I read through your post, but I don't understand much of the meaning of the studies. A higher incidence of alchoholism, or crime, or other behavior, among identical twins, as compared with non-identical twins, seems interesting. But it doesn't prove determinism or free will.

(4) folks are primarily determined by their will (their intellectual appetites; their "focused-on" values); i.e., they're not determining their "own" choices -- it is their "wills" (something assumed to be "separate" from "them") that is what it is that is determining their behaviors

if one's thinking is non-objective, one either contradicts the law of identity by choosing to neglect some data that one knows is pertinent, or one violates the law of identity by incorporating contradictions into one's thoughts.

If it were determined that one thinks something, then one lacks the power to think any other way. Which is to say, one lacks the ability to think at all, because thinking is the logical process of making distinctions: identifying facts, discarding errors.

Suppose I had remembered to carry the 1 and gotten the right answer. In that case as well, I would have lacked the power to think any other way, because in remembering my rules of addition, I could not have avoided getting the right answer. So whatever answer I arrived at -- whether correct or incorrect -- I could not, under the circumstances, have gotten a different one.

This is true, even if I had checked my addition, caught my mistake it and corrected it, for in checking my addition, the recognition that I had made the mistake was itself unavoidable. Does the fact that, under a given set of circumstances, one lacks the power to think any other way imply that one lacks the power to think at all? Of course not!

Ethics and its Controversial Assumptions

[Forthcoming in Vera Lex]

Tibor R. Machan*

      Whether ethics even exists is often in dispute. That is to say, whether claims such as “People should be honest” or “Children should be cared for” or, again, “Treating members of racial groups with prejudice is wrong” can ever be true is widely disputed. Many believe ethical claims like these and claims such those made in the various sciences are radically different because claims in the sciences are subject to certain kinds of demonstration which are not available when we attempt to show ethical claims to be true. Another source of serious skepticism about ethics comes from the fact that a good many natural and social scientists think that people cannot be morally blamed for what they do; instead their conduct is explainable by various causes and the agent’s initiative, will, or choice is but an illusion.

        Ordinary folks, too, are at times convinced that people act badly only because something made them do so, some event in their upbringing, some biological component of their make-up, or some factor of the culture to which they belong. (We tend to explain our own bad conduct more readily but blame other people for theirs! And, conversely, we tend to take credit for our good conduct but often dismiss that of others as having been the result of various impersonal factors.)

        So whether ethics is a bona fide part of human life is not self-evident, nor obvious. In order for there to be ethics, some other facts must already obtain. Such claims as "Judy should not lie," or "The president of the United Sates of American ought to be honest with the citizenry" assume that Judy and the president have a choice about what they will do. As Immanuel Kant believed, "ought" implies "can." This means that if one ought to do something, it must be that one can either do or not do it. It also assumes that Judy, the president and anyone who would look into the matter can identify certain standards of conduct to be used in figuring out what we should or should not do.

        Some claim that Kant’s insight is wrong and that we need not be free in the sense of having the capacity either to do or not to do something, as a matter of our own initiative or choice, all things being equal, because this would violate the laws of causality which make it impossible for two different outcomes to result from identical circumstances.[1] Nevertheless, these philosophers hold to what is called a compatibilist position such that people are still responsible for their actions, even though they couldn’t have acted some other way than they actually did. By “responsible” they mean, however, not that they could have done something else under the same circumstances but that they were, in fact, instrumental in what came about—they played a causal role in a sequence of causes that resulted in what we are evaluating about them.

        Such a view, however, is arguably not what amounts to a genuine, bona fide moral perspective. Both ordinary morality and law take it that human beings are generally free to take different actions from identical circumstances, otherwise the idea that they ought to have done otherwise—for example, not kidnapped or assaulted someone, not cheated on their wives, not murdered millions during the Holocaust—could not apply. Arguably, then the compatibilist position is a sort of attempt to eat one’s cake and have it, also—being true to determinism but also to the requirements of the moral point of view.

        In this discussion I will take it that either ethics is a genuine part of human life, in which case people are normally free to choose between alternative courses of conduct all else being equal, or there is no morality and it is all a matter of what will be will be—que sera, sera.

        First, then, for ethics to be real, it must be that we can exercise some genuine choices, that we have the capacity to initiate some actions. If this were impossible, the idea that we should (or should not) act in such and such a fashion would have no application in human life. Second, ethics requires that some principles that apply to conduct be identifiable or objective. Unless we all can learn those very general principles, ethics has no place in our lives. It consists, after all, of such principles of conduct that pertain to all human beings. Moral or ethical principles pertain to action, how we should conduct ourselves, on what basis we should choose or select what we will do. To succeed at living a human life which is morally good, some principles would have to be followed. "Morally good" here means: being excellent as a human being in one's life but as a matter of choice, of one's own initiative, not accidentally. So being tall or talented or beautiful are not aspects of moral excellence, whereas being honest, courageous and prudent would be, if ethics is indeed a bona fide dimension of human living.

        If we could not exercise genuine choices, morality would be impossible since no one could help what her or she is doing. It would all be a matter of good and bad things simply happening, as indeed they often do at the hands of nature, as it were: when tornadoes or earthquakes or diseases strike. Que sera, que sera, period.

