Q&A: On Determinism in Light of Your Book The Science of Freedom
On Determinism in Light of Your Book The Science of Freedom
Question
Hello Rabbi. My name is Yuval Shapira, a 22-year-old from Yeshivat Yeruham. Recently I was discussing the issue of free choice with Professor Amos Tanay, who works in computational biology at the Weizmann Institute. He presented a very interesting claim, which it seems to me may have an answer in your book, which I read in the past, The Science of Freedom. I would be happy to receive an answer, or alternatively a reference to the precise place in the book.
His claim is as follows: he believes in absolute materialism, and as a result he believes in a kind of determinism. In his view, everything is fixed in advance, but we do not have—and it is not even possible that we ever will have—a computational tool that can predict our behavior. I should note that the professor educates his family exemplary well, and to morality at the highest level; I can testify to that from my acquaintance with his daughter. He grounds “free choice” in the gap between the actual fact that everything is fixed in advance and the fact that we do not have any real predictive ability. This gap allows for a kind of freedom of action and gives importance to moral behavior.
First and foremost, I would be glad to hear your response to his view.
I would also be glad if you could address in your answer his claim that it is impossible for us to have a predictive means—and after all, who in the 15th century could have imagined the quantum computer?!
I would appreciate your prompt response, Yuval.
Answer
This is a common mistake made by people in computation and by physicists who deal with chaos. The question of choice has nothing at all to do with our ability to compute and predict, but rather with the question whether there is genuine freedom in the system. A chaotic system whose future cannot be calculated in advance is still a deterministic system. Therefore, you cannot smuggle free will into it. The fact that I do not know what drives a person does not mean that he is not driven.
I devoted an entire chapter of my book to this, the chapter that deals with chaos. There I showed that the early thinkers on chaos raised exactly this claim, and of course were mistaken. After that I went on to discuss quantum theory, where there is apparently genuine freedom (and only there).
In short, he is simply confused about the concepts.
The fact that a person behaves morally does not mean much. If he is a deterministic system (even if chaotic), then that is what leads him to his moral behavior, and therefore it has no value. He does not choose it, but perhaps lives under the illusion that he chooses it (because of the lack of predictive ability). He is led to it in a deterministic way. I think he himself does not understand that his position is self-contradictory, and therefore he is a covert believer in free choice. The question is always how to interpret the positions of people who are unaware of the problems within their own doctrine. I touched on this a bit in column 456 (where I argued that a moral atheist is either inconsistent or a covert believer), and in other columns as well.