The door was locked anyway
But does that abrogate free will?
John Locke suddenly wakes up at 4am one morning with a brilliant idea. He’d like to get up and go to his study, but he knows that his landlady (who is probably inclined to application rather than theory) is a light sleeper and always complaining about his nocturnal activities. But he realises that in order to mollify his landlady, he can deal with it in the morning and being, in fact, rather comfortable, he goes back to sleep.
By the next morning, though, he’s forgotten what his idea was and is rather annoyed. But he did choose to go back to sleep and simply has to accept the outcome of his decision.
But here’s the twist. His landlady actually locked the door to prevent him from roaming around at night so that even if he had got up, he couldn’t have reached the study.
Locke thinks he made a free decision, but did he?
Whether Locke knew the door was locked or not, I’d say that he did make a free decision because he could’ve chosen to get out of bed and try the door only then to find it was locked and, instead of bringing a charge of false imprisonment against his landlady, he could then have chosen to freely accept her reason for locking the door. But whether the door was locked or not, he made his decision.
Like Locke, I make many (or perhaps all) decisions in ignorance of all the relevant factors because I assume that there will be no impediments to my undertaking. But if I know there’s some impediment, then my choices will be different. I assume, though, that there is some impetus behind our choices, which makes any free decision less free than it might seem. I went to the shop just before because I wanted to buy something to drink as part of the lunchtime ritual. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to. I have orange juice at home and I’m not that thirsty. I’m a little bored with drinking Coke. On the other hand, I wanted to assess the clemency of the day (quite pleasant) and ultimately I needed to put my bike back in the bike shed because I’d had it inside for want of anywhere to park it out of the rain last night now that Mr Gatekeeper is locking the door to the bike shed somewhat earlier than he used to. All these factors guided my decision in one way or another.
I don’t see any of them as being particularly constraining. It’s only when circumstance forces me to make an unjustified choice that I’d rather not take that I’d regard some decision as truly unfree. That’s when I tend to get migraines.
By the next morning, though, he’s forgotten what his idea was and is rather annoyed. But he did choose to go back to sleep and simply has to accept the outcome of his decision.
But here’s the twist. His landlady actually locked the door to prevent him from roaming around at night so that even if he had got up, he couldn’t have reached the study.
Locke thinks he made a free decision, but did he?
Whether Locke knew the door was locked or not, I’d say that he did make a free decision because he could’ve chosen to get out of bed and try the door only then to find it was locked and, instead of bringing a charge of false imprisonment against his landlady, he could then have chosen to freely accept her reason for locking the door. But whether the door was locked or not, he made his decision.
Like Locke, I make many (or perhaps all) decisions in ignorance of all the relevant factors because I assume that there will be no impediments to my undertaking. But if I know there’s some impediment, then my choices will be different. I assume, though, that there is some impetus behind our choices, which makes any free decision less free than it might seem. I went to the shop just before because I wanted to buy something to drink as part of the lunchtime ritual. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to. I have orange juice at home and I’m not that thirsty. I’m a little bored with drinking Coke. On the other hand, I wanted to assess the clemency of the day (quite pleasant) and ultimately I needed to put my bike back in the bike shed because I’d had it inside for want of anywhere to park it out of the rain last night now that Mr Gatekeeper is locking the door to the bike shed somewhat earlier than he used to. All these factors guided my decision in one way or another.
I don’t see any of them as being particularly constraining. It’s only when circumstance forces me to make an unjustified choice that I’d rather not take that I’d regard some decision as truly unfree. That’s when I tend to get migraines.
Unlike the classical Cassandra, the people believe the predictions made by tomorrow’s Cassandra.
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