A Look at the Determinists’ Hallucination Dictionary (Column 646)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

In the previous column I wrote about a conference I took part in that dealt with free will versus determinism. There, I mainly discussed the distinction between free will and randomness and between both of these and determinism, and at the end I also proposed a way to reach the libertarian conclusion. But at the beginning of my lecture at that same conference, I touched on the question of why this discussion matters at all (especially from a positivist point of view), and that is what I wish to address here. In doing so, I’ll present to you, dear readers, a monumental translation project in which determinism creates (and perhaps chooses to create?) for itself a bizarre dictionary made entirely of illusions so that it can survive.

A first look at the libertarian–determinist debate

When I ask someone whether the disagreement between the determinist and the libertarian has consequences and what they are, the conversation immediately turns to moral and legal responsibility and to punishment. The common assumption is that a deterministic being—like a machine, or a person who lacks free will—is not responsible for his actions and therefore should not be punished. It’s important to understand that this is not just a neutral description of the disagreement and its implications. The claim that within a deterministic framework there is no room for imposing moral and legal responsibility, for punishment, for education, for decision, for freedom, and thus that even moral values themselves have no validity or point, provokes antibodies and, for many, constitutes an argument in itself against determinism.

Substantively, however, there is no argument here. If that is the truth—namely, if indeed we have no choice and no free will—then we are not free, responsibility moral or legal should not be imposed upon us, and there is no point in educating or punishing us. Suppose that’s the fact. Even if we don’t like it (did we “choose” not to like it?), that’s the situation, and there is no argument against determinism here. One cannot use the desirable to determine the actual. Perhaps we would like there to be room for freedom, education, responsibility, and punishment, but those are merely the desires of our hearts (we are programmed to desire them). What do these have to do with facts? Does the fact that I would like to be a millionaire mean that I actually am one?

Still, these difficulties do lead to one thing. It is not for nothing that various thinkers and philosophers make the effort to argue that although the truth is deterministic, it is very important to deny it so as not to bring the world to chaos. This is done at several levels. For example, Prof. Maya Bar-Hillel argued at the aforementioned conference in Nazareth that even if we conclude that the world is deterministic, it is very important that we live and act in a libertarian fashion so that the world functions sanely and morally. She also added that we have no choice but to live this way. Our experience is distinctly libertarian. We feel at every moment that we deliberate, choose, and decide, that everything is in our hands and depends on us; that we act out of responsibility and are responsible for what we have done. She claimed that it is impossible and improper to live otherwise, regardless of what the factual truth is (whether or not we have choice).

For my part, this description naturally raises the question: if that is indeed our experience, why deny it? On what basis do people decide to reject this most fundamental intuition and treat it as an illusion? If we are compelled to live and think this way and we experience it so powerfully—does that not indicate that it is the truth? In my view, there are no good reasons to reject it, but I’ll return to this later.

At any rate, if Maya Bar-Hillel calls on us to work on ourselves, Prof. Saul Smilansky goes one step further (I debated him years ago at a conference in Tel Aviv. You can see his position in more detail in an article here). In his view, it is not only important to live this way (that is, to work on ourselves), but we (philosophers and scientists) must conceal this terrible truth from the public so that the world will function sanely and morally. There is an elitist assumption here (groundless, in my opinion) that the sect of philosophers and scientists, the knowers of the secret, should not share it with the plebeians, i.e., the simple and ignorant public. They themselves will presumably continue to behave nobly and morally, but the general public may not. Well, well…

All of this is a consequence of what I wrote above. The implications of determinism presented above are perceived as difficulties, not merely as a neutral description. This is what leads people to call on all of us to live a lie, to resort to esoteric speech, and to operate with a mental doubleness—much like religious sages who refuse to expose their core tenets to the general public lest the masses, God forbid, reject them. Once again we see that the atheist, materialist “church” is no different from any other church. I cannot help but repeat my earlier remark: if indeed such implications follow from the controversy, that is a genuine challenge to the deterministic position, or at least a major difficulty it raises. The question I will now address is whether the deterministic view really does have such implications. We shall soon see that it is not so simple. I shall try to explain how the priests of the deterministic cult manage to act so nobly, unlike the plebeians. Their way of doing this is through a comprehensive translation project: the creation of a deterministic dictionary for public use. I’ll note already that I doubt whether these noble-minded thinkers truly believe in this translation, or whether it is part of their esoteric policy to conceal the truth from the public. Instead of erasing the libertarian lexicon, they present a deterministic façade, as if the entire dictionary still exists and is relevant for them too.

