Spencer Heath Archive

Item 423

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum of conversation with Heath over the dinner table at Waterford, Virginia

July 9, 1954

     The question of free will versus cause and effect presupposes that by our individual will we cause or effect something — or that we do not. It is fair to recognize that each of us and each and every part of us is both an effect and also a cause. It is an effect of something preceding and causing it and the cause of something succeeding and caused by it. Our will therefore is an effect and also a cause. However, the fact that it is an effect does not render it any less than it is, namely, our will. It acts in the manner appropriate to and inherent in it without any necessary regard to how it came to be. The will is automatic within itself nonetheless from the fact that it was predeter­mined. Being predetermined does not preclude it from being a determinor.

The action of three elements genetically, the first being the cause of the second and the second being the cause of the third, is like three links hanging in a chain. The first link holds the second and the second holds the third. The middle link with reference to the other two is both a held link and a holding link. It is no less of a holder by reason of its being also held.

We need only substitute causing for holding, and will for link, in order to realize that each will acts in its own proper person and capacity notwithstanding it may have derived that person and capacity from prior will or cause. It is no less a determinor by reason of its having been itself a determinee. To think otherwise is to rub out all distinc­tion between being created or predetermined and creating or determining something else. Therefore there is such a thing as free will insofar as an entity is free to act in accordance with the nature with which it has been endowed. Q.E.D.

You have got to define the thing to which you impute or deny free will, then realize that its intrinsic character can manifest itself notwithstanding that that character has been derived.

Let us suppose that a man wills to have a son. That is to say, whether or not he shall have a son rests with him. Now if we distinguish between him and his antecedents, such as his father, then his powers and properties must be like­wise distinguished from those of his predecessor. If now he acts, he acts in virtue of what he is, not in virtue of what they were. Deny this and we deny all distinction between father and son. We assume them to be an unbroken continuum without that individual discontinuity which science demonstrates obtains throughout even the physical world. To merge succes­sive entities without distinction as to action and being acted upon is to obliterate all distinctions in nature and therewith any possibility of relationship or of rationality in terms of ratios between magnitudes numerically expressed.

/Picking up his dinner fork/

To suppose that I cannot pick this up is to suppose that I can be in opposition to myself in that my will can be working backwards and forwards at the same time. It is true that our parts may be in opposition, one to another, but we as integrated individuals cannot as a whole be or act in opposition to our own wholeness even when that whole­ness manifests itself in a specific or particular act.

Your will is what you are.

“Now what do you mean by that?”

It is how you distinguish yourself from any other. Your will itself is a link in the chain of causation.

Most defective thinking is due to excessive subjectivity. This defective thinking is due to excessive objectivity. All sound thinking takes both into account. To deny free will absolutely is to deny that which is perhaps most specifically subjective in us. Isn’t it apparent that it is a denial of subjectivity?

Well put it this way. The very act of understanding anything is an interaction between the subject and the object. The very act of determining something is an interaction between the same. Those who deny free will deny one side of the interaction. They become totally objective. This elimin­ates the human element in an event just as solipsism eliminates the non-human. They are the opposite sides of the same shield.

“Just as you once said that there is no doubt about how the dice will land in a roll of dice — that the doubt was all in us — does it hold that there is no doubt about every slightest action which a small boy we see on the street will take for the rest of his life? That the entire course of his life is precisely determined?”

You have certainly picked an extreme example, but yes, it holds even there. But remember that he himself is an agent in that sequence of events. Everything is determined by environment, we say. But remember that he is a part of that environment.

/Tape failed; last 2 paragraphs are from memory just afterward/