Free Will and Brute Facts

The question is sometimes raised of whether free will means embracing brute facts (often in relation to why one choice was made instead of another).

There is much to be said about this, including whether contrastive explanations are within the scope the principle of sufficient reason. Many philosophers argue against this, saying, for example, that while the PSR must account for Why P? it does not need to account for Why P rather than R?

However, I will say something different.

Most of these issues (if not all of them) can be resolved once we get the metaphysics of will straight. Pay attention: It is not that the will is determined by some finite motive; rather, is it the POWER of the will to make efficacious some finite motive. Motives, as finite, which do not determine me, I can determine to make determining, because that is just what it means to have a “free” will – namely, a will that is by necessity determined to the good as such (namely, God) but has the power to select among any non-determining finite goods along the way.

Further, to select something as befitting is not brute, precisely because it is done for a particular rationale. Rationale is a source of intelligibility: i.e., I chose the chocolate ice cream rather than the vanilla because I favored the reason – that is, made efficacious the motive – that chocolate is richer than vanilla (even if vanilla is sweeter), and that is perfectly satisfactory in terms of explanation, even though I could just as well have favored vanilla. Hence why we are typically not unsatisfied when people respond, “He made that choice of his own free will.”

We can say something analogous of God. God is by nature necessitated to will the good as such (in this case, his own essence). However, beyond that, God is free to choose whether to bring some world into existence or not. That he chose a world is based upon some rationale and that choice is not brute for the reasons mentioned above. To argue against this is to (however subtly) beg the question.

The person to read on this is Yves Simon.