My last post laid out a definition of liberty that was compatible with the necessity of causality. I said that since nothing prohibits us from acting according to our determinations, we are free. Here is a possible objection: "Okay, it may be that you have the freedom to act according to certain desires that you have, but those desires themselves are determined in such a way that you cannot act any other way than how you do. In short, for any action you make, you could not have done otherwise." Here is my response (and probably also Hume's): I grant that I can not act in any other way that I do. That would be absurd. My actions may be determined by my desires, and my desires may also be themselves determined by an endless causal chain preceding them, but my freedom of will is actually secured by determinism, not endangered by it. Let me explain. In order for me to be a self-determining being, that is, a being who determines my own actions, it must be the case that I can effectively translate my own desires into action. My actions follow from certain desires, dispositions, inclinations, and deliberations that I have. These are all part of who I am. It is the necessity of causality that makes it possible for me to act on these desires, deliberations, dispositions, and inclinations that I have, rather than on any other factors. Some think that I need to be the first cause of my actions in order to be free, but if this were the case, and my actions were not determined by anything, then it would not be possible to have any actions. It is universally accepted that everything owes its existence to a prior cause, so if there were no prior cause to my actions, then I could not have any actions at all. Either that, or my actions would be a product of chance. Chance, though, doesn't really exist. It is not a physical object, it has no measure of mass or energy, and has no power in producing any effect. The word chance is a word used to describe one's ignorance (that is, we say that something is left to chance when we do not understand or cannot calculate all of the factors involved in a causal relation). Even if there was such a thing as chance, and my actions were not preceded by anything that determined what they would be, it hardly seems that chance would grant me the kind of freedom that I am looking for, because in order for my actions to be free, they need to arise from my desires and other factors that I identify with.
To sum this all up, I am free enough because I have the freedom to act according to my own desires. There seems no rational reason for wanting any more freedom than this, nor does it seem possible that there could conceivably be any freedom greater than this.
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