The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Inhibition and the Freedom of the Will
THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
INHIBITION AND THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.
THE confusion incident to the old controversy about freedom is due to a very simple error. The disputants fail to distinguish between the proof and the conditions of it. By the proof of it we mean either the testimony of consciousness, or those circumstances which, although not necessary to freedom, make any other supposition impossible. By the conditions of it, we mean the circumstances that are necessary to it or the characteristics that constitute it. It may be that in some cases the proof and the conditions will coincide or be identical. But this may be so infrequent that we do not require to take it into account. It is necessary, however, to avoid the confusion of the two, because of the fallacious tendency to deny the fact of freedom on the ground that the circumstances which would prove it do not exist. What we shall, therefore, endeavor to do in this article is to keep this ratio cognoscendi and the ratio essendi distinct, and to indicate the circumstances which interfere with the supposition of pure mechanical causation in volition. The former feature of our endeavor involves an analysis of our conception of freedom, its proof and its conditions, and the latter will be characterized by an explanation of what inhibition does to interrupt the causal nexus between external influences and volitional impulse.
Freedom is a much more complex conception than is usually supposed. It is made so by the implications connected with it, many of them wrongly connected with it by reason of the failure to make the distinction between its ratio cognoscendi and its ratio essendi. But without entering into any elaborate explanation of this complexity we shall simply tabulate the results of our analysis, relying upon the knowledge of the reader for a correct understanding of it. It may be best, notwithstanding, to explain why we recognize two general kinds of freedom. This is to emphasize the distinction between what may be called physico-political freedom and psychological freedom. They are not the same kinds of freedom, as every one will recognize; the former being characterized merely by the absence of influences for determining the alternatives between which it is the interest of the person to choose, and the latter by the notion of self-initiative. In the sequel also we shall require to take some notice of the doctrine of responsibility, in order to evade the usual confusion between this notion and that of freedom. The following is a tabular analysis of the notions entering into the idea of free volition, or that are connected with it.
Ratio cognoscendi of = Absence of external influences.
= Absence of determination by external influences.
1. Consciousness.
2. Absence of external influences.
3. Absence of motives or of determining motives.
4. Avoidability of the alternative actually chosen.
5. Deliberative choice.
Negative: Absence of determining influence of external agencies.
Positive: Autonomy or self-initiative.
Physico-political Ratio essendi of Metaphysical or Psychological Ratio cognoscendi of Ratio essendi of
In this outline there is little distinction between the third, fourth, and fifth ratio cognoscendi. They imply each other, but are mentioned separately because they represent so many ways of considering the question. It will be noticed also that we distinguish clearly between the absence of external agencies and the absence of their determining influence on the will, this being done because we do not regard freedom as incompatible with the limitations imposed by environment or external influences. Responsibility may be limited by such forces, but not freedom.
Moreover the burden of the discussion will fall upon the last three points enumerated under the ratio cognoscendi, and this for two reasons. First, the testimony of consciousness is thrown out of court by the advocates of necessitarianism. Second, although the absence of all external agencies affecting choice would prove its freedom, we cannot prove the fact that such a condition of things ever exists, and so must maintain freedom, if it be true at all, in spite of the existence pf environment and its influence. It is also to be noticed that free volition would be proved most decisively if no motives existed to produce it and if volition actually occurred as a fact. It was probably the temptation to consider it in this way which led to the famous illustration of the ass (asinus Buridani) between the two bundles of hay. Undoubtedly, this conception of the case, if it represented the facts, would prove freedom. But no such absence of dominant preferences seems to exist, or even if it be possible, it is so seldom that we cannot reckon with it in the explanation of the majority of our volitions. Besides we have long ago given up the task of proving freedom by showing the absence of motives to volition. We must make it compatible with the existence and influence of motives. Nevertheless the incident of the ass between two bundles of hay is valuable for its suggestion of deliberation between alternatives, which is an important incident in the proof of freedom. There may be no such balance between motives as this story implies, but there may be such a condition as this balance was supposed to imply; namely, one of deliberation, and this will prove an evidence of freedom.
