Is any existing human language a general purpose tool that can deal with all raw materials and produce all possible objects of utility and beauty? Can any existing human language deal with reality as we discover more about the world around us and even more about what lies inside of us? Is there any possible human language that could be such a general purpose tool? I’ll not discuss the second question though I’ve adopted the Thomistic position that the human mind is — in principle — the sort of entity that can fully understand the universe, which I anachronistically but plausibly take as the Einsteinian Universe. That implies there must be such a possibility as a human language with the power to deal with all contingencies in this universe and much of the possibilities of Creation in a more general sense. But I wish to speak of actual human minds and actual human languages.
More specifically, I wish to speak about the term ‘free-will’ which, in common usage, refers mostly to the decision-making process of a modern consumer and not much at all to more important and more complex decision-making processes. We have moral freedom which we can exercise in more important matters but it’s an intentional sort. That sort of freedom allows us turn, even bend our being — body and mind and soul, towards a goal or an object, towards a person or a Person. But there are various complications there, such as the need to be able to conceive of a particular goal before we can see it as such. Human freedom can’t be used to move towards the God of Jesus Christ if we have no conception that the Almighty Creator exists, though we might wander vaguely in that direction so long as we have the concept of a God who is both transcendental and immanent, a God who is all-powerful and all-knowing. This very discussion provides an analogy to that situation. After all, I have only a partial and possibly defective concept corresponding to ‘moral freedom of an intentional sort’ and I’m moving towards some sort of a description and analysis of this piece of a concept.
Here’s one way to view the problem I’m bringing into the light: a species with the free-will of an autonomous agent would act with more decisiveness than is wise in a world of uncertainty. Free-will might well be dangerous, and maybe impossible, unless united to all-powerfulness and omniscience. This introduction of practical or utilitarian concerns into a moral discussion is not a problem to a Christian who truly believes we live in the Creation of an all-powerful and all-knowing God. So-called ideals and so-called utilitarian concerns will melt together when all is said and done. Even in the short-run, utilitarian concerns will sometimes better get us to truly moral results. To adhere dogmatically to ideals will often serve a self-destructive fanaticism rather than helping us to obtain the goods God wishes for His creatures, just because our ideals are always formulated by our mortal selves and implemented by our sinful selves.
I’m already using the techniques of negative theology in this analysis of moral issues. On my way to some understanding of what human moral freedom is, I’m first saying what isn’t. It isn’t free-will of the sort considered by modern economists or philosophers when they posit an autonomous agent, a strangely bloodless entity that stands free of his own biological nature, of his family and culture, of his Maker, as he makes decisions in the way of an idealized computer, a pure logical analysis machine.
We’re biological creatures and don’t even know the full range of possibilities open to us, nor do we understand fully the consequences or results of particular decisions. We aren’t like God Who has a true free-will because He can make random numbers and act in a truly random way. If He couldn’t do this, we would not exist. A random-number, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, is a number so free of patterns that the shortest way to describe it is to list it out, digit-by-digit. It takes an absolutely infinite mind to create a random-number because all digits have to be held in mind at once and a still larger number of potential relationships have to be checked that no patterns occur. A random-number seems impossible to create, from a creaturely perspective.
Yet, it turns out that, in a measure-theoretic sense, all numbers are random. Numbers with patterns, such as 0.33333… or 1/3, have a probability of zero — as does any well-ordered Creation. An absolutely infinite mind turned to the task of generating numbers would never produce any number we could hold in mind, any number that would be involved in our day-to-day transactions or even most physical processes. (There is a possible exception in some of the constants of physical forces, which govern events at a basic level, might be truly random. However, those constants, if truly random, can never be fully described by man — they are in the realm of God’s mind. As I noted in my book, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, those constants might be a great mystery, a manifestation of the absolutely infinite in a universe which could only be — at most — of a relatively low magnitude of infinity in spatial and temporal extension.)
It would require an absolutely infinite mind and an absolutely free will to create something from nothing, as well as a Being who exists in and of Himself. Any given Creation is impossible, that is, it occupies a vanishingly small volume of the space of possibilities. From a more empirical viewpoint, it’s also true that the probability of the configuration of this universe at the time of the so-called Big Bang was very small, not 0 in the same sense as the probability of Creation or a random number, but very small. That doesn’t really add to or detract from the first point: to make a truly random number or a particular Creation requires a Being of absolutely infinite mind and absolutely free will.
