Nielson’s theory is a more accurate description of freedom of action which is distinguished from freedom of the will in deep-self theories. Examples of deep-self arguments are offered by Susan Wolf and Harry Frankfurt. I will mainly concentrate on Wolf’s argument as she covers the same areas and ideas as Frankfurt in addition to offering more support for them. The deep-self theory makes the distinction between freedom of action and freedom of the will. Freedom of action is the freedom to act on our desires, whereas freedom of the will allows us to exert control over what we desire, which is in other words, the freedom to want to want something. Frankfurt describes freedom of the will as being demonstrated when what we want to want aligns with our desires. One point worth examining is that there may be competing desires within an individual. An example of this would be an individual going through the process of becoming fit. To begin, the person will have competing desires, one of which is to go to the gym and the other is to stay at home. Yet the person needs to go the gym to improve their fitness. The person will sometimes have a stronger desire to stay at home and eat pizza as opposed to going to the gym so they will stay at home on these occasions. According to Frankfurt this person is not demonstrating free will. After time, the person motivates themselves to overcome the desire to stay home and eat pizza and starts going to the gym every day. Eventually the desire to stay at home at gym time disappears and the person’s desire to want to become fit aligns with their desire to do exercise. At this point, according to Frankfurt, the person is demonstrating free will. 17 Susan Wolff finds a problem with this argument by using the example of a dictator’s son named Jojo. Jojo was brought up by his
17 Harry Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, in Free Will (Malden: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 127-144
16
Made with FlippingBook HTML5