Opacity of free will to theoretical reason. There can be no theoretical account of free will.*

This post is a digression into some of my conjectures on self awareness; especially awareness of free will. Notice that I write of self awareness; not self knowledge.

I expand upon the suggestion of the previous post that theoretical reasoning places a barrier between our thinking and what we think about to suggest why we cannot have a theory of free will.

We use our free will in our practical reasoning. We encounter our free will by using it; not by thinking about it. When we pause to think about our free choosing, we are not using our practical reasoning; let alone our free will. Instead, we switch to using our theoretical reasoning. With our theoretical reasoning we try to form some representation of our free choosing. It might be a thought of not being mentally or physically pushed. For me representation of freely choosing is remembrance of having intended to do what I chose to do. But the representation of the choosing is not the choosing. Similarly, remembrance of intending is not the intending.

Actual choosing and intending are things in themselves. Theories are about things in themselves. Things in themselves are not in the theories. The elements of theories are representations.

Perhaps this may be said of any dynamic process. But when we talk of the external causality of a falling rock, the rock does not care about what we say of it. But we have the awareness of the free choosing. So, the theoretical remarks about no free choosing because no representation of choosing recognizes its freedom concern us. For we are aware of the freedom because we are exercising it! We are aware from the inside.

Even our own reflection on free choice gives only a representation of our free choosing which is not exactly what we were aware of.

I expand the topics.

I am exploring implications of holding that practical reason is primary over theoretical reason. We have seen the primacy in the possibility of practical reason being aware of an immanent commander who is beyond theoretical reason. So, theoretical reason regards it as the Transcendent. The Transcendent is theoretical opaque. Similarly, I want to say that free will, intending, hearing a moral law as a command and obeying a moral law because it is commanded are theoretically opaque. These are ways practical reason operates. The primacy of practical reason tells us that we cannot place theoretical constraints on capacities of practical reason. The price practical reason pays for this primacy is that there can be no theoretical justification that practical reason has these basic capacities.

To adapt some of Newman’s terminology: We can give real assent to our choosing freely but never notional assent.

A final example of theoretical opacity is the self. In practical reasoning we are aware of our self when we seek self-preservation. But when we try to have a theory of our self, we cannot, as Hume notoriously noted, we cannot even represent our self.

*( Upon editing this post, I realize that I could develop the stronger claim that moral reasoning is theoretically opaque. This would imply that moral arguments could never be logically rigorous because the inability to place basic moral reasoning capacities into a theory precludes justifying their use.)