An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

[SECTION V.]

OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF REGARDING VOLITION AS AN EFFECT.

It has been frequently conceded that a volition is an effect; but to make this concession, without explanation or qualification, is to surrender the whole cause of free agency into the hand of the enemy. For if a volition is an effect, properly speaking, the only question is as to its efficient cause: it is necessarily produced by its cause.

To make this matter clear, let us consider what is precisely meant by the term cause when it is thus used? An effect is necessarily connected, not with the thing which is sometimes called its cause, but with the action or positive influence of that thing. Thus, the mind, or the power of the mind, is sometimes said to be the cause of motion in the body; but this is not to speak with philosophical precision. No motion of the body is necessarily connected, either with the mind itself, or with the power of the mind. In other words, if these should lie dormant, or fail to act, they would produce no bodily motion. But let the mind act, or will a particular motion, and the body will necessarily move in consequence of that action. Hence, it is neither with the mind, nor with the power of the mind, that bodily motion, as an effect, is necessarily connected; it is with an act of the mind or volition that this necessary connection subsists. A cause is said to imply its effect: it is not the mind, but an act of the mind, that implies motion in the body.

This is evidently the idea of Edwards, when he says, as he frequently does, that an effect is necessarily connected with the influence or action of its cause. The term cause is ambiguous; and when he says, that an effect is necessarily connected with its cause, he should be understood to mean, in accordance with his own doctrine, that the cause referred to is the influence or action by which it is produced, and not the thing which exerts that influence or action. Thus, although motives are said to be causes of action, he contends, they can do nothing except by their influence; and so much as results from their influence is the effect of that influence, and is necessarily connected with it.

Now, if a volition is an effect, if it has an efficient cause, what is that cause? By the action of what is it produced? It cannot be by the act of the mind, says Edwards, because the mind can produce an effect only by another act. Thus, on the supposition in question, we cannot ascribe a volition to the mind as its cause, without being compelled to admit that it results from a preceding act of the mind. But that preceding act, on the same supposition, will require still another preceding act to account for its production; and so on ad infinitum. Such is the absurdity which Edwards delighted to urge against the self-determining power of the mind. It is triumphantly based on the concession that a volition is an effect; that as such the prior action of something else is necessary to account for its existence. And if we suppose, in accordance with the truth, that a volition is merely a state of the mind, which does not sustain the same relation to the mind that an effect does to its efficient cause, this absurdity will vanish. The doctrine of liberty will no longer be encumbered with it.

Now, proceeding on the same supposition, let us conceive of a volition as resulting from the influence exerted by motive. If an act of the mind is an effect, surely we may say, that the act or productive influence of motive, or of any thing else, is likewise an effect; and consequently must have a cause to account for its existence; and so on ad infinitum. Hence, the very absurdity which Edwards charges upon our system, really attaches to his own.

Will it be said that this ad infinitum absurdity does not result from the supposition in question, but from the fact that the mind can do nothing except by its action or influence? It is very true, as Edwards repeatedly declares, that the mind can be the cause of no effect, except by a preceding act of the mind. The truth of this proposition is involved in the very idea which he attaches to the term effect, and it is based upon this idea alone. And we may say, with equal propriety, that motive can be the cause of no effect, except by its action or productive influence. Indeed, Edwards himself expressly says, that motives can do nothing, except by an exertion of their influence, or by operating to produce effects. Thus, the two cases are rendered perfectly parallel; and afford the same foundation on which to erect an infinite series of causes.

To evade this, can it be pretended, that motive just exerts this influence of itself? May we not with equal, nay, with infinitely greater propriety, contend that mind just exerts its own positive influence of itself? Or, will it be said, that it is a mistake, to suppose that Edwards ascribed any real, productive, or causal influence to motives; that he regarded them as the occasions on which the mind acts, and not properly as the causes of its action? If so, then the whole scheme of moral necessity is abandoned, and the doctrine of liberty is left to stand upon its own foundation, in the undisputed evidence of consciousness.

The truth is, if we take it for granted, that a volition is an effect, properly so called, and as such must proceed from the prior action of something else, we cannot escape the ad infinitum, absurdity of the Inquiry. If we rise from this platform, we cannot possibly ascend in any direction, without entering upon an infinite series of causes. Whether we ascend through the self-determining power of the mind, or through the determining power of motives, or through the joint action of both, we can save ourselves from such an absurd consequence only by a glaring act of inconsistency. Hence, we are forced back upon the conclusion that action may, and actually does arise in the world of mind, without any efficient or producing cause of its existence, without resulting from the prior action of any thing whatever. Any other hypothesis is involved in absurdity.