Deliberation implies hesitation between two or more alternatives, and most persons would perhaps assert or suppose that it implied an equilibrium between two equal and opposite inclinations, in which the impulse of one motive neutralized the opposing influence of the other. If we suppose the latter assumption and its applications to be true, we have precisely the condition in which volition, if it actually took place, could not be explained except by the will's own initiative. It would be exactly the condition described by the incident of the ass of Buridan. But we shall not go so far as to maintain this supposition admitting it to be a possible one. It is sufficient to show what is implied by hesitation between alternatives. This is the interruption of the causal agency between stimulus and volition and the consequent denial of causality to certain mental conditions going by the name of "motives." Let us examine, therefore, the problem as the terms of the case require.
In the first place, the law of mechanical causation, which the fatalist opposes to freedom, supposes an immediate production of the effect whenever the conditions are present. Now "motives" are either the causes of volition or they are not. In the latter alternative their presence is not opposed to freedom, as the nature of the case would imply. On the other hand, if we assume them to be causes of volition, this effect must occur immediately upon their occurrence in consciousness, unless, in order to explain the fact of deliberation, we admit either or both of two assumptions; first, that an equilibrium is possible from the conflict of equal and opposing "motives," or second, that there are distinct kinds of "motives" which are differently related to the law of causation. With either of these two presuppositions freedom is established. The Necessitarian is therefore reduced to the position of assuming that all "motives" are one in kind, the so called "external motives," and that they are the immediate causes of volition, or of denying the existence of deliberation. For, as long as we suppose deliberation to be hesitation between two conflicting "motives," we cannot attach immediate causation to all of them, and not affirming it of all of them is paramount to the admission of freedom. This is clear from the above two alternatives. The first of them, assuming an equilibrium between conflicting motives to be possible, must imply either that volition never takes place under such circumstances, or that if it does occur, the motives are not its causes. That is, those who assume it must either deny the fact of volition under those conditions, or admit the possibility of freedom, But as this assumption is denied, the conflict is supposed to be between "motives" of unequal efficiency, and the dominant influence is asserted to prevail. But nothing is gained by this assumption. For according to the law of mechanical causation prevalent "motives" must act as promptly as those which act alone, only the resultant will be different in amount. If they did so, a conflict involving deliberation would be impossible. Hence the Necessitarian may choose between affirming the mechanical law of causation in "motives," or denying the fact of deliberation. The only other alternative is the denial of the application of mechanical laws to "motives," and this is the position of the Freedomist. The fact of deliberation, however, is against the Necessitarian, and he may justly be called upon to explain it. He must show either that it does not really take place and that its supposed existence is an illusion, precisely in the same manner as he impeaches the testimony of consciousness regarding freedom, or that it is perfectly compatible with the mechanical theory of volition. The latter we have shown to be impossible, and we may safely leave him to the consequences of sustaining the former thesis. On the other hand, the Freedomist, assuming the fact of deliberation, has only to explain its implications and to show how it is possible, or how the series of phenomena which finally issue in volition is arrested at a certain point and opportunity afforded for the autonomy or self-initiative of the will.
The case against the Necessitarian, however, would seem too easily won by this method of treatment. Besides, the argument does not reach the question whether a man "can or cannot help doing" what he does. In fact the discussion is never carried on with a view to determining the relation between deliberation and the law of causation. The Necessitarian, while constantly implying in the argument that the "motives" are the causes of volition, although probably using his language on this point loosely, nevertheless concentrates the force of his position upon the claim that the agent cannot do otherwise than he actually does, and he assumes the relation of motives to conduct as a proof of this claim. He simply ignores the implication in the fact of deliberation; namely, that the mechanical series of caused events, which Necessitarianism must assume, is interrupted and perhaps modified. He, therefore, succeeds in evading the issue and precipitates another and graver problem, making the facts of experience to support man's inability to do otherwise than he does, and assuming meanwhile that his ability to choose another alternative is a condition of freedom. Here, however, we demur to this assumption and propose to maintain that such an ability is the ratio cognoscendi, but not the ratio essendi of freedom, while we regard it as the ratio essendi of responsibility. This gives us three questions to consider: first, the relation of deliberation to "motives," and of "motives " to volition; second, the function of inhibition, which makes deliberation possible; and, third, the relation between freedom and responsibility.
