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

ETHICS
those which proceed from the promptings of a particular
impulse which they express; for example, breaking the
furniture in a rage, singing in the bath, boasting when
drunk, or taking to one's heels when pursued by an angry
bull. Now there may be some sense in which these actions
are free; some sense, that is to say, in which the agent
who performed them need not have done so. If, however,
there is such a sense, it is not here proposed to try to estab-
lish it. My present concern is only with those actions
which would normally be regarded as proceeding from
deliberate choices. These I propose to call " willed actions".
A willed action is one that I perform when, after balancing
two alternatives one against the other, I deliberately opt
for one of them because it seems to me, as the result of a
dispassionate survey of all the evidence which can be
adduced in favour of both, to be the better of the two.
When, for example, in a game of chess after deliberating
whether to move a bishop or a knight I decide to move
the knight, my action is a willed action in the sense
defined. Now although the distinction between voluntary
and willed actions may be difficult to establish in theory,
it is, I think, sufficiently clear in practice. For example,
in referring to a particular situation which we expect to
occur, we may 'determine in advance to follow a deliberately
planned course of action, or we may determine to
trust to the impulse of the moment; to prepare a speech
with a sheaf of notes, or to speak as the spirit moves; to
follow a route previously marked out with the aid of a
map, or to follow our fancy and be guided by the weather.
The Significance of Character Formation for Free Will
A fruitftd line of approach to the problem of freedom is
afforded by a consideration of the difference between a
formed and an immature character. Aristotle suggested that
the distinctive feature of what is popularly called a "formed
character" is the ability
domination by impulse,
of its possessor to escape from
and to act upon a deliberately
planned rule ofconduct. The more formed our character is,