DETERMINISM
v. FREE-WILL
Am I the captain of my ship, or
am I sailing on a ship controlled
by some unknown auto-pilot?
DEFINITIONS
determinism - The view that every event has a cause and
that everything in the universe is absolutely dependent
on and governed by causal laws. Since determinists
believe that all events, including human actions, are
predetermined, determinism is typically thought to be
incompatible with free will.
For every event, there is a set of conditions such that if the
conditions were repeated, the event would recur. The
law of causality (or law of cause and effects) governs
events.
So even if we are not aware of those first events,
determinism still assumes that an event is determined
.
(caused) by those first events.
indeterminism - The view that there are events that do
not have any cause; many proponents of free will
believe that acts of choice are capable of not being
determined by any physiological or psychological cause.
A compatible view (but certainly not exactly the same as
free will, which is discussed later) and yet still part of
“indeterminism” is CHAOS THEORY, which says there
are no causes, and yet given enough time, it will
“appear” that there is enough regularity to suppose
(erroneously) that there are causes for events.
fatalism - The belief that "what will be will be," since all
past, present, and future events have already been
.
predetermined by some impersonal cosmic force or
power.
In religion, this view may be called predestination; it holds
that whether our souls go to Heaven or Hell (or Nirvana
or no where) is determined by some personal power
(i.e., God or the gods) before we are born and is
independent of our good deeds.
Both fatalism and predestination are “deterministic” in that
(1) the assumption is that some thing or some one is
controlling and determining our futures and that (2) there
is little we can do to change our futures. Our futures are
determined.
.
free will - The theory that human beings have freedom of
choice or self-determination; that is, that given a
situation, a person could have done other than what he
did.
Many philosophers have argued that free will is
incompatible with determinism. See also
indeterminism.
If man has
free will….
Determinism, Fatalism, and Predestination all clearly raise
.
questions about human freedom (although determinism
only holds that if particular conditions occur as causes,
then the effects will occur; if the causes of possible
events do not occur, then that event will not occur
either).
If all events are caused (whether by fate, a god, or some
other events), how can human actions (assuming that
human actions are events), like your act of being in this
class and reading these words, be free?
The above question is one way of formulating what
Philosophers call “the problem of free will.”
THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL
The problem is important for a number of reasons, and
one of the most important has to do with moral
responsibility.
If the choices we make and the actions we take are not
free, then it makes no sense to praise or blame people
for what they do.
Whether it is fate, God, or other events that cause us to do
certain things, then there is no reason for punishing us
for doing “wrong” things, is there?
The Dilemma:
1. Human choice is either free, or it is not free.
2. If it is free, then the law of causality is false.
3. If it is not free, then people are not responsible for their
actions.
4. Therefore, either the law of causality is false, or people
are not responsible for their actions.
Neither of the choices in the conclusion (4) are very
attractive. We want to believe the law of causality is
true, and we want to make people responsible for their
actions.
If your future is determined by God, or the stars, or some
.
unknown first events that cause other events (which is
the claim of determinism, fatalism, and predestination),
then what sense does it make to say that you earned a
good grade in philosophy, or that you merited a
promotion at work, or that you ought to be punished for
behaving badly?
Hopefully, as we look at some things this evening, we’ll
see some solutions to the “problem of free will” that had
not occurred to us and our understanding of the
problem itself will grow.
“On Free Will”
SIMPLE v. HARD DETERMINISM
Simple Determinism refers to the idea that all events are
caused. For every event, there is a set of conditions
such that if the conditions were repeated, the event
would recur. The law of causality (the law of cause and
effects) governs events. So we can assume that any
given event is caused by some previous event, even if
we are not aware of what those previous events are.
Simple determinism does not rule out the possibility that
previous events (which are now the cause of current
effects/events) were the result of choices we made in
the past.
Hard determinism holds that every event has a cause
and that this fact is incompatible with free will. Nothing
.
happens for which there is not a sufficient reason;
hence, free will is an illusion. Since any event or human
action is unavoidable, we can’t blame a person for
telling a lie any more than we can blame a leaf for falling
off of a tree.
Hard determinism holds that people are not in fact
responsible for what they do in the sense that they
could have made other choices than they did.
Simple determinism, on the other hand, allows previous
human choices to be the previous causes for given
events, and thereby allows for the possibility of human
free will as a causal factor.
Supporters of hard determinism usually appeal to the
.
physical sciences and concepts like “natural law” to
back up their views.
Science seeks to give a description of objective facts. And
if you recall, the difference between common-sense
knowledge and science is that science is looking to find
the uniform laws of nature which could explain the
“facts.”
