Q&A: Intuition of Free Choice
Intuition of Free Choice
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I read your book “The Science of Freedom,” and I’m worried I didn’t understand something. You argue that for a choice to be free, if I return to exactly the same situation I could choose differently. Intuitively, I don’t feel that this is the case. After all, I have no different information, the situation is identical, I am identical—why would I choose differently? Even when I talk about regret, I say, “If I had known what I know today, I wouldn’t have done it,” but not, “If the situation had been exactly the same, I would have chosen differently.”
It seems to me that the fact that I would not choose differently does not mean that the choice is not free. Theoretically, a different choice from the one I made was possible. Someone else might have chosen it; I, with different knowledge or in a different situation, might have chosen it. Maybe one could call this “determinism from within the self”—meaning, I choose, but because I am who I am, my choice will always be the same choice.
In this description, I think your main problem with determinism (as I understand it), namely the problem of human responsibility for one’s actions, is solved, since the choice depends on my “self,” and one can certainly judge a person for who he is. When I judge a person, I do not necessarily say, “Your act was wrong” or “The choice you made was wrong,” but rather, “You are not all right.”
Is there some logical flaw in my intuition that I’m not seeing?
Thank you.
Answer
And there is a difference between the question of whether you would choose differently and the question of whether you could have chosen differently. Even if in practice you would not choose differently, determinism claims that you could not have chosen differently.
Your last claim is what is called compatibilism, and it is an empty word game. I explained this in the book and elsewhere as well (including the debate with Aviv Franco). There is no responsibility for actions here, because they are forced on you. Forced by your own nature, yes—but you could not have done otherwise, and therefore there is no reason to punish you for them (except in order to prevent future offenses in a deterministic way: a mechanical correction of the personality. That is not responsibility).
By the way, I don’t know what “the problem of human responsibility for one’s actions” is supposed to mean. There is no problem here. Either there is responsibility or there isn’t. According to the determinist, there isn’t, and according to my view, there is. I do not recruit philosophical and factual positions in order to solve problems. That is pragmatism, which is a dirty word in my view.
Discussion on Answer
You’re mixing apples and oranges. If you’re talking about punishment as corrective recompense, then you are certainly right. A person is constructed in a way that causes him to commit offenses, so you “punish” him in order to fix his brain. After all, we discussed this again and again with Aviv Franco. But that has nothing to do with responsibility and punishment in the moral sense. That could also be done with brain surgery. Why should a person be punished for how he is built? That’s how he is. At most, give him brain surgery so he won’t go back to causing harm. That is not what is called punishment.
If there is wordplay here, then it is exactly what you are doing. You take the concept of punishment and convert it into another concept (mechanical correction), and then you do not understand why choice is required in order to apply the other concept. Indeed, it is not required. But the other concept is not punishment and not responsibility. Punishment and responsibility require that there be choice.
The question whether a person is the sum of his characteristics is indeed at the center of the argument with the materialists, and I discussed it at great length in The Science of Freedom and in articles. But that is not the subject of our discussion here. The justification for punishment and for assigning responsibility is not determined by the question of who the person is, but by the question whether what he did was done by choice.
I think that is exactly the point I don’t understand. Why do punishment or responsibility require choice? What is it about choice that gives you the right to punish? Just as you say, “That’s how he is,” one could say, “That’s how he chose.” If the choice does not come from him, what difference does it make that he chose that way? If I don’t punish a person because he is the one who chose that way, then what am I punishing him for? Choice is only the thing that links the person to his actions, the way we define the intention behind the act—but if the choice does not come from the person, then what am I punishing him for? And if it does come from the person, then clearly saying “that’s how he is” does not exempt him from punishment. The fact that if he had been different it would have prevented him from choosing that way is only a secondary gain, not the fundamental point. I’m not talking about correcting his actions but about attributing the actions to him. According to what you’re saying, the person is separate from what he is, so by virtue of what does he choose? Maybe the discussion is a bit circular, but I feel I’m missing an important point in what you’re saying, and I want to make sure I understand you.
I’ll try to explain once more, and with this I’ll finish. Our common conception of responsibility and punishment as a sanction for an offense (let us say for the sake of discussion that this is a moral offense that I want to punish) is that a person who did something bad deserves punishment. It is recompense for his being bad. One can speak about punishment as correction or as deterrence (if he sits in prison, that will deter him from repeating the offense), but those are not responsibility and not punishment in the sense I am talking about. After all, instead of that, one could give him brain surgery that would change his criminal tendency. That is a utilitarian act, not a moral one. The responsibility I am talking about is responsibility in the moral sense.
If a person acts mechanically, you can punish him in order to deter or to correct, but by the same token you could also give him brain surgery to correct his criminal tendency. But there is no point in imposing a sanction in the moral sense on him if he could not have acted otherwise. What do you want from him? Are you punishing him for having been born a certain way? What is there to explain here—isn’t this self-evident?
You are talking about the question of whom one punishes (the person or something else), and I am talking about the justification for imposing the punishment. In my picture, the choice definitely does come from the person, and for that he is punished. He chooses to act this way or that way. But the “person” here is not a mechanical calculation but values that he chooses. Only in that way is the act attributed to him. If he acts mechanically, then of course you can attribute the act “to him,” but the “to him” here is meaningless. It is like attributing an act to a computer or to a stream of water. See my podcast with Aviv Franco about the example of the water.
What I meant was the philosophical problem of punishing a person for his actions if he could not choose them. I can’t manage to understand why one cannot punish a person for his choice if he was compelled by his nature. What is the big difference between a person’s nature and the person himself? That is what sounds like wordplay to me. What is the logical difference between the sentence, “I assign you responsibility for your actions because you chose an improper act,” and “I assign you responsibility for your actions because your nature led to the choice of an improper act”? If a person had had a different nature, then he would have been a different person and not the person who chose the improper act. To paraphrase Maimonides’ laws of repentance, one who chose a different act is a different person and not the same man who chose those acts. The separation between a person’s nature and the person himself seems artificial to me.