The new deterministic dictionary

This translation project is based on the fundamental claim that all the difficulties described above—the absence of concepts connected with decision, guilt, education, punishment, responsibility, in the deterministic dictionary—are the product of a naïve conception of determinism. That is the old, undeveloped determinism. Today’s determinists are more sophisticated. They know these difficulties and reject them out of hand. The contemporary determinist uses the entire libertarian system of concepts—education, punishment, decision, choice, deliberation, freedom, moral and legal responsibility, guilt, and so forth—only he translates them into his language, i.e., inserts these concepts into a deterministic framework and set of connotations. He effectively rebuilds our moral and human dictionary, and, unsurprisingly, it looks astonishingly similar to the libertarian dictionary. The very same entries (terms) that appear in the libertarian dictionary also appear here, only that for determinists they receive a different meaning and interpretation.

For example, consider the concept of education. In the naïve view, the determinist would say that there is no point in educating people, since their fate, behavior, and character are forced upon them and are not in their hands—nor in the hands of their educators or society. So what’s the point of education? The new determinist rejects this outright. In his view, education is the deterministic shaping of the pupil—literally turning him, by wielding an educational hammer and chisel, into an educated personality. It is wrong to think that in a deterministic picture there is no room for educational influence. There is influence, only that it is forced on both educator and educatee alike. This is not education in the libertarian sense, i.e., instilling values and broadening the pupil’s horizons so that he chooses rightly. It is his shaping, as part of the deterministic influence of the environment upon him. In exactly this way, at the beginning of my book The Sciences of Freedom I explained that the brain’s plasticity (our brain changes over the years, under environmental influence and under my own influence, and does not remain as it was) does not contradict determinism. It’s part of the deterministic mechanism. There are influences among persons and entities in the world; only that all this occurs deterministically. So it is also with education.

Thus, says the new determinist, there is indeed a point in educating people: without education they will turn out bad, and education changed them. Only here education is not an attempt to influence and persuade but rather the setting and shaping of the pupil by the educator (along with other factors). Just as one trains a dog or a cat. Only that the human being is a less developed and less autonomous creature. He can be trained quite easily, unlike cats. Choice—of the educator or of the pupil—is not part of the story. Behold the translation of the term “education” in the new deterministic dictionary.

Note that the eternal dilemma, nature or nurture, which is always presented to us (see Column 198), assumes that the human being is nothing but a collection of internal genetic influences and external cultural ones. His choice plays no role here. Seemingly we are presented with different ways of conceiving the human being, but in fact those ways are restricted to the options determinism permits. The question of heredity or environment may be interesting to biologists and psychologists, but it has no philosophical significance. It merely swaps one determinism for another.

As part of education, punishment is also conceived the same way. There is definitely a point in punishing a person for offenses he has committed (an adult in a court of law or a pupil in an educational institution or at home with parents), not because punishment will help him choose rightly and not because he “deserves” it, being guilty and responsible for his actions. He is not responsible and not guilty, and punishment does not “belong” to anyone. Punishment is imposed so that it becomes part of the deterministic influences that will lead the person himself—and others—to behave correctly. This is training, not punishment in its usual sense. We must remember that even a person who lacks choice carries out calculation and “deliberation” to reach a decision how to behave, only that these are mechanical processes. This is the translation of the term “deliberation” into the deterministic dictionary. As part of his calculations, he must take into account the punishment that awaits him. The calculation itself is a deterministic process, just like in a computer, but it takes into account the consequences of actions, and therefore punishment will certainly affect behavior. Behold the term “punishment” in the deterministic dictionary. Note that education and punishment with respect to people are interpreted in the deterministic dictionary the way education and punishment for animals are interpreted in the libertarian dictionary. The term “deliberation” there is interpreted like a computer’s computation.

