Freedom and the Power of Preference

Keith Lehrer

It is the power of preference that leads us to think and aver that things are up to us or in our power.  Our preferences are the source of our freedom.  But we must have our preferences because we prefer to have them and not because they are imposed upon us.    We have reasons for our preferences.  But reasons for our preferences must be reasons because we prefer them to be.  We must be agent and author of our preferences for them to be free.   But our preferences, it seems, are part of the natural causal order.  So how can we have our preferences because prefer to have them?  How can things be reasons for our preferences because we prefer that they are?  How can we be the agent and author of our preferences, when our preferences are part of the causal order?  How, on the contrary, can we have preferences because we prefer to have them if they are not part of the causal order?   When we reflect on how preferences empower us, we understand that we must empower them.  But how?  These are the questions I shall seek to answer.  The keystone to the answer is a kind of  special preference that loops back onto our preferences including itself.