Choice, Lesson 3

Table of Contents

• [0:00] Introduction to free will and the previous discussion
• [2:42] Ciechanover’s mistake and the plasticity of the brain
• [4:40] The Talmudic passage about “against their will” in Egypt
• [6:59] Summary of the mistakes and libertarianism
• [8:12] Van Inwagen’s “either way” argument
• [12:59] Models of political elections
• [17:38] The fourth model – the elections in Israel
• [24:57] Artificial intelligence and philosophical definitions
• [26:25] Does a computer have intelligence?
• [27:54] Defining intelligence for water and other creatures
• [29:56] Determinism and the difficulty of defining intelligence
• [32:21] Defending the libertarian position against the determinist
• [34:50] Three mechanisms: determinism, indeterminism, deliberation
• [38:05] The critique of the concept of causality in science
• [49:51] The connection between free will and deliberation – the telephone example

Summary

General overview

The text presents an attempt to sharpen the concept of free choice by rejecting two opposite mistakes: compatibilism, which defines freedom as doing what a person wants even if the will is internally dictated, and a claim attributed to Ciechanover that the brain’s plasticity rules out determinism because of external influences. The text argues that both approaches miss the essential question of responsibility and deliberation, and it presents Van Inwagen’s “either way” argument against libertarianism in order to claim that it assumes from the outset that there is no third possibility between determinism and randomness. From there it builds a defense of the libertarian view: there is a third possibility of deliberation that is neither mechanical calculation nor a lottery, and this is also central for understanding intelligence and responsibility, and is even more intuitive than the assumptions of causality and randomness, which the text treats as philosophically less well-grounded.

Compatibilism and moral responsibility

Compatibilism holds that there is no contradiction between determinism and free will, because a person is free when he does what he himself wants to do, even if that desire is dictated to him by internal motives. Compatibilism defines unfree will as external coercion, and claims that internal constraints are simply “me” and therefore do not limit freedom. The text argues that one can define freedom that way on the semantic level, but the implications of libertarianism, especially moral responsibility, do not hold when the decision is dictated by the internal structure without a stage of deliberation and decision-making.

Brain plasticity as the opposite mistake attributed to Ciechanover

In Ciechanover’s name it is argued that the brain’s plasticity teaches that the world is not deterministic, because a person does not remain with a given genetic brain structure that dictates his life; rather, the brain is shaped over the course of life and influenced from the outside and by changing circumstances. The text replies that external influences can still be deterministic, and that there is no essential difference between internal circumstances and external ones with respect to the question of freedom. The text presents this mistake as a symmetrical inversion of the compatibilist mistake: instead of identifying coercion only in the external, it identifies determinism only in the internal and treats the external as though it opened the door to indeterminism.

Side note: Berakhot 9 and “against their will”

The text cites a Talmudic passage in Berakhot 9 about “and they made them borrow against their will” with respect to silver vessels and gold vessels, with a dispute over whether the coercion was that of the Jews, who took them only because of the burden, or that of the Egyptians, who gave them. The text interprets “against the will of the Egyptians” through the verse “And the Lord gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians” as a situation in which the Holy One, blessed be He, shaped the Egyptians’ will so that they would want to give gifts. The text argues that the Talmud calls this “against their will” because a desire that is not the result of a free decision and independent deliberation, even if it is experienced as an inner desire, is not free will.

Van Inwagen’s argument and the claim that there is no “slot” for free will

Van Inwagen presents an “either way” argument according to which an action either has a cause or has no cause: if it has a cause, that is determinism and therefore not free will; and if it has no cause, that is arbitrariness or randomness and therefore also not free will. The text applies the question again and again even to the stages of deliberation themselves, and argues that the argument seeks to close off every possibility of free will by forcing a choice between a compelling cause and the absence of cause, which is then treated as a lottery. The text presents the completion of the argument as though even the absence of both external and internal causes does not create freedom, and concludes that the resulting picture appears complete only if one already assumes that there is no third possibility.

The libertarian response: a third possibility and begging the question

The text argues that the “either way” argument begs the question because it identifies “no cause” with indeterminism in the sense of random action. The text formulates the libertarian position as one that requires a third possibility in which action without a cause is not necessarily a lottery, but rather an act of free will and deliberation. The text admits that this third possibility is not defined from within, except by way of negation, but argues that merely presenting it already undermines the determinist attack that claims to show an internal contradiction in libertarianism.

The elections analogy: Syria, Switzerland, and a third model with consequences

The text presents three models of political elections in order to illustrate determinism, indeterminism, and free will. The Syrian model presents a single ballot and a sense of formal freedom that parallels compatibilism and determinism, where there are not really any alternatives. The Swiss model presents a choice among several options but without problems or costs, and therefore the choice is devoid of meaning and functions like a lottery; the text identifies this as indeterminism. The third model requires multiple options, genuinely free choice that is not dictated from within or from without, and also the existence of problems and consequences that give the choice the meaning of an actual decision.

A fourth model and the post office anecdote in Burma

The text adds a fourth model, described as a local reality in which there are several ballots and the place is full of problems, but “whoever is elected does the same thing,” so the split among the options turns out to be an illusion. The text illustrates this with a story about a post office in a village in the jungles of Burma/Myanmar, where many mailboxes are marked for different destinations, but behind the partition everything goes into one big sack. The text uses this story to describe a situation in which choosing among paths appears to offer many possibilities, but in practice everything converges on one result.

Deliberation versus calculation and the collapse of the “either way” attack

The text states that deliberation is not algorithmic calculation, because calculation is determinism, whereas deliberation includes an inherent freedom of decision between alternatives. The text argues that the ability to choose different values in order to solve problems in different ways highlights the difference between decision and a mechanical mechanism. The text formulates its position as a defense: even if the determinist can argue that everything is dictated by hidden causes, one still cannot prove from that that the libertarian is contradicting himself, and therefore Van Inwagen’s attack is not decisive.

Intelligence, AI, and animals as dependent on freedom of choice

The text argues that many people in AI use a methodological definition of intelligence for purposes of research, but mistakenly turn it into a philosophical claim about human beings. The text states that a computer does not have intelligence—not in the sense that its “intelligence is zero,” but in the sense that the concept is not relevant to it, similar to saying that a point has no length, not that its length is zero. The text brings the example of water “solving” the Navier-Stokes equations, and yet it makes no sense to attribute genius to it, because it does not choose a tool or a path, but simply behaves as it does. The text applies this also to animals and birds and to programmed systems, and ties the attribution of intelligence to the possibility of deliberation in choosing tools for solving problems, while distinguishing cognitive deliberation from ethical dilemmas.

