Philosopher Robert Kane, who died this year, had a theory of “self-forming actions.” These are moments when one exercises true free will, making a choice that’s not reducible to prior causes or chance. One selects among competing neural impulses. Kane offered as an example a businesswoman walking to an important meeting who sees someone getting mugged in an alley. She wants to help but doesn’t want to miss the meeting. She must decide what to do, and that decision shapes who she is.
Perhaps you mix the “liberty of indifference” (choices are not predetermined) with the “fallacy of composition” (you can’t reduce a complex system to its components), and self-forming actions result. Or maybe Daniel Dennett, who died a day before Kane, was right to argue we don’t need a metaphysical freedom based on indeterminism, as humans have “elbow room” in making conscious decisions. Free will’s a social construct, no less real than music or money, and “more valuable,” Dennett wrote.
This debate weighed on me in my youth, less so in middle age, but came to mind as the election results rolled in. If there’s such a thing as a collective self-forming action, this was it; the electorate deciding what kind of country this will be, seemingly unbound by what kind it’s been, and not reducible to some clear-cut cause or random quirk. If inflation were in double digits, not 2.4 percent, one might say that’s why people chose Donald Trump, despite their qualms. If the race had been close, one might wonder if some factor such as Russia’s bomb threats pushed the outcome past a tipping point. But given what occurred, I don’t see how to avoid the conclusion that voters chose Trump not despite who he is and what he says, but in major part because he is and says those things.
I’ve argued that a second Trump presidency will have terrible consequences, particularly in making the U.S. more authoritarian and weakening our institutions; I’ve generally focused on governance over policy, though I expect policies on issues ranging from climate to Ukraine to abortion will be awful for at least the next four years, with tragic and far-reaching consequences. I could be wrong on all of that; the authoritarianism and institutional decay I anticipate might be far less than I thought, or somehow not occur; the policies I disfavor might not materialize, to a large degree, or have different effects than I predicted. I doubt I’m as wrong as would be needed for such positive outcomes.
I’ve tended to think that many Trump voters will regret their decision; that his return to power, now immunized by the Supreme Court against criminal liability for official actions, will have harmful effects so unmistakable that even many supporters will sooner or later turn against him and his administration. I’m less sure about that, following the election. It’s possible that many Trump supporters will put up with personal sacrifices, including losses of freedom, so long as others they dislike bear worse consequences. I can imagine, for instance, food prices surging because of disruptions caused by mass deportations of agricultural workers, with much of the public still approving the policy regardless of that effect.
Free will, whether it takes the form of Kane’s self-forming actions or Dennett’s elbow room, implies that what we do matters. If the electorate’s 2024 decision has changed this nation in a sharply negative way, then future decisions can change it in some other way. The key thing is to maintain the capacity to make decisions. Every step toward authoritarianism must be resisted, but the resistance must be intelligent. If street protests degenerate into riots, public support for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act or other autocratic powers will increase. Non-violent demonstrations, legal challenges by civil liberties groups and legislative maneuvering will be crucial in countering power grabs by all branches of government.
However, as “democracy in danger” has less public resonance than some, such as I, thought it should, the Democrats will have to come up with other forms of messaging that might give the party new political momentum. One possibility will be to emphasize concerns that Trump’s mental and physical faculties are in decline, raising the possibility that others in his administration and party seek to take advantage of his weakness. This could heighten tensions among Republican factions, and stoke Trump’s paranoia, and will likely take on growing credibility based on mounting evidence that it’s true.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on X: @kennethsilber