While my first claim against determinism is due to logical contradiction, and the second one is in the realm of scientific utilitarianism, the latter two claims against a determined existence stem from ethical claims about whether free will is a necessity for personal and social morality. Starting with the claim that the universe, and all causes and effects thereafter are predetermined, I shall demonstrate firstly that this awareness fosters a sense powerlessness and anxiety of the individual. Later, we shall discover the absolute impracticality of a society which accepts a deterministic reality.
Within the individual, accepting a deterministic world risks a justifiable embracement of nihilism catalyzed by personal anxiety about authorship. If indeed the world is predetermined, than ultimately you have no choice in the nature of what you will become, or in the actions that you perform. Choices that you think you might have are really just illusions; the decisions have already been made, so to speak, and you are just living out the consequences of a larger cause. Your life must be an effect – an effect which becomes cause to new effects – but nevertheless, you experience, thoughts, and choice cannot be self-evident occurrences. Feelings of regret are therefore irrational, because things couldn’t have happened differently. Wishing or hoping is also illogical. You are not the author of your actions, and are no way special or distinct from anything that has ever happened. You, itself is a confused signifier which means less and less as determinism becomes stronger. From these obvious moral conclusions, the life of a hard determinist seems miserable and dismal.
Moreover, if determinism necessities that you are unable to escape the terminus which has been prescribed for you, determinism lends itself, almost by definition, to fatalism – a system which acknowledges that all things have an unwavering fate. Fatalism, combined with the notion that we live in a world with other fated beings, easily lead an individual to embrace mechanism – a system which suggests that ‘autonomous individuals’ are really just shackled cogs in a machine, even if they are completely unaware of their lack of autonomy. While compatibalists, such a Mill, suggest “not to confuse determinism with fatalism,” (Kane 2005) this is an optimistic outlook given a softer, less determined lens of determinism. When assessing the risk of nihilism implicit in an individual’s awareness of a determined world, we cannot be so optimistic.
Upon realizing the hopelessness of one’s situation – mostly based upon the notion that your future will never, by definition, be ‘up to you’ – one finds himself entertaining a type of anxiety where he is not morally responsible for any of his actions (good or bad) simply because he is not the author of his own actions. They were fated to occur anyway. And, making the last philosophical step in a progression of despair, the individual reaches nihilism in a type of existential apathy, realizing that not only does he have no control over his ultimate fate, but an essential he (self) is an ostensibly unstable, irrational expectation altogether. Doomed to participate in a mechanistic system, devoid of personal meaning, there is no he to overcome the causal chain. Even by rejecting society, in an attempt to reject hard determinism, the archetypal nihilist cannot perform any action freely, of his own accord. Fate must always be realized in the world of determinism at the cost of personal value and meaning.
Assuming my previous arguments against determinism are untrue, and the deterministic world prevails; is this the world that the individual wants to live in? Is this a world he can live in? By affirming immutable fate, the determinist’s world risks all subjective experience. Mill is therefore wrong; the determinist must be concerned with fatalism, mechanism, and nihilism, simply because of the ontological risks they pose in a predetermined world. The harder we make determinism, therefore, the closer our affinity to nihilism.
The Risk of Nihilism Without (2 - an unlivable reality)
We may ask the same moral questions of society. It is my contention that regardless of how we break down the systematic ramifications of a deterministic world, our awareness of determinism, and therefore rejection of free will, creates an unlivable social reality. In a system where individuals are fated to commit wrongs, how can society hold them morally responsible for acts which could have been no other way? In a system where the authorship of the individual is put into question by the very nature of the reality we live in, how can society even attempt to govern, knowing full well that the laws of determinism will trump their sovereignty every time? Morality in both social and personal contexts must be completely irrational in a determined system, because their fundamental maxims – no matter how grandiose – will always yield to that system. In the deterministic world, morality is not self-evident; rather, it came into being through the vehicle of determinism. Thus, morality is not an absolute ends in itself (as Kant might claim) nor is it relative to cultures and peoples; it is the mere effect of a particular cause.
Society needs self-determinism and social determinism in order to function correctly. These cannot manifest in a linear world driven by singularity, the causal chain, and continual precedence. It is not only advantageous then for the individual to reject hard determinism, concerning the anxiety and nihilism that it may cause in him, it becomes necessary for a society to reject the tenants of determinism even if they are discovered to be true. For a world of hard determinism undermines society’s ability to hold individuals morally accountable for their actions, to legislate rule and order as their own supreme ends, and to conceive of an absolute definition of ethical standards altogether (be it universal human rights, collective relativism, or anything else). A society that embraces determinism is almost unthinkable. Therefore, in some sense, while the individual may be justified in holding truth over pragmatism, a society is more justified in following a pragmatic ideal more than a philosophical one. Taking a page of wisdom from Book X of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, even if determinism were correct, it would be a moral plaudit for the masses of men to believe the lie; society must pursue itself, not universal truth, to function properly.
