The Validation of Free Will

Free will is validated, not proven. The reason for this is because free-will is a pre-requisite of Epistemology: for you to prove anything at all you must have volition. To demonstrate this, we can consider the alternative: that man is not free.

First, epistemology is the science of “how do I know?,” which requires knowledge, i.e. beliefs that have been validated. To ask for validation of any knowledge, thus pre-supposes an acceptance of epistemology and thus epistemic norms. There is no way to prescribe some method of proper thought if man has no choice in accepting the method—norms pre-suppose that man can choose. The determinist tells us that we ought not believe in free-will—this is the same as the claim that free-will is false and is completely ruled out on his own premises. The entire purpose of epistemology is to tell man how he should direct his consciousness to achieve knowledge, but “to direct one’s consciousness, one must be free and one must know, at least implicitly, that one is.”¹

Second, if determinism is true, then the determinist is pre-destined to accept determinism. How, then, does the determinist hope to validate determinism? The factors that caused him to be a determinist are clearly not infallible as those same factors caused other people to not be determinists—so he must accept that man can think in error. Given the determinist’s mind is not automatically attuned to reality and the determinist claims that he has no choice over what he believes, then he cannot validate any belief that he holds—the determinist claims that he cannot deliberately choose reality over fantasy.

The concept of “volition” is one of the roots of the concept of “validation” (and of its subdivisions, such as “proof”). A validation of ideas is necessary and possible only because man’s consciousness is volitional. This applies to any idea, including the advocacy of free will, to ask for its proof is to presuppose the reality of free will.

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The determinist’s position amounts to the following. “My mind does not automatically conform to facts, yet I have no choice about its course. I have no way to choose reality to be my guide as against subjective feeling, social pressure, or the falsifications inherent in being only semiconscious. If and when I distort the evidence through sloppiness or laziness, or place popularity above logic, or evade out of fear, or hide my evasions from myself under layers of rationalizations and lies, I have to do it, even if I realize at the time how badly I am acting. Whatever the irrationalities that warp and invalidate my mind’s conclusion on any issue, they are irresistible, like every event in my history, and could not have been otherwise.” If such were the case, a man could not rely on his own judgment. He could claim nothing as objective knowledge, including the theory of determinism.²

Thus, man must think in order to know, he must choose to orient his mind towards an apprehension of reality—reality will not impinge any facts upon him. If man could not make this choice to attach his mind to reality then his consciousness would be incapable of any cognition, which means that his consciousness would be detached from reality, which means it would not be a consciousness. But, A is A.

Volition, accordingly, is not an independent philosophic principle, but a corollary of the axiom of consciousness. Not every consciousness has the faculty of volition. Every fallible, conceptual consciousness, however, does have it.

If a determinist tried to assess his viewpoint as knowledge, he would have to say, in effect: “I am in control of my mind. I do have the power to decide to focus on reality. I do not merely submit spinelessly to whatever distortions happen to be decreed by some chain of forces stretching back to infinity. I am free, free to be objective, free to conclude—that I am not free.”

Like any rejection of a philosophic axiom, determinism is self-refuting. Just as one must accept existence or consciousness in order to deny it, so one must accept volition in order to deny it. A philosophic axiom cannot be proved, because it is one of the bases of proof. But for the same reason it cannot be escaped, either. By its nature, it is impregnable.³