The common belief in free decisions of the mind arises because we are conscious of our actions but ignorant of their causes; the ‘dictates of the mind’ are just appetites varying with bodily states.

By Baruch Spinoza, from Ethics

Key Arguments

  • Experience shows we often repent, and when torn by contrary emotions we ‘see the better and follow the worse’, indicating determination by passions.
  • Examples of infants, angry or timid children, drunk, delirious, and garrulous persons show people attribute actions to free decision when they cannot restrain impulses.
  • Explicit diagnosis: people believe themselves free due to consciousness of actions and ignorance of determining causes; ‘dictates’ of mind vary with bodily condition.

Source Quotes

Thus an infant believes that of its own free will it desires milk, an angry child believes that it freely desires vengeance, a timid child believes that it freely desires to run away; further, a drunken man believes that he utters from the free decision of his mind words which, when he is sober, he would willingly have withheld: thus, too, a delirious man, a garrulous woman, a child, and others of like complexion, believe that they speak from the free decision of their mind, when they are in reality unable to restrain their impulse to talk. Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined; and, further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are but another name for the appetites, and therefore vary according to the varying state of the body. Everyone shapes his actions according to his emotion, those who are assailed by conflicting emotions know not what they wish; those who are not attacked by any emotion are readily swayed this way or that.

Key Concepts

  • men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined
  • the dictates of the mind are but another name for the appetites, and therefore vary according to the varying state of the body.

Context

Ethics, Part III, PROP. II, Note (lines 1749–1876); psychological explanation of the illusion of free will