Free will is an illusion, + oh yeah, I'm a determinist

 

I listened to a few podcasts on the way down to California which helped me develop and articulate some of my philosophical predilections.  I've already confessed to being a pragmatist; now, I confess to being a determinist.

(As a sidenote, I think it's awesome that I could spend the majority of the 12 hour drive learning and thinking about all this awesome stuff, rather than just listening to music or staring at the road.  Podcasts included: In Our Time Archive: Philosophy: Free Will, In Our Time Archive: Philosophy: Pragmatism, WNYC's Radiolab : Talking to Machines, Stuff You Should Know: how stuff works [how the US Marshals, Peace Corps, Gene Patents, Alcatraz, and Presidential debates work], & Stuff You Missed in History Class: The Gunpowder Plot and Maximilian, Mexico's Habsburg Prince). 

Determinism

Picture a billiards table.  The Q ball has been struck.  A moment after it is hit, freeze frame: what will happen next?  Is it possible to predict at that moment where the Q ball will end up, and what will happen to the other balls? 

For an experienced follower of pool, the outcomes can be predicted with a fair amount of accuracy.  An intimate knowledge of the ball's impulse, the pool table, angle, other ball positions, etc. would yield an even tighter probability estimate of the end orientation.   Taken to its logical extreme, one might use this reasoning to suggest that the end result could be precisely predicted.  If so, you might even move the start point back a half second or two, before the Q stick struck the ball.  Was the end any less determined if you step backward in time once or twice?  How about back to a big bang or beyond?  The end state is always determined by nothing less nor more than the full universe of inputs. 

It's not too far a leap from that conclusion to the conclusion that all human behavior is determined.   We have yet to find evidence in the universe of any effect without a cause; consciousness is material; the determinants of human choice, though highly complex, are similarly physical; as long as the universe's laws remain constant, then it is reasonable to conclude that at least most (and likely all) of human behavior is determined.   Hold on to judgment quite yet though- there are a few more points to explore first. 

Fate

This conclusion does not lead to the conclusion that certain outcomes are inevitable, nor that our behavior is predetermined in a way to render accountability and morality empty of meaning.  For instance, it is not Matt's fate to get his dream job, such that he might as well stay in bed because it is inevitable that he will land it.  Instead, he still has to get up and go perform well in the job interview.   That his choice to arise from bed and perform well in the interview was determined neither robs him of agency, nor removes the causative links between his behaviors and future outcomes. 

Moral responsibility

But if all behavior is determined, then certainly there is no behavior worth praising or censuring, right?  If a man commits a crime while sleepwalking or because of a brain tumor, certainly we wouldn't hold him accountable as we would a comparable criminal with full capacities!

Also, do we not revere those who exercise their agency to do good?  Would the the selfless sponsor of orphans merit praise, if her acts were determined? 

To answer this question, we must first make a brief foray into a debate about the self, free-will, and consciousness.  What does it mean to have full capacities, anyway?

Free will/consciousness/self

Over the past few weeks, I've engaged in philosophy of mind/consciousness debates with a number of friends (thank you Tiff, Michael, and my brother Trye).  We debated whether thoughts and decisions can be predicted.  All conceded that, given fuller knowledge of the determinants of behavior (i.e. mood, brain structure, upbringing, experience, past learning, neurochemistry, memory, physiological state, intimate and exhaustive data on past decisions and current temperature and biochemistry, etc.), one could predict a particular behavior with increased probability.  However, not all debaters were willing to concede full predictability of behavior.

This reluctance is unsurprising, for it threatens our sense of a freely thinking and choosing self. ("man, this sure feels like I think and therefore I ineffably am!  I could've sworn that I'm a sentient agent, freely choosing amongst alternatives according to my inscrutable whim.")

Plus, how can our conscious minds (the seat of moral decision making), which can barely forecast the end position of billiard balls, even begin to conceive of the predictability of such a wonderfully complex system?  Indeed, this is the more frequent objection I encounter- "Oh the arrogance to think that piddly mortal you could predict what The Great Inscrutable Will That Is I will do next!" or, "Certainly you would not have predicted this particular wild, crazy, random unfolding of the universe as inevitable on the dawn of the Big Bang!"  These contentions remind me of the rather annoying demand made by interlocutors in a different context: when I posit same-sex reproduction.  The demand is typically for an actual human offspring of a male-male or female-female (for some reason the mouse picture I show doesn't convert many stubborns).  Whether that event actually happens next year or next century or never has zero effect on whether the concept is sound today.  Is imagination really that constrained?  Must I show you a solved Rubik's cube before you'll accept the fact that it is solvable, and was solvable before I began physically proving it?  At that pace scientific thought won't make it out of the starting gates for millenia.  "Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible - only prediction in theory."

Fact: after being disconnected with our conscious minds while we sleep, upon awaking we return to an apparent continuity of self- a rather incredible phenomenon if you step back and look at it! (non-coincidentally we witness dream-like departures from the conscious self throughout literature, think Wheel of Time and The Matrix).  I heard one TED talker who theorizes (roughly) that this sense of self derives from the brain stem's modeling of our stable internal anatomy, and suggested that the many psychological and cognitive disorders show that there is a dysfunction for almost every function of our brains, and thus the mind (including consciousness and the sense of self) must be physically based. 

