The Scandal of Freedom: The Independence of Free Will from Any Object
Joseph Trullinger
Posted on August 17, 2016
In the Kantian view, a free choice is by its very nature irreducible to conditioning factors. Since to explain is to spell out conditions for the conditioned[1], it is a category mistake to expect a causal explanation of why I chose what I chose, if this choice really stems from free will; a free act of the will is an uncaused cause, one that inserts something into the causal series of the world without being constrained to do so by a chain of events. However, we rightfully anticipate that for any event that happens in our experience there is a cause that precedes it in time. Kant reconciles the tension between the intelligibility of the natural world we experience and morality’s need for free…
Categories: Uncategorized