FREE WILL: From Great Issues in Philosophy, by James Fieser

CHAPTER 4:

CONTENTS

A. Main Concepts

B. The Case for Determinism

The Materialist Argument for Determinism

The Predictability Argument for Determinism

C. The Case for Genuine Free Will

The Feeling of Freedom

Moral Responsibility

Human Dignity

Indeterminacy

D. The Freedom of Action Alternative

Free vs. Unfree Actions

E. Free Will and God

Determinism and Divine Goodness

Free Will and Divine Foreknowledge

For Reflection

1. Give an example of a free action that you performed and explain why you think it wasn't determined.

2. Could robots be programmed to act freely?

3. Suppose that you perform an action, and you feel as though you did it as a matter of free choice. Does that feeling of freedom really mean that the action is free?

4. Suppose that you are psychologically programmed to steal a bag of potato chips from the grocery store. Could be held morally responsible for that action?

5. Suppose that God knows that at midnight tonight you’ll eat a banana. Does that mean your action is determined?

A marketing company called Acxiom has collected detailed personal information on over a hundred million consumers. Aside from the usual data such as your name, address and phone number, Acxiom knows your income, the kind of house you live in, car you drive, food you eat, pets you have, music you listen to, and even your exercise preference. With this information they group people into 70 different “life stage segments” and hundreds of additional sub-groups. Knowing what kind of person you are, Acxiom is able to predict the things you’ll buy in the future. As Acxiom itself words it, “households' consumer behaviors are reflected in their shared life stage and similar socio-economic characteristics.” Acxiom then sells your consumer profile to other companies who target you to purchase their products – whether it’s cat food or a treadmill. It may bother you to know that Acxiom is accumulating your personal information and passing it on to countless other businesses. But something even more sinister is afoot: Acxiom presumes to know what you will buy even before you do! As unique as you think you are, your choices are shaped by socio-economic factors that make your buying behavior very predictable. From Acxiom’s standpoint, your conscious thinking process is irrelevant. What matters is the type of psychological machinery you have that pushes you towards some products and away from others.

The assumption behind Acxiom -- and much of business marketing -- is that our choices are determined by underlying psychological causes, and there is little place for free will. If a company cracks the code to those psychological causes, it will become rich. The issue of free will vs. determinism is among philosophy’s oldest controversies, and Acxiom’s consumer profiling is just a recent manifestation of what’s at stake. Are our choices mechanically determined by prior psychological causes or can we break free from those constraints and make choices that are genuinely free?

A. MAIN CONCEPTS

There are many ways of unraveling the notions of free will and determinism, but a good place to begin is with these two definitions:

Genuine Free Will: for at least some actions, a person has the ability to have done otherwise.
Determinism: a person never has the ability to have done otherwise.

While not all philosophers agree on the above definition of a “genuine free will,” it nevertheless offers one of the boldest conceptions of freedom. Key here is the “ability to have done otherwise.” To explain, suppose that it’s a hot summer day and your standing in front of the display case at an ice cream shop. You spy the chocolate ice cream, rich and robust in its delectability. Then there’s the smooth and silky vanilla. As you consider which of the two to order, you think about how each might satisfy your immediate desire for a cold treat. You then say to the cashier “one scoop of chocolate please”. Suppose now that time magically reverses five minutes, and there you are again standing in front of the display case and you have no recollection of your previous decision. All factors are exactly as they were the first time around – the store, the shoppers and your psychological framework. Would you have the ability to make a different decision and order vanilla instead of chocolate? The notion of genuine free will maintains that you could select vanilla this time. You have an ability to initiate a genuinely free choice that’s independent of the causal forces of your mental framework. By contrast, the notion of determinism holds that you could not choose differently. If the setup is exactly as it was the first time, then events will unfold in exactly the same way: you’ll order chocolate. As defined above, the notions of genuine free will and determinism are incompatible: you can’t consistently endorse both at the same time.

The freewill and determinism debate is a very narrowly defined issue. Other topics in philosophy are similar to this, but when we don’t distinguish them properly they can muddle the issue. One such notion is political freedom, which is easy to confuse with free will. The idea behind political freedom is that we have the right to be free from constraints that others might place on us. For example, my political freedom is violated if you kidnap me and chain me to the wall in your cellar. My political freedom is violated if the government punishes me for speaking my mind. But the debate between free will and determinism usually involves the possible constraints within my own psychological makeup, not the possible constraints that others place on me through brute force.

A second point of confusion involves the notion of fatalism, which is often mistaken for determinism. Fatalism is the view that some event will happen regardless of what you do to stop it. Suppose, for example, that you are fated to buy chocolate, and you try to avoid that destiny. You thus order vanilla. When the cashier hands you your ice cream cone, though, there’s a scoop of chocolate in it, not vanilla: the cashier mistakenly scooped from the wrong bucket, thus fulfilling your destiny. You then place your order again and watch carefully as the cashier scoops it from the right bucket. When you go outside and take a bite of it, though, you discover that it’s not vanilla, but white chocolate: the cashier again mistakenly scooped from the wrong bucket. No matter what you do, you’re fated to order chocolate. Fatalism assumes that there are different paths that we can attempt, but all end exactly the same. Determinism, though, is different: there is only one path of action that we can follow, and that path is constrained by rigid and predictable laws.

