Volition and influence

Volition and influence
Volition, or freewill, is causality by an unmoved mover[1], meaning a self-moving entity, something moving literally by itself, without being immediately forced or indirectly programmed to do so either by a complete causative or by natural spontaneity (or by another unmoved mover). An event occurring through volition has a cause – namely, the agent of that volition, i.e. the entity that freely willed the event. The cause of an act of will (or volitional act) is not any thought or property of the agent; but the agent personally. Moreover, it is not ‘the will’ that wills: it is the agent that wills. The term ‘willing’ (or volition) refers to the causal relation between the agent and the internal or external product (effect) of his act of will; it does not refer to the cause or to the effect being thus related[2]. Note that the term ‘spontaneity’, when used in the context of volition, refers to willing without purpose (i.e. without any influence for or against – see more on that below).
Under a mechanical regime, of causation and/or (if that exists) of natural spontaneity, a static thing can completely cause another static thing or partially cause a dynamic thing, and a dynamic effect can only emerge from a complete or partial dynamic cause, or from no cause at all. Not so under the non-mechanistic regime of volition; here, a relatively static source (the willing agent) produces a dynamic result (certain willed movements or changes and static phenomena emerging from such movements or changes). This is one important differentia of volition from causation and natural spontaneity, although the agent can well also be said to be in part, but not only, a necessary causative of its volitions (since without that particular agent those particular volitions would not occur), and human spontaneity does have some resemblance to natural spontaneity (although the causelessness involved is of a different sort).
Another important differentia is that the agent of volition is free of determination in its (or his or her) act of will: it is an unmoved mover within the limits of the specific powers of self-movement granted by its nature. Volition means freewill; there is no such thing as volition without freedom of the will. To be precise, in volitional acts, it is not the will that is free, but the agent of the will who is free. But this should not be taken to imply that the agent’s freedom is unlimited; volition (at least that of humans and animals) is always circumscribed by some natural and circumstantial bounds.
Freedom of the will means that nothing can directly or indirectly force the agent to perform or not-perform its will (given that it has the requisite power in the specific case at hand); willing is thus markedly different from deterministic causality (causation). Willing also differs from natural spontaneity in that the former involves an agent whereas the latter does not (‘Nature’ is not literally an agent, even though we often speak of it as if it were, thus reifying it). This does not mean that the agent is never subject to overwhelming force, whether through causation or natural spontaneity; it means that when and where the agent is evidently literally overpowered to do or not-do something, what results is not volition but mechanical action.
To be sure, volition does not imply unlimited freedom. The agent of volition is usually if not always subject to varying degrees of influence. An influence is something whose cognition by the agent makes the agent’s act of will easier or harder at the time concerned; that is my definition of influence. Consciousness is central to it, note well. Without this concept of influence, we cannot understand and accept the concept of freedom of the will, in view of the evidence that we are indeed ‘affected’ by things in us and around us when we will. Together with causation, natural spontaneity and volition, influence is one of the four distinct, irreducible, and complementary types of causality.
There are many sorts of influence: all sorts of external objects; bodily events, states or sensations; mental events, states or emotions; memories, imaginations, abstract thoughts, rational decisions, ethical doctrines, and so forth. Note that the concept of influence includes, but is wider than, that of purpose. The thought of a certain goal influences the agent to perform a certain action by means of will – in that sense, Aristotle’s ‘final cause’ is actually a sort of ‘efficient cause’, though more specifically (note well) in the sense of influence. But objects of consciousness other than goals can also influence volitions.
An agent can also, it seems, engage in acts of will that are devoid of teleology, i.e. devoid of the influence that a goal or motive or desire or aversion constitutes; this refers to will that is not only free, but also spontaneous. We call this impulsiveness or caprice. Although this is conceivable, and apparently occurs occasionally, most volition occurs under many influences, pro and con.
