Determined but free

Is free will about science or is it really about politics?

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky, Stanford Behavioral scientist, came out Thursday.

Based on a few reviews I have read, Sapolsky makes the argument that not only are our lives causally, neurologically, psychologically, and physically determined, but that we have no free will either.

The book is divided into two parts: one largely on the science of biological determinism and the other on the philosophy of free will.

Free will is defined as having the ability to do otherwise.

The most common interpretation of free will is libertarian free will or libertarianism. Our will is free and self-caused to make choices in a given situation. Therefore, determinism must be false. An example is: If offered the choice between vanilla and chocolate ice cream, I can make a free and reasoned choice about what I want, and the state of the universe up until that point does not lead to any pre-determined outcome.

Libertarian free will necessarily has to rely on there being a soul or spiritual force inside us self-causing the will or else on quantum effects such as quantum consciousness. Anything else is known to be deterministic.

The second interpretation, which is the most common among philosophers, is that we make choices that are free but also determined. In other words, given the world and circumstances we are in, we are determined to make a particular choice, but, if circumstances were different, we would make a different choice, and that choice is sufficiently self-caused to be considered free.

If offered the choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, I choose chocolate because last time I got vanilla. In a world where last time I got chocolate, I choose vanilla. The choice is still mine, it is simply a fact that it relies on data that I have about the world, i.e., what I last chose, and my preferences for how to make choices, alternating flavors. This is my own idiosyncrasy and therefore is self-caused will.

This latter definition is called compatibilism because it says that free will is compatible with determinism.

Sapolsky rests firmly in the incompatibilist camp. He believes that our choices are causally determined by external factors and not by ourselves. In fact, he argues we are unable to make choices. Rather, choices simply “happen” to us.

Sapolsky uses the strength of scientific evidence to reason that the brain’s decision making apparatus is entirely outside our control, that there is no ghost in the machine pulling the levers after all, and all our choices are easily explained in behavioral terms.

In addition, unlike some scientists-turned-philosophers who seem to be ignorant of compatiblism, Sapolsky takes aim at it, particularly compatibilist philosopher Daniel Dennett, saying that causal circumstances trump any personal responsibility a person has for their actions.

This is where we traverse from science, which makes a pretty good case for determinism, to politics where our attitudes, particularly related to free will, seem to be furthest from our control.

He says:

Suppose you’re born a crack baby. In order to counterbalance this bad luck, does society rush in to ensure that you’ll be raised in relative affluence and with various therapies to overcome your neurodevelopmental problems? No, you are overwhelmingly likely to be born into poverty and stay there. Well then, says society, at least let’s make sure your mother is loving, is stable, has lots of free time to nurture you with books and museum visits. Yeah, right; as we know your mother is likely to be drowning in the pathological consequences of her own miserable luck in life, with a good chance of leaving you neglected, abused, shuttled through foster homes. Well, does society at least mobilize then to counterbalance that additional bad luck, ensuring you live in a safe neighborhood with excellent schools? Nope, your neighborhood is likely to be gang-riddled and your school underfunded.

Sapolsky’s argument is political rather than scientific in that he aligns his arguments with those on the left who argue that people don’t make bad choices, they are simply the victims of bad circumstances. Government’s or society’s role is to even out the playing field but it does not. Therefore, we cannot blame people for what happens as a result.

Sapolsky is really just a messenger here, and he draws upon a number of philosophers rather than his own intuitions to make his argument. Hidden in the arguments of Sapolsky and the incompatibilists from whom he draws inspiration is an assumption of a global (meaning societal) standard by which our circumstances and causes of those circumstances should be judged. If we were born in circumstances that are “below the average” it is reasoned, then we can’t be held responsible for what we do in our lives turning out badly. Society owes it to us to make up for our bad luck.

The idea of needing to “level” people out is a popular idea on the left. While it has its extremes in Marxism and class struggle, socialism and more recently, intersectionality, with its hierarchies of oppression, are the more common implementations in the West.

There is, in the case of Marxism/socialism/intersectionality, a fundamental misunderstanding, however, of what personal responsibility means. It has absolutely nothing to do with any global standard, which is arbitrary anyway. Rather, it has to do with what you do with what you are given, including the circumstances of your birth, your genetics, and your brain’s own predispositions. And although we have an obligation to look after the poor and the needy, we are under no illusion that people can be put on the same level.

Those on the right side of the political spectrum, meanwhile, promote the opposite extreme from Sapolsky’s viewpoint. Such a callous expectation of personal responsibility is where you expect people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and that what happens to them is purely a reflection of their personal character, lack of fitness, and their life circumstances are irrelevant.

The extreme case here is that we need to “level” people out not by changing their circumstances but by getting rid of the below average people. This can become fascism although it is more commonly implemented in the West with the prison system although in the past forced sterilization was also popular. This is the world where Sapolsky’s crack babies are eliminated before they are born or incarcerated as soon as they grow up.

