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Wednesday, February 1, 2023

WJ on free will

""I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life," James wrote in his diary on April 30, 1870. "I finished Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—' the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts'—need be the definition of an illusion."

Against the prevailing winds of nineteenth-century deterministic philosophers, Renouvier reasserted metaphysical liberty, declaring that each of us "could break the logical continuity of a mechanical series and be the initial cause of another series of phenomena." James, taking up Renouvier's declaration, declared his own new independence: "My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."

James's will, newly freed, could begin the world again, and his life again… His sick soul was now twice-born, though as with most births, nothing's easy. "This cannot possibly be real.… Surely this freedom and joy are at best a fluke. At worst, it is a sure sign that things have gotten worse—that I'm completely delusional." The fear and trembling, the working out of salvation, grip us again and again; we interpret even our joy as, somehow, its opposite.

But Renouvier's declaration kept James aloft… Maybe life is worth living; there is a choice about it, every time the question is asked. Likewise, when it comes to believing a claim on little to no evidence (not, mind you, a claim counter to the evidence), yet a claim vital to one's flourishing, James argues in "The Will to Believe" that there is a chasm requiring a choice: leap across (believe) or freeze (suspend judgment). Both are choices. In James's oxymoron, this is a "forced option," a forced choice. The belief in free will is just such a forced choice. Philosophically, the case is inconclusive, though the stakes are profound. It is an open question.

Over this abyss, Renouvier forced James to choose, asking, "Are you free?" James, frozen for so long, leapt out, sprung forward, and asserted "I am." After his Renouvier moment in the 1870s, James turned in earnest to his studies, first to human physiology, then to psychology, finally to philosophy and religion. He had discovered his will, and now he was determined to put it to good use.

He spent the next decade of his life exploring the relationship between free will, activity, cognition, and emotions. The result of this extensive study was the Principles of Psychology, published in 1890, which is widely regarded as the greatest achievement in empirical psychology in the United States in the nineteenth century, and arguably ever."

— Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James by William James
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