As a spontaneous "philosopher"; I am naturally an argumentative person, who has striven for the past couple of decades to suppress this trait because it was (mostly) a pointless waste of my life... More exactly, it was pointless in terms of trying to change other-people and the-world (which is what I was trying to do)...
Actually, the arguing was sometimes useful to me, in clarifying my own understanding; especially when I became aware that I did not really understand what I was arguing-for.
This was also something that sometimes happened when I was teaching... I'd be standing writing something on the board and expounding it; when I realized that it didn't make sense or I was just putting-out a black box assertion.
These were significant moments of learning.
It has happened on this blog too. Early on in its history; I was trying to explain to William James Tychonievich what was "free will" and how it worked - because he did not seem to be able to grasp what I was saying and kept on questioning me...
When I realized I myself did not understand what I was saying about free will.
Ultimately, I was parroting forms of words that I had heard or read elsewhere, and they really didn't make sense. I was repeating the classical theological arguments about free will, that I had come across in Boethius, CS Lewis, and scholarly accounts of Aquinas - and I recognized that I could not understand them, not really.
Further thought led to a recognition that my personal inability to understand was not (in this case) from inadequate intelligence or insufficient thought; but that the arguments were intrinsically un-understandable because they contained abstractions that served the role of a black box; a logical package the role of whose content was asserted but could never be grasped.
The classic theological argument I was defending was that God was assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent (an "Omni-God" and created everything from nothing including me; and that free will was then gifted to me by God.
The particular incomprehensible abstraction was that God could and did give free will - which is the agency of an individual to act from-himself and independently of God.
This is incomprehensible because if literally everything - including everything about me and my environment is made by God; then it makes no sense that God could "give" something that was independent-of and autonomous-from God.
In other words: The assumptions excluded the answer; the assumption was that absolutely every-thing came from God, was contradicted by the assertion that God could make something independent-of-God, and then give it to me.
How is it that such a stark contradiction became Christian dogma - how is it that so many very intelligent and thoughtful people have ignored (or not seen) it?
One answer is that such people were not really interested either in understanding or in explaining free will, but were instead absolutely committed to the assumption that the Christian God was an Omni-God.
So the fact that they personally did not really grasp what is is free will or how free will worked; did not really matter to them.
Another reason that the contradiction is ignored; is that the contradiction was re-named a "mystery"; and thereby safeguarded from critique.
What they were (evidently) most focused-on was winning any possible argument directed against the idea of the Christian God being an Omni-God - and the statement that an Omni-God could and did create autonomous beings by an act of gift did not really need to be understood.
How such a gift actually made sense was of secondary importance to them.
Also, having made this assertion of gifting free will; the incomprehension was sustained by the fact that their definition, their understanding, of free will was negative - free will was being defined in terms of independence-from God.
Significantly, the scientific assertions about free will have a closely analogous negativity - being defined in terms of something that is not caused.
Something I have learned is that when something is negatively-defined, it becomes ungraspable in itself, of itself.
So, the mainstream orthodox statements about free will have the effect of making it mysterious at best and ineradicably incomprehensible at worst...
...As anyone knows who has tried to discuss free will in the public forum. Argument devolves to assertions that some-thing was done by free will, versus assertions that it was instead the inevitable outcome of preceding causes - whether scientific causes, or caused by God.
Free will is a particularly stark example of the problems of un-comprehended "abstraction", and definition by negation. It results in making mysterious, and indeed unreal, something that is one of the primary spontaneous experiences of every human being!
Something, moreover, that is essential to being a Christian (at least by my IV Gospel rooted understanding.) If people cannot freely decide to follow Jesus Christ or not, then this excludes values from Christianity.
Arguments against those whose assumptions make free will incomprehensible (whether orthodox traditional Christians, or mainstream secular people) is futile - since these people do not really themselves understand what they are asserting - and do not see any need why they should understand it!
To repeat: such people often have a fixed and committed belief that personally genuinely-understanding what they affirm is not necessary.
(As indeed, it would not be necessary if free will had indeed the negative, abstract, subordinate role they assert for it.)
The general lesson I draw from this is related to the importance of really understanding for oneself - and of not being satisfied by black box abstractions, or parroting stuff taken from other people...
This is true, no matter how prestigious is the source of the black box argument.
And further; if we are to avoid intractable error, our personal understanding needs to be in positive terms.
It might be objected that this cannot possibly happen in practice; given the sheer number of things that must be taken on trust in any complex civilization.
This is true in a quantitative sense, about most matters of assertion; but is false when it comes to those matters which are of core significance to our-selves.
And there we come to the crux, for a Christian at any rate. What really is most important for us to understand - what, indeed is it vital for us personally to grasp?
In the past, Christians regarded belief in the Omni-God as vital and necessary; but understanding free will was merely optional; to the point that it was not understood - and indeed not understandable within the assumptions.
Yet; here and now, for myself and probably for most people; it is vital to understand - that is really to grasp in positive terms - free will, agency, the basis of individuality. To say it is "real but a mystery" is an evasion, when something looms so large at the heart of our existence.
The needful understanding is something made impossible both to those who accept mainstream orthodox Christian theology (and indeed theologies of most other religions); as well as the much larger numbers of people who regard "science" as the basic assumption behind all explanations.
As so often; the individual cannot look to any of the most powerful influential, prestigious, ancient or modern external sources for an understanding of some-thing that he may regard as a matter of prime importance.
As so often; the individual must either do it for himself - i.e. discover by his own efforts a genuine understanding of the reality of free will...
Or else must take the consequences of assimilating, living-by, and thinking in-accordance-with, the socio-cultural insignificance of his own agency.
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Note added: It is pretty obvious why it has suited, and still suits, the powers that be; to create and maintain a situation in which free will is kept mysterious, contradictory, un-understandable -- while top-down and collective imperatives are by contrast clear, simple, easily comprehensible. This endemic doubt and uncertainty keeps people obedient to external authority. When people cannot satisfactorily conceptualize them-selves; then they are controllable at the deepest spiritual level.
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