An influence is never determining, note well; but it can make things so extremely easy or hard that it seems almost determining. Influence implies a probability of occurrence or non-occurrence. For this reason, we can somewhat predict human behavior, with reference to group statistics. Such predictions cannot be certain, but they can be indicative. However, if the putative influence is found to be literally 100% facilitating or impeding, it cannot be called an influence, but must be regarded as a complete causative, a determining cause. Influences are necessarily, by definition, less than 100% effective.
Influence, also note well, occurs through consciousness of an object (of any sort) by the subject (agent). If consciousness is not involved, i.e. if the object referred to as an influence affects the observed result without having been cognized to some degree by the subject, the putative influence cannot be so called, and the observed result cannot be said to have occurred through volition – it was deterministically caused.
Many people have doubts concerning the possibility of volition because they have not understood the nature of influence and so tend to confuse it with determinism. They think that the will cannot be free if it is influenced; they think influences are determining, i.e. that they are causatives. Though an influence might be viewed as a partial cause of a willed effect, next to the agent, the power of the influence is necessarily through the consciousness of the agent, taking the influencing object into consideration (wanting it, not wanting it, fearing it, hoping for it, being informed by it, being misled by it, etc.).
Influences motivate, by subjective attraction or repulsion, but the agent remains free to choose in spite of them. The influence does not literally drive the agent to act or not-act in a certain way, but only affects the agent’s decision-making by making this choice easier or that one more difficult, i.e. by modifying the subjective effort involved in the act of will. The influence merely increases or diminishes the effort that a choice involves, for this agent, at this time. If the agent musters the effort needed to overcome all contrary influence, he exercises volition, whether successfully producing the intended result or not.
But the agent can also remain will-less in the face of contrary influences; in such an event we must conclude that he did not have the willpower needed to go this way or that, effectively letting things happen however they fell without his interference. Such inertia based on indecisiveness may be characterized as weakness of will, because the inaction is effectively acceptance of the easiest course of events. Passivity is a choice of sorts, one that many of us often make. Note that wishing is not willing – one may want something, wish for it to happen, but do nothing to make it happen.
There are many categories of influence. An important one of these is instinct. An instinct is a genetically programmed preference, presumably resulting from evolution, which in principle favors the survival and health of the individual organism or of its species, though in particular cases or circumstances it might have contrary effects. Instinct is not antithetical to volition: it does not literally force a certain behavior on the organism, but strongly influences the direction of its choices, providing it with a ‘default’ almost automatic first choice, without however making other choices impossible if they are willed. Emotions (be they gut feelings or more subtle mental phenomena) have instinctive influences; for example, fear may generate fight or flight or impotent freezing in place. Personal habits, on the other hand, are acquired influences, not instinctive ones; still, they affect behavior strongly and are difficult though not impossible to overcome like instincts.
For human beings, another important category of influence is reason. This refers to thoughtful deliberation on courses of action, with consideration of ways and means and their possible consequences, with some appeal to experience and some use of logic, but also some influence by emotion, usually with attention to certain principles personally or socially taken for granted. Context of knowledge – intuitive, perceptual, and conceptual – has a strong influence on rational decision making. Social influences play a big role in the behavior of people (especially the young), of course. There are the influences of the family and immediate entourage, but also nowadays strong influences from society at large through schooling and the various media (written or visual and auditive), which are often politically motivated.
Evidently, different individuals respond to these various influences to different degrees, and the same individual may respond differently at different times. Some people are more instinctive, some more emotional, some more subject to habit, some more rational, some more scientific, some more mystical, some more poetic, some more influenced by family or some other segment of society, and so forth. Some, less. Men and women, adults and youths, seniors and children, people of different educational levels, cultural frameworks, or periods of history, and so forth, display different behavior patterns, broadly speaking. Much depends on each person’s natural endowments, his or her innate physical and psychological facilities and constraints, notably the degree of intelligence. Also, of course, different animal species respond to influential stimuli differently. Obviously, humans are more rationally inclined, other animal species more instinctive. All such differences can be established through empirical statistical studies.