This attitude suffers from the exact same flaw as the leftist one. In order to place the same expectations on everyone, you have to appeal to a global standard. In this case, not a standard for life circumstances but an ideal character and birth circumstance to which we can compare people and then punish or eliminate them for not measuring up.

While we should aspire to good character, perfection is not a standard that any of us can meet, and those of us who think we do are often the worst offenders.

Like most things, whether the universe is deterministic or not, there is a middle way here.

A good illustration of this middle way is in the Parable of the Three Servants. In this parable, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks about three servants whose master gave each of them some money and then goes away on a long trip. Upon his return, the master finds that two of the servants have invested the money well and made back 100% of what they were given. One servant, however, buried his out of fear and made nothing, not even interest from the bank.

The amount each servant was given was different, so naturally what they made back was different too, but even the person given the least should be able to do something with it.

This story is interpreted to be about how we use the gifts and talents we are given in life. We have to use what we have to the best of our ability. We have to believe that we have been endowed with a minimum of reason, courage, and natural desires in order to accomplish something with our lives. Likewise, we have to believe, like two of the servants, that it is to our good to do this rather than live in fear and avoid doing anything worthwhile for fear of losing the little we have because that will ensure that we do.

Whether people can really make choices or not, human beings are unable to live as if they can’t and for good reason. The belief in a lack of free will may appear to make us kinder and more forgiving of people, but it is all mercy and no justice. In the same way, belief in total freedom of the will is all justice and no mercy. We owe both others and ourselves mercy, but we also owe others and ourselves justice or we will forever see ourselves and others as victims. We are always victims but we are also always perpetrators.

People who do wrong are neither broken machines who need fixing, an attitude that is easily abused by people playing the victim, nor are they self-determining angels and demons, easily abused by those playing the accuser. Instead, they are part of a complex system that requires both justice and mercy, forgiveness and responsibility.

Interestingly, Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, 83, flips Sapolsky’s argument around. He says “Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain.” In other words, while Sapolsky and others argue that we should not have judgements because we have no free will, Aquinas says that we have free will because we have judgements.

Aquinas was not merely espousing unsupportable medieval viewpoints either. He argues on precisely the same causal nature of free will, albeit he lacks the knowledge of neuroscience and behavior that Sapolsky benefits from:

Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause.

Aquinas gets right to the heart of the relationship between free will and causality. Incompatibilists argue that because of causality, there is no free will because causes are too far outside of personal control. Here Aquinas argues that the will can be free even if it is not the first cause of itself, meaning it has outside causes.

Aquinas argues that human beings have two natures which he calls natural and adventitious. All human beings have a certain nature: reason and specific universal desires such as a desire for happiness. The reason is the source of free will but our universal desires are outside our control.

In addition we have passions, i.e., preferences for one thing or another, and habits. Passions are separate from the will but subject to reason as well because we can have competing desires that the reason has to adjudicate.

As we judge between choices, which may or may not be a conscious act, we exercise our judgement and that is a free choice. It does not matter what those choices are or what circumstances we have to choose from. We can always choose.

An alcoholic can choose to go with habit and passions, for example, and drink themselves to death or, instead, use the reason and, pursuing a higher natural desire of happiness, abstain. It doesn’t matter if that person’s father was also a drunk or if they have a gene that makes them more predisposed to alcoholism. What matters is that they are presented with this choice, given the faculty of reason, and given higher desires than merely the need to satisfy their cravings.

We can argue that the alcoholic doesn’t actually have a choice while they are at the bar or party or grocery. Rather, his choice is primed by the messages he receives from those around him. In other words, if he is exposed to a lot of images of people drinking and enjoying alcohol, he is more likely to have a drink or twelve. If he is exposed to more negative images of drinking such as in a church setting or alcoholics anonymous, he will be less likely to.

But of course this is true! That hardly is relevant to our free choice however because we can choose where and how to spend our time and with whom. All that matter to our later choices in life. Often when it comes to make a choice there is indeed a chain of choices leading up to it for good or ill.

How we spend our time and with whom is also a choice that has its cause is what we want for ourselves and what we believe. This is why our beliefs about the world, our philosophy, is the very center of our free will.

We can hold the alcoholic responsible for making the choice to drink but moreso making the choice not to acknowledge their problem and get help. Why is that? It is because we recognize the powerful influence of the appetites on a person’s choices.

It is hard to resist something enticing in the moment unless you have been conditioned over a period of time to resist it. Failing to acknowledge when something is doing you harm, however, is a failure in the exercise of free will because you are lying to yourself. And lying to yourself is far more of a choice than taking a drink.

You don’t need to lie to yourself, but you choose to in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance of knowing you are doing yourself harm and doing it anyway with no intention of stopping. That is where the will is most freely exercised, in choosing to acknowledge the truth and live by it.

I for one will not assume that people have no control over the lies they choose to tell themselves. Nor will I assume that people have total control over all their actions. Both are political extremes that neither science nor philosophy has any place serving.