I’ve stumbled towards a description of true free-will using the analogical method of Catholic tradition. That description implies that man cannot have any such faculty — on his own. Elsewhere I would argue that we can share in God’s free-will by the seemingly paradoxical route of surrendering our freedom to Christ. As we become part of His Body, we share in the life of God in general, including His absolute freedom, corresponding somehow to ‘free-will’.
We don’t share directly in God’s true freedom in this mortal life, but we can learn some small measure of freedom by intending some result on a very tentative basis. We don’t even understand what is good when we first set out to be God-centered human beings or perhaps godless virtuous pagans. How can we freely will what we know not? In all likelihood, most of us would be frightened away if we understood what would happen to us if we were to follow through on a re-formation into virtuous creatures. The adolescent George Washington set himself the goal of becoming a man of absolutely unimpeachable public honor partly because he wished to be honored by his fellow citizens of Virginia. Would he have done so if he could have foreseen he would would be one of the most hated men in American history as he was leaving the second term of his Presidency? True, he was once again honored once he was no longer in the position of bothering his fellow-citizens with demands that they act in an honorable way, say, towards the Amerinds then clustered in a fairly dense way on the west banks of the Mississippi river, dense enough that they had a chance to form a free-standing nation?
Would John Henry Newman have set out on his exploration of the early Christian Church if he’d foreseen his discoveries would force him to return to Rome and to leave his beloved Church of England? Would Julius Caesar have been so generous and so forgiving if he’d foreseen that the recipients of that generosity would turn on him and assassinate him?
That last one could be instructive because it shows a little of what I see very dimly as a possibility for describing human moral freedom. Caesar struck out blindly on a road which might have brought some peace to Rome after the collapse into an Empire — which he didn’t cause but certainly used to his advantage. He moved with some moral freedom towards a vaguely seen goal, trying to shape his very goal as he moved. How can we speak of freely willing a result if we don’t even know what that result truly is?
In fact, most moral decisions in this world are of two types:
1. Decisions best and most effectively made by habit and not by mental or emotional exertion. When my grandfather, a Chief of Police, found a box filled with cash in the shack of a dead hermit, he simply turned it in to the probate court, not even making a decision about the matter. It wasn’t his money, and though he had been the hermit’s only friend, the law and his special duties, simply didn’t give him a choice. There was no free-will involved and he was surprised that others thought he’d even made a decision in the matter. Encouraging so-called free-will in clear-cut cases wastes energy and invites trouble for no good reason.
2. Decisions made by walking boldly, or with great trepidation, into the darkness. These are cases where we do not and could not make a decision clear-cut enough that true free-will would be involved. Like Caesar trying to restore some degree of peace and harmony to a fallen Rome, we intend some result and hope that result to be good. Often we don’t even have a clear intention of a result because the human mind can’t perceive the future to even see most possibilities. Worse still, we live in a world where unique events do happen. How can we foresee a type of event which lies beyond our current understanding of our universe?
We need new ways to talk and think about our limited but real freedom. For now, I’m in a mode similar to that of the negative theologians — I’m saying what human moral freedom is not just as they started by saying what God is not. From there, the great theologians, such as Augustine and Aquinas, begin to speak in a more positive way, typically using analogical reasoning.
In the same way, we can stumble towards an understanding of our moral freedom, which we can’t understand fully without knowing the context of our lives — which we can’t know until our resurrection if we are so blessed. But we can understand some of the context of our lives and I’ll move on in my next entry to speak of man the dependent, rational animal as Alasdair MacIntyre described our species in a book titled, “Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues”.
Basically we need the virtues, as I understand them, for a reason I already discussed a little: we can’t foresee the future or the results of our actions and we need to have those actions guided by rules formed into habits. This is not to say the process is mechanical, nor — as we can see with George Washington and Julius Caesar — does it exclude attempts to peer into the future.
Perhaps MacIntyre is right that the future of moral philosophy, and all disciplines drawing upon its insights, will include a turn away from modern understandings of moral nature and moral decision-making and a return to the virtue-based thought of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. Most of all, Aquinas.
A more complete moral understanding is a ways off but I’ll try to move on to speak a little about the context of the human being, which context partially defines and forms the human being. And so we’ll speak stutteringly about human nature in general. In doing so, I’ll be nudging American English in a direction where we can speak and think more clearly about moral issues including human moral nature and human moral duties.