One of the most haunting bits of writing among the philosophical texts on free will and determinism, are these paragraphs from Schopenhauer:

Let’s imagine a person, who, standing in the street, says to himself: It is 6pm. The day’s work is done. I can now go for a walk, or I can go to the club, I can climb the tower to see the sunset, I can also go to the theatre, I can go to visit this friend, or also that other friend, yes, I can walk out of the gate into the wide world and never return. All of that is solely up to me, I have full freedom to do any of it, however I’ll do none of that now. Instead, I shall, equally voluntarily, go home to my wife. That is as if water were to say: I can make high waves (yes! in the sea when there’s a storm), I can rush downhill (yes! in the bed of a stream), I can throw myself downwards frothing and bubbling (yes! in a waterfall), I can shoot up into the air (yes! in a fountain), finally, I can boil up completely and disappear (yes, at 80º heat), however I will do none of these things, but will stay voluntarily still and clear in the reflecting pond. As the water can do any of those things only when the determining causes come into effect for one or the other; in the same way, that person can do, what he thinks he can do, no differently, than under the same condition.

I say it’s haunting because we are always that person standing in the street imagining that we could choose to do any number of things. And yet, when we reflect, we can’t see that we can escape causality. Schopenhauer tells us that human beings are prone to assert that we can do as we will. He reminds us that this is purely a statement about physical freedom, not about freedom of the will. In his formula: we can do as we will, but we can’t will as we will. We can execute our decision or choice to act in a certain way, but we can’t choose which way that decision goes in the first place. The content of our will is at any time given by motives, facts about ourselves (our character, thoughts, feelings, what we perceive) and facts about the world (the way other things are).

While the image of the person in the street much-quoted and famous, we are less frequently reminded that Schopenhauer goes back to his person in the street a couple of pages later:

If we return to that example of the person deliberating at six o’clock and imagine that he now notices that I’m standing behind him philosophising about him and denying his freedom to all of those potential actions; so it could easily happen that he, in order to prove me wrong, might execute one of them: then, however, my very denial and its effect on his contrary spirit would have been the necessary motive to that action. However, that motive could only ever move him to one or the other of the easier actions mentioned above, for example to go to the theatre; but never to wander out into the wide world: for that the motive would be too weak.

This is interesting. We can imagine the man on the street having this kind of conversation with Schopenhauer.

“You said yourself that I acted differently because I spotted you and wanted to prove you wrong.”

“Differently, yes, but not more freely. Having bumped into me and reacted to our meeting is exactly how you would expect a mechanism of determinism to work. And I’m not flattering myself that it’s personal to me. Any encounter can be such a mechanism of determinism in that it can change your motives and make you act in certain ways.”

“Agreed, and in future I wouldn’t need you to stand behind me in the street, observing me, commenting on my deliberations in that way. It will suffice for me in future deliberations to adopt the motive to prove that I have freedom of will and disprove determinism, to have the same effect. If I do that, the whole course of my life will be different from the way it would otherwise have been, had I not adopted that motive.”

“That is true. But again, that is exactly how the mechanisms of determinism work. Encounters with influential others, relationships, engagement with powerful concepts: of course they shape the way our lives go. They determine how they go. There’s something I always find slightly amusing about that, by the way, in that it doesn’t even matter if someone is conforming to someone else’s expectations or rebelling against them. The rebel does them the honour of allowing himself to be determined to the same degree as the conformist – the conformist in one direction, the rebel in the other.”

“That may be true, but in my encounter with you, I was not so much looking to follow you or rebel against you personally, and we didn’t engage with just any concept. It is the engagement with the concept of freedom of the will specifically which had the effect of changing my course of action.”

“Yes, you wanted to prove your freedom of the will, and so you changed your plan. But you didn’t prove your freedom, you just allowed yourself to be determined by a different and stronger motive. I assume your motives for going home to your wife were about spending time with your loved one, but also your comfort and routine. Now you’ve chosen to do something else, because the motive of proving your freedom was stronger. But, you know, you can never prove yourself to be free by allowing yourself to be determined by a motive.”

“Yes, you guessed that to disprove you I would go to the theatre instead. You thought that my new motive – to prove you wrong – would not be strong enough for me to walk away from my life as I know it.”

“Exactly so, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, but doesn’t it strike you as meaningful that I didn’t just give myself up to complete randomness?”

“In what way meaningful?”

“Well, the most obvious way to prove our freedom of the will might have been to do something completely extreme and random. But then we would have fallen into the old trap of refuting determinism by gaining only an unattractive notion of freedom of the will that would entail chaos and randomness. That wouldn’t be a freedom of the will worth having.”

“True. Because there is no such freedom of the will available.”

“Nonetheless, I revised my plan under the motive of proving my freedom. In allowing you to add that motive to the set of motives motivating us, our lives changed.”

“But not in a way that proves that you have freedom of the will.”

“You say so, but I already feel a bit freer by having chosen to go to the theatre. I called my wife, by the way, and and also the two friends you mentioned and persuaded them to come too.”

“Yes, yes, they must have thought you very spontaneous, less predictable than they thought you were, less prone to sticking to your daily routine, more adventurous I grant you, but no less determined.”

“Ah, but that’s the point. I think a little bit less determined…”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe there was something in what you said… When you said ‘no less determined,’ it made me think that maybe it is a question of degree, not just a binary issue between freedom of the will and determinism.

In deliberating about our courses of action, we obviously consider a finite number of options and have a finite number of motives acting upon us. As you said, we won’t just wander out into the wide world and leave all our commitments and relationships behind on the slightest provocation. But where it would be reasonable and justifiable to do either of a number of things, say to go to the theatre or to go home, an added reason to do something other than go home (say if we were asked to prove that we can revise our plan) could suddenly make us go the other way. Maybe when we’re challenged to think again, when we’re given an additional reason to consider, when in the light of that reason we think again and we revise our course of action, maybe we should say that this increased our freedom a little bit.

You are fond of saying that we can ‘do what we will, but not will what we will.’ But in the first instance maybe we don’t even always do what we consciously will. Maybe sometimes we act habitually without thinking, almost as if on auto-pilot. So if we actually do what we will, rather than just do what we always do, that is an important increase in freedom, though I guess you would say only of physical freedom, not freedom of the will.

And let’s say that you’re right in claiming that we can’t ‘will what we will.’ You would argue that this is because motives that are given act on our character that is given, resulting in action that is given. But you caused me to reconsider what I should do with my evening. You added a motive into the situation (the motive to prove you wrong about freedom of the will) and it changed my course of action. You’ll say that it was already in my character to want to prove you wrong, so nothing new happened there. But maybe that openness to consider another motive, maybe the willingness to engage with your reasoning, maybe the possibility of considering new reasons, after my decision to go home had already been made, maybe they open up a little bit of space that we should call a greater freedom of the will.

Anyway, it’s time for me to go. The play is about to begin. Do you want to join us?”

“Erm, no thanks. I think I’ll just go home.”

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