#hard determinism

A word on politics, free will, and God

[Content note: the topic of theism as it relates to free will is something I’m deeply interested in but on which I retired from debating long ago, and I’d much appreciate hearing from someone more knowledgeable.  Much discussion of conservative religion and abortion.] I. Free will and the political spectrum, revisited While I’m still on the subject of the whole social conflict between free-will…

Failure modes of determinist goggles

[Content note: more free will / responsibility stuff, because apparently I never get sick of it.  Contains some qualifications on points I made last time which hopefully won’t be taken as defenses of what I criticized before.] Now it’s the other side’s turn. My last post was a diatribe of sorts against the societal values that I’m afraid free-will-leaning outlook on life will lead to (see…

I’m republishing the following because I didn’t realize at the time that I outlined an account that’s more or less in the spirit of what Schopenhauer intended. The distinction is hard to understand, but given my account, the language I use makes the distinction easier to see. I use the phrase thought of action, which means thinking about acting whether morally, socially, or what have you. I also the phrase willing to thought, which is the conscious choice to weigh one’s options. Then, of course, there’s the action itself, which makes clear what Schopenhauer intended to say. We can commit to thinking about and doing one of two or more actions. What we cannot do is create the circumstances that lead to one action or another or one outcome or another. Our will is entirely determined by physical forces, neuroanatomy, genetics, and circumstances lying completely out of our control. The account is as follows.

Before I share my thoughts, I want to iron out some terminology since I get the sense that might confuse some of my readers. I will use the term determinant when speaking of that which influences our thought of action. Clear examples will be mentioned below. I will also draw a distinction between thought of action, which is precisely what it sounds like: me thinking about acting; willing to thought, which is my conscious decision to entertain the thought that preserves, so to speak, the influence of the determinant(s); willing to action, which is my conscious commitment to a given action; and the action itself. These have a hard-to-pin-down causal relation, but I would hope the distinctions I make are clear. To think of an action, to entertain that thought, to transfer that thought into action, and the action aren’t the same things. Please keep these in mind as you read on.

I would identify as a compatiblist. Libertarian free will is out of style precisely because it doesn’t take determinism into account. Compatibilists don’t make that mistake. To act as though determinants don’t influence your thought of action is to miss the mark. Think of ads for instance. If I’m watching a Starbucks ad and suddenly I crave Caramel Macchiato or something that was explicitly advertised in the commercial, in what sense did I pull those thoughts out of thin air? I more than likely wouldn’t be thinking of Starbucks products if not for the commercial. The ad, in this case, would be the determinant. Now, it’s another thing entirely to act as though the determinants decide our actions for us. The fact that the ad made me crave something doesn’t mean it compelled me to make the decision I made. I didn’t go out to Starbucks solely because of the ad. There is, at the very least, a limited will to go out and get the product.

This is where I think we have a will. It isn’t, however, entirely free of the influence determinants have. There are cases, for instance, where we’re not conscious* of determinants, but that doesn’t mean none are present or more specifically, that no determinant(s) is influencing your thought of action to some degree. To introduce talk of degrees is vague, but to illustrate simply, think of it as follows. There’s no sense in where a determinant is 100% accountable for my thought of action. There’s no sense in where it has no accountability whatsoever. There is some measure in the direction of determinants. What remains is in the direction of my willing to thought—my conscious decision to entertain the thought.

Now, you’ll hear hard determinists invoke studies where the experimenter knew the decisions the participants were going to make before they made them. Sam Harris, for instance, speaks of this in his book Free Will. However, left and right, up and down, press or don’t press sort of decisions are overly simplistic and pale in comparison to the more sophisticated acts of volition we display day in and day out. Whether or not you cook tonight isn’t like going left or right or like pressing or not pressing the button. Also, the fact that neurons fire and nerve passageways flare up doesn’t imply that you knew my decision before I made it or acted on it. Like any simple motion, the brain registers your move before it is made and then, via the nervous system, sends signals to your limbs and extremities, so in theory, you can know whether or not I’m going to clench my fist before you see me doing it. Furthermore, there’s a delay between the thought of the act and actually committing the act. This, however, gets complicated when you think of a series of acts that constitute willing. As mentioned, cooking isn’t like up and down actions. It’s more complex. Sure, you can reason that I’ll get a teaspoon, a cup, a bottle of olive oil, etc., but you’re simply using common sense. In other words, you probably have some experience with cooking. That, however, is a far cry from knowing what I’ll do prior to my doing it.

The hard determinist is therefore without answers. Citing x amount of studies showing that you’ll know my simple choice before I make it doesn’t mean I don’t have will. My will isn’t free, I agree. The Libertarian version isn’t up to snuff. My will, however, can decide for or against existing determinants. That is to say that I can choose to heed the influence of the Starbucks commercial or not. Determinants, therefore, don’t have the final word.

Of course, the hard determinant has wiggle room and a bit of recourse. They’ll say that my deciding against the influence of the advertisement isn’t exactly my choice. They’ll say that other determinants play a role (e.g. I’m physically exhausted; I have a headache; I need sleep; it’s raining outside). Again, however, these haven’t the final say. Determinants neither encourage nor discourage my willing to action and they only have a degree of influence on my willing to thought. My willing to action, however, doesn’t serve any determinants no matter how influential they are over my thought of action since they can’t possibly have the causal power of, for instance, a natural force. If I will to jump vertically, the force of gravity will act on me. There is no sense in which determinants are like natural forces. They have an influence, sure. They cannot, however, act on me or more accurately, on my willing to action. They can’t, as it were, push me to decide or to be indecisive. 

In fact, the very fact that we have moments of indecision demonstrates both the influence of determinants over our thought of action, and our willing to action. If one still wants to argue that determinants are akin to causal forces, they’d be hard pressed to explain why some determinants are stronger than others. In other words, when determinants are competing against one another—i.e., the Starbucks ad versus the fact that it’s raining outside—one is more influential on my thought of action than the other. If they are equal forces, then I’d remain indecisive because my willing to thought would be acted on by two equal and competing forces. Therefore, my willing to thought will never transfer into a willing to action and the actual committing of that action. Since this isn’t the case, my willing to action must have some say or perhaps even the last word.

Anyone who has read enough of my posts on free will might rightly guess that I’m completely on Dennett’s side here. Not that Dennett managed to fully articulate his position -- he was mostly focused on rebutting or deflecting particular points coming from Harris -- but just about everything he said strongly reflected my way of thinking about free will. Harris, on the other hand, kept making arguments that came across to me as weak or confused, which is uncharacteristic of my usual impression of him.

Below the cut are a couple of points in the conversation where Sam Harris brought up arguments which I’m pretty sure are quite wrong but are still interesting to mull over.