The Individual Will

Letting ‘S’ stand for the set of motive-volition patterns, ‘S₂’for the set of stimulus-response patterns, ‘C’ for a person’s character and ‘F’ for the constellation of forces mentioned in (2), the argument can be formally represented as follows: C = (1x) (x ground S₁) F = (1x) (x grounds S₂) S₁=S₂ So C=FGoogle Scholar

These representations will never be just representations of the immediate environment, for what collaborates with will to produce action always includes a set of relevant background beliefs. To take a simple case: the two duck-shooters may both take the duck to be a duck but one fires and the other not for the reason that the former believes the duck to be within range while the latter does not.Google Scholar

It might be objected that at WR I p.100 Schopenhauer insists that there must be no time gap between volition and action: “Resolutions of the will relating to the future are mere deliberations of reason about what will be willed at some time, not real acts of the will”. But what really concerns him here is alterability, not temporality, for he continues: “Only the carrying out stamps the resolve; till then it is always a mere intention that can be altered; it exists only in reason, in the abstract”. My identification of volitions with the neurological initiators of bodily action satisfies the unalterability condition: once it occurs the “carrying out” is inevitable.Google Scholar