The belief in man's elevation over the animals is under assault in the West. Denial of free will -- and with it the possibility of morality -- is central to that attack. If man does not possess the freedom to choose, he is no more morally culpable for his actions than a lion for eating its prey. At the end of the day, he is just another animal whose actions are determined by his instincts.
Writing recently in The New York Times, Dennis Overbye takes off from his inability to resist molten chocolate cakes on the dessert menu to consider a "bevy of experiments in recent years suggest-[ing] that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions. . . frantically making up stories about being in control."
Mark Hallett, a neurological researcher, informs Overbye that free will is nothing more than an illusion, a sense that people have. Philosophy professor Michael Silberstein points out that all physical systems that have been investigated turn out to be either deterministic or random. Either alternative is inconsistent with free will.
Many find it convenient to use the compulsion defense to avoid the moral censure of their own conscience or of others.
Hallett is right that no one consistently experiences life as lacking all choice -- even Overbye could resist the chocolate cake if the reward were great enough or the punishment immediate enough. Many, however, find it convenient from time to time to use the compulsion defense to avoid the moral censure of their own conscience or of others. ("The heart wants what it wants," said Woody Allen of his affair with his lover's 17-year-old adopted daughter.)
Life without the sense "that things are really being decided from one moment to another and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages before," wrote William James, would lose all its "sting and excitement."
The Torah identifies the act of moral choice with life itself: "I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and curse; choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19). True life is to be able to choose the blessing over the curse. Isaac Bashevis Singer got it right when he told an interviewer that free choice is humanity's "greatest gift," a gift that itself makes life worth living.
DIFFERENT THAN ANIMAL
Fortunately, those who treasure their sense of themselves as choosing beings need not concede that our choices are illusory or that man is nothing more than an animal driven by instinct. Man differs in myriad ways from every member of the animal kingdom. Only man can imagine a variety of future possibilities and guide his actions in accord with those imagined futures.
Hans Jonas points out in Tool, Image, and Grave: On What is Beyond the Animal in Man three ways in which man is distinguished from animals. Only man designs tools to achieve particular purposes. Only man creates physical images to recall past events or to contemplate future possibilities. And only man buries his dead, and is moved by a lifeless form to contemplate something beyond the physical universe. "Metaphysics arises from graves," Jonas informs us.
Nor can the workings of the mind be reduced to the rules of the physical universe, or the mind conflated with the electrical impulses of the brain. The laws of the physical universe, of which Prof. Silberstein speaks, allow us to predict future events. There can be no parallel charting of a human life. What, for instance, would be the parallel in the laws of the physical universe to the phenomenon of the ba'al teshuva (returnee to Judaism) -- someone who has chosen a life at odds with his entire education and upbringing?
In his Laws of Repentance, Maimonides describes an act of complete repentance: "He had forbidden relations with a woman, and after a period of time, he finds himself alone with her. His love for her is unabated; he is undiminished in his physical capacities... Yet he separates himself and does not sin." Everything remains the same, except for the choice of the actor involved. Who has not experienced a comparable internal struggle and, hopefully, a similar triumph?
"You deny free will because you are in fact unfree; you have enslaved yourselves to the evil within you."
None of this is to argue that the range of our choice is unlimited. Each of us is a product of his education. And each of us is born with a unique personality, as any parent of more than one child knows. Nor is the exercise of our choice random. If people did not find themselves repeating familiar behavioral patterns, no one would ever go to a therapist.
Finally, the human mind is not a tabula rasa, as Chomsky's work on linguistic structures and Piaget's on the stages of moral reasoning demonstrates. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert shows in Stumbling on Happiness all the ways that we make systematic mistakes when we project ourselves into the future.
In his Discourse on Free Will, Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler describes how the area of free will differs for each and every person, based on education and other factors, and how it shifts constantly. It is only possible to speak of the exercise of free will, he writes, at that point where a person's apprehension of the truth, i.e., what is right, is in perfect equipoise with a countervailing desire. Precisely at that point, nothing besides the person himself determines the outcome.
Rabbi Dessler employs the spatial metaphor of a battlefield to capture the process. The point at which the battle is joined is the point of free will. Behind the battle line is captured territory -- the area where a person feels no temptation to do other than what he perceives as right. And behind the enemy lines are all those areas in which a person does not yet have the ability to choose.