There is a class of actions which we call "our own" and which are motivated by reflex impulses and instincts. As "motives" of conduct, instincts are supposed to be outside of our consciousness or deliberate intention. Reflex action, perhaps, never obtains the credit of being instigated by motives except as external stimuli may be given that name. Yet, since modern psychology considers such action as the original type of all our later modes of activity, it presents us with a phenomenon which very largely determines our conception of the relation between "motives" and conduct, even when we assume other than external stimuli as the cause or occasion of such conduct. This we shall observe in a moment. In the case of the instincts we neither conceive external stimuli as the sufficient cause of the action initiated by them, nor intelligent choice as the condition of it. It is but one step to the consideration of emotions and desires as the motives of volition. Assuming instinctive impulses as the blind initiatives of volition, we have attributed neither freedom nor responsibility to agents governed by them; and then passing from these to conduct under the influence of emotion or desire, which are either expressions of instinctive impulse or necessary consequents of our nature and at the same time the "motives" or causes of volition, we very naturally carry with us the presumption that the volition excludes deliberation and choice between alternatives, because it is the necessary effect of the stronger motive. If we consider the order of events to be stimulus, emotion or desire, and volition, and then admit that the emotion or desire is both the necessary effect of its antecedent and the necessary cause of what accompanies or follows it we have a series of phenomena under the law of causation and we do not seem to require an initiative force between the first and the last term to account for the volition. But it is precisely at this point that the subreption occurs. It is true that we do speak of emotions and desires as "motives" to action, but not as mere states of consciousness unaffected by the determination of attention and choice. Emotions are reflexes of action and so are concomitants or effects of functional exercise. They do not necessarily issue in a particular volition as soon as they enter into consciousness, unless the intellect after a shorter or longer deliberation permits it. Pleasure and pain, love, fear, anger, etc., do not issue in any special volition by virtue of their presence in consciousness or of any immediately initiative power they possess. They are the necessary effects of organic or mental action, but their existence, even as conditions of volition, does not empower them to produce it as an inevitable effect in a causal series; that is, they are not efficient or active causes of volition until they are supplemented by what may be called "impulsive ideas," and even then are mere attendants and indices of the real impulsive force. We often speak of pleasure and pain as motives of conduct, but the fact is that as present states they are either never such or can be such only by considering every volition or act merely reflex. It is in reality the idea of pleasure and pain, not the actual present pleasure and pain that is the motive to volition. This is of course a truism, and yet the significance of it is totally ignored when speaking of emotions as "motives" of conduct. If we consider the emotions, merely as present states, to be "motives" of volition, we conceive them as identical in impulsive power with the instincts and reflexes. This is to think and speak of them as the efficient causes of volition. But a motive as properly understood in philosophic discussion must be a final cause, whatever may be said about it as an efficient "motive." The same can be said of the desires. A present desire, so far as it is a mere wish for an object, is not an efficient cause or motive of volition, but it must first reach the stage of an "impulsive idea," into which it may readily, and perhaps usually does, develop. It must take on, however, the character of a final cause with something of resolution and purpose before it is properly a motive that has any efficiency to produce volition.
