Knowledge and Free Choice
Book II
Part 2
by
Louis Lopez
© 2021 by Louis Lopez
All rights reserved. It is allowed to reproduce and distribute copies of this book PROVIDED (1) that it is copied exactly as found here without any alterations to the wording and (2) that no more than $20 be charged for each copy.
Table of Contents (Part 2)
11 An Examination of Free Will
The Foundations of Free Will
Marks Against Free Will
The Scope of Rationality
The Place of the Emotions
You without Emotions
An Equal Amount of Free Will
A Justification for Punishment
Divine Punishment
Miscalculations
12 A Closer Look
The Arm Experiment
Ann's Walk
Animal Decisions
Jake's Stein
Some Aspects of Determinism
13 Freedom from Determinism
The Arm Experiment
Decision Points
Ann's Walk
Animal Decisions
Jake's Stein
14 Genetics and Environment
Genetics
The Arm Experiment
Environment
15 The Roots of Determinism
Christians and Determinism
LaPlace's Intelligence
The Unconfirmed Conjecture
Simple Model of Cause and Effect
Determinism at the Quantum Level
Determinism at Higher Levels
16 Randomness
Examples of Randomness
Determinism at the Biological Level
Extent of Strict Determinism
Historical Randomness
17 Softening Determinism
Hard Determinism
Indeterminism
Origination
Jumping Out of One's Skin
Overcoming Character
The Will to Condemn
Building Character
Chance and Free Will
Synchronicity
Impulsiveness
Compulsive Criminals
Evolution and Free Will
Free Will Shackled
18 Decisions within Determinism
Arbitrary Decisions
Switchable Determinism
Compulsion Cases
Open Choices
Moral Deliberation
19 The Solution of Free Choice
Free Choice
A Review
11 An Examination of Free Will
We all like the feeling of being able to control events whether they affect us or other persons or our surroundings. The control of events is important in the avoidance of harm as well as in the seeking of pleasure. You try to control events in your life in a variety of ways. Most of these efforts you undertake with ease and little thought that you might not be able to carry them out. Furthermore you feel your desire to undertake the actions came from no other source but you.
When we are small children, we experience an abundance of the feeling that we can will to do anything. Small kids may try to fly through the air by jumping off chairs, walk around in extreme weather without fear of consequences, try to eat something even if it is considered inedible, or eat nothing while playing all day. In adolescence, they become even more daring: smoking cigarettes, having sex without concern for pregnancy, trying to drink a gallon of beer, driving down a crowded highway at 80 miles per hour. It has been pointed out that at this age adolescents attain a feeling of omnipotence, especially the boys.
The Foundations of Free Will
The realization eventually arrives that they cannot will to do any action and always expect favorable consequences. For one there are certain regularities in the world such as the law of gravity. Then there are times when their friends may not want to join in doing something at a particular time. Parents may set down restrictions.
Parents usually are the ones that introduce the concept of free will to the child. The parent may reprimand the child for some undesirable act like smearing peanut butter on the wall. The child may claim it was an accident. The mother may then declare, "Don't act like it was an accident. You did it of your own free will." Hearing that, the child begins to grasp the concept. Later the child will have ample opportunity to reexamine the idea.
Science is one of the great pillars of support for determinism, the doctrine that all events are brought about by related preceding events. Causes precede their effects in the law of cause and effect. We humans are controlled by various forces found in nature.
It becomes clear that free will depends on being able to deliberate on competing choices. This can involve large endeavors. Military operations need planning that involves the making of carefully considered choices. Smart jewel thieves make elaborate plans before accomplishing a successful heist. On the other hand, if a person does not have the capacity for rational deliberation, s/he will not be able to truly exercise free will.
There are numerous actions we perform regularly. An example is getting in the car, driving to the grocery store, going to a gas station to fill up the car, going to the post office to leave a letter, and driving back home. It feels like one is perfectly free to perform them, but a determinist critic of free will could point out that all these actions need to be performed as part of everyday living. The choices are not given any thought. They are automatic and therefore not free.
In answer, it has to be admitted that many everyday actions are completely determined. However, that does not apply to all actions. The visits to the gas station and to the post office were not pressing and could have waited to another day. The letter could have been placed by the mail box at home so that the letter carrier could pick it up. Some deliberation could have taken place in deciding whether to take these two actions.
At times deliberation, when done carefully and wisely, seems to change minds. A person may think that taking a particular course of action is the way to proceed. Then after gathering more information and taking careful consideration of all the sound alternatives, the person decides on a better way than the initial choice. In these cases--of which there are many--it appears that there is something more than just a feeling of acting freely. Instead, deliberation is followed in preparation for the true exercise of free will.
Marks Against Free Will
Not all people are equally capable of carrying out detailed deliberations. Some people act very quickly and rarely
spend time deliberating on what is the right course of action to take. If their deliberations are difficult or frustrating, they simply pick the alternative that feels good. They act impulsively and might be called impulsives.
Then there are those at the opposite end who always need to deliberate on which action to take, even on minor decisions such as what to snack, when to go to the mailbox, what clothes to wear, etc. These people can come off as indecisive. Call them deliberatives. There is apparently a spectrum in which all people fit between the two extremes.
From this, it seems that people have different amounts of free will. On one end, the impulsives appear to act with great freedom since they act quickly and with self-assurance. However, since they don't spend much time reflecting on issues, their actions could be considered driven rather than free. Where do impulses come from? It could be that impulsiveness is to a great extent an inborn characteristic. Those who are impulsive are more likely to be young. All of us seem to be the most impulsive around age two and gradually become less so as we grow older.
A friend of mine who was very intelligent said that he did not believe in free will because he had never experienced the feeling that he was acting out of free will. It always felt to him that any action he took was not under his control. When he and i were younger, it did strike me that he would at times blurt out comments impulsively. They could even be imprudent. At other times, it seemed that he made important decisions after what appeared to involve deliberations. Nevertheless, he maintained that he felt in even those cases that he was not in control. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic, which may have affected his judgment. I wonder how many other people may also harbor the feeling that they do not act out of free will. Is that what all impulsives feel? Would they also have to be schizophrenic to feel that way or could they feel that way without having any mental abnormality?
A strike against humans having a wide-ranging free will was dealt around 1900 when the idea of unconscious motivation was introduced by Sigmund Freud. After that time, people began to gradually realize that they did not always perform actions based on reasons of which they were aware. People experienced uncontrollable thoughts and fantasies in contrast to what they consciously willed. Much of what Freud uncovered had to do with repressed libido, a trademark of the preceding Victorian Era. Certain of Freud's explanations later fell out of favor.
There is behavior that has become accepted as stemming from unconscious motivation. An example can be the women who are divorced several times even though they tried hard to make the marriages work. In spite of their most careful efforts, they picked the wrong match every time. Often it became clear that these men were modeled after their fathers who had serious shortcomings in the relationship department. They may have been selfish, abusive, temperamental, alcoholic. The women had wanted to have more attention from their fathers but never received it. They united with partners whose personality was much like their fathers in an unconscious attempt to still succeed in winning their fathers' love through them. Unfortunately, the fact that they were like him made it that much more likely that the marriage would fail.
Another example is the man who is easily angered. He regularly feels an internal anger that other people do not observe. He notices that much of the time his anger is unfocused; there is no particular event or person that is causing his anger. It is just there. With a psychotherapist, he is able to admit that he was molested by his father as a boy. It was this secret, coercive situation that produced the anger in him that lasted for years without his realizing the source. There are many cases of unconscious motivation in which persons fully feel they act under their free will and yet do not realize that some experience in their past makes them choose the way they do.
Many people suffer from obsessive-compulsive behavior and the various phobias. Some compulsive habits are the frequent need to wash their hands or to check the items in their pockets or purses or, much worse, the need of the serial killer to murder and even derive pleasure from it. The phobias include fears like that of being enclosed (claustrophobia), heights (acrophobia), and germs or dirt (mysophobia).
The discovery and study of numerous maladies like these made it clear that it was impossible for afflicted persons to use their free will to overcome these behaviors. There was no cure for them. The best that could be done was to take drugs to dampen the fear and even that only helped to some degree. There is a range of these mental maladies. There are those in whom it is clearly evident, while in others it is only noticeable to themselves. They can hide their illness, such as the fear of being in large groups (agoraphobia).
It became clear that the exercise of free will could not defeat these problems. It had nothing to do with the intelligence or strength of will of the person. Very intelligent and disciplined people could be the victims of these disorders and stand helpless in the face of them. Something caused these problems for them in spite of their best efforts.
The Scope of Rationality
When people hear of a particularly heinous crime that was committed, they cry out for swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrator. They assert that the offender was acting out of his completely free will and so should be held completely responsible. To them the seriousness of the offense points to a mental state in the offender that had to make him fully capable of reasoning about what he was doing and in control of his actions.
The idea of free will assumes that the person exercising it is capable of reasoning through various alternatives. Since people have long been observed going through deliberations in order to make a decision, it has been claimed that humans are rational. Aristotle's pronouncement that "man is a rational animal" has been happily and unquestioningly accepted in part because it is flattering. It is true that of all the animals it is humans who have gone the farthest in using and developing rationality. This would seem to indicate that the essence of humans is to be rational, but need this be so?
Humans are the species that seems most adept at walking with the use of only two legs. Does that mean that their essence should be considered bipedalism? That cannot be correct. The bipedal trait is an important one that supposedly sets humans apart from many other species, but birds are also bipedal. Bipedalism frees the other two limbs to undertake other actions. Humans are free to use their arms and hands in a variety of advantageous ways while either standing, walking, or running. A disadvantage of bipedalism has been the greater likelihood of serious injury from falls in old age. This unfortunate problem could be avoided if older humans would revert to being quadrupedal, after say 70 years of age. Crawling would also furnish aerobic exercise as well as strengthen numerous muscles in the upper body. How likely do you think it would be for older people to adopt this injury avoiding strategy?
There is a trait that is truly unique to the human species. This is the ability to learn and understand a complex language. The adjective "complex" has to be added because it continues to be discovered that various other animals like parrots and chimpanzees are capable of understanding language. Humans have reached many of their accomplishments due to their facility with language. Still, language is not the essence of humanity or the center of their life.
The Place of the Emotions
The central aspect of conscious life is the emotions. We want to think that our reason will take control and override our emotions whenever that is necessary. This is more readily found with the more intellectually disposed. There are those who are more inclined to allow their emotions to lead the way. Poets and other artists seem to be more likely to fall into this category. Yet even they at least sometimes seek to figure out and keep their emotions in check, as when they realize that they are too much in the grip of fear or anger.(An interesting book by a philosopher that discusses emotions is Robert Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993).) There is no doubt that other animals show strong emotions and make most of their decisions based on emotion. Emotions are an even more central part of their lives because reason cannot play as large a part. It has to be that emotions have to be counted as the central aspect of animal life.
One of the reasons that emotions are at the center of human lives is that they are present so much of the time. If we see the news on television, we react emotionally to much of it. The emotions may not be as deeply felt as if we personally knew the persons involved, but emotions are called forth nonetheless.
You hear a story about a man who has left his dog in his backyard attached to a four-foot leash for days with hardly any food or water. The dog is now skin and bones. You feel amazement, pity for the dog, and anger at the owner. You hear a story that a bomb in a bus in Tel Aviv was detonated killing 13. You feel pity for the victims and their families, anger toward the perpetrators, and a general dislike for terrorists. In everyday dealings with our families and friends, we feel different emotions, usually moderate but sometimes strong. Our interaction with other people would be very different if emotions were never involved. At times this might be better, but at many other times not.
If all our emotions were eliminated, what would we be like? Assume that you retain all your senses and all the different sensations facilitated by them. However, you do not retain any ability to feel any appreciation for what those sensations brought you. As an example, you would be able to distinguish the sound of music from other sounds but not be able to appreciate it in any way. It would just be a class of sounds. You would no longer enjoy your favorite song. You would be able to differentiate one color from another but would never find any pleasure in observing color. You would be able to identify the scent of a rose but derive no special pleasure from it. The same could be said with regard to the taste of food.
If your emotions were taken away, it seems that you would then just be a robot. You might even be able to make better judgments in cases in which your emotions might previously have gotten in the way. On the other hand, you might be handicapped in trying to analyze psychological problems of others that involved emotions, and most psychological problems involve emotions. Not having emotions yourself would make it difficult to understand what others might be feeling. You would correspondingly have no capacity for empathy.
If desires are emotions, then as a robot with no emotions you would not be able to initiate your own actions. LIke any other robot, someone would have to present you with a course of action or problem to solve before you undertook to do it. If it was not a type of problem with which you were familiar, you would have to first be taught the subject. You would not be able to figure it out for yourself.
You without Emotions
An even more important question is how would you experience the world without emotions? What would be the quality of your life? It would seem good to be free of the negative emotions like hatred, envy, and fear. However, even those emotions may be necessary some of the time. Intense hatred may not ever be necessary but dislike may. It may be beneficial to be able to dislike those who dislike you. Otherwise, those persons might mistreat you, heap scorn on you, and you might still persist in trying to have a relationship with them. A moderate amount of fear appears useful. An example could be a young man who starts driving down a two-lane road at 100 miles per hour, starts to feel fear, and then slows down. A person who goes to a casino with some fear of losing money may be in a better position than a highly intrepid one who proceeds to lose all his money.
Imagine life without the pleasant emotions like love, exhilaration, wonder, admiration, pride, sympathy, respect. These emotions would be highly missed; yet there is one other one that may be the most important. This emotion is all encompassing. It is joy. It has often been said that pleasure is the most important measure of a desire or reason for living, but it may be subsumed under joy. Pleasure has a connotation of physical or sensual enjoyment. Joy and enjoyment are very closely related, with joy showing more immediate excitement and exhilaration. Enjoyment is found in a wider variety of situations and implies a greater calm. An example is the quiet enjoyment of a natural scene or of a painting of a natural scene.
Enjoyment is often found working together with other emotions. There is the enjoyment of loving someone or being loved. There is the enjoyment of wonder and an enjoyment in gratitude, whether it is received or expressed to others. Enjoyment in eating can be essential. People who become old and ill sometimes lose their sense of taste. They report that it is downright unpleasant to try to eat food that doesn't have a taste. This can become so bad that it works against their being able to enjoy living. At this point, they sometimes cease to eat at all and simply starve to death.
Lack of enjoyment may be due to depression. If persons are only experiencing very little enjoyment, they probably are severely depressed. They might be suffering from anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Those suffering from anhedonia often also feel suicidal. Perhaps not finding enjoyment in life makes it feel that it is not worth living. You can imagine how unpleasant it must feel not to be able to find enjoyment in anything.
Much more could be said about emotions and enjoyment. Emotions are so central and powerful in human existence that they make it very hard for free will to operate as it is imagined it does. The way most people think free will is supposed to work is that the individual decides to do something and then carries it through. If you have ever tried to put yourself or your begging pet on a diet, you probably know that it is not that easy.
So it is that the emotional side can so many times take control and upend our best laid plans and carefully considered decisions. This happens at times to even the most rational and self-controlled people. Emotions affect our behavior in subtle ways to a greater extent than we realize. This may be partly because we are often trying to please ourselves, and we do that through the emotions. How else do we "feel" pleased than through our emotions?
Part of the explanation for this may be that in evolution the emotions appeared in creatures well before any significant capacity for rationality. The emotions and other primal traits such as instincts and drives are associated with a part of the brain, including the limbic system, which appeared in creatures early in evolutionary time. The frontal cortex of the brain found in more complex creatures did not appear until millions of years later. It is associated with rationality and self-control. In spite of the human possession of a powerful frontal cortex, the limbic system is still present and has a great influence over our behavior.
Even if Aristotle pronounced the human a "rational animal," he might still have agreed that we possess a fundamentally emotional nature. A more accurate description could be "the human is the emotional animal with the greatest capacity for rationality."
Having a capacity for rationality does not mean that the ability can direct every person at all times in a direction that is beneficial. Unfortunately, that is an assumption that is too often made. As a result, people who can't always overcome their emotions and commit an error are condemned for not having enough will power. Perhaps, reflecting on the power of emotions can help us better understand what forces we are up against. Reflection and observation of ourselves and others can also reveal the related issue of the limitations of our rationality.
An Equal Amount of Free Will
Another serious problem involved in the concept of free will as it is commonly characterized is the assumption that everyone possesses an equal amount of it. Each person has equal capacity to will herself to do what she decides to do, to make the correct decision on what to do, and to control herself well enough to carry out what she decides to do.
There have been allowances for a few people. These have been extreme cases involving insanity or serious mental retardation. In the twentieth century, there grew a greater recognition of weakness of the will. One observation came with respect to child behavior. Children have always been restless and easily distracted. However, it was recognized that some, particularly boys, had a special problem on being able to concentrate for very long. This was labeled Attention Deficit Disorder.
On first impression it appears that everyone has equal free will. It is only after observing a person on how s/he thinks about and carries out her/is actions that we can truly gauge how capable they are of exercising free will. Practical considerations can be involved. It is convenient for parents of several children to assume that each child has an equal amount of free will. Consequently, they can be better justified in meting out equal punishment for similar infractions.
If later it turns out that one of the children does not appear to have as much free will as the others, the parents may not resign themselves to that being a naturally occurring characteristic. They go to work to bring the deficient child up to par with the others through instruction and discipline, even harsh discipline. Luckily, today's parents are more likely to seek professional counseling rather than rely solely on strict discipline. In schools teachers and the administrators must start out with the assumption that all students start out with equal free will.
A Justification for Punishment
As adults, people continue to face the same assumption that everyone has equal free will. One particular area where this is true is the criminal law. Everyone is equal in front of the law including the extent to which they are punished. Luckily, there is the exception of insanity but it is applied very narrowly. Not many defendants are able to qualify for it. Attempts have been made unsuccessfully to broaden the defense to include "temporary insanity." There is no provision In the law, for assessment of how much free will the perpetrator had.
More recently laws have been passed that indirectly allow that women accused of murdering their partners may not have been acting with free will. It is based on the Battered Woman Syndrome. It is a defense that involves a woman that has been beaten and intimidated by her partner for years. He may have threatened to kill her if she left and his threat was very credible.
These women put up with the situation for years until they reach a breaking point. The violence escalates to where they fear for their lives or the lives of their children. They then suffer an emotional convulsion and uncontrollably kill their partner. The defense is that because of the oppression these women lose rational control. Given the circumstances, their free will was compromised.
The civil side of the law also does not pay much attention to directly weighing free will. An example could be the case in which someone is sued for negligence. No examination is ever made of the degree of free will the allegedly negligent defendant truly possessed at the time of the act. Most people working in the legal system are not well acquainted with the idea of determinism and its ramifications.
One good reason that the legal system has not become involved with calculating how much free will each litigant possesses is that it is difficult to accurately measure the capacity for free will. Perhaps someday it could become possible. A more accurate individually tailored method of punishment would then become a reality.
Here is something to mull over for those avid free will defenders who do not like to consider determinism because they think it encourages the unjustified coddling of criminals, misplaced compassion. Free willers need to realize that determinism does not categorically call for compassion. Determinism can be employed to support harsh penalties for crimes. Tougher sanctions can work as a deterrent, i.e., as causes that push people away from wanting to commit a crime. As a deterrent cause, it is necessary to make sure that the public is informed about the penalties. Schools could provide ample information to youth of the consequences of committing crime.
Divine Punishment
There is another situation that is similar to the one involving criminal law that involves punishment. Divine punishment is something that many people believe occurs. There are two categories of this punishment: temporal and eternal. Temporal punishment involves divine retribution that is exacted for misdeeds while the person is still alive on this earth. Apparently, the punishment can either be short-term or long-term. Some people believe that all misfortunes in life are sent by God as punishment for infractions committed no matter how small. An example of a short-term temporal punishment could be a headache sent by God or the gods because you told a little lie. A long-term punishment such as bankruptcy or glaucoma or cancer could be meted out for a bigger, harmful lie. These beliefs are often related to psychological problems of the individual believer, such as obsessive-compulsive behavior.
Eternal punishment is believed to be meted out on Judgment Day. On that day the deeds and misdeeds during the entire life of each person are reviewed. If the total actions of the person do not meet a certain standard, s/he must suffer eternal punishment, also known as hell. The standards followed by the judge, supposedly God, are not known. The judge makes the decision on each person.