If we could not identify moral principles, we could never make a sensible selection from among alternative courses of conduct. Depending on what we aim for, we can identify the principles that will enable us to reach our goal. This is clearly evident in such fields as medicine, engineering and business. Thus, it seems that this second requirement of ethics, that we can identify principles of conduct, might be satisfied. But we will need to explore that further to be able to tell.

        Let me explore briefly whether these two assumptions are reasonable or merely prejudice or myth as some folks believe, ones who would consign ethics to the dustbin of pre-science, akin to demonology or witchcraft.

        The answers I will reach cannot be considered conclusive—there isn't enough time and space to carry out a full investigation. But we will have a chance to look at the major points for and against the assumptions. Without some idea about whether they are true, ethics itself is left unsupported—it could just as easily be in the class of the occult, such as astrology or palmistry.

1. Free Will?

        The first matter to address is whether we have free will—not necessarily all of us, all of the time but, rather, we as a rule, normally. In other words, are human beings, as they have appeared throughout history in their innumerable diverse circumstances (though not when incapacitated or significantly damaged or as bare infants) capable of bringing about, of their own initiative, the behavior in which they engage?

Against Free Will

        Nature's Laws versus Free Will.  First, one of the major objections against free will is that nature is governed by a set of laws, mainly the laws of physics. The argument here is that all material substances are controlled by these laws and we human beings are basically complicated versions of material substances. Therefore, whatever governs material substance in the universe must also govern human life.

        Social science, for one, which studies human beings in their social relations, looks into some of causes that produce our behavior. So does neuroscience, a sub-discipline of biology, in its study of our individual brains-minds. In each case what is studied are the causes of behavior. So, the only difference between the rest of nature and ourselves, as far as these branches of science are concerned, is that we are more complicated, not that we are not governed by the same principles or laws of nature.

        Most definitely, it is argued, no such thing as an original cause is evident in the rest of nature, something that would have to be possible for free will to exist. As one advocate of determinism puts it, "[T]he best response to the demand for an explanation of the relation between an originator and decisions is that an explanation cannot be given. We have to regard this relation as primitive or unanalyzable."[2] In other words, originating or initiating some action seems nothing more than a myth or an unexplainable fact, for which no evidence or argument can be given.

        The determinist claims that all our actions, including decisions, are more sensibly taken to be effects of some prior events. It is the determinist's view that everything we do is the effect of some set of causal circumstances. This makes better sense, say the determinists, than leaving things unexplained, mysterious.

        Affirming Initiative. Now, in response one might argue that nature exhibits innumerable different domains, distinct not only in their complexity but also in the kinds of beings they include. There are, to be sure, many domains where we find the familiar cause and effect situation clearly evident—for example, on the billiard table, in geological movements, and in the motion of the planets. But there are areas were something else appears to be going on. For example, is the cause of a musical composition, the composer, itself some effect of a prior cause, so that the composer makes no original contribution?[3]

        So, "causal" reasoning does not necessarily rule out that there might be something in nature that exhibits agent or original causation, the phenomenon whereby a thing causes some of its own behavior. Causal interactions depend on the nature of the beings that interact, what they are. So one cannot rule out, a priori (before investigation), that some beings could have the capacity to act on their own initiative.

        Thus it seems that there might be in nature a form of existence that exhibits free will. Whether there is or is not is something to be discovered, not ruled out by a narrow world view or metaphysics that restricts everything to being just one kind of thing so that everything has just one kind of causal characteristics. Nature appears to be composed of many types and kinds of things and thus does not have to exclude free will.

        So, free will seems to be possible, even in a world of causality. Whether free will actually exists we'll examine shortly.

        We Cannot Know of Free Will.  Now, another reason why some think that free will is not possible is that the dominant mode of studying, inspecting or examining nature is what we call "empiricism." In other words, many believe that the only way we know about nature is by observing it with our various sensory organs. But since the sensory organs do not give us direct evidence of such a thing as free will, there really isn't any such thing. Since no observable evidence for free will exists, therefore free will does not exist.

        We Can Know Free Will. But the doctrine that empiricism captures all forms of knowing is wrong—we know many things not simply through observation but through a combination of observation, inferences, and theory construction. (Consider, even the purported knowledge that empiricism is our form of knowledge is not "known" empirically!)

        For one, many features of the universe, including criminal guilt, are detected without eyewitnesses but by way of theories which serve the purpose of best explaining what we do have before us to observe. This is true, also, even in the natural sciences. Many of the complex phenomena or facts in biology, astrophysics, subatomic physics, botany, chemistry—not to mention psychology—consist not of what we see or detect by observation but is inferred by way of a theory. The theory that explains things best—most completely and most consistently—is the best answer to the question as to what is going on.

        Free will may well turn out to be in this category. In other words, free will may not be something that we can see directly, but what best explains what we do see in human life. This may include, for example, the many mistakes that human beings make in contrast to the few mistakes that other animals make. We also notice that human beings do all kinds of odd things that cannot be accounted for in terms of mechanical causation, the type associated with physics. We can examine a person's background and find that some people with bad childhoods turn out to be decent, while others become crooks. Free will, then, amounts to a very helpful explanation. For now all we need to consider that this may well be so, and if empiricism does not allow for it, so much the worse for empiricism. One could know something because it explains something else better than any alternative. And that is not strict empirical knowledge.

