Can free will be compromised?

[Robert_Sock]

Take, for example, someone having a panic attack when the mind narrows to such a degree that one’s identity and values disappear completely and the only thing they are aware of is the desire to die. Another example, someone whose abnormal, intense sexual urges greatly diminishes one’s religious identity and religious values and are “tricked” into committing a grave sin, such as engaging in a casual sexual relationship. In a normal state-of-mind, a devoutly religious person would never commit these types of sins. My question is whether such people are culpable of mortal sins when their normal religious self and values are removed from their awareness? What choices does a person in such an abnormal state-of-mind actually have?

This also probably relates to the rise in suicides over the past several years. Was Kate Slade and Robin Williams, for example, capable of normal, rational thinking? I doubt it! Sure they should have picked up their cross and carried it, but did they have the mental capability to choose this alternative?

 

[OsculeturMeOsculo]

We had way too many free will threads lately.

 

[Robert_Sock]

(name removed by moderator)

Whether or not individuals commit a mortal sin, we cannot know, since we do not know their hearts at the time of commiting the sin. But if we’re speaking hypothetically, then we can give hypothetical answers. In your examples, those people would probably not be culpable for mortal sin. The requirements for a sin to be mortal are grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent. The situations you described could mess with their full knowledge or deliberate consent.

I agree, but there seems to be those who believe in free will in an absolute sense and would never take the factors you described into account.

 

[Bradskii]

I think that that we’re governed by so many conditions outside our control that it almost makes it nonsensical to even consider that we have free will.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Bradskii

I think that that we’re governed by so many conditions outside our control that it almost makes it nonsensical to even consider that we have free will.

I tend to agree to a large degree but I believe that God provides everyone with certain critical moments where we are truly allowed to choose and that the choices we make will greatly determine our future. Not that people who are suffering or going through hardship necessarily made poor choices in their past, however!

 

[gregoryphealy]

I think that that we’re governed by so many conditions outside our control that it almost makes it nonsensical to even consider that we have free will.

Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise and is void of any substantiating claims. You essentially said, “There are too many variables to analyze and control for, ergo determinism.”

Take, for example, someone having a panic attack when the mind narrows to such a degree that one’s identity and values disappear completely and the only thing they are aware of is the desire to die…

…I doubt it! Sure they should have picked up their cross and carried it, but did they have the mental capability to choose this alternative?

Free will is not always exerted in its utmost form. We can act involuntarily upon our passions. I’d recommend reading Aquinas’ discussions on free will, the voluntary nature of human acts, and passions. The whole Prima Secundae Partis is a good read on such topics, for that matter. Here’s a crash course if you want something a bit more modern and brief.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

I think that that we’re governed by so many conditions outside our control that it almost makes it nonsensical to even consider that we have free will.

Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise and is void of any substantiating claims. You essentially said, “There are too many variables to analyze and control for, ergo determinism.”

You don’t determine anything in a vacuum. Nothing at all. There are always conditions relevant to any decision you make and you make whichever one you do for a reason (otherwise it would be entirely random).

And that particular reason was itself conditional on any number of prior conditions. So if you go to the fridge to get a beer, it’s because you are thirsty. And you are thirsty at that specific moment in that specific place because your wife asked you to stop off on the way home to buy some chicken and there was a traffic hold up and you had to take a different route and…etc etc.

If the guy who caused the traffic hold up had decided to work late, you wouldn’t be standing at the fridge feeling thirsty. So he was a direct determinant (if not cause) of you deciding to get a beer. So in that sense, everything you do is a result of determinism. It cannot be otherwise.

We are all products of our environment. The problem is how we determine to what extent we are masters of our own destiny because in the vast majority of cases we are not. Notwithstanding that it appears that the majority of decisions we make are subconscious in any case and ‘we’ simply go along with the call (I haven’t bothered putting ‘you’ in quotes in the preceeding because it would look clumsy).

 

[Robert_Sock]

gregoryphealy

Take, for example, someone having a panic attack when the mind narrows to such a degree that one’s identity and values disappear completely and the only thing they are aware of is the desire to die…

…I doubt it! Sure they should have picked up their cross and carried it, but did they have the mental capability to choose this alternative?

Free will is not always exerted in its utmost form. We can act involuntarily upon our passions. I’d recommend reading Aquinas’ discussions on free will, the voluntary nature of human acts, and passions. The whole Prima Secundae Partis is a good read on such topics, for that matter. Here’s a crash course if you want something a bit more modern and brief.

The fact remains that free will can be compromised by Satan to the degree that we lose much of our religious identity and religious values and replaced with Satanic cognitions that force people to act in ways that run contrary to how they would normally act had their true religious identity and religious values had not been compromised.

Please quote Aquinas saying that free will can never be compromised!!! Use your God-given rational reasoning that a devoutly religious man who becomes depressed and senile and commits suicide acted with his free will!!!

 

[BridgetN]

There are hindrances to free will, you still commit a sin, but depending on the hindrances it doesn’t always have to be a mortal sin.
The hindrances to free will, that lessen the guilt are;

1. Concupicense
2. Fear
3. Violence
4. Ignorance

 

[gregoryphealy]

You don’t determine anything in a vacuum. Nothing at all. There are always conditions relevant to any decision you make and you make whichever one you do for a reason (otherwise it would be entirely random).

And that particular reason was itself conditional on any number of prior conditions. So if you go to the fridge to get a beer, it’s because you are thirsty. And you are thirsty at that specific moment in that specific place because your wife asked you to stop off on the way home to buy some chicken and there was a traffic hold up and you had to take a different route and…etc etc.

If the guy who caused the traffic hold up had decided to work late, you wouldn’t be standing at the fridge feeling thirsty. So he was a direct determinant (if not cause) of you deciding to get a beer. So in that sense, everything you do is a result of determinism. It cannot be otherwise.

We are all products of our environment. The problem is how we determine to what extent we are masters of our own destiny because in the vast majority of cases we are not. Notwithstanding that it appears that the majority of decisions we make are subconscious in any case and ‘we’ simply go along with the call (I haven’t bothered putting ‘you’ in quotes in the preceeding because it would look clumsy).

I never said your decisions are free of influence. I’m asserting that they exist.

Mind you, concepts like “reason” and “choice” and “decisions” don’t exist if you’re going to take a determinist stance. We aren’t “masters of our destiny” at all but slaves to physics and the laws of nature. The molecules in our brains and the synapses happened just as they should have given the preceding state of the universe.

I think the biggest question one on either side of this debate could answer is “how would our existence be distinctly different under the opposite paradigm?”

The fact remains that free will can be compromised by Satan to the degree that we lose much of our religious identity and religious values and replaced with Satanic cognitions that force people to act…

Please quote Aquinas saying that free will can never be compromised!!! Use your God-given rational reasoning that a devoutly religious man who becomes depressed and senile and commits suicide acted with his free will!!!

It depends on your definition of “compromised”.

Only God can change the will.[1] Satan can impede the use of reason by appealing to our passions (or sensitive appetite, as Aquinas would have it), but he cannot directly move our will or reason. [2] Aquinas does, however, argue that unless an act is rendered involuntary (as is the case with a possessed person, for example), it cannot be excused from sin altogether.[3] I would not feel comfortable making an assessment of the condition of someone’s free will, however you are free to if you’d like.

 

[Rhubarb]

Absolutely free will can be compromised. People are coerced or act without agency all the time.

 

[Monica83]

Definitely. Panic attacks, anxiety, distraction, anger, fatigue, alcohol, drugs all diminish free will. BUT, our decisions getting to the point where free will may be diminished could be sins.