In all these sin-related judgments, it is presumed that the human subjects have an equal amount of free will. There is no accounting made of people's differing amounts of free will. There are commentaries or other secondary writings discussing these matters by clergy and religious writers, but they are not definitive. After all, there would be no basis for any claims since they could not truly say that they had been informed by God.
In religious teachings, there is not even any provision for leniency toward the insane. Killing humans is one of the sins commonly thought to be assessed eternal punishment. Take someone who kills another person and is not punished by the earthly authorities because he is adjudged criminally insane. Nevertheless on Judgment Day, it may turn out that this same person is sent to eternal hell.
Miscalculations
Here is another error that is found in free will as it is ordinarily perceived. It seems to be assumed that errors do not occur in applying it. However, free will does not come with a warranty that its results will be satisfactory. Calculations need to be made and that leaves the door open to error. First, there is the calculation whether any action needs to be taken. Then it takes more investigation and reasoning in deciding which course to follow among the options available. Many times the unreflective judgment of others is that the person exercising her/is free will did exactly what s/he intended to do. Not much thought is given to the possibility that a person made an error in her/is calculations. The person did not actually will to do what s/he wound up doing but instead was thrown off from her/is real goal by miscalculations. These are the situations in which a sincere apology from the person in error can clear up misunderstandings.
Moral miscalculations are not seen much in the commission of crime. The thief or the gang decide to rob a bank with little or no thought of morality. Miscalculations are more likely to occur in personal interactions. Here are two situations in which a person willed a particular outcome but made a mistake in the calculations. The first one involves an actual situation that was told to me.
Lance was having serious marital problems. It reached a point serious enough that his wife refused to talk to him. They each had a master's degree in counseling. He suggested that they go to marriage counseling; she refused. The situation continued for several months. Lance was anxiety-prone and so suffered considerably on account of the ongoing tension. He did not want a divorce and did not think she wanted one either.
He had an idea. He would file a divorce. This would shake her up, get things off dead center, and promote a reconciliation. The divorce case could then be dismissed. When Lance's wife received the divorce papers, she became angrier than ever. She decided divorce was a good idea and insisted on carrying it through. It was final within a few months. She never spoke to him again. Lance realized he made a serious miscalculation.
The second example is imaginatively based on the kind of situation that happened in thousands of cases involving the subprime mortgage crisis of the late 0's. Mort and his family decided to buy a house in 2004. He was the sole breadwinner in the growing family with three children so they did not think they could afford a large house. Their real estate agent still showed them large and beautiful new houses. They liked one but Mort didn't believe they could qualify for a mortgage on it. The real estate agent told him not to worry. He went over some figures with Mort and his wife and it seemed all right. They were approved. The mortgage company employees assured Mort he would be able to make the payments and told him not to worry.
In 2008, Mort had his hours at work reduced and began having problems making mortgage payments. Soon the assessed value of the home dropped to a level well below what was owed on it. He found out later that thousands of other families like them should not have been approved for their loans. There was a foreclosure on the home. The family had to move in with her parents. Mort clearly had the intention to find a good home for his family but miscalculated in trusting the agent and the mortgage company employees.
12 A Closer Look at Determinism
Determinism is the idea that all events in the universe are brought on by prior events. Determinism has become widely accepted as having a strong influence on behavior. Years of scientific observation have confirmed determinism. It is further believed that determinism leaves little flexibility. Many observers who believe in determinism concurrently believe that free will is compatible with determinism. They were labeled Compatibilists. Their opponents, the Incompatibilists, hold that determinism and free will are incompatible. We are solely affected by (1) our physical makeup, (2) the laws of nature, and (3) environmental influences.
Those three factors totally control our acts at every single moment. Need this be so? Can it not be the case that at some moments there are no significant influences on our actions? That at precisely those moments we are truly free to make the choice we desire? It would seem that while natural laws are continuously in action all around us they need not control our every act as individuals. There might be leeway left for making free choices unimpeded by nature while yet staying within its general bounds.
The crucial question: does determinism totally limit free will? In the historical discussion of free will, an inordinate amount of time has been spent getting involved in tangents and tangents upon tangents. With this in mind, it would be better to refrain from dealing in detail with side issues as much as possible, matters such as the difference between intentions and actions, quantum theory, and so on. This is not to say that it is not desirable to deal with some of the more important peripheral issues. It is just that they have detracted from discerning the crucial questions. Better to focus as closely as possible on this salient issue in order to discuss it adequately and also to try to avoid causing any confusion by getting sidetracked.
The Arm Experiment
Let us examine the question whether there are occasions in which nature allows free will to operate. There will be four scenarios. First there will be a description of each scenario. In later chapters they will be studied.
The first scenario is the simple raising of one's arm. I will test my free will. I want to assess whether i am free in willing to move my hand and arm in different positions. There is no other motive for moving my arm. I have no need to move my arm other than for the purpose of conducting the test. If i were not to conduct the test, i would merely sit in my chair with my right arm completely still on top of an arm rest. I will decide which way to move my arm just before i move it. There will be no preset pattern in mind.
I hold my right hand and forearm in a horizontal position with my hand five inches in front of my chest, palm down. I move my right arm straight up a few inches to a level where my right hand is now in front of my eyes. I pause it there for about 20 seconds and then move it down to a level where my hand is even with my waist. I next move my hand back to the level in front of my eyes, next in front of my waist, then back in front of my chest, back to my waist, back to my chest, up to my eyes, then back to my waist, back to my eyes, back to my waist, back to my chest. I then decide to move my right hand to my left to where it touches my left bicep, then i move it back in front of my chest, in front of my eyes, back to my chest, now straight up just to the right of my head. I hold it in that position for about 30 seconds, then lower it in front of my waist, in front of my eyes, down to the side of my right thigh, and then i stop.
Ann's Walk
The next example involves a coming to a crossroads. It can serve as a metaphor for numerous other decisions we have to make in our everyday lives. Ann's friend Danica has invited her to go to her house for lunch. She only lives six blocks away so Ann decides she will walk there. Ann walks for two blocks and comes to an intersection with a street that goes to the left but eventually leads to Danica's house. Taking it would reduce the distance by about one block. Ann pauses briefly to decide which way she prefers to go. She likes the opportunity to get more exercise and activity whenever she can. Walking an extra block on the street she is already walking on would provide a little more exercise, but it would take up more time.
If she takes the shorter route to the left, she would probably arrive at her friend's house about five minutes sooner. That is not much difference from an objective standpoint, but Ann's friend is the anxiety-ridden type of person. Five minutes might seem like a long time to her. Yet it might be good for Danica to practice being more patient. She has mentioned that she wants to work at being more free of anxiety. A reason Ann would take the longer route to the right is because it is more aesthetically pleasing, with prettier houses and more attractive lawns. An opposing strong consideration is that on the short route she knows there is a very friendly dog who is likely to be in his front yard as he usually is. Ann would like very much to say "hi" to him. She is an intense animal lover.
Ann quickly thinks of other competing considerations for taking one route or the other, and it appears they balance each other out. Nothing readily motivates her to choose one way over the other. She might as well flip a coin. She feels an equal pull from each side of the choice. It is like sitting on the equals sign of an equation. Ann decides to take the longer route with the hope that Danica will not be upset by her taking a little more time to get there.
Her choice was close to an arbitrary given the equally balanced considerations. The next time Ann walks to Danica's house, she could decide to go to the right. The reasons for choosing each of the two routes may still be evenly matched. Then it is possible that on some occasion a particular reason would clearly indicate which route she should take. If it were urgent to get to Danica's house as quickly as possible, Ann would readily take the short route since she is a person generally guided by reason.
However, there could be a time when she might not follow the most rational course. If it were necessary for her to walk further because she had not been exercising, she might nevertheless be lazy and take the short route. Ann would still in effect be exercising her free will even if it was not the most rational course of action. Small deviations from rational considerations may be considered as consistent with the exercise of free will. Large departures from rationality are likely to be seen as a product of compulsion and not of free will.
Animal Decisions
Note that crossroads decisions can confront an intelligent nonhuman animal such as a cat or a fox or a gorilla with a decision. It is interesting to assess if some animals engage in at least some rational deliberation and base some of their decisions on that. Suppose a dog named Nariz is walking in the wilderness near its home on a farm and comes to a fork in the trail it is on. It stops to sniff. It picks up a scent on the trail to the left, then moves a little to smell what is on the trail on the right. It appears to pick up a scent from there also. Both times it sniffs both the ground and the air. It then smells one more time in the direction of the trail leading to the left. After doing that, it turns to the right and heads on the right-leading trail.
We have noticed dogs behave like this. What are we to make of it? Often a dog picks up a scent in a particular direction and immediately darts in that direction. That appears to involve only one scent so the dog moves impulsively without deliberation. This is the way animals act most of the time, but there are other times when there appears to be deliberation.
Charlie, a dog, seems eager to go outside but at the same time is hungry because he has not eaten for several hours. A bowl of food is located just inside the door. Josephine, his owner, holds open the screen door for Charlie to go out. He approaches it. Then he looks at his food. He stops and takes a step toward the bowl. Charlie then takes another look at the open door. He probably realizes that Josephine will not hold the door open indefinitely especially if he decides to eat. Later Josephine may get busy doing something, and he will miss his chance to go out. This happened before. What is Charlie to do? There are other choices that pets sometimes have to make such as whether to go into a bedroom or the living room, to play or to eat, to go to one family member or another, to sleep outside overnight or inside.
Last night at bedtime i gave my cat Felis the chance to decide to sleep outside overnight. The wind was blowing hard, which can make it uncomfortable. I led him to the screen door at which he stood as if pondering. He didn't seem as eager to go out as on other summer nights. I opened the door, and he went out calmly. I stayed at the door to observe. He walked a little and then stood and sniffed the air. He walked around a little more. After about two minutes, i opened the door. He walked back and decisively came inside. He spent the night inside peacefully.
The decisions that animals have to deliberate do not involve complicated matters. Their lack of verbal language surely precludes their being able to engage in extended reasoning. Nevertheless, it appears that animals are at times faced with genuine choices. They seem to hesitate while pondering what step to take next. On those occasions, there does not appear to be anything that compels them to take one particular action over another. While natural laws are at all times involved in the movements they make, those laws do not apparently always control the animals' choices.
Jake's Stein
Here is one more example, inspired by the glass of beer that Max Black talked about in his lecture at the Proceedings of the first annual New York University Institute of Philosophy in February, 1957.(Max Black, "Making Something Happen," Determinism and Freedom, Sidney Hook, ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1958) 31.)
Jake is a philosophy professor who is having a party at his house for university colleagues and friends. After all the guests are settled in, he goes to the kitchen to get his stein and pour himself a beer.
One of Jake's close friends Michael then comes into the kitchen and starts to talk to him. The conversation turns to how Mike admires that Jake has always been very logical in his thinking and correspondingly methodical in his actions both at work and at home. Just then Jake's wife comes into the kitchen, overhears what Michael is saying, and agrees. She mentions approvingly that his traits of cautiousness and levelheadedness make it easier to live with him.
Michael goes on, "The other day i heard of a man who was holding a full glass of beer in his hand just as you are," addressing Jake. "He was at a bar with some friends and one of them dared him to drop the glass of beer on the floor. They were all standing around. The other friends joined in taunting him to do it. I don't know what motivated the dare, perhaps he had a reputation like you of always being restrained. All of those guys had surely had a few drinks. The guy who was being dared decided to take the dare and drop the full glass on the floor. Needless to say the head bartender was not happy. I can't see someone like you ever doing that."
"No," his wife agrees as she is leaving the kitchen, "i can't imagine Jake ever pulling a stunt like that."
Jake and Michael then go on to talk about other matters including the problems that a young, new psychology professor is having. In the meantime, Jake--in the back of his mind--thinks about what it would be like to intentionally drop his almost full stein of beer on the floor. He likes having the reputation of being rational, calm, and measured. He believes strongly that all people would be better off if they would try to lead their lives with the aid of rationality.
On the other hand, he has previously thought that he doesn't like the feeling that he might be too one-dimensional. Through the years, he has at times been accused of being "too rational." He wasn't sure what people meant by that when he was younger. It seemed that his accusers were not adept at rational thought or enjoyed the excitement of acting on emotion. Often they fit both of those profiles. Eventually, Jake did realize that what people most likely meant by saying someone was "too rational" was that the person did not take emotions--especially those of other people--into account. Jake concluded that was a valid observation. From then on, he tried to remember to take people's emotions including his own into account.
Jake also realized that a person who thinks a lot can come to be perceived as plodding and dull. He doesn't like to be seen that way. He would like to be at least a little exciting some of the time. He noticed that he himself often takes a liking to people who are exciting. Jake fancies that he has a little flare for excitement and an ironic sense of humor. Then there is the consideration that he senses that his wife sometimes thinks he is dull and life with him too predictably humdrum. He is aware that people who have been in good marriages sometimes develop dissatisfaction with the other person because the person is reputedly boring.
From time to time, Jake will try to do something different and exciting. Dropping his stein of beer intentionally would certainly fill the bill. It is tempting. Yet he wants to keep his reputation as a restrained and reasonable thinker. It is doubtful that one wild action would destroy that reputation especially once people learn that it was done in jest.
What actually holds Jake back the most is a very practical consideration. The broken glass and the beer will rebound and scatter all over the kitchen. It will make a big mess that will take time to clean. It will not be possible to clean all the glass, no matter how much effort is put into it. Jake knows that months later little pieces of glass will still be found on the floor behind appliances. Of course, Jake would do all the clean up. He would not allow his wife to help. He is not eager to have to get down on his knees and even elbows looking for pieces of glass.
Then there is the tantalizing thought of what kind of reaction dropping the stein would create. Any number of people would be incredulous. It would be hard to believe if anyone were to do it, but much more so because it was Jake. The party attendees would get a good laugh out of it. A buzz would continue through the evening. No entertainment was planned for the party so the incident could count as that. Word about the unexpected act would travel to the philosophy department, perhaps to other university departments. It would probably be remembered and recounted for years. Jake has now made the decision.
"So you think i am too reserved to drop this stein on the floor"? he asks Michael just as his wife returns to the kitchen.
"Yes, i do," Michael replies.
"Watch this," Jake states with a smile as he calmly lets go of the stein from chest height, which predictably shatters on the floor. His wife and Michael stand agape.
Some Aspects of Determinism
Determinism holds that events are brought about by related preceding events. Only certain events can be the causes of specific effects. Rain falling on an old tin can does not cause it to grow larger or turn it into a pumpkin. Rain does help cause trees and plants to grow. That is predictable because it has been occurring regularly for many years. Further study shows that if rain had not existed for all that time, the earth would be a very different place from what it is now.
Sometimes more than one causal event is necessary for a subsequent expected event (effect) to occur. In the case of plants, there are several necessary conditions including the proper climate, soil, certain nutrients in the soil, etc. Conversely, one cause can bring about multiple effects--some desirable, some not. A copious rain can cause some plants to grow, quench the thirst of animals, and yet flood fields of grain so seriously that it ruins the crop. That multiple causes and multiple effects occur is important to remember since it seems that there is the thought that there can only be one cause for only one effect and vice-versa.
Another aspect of determinism is that it is not always uniform and exactly predictable; it can be probabilistic. Dark clouds in the sky are always a necessary precursor of rain, but we can all remember times when they just kept passing overhead and there was nary a drop of rain. Dark clouds only make it probable that rain will fall. Other conditions must come into play before any precipitation actually takes place. Another way of putting it: dark clouds are a necessary condition of rain but not a sufficient condition. There is no guarantee that dark clouds will always cause rain to fall.
There is no dispute that past events can have a definite, continuing effect on later events. Geologists tell us that many millions of years ago over a long period of time millions of trees and plants died, decomposed, and were compressed by other vegetation and soil that fell over them. That vegetation became liquid after the passage of millions of years. That liquid is what we today know as petroleum, which has had a profound effect including the production of plastics and gasoline for motor vehicles. In cultural history, it is well known that the Romans occupied Europe about 2,000 years ago. That has had an enormous cultural influence for centuries.
Just how precise is the effect of past causes? Take one of your remote grandfathers on your mother's side who lived in the year 1500. (We won't try to figure out how many great greats that is.) Could the fact that he suffered from chronic gastritis have deterministic control on whether you like (or don't like) coffee? Would that involve a physical causal chain from 1500 starting in your grandfather's stomach and ending in you today?
Could an earthquake that occurred in 20,110 BCE have been a minor cause of floods that occurred in Mississippi in the U.S.A. in 2021 CE? In terms of predictability, can it be claimed, after gathering detailed related data, that the leaf i am looking at near the top of my tree will fall without fail next December 16 at 8:37:31 a.m. as opposed to say December 16 at 8:37:41 a.m.? Can determinism be so precise that there is no room for even just a slight variability in effect? In this case, a mere 10 seconds. What about the difference between the leaf falling at 8:37:41.01 a.m. and 8:37:41.02 a.m.--a one-tenth of a second difference? Is there not even just a little room for chance?
13 Freedom from Determinism
Let us now analyze the four scenarios. First, the review will be with respect to natural laws and later in relation to the prior influences of genetic makeup and personal environment. There were probably a number of scientific laws that were involved in the examples.
The Arm Experiment
In the experiment with my arm, there was the pervasive law of gravity without which i would have been floating in the air. Laws of motion and momentum controlled the general manner and the limits of my moving my arm. Physiological laws ruled the ongoing functions of my body. They controlled the beating of my heart, circulation of my blood, the functioning of my cells and organs, my brain processes, etc. This is before considering what processes were necessary to carry out the various movements of my arm. The same physical and physiological laws were involved in the movement of the characters in the other examples.
What scientific laws controlled the specific choices i made in the various movements of my right arm? I submit to you that no laws were involved. No laws have been identified that would direct the exact sequence of movements that i made or the distance between each movement or the varying intervals of time between each movement. Nor will such laws ever be discovered. There is no reason to believe that any laws dictated the specific moves i made. I could have easily made a different set of moves or done them more slowly or more speedily.
Anyone taking the same free will test would be free to choose whatever movements they desired. Apart from any free will test, you surely remember being in similar situations in which you engaged in actions that you were free to perform in whatever manner you chose. You had freedom of choice. Examples of such actions can be found in playing ball games with dogs in which you throw the ball and they retrieve it. Each time you toss the ball you can choose a different direction, a different distance, and a different height. One does not feel at all compelled to follow any set of rules but instead chooses with only a little thought where to throw the ball next.
The criticism could be put forward that free will was not involved in raising my arm (or in throwing a ball to a dog) because it was done with no thought to which way i was going to move it next. It was done at random, and that cannot count as being done from free will. While there may not have been any thought given to the pattern or variety of the movements, there was a slight thought given to what the next movement would be. If this had not been the case, no move would have been made. It is only natural that at least some thought has to take place for a specific move to be executed. So it is clear that each specific move was an act of will.
Surely it cannot be claimed that the specific actions were determined. There was nothing compelling me to make any of the movements i made. The only motivating factor was my free choice. Physiological laws were involved in each movement, but they were not dispositive in what manner my arm was moved. That was my choice.
If someone still wants to argue that the arm movements were made thoughtlessly and therefore without my choice, a different but similar experiment could be undertaken. I would execute the same movements with my arm, but now instead of making all of them according to my own choice, i would make them at the direction of another person. Yet i would at all times be allowed to disagree with the request of the person, announce that i wanted to undertake a different move, and then go ahead and make the move i wanted to make. I would then make the different moves requested by the other person interspersed with the moves i wanted to make. I would decide when to stop moving my arm and end the experiment.
The experiment would not consist of purely random, thoughtless moves. I would have to give some thought to when i wanted to disagree with the instructions of the other person (the director) and to what move i would make that would be different. None of the moves would have to make any sense or follow any pattern. Both the director's choices for moves and my deviations could be made haphazardly. Nevertheless, the moves would each be made by me as a matter of free choice. The moves that were commanded by the director with which i complied would be done because i chose to do so. The moves that i would carry out on my own after rescinding the director's order would be done even more so out of my own free will.
There would be psychological traits that would dictate that i would care enough about the free will question to participate in the experiment and how much time i would be willing to spend on it. I can't think of any specific psychological laws that could come into play. In psychology there is hardly any talk of laws. There is simply not enough rigidity with respect to behavior. There could be other side issues like these, but they would only be peripheral. They would not affect the making of the basic choice of where to move my arm each time.