These laws of nature (if discovered) are the networks of
causes and effects according to which the events in the
universe would be ordered.
,
BETTER ENVIRONMENTS, BETTER CHILDHOOS, ETC
The debate over free will in not merely academic (or
.
limited to Philosophy discussions). It shows up, for
example, when we discuss the roles that heredity and
environment play on violent behavior, especially when
we are talking about particularly perplexing and horrific
crimes.
Susan Smith shocked the whole nation when she killed
her children. If you recall, she locked her two little boys
in a car, rolled it into a lake, and drowned them. In
order to prevent her from receiving the death penalty,
her attorney, David Bruck, argued that she really had
little control over her actions.
Bruck argued that for all of her life, Susan Smith had been
.
a victim of destructive relationships (such as sexual
abuse by her step-father).
She also could not control the biological and mental fact
that she suffered from depression and mental instability
(which were the result of the destructive and abusive
relationships).
Her attorney did not argue that she was legally insane at
the time of the drowning (because she did know the
difference between right and wrong), but her defense
was that outside factors were primarily the cause of the
events that happened on the day her sons died.
In other words, it was not her fault because she could not
have acted differently.
And a few years later, Andrea
Yates deliberately and .
systematically murdered her
five children.
When we hear these stories,
we wonder if those people
are truly in control of their
own actions.
What causes people to do
such terrible things? Is it
really “not their fault”?
Two opposing tendencies drive our thoughts:
1. We want to believe that some inner agent called the “I”
(me, my conscience) controls what we do no matter
what our genetic inheritance or life experiences tend to
be.
2. We want to know what makes us tick. We want science
to be able to explain addictions (such as a genetic
predisposition for alcoholism), sexual preference, crime,
and a host of other behaviors.
Can we have it both ways?
Can we believe both that some free agent called the “self”
is responsible for people’s actions AND that there are
factors beyond people’s control that cause them to do
what they do?
The hard determinists say we cannot have it both ways.
Free will and hard determinism are incompatible. Hard
.
determinism says that the idea of a free agent who is in
control of what she does in such a way that she could
have done otherwise at various points in our lives is just
an illusion.
Free will is a convenient fiction that we maintain out of our
desire to punish and blame others for wrong doing and
to congratulate ourselves for doing the right thing.
It says “victim mentality” is true, because the victim could
not have done otherwise than be a victim.
We prefer the illusion of free will because it gives us the
hope that we will not have to be a victim unless we
make that choice to be a victim.
LAURA WADDELL EKSTROM
If hard determinism
is true and what I
do is always the
only thing I could
possible do, how
could I have any
free rein in
conducting my
life?
Philosophers and Free Will
Aristotle – “where it is on our power to act, it is also in our
power to not act”
Hume – liberty is “a power of acting or not acting according
to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to
remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also
may” (since there is no such thing as cause and effect)
Kant – for an act to be truly free, “the act as well as its
opposite must be within the power of the subject at the
moment of its taking place”
A.J.Ayer – “when I am said to have done something of my
own free will, it is implied that I could have acted
otherwise.”
DEFINITION – The possession of free will requires
.
some times being able to do otherwise than what we
actually do.
Let’s say that an agent has free will only if some of the
actions she performs during her lifetime are such that
she can do (or could have done, but didn’t) otherwise.
Ekstrom calls this “the minimal supposition of human
free will” – the ability at some time to act other than
acting precisely as he or she does act.
THE COMPATABILITY QUESTION
Does the truth of determinism imply the falsity of the
minimal supposition of human free will?
Hard causal determinism is the doctrine that there is at
every instant exactly one physically possible future.
The laws of nature are wholly deterministic, and every
event is covered by or falls under a law.
Incompatibilism says that determinism and free will are
not compatible.
Compatibilism says that even if determinism is true, it
does not rule out person’s having free will.
THE “SIMPLE” INCOMPATIBILIST ARGUMENT
1) The thought that all of my behavior is the causally
necessary outcome of my genetic blueprint,
environment, and social conditioning – in short, the
thought that I am pushed into doing hat I do by what has
come before me – undermines the idea that some of the
acts I perform are genuinely “up to me.
2) Even if some things are “determined,” that does not rule
out that I have choices at various times at a number of
points with multiple options. (Recall the “minimal
supposition of free will” says that at some time in my
life, I will have the option and ability to act otherwise
than how I do in fact act.)
As depicted in figure 2.1, if one is a free agent, then as time
proceeds from left to right, there are various juncture in
one’s life and a number of alternate ways one might chose
that, once chosen, alter the course of one’s life from that
point on.