One last point of clarification. The actions that we perform are of different types. The most obvious ones involve physical actions. The act of you buying a scoop of ice cream involves you speaking your order to the cashier, paying for it, and taking the ice cream cone in your hand. But free choices would also include voluntary mental beliefs and feelings. For example, after hearing the evidence about a man charged with murder, you can choose to believe either that he is guilty or not guilty. Similarly, if someone dents your car you can choose to get angry or remain calm. What’s at issue with all of these choices -- physical movements, beliefs, or feelings – is whether they result from free choice or prior determining events.

B. THE CASE FOR DETERMINISM

It is a tough job to prove either the free will or the determinist position. In fact, it may be impossible to prove either with certainty. What we’d need to do is watch you order chocolate ice cream, then reverse the hands of time, then see if this time you acted differently. Perhaps we’d have to do this a hundred or a thousand times before we could say for certain that you are or are not capable of acting otherwise. But since we can’t reverse the hands of time, advocates on both sides of the issue must resort to other proofs for their respective positions. Let’s begin by looking at the determinist’s main arguments.

The Argument from Materialism. Determinists usually ground their position on a basic point: the physical world operates according to rigid and predictable laws. Since humans are physical in nature, our choices are thus constrained by those laws. Suppose that your air conditioner breaks at exactly 3:00 PM. Time then reverses five minutes. As events move forward this second time, would the air conditioner break again at 3:00 PM? Surely it would: its physical mechanisms would operate under exactly the same natural laws that made it break the first time. This view was stated dramatically by 18^th century French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace: if I knew all the forces that animate nature, knew the exact position of everything in it that exists, and had unlimited calculating ability, I would be able to accurately predict everything that will happen in the future. We of course will never come close to performing the task that Laplace describes. His point, though, is that everything unfolds quite mechanically in a world governed entirely by natural laws.

The main question now is whether human beings are constrained by rigid natural laws similar to the way that air conditioners are. The contemporary theory of mind-body materialism boldly answers yes! Conscious human minds are the product of physical brain activity, and nothing more. This position is at the heart of the following argument for determinism from materialism:

(1) Human choices are exclusively a function of brain activity.

(2) Brain activity is constrained by rigid natural laws.

(3) Therefore, human choices are constrained by rigid natural laws.

Just as air conditioners operate according to rigid natural laws, human consciousness, according to determinists, is also a function of physical mechanisms that also operate under the constraints of natural laws. The laws in our case are biological rather than the more mechanically-oriented laws that govern the construction and operations of air conditioners; nevertheless, they are rigid natural laws.

How might an advocate of free will respond to this argument? French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) challenged premise 1 in the above and argued instead that human choices are the product of non-physical spirit-mind, not the function of brain activity. His position, called mind-body dualism, is that human beings are part physical body, and part non-physical spirit. The physical part of us is what we see when we look in the mirror; the spirit part of us involves our conscious minds and, for Descartes, constitutes our true nature as human beings. It’s as though I have a spirit bubble that’s connected to my body, which prompts my body to move which ever way my spirit-mind directs it. According to Descartes, our physical bodies are indeed constrained by natural laws; they are made of physical stuff that obey the rigid laws of physics and chemistry, just like any other physical object on this planet. If a nerve in my arm is stimulated, it will quite mechanically make my arm move. But our spirits, he argues, are not constrained by natural laws. Spirits reside in a non-physical realm, are made of non-physical stuff, and are beyond the domain of the laws of physics and chemistry. In this non-physical realm, Descartes continues, our spirits have unbounded freedom, and it is our spirits that are ultimately behind the free actions that we perform. If time reversed five minutes, your spirit could indeed select vanilla the second time around, rather than chocolate. Descartes’ version of dualism, then, accepts the rule of physical laws in the physical world, but embraces free will as an element of human spirits.

Determinists have two responses to Descartes’ position on free will. First, why assume that spirits have free wills? For all we know, there may be rigid laws that govern how spirits operate, just as physical laws govern the operation of physical things. While we might conceive of human spirits that can choose freely, we can just as easily conceive of a spirit drone that acts as it's programmed. Maybe within your spirit-mind there are causal forces that prompt you to select the chocolate ice cream over the vanilla, and that won’t change no matter how many times we turn back the hands of time. The problem is that spirits are by nature beyond the realm of scientific inquiry, so, even if they exist, we can’t even investigate whether they are constrained or unconstrained by special laws of the spirit realm. The idea of free-willed spirits is pure speculation.

