added jury example 12/20
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Topic 1.0  Freedom of Indifferent Choice

Most of us believe in moments of indifference when we are able to free ourselves of  prior consideration or inclination allowing room for the exercise of free choice. If our choice is predetermined how can it be free?

Our justice system has a demanding notion of impartiality, requiring jurors to be independent not only from the dictates of others but also from their own preconceptions and biases. It requires jurors to achieve an appropriate state of indifference and decide the case solely upon evidence presented in open court.

Science considers belief in indifferent choice an illusion because every action must have a preceding cause. Media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, television and the internet regularly report the results of current scientific research. Often these research reports portray human behavior as compelled by various natural causes such as genetics, hormones, or brain chemical imbalances. If our actions are compelled by physical causes we would not be free.

These popular reports are cultivating a new faith in Scientific Determinism that is replacing the old faith in Divine Determinism. God's will has been replaced by the will and power of nature. Nothing else has changed.

Many consider the Question of Free Will resolved in favor of various types of determined behavior.

Yet it seems obvious that for each time we act a definite reason would exist to explain why, out of several possible actions, we carried out just one and no other.

To properly consider the Question of Freedom calls for a deeper look at these causes of action and how they come about than is normally done.

1.0 Exercise  Freedom Of Indifferent Choice or compelled by a predetermined reason?

Perform action A or B:

A. Move your left thumb  B. Move your right thumb

Is there a reason why you carried out one action rather than the other? Carry out the exercise several times and compare the results.

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Topic 1.2  Freedom Of Choice

It makes sense that there must always be some reason for a choice to occur. What matters is whether the choice is determined by myself or by something else.

Suppose tomorrow is a holiday. I can repair my bicycle or paint in my studio. I can go out and climb a mountain or stay in and read a good book. The choice is up to me.

If I am free, my choices would be determined by me without coercion or compulsion. Freedom of Choice is an expression of my own self, of what I might call my individual spirit. My free choices are the results of my own desires and preferences.

But how many times do we think we could have made a better choice if it were not for the pull of strong desires we were feeling in the moment? Are we sometimes compelled by desire to want what we would prefer not to want? A free being would be one who can want what they consider to be the right thing.

Couldn’t the Question of Freedom be restated as, Am I free to desire or not to desire?

One way to answer this question is to look at the workings of my own inner life through looking within, a process also known as introspection.

1.2 Exercise  Freedom Of Choice or compelled by desire?

Select your choices from the menu:

Appetizers
A. vegetable salad  B. chicken wings  C. clam chowder

Dinner
A. steak  B. poached fish  C. pork chops

Desert
A. ice cream sundae  B. fruit cup  C. apple pie

Are we free in what we desire or long for?

Original Text

It is one of the sad signs of the superficiality of present-day thought that a book which attempts to develop a new faith out of the results of recent scientific research, has nothing more to say on this question than these words:

"With the question of the freedom of the human will we are not concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been recognized as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the name. The moral valuation of human action and character remains untouched by this problem.."

It is not because I consider that the book in which it occurs has any special importance that I quote this passage, but because it seems to me to express the view to which the thinking of most of our contemporaries manages to rise in this matter. Everyone who claims to have grown beyond the kindergarten stage of science appears to know nowadays that freedom cannot consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses of action. There is always, so we are told, a perfectly definite reason why, out of several possible actions, we carry out just one and no other.

[2] This seems obvious. Nevertheless, down to the present day, the main attacks of the opponents of freedom are directed only against freedom of choice. Even Herbert Spencer, whose doctrines are gaining ground daily, says,

“That everyone is at liberty to desire or not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is negated as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by the contents of the preceding chapter..