Consciousness, freedom, and determinism as an analogy to a programmed robot

The text argues that consciousness is not sufficient for freedom, because one can be conscious of coercion and still act under coercion. The text presents freedom as a defining element that distinguishes human beings from robots in ethical and cognitive contexts, and argues that the determinist accepts the conclusion that human beings are sophisticated robots programmed by their creator. The text refuses to claim a victory over determinism here, and focuses instead on the point that libertarianism can remain consistent in the face of attacks that try to show it is impossible.

Intuition, circularity, and the burden of proof

The text argues that in questions like these there is no logical knockout, so what decides the matter is one’s starting intuition and the ability to defend it against attacks. The text accepts that both the libertarian and his opponents rely on basic assumptions, but argues that begging the question is not a problem when it serves to fend off an attack rather than as a decisive proof. The text presents the burden of proof as shifting to whoever seeks to alter the initial intuition, and places itself at a libertarian starting point.

Hume, causality, and the claim that science does not teach causality

The text relies on David Hume in arguing that the concept of causality is not drawn from experience, because observation provides only temporal succession and not a relation of causing in the sense of “because of.” The text illustrates this through Newton’s second law, F=ma, and argues that the equation itself is symmetrical and does not contain an interpretive direction of cause and effect, so our decision to see force as the cause and acceleration as the result is an input introduced from the outside. The text concludes that the concept of causality seems self-evident only because it is an interpretive habit, not a scientific finding.

Randomness, probability, and quantum theory

The text argues that indeterminism in the sense of events that happen without a cause is not known from experience, and that the use of probability in rolling dice is a methodological tool arising from the multiplicity of factors and sensitivity to initial conditions, not from randomness in reality. The text notes that in quantum theory there is a common interpretation of randomness, but presents it as unintelligible and as something that provoked resistance in the style of “God does not play dice.” The text insists that even a coincidence such as a flowerpot falling at the moment someone passes underneath it is not randomness in the sense under discussion, because each component has its own causes and there is no need for a cause linking them together.

The three mechanisms and the reversal of the philosophical picture

The text divides the possibilities into three: determinism of causes and effects, indeterminism of causeless arbitrariness, and a third mechanism of deliberation that is neither “because of a cause” nor “just like that.” The text argues that the first two mechanisms are not really familiar from life in the way people assume, whereas the experience of free choice is the most intimate and familiar experience a person has at moments of decision. The text argues that determinists reverse the picture and prefer what is not directly experienced over what is directly experienced, and presents this as a position that seems to it contrary to reason.

Cause versus reason: teleological explanation and the special power of will

The text distinguishes between a cause that drives an action and a reason or purpose that is oriented toward the future, formulating this as the difference between a causal explanation and a teleological explanation. The text describes picking up the telephone in order to set a meeting for Sunday: the meeting is the reason, and the desire for the meeting is the cause that brings about the physical action of lifting the telephone. The text defines human will, in the libertarian conception, as a faculty that converts future reasons into present causes, and suggests that the will itself has no cause because it is a mental event not subject to causality in the way a physical event is.

New causal chains and the difference between a human being and an animal

The text describes determinism as an unbroken causal chain from the Big Bang until every detail in the present, something that is in principle calculable if there were sufficient computational power. The text describes libertarianism as the position according to which there are points at which a new causal chain begins, with no prior links before it, arising from a look toward the future that generates a beginning. The text distinguishes between a human being and a lion chasing a zebra by saying that in the lion’s case this is a drive and instincts arising from its structure, not from a future plan. It adds that if it turns out that animals too act from free plans, then they too would have free choice, because the aim here is to define the concept, not to decide who possesses it.

At the end of last time, I started dealing a bit more systematically with this concept of free will, or freedom of choice. Okay, we’ll leave that open—I assume I’ll talk over this noise. Nowadays, in the coronavirus era, an open window is more important than noise. So at the end of last time I tried to point out two mistakes—at least in my view, opposite mistakes—regarding this concept of free will. One mistake is what’s called compatibilism, which is an approach that says there is no contradiction between determinism and free will, because if a person does what he himself wants to do, then he is free. It doesn’t matter that what he wants to do is not really in his control—that is, it’s dictated to him by internal motives. According to compatibilism, when we speak about an unfree will, that means something from the outside is forcing me to do something. But if I arrive at the conclusions I arrive at and act accordingly, then I’m free, and it doesn’t matter at all how I reached those conclusions. That’s what I want, and I do what I want, so I’m free. This is a view that says the will is unfree only if the constraints are external constraints. But if the things—the constraints, let’s call them that—are the result of my internal or psychological structure, then that’s me. In other words, that’s not something that limits my freedom. That’s the compatibilist claim.

I said that of course, at the conceptual level, you can define things however you want. That is, you can define such a person as free. The question is whether the implications of that view, or the implications of libertarianism—which is the view of free will—can also appear in such a picture. It seems to me they cannot. When we talk, for example, about a person’s moral responsibility for his decisions, then where the decision is something dictated to him by his structure—even if it’s his own structure—but there was no stage at which he exercised judgment and made a decision, then it’s hard to see how you can impose moral responsibility for that kind of decision, or on a person in that kind of picture. So of course you can call it free will; that’s a matter of definition. But on the substantive question—whether we have free will—it seems to me this is not a solution.

There is an opposite mistake, and that’s what I brought in the name of Ciechanover, who says that the plasticity of the brain teaches us that our world is not deterministic. He explains that the old view thought that a person is born with some given genetic brain structure, and that is what dictates his whole mode of thinking and the decisions he will make throughout his life. Brain plasticity means that this is not true. The brain is shaped over the course of life, changes, and is affected from the outside and by all kinds of circumstances, and therefore it’s actually wrong to look at the human being as a deterministic creature. In other words, his birth does not dictate what will happen to him later in life. But those influences are deterministic. Yes, נכון, so I said that in certain scientific contexts you can define determinism that way. That is, determinism in the sense that if I die the way I was born, that’s determinism; whereas if I change and things affect me, then that means it’s not determinism. So as terminology—again, this is semantics—you can define it that way in certain contexts, but with regard to the substantive question, it’s simply a basic mistake. There is no difference between internal circumstances and external circumstances. You can see that it is exactly the opposite of the previous mistake. The previous mistake said that if the constraint is external then there is no freedom, but if the constraints are internal then that’s okay. What Ciechanover claims is the opposite. In other words, if the constraints are internal—my brain dictates everything that will happen—then that’s deterministic. But if there are external constraints, external influences—and I’m not claiming they’re non-deterministic, just influences that are external, not part of the structure I was born with—then that’s not determinism. The opposite of what I said before, and just as mistaken.