Second, and most importantly, at this point in the history of science, Descartes’ theory of dualism is pretty outdated. The disciplines of biology, psychology and sociology today all assume that my consciousness is a function of my brain activity, and my brain, in turn, follows rigid laws of nature. If you want to know why I make the choices that I do, you look at how my brain operates, not at some spirit-bubble that’s grafted to my body. There indeed still are some diehard defenders of Descartes’ dualism who insist that free choice is imbedded within our spirit-minds. Nevertheless, the debate between free will and determinism today takes place within the arena of mind-body materialism. Within that arena, the argument for determinism from materialism looks compelling.

The Predictability Argument. While the argument from materialism may be the strongest weapon in the determinist’s arsenal, some defenders have offered a more modest argument from predictability that doesn’t rest on assumptions about materialism and the stuff that a human person is composed of. The contention is that the predictability of human choices shows that they are determined by rigid natural laws. Here’s a classic example. Suppose that you’re about to be executed. Your head is on the chopping block, the executioner approaches and raises his ax. What are the odds that, in a last minute exercise of free will, the executioner will change his mind and let you go? No chance at all. The executioner’s decision to bring down the ax is as fixed and predictable as is the separation of your head from your body, and your death. Less dramatically, we see this kind of predictability in people at every moment throughout the day. Laborers, store clerks, teachers, accountants, all do what’s expected of them in their jobs. Imagine, in fact, what life would be like if human behavior didn’t fall into predictable patterns. Farmers might decide to stop growing food and we’d starve. People at the gas company might quit their jobs some winter and we’d all freeze. Employers might not pay workers and we’d be homeless. In fact all social institutions that rely on cooperative efforts would be at risk. Short of some national crisis, we rarely think seriously about these possibilities since we’ve grown so accustom to the predictability of human behavior. But when we do reflect on how we are, it makes us look like machines that are constrained by laws of physics, biology and psychology. The predictability argument for free will, then, is this:

(1) Human choices are predictable.

(2) Predictability is an indicator that choices are constrained by rigid natural laws.

(3) Therefore, human choices are constrained by rigid natural laws.

But defenders of free will criticize that people are not 100% predictable. Some farmers in fact decide to stop growing food while others don’t. Some workers quit their jobs for no clear reason, while others carry on. Some employers don’t pay their workers, while other employers do. In fact every cooperative institution contains people who make quirky decisions. Just look at your own lives, the free will advocate asks. Are your actions really that predictable? Even if you typically choose chocolate ice cream, sometimes you do choose the vanilla instead. Sometimes you prefer an action movie, other times a romantic comedy. Where’s the predictability?

Determinists have a response. Even when someone’s actions are off a little – such as someone who quits his job for no clear reason – we can find some pattern if we look hard enough into his surrounding circumstances. In fact, if I hear that Sam abruptly quit his job, I’ll assume that he did it for a reason that makes sense to me, such as conflicts with his boss, increased work load, or bad health. By anticipating reasons like this, I am assuming that Sam’s behavior can be fully accounted for and, if I knew his complete history to begin with, I might have predicted that he would quit his job. Even if you occasionally opt for vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate, people tire of eating the same food and naturally go for some variety. If I knew what your threshold was for tiring of chocolate ice cream, I might be able to accurately predict your purchase of vanilla. This is precisely what Acxiom tries to do with all consumer choices. With enough information about human motivation in general and your socio-economic background in particular, they’ll find the precise consumer niche that you fall into, which will allow them to more accurately predict what you will buy.

Scientists from many disciplines are also chiming in with prediction indicators of human behavior. They tell us that there is a genetic basis for sexual orientation, violent behavior, shyness, and even liberal vs. conservative political preference. They tell us about social influences that impact our choice of careers, hobbies, food preference and religious affiliation. Even climate and geography have profound influences on our choices. Scientists and organizations like Acxiom are far from the point of predicting every action that you and I will perform in the course of a day. But the better they get at predicting people’s behavior, the more reasonable it seems that people’s behavior is determined.

C. THE CASE FOR GENUINE FREE WILL

Again, the position of genuine free will is that, for at least some actions, a person has the ability to have done otherwise. Let’s look more closely inside the human mind to understand precisely where this “ability to do otherwise” might be located. There’s no question that at least part of the human decision-making process involves a rigid chain of cause-effect connections. Our brain activity is programmed with genetic predispositions, memories from life-experiences, and these all combine together to supply us with a wide range of motivations. One motive drives me towards chocolate ice cream, another towards vanilla, and yet another set of health-conscious motives drives me towards the tofu-berry sherbet. The determinist takes the view that, as my various motives compete with each other, I’ll be forced to act upon which ever motive is the strongest at that time. If my motive to select chocolate ice cream is more overpowering, that’s what I’ll select. No matter how many times the hands of time are reversed, I’ll always select chocolate since the desire for chocolate is the strongest motive in my mind each time that moment of action replays.

