Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

automatically assumed to be something more than just a series of qualities. We need to be at least a being that is sensate, if not a fully embodied agent, in order for the free will question to have any meaning.

Agency and embodiment give persons, animals, birds — in fact all sentient life — a status above objects. I am not my body — I have a body. Just talking about ‘having a body’ rather than ‘being a body’ is part of what is involved in ascribing agency to living creatures. So owning a body seems to be an integral part of agency. The reason this embodiment is important is that the will and the body cannot be separated. To be embodied is to have intention. To have intention is to be an agent. Body and agency are one!

As agents with physical bodies we are ‘settlers of matters’ — we can make a decision of some sort and that decision will change the course of things in the world. The ‘decision’ may be a thought, but likely as not this will lead to one or more physical actions at a later time, which will be the ‘settling’. So we are embodied agents who change the course of the future by settling matters in the real world.

To be a settler of matters also means making a distinction between past, present and future. There was a time when matters were not settled — there is a moment of settling — there is a time after the settling. Determinism — to be fully consitent with science — should not beg to use this distinction. Physics should work forwards and backwards in time, but free will insists that there’s an arrow of time — that the

163