Blogs, being essentially autobiographical, are complicated forms of masturbation. So allow me, if you will - all three or so of you - to do something I haven't done for a while. That is, write something I want to write.

I want to explain a few of the basic principles that underlie my social and political views, as much to set them straight in my own head as anything else. Almost everything I think or say about anything in history or current events finds its basis in these fairly simple ideas, so they're worth getting straight.

The natural beginning, for me, is with choice. All humans can do is choose and act, choose to act, in one way or another, and so it makes sense to take a close look at what exactly this entails. But in the same way that a study of mental health begins with a look at mental illness, it's convenient to start with a pernicious misunderstanding that is as old as civilisation: free will.

I mean something specific by "free will". I mean the doctrine or belief that the following statement is not true: "All of our decisions are determined, ultimately, by factors outside of the decider."

So I don't mean that free will is being able to make a decision without a gun to your head, and I don't mean that free will is the absence of having some kind of omnipotent Fate controlling everything. I simply mean to say that all choices are determined, ultimately, by factors outside of the control of the chooser, and that people who deny this refer to a vague thing called "free will".

How the notion of free will arose is not extraordinarily important here, except to note that it was once useful and now has become a hindrance. If it was not once useful, it would never have evolved in human thought; and if it was not now a hindrance, I would not be compelled to write about it.

Defining free will is difficult because it is nothing more than a term used to avoid the truth of my assertion. Defining "choice" or "decision" is almost as difficult. Consider the dictionary:

choose. v. 1. pick out as being the best of two or more alternatives.
pick. v. choose from a number of alternatives.

Thanks, Oxford University Press.

Of course, the same criticism can be made of every word in the dictionary, that they are almost all defined in terms of each other (though it's always entertaining to look up definitions of colours). But a definition that is so completely circular as "choose means pick and pick means choose" is particularly useles in taking a good look.

So in the same way as "red" is defined as "of a colour as of blood or rubies", we have to turn to concrete experience in expressing what exactly it means to "choose".

Don't worry. Here's one I prepared earlier:

To choose is to act one way, rather than others, for reasons.

Sounds fairly simple, doesn't it? And it is, of course, which is what makes it so difficult to define. But here we have, I think, a definition of choice that conforms to everyone's experience of what it is to choose.

To choose is to act. Some may argue that one can choose now to do something tomorrow, and so the choice is distinct from the action. Fair enough, but it's worth pointing out that when tomorrow comes around, one may choose not to follow through with today's intention. And since I'm eventually going to bring all of this around to things like personal responsibility and the justice system, let's hope that the intention to act a particular way is far less important than the action itself.

To choose is to act one way, rather than others. It's only a choice if there were other perceived options available. Thus the phrase, "I had no choice!" And thus the response, "Well, yes, here is a list of other things you could have done."

To choose is to act one way, rather than others, for reasons. To put it another way, for any action that is choice, it is intelligible to ask of the agent, "Why did you do that?" It doesn't matter whether or not the agent (that's the decider) knows his reasons. The point is that if it were not a choice, the question, "Why?" would be inapplicable. Because every choice is made for reasons.

Now, I'm always interested to hear people's alternative definitions of "to choose", but as far as I know, this one fits everyone's experience. Other definitions most often either do not, upon examination, accord with people's experience; or they are circular in some manner more subtle than the dictionary.

The next question is, what are "reasons"? Simple: "reasons" are anything that influences the choice. Anything that influences a choice can be part of an answer to the question, "Why did you do that?" The most obvious and common reasons are what I call values. Values are sets of criteria for evaluating the preferability of options. But that's not super important right now.

Is there anything other than reasons that influence the outcome of a choice? No, by definition. By my definition, I know, and that might seem like I'm performing some sleight of mind. But it still seems pretty obvious that anything that can be intelligibly and accurately used in an answer to the question, "Why?" is something that influenced the choice.

So, the final and most important question. Do we choose our reasons for acting one way rather than another? The simple answer is no, we don't. Here's a slightly more complex answer.

Take any given reason for acting one way rather than another. Did you choose to have that reason influence your choice? If not, its influence was outside of your control. If so, then we must look at the choice you made in choosing to be influenced by that reason. If it was within your control, it was your choice. If it was a choice, you had reasons. Did you choose those reasons? If not, its influence was outside of your control. If so, then...

And so on. Ad infinitum. Really, it's a bit hard trying to imagine what it would be like to choose a reason for choosing something else. But consider the influence that nicotine addiction has on the smoker. You ask him, "Why do you smoke?" He may say, "I want to" or "I am addicted" - they amount to the same thing. Now he stops smoking. You ask him, "Why did you stop?" He says, "It was expensive and unhealthy, and I'm broke and sick." Months later, you run into him again. He is wealthy and healthy, but not smoking. "Why do you not smoke?" you ask. He says, "I do not want to" or "I am not addicted" - again, they amount to the same thing.

So that's an example of an influence on your (future) decisions being within your control. When you choose to start smoking, you are choosing a course of action that will provide a reason to smoke in future. When you choose to quit, you are choosing a course of action that will remove that reason to smoke in future. But if you keep asking questions, you hit reasons that were not chosen. Why stop smoking? To save money. Why do you want to save money? To spend on a holiday. Why do you want to go on holiday? To enjoy the sun. Why do you want to enjoy the sun? Well... I just do. I didn't choose to enjoy the sun. I just do.

Ultimately, all of your reasons for acting one way rather than another are outside of your control. And since reasons are the only things influencing choices, they are the only things that determine those choices.

And so choices are ultimately determined by factors outside of the control of the chooser.

All of this can be summed up more succinctly:

You can choose to do what you want,
But cannot choose what you want to do.

More on free will and the implications of its nonsensicality later, probably tomorrow.