There was no requirement in the experiment that the moves follow any pattern at all. The result of the experiment was not affected by carrying out any particular sequence of moves. All that the experiment required was to observe whether each move was made freely. Also it had to be observed whether an alternative move could be chosen in lieu of the one actually chosen, and there were alternatives at every move.
If the experiment were run again, there is no doubt that a different sequence of moves would be followed. For one thing, the first sequence would be forgotten because there was no attention paid to the movements making up the first sequence. Nor would any attention be paid to the second sequence of movements. All movements would be done randomly so it would be an extreme coincidence for the second sequence of movements to exactly duplicate the first one. If it did turn out that the sequence of movements in the second experiment turned out to be in exactly the same pattern as in the first experiment, the experiment could be run again several times to see what would happen. Surely, there would be different results in each experiment. Another approach could be to use different subjects to conduct the experiment.
What about the law of cause and effect? What happens to the law of cause and effect if all the individual arm movements are considered as being done haphazardly? Causality is in the picture all along. The cause of my performing the experiment was my interest in investigating the problem of free will. That interest in turn was produced by a long sequence of causes and their corresponding effects.
My interest in free will was the cause of my decision to conduct the experiment, of my designing it, and then to perform it. These were effects of the cause. However, the cause did not determine each specific movement i made during the experiment. The movements were randomly chosen once the test began. After the completion of the test, the chain of cause and effect continued. It involved assessment of the result and involves all the steps in which i am now engaged in discussing the test.
Stating it again, the individual movements made with my arm were not part of the chain of cause and effect that started when i first became interested in free will. In fact, they were not part of any chain of cause and effect at all. Each move was made without any consideration of what the prior move was or what the subsequent move would be. Nor did any move in any other way influence the following move. In other words, the law of cause and effect did not control what move was to follow any prior particular move. Upon running the test more times, the sequence of moves would have been different. There were some limitations on which individual moves i could make. For instance, if i had made a move that reached as high as my hand could go, i would not then be able to move my hand any higher.
What happened could be considered a suspension of the law of cause and effect while the actual moves were being made. During this time, determinism was not in control of the moves and that allowed my free will to operate. This does not usually happen. Normally, just the opposite occurs. Determinism is soundly in control, through the law of cause and effect, and free will is not involved in most of our actions.
In spite of the freedom directly related to the commencement and conduct of the lifting of my arm, the test in its entirety was part of a long chain of cause and effect. It was all within the realm of determinism. It could be that the chain started when i first became aware as a child that some actions are taken on the basis of free will while others are not. The chain could have started about the age of five.
One or more events could have opened my awareness of free will. My mother could have scolded me for not restraining my impulses when i jumped off a patio table outside and fell hard on the ground. She could have then declared i should learn to better control my actions and that i was capable of doing that. The chain would have continued through the years as i experienced how free will did or did not operate in my life and as i observed the same in the actions of other conscious beings.
Decision Points
There would have been a number of different chains of cause and effect that began at different times in my life to influence me toward being curious about free will. This would have set the stage for me to decide to conduct the arm lifting test. Even then, there was nothing that compelled me to conduct the test. I could have very well thought about running the test but not actually performed it. I might not have physically run the test but instead conducted it as a thought experiment. I had free will in deciding when and how to run the test.
After the test, the chain of cause and effect continued right along influencing my curiosity and learning on the subject. The test did not cause any permanent break or disappearance of the chain. It continued in my life along with other chains influencing my life such as the chain affecting my health and the one influencing my financial decisions. The various chains can interact. For instance, a serious illness in which i have to spend over $100,000 would affect my finances.
In spite of the deterministic control of the chain over me, there was a point or gap at which i was able to exercise my free will to decide whether to conduct the test and then to decide what arm movements to make. Having this decision point appear in the middle of the deterministic chain of cause and effect did not mean that it was not a determinate event. It was caused by some idea that came into my head related to some pondering on the subjects of free will and determinism. It did not come out of nowhere. That could only be said to happen if the thought of doing the experiment had simply popped into my head without my having ever before in my life thought about the free will/determinism question. Instead, the idea of the test was the effect of a cause which in turn was brought about by a long deterministic line of prior causes and effects.
At the same time, it was a decision point that presented an opportunity to make a free choice. You could say this decision point or gap was only a temporary pause in the long chain of cause and effect. It did not end the chain. The most it could do was perhaps change its nature or direction. This could happen if i changed my opinion on free will as a result of the test. What the decision point did turn out to be was both an effect and a cause of an opportunity for the exercise of my free will during the experiment.
This may be surprising. It seems possible that there can be a chain of cause and effect and yet a person can make a decision within that chain. That line of cause and effect can then either remain unaffected by the person's decision or undergo at least some alteration. Nevertheless, the chain continues onward. Nothing occurs to subvert the deterministic tenor of the events.
In my arm moving test, little happened to alter the continuing chain of cause and effect from the direction in which it would have headed without the conduct of the test. I do not think it changed my opinion much on free will. Or it could be said that the experiment strengthened my belief in free will (in at least some circumstances) and thus possibly altered my future actions. It could be that i will be more confident in talking to others including philosophers about the nature of free will. In turn this may influence at least some of them to examine free will in a different light.
Most of our actions are routine without any significant decisions having to be made. Call this routine determinism. Yvonne drives to the grocery store, goes to get gas, and goes the post office. Bob drives his family to a baseball game, they buy food there, watch the game, and go back home. They go often to see games and are used to doing everything routinely. In both scenarios everything goes as usual with no need to make any deliberative decisions. The two situations differ from the one involving my arm lifting test. In my case, my movements were not done automatically because there was no requirement or expectation or natural flow of what the next move was going to be. Each move was the result of my free choice, even if there was not much thought behind each particular decision.
Ann's Walk
The second scenario from the previous chapter involved Ann walking to her friend Danica's house for lunch and coming to a fork in the road. Ann decided to take the longer route. Of course, there were chains of cause and effect involving the lunch. First, there was the invitation from Danica. This could be traced as far back as the point at which the two first met. This could be traced further back to include the features in each of their personalities that allowed them to become friends.
There were two reasons that made Ann decide to walk there rather than drive her car. She wanted to get some exercise and it was a nice, cool day conducive to an enjoyable walk. If Ann had been tired from prior work or exercise or if it had been raining, she would not have walked. These reasons (causes) involved laws of nature--physiological and atmospheric ones. After Ann's arrival, there was the chain involving the actions and conversation before, during, and after the meal. Finally, there was Ann's walk back home and any effects after that.
It turns out Ann's taking the longer route to Danica's house made no difference. Danica was still busy baking a cake when Ann arrived. The slightly longer trip did not have any effect on Ann either. Neither was there any effect on the lunch visit. Everything that took place would have happened exactly the way it did regardless of which path Ann took. What was important for the chain of cause and effect was that Ann successfully got to Danica's house. Suffering a serious accident would have caused a definite change to the chain.
How much did the antecedent events after Ann started getting ready to go at her house affect the decision she made at the crossroads? Those prior causes led her to the intersection of the two streets but did not control the decision she made. Nor would they have had anything to do with Ann making the decision to take the shorter route if that is what she would have chosen.
None of the factors affecting the decision had anything to do with why Ann was going to Danica's house or her preparations at her house before she left. Hardly anything that she had done in the preceding few days prior to reaching the decision point influenced her choice of paths. The only exception was that she had been keeping up with her regular exercise routine and so had no particular need to walk the longer path for the exercise. That was one reason in favor of choosing the shorter route but was counterbalanced by her frequent wish to get additional exercise.
It turned out that the reasons for taking the short route appeared to exactly balance those in favor of taking the long one. That gave Ann the freedom to choose whichever way she wanted to go. She was able to make that choice without any control by natural laws to make it go one way or the other. At that decision point, she was able to decide based on her free will.
It does not have to be the case that the factors on both sides of an opportunity for a decision have to be equal as in this decision. There can be considerations pointing toward the choosing of one alternative over another and still allow for the exercise of the free will of the chooser. There is some flexibility as long as the influences do not tilt too far one way or another.
In Ann's situation if she and Danica had made plans to go to a movie matinee at a specific time after lunch, there would have been more of an urgency to get to her house quickly. Determinism would have presented a strong reason to get there sooner.
Here is another possibility in which determinism would have pushed the route to take. Suppose there would have been two police cars with lights flashing standing in the street that was the longer route. A police officer would have informed Ann that the street was temporarily blocked off. In that case, she would have had virtually no decision to make. She would have had no opportunity to exercise her free will at a decision point. (We will assume that Ann would not have wanted to exercise her free will by doing something like defying the officer and running up the prohibited street.) Ann's actual case offers an illustration of a decision point where free will can be exercised without the influence of determinism one way or the other.
Animal Decisions
Let us examine the situations involving animals in order to explore whether animals are sometimes faced with decision points. Animals-even intelligent, domesticated ones--often act on impulse. At other times, they may act on habit as when they wait everyday at say 5 p.m. in front of their food bowl because that is the time they are customarily fed. There are the times that they seem to weigh competing considerations. An animal may not put great thought on a choice confronting it, but it can hesitate momentarily as if to weigh which is the better action to take.
The third scenario of Nariz the dog sniffing at the intersection of two trails in the forest could have involved any number of competing attractions. The trail to the left could present a scent that indicated that a roast was being cooked at home. Nariz was sometimes given some of the meat that his human caretakers cooked. Down the other trail, there was the scent of another dog or dogs--it wasn't clear. It could be that they were the dogs he knew who lived at other houses, or it could be new ones in the area. Either way alluring opportunities called. What to do?
An animal could not calmly deliberate all the details and ramifications involved in the two alternatives. That is the disadvantage of not being able to understand a complex language. Nevertheless, a dog or other similar animal is believed to visualize images and engage in limited thinking by that means. Nariz could have seen imaginary scent from the past of a meat dish in the oven but then perceived associated images reminding him that he and other family members did not ordinarily get to eat for some time after that. Rushing home would not then mean getting to eat right away.
Then there were images of past happy encounters with old dog friends in the area that rekindled the desire to see them again. Perhaps even more important would be to meet new dogs that had recently moved to the area. It is important for a dog or a cat to keep abreast of what new animal may be a threat to its territory. Nariz may have quickly come to a conclusion on which path to follow. Or he could have lingered, paced around as he pondered in his own way, and then moved down the trail he chose.
In the earlier example of Josephine's dog having the choice between going outside or eating some food, there was less time for her/im to hesitate. The human would not hold the door for long. If going outside was the dog's preference, s/he had to exit immediately. The choice may have been made quickly, but it may have involved short deliberation. Animals act mostly on instinct and habit, but may arrive at decision points that give them opportunities to exercise free will.
The example involving my cat Felis is perhaps the best one at illustrating the use of free will by an animal. It was not the first time i had seen him or another cat i used to own appear to mull over a decision they had to make. He sniffed the air and seemed to carefully evaluate the scent he detected. He might have also assessed how he felt about conditions like the temperature and the speed of the wind since it was windy. Wind makes sleeping less comfortable. He may not have picked up the scent of other cats but may have wondered about the likelihood that he would meet up with cat friends. That i believe was a big incentive to stay out, but there was never a guarantee that there would be other cats out on a particular night. Especially on a windy night, they generally prefer to hunker down somewhere.
Felis might have walked around in order to assess how he felt internally. He suffered from kidney disease and on some days did not seem to have the same amount of energy that he did on others. It is said that cats with kidney disease sometimes suffer from nausea.
About a week after that, something similar took place around noontime on a hot June day. I saw Felis sitting outside about five feet in front of the same door. I thought he might want to come inside because it was getting hot. I opened the same screen door for him to come in if he so desired. I didn't call for him to come inside, i just gave him the opportunity. He did not rush in but did stand up while looking to his left. He then wandered a few steps to his left and stopped. He looked straight ahead in front of him the whole time. He did not sniff to pick up any scents. During the day, he did not seem that interested in finding cats. Cats do not seem to wander around as much during the day but normally prefer to sleep instead.
Felis probably also realized from past experience that he had two alternatives as far as comfort was concerned. Outside the house, it would be hotter, but there was a breeze that would ameliorate the discomfort. Inside the house, it would be cooler but there would not be as much circulating air even though several windows were open a little. The air conditioner would be turned on, but that wouldn't happen for another three hours. Until then, it could feel unpleasant. Felis stood a few seconds longer and then walked to the door and came in.
He normally came inside the house around noon. There were exceptions in his customary practices in which he took an unexpected course of action. Sometimes there were particular factors that explained his unusual action like the scent of a cat nearby. At other times it simply seemed to be based on whim. He just wanted to stay out or come in at that particular time.
There is plenty of evidence that at certain junctures animals have the opportunity to engage in making decisions with the help of their free will. If you have the opportunity, take the time to observe animals in this regard.
Jake's Stein
Proceed to the case of Jake the philosophy professor who after considerable deliberation intentionally dropped his stein of beer. There were no apparent natural laws that caused Jake's action. There were a number of natural events taking place prior to Jake's action such as the physiological processes occurring inside the bodies of Jake and Michael as they stood there talking to each other, but none of those made it a necessity that Jake drop his stein. Perhaps the closest natural event that brought about Jake's action was the process that took place in Jake's ears as he heard Michael recounting the story of the man who had dropped his glass of beer at a bar based on a dare. Physiological processes involved with thinking had to have taken place in Jake's brain as he pondered what to do with his stein filled with beer. There may have been some effect of the alcohol but it was only his first drink. However, none of these processes produced a strict determination on what specific decision Jake had to make with regard to his stein, of which he was particularly fond.
Natural processes took place that set the stage for Jake being faced with the stein dropping decision. They started with the decision that he and his wife made to have a party, going through the preparations they made, and then passing through the greeting of people at the beginning of the party. All this determined the appearance of the decision point that Jake encountered, not the decision itself. The events that made up the chain of cause and effect up to the time of the decision point only set up the opportunity to make the decision of dropping the stein.
Suppose Michael had not come to the party or that he had simply not mentioned the incident concerning a man intentionally dropping a glass of beer. Then Jake would not have been faced with the decision point. It would not have been likely that anything would have made him consider dropping his stein as an amusement. In the third possibility, everything occurred as originally described except that Jake decided not to drop his stein.
Jake's decision to drop his stein was all his own. It was evident to everyone including himself that he was by nature calm and reflective. Indeed, at the party, he mulled over what action he was going to take. He felt that he was free to choose whichever of the two avenues were in front of him. He liked that feeling of freedom of choice in the situation. By far, the higher probability was that he would not drop the stein, but at the decision point he had the freedom to travel down the unusual path.
Jake's decision had a definite effect on the course of events (chain of cause and effect) that followed. There was much more commotion and excitement. As Jake imagined would happen, people talked about the incident throughout the party and for a long time after at the university. Jake spent considerable time cleaning the kitchen floor both during and after the party. His wife was a little mad at first but later was amused. She and Jake had a wide sense of humor.
This is different from the prior cases considered in which there was no significant effect on the subsequent chain of events. The particular arm movements i pursued made no difference to what followed. I was not anymore hurt or tired by the set of movements i made than if i had made a different sequence of movements. Likewise, Ann's taking the longer route to her friend's house did not make any difference in what occurred after she arrived there.
Jake's example illustrates--more than the other scenarios--how a person's free choice can change the course of events. In his case, it was a deviation from the normal and expected. A free choice need not be an unusual one. In the case of Nariz the dog, it would not be unusual for him to pick either path. His choice to follow the trail that would allow him to investigate the scent he picked up of other dogs would be no surprise to anyone who knew him. Incidentally, an ordinary choice does not guarantee against an unusual outcome.
Suppose that on his way in following the interesting scents, Nariz had suffered a blindside attack by a mountain lion. Assume Nariz was big and strong enough to fight off the cat but suffered some bad wounds. He managed to limp back home and shocked the people at home when they saw him. Of course, most of the time, ordinary choices lead to ordinary results. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that different choices can have different consequences.
None of this should be taken to imply that choices obviate the deterministic system in which we live. It is always there, always involved. Choices that thinking beings make are determined by all the preceding causes that bring about decision points. Choices that are made at decision points often determine the particular chain of cause and effect that follows. Choices (decision points) are embedded in the universal deterministic system that is always present.
At a decision point, a thinking being is given the opportunity to choose performing an action among two or more possible ones. The events leading to that decision are determined by prior causes. The thinker does not have the freedom to choose the prior causes leading to the present decision point. That is outside of her/is control.
At a decision point, the thinker does acquire the power to affect which path the chain of cause and effect that led to that point will take from there forward. The thinker indirectly chooses what course the chain will take. The thinking free agent is usually not consciously aware that her/is choice is going to have effects far into the future or what those effects will be. The thinker usually is only concerned with the immediate effect the decision will have and possibly a few short-term consequences. Of course, there can be exceptions. The situation could be one that calls for peering far into the future to try to assess what could come about as a result of the choice made at the decision point today.
Whichever of these details takes place, the thinking chooser in effect directs the preceding chain of cause and effect in a particular direction. Whatever that direction may be, it follows the line of the preceding chain. It is still in consonance with deterministic cause and effect. All the chooser does is affect the particular course the chain continues to follow after the decision point. There is never any violation of determinism by the thinker's decision. Leading up to the decision point, events are part of a preceding chain of cause and effect. At times, there can be several chains flowing that converge at the decision point.
This can be seen in Jake's case. There was first the line of events that constituted Jake's life leading to the moment of his decision. Then there was the chain that included Michael's going to the party, his mentioning the story of the beer dropping man, and finally saying he did not believe Jake could ever do the same thing. This was apparently the last action that Michael took that influenced Jake. His wife's agreement with Michael probably also had an influence in so far as Jake wanted to surprise her as well as Michael and everybody else. The timeline leading to holding a party would also be essential.
After Jake dropped his stein, the chains of cause and effect that were flowing to that decision point then followed a post-decision chain that was continuous with all the preceding events and included the surprise, commotion, and laughter that followed the incident. You could say that Jake diverted the chain from the course it would have normally and predictably have followed. This is very different from the prior scenarios in which the decisions had no effect on what followed.
In none of these cases, did the acts of free will involve anything magical. The law of cause and effect applied throughout. This is true even in the Jake scenario where there was an unexpected divergence in the foreseeable course of events. Whatever change a being using her/is free will is able to impose is still within the law of cause and effect. The discussion has thus far emphasized the influence of nature on determinism; yet the laws of nature do not tightly control every occurrence. There is some flexibility in how determinism can operate. Free will is not some magical act that humans are able to perform that violates determinism.
14 Genetics and Environment
Surely, what individuals bring with them at the time of birth has to be counted as affecting how they behave today. Continuing studies in genetics, including the accomplishments of the Human Genome Project, have made it very clear that our makeup depends heavily on our genetic configuration. A person who has been anxiety-ridden for as long as anyone can remember may well have been born that way. This would be more likely if one or both parents also seemed to be anxious by nature.
Genetics
Observers infer that a person who is consistently timid or suffers depression or is an alcoholic or has a volatile temper and has at least one parent with the same characteristic could well have inherited it. It has long been clear that bodily resemblances are inherited, so why couldn't biological inheritance play a part in personality traits? Personality similarities can be evident even in cases in which the parent has not had much contact with the child as it was growing up.
Some people made these observations centuries ago. Then starting around 1900, psychology began to become professionalized. Formal studies were devised and conducted. A number of studies have been made of identical twins to observe to what extent similarities in their behavior are the product of a common biological inheritance. The studies that were the most revealing were those in which the twins, for one reason or another, had not been reared together. It turned out that there were a number of instances in which twins showed very similar traits, attitudes, and habit. These similarities clearly appeared to be the product of a correspondingly similar genetic makeup. There are also a number of anecdotes in which identical twins are separated at a very young age, find each other as adults, and marvel at how alike they are. They can both be cheerful and optimistic, enjoy most of the same foods, read many of the same kinds of books, prefer the same entertainment, and so on.
There are those who try to downplay the importance of heredity and instead choose to concentrate on the influence of surroundings from birth onward. Environment is profoundly important in affecting how persons act in their lives. The illnesses, injuries, trauma, instruction received, and the example received from others all impinge on how a person reacts to later events. Nevertheless, the impact of environment cannot negate the fact that we come from birth with inherited tendencies. Some of these are very strong and hard to avoid. It is important to acknowledge and understand this difficulty. If we can manage to do this, it becomes easier to be more understanding and forgiving of those who seem incapable of improving their behavior.