What has been said is equivalent to dividing "motives" into efficient causes (ratio fiendi] and final causes (ratio agendi) of conduct. But they are not reciprocally exclusive of each other. There are "motives" to action which are only efficient causes, and these are such as the reflexes and the instincts, according to the common conception of them. They produce an act immediately and necessarily upon their occurrence in the organism, and leave no room whatever for consciousness, deliberation, or choice. Hence they bring all such actions under the law of causality in a form that excludes freedom. But then we are privileged not to call such actions volitions at all. Then there are "motives" to conduct which are both efficient and final. These are comprehended under the conception, ideas of ends, which have to be called into existence, perhaps by the emotions or other mental states, or even by external influences, before they can be operative. These ideas, being the free creation of the mind, in so far as their form and matter are concerned, although their occurrence may be necessary, confer upon the act they originate the freedom they themselves possess. This claim, however, may not have all the certitude that is desirable, and we do not urge it in the form expressed. What we require from the distinction is, that actions initiated solely by efficient causes, or "motives," such as the instincts and reflexes, or even the emotions and desires considered as efficient agencies, are not free, but are necessary, and exclude either the presence and interposition of consciousness or the existence of alternative possibilities, while actions initiated by final causes, motives as ideas of ends, which may also be efficient, require by this very fact to be radically distinguished from mechanically conditioned conduct. The presence of a final cause is what makes them free, and the presence of efficiency in that cause, at the same time, brings the volition under the general law of causality, but with the limitation, due to the fact that the motive is a final cause also, that the causality is subjective or internal, and not objective or external. It is the latter kind of cause or "motive" that excludes deliberation. The former admits it, and the possibility of deliberation insures the existence of action quite distinct and independent of the law of mechanical causation however otherwise we may choose to consider it. The main question then is to determine how this deliberation is possible, especially when we observe or suppose that the first members of the series of phenomena on the way to volition are necessary events, subject to a purely mechanical law of causation.
The Necessitarian, as we know, supports himself upon the real or supposed fact that the early stages of action, preceding what is properly called volition, are an uninterrupted causal series, and the question is whether we ever really get beyond that stage. It will not be necessary to state at any length the nature of the earliest muscular movements of organic structures. We shall admit for the sake of argument, although the claim may either be contested or require modification, that the primitive actions of all animal life are instinctive, reflex, or automatic. Such actions are never regarded as free actions by either party to the controversy, although this assumption also may have its proviso. But they are certainly unconscious actions and do not involve responsibility, besides having the fundamental characteristic of being the final term of a distinctly causal series in which purely mechanical law seems to have the predominating agency. Now, if with later speculation we assume that all subsequent conduct is but a complex adjustment of instincts and reflexes, carrying with it the characteristic of the actions from which they originated, all volitions must have the mark of necessity. But in order to show how the transition from the lower to the higher order of actions involves the introduction of new elements we represent the reflexes by the following diagram, indicating a mechanical series of events, of which the first term is stimulus and the last a muscular movement.
Fig. i.
A represents a nervous centre and B the point of stimulus and AB the line of transmission. AC represents the reflex act. The whole series of phenomena occurring between B and C is simply one of mechanical causation, according to our supposition, and inasmuch as volition in the mature subject passes along the same lines of muscular egress, anteceded by some stimulus known either as an impression or a motive, or both, the character of that event seems to be the same as the action from which it is presumably developed. Supposing also that emotions, desires, sensations, and "motives" in general, occupy the same relation to the volition, which they precede, as the stimulus of reflex action, and are also the effect determined solely by an external stimulus, we have action in every respect like the reflexes. We are prepared to admit that a great many actions are so mediated. The immediate response shown by the infant to some sensation or emotion, without deliberating upon any alternative, and the promptness with which a hungry dog is impelled by the sight of food to seize and eat it, and the thousand acts of almost every individual determining the will at the moment of a sensational experience, are phenomena that show an uninterrupted series from the point B to C, in which the initiative is an external influence. There is no choice or deliberation in the reflexes, and none appears in the immediate transition from a sensation or emotion to volition. This may not be incompatible with freedom, but the presumption, at least, from the order of sequence and its invariability is that the cause is the original stimulus, and not the free impulse of the mind. If then there exists anything to interrupt the development of impulse from B to C so as to present an originating agency from within, and which also renders deliberation possible, we may find the whole case modified. In Figure 1 the reflex arc represents a peripheral receiving point and a motor centre. In the following Figure 2 the illustration is more complex, involving sensory and ideational centres. D represents an ideational and E a sensory centre. F represents a volition and C an inhibited reflex or other spontaneous action, and the dotted line AB an inhibited transmission of stimulus to the motor centre, or at least its inefficiency. AE represents the possible, and perhaps very frequent, immediate and non-deliberative connection between sensation or emotion and a volition, which may be interrupted by the passage of a stimulus through an ideational centre.