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I think I'm fundamentally in agreement with you on most of the points covered here (i.e. that we are obligated to believe we have souls in order to be better social actors, and other such things). But it is easy to come up with some quick and easy counter-arguments from the point of view of a hypothetical opponent.
ReplyDeleteThe first counter-argument might be that while sets of self-contradictory statements might not be LOGICALLY possible, they are PSYCHOLOGICALLY possible.
For example, consider an individual who asserts in one statement "I believe in determinism" and then in the next "I believe that I will live forever." You might try to point out to him repeatedly that he cannot truly believe those two things at the same time. But he might simply reply to you "I don't see why you are trying to change my beliefs." "What's the problem?" "Where is the inconsistency?" "What inconsistency?" The problem is that if someone doesn't CONSENT to the problem, there is no way to force them to admit to it. You might vehemently ask someone "Don't you, mustn't you see a problem here?" to which they might simply reply "No."
Of course, this is a little bit 'out there' - but it isn't too far off from some of Wittgenstein's expectations and/or thought experiments.
Maybe a workable example might be a medieval Christian. Suppose the Christian believed that God determined all things and knows in advance what moral choices you are going to make before you make them. But suppose the Christian also believed that you faced those moral choices nonetheless. Of course, maybe there is something a bit troubling about this, but nothing so worrying that the whole system might need to be given up. After all, God works in mysterious ways. So if you bring this up to the individual, perhaps the best you would be able to get out of them would be a shrug - but NOT belief revision.
In light of this, it is generally difficult to show that beliefs are PSYCHOLOGICALLY incompatible. People can and often do usually mix together any old beliefs they want (even very contradictory ones) and rarely see any true problem with such a process.
The next counter-argument might be that determined beings might be determined to believe in non-determinism. This, I'm fairly sure, wouldn't break any deterministic rules or laws. Imagine an array of neurons that constitutes the "I possess real choice" belief. Let's say that this array was determined to come into existence. Then it would come into existence, and other things would follow from it, etc. etc. But the essential point remains - that robust systems of ethics, vitality, and faith in life - are compatible with the existence of determinism.
So, if these counter-arguments work, then (1) belief in determinism is not inconsistent with belief in 'one's soul' and (2) actual determinism is not inconsistent with belief in 'one's soul'.
I guess the first point is the more relevant. To disprove it, you would have to show that humans cannot be inconsistent in their beliefs. But it seems that the evidence shows that we really aren't as consistent as we think.
Such rambling! Well, constraints of time really are at play aren't they! Well, I hope this at least contributes something!
Best of Luck,
John-Paul
I agree with both the points made by John-Paul above. However, I'd like to add a couple more which I think we can agree on: (3) Belief in determinism is not inconsistent with an actual soul, and (4) Actual determinism IS incompatible with an actual soul.
ReplyDeleteThe 3rd seems obvious, for the reasons given by John-Paul above - people can psychologically cobble together any beliefs they want, the mind's great at sustaining cognitive dissonance. But the 4th, I think, was the main point of Aaron's excellent post. For those of us who ARE trying to eliminate inconsistencies of belief, we are left with the dilemma, as Aaron pointed out, of determinism/nihilism/moral relativism on the one hand or non-determinism/freedom/moral objectivity on the other. Either may still be true - but each of the consequences of the two sides are unavoidable.
Of course, in pursuing knowledge at all, one is already implicitly denying determinism. For as John-Paul alluded to above, if determinism is true, our minds might be determined to believe any old thing. No reason at all to believe that our beliefs correspond to reality, no matter how we arrive at them - since they were all pre-determined. I've always wondered why there are any determinist philosophers, even if determinism were true...
JP ~ I'm only interested in people who are interested in rationalizing (or proving) their beliefs to be rational. Inconsistent beliefs can't be rational; i.e. it is not rational to expect that your life is determined and yet you can chose your fate at any given moment. I'm not attack these people exactly, but such thinking strikes me as egregiously un-philosophical. Yes, that's right, christians are unphilosophical.
ReplyDeleteTaylor ~ You are correct in how you understand my intention. These arguments alone are not enough to refute determinism, however, because I take for granted (and hence beg an important question) the fact that we are free to think about determinism (and our own psychology) in the first place. If this is not true, or you are not willing to grant this premise, then the whole discussion of 'what's morally advantageous' and what's not is almost irrelevant. If we can't freely question whether or not determinism is consistent with our moral standing, we cannot make any evaluating claim that we ought to abandon one or the other.
I hope you're writing good music. You certinaly have your way with words.