It is understandable that some would wish to downplay the effect that heredity has on behavior. After all, there is nothing anyone can do about what characteristics they received at birth. Luckily, there is some room for improvement later on, such as through cosmetic surgery and tranquilizers.
The Arm Experiment
Return to the arm experiment and review it under considerations of the genetic influences involved. In my moving my arm in front of me without a pattern, how would those movements have been determined by my genetic makeup? How would individual traits i inherited influence the sequence of movements i followed? It is understandable that my arm movements may have been restricted if i had been born with a defect in my arm. Such was not my case. I had perfectly free, painless movement in that arm.
If genetics were involved, might that dictate that i would make the exact same sequence of movements every time? Might not someone else with a different genetic configuration from mine follow a different set of movements from mine? Might not that person follow the same pattern applicable to her/is genetic makeup every time?
I think we can agree that there would be no difference from what occurred whether i was performing the experiment or it was someone else. It would involve different random, patternless motions each time. I think we have all had the experience of performing or watching someone else perform some mindless series of actions like the arm test and observed that there is no pattern to the actions. Anyone would follow a different set of movements each time because they would not be giving the task much thought. They would not try to use any conscious control if they were told they were free to follow whatever pattern turned up.
A similar example would be boxers who prepare for fights by shadow boxing. They follow a completely random pattern of punches whenever they throw their punches into the air. There is no need for any regularity. They are just conditioning their arms and legs. Then there is doodling in which persons are free to draw according to their whim. Genetics may influence an individual to doodle but not necessarily what they doodle.
There could be some individual exceptions. A person could have a defective arm and only be able to perform a very limited number of movements. Someone could be so meticulous that s/he would plan an exact pattern and follow it exactly every time. This would be a rare exception of a person. The vast majority of test takers given the opportunity to perform the movements randomly would do just that. It is not very likely that even meticulous persons would act under the influence of the past--genetic or environmental. Someone who was extremely meticulous could be suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and that could very well be inherited.
All this implies that the specific arm motions of the great majority of people would not be guided by any of the elements of determinism: natural law, genetic makeup, or environmental influences in the world. With regard to unimportant, unstructured actions or sets of actions such as this one, determinism is not involved. The actions of people in these cases are wholly a matter of free will.
With regard to the other three cases, genetics was involved in the decisions although it is not clear to what extent. Genetics was also intertwined with environmental factors. It was pulling on both sides of the respective decisions. For instance in the case of Nariz, there was hunger and love of his family balanced with strong curiosity about other
dogs.
Environment
Environment affects our actions from the first minutes we are alive. Those who oppose the circumcision of baby boys at birth point out that it has to be a traumatic experience that will stay with the child for the rest of his life. It may not be possible to prove this, but it could be true. How much effect it will have will depend on later environmental experiences as well as genetic influence. There is an interplay between genetics and environment that continues every day throughout life.
It may be that events in the early years of our lives are more likely to have a strong effect on us in the future. This could be because we are more impressionable at an early age. Early experiences have an effect over a longer period of time. Exhilarating or traumatic experiences can have an impact on attitude and behavior even into old age. There is also the fact that hormonal and other biological changes in seniors can cause significant changes in behavior and attitudes. This can be brought on by environmental factors but can also be tied to genetic predisposition.
It could be that experiences are more important and influential than inherited traits by adulthood since by then there have been many more experiences. People go through various experiences everyday of their lives. This multitude of experiences helps support those who believe that the influence of environment is greater than that of genetics. It appears that genetics exercises a stronger influence on certain individuals more than others, specifically those who inherit unrelenting diseases such as blindness, deafness, schizophrenia, clinical depression, etc.
The interaction of all a person's experiences are complex and contingent. Remember that the factors that come from genetics and experience do not have a simple, fixed influence. Instead, they have a varying effect at different periods in a person's life. Furthermore, the influence of any one factor can also be blunted by the influence of another factor or factors acting in opposition to the first factor. The picture seems far removed from the simple determinism that has been talked about.
15 The Roots of Determinism
This chapter will examine determinism more closely to see if it is so rigid, strict, and unbending that it leaves no room for anything like free will. The doctrine of determinism has been around for centuries. Early evidence for belief in it may be found in the ideas of the Megarians and the Stoics. In a disputed work of Aristotle, De Interpretatione, he discussed a related issue. Fate was a widely held belief at the time and had much to do with deterministic ideas.("Determinism," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards, ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967).) Under fate, it was believed that humans were not free to make decisions but were instead controlled by rigid, inexorable forces they were powerless to affect. These forces could be the gods but not necessarily.
Christians and Determinism
It was the later Christian doctrinists who provided impetus to the idea of determinism. This was probably done unwittingly. These early Christians undoubtedly believed in free will, but they also wanted to believe in a God that was omniscient. They were not satisfied with positing a God who knew everything going on in the present. They also had to claim that he could foresee how every event would turn out in the future. This brought up questions about the nature of free will.
The following dilemma emerged as a result of holding that God could foresee all events in the future: how can a person facing a decision make a free one if God already knows what it will be? Take the case of Ann at the intersection. She stopped to deliberate which way to go considering several incentives. It turned out it was a close call, so evenly balanced that Ann almost made an arbitrary decision. She could have readily chosen the other way.
The puzzlement arises in trying to understand how a person can make a free decision if God has already foreseen what it will be. That can only happen if there is a strict determinism controlling all actions. This would mean that the person could make one and only one decision. There would be flexibility and thus no freedom to choose.
The answer that is usually given is that since God is omniscient he knows every bit there is to know about the person's background. He knows everything there is to know about the person's genetic makeup as well as every experience she ever had along with the exact impact each experience had on her. Putting it another way, God knows every intricate detail of a person's character and how it will cause her to act, no matter how trivial the action might be. Yet, we have seen in analyzing our examples how difficult it is to say that a person will make the same decision every time, even from one day to the next. And we didn't go very much into impulsiveness and arbitrariness.
LaPlace's Intelligence
The greatest support for a rigid determinism and indirectly for an omniscient God who can foresee all future events came from science. This may be surprising. It happened after scholars became convinced of the precise regularity of the physical laws discovered by Isaac Newton. It was afterwards, that scientists began talking about a mechanical, clockwork universe. With the aid of mathematics, very precise results could be correctly predicted in physics and astronomy. Astronomers were impressed by how much Newton's ideas clarified and predicted the events in the solar system.
One of these astronomers was the Norman Frenchman Pierre Simon de Laplace. He was also a very capable mathematician. With his skill in math, he was able to avoid what had been assumed as errors in the Newtonian system. Newton had not been convinced of the stability of the solar system and consequently conjectured that it might on occasion need divine correction.("Laplace, Pierre Simon de," id.) Clearly, he was no believer in a rigid, mechanical determinism. Laplace did not sympathize with that suggestion. He had gained great confidence that the solar system was completely stable. After all, with the use of a calculus improved by mathematicians after Newton's time, he had been able to demonstrate that stability.(Id.)
By the way, Laplace was appointed to teach young artillery officers at the Ecole Militaire. After listening to a discussion by Laplace of the refined Newtonian theory, one student asked about the absence of God from the theory. Laplace answered that there was no need for that hypothesis. Laplace seemed confident that God did not have to get involved. The student who asked the question was Napolean Bonaparte.(Id.)
Further evidence of how much trust Laplace placed on the accuracy and power of the theory can be found in the following famous LaPlace's Conjecture he made:
An intelligence, knowing at a given instant of time, all forces acting in nature, as well as the momentary positions of all things of which the universe consists, would be able to comprehend the motions of the largest bodies of the world and those of the smallest atoms in one single formula, provided it were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis. To it, nothing would be uncertain, both future and past, would be present before its eyes.(Pierre Simon de Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, F.W. Truscott and F.L. Emory, trans. (1951) 4.)
Laplace may have come to place great faith in his calculations, but whether he was justified in making that conjecture is another matter. It is true that Newtonian laws with respect to objects large and small were put to the test and found to be correct once Laplace made the necessary refinements. Planets could not be made the subject of experiments but their movement could be observed and carefully measured and recorded with the aid of telescopes. It was found that they moved consistent with the theory. Small objects such as metal balls were subjected to the appropriate experiments that showed support for the theory. While not many of those experiments involved living bodies, it eventually became clear that those bodies were just as subject to Newton's laws.
The Unconfirmed Conjecture
Unlike Newton's laws, Laplace's Conjecture was not confirmed by experiment or close unbiased observation. It is difficult to see how it could be. Yet it became tacitly accepted in a more simplified statement like this: if one knew the positions of all the objects in the universe and all the laws which govern them, one could calculate their position at any time in the future. There were no serious experiments to establish the conjecture even after the advent of the super computer. By 1969, the belief was based on the record of success that science and technology had amassed since Newton's time, which indeed was a remarkable one. In that year, three men were able to go to the moon for the first time. Having faith in ongoing scientific success was well founded. Faith in LaPlace's conjecture was part of the picture.
It is ironic that many of the people who have at times been skeptical of science and its findings have at other times expressed great faith in its power. As an example, those who scoffed at data gathered by climate scientists and biologists showing that humans were causing global warming continued to show remarkable faith that science would provide abundant energy. These optimists expressed confidence that if all the world's oil was eventually depleted, science would come up with adequate synthetic substitutes. In addition, engineers would be able to continue operating nuclear reactors to provide electric power without any fear of harmful waste or accidents.
Laplace's conjecture about an Intelligence fit right in with the religious idea that God could foresee all events. All the theologians who had been promoting that idea had to do was claim that God was the putative "Intelligence. " Perhaps this is the reason that little criticism of Laplace's statement was heard from religious quarters. The most they might have pointed out was that Laplace should have mentioned God in his statement rather than merely referring to an "Intelligence." Theists derive comfort believing that God is in command of all events, even all future ones. Nontheists may not believe anyone is in charge of the universe but also find comfort in believing that it is invariably and perpetually regular. That way there are no random surprises to have to fear.
Simple Model of Cause and Effect
The rigid determinism inspired by Laplace is based on a simple model of cause and effect. The model works best with one single cause bringing about only one possible single effect. It always continues to work that way. Once the single effect is produced, it may then become a cause, but it is only a single cause of its corresponding single effect. It continues in the same manner from there.
It is true that one finds many instances of this conjunction of a single cause creating only one effect. An example is a single billiard ball rolling forth to hit another solitary billiard ball. In discussions of Newton's laws of motion, the objects are usually solitary ones like balls, cars, or trains. In the study of planetary motion and gravitational attraction, it is usually just the effect of one astral body on only one other one that is usually considered. The gravitational effect that more than two bodies have on each other has been particularly difficult to calculate. It is known as the three-body problem.
Laplace was a mathematical astronomer. Perhaps working on astronomy problems only allowed Laplace to see simple, solitary cause and effect at work in the world. This in turn gave him the confidence to make his Conjecture. If Laplace had not worked on these types of problems but had instead worked in biology, he may not have gotten used to thinking that cause and effect were simple. This may have caused him to refrain from posing his Conjecture.
There are any number of instances in which more than simple cause and effect are found in the world. Going back to billiard balls, it is possible to make two balls hit one ball simultaneously (by the action of two shooters). The strike could be said to be the single effect of a double cause. Two cars can collide into a third one simultaneously. There can be a single cause with two effects. An explosion is a good example of a single cause that can have multiple effects.
This is not to say that the existence of multifaceted, complex cause and effect mechanism proves by itself that determinism is not always precise. It could well be that events still follow a specific and narrowly precise course every time without deviation even in the case of multiple causes and multiple effects. It could be that events are always so perfectly aligned that even when there are multiple causes they always produce exactly the same effect or effects. It still seems--intuitively at least--that it would be more likely that there would be deviation, even if just a minute one, each time a more complex scenario occurs.
For instance, take the opening of a billiards game in which all the balls are gathered in a triangle. The first shooter shoots at the ball on one of the corners of the triangle in order to scatter the balls. The configuration in which the balls end up varies widely with each shot. These countless deviations in configuration bring up the touchy subject of randomness. Do the balls wind up in a random, unpredictable position each time?
This point about the complexity of some situations being more likely to create random events is not that important. It is a speculative point. There is a field called chaos, also called complexity, which studies events in nature that do not apparently always occur in a regular manner. Examples are weather events, the swinging of a pendulum, the flow of water from a faucet, heart rhythms, and others. It has become accepted by scientists that these systems are unpredictable. The reason given is that it is too difficult to measure the initial conditions. It is claimed that if all the initial conditions were known precisely it would then be possible to accurately predict what a complex system would do far into the future.
The response regarding measurement of initial conditions does not necessarily put everything to rest with respect to determinism. That it is so difficult to measure conditions would seem to count as a mark against determinism. One thing that can be said is that it seems idle to speculate (as Laplace did) about initial conditions on a wide or universal scale and about the rigidly deterministic predictions that can be made from them if it turns out that the initial conditions cannot be measured.
Why is it so difficult to measure all the initial conditions? It could be that when you get to the level where there are objects that are extremely small--at the subatomic or quantum level--the simple act of attempting to measure particles affects the ability to make the measurement. It cannot be done accurately. It could also be that particles do not move in a regular manner, i.e., there is some randomness in their movements.
Determinism at the Quantum Level
This question of measurement at the subatomic level has been tackled in particle physics. Physicists found that there was difficulty measuring the motion of electrons. In 1927 Werner Heisenberg came up with an explanation for it. He showed that if one tries to measure the momentum of an electron with exactness it becomes impossible to determine its position. Likewise, if one tries to determine the position of an electron, it becomes impossible to determine its momentum. The same holds if one tries to determine both time and energy.(Lillian Hoddeson, "Quantum Theory," The New Book of Popular Science, Vol. 3 (Grolier, Inc., 1982) 330, 340.) The problem was not that of simply not having good or sufficiently advanced instruments. Heisenberg showed by means of a mathematical formula that the measurements could not be carried out with precision even under ideal conditions.
It turns out that atomic particles do not operate in a regular manner. In particular, they do not move neatly and exclusively only in their own specifically assigned orbits as is shown in many popular illustrations. Instead, there is a sphere of negative charge surrounding the nucleus of an atom. One cannot be sure of always being able to locate an electron within that sphere at any given time. The best that can be done is to say that there is a 95 percent probability of finding the electron within the sphere.(Id.) Einstein expressed distaste for this lack of certainty. In spite of his opinion, it has become a solid part of standard quantum theory that electrons can only be located within the limits of probability. In other words, there is some randomness in the subatomic realm.
Determinism at Higher Levels
The existence of randomness at the level of the smallest objects--subatomic particles--does not mean that it has to exist at higher levels. There are countless events in our everyday lives that occur on a regular basis. There are no credible accounts of the sun not rising. Certainly no claims that it did not appear in the morning at the expected time and was missing for say, two days. Alternatively, there is no credible story claiming that the sun decided to take a rest in the same location in the sky for a couple of days. You can imagine what that could have done to those below if it shined on them in summer time.
There are a number of other regularities that we are very happy to depend on. We expect that gravity will work the same everyday, that liquids will heat and cool, that fire will burn, that electric current will run through wires, etc. As a result of these universal expectations, we don't put much credence in random events. An important reason people have had--in the last hundred years or so--for looking for regular cause and effect has been the successful truth-finding of science and technology. It has shown a strong dependence on cause and effect. This has meant a turning away from superstition based explanations, a popular approach for centuries. To counter superstitious beliefs, people have pointed to the regularity of cause and effect.
Can we be completely confident that random events never happen at the atomic level and above? Random, unpredictable movements are continually going on among the subatomic particles, but somehow that is never enough to affect the bigger world. Yet it seems difficult to understand and explain how this could be.
Here is one imaginary example to show how it could work. Suppose the electrons in several of the molecules of a small log in the Mississippi River move randomly at about the same time. This happens to cause the river, which flows southwardly, to shift its right boundary to the west by one millimeter at that location. The next day, the electrons in several molecules passing the same location in the river simultaneously move randomly. This causes the right boundary at that location in the river to shift to the east. That exactly cancels the prior day's shift to the west. Scenarios like this occasioned by quantum randomness may happen all the time in the Mississippi River and in all of nature but we never notice them.
A leaf on a tree may be expected to fall at a specific instant in time in the month of November. A random particle movement in one of the molecules in the leaf instead makes the leaf fall .7 seconds earlier. Who is to notice and what difference would it make? We certainly cannot observe first hand processes of random quantum events like these that could affect visible events.
16 Randomness
Might we be too complacent in the belief that random events never occur above the microscopic level? We take it for granted that there is a cause even if that is not obvious. Even in those situations in which there might plausibly be randomness, it is not apparent. The exact edges making up the boundaries of the Mississippi River could occasionally change in a haphazard way. Surely almost all of those changes could be traced back on an inerrant chain of cause and effect. Yet, we can't be sure that a few of those deviations in the river edge are not random. They happen inexplicably without proper causes.
Nor would those deviations necessarily be explained by quantum theory, i.e., by the random action of subatomic particles associated with the atoms in the water. The deviations would be a randomness that takes place above the subatomic level--a simple, unexplained breakdown in the causal chain. There may be a number of occurrences that occasionally take place in the world without our knowing it. If they do happen, it may well be that there is no way of ascertaining that they do or do not.
Examples of Randomness
Here are two examples of randomness and possibly a third one. They involve occurrences with which we are all familiar. The first is the flipping of a coin, a time honored tradition used as a way of deciding a choice between two alternatives. There is no way to know on what side a coin will fall--heads or tails. That it falls on one side or the other is a random event. This is true even if the coin has landed on the same side for 100 flips in a row (a very unlikely happening). It will still be uncertain on what side it will land on flip 101. It can be safely claimed that after a number of flips the coin will fall approximately half of the time on heads and the other half of the time on tails. The greater the number of tosses, the closer the number of landings will be to 50%-50%.
To my knowledge, no one has ever shown that any particular type of coin falls more on one side than on the other because it is heavier on the first side. Don't the employees at the mints around the world take into account the need for unbiased coin flipping when they design coins? At any rate, if a coin is not evenly weighted on each side, another type can be used that more likely is. If necessary, a metal token can be used that has no engraving on either side. A mark with a liquid marker would be made on one side to differentiate the sides.
Incidentally the flipping of a coin could be a good test to proffer to someone who claims to be adept at forecasting the future like a clairvoyant or soothsayer or fortune teller. It would be a test of how well they could predict the result of flipping a coin. Have them predict each flip for at least ten flips. If they are at least 80% accurate, extend the test to at least 100 flips. If they are less than 90% accurate, do no take their predictions seriously and do not pay them anything for their forecasting of anything.
Another action that is universally accepted as random is the tossing of dice. Take one die. It is a cube, which means it has six surfaces. Each surface has a different number of dots on it, starting from one and going up to six. It is well accepted that there is no greater chance that one of the six numbers will turn up than any of the other five whenever the die is cast. Furthermore, if the die is cast a large number of times, say 1,000, each side will have come up about an equal number of times. No number has an advantage over any of the others. This is why dice are used in so many table and board games. It is expected that each player will have an equal chance. Any one toss comes up randomly.
One wonders how rigidly determined is the result of tossing any number of items. I toss down my athletic shoes after i take them off hoping to have them land on their soles, but that often doesn't happen since they are light and bouncy. Sometimes they keep rolling 270 degrees. The landing is hard to predict.
Cause and effect are always in play in all three kinds of tosses. In every instance, the cause is always the tossing the item, the effect is its landing on the floor. The exact movement of the hand doing the tossing, the air currents inside the room, and other factors might influence the final position, but the result is random.
Randomness is likely found in the weather. Are the movements of a wind gust caused with exact precision by antecedent causes? Do those causes determine precisely what the speed of the gust will be down to a small fraction of miles per hour? For instance, do they determine that the exact speed will be 50.832614 mph? Maybe, the antecedent causal factors only determine that the range of the speed will be somewhere between 49 mph and 51 mph. The exact speed within that range turns out to be random.
Another weather related phenomenon that seems like a good candidate for randomness is lightning. Scientists are still hard at work trying to figure it out. There are factors that have to be present to produce lightning. A bolt of lightning is supposed to come down and hit the most eligible targets on the ground. They are those that stand high off the ground or are pointed or made of metal. (It has recently been said that the electric charge actually travels from the ground to the cloud.)
One would expect bolts of lightning to always follow straight lines since an electrical discharge dashes very quickly (at the speed of light). The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Yet, there is often a deviation from the vertical by 30 degrees, sometimes more. You would expect that the lightning would be able to find a target directly below without much deviation, at least in urban areas. The bolts that deviate significantly from the vertical are the ones that travel for miles.
