of Jesus at the Last Supper in John's gospel. While we're at it, maybe this is a key to understanding the Eastern idea of theosis.

Of course, upon writing it down, it's probably the case that I'm the last person to notice this. Darn head seems to keep getting in the way.

Anger as Distraction

Anger so often seems to be a way out of inner struggles. It is a way of shifting blame sometimes; but even when it is over a real issue, it can be a mask, a protective guard. To be angry (barring situations of appropriate, righteous anger) is to not have to face ones inner fears. It is a defiance of reality instead of an acceptance of the sometimes harsh and absurd nature of things. For that reason, it is often a lack of faith that God really will come and be with one in ones loneliness.

And thus it is with my feelings towards people so often, in particular concerning the faith. I'm not going to say that there aren't very real issues. However, I too often lash out, even if most of the time only mentally, because it gets my mind off of the reason why I'm frustrated; I am lonely, I don't fit it in for various reasons that are not likely to change anytime in the near future if at all, I have to take on the responsibility for learning that which I should have gotten from the larger community, I reject the foundational beliefs of the society in which I live, I live in almost constant contradictions between what I believe, what I can reason, and what I experience. Anger doesn't solve any of these problems, and in most cases a more appropriate response would be compassion and an attempt to understand those who I see misunderstanding others. Anger keeps me from actually trusting God through the situations, from letting the pain be used to teach me that which I've been too stubborn and proud to know. And who wants useless pain?

Tied to that, it's been freeing going through a study of Ecclesiastes; I realize that everything that I can do is hebel, absurd/meaningless/vanity, and knowing myself I cannot help ruining it in any case. So I guess there's nothing to do but let God bring some good out of the mess that is me.

Ok, I figure that I might as well write that for someone to listen to, as I probably won't come tomorrow morning.

Frustration

Not that I've completely solved the issues from the last post, but I think I've narrowed down some of my problems with Evangelical use of Scripture a bit. It's not merely that I see so many bad presentations; everyone ought to be able to read Scripture, and I need to have faith in God that God can help anyone get the important parts out of it (though I still am struggling over the issue of how exactly God has proposed to get this knowledge across). I think the problem lies more in the fact that as soon as people open the Bible, they assume that they are fully competent teachers on everything, despite protestations to the contrary. Distressingly, I even find this in seminary, where so many would-be pastors simply want to be told what to think so that they can get their bit of paper and go tend to a flock. I wonder if this has anything to do with general trends in America (probably elsewhere too, this is just where I have experience) to not really think too hard about anything, but to form a hard and fast opinion about everything.

This particularly frustrates me when I go to someone from whom I should be able to get advice and am told more or less to stop thinking about things and be more "optimistic" (which as far as I can tell means forming opinions quickly enough that one can manufacture peace and telling oneself that the world is basically good in all ways so that one can manufacture joy, since meaning in life really comes from the same things for the Christian as for the atheist). And despite protests about their own simplicity and down-to-earthness, they proceed to judge everything under the sun, putting everything they don't understand "man's wisdom" and everything they think understand under "God's wisdom."

Ok, </rant>. You can all go back to your own regularly scheduled programming.

Edit: Maybe I should put down some clarifications. I am not attacking te Evangelical movement as a whole, I know that there are better characterizations that what I present and there are many Evangelicals whom I admire. Unfortunately, at this point most of these whom I admire are in academia, which is also the main place where I hear the good presentations of what it means to be Evangelical. I'm just really struggling with the fact that while Christianity is first and foremost for those who are not wise by worldly standards, etc., I mainly see fruits of it among the learned, or at least those educated in basic theology in one way or another (and that fruit includes love as well as wisdom, though of course not all the learned have either). It almost seems to promote willful misunderstanding of others for the average person in the churches, as well as complicity with everything society does with the exception of abortion, gay marriage, and evolutionary teaching. This isn't how it is in all churches, but in enough that it is a problem.

Edit #2: Not that anyone will most likely read this now, but I figured that I should take a couple more things into consideration with my rant. I think some of the poorer churches that I've seen have displayed a great deal of love, despite lack of education.