Yesterday we looked at the relationship of Kelly's philosophy to Existentailism. Today we continue that theme with a more specific discussion of determinism and free will. George A. Kelly: The Psychology of Personal Constructs Part IV Constructive Alternativism and Existentialism. Deterrminism and free will
      The first thing one must notice is that Kelly uses the word "determinism" and not "pre-determinism". Nowhere does he talk of any teleological forces or processes that inevitably lead from a past event to a future event. Remember, earlier he had said that our constructs are designed to predict and control, but he also said that as scientists we must always test our contructs for their accuracy, and he said that can only be done with immediate events, not far in the future events like life-after-death or anything that depends upon religious faith.
      Kelly's position is that the facts do not determine our constructs, but our constructs determine how we live with the facts and that is the only kind of determinism that concerns him. He also says that freedom and determinism are two sides to the same coin. He is not concerned with the freedom of chaos, only the freedom of humans to chose. Our constructs may determine our lack of freedom, but we can always free ourselves from past constructs by constructing new ones.
      Years ago, in one of my own essays on free will, I stated that the problem of free will, for most people, is that they frame it as an absolute. If I say "I have free will," you can counter with "No, you do not have free will because you aren't more powerful than a locomotive, you can't leap tall buildings at a single bound, and you aren't faster than a speeding bullet." My bad. I framed it as an absolute and you were right to call me on it. So then I say, "I don't have free will," and your rebuttal is that maybe I don't, but it doesn't follow that nobody else has free will. Again, the mistake was in fram,ing it as an absolute.
      Free will is relative on a scale of zero to some non-zero finite number. Some people really do not have any free will at all, some have more than others, some have lots and lots of free will but usually not as much as they would like to have and/or as much as they think they have. Nobody has absolute free wiil, but that argument does not negate the probability of some free will.
      Kelly backs me up on this. Our choices of constructs, he says, and our choice to test, reevaluate, or change our constructs will eventually gain us more free will than we started with. I like to use a card game as a metaphor. In the first place, you can't win if you don't play the game. Then, the cards in your hand may be dealt to you by the Cosmic Coinkydink, but it is your turn to play them with the goal of improving your hand. That's Basic Existentialism 1A, If you don't play the game, The Cosmic Coinkydink will make the choices for you and you are still responsible for the consequences of whatever happens next.
       Tomorrow: Constructve alternativism and Pragmatism
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property, that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9, 2015
My rants on private property began on July 14, 2015 My website