There are plenty of instances in which lightning does not hit the most eligible target but travels far away. A news story on television reported on a softball team of girls around age 10 that was practicing one day on a sports field with light poles and metal objects around. There was a thunderstorm in progress more than 5 miles away. They could hear the thunder. There were no rain clouds near them so they kept playing. One of the girls on the field was struck by a bolt of lightning. She was not the tallest object around nor was there any other reason why she should have been hit out of all those on the field. She was seriously injured but luckily survived. The news report also pointed out that it had been known before that lightning could strike several miles away.
I became aware that lightning could strike at a long distance when a woman i knew was very distraught. Her 18 year old granddaughter was riding her horse and stopped to let it drink from a pond. The horse stepped into the pond. Lightning traveled over five miles and killed both the girl and the horse. Standing in water increases the likelihood of being struck by lightning.
There is lightning that strikes horizontally. This is cloud-to-cloud lightning and happens more often than cloud-to-ground lightning. It is the reason you sometimes hear thunder, especially the quieter kind, and yet do not see any lighting precede it. The bolts are concealed by the clouds.
If people could rely on lightning bolts predictably hitting only the most eligible targets such as high or metal points, they could walk freely in a lightning storm. They would be safe as long as they avoided being near these targets. It would be even better if all lightning just stayed in the clouds. After all, clouds are closer to each other and thus present a shorter path for discharge. Why do both types of lightning take place in an irregular sequence? The reason that people are advised to take so many precautions with lightning is that it is so unpredictable. In all this, it is easy to entertain the thought that some randomness may be involved in lightning.
Determinism at the Biological Level
Microbes, plants, and animals show a much greater complexity than do nonliving objects. Consequently, one would think there would be a greater chance of finding occasional randomness at the biological level. There is the falling of leaves due to autumn cooling. Does each leaf fall at a precise time or is that flexible? Perhaps there are other events that are only destined to occur, such as a blooming or an animal birth, within a range of time with the exact fraction of a second occurring randomly.
In genetics, there are the surprising events that become causes that can bring profound, far-reaching change that can be felt long into the future. These are the mutations, both genetic and chromosomal. Mutations stay with the individual. That is, they are not passed on to the next generation. Unfortunately, one type of mutation that stays with the individual brings about a proliferation of abnormal cells which can eventually lead to death. This is known as cancer. The nature of the genes in a person can predispose her/im to certain types of cancer, and these genes can be passed on to future generations.
The most interesting mutations have been those that have gone on to create new species. This happens when a mutational change in an organism turns out to be beneficial for the adaptation of the organism to its surroundings. This helps the organism to survive and to reproduce. The mutation is passed on to the offspring who in turn adapt more and repeat the process reproducing better adapted offspring. This keeps occurring to the point where it can be said that a new species has appeared. The creation of new species does not happen frequently but has occurred enough to produce multitudes of species through the eons on this planet. You get an idea how often it occurred after you reflect on the claim by biologists that more than 99% of all the species that have lived on this earth are now extinct.
Various causes have been identified as being responsible for the occurrence of mutations. Radiation is one that has been commonly cited. No doubt there is a cause to be found in most cases. Yet the occurrence of a mutation is rare and seemingly unpredictable. I am not aware of any cases in which biologists were able to predict that a new species would appear. If they did, one would expect more than a vague description of the new species to arrive at a particular time in the future. A more specific prediction would be expected. Because a mutation is unusual and unpredictable, one could suspect that at least an occasional mutation could be a random occurrence.
There is another very significant event in the history of the world--the appearance of the first living form. The first appearance of life involved some dramatic alteration in the materials that were found before. This may have been only a new combination of familiar materials.
It is estimated that life first appeared on this earth about 4 billion years ago. "Many scientists believe that millions of years of random mixing and shuffling of molecules culminated in the appearance of one living cell."(Robert Hazen and James Trefil, Science Matters (New York: Anchor Books, 1991) 247.) Scientists take the question seriously enough that they have conducted experiments for years in laboratories dedicated to "origin of life" studies.(Id. 246) It is believed that the universe began almost 14 billion years ago. Therefore, it took almost 10 billion years from then to the time that life on earth appeared. That seems plenty of time to allow for pivotal random events to precipitate the formation of the sun and planets including the earth, the inanimate objects on the planets, and then life.
The earth solidified about 4.5 billion years ago. The one-celled organisms like bacteria that first appeared around 4 billion years ago remained in charge of the earth until 1.5 billion years ago. It was then that more complex life began to appear. The first multicellular animals and plants appeared around one billion years ago.(Id. 252-253) Obviously, this was a long, slow process with opportunities for random events to occur. Another big change down the road was the appearance of consciousness in animals.
It seems hard to understand how these dramatic changes along with many other minor ones could have happened under a strictly deterministic system as envisioned by Laplace. After Laplace's calculations, the movement of the planets was supposedly found to be regular without any variation. Laplace assumed that this strict regularity would apply to all objects in existence, even the smallest ones.
It is easy to see how this might be true for planets and smaller inanimate objects but harder with respect to living, dynamic objects. Leaves may not move with the same precision as the planets and other nonliving objects. Life did not appear very readily on this earth and the progression from one-celled organisms to multicelled ones was very slow. The progression of evolution from that point--one billion years ago--through today has been filled with variation. This variation does not mesh well with rigid determinism.
Biologists who specialize in evolution recognize that randomness has played a part in evolution. Here is the way Ernst Mayr, a highly respected evolution biologist, put it:
[O]wing to the two-step nature of natural selection, evolution is the result of both chance and necessity. There is indeed a great deal of randomness ("chance") in evolution, particularly in the production of genetic variation . . . .(Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001) 120.)
Mayr went on to say that natural selection is not teleological (goal-directed). There is no known genetic process for carrying out any goal. The numerous extinctions that have occurred are not consistent with any teleological direction. He pointed out that changes that affect a population are "unpredictable, particularly when caused by the arrival at a locality of a new predator or competitor. Survival during a mass extinction may be affected by chance."(Id. 121) Mayr ultimately put it this way:
To say it in other words, evolution is not deterministic.(Id.)
This is not to say that determinism does not play a powerful part in events. When the new predator (or competitor) moves to a new territory and changes the situation for the existing residents, there is almost certainly a cause that made the predator move there. Likely causes could be a severe drought or a permanent change in climatic conditions. It would also be predictable that the predator would eat some prey in the new territory, which would have otherwise been able to survive. What is not predictable is every detail of what the new predator will cause and what effect that will have on the prey.
The more deterministic aspect in evolution has been considered to be adaptation to a greater fitness for survival through natural selection. Even here, chance appears to play a role. Mayr noted that there was a great diversity among organisms including some bizarre types that should not have survived under a strict selection process.
One cannot escape the suspicion that many of them were due to mutational accidents that were not eliminated by selection. Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether the elimination process is not sometimes a good deal more permissive than is usually assumed . . . . . chance alway plays a considerable role even at the second step of evolution, that of survival and reproduction.(Id. 229)
Stephen Jay Gould reviewed examples of contingencies causing the unexpected appearance of species in his book Wonderful Life, while at the same time pointing out that the extinction of other species may have been the result of a chance event.(Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989).) Mayr pointed out that "physical factors and chance are dominant in mass extinction."(Mayr 203) He observed:
Many authors seem to have a problem in comprehending the virtually simultaneous actions of two seemingly opposing causations, chance and necessity. But this is precisely the power of the Darwinian process.(Id. 229)
Those observations of two prominent biologists among others make it more difficult to continue to believe in a strict determinism. One philosopher who spoke out in 1957 against hard determinism is C.J. Ducasse.(C.J. Ducasse, "Determinism, Freedom, and Responsibility," Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science, Sidney Hook, ed. (1957) 160.) He rejected strict determinism referring to it as "theoretically universal predictability." He pointed out the novel appearance or emergence of life and mind that could not have been predicted. It is unfortunate that he did not develop those points more fully.
The Extent of Strict Determinism
A number of observations such as the foregoing clearly put the extent of strict determinism into serious question. The evidence points to determinism being more prevalent at the level of inanimate objects like planets, rocks, and cash registers. Then there are the phenomena involved in the area of chaos that may involve randomness, but that has not been proven. In the end, determinism may fully explain them. Perhaps even lightning would be shown to be rigidly determined with every detail in any bolt of lightning composed of causes tightly followed by effects. This would be hard to believe.
There are people who are eager to reject strict determinism in the ordinary physical world. They normally refer to it as mechanism, the idea that the universe always operates mechanically and clocklike. The basis for their rejection is that, since the subatomic realm is sometimes random or indeterminate, the atomic realm must be the same. Such an assumption cannot be made. For one thing, subatomic indeterminacy may well balance out and have no effect on the larger items in the universe.
Most events that happen everyday are not random. You would not believe someone who told you that a lamp in his living room moved completely on its own from its regular place on a table to a different table. He investigated it thoroughly and is convinced that it happened. A house detective asks to look in a woman's purse at Nieman-Marcus. She allows it and he finds a bottle of expensive perfume. She insists that the bottle just moved into her purse spontaneously.
Even if rigid determinism holds with respect to the ordinarily observable events in the world, perhaps random events still sometimes take place that alter the expected course of events. Certain laws may well be rigid like gravity and the evaporation of liquids. Nevertheless, other natural laws may leave enough leeway for certain events to take place flexibly (randomly) on occasion.
Imagine that a huge boulder--a balanced rock--is located on the edge of a cliff. The rock is very securely positioned. It rests on top of other large rocks which are themselves snugly anchored into the side of the mountain. Whenever it rains, water does not run to the place where the balanced rock sits. The ground is angled in a way that water flows away from the location it and no erosion of the soil around it takes place. There is every reason to believe that the rock will safely remain in its appointed place for centuries.
At the bottom of the cliff below the boulder there sits a smaller rock that is very attractive and unusual. It is dark gray with lines of red and turquoise throughout. It also looks solid enough to last for a long time. One night a meteor two feet in diameter hits the boulder above solidly and breaks it into smaller pieces. The biggest piece lands on the pretty rock below and breaks it into small pieces.
Evolutionary biologists have indicated that randomness has affected the destiny of living beings. This boulder example shows that the participation of biological beings is not necessary for the occurrence of randomness. All the items were nonliving things. The meteor arrived because of gravitation and other physical laws. The boulder and the pretty rock, which were expected to last for centuries, were destroyed by what was an unexpected, random event for them.
Historical Randomness
Human history indicates the presence of randomness at certain times. The course of events that may appear to be going in a particular direction is sometimes thrown off by unexpected occurrences. In 1963, U.S. President John Kennedy may have been planning to limit military involvement of the U.S. in South Vietnam but was assassinated. His successor Lyndon Johnson felt pressure from the Republican party to escalate involvement that gradually led to a very costly war.
In a discussion of historical determinism in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the following was pointed out:
Thus J.B. Bury, in his Later Roman Empire, represented the success of the barbarians in penetrating the Roman Empire as due to a succession of coincidences--the "historical surprise" of the onslaught of the Asiatic Huns, which drove the Goths west and south; the lucky blow that killed a Roman emperor when the Goths engaged a Roman army that just happened to be in the way; the untimely death of that emperor's talented successor before he had arranged for assimilation of those tribesmen who had settled within the imperial border; the unhappy fact that the two sons who subsequently divided the empire were both incompetent, and so on.(W.H. Dray, "Determinism in History," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 373, 376.)
These examples involve a course of events that is progressing with expectations that it will continue in a particular direction. In the vast majority of similar cases, it would. However, some unexpected event happens that is random with respect to how things are flowing. Yet, no one would believe that any of the coincidences occurred because any physical laws were broken. All physical laws remained intact, yet a random event happened to occur that upset the normal course of events.
Here is another way of looking at this. What happens in the cases in which something appears to be random is that there are two chains of cause and effect proceeding forward. They are unrelated to each other and then happen to cross paths. An unexpected event takes place as a result of this intersection of determinate paths. It can be called random, but all that means is that it happens by chance and is unexpected. It does not mean that it is a self-created event or without a cause. Determinism is still in control and affects all events. Nevertheless the random event can have unexpectedly far reaching consequences. It starts a new chain of cause and effect.
In the clash of the Roman army and the Goths, events occurred that caused the two armies to begin marching in the particular directions they followed. The two paths accidentally intersected. It was a surprise to both sides, but it did not mean there was anything metaphysically or supernaturally involved. It was just a coincidence. The enemies engaged in an unplanned skirmish in which the Roman emperor was killed. It happened to have more far-reaching consequences than simply those of a simple battle. At some previous time when the Roman empire was on stronger footing, the clash may not have had much significance. Given the situation at the time, the bellicose meeting was, according to Bury, a factor in the downfall of the empire. For the barbarians, it also meant a future consequence. They eventually were able to get out from the yoke of the Romans.
By the way, there were many causal lines going forward in the clash, not just two causal lines--one for each side. There was a causal line for each combatant and for each horse traveling with the two groups. In fact, there was a causal line for each object traveling along, like pots and pans.
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17 Softening Determinism
The picture that is left after the foregoing considerations is one of determinism in the universe with random, uncaused occurrences that occasionally take place. One of these occurrences could have been the first appearance of life on this earth. Even in this case, the randomness involved may not be the uncaused appearance of a living object. It may have instead been only that the proper combination of atoms and molecules finally took place after millions of years in which many combinations took place haphazardly without any result until finally the life-creating one did.
Certain beings seem to make choices, so it would seem that strict determinism does not apply to them. One view disagrees with this. It holds that as much as decision-making beings deliberate and appear to make free and independent decisions they are at all times determined. Not only that, they are determined in such a way that there is only one avenue open to them. It may seem to the decision maker and to others observing her/is deliberations that s/he is making a free decision, but that is merely an illusion. As much as the choice may appear and feel like it is real, there are always factors in the chooser's background that force a decision to be one way and no other. These factors can be genetic or environmental. In other words, in any choice there is always a single chain of cause and effect that predominates, and it alone determines what the choice will be.
Return to Ann who paused at the cross streets to decide which street to take to her friend's house. Under this view, she chose the longer route because it was all foreordained. She made that choice because a particular causal chain pushed her in that direction. It didn't matter that she was not aware of it. There were no external factors that compelled her decision such as a police block that prevented her from taking the longer street, but there had to be forces within Ann that made her do what she did.
Hard Determinism
The foregoing is the position of hard determinism. It is strict determinism applied to beings that are capable of making decisions. None have free will. Everyone is compelled to do what they do. They can be determined by external physical forces and also by internal psychological ones, otherwise called drives, compulsions, inhibitions, etc. There are obvious psychological forces such as phobias as well as more subtle ones. One result of this theory is that it is much harder to condemn people for their actions since they are not in fact free to choose what they will do and be.
The defenders of free will do not like this picture. They point to hard determinism as supporting a mechanistic universe with humans that are not agents of their own actions but instead are mere automatons caught in an unbending machinery over which they have no power. Another reason for not liking hard determinism is that it allegedly leaves no room for moral responsibility. The person under such rigid control has no ability to make moral choices and can use that as an excuse for objectionable moral behavior.
Hard determinism is consistent with Laplace's idea of a precisely tuned universe in which events can be predicted perfectly. Hard determinism is a philosophical term invented by William James in discussing psychological determinism in connection with moral responsibility. Most philosophers have accepted strict determinism but have preferred to look for a way to say that moral responsibility holds. They have shied away from hard determinism.
Apart from the desire to find a correct view on free will, another pressing motivation for hard determinists to maintain their stance is a concern that unjust punishment occurs. An example of a hard determinist concerned with the problem is John Hospers. He wrote about it on several occasions.(See "What Means This Freedom"? in Hook 126.) This concern is understandable since they do not believe that humans have any freedom to do anything other than what they do at any particular moment. Clearly under these circumstances, it is wrong to punish anyone for doing what they were destined to do deterministically.
Perhaps hard determinists would not take such a rigid stance if they saw people adopt a more flexible free will position compared to the punitive one that has been followed. This position could take into account the strong emotions that influence people and the differing capacities people possess in exercising their free will. If people could recognize that everyone does not have the same amount of free will with some individuals being very weak in that regard, that could result in punishment that was better tailored to the individual's capabilities for self-control.
Philosophers tried to find a way to show that determinism and free will could coexist, that there was a compatibility. James called the idea of a compatibility between hard determinism and free will "soft determinism" and correctly pointed out that the arguments given for it at the time were sophistical. It was too hard to see how strict determinism was true alongside free will as usually understood.(Richard Taylor, "Determinism," Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) 359, 368.)
Generally, soft determinism or compatibilism, has been supported by the claim that when people are not physically coerced or prevented into choosing what they desire they are acting with free will. It was espoused by Hobbs, Hume, and John Stuart Mill. All lived before Freud and the attention paid to unconscious motivation. Thus they did not discuss inner drives, fears, obsessions, and other emotions that can be coercive. When you take these into account, it is less clear when and how free will is applied. As time has passed, fewer philosophers have remained satisfied with soft determinism.
Indeterminism
Two other justifications for free will, indeterminism and origination, have been promoted. Indeterminism is the one that was espoused by James. It is the opposite of determinism. It holds that there are some events that are not caused. Few philosophers have gone along with James. Since he could not accept determinism as reconcilable with free will, he opted for its opposite--chance. Indeterminism means that chance has to be involved in the making of free decisions. Chance means that a result can go different ways. Supposedly chance then gives the decider the freedom to make a choice. However, precisely because chance is involved, there wouldn't be a way to predict which way things would go. Chance does not seem to give any control to the one supposedly making a free-will based decision.
A believer in indeterminism may feel good that her/is actions are not rigidly determined by the numerous actions that went before, both her/is and all the others impinging on her/im. It is understandable that someone would not want to feel controlled like a robot and would not enjoy having her/is fate completely determined by preceding and outside forces. Having chance decide what actions the person may free her/im from that robotic feeling, but events would still be beyond her/is control because they would be left up to chance. That seems like a small consolation, if at all. Indeterminism supposedly means that someone making a decision can do it completely freely without any prior influence. The person just simply takes an action.
The matter cannot be so simple. There has to be a problem present or a motivation for wanting to take an action. In other words, there has to be a cause for taking the action. You just don't take an action for no reason. What would that action be? It could be a purely arbitrary movement.
Furthermore if an event is not caused, one cannot know when it will occur. It could be completely random and unpredictable because it is dependent on chance. That is not much use to someone who wants to exercise her/is own free will. Presumably we would like to exercise our free will at times when it is needed and in a manner that is appropriate. Yet indeterminate, uncaused events are liable to occur at uncontrollable times and places. That is the only way they can occur. If they were under control, it would mean they were caused, but that is what the indeterminists want to avoid.
In an indeterministic world, a man is calmly walking in a crowded airport to catch his flight and then suddenly and uncontrollably kicks high into the air with his right leg coming close to hitting a woman passing by. A woman is at a concert pleasurably listening to the second movement of Brahm's Symphony No. 2 when uncontrollably she lets out a very loud and noticeable war whoop. A man is standing next to a pretty woman, admiring her. Suddenly, his arm comes up, his fist clenches, and gives her a crunching right cross on the left cheek.
Origination
The thought that purely uncaused events could happen to a person and aid them to exercise their free will was abandoned. Some proponents of free will noticed the shortcomings of indeterminism. Still, they did not want to give up on establishing a foundation for free will. An idea came to them. They promoted the view that persons cause their own events. This is not to say that they are completely free from the law of cause and effect. They are still prone to having a virus enter their body, to having a cinder block fall on their foot and break it, or to being struck by lightning. All the ordinary events surrounding life affect them.
Under this approach, it is only when a person needs to make a decision that s/he can summon the power to cause an event and only if it is related to the decision being made. If a person is in the process of making a decision about her/is finances while standing in a pool of cold water, cause and effect still make her/is feet and legs feel the coldness.
It is also estimated that people cannot be automatons since they deliberate on actions they may take and feel very much as if they freely choose to take those actions. People also have selves that control and direct them. It must be then that they are not controlled at every step by determinism but are instead able to cause their own behavior at certain times. This idea has been labeled self-determinism, self-determination, self-causation, agency, or origination. The word origination will mainly be used here because it is more descriptive of what its proponents mean.
