thoughts on determinism

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Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Compatibilism/soft determinism on punishment

Compatibilists believe that criminals are morally responsible for their actions that are determined in the morally relevant way, such as those that are determined by their internal causes.

Shall we go around and around and around again regarding the extent to which the compatibilists among us are able to believe “internally” other than what their own brains compel them to believe.

If a criminal is morally responsible, it follows that they deserve punishment. So, a retributive view of punishment could be justified on compatibilism.

And if criminals are compelled by their brains to break laws that lawmakers were compelled by their brains to enact?

This part…

However, compatibilists also believe in determinism, which is difficult to combine with the idea that a criminal deserves punishment. This could cause a compatibilist to adopt a weaker less harsh form of retributive punishment.

Right, like this too is not an inherent component of the only possible reality. Weak or strong retribution? Sure, that makes sense in a free will world. We call them aggravating and mitigating circumstances. But how are both not interchangeable in a wholly determined universe?

Alternatively, compatibilists could simply give up on retributive punishment and adopt a view punishment like Harris does; that punishment for rehabilitation or defence of society could be justified in a way that is compatible with determinism.

All of which Sam encompasses in a world of words? But wait. Sam is himself a neuroscientist. So perhaps he has experiential and experimental evidence to back the words up. He can point to actual chemical and neurological interactions in the brain that do in fact demonstrate his philosophical arguments.

Compatibilist free will cannot grant moral responsibility. The motivation behind compatibilism is to find a definition of free will that works with determinism yet also preserves the ethical function of the traditional definition. So they might argue that we are morally responsible for our actions that were determined by our internal causes. However, it’s hard to see how we can we have moral responsibility for something we couldn’t have helped doing.

Yep, the part I keep coming back to in my own “world of words”.

Psychological determinism would argue that our internal causes are the direct result of conditioning external causes, which also questions the validity of Hume’s conception of moral responsibility.

Internal/external? Half a dozen of one six of the other?

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

Hard determinists often claim to have common sense on their side, but common sense doesn’t have much place in philosophy.

Besides, how are these claims not in and of themselves articulated such that they could never have been articulated otherwise? Common sense in a world where nothing can ever be other than what it must be?

That said, compatibilists do face the very hard task of showing in what sense we can be free, make choices, and remain responsible for our actions in a morally meaningful sense if determinism is true.

Ah, the part I keep waiting for someone to broach. Though, sure, some here claim to have already “explained” how Mary, compelled to abort her unborn baby, is still morally responsible because no one put a gun to her head and commanded her abort the baby or else.

In what follows I don’t claim to offer a detailed positive defence of compatibilism, but rather to show that if you’re a hard determinist like Harris, and you reject compatibilism and the libertarian conception of free will, then you’ve also got to leave moral responsibility, blame, praise, punishment, reward and most of the other language of moral discourse at the door.

I certainly do. Only I’m also the first to admit that compatibilists may well be grasping all of this in a more reasonable manner. Though from my frame of mind, in turn, Harris still comes off as a “free will determinist”. It’s like he argues that he was never able to argue anything other than what his brain compels him to argue…but that his own conclusions are still the best? He’ll debate others while, what, concluding that the debates themselves unfold only as they were ever able to?

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Even if someone puts a gun to your head, or a nail into your wrist, you still have a choice… As long as you haven’t been brainwashed to believe you have no choice.

The universe is co-determined. If there were no conditions to determine… it couldn’t have been co-determined. The conditions do not determine our choice, they just determine the range of possible choices. For example, logical contradictions are never in the range of possibility, and practical impossibilities are … miracles.

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

Harris is clear that he rejects compatibilism, which he takes to be an evasive, topic-changing approach to free will.

Again and again: what does it mean to be clear about something you were never able to encompass any other way? We’re all being entirely clear here in that we are all posting only what our brains compel us to.

Well, not counting the part I keep missing in an actual free will world.