Fig. 2.
Now if the motor reaction of A be the inevitable effect of a stimulus at B, transmitted directly through AB, we should never have anything but reflexes of the type AC. But if this effect does not invariably occur we have actions of a different order. AC gets its necessary character from its direct connection with a real or supposed external cause. If that connection is interrupted and internal agencies awakened which weigh alternatives we have a set of initiatives which are not only internal, but also decide for or against a given action according to a law of final causes or ends rather than purely efficient causes. That connection is interrupted by every process involving consciousness of the higher kind, or the activity of ideational centres. How then can the transmission of stimulus along the line AB be prevented and the initiation of volition not only changed, but also made a product of real or possible deliberation? We answer that at least one means to this result is the function of inhibition, which we proceed to examine, and whose importance in this connection will be apparent upon the discovery of its tendency to set aside the reflexes and to produce a mental equilibrium which will be disturbed only by internal and ideational influences.
Mr. Ferrier remarks that "the primordial elements of the volitional actions of infants, and also of adults, are capable of being reduced to reaction between the centres of sensation and those of motion." But he then adds that "besides this power to act in response to feelings or desires, there is also the power to inhibit or restrain action, notwithstanding the tendency of feelings or desires to manifest themselves in active motor outbursts." The significance of this statement lies in the admission of an additional power of the mind besides the type of reflex action, and one which is opposed to it. This characteristic of it is conceded by Spencer, Bain, Ribot, and most writers who have discussed it. Special illustrations of inhibition are found in such cases as the delay or stoppage of the heart-beat by disturbances in the vagus nerve of the heart, or in the restraint by the brain of certain muscular movements mediated by the spinal cord. These are instances familiar to the special student of physiology. More common instances are such as modifying one's movements by some unexpected or additional impression, mitigating pain by some new sensory stimulus, suppressing one motive to act by another and opposing motive. If a child be engaged in active muscular exertion and be suddenly disturbed by a new object in the field of consciousness, it may cease at once from its exercise. The new impression is said to inhibit the motor action going on at the time.
Some of these forms of inhibition, into a detailed description of which we cannot enter, are peculiar to the nervous system and take place without any reference to consciousness. This is only to say with most writers that an inhibitive as well as impulsive power is a characteristic of nervous organisms. The phenomenon will perhaps be explained in several ways which leave no room for supposing the relevancy of the fact in regard to the problem of freedom. For instance it may be said that the amount of force which the system is capable of expending is a fixed sum, and that when it is occupied in any given direction a disturbance from any other direction will naturally absorb enough interest or energy to make the sum of both activities equal to the total of the fixed possible force or equal to that which was inhibited. This is probably the case. But the fact has no bearing upon the point which we are raising. It is that an action, which ought to be the same according to all mechanical laws, is modified or even prevented by an influence which, according to Mr. Spencer's admission, ought to increase central activity. Yet we are willing to grant, so far as our present contention is concerned, that this form of inhibition is of no special importance to the problem of freedom. So far as it merely establishes physical equilibrium of the nervous system, it only produces a passive condition from which no inner spontaneous action may issue, either conscious or unconscious. But it is the higher form of inhibition, which is essentially the same in character as the lower, as a restraint upon reflexes in some instances, and most frequently upon the tendency to a fixed causal relation between sensations or emotions and volition, and which renders deliberation possible — it is this form of inhibition that affects the problem of freedom in a more important way. The diminution of a pain by a new impression, the restraint of muscular action by a new sensation, the modification of an emotion or desire by a change of attention, the interruption of any impulse from a sensation by the memory of consequences — these are incidents which show that there is no absolutely invariable causal influence between a given stimulus or sensation and a supposed motor reaction. Thus the sight of a candle may be followed, as is frequently the case with infants, by an effort to handle it. But after the first experience at this dangerous work the sight of the same object rather awakens restraint. The burn in the first instance is associated with the perception of the candle and the memory of the pain is a deterrent of volition, showing that, after all, it was not the sensation in the first case that was the cause of the experiment, but rather some idea which was incidental to that occurrence. Hence there is no