        Free Will Is Weird. Another matter that very often counts against free will is that the rest of (even living) beings in nature do not exhibit it. Dogs, cats, lizards, fish, frogs, etc., have no free will and therefore it appears arbitrary to impute it to human beings. Why should we be free to do things when the rest of nature lacks any such capacity? It would be an impossible aberration. Some opponents of the free will idea, such as the behaviorist psychologists B. F. Skinner, have stressed this objection[4]

        Free Will is Natural. The answer here is similar to what I gave earlier. To wit, there is enough variety in nature—some things swim, some fly, some just lie there, some breathe, some grow, while others do not; so there is plenty of evidence of plurality of types and kinds of things in nature. Discovering that something has free will could be yet another addition to all the varieties of nature. Determinism seems to depend upon adherence to a very specific ontology, in terms of which everything must be a given kind of thing, one that can only move when prompted by something else, and this is not something that can be shown to hold universally so as to preclude free will.

        God Doesn’t Allow Free Will. There is also the theological argument to the effect that if God knows everything, he/she knows the future, so what we do is unalterable. If someone knows that some future event will occur, e.g., that Haley's Comet will come nearest to earth at some given time in the future, then whatever is involved in that event cannot have a choice about it. So if God knows that you will have three children, then you have no genuine choice about that matter. It has to turn out that way.

God's "knowledge" is Mysterious. But God's knowledge is not likely to be the kind human beings have, indeed, it is a mystery just what it is. So nothing much can be inferred from it. It is mistake to confuse what would follow from a human being's knowing the future versus God's "knowledge" of the future. The latter is entirely different from the former and so the implications wouldn't be the same either.

For Free Will

        Let's now consider whether free will actually does exist. I'll offer four arguments in support of an affirmative answer. (They are not uniquely my arguments but ones that have been proposed throughout the philosophical community.) Thus far we have only considered whether free will is possible. But does it exist? The following points support that contention.

        Are We Determined to be Determinists—or not? If we are fully determined by impersonal forces to behave as we do, this implies that what we think is also so determined. And then the belief that determinism is true is also a result of such forces, not something we come to learn as a matter of choosing to use our minds well. But the same holds for the belief that determinism is false. There is nothing one can do about whatever one believes—one was determined to believe it.

        Doesn’t Judgment Require independence? If, however, there is no way to take an independent stance and consider the arguments in an unprejudiced manner, because all the various forces making us assimilate the evidence either cause us to believe or disbelieve in determinism, then both the belief in and the rejection of determinism are a matter of such forces and on independent assessment of the topic is possible. One either turns out to be a determinist or not and in neither case can we appraise the issue objectively because we are predetermined to have a view on the matter one way or the other, ad infinitum.

        And then, paradoxically, we'll never be able to resolve this debate, since there is no way of obtaining an objective, unbiased assessment—we aren’t free to judge such matters. Indeed, the very idea of philosophical, scientific or judicial objectivity, as well as of ever coming to know anything, has to do with being free. Thus, if we're engaged in this enterprise of learning about truth and distinguishing it from falsehood, we are committed to the idea that human beings have some measure of mental freedom. This view was put forward by Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher, as well as by Nathaniel Branden, a psychologist who defends free will.[5]

        We Should All Become Determinists.  Everyone who accepts determinism would also have all those who reject it accept the view, as well. This is especially true of those involved in the argument about the topic. Both those who embrace free will and those who embrace determinism hold that the others ought to change their minds and join them in holding their position. Of course, if it is right, that is what we all should believe.

        The Dilemma of Determinism. However, there's a dilemma afoot in determinists imploring others to accept their views, to change their minds. Since the determinists holds we cannot help what we believe—such matters aren’t up to us, there is no choice about the matter—the determinist has no basis to ask us to believe in determinism, to ask that we ought to do so rather than believe in "the illusion of free will". As Kant also said, "ought" implies "can". That is, if one ought to believe in or do something, this implies that one has a free choice in the matter; it implies that it is up to us whether we will hold determinism or free will as the better doctrine. That, in turn, assumes that we are free.

        So, even arguing for determinism assumes that we are not determined to believe in free will or but that it is a matter of our making certain choices about arguments, evidence, and thinking itself. We run across this paradox when we find people who blame us for not accepting the view that people's fate is not in their hands so we should not blame them. Blaming some while denying that anyone should be blamed is a paradox, one which troubles a deterministic position. In one book defending determinism, the author ends by posing the following question: "If ['Left Wing politics is less given to attitudes and policies which have something of the assumption of Free Will in them'], should one part of the response ... be a move to the Left in politics? I leave you with that bracing question."[6] Yet can this be a genuine question, if the answer is predetermined and one either will or will not move Left or Right and has no choice in the matter?[7]

        This line of attack on determinism suggests that free will exists for human beings as a matter of necessity or necessarily, since any belief one might have about anything, including whether this matter can be rationally resolved, presupposes the ability of the human mind to address the issue without impediments that would distort how it is with the topic.

        Free Will Is A Self-Delusion. Many prominent thinkers hold that free will doesn’t exist but we need to believe in it. The famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawkins, for example, holds this position, as did even B. F. Skinner. Some even argue that the belief in free will, albeit wrong, is produced in us by evolutionary forces. Such a false belief has survival value. (Some hold the same view about religion, that the uniquely religious content of religious beliefs is false but has survival value for us.)

