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1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Waking Life
Waking Life
Is determinism true? If determinism is true, can we still have free will? What is freedom?
Is determinism true? If determinism is true, can we still have free will? What is freedom?
This is hard to define. Is freedom to do what we want? Well, I want to fly to the moon right now. And I want to live forever. These are impossible. My physical body places constraints on what I can or cannot do. So If an act is impossible, then I am not free to do it. So I am free so long as I am not constrained. An act is free only if it is not constrained. But this isn’t quite right. Every choice is constrained to some extent. I do not have an infinite number of possibilities to choose from. But even if I only have a choice to do two things, I am still free.
When I look back on an event, I think I could have chosen differently. So an act is free if I could have done otherwise.
So long as it were possible for me to do something other than the action I in fact did, I was free.
What is Determinism?
What is Determinism?
Definition by Brand Blanshard: ‘Every event is caused’
The world works according to natural laws. These laws determine how the world works. So every event is caused by the event that precedes it according to natural laws.
But: we are physical things. That means that we are governed by the same natural laws. So, if every event is caused, then every event is determined to occur.
If it is determined, then it is impossible that it could have been otherwise.
It is impossible for any event to be otherwise, then I am not free.
2. The Problems of Free Will and Determinism
2. The Problems of Free Will and Determinism
Two conceptions of determinism:
A. Fatalism
B. Physical Determinism
A. Fatalism and Logical determinism
A. Fatalism and Logical determinism
"What will be, will be."
Divine Foreknowledge
How can we be free if god already knows in advance everything we’re going to do?
Let’s imagine the scenario:
God knows that on January 7, 2010, you will go to Burger King and order a whopper.
If God knows it, then it is true.
Then it was always true that on January 7, 2010, you will go to Burger King and order a whopper.
If it must be true that in the future you will do x, then you are not free to do x.
It could not be true that on January 7, 2010, you would go to Wendy’s and order a junior bacon cheeseburger.
If it is necessary, then you cannot do otherwise.
If you cannot do otherwise, then you are not free.
You are not free.
(God-Free) Logical Determinism
1. You will go to Burger King
2. You will not go to Burger King
Law of excluded middle: one must be true and the other false
If 1 is true, then it must be always be true and you will go to bk
If it was always true, then there was never a time when your going to bk could have been prevented
Thus, your action could never have been prevented. It could not have been otherwise
Thus, going to burger king was necessary.
Thus, you are not free.
Example: The Minority Report
Imagine there is a group of people who can know in the future when a crime is going to be committed.
They see in a vision that you are going to commit a crime on January 7, 2010. You are arrested, charged with the crime, and pronounced guilty all without having done the act.
Questions:
Does this seem right? Would we say they are guilty?
If fatalism or logical determinism is true, do we have to say that they are morally responsible for this act?
Were they just as fated to be caught and charged for something they didn’t yet do, as they were fated to do it?
B. Physical determinism
B. Physical determinism
This is the one discussed by Blanshard.
Every event is so connected with previous events, that because the first event happened, the next event happened.
Scientific laws: physical determinism
We are complex physical systems, so we should be determined
If we are determined, then we cannot do otherwise. So there is no free will.
Problems:
Recall Walking Life:
Self: who we are is a matter of free choices. If we have no free will, then we do not determine ourselves. What follows? So, there is no self.
Moral obligation: only responsible for those things we do of our own free will. If we have no free will, then we are not responsible for our actions. Neither do we have any moral responsibility, we have no moral obligations.
Free will is just an illusion. We are just machines, cogs in a wheel. This does not mean that we shouldn’t act at all. It means that we have conflicting beliefs about the world. We believe we have free will. We believe the world is determined. We cannot reconcile these beliefs.
How do we solve this problem?
3. Compatibilism
3. Compatibilism
Compatibilism:
Free will and determinism are both true.
How is this possible? Well, find some way that the truths of determinism are consistent with the definition of freedom. Reconcile the fact that every event is caused by its preceding event with the fact that we must be free of constraint and could have done otherwise.
Incompatibilism:
1. No Free Will
2. Libertarian: indeterminism
Not every event is caused by what precedes it.
Based on your reading of Blanshard, what camp does he fall under?
Is indeterminism true?
Is indeterminism true?
First Reason
Feeling of freedom:
Blanshard: we always look to the future and do not stop to consider the impact of the past on our decisions. Then we see we are constrained.
But even after we see we were constrained, we still think we might have done otherwise.
The fact that we feel we were not constrained does not mean that we were not in fact constrained.