Concepts such as decision, choice, and the like undergo the same transformation. When a person experiences deciding or choosing or engages in deliberation, for the determinist this is nothing but a mechanical computation of various considerations and their (mechanical) aggregation into a final decision—exactly as a computer might do. Therefore these concepts too can honorably enter the deterministic dictionary. Needless to say, in this odd dictionary guilt is of course not a normative judgment but merely a feeling. We are built to feel guilt, or to feel that another is guilty of something he did. Facts are not up for debate. In my article here I discussed further ramifications of this view for legal responsibility.

The last and most astonishing step in this deterministic translation project is compatibilism (see Eliezer Malchiel’s book, Will, Freedom and Necessity, and my review of it here). The compatibilist claim is that there is no contradiction between determinism and freedom (the two are compatible). This is a far-reaching move, for it undergirds everything else. Now not only can one use the entire accepted libertarian dictionary, but one can even feel free. Here the last libertarian stronghold falls. To this end, they begin with a definition according to which a person’s freedom is nothing but the ability to express his desires, values, and personality. If nothing external prevents you from doing what you want, you are a free person. Compatibilism claims that an unfree person is one for whom some external factor prevents him from behaving as he himself “decided.”

Seemingly quite persuasive, no? After all, this is pure freedom, isn’t it? Only that such “freedom” can certainly exist even within a deterministic picture. A person indeed cannot do other than what he does, but ultimately he is doing what he himself wants (and necessarily wants). His desire is indeed the result of his personality and values, his genetic makeup and environmental influences, but that entire aggregate is the person himself (the mold of his native landscape). And if that aggregate wants something and can carry it out, he is a “free” person doing what he “decided” (therefore also “guilty,” and bearing “responsibility” for his actions). Now one can “condemn” or “praise” him, impose legal sanctions (“punishment”) upon him, and even treat him as the crown of creation. We have saved what supposedly differentiates man from computer and ape.

No wonder compatibilists go on to argue that there is no impediment to imposing responsibility (actually, “responsibility”), moral or legal, on a person even within a deterministic framework. After all, it is his “free” decision, hence he is “responsible” for it—indeed also “guilty.” There is no need to assume libertarian freedom in order to impose moral or legal responsibility upon him. Note that the terms “decision,” “freedom,” “moral responsibility,” and “legal responsibility” all undergo the same transformation and enter honorably into the deterministic dictionary. But the coup de grâce is that even the concept of freedom itself undergoes the same transformation. After explaining that everything is illusory and driven by deterministic mechanisms, you still insist on claiming that… actually you do have freedom (that is, “freedom”). The determinist wants to enjoy all worlds to the very end without giving up anything.

Needless to say, the libertarian, standing bewildered before this hallucinatory translation project, tries to explain to himself why his concept of freedom differs from what the compatibilist presents, and why in the deterministic picture there is no room for guilt, responsibility, punishment, education, human exceptionalism, and the like. But the new determinist is unimpressed. He presents his dictionary and claims that everything remains as it was. Determinism has overcome all the difficulties I described above and remains alive.

Interim summary

To summarize: in the deterministic–compatibilist picture, a person behaves and speaks exactly as in the libertarian picture. Every sentence the libertarian will say can also be said by the determinist. Every step or behavior the libertarian will take will also be taken by the determinist. Phenomenologically, there is no difference between them. Only that the entire system is rooted in two entirely different worldviews and conceptual pictures. For the libertarian there is an assumption that the person is free to choose; for the determinist he is compelled to “choose,” but still that “choice” is his “free” decision.

This recalls the problem nicknamed “the philosophers’ chestnut” (see on this in Columns 99, 142, 153, 251, 268, 435, and more). I talk with you about the green table before us, and we understand each other and converse freely, but there is no way to check whether the appearance you see within your consciousness is identical to what I see within mine. Is what you call “the color green” what I call “the color green”? Perhaps I see what you call “the color red,” but I’ve gotten used, since forever, to people calling that “green.” Therefore my interaction with the world proceeds coherently and clearly, but in fact we are talking about entirely different things. I’ve even said that one can take this further: perhaps when I speak of green I am actually hearing what you call Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. That is what “seeing green” is, and thus I consistently speak this way and succeed in conducting interactions with my surroundings. Once again, the discourse proceeds coherently and fluently, but we are talking about entirely different things. This is exactly like the discourse between determinist and libertarian. Both use the same system of terms, but they give them utterly different meanings (only that here, thankfully, one can at least clarify his intention to the other. Behold, I—as a libertarian—present you with the deterministic dictionary).

