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Re-Thinking Free Will

Abstract: The common conception of free-will has it that our subjective mental states
have a causal efficacy on our concrete actions in the world. These subjective mental states,
however, must also not be determined by antecedent events in the world. We may be able to
reflect on the state of affairs that we are in, but this state of affairs should only inform our
decision making process—not cause it. The idea that our subjective mental states have a casual
efficacy on our actions, thus branches off into two theories of human will: the first of these is the
aforementioned free-will or unconditioned will, and the latter of these is the determined will or
the conditioned will. In this paper, we will attempt to show that this model of will operates under
a false paradigm ushered in by Cartesian Ontology. The basic tenant of Cartesian Ontology is
that thought must necessarily emanate from a being that thinks, and this thinking being is what
causally engages with the outside world thereby determining the representation. As a substitute
for this ontology we will articulate ‘Expressionist Ontology’ in which thought is not the act of a
being, but rather the pure self-expression of an organism. The first part of this paper will be spent
engaging in a critique of Cartesian Ontology and an explication of Expressionist Ontology, while
the second part of the paper will show the possible ethical and political ramifications of such an
ontology.
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“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the
earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because
the windshakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All of this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital
organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the
cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and
says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.”
(Tolsoty, War and Peace. Book III, Part one. Pg. 650)

The Critique of Descartes

Cartesian Ontology ushered in a new epoch of thinking in which thought circulated

around the subject. The subject, for Descartes, is something we are immanently aware in the very

act of engaging in metaphysics. For us to be able to engage in metaphysics we must be able to

make a judgment. In our act of judging, the ‘I’ thinks, our judgment, then, must refer back to a

‘thing’ from which the judgment emanates. Because there is this ‘I’ that thinks, there must

necessarily be a thinking being, therefore from the ‘I’ that thinks, there must necessarily be an ‘I’

that I am in each case of thinking—Cogtio Ergo Sum (I think, I am). This immediate awareness

of myself as a thinking subject is what Descartes called ‘pure intuition’. Through pure intuition

one is able to intuit the universality of their existing, and it is this certainty, the certainty of the

‘I’ that grounds all certainty (Jaakko Hintikka, Inference or Performance? 1962, pg. 3).

Yet, it is not clear that thinking or intuition ever has a universal quality. When we make a

judgment, that judgement is always singular, it is always reaching towards the particular case.

When one thinks, one thinks the case, one never thinks the universal. As finite beings, all we

have access to are particulars—judgment only ever determines the particular representation. How

then, are we justified in inferring the universal claim ‘I am’, from the singular judgment ‘I think’,

how is it that this ‘I think’ can be in each case my own act of thinking. What is at stake here is
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the unity of the subject. But there was a solution to this problematic, this solution consisted in

changing the ‘I think, I am’ to the ‘I think, therefore, I am’. No longer was the subject given

immediately in pure intuition, rather the subject operated through a pre-given horizon that

determined in advance the universal form of judgment. The universal thus became something

that had to be rendered visible by a new means of a priori cognition—the synthetic a priorii.

Thinking becomes oriented, not towards the given, but towards its own activity in apprehending

the given. This was the Copernican revolution of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Transcendental

logic revealed a dimension of thought that was immanently self-reflexive, the synthetic unity of

the representation made it possible for the subject to infer its own analytical unity through the

transcendental deduction (H.J Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, 1936, pg. 284).

In this model of the subject, the ‘I think’ is no longer immediately given in our act of

thinking, rather it is that which must necessarily accompany our unified representation as its

necessary, transcendental condition. When we make a judgement about an object, there is a

transcendental unity that makes that judgement possible. To judge something to be a tree, I must

compare the particular present tree with my past representations of a tree while also

distinguishing the tree from its surrounding context. All of this implies a cognitive unity that

makes judgment possible . All objects that are represented in our consciousness are thus

represented as a synthetic unity and it is from this synthetic unity that we are able to deduce the

analytical unity of the subject. However, it is not enough that we deduce the concepts that govern

the unity of the representation, we also have to account for the way in which these concepts are

