For the preceding 14 posts and associated debates on the subject of Freewill and Determinism, see the left hand sidebar categories link. For Part A of this post, outlining the main positions on Determinism see this morning's post here.
Now I'm finally going to come clean on where I stand on freewill, and I'll outline some of my thoughts on the subject.
It will only be an outline because a) I fear I lose at least one 4AoSer every time I mention the topic and b) after thinking about it, and reading about it for over 20 years - on and off - a proper examination would fill a Philosophy Masters thesis, which is, funnily enough, what I'm planning to undertake next February.
When I got seriously back into the subject last year, I joined a philosophy forum. As you know I'm a huge fan of specialist forums; you instantly make a thousand (ten thousand?) new friends, most of whom are very experienced and knowledgeable about the specialism and they are all keen to share what they know and to encourage others. My modest achievements over the last couple of years in the areas of Astrophotography, 3D Animation, Macrophotography, Microphotography and Spectroscopy etc. would not have been possible without these wonderful dedicated people who are happy to talk and exchange ideas, day and night.
I soon gave up on the philosophy forum.
Why? Because while there were many people who were talking about Freewill and Determinism, each person was convinced that the answer to the problem was completely obvious. There was a lot of heat being generated but very little light.
A determinist would outline one or more of the arguments discussed in the previous post, and would state them as obvious facts: "How can you even imagine that freewill exits??" was a common cry. The believers in Freewill (Libertarians) would do the same thing: "Of course freewill exists! How could you be so stupid as to think it doesn't?"
I'm paraphrasing their statements of course, and their philosophical positions, as there are dozens of "schools" within the debate, including compatibilists, who say it is obvious that both Freewill and Determinism are true at the same time and how could anyone be so deluded as to think....well you get the picture
What is going on here? How can (mostly) intelligent, thoughtful people end up with such opposing views based on the same evidence?
We can all agree, I think, that we should follow the evidence wherever it takes up, even if it takes us to places we don't want to go.
Consider Creationism vrs Evolution. Both sides have their evidence. The creationists have the Bible and the Evolutionists have the ideas of Darwin, so it's perfectly ok to choose which evidence you prefer and we can respect either position right?
Well, no actually.
Because the theory of evolution isn't just about Darwin, in fact it's not really about Darwin at all. For the world to be 6000 years old, EVERYTHING we know in every scientific field would have to be wrong: Astronomy, Cosmology, Geology, Biology,Archeology and any other "ology" you care to think of. It's possible that creationism is true of course; perhaps God created the world 1000 years ago and planted all the misleading evidence just to test us, (or maybe he made the world 5 minutes ago and planted my memory of enjoying Nutella on toast for breakfast...) but there is no evidence for such a bizarre idea and so all reasonable people must accept that the idea of a 6000 year Earth is a nonsense.
We all have access to the same information about Freewill and Determinism, and unless we are Bible-bashing madmen, we are open to wherever the evidence takes us right? If we are reasonable people, then, why can't we agree on the subject of freewill and determinism?
The answer, I think, is that we are appealing to different kinds of evidence. While I'm not sugggesting that I have the answer to a 3000 year old mystery, I am going to suggest that the reason there is such a divide between the two camps is because of a mistake on the side of determinists. And that mistake is to be blind to the subject of consciousness and its implications. I'll come back to this, but first we need to look at the concept of evidence in a little more detail.
Brian Cox tells me that if you take all of the "empty space" out the molecules and atoms that make up our bodies, the whole human race - all 6.92 billion of us - would fit into an area smaller than a sugar cube.
This is clearly nonsense!
The mind boggles at the very idea, and it is in complete contradition of all of my experience about the stuff we are made of.
And yet.... he has the whole body of scientific knowledge and understanding behind him, and nobody who has any real knowledge of Chemisty and Quantum Mechanics disagrees with him, so reluctantly - and with a slightly nauseous sense of unreality - I must accept it as true. Like all reasonable people I go where the evidence goes.
My chemisty teacher told me water is make of molecules, which in turn are made of 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. I have seen it repeated many times in books and nobody disputes it. So I will accept the evidence. I can say that in some sense I know what water really is.
But I have a different kind of knowledge of water. Water is that clear watery stuff that I see in the glass in front of me. This direct knowledge of water is called primary intension (DJ Chambers) and my scientific understanding of water is called secondary intension. The 2 kinds of knowledge are both true in their own way, and usually there is no tension between the 2 intensions; they are just different ways I experience the world. The Sun is both a small round bright thing that keeps me warm when I'm in the garden AND a vast nuclear fireball 1.4 million km in diameter.
