If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
-- Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Why is Blake's "proverb of hell" a true proverb? Because to persist in one's folly is to take one's foolish idea absolutely seriously, to think out its ramifications, and to try to live by it. If the idea is indeed a foolish one, this process of "persisting" will tend in the end to make its foolishness apparent. To persist in one's folly is to do the work of reductio ad absurdum.
The folly in which I persisted, which led me slowly but surely from uncompromising atheism back to Christ, is encapsulated in this little essay I wrote back in 2006: "Free will: a problem for everyone," in which I argue that free will is absolutely logically impossible regardless of whether or not there is a God. It begins with this axiom:
A given action is either caused — determined — by something prior to it, or it is random, or it could be a a combination of causation and randomness. That exhausts the logical possibilities. The idea that free will is to be found in something which is neither chance nor necessity nor a combination of the two is a non-starter.
and reaches this conclusion:
The bottom line is that you didn’t create yourself. Given that a cause must precede its effect, it’s logically impossible for you to have created yourself. No matter what you believe about human nature or human origins, it is inescapably true that you are not ultimately responsible for what you are; either something or someone else made you that way, or you are that way for no reason. No matter how you slice it, it’s not your fault.
Years later, I finally had to accept the necessity of agency (see here and here) -- that agency, or "free will" really is a metaphysical primitive, a third thing not derivable from the causation and randomness that I had once assumed "exhausted the logical possibilities" -- that things do not just happen (by chance) or unfold (by necessity) but are done (by agents). From this, a tentative theism followed almost immediately.
And in late 2019, still persisting in my original "foolish" line of reasoning, but with the key premise corrected, I finally overturned my original "bottom line" and concluded that, ultimately, you did create yourself. Is this folly, too? If so, I intend to persist in it until I discover that.
2 comments:
Reading your second agency post, I found McGilchrist's quote quite insightful. A great deal of philosophy seems to be trying to determine what is basic and what should be explained in terms of other things.
I still don't understand what you mean by self-creation - assuming you do Not mean that Beings always-were. Presumably you do not mean that we self-create from nothing; therefore I do not see what 'creation' adds to 'self'. Yes, we *develop* through time...
Or do you mean to regard development as self-creation; and to regard all biological instances of development at self-creation?
That seems like it might a *potentially* coherent thing to say. Our innate property, as Beings, may be that from-our-selves we can potentially develop both our-selves and 'the environment'?... Both phenomena having no reference to anything outside of the original/ primary/ true/ divine self?
As I say, you need to be clearer, more explicit about what You mean.
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