        We Often Know We Are Free.  Aside from what has already been said here about the basis of free will, it may also be noted that since in many contexts of our lives introspective knowledge is taken very seriously, such knowledge about free will needs also to be taken seriously. When one goes to a doctor and is asked, "Are you in pain?" and one answers, "Yes," and the doctor says "Where is the pain?" and you say, "It's in my knee," the doctor doesn't say, "Why, you can't know, this is not public evidence; I will now get verifiable, direct evidence of where you hurt." In fact the patient’s evidence is very good if not the best evidence. Witnesses at trials give such evidence as they report about what they have seen, relying as they do on their memory, something they access introspectively. That is the source of the confidence we have in claims such as "This indeed is what I have seen or heard." It involves reference to something we recall from memory and is thus something within us, not evident to others without our testimony or report. Even in the various sciences people report on what they've read on surveys or seen on gauges or instruments or studies. Thus they are giving us introspective evidence.

        Introspection is one source of evidence that we take as reasonably reliable. So what should we make of the fact that a lot of people do believe and say things like, "Damn it, I didn't make the right choice," or "I neglected to do something." They report to us, furthermore, that they have made various choices, decisions, etc., or that they intended this or that but not another thing. They, furthermore, often blame themselves for not having done something, thus implying that they know that they made a choice (for which they are taking responsibility).

        In short, there is abundant evidence from people all around us of their experience of the existence of their own free choices. This cannot just be ruled out, since it would also undercut much else we take very seriously, indeed treat as decisive, coming from such sources.

        But Science Shows that there is no Free Will. It is often held that scientists have shown that free will does not exist. How? By having unearthed, in numerous cases, causal factors that explain what we do—our thinking and our behavior. Psychology, physiology, economics and numerous other fields of science aim to show why people behave as they do, how come they hold various views and act as they do. So, it is clear, then, that no such thing as free will exists.

        Science Discovers Free Will. Arguably, however, what scientists and those who claim that they have shown there is no free will actually have done is ruled out free will by virtue of certain assumptions they hold about the world. The most widely held assumption is that every event must have a cause, and only events can be causes. (We have already touched on this above.) For example, B. F. Skinner does not actually prove that all our behavior is traceable to prior events. Instead, he holds to a certain metaphysical position that implies this.[8]

        Moreover, there is also the evidence from the field of psychophysics that we do have the capacity for self-monitoring and self-determination. According to some of the scientists in this discipline, the human brain has the kind of structure that allows us, so to speak, to govern ourselves. We can inspect our lives, we can detect where we're going, and we can, therefore, change course. The human brain itself makes all this possible. The brain, because of its structure, can monitor itself—that is, its higher regions can influence the rest—and as a result we can decide whether to continue in a certain pattern or to change that pattern and go in a different direction. This is how we change habits, restrain impulses, control our temper, "watch what we eat," alter our developed motor skills in, say, how we play the piano, or even change our established opinions. That is the sort of free will that is demonstrable.

        For example Roger W. Sperry maintains that there's evidence for free will in this sense.[9] This view depends on a number of points I have already mentioned. It assumes, for example, that there can be different kinds of causes in nature and, also, that the functioning of the brain as a complex neuropsychological system could manifest self-causation. An organism with our kind of brain could cause some mental functions to occur via what Sperry calls a process of "downward causation." (Sperry argues that there is some evidence of such causation even apart from how the human organism's higher mental activities occur, for example, in the way water freezes.)

        Now the sort of thing Sperry thinks possible is evident in our lives. We make plans and then, upon reconsideration (which at times takes but a fraction of a second) revise them. We explore alternatives and decide to follow one of these. We change a course of conduct we have embarked upon, or continue with it. And most revealingly, we resist temptations, act despite the desire to do something else, and gradually build up good habits which, at first, were difficult cultivate. In other words, there is a locus of individual self-responsibility or initiative—or, to use Ted Honderich's term, "origination"—that is evident in the way in which we look upon ourselves, and the way in which we in fact behave.

        Some Cautionary Points. There clearly are cases of conduct in which some persons behave as they do because they were determined to do so by certain identifiable forces beyond their control. A brain tumor, a severe childhood trauma or some other intrusive force sometimes incapacitates people. This is evident in those occasional cases when a person who engaged in criminal behavior is shown to have had no control over what he or she did. Someone who actually had no capacity to control his or her behavior, could not control his or her own thinking or judgment and was, thus, moved by something other than his own will, cannot be said to possess a bona fide free will.

        Compatibilism. Those who deny that we have free will would seem to be unable to make sense of our distinction between cases in which one controls one's behavior and those in which one is being moved by forces over which he or she has no control. When we face the latter sort of case, we still admit that the behavior could be good or bad but we deny that it is morally and legally significant—it is more along lines of acts of nature or God by being out of the agent's control. This is also why philosophers who discuss ethics but deny free will have trouble distinguishing between morality and value theory—e.g., some utilitarians, Marxists. Morality concerns how we ought to act (or the rightness of conduct), whereas value theory deals with what is good and bad and why. It is possible to address the latter field without taking a side on the free will issue. But that is not so with the former.