As I said above, when the evidence points to my common sense understanding being wrong, I will accept the evidence and will disgard my narrow false views. Generally it should be noted, our common sense ideas turn out to be wrong most of the time, so reasonable people have to be strong enough to face up to this disgarding process regulary. In fact if they read widely enough, they will have to do it every day.
However science can be wrong. In fact science gets it wrong a lot. How and why it gets it so wrong is a fascinating subject in its own right, but that it gets it wrong is beyond dispute.
There are so many examples of scientists believing things that turn out to be nonsense, or dismissing things as nonsense which in fact turn out to be true, that it's dificult to know where to start. There's one example that comes to my mind though, evey time I look at a map or a globe of the Earth. A child of 5 can see that Africa fits nicely into America. It's so obvious that no reasonable person could ignore it, surely?
Well, although the idea was put forward over 400 years ago, the theory of continental drift was considered complete heresy even unil the 1940s because it did not fit in with other theories. The world of science is full of as much prejudice, vested interests, fashion and narrow-mindedness as any other area of human endeavour. What annoys me about nutty fundamentalists is that they never admit they are wrong and what annoys me about science is that although it eventually admits it was wrong, it never seems to translate that experience into humility.
The important point here is that my primary intension can never be false. The explanation for it may be very illuminating but it can never be explained away. However the secondary intention can be wrong.
It's possible that Brian Cox could come back to me, looking even more embarrassed than he normally does, and say "Sorry, I got my sums wrong. Of course you can't fit the whole of the human race into a sugar cube! I'm amazed, now I come to think about it, that anybody ever believed it for a moment."
Similarly if chemists realise to their horror that they got it wrong about the H2O business, it would not affect my primary intension of water one little bit. It would still be exactly the same watery stuff I'm drinking now.
One more important example. Does The Loch Ness monster exist? I have seen many compelling interviews with apparently sincere eye-witnesses saying they have seen it but I have no direct experience of it. Scientists say that if there was a monster, it would have to be one of a number of monsters, since the sightings go back many decades. They also say that there simply isn't enough food for a number of big beasts in Loch Ness.
So, following the evidence, I must conclude that there isn't a monster. The people who say they have seen it must be lying or deluded. However, if I find myself on the shores of Loch Ness running for my life from a multi-humped monster, I will not turn to it and say "science says you can't exist!"
In other words, my primary intension is more valid than my secondary. Note that I may still be mistaken in my newfound belief in the monster; perhaps it it some hoax or practical joke.
Where does that leave us?
1) Our common sense understanding is often wrong
2) Science and reason often corrects that misunderstanding
3) Where there is a discrepancy between common sense understanding and firm evidence, common sense understanding must be disgarded.
4) Science also gets it wrong
5) My direct experience (primary intensions) can never be false. The interpretation of that experience may be wrong but not the experience itself. By definition, it is what it is.
6) Where there is a discrepancy between my direct experience (primary intentions) and knowledge gained from other sources (secondary intentions) it would be wise to trust primary intensions and then to re-examine the second intensions carefully.
All of scientific understanding and reasoning, as David rightly says, points to Determinism being true. I am a reasonable person, therefore even though it goes against everything I feel and believe, I must give up my romantic notion that I am free to make genuine choices.
This was the conclusion I came to in 1986 when I wrote my dissertation on the subject. It actually left me feeling unwell whenever I thought about it, and so I stopped thinking about it for a year or two.
And then I realised something which shocked me. All of the determinist arguments I had come acrossand written about were based on a reductive materialist explanation. In other words, they assume that everything can be reduced to and explained by reference to the movement of matter and energy and the laws governing it.
Determinism ignores....consciousness. My lovely dissertation - I admit to my shame - makes no reference to consciousness at all, even though freewill, if it exists, must be intimately connected with consciousness because it is clear that unconscious things are certainly not free.
To explain the human mind using the tools of reductive materialism is to explain away consciousness. And without consciousness I am of course "just" a complex biological machine and have no freewill.
Consciousness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for freewill so we are a long way from proving that freewill actually exists but, ignoring consciousness and simply relying on explanations which work for particles is at the very least dangerous.
David believes (I think; I'm sure he'll let me know if I'm misrepresenting him ;-) that consciousness is something that emerges as a natural consequence of a certain level of complexity and that is requires no "special" consideration and it can be reductively explained. Consciousness does not have any top down causation; in other words it does not "do" anything that cannot be explained at a lower level of abstraction.
This may be true, but just saying it does not make it true, and there are in my opinion many reasons to suppose it is not true. I'll be coming to some of those in Part C. In the meantime what I would say that we should not give up our primary intension - our feeling that we can make choices - until the evidence, the secondary intension, is strong enough to suggest that we must.
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