What are your thoughts on machines that can predict what you're going to do in the next five minutes? Do you think that everything that happens now in the universe was causally determined by some event(s) that happened before it? When professional philosophers check people's intuitions it looks as though sometimes people generally agree that we have free will even if the universe is guided by the natural laws that we learn about in physics, chemistry, and biology and sometimes they do not.
People just don't seem to have intuitions about these sorts of cases and the questions that are raised by them. People have intuitions about which path would be shorter to work, what color shirt would look best with their complexion but not whether the laws of the universe somehow limit the human capacity to act freely. Not only ordinary people but philosophers since the time of the ancient Greeks have had trouble coming to a consensus on the nature of human freedom, demonstrating that they too do not have uniform intuitions about free will.
The late 20th and early 21st century have brought us reassurance from some scientists that we don't have free will. These scientists include the physicists Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene and Lawrence Krauss; biologist Richard Dawkins; and Sam Harris, all of whom assume that if the universe acts according to physical, chemical, biological, and other natural laws then there is no room for free will. Why must we, if we want to get clear about free will, assume that free will is opposed to a universe with natural law? Why can't free will be viewed as a natural component of our human behavior?
According to Harris in order for us to have free will we need two things—(1) we have to be the conscious sources of our own thoughts and actions and (2) if we had the ability to rewind back to earlier events in our lives, we would need to be able to make decisions differently and act differently than we otherwise did. In Harris's book Free Will (2012), he pretty quickly dismisses the first point. He invites the reader to sit quietly and try not to think and watch how thoughts come into the noggin. We have no control over what thoughts come in during that moment but neither do we have control over what thoughts we have at any moment in our lives. We also make decisions but don't know why we chose on the basis of some beliefs and desires and not on the basis of others.
With regard to the second criteria Harris says that if you think about it, there's just no way that you could act differently than you did in a situation. Think about the last time that you wanted to order a steak at a restaurant. If you were to go back to that exact moment and situation and have all the same thoughts and desires you are going to order that steak. It would take divine intervention for you not to do that. If all the physical laws of the universe are fixed our identical beliefs and desires dictate that we really can't act any other way than we do in any given moment.
Among the philosophers that are dissatisfied with Harris's account of free will is Eddy Nahmias, who believes that you do not need the components Harris claims to have free will. You don't need to be the conscious source of your thoughts and actions nor do you need the ability to have acted otherwise. Nahmias in The New York Times writes:
Many philosophers, including me, understand free will as a set of capacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating about one's reasons for choosing them, planning one's actions in light of this deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competing desires. We act of our own free will to the extent that we have the opportunity to exercise these capacities, without unreasonable external or internal pressure. We are responsible for our actions roughly to the extent that we possess these capacities and we have opportunities to exercise them.
For Nahmias, free will is the set of relative capacities of a person to act from thoughts, desires, and principles and it sits comfortably with our understanding of the natural world. On Nahmias's account, we can still accept that our bodies as well as everything else in the universe is a result of physical, chemical, and biological laws and still believe free will is a property of human beings (and perhaps other biological organisms). Furthermore, free will makes sense as a real explanatory feature of our behavior in the social sciences.
In reply to Nahmias Harris writes in Free Will:
There is no question that human beings can imagine and plan for the future, weigh competing desires, etc.—and that losing these capacities would greatly diminish us. External and internal pressures of various kinds can be present or absent while a person imagines, plans, and acts—and such pressures determine our sense of whether [someone] is morally responsible for this behavior. However, these phenomena have nothing to do with free will.
If our goal is to understand human behavior in ordinary life, in our legal system and in the social sciences, what is wrong with an account of free will like Nahmias'? Isn't the ability to act according to what you think, plan for, and desire enough in terms of a free will worth having?
--Billie Prichett
As an ardent appreciator of Spinoza (with whom I’ve found much agreement) I’ve dealt with and wrestled over the potential problems giving up the concept of a Free Will might entail.
I’ve also integrated my readings of Spinoza with readings of Nietzsche who also does not believe in a free will but, rather, in degrees of will with varying degrees of strength.
At this point in my life I’ve appealed to both of my favorites (as mentioned above) and my own experience and I’ve come to the conclusion that while we do not have any sort of a free will, we have Our will. I do not make free choices. I make ‘Daniel’ choices.
I see nothing lost here. We still behave according to our tastes, reasons and inclinations and those are all we have access to anyway so while this is the very proof of our un-free will, it simultaneously speaks to the unimportance of any ‘free’ will. It isn’t necessary and giving up the concept leaves us no worse off.
There are of course meaningful degrees of freedom and it’s opposites such as external pressures and coercion versus the absence thereof.
And in regards to legal systems… Perhaps a pragmatic notion is most appropriate. Even if we are not metaphysically priveledged with a transcendent, free will, we are still engaged in social life with implications and effects—the moral qualities of which we can agree and disagree upon—which it seems to me we are justified in actively deterring and punishing for the good and well-being of everyone who agrees to refrain from violating the liberties and rights of others.
Daniel:
Dunno what I think about the point about legal systems but I agree with you otherwise. Looks like the dispute is just terminological.
“And in regards to legal systems… Perhaps a pragmatic notion is most appropriate. Even if we are not metaphysically priveledged with a transcendent, free will, we are still engaged in social life with implications and effects—the moral qualities of which we can agree and disagree upon—which it seems to me we are justified in actively deterring and punishing for the good and well-being of everyone who agrees to refrain from violating the liberties and rights of others.”
Why then are we not justified in complete self serving?