However, the free will advocate sees our final decision-making process differently. Yes, my various motives mechanically pile up within my mind, and some are stronger than others. But I am able to thoughtfully pick through my competing motives and freely select one over the others – even one of the weaker ones. In essence, I have the ability to break the rigid chain of motives in my mind and act as I choose. Even if my strongest motive at the moment is to select chocolate ice cream, I can resist this and select vanilla if I want. If time reverses and my motives line up again exactly the same way, this time I can select the more healthy tofu-berry, even if I don’t particularly like that flavor and it’s the very weakest motive at that moment. This element of the free will position is often called agent causation. That is, I (the “agent” performing the action) have a special causal ability within my conscious mind to redirect the purely mechanical forces of my motives. There are four arguments frequently given in support of this view.

The Feeling of Freedom. The first argument for genuine free will is straight forward: I have a feeling of freedom whenever I perform any action. Throughout the day there are thousands of small decisions I make – what to eat, what to wear, what to read, who to talk to – and as I navigate through this ocean of choices I feel very much in control of what I do. When I decide to order chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, it feels very much like the choice is within my control and I could have done otherwise. Sometimes I even consider very methodically the pros and cons of each option, and select the one that I want. When considering ice cream flavors, for example, I might weigh factors such as health content, cost, or which item I’ll enjoy more. Not only do I evaluate these factors, but I feel as though I’m in control of how much priority I give to each factor. Sometimes health matters more to me than taste, other times taste more than health. Throughout this process, the very last thing I feel is that I’m robotically programmed to select the options that I do.

But as persuasive as this argument seems, it doesn’t settle the issue. Imagine that I attended a hypnotism demonstration and am selected as a volunteer subject. The hypnotist puts me under and says this: “When you wake up, every time you hear the word ‘water’ you become very thirsty and get a drink from the water fountain in the hall.” He snaps his fingers, says the word “water” and off I go. At the time I’m thinking, “Wow, I’m really thirsty; I think I’ll duck out for a quick drink from the fountain.” It seems to me that my choice is completely free, but it’s clearly not: the hypnotist has programmed me to perform that specific task.

What’s happening, according to the determinist, is that I am conscious of only a small amount of my mental processes, most of which take place at a deeper level than I can consciously experience. It’s something like a mug of beer that bubbles away creating foam on top; the foam is what we’re aware of, and the bubbly liquid beneath is what we aren’t. The real decision making process takes place below the surface, and what we consciously experience at the higher level is irrelevant. A recent psychological experiment makes this point. People were connected to electroencephalogram machines and asked to perform specific actions. The people reported a conscious triggering of their actions a quarter second before the actions occurred. However, the machines spotted a unique brain activity a half second before the action. The point is that the conscious feeling occurs after the brain already initiates the action. The brain first unconsciously sets the course of action, only after that the conscious feeling of choice emerges, and then finally the action itself takes place. Interpretations of this study are controversial, but it may help show that our conscious feelings of freely chosen actions are only illusions.

Moral Responsibility. A second argument for genuine free will is that moral responsibility requires that we freely choose our actions. Consider two different situations in which burglars break into a house and steal jewelry. In the first situation a man named Joe thinks up the idea, plans the details, and then carries it out. In the second situation, a man named Bob is kidnapped and brainwashed with mind-altering drugs into carrying out a burglary. Morally speaking, we’d judge Joe’s and Bob’s conduct quite differently. Joe is morally responsible for his actions because he freely chose to perform the action himself. Bob, on the other hand, is not responsible since he had no choice in the matter: he was implanted with an irresistible impulse to carry out the crime. Here’s the point: according to the determinist, none of our actions are freely chosen; they’re all irresistible impulses like Bob’s, which we have no control over, even Joe’s action. This means that, if determinism is true, we are not morally responsible for any of our actions. The fact is, though, that we do hold each other morally responsible in many if not most situations, which means that we do have free wills. The specific argument is this:

(1) If I am morally responsible for my actions, then I must have genuinely free control over those actions.

(2) In many situations I am morally responsible for my actions.

(3) Therefore, I must have genuinely free control over those actions.

The determinist has a response. The idea of “moral responsibility” is a rather vague term and in most cases what we really mean is that we are justified in punishing people for their conduct. We want to punish Joe for his act of burglary, for example, and that’s what’s at issue. There are several reasons why we might want to punish Joe, and most of these are perfectly compatible with determinism. First, we might want to put him in jail to keep him from burglarizing other homes. It doesn’t matter if Joe is predetermined to burglarize because he was raised in a bad environment, or he has the “burglary gene” or whatever. He’s a nuisance that we want to get rid of. We also might want to put him in jail as a means of reforming him – essentially reprogramming him to not burglarize. Further, putting Joe in jail is another way of expressing our vengeance and anger at what Joe did. While vengeance and anger are not the noblest reasons for punishment, they are undeniable elements. Whether we punish Joe to keep him off the street, reform him, or vent our anger, all of this is compatible with the view that Joe’s act of burglary was determined. Yes, Joe may have been predetermined to burglarize, but we are nevertheless justified in punishing him. Even under determinism, we can distinguish between Joe’s and Bob’s situations in spite of the fact that, at bottom, they both act from irresistible impulses. We recognize that Bob was victimized when being kidnapped and brainwashed, and this will give us sympathy for him. Rather than throw him in jail, we’ll want to de-program him through more gentle means. Our reaction to Joe, though, will be different: he was not victimized like Bob, and thus we will feel morally justified in punishing Joe by putting him in jail. In this way, the determinist can make sense of the notion of moral responsibility without the assistance of the idea of free will.