actively applied to empirical objects; we have to posit a unifying act of consciousness that binds

the analytical unity of the subject together (Critique of Pure Reason, B 112).
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This unifying act of consciousness is what some Kant scholars refer to as the ‘causal

power of the inner sense’ and it reveals clearly how Kant’s model of the subject is a causal

model. And it is this causal model of the subject that provides us with the necessary hermeneutic

which makes transcendental analysis possible; in the same way that we think of objects in the

phenomenal world interacting causally with one another, we also think of the subject as that

which introduces new causal powers into the causal nexus of the phenomenal world. The subject

is that being which introduces to new causal chains into the phenomenal realm through the act of

freedom, the subject is that which possesses an ‘unconditioned causality’ not determined by any

antecedent cause. But this unconditional causality, according to its own principles, must be self-

regulative; it cannot be regulated by anything exterior to it or else it would not be unconditioned.

Unconditioned causality is therefore a causal power that is self-causing, there is nothing prior to

it, it pulls itself into existence from the void, it is the voice which speaks from nothingness.

Towards an Expressionist Ontology

Ontologies of causation operate in a two-fold manner, first there is the isolation of events

into antecedent event and subsequent event, second there is the positing of a directional relation

between these two events and this directional relation subsumes the two events under one general

event. Causality operates through the recapitulation of a division from which it is the origin of.

But even this general event which unifies the antecedent and subsequent event must have a prior

event, the logic of causality dictates that general events can be isolated and unified into an even

more general event; that there is no event which does not have a cause, because any event

without a cause could not be a true event. This is the problem that the unconditioned causality of

the transcendental subject seeks to rectify. Unconditioned causality originates out of the
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noumena which is outside of the bounds of space and time, this noumenal causality operates in a

two-fold way through originary presentation—it presents us with the thing-in-itself which

causally affects sensibility, and it presents us with the power of reason which determines this

sensibility, as Kant says, ‘The representation is the play of presentations’, but this play is never a

pure play, it is a play always governed by the paradigmatic logic of causality (Critique of Pure

Reason, A 102).

Causal ontologies, predicated on the isolation of events that mutually condition one

another, are thus never able to fully make sense of themselves because they can never reasonably

get at something unconditioned from within their own framework. The paradox of this, is that for

a causal model of reality to intelligible it must understand itself through the unconditioned, there

must be some higher-order law that governs lower-order causal relations but these higher-order

laws can of course, not be conditioned by something higher than it. This paradox comes to full

fruition when we consider morality, on the one hand the moral agent is supposed to be able to

generate a moral representation that has casual efficacy in the concrete world, on the other hand,

this moral representation must itself not be conditioned by happenings within the world.

Voluntarist ethics, which is predicated on the idea that our moral representations can have a

causal relation to our actions, relies on the severing of these moral representation from the causal

nexus of the world, it relies on the voice which speaks from nothingness.

A possible substitute for the paradox at hand would be to unite the apparent division

between antecedent and subsequent events and consider their division only an apparent division

arising out of the re-cognition of a singular event. Through this schema the apparent division

between events originates out of the self-expression of an originary singular event. This is what I

will call Expressionist Ontology, and its epistemic consequences are numerous, but for this paper
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we will only be focusing on its concrete practical consequences in regards to ethics. We will be

asking the question ‘How can freedom be thought of, not as a causal power, but as an expressive

event?’. This question is what will be the guiding thread of our re-thinking of the free will from

outside of the rubric of causation.

Concerning action as expression and its moral weight

How, then, can the ethical status of a given action be determined when considering the

differing interpretations of free-will? For purposes of this paper, we assert that it is possible to

paint a compatibilist picture via expressionist ontology. Such that the choices of a given agent

are indeed products of their own intention, said agent can be morally responsible for any given

action. Yet said agent does not stand in a causal relation to the action performed. Rather, the

causal relation emerges through the recognition that originates from expression. Because this

expression can only occur within the given social contexts of which it is constitutive, the

recognition of this expression is necessarily reciprocal. This consistent reciprocal expression

allows for basic deviations or lack thereof to be clearly apparent upon their occurrence, because

normativity is constantly expressed onto actors. So the moral responsibility befalling all actors

gains its content through the reciprocal recognition between an individual and their community.

