[III.]
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST A SELF-DETERMINING AND CONTINGENT WILL.
Edwards’s first and great argument against a self-determining will, is given in part II. sec. 1, of his work, and is as follows:
The will,—or the soul, or man, by the faculty of willing, effects every thing within its power as a cause, by acts of choice. “The will determines which way the hands and feet shall move, by an act of choice; and there is no other way of the will’s determining, directing, or commanding any thing at all.” Hence, if the will determines itself, it does it by an act of choice; “and if it has itself under its command, and determines itself in its own actions, it doubtless does it in the same way that it determines other things which are under its command.” But if the will determines its choice by its choice, then of course we have an infinite series of choices, or we have a first choice which is not determined by a choice,—“which brings us directly to a contradiction; for it supposes an act of the will preceding the first act in the whole train, directing and determining the rest; or a free act of the will before the first free act of the will: or else we must come at last to an act of the will determining the consequent acts, wherein the will is not self-determined, and so is not a free act, in this notion of freedom.” (p. 43.)
This reasoning, and all that follows in the attempt to meet various evasions, as Edwards terms them, of the advocates of a self-determining will, depend mainly upon the assumption, that if the will determines itself, it must determine itself by an act of choice; that is, inasmuch as those acts of the will, or of the soul, considered in its power of willing, or in its personal activity, by which effects are produced out of the activity or will itself, are produced by acts of choice, for example, walking and talking, rising up and sitting down: therefore, if the soul, in the power of willing, cause volitions, it must cause them by volitions. The causative act by which the soul causes volitions, must itself be a volition. This assumption Edwards does not even attempt to sustain, but takes for granted that it is of unquestionable validity. If the assumption be of unquestionable validity, then his position is impregnable; for nothing can be more palpably absurd than the will determining volitions by volitions, in an interminable series.
Before directly meeting the assumption, I remark, that if it be valid, it is fatal to all causality. Will is simply cause; volition is effect. I affirm that the will is the sole and adequate cause of volition. Edwards replies: if will is the cause of volition, then, to cause it, it must put forth a causative act; but the only act of will is volition itself: hence if it cause its own volitions, it must cause them by volitions.
Now take any other cause: there must be some effect which according to the general views of men stands directly connected with it as its effect. The effect is called the phenomenon, or that by which the cause manifests itself. But how does the cause produce the phenomenon? By a causative act:—but this causative act, according to Edwards’s reasoning, must itself be an effect or phenomenon. Then this effect comes between the cause, and what was at first considered the immediate effect but the effect in question must likewise be caused by a causative act; and this causative act, again, being an effect, must have another causative act before it; and so on, ad infinitum. We have here then an infinite series of causative acts—an absurdity of the same kind, with an infinite series of volitions.
It follows from this, that there can be no cause whatever. An infinite series of causative acts, without any first, being, according to this reasoning, the consequence of supposing a cause to cause its own acts, it must therefore follow, that a cause does not cause its own acts, but that they must be caused by some cause out of the cause. But the cause out of the cause which causes the causative acts in question, must cause these causative acts in the other cause by a causative act of its own:—but the same difficulties occur in relation to the second cause as in relation to the first; it cannot cause its own acts, and they must therefore be caused out of itself by some other cause; and so on, ad infinitum. We have here again the absurdity of an infinite series of causative acts; and also, the absurdity of an infinite series of causes without a first cause. Otherwise, we must come to a first cause which causes its own acts, without an act of causation; but this is impossible, according to the reasoning of Edwards. As, therefore, there cannot be a cause causing its own acts, and inasmuch as the denial of this leads to the absurdities above mentioned, we are driven to the conclusion, that there is no cause whatever. Every cause must either cause its own acts, or its acts must be caused out of itself. Neither of these is possible; therefore, there is no cause.
Take the will itself as an illustration of this last consequence. The will is cause; the volition, effect. But the will does not cause its own volition; the volition is caused by the motive. But the motive, as a cause, must put forth a causative act in the production of a volition. If the motive determine the will, then there must be an act of the motive to determine the will. To determine, to cause, is to do, is to act. But what determines the act of the motive determining the act of the will or volition If it determine its own act, or cause its own act, then it must do this by a previous act, according to the principle of this reasoning; and this again by another previous act; and so on, ad infinitum.
Take any other cause, and the reasoning must be the same.