His hard determinism certainly has the appeal of simplicity. It does away with the need to think deeply about what choice and responsibility really, could, or should mean, and thus obviates the difficulty of reconciling determinism with free will and moral responsibility — such ideas are just metaphysical fictions.

On the other hand, is his determinism hard enough? It would seem that determinism can’t get any simpler than this: everything that we do, we are never able to opt freely not to do.

Or perhaps not; things get a bit murky in Harris’s philosophy on this point. One the one hand, Harris poses and answers the following question:

“If we cannot assign blame to the workings of the universe, how can evil people be held responsible for their actions? In the deepest sense, it seems, they can’t be. But in a practical sense, they must be. I see no contradiction in this. In fact, I think that keeping the deep causes of human behavior in view would only improve our practical response to evil. The feeling that people are deeply responsible for who they are does nothing but produce moral illusions and psychological suffering.”

Deep causes? Though it’s not for nothing that, with regard to many, this takes them around to God and religion. And, sure, if Harris wants to speculate “philosophically” about deep causes here and in regard to neuroscience then, perhaps, someday – of his own volition? – he will nail these “internal” deep causes down chemically and neurologically. It might even encompass QM interactions.

How about this…

If you think you grasp Sam’s point here, note how you imagine it might be applicable “in a practical sense” to Mary aborting her unborn baby. Or how you imagine it is applicable to your own chosen, “chosen” or “chosen” behaviors.

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

On the other hand, Harris ties to establish a notion of personal responsibility that “fits the facts”, which, in this case, are the facts of determinism — specifically, that human behaviour is as determined as the weather, and humans are essentially “neuronal weather patterns”.

Again, however, what does that encompass or not encompass? Does it include the arguments that he makes regarding the arguments that others make? Does it include me typing these worlds and you reading them?

For instance, there’s the part where over time weather becomes climate. And those like Al Gore arguing that because we do have free will, we are responsible for the greenhouse gases which some predict will result in catastrophic climate changes. Some insisting that we have already gone past the “tipping point”…the “point of no return”. Whereas, if human brains are no less an inherent manifestation of determinism, there’s only what could never have not unfolded in regard to climate change.

Harris’s solution is quite simple.

If his solution is just one more set of dominoes toppling over chemically and neurologically in the only possible reality, what does it mean to differentiate between simple and hard? How are they too not entirely – essentially, materially, phenomenologically – interchangeable?

In The Moral Landscape he observes that the last time he went to the market he was fully clothed, did not steal anything, and did not buy anchovies. “To say that I was responsible for my behaviour is simply to say that what I did was sufficiently in keeping with my thoughts, intentions, beliefs, and desires to be considered an extension of them.”

Back again to those “internal” components of our motivations and intentions. As though, either scientifically or philosophically, a definitive distinction can be made between the internal and the external factors in a wholly determined universe.

Which, in comparison with other animals, revolves around the distinction between genes and memes?

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

This [from above] implies that if someone does something that out of character, then they’re not responsible for it. Acting out of character is hardly unheard of: there are cases of generally law-abiding citizens who for the first 40 or 50 years of their lives do not steal, maim or kill, and then one day turn around and kill their wife (perhaps they found out she was having an affair, or an argument got out of control — neither of which I’m suggesting justifies killing!).

Alas, the part that I keep missing. If we do live in a wholly determined universe, then how can anything that we say or do be out of character? What, nature compelled Joe to behave only as he must behave for 40 or 50 years and then, out of the blue, autonomy switches on in his brain and he says and does things of his own volition? That too can’t be explained as but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

As for the author suggesting the killing is not justified, that, as well, might be just another one of nature’s dominoes toppling over on cue.

As implausible as it seems to excuse someone from responsibility in such cases merely because it’s not part of their usual behavioural repertoire, Harris actually embraces it:

“If…I had found myself standing in the market naked, intent upon stealing as many tins of anchovies as I could carry, this behaviour would be totally out of character; I would feel that I was not in my right mind, or that I was otherwise not responsible for my actions. Judgments of responsibility, therefore, depend on upon the overall complexion of one’s mind, not on the metaphysics of mental cause and effect.”