Second Reason:
Quantum indeterminism – it is a probabilistic theory
Unpredictable – cannot determine what will come next
This means that it is not the case that every event is caused by what came before.
Things occur with probability, but there is no reason why one happened more than another.
Schrödinger’s cat
What are Blanshard’s reasons for rejecting this? 1. Rejects that it shows physics is indeterministic. i. Our knowledge of causal laws has limits. ii. Maybe we are trying to determine the wrong things. Electrons don’t have position or velocity. iii. it makes no sense for something to have no determinate position. iv. The fact that we do not know a correlation between event a and b, does not mean that there isn’t one. 2. Rejects its importance even if quantum physics were indeterministic. It would have no impact on choice. Mack truck: there is a quantum possibility that a mac truck racing towards me could completely miss me. This possibility is so slim that it is irrelevant. 3. Even if the possibility were greater, what meaning would this have for choice? The laws that govern human bodies are laws of masses of particles, not individual quantum particles. There is a school of thought in physics according to which, at sufficiently small scales, the “law of causality” does not hold. “The Copenhagen interpretation” Sir John Eccles, The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind
Indeterminacy in the position of a synaptic vesicle: about 50 Å in one millisecond. Very small particles do not have determinate position and momentum at the same time.
Blanshard thinks that this is useless for getting freedom; even if small particles move randomly, what counts is how masses of particles move.
The indeterminacy in the position of a synaptic vesicle will produce indeterminacy as to when the charge is transmitted to the dendrite of the next cell… And that in turn produces indeterminacy as to when the next cell will fire… And that in turn produces indeterminacy as to when the next cell after that will fire… In short, the brain can be portrayed as a “quantum indeterminacy magnifier”.
This would refute Blanshard's argument; but would it solve the problem?
Let’s imagine that some such story as this is true. Many brain events will lack sufficient conditions of the causal sort: they will not be necessitated by preceding physical events. Will this secure freedom? If we suppose that decisions are associated with such uncaused events, will that make the decisions free? It may be a necessary condition for freedom, but it does not seem to be a sufficient one.
That is, more is needed to get a free decision than just random, uncaused events in the brain.
If that is all we had to say, then our decisions would be at the behest of uncaused events in the brain -- we would be out of the frying pan and into the fire: out of the bondage of determinism and into the bondage of randomness. We would be like mexican-jumping-beans.Determinism precludes freedom, but indeterminism does not secure it.
Again, recall Waking Life: This is not what we want from freedom! This is not freedom, it is just randomness. We want freedom to be the result of our own choices, not just the random actions of subatomic particles. We successfully refuted Blanshard's second argument, but now we are caught on another one.
Suppose we wish away all these complicated brain-troubles and imagine ourselves to be disembodied minds.
Suppose I am trying to decide whether to spend the afternoon humming through Handel’s Messiah, or mentally working through Gödel’s Theorem. There is no physical world, so there is no physical determinism. Let us assume that psychological determinism is false (you can’t make psychological laws). Let us assume that God does not exist, and that the Law of Excluded Middle has been cast into disrepute. There is nothing that can constrain my decision. I am totally free. So, I muse on Handel and I muse on Gödel, and I am not really sure which one I will go for. I lean one way, and then I lean the other…
I have no reason to decide one or the other!I am like Buridan’s Ass! The philosophical position that tries to understand free will as built upon causal indeterminacy is known as libertarianism
Blanshard's third argument, about morality, has led to the development of a third position, between determinism and indeterminism, called "soft determinism"
This is a pretty surprising idea. What it amounts to is this: if you really think hard about our concept of freedom, you will see that it is really quite compatible with determinism after all. That is, we need to do some conceptual analysis: analyze our concept of freedom and you will see that it is not inconsistent with determinism.
What then, is freedom? Surely we are free when we are able to express in our actions our deepest desire, our true wish, our true self….
We are free when we can do as we please….
This kind of freedom -- in which we are often interested, for which we often struggle -- is entirely compatible with determinism: in a deterministic world it may often happen that Jack’s actions are in accordance with Jack’s desires. But, that conception of freedom is only one conception. It is generally called “freedom of spontaneity”. It is true that “freedom of spontaneity” is compatible with determinism.
But there is also another conception of freedom -- generally called “freedom of indifference. Freedom of indifference is about the possibility of doing otherwise, about genuinely open alternatives, about the future not being closed. Freedom of spontaneity is about actions being free; freedom of indifference is more typically about decisions, or acts of will, being free. And freedom of indifference seems much harder to reconcile with determinism.
The verdict: soft determinism works for freedom of spontaneity; but it doesn’t seem to work for freedom of indifference.
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