        Some, as we have already mentioned, will defend the view that even if we have no ultimate control over our actions—even if our behavior, the judgments which we make, or our character is controlled by forces such as the environment or our genetic make-up—we may still speak of ethics or morality. These compatibilists, however, mean by the term "ethics" or "morality" something different from what the terms would mean if we did possess free will.

For compatibilists ethics concerns the standards of good behavior, in conformity with rightness regardless of how it came about that one conformed or did not conform to those standards. Ethics, along these lines, concerns values and how to secure them, without implying that one could, of one’s own initiative, exert control over whether these values would be achieved. Accordingly, then, without personal responsibility or agency—where one is the cause of what one does, whereby one initiates or originates one's significant actions—ethics would amount to something drastically different from what we usually mean by the term.

        Given the way compatibilists see human action—namely, that it is possible to have both a causal explanation of it as well as the agent being responsible for the conduct—the theory appears to succeed better than all others, including the one dubbed agent causal free will. In fact, however, the compatibilist doctrine does not allow for personal moral responsibility, however much its proponents so insist. No bona fide, ultimate personal responsibility can be attached to behavior that is, so to speak, softly determined. If one’s character has been molded so that one will have integrity and be honest, generous, and so forth, and when one exhibits integrity and is indeed honest, generous and so forth, one cannot reasonably be said to be responsible for any of this. It is whatever molded one’s character that would have produced and explain one’s honesty, generosity and so forth. Any kind of moral credit would be unwarranted and amount to an illusion, not something well deserved. (It is indeed for this reason that John Rawls, the most prominent political philosopher of the 20^th century, denied that there is any morally significant difference between those who produce wealth and those who do not—as he put it in his most important work, “The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is. . . problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit.”[10] The very foundation of the welfare state rest, as Rawls saw it, on denying that differences in effort are of any moral significant. Of course, Rawls like many others did paradoxically urge that we all recognize this and if one does not, one is morally remiss!)

Compatibilism, then, is a dead end and no significant, bona fide moral (as distinct from value) theory can rest on it. Furthermore, there is a direct impact on politics from the denial of bona fide free will—it implies moral and legal egalitarianism, just as had been claimed by the famous American defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

Is Free Will Well Founded?

        So these several reasons provide a kind of argumentative collage in support of the free will position. Can anyone do better with this issue? I don't know. I think it's best to ask only for what is the best of the various competing theories. Are human beings doing what they do solely as the consequences of forces acting on them? Or do they have the capacity to take charge of their lives, often neglect to do so properly or effectively, make stupid choices? Which supposition best explains the human world and its complexities around us?

        I think the free will view makes much better sense. It explains, much better than do deterministic theories, how it is possible that human life involves such an array of possibilities, accomplishments as well as defeats, joys as well as sorrows, creation as well as destruction. It explains, also, why in human life there is so much change—in language, custom, style, art, and science. Unlike other living beings, for which what is possible is pretty much fixed by instincts and reflexes—even if some extraordinary behavior may be elicited, by way of extensive prodding in laboratories or, at times, in the face of unusual natural developments—people initiate much of what they do, for better and for worse. From their most distinctive capacity of forming ideas and theories, to those of artistic and athletic inventiveness, human beings remake the world without, so to speak, having to do so! This, moreover, can make good sense if we understand them to have the distinctive capacity for initiating their own conduct rather than relying on mere stimulation and reaction. It also poses for them certain unique challenges, not the least of which is that they cannot reasonably expect any formula or system to predictably manage the future of human affairs, such as some of social sciences seem to hope it will. Social engineering is, thus, not a genuine prospect for solving human problems—only education and individual initiative can do that.

        Yet, it should be noted that free will does not contradict social science if the latter is not conceived in strict deterministic terms and the former is understood to allow for long range commitments, chosen policies, strategies, institutional involvements, etc. Human beings make choices, some of which, however, commit them to a course of long range behavior which can be studied in terms of their impact on various features of the social world. People choose to enter schools, careers, relationships, to form institutions, to carry out plans, etc., and often their choices justifies expecting them to stick with a reasonably predictable course of conduct.

        In economics, for example, one may be studying the market place as an arena wherein human beings make various free choices concerning how they will be earning a living, what they will be producing and consuming, how they will be marketing their products, bargaining for prices, wages, and benefits, etc. The discipline examines the various permutations and consequences of these choices, as well as various regularities that are evident in the overall sphere of their activities.

        Nonetheless, people are free to do what they do as commercial agents in various ways, embark upon their tasks more or less intensely at various periods of their lives, for various reasons of their own or because of circumstances they face. None of this needs to be determined by other than the individual agent and all these actions are open to moral evaluation.[11]

        Yet this does not take away a good deal of orderliness, even predictability from people's economic activities, provided one does not expect that they behave like Haley's comet or a subatomic particle, according to impersonal laws or random forces. If social science appreciates that human beings have free will, they do not necessarily give up being scientific about human life, quite the contrary. And from human commitments, predictions about human behavior can become quite reliable though never along lines witnessed vis-à-vis mechanical processes.

Is the Free Will Idea “Spooky”?