In any case, I and my three interlocutors all agree that the universe of determinants of human behavior is broad indeed (and likely extremely complex, especially if you appropriately factor in quantum uncertainties and molecular conformations, the vagaries of chemistry, etc.).  However, if human choice has a determinant other than all the physical inputs which preceded it the moment before, what is that determinant which defies predictability?  A spirit?  Magic?  Random chance?  Changing universal physics laws?  What? 

It is here that we return to our question about whether determinism results in emptying accountability of meaning.  Some I've spoken with reference inherent quantum uncertainty as a defiance of the predictability of human behavior.  In the context of moral responsibility, I would ask whether this is an improvement to the condition assumed by determinism.  If your choice of whether or not to shoot an innocent surfer were causally determined by a random quantum state, would we be more comfortable with that reality?  Do we take solace in having our moral decisions no more predictable than the roll of the dice?  With regard to moral responsibility, Isn't arbitrariness at least as bad, if not worse, than the state of things if determinism is true? 

In any case, drawing on my pragmatism philosophical foundation, I would posit that moral responsibility is as true as anything, because it works in the context we're familiar with and communicating in.  Permit an explanation.  To decision-making me or you, our sensory input is extremely limited.  Our cognitive capacities are hobbled by a host of biases and heuristics.  Our perception and decision making  are similarly crippled, and the number of factors relevant to any decision are extremely large and fall far outside our computational capacity.  Our consciousness can flit back and forth between various alternatives almost effortlessly (though, in truth, thoughts are not free, but are instead shackled to the need for the action potentials and neurochemical motion that constitute them- good luck thinking "freely" without them).  From our perspective, the constricted data inputs we sense, combined with the incredible complexity of our world, create the perception of agency and of a future that we can help create.  Taken together, it appears to us as though we have a conscious self, exercising moral agency in a world where future states are highly unpredictable (as though it were a canvas we paint with our choices [which, by the way, we do, except there's no "we" in the sense of something independent of or external to the mind guiding the hand guiding the brush]).   This perception is sufficient to justify treating moral responsibility as though it were true (even though free will is, upon examination of the brass tacks, an illusion).  When the Styrofoam cup has a hole in it, we discard it and use one with greater integrity.  This act is not different, in substance, from incarcerating the criminal who demonstrates severe moral lapse (e.g. harms others).  A Styrofoam cup does not have free will (i.e. all its "behaviors" are fully determined); neither does a criminal.  However, morality, or holding water, happens to be useful in the context of a community of consciousnesses that have evolved a perception of empathy-based morality.  Thus, as long as the actor has as much apparent choice as the rest of the community, it makes sense to impose a community-reasonable degree of accountability (e.g. to punish a murderer).  This standard perhaps survives even if the actor's empathy is dysfunctional.  

Permit another illustration.  One argument goes like this:

Argument that Free Will is Required for Moral Judgments

    1 The moral judgment that you shouldn’t have done X implies that you should have done something else instead

    2 That you should have done something else instead implies that there was something else for you to do

    3 That there was something else for you to do implies that you could have done something else

    4 That you could have done something else implies that you have free will

    5 If you don’t have free will to have done other than X we cannot make the moral judgment that you shouldn’t have done X

Our ignorance of the knowledge needed to predict the effects that deterministically flow from the predicate causes of the past creates the needed #2 and #3.  It appears to us as though we have options (and indeed that very perception becomes a cause that affects the effect that is the choice- the decision might be quite different sans the perception of agency).  The fact of this perception makes morality meaningful, but only in the context of an empathy-programmed community with a very limited ability to model the determinants of their own behavior.  Thus far, evolution has provided modern Homo sapiens communities with both.   

To reiterate.  For most, it seems like we have moral agency, and within that context it is extremely useful to act as though we do.  If this were not the case (e.g. we suddenly became smart enough to discern the cause-effect universe of human behavior), none would balk at imposing punishment, as that imposition would itself be determined.  Thus, in either case, there is no reason to refrain from pursuing or enforcing morality (again, as long as these two hold: (1) ignorance about the future [creating the perception of agency] and (2) the existence of an empathy-based community of consciousnesses [creating the relevance of morality]). 

Sidenote

Do qualia exist or not?  I think this is an interesting question under the philosophy of mind umbrella.  I'm not certain I understand the debate well enough to weigh in yet, plus I'm torn. 

My respected & intelligent philosophy friends fall into opposing camps (e.g. Chris Naegle and Brent Allsop think qualia exist, while myself (initially), Guilio Prisco, and Lincoln Cannon think not). 

Conclusion

Now remember, as with all my ramblings, I'm testing out ideas.  I'm not locked in cement, and I hope to guard against confirmation bias and to openly and invitingly seek challenges to my current thinking.  Oh, and that pragmatism stuff (esp. Dewey and William James,  slightly less so on Charles Pierce) is pretty awesome, thanks guys for the intellectual heritage.