In any case, to repeat, instinct is not contradictory to free will; it influences choices but does not determine them. Humans, though largely moved by free will, also have instincts. Most mothers and fathers have parental instincts, though some occasionally willfully hurt or kill their children. Our instinct is to preserve our health, but some people choose to smoke tobacco or drink much alcohol or use psychotropic drugs. And so on.
I believe that all animals, including even insects, have both free will and instincts, though to vastly different degrees than we do. They are not robots, they have souls of sorts, since they evidently have cognitive and volitional powers, and appetites and aversions. Anyone who has owned a dog or cat, or has had extended contact with any other species of animal, knows that to be obvious. Of course, animals are much more instinctive and less free than we are, but they also display some ability to move with other motivations. A cat can befriend a pet bird in the same household, for instance. At the lower end of the animal spectrum, while a fly is undoubtedly mostly moving in accord with its instinctive behavior patterns, and has very little free will, almost none, nevertheless, it can be assumed to have just enough to choose to move this way or that for no particular reason (it has to move in some direction eventually, but which direction it moves in is not given it).
What sort of thing is an agent of will? We know of the existence of will through personal introspective observation, i.e. intuition; and also through things relatively external to the agent, namely perception of mental or physical events and by subsequent conceptual means. I know I will; I know when I will and when I don’t will; I know what I will or don’t will; I very often, but not always, know why I will or why I don’t; and I usually know whether, or to what extent, my will was successful or not. It is a fact that we are able to and routinely do make these distinctions through self-awareness and introspection. If anyone truly lacks this self-awareness (which I doubt), they surely have a serious psychological problem.
Who am ‘I’? I am not primarily the physical body I apparently reside in; nor am I the mental phenomena that I perceive and conceive inwardly (my experiences, memories, imaginings, thoughts, dreams). I am the soul, the spiritual entity, at the ‘center’ of my being; the soul is myself. It is the soul that wills; the soul is the free agent of all volitions emanating from it. The soul is fully responsible for all its volitions, no matter how much influence has impinged on it, because it has the final say, and can choose to do or not-do what is in its power to do or not-do, however easy or difficult it gets, and however successful or unsuccessful the result.
Volition is one of the three distinctive powers of the soul – the other two being cognition (consciousness of anything by whatever means) and valuation (ascribing value or disvalue to things cognized). Volition cannot be understood without reference to cognition and valuation. A soul has these three means of relating to the world: cognition, volition and valuation; and these three functions of the soul, as well as the soul itself, are known to it primarily through (I use this term here in a restricted sense) intuition; such intuition (or apperception) is direct self-knowledge.
It is impossible to fully define any of these four spiritual items (soul and its three said functions), because each of them is metaphysically sui generis. Soul is nothing like any mental or physical phenomenon that we routinely perceive; we cannot honestly say what it is made of or how it is constructed or how it operates or even where it is, and any attempt to do so can only be rough analogy for pragmatic purposes. Taking such analogies too literally can only result in error.
Similarly, cognition and volition cannot be reduced to anything else, because they are so ontologically unique. We can, however, observe that nothing (no living organism, no animal) has cognition without volition, or volition without cognition. Valuation likewise implies both cognition and volition, before, during and after its occurrence. In our experience, there is no soul without cognition and volition and valuation, and these three functions are only possible to and necessarily imply (are inconceivable without assuming) a soul.
When we consider what entities have soul and its three functions, this observation is seen as logical. In the world of our experience, all humans, and (to a lesser extent) higher animals and perhaps lower animals too, though to a much lesser extent,[3] seem to have cognition (since they manifestly have means of cognition such as sensory equipment and a nervous system), volition (since they can move without being moved, unexpectedly and in inexplicable directions) and valuation (desires and aversions of various sorts, some of which reflect real biological needs).