The battlefront moves constantly. With every victory -- every choice to do what is right -- a person advances. And he retreats with every defeat. Pharaoh provides the paradigm of the latter. By repeatedly hardening his heart, he finally lost the capacity to exercise his free will.
In a contemporary context, Rabbi Dessler remarked that those who deny the possibility of free will do so because by failing to develop their own will power through the positive exercise of their free will they have lost their freedom.
"You deny free will because you are in fact unfree; you have enslaved yourselves to the evil within you."
(12) benyomin, September 27, 2020 8:50 AM
You got Chomsky wrong.
Chomsky was adamant that we are not born a tabula rasa. That was his whole argument with Skinner and the other behaviorists. You would be better to use examples like John Locke and Freud. Otherwise, good article.
(11) Allan Koven, September 13, 2011 2:24 AM
Free will...anthropormorphic
God is outside time and space. He is all-knowing and creates all things. How could our reality exist without God?
(10) Peter, May 12, 2010 10:57 PM
responding to Kingreol (#9)
You say: "give me a real description of "choice" WITHOUT influence from anything (world and divine)." Disinformation could not exist without choice. Fraud could not exist without choice. No one could lie without choice. Every man has the ability to choose, to express choice and this ability is a reality, but this reality exists only inside brain, inside consciousness, in other words the reality which allows choice is divorced from the physical reality which is the universe, etc. Thusly, two realities are proven. Surely, if there were no choice there could be no evil. When the lion kills the gazelle, there is no evil because the lion has no choice, the lion can not be the gazelle. Brain and consciousness is automatic, it is a direct function of genetics. What is not automatic is literacy because every man must choose for himself to become literate, to learn a language, to learn knowledge and information. Every man is a tabula rasa, is an empty vessel at birth and he will remain that way unless he acts positively, directly and proactively to add information to his brain. Brain is hard wired in such a way that almost instantly brain can "see" the opposite of any argument or data: therefore this is NOT choice. What is choice is the communication of a lie all the while masquerading as truth, couched in the language of truth. The buck must stop somewhere when it comes to the invention of disinformation and fraud because, clearly, disinformation and fraud do not exist in physical reality, in the universe. There is no "fake" sun, no fake biomass. There are no "illegal" chemical reactions. Men clearly have a choice as to what they want to or not want to learn, what CONTENT they put into their brains. Otherwise we are all preprogrammed robots and none of us could pass the Turing Test.
(9) kingreol, June 4, 2009 4:04 PM
i believe freewill does not exsist. our choices are guided. freewill says that our choice is guided bye ourselfs. its not our choice that matters, its why we made that choice thats infact linear. a million to the millionth power helped guide that choice. lets say if computers where not invented. that whould of changed the whole outcome of society, and your choices in life whould be completely different. but because computers where invented our choice remains the same, same is true if the nuke was not dropped. a million butterfly effects. can you mathimatically tell me how freewill exsists. give me a real description of "choice" WITHOUT influence from anything (world and divine) and you might have me a believer in freewill. for its my belief we are slaves to EVERY event in the past. basicly disprove chaos theory and a linear timeline and you will have freewill.
(8) Isaac K, February 25, 2007 8:33 AM
in response to the OTHER Anonymous
"People are a product of their genes and environment. Where is the free will?"
Fact is, in the Jewish system, free will MUST exist. Consider the eleventh of the Maimonidean Principles: That Hashem bestows good upon those who observe the Torah, and bad upon those who violate it.
If a person cannot control his own actions, how can he be punished? It is purely impossible. Jewish law has a categorical term for someone who is forced into a particular action: Oneis (also, this is the same term for rape).
If a person is punished for action that they are incapable of choosing, you basically have created a system where God becomes a rather perverted sadist.
It is specifically BECAUSE it is against his genes, heritage, and everything else in his life that the ger (and ba'al teshuvah) is praised. We as humans are generally not BORN with the capacity of "seeking truth," we are only born with the desire to seek "good." But good, ultimately, only exists where you CHOOSE to use experience as a tool towards positive, Godly growth.
(7) Dvirah, February 6, 2007 11:36 AM
Reply to Anonymous, 2/4/2007 2:32:00 PM
One's personality, like one's muscles, is suseptible to development. One can, by use of the proper discipline (proper to the outcome one desires), strengthen or moderate specific personality traits. If one thought about what kind of person one really wanted to be, and followed the discipline that lead to this, one would in time become that person. Not by introducing unnatural traits but by refining the natural.