In one of his famous books, Daniel Dennett asks, rhetorically, of course:

How does an agent cause an effect without there being an event (in the agent, presumably) that is the cause of that effect (and is itself the effect of an earlier cause, and so forth)? Agent causation is a frankly mysterious doctrine, positing something unparalleled by anything we discover in the causal processes of chemical reactions, nuclear fission and fusion, magnetic attraction, hurricanes, volcanoes, or such biological processes as metabolism, growth, immune reactions, and photosynthesis.[12] 

        First of all, the main argument for free will is no more mysterious than any arguments that rely on a dialectical move. If, as it turns out to be the case, free will is assumed even as one tries to deny it—in other words, the action of attempting to deny free will presupposes that the agent is capable of making original choices—that is sufficient to present a very strong case for free will. And the kind of independent thinking involved in argumentation does exactly that, namely, presuppose free will, the capacity to make choices, to take the initiative as a conceptually conscious agent. For what worth would any argument be if it merely amounted to a computational or genetic process? It would be no more compelling as argument as would be an “argument” advanced by a computer or parrot. The reason we can understand the reference to these as arguments it that we, human agents, can take them as such. But as products of computers or parrots they aren’t arguments, only a bunch of sounds strung together.

        Second, there is that aspect of the case for free will that relies on introspection. We often know about things this way, as when we answer our doctors very confidently about where we feel a pain in our bodies, or remember an event for which there is no evidence any longer apart from our memory. These are completely reliable kinds of knowledge and part of what gives us knowledge of our free will is that we are well aware of the fact that we often choose, initiate action, produce or create what we didn’t have to produce or create. As I am writing the next few words in this discussion, I know at every moment I could stop, get up and get a soda from the fridge or continue with my project, as indeed I am choosing to do. Indeed, without this capacity the ideas of commitment to a project, tenacity, perseverance, ambition and such would be vacuous. And whatever one were to say on a subject, it would all be the results of various impersonal forces, never one’s own initiative and self-determined close attention, good judgment or the like.

        Finally, is Dennett’s distinction between determinism and inevitability (or fatalism) sound? Let’s look again at what he says:

Inevitability means unavoidability, and if you think about what avoiding means, then you realize that in a deterministic world there’s lots of avoidance. The capacity to avoid has been evolving for billions of years. There are very good avoiders now.[13]

Now suppose that I am typing along here and someone maintains that I am fully determined to do this.[14] I, however, in order to try to show that I am not, stop. Have I avoided some factors that were about to determine my continuing to type on? No, not according to determinism. Some other factors—such as, say, the presentation to me of the idea—well, the physical sounds that we take to indicate such an idea (although for materialist determinists the notion of an “idea” would be problematic without its being reducible to some matter or other) that I am determined, along with my psychological responsiveness to such a presentation—have come into play to redirect the anticipated flow of events, so that I am no longer typing along but stopping, reacting to these unanticipated but equally unavoidable factors or forces. Could I have done otherwise? Not according to the determinist view. Was it inevitable what happened? Surely, the presentation of the determinist’s idea couldn’t be avoided; my reaction couldn’t either, and so on and so forth.

What Dennett takes to be a serious difference between determinism and fatalism is only a difference in how detailed a story one is going to tell. Sure, there is no fatalism of the sort where merely large movements proceed, unstoppably; but there is a fatalism of the sort where zillions of micro-movements interact in ways that even a humongous powerful computer might not predict exactly. Still, a sophisticated fatalist would rightly hold that whatever is going to happen, is fated to have happened, were all the details being fully, totally considered.

So, pace Dennett, if we know what avoidance means, we know that, paraphrasing him, “in a fatalistic world there’s lots of avoidance.” Why? Because what is called avoidance is a form of behavior that is determined to occur, just as any other form of behavior is determined to occur by way of the daisy chain of efficient causal links that connect the primordial past with the endless future (as per the picture determinists offer of reality).

        What the agent causation position does not show, of course, is the detailed correct or true full account of free will, only that free will exists. Indeed, its existence is undeniable for us who are the acting agents. A detailed theory of agent causality would serve as an account of free will, not so much its proof.[15]

        If such an account fails, however, perhaps the idea that we have free will has to be given a different account. But the issue we need briefly to consider is whether the agent causality account of free will must be unsound. That is the import of the claim, made by Dennett and others, that the very idea of agent causation is mysterious, spooky. When someone proposes that he has encountered a ghost, we tend to object not because of the belief that this particular ghost is unreal but because ghosts as such are impossible, their very idea is unfounded, baseless. And that is what the claim by Dennett & Co. concerning the mysteriousness of agent causality comes to. The idea is impossible.

        But why is Dennett so confident that agent causation would have to be mysterious and thus impossible? Well, to answer we need to consider a famous argument about the nature of causality that occurred back in the 18^th century.

It was David Hume who reasoned that if we depended for knowing the world entirely and solely on our sensory information, then causality itself must not be thought of as any kind of production or power. The billiard ball that strikes another and is taken, thus, to have made the other move has no (empirically) demonstrable productive powers at all. Instead, if we depend on our senses for knowledge, all we can justifiably claim is that the first billiard ball’s motion was followed by that of the second, and the oft-repeated instances of this results in our coming to gain the idea of causality. (This is an odd move, by the way, since Hume is depending on a productive notion of causality to explain our belief in causality!) Regular or constant sequences like that are, for Hume, all that causes are, involving no evident causal powers.