In this material context, the biological significance of these functions is obvious. Each animal organism needs to protect and further its life, and does so by taking stock of its physical environment, including its own body, as much as it can (by means of cognition), and by acting on its physical environment as well as it can (using volition), in pursuit of goals it estimates as conducive to its physical life (valuation).
Humans, and perhaps higher animals too, have additionally to take into account the mental environment of their existence, i.e. they additionally have psychological values to watch out for and take care of (e.g. their sanity or their character or their emotional states). Moreover, as many spiritual traditions suggest, it is likely that our lives extend beyond our mere physical and mental existences, into some purely spiritual realm, of which our souls are a small fraction, or where our souls permanently reside or come from and return to; in which case, we have to look out for, and behave in accord with, certain purely spiritual values too.
All the above considerations are crucial to any science of ethics. If there is no freewill, there is no ethics; anything goes, because we have no choice anyway. But, granting freewill, a scientific ethics can and must be conceived, provided the (human) subject has the conceptual power needed for such abstract study. Denial in principle of ethics is logically absurd, since it implies an imperative not to follow ethics. Ethical thinking is directed as determining what is good and what is bad, and what is indifferent, for the organism (person) concerned; ethics prescribes acts of will appropriate for the life (physical, mental, spiritual) of that organism. Ethical investigation is not for mere theoretical knowledge; its purpose is to positively influence (human) behavior in a wise direction in actual practice. Ready-made ethical guidelines, inasmuch as the individual is aware of them, and understands them, and wishes to follow them, function as influential factors, among other influential factors, in human volition. Ethics provides a rational counterweight to the forces of passion in people, including the foolishness of inertia. We could objectively propose ethics for all living beings, but of course only those organisms who can think such theoretical thoughts (certainly humans, and perhaps some other animal species if only preverbally) have any interest in it in practice.
Ethics differs from individual ad hoc reflections on particular ends and means, be they perfectly rational or partly or wholly based on emotional considerations and forces. Ethics is an attempt by interested individuals[4] to determine theoretically general principles for the practical guidance of all persons under a broad variety of life circumstances. Inevitably, there are competing ethical doctrines in circulation, some intelligent and some stupid, some very wise and some very foolish, and the individual must still use his (or her) head and heart to personally decide which to choose or which parts of each to choose. By ‘use his (or her) head and heart’ I mean judge matters rationally with due regard to human feelings. The ultimate standard of moral judgment has logically to be ‘Life’, because life is the end and means of all human existence.
As regards theology, we assume God’s existence and powers by extreme extrapolation from our existence and powers. That is, while we evidently have only limited cognition and volition, and very often confused valuation, we assume that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly wise and good. Our assumption that God is the highest and greatest Soul allows us to conceive our souls as small parts of a larger entity, and so to explain people’s commonalities and community with reference to a common Source. This can affect our ethical thinking. This is all still speculation, of course, but certainly a legitimate and valuable part of human thought. Admittedly, we do not empirically and logically know that God exists, nor any of his features, but it is useful to think about it and consider the possible implications of it.
In any case, it should be stressed that the idea of volition is contrary to the Cartesian doctrine of an unbridgeable dichotomy between ‘mind’ and matter. The concept of volition is precisely that a ‘spiritual’ entity (the agent of an act of will) impinges on certain mental and physical phenomena, modifying (however minutely) the course of things in the material world. This is a statement that the ‘laws of nature’ that scientists consider unbreakable (even though they are only known by generalization) can be breached in very specific circumstances, notably within the context of a human or higher-animal existence. For instance, while the law of conservation of matter and energy states that the quantity of matter and energy in the material universe is constant, the freewill doctrine says that even so, a material event can occur (if only within the confines of a human nervous system) through the agency of a spiritual entity (the person’s soul). Human beings are not sophisticated machines (and I believe, in view of our many biological similarities, contrary to René Descartes’s supposition, neither are animals automata, at least not the higher ones).