Just as an aside, there’s an interesting passage in the Talmud in Berakhot 9. The Talmud brings there “and they despoiled Egypt”—no, actually before “and they despoiled Egypt,” it says there, “and they made them lend against their will,” they borrowed silver vessels and gold vessels against their will. There is one opinion that says this was against whose will? The Jews who received them, or the Egyptians who gave them. How can you say this was against the Egyptians’ will? Against the Jews’ will means because of the burden. They forced them to take the silver and gold vessels, even though the Jews didn’t want to schlep them around in the desert. It was because of the burden, so therefore it was against their will. And what does it mean against the Egyptians’ will? The simple meaning is that it says: “And the Lord gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians.” In other words, the Holy One, blessed be He, hypnotized the Egyptians, or entered their minds and caused them to think that suddenly they were very fond of the people of Israel and wanted to give them gifts. And since that was the case, then ostensibly they gave them gifts of their own free will, right? Only their free will was really something that the Holy One, blessed be He, had shaped. And something like that the Talmud calls “against the Egyptians’ will.” It was against their will—why? But it’s what the Egyptians wanted. It doesn’t matter that this or that factor caused them to want it. There are always things that cause me to want. In the end, I did what I wanted. Why is that called against my will? Why is that called an action done against my will? For the same reason I said earlier: because if that desire is not the result of my own free decision, even if it really is what I want, but what I want is not the result of my own deliberation or decision, but of someone who intervened in my brain and caused me to want that thing, then that is not called free will. That is called against their will. In that sense, brain plasticity solves nothing; such a thing is completely deterministic.

What this basically means is that free will is a very elusive concept. If we now sum up those two mistakes on both sides, beyond removing the mistakes, let’s see what remains. What remains is some sort of picture that’s hard to understand, very elusive. In other words, it means that the libertarian picture—the picture of someone who believes in free will—is a picture that says my decision, my way of thinking, or my values, are determined neither by internal factors nor by external factors. So what does determine them? There’s no such thing. We’re left, basically, with nothing. If this isn’t free will and that isn’t free will, fine, I understand. But then the conclusion is not that both are wrong, but that all of us are wrong. There is no such thing as free will. Because what else could there be besides external circumstances or internal circumstances? What else could shape this picture? There is something here influencing me and someone forcing me.

I’ll maybe give an example. One of the most common arguments against libertarianism—when I say libertarianism in this context I mean the view of free will, not economic libertarianism—one of the most common arguments against libertarianism is a what-you-might-call “either way” argument by a Dutch philosopher named van Inwagen. He claims—he says—when a person performs some action, there are one of two possibilities: either there is a cause that made him act, or there is no cause that made him act. If there is a cause that made him act, then that’s determinism, not free will. If there is no cause that made him act, then it’s just arbitrariness. That too is not free will. Free will doesn’t mean I just do things for no reason, like my hands moved on their own, or I flipped a coin, or something like that. Free will is a concept that assumes some kind of judgment. In other words, I weigh the possibilities in my mind and arrive at a decision. Free will is not some thing where I act by random lottery or arbitrarily. So he says there is no room for it—an either-way argument. If there is a cause, then it is not free will, it’s determinism. If there is no cause, then that’s what’s called indeterminism. Indeterminism means random behavior. And there are reasons that I weigh and take into account, and reasons I won’t take into account. So the reasons I decide to take—why do you decide? Go one step further back. And when you decide what to take into account, is that because of a cause or without a cause? My choice whether to choose—does that come from a cause or not? One of the two. I’ll ask the same question. You’ve only pushed me back one stage. I’ll ask the same question there.

The fact that I weigh things in my mind—I go this way, I go that way, I examine this and that, and in the end I reach a conclusion—that arrival at the conclusion, not the reasons, that arrival at the conclusion: about that too I can ask, was there a cause that dictated that conclusion, or was there no cause? If there was a cause, it is deterministic. If there was no cause, it is indeterministic. So there is no box called free will.

This argument comes up everywhere people discuss the issue, and it broadens the problem I mentioned earlier, because now—earlier I presented two possibilities: something has to be the cause of what I do. Either something external or something internal, right? Compatibilism or brain plasticity, what I called earlier. But there can’t be no cause at all, and therefore, either way, there is no room for a picture of free will. Now van Inwagen adds another completion: let’s say there is no cause. Neither external nor internal—there’s a third possibility, that there is no cause. And that too is not free will. So in the end the picture that remains is that whether there is an external cause or an internal cause, that’s not free will, and if there is no cause, that’s also not free will. What else could there be? In other words, either there is no cause or there is a cause, and if there is a cause then it’s either external or internal. This seems like a complete picture. What else could there be here? Right? So that is basically the problem. It leaves us with a very, very problematic picture.

What I want to claim in broad terms—and I’m already putting it on the table here and afterward I’ll explain more—is that this either-way argument begs the question. Like every logical argument, it begs the question. What do I mean? It basically says that if there is a cause then it’s deterministic, and if there is no cause then it’s indeterminism. So there is no room left for free choice. But someone who believes in free choice must actually say there is a third possibility. In other words, if there is no cause, that still does not necessarily mean indeterminism in his sense. It does not necessarily mean random action. An act of free will is also an action without a cause. So the fact that I ruled out the possibility that my decisions are caused by reasons still does not mean I have to arrive at the indeterministic conclusion. According to the libertarian view at least, there is another possibility. And when he says, either way: if there is a cause then it’s determinism, and if there isn’t then it’s indeterminism—he is basically assuming there is no third possibility, not proving that there is no third possibility. He assumes there is no third possibility, therefore he says either this or that, there’s nothing else, and neither of them is free will. But the libertarian claims there is a third possibility. Therefore the either-way argument doesn’t work. It begs the question. That still doesn’t explain it—I mean, I don’t know what this third possibility is—but if there is such a third possibility, then it undermines this argument at its root.

I want to sharpen this a bit with an example I already brought here—yes, about elections. I said there are three examples of political elections. It seems to me that by now we’ve gotten experience also with a fourth model, but back then I presented it as a proposal; I think today it’s already reality. Maybe I have prophetic powers.