Another example is the debate between actualism and informativism in the philosophy of science. In this essay I showed that these two views describe the conduct of science in exactly the same way and guide the scientist with exactly the same instructions. Both types of scientists formulate, confirm, and falsify theories in the very same manner and under the same circumstances and techniques, but the meaning of the theory—or of refutation and corroboration—differs entirely between them. For the informativist, the theory is a claim about the world; for the actualist, it is a claim only about us. This recalls the debate between a solipsist and a philosophical realist—whether there is or is not an external world. The solipsist, who holds that there is no such world and that everything is within our consciousness, uses the same system of concepts, only that for him their meaning is internal to consciousness and not factual about the “world” (since, in his view, there is no world at all). Seemingly, one could argue on that basis that all these debates are illusory. But I showed in that essay that the debate about actualism is real and can even be decided by observing how science actually proceeds and by its history.

If we now return to the debate about determinism, the translation I presented seemingly removes the difficulties I described above. Now the determinist is spared the consequences of immoral behavior; he recognizes the importance and possibility of education and punishment, guilt and responsibility—just like the libertarian. Thus they dismiss the existing difficulties in their view described above.

The positivist challenge on three levels

The description we have seen raises a question about the meaning of this debate. In my lecture I dubbed it “the positivist challenge.” One can examine the meaning of this controversy on three different planes: the linguistic (which we saw above), the physical, and our attitudes. Let us now look at these three levels.

The linguistic level. As we saw, one can translate every term and every claim from the libertarian picture into the deterministic picture and vice versa. This raises the question of whether there is any real disagreement here at all. The logical positivists hold that a claim with no practical manifestation (observable empirically) is a pseudo-claim—that is, it does not claim anything. The question of whether the author of the sonnets was Shakespeare or his cousin who was also named Shakespeare doesn’t seem especially interesting, and it is doubtful whether it even claims anything. And even the question of whether they were authored by a person named Yosef Cohen and not by Shakespeare is not really important—at least as long as we know nothing about him beyond the fact that he authored the sonnets. Note: not only is this an unimportant question, but it is doubtful whether there is any question here at all. Is the debate between determinism and libertarianism not a spurious debate? It seems analogous to the philosophers’ chestnut—unresolvable, and therefore perhaps devoid of genuine content. This is the positivist challenge that stands before us regarding this debate at the first level: the level of language and terminology.

The physical level. Although at the linguistic level there is no difference between the sides, one can still ask whether the sides to this debate have different predictions in the physical world such that we could decide it by a scientific experiment. For example, Libet’s experiments aspired to resolve this debate scientifically. The claim there is that both sides have a scientific implication that can be tested empirically. Briefly: even before Libet it was known that prior to performing an action there is an electrical readiness potential that arises in a person’s brain, called the RP (Readiness Potential). What Libet claimed is that the determinist must hold that this electrical potential appears before the moment of decision. For him, the order is: RP → decision → action.

By contrast, the libertarian must say that the RP does indeed appear before the action but only after the moment of decision. For him, the order is: decision → RP → action.

Libet found an empirical way to test whether the RP precedes the decision or appears after it, and that is already an experiment that could distinguish between the sides. I will not go into the details of the experiment or the analysis of its results (see Chapter 15 of my book The Sciences of Freedom), only say that, at least as of today, in my view Libet erred. There is in fact no experimental way to resolve this debate. But in principle, a way might be found, and that means that although we saw that at the level of terminology and language the two views proceed identically, the debate is not spurious.

I will now formulate this more generally. In the previous column we saw that there is a physical difference between the two views: the libertarian holds that there is an electron that begins to move without any physical force field acting upon it (it moves by force of will), and the determinist of course denies this. Therefore, in principle, there is a measurable factual difference between the views. True, in practice it is very difficult to imagine a way to get at that single electron and examine this thesis empirically, but there still is a difference that shows these are not two equivalent claims. The thought experiment I described in the previous column (Buridan’s ass) also points to a factual implication that distinguishes the views. There too one cannot test it empirically (hence it is a thought experiment), but still it clarifies that these are not two equivalent claims. This is the second plane of discussion: the physical plane.