In ancient times, Carneades was the first philosopher known to put forward the theory.(Id. 369) Thomas Reid was the first one to set out a full exposition of it in his Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Philosophers like Reid have tried to place a distinction between the ordinary cause found in nature or external cause and a cause that humans have the power to produce. One argument is that all people feel that they create events so that must mean that there is a special power somewhere inside them to create causes. To Reid this was a matter of common sense and so should be sufficient to support a belief in self-created causes.
Reid was a philosopher who liked to fall back on common sense in this and other philosophical issues. It is not a bad idea to consult common sense when philosophical claims reach the point of incredulity. It may help to find one's bearings. It is another matter when it is always expected to be the support for serious theories.
An evasive action that has been taken by proponents of origination has been to eschew the word "cause" in their discussions. At this point, they bring in talk of agents. Since it is difficult to conceive how agents by themselves rather than events can be the cause of anything, they admit that a very different conception of cause is being used when agents are involved. Therefore, they propose to do away with the word "cause" altogether and substitute for it words like "originate," "initiate," or "perform."(Richard Taylor, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963) 52.)
It can't be that easy. The ordinary definition of "cause" is the "bringing about of an event." "Originate" and "initiate" are clearly synonymous with "cause," so you are not getting around "cause" by using them. "Perform" is not, and for that reason cannot be, properly used to describe an agent bringing about an event. Here is the more technical definition of the noun "cause": antecedent sufficient condition. This says that there is always an action that has to take place before the subsequent event takes place (the effect).
If i throw a football in my backyard, my hand putting force on the ball to propel it forward is the action of mine that sends the ball hurtling through the air. This could be claimed by the originationist to be the originating action that makes the ball fly through the air. But is not that action of my hand the antecedent sufficient condition for it to fly through the air? Is not the action of my hand the cause of the ball flying through the air? There is simply no getting away from the word "cause." To talk of any alternative is only a semantical trick. One cannot avoid talking of cause.
An origination proponent can insist that i originated the throwing of the football as an agent. I was not compelled to go out and throw the ball. How can this be? There must have been something that motivated me to throw the football.
The motion of my hand was itself caused by a sequence of physical (including neural) events that were causes in a set order. We cannot simply ignore the chain of cause and effect that took place in my body just before i threw the ball. This includes my picking up the ball where it was stored, my walking to the door to go outside, my finding a place to stand, my looking at the place where i intended the ball to land, and my raising my arm. Before that, these events were set in motion yesterday by a friend of mine who told me he had gone to his backyard and thrown a football. He, like me, had not thrown a ball in years and wanted to see how he would do. I was motivated by the same curiosity after he gave me the idea.
Another possibility is that my friend would not have been involved. My motivation would have only been from an idea that popped into my head to see if i could still throw a football. The idea may have appeared suddenly but it had to follow from prior causes including memories of the many times i had previously thrown a football.
Note that the process also has to include all the events that took place starting from my birth and proceeding with all my environmental influences from then until the second i threw the football. After all, those influences could have kept me from even bothering to go outside to see how i did in throwing the football. I could have simply shrugged it off and stayed inside sitting on my couch.
All this is to show that to talk of an agent originating an event may be nothing more than to observe the following: a series of events in cause and effect order takes place that impacts the agent and then influences her/im in a way that makes her/im perform a particular act. That act of the agent then continues the chain of cause and effect. The agent is at all times in the middle of and part of the chain of cause and effect that involves the allegedly originating event. The agent cannot avoid this. There is no such thing as an agent creating a cause or originating an action with no prior influence. The supposed originating cause is simply a dramatic act that stands out in the overall process of events which take place around it. In this example, it was the precise point at which i threw the football.
If this is not the case, it is very hard to understand how origination can take place. The question that comes up is what motivates the agent to pick the particular events s/he chooses to originate. It seems that there has to be some prior event that moves the agent to choose an event to originate.
Consider this example. I throw a wadded sheet of paper across the room into the waste basket that is next to the door to the room. Ordinarily, i would have waited until later to take the paper to the recycling basket in the kitchen. This time i threw it without forethought. Does that mean i originated the event? No, it started with the need to throw the paper away which subconsciously caused the immediate activation of memories in my brain. These were memories of my past enjoyment and successes at throwing things at waste baskets as well as shooting basketballs. There was also the subconscious realization that no harm could come by throwing the wad. These factors caused me to throw it. All the events were part of a chain of cause and effect. There was nothing mysterious about it. I used no special power to originate any unusual or unexpected event.
I did have the alternative of setting the piece of paper aside. I would have been exercising my will power. It would have been an example of the choosing between two alternatives exerting roughly equal force on me. It is similar to Ann's decision. This is the closest mechanism to the wide-ranging free will everyone imagines they have. What happens is that a person is always presented with two or more alternatives. The person has no control over what those alternatives are to be.
At this point, the self-determinist might admit that origination does not work well in ordinary situations such as these. Where it needs to be summoned is in important situations like those involving significant moral decisions. After all, making the correct decision can have a profound and lasting impact on others as well as on ourselves.
Accordingly, let us take up a robbery situation. A young man goes to a convenience store to rob it. He points his gun at the store clerk behind the cash register. The clerk doesn't put up his hands. Instead he quickly reaches for something under the counter, and pulls out a gun, and points it at the robber. The robber is surprised. He had not planned on this. He knew that stores told their clerks not to resist a robbery so he had assumed that any clerk would immediately acquiesce. He did not think he would have to kill anyone. All we have to do is consider what happened up to this point. I will let you fill in the ending you want.
A self-determinist could point out that the outlaw originated his action to rob the convenience store. After all, it involved a serious moral judgment. That would mean that there were no prior negative influences pushing him to decide to do the robbery. Can it be that simple? There were surely a good number of prior events and conditions that influenced him, both genetic and environmental. The immediate need was money to make the three payments on which he was behind for his new, much cherished Corvette. He could have been born with a tendency toward impulsiveness, greediness, and the inability to defer gratification. HIs parents may have shown a lax attitude toward breaking the law, may have admired outlaws like Billy the Kid and John Dillinger, or may have engaged in thievery themselves.
Fearlessness, no habit of clear thinking, impulsiveness, poor money management, among others were also involved. You would think he spent a lot of time thinking about how he was going to accomplish the robbery, but he didn't. He always said he didn't like to spend time mulling over decisions. He was not the type of person that is reflective. Very likely he fit the profile of so many offenders. They get the idea in their head that they desire something and do not stop to think. Sometimes they don't even pause to devise a sound plan for accomplishing the crime, much less to consider the consequences. There were law abiding influences in his past but not that strong.
Jumping Out of One's Skin
The question now arises: what is the process an agent supposedly follows to originate an action if s/he decides to do so? Presumably, the agent is still subject to cause and effect. Prior influences and her/is genetic makeup still affect what s/he does. S/he may even be cognizant of this. S/he may be content to follow the causes that generally control her/is actions.
What the originationists are ultimately expecting is that a person just ignore his past influences pushing him to act negatively and determine (or cause) himself to simply do the right thing. Furthermore, the right thing is always clear and something all people would agree on. The person jumps out of his skin, so to speak, and turns away the negative influences while accepting the positive ones. Somehow he is able to perceive how to sort out all these completing influences, comprehend how to avoid going in the wrong direction, and how to originate the right course to follow even if it means ignoring prior negative influences.
If the person passes through these hurdles, s/he would then have to deal with perhaps the most difficult part: deciding which specific action to originate. There is the possibility that the agent would originate a course of action that was even worse than what could be chosen following ordinary cause and effect. The robber could have decided to rob a big bank instead of a little store or to snatch the purses of some little old ladies.
It is hard to see what that originated action could be beyond the realistic alternatives already in front of the agent. In many moral decisions, an agent has the performance of the right action as one of his alternatives in front of him. There is no point in originating any other action. The agent either does the right thing or doesn't do the right thing, and it is already clear what that is. What origination finally amounts to is the belief that agents can just will themselves to do that right thing, even when prior influences are pushing them hard not to do it.
In the case of the robber with a number of different forces pushing him to rob, he is expected to stop to consider the process of origination. His deliberating is not very probable so any idea of origination or initiation does not seem viable. It certainly does not seem that those who would most need to apply origination, such as impulsive criminals, would even imagine using it. Origination would not work for unreflective persons.
It is the unreflective who are less likely to avail themselves of origination but instead take actions that are hasty and careless. They expose themselves to problems and misfortunes on account of this behavior and so are incapable of resorting to that supposedly very effective technique of origination. This is a real shame because this would mean that those who would have the greatest need for origination would be the ones least able to use it.
There is no guarantee that even a reflective person can see the necessity for the origination of a solution to a problem. Nor would there be any guarantee that s/he would see the necessity of originating a new and uncaused course of action, that it was possible to carry out an origination, that s/he would be able to come up with a new course, and that the new course would be adequate. If even reflective people may have problems undertaking origination, it would seem much less likely for the unreflective ones to pull it off.
It appears then that origination, if it occurs at all, is not employed most of the time that it should be. Too many times there is not much thought given to originating a sound course. An action is just taken. If this is the case, there cannot be much hope for sound results.
There is a similarity to indeterminism. There no causation was involved; the expected action occurred freely, spontaneously, randomly. It was also unpredictable because it was free from causation and anything could happen. In origination in the hands of someone who does not think carefully, there is also a lack of control over how the originated act will come out. This is hardly the result the originationist would want, at least in situations involving less attentive people.
Perhaps the originationists would then want to concede that origination only works for some people, maybe only a minority. One would think that they would want it to apply universally. Otherwise, it would go against the widely held belief that free will and responsibility apply universally.
As a last resort, the originationists could maintain that a person would not have to engage in much thought. S/he should just be able to make the correct decision because there is an "inner moral sense" or "natural light," as proposed by Leibniz, to guide us. This "natural light" is supposedly installed in everyone at birth with an equal luminosity. "Natural light" supposedly allows us to recognize what is morally correct and to act consistently with it. If it is not there at birth, it could still arise at some point of our maturity.
Origination appears so weak that it needs direction from a natural light or something like it. Otherwise, how can an agent know what new path to initiate? Furthermore, it would be necessary for the natural light to be self-activating. It may be too much to expect the agent to know when to summon the natural light and when not. The natural light would have to come unsolicited to the rescue of the agent at the necessary moment.
As discussed before, there are problems with the existence of any natural light or innate guide to moral living. If there were a natural light in all of us, one would expect that everyone with few exceptions would be perfectly moral. Then there are so many different natural lights giving different people conflicting messages on how they should act. At times, it seems as if there is a customized natural light for each individual.
Overcoming Character
Those who espouse origination are simply trying to come up with an explanation of free will. They are really just defenders of free will, by which you are just supposed to employ your free will and do the right thing. They can go further and think that origination can be used to overcome the character of the agent. The agent is simply able to ignore relevant prior influences, to know when that is necessary, to change whatever aspect(s) of her/is character needs to be changed at the moment, and then to take the action required. All the criticisms of origination in general apply to this change-of-character version. This version is nothing more than regular origination that goes one step further. It expects people to turn away from their character or at least the relevant aspects of it.
Ignoring character is a heavy demand. It is difficult enough to avoid a minor prior influence. To turn away from character is much more problematic. Character consists of a set of traits, not just one particular one, that are deeply ingrained. They are not easily changed or ignored. Some of those traits are genetic, others begin to get installed at an early age depending on surrounding circumstances. Often there is no dramatic change in basic character between ten years of age and old age. Even those who want to change one of their own character traits can find it difficult. Try changing even one character trait in a person, and you will meet resistance. Everyone has probably run against that wall of resistance in others at some time.
It is hard to fathom how persons can originate actions that are inconsistent with their own characters. If they possess a particular character, why would they suddenly be motivated to originate any action in opposition to that character? Perhaps this would be undertaken by a person who suspected that there was something wrong with her/is character. It would likely involve a particular trait or set of related traits like dishonesty.
The person would need to have the capacity for at least some self-insight, which is not widely found. Even if a person has such a capacity, it is hard to see that it would be put to use without a very pressing reason. It is ordinarily caused by an unpleasant experience or criticism from someone else, which then causes the person to engage in self examination.
The experience or criticism need not have taken place recently. It could have occurred in the remote past with the person remembering it in the present and then stopping to ponder about originating an action or course of action that is different from what s/he did previously. In either case, the pondering by the person would have a cause. In addition to prior experience acting as a cause, there would have to be a cause or causes, however small, of the person's inclination to ponder.
The originationist C.A. Campbell called the power to originate in opposition to character "creative activity."(Taylor 369) If Campbell wanted to assert that persons can sometimes overcome their inclinations through willpower, that is one thing. However, even in such a case, there are opposing inclinations that pose problems. It can be part of a person's character to have a negative inclination that opposes a positive inclination. In the case of an overeater, s/he has character traits that dispose her/im to eat moderately for health and other reasons. However, these traits are often sabotaged by an ample appetite. The positive inclinations do not always win. Another problem with changing character is that it involves the changing of a number of traits of character, perhaps many.
A person is confronted with alternatives and chooses freely from them depending on all her/is prior influences. Putting it in another way, the person chooses depending on her/is character. There is no "creative activity" to summon for aid in making the right decision. Even if there were, it would depend on character to choose to call for it or not.
The Will to Condemn
Unfortunately, origination (self-determinism) can be used to condemn those who do not do the right thing. We have seen that self-determinism does not work as the buttress for free will. Still the free willer tries to come up with a way to justify how everyone has complete free will. The free willer postulates that an agent can on her/is own simply determine her/is own path whenever it is necessary. Of course, the free willer could adopt a more flexible position in which an agent can possess the ability to choose sound actions but still be prone to human error and pick the wrong path to follow.
The tendency in some to push hard for the establishment of free will comes from an apparent need to condemn. This can be found in those persons whose personalities appear to need to condemn others for misdeeds, sometimes even minor ones. There are those who want to inflict harsh punishment on criminals. This is an understandable feeling in victims of crimes and their relatives.
Then there are those who are in tune with condemnation because their religion teaches them it is important. Punishment is a near universal part of religion. In Eastern religions, it is called karma. Different religions, different sects and churches within religions, and different leaders have varying emphases on punishment. The groups that pay greater attention to punishment appear to attract those whose personalities make them more apt to spend time condemning.
A religious faith with a strong component of punishment would understandably be concerned with finding a sound footing for free will. Punishment can only follow from responsibility, and responsibility requires free will. It is not surprising to find that some of the defenders of religious free will would go far in looking for explanations for it, including origination and the transformation of character.
I fear that this may have been what motivated Campbell to propose that character can be circumvented. After all, the book in which he proposed this was entitled Selfhood and Godhood.(Cited in Taylor, 373. The book was published in London in 1957. In Taylor's article, he cited two other works that attack determinism. It is interesting that he found it necessary to point out, "These two works are written from a Catholic point of view.")
The demands that religionists can put on free will can be illustrated with the following scenario involving the most important doctrine in Christianity--salvation. It is fictitious, but something like it has occurred numerous times in the past.
It is 1926. A Christian missionary arrives in a very remote, small village in northern China. He is a member of an evangelical denomination and has come for the purpose of gaining converts. He is scheduled to be there for a week. The villagers are cordial to him and seem to like him. He has an amiable personality. The missionary is thorough in his presentation of the only way to reach salvation--accept Jesus Christ who is supposed to be the son of God as one's personal savior.
He confidently announces that if you take this simple step, you will get into heaven for eternity. On the other hand, if someone hears this teaching and does not accept Jesus as his savior, s/he will be condemned to spend eternity in hell. It is not clear what happens to those who do not get to hear this message of salvation. Presumably, they do not go to hell because they did not hear the teaching and thus cannot be expected to take Jesus as their savior. It is also not clear if they get to go to heaven.
There is no specification that the listener must be given detailed instruction. Apparently, all that is necessary is that the person hear the announcement only one time. This is the way to salvation in Protestant Christian dogma. Catholic belief has the same requirement but goes further by holding that a person's sins and good works additionally affect where s/he spends eternity.
Almost all the residents of the village of 32 people tell the missionary they are Buddhist. He appears to gain two converts. He is not even sure that the two are truly converting or just going along to be nice. The people tell the missionary about a family that lives about two miles away. They say the father is a devout Buddhist who may be interested to hear this new message. He sometimes comes to the village to answer questions about Buddhism.
The missionary sets out eagerly to go see the family. He figures that a man versed in religion may be more open to the message he brings of Christianity. The man cordially invites the missionary in to talk about his religion. The man tells the missionary he has been a Buddhist all his life and has studied Buddhism closely for twenty years. He points to several books on Buddhism in a small bookcase. He says he has heard of Christianity but knows nothing about it. He has not ventured far from this house where he was born.
The man listens attentively to the missionary for more than three hours. The missionary works hard at giving a good presentation. The missionary becomes hopeful that the Buddhist will become a Christian because he asks very good questions. He assumes that if the man, as head of the family, converts the whole family will follow. Finally, he pops the question: "Will you take Jesus as your only savior"?
"Oh, no," the man replies. "I am so sorry. I am very happy being a Buddhist."
The missionary pleads with him for his salvation, but the man won't budge. The missionary leaves the remote area discouraged. He cannot see why there was not a more positive response from the people of the area to the word of God. Those who persisted in their old ways will unfortunately wind up in hell, unless they change their mind at some later date.
In 1926 there were people living in remote places in the world who had never heard the Christian message. Today with much greater means of communication, it is very likely that all inhabitants have heard at least the basic Christian doctrine, especially since there are still missionaries working tenaciously to spread the word to the ends of the earth, as instructed by Jesus.
Given their beliefs about salvation, it is not surprising that some concerned Christians labor devotedly to attack determinism. If people do not naturally possess a powerful free will, they cannot be expected to follow the commandments of God. The situation in the example should show how difficult it is for people to go against their well established customs. It is hard enough to accomplish this with respect to minor tendencies or habits. It is much harder to get somebody to change her/is mind on a set of deeply held beliefs related to how morally to live life, what happens to people after they die, and the nature of nature. Add to this that a person's religion is strongly influenced by family and culture. It is difficult for an individual to go against the surrounding milieu.
Building Character
There is an added approach that can be taken in relation to character by the promoters of the idea of a powerful free will. According to this, a person should work on building her/is character beginning in childhood so that the person can be prepared to make the proper decisions when the need arises. Purportedly this can help strengthen free will.
Building a good character is commendable. Perhaps children today are no longer encouraged to do that, at least not with the understanding that they are working on their "character." If the conscious building of character could become a widespread practice in society, it might avoid many individual and social ills. It could lower the crime and divorce rates. Fewer people would use drugs.
Would it be that easy? It might be if every individual would sign on to building her/is character and stay with her/is commitment. In fact, many young people work at building their character without thinking of it in those terms. They work hard at learning to refrain from committing misdeeds and try to learn to be good persons. The problem is that often the very people who are most in need of a better character are the ones who have no concept of building one.
A young person interested in building her/is character is going to be one who has several influences pushing her/im in that direction. First, it will be important that the person have an inborn disposition that is consistent with the building of character. There will have to be a minimal amount of intelligence in order to learn and adopt new traits. There will have to be the perceptiveness to appreciate the desirability of building character and the capacity for patience, self-discipline, and perseverance. There will also need to be an appreciation and empathy for others. In all this, there is the assumption that talk of building character means cultivating a good character.
After a young person shows inherited traits disposing her/im to having good character, there has to be a spark to awaken a desire to cultivate a good character. Without that catalyst, the child is not likely to appreciate good character, in either herself or others. The first spark could be one or both of the parents. They would be influential by being sound examples of it. They could also openly talk about making sound moral decisions. Other catalysts could be teachers and relatives.
Since it is not easy for people to get the motivation to build solid character from surrounding influences, it is hard to see how they can do it simply through free will or self-determinism. Allegedly, they just find the idea in their head one day, decide readily to follow up on it, and build themselves a solid character. It is first highly questionable that the idea would come to them with no cause whatsoever. Even if it did, it is difficult for anyone to agree that there is something "wrong" with them that needs extensive revision. Then they could have doubts about being able to follow a character-building program.
A robber cannot be expected to forget all his prior negative influences and start building an empathetic, law-abiding character. His father may have been in prison half of the time and been temperamental and uncaring. His mother may have been neglectful and spent much of her time in a stupor taking different pills, partly from being depressed. You can't expect an original free will decision to build good character from someone like that. It is not that easy to find a justification for condemning people.