Human Dignity. A third and somewhat similar argument is that the idea of human dignity rests on the ability to make free choices:

(1) If I act with human dignity, then I must have genuinely free control over those actions.

(2) In many situations I act with human dignity.

(3) Therefore, I must have genuinely free control over those actions.

What would life be worth if all of my actions are mechanically pre-established? I’d be no different than animals that cannot act beyond their instincts. Worse yet, I’d be no better than a mechanical robot that is restricted by its programming. The uniqueness of human existence hinges on our ability to break free of constraints and build our own distinctive worlds. The Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) argued that your dignity as a human being consists precisely in the fact that “You may freely and honorably mold, make, and sculpt yourself into any shape you prefer. You can degenerate into the forms of the lower animals, or climb upward by your soul’s reason, to a higher nature which is divine.” The choice is yours to become what you want, and that element of dignity is the product of free will.

Does human dignity demand the ability to make truly free choices? The determinist is skeptical about this. Suppose that you jotted down all the actions that you made in a single day from the moment you awoke in the morning until you fell asleep at night. The list may contain upwards of 100,000 actions. The vast majority of your actions, though, would be the result of routines that you’ve mastered, and not the product of unique choice. We have morning routines, work routines, socializing routines, educational routines, meal routines, entertainment routines, and evening routines. Even the free will advocate would admit that much of our behavior throughout the day occurs when we’re running on autopilot. Suppose, now, that you go an entire week running only on autopilot. During that time you work hard at your job, are loving to your family, and decent to other people—all the while acting from sheer habit. Could I accuse you of being an undignified animal or robot? Certainly not. Your conduct during that time might even exemplify what we mean by human dignity. Suppose next that you went your entire life on autopilot, without making a single choice of the sort that free will advocates cherish. As a child you are imprinted with routines from your parents, and you carry those with you through life. Even when you add new routines, you do so while on autopilot by mechanically adapting routines that you already have. Throughout this time your behavior is as virtuous as can be. Could I accuse you of living a sub-human existence? Again, certainly not. The point is that there is enough merit in our autopilot existence to give us dignity, even if free will does not exist.

Indeterminacy. A fourth argument for genuine free will stems from the principle of indeterminacy which was discovered by physicists in the early 20^th century. When investigating the way that electrons zip around the nucleus of an atom, physicists realized that they could not determine with certainty where an electron would be at any given moment. It wasn’t because their scientific equipment was too primitive. Rather, it’s because the electrons themselves are by nature indeterminable. It’s as though electrons exist in a cloud of potentiality around a nucleus, and their specific locations in space become actualized only when we take measurements of them. An electron is “indeterminate” in the sense that, prior to measuring it, no standard causal law calculation can be preformed to designate its exact location at a particular time. The best that we can do is to calculate the probability of where it might be at that point in time.

“Aha!” says the free will advocate, “there are uncaused events in the physical world, which are unconstrained by precise natural laws. This is the basis of our unconstrained free choices.” More precisely, there are two ways in which subatomic indeterminacy might bolster the theory of free will. First, the principle of indeterminacy rewrites the book on how the physical world around us operates. We can no longer say that the world is just a giant cause-effect machine with each link in the causal chain obeying rigid laws. There’s a break in that chain at the subatomic level, and that entitles us to consider the possibility of breaks in the chain other places, particularly with free human choices. Second, it could be that the indeterminacy of electrons themselves trigger a chain of bio-chemical reactions in my body that result in a freely chosen action. For example, when I select chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, my thoughts and neurological activity build upon deeper and deeper biochemical events, which might ultimately trace back to the indeterminacy of electrons.

It is true that the indeterminacy principle compromises the most extreme versions of determinism, since the determinist can no longer say that all events in the physical world have prior causes guided by standard natural laws. Nevertheless, the free will advocate’s excitement may be premature for two reasons. First, even if things are indeterminable at the level of subatomic particles, the physical world is still governed by rigid natural laws at higher levels of chemical molecules and biological cells. Chemists have complete confidence that the substances they work with follow strict chemical laws. Biochemists have the same confidence that the living cells they study follow strict biological laws. At these higher levels, the causal machinery of the world is completely intact, regardless of what happens at the subatomic level. Whatever choices we make as human beings, these originate within our brains, which follow chemical and biological laws. The indeterminacy of electrons doesn’t just jump up to these higher levels – either literally or metaphorically.