        Now the assumption that all of what we know comes form our senses is a pretty radical one and although Hume’s idea of causality was very influential, most scientists and nearly all the rest of us did not fully accept his claim about causality because it rested on a radical empiricism that holds that all of what we know rests on nothing else but the contact our senses experience with input, input we cannot even be sure comes from anything outside our minds (brains). Yet many did accept a good deal of Hume’s analysis of causation, so the idea that there can be something productive in a causal relationship has been dropped by most of those who think about causal connections in the world. It is this idea that is deemed to be spooky or mysterious by many because the productivity of a causal factor assumes something that is not directly evident—it isn’t perceived by the senses. Instead it is inferred from the entire context of the causal situation.

        So, for example, that the billiard ball has something about it—say, its solidity, its mass and density, that would produce an impact on another billiard ball so this other ball would be moved by it, is something that we do not see but infer. And although much of science welcomes direct evidence, first and foremost, as it considers convincing explanatory stories, science also makes room for inferred powers. For instance, black holes could not be detected by way of direct evidence for a long time, since by their very nature they didn’t release any sensory information since their immense gravitational force did not allow such information, involving as it has to the emission of light, to escape for us to perceive it. So, the existence and nature of black holes were both discovered by inference, by noticing facts that could best be explained by the postulation of the black hole. (This is, of course, how the reality of many other beings are routinely established—for example, intentions, motives, wants, wishes, expectations, and so forth.)

        In response to those like Dennett, then, who deny the possibility of agent causality—probably because they regard productive powers of causal factors something mysterious or spooky—it needs to be stressed that such powers are not directly perceived but they can be inferred from other facts that can be perceived and our reflection on that fact. So, if the best explanation of what makes the second billiard ball move is that the first has certain properties—lacking in, say, a tennis ball—which can produce the typical movement in an entity such as the second ball, then that is a conclusion that is certain beyond a reasonable doubt (although not certain in the incorrigible, absolute sense Descartes’ idea of knowledge, which Hume deployed for sensory impressions, would have required). Similarly, the power of human agents to be first causes can also be inferred along these lines. Given a certain composition of their brains, given the properties of them, and given the mental capacities—of, say, concept formation and self-reflection—they could well be the kind of beings capable of making original choices, of taking the initiative, just as we ordinarily believe they are.

2.  Moral Skepticism

        We now turn to the second assumption and briefly discuss the pros and cons.

        Let's once again recall what's at stake: is there any basis for our ethical or moral judgments? When a politician is denounced, a newspaper criticized for its practices, or a teacher (or even a text book author) praised or blamed for his or her product, can any of this be made out? Is it possible to justify such judgments or claims? When one claims that one's parents have mistreated one or one's physician engaged in malpractice, is this just hot air or the expression of displeasure? Is it that we simply know this without any justification, without any basis for that knowledge? Is ethics, perhaps, some kind of realm where we can be right without any justification?[16] Or perhaps there are standards we can identify that can help us show that what we claim is true?

        Our discussion, here, will again certainly not exhaust the topic. There is much more to be considered in a thorough study, but what we will do should help lay the foundation and give a clue as to what the debate involves.

Against Morality

        Moral Diversity vs. Objectivity. There are too many moral opinions, so how can there be one, true moral standard for all? Clearly, across the globe and throughout human history great diversity exists and has existed concerning what is supposed to be right and wrong in human conduct. Indeed, apparently decent and intelligent people differ very seriously on the topic. Surely that suggests very strongly that no common, objective standard is available as to how we ought to act. It is mostly cultural anthropologists who advance this view—e.g., Ruth Benedict.[17]

        No Evidence of the Senses supports Moral Claims. Moral judgments are not verifiable by observation, as are many other judgments we make. We can pretty much decide what color hat one is wearing, how many people are sitting in a class room, where China's borders are, how bright the sun is at noon, and other subjects we want to know about, by means of the diligent use of our sensory organs. Yet, no such use is going to enable us to decide whether we ought to tell the truth, write a letter to mother, help the poor, avoid pornography or ban abortions. Accordingly, moral disputes appear to be impossible to settle. This is an argument stressed by members of the philosophical school logical positivism—e.g., A. J. Ayer.[18]

        The Gap Between "Is" and "Ought" No judgment of what is the case can support a conclusion of what one ought to do—the "is/ought" gap argument of the philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). The rules of sound reasoning, good judgment, require that when one draws a conclusion from premises, the terms that are present in this conclusion also appear in the premises. Yet if one begins an argument with claims about this or that being so and so, there is no "ought" or "should" present, whereas in a conclusion having moral import it is just those terms that would have to appear. Clearly, then, such moral conclusions cannot be derived from non-moral premises.

        Morality is Against Nature Nothing else in nature is subject to moral judgment or evaluation, so applying moral judgment or evaluation to human beings is odd, arbitrary, unjustified. Consider anything—rocks, trees, birds, fish or whatever, and there is no place for praising and blaming in our understanding of these things. So bringing morality into the picture when we consider human affairs is arbitrary, out of the blue, unjustified. John Mackie argues, for example, that moral values, if they existed, would be "entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe."[19]

For Morality

        Diversity is More Apparent than Real. (A) Moral opinions tend to differ about details, not basics. (B) Some persons have a vested interest in obscuring moral standards lest they be found guilty of moral wrong doing or evil. (C) Some persons are professional "devil's advocates" and propagate skepticism because they are testing, questioning, making sure (even if they do not act as if they were skeptics, e.g., toward their children, friends, political reps).