An ethics founded in an expressionist ontology is thus centered around notion of the community

and the passive subject.

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Annotated Bibliography
1. Wegner, Daniel. “The Illusion of Conscious Will.” The MIT Press. 2002. Cambridge,

Massachusetts and London, England.

Daniel Wegner’s empirical studies into what he purports as the illusion of free or

conscious will is one of the most cited contemporary works on said topic. Within the book,

Wegner traces our ordinary experience of willing some action and finds that we have a tendency

to defend our autonomy in favor of free action. Further, our actions, as Wegner’s studies support,

are merely correlated with the thought processes that we believe cause our action. The overall

picture painted by Wenger’s book on the matter of free will is one that can be either concerning

or potentially liberating by some’s interpretations. On the one hand, we can take it at face value

and declare choice an illusion. Yet, does Wegner’s conclusion have to conclude deterministically

and therefore amorally? The proceeding article provides a groundwork from which one can

begin to assert that the answer to the aforementioned question is no.

2. Sven Walter. “Willusionism, Epiphenomenalism, and the Feeling of Conscious Will.”

Synthese. Vol. 191, No. 10. Pp. 2215-2238. July 2014. Springer Publishing Co.

https://www-jstor-org.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/stable/24020006.

This section of the Synthese Journal explores the discussions surrounding debates of free

will, critically evaluates the empirical studies performed by Daniel Wegner on the subject, and

concludes that Wegner doesn’t actually wholly subscribe to epiphenomenal conclusions on

matters of free will. The author argues that the empirical will (drives) and the phenomenal will

(experience of willing) are often conflated in the traditional debate. Further, Wegner’s studies

and writings can be somewhat compatible with traditional conceptions of free will so long as one
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does not conflate the phenomenal will with the will itself (empirical will). While the author is

convincing in his interpretation of Wegner, this piece is especially useful for conceptualizing free

will from an expressivist rather than a dualist perspective. In discussions of agency, the shift to

an expressivist ontology can prove quite useful when attempting to develop the moral

implications of said conception of free will.

“By acting, we can cause something, but to say that we cause our actions is at best misleading

and at worst senseless. Agents don’t cause what they do, they do it.” (Walter 2232).

3. Double, Richard. “How to Accept Wegner’s Illusion of Conscious Will and Still Defend

Moral Responsibility.” Behavior and Philosophy. Vol. 32, No. 2. Pp 479-491. Cambridge

Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS).

This article provides an interesting response to Wegner’s theory on the illusion of

conscious will. The intuitive response to an explicitly deterministic picture of the universe is that

such a picture allows for no freedom and no chance; everything occurs because it was meant to

occur, irreconcilable by any moral or otherwise metaphysical assertions. In this article, however,

Double suggests that there is indeed a way to permit what he calls ICW (illusion of conscious

will) without a destruction of moral responsibility in the traditional sense.

4. Horgan, Terry. “CAUSAL COMPATIBILISM AND THE EXCLUSION

PROBLEM.” Theoria: An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of

Science, vol. 16, no. 1(40), 2001, pp. 95–116. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23918372.

In this section, Horgan proposes a causal compatibilism in which he reconciles the tension

between the causal-closure of physics and apparent mental causation. Hogan’s position asserts

“genuine causation at multiple descriptive/ontological levels.” Hogan offers potential levels-

parameters within which causal efficacy can be exercised by components of a particular system
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(such as mental, physical, micro-physical, etc.) on other components of that same system. He

offers a metaphor to illustrate this point, asking what time it is on earth rather than asking what

time it is in a particular time zone. The ascription of causal properties must be contingent upon

the parameters governing the system in which said property must occur. As Hogan puts it,

“Notions like cause and causal explanation are normally governed by an implicit, contextually

variable, level-parameter that determines which level of description, and which kind of

counterfactual dependency upon properties, are appropriate to focus on in giving a contextually

appropriate causal explanation of a given phenomenon.”