Choosing a Spouse
. There are a number of
Choose ME !!! variables that range from
when to whom. Which
person you choose alters
your life path considerably.
If causal determinism is true,
then at every instant of
your life, there is exactly
one physically possible
future (and one person
available to you for
marriage, and so forth).
Figure 2.2 illustrates that there may be “apparent” forks in
.
the road from the perspective of a person living in a
deterministic universe, but exactly one of the
“alternatives” is the one that the agent can actually take,
since there is only one way, given the past and natural
laws, that the course of events can proceed.
. If causal determinism is true,
then the agent cannot
“get” to any of the
alternative paths from the
path he is on.
Hence, it cannot be true that
we have free will and that
the doctrine of
determinism is correct.
One or the other of the
suppositions is false.
The Consequence Argument
If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences
of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But
it is not up to us what went on before we were born, and
neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are.
Therefore, the consequences of these things (including
our present acts) are not up to us.
The Consequence Argument maintains every event is the
causally necessary outcome of previous events, so that
a chain of deterministically linked events stretches
backwards into history. From a past event, given
determinism, a person can trace a line forward through
necessarily linked events up to each present events.
There is a post hoc propter hoc fallacy, however,
.
associated with this reasoning. See if you can figure it
out after you hear the argument again.
Here it is:
If determinism is true, since past events are now out of
your control and what happens now because of
previous events and laws of nature that are out of your
control, then what happens now (as the outcome of
those previous events and natural laws) is also out of
your control.
Modern day application (and this is TRUE!):
I have a sister who lives in Atlanta,
and every time I go to visit her
when the Braves are playing a
home game, the Braves lose. Did
my going to Atlanta cause the
Braves to lose?
If I only visited my sister when the
Braves were playing away-games,
would the Braves have more
winning seasons?
But I cannot choose when I am going
to visit my sister or when the
Braves are going to win or lose, the
determinist would say.
LIBERTARIANISM
First, do not confuse this kind of Libertarianism with the
political movement of the same name.
Libertarianism (to which Jean-Paul Sartre adheres) is the
position that some human choices, in particular moral
ones for which we can be held accountable, are NOT
determined by previous events.
The self (the part that makes choices) is not fixed by
heredity, environment, or any other factor except our
capacity for choice. We create who we are by the
choices we make.
We are RADICALLY FREE, the existentialists would say.
EXISTENTIALISM
Soren Kierkegaard, a Dane, is considered the
founder of existentialism and turned 19th century
Romantic optimism upside down by finding
meaningful existence only in the possible, to which
dread, rather than hope, is the key, and despair the
path to minimal possibilities among the specters of
frustration, sickness, pain, and death in God's
inscrutable world.
Jean-Paul Sartre, who was French like Descartes,
argues that because he could not doubt that he was
doubting with his back against a wall of nothing, he
existed: Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am").
The philosophy rose to prominence in the 1930s and '40s.
Whether in the theological branch of Kierkegaard or the
…atheistic branch of Sartre, existentialism shares six
…essential aspects:
1. Existence before essence. All individuals are unique
in ever new circumstances, in which they must act on
their desperate choices. Through their choices and
acts, they create their unique existence, their
individual essence.
2. Impotence of reason. Humankind's presumed
rationality cannot deal with the subterranean reaches
of existence. But the existentialist sees reason
powerless until merged with the irrational to make
humans whole.
3. Alienation.
.
Scientific rationalism and a collective
industrial materialism have alienated humans (a) from
God, (b) from nature, (c) from society, and (d) from
self. God is dead (Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900).
We encase ourselves in shoes and walls, out of touch with
nature.
Each person is alone and unknown to those with whom
she rubs elbows in the elevator.
The self is fragmented into superego, ego, and id. "We
are Hollow Men," says T.S. Eliot's mournful chorus.
4. Anxiety. Lost in the crowd, alienated even from self,
. choices even to exist, we
yet faced with the desperate
live in an Age of Anxiety.
God orders Abraham to violate "Thou shalt not kill" and
sacrifice his son to prove his love and serve a higher
command; Kierkegaard's point is that we must choose
one abstract imperative over another, not in arrogance
but in fear and trembling, only hoping the choice is
right where moral laws contradict each other or fade
altogether.
In fear and trembling, we must frequently choose the
exception to the rule because existence is unique,
each circumstance exceptional.
5. Awful freedom. Since . human beings are free to
become anything, to make their existential being
through the act they must choose, their freedom is
awesome and awful.
The Christian existentialists fill the void with faith. Sartre
filled it with will.
