Q&A: Free Will?!
Free Will?!
Question
Hello Rabbi/Doctor. I read your book about a year ago and have heard quite a bit of what you have to say about the issue of free will and its existence. I’ll begin by saying that I agree with your conclusions regarding this (maybe a banal agreement, but I’ll write it anyway): I definitely agree that there is no such thing as morality or meaning in a deterministic world (compatibilism is purely psychological as far as I understand; there is a match between my will and what I do). In addition, I agree that there is something problematic about a deterministic person holding such a position, since his thinking about the issue, which led him to the above conclusion, was programmed to bring him necessarily to conclusion A and not B. And of course, I feel free when I make choices (within certain limits, obviously), but I still feel that there is someone deciding inside me. There is something about this idea of freedom of the will that is really vital to the meaning of almost everything in life. I would also add that I have no objection at all to adding the component of the existence of a soul or spirit that truly exists, since the natural world itself is deterministic and we will probably need that. My issue is this: you speak about choosing on the basis of considerations toward a certain purpose. Is that purpose itself chosen freely? This claim sounds puzzling. Suppose I’m sitting in front of the computer watching a horrific film about abuse in the lives of animals and I decide that I will no longer eat meat. Did I choose to be persuaded by the content I saw? It seems to me that I am convinced by what persuades me in a pretty passive way. I do not choose what arouses anxiety, compassion, fear, or any other emotion in me. And also regarding the question of degree: the film I supposedly saw, which caused me to behave in a certain way (to decide to become vegan), touched me in a way over which I had no control whatsoever. I also have no control over the degree of my compassion for certain animals, over the degree of my love of/aversion to meat, over the desire to be moral, just, and over endless things that surround me on every side. I am in an existential crisis. Good night.
Answer
Hello,
I think one has to distinguish between the influence things have and the formation of a position. Experiences can arouse feelings in me, revulsion or empathy, and I can still form a position about them independently. Statistically, it will certainly affect my position, but it does not necessarily dictate it. In war, a person encounters difficult experiences, killing human beings and a great deal of blood, and still not every soldier who has gone through war becomes a pacifist.
The same is true of the claims you raised here: for you they cause an existential crisis, and for me they do not. So you see that you form a position under the influence of experiences, but they do not determine your position.
Discussion on Answer
I’ve written several times, and explained in detail in The Science of Freedom, that there are no such actions. But there are approaches like that. Moral obligation cannot be explained in a deterministic-materialist world, and therefore they see it as an instinct imprinted in us (a product of evolution). Again, there is an explanation here for the phenomenon, but not for the outlook. The same applies to the trust we place in our own judgment.
So if we find a certain gap between our actions and aspirations and the ability of environment or evolution to explain those aspirations, can we reasonably accept belief in free choice?
For example, if someone does not think the Jews should have survived through the Middle Ages because the cost in lives was far too high compared to the advantages of religion for one psychological need or another, can that indirectly show that they died for sanctification of God’s name through free choice?
Here, admittedly, each action on its own can be explained by saying that they behaved without choice because they thought that was the right thing and therefore did it. But on the general level, the “outlook” should not really be correct. And if so, it should indeed raise the question of how such a thing came about if not through choice.
Hypotheses are always possible, but you won’t be able to base any serious argument on that. The flexibility of evolutionary explanations is Olympic. See my book God Plays with Dice.
I’d like to push back a bit (or at least try). Why is it not more reasonable to accept the position that those soldiers who did not become peace-seekers after horrific scenes of blood and death in battle remained of the same opinion as before because their psychological makeup is different from those who tended, for example, toward post-traumatic stress disorder? And further, your makeup is cold, calculated, and rational (I don’t know you personally, but that’s the impression), and therefore you are not inclined to experience a mental crisis like the one I experience because of this issue (among other things because I’ve suffered from OCD for several years, so I have an exaggerated tendency toward emotionality sometimes). Sometimes it seems to me that we act in a certain way and only take credit for our actions even though the choice was entirely technical. There is an environment and I am apparently part of it, nothing more? Why is that not more reasonable than necessary but very borderline beliefs about the existence of some entity that moves electrons by the power of its will?
This is flour that has already been ground. It is certainly possible, and that is indeed what determinists think. I disagree, and I explained this in the book and in a detailed article here. Obviously there is no proof for either side.
Speaking of conclusive proof: is there any room at all for the existence of evidence that would persuade someone who holds that free will exists? Even if it were proven under controlled and sophisticated laboratory conditions that all our choices, from the random ones to moral dilemmas, can be accounted for, one could still say that specifically these experiments I cannot accept, because accepting their conclusions is itself an exercise of judgment that is supposed to be free; and since it is not, it is better to exclude these experiments and claim that precisely in these experiments the senses misled me and caused me to arrive at deterministic results. Is the existence of deterministic evidence an oxymoron? If so, what is the point of talking about further evidence or about the current state of neuroscience and the strength of the evidence, etc.? Thank you.
Well, that is true of every scientific claim. In science there are no proofs in the strict logical sense.
Rabbi, are there actions that cannot be interpreted after the fact within a deterministic worldview, but only within one that includes free choice?
For example, a person eats so that he won’t be hungry, or a person eats because he is hungry.
So in both actions—a person eats—it is possible to give somewhat similar explanations: in the first case for the sake of the purpose, and in the second case the purpose is actually the cause, so that the action is not done for the sake of the purpose but because of it.