5. James, William. “The Dilemma of Determinism.”

https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/JamesDilemmaOfDeterminism.html

William James’ pragmatic approach to confabulating the discourse surrounding topics of

free will is insightful and useful for our purposes here. In this essay, James parses out two

separate conceptions of the universe, one which accommodates chance and one which does not –

that is indeterminism and determinism respectively. That compatibilism ought to be called soft-

determinism pejoratively is an assertion James makes early on in the essay, the implications of

which are what I find useful for the topic at hand. “Determinism,” James asserts, “in denying that

anything else can be in its stead, virtually defines the universe as a place in which what ought to

be is impossible”. The “Schopenhauerian pessimism” espoused when defending determinism

also does not assign moral weight to any given particular action, rather the moral weight falls

upon the system as a whole which allowed and determined the particular action. An alternative to

pessimistic moral conclusions regarding determinism would entail rejecting what James calls

“judgements of regret” as entirely wrong. The result of the preceding two statements, James
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claims, is that questions of determinism ultimately fall into questions of pessimism or optimism,

questions of the existence of evil. If there can be no evil in the world, then a mechanical and

deterministic picture is applicable and appealing – we are but the results of an infinitely complex

system converging on a singular being which merely espouses and thinks precisely what he/she

was determined to think by processes which began long before the agent’s birth. Yet, if we find

it apt to morally judge someone, regardless or not of circumstances, perhaps this motivates one’s

attraction to indeterminism more than the metaphysics behind the concept. James’s approach to

this question is what motivates my synthesis of the metaphysics of expressivist ontology with the

potential legal implications of accepting compatibalism. Moral responsibility need not be a

metaphysical reality in order for it to be useful for our purposes as humans, indeed the subject of

this paper is not an exploration of the true metaphysical status of moral responsibility. But, given

what we know about the context within which our decisions must be made, namely among other

agents within a cooperative society, then the supposition that moral responsibility is a pragmatic

fact is undeniable for purposes of general social stability.

6. Kant, Immanuel, and Werner S. Pluhar. Critique of Pure Reason Abridged. Hackett,

1999.

Our paper will provide an interpretation of Kant which situates him at the zenith of causal

ontology. The transcendental hermeneutic that makes possible the conceptual rendering of the

subject is itself made possible through the ontological causal dependence of propositions. What

Kant articulates as the ‘disjunctive sphere of propositions’ is what allows for the transcendental

subject to locate itself in relation to the object that appears before it as a re-presentation.
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7. Bowden, Sean. “Normativity and Expressive Agency in Hegel, Nietzsche, and

Deleuze.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 2, 2015, pp. 236–

259. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jspecphil.29.2.0236.

This paper explores the possibility of expressive normativity wherein the agent and the

action form a singular, expressive unity. It puts forth a thesis of ‘non-isolability’ in which the

agent becomes the act that it will, and the act, in a sense, becomes the agent that it wills. This

paper equates normativity with ethical recognition and argues that expressive normativity must

place this recognition after the action, meaning the action does not delineate a closed region of

consequences, rather the action reverberates though a community and it is through this

reverberation that ethical recognition is possible. Recognition is not the recognition of an isolated

subject, rather, recognition expresses the co-implication of subject and community.

8. “The End of Phenomenology: Expressionism in Merleau-Ponty and

Deleuze.” Thinking through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question, by

LEONARD LAWLOR, Indiana University Press, Bloomington; Indianapolis, 2003,

pp. 80–94. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt200603v.10.

This paper interprets expressionist ontology as a possible critique of Phenomenology as a

methodology centered around the ‘logos’ of the Phenomenon. Phenomenological investigation

seeks to uncover the ‘how’ of appearance, where expressionism interprets every appearing as, in

some sense, transcending ‘how-structures’. The singular event of the expression is unable to be

adequately accounted for by our causal-explanatory models of the ‘how’. Every expression is a

novel and new expression corresponding to how every event is a new event in time, or as

Deleuze puts it, a ‘living present’ that is the contraction of a past multiplicity. This article would

be used to bolster the ontological side of the paper

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