There are three models of political elections. There are the elections in Syria, where you approach the ballot box—we already talked about this—you choose, in a completely free manner, the only slip that is there, Assad, you put it in the ballot box, and who gets elected, amazingly enough, is Assad. So you choose, in a completely free way, the one and only ballot slip that is there. That is of course not free elections, right? Even though the feeling is: no one is bothering me, everything is fine. If you think about it, this is basically parallel to compatibilism, right? I’m doing exactly what I want, nobody is bothering me, nothing, everything is fine. I show up there—did someone interfere with me? I do what I decide and everything is fine and they count the votes and whoever is elected is elected. Right, there is only one possibility. Within that possibility I do what I want.

Haredi sociology, where the rabbis dictate whom to vote for. Fine, because then the rabbis choose, not the Haredim. Fine, but someone is choosing there. You’re saying that there too Assad is choosing. Okay, fine. That reminds me of what my grandfather told my father. My father wanted to go study Semitic languages, I think, in Hungary, when he reached university age. So my grandfather, who was a well-known farmer, told him: no problem, you can study whatever you want, as long as it’s in engineering. In other words, he decided that my father was not going to sell shirts in the market like he did, and it’s the same thing, because you can do whatever you want, as long as you choose one of the slips in the ballot box—and there is only one.

Okay, that’s the first model. The second model is elections in Switzerland. Metaphorical Switzerland, I’m saying again—obviously the real Switzerland isn’t like this—but metaphorical Switzerland as it is imagined: you approach the ballot box, you choose completely freely, completely freely, among several possible slips that are there, and at the end they count the votes. Whoever gets the majority of the votes becomes president of Switzerland. So ostensibly this is democracy at its best. Except that it’s a place with no problems. So why should I care who the president of Switzerland is? You can just draw lots. There’s nothing to deal with. So what do you care whether the president of Switzerland is this person or that person? You can flip a coin. There are no costs, no meaning whatsoever to what you did.

Now notice: this really is free, unlike Syria. You have several possibilities and you can decide completely freely, and what you decide is what will be. In that sense all the conditions are met. All the conditions are met, but it is devoid of meaning. Since if you have nothing to contend with, no reward and punishment for your choices, no meanings that are not dictated to you, then what difference does it make that you choose? Flip a coin—it’s the same thing. In fact, what you’re doing is flipping a coin. Not just “flip a coin because it’s the same thing.” That’s what you are doing. Because if there are no problems, then the decision whether to go here or go there is a coin toss. It’s not a judgment. And therefore flipping a coin is also not a choice—well, it is a free choice, but not in the sense we’re talking about. Because someone who makes, say, a moral decision by flipping a coin—I don’t think we would see him as someone responsible for his actions, right? Even though it’s not deterministic, it wasn’t dictated to him what would happen. The coin decided what it wanted. That is not what is called free choice or democratic choice in our context.

The third model is a model where, of course, beyond there being several slips in the ballot box and you go in and choose one of them and what the majority decides is what happens—beyond that, there are also problems all around. There are one or two countries here and there that also have problems, and therefore this is actually the situation of free choice. In other words, for free choice, several things have to exist. First, there have to be several paths before us, or several slips to choose between. Second, the decision among the slips has to be free—free in the same sense I spoke about earlier: not dictated to me from within and not dictated to me from without. And third, there have to be problems—consequences, problems or consequences or costs. Positive or negative costs, consequences, for what I do. Because if all the paths are equivalent, right? Then as I said—then I remarked that there’s a fourth model. There’s another model. You go into the ballot box, you choose among several slips, in a place full of problems. You choose among several slips, the majority determines, and the person you determine will be prime minister, even though everyone elected does the same thing. That’s the fourth model—that’s what happens here. That’s our model.

It reminds me of a story. I have some friend of a friend—meaning, a friend of mine told me about his friend—who went on some trek in the jungles of Burma, Myanmar, many years ago. And in the middle of the jungle he came to some kind of hut village, and suddenly he sees a post office. Wow, he’s going to send a letter—there’s a post office there in the middle of the jungle. So he gets closer and sees that on the wall there are these mail slots divided by countries and continents. He says, unbelievable—Asia, America, with countries, you can drop your letter into whatever destination you want. He’s amazed. A hut in the middle of the jungle. Fine. That was on this side of the wall, and here was the service window. He goes into the window to buy stamps and things like that, and on the other side of the partition he sees that everything goes into one big sack. In other words, you can drop the envelopes into whatever slot you want; it all goes into one big sack. By the way, that definitely makes sense. They established it with good intentions, but one person a year comes there, so for that you’re going to keep separate sacks? You keep one big sack and empty it once a year, and there’s one letter or two there. You don’t have to go all the way to the jungle—by us too, all the containers in the end become one big sack. No, but the claim is that this is only an interim stage, preparing for the point where it will really be split by destinations and so on. There is nothing more permanent than interim situations.

In any case, for our purposes, if I want to bring this parable back to the point, I would say this: the elections in Syria are basically determinism. Right? Even though no one is interfering with you from the outside, you do what you decide, no one tells you what to do—but reality dictates the result. There is only one slip; you have no other possibilities. So that is determinism. The situation in Switzerland—the elections in Switzerland—is what van Inwagen calls indeterminism. What does that mean? It’s basically a lottery, right? If there are no costs and no weights to your decisions, then basically what you’re doing is drawing lots. You are not making a decision. So that is called indeterminism. But that is exactly the point: there is a third model. Besides determinism and indeterminism, there is a third model. This third model is the model of elections—what we would like to have here in the country, for example. It’s the model where there are problems, there are several possibilities, you choose one of the possibilities, and then you pay or gain according to the possibility you chose. That is basically the meaning.

What is the difference between the third possibility and the Swiss possibility? In Switzerland you’re not really exercising judgment. There’s nothing to weigh, no costs, it makes no difference whether he is elected or he is elected. It’s a coin toss. In principle—even if you don’t actually do it—that’s what your action there is, a coin toss, like a lottery. Right? So that is one kind of indeterminism. A second kind of indeterminism is indeterminism in the third model, which is also indeterminism. That is, I freely choose one of the slips, and the results depend on what I do; they are not predetermined. But what I do is not a lottery—what I do is judgment. Judgment means—and this is the elusive concept I’m somehow trying, I can’t define it from within, I’m trying to close in on it from outside in order to try to define what it is not, because I don’t know how to say what it is. But this is basically the concept we are talking about. The concept that says that what causes my decision is not a cause that compels the decision upon me—in other words, it is not determinism. On the other hand, it is not a lottery either; rather it is the concept we usually call judgment. Judgment is not calculation. Calculation is to calculate the outcomes when there is some algorithm and you arrive at a result. Calculation is determinism. When I speak of judgment, built into it there has to be some kind of freedom, some kind of ability to decide and not a calculation dictated to me.