Chance and Free Will
Chance (luck) can make a difference. Suppose that Erica who is 15 has a terrible home life with her single mother who is a drug addict. They live in a crime-ridden neighborhood. She attends a deficient school where the teachers are too exhausted to pay attention to their students' psychological needs. Erica is capable of making good grades but underperforms. She has never had a significantly positive role model or influence in her life.
One day Erica has to go see a doctor. In the waiting room, by chance, she picks up a magazine and is able to fully read an article. It is about building character and inspires her tremendously. It is a life-altering event. From then, she starts to become a different person. She does well in high school, goes to college, and becomes a warm and well-liked person throughout her life.
It is highly unusual for this to happen. Erica has to have had tremendous inner resources from birth for her to be affected in this way. Just the fact that she read an entire article on character made her unusual. Most people who sit in waiting rooms do not read entire articles, if they even pick up a magazine. A number of factors including genetic ones came together to change her course in life.
Still luck played a part in changing Erica's life. Various events could have taken place that would have denied her the opportunity to read that helpful article. She may not have become ill and needed to go to the doctor. The doctor's office may not have offered that particular magazine for reading in the waiting room. Someone else could have been looking at the magazine, and Erica would have never had the chance to read it. Chance played an important part by giving Erica the opportunity to read the article. One thing is clear--Erica had no control over the appearance of that magazine in the waiting room. It is further clear that she did not cause her reaction to the article. There are instances in which chance makes things worse. Here are two examples.
A girl's mother died when the girl was eight years old. For several years, her father did an exemplary job of raising her and her two younger siblings. She was a great help to him. When the girl was thirteen, the father was killed in a freak accident at his job. There were no relatives or friends to take in the children. The girl was bounced around different foster homes for the rest of her adolescence. This had a deleterious effect.
A couple decided to start a restaurant. He had worked as a chef for several years. They were both very industrious. They had to borrow money from relatives. The restaurant began doing well. Then he contracted cancer and died before long. The business eventually failed. Most new businesses fail within the first five years due to a variety of chance occurrences.
There are some optimistic luck deniers, but one stands out in my mind. He was a local right-wing radio talk show host who would sometimes preach the gospel of unflinching self-reliance. He would at times get on the soapbox of opening your own path or "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps." He was an admirer of business and businessmen. According to him, anyone could go as far as s/he wanted in business with enough hard work and dedication. The idea went beyond business. Anyone who wanted to reach any goal could do it if they put their mind to it. Luck--good or bad--did not ultimately make a difference. You made your own breaks and could overcome any obstacle. He was around 50. His primary occupation was salesman for a large national company. I wondered what his response would have been if someone had called and asked him why he was not by his age the president of the company or some other large corporation.
The "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" attitude can go hand-in-hand with free will. Anyone can just will themselves to do what they want to do. The question is how can you accomplish the feat if your boots have no straps? Cowboy boots and galoshes have no straps to pull on. What if you can't afford to buy any boots?
Those people who believe in a strong free will that has wide-ranging control often scoff at the thought that chance or luck can play any serious part in human actions. This kind of person tends to be more judgmental than average with regard to the failures of others. They are impatient with people who might point to bad luck as contributing to failure to accomplish a task. They see the blaming of misfortune as a "lame excuse." Even if they admit that bad luck can play a part in diverting human plans, they still believe that such obstacles can be overcome by determined effort. These "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" proponents can cause serious emotional pain for those with whom they come in contact.
They can also cause themselves great harm and pain with their attitudes. They place a great burden on their own shoulders. Whenever such people fail, they might blame themselves completely and not put any burden on luck. If this happens enough times, it could develop into disappointment in themselves as persons and even progress into self-loathing. Then there are those people who easily cast judgment on others but more readily give themselves a pass. That is better for their own peace of mind but not for that of those around them.
Perhaps very ambitious people have to hold a very strong and unbending determination that leaves no room for deviation from the mark. However, an unrealistic attitude about chance is not necessary. It is bad enough not to believe in determinism without going further into discounting the effects of bad luck.
Those who believe that summoning up one's courage and determination will overcome all obstacles are really advocating for an unrealistic power in free will. To the credit of most adults, they acknowledge that luck can make a difference, placing some situations out of the individual's control. Perhaps, in their own personal experience they have come to realize that luck can affect events whether we like to admit it or not.
It needs to be clear that usually chance is the product of determinism. Random events take place and fall under the rubric of chance. Still, the vast majority of events that can be considered chance ones are governed by determinism. They are each part of a chain of cause and effect that is in progress. Remember that chance comes into play when a chain of cause and effect unexpectedly impinges on another chain of cause and effect.
Synchronicity
An idea that is related to luck is what is called synchronicity. Psychologist Carl Jung coined the term in the 1920's. It refers to two or more unexpected incidents that occur simultaneously and turn out to be meaningful in some way. Coincidences can turn out to have a welcome outcome. Synchronicity does not usually involve negative outcomes. Jung was a believer in the paranormal.
An example could be that Carla remembers a teacher in high school that she appreciated very much. She tries various ways to find out how to contact her but is unsuccessful. The teacher is retired. A few days later, Carla has not eaten lunch and decides to buy a candy bar. By chance she stops at a convenience store that she has never entered. Lo and behold, she finds her former teacher there pumping gas who declares she has never been there before and decided to stop by chance.
Jung apparently believed that synchronicity took place only on rare occasions. However, the idea has been taken to the extreme in more recent times by the New Agers. The mantra they use now is "there are no coincidences" or "there are no accidents." The claim that coincidences do not happen entails that someone or something makes them take place. The New Agers seem to be saying that God or a higher power or higher source is orchestrating the events so that they turn out a certain way even if every indication is that they are accidental.
Of course, this thinking does not have to be confined to New Age "religion." Other religions can support synchronicity although it is not a part of their doctrine. The idea of a personal god with which the person is in continuous communication is fostered by various religions. This God can send down what seem like coincidences but are really blessings (or punishments).
I have a friend who thinks this way, and i have heard of others like him. He told me he dropped a jar of pickles in his kitchen one day and was certain it was a punishment from God although he could not pinpoint which sin it was for. I told him that i had not observed that he committed many sins. He had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I told him that he suffered further from scrupulosity, a subtype of OCD that involves religious belief. I have told him many times that what he needed was medication. Ultimately, it seems that rather than assume there is synchronicity it is preferable to believe that chance is involved in some events. Otherwise, too much room is left for psychological torture on the belief that continuous punishments are being meted out.
It is interesting to ponder on what it means for a higher power to be involved in incidents in people's lives. That would indicate that determinism rules human lives with the higher power or mind doing the determining. At the same time, this higher power could be said to be exercising its own free will.
Impulsiveness
Impulsiveness can be thought of as compulsiveness or compulsion. In psychology, there is a distinction. Both involve actions that cannot be helped, with impulsiveness generally giving pleasure while compulsiveness does not.
Until recently, it was considered that people who committed impulsive acts were simply being careless in their actions and could correct their behavior with some self-discipline. It was a matter of their using their free will. Those who continued to exhibit impulsive behavior were considered to be stupid or selfish or downright wicked depending on the seriousness of the consequences. In primitive cultures, they could be judged as being possessed by demons. To this day, these judgments are still observed. Fortunately, this is changing. It helps that some people are realizing that their relatives and friends cannot help their impulsive behavior.
Anyone can engage in impulsive behavior to some degree at one time or another. However, it appears that those with mental maladies are prone to act impulsively more often. Obsessive-compulsive behavior has been identified for some time now. As with other mental disorders, the sufferer will probably never become completely free from it. People with generalized anxiety order come to mind because at times their anxiety can provoke them to act without normal control. People with schizophrenia can become so caught up in their distracting delusions that they can act impulsively, like run into the middle of heavy auto traffic. Paranoiacs can act erratically in situations in which their fear becomes very strong. Similarly, those suffering from panic attacks can experience fear so strong that it makes them act with unpredictable impulsiveness.
Bipolar disorder used to be called manic-depression. It is depression punctuated by episodes of mania, which can involve impulsiveness, excitability, irritability, anger, talkativeness, and other energy-exhibiting behaviors. In its most serious form, it can sometimes involve the commission of serious crimes. It should not be surprising to hear of a diagnosed sufferer pulling several bank robberies on the same day. It can involve uncontrolled and irrational spending of money.
Any number of mental problems affect a person's free will to one degree or another. An apparently irresponsible person often acts without intending harm. The mental malady need not reach a serious point as in schizophrenia or psychosis. Other people may not even be able to detect the person has a mental defect or illness that is causing the erratic behavior. After all, they see that they themselves as well as others are able to successfully employ their free will. Much pain has been caused to both sides of this situation by the lack of understanding of what is actually going on.
I had a friend whose ex-wife treated him cruelly at the time of their divorce and whose mother acted likewise toward his father before and during his parents' divorce. My friend was a firm believer in determinism. He spoke compassionately of people--many times criminals--who committed harmful acts and believed that they couldn't help themselves. He also tried to think forgivingly of his ex-wife and his mother. Most of the time he was successful at this but at other times exhibited ironic anger and sarcasm when talking about what they had done. He talked as if he considered that they had been in complete control of their actions. He was bemused by his anger but admitted he couldn't help it. What apparently happens is that in spite of our most sincere intentions emotions such as resentment continue to lurk in the background and at times take control.
Compulsive Criminals
People often express hatred of criminals, whether they were harmed directly or merely heard about them. This happens even when wrongdoers express regret for their actions. Yet when you study the background of these offenders, it becomes clear that there were forces leading them to do what they did. This is more true of those who commit heinous crimes or who return to repeatedly commit offenses. Judgmental people often scoff at any excuses and pass off any sympathy as just molly-coddling and pampering.
Chronic misbehavior can start early. I once had a boy around six years old jump the fence of my backyard and start running around as if he knew me very well. I had never seen him before. He did not threaten me in any way, just scampered around energetically and picked up and looked at items. Soon a girl a little older than him came to the gate and informed me that she had come to take her brother. He ignored her and kept running around. Then he jumped the fence at the same spot he had entered and ran toward his home. She told me he had always acted out of control like that and that their family was at their wits end on how to handle him. I wondered what trouble he might get into after he became older.
One of the most reviled classes of criminal is that of child molester. Yet, it has become clear that sexual child abuse is an obsession--like so many others--that cannot be cured. It can be controlled through medication, psychotherapy, or the simple fear of prison, but there is no guarantee any of that will work. There are occasions in which a man will be convicted of child molestation and subsequently not touch a child for years. Then without warning he strikes again perhaps to the point of even killing the child.
There was a story of a child molester/killer in a PBS television documentary. He was on death row for killing several children, and the time for his execution was getting near. He said he was ashamed of what he had done. He had felt the strong impulse to molest children and had tried hard to stop himself from doing it. In spite of his best efforts, there were times when he could not resist the compulsion to molest. He said he wanted to be executed. Dying would end the torment that went on continually within himself.
Then there was the BTK killer--BTK for bind, torture, and kill. He lived in Kansas where he worked as a natural gas technician for 17 years. He made thousands of calls without incident to make necessary repairs at homes. He had a wife and family who lived in peace and were regular church goers. Every so often, this man would get the urge to torture and kill. Sometimes whole families were his targets. He went undetected for several years. When he was finally discovered, those who knew him could not believe he was capable of doing what he was accused of doing. The BTK killer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison the rest of his life.
Other offenders have reported feelings that they could not control what they were doing, including the depraved crimes. The brutal and heinous acts are the wrongs that people become the most angry about and want to condemn the most. Yet this is probably the rule that applies: the more heinous the act, the less the responsibility.
Evolution and Free Will
These have been examples that go against free will. Now here is one that works in favor of it. It involves an aspect of evolution. The traits that creatures possess are a product of natural selection for aid in their survival. Species that survive for very long have traits that are useful and not many that are detrimental to the thriving of the species.
Deliberation and the basing of decisions on it require some degree of free will. A number of species show an ability to deliberate, even if it is crude and elementary. It is hard to believe that such a capacity is merely accidental if it is useful. It would appear that as creatures arose that had a nascent ability to deliberate they were able to flourish by natural selection. By the time humans appeared on the scene, the ability had progressed further.
The ability to deliberate may appear in small animals, even insects. A cockroach stands outside a kitchen door. It is a warm summer night. The kitchen door is wide open to let in cooler outside air. There is a gap under the screen door through which the roach can easily scoot. It ponders on whether it can find better food in that kitchen or somewhere outside. Predators such as tigers have to study and make good decisions on how to attack their prey. Recently scientists have discovered that honey badgers and crows show great mental creativity.
A crow was recorded on a video using a flat object, like the lid of a large bottle, as a sled. S/he would take the lid to the top of a snowy building roof with a good pitch in it. S/he would put down the object next to the peak of the roof, step on it, and slide down several feet to the point where the roof became flat. S/he repeated this several times and seemed well-practiced in doing it. S/he may well have learned this from other crows. They have apparently reasoned out that they can enjoy themselves with sleds.
Early humans had to ponder and make sound decisions with respect to several endeavors like hunting, constructing dwellings, avoiding dangers like harmful food and predators, and the like. Today even those who prize seeing people who act swiftly or behave spontaneously will admit that at least in some instances deliberation is advantageous. Thorough thinking does not guarantee that the correct choice will be made. Yet hasty decisions on important matters are more likely to produce erroneous results.
People engage in deliberations, however brief, all the time and usually are not aware of it. They expect other people to try to make rational decisions especially if it affects them. They demand it of those in certain positions such as politicians, business executives, judges, surgeons, construction engineers, jurors, and others. There is good reason to believe that the practice of deliberation in decision making is one of those traits that was gradually produced by natural selection.
Free Will Shackled
We have reviewed a number of ways in which free will falls short in avoiding determinism. Humans are fundamentally emotional beings. Most of our actions are based on emotion--both the constructive and the destructive ones. We experience the world emotionally. Rationality and intellect do not enable us to feel.
Rationality is an ability that certain animals have that helps them navigate through the world in their daily lives. It helps humans understand their emotions but does not actually allow them to experience them. Rationality does not furnish us with the emotions with which we "taste" life. Rationality cannot always keep emotions in check even when it is urgent to do so. Consequently free will, which is dependent on rationality, does not always do a good job in directing actions. Emotion too often trumps free will. Some people are able to exercise better self-discipline by using their free will more effectively.
The idea of origination, which is supposed to be the explanation for free will, may stem from the observation that at times people perform the same undesirable action many times. Then finally one day they desist. After all this time, it seems as if the person is able to rise above all the influences driving her/im to take the undesirable action and then originate a new course by pushing her/imself to do the proper thing. Examples of this can be found among smokers and weight losers. A smoker is told for years that s/he should stop smoking for her/is health. The smoker continues for years, saying s/he likes to smoke. Finally, s/he decides to quit and is successful.
In spite of appearances, these dramatic reversals can be explained in deterministic fashion. Ongoing influences may have finally had an effect such as the family nagging and media information. Sometimes getting older helps people reason better including becoming more concerned with their health.
Origination ultimately is almost as incoherent as indeterminism and soft determinism. It is just too hard to explain how someone can cause an event to take place that is completely independent of prior causes. There has to be some motivation or idea that drives the desire to originate an action. If that is the case, the motivation or idea has to be the preceding cause that brings about the allegedly originated event. That means the event wasn't originated at all. Origination with respect to character building is also too difficult to imagine without prior incentive or influence. Consequently people should not be quick to cast judgment on those they think have not done enough to possess a good character.
Hard determinism has been left standing strong as an alternative to free will. This even though it indicates that we are all universally controlled by antecedent causes without any freedom of choice at any point in the process of our lives. It is understandable that most have not accepted hard determinism. Instead, they have clung to some vague form of free will. It has not been possible to discern or articulate an adequate explanation up to now, but most people have continued to believe it.
The solution to the problem offered in this book provides the necessary foundation for a sound belief in a modified free will and limits hard determinism. It was shown with the use of some of the earlier examples. It will be illustrated further in the next two chapters. It is consistent with determinism but not the rigid version. It allows for the making of real choices.
18 Decisions within Determinism
The production by natural selection of insects and animals with the ability to make choices marked the definite end for rigid determinism. Up to that time, events took place on a more regular basis and were more deterministic. However, there was randomness. Remember the balanced rock on the edge of the precipice. It was not clear that the exact time could be predicted when it would tumble down. Another uncertainty was in the damage it would cause. If it hit a smaller rock below, could it be predicted into exactly how many pieces it would be broken? So, it is not clear that even in an inanimate world all events--especially the small, insignificant ones--are determinate. It may be that Laplace's Intelligence and its predictive power has never been a reality.
Once the earth spawned creatures that could decide upon alternatives, determinism became much less strict. You can call these new creatures choosers or deciders. Perhaps the Intelligence would enjoy some success in predicting actions based on its estimate of the probability that they would choose to undertake a specific action over other possible ones. Because it would depend on probability, the intelligence would sometimes fail in making its predictions. That is probably not what Laplace had in mind. He was thinking exactitude.
The choosers thwarted any certainty if they were free to will individual decisions on how to survive. If a chooser is truly free to make a decision, it will not be possible to know what that decision will be ahead of time. If it is a close decision, the preliminary signs will be even less clear on which way the choice will go. There may be some clues that the Intelligence can discern that indicate that the chooser will pick a particular option, but then there may be other conflicting clues that point to the making of a different choice. If the chooser is wavering, the prediction becomes that much more difficult.
Think of a sparrow that has just finished eating grass seed on the ground. There are two trees that stand directly in front of it. They are each an equal distance from the bird and also are equal in height to each other. There are other birds in both trees, which indicates that it is safe to perch in either tree. There are other indications that favor the trees to an equal extent. As soon as the sparrow finishes eating, it immediately flies to the tree on its left without apparently giving the choice much thought.
Perhaps if the sparrow's body had revealed some indications indicating its intentions a second or two before it made its ascent, the Intelligence would have been able to pick up on it. It is hard to perceive how the Intelligence could have predicted the sparrow's move to the tree on the left one hour before it happened. The bird might not have even been in the area one hour before. Assume there was no predator in the area or any other motivating factor to prompt the sparrow to go one way or another. It stretches credibility to believe that the Intelligence could predict the flight one month before or in 1800.
It might be easier to predict a decision just seconds before it is made. In that case, there are probably more clues on what is to be chosen. It would not be as easy in the case in which the prediction was attempted several years before, as Laplace contemplated.
Arbitrary Decisions
In effect, the sparrow's choice was an arbitrary one. It certainly did not take time to deliberate it. One alternative was the same as the other one. Given those circumstances, how could anyone including the Intelligence predict where the sparrow would go? The decision was arbitrary but still free because nothing compelled the sparrow to fly where it did.
Hard determinists have maintained that such a move was bound to happen as it did. They have claimed that the bird had no choice; something determined it to fly where it did. However, that is only an assumption. No evidence has been given to sufficiently prove such allegations. It is hard to see how there could be. Our physics and neurology knowledge still have a way to go.
Decisional beings make deliberate choices but also engage in arbitrary decisions. However, that does not further mean that they are compelled. They are still free to take different avenues of action. The sparrow was free to arbitrarily fly to the second tree. It could have flown to a third tree or to an electricity wire or a fence. There is nothing to say that a chooser has to make an expected or regular decision. We witness unexpected decisions being made all the time by all kinds of beings. They can be arbitrary but free. Arbitrariness does not mean there has to be some antecedent cause that forces the chooser to act in only one specific way.
Define a decision as a psychological act that is determined by a prior cause or causes and that itself can be the cause of subsequent effects. I do not want to delve into whether there is a distinction between a decision and an act. There is a difference, but it does not have enough importance to have an effect on the issue of the nature of free will.
Arbitrary only means that the choice was not based on deliberation. An arbitrary decision could come even after close deliberation. This could happen when a person deliberated closely and could not come to a rational decision because the opposing considerations appeared so evenly balanced. The person might then just make an arbitrary choice to go in one of the directions. It might look as if it were compelled. Being that it is arbitrary, it is an abdication to blind luck, a leap into the dark. It appears less free than when it is based on deliberation that supplies a clear choice. Nonetheless, an arbitrary choice is free in that it is made without compulsion.
In the situation of the sparrow, each of the two trees in front of it was equally accommodating. S/he flew to the one on the left without any thought. Assume now that in that same tree there is a hungry cat that is moving around looking for a bird to eat. The bird can again fly arbitrarily to that tree, or it can take a little more time before taking off. It can listen to the sounds being made by the birds nearby. They would likely make sounds that would indicate a danger was lurking. Based on this, the bird flies to a tree farther away.
