GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE. PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 259
be an expression of the old, and not a creation of
the new.
Free will, then, Bcrgson holds, is creative action; that
is to say, action as it really is, while determinism is a
belief imposed upon us by our intellectual view of reality,
which reasons so convincingly, not about our lives as a
whole, but about that false abstraction from our lives which
is a separate state of consciousness and about its expression
in action.
But do we, in spite of the intellect's convincing reason,
really believe in determinism? Our reason may, indeed,
be convinced, but our instinctive belief, persisting in the
teeth of reason, is that we are free. Why does instinctive
belief persist in contradicting reason? Because, says
Bergson, instinctive belief is of the character of intuition,
whose function it is to comprehend life as a whole.
Seen as a whole, life is a creative activity, and its nature,
therefore,
is to be free to create the future.
B. The Minimum Conditions for Free Will
Involuntary, Voluntary and Willed Actions. The
positive case for free will is, as I have already suggested,
difficult to divorce from metaphysical '
considerations.
Something, however, may be said on the subject of the
mjnirpiim conditions which are necessary, if the freedom
of the will is to be at least possible. These conditions have
been set forth by Professor A. E. Taylor, whose treatment
I have partly followed in the ensuing exposition.
It will be convenient to begin by making a distinction
between willed actions, voluntary actions and involuntary
actions. An involuntary action is one which is performed
by a body without any necessary intervention on the part
of the mind; for example, withdrawing the hand from an
unexpectedly hot surface, falling over a precipice, or
contracting the pupils of the eyes. For these, it is obvious,
no freedom is, or can be, claimed. Voluntary actions I
shall define, for the purpose of the present discussion, as