A second problem with the indeterminacy argument is that it does not allow for the type of human choices that free will advocates need. The indeterminacy of electrons is a random thing, but genuinely free choices could not be random: they are thoughtful and meaningful actions. If I’m deciding between buying chocolate ice cream and vanilla and I randomly flip a coin to decide, that’s an arbitrary action, not a free action. If in fact all of our actions were indeterminate in the way that electrons are, we’d have nonstop spasms and convulsions, not meaningfully chosen actions. Rather than selecting either the chocolate ice cream or vanilla, I’d start quivering like I’m having a seizure. Thus, subatomic indeterminacy is no real help to the free will advocate.

D. THE FREEDOM OF ACTION ALTERNATIVE

So far the case looks pretty strong for a determined physical world that follows rigid scientific laws at the level of human conduct. Also, the case for genuine free will looks pretty weak. In spite of this, it’s difficult to abandon the concept of free choice which we so regularly rely on in our daily lives. It seems to be at the heart of personal responsibility, artistic creativity, true friendship and scores of other human values, all of which involve breaking free of restrictive social expectations. Can we just throw this away and surrender to the idea that we’re only pre-programmed robots? Even determinists recognize that ideas of freedom are embedded in our thinking and that we all use the notion of free choice in ordinary conversation.

Perhaps the solution is to come up with a different definition of freedom that’s more compatible with determinism. Consider the definition of genuine free will that we’ve been working with so far: for at least some actions, a person has the ability to have done otherwise. This is an extreme position that requires us to defy known laws of nature when acting freely. That is, if I could reverse the hands of time and act differently the second time around, I’d have to break free of the causal chain of events that led up to my action the first time. That’s an unrealistically high standard to set for any theory. But there are alternative notions of freedom that are more modest, and aim to fit neatly with determinism. These are sometimes called “compatiblist” theories, and stand in sharp contrast to the rival “incompatiblist” theory of a “genuinely free will” that is inherently at odds with determinism.

A popular compatiblist approach among many philosophers is a weaker conception of human freedom known as freedom of action:

· Freedom of Action: at least some human actions are caused by factors inside of us.

According to this concept, I draw a circle around myself and say that if an action originates from causes within that circle – such as my DNA or my brain activity – then that action is free. I ultimately am the source of that action, and not some force outside of the circle that is imposing itself on me. The action is free because it is mine. When I select chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, that choice emerges from inside of me given how I am. This rather modest conception of freedom does not require that I have the magical ability to have done otherwise. It also fully accepts the theory of determinism and is completely compatible with it. Even though my actions are determined, I can still take comfort in the fact that the decision process is uniquely mine, and is generated by mechanical psychological processes within me specifically.

Free vs. Unfree Actions. The biggest challenge for defenders of freedom of action is to tell us precisely how our free actions differ from our unfree actions. If all actions are ultimately caused by laws of nature, what exactly is the point of distinction between the free and unfree ones? There are two common explanations offered by advocates of freedom of action. The first is that we should assume that most of our actions are free – including those done while on autopilot – since they originate from within us. The only exceptions are restrictions that seriously impair our normal actions. If I’m sitting in a wheel chair paralyzed from the neck down, I cannot choose to get up and walk around. If a robber makes me hand over my wallet at gunpoint, I can’t reasonably choose to keep my wallet in my pocket. If I’m a heroin addict, I can’t reasonably choose to give up my next fix. Returning to the earlier example of the two burglars, we would all normally say that Joe freely chooses to burglarize houses, but poor brainwashed Bob does not burglarize by choice. What is the difference between the two? The answer is that Joe burglarizes freely since there are no serious constraints on his actions. Bob’s burglarizing activities, though, are not free since his actions were seriously impaired through brainwashing.

A second explanation of how free and unfree actions differ was offered by American philosopher Harry Frankfurt (b. 1929). He asks us to distinguish between two kinds of desires that we have. Take, for example, a conflict that many dieters face. I may have a strong desire for ice cream and go buy some, but at the same time I may resent the fact that I have that desire and can’t control it. In Frankfurt’s terminology, I have a “first-order” desire competing with a “second-order” desire:

· First-Order Desire: a basic desire for a thing (desire for ice cream)

· Second-Order Desire: a desire to have a desire (desire to not desire ice cream)

Free actions, according to Frankfurt, are those in which our first and second order desires line up; unfree actions occur when first and second order desires conflict. Thus, the dieter’s purchase of ice cream would be unfree since the first and second-order desires conflict. Non-dieters, though, may desire ice cream, and desire to have that desire. For them, the purchase of the ice cream would indeed be free. It’s important to keep in mind that even “free” actions, as Frankfurt describes them, are still determined. Even if my first and second order desires line up, as when I desire to desire ice cream, the cause of my desires at both levels strictly follow mechanical laws of nature.

