11 - Will

Summary

In chapter 9, the will was said to play a prominent – a pre-eminent – role in our cognitive lives, underlying virtually all concept formation. It was briefly mentioned there that because of this function the will also plays a vital role in our emotional lives – in our psychological wellbeing and in our psychological ill-being. In this chapter, I wish to expand on those claims, both because the issues are intrinsically interesting and because, by doing so, the place of the will in Scientific Cartesianism will be clarified. These ends are best achieved in considering some familiar problems of the will.

1. The problem of free will has been a vexing one. It is one of those philosophical problems where even trying to state it clearly has proved taxing, and often unconvincing. And it is a problem where none of the proposed solutions – hard determinism, soft determinism (compatibilism), indeterminism – may seem satisfactory. Each may seem to be mistaken on some issue or to overlook important data to be accounted for. Yet, despite the problem's being difficult to state, there really does seem to be a problem. Indeed, many would describe the situation introspectively, not merely by saying that we feel that there is a problem, but that we feel the very problem itself.

I believe there is at least a partial solution to the free will problem, or at least that one solution is more reasonable than the others and can be arrived at by understanding salient facts about how human beings form concepts.