But where exactly is the freedom here? If I solve problems in a certain way that will solve the problems, then I have no choice because I think only he is capable of solving those problems. Not exactly, not exactly. You choose among paths. You can solve problems in many ways. For example, you can solve problems through the value of equality and be a communist, and you can solve those same problems in another way and be a capitalist. And that value too is dictated? No, that’s my claim—that it isn’t. You decide that you adhere to a certain value. Now again, this is the libertarian view. You can agree with it, you can disagree with it, but once you accept this view and basically say there are three mechanisms and not two, then the whole either-way argument I brought earlier from van Inwagen collapses. Because van Inwagen says: either you have a cause, in which case it is determinism, or you have no cause, in which case—he assumes—it is indeterminism. Not true. If you have no cause, it can still be either of the last two possibilities, the second and the third. And therefore he is of course assuming there is no third; there are only either one or two. Consequently he has his either-way argument, that if it isn’t one then it’s two. But when you attack the libertarian you have to attack him on his own terms. The libertarian himself believes there are three mechanisms, and therefore this either-way argument is actually irrelevant.

What I’m saying, from a purely logical standpoint—everything is possible, just as there is… one can say, okay, nevertheless what caused me to choose this way or that way is external determinism, influences. You can say, look, most people—for example, religious people—vote in one direction rather than another. So perhaps here too it stems from influences? Maybe there really is some secret of creation, that God gave something special that can’t be defined. Okay, so that’s exactly what you answered yourself. In other words, clearly you can say—that what I brought here is not an argument that proves determinism or an argument in favor of determinism. It is a defensive argument against the deterministic attack. What you can say is that everything depends on hidden causes, even if I don’t feel it, and everything is deterministic. That is a claim I cannot refute. It only means that the claim you raise against me—that it cannot be otherwise, yes, that the either-way argument tries to show that libertarianism cannot exist, that it is internally contradictory—that is not true. It begs the question. Okay?

I understood the idea of determinism to mean that there are laws of nature, and therefore everything that happens must be… You’re already getting into explanations for why we think determinism is true. At the moment I’m only defining what determinism is. I defined what determinism is. In a bit we’ll also get to the arguments for and against holding this view or that view. But first I want to define what these views are saying. And I’ll just give you an example so the things will be clearer.

Very often in research as well—in neuroscience and psychology and all kinds of studies of this sort—they bring examples of types of intelligence found in animals and also in computers, AI, artificial intelligence. There are different levels of intelligence attributed to these kinds of creatures. I think that, again, in the context of AI, you can define intelligence and work with that definition and everything is fine. But a lot of AI people don’t notice that this is a methodological definition. They turn it into a philosophical claim and basically say that the human being too is some kind of such creature, and you can measure him on the same scale and see what he knows how to do, what functions he has, what kinds of computational capacities he has, and place him on the general scale of intelligence—between birds and ducks, with some human beings somewhere in there, some perhaps below the birds apparently.

In any case, this claim, in my opinion, misses something very important—again, not in the AI context, but in the philosophical context, the ethical or philosophical or humanistic context if you like. Because I do not think birds have intelligence. It is a mistake to speak that way—a philosophical mistake. Again, in AI methodology, define whatever you want; whatever is useful for research and for characterizing and developing the field, excellent, no problem at all. The problem is when you make some philosophical claim. I think that is a mistake. A computer has no intelligence. No matter what it knows how to do—it’s irrelevant. A computer is a creature that by definition has no intelligence. Not that its intelligence is zero. The concept of intelligence is not relevant to it. It’s like—do you know what the difference is—whether the length of a point is zero? The answer is no. A point has no length. Not that its length is zero. Length is a characteristic of one-dimensional entities. Okay? A point is zero-dimensional, not one-dimensional. Many times people think a point is something whose length is zero. No. A point is something to which length simply does not apply. The same with a line and area. A line is not something whose area is zero; rather, it has no area.

That is what I want to say here as well. A computer does not have zero intelligence. A computer is a creature to which one cannot attribute intelligence. Why? Think according to that logic—for example, water has super-intelligence. Why? Because water solves what are called the Navier–Stokes equations in hydrodynamics—equations that the greatest physicists and mathematicians cannot solve except in really trivial cases, with perfect symmetry and something extremely, extremely simple. Now water flows through very complicated channels and always knows how to flow. It’s unbelievable—they solve equations that no Einstein could even begin to rival in comparison with the abilities of water. Okay, so what does that mean, that water is a genius? No. Why not? Because it does not choose the way to solve the problem; it simply behaves that way. You can say maybe the one who created water is a genius. Or the one who formulated this equation according to which nature behaves, if you believe there is someone like that—then he is a genius. But the water itself—it is meaningless to speak about the intelligence of water. It can solve very complicated problems that we cannot solve, but that is not called intelligence. That’s just equivocation.

I think the same thing applies to birds that know how to navigate, or animals that you see know how to do various things, or apes that make primitive tools, or use several primitive tools. Various examples from the animal world, or computers that know how to do all kinds of things—it is a mistake to attribute intelligence to these creatures. And the reason—what is the difference? The difference lies in the question whether you have judgment in the use of that intelligence. In other words, a person who chooses a tool in order to solve a problem—he decides which tool to solve it with and how to approach the problem—so you can attribute intelligence to him, more or less, each according to what he is endowed with. But an animal or a computer does not choose which tool to use, and even if it chooses, that choice itself is dictated to it by nature or by its programmer or builder. And therefore all creatures that lack this element of judgment—it is incorrect to attribute intelligence to them.

Of course, in the context of intelligence we are talking about judgment—I would say cognitive judgment, not ethical judgment, but a decision about how to solve a mathematical problem, for example. It doesn’t matter—you choose a tool and try to use it to solve the problem. The choice is not an ethical dilemma of whether to go here or there. We usually are not accustomed to attributing the concept of choice to things of that sort, and therefore AI people naturally assume there is no choice here—this is calculation. We are simply calculating how to approach this kind of problem. But then indeed they turn the human being too into some sort of computer—he too is some kind of calculation of how to approach problems, and he chooses; if he is a sophisticated computer, then he can solve problems that human beings cannot solve.

So according to the determinist there is no such thing as intelligence at all. Right. There is no intelligence at all. Right. That’s my claim. In a deterministic world you cannot speak about intelligence in the ordinary sense. You can define the concept of intelligence for purposes of research or… fine, all of that is okay—definitions. But this is what I’m showing you also in the examples I brought at the beginning with compatibilism and brain plasticity: often people take a definition that serves them in a certain disciplinary field, they define a concept in a way that is perfectly fine—every field needs to define its own concepts. But then they take that definition into another plane, a philosophical or ethical plane or whatever, and there it is simply irrelevant to use that definition.