Remember, you are more than you may think you are. All people carry potentially all possible traits; the difference is in proportion. That difference is partly innate and partly molded by one's experience of life. But to great extent one can choose what one experiences - because the essential experience is internal: not what happened but how you view what happened. So one can choose one experiences so as to mold one's personality. It takes great awareness and do not expect it to be easy, but it is very worthwhile. So the person who developes openess to new ideas will be open to Truth, while the one who shuts his/her mind will not recognize Truth. But truth is also a personal thing, so be careful not to judge hastily. Even yourself.
(6) Cathy, February 5, 2007 3:14 PM
Choice throughout the ages
The paradigm of Moses (the Israelites) and Pharaoh (Egypt) keeps repeating itself throughout history on all levels of our existence - on a global scale, on a societal scale, and on a personal level as well. We can choose to align ourselves with the Light, face our own "Sea of Reeds" and break through to the land of Canaan, or we can opt to live a life of darkness and enslavement in exchange for whatever "comforts" such a life can give us.
(5) Ari, February 5, 2007 12:59 AM
Freedom to do the right thing
"The only freedom anyone has is to do what he ought to, because he WANTS to"(author unknown but it should be the summary of Torah).
It sums up the ultimate balance between G-d's sovereingty and our own. Either we have a heart (like David) that knows and loves to embrace truth as contained in Torah, and do good, (with the determined discipline to so act) or one is sold out to error, lies, and negative or evil behavior which enslaves them.
Ari
PS if you would please share this following, with the author of the other comment re unhappy marriage.
I lived that choice and divorced.
In retrospect, Had I been the man I should have, not thinking of self, I would not have done so. I too thought the conflict was worse on the children than a split. I was wrong. Had I been a stronger man, understanding more fully the male responsibility as the priest of the home, I would have done whatever was necessary to be patient, supportive, encouraging, faithful and dutiful to not only my Ketuba but the G-d given role and gifts given man.
Bitterness, emotional disfiguration, estrangement, and loss are the only fruit of my divorce.
Much better would have been helping, encouraging, self-LESSly doing my utmost would have elevated the outcome.
We do not have to live Hosea's example, but it is apparently the degree of loyalty and steadfastness our Creator's prefers.
I had free will and I and my family are worse off for my poor decision.
If I could repeat that decision I would do whatever was necessary to stay and make better all that I could.
Even if the circumstances are beyond trying and tough, the scars of divorce will be deep and affect subsequent generations and our own lives negatively.
Exceptions may be in order for extreme abuse, criminality or violence, but that is not the more common, "no-fault" consideration of most divorces today.
My wisdom came at the expense of much pain. May yours be a lighter cost, because you "do the right thing."
(4) Anonymous, February 4, 2007 2:32 PM
People are a product of their genes and environment. Where is the free will? The Baal Teshuva chooses to return to Judaism because G-d gave her the personality to seek truth and do what is right. Others were not born with that personality. So when either type of person confronts Judaism, the former chooses it while the latter doesn't. It's not free will. They were born that way. Can anyone refute this?
(3) Char, February 4, 2007 1:20 PM
Free Will against the odds
To anynomous caught up in a bad situation. You do have free will. You have the free will to tell the abuser that his behavior is not acceptable. You have the free will to stand up for yourself and your children. You have the free will to do what you just did -- reach out to others. Unfotunately, you are not alone. There are rabbis, therapists, counselors, doctors, another person who is willing to help you and your children, and even the abuser. You have to find out why he is abusing you. Insecurity, low self-esteem, a marriage he absolutely does not want, or he thinks he doesn't want. There are people who can help you get through it, who can help lessen the pain. The fact that you can acknowledge there is a problem is an expression of your free will. Take your free will to the next level and reach out to another person -- a rabbi, doctor, therapist -- find someone who will listen and give you sound alternatives -- try to get the abuser involved -- but you make the first step yourself -- don't wait for the abuser to do it. You have the free will to change it within the relationship and if it is not possible, to get out of that relationship. Don't let the children be an excuse, but a reason to change your environment -- within, but if it's not possible, then to step out of that environment -- for the sake of the children. Let them see free will does exist -- for their sakes' as well as your own. And for the abuser's sake. He needs a wake-up call. We'll be praying for you and yours.