sensation, no pleasure or pain, which acts as the sole efficient cause of volition. The sensation or other state is either utilized to indicate the safety of impulsive action, or any tendency which experience may have happened to favor in its mediating influence on volition is inhibited, until the mind may read aright the situation, when the "motive" becomes one that is furnished by the ego and not by the non-ego. As we have remarked, and as all modern psychology shows, there is such an intimate connection between stimulus and motor changes that the changes seem to be explosions occurring in response to the stimulus. Consciousness naturally discharges itself upon the muscular system, as sensations are alarms against personal assault from the external world. Habit powerfully reinforces such a tendency and would make mere machines of us in a very short time were it not for inhibition. An experience which has once or twice, or more frequently, been the connecting link, as Mr. Spencer has shown, between stimulus and volition, will more readily repeat its action on each succeeding occasion, because mental and physical activity follow the lines of least resistance. But inhibition comes in with varying degrees of power to prevent habit from assuming absolute control of the subject, with many exceptions familiar to the student of psychology. It interrupts the tendency to direct and immediate transition from sensation or emotion into volition and offers opportunity for reflection. This is the only way in which a man can escape being the victim of any present state of mind, and in which he gains power to guide himself by the future rather than by the present moment. He never could decide the conflict between the present enjoyment and the future possible good except for the inhibition exercised by the idea of the latter upon the tendency to a mechanical realization of the former. Inhibition is thus an antagonistic force against the direct agency of stimuli and sensations to produce muscular activity, and thus establishes more or less of the equipoise necessary for deliberation and the formation of ideational motives. Ribot, who treats the freedom of the will with contempt, has emphasized the nature and influence of this phenomenon without realizing fully its significance. He betrays some consciousness of its importance, but mainly because the fact seems to show the existence in connection with absolutely all nervous activity of two opposing influences, one to produce and the other to prevent volition. But not having reckoned with the conception of the case in Figure 2, where ideational centres add to the forces capable of affecting action and where inhibition is represented, not as wholly forbidding volition, but as preventing the immediate passage of a stimulus or a sensation and emotion into it, and offering the ideational centre D the opportunity to assume the function of motivating the will in terms of a final as well as an efficient cause, — not having reckoned with this conception of the case, he neither realizes the possibility of freedom nor understands the nature and relation of intelligence, or of ideational motives, to volition.
Now if we return to the exposition of Figure 2 we shall understand the question more clearly. In the first place, the lowest form of activity is that of the reflex arc, BAC, in which action is purely the result of stimulus and motor reaction, and in which there is no accompaniment of consciousness. There is in this case neither freedom nor the proof of it: there is no freedom because the action is under the sole determination of external influences; and there is no proof of it because there is no interruption of the transition from the first to the last term of the series, which would throw the causal energy upon something outside the series. This kind of action is peculiar to organic life of the insensible order and to that portion of all higher organisms which represents purely physiological functions. The next higher form of activity is that which occurs through the medium of sensation, the lower form of consciousness, and represented by the line BEAC. The activity of the centre E operates to inhibit the unconscious reflex and to place muscular action under the impulse created by sensation. We have here a higher order of action. Still the creature manifesting it is not said to be free, although conscious, because the connection between E and C seems as immediate and direct as between B and C. That is, the animal acts upon the impulse of the moment, and without reflection. The sensation to all appearances is the cause of the volition in such cases, and inasmuch as the stimulus at B is beyond all control or determination by the subject, namely, is the effect of external impressions, and also the sensation at E being a pure sensory reflex, the supposition that the sensation or emotion, as it no doubt does in many cases, acts directly and efficiently to produce a motor discharge through EAC makes the motive a purely efficient cause instead of admitting the characteristic of a final cause as a part of the initiative. Hence in all schools of thought where reflex action and action under the immediate impulse of present sensations or emotions were considered incompatible with the freedom of the will, if all volition had to be reduced to those types, that doctrine was, of course, denied in spite of the fact that consciousness was an accompaniment of the action. There was the presumption from the uniformity of sequence and the immediate connection between