And this whole discussion actually revolves only around cases where there is consciousness. And then the whole issue of… Yes, but consciousness is not enough. Consciousness is not enough, because consciousness still doesn’t mean… It could be that I am conscious that I am compelled to do what I do, and consciously I do what I am compelled to do. Consciousness is perhaps part of the matter; there is even some philosophical room to think about how essential it really is. If I make unconscious calculations—I don’t know, not calculations, sorry, unconscious judgment—moral responsibility I would not impose for such a thing, but on the level of intelligence one can begin to discuss it. I don’t know exactly. But I agree that in the simple definition consciousness is needed. I’m only saying that consciousness is not enough. You need some kind of judgment, and again this element of freedom comes in here as an essential feature of what we attribute to human beings, as distinct from other creatures—both in the context of ethical choices and in the context of cognitive judgment, intellectual judgment, scientific judgment. In all these places some element of freedom has to enter in, some ability to decide for yourself between possibilities. Otherwise we simply become some kind of robots. And the determinist is not alarmed by that; he says, correct, that’s what we are. We are some kind of robots—sophisticated robots, but robots.

Like a computer programmed by its creator, so too a human being is programmed by his creator. Yes, that’s what the determinist claims. But what is the error in that claim? I don’t know if it’s an error. I disagree with it. I don’t know if it’s an error; I don’t know how to prove he is wrong. Notice, I repeat: all I’m doing here is not proving that the determinist is wrong. I am defending the libertarian. And I’m saying: the determinist cannot attack the libertarian, because the libertarian can present a coherent picture. Okay? No, I don’t know how to decide whether I’m right or not; that’s another question. But first of all I want to show that this whole thing can in fact be coherent, and the usual attacks against it do not really knock it down.

Earlier you distinguished between something that is a calculation and something that is judgment. Judgment, as the phrase implies, is basically that you assign different weights and sum them up—which is basically what machines… No, then you’ve already turned judgment into calculation. No, I’m claiming that judgment is not calculation. Fine, but then you’re using a circular definition, because the libertarian will claim it’s simply not a one-plus-one type of calculation. I’ll say again: I’m circular and he’s circular too. That’s perfectly fine. But I’m saying each side remains in its own position, and there is no attack that can settle it. That is my claim.

But you can argue that someone who calculates is not a determinist, because he can also make mistakes in it… No, if you calculate in a completely mechanical way then it doesn’t matter. Again, the name doesn’t solve anything. I want to claim that behind this label “judgment” sits a third mechanism. A mechanism not of Switzerland—a third. Right? That’s what I claim is there. Now, either it’s correct or it isn’t, but the deterministic attacks against it beg the question. You can say: you too beg the question. Absolutely correct. Right, both sides beg the question, but that’s fine—begging the question is okay as long as you don’t have a successful attack against you. Say, for example, I assume that what I see exists. Fine? Maybe it doesn’t exist, maybe it’s just a hallucination. I assume it does. Then someone says to me, what do you mean, who says it’s there? Here, I touch it. Fine, you’re assuming touch exists too. You won’t be able to prove that you’re right; I’m only deflecting the attacks that try to show I’m wrong. That’s what I’m doing. And in principle everybody deals with this that way. Because the attacks come to show you that even on your own terms you are wrong—that is, that you are inconsistent. And I show you that I am consistent. If I present an attack against you, then that would indeed be an attempt to prove that I’m not only consistent but also right. We’ll get to that in a bit. Okay?

Maybe one more remark. I want… one more remark, I want to talk a bit about what lies at the basis of these feelings that libertarianism is something terribly elusive. So, like this: we have a certain feeling that we know well. After all, there are three… I’m now defining there to be three mechanisms. One mechanism is the deterministic mechanism: there are causes and effects. The results—right? That’s calculation. The second mechanism is indeterminism. It’s not really correct to call it a mechanism, but for the sake of discussion let’s call it that—indeterminism. Things happen by themselves, what happens without a cause, just so, arbitrarily. And the third mechanism is something that happens מתוך judgment. Okay, not from a cause, but also not just randomly. Now I’m defining it negatively, of course. So it doesn’t happen from a cause, but it also doesn’t happen just for no reason; that is, it is neither determinism nor indeterminism. That’s what I’ll call the concept I called judgment.

Which of the three—say the first two seem understandable to us, right? Causality, we know that: there is a cause, as a result there is an effect, everything is fine. Randomness, I can understand that too. Fine, something just happens with no cause, it just happened. The concept of free will, the third concept, judgment, is something that seems to us incomprehensible. What has a cause I understand, what has no cause I understand—what is this third thing? That’s why I think many people ignore the third possibility and assume there are only the first two. But from a philosophical perspective the picture is completely reversed. And that is an interesting point, because as we’ll also see later, I think that often what decides disputes like these, where there are arguments and smart people on all sides, is that there probably won’t be a knockout victory in this kind of issue. And therefore what remains is to stay with your intuition and defend it against attacks. That is the only way you can form a position on this topic, because you won’t succeed in knocking the other side down with some crushing logical argument that simply shows him he is talking nonsense.

After all, in a deterministic approach, what are you even arguing about? The whole debate here… Yes, that’s one of the arguments we’ll talk about later. But then I say: therefore it is very important for a person to clarify what his starting point is, what his initial intuition says. And then, once you come to change my initial intuition, the burden of proof is on you. That is, if you bring me good arguments, then if I’m honest enough I’ll have to retreat. But if you don’t bring me good arguments, I stay with my intuition. That’s why I’m not frightened by the fact that there is circularity here or begging the question.

So I want to explain why my starting point is libertarian rather than deterministic. Many others will say their starting point is deterministic. Why? The explanation, as I said earlier, is that we completely understand the concepts of cause and effect; there is the principle of causality, everything that happens has a cause. We are used to that. That is something we know from our lives, from the world; it’s simple. A thing without a cause—let’s say I can also understand that—that is the negation of the first. The way I understand that concept. Therefore many people feel that this concept is empty. There really is no third possibility between determinism and indeterminism.