Okay, where did this new-found intention to steal come from? Is it a manifestation of Sam’s brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter? Is it as a result of a brain tumor or mental affliction in an otherwise free will world? Or, for any number of complex circumstantial contexts, did Sam believe that he had no choice but to steal…

As for the nudity, the same thing?

In any event, how could it not make all the difference in the world that Sam either had free will in that market or he didn’t?

And what does it mean to argue that Sam was entirely compelled by his brain to strip naked and steal anchovies, but that he is still entirely responsible morally for doing so?

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

Harris’s answer is, in essence, that what matters is whether people harbour the kinds of thoughts, intentions, beliefs and desires that will make them likely to commit moral offences, such as harming others. That is, if a man is the kind of person who wants and intends to kill people, then “we need entertain no notions of free will to consider him a danger to society”.

Sam’s answer. So, would he flat-out insist as well that if his own understanding of determinism is correct then those who express conflicting answers are also correct? Correct in the sense that they were never actually free to opt to answer it otherwise?

The surreal part? Brains grappling to understand themselves? In other words, given all that they do not – will not? cannot? – grasp about the human condition itself “somehow” fitting into existence of existence itself?

And in a No God universe without that “transcending” frame of mind, there are only mere mortals going about the business of being dominoes toppling over on cue again and again and again…all the way to the grave. To oblivion?

So? The point here [mine] is that others might hold him responsible for stealing those anchovies above that he was never able not to steal. And, in fact, they are holding him responsible only because they too were never able to freely opt not to.

Back then to how determinism [for some] is basically interchangeable with fate and destiny…in a world where everything that human beings think, feel, say and do is wholly determined by the laws of matter.

Is that Sam’s take on all of this too? Are his own “thoughts, intentions, beliefs and desires” just more chemical and neurological interactions “somehow” inherently intertwined in the world of the very, very, large and the very, very small?

Same as ours?

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

An out-of-control lawnmower may pose a danger to guests at a barbecue, but this threat does not depend on the lawnmower acting under its own free will. At the same time, this observation has nothing to do with showing that moral responsibility is compatible with hard determinism. Recognising that some entity poses a threat to people says nothing about whether that entity would be morally responsible should the potential threat become an actual harm.

Unless, of course, it says everything about it. After all, the gap between the matter in the lawn mower and the matter in the human brain that was able to invent it…?

Unless, of course, there is no gap at all.

Now all we need to do is to pin that down in such a way we can demonstrate how we opted freely to do so. That, in other words, we were not in turn compelled to by that same brain.

So if we say a human is morally responsible for their actions, but a lawnmower isn’t, this difference can’t turn on whether they’re deterministic systems — for they both are.

Indeed, it may be that we say this only because we were never able not to say it. Only the determinists themselves are no more capable of demonstrating that. And around and around we go here trying to pin it all down…philosophically? As though the arguments we make here are or are not necessarily autonomous?

Citing the thoughts, intentions, beliefs and desires of the human, which the lawnmower lacks, is not enough either, as these are as much the product of deterministic process as those that drive the behaviour of the lawnmower!

Unless, of course, those that cite this do so autonomically? Or unless “somehow” God and/or the universe did manage to install free will in minds that are “somehow” distinct from brains. The creation of souls, for example?

So what invests these deterministically caused causes with what it takes to establish moral responsibility? These are the kinds of questions that a compatibilist philosophy tries to deal with in one way or another. Harris doesn’t buy into these compatibilist approaches, and so it remains unclear why he should attach any importance at all to deterministically caused thoughts, intentions, beliefs and desires in underpinning moral responsibility.

Yeah, the part I keep coming back to. But it remains unclear because given this…

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?

Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.

Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.

…clarity itself remains well beyond the reach of both philosophers and scientists.