A robot, even one with the most advanced ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) capabilities, is a machine because whatever it does, including its apparently autonomous decisions and movements, is the result of prior programming by people (or by machines programmed by people). Human beings differ radically, in that they have a soul, which has consciousness, volition, and values, which make it possible for them to choose freely no matter what influences they are under. Machines have no soul, no consciousness, no volition, and no values. Some are said to have ‘artificial intelligence’; but it is doubtful the term intelligence is appropriate in their case, because intelligence is an attribute and measure of consciousness, and not per se of physical processes. Even so, machines can be useful or dangerous, according to how well or badly we program them. In that perspective, machine are mere extensions of human thoughts, will, and valuations, whether intelligent or stupid.
And yes, AI could conceivably destroy humanity and all life on earth. Some machine could well ‘think’ that this would be the most efficient way for it to perform some difficult function we asked of it – so, we must make sure such extreme solutions to problems by machines are made impossible by right programming. But what of malicious programming? A malevolent human individual or group with the required skills could well deliberately program an AI system to destroy humanity. Such crazy, humanity-hating people unfortunately exist – see how frequently some go out suddenly and kill as many people as they can for no apparent reason. Clearly, humanity is now, or will soon be, in great danger from AI; and it is doubtful that any legal restrictions can prevent such a historic disaster. Hopefully, benevolent programmers will come to our collective defense and stay one step ahead of the bad guys in an unending war of wits (just as today the internet is constantly under attack from numberless evil hackers and armies of good guys are busy fighting them).
Volition is a spiritual phenomenon. The concept of volition is definitely not a materialist-determinist one: it implies transcendence of sorts, a being existing over and above matter. It would be more difficult to claim that it is the physical body that has volition than to propose, as here done, that it is something which is not itself subject to physical laws (viz. the soul, our ‘spiritual side’) that has volition. Volition, like natural spontaneity, may be viewed as a circumscribed exception within a largely (but not exclusively) determinist universe.
The mechanical realm is, in this perspective, not fully predetermined; it involves, in many cases, mere natural inertia that can in principle be overcome by volition. Some natural events are beyond the power of anyone’s volition to produce, prevent, or modify in any way; but some are subject to volitional interference. If we don’t interfere, the ‘natural course’ of events proceeds; but if we do interfere, we ‘change the course’ of events. We can affirm that within a field largely occupied by mechanistic events, there may be scattered small pockets of freely willed events. It is not against nature; it is a special, highly developed power endowed by our natures, perhaps the peak of material evolution. Nature includes not only physical phenomena, but also mental phenomena and spiritual ones (i.e. at least individual souls and their three functions). There is no reason to shut our minds prejudicially against this thesis.
Many ‘scientists’ today prefer to reject this narrative at the outset, although they have no scientific basis for such outright denial; their exclusive materialism and determinism is not a result of valid induction, but rather a blind-faith ideological stance which makes them refuse dogmatically to take empirical and rational arguments into account. They ‘postulate’ that all the phenomena of life (including consciousness and volition) will one day somehow be reduced to material laws (i.e. be exactly predictable from purely material factors), but they have so far not in fact managed to propose any mathematical equations that could give credence to this wild speculation. It is just a figment of their imaginations, a hope of theirs, or an intellectual fashion they cravenly follow. It is a closed-minded prejudice; it is not science.
Much more scientific, i.e. strictly in accord with logic and epistemology, is to assume the correctness of our common inner experience of self, cognition, volition, and valuation, and to theorize accordingly. We cannot just ignore such evidence, simply because it is too subtle and difficult to grasp precisely, so very different from the much more (sensorially and imaginatively) impressive physical and mental phenomena we also routinely experience.
 

[1]              ‘Unmoved mover’ is, of course, a phrase drawn from Aristotle (e.g. in Physics, 8:5).
[2]              Contrary to the impression given by the ways we often word things in everyday thought and speech.
[3]              Plants seem to lack these powers; or maybe they have very primitive equivalents of them (being, after all, also living beings).
[4]              Including religious, social, and political leaders, as well as philosophers.