Free

15 February 2005

 That old favourite, free will versus determinism, seems to be in the air again. The other day I was reading James Anderson's 'Perspex' theory (more on this another time) and came across his formulation that: 'An agent’s will is free if it is not willed by another agent.'  Then the latest issue of the JCS is devoted to David Hodgson's attempt to give a philosophical justification for something like the common sense view of free will.

Anderson's definition, as quoted above, seems to need some revision. Although not being subject to someone else's will is certainly a condition of free action, it isn't the case that someone else can deprive me of freedom just by willing me to do whatever I am actually doing. My friend may fervently hope I have bought a particular book she wants to read; that doesn't mean that, as I stand in the bookshop making that particular purchase, I have no freedom of action. In general, however, from the quick look I've had, Anderson seems to make a fairly sensible compatibilist case.

Hodgson, on the contrary, is out for freedom red in tooth and claw: a freedom incompatible with determinism. I admire his pluck while deploring his judgement. I think it's a quixotic enterprise, but anyone who sets out to defend the common sense point of view has my sympathy.

 Well, I suppose I'll grant you that, though I think radical determinism is pretty far from common sense. Hodgson sets out nine theses. Probably the key ones are the first and fifth. The first says that there are situations in which the laws of nature allow two possible states to follow a choice, rather than just one. The fifth says that people can make effective non-random choices between the alternatives, influenced but not determined by any rules or reasons. I feel there's an element of duplication here - we've got an indeterminacy in the world and an indeterminacy in the mind. If you allow me a mental capacity to make effective non-random, non-determined choices, I think I can run you up a perfectly good system of free will with that alone - I don't need an additional indeterminacy in the external world. But perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I think most people will find it hard to accept that there can, strictly, be two possible sequels to any given situation. Hodgson invokes quantum mechanics, but even if we accept that there's an indeterminacy there, that in no way authorises him to assume macroscopic indeterminacies of the sort he needs.

 So what, then - your own half-baked ideas? I can do without another discussion of the supposedly wonderful, unique, magic human property of 'free' action. All you really need to know is that determinism is true. And I repeat, it has to be true. Even if all our current science somehow turned out to be wrong, the Universe has to follow some set of rules - some unambiguous set of rules. Otherwise it would be incoherent, unmotivated, or both. And if it follows rules, it's deterministic.

In fact, here's an even simpler argument. Event A happens. At all previous times, then, it was true that event A was going to happen. So event A was already determined at all previous times.

That is all. Tell the fat lady to start singing.

 Don't jump to conclusions. In fact, I want to argue that the problem is illusory; that this is one of those issues where the real challenge is not finding the answer, but working out why people think there's a problem. Now, the problem is supposed to be a contradiction between two sentences like the following.

1. My action A happened because of the preceding physical causes that gave rise to it.
2. My action A was freely chosen by me.

In fact, there is no contradiction. Sensible people since, oh, St Augustine at least, have been patiently pointing this out, but it never makes any difference. People always feel, and probably always will, that there is a problem here. I think...

No, no. You see, discussions of what could have happened always depend on implicit but limited assumptions about the circumstances. That's what makes them worthwhile, because they shed light on the particular facets of the circumstances which are assumed to be under consideration. If you tell somebody you could jump a fence, you're telling them about your own state of fitness and training, not making any kind of prediction about whether the course of your life will ever, in fact, lead you to jump the fence. If someone asked you whether you could jump the fence and you said "No, because I don't intend to and therefore won't." they would think you were misunderstanding (or perhaps rhetorically countering a perceived suggestion). But that's the kind of stance you take up when you go off on your determinist tack. In effect, you just refuse to talk about possibility. You insist on the whole history of the Universe being implicitly specified down to the movement of every atom. Then you say; given the state of the Universe, only one thing could have happened. But that's vacuous. You're just saying 'given that everything was the way it was, then things are going to be the way they're going to be'.