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

To make sense of Harris’s position, it’s important to recognise that he is not making a metaphysical or conceptual case for moral responsibility, but a legalistic or practical case for responsibility.

Back to that again. As though whether Sam thinks of moral responsibility metaphysically and conceptually or legalistically and practically, he is any less compelled to by his brain.

Harris rightly argues that regardless of whether a danger to people is the product of freely willed behaviour or blindly mechanical actions, a threat is a threat: an out-of-control lawnmower is dangerous, and we would want to stop the lawnmower by unplugging it, or directing it into a shed and locking the door behind it (a lawnmower prison), without thinking about free will for a second.

Okay, there are all of the things we should do here. But what does it mean to say we should do something that we were never able not to do in the first place? If something is a threat to us how can it not make all the difference in the world whether we either are or are not of our own free will able to thwart it?

As Harris points out, this practical perspective brings into focus questions about how we treat people who do bad things. He writes: “Clearly, we need to build prisons for people who are intent on harming others. But if we could incarcerate earthquakes and hurricanes for their crimes, we would build prisons for them as well.”

Practical perspective. In other words, when we discuss free will here, is that any different from when we act out what we believe here given the behaviors we choose? If how we think about people who do bad things and how for all practical purposes we react to this by punishing them are both manifestations of the only possible reality…?

What does it mean to say we need to build prisons in a world where we were never able not to say it? A world where the prisons were never not going to be built?

And, again, if the matter in a human brain obeys the same immutable laws that the matter in earthquakes and hurricanes obey, how then are the consequences of human behaviors not just another necessary component of the only possible reality?

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

Presumably we’re not supposed to consider earthquakes and hurricanes morally responsible for the deaths they often cause. Yet that doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t want to stop them occurring again, which is why we would build prisons for them (or do whatever it took to stop them occurring). The same logic applies to people: if some people are going to hurt or kill other people, then regardless of the causes of their actions it would be wise to take them out of the population and keep them somewhere else (in prison or a psychiatric unit). Such decisions have got nothing to do with believing in a libertarian sense of free will or assigning moral responsibility.

And around and around I go. Earthquakes and hurricanes cause death and destruction. Human beings cause death and destruction. And while it would be wise to stop all three of them from doing so, if what we do to stop them is the only thing that we were ever able to do…? This distinction between those who “choose” to kill and harm others and those who “choose” to lock them up for it. From the perspective of some determinists it’s a distinction without a difference if both the criminals and society are inherently intertwined in the only possible reality.

All this shows, however, is that there is a rationale for imprisoning people that is independent of questions of free will or moral responsibility. (The same goes for less severe responses to moral offences, such as fines or merely a good telling off; if these things cause people to fix their ways, even if this is a result of deterministic processes, then they’re useful tools for societies to wield.)

Again, it must be me, right? I simply fail to grasp that some “rationales” transcend the assumption particular determinists make that any “tool” society uses to sustain itself is in and of itself an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

Now, if, given free will, society is able to choose one tool rather than another, that’s different. But if the “moral offenders” are never able not to offend and those who offended are never able not to use the punishment tool to contain them…?

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Free Will
Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

I want to begin this article with the assumption that reality consists entirely of physical things and the forces which bind them. That is to say, I will assume the truth of materialism: the idea that the only things that ultimately exist are matter, energy, and physical forces.

Back then to how philosophers and scientists and theologians construe the human brain here. In other words, is it in sync with the laws of nature as all other matter seems to be…or “somehow” did it acquire autonomy?

Mind and matter? You tell me. But first you have to ask yourself [as always], “going back to what…the Big Bang? Biological matter? God?”

Then the attempt to close the gap between what you believe and what you are able to actually demonstrate is true for all rational men and women.

I will argue that this is consistent with a ‘materialistic compatibilism’ which preserves some sense of freedom and responsibility, and that this implies a positive conception of political and social liberty.