(2) Jeffrey A. Pomykala, February 4, 2007 12:24 PM
To Anonymous, 2-4-07 -- Choices
Anonymous, I hear where you are coming from, as I, too, was in a very bad marriage with a woman who had "issues" to say the least. But, I did knowingly choose that route of my own free will. I thought I was strong enough - that I cold help her. It took me 12 years of hell before I came to realize I couldn't help her. I've been out of that marriage for a year, and it will be many many years before I can say (if ever) that I am healed.
with all this hell going on!"
Had we had children, though, I would have left a decade ago. There is NO way I would allow any child of mine to go through what I have had to go through. I, a 42 year old man, am scarred!! Would I put a child through that, too??
It sounds as though you are feeling that you have no choices - that, due to children, and percieved "obligations", you are trying to make the marriage "work" -- for the children. If your experience is only HALF as bad as mine has been, I would say: make the freewill choice and work towards getting out now - FOR THE CHILDREN!! I don't know your situation, but if there is real psychological and physical abuse - GET OUT -- for the children. Once out, your EX-spouse would still have the freewill choice to "get better" as a human and reconciliation might be possible. Your leaving could even be the "trigger" that might HELP them realize they need to change destructive behavior. If they choose to continue their "stuff", you (and your children) are at least free from the negativity, and can grow and blossom.
The last few years of my marriage was really me coming to my freewill choice to get out...because, really, for all the hell and drama and trauma, well - we humans get used to things - prefering the "devil we know" to the unknown. And we also can use them as excuses for not making our own choices. "Oh, poor me! if I wasn't in such a terrible marriage I could (fill in the blank)". Truth is - we're afraid...because if we leave that drama/trauma - we have no more excuses.
Now, my marriage included police and paramedics coming to the home, sometimes many many times in a month, and psychiatrists and "programs" by the dozens. One of her "things" (besides being an extreme alcoholic) was to blame me for everything - falsely accuse me of the most awful, mailicious things - all the while she was hurting and abusing me. Suffice it to say I was vindicated every single time! She grew up in a "traumatic" childhood, in an abusive home - It's all she knew. So, it's what she gave. [[which is why I say get your children OUT!]] Even though I was always vindicated and everyone does now know the depths of her issues, the "system" didn't stop doing it's thing to me. I am just a male after all - if a woman accuses - I MUST be guilty! Abuse of husbands by wives (which is a double-digit percentage in the "abused" category) is just never talked about. Not only are us men abused by our spouse, we're often looked down at by society - and then there's that "system" that also may abuse us in it's blindness and false presuppositions.
You have plenty of freewill, Anonymous - every second of the day.
Truth is, we all are where we are today and who we are, due to our own individual choices in freewill - no matter the "external factors" that surround us all, and that we often use as "excuses" for not trying - at anything.... Do we learn and grow, all the stronger and wiser for our trials and tribulations? Or do we stick with the easier "oh, poor me! ~ how can I do
Our freewill choices do ripple out and touch the world around us, and when the inevitable repercussions (both good and bad) ripple back to us, we again can freely choose a response.
I must say, it is easier to make choices that have positive repercussions if we strive to understand and obey G-d. That takes study and contemplation of His words and ways.
I wish you well in you journey, Anonymous.
May there be true peace in Israel, soon.
(1) Anonymous, February 4, 2007 9:13 AM
we are connected to this universe that there is no free will.
i don't understand how free will can be different from choices that we make. i am in a very bad marriage. many times because of my children have tried to stay in the marriage but by doing so i am being destroyed in a way that sometimes i feel my soul is getting away from me. times and times i have to remind myself of the reasons i am letting myself to go through all this agony. but then i think of me as another human being and i wonder how much this person within me can take. i tell myself there has to be a reason for me to be where sometimes feel like hell and i ask g-d to help me to graduate and learn my lesson and make it easier on this person inside my body.however there are times i can not bear it and act the way i normally would act. free will? is it for me to stay and take it all in me or free myself of this agony. we make choices based on our strength and upbringing. what is free will for me when my life is connected to so many people. the way some of us raise our kids there is no real person by itself there to make choices for her or himself but there is someone there
connected to this universe already in a way that choices already have been made, so how much free will exist i have no idea.