Hello, LifeformBri:
You seem to be suggesting a slippery slope argument. Could you explain this a little bit?
I was just thinking that it could go either way – just (deterring and punishing for the good and well-being of everyone who agrees to refrain from violating the liberties and rights of others) or unjust (self interest) – with an absence of self.
In nature we see both synergistic and antagonistic dynamics. Nothing can be justified.
Do you think I would be correct in writing that synergy and antagonism are metaphysical properties? As in, they are “meta” to the physical properties. I don’t think that’s correct but it almost feels correct.
I am in agreement with most of Daniel’s response. Billie Prichett and Eddie Nahmias join a large body of philosophers in making the classic error of maintaining that, since we can make decisions, we must have free will. Using this measure, animals and computers also have free will.
What we think and do is the end result of a long and complex chain of influences including our genetic heritage, past experiences, acquired beliefs, current situation, our mental state, emotions etc. These factors are embodied in the neural structure of our brains: we are our brains. Decisions we make are generated by deterministic processes within our brain. The crucial point is this: although we may be appear to select one choice over another, the choice actually made is determined by the current state of our brain. In other words, the choice we make is the choice we make – how can it be otherwise? How can you imagine that you will make a decision that is not predicated by the nature of your brain?
The drive to justify free will seems mostly motivated by the moral responsibility issue: we want to feel justified in punishing wrong-doers and rewarding the praise-worthy. Regardless of the influences bearing down on him, the criminal, with free will, can still choose to take the moral path. If he fails to do so, then he is truly culpable. However, to accept this, you would need to hypothesise some agent or module in the brain which acts independently of the brain but is able to defy its normal deterministic behaviour. It is most unclear how this can possibly happen.
Hello, Colin:
Thank you for the comment.
First off, it’s a privilege you included me in the same breath as Eddy Nahmias as having made a ‘classic error.’ Good company.
Secondly, totally agree with the implications in your first paragraph and your remarks about having our thoughts and actions being totally determined in the second paragraph. And re animals and comps: I have nothing against animals or computers, so sure, why can’t they be candidates for free-will-having beings? And yeah, right, any decision we make is causally determined by, say, a neurophysiological (NP) process, which, yeah, maybe could be subsumed under an NP law, or other relevant laws, and so on. Yep, choices are causally determined.
Regarding moral responsibility, I think it’s another issue altogether. Important one, to be sure, but you know, as for me, with regard free will, I’m more interested in the concept in its usefulness or lack of usefulness in helping to explain how the world works. I’m not even particularly attached to the phrase ‘free will,’ but I’m more interested in a useful expression of that concept that could be helpful in talking about how the world works. Seems like free will in terms of having the set of relative capacities to act from beliefs, wants, principles, and the like is a sense of the concept worth preserving–whether or not you preserve the phrase ‘free will.’ But if you’ve got beef with that phrase, good luck expunging it or its foreign language corollaries from language.
“We are responsible for our actions roughly to the extent that we possess these capacities and we have opportunities to exercise them.”
In justice systems, we are responsible to the extent that a given action gives evidence of potential future antagonism. The potential action or behaviour is contained (incarceration), corrected (rehabilitation and/or retribution), or managed.
To your response about my (perhaps long-winded) concluding point about legal systems, I think this comment of yours actually addresses your own question quite well. This is what I had in mind when I spoke of pragmatic solutions in which acts of containment, correction and management are not off the table pending the status of Free-Will. Like you stated, it is still justifiable without appeals to moral responsibility because in some sort of Hobbesian way we all are bound to laws which serve as protection to the commonwealth which in turns insures the security of individuals. Anyone who violates such an agreement (ie laws (though we can still criticize laws I believe… For example the status of non-violent drug offenses is disproportionate and unjustified even on non-moral grounds)) would either be entitled to containment or punishment OR he/she would represent a social contract that had become null and void and at THAT point, perhaps, self-serving would be a lot of people’s logical-next-steps.
My only point about legal systems and such is that it would be disastrous to disassemble them solely on the grounds that there is no such thing as ‘moral’ responsibility.
[of course, I may be wrong about everything else too, but if I’m not then this strikes me as an adequate compromise between (a) moral rigidity (and it’s legal implications) and (b) anarchy (of state as well as conscience).
#just some thoughts#
The morality justifies the stability of a justice system. The system of justice works therefore it must be moral…or so it seems.
Attila the Hun’s system of justice also worked – there was no greater good than destroying your enemy and taking his possessions (I believe I got this from a previous PEL episode). Attila was strongest therefore he actions could serve himself and no others. So, morality isn’t real beyond a conceptual description of how the justice system operates – what is deemed good and bad.
“which it seems to me we are justified in actively deterring and punishing for the good and well-being of everyone who agrees to refrain from violating the liberties and rights of others.”
I agree but only to the extent that it is justified as long as it works to benefit those who participate in the social contracts. Once it stops working then morality changes and it may favour those who don’t participate in social contracts.
It was Genghis Kahn in the Hobbes episode 3, Not Atilla the Hun…oops.
“My only point about legal systems and such is that it would be disastrous to disassemble them solely on the grounds that there is no such thing as ‘moral’ responsibility.”
Got it now. Without Free Will there can be no ‘moral’ responsibility but we still need a justice system to decrease risks and maximize happiness. In order to decrease risks we need rigid morality (abstraction of authority) but with rigid morality we get less liberty and subsequently less happiness.
Morality as “abstraction of authority”. I think that’s really good. Should make up for Genghis Kahn mistake.