Of course, one can argue anything. After all, in order for an argument to be valid all that is necessary is that an agreement is reached regarding what the words mean. Thus, arguing about the nature of the human brain here is not the same is establishing empirically that we either do or do not have free will.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

Reality Consists of Physical Things

And yet who wouldn’t acknowledge the human mind clearly seems to be like no other matter around? Even other creatures able to grasp the world around them with sense perceptions that can actually be more [far more] acute than our own, don’t have brains capable of inventing…philosopohy? science? the Gods?

A materialist view of the world might strike you as characteristically modern and Western. In fact, it isn’t quite so modern, as Democritus was talking about reality consisting of ‘atoms and the void’ 2,500 years ago.

Maybe. But back then they were barely scratching the surface regarding that which science would eventually reveal to us. Unless, of course, some would remind us that in a thousand years – a hundred years? a decade? – many will look back at us today as having barely scratched the surface in regard to some things.

You might be itching to tell me that the idea is not originally a Western one, either. Nevertheless, let’s acknowledge that, for most of history, most people have lived with an explicitly dualist understanding of reality: they’ve thought that the world consists of what we might call ‘lumps of stuff’ on the one hand, and minds, spirits, or souls on the other.

Here we go again. Noting the gap between 1] what we think we understand about the material brain and that profoundly problematic ghost in the machine and 2] what we are still largely ignorant regarding. East or West, the parts we don’t even know that we don’t even know about any number of crucial things here hasn’t gone away. And that is certainly the case regarding “spirits, souls and minds”.

Yet what a great number of us think these days is that consciousness is not some non-physical thing, but something physical which emerges from the processes of the brain.

In other words, “somehow”.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

All of this [above] is, of course, hugely controversial, and the philosopher David Chalmers for instance has vigorously defended a form of what is called ‘property dualism’, which suggests that while physics has managed to explain all manner of natural phenomena, it will stumble and fail to find a purely physical account of consciousness.

Sooner or later we always get back around to this…dualism. The profoundly problematic mystery of the human brain itself. Where does the material brain end and the murky meanderings of minds rooted existentially out in particular worlds understood in particular ways begin? What we have established here empirically, scientifically and what we encompass in “worlds of words” as sheer speculation philosophically. Then those who just skip all the secular stuff and anchor the objective truth here in God.

Consciousness is, for Chalmers, a unique example of what he calls a ‘strongly emergent property’. In the other corner of this philosophical heavyweight contest stands Daniel Dennett. Dennett’s position is that while consciousness is presently mysterious, the physical sciences will yield its secrets in good time.

See what I mean? And until the physical sciences do in fact resolve the conundrum embedded in a “material mind”, it is not likely that “in good time” will include the time that we are still around. Instead, one by one, we will shuffle off this mortal coil utterly oblivious as to what mind actually is going back to where our own fits into the mind-boggling mystery that is existence itself.

Only, of course, that’s not how it works at all, is it? Instead, all that is really necessary “here and now” is for each of our minds to believe what it does about minds and brains. In other words, we believe what we do and that is what prompts us to behave as we do. And it is human behavior that precipitates actual consequences. For ourselves and for others.

On the other hand, in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, even our behavior itself is “beyond our control”. As, for example, when we dream.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

All of this is very interesting, but the important point for us is that even Chalmers does not question that consciousness emerges from the physical brain (he says that it ‘supervenes’ upon it) but only that we can never understand how it does so.

You know what’s coming…

I’d ask Chalmers whether the reason he questions or does not question what he does here about free will is because he was never able not to do other than what his brain compelled him to do? Or is he another of what I construe [perhaps erroneously] to be a “free will determinist”?

Though – click – we seem to be in sync regarding whatever his answer might be. In other words, that “here and now” neither science nor philosophy is able to explain either the material brain or the “ghost in the machine”. Let alone how they may or may not be intertwined.

In our “souls” perhaps?

No matter; the fact that you can radically alter my consciousness by hitting me over the head or drugging me suffices to demonstrate that my mind is, somehow or other, bound up with the operation of my brain.

