If We Don't Have Free Will, What Should We Do?
The question is obviously ironic. What does should or ought mean if our actions are determined? Should presupposes the ability to deliberate and decide. But without a will -- the term free will is redundant -- how could we make decisions? I've heard social scientists say something like this: since there is no free will, we ought to rethink the criminal justice system. We ought? What does that mean if the premise is that the will is a delusion?
The reason I bring this up is that many atheists seem wary about free will. I think I can explain this wariness. Since atheists properly deny the existence of soul, or spirit, they think they're committed to what seems the only remaining alternative: materialist reductionism. They reject "the ghost in the machine" and embrace the machine alone. But they've thrown the will/mind baby out with the soul/spirit bathwater.
I wrote this post, and you are reading it. Think of what those facts imply. How can they be explained by materialist reductionism? They can't be. To account for what's going on, we must resort to concepts such as consciousness, awareness, will, understanding, intention, meaning, and so on. When I typed all these words, I meant something and intended to communicate my meaning. As you read them, you understand my meaning (I hope). That can't be reduced to brain chemistry. Brain chemistry certainly has a role; we can say that thinking, writing, and reading require brains. But that only proves my point, namely, that those actions cannot be identical with brain chemistry. Indeed, if A requires B, then it cannot be the case that A is B. Electrochemical processes in the brain simply are not what we mean when we speak of conscious experience. Everyone understands this directly. I know what a funny thought is, but I have no idea what a funny electrochemical activity would be.
All of us know directly that we are conscious; that is, we are (usually) in an active state of awareness. It's self-evident. Skeptics, don't ask for proof because proof presupposes consciousness, not vice versa. As Wittgenstein might have said, I have no reason to doubt it, and if I were to be convinced otherwise, I would have to doubt that I understand anything at all, including the meanings of words.
The relationship between awareness and will ought to be obvious. The two go hand in hand. We also can readily see that to be conscious presupposes something to be conscious of. Contrary to Descartes ("I think, therefore I am."), existence is primary and consciousness is subordinate. Without reality, there is no consciousness. (I first encountered this point in Ayn Rand, but it goes back to the ancient Greeks.)
If anyone wants to challenge my claim that he is in an active state of awareness, he's welcome to do so. I'm happy to take him at his word and stop speaking to him.
The rest of us, however, will agree that being in a state of awareness necessarily entails having, within limits, discretion -- I'll say it, freedom -- regarding where and how intensively we direct our attention. We have the choice to think or not to think.
Do acts of will have antecedents and influences? Of course they do; the question, however, is: what is the nature of those antecedents and influences. Let's not confuse reasons with causes when discussing human action. If your model of causality has no room for self-evidently volitional action, then you need a new model. Are we to deny what we all experience? Are we to believe that our experience of choice is delusional? Where's the survival value in that?
Atheists ought to be careful here. (Theists too, actually.) If one is going to insist that he has no free will, why should anyone take him seriously when he says he can't believe in God because he finds the evidence unconvincing? Once you've denied free will as I've described it, one can only say about any argument, "My brain chemistry compels me to say that I find the argument unconvincing, but I have no way to determine if that means it's actually unsound." That's hardly impressive.
And what would the atheist materialist reductionist say to the theist who declares, "I have no choice but to accept the arguments for God and to reject those against it"? Whether he knows it or not, a materialist reductionist is committed to the view that any argument is as good as any other. Using reason to check an argument and searching for confirming and disconfirming evidence are purposeful willful acts. Passivity is not conducive to sifting good from bad arguments.
As an atheist, I reject souls and spirits. No ghost inhabits the machine. But just as we're not souls, so we're not machines either. We are persons, and persons are persons. As the philosopher Gilbert Ryle used to say, some tautologies are worth remembering.
A big source of confusion is this: while we often use nouns such as consciousness and will, those are really metaphors. What they actually refer to are things that we do, not things that we have. The nouns actually indicate verbs and adjectives. That's why pathologists never find a consciousness or will in a cadaver. So what?
- We don't literally have (the faculty of) consciousness. We are conscious.
- We don't literally have (states of) awareness. We are aware.
- We don't literally have minds. We mind. (Recall phrases such as mind your business.)
- We don't literally have a will. We act willfully.
You might ask where consciousness comes from. How can certain material entities be willfully aware? Those would be strange questions coming from an atheist. By what a priori assumption would the atheist rule out conscious willful entities? We know there are living entities in contrast to nonliving entities; why not conscious entities? Even if we can't yet fully explain the material process that underlies awareness, we most assuredly cannot deny its existence.
