Freedom vs. Determinism

Part 3. The Brave New World of Determinism

We’ll ignore the incongruity of parents deciding to teach determinism to their children so as to relieve their shame and guilt, so that we can examine this brave “new world” of the determinist.

Presumably, Dr. Gill believes this will be a better world because it will be free of shame and guilt. Shame and guilt are experienced when we do not live up to or fulfill our moral obligation to ourselves, our families, and communities. If there is no free will there are no moral obligation because we are incapable of choosing between right and wrong.  The law is based upon the community’s articulation of moral norms (remember, in a materialistic universe there is no transcendent Good or Moral or Natural Law).  If there is no free will we cannot be held responsible for fulfilling the obligations of the law as our actions are governed by deterministic forces beyond our control. There would then be no basis for punishing violators of the law and the law would lose its authority. The law with its articulation of the rights and responsibilities of the members of the community would cease to exist. The community without law would collapse into anarchy. And the person (if he is, as Aristotle believed, a social animal and not a monod) would be incapable of actualization, that is, of living a fulfilling and happy life. This stark reality has been clearly articulated by many of our modern Scientific Materialists:

“Humans are complex organic machines that die completely with no survival of soul or psyche….  No inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society.  The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life”
~ William Provine

“As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible.  Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends.  Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will….  In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.  It is without external grounding”
~ Holmes Rolston III

This can be a bit difficult to swallow by the general public and our political leaders who have become more dependent on science, not only for their explanation of natural phenomena, but for providing social and ethical guidance in our increasingly secular society.  Even some scientists struggle with the notion that they, and the rest of humanity, do not have free will, while desperately trying to remain faithful to Materialism.  In order to provide humanity with at least a modicum of freedom they have come up with two scenarios:  (1) the existence of chance in the universe, and (2) the concept of biological emergence. But before we consider chance it should be noted that there are materialistic philosophers/scientists that reject that chance can even exist in a universe whose governing principle is determinism.  Instead, they hold that “chance” events or random accidents only appear as such because we do not or cannot perceive the cause(s) that necessitated them. In spite of the protestations of determinists we will consider chance as though it exists and acts independent of necessity.

The introduction of chance to complement the axial principle of deterministic necessity is not the invention of materialists who hope to restore the possibility of freedom.  The Greek philosopher, Democritus, may have been the first to introduce these as twin principles to materialism:

“Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.”

Most biologists (especially those of a materialistic persuasion) agree with Democritus that chance plays a significant role as a guiding principle of the universe. Modern evolutionary theory holds that life from its simplest to its most complex forms came about as the result of the interaction of chance genetic events and the necessity of natural selection. And unlike the strict determinist (who hold that natural law/necessity is the only factor that governs the universe) the evolutionary biologists, like Democritus, see with the introduction of chance the opportunity for human freedom and the subsequent development of ethical systems. Human freedom was central to Democritus’ ethic:

“He who chooses the goods of the soul, chooses the more divine; he who chooses the goods of the tabernacle [the body] chooses the human.”

The modern evolutionary biologists, Jacques Monod, likewise observed:

“The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below; it is for him to choose.”

Frederick Copleston, author of the definitive, History of Philosophy, made the following comment regarding Democritean ethics:

“It is unlikely that Democritus recognized the inherent contradiction between the ontological determinism of his atomist-mechanical cosmology and the freedom of his ethical system.”

It is likely that Copleston would draw a similar conclusion regarding Monod’s positing the human freedom to chose between the “kingdom above or the darkness below” with a mind that was a product of necessity and chance. Unless, of course, there is something in chance that imbues the human mind with free will.

"Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws. A purely random set of accidents." 
~Marvin Minsky

If Minsky is correct than thought including thought that involves choice (free will) occurs as a result of deterministic laws and chance (random set of accidents).  This is of course reasonable if we assume that these are the fundamental guiding forces of the universe. Let’s consider how and/or if these forces could generate choice using a mind experiment.

Suppose the mind is presented with the opportunity to select between two separate events, say the choice of a vanilla or chocolate ice cream cone, The mind governed by “deterministic laws” alone must select one event and not the other.  As Dawkins might suggest the genes make that decision for us although they may give us the illusion that we, as a free agent, are making the decision for ourselves. The mind governed by chance will make a random choice in which case this is no more an act of freedom than that governed by determinism. Perhaps the freedom comes from the chance or accidental events that present themselves to us as opportunities for choice? Another words the universe presents us with choices generated by chance from which we chose either by necessity (much like natural selection acting on a chance mutation) or chance. But neither is an example of free will.  Rather, it is as Schopenhauer observed, "A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills."

It is little wonder that so many Materialist philosophers and scientists have pretty much given up hope to restore free will to men given a universe governed by chance (if it exists) and necessity.  It is difficult to reconcile our societal norms, customs and institution that have developed over the past two millennia with this relatively new resurgence of materialism in academia as was rather boldly admitted by the late Dr. Richard Rorty: 

“Philosophers on the one side want something to rely on, something that is not subject to chance.  Philosophers on the other side try to find ways of preserving most of common sense while keeping faith with Darwin with the realization that our species, its faculties and its current scientific and moral languages, are as much products of chance as are tectonic plates and mutated viruses.  They can try to explain how social democrats can be better than Nazis, modern medicine better than voodoo, and Galileo better than the Inquisition, even though there are no neutral, transcultural, a historical criteria that dictate these rankings”

Next: Autopoietic Emergence