the result and the known agency of the external cause or impression to favor this view. The difficulty of disputing the conclusion in such cases, representing presumably the whole conduct of animal life and a large part of human life, was not that free action was impossible when so directly connected with sensation or emotion, but that there was no proof of that freedom so long as the sequence conformed exactly to the law of mechanical causation. In reflex action there is neither the concomitant of consciousness nor the proof of free action; in the next stage of development, action under the impulse of present sensations or emotions, and without comparison or conflict with other alternatives, there is the accompaniment of consciousness, but not the proof of freedom. That proof can be found against the assertion, that present sensations and emotions are the sole determinants of action, only in the fact that some sensations are not immediately followed by volition; that is, that volition does not always follow the lines of BEAC. The third and highest stage of development furnishes the condition desired. We have a stimulus beginning at B, passing through E and D and terminating in AF. The transition and the result may conform in directness to either of the other forms of conduct. But it is not always or necessarily so. It may be the very opposite of what the sensation or emotion is of itself disposed to effect. Herein lies the significance of the phenomenon. It contradicts the assumed uniform causality of present sensations and sets up another motive. The sensation instead of passing immediately into action has its motor impulse inhibited by the activity of ideational centres which assume an impulsive efficiency of their own. These centres are the intellectual sources of reflection and deliberation. They may not act in the earliest stages of life. But as soon as memory and association can act to call up with a present sensation some past experience the worth of the two may be compared, and the causal nexus between sensations and volition having been broken by the inhibition, the motive to action must come from the ideational centre, and it may or may not conform with the original inclination. It must be observed, however, that this motive is not contributed by the external impression or the sensation although they are instrumental in its occurrence, but is an original and creative product of the ideational centre so far as its form and matter are concerned. This motive is an efficient cause precisely as any motive may be supposed to be. But not only is its efficiency as well as its existence found outside of the mechanical series represented by objective impressions and their immediate termination in motor discharges independent of the interposition of consciousness, but its efficient power does not appear until it first occurs as a final cause. As soon as an idea becomes an end or represents an object of the will, it may have efficiency to move the will, but not before. The end is a pure contribution of the ideational centre, and as the efficiency of this end as a motive awaits ideational activity to decide what shall be the final cause or ratio agendi, the cause of the volition comes wholly from within. Perhaps the necessity for willing one way or the other is determined by external conditions; but, as we see from the nature of the ideational centres and their deliberative functions, the action willed, the alternative elected, is due to the mind, and not to the outer stimulus. Any such necessity created by external conditions may limit our responsibility but not our freedom, which is merely the self-initiative of ideational centres, instead of being an impulse in a causal series initiated by an external and mechanical impression.
It remains only to show the extent in which ideational centres are inhibitive and promotive of opportunities for reflection, as against the instantaneous reactions from present impressions, reflex, sensational, or emotional. In the first place the fact that consciousness of whatever degree is in its nature an inhibitive force, whatever else it may be, is sufficiently proved by two well known facts. The first of these is the delay of reflex impulses in their passage through the spinal cord from the influence of the cerebrum and their quickened speed when the cerebrum is removed. The second is the heightening of reflex action during sleep when consciousness is suspended. But before free volition can be proved this inhibition must be of the higher ideational centres upon sensation, as already indicated, and this can be shown to be the case in a thousand ways. Every comparison between a present and a past experience involves it. We can safely affirm, then, that all the higher activities of consciousness are essentially inhibitive, to some extent perhaps in relation to reflexes, but more particularly in relation to sensational and emotional impulses, while they may be themselves per se impulsive as motives. But the fact we are interested in here is the interruption they produce in the ordinary causal series between stimulus and motor reaction. If this did not occur we should have no disproof of fatalism. The fact that it does occur, however, even if not always, explains the possibility of the other known fact; namely that of deliberation, which may be regarded as the continuance of intellectual activity after inhibition has interrupted the course of sensation and emotion, and which would be impossible if all action were reflex in its nature.