Yes, without brains we could not think or act; that's true of the other parts of the body too. But let's not conflate the tools with the action. Free will, void of religious connotations, consists of the choice to think or not to think, that is, to direct one's awareness to this rather than that, now rather than later. Who would mount an argument against this? And how if one cannot act willfully?
An atheist who denies our ability to act with willful purpose -- and all that implies: awareness, intention, etc. -- pulls the rug out from under his own feet. That's a neat trick, to be sure, but one that any atheist should want to avoid.
Two books that I've found helpful in this matter are Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind and Thomas Szasz's The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience.
Have you read Julian Jaynes' _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_? He posits a very interesting and IMO very plausible explanation for consciousness (and he does define it as something more than mere awareness) and the development of god concepts in humans. It also has some interesting ideas about schizophrenia (which are partly at odds with what Szasz has to say about it, at least in _The Myth of Mental Illness_--which is the only thing I've read from Szasz).
ReplyDeleteBTW, we do know about some "funny"electrochemical activity, e.g., we are beginning to understand that some chemicals (hormones) like serotonin affect certain areas of the nervous system (hence SSRIs being used as antidepressants).
I don't know that book, Joe, so thanks for the reference. That some hormones affect the nervous system, which I have no reason to doubt, would not make them "funny," as we understand and use that word. I wonder what Jaynes would say about the fact that atheism is as old as monotheism.
DeleteThanks for your continuing interest and comments.
It's been a while since I read Jaynes but I don't think he discusses atheism much (if at all) in his book. However, he does have discussions of the Bible, for example, where he compares the oldest book (of those that are not considered compilations from other sources) which he says is Amos (dating from 8th century BCE) and the most recent of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes, to point out how the former is from the bicameral (pre-consciousness) era and the latter exhibits conscious thinking. On the point of monotheism, Jaynes says that the word "elohim" in Genesis is incorrectly translated as in the singular as God, but it actually is a plural form and suggests a number of alternate (plural) translations (p. 297 of the 1990 edition).
DeleteI cannot imagine what "pre-consciousness era" means. The Jews did not become firm monotheists until the Hasmonean dynasty compelled monotheism on unwilling populations. Of course, that included forced circumcision. Funny how the Maccabees are today hailed as champions of religious freedom.
DeleteJaynes explains what he considers consciousness in the first two chapters of his book (about 40 pages) so it's hard to summarize here. The Wikipedia article on 'Bicameralism (psychology)" has a decent summary of his theory and the evidence he presented to support it.
DeleteThe evidence seems flimsy, and Jaynes was much criticized. It is implausible that people 3,000 years ago were not self-aware, considering they had language. Did they never stub their toes and experience pain? That they did not write about self-awareness would not seem to matter. Ryle's distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that" seems relevant here.
DeleteOne reason that explanations of consciousness are taken as unsatisfactory is that human action, including mental action, is irreducible. People do things, such as walk, eat, and think (silently talk to themselves), and there's little left to say other than that those things are done for such and such reasons (motives).
DeleteFor Jaynes, consciousness is *not* the same as self-awareness. As I said, it's been a while since I read him so I may not do him justice in my explanations. But for example, once you know how to ride a bicycle you don't invest much of your consciousness in doing so. Jaynes thought that the Iliad (and the bible book Amos) was written by bicameral men, lacking introspection. Bicameral men would hear "voices" like schizophrenics and those with echolalia. Jaynes' version of consciousness, introspection or whatever you want to call it, developed slowly as individuals stopped those voices. Thus the Odissey shows more conscious, introspective writing. His critics generally interpret his theory incorrectly,as if the transition from bicameralism happened all at once and everywhere at once.
Delete"Jaynes thought that the Iliad (and the bible book Amos) was written by bicameral men, lacking introspection. Bicameral men would hear "voices" like schizophrenics and those with echolalia."
DeleteWell, it's hardly my field, but I don't see how Jaynes could know that. Did the authors leave diaries stating they were unable to engage in introspection? Not bloody likely.
I'm no expert either but I think it's like Joe Sobran (and others) claiming that the real author of Shakespeare plays was Edward de Vere, or more apropos, saying that the two creation stories in Genesis come from different sources, i.e., it's literary analysis. In the case of Jaynes, he examined the text of the Iliad in the original ancient Greek, and understanding how various key words were used, e.g., like 'noos' (spelled 'nous' later), at that time vs. how they evolved later (something like "field of vision" vs. "mind". As for Amos vs. Ecclesiastes, I'll just quote a couple of sentences. "Amos is almost pure bicameral speech, heard by an illiterate desert herdsman, and dictated to a scribe. In Ecclesiastes, in contrast, god is rarely mentioned, let alone ever speaking to its educated author." (p. 296)
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