Free Will: Implications

If we accept Hard Determinism we have to face up to some pretty serious implications. It could change the way we think about morality and personhood.

If the causes of our actions are beyond our free control, does this mean their consequences are not our responsibillity? And would this mean that we shouldn't be punished for them? Morality is about "oughts" and "shoulds", and determinism is about "coulds". We could not have acted differently, so we had no real choice. What we ought to have done, or should not have done, doesn't come into it. So is it part of Hard Determinism that morality as well as freedom is illusory? I don't blame a fallen branch for scratching my car, so why should I blame a youth who couldn't have acted other than how he did?

But we could argue that morality is compatible with determinism. We have been exposed to morality - it is part of the cultural influence on us - so it has gone into the complex mix of factors that determine our actions. Blaming and the threat of punishment are factors that our desires etc respond to and which become part of the causal process. We may resist an action as the result of a second-order desire not to want the pain of punishment or shame. This is supported by the point that we do distinguish between sane adults who restrain their basic desires and animals, children, the mentally ill, who may not. Mind you, this is not to say that punishment is actually fair, because determinism still means that ultimately your character has been formed by factors outside your control.(Although as Chris pointed out, fairness may not be a concept that we should be allowed to use if morality had been undermined by Hard Determinism.)

Even so, we may think that this unfairness is a price we have to pay for keeping society safe and orderly through our systems of morality, law and punishment. In other words, determinism forces on us a practical rather than moral justification for our social practices.

But do we want to explain morality away, as science explains magic away, so that we feel we don't need it anymore? Or do we want to insist that moral blame is ineliminable, too fundamental to get rid of? For example, would you like to see scientific defences extended in court cases to such an extent that people can be excused any crime they were "caused to commit" eg by drugs, alcohol, junk food, low self-esteem, genetic inheritance, poor upbringing, peer pressure, etc?

Would it not be dehumanising to lose the notion of holding peple responsible for their actions? Peter Strawson argues that if we can't hold people responsible for their actions, we can't think of them as objects of our "reactive attitudes" such as gratitude and resentment. You can't resent, or be grateful for, a mere mechanical reaction. To treat people as people rather than as medical cases or as machines means to respond to them with such attitudes. To treat everyone objectively, without personal feelings, would be to dehumanise them. Strawson goes so far as to argue that even if science showed that free will is an illusion, the concept of freedom or autonomy is so fundamental that we simply could not eliminate it. Proving Hard Determinism true would not change a thing. If it did, society would unravel, come apart. Do you agree with Strawson?

But it is not only morality that would be affected by Hard Determinism. It could be seen as undermining rationality too, by suggesting that actions should be explained or accounted for in terms of causes rather than reasons, intentions, purposes, etc. And moral responsibility is not the only kind. We are also considered to be responsible rationally, for our beliefs and reasoning. It is irresponsible, for example, to hold two beliefs which contradict each other.

Why are you reading this now? What kind of answer does that question expect? One in terms of the physical causes that led up to you reading this, or one in terms of your reasons? I don't care about the mechanical causes; I want to know about the rational motives. This explanation would refer to things in the future, your aims and ambitions, rather than past events. Causal explanations look backwards; they explain the how but not the why. We need to see people as rational beings, with the freedom to make considered choices, not as blind bundles of mechanical atoms.

Also, we need to see actions in a social context - in what Wittgenstein called a "form of life" - or in the context of a particular "game", with specific rules and purposes. Exactly the same body movement becomes a different action in the context of a football game from what it is in the context of a fight, and therefore it needs a different explanation, one which connects with the context, the rules and purposes. This is a rational explanation rather than a causal one. A causal explanation would be missing something.

So we have two different stances on human actions/behaviour. The Intentional Stance sees us as persons with free will, as responsible for our actions, participating in various "games" for various purposes. The Mechanical Stance sees us a bodies, subject to the laws of nature, whose behaviour can be explained in terms of causes, scientifically. The question then is: Can the Intentional Stance be eliminated. Can we reduce all rational explanations to causal, scientific ones.

Of course, desires can be seen as both reasons and causes, but a cause has a law-like status. If A causes B, A will always cause B if the circumstances are the same. So we would have to show that a certain desire was always caused by a certain brain state and that it always had the same consequences when circumstances were precisely the same. If this were possible we might be able to see desires as both causes and reasons. Both could explain my behaviour in different ways without being in competition.

The Intentional Stance is one we are likely to adopt towards any very complex system with complex mechanisms and outputs - eg organisations, some animals, computers. Not just people. So that suggests it has a useful function even when genuine freedom is not really an issue.
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