        Perceptual Knowledge is Not All. In complicated areas observations do not suffice to verify judgment—e.g., in astrophysics, particle physics, psychology, crime detection, etc. Moral judgments may require verification by way of a fairly complex theory or definition of, e.g., what "good" or "morally right" means. (Moral theories propose such theories and definitions.)

        How not to Deduce but to Derive Ought from Is (A) Hume was arguing against those who believed that moral conclusions can be deduced from premises stating various facts. But not all arguments consist of deductions, a formal statement linking premises to conclusions by nothing other than its logical structure and the essential meaning of the terms. Thus nothing strictly new is ever established by way of deduction, nothing that isn't true implicitly already. There is, however, reasoning that's not deductive but, roughly, inferential. Based on our observations, reflections, economical theorizing, and the like, we forge or develop an understanding of the world. When detectives explain a crime, they do not deduce—contrary to Sherlock Holmes—but infer who did it. Scientists work from evidence to conclusions in other than a strictly deductive fashion. They reach their understanding of what is what by developing valid, well founded concepts and theories that best explain what they see and have previously learned about. Indeed, most often we are concerned to establish definitions which are not the product of deduction but generalization, abstraction, the formation of ideas.

        Accordingly, (B) the premises of moral arguments could include theories or definitions as to what "good" or "ought to" mean and thus give support to particular moral judgments. For example, "the will of God is Good," "Good is what everyone ought to do," thus, "the will of God is what everyone ought to obey." Or, "Goodness is Living (for human beings)," "Living (for human beings) is furthered by thinking," thus, "Goodness is furthered by thinking." These definitions or theories cannot be just dismissed. There is a possibility that one of them captures accurately what the relevant terms mean and from this we could infer moral conclusions.[20]

        Nature is Diverse Enough to allow for Major Differences As in the case of the free will hypothesis, there is nothing odd about something new emerging in nature that does invite judgments. Mary Midgley puts forth a very interesting idea to the effect that human beings are precisely distinctive in the natural world by having a moral nature, a unique ethical dimension to their lives.[21] Indeed, this view was advanced by Aristotle, as well.[22]  It is evident enough, as well, as we consider how really extraordinary human life is—what other aspect of nature gives us board games, museums, symphony music, philosophy or the novel (as well as all the unsavory features. Such as murder, betrayal, ethnic cleansing, or embezzlement) ?

The Best Theory is As True as Can Be

        When we put all of this together what is at issue is whether we get a more sensible understanding of the complexities of human life than otherwise—do we get a better understanding, for example, of why social engineering and government regulation and regimentation do not work, why there are so many individual and cultural differences, why people can be wrong, why they can disagree with each other, etc. It may be because they are free to do so, because they are not set in some pattern the way cats and dogs and orangutans and birds tend to be. In principle, all of the behavior of these creatures around us can be predicted because they are not creative in a sense that they originate new ideas and behavior, although we do not always know enough about the constitution of these beings and how it would interact with their environment to actually predict what they will do. Human beings produce new ideas and these can introduce new kinds of behavior in familiar situations. This, in part, is what is meant by the fact that different people often interpret their experiences differently. Yet, we can make some predictions about what people will do because they often do make up their minds in a given fashion and stick to their decision over time. This is what we mean when we note that people make commitments, possess integrity, etc. So we can estimate what they are going to do. But even then we do not make certain predictions but only statistically significant ones. Clearly, very often people change their minds and surprise us. Furthermore, if we go to different cultures, they'll surprise us even more. This complexity, diversity, and individuation about human beings is best explained if human beings are free than if they are determined.

        That is, at least, what is required for ethics to be a bona fide, genuine subject matter of concern.

Bill, you're correct that I was imprecise and careless in presenting two apparently conflicting definitions of objective. I think of objectivity in two ways: first, the objectivity of reality; and second, the objectivity of reasoning. The first is logically antecedent to the second. Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but I sense that your arguments make the second antecedent to the first. But I'l have to reread and think about what you wrote, before I respond.

Bill, your analogy with math here -- while easiest to understand -- is weak. Math is primarily done with only one primary value in mind -- to get the right answer. Now, knowing this pre-determined goal of folks who do math, it is presumptuous to bring up "error" as a special situation involving any kind of determinism (i.e., where every math error had to have happened). We already know what almost everyone doing math wants -- the right answer -- so we can reasonably infer that, whenever they err, it is due to 1 of 2 factors:

(1) insufficient intellectual ability (as when a 1st-grader attempts long-division)
(2) insufficient concentration (as when you don't choose to set aside your other concerns fully, in order to concentrate solely on the task at hand)

Factor (1) is not an example appropriate to the Free Will/Determinism debate (otherwise, Free Will would mean: omnipotence, which is absurd; and, therefore, wrong thinking). Factor (2) can be explained by the agent's free choice (i.e., as something she didn't have to choose to do).

What this means is that proponents of determinism have to show how the free choice explanation involves either a false premise or an invalid inference (the 2 ways that humans can evaluate arguments). The apparently-impossible responsibility that is logically (i.e., correctly) placed on the determinist's shoulders then -- is to prove a negative (i.e., that her choice could not have been otherwise)!