In the arbitrary decision, the sparrow appeared spontaneous and carefree. This is not the case in her/is making the second, more deliberate decision. There s/he is more in control of the situation and makes a move that is safe. There is the free will to make a decision that is more likely to ensure her/is safety. This still does not negate that the arbitrary choice was a free one. Remember Ann who weighed the pros and cons and found they were about equal so ultimately made an effectively arbitrary decision.
Switchable Determinism
Decisional beings have the opportunity to make their choices at certain points that can be thought of as crossroads or decision points. Another way of looking at it is as a switch in railroad tracks. A train moves down the pair of tracks it is on toward a switch in the tracks. The switch can be set in one of two or more positions depending on which direction it is desired to send the train. It is the job of the switchman to set the switch in the desired direction.
Take a particular example in which the switch is in the position that will allow the train to proceed on the tracks it is presently on. Thirty minutes before the train is to pass the switch, Sandy the switchman, is supposed to move the switch so that the train will move onto the alternative tracks that go in a different direction to the right. Sandy follows instructions and the train glides without incident to the right as planned.
The train traveled down the track in accordance with all the physical laws related to its movement. They are consistent with the law of cause and effect. When it veered to the right in accordance with the setting of the switch, it followed the same laws. After it passed the point where the switch was located, it continued on its new course following all the same deterministic laws. If the train had been sent on the tracks it was already on, the same laws would have applied. Determinism would have been in play in both situations.
Determinism also applied at every step involving the decision point to flip the switch. Cause and effect operated as usual including the event that occurred just before the choice was made to flip the switch. The chain of cause and effect was the reason the chooser, in this case the switchman, was faced with the choice. The chain of cause and effect included the operations of Sandy's employer, the Santa Fe Railway, as well as the previous events in Sandy's life. The events in her/is life started with the many past events that led to Sandy being a member of a species that is empowered to make choices. Then there were the other genetic and environmental influences leading to the decision made. S/he had 20 years of experience working for the rail company, 15 as a switchman. S/he was happy in everything involving her/is job and had always received good performance evaluations. After the decision was made, determinism controlled the chain of events that followed.
A general description of what happens in similar cases is this. A chain of cause and effect takes place up to the time a decision at a particular decision point is made. The decision becomes the effect of that chain and in turn becomes a cause in the chain of cause and effect that continues onward. Nothing magical happens. All the decision does is determine the particular chain of events that will follow from the choice made based on the alternatives open to the maker of the decision. There are only a limited number of options in the making of any decision.
As a switchman, Sandy has several options in how to set the switch depending on the number of different pairs of tracks available on the ground connected to the switch. S/he has instructions to set the switch so as to send the train in a particular direction, but s/he is ultimately free to disregard them. This could happen if an emergency arose at the last minute and the train could not safely go onto the originally specified pair of tracks. Sandy would also have the option to have the train stop completely before reaching the switch provided s/he communicated with the train engineer in enough advance time.
Sandy's free will, however, does not allow her/im to do whatever s/he wishes. There are limits. S/he would not be able to make the train do what was physically impossible for it to do such as ascend into the sky or go off the tracks and continue to run on ordinary ground. This is not what is meant by free will.
Now change Sandy's personal situation to where s/he is not happy with her/is situation in the company. Say s/he is angry at the managers and has the urge to lash out at them. In the last several years they have piled the work on her/im and her/is fellow employees. At that time s/he realized they had never given her/im much recognition although they had given it to other less deserving employees. A way to create some havoc for the company would be to keep the train away from its intended destination by just keeping it on the tracks it is now on. This would be an unexpected choice to the management as well as to Sandy's coworkers. Nevertheless, it would be an option.
Say that her/is outrage is so great that it forces her/im to disobey. This can happen to anyone even to otherwise calm and thoughtful people. Anger, fear, and jealousy are emotions that can make people lose control of their will. On those occasions people do not act with free will. This is even more likely to happen to people who tend to act more out of emotion and impulse.
Instead suppose that Sandy is not in an uncontrollable rage, just in a calm state of anger. S/he has been carefully pondering how to get back at her/is superiors for weeks now. Sandy thought about quitting her/is job. Maybe s/he could simply be satisfied with quitting and take no revenge. Still Sandy thinks . . . revenge is delectable. S/he realizes that the considerations for choosing to obey or not to obey are equally weighted on each side, at least in her opinion. It is a hard decision that makes it difficult to make up her/is mind. If s/he obeys, s/he could stay in a secure job indefinitely. If s/he does not, it could be that s/he would only be reprimanded. S/he would want them to know s/he had done it to retaliate, so more likely s/he would be fired. S/he is vested in her retirement so would eventually be able to collect on it. A big incentive is that s/he had been thinking of quitting any way in order to run a bicycle business. S/he has plenty of money saved and there is a good opportunity to buy a successful one. The owner wants to retire.
It would be a free decision with about equally opposing considerations, such as the ones of Ann and Jake. This would be true even if it were considered a mistake or morally wrong. Sandy's predicament offers a good illustration of a situation in which free will can be exercised. There are no compulsively deterministic influences pushing for a choice to be made one way or the other. Sandy is able to deliberate and is undecided. Even an arbitrary choice would not be determined but be free because there is no pressure either way.
Here is another analogy that illustrates how free choice works within limits. Shifty is under house arrest and so is not free to venture outside. He may do what he desires inside the house: arrange the furniture as he sees fit, order the different foods he wants from the grocery store or from a restaurant, make home improvements, keep pets, listen to music, listen to the radio, workout in an exercise room, entertain guests, etc. Shifty simply cannot choose to go outside, just as we cannot avoid deterministic constraints.
Compulsion Cases
Sid is hiking in an isolated area near the Chanchelulla Wilderness in Trinity National Forest in California. He is alone. He came to get away from people. Out here, you hardly ever see anyone. They often get on his nerves. All his life, people have given Sid trouble starting with his mother. He never knew his father. He likes to spend time in the isolated forests where he can get away from the voices. Sid has murdered 22 people in his 42 years. He would have killed more, but the circumstances were not always right. He has always been careful about not getting caught.
To his astonishment and joy, he meets a woman carrying a huge backpack. Sid strikes up a conversation with her. She seems wary, but he is able to set her mind at ease. He has become good at that. They talk for a few minutes. After she starts to go on her way, he runs up behind her and starts stabbing her in the neck. She has trouble defending herself because of the heavy backpack. He does a good job of hiding her body and all her belongings in separate places. He thinks about how easy this one was.
Manuel was a minister in a United Methodist church in Mason City, Iowa. He followed in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather as a Methodist minister. He had a happy childhood with two very attentive and loving parents. They offered thoughtful moral instruction to him and his siblings accompanied by conduct that was beyond reproach. Members of his community were kind, charitable, and considerate. Manuel was well behaved and constructively involved at home and in school. His regular showing of care for others made him popular at school. Manuel was a model boy as he grew up.
Manuel the pastor continued to follow high standards of conduct. His Methodist congregation noticed this and so developed great trust and admiration of him. It helped Manuel that he married a woman who was also a model of kindness and good conduct.
One day Manuel was preparing a sermon for the following Sunday on theft and avarice. It crossed his mind how he now was being faced with the opportunity to take some money from the church and that probably no one would ever find out. A member of the congregation had died last month and left $250,000 to the church. The man's will stated that the money be given to "the minister for him to disburse as he sees fit." The man did not have any children or close relatives. His lawyer was the executor of the will and told Manuel he would give him a cashier's check made out in his name. No one else knew about the bequest to the church.
Manuel realized that he could leave the money in his bank account and just use it for himself and his family. There were plenty of things the kids needed and before long there would be college and all its expenses. If the money was to come to the knowledge of the parishioners, he could always claim that he was going to get around eventually to spending it for the church.
Alternatively, he could claim it as a well deserved bonus. After all, he received only a modest salary. He had worked very hard for the church since he arrived six years ago. Everyone knew that. The fruit of his hard labor was evident. Membership in the congregation had tripled and was still growing. He wouldn't be taking money out of the congregation. He would just not be depositing the new money that the just deceased parishioner had left. That member had been very fond of Manuel. He probably would not mind if Manuel appropriated his donation for the family. Ultimately, he had said he was leaving the money for Manuel to do with it whatever he saw fit.
Manuel woke up from his reverie. He immediately felt shame that the thought of taking any money had even crossed his mind. He wondered if something was going wrong with him. The following Sunday, Manuel announced the gift to the church and asked for volunteers to work on a committee to decide how to allocate the sum. He led the church for twenty more years and never took a penny from it improperly nor did he ever fantasize about it again.
These two examples are in one sense very similar and illustrate the same point. The champions of free will might well declare that it was at work in both of these cases. On further examination, is it really the case that these men acted out of free will? Were they compelled? Today even many free willers would be willing to accept that Sid may have something in his brain that gives him pleasure or otherwise compels him to take lives. Just his killing of 23 people is strong evidence of this. Sid is a psychopath who in his lifetime likely has become aware that when he kills humans or other animals it does great, irreversible harm to them and their families. He is no doubt aware that society extols harsh punishment for committing murder. Yet, when the opportunity arises, he is overwhelmed by the desire to kill and can't help but do it. There is no deliberation involved. Free will is out of the question. His whole focus is in accomplishing what he is obsessed to do at the moment.
An individual may have "good" days and "bad" days. There are variations in how much of an impulse is felt at any particular time. Killers and abusers surely refrain from committing crimes most of the time or else they would kill hundreds. Free will is able to override impulse on the good days. Free will disappears just before the time they commit violent acts.
Discussing Manuel's motivations is not as scary as those of Sid. Sid's characteristics are more likely a product of genetics than of environment. Manuel's traits may have a genetic connection but his environment may well have had more of an influence. No doubt the example shown by his parents and family along with what he learned from his school teachers and community molded his desire to possess a character and a will that was able to resist temptations, even very strong ones.
Since clearly Manuel was so predisposed to do the right thing, could it not be claimed that he did not act out of free will? Given all the influences pushing him in the direction of conforming to the moral rules of society, it could be said that he was simply acting in the way he had been programmed. There was no free will involved. He saw that he was in the position to steal all or a portion of the money but quickly rejected the idea. It could be said that Manuel was just as compelled to do what he did as Sid was. Both acted in a manner that was not a surprise and was consistent with what they had done in the past.
The big difference in their actions was that one man acted in a reprehensible manner, while the other one did something that was praiseworthy. People would have heaped scorn on Sid if he had been discovered. The hard determinists understandably question whether he would deserve the vilification. After all, he could not help doing what he did. Given that Manuel was also plainly compelled to act as he did, was he deserving of any praise? He was just acting automatically. There is some merit to claiming that Manuel did not deserve commendation for his act, which he performed with little thought. He was programmed to do what he did.
On the other hand, it sounds like a good idea to praise people such as Manuel in his decision. Yes, he may not have had any option but to act the way he did, but it would still seem advisable to bestow praise for selfless acts. It would be another reinforcement pushing the person in a direction that is socially desirable. Consistently constructive behavior is not usually thought of as compulsive but rather as constant or unbendingly upright. Luckily many people fall in this category. They were taught as children not to lie, steal, or murder and do not consider doing otherwise.
Open Choices
There are numerous cases in which people and other animals have open choices of what they are going to do. Examples of that are those of Sandy, Ann, and Nariz the dog. Now assume that Manuel had a weakness for eating too much and consequently was carrying too much weight. When it came to eating, he moved without hesitation too much of the time. He knew this was not good for his health so he worked hard to resist temptations. Most of the time, he succeeded at resisting but it didn't take many failures to cause his body to put on weight. It was a continuing saga of struggle.
Manuel had been brought up to eat moderately. He was taught to use moderation in all facets of his life. He agreed with the practice of moderation and was successful in following it, except sometimes when it came to eating. Manuel was often invited to dinner parties. He would deliberate the pros and cons of eating more than a modest amount and could refrain. It was clear that he had the power to stop. With respect to eating, Manuel had an open choice as did Sandy and Ann. He did not act automatically as in the case involving the bequest to the church. He was not usually compelled to eat more.
People act out of free will to different degrees and at different times. Sid could be a compulsive serial killer but also be very kind and helpful to his older sister. There is much behavior that is not automatic. People are capable of deliberating on what action to take.
It is in the cases in which deliberation comes into play that free will is usually involved. Compulsion and free will are incompatible. There are times when an act of willpower is able to overcome a drive of compulsion, but this is not guaranteed. This can probably be done in cases in which the compulsion is not that strong. Also precautions can be taken ahead of time in order to avoid situations in which a compulsion can take over. For instance, a person who loves ice cream and knows s/he will eat too much of it if there is any in the house is prudent to set a rule to not bring any home except on distant occasions.
Moral Deliberation
Look at the imaginary situation of Billy who came on an extended fishing trip off Martinique with his son and grandson. He has always been close to them. They paid to come on a small boat with a few other people. A sudden, violent storm came and capsized the boat. Billy, his grandson, and an old man were the only survivors, now in a lifeboat stranded in the middle of the ocean. All they can see is water all the way to the horizon. There is good reason to believe that it will be long time until there is a rescue, if any.
Billy does some mental calculations. They were not able to bring much food. Billy thinks it would be best to plan to promote the survival of his grandson over that of the other man and himself. His grandson Ishmael is 10 years old and in very good health. He is intelligent, makes good grades, and is the quarterback of his football team. Billy loves him very much. Anyone would agree that Ishmael has many fruitful years ahead of him.
The other man is 88 years old. He has a persistent cough and looks weak. The old man relates that his doctor told him that his lung cancer had come back. He first contracted it when he was 72 and beat it. He wanted to enjoy the fishing trip before he started therapy. He is optimistic he can overcome again. Billy who is 70 tells the man he has decided to stop eating in order to leave more food for his grandson. The man eats very well. Billy hopes he will get a hint about eating less. He ponders on possibly getting rid of the man.
Two days later Billy realizes the man is not interested in the project to conserve food. He eats better than Ishmael saying he has to conserve his strength because of the cancer. Billy seriously begins to consider killing him. Billy would jump off the boat himself if it would help. However, that wouldn't make any difference because he is already fasting and is sure that he will not waver. Billy hates to have to think about all this. He is a retired Pentecostal minister. He was not one to approve flexibility in interpretation of God's commandments. He had scoffed at "situation ethics." People who knew him would vouch that he was an excellent example of a moral person.
Something has to be done soon. Billy openly asks the man to join him in fasting to leave the food for a young person. The man responds that there is no worry because they will be rescued. He is doing a lot of praying and Billy should do the same. Billy wishes he could wait. The more he waits, the more the supply of food diminishes.
There are no weapons on the boat. Billy could put the man on an involuntary fast, just prevent him from eating. There is strangling and drowning. He is confident that he is much stronger. Billy surmises that maybe he should just let events take their course without doing anything to the old man.
What do you think Billy should do? What would you do? It cannot be denied that there are strong forces working on Billy to make him decide on either side of the issue. Billy's choice is not compelled or clear cut. The decision at hand is an open one, clearly a matter of free will.
This and numerous other examples can be fashioned that show that free will can work within the confines of choices offered by determinism. There are the countless everyday situations in which we follow a routine without thought but could nevertheless decide differently. For instance, Henry has taken the freeway to work everyday for years as a matter of habit. He is free to choose to use one of two other routes if he so desires. Once in a while, he does choose one of them in order to experience a little variety.
There is no doubt that people around the world spend hours deliberating on the right choice to make. It seems strange then to believe, as the hard determinists do, that we are strictly determined to choose by prior causes. All this time spent deliberating by people and some animals are for nought. They say determinism alone decides what each person is to do. Any satisfactory feelings people may have about having worked hard mentally to arrive at the correct decision are false. Deliberation just takes up time that could be better spent on something else.
19 The Solution of Free Choice
The significant shortcomings of free will should give anyone pause for thought about how "free" it really is. Recognition of these limitations along with observation of the pervasiveness of the law of cause and effect in nature including human actions made some conclude that determinism had to control all events. Human actions included all psychological events such as intentions. Determinism produced an unrelenting mechanism under which humans function like robots even when they act and feel as if they freely decide on the actions they take.
On the free will side, attempts were made to avoid determinism in order to establish that humans had free will. Conjectures about indeterminism and origination were proposed but were found to have fatal holes. Nevertheless, the hope has remained that it would be possible to set down a proper foundation for free will.
The analysis offered here is the best explanation for the existence of free will. It is a limited free will, not what most proponents of free will would like to think it is. They seem to want to believe in a freedom of the will that gives a person extensive power. People do not have such power. They are still subject to the law of cause and effect. My description avoids the fate of being totally controlled by cause and effect. It limits both determinism and free will.
Free Choice
The phrase "free will" implies a very wide range of options. The mechanism can be called "limited free will," but "free choice" would be better. A choice is an opportunity to pick from a limited number of alternatives. One is free to choose from among those alternatives but not outside of them. The alternatives are presented in the ordinary course of events of life brought about by cause and effect. There is nothing mysterious about the process. If random events occur, it is a mystery of how and when they do. They seem to be few and far between.
It does not seem to have been previously thought that there could be the possibility of choosing among alternatives while all the time staying within the deterministic law of cause and effect. The problem is that only a rigid determinism has been envisioned behind nature. Free choice: the ability to choose at decision points among alternatives presented by preceding causes.
A Review
A review of what has been presented may be helpful. The best illustration is the analogy of a train rolling down tracks and coming to a point where it can continue on one or the other of several tracks heading in different directions. A switchman decides in which of the directions the train is to proceed. It is not always ordained that the train is to continue in only one direction each day. On some days, it goes in one direction, on others it goes in another direction. Which track it follows depends on where it is needed on that particular day. Yet, even though there is this variability in the train's path, it is at all times ultimately under the purview of the law of cause and effect.
In the same way, persons are faced with choices that they are free to make several times a day. Some choices are trivial while others are life-changing. Most actions are automatic and do not involve making a choice. Most of us eat something each day without even considering there is a choice not to eat. People sometimes go on hunger strikes. At specific meals we make choices. At breakfast time we decide whether to eat pancakes or eggs. If the latter, should they be scrambled or in some other form. These choices can be made after some deliberation or in haste. Nevertheless, they are free. It is a set of free choices arising within the deterministic situation of having to eat.
A more profound example involves college students trying to decide what major to choose. This is a free choice within a deterministic situation in which certain majors could be out of the question for the particular student. For instance, picking a major in engineering could be a forbidden path if the student were averse to mathematics. The need to make a living in some way is a determined fact.
The situations in which it is clear that we are making a free choice are those in which the incentives to choose one alternative or another are open. There is no compulsion to choose one or the other. Several of the examples that were reviewed exhibited an almost equal balance of opposing considerations. The choosing of scrambled eggs or sunny side up for breakfast is a good example provided the chooser does not have an unbending preference from the beginning.
This breakfast example also offers the opportunity to examine arbitrariness. A choice of the form of eggs can be an arbitrary one with no thought given to it and with no physiological or other conditions pushing for one dish or the other. In real life, people surely make such a choice arbitrarily much of the time. It is still a free choice. The existence of conditions in which arbitrary choices can be made shows that there are situations in which there is a freedom to choose, even if arbitrary. Life does not always force situations on people and leave only one avenue as the hard determinists believe. There is more flexibility than that.
Free choice can be unthinking, but it can also involve the application of rationality, which facilitates decisions reached on the basis of information gathered and assessed. The process is still open to error but is usually a vast improvement over impulsive or hasty decisions. The advantage of rationality is one that was gradually acquired through evolution. There are the abilities, such as long distance vision, that slowly developed in species. Rationality appears only to a limited extent in nonhuman species as well as many members of the human race. It would be to the advantage of all species to employ rationality more widely than they do.
Through many centuries, philosophers have promoted rationality. So it is puzzling to see that some philosophers who believe that hard determinism directs all human actions have in effect argued that rationality is not real. You have surely availed yourself of the process of coming to rational conclusions and seen that it has success. It could be said that much of education is learning to use rationality especially on how it is applied in specific fields.
Hard determinists are afraid that blame is unjustly placed on those who at times cannot help but do what is not wise. This is a commendable concern, but they do not have to go as far as they do. Their concerns can be allayed if humanity comes to realize that there are some people who do not have the capacity to make sound choices. That does not mean that everyone else is lacking in the capacity.
Free choice is present when the influences are not so strong that they compel a particular choice.
End of Book II