Frankfurt's theory has the advantage of helping us distinguish between the free choices that humans make, and the not-so-free choices that animals make. Some higher animals such as chimpanzees may very well have decision-making processes that resemble ours. Still, we’d like to think that human choice is qualitatively better than the choice of a lower animal like a chicken. Defenders of genuinely free will had a simple solution: humans have “the ability to have done otherwise,” and chickens don’t have that ability. But what solution can determinists offer regarding freedom of action? According to Frankfurt, having second-order desires is a uniquely human thing. Animals like chickens don’t go on diets, and then resent the fact that they desire to gorge themselves with chicken feed. Their desires are limited to first-order ones.

What should we think of the freedom of action alternative? Even if we can make general distinctions between free and unfree actions as Frankfurt suggests, is it really a viable conception of freedom? “Oh, come on now,” criticizes the advocate of genuine free will, “the concept of freedom of action is not really freedom at all. It’s just a flimsy consolation prize for determinists who are desperate to hold onto the term ‘freedom’. Ultimately, you still think that you are a robot that is determined by biological programming, and there’s no freedom at all in that.” Yes I’m a programmed robot, the defender of freedom of action admits, but I’m a robot that feels strongly about my individual identity. All of my actions are indeed determined by my genetics, my environment, and my brain activity, but at least it is my genetics, my environment, and my brain activity. Because of this I can say that I’m not merely a puppet being controlled by outside forces; I’m not merely a cog in the larger machinery of the universe. Instead, my choices are the result of my own history. There’s nothing flimsy at all about linking the concept of freedom to my feeling of identity.

Thus, the success of the freedom of action alternative hinges on whether we can meaningfully see ourselves as programmed robots which at the same time have strong feelings of identity.

E. FREE WILL AND GOD

While the free will and determinism debate is interesting in its own right, it takes on new proportions for religious believers. The traditional idea of God is that he is an all-powerful being who knows everything and is preeminently good. Puzzles about God’s attributes immediately arise, though, once we consider questions about human free will. We’ll look at two controversies: the impact of human determinism on the concept of divine goodness, and the impact of genuine free will on the concept of divine omniscience.

Determinism and Divine Goodness. Let’s assume for the moment that human behavior is fully determined according to rigid bio-chemical laws. We have no genuinely free wills, and hence we lack the power to have done otherwise. In spite of whatever feeling of individuality I may have, I am a small piece of a physical world with causal connecting links that extend billions of years into the past. When I buy a scoop of chocolate ice cream, that decision is the result of motives that were bio-chemically imprinted within my brain by my environment – such as the influence of my parents. The very existence of my parents, in turn, rests on a complex set of causes pertaining to their parents. This, in turn, rests on the history of the human race, life on earth and the origin of the cosmos. According to the religious believer, God is at the beginning of this elaborate chain of events. He creates the raw material of the universe, devises the laws by which they operate, and sets in motion a continually-cascading sequence of events that mechanically unfold throughout time and result in me purchasing a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Further, as an all-knowing being, God would be fully aware of the outcome of this cosmic chain of events. In short, my act of purchasing chocolate ice cream is ultimately caused by God.

If all human acts were as innocent as buying ice cream, then God’s ultimate role in causing human actions would be no big deal. But that’s not how it is. We very often do horribly vile things, such as enslave, rape, kill, and even wipe out entire races of people. Just like my purchase of ice cream, all of these actions would trace back to God as their originator. Even Hitler’s conduct was initially set in motion by the grand architect of the universe, and, at the tail end of an elaborate chain of events, Hitler robotically carried out God’s programming. The problem here is that we assume that God is a perfectly good being, but if determinism is true, then God seems to be responsible for all human evil. More precisely, the argument is this:

1. Evil human actions are determined by a necessary causal chain of mental and physical events.

2. This chain ultimately traces back to God who is the creator.

3. Therefore, God is responsible for evil human actions.

The problem is compounded if the believer holds that God punishes people for their evil conduct – either in this life or the afterlife. If Hitler’s evil conduct was the result of how God programmed the world, it doesn’t make sense for God to then punish Hitler.

Many religious philosophers argue that the only satisfactory solution to this problem is to deny determinism and embrace genuine free will instead. By inserting free will within the natural sequence of causal events, there is a gap that keeps us from tracing causes back to God. For all we know, God set the wheels of the cosmos in motion to culminate with a paradise on earth; but, when the chain of causes and effects finally reached the level of human choice, we freely imposed our own plans on human activity. God may have intended Hitler to be a gentle artist, but Hitler, of his own free choosing, went into politics to unleash his genocidal plan. However, while this solution might successfully rescue God from being the source of evil human actions, it presumes that humans have free wills. Just because the notion of free will offers a convenient solution to a theological problem, that in and of itself is not a good reason to embrace free will. We’d still need some independent reasons for thinking that the idea of free will is true—such as the argument from the feeling of freedom, or the argument from moral responsibility—and these arguments, as we’ve seen, are not necessarily convincing.