The plane of our attitudes. We now arrive at the third plane of discussion, where there certainly is an implication to the debate—and by it we can see the principal importance of this discussion. This concerns the human image and our attitude to human beings as reflected in the two pictures, libertarian and deterministic. If the determinist is right, even if there were no factual–scientific difference between the views, the conclusion that follows is that there is no essential difference between a human being and animals, and essentially not even between him and plants and inanimate objects. The fact that the human is a more sophisticated machine does not change the fundamental picture. Determinism has built a comprehensive and impressive dictionary that contains all the entries in the libertarian dictionary, but it has emptied them of content. The connotation and what we feel toward guilt, responsibility, moral and legal judgment, punishment, education, and so on, are entirely different. The terminology has been preserved but not its substantive content. Beyond the identical language, in terms of what this means to me, this is a radical change.

Let me put it bluntly: would any of you agree to marry a machine? Would any of you fall in love with a machine? Note: the machine is sophisticated and functions like a human being. You know what? It even looks exactly like one. And still, it computes differently and therefore it is not truly a human being. It is only a façade. The well-known film her depicts a man who falls in love with an interactive computer program. She functions like a person, is interesting and intelligent, and one can have fascinating conversations with her. She also shows him warmth and love. So why shouldn’t he fall in love with her? But this is a film, and precisely because it is entirely far-fetched it becomes successful and moving. It poses a paradox: if there is no difference, then why indeed shouldn’t one fall in love with a machine? This paradox is built on the sense that of course we wouldn’t, and it merely asks why. Thus the film is an example by contradiction, for we all understand the oddity of the situation. Perhaps someone might fall in love with a machine because he has the impression that it is truly a person—but that is only because he already has a prior model of a person, a being with choice, and then he mistakenly identifies the machine with that being. But to fall in love with a being one knows is a machine is far less plausible.

Therefore, in the deterministic picture of the human being, emotions such as love, esteem, human connection, human exceptionalism—all undergo a transformation. We accept the preposterous claims that we fell in love with machines and married them, as if they were pure truth, and after a time we grow used to them and cease to sense their absurdity. But of course this is a psychological claim. One might say this is the situation today because we don’t yet have experience with highly sophisticated machines that pass Turing tests. Once we meet such machines, we will be able to fall in love with them too. Furthermore, even if this does not change, it remains a claim about our psychology and has no substantive significance.

This brings me to the next question. How ought we relate to such a machine? Should it be granted an ethical status different from an animal or a machine? Is there a problem with smashing an advanced computer that runs AI software and passes Turing tests? I cannot imagine anyone answering yes. Why not? What is the difference between that machine and a human being? Of course one might answer that the machine does not feel pain, unlike the pain caused to a person by such smashing. So I suggest you first sedate the person and only then smash him—or simply kill him in his sleep.

Again, one who treats morality as a kind of embedded feeling will answer as before: this is mere psychology, a fixation devoid of philosophical and substantive meaning (for a determinist–materialist everything is embedded fixations, and nothing has philosophical or substantive meaning. See Column 159 and a Q&A thread that came up here just now). My words are addressed to those who are committed to morality and believe in its validity. For them, the question of whether a human being has free will is very important. It determines our attitude toward human beings and their status relative to other creatures. The determinist merely translates here, exactly as I showed above. For him, the term “morality” is translated into inclinations embedded in our genome or instilled by the environment. The term “valid morality” or “a person committed to morality”—which, of course, in his worldview must be emptied of all content—are translated into a state where a person has an interest, or simply a bias, to act that way. These statements, like every other substantive statement, are translated for him into an illusion embedded within us. The discourse is very similar, but the meaning is entirely different. This experience too, like all our other experiences described above, is sheer illusion.

False consciousness: morality without God and without choice

You might say that even here there is no real implication. The libertarian cares very much to know whether the being before him has free will, but the determinist does not see its importance. The fact is that although he sees his life partner as a sophisticated machine, he falls in love with her; and although he sees human beings as sophisticated machines, he grants them an ethical status different from other creatures.