Humans must move forward from black nothing into the
moral void by choosing for themselves as if they were
choosing for all, creating for themselves the essence
of their being, and rediscovering, oddly, the old
verities like "Love they neighbor as thyself," which
Sartre believed have vanished.
6. Nothingness. NIHILISM, "nothing-ism," no reason for
living, it is the realization that there is nothing before a
person but suffering and actual
. death; to stop is
impossible, to go back is impossible; what one lives for
is "nothing." The ultimate Christian dilemma of doubt
and dread is the wish for death but the inability to die (or
have the strength to commit suicide, physically or
spiritually).
Rejecting the past for present existence and its unique
dilemmas, existentialism pervades the works of Franz
Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel
Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Stephen Crane, and
Hemingway. The Greeks asked, "What is Man?"; the
existentialist asks, "Who have I made myself to be?"
Jean-Paul Sartre (1899-1976)
In 1964 he was offered the
Nobel Prize for Literature,
but refused to take it.
While his political and
philosophical views
eventually fell from favor,
Sartre remained a much
respected character and
when he died in 1980 over
fifty thousand people
attended his funeral.
SARTRE’S Thought
Sartre said that "existentialism is humanism." By this he
meant that the existentialists start from nothing but
humanity itself.
His philosophy can be seen as a merciless analysis of the
human situation when "God is dead." The expression
"God is dead" came from the German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
The key word in Sartre's philosophy, as in Kierkegaard's,
is "existence." But existence did not mean the same as
being alive. Plants and animals are alive, they exist, but
they do not have to think about what living implies. Man
is the only living creature that is conscious of its own
existence.
Sartre said that a material thing is simply "in itself" (en soi)
.
but mankind is "for itself" (pour soi). The being of man is
therefore not the same as the being of things.
Sartre said that man's existence takes priority over
whatever he might otherwise be. The fact that “I exist”
takes priority over “what I am.”
"Existence takes priority over essence."
By essence we mean that which something consists of -
the nature, or being, of something.
But according to Sartre, man has no such innate "nature."
Man must therefore create himself.
He must create his own nature or "essence," because it is
not fixed in advance.
.
Throughout the history of philosophy, philosophers
have sought to discover what man is - or what
human nature is.
But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal
"nature" to fall back on. It is therefore useless to
search for the meaning of life in general.
We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors
dragged onto the stage without having learned our
lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper
stage directions to us. We must decide for
ourselves how to live.
Bad Faith
When people realize they are alive and will one day die -
and there is no meaning in life to cling to - they
experience angst, Sartre said.
You may recall that angst, a sense of dread, was also
characteristic of Kierkegaard's description of a person in
an existential situation.
Sartre says that man feels alien in a world without
meaning.
When he describes man's "alienation," he is echoing the
central ideas of Hegel and Marx.
Man's feeling of alienation in the world creates a sense of
despair, boredom, nausea, absurdity, and fear.
Alienated
from
himself,
Michael
Jackson
tries
to assume
responsibility
for his
own looks.
But although there is no meaning to life, Sartre believed
.
that there is still human freedom and people should face
up to this.
"Man is condemned to be free," he said. "Condemned
because he has not created himself - and is
nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled
into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
As self-conscious beings we have to make choices about
how we live our lives. The choices we make are not
connected to rationality.
Sartre emphasized that we cannot hope to rationalize all
the choices we have to make. Life consists of making
choices but we do not always have good reasons for the
choices we make.
Sartre regarded this freedom to make choices as a great
.
burden to bear but something we must understand and
accept. Some people find this hard.
People who are scared by
the burden of freedom
sometimes fall victim to a
kind of intellectual
deception that Sartre calls
"bad faith."
They allow themselves to be
misled into thinking that
they do not have the
freedom of choice.
When people say things like "I'm just doing my job" they
.
are guilty of bad faith because they are using their job
as a reason to avoid making their own choices.
When someone denies that they have choice in this way
they are acting as though they only exist en-soi rather
than pour-soi.
Saying that you can’t do or be something because of your
parents’ lifestyle and how you were raised [or because
of where you grew up - like on the “wrong side of the
tracks” - or you don’t yet have enough money or you
attended a second-rate college rather than an Ivy
League one] is an excuse for not taking control of your
own life and making the hard choices (many of which
including OVER-COMING the “excuses” in order to
succeed!).
In many ways, Sartre’s philosophy sounds like a Nike
commercial: .
No excuses.
Just do it!
Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never
be other than members of the impersonal flock, having
fled from themselves into self-deception.
On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make
something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly.“
To live “authentically” means to make our own choices and
accept responsibility. Accepting any kind of determinism
is a cop out and “bad faith.”
LIVING IN “BAD FAITH”