Austin's Wisdom: Free will and Constraints and Canada

Reading again. About freedom. And free will.

Take Mr. Reasonable. A miscreant puts a gun to his head, and says, "Move your left foot." Mr. R., a sensible sort, moves his left foot.

Would we say that Mr. R. moved of his own free will? Well, no. We might say that the threat caused Mr. R. to wiggle the foot. We might say that he had to move the foot or get shot. We might say he moved the foot rather than get shot. We might say he was very highly motivated to move the foot rather than risk the bullet. Or a lot of other ways of saying pretty much -- but not exactly -- the same thing.

So, what of free will? Well, a lot of the talk of free will, or freedom, is based on the idea that neither is a "thing"; both are negatives, the absence of constraints. Mr. R., in this instance, certainly did not act freely. We would not talk about free will in this situation; it would make no sense. And all because of the gun to his head. The gun is the constraint. I think, in general, that this is the most sensible way to look at "freedom" talk; we talk about freedom only when we are not burdened by obligation or threat.

Who cares? In practical terms, losing freedom is, among other things, about health, economics, privacy, emotional state, relations with others, law -- we could all go on. There are an ocean of constraints on our freedoms. We take many of them for granted; there are a lot of constraints on robbing banks. Do I have the freedom to rob a bank? Sure. But we just don't talk that way.

If someone robs a bank, we don't say "Ah, free will at work". We say, "Yipes. He must have been desperate". The constraints on bank robbing are many and severe. It is not about free will. Bank robbery is an act of desperation, not an embrace of freedom.

Or, more difficult: A person with kidney failure, who has been on dialysis for years, abandons the treatment, facing imminent death. This is not uncommon for those who have suffered the rigors of dialysis over long term. What do we say? "How lovely is free will." More likely, we would say "He just couldn't take it any more". He has been constrained in truly awful ways.

Alert Reader (and there may be only one of you) will notice that once again I am talking about the way people really talk to each other, not the way we want them to talk, or the way we hallucinate that they do talk. My one source will be J.L. Austin, an old Brit -- well, long dead now -- who thought there was very strong wisdom in the ordinary language of ordinary people. He led us out of the dark ages by looking at that ordinary talk.

Talk of free will, and freedom, is rare outside of political contexts. Inside political contexts, the talk of freedom is ubiquitous and trivial. Dictators of the most repressive states boast of the freedom of their people.

My Canadian relatives experience less constraint -- hmm, maybe it should be fewer constraints -- in their lives than I do, for a lot of reasons, most of them related to governmental functions. They have more freedom. They also live longer, on average. Hard to imagine how freedom is related to life span, but there it is. Probably health care, maybe diet. They seem to think that they have a better standard of living in general. I don't know.

But I do know that I made a mistake that will probably cost me three years of life by not moving to Canada. But then, I had constraints, didn't I? Must have. Or I would have gone.

Next time: Woulda, coulda, shoulda. And, I guess, mighta, hadda, wanted to but -- well, we could (heh!) go on. Conditionals and their discontents.