In my judgment, these phenomena only indicate that the ordinary determinist does not truly believe in the determinism he professes (alternatively, he adopts Smilansky’s policy and hides it from us—or at least Bar-Hillel’s policy and works on himself). The other possibility is that this is very implausible and inconsistent behavior. There is no place to grant humans a preferred ethical status without the assumption that they have something different—that is, free will. Mere sophistication of a machine does not confer a different ethical status upon it. Of course one can justify any claim by declaring it a postulate, but that does not make it rational. In my understanding, a person who grants moral significance and a different ethical status to humans and falls in love only with humans and not with programs is a covert libertarian (even to himself). Deep down he truly believes we have choice (and therefore he is likely a dualist), even if on the surface he is not (and not that either). We arrive here at questions of false consciousness that I will not enter into (see Columns 203–204, 233, and more).

Beyond all this, if a person has no choice it is hard to understand how values can be accorded validity. At most you can say that it is worthwhile to accord them validity, but not that they have validity. For the determinist, values instruct me to act in a certain way—not because it is right, but because this is the fact that they are embedded within me. If someone else acts immorally, I condemn him only because I am programmed to do so, but there is no real condemnation here—for he is acting according to what is embedded in him. If so, this is not valid morality but a moral façade. This is another example of the empty translations of libertarian language into the deterministic dictionary, as we saw above.

Thus Cave cites, in the aforementioned article, in the name of Smilansky:

According to Smilansky, determinism undermines not only the concept of guilt but also the concept of praise. Imagine that I do decide to risk my life and parachute into enemy territory to carry out a daring mission. Afterwards it will be said that I had no choice, that my achievements were nothing but the inevitable result, and therefore not worthy of praise. And just as the undermining of the concept of guilt facilitates immoral behavior, undermining the concept of praise removes the incentive to do good deeds. Our heroes will no longer be as inspiring as before, Smilansky argues, our achievements will no longer be as noteworthy as before, and we will soon degenerate into moral decay and despair.

The translation project I described above, which tries to solve these problems, apparently does not inspire much confidence. People will not be persuaded by these empty translations. Therefore, although he accepts the deterministic assumption, he understands that if it is not concealed from the masses, they will draw the conclusions. Translation will not do the job, except perhaps for the noble-minded and intellectuals.

A parallel move exists regarding God and morality. I have often pointed out that, in my judgment, there is no valid morality without belief in God who grants it validity (see Column 456 and elsewhere). Hence, the maxim of the moralists that relies on the verse “Only there is no God in this place, and they will kill me” is offered: without God there is no morality. But I have also repeatedly pointed out that there is no clear moral gap between believers and atheists. Therefore I argued that although there is no valid morality without God, there are people who do not believe in God and still behave morally. Not only do they behave morally in a phenomenological sense, but they feel blame and praise, responsibility and obligation; they judge others who do not behave morally—all this just like libertarians. How to understand this? I explained that these people live in contradiction, and in my understanding this indicates that deep down they are believers (this is the moral argument discussed in The First Existent, fourth conversation, part C). Again: false consciousness.

The effect of libertarian belief on moral behavior: empirical findings

It turns out there is empirical corroboration for these psychological claims. Those who espouse determinism tend to behave less morally, and therefore, as we shall see, this topic has considerable practical importance.

In Stephen Cave’s article cited above, he presents an experiment by two researchers, Vohs and Schooler, that demonstrated the practical importance of belief in free will:

In 2002 two psychologists proposed a simple yet brilliant idea: instead of speculating about what might happen if people lost their belief in their capacity to decide, one can run an experiment and find out what happens. Kathleen Vohs, then at the University of Utah, and Jonathan Schooler of the University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of participants to read a passage arguing that free will is an illusion and another group to read a passage taking a neutral stance on the issue. They then placed various temptations before the two groups and examined their behavior. Would differences in abstract philosophical views affect their decision-making?

Indeed they would. The participants took a math test under conditions that made it easy to cheat, and in the first group—the one that had read that free will is an illusion—a higher rate of cheaters was found. When the members of this group had the opportunity to steal without consequences—taking more money than they deserved from an envelope of dollar coins—they stole more than members of the second group. Vohs told me that she and Schooler examined a series of measures and found that “among [the first group] there was a higher rate of immoral behavior.”

It follows that when people cease to believe they are free to act as they wish, they cease to see themselves as responsible for their actions. Therefore they behave with less responsibility and yield to immoral impulses. Vohs clarifies that this result is not limited to laboratory experiments. “We observe the same phenomena among people who naturally believe more or less in free will,” she said.