It will be a corollary to this view that freedom is proportioned to the extent to which the higher forms of consciousness inhibit the causal agency of the lower forms. Hence it would appear to have degrees, — a doctrine which we are fully prepared to accept, especially when we remark its exact conformity to the facts of observation. For instance, we have the intellectual man who has cultivated the predominance of ideational activity. He is a man who is most free from the influence of sensation and emotion upon the will. Inhibition and habit have suppressed all tendencies to a direct nexus between stimulus and volition. He is therefore free precisely in proportion to his independence of external influences, and the reflexes of sensation and emotion. Again, we have the impulsive type of character; such a person is more or less the subject of present impressions. He does not deliberate, but acts immediately as his circumstances incline him to do. He is the victim of other than deliberative motives. While he may have a degree of freedom it is small compared with that of the man who first "looks before and after," and who holds in check his spontaneous tendencies to volition. On the other hand, there is the contemplative character whose activities are entirely of the ideational sort. In the extreme form he is as if afflicted with muscular paralysis. The muscular indolence of contemplative men is no doubt due to the constant inhibition of the ordinary impulses. If they act at all it must be from internal motives formed by deliberation. The sceptic, again, is a man in whom inhibition is highly developed. He is mainly the antithesis of the impulsive man, and shows a constant disposition to suppress the influences inducing him either to act or to adopt decided opinions. He is always weighing considerations on both sides of a question, and shows the development of inhibition in the higher functions of reason. If he decides to act his motive is a creation of his own mind. Hence all types of character which furnish their own motives to volition as a result of deliberation are free precisely in that proportion.
But without insisting upon or multiplying instances in which the higher intellectual consciousness shows its tendency to interrupt the causal agency of sensation and emotion and to produce deliberation and its internal motives, it is sufficient to know that it is a fact quite as universal as those higher states, and that it is in direct contradiction with the denial of freedom, based upon an immediate and inevitable nexus between the initial stages of consciousness and volition. It will not do to assert that this nexus is the same in character between ideational motives and volition: for we admit this fact. But it is offset by the distinction in kind and source between internal and external motives. Ideational motives are the product of reason, and not of external stimulus. They are final causes before they become efficient, and this external motives never are. The causal efficiency of deliberative impulses originates in an ideational centre and not in the nature of the impression. This is even possible without any measure of deliberation; so that the hesitation involved in this process is only a proof (ratio cognoscendi), not the condition (ratio essendi) of the mind's independence of external impressions. Hence it is not the presence or absence of a nexus between motive and volition that determines the question, but the source of the agency acting as a motive. If that agency be ideational the will is free, and in order to reach that stage of complete freedom involved in the dominant influence of ideational centres inhibition must break the natural connection, strengthened by habit, between sensations or emotions and volitional action.
This brings us to our conclusion in which a word must be said about responsibility. The nexus between motive and volition being complete, and the motive being determined by the nature of the ego or ideational centre — this being due to experience, heredity, or creation — it would seem that whatever is done is unavoidable; that is, the agent has no choice. This is construed as conflicting with freedom. We do not, however, regard it so. Freedom consists only in self-initiative and independence of external causes, whether there be any choice between alternatives or not, and we have shown how inhibition and deliberation bring about both of these circumstances. But this ability to choose otherwise than we do, while not essential to freedom, is essential to responsibility, which must not be regarded as convertible with freedom. If at any time we are able to choose otherwise than we do, the fact proves our freedom, but it is not the condition of it. But it is the condition of our responsibility, which will be proportioned, on the one hand, to the extent of our liberty including the degree of inhibition we possess, and on the other hand to the extent of our knowledge of alternatives. This view may diminish the importance of the doctrine of freedom by making responsibility the problem of ethics. But each problem has its place, and we care here only to point out the confusion between freedom and responsibility, on the one hand, and their ratio cognoscendi and ratio essendi, on the other. If we have succeeded, the problem will present fewer perplexities for the future than it has for the past.
James H. Hyslop.
COLUMBIA COLLEGE.