Genuine Free Will and Divine Foreknowledge. Religious believers commonly say that God is all-knowing. This ability to “know everything” includes foreknowledge, which is the capacity to know something before it happens. It is understandable that an all-knowing God could foresee the eruption of the volcano on Mount Vesuvius, for example. By knowing every physical fact about the earth and every law of physics, God could mentally project the outcome of any physical event, including a volcano’s eruption. The key problem with foreknowledge, though, is that it seems to conflict with human freedom. If God knows everything I will do even before I am born, how can any of my actions be free? Suppose that at midnight tonight I will eat either an apple or a banana; I haven’t yet decided which. If I am truly free, then God himself won’t know what I’ll do until I actually make the choice myself. How, then, is it possible for God to foresee my choice when the time hasn’t come for me to freely make it? If he foresees that I’ll select the apple, then the truth of that option will become fixed on the timeline, and I will not be free to select the banana. More precisely, the argument is this:

1. If God foreknows what I will choose at midnight tonight, then at midnight I must choose that action.

2. If at midnight I must choose that action, then at midnight I cannot freely do otherwise.

3. Therefore, if God foreknows what I will choose at midnight tonight, then at midnight I cannot freely do otherwise.

Some philosophers try to solve this problem by tweaking yet another divine attribute, namely timelessness. There are two ways in which we can think of God as being timeless. First, there is a weak sense of timelessness as endless temporal existence. On this view, God existed at every moment on the timeline in the past, and God will exist at every moment on the timeline in the future. By contrast, the strong sense of timelessness is that God is actually outside of time, and the very concept of time does not apply to him. He is in a privileged position which allows him to look down on the entire historical timeline in a single glance. This strong position offers a possible solution to the problem of foreknowledge. On this strong view of timelessness, it is misleading to talk about God “foreseeing” future events since it makes it seem like God is himself moving through the timeline like we are. Instead, God knows my future free choices because of his privileged position outside of time, not because he can look into the future.

There are many other theological puzzles that arise when examining the free will debate in relation to God’s attributes. For example, God creates us knowing exactly what kind of creatures we are, and consequently he wills the existence of “free” beings who often choose to be immoral. So, even if God does not directly cause us to act immorally, he nevertheless knowingly causes us willfully immoral creatures to exist. Whether puzzles like this can be adequately solved remains to be seen. What’s interesting about these puzzles, though, is that it shows how far reaching the free will and determinism debate can become, particularly for religious believers. In essence, the position that you take on the issue of free will impacts not only how you understand human values like moral responsibility and human dignity, but it also impacts your conception of religious values, such as the kind of attributes that you can reasonably ascribe to God.

For Review

Please answer all of the following questions for review.

1. Explain the notion of “the ability to do otherwise”.

2. What is the difference between determinism and fatalism?

3. What is the dualist's view of free will, and what are the two criticisms of it?

4. What is the argument for determinism from predictability?

5. What is the argument for free will from the feeling of freedom, and what is the hypnotism criticism of this?

6. What is the argument for free will from moral responsibility and what is the criticism of that view?

7. What is the argument for free will from human dignity and what is the criticism of that view?

8. Give the argument for free will from subatomic indeterminacy and one of the criticisms of that view.

9. What is the theory of free action, and what is its connection with determinism?

10. What is Frankfurt's view of free actions?

11. Explain the conflict between human determinism and divine goodness.

12. Explain the conflict between genuine free will and divine foreknowledge.

For Analysis

Please select only one question for analysis from those below and answer it.

1. Think of an argument to support Descartes’ view that human spirits have genuinely free wills.

2. How might a defender of genuine free will respond to the argument for determinism from predictability?

3. Write a dialogue between a determinist and free will advocate on the subject of moral responsibility.

4. Write a dialogue between a determinist and free will advocate on the subject of the indeterminacy principle.

5. Think of an argument to show that determinism does not adversely affect the concept of divine goodness.

6. Without discussing the concept of divine timelessness, think of an argument to show that free will is not in conflict with divine foreknowledge.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Works Cited in Order of Appearance.

Acxiom news release, May 22, 2002, “Acxiom Unveils Personicx as the Next Evolution in Consumer Segmentation” http://www.acxiom.com

The example of the executioner is from David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). The standard edition is edited by Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

The experiment regarding the conscious feeling of freedom is discussed by Benjamin Libet, “Do We Have Free Will?” in Robert Kane, ed., Oxford Handbook on Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 551-564.

Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, On the Dignity of Man, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998). Recent translation of Pico’s most famous writing.

Frankfurt, Harry, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 67, 1, 1971.

Kogonuso

Search This Blog

Italy's daily coronavirus death toll and new cases fall

FREE WILL: From Great Issues in Philosophy, by James Fieser

Comments

Post a Comment