In another study Vohs and colleagues measured contract workers’ belief in free will and then examined their job performance based on their supervisor’s ratings. Workers with stronger belief in free will arrived on time more often and received better ratings. In fact, belief in free will proved a better predictor of job performance than known measures such as self-assessed work ethic.

Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, another pioneer in the psychology of free will, added to these findings. For example, he and his colleagues found that students with low belief in free will spent less time helping other students than those with strong belief in free will. In addition, the researchers had some students read statements such as “science has proven that free will is an illusion” in order to inculcate a deterministic view. A smaller percentage of those students gave money to the homeless or agreed to lend a phone to another person.

Additional studies by Baumeister and colleagues identified a connection between lower belief in free will and stress, unhappiness, and lower commitment to relationships. They found that when they encouraged subjects to believe that “all human actions depend on prior events and can ultimately be explained by the movement of molecules,” the degree of meaning they attributed to life decreased. Another research team published a study this year that found a correlation between lower belief in free will and poorer academic performance.

The list goes on: there is a link between belief that free will is an illusion and reduced creativity, increased conformity, reduced willingness to learn from mistakes, and reduced gratitude among people. Determinism seems to lead us to the dark side on every possible front.

Few researchers would feel comfortable claiming that people should believe an outright lie. Perpetuating falsehood would harm their integrity and violate a principle long cherished by philosophers: the Platonic hope that truth and the good go hand in hand.

Here we arrive at Smilansky’s view mentioned above. The conclusion is that people are not willing to fool themselves—at least if they are not great philosophers. They grasp very well that without free will there is no moral responsibility, and they do not buy the determinists’ translations that try to preserve all the terms by emptying the concepts they denote of their substantive content. They don’t buy the illusions the determinist tries to sell them, and therefore Smilansky is compelled to hide the “facts” and the “truth” from them.

Note the upshot. This debate certainly has implications for people’s moral behavior, and therefore the discussion and resolution of this issue are very important. It is important to me to prove libertarianism to others (which I believe is correct—not to lie to them like Smilansky). One cannot say there is no point in engaging with this issue because it has no content and no implications. We may be using the same vocabulary and demanding the same things of people, but in practice it doesn’t work. On average, one cannot deny that a deterministic picture induces more problematic behavior. I should stress that thus far this is not an argument for libertarianism but only for conducting the debate and reflecting on the issue.

However, later in that article Cave brings Sam Harris (one of the commentators of the apocalypse—the materialist–determinists), who wrote a book aiming to dispel the illusion of free will. Harris offers an alternative. There is no need to sell people a bill of goods to promote positive behavior. If they believe that others too are driven by deterministic chains of causes, they will be less angry at them and will not seek revenge, and the world will be better. This will offset the previous effect without the need to lie.

He offers the following example:

Harris suggests comparing “our attitude to Hurricane Katrina… with our attitude to the 9/11 attacks.” For many Americans, the terrorists who hijacked the planes in 2001 are the epitome of a criminal who decides, out of free will, to do evil. But if we abandon belief in free will, we will have to conceive their behavior like any other natural phenomenon. In his view, this change of attitude will help us respond to various events more rationally.

Although both events were disasters on a similar scale, the responses to them were entirely different. No one wanted to take revenge on tropical storms or declare war on the weather; therefore after Katrina it was possible to focus on rebuilding and preventing future natural disasters. According to Harris, our responses to 9/11 were driven by rage and a desire for revenge and led to unnecessary loss of many human lives. Harris does not claim that we should not have responded to the attacks, but that a measured response would have looked entirely different and would have significantly reduced the loss of human life. “Hatred is a poison,” he told me, “and it can disrupt the stability of both individual and social life. If we cease to believe in free will, there will be no rational reason to hate anyone.”

According to him, perhaps it would in fact be advisable to lie precisely to those who believe in free will so as to improve the world. If only I were smart enough to lie to people and convince them that the world is deterministic even though I don’t believe it, then surely “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” You can see the deep distress in which determinists find themselves: the translation attempts that don’t take root and don’t deliver results; people’s intuitions that grasp very well—better than all the philosophers—that if there is no free will there is no valid morality and no human exceptionalism, no responsibility and no guilt, no education and no punishment. The entire deterministic dictionary is a fiction whose purpose is to sell us illusions that we all (except the deterministic philosophers) understand are false. I would ask Smilansky, in light of all this, whether he really thinks philosophers are more intelligent and noble than laypeople. I tend to think the opposite (you know what? perhaps more noble—but certainly not more intelligent).