So I want you to notice for a moment a philosophical problem, or a philosophical consideration, that leads in precisely the opposite direction. As for determinism—this goes back already to David Hume, whom I think I mentioned some time ago—David Hume already showed that the concept of the principle of causality, or the concept of cause and effect, is not derived from experience. We have no experience that can show that everything has a cause, or even that a particular thing has a cause. All we can see, independently of interpretation, see directly from experience, is temporal sequence. That is, that event A always comes after event B, or before event B. So I say event A is the cause of event B. Say someone kicks a ball and the ball flies away. So I say the kick is the cause of the ball flying away. But what do you actually see? Leave interpretation aside. What you saw is that first there was a kick and afterward the ball flew away. That’s what you saw. But the concept of cause is not that. The concept of cause is not merely temporal precedence, not only that A is before B, but that A is the cause of B, or B is because of A—not that it is after A, but because of A. There can be many things where B comes after A, and we would not say that A is the cause of B. Suppose two o’clock comes after one o’clock—does that mean one o’clock is the cause of two o’clock? That has no meaning. They come one after the other; that is not a cause. Okay? Saying that something comes after something else is not enough to determine that there is a causal relation between them. What is missing? What is missing is the relation of production—that B is because of A, or A causes, generates B. Okay? Therefore, when we look at events that we call cause and effect, we do not really see the relation of production between them. We simply don’t see it. It’s not correct—it doesn’t come out of observation. It is our interpretation. And Hume indeed denied that interpretation. He said, where did you invent such a thing from? He was an empiricist; observations don’t give us that, so where does it come from? That’s an interpretation you bring from home.

So the concept of causality, which seems to us so self-evident and familiar and part of life, is not really from life at all. It is an interpretation we bring from home. More than that, I’ll tell you this: suppose in the scientific context people talk about causality. Let’s take Newton’s second law, F = ma, force equals mass times acceleration. Okay? If a certain force F acts on a body and its mass is m, then it develops an acceleration a—acceleration, yes?—which is F divided by m. Fine? A fixed relation between force and acceleration.

Now look for a moment at the equation F = ma. Who is the cause and who is the effect? F, the force, is the cause. Again? F is the cause? The force is the cause and the acceleration is the effect. Is there any hint of that in the equation? The equation is symmetrical. You could just as well write ma = F, right? There is no law that forces you to write this on the right side and that on the left. Why do we always write it this way? That is our interpretation. We understand logically that the force is the cause and the acceleration is the result. Physics does not give us that; we insert it into physics. Physics does not give us relations of cause and effect. Ironically—and people don’t so much understand this—ironically, the concept of causality is not a scientific concept. Science teaches us nothing about causality. Causality is an assumption we bring with us from home. It speaks of connections. Yes, exactly. Correlations or connections. Science links two things for us. The decision about what is the cause and what is the effect is our decision. It is an interpretive decision, one I of course completely identify with—that force is the cause and acceleration is the effect—but I identify with it because that is an interpretation. Not because it is a scientific finding. It is an input I bring into science.

And therefore this feeling that all causality, or causal relations between events, is something familiar to us from experience or obvious to us, is simply incorrect. It is something we bring with us from home. Let’s move to randomness, to non-determinism, the second mechanism. Non-determinism means things that just happen, without a cause. Has anyone ever seen such a thing? Is it familiar to us from experience? From life? Never. Certainly not in physics—at least in the physics accepted today. Let’s put quanta aside for the very tiny scales. But in the physics we know today there is no such animal. There is no such thing.

I’ve already spoken more than once about the fact that when we use probability to describe the results of rolling a die, that does not mean there is something random in the rolling of a die. Rolling the die is Newton’s laws. Tell me what force you apply, what the shape of the die is, and I’ll tell you exactly on which face it will land. The height too, and so on, and I’ll tell you exactly on which face it will land. There is nothing random here. So why do we use probability? Because there are very, very many factors. Right, because there are very many factors and it is very complicated and very sensitive to initial conditions, which is somehow related to chaos, and therefore we use probability as a methodological tool. But that does not mean there is really something random in the reality we are treating. So even the things—think of the most extreme examples of what seems to you completely random—you have never… in your life you have not encountered anything random. Rather, many times you give it an interpretation as if it were random. Sometimes, by the way, it is not really an interpretation, because we all understand that in dice there is nothing random at all; it is a methodological assumption that helps us, because calculating by Newton’s laws on which face the die will land is very complicated—impossible to do in practice. So what we do is use statistical or probabilistic tools to handle the problem, but that is only because of its complexity. There is nothing random there.

Even in quantum theory, where they did discover something that can be interpreted as randomness, Einstein objected to it. He said God does not play dice. And all the unintelligibility of quantum theory stems exactly from the fact that there are things there that apparently happen without a cause. By the way, I am not at all sure that this is true, but it is the accepted interpretation: that there are things there that happen without a cause. And we refuse to accept it precisely because of that. So how can one say that random events and events that happen without a cause are something we understand from experience? That this we understand, we know, everything is fine, we are at peace with it?

So look what comes out here. What comes out here is that of the three mechanisms—randomness, determinism, and judgment or free choice—the first two are the ones that are not understood and not familiar to us from life. Well, “not understood” isn’t… not familiar to us from life. We force our conceptual world onto them. Free choice—I don’t know if there is anything more familiar to us and more understood by us from life than that. Anyone who has experienced crossroads in life and decisions he has made experiences the experience that he freely chose what he did. You can tell me that this is an illusion and that in reality it is not true, and that proves nothing. That’s why I said I am not proving it is true. I’m only saying: my starting point, if I had to choose which of the three mechanisms exists and which is invented, I would choose first of all the third. The third certainly exists. As for the first two—whether I’m right or wrong, I don’t know.

Now absurdly enough, determinists look at it the other way around. They say: causality—that’s obvious, that’s understandable, that’s what we know from life. Randomness—I can understand that too. Beyond that there is nothing. Where, where does this thing… the most intimate experience we have all the time in our lives, that is the illusion. All the other things that we bring from home without having any empirical basis, those are what are obviously true. To me that seems a little backwards. And this is very strong within us—I’m not saying I don’t feel it too. I think many people feel that way. But one needs to think about it somewhat philosophically, and then one sees that in many ways it is simply embedded in us. It does not stand up to philosophical scrutiny. But in the end it seems to me that this concept of judgment or free choice may be the most familiar to us of the three, and not the one that cannot be understood or known.