One step further: the failure of the translation (the dictionary) is evidence against determinism

I wrote this column because it is very interesting to note how much determinists must deviate from our most basic intuitions, and how many of our fundamental insights (including their own) they are compelled to classify as illusions. Up to this point I brought this only as motivation to conduct the discussion and not to see it as empty hairsplitting (the positivist challenge). But now I wish to take one step further.

Note that this itself constitutes an argument against determinism. One who claims that many of our assumptions and the meanings of many of our concepts are illusions bears the burden of proof. Try to think of a person who tells you that the tree you see does not exist but is an illusion; that the person bothering him is nothing but a demon in disguise; that the law of gravity is nothing but an illusion or a convention of ours; that trust in people is an illusion; that love for one’s spouse is an illusion; and so on. What would you say about him? As for solipsists who claim there is no world and everything is an illusion of our consciousness—do you think the burden of proof rests on them or on their opponents?

I cannot help recalling the words of the Gashashim (may they live long—and rest in peace), in the sketch “Banks on You” (which mocked the proliferation of bank branches on every corner—an unamusing phenomenon common at that time), and I will rewrite them here for the convenience of the holy audience:

Shaike: Where’s the welfare office here? Gavri: I’ll explain, you good Jew… Walk straight there—do you see a bank on the corner? Turn right. As you turn right you’ll see a traffic light. At the light you turn left… at the light on the right you’ll see a bank. Pass that bank, go straight and you’ll see another two or three banks; then there are some stairs. You go down the stairs and see a bank. Pass that bank, go up the stairs—opposite you is a restaurant. Tnuva restaurant. That’s not a restaurant—that’s a bank. Bank Hapoalim. Pass Bank Hapoalim and you’ll see another three banks or so and then you’ll see a synagogue. That’s not a synagogue—that’s a bank. Mizrahi Bank. Pass Mizrahi Bank; there are another six or seven banks. You’ll see opposite a policeman. Shaike: That’s not a policeman—that’s a bank. Gavri: No, that’s a policeman guarding a bank. Pass that bank; there are another thirteen or fourteen banks, and you arrive at a big glass building. Shaike: And that’s it? Gavri: What do you mean, that’s it? Shaike: The welfare office. Poli: The welfare office? I don’t know that bank!

A whole world of fancies—but behind them all are banks. There’s a restaurant, a traffic light, a policeman, and a whole rich world of objects and concepts. But in fact, it’s all illusions. Behind everything are banks. Among determinists, too, we saw there is a whole world of hallucinations behind which there is a machine that drives us all and creates within us diverse illusions that conceal its very existence.

This phenomenon nicely illustrates Orwell’s saying: “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them.” The intellectual has the ability to distance himself from his intuition and follow the intellect in a cold and detached way. Such detachment is indeed helpful when we seek new paths and try to exit fixations and habits. But it also has a downside, for it easily strays too far from common sense and intuition (while deluding itself that it is not based on intuitions but on science).

The deterministic dictionary I described here is the great dictionary of illusions. It turns all the words and terms in our lexicon into a collection of illusions. And this is what people treat as the scientific and rational position—contrasted with libertarianism, which is portrayed as outdated, rigid, and illogical. An upside-down (and hallucinatory) world I have seen. In this column I tried to dispel the greatest illusion of all—the one that says that everything else (but it) is an illusion.

Conclusion: back to the three planes of the positivist challenge

If so, it seems it is precisely important to discuss the question of free will. Although at the terminological level determinism offers a substitute (the dictionary—the translation project), it doesn’t work. The dictionary is a fiction, and it does not convince people. Therefore, at the level of people’s attitudes (the third level), the discussion is certainly important. We need to understand human exceptionalism, to understand why a different ethical status is due to a person, whom to love and whom not. In addition, we saw there is indeed something to discuss, since there is a difference at the physical level between the views (the electron that moves without a physical force field). And finally, from here too there is evidence that free will exists (or at least that the burden of proof lies on one who claims it does not).