Now, people here really already raised this earlier, so I’ll note it here. I’ll present it from a slightly different angle. What is the difference between causality and judgment? In judgment too I have reasons for why I do things. I decide to do this or that because I have… I want to achieve such and such. Okay? Ostensibly these too are explanations in terms of reasons. Why do I claim this is different from determinism? Here I am indeed entering the distinction between cause and reason, yes? Between reason and cause. There are things I do because of a cause. The cause makes me do things; it moves me to action. There are things I do for the sake of a reason, or because of some purpose, which is usually oriented toward the future, not from past to future. I actually want to achieve something, and therefore I do something now in order to achieve that future goal. That too is an explanation, but it is a teleological explanation, not a causal explanation. It’s the difference between “what caused it” and “what for.” Okay? And determinism depends on causal explanations—explanations from the past: what caused this thing to happen. Teleological explanations are: for the sake of what did I do it, or because of what end did I do it—for the sake of what did I do it? Okay? That is what I want to achieve in the future, a look toward the future.

Now strangely enough, let’s say I pick up the phone in order to call my friend and set a meeting with him for Sunday. Okay? Then people say to me… the reason you picked up the phone is the desire to meet him on Sunday. The meeting on Sunday is a future event. How can it be a cause of something I am doing now? Obviously that is only a manner of speaking. What is meant is that my desire to meet him on Sunday constitutes the cause of my picking up the phone. The desire really did precede the picking up of the phone. The meeting comes afterward. Okay? Meaning, if I speak about the causal explanation for why I picked up the phone, it is my desire—that is the causal explanation for my picking up the phone. If I speak about the teleological explanation, then I say it is the meeting. The desire that there be a meeting, or the Sunday meeting, is the reason why I picked up the phone now.

But notice what comes out of this—it’s very interesting and I think sheds some light on this mystery of judgment or free choice. Basically, our will—at least in the libertarian conception, and again this is not a proof, I’m only presenting what the libertarian conception is—the libertarian conception basically says that the will is a very special power in our world. It is a power that turns reasons into causes. Basically I want a future event, okay? So I need to pick up the phone. I—let’s say I’m interested, not “want,” interested in a Sunday meeting. For that purpose I need to pick up the phone. So the reason for picking up the phone is the Sunday meeting. But the picking up of the phone has to be done for some cause. And picking up the phone is a physical action. A physical action always has a cause. A physical action is not done for the sake of a purpose; a physical action is done because of a cause. What is the cause of this physical action of picking up the phone? The desire to arrange a meeting on Sunday. The desire is the cause of picking up the phone, while the reason for picking up the phone, the purpose of picking up the phone, is the Sunday meeting. So the will turns the future reason into a cause. Human will—that’s what it does. It takes—and this is the meaning of this puzzle, why people are constantly confused between judgment and causality. Between judgment and causality. I am basically saying: in the libertarian conception, the human will has a very special power. It takes a future event, which is a reason for something that must be done now, turns it into a cause, and that cause generates the events that will ultimately lead to the goal, to the reason.

Now you’ll ask, let’s continue asking: and what is the cause of the awakening of the will? If the awakening of the will is the cause of my picking up the phone, and the picking up of the phone is the cause of the meeting, right? That is on the causal axis. But on the axis of reason, everything begins with the meeting. On the causal axis the meeting is the end of the process, but on the teleological axis the reason is the beginning—the meeting is the beginning. I want to get to the meeting; for that I need to pick up the phone. But I can’t pick up the phone by the power of a future event. So a cause has to be produced that will generate the picking up of the phone. That cause is the desire to arrange a meeting on Sunday. Now I ask: what arouses the desire? What is the cause that aroused the desire? What, for instance, the event on Sunday? Then again we have some sort of cause that is located in the future. A cause is supposed to appear before its effect. The answer—just a second, I just want to complete the picture—the answer I suggest is that the will has no cause. Unlike physical things—picking up the phone is a physical event. I raise my hand; there is a physical body here. Our body operates with electrons and masses, and this is a physical event. So a physical event needs a cause. But if its cause is the will, then the will is a mental event, not a physical one. And if you are a libertarian, then you have to accept the assumption that there are mental events without a cause. That a desire can arise…

Wait, and neuroscience says no, each one says there is something that gave… I’ll get to that. Right now I’m only laying out the libertarian picture so we know what this debate is about. I’ll still get to neuroscience and the arguments, but I want it to be clear what the models are that stand here opposite each other.

So in the deterministic model, basically what you have is a look from the past to the future: A is the cause of B, B is the cause of C. Basically, at the moment of the Big Bang it was dictated that we would sit here in this arrangement and everything we would do—everything was predetermined. If we could make the calculation all the way through, if we had enough computational power, we could have determined at the moment of the Big Bang that there would be a lecture here at such-and-such an hour and these and these people would be present and someone would cross his legs over there. Okay? We could have known that from the Big Bang. Fine?

The libertarian view says no. The libertarian view says there are points on this causal chain where a new chain begins that has no previous links. It is a look toward the future that creates the beginning of a chain, and now a chain starts. This meeting, of course, will create consequences and that chain can continue forever, but it did not begin at minus infinity or at the Big Bang. It began at a certain point in time, and from there on it continues causally.

And what’s the difference between that and an animal? A lion, when it sees a herd, it stalks a zebra. Wait, wait. “I want to devour it.” And saying “it wants to devour it” is anthropomorphism. You are anthropomorphizing it. No, it does not want to devour it. It has an urge to devour it. In its case the desire does not come from a future plan; the desire comes from the fact that it is built in such a way that when it is hungry and sees a gazelle, certain instincts are aroused in it that make it run. But you assume that with human beings it is different. That is what I assume. I am not proving the claim; I am only presenting it. In a bit we’ll see, later on, what the arguments are in each direction. First of all I am putting the two models side by side.

It struggles with urges in order to say that when I want to meet him on Sunday I choose freely, but when the lion wants to eat the zebra, that’s anthropomorphism. If that is speciesism, then I plead guilty. Or more precisely: I admit the facts, deny the charge. There are actual experiments that proved they are programmed. What? That animals are programmed. There are actual experiments. Fine, maybe. I’m not sure at every level. There are more planned things too—the male that kills all the other males in order to… And again, that’s the same anthropomorphism. That urge is not created as the result of a future plan. That urge is created by the fact that it is built that way. Simply built that way, so that when it sees other males and there is a female it wants, then it wants to eliminate them. It’s not that it makes some sophisticated plan: I choose this lady, and now I have to eliminate all the others in order to get her for myself. We describe it in that language, but that is anthropomorphism. That’s the claim, at least.

Now I say again: even if I’m not right, and it may be that the lion makes plans, then the lion too has free choice. I don’t care. What I am trying to define here is the concept of free choice. I don’t care at the moment whether only human beings are endowed with it or other creatures as well. That is another question.