The Charles Whitman Syndrome. Only he had a brain tumor which propelled – compelled? – him to go on a shooting spree resulting in multiple deaths.

And that’s got to perturb all of us given that any number of mental afflictions might cause us to do things which “here and now” we might deem to be unthinkable. And that’s presuming of course that “somehow” we have acquired free will.

The psycho-somatic self. Almost as scary as the fractured and fragmented self to some of us.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

Compatibilism and Responsibility

Compatibilism is the idea that the materialist picture of a cause-and-effect universe can be reconciled with the intuition we have that we are free and responsible for our actions.

Intuition. Yep, that’s what any number of “free will determinists” here seem to fall back on. Okay, they agee, their brains are in sync with the laws of matter. But “somehow” deep down inside them is their own rendition of the ghost in the machine. A “soul” implanted by God perhaps. Or maybe, instead, a profoundly problematic manifestation of the universe itself [re pantheism].

They simply shrug off this part…

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

…and “deduce” autonomy into existence philosophically in a world of words. Well, after first defining it of course.

The reason why many consider this a stretch isn’t hard to understand. If my consciousness is the mere by-product of physical forces, then everything that flows from it is equally a product of those forces. Indeed, the atoms and molecules in my brain are there because of a chain of causes going back to the Big Bang.

And then right around the corner from that is all the other “spooky” stuff that none of us are privy too. Here, free will is grappled with “theoretically”.

As for connecting the dots between “in my head” and “out in the world”, well, what in particular is in whose head out in what particular world? And then the gap between what science thinks it means to go back to the Big Bang and where the Big Bang itself becomes this enormous leap of faith given among other things, this:

“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” nasa

This position is called ‘hard determinism’, and seems pretty consistent with the ‘atoms and the void’ universe I defend. ‘No minds or spirits’ frequently equates, on this view, with ‘no choice’, but I want to modify that conclusion.

Go ahead, let him modify it. But he’s still stuck with being unable to pin down whether or not he was ever able to do so of his own volition.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

The most famous philosopher to be sceptical about floaty metaphysical stuff yet also try to maintain a notion of moral responsibility was David Hume. For him, the issue is not whether our actions are caused (they must be, since our actions would be unpredictable otherwise), but the origins of the causal chains involved.

And yet isn’t he the one who made that crucial distinction between “cause” and “correlation”? Thus, even to the extent we “somehow” did acquire autonomy – and this is confirmed unequivocally by brain scientists – we can never trace that back to an ultimate cause. God or No God.

Unless, of course, we can.

Though in a God world, there is always the possibility that He will reveal Himself.

Broadly, if the causes of our actions are to be found within our own personalities or characters, we can be held responsible for them. This sounds reasonable. If I rob because I am greedy, then my greed is the cause of my actions and I am responsible for them. On the other hand, if I rob someone because you have threatened me with violence if I don’t, then the origin of the causal chain lies outside of me and I am not responsible.

Again however: How broadly? It can only be as broad as the capacity of the human brain itself to know things. And what if we are not actually hard-wired to grasp the most rational understanding of the brain?

And if our personalities and characters are in turn but inherent manifestations of the only possible reality?

Next up: “the passions”…

However, this kind of thinking, which equates freedom with a lack of coercion, flies in the face of what we now know about the origins of what Hume called ‘the passions’ and their role in motivating behaviour. Exploring these issues has, it turns out, profound implications for the role of philosophy in our lives, as well as calling into question the sufficiency of Hume’s conception of freedom as non-coercion.

Human passions – intense emotional and psychological states – truly do muddy the waters here. Not unlike connecting the dots between the behaviors we choose and even deeper components of the human brain…the id, drives, instincts, biological imperatives, subconscious and unconscious awareness.

Of course, philosophers seem more intent [to me] on basically sweeping these variables under the rug. Instead, it’s more about what we can pin down logically and epistemologically – if only theoretically – in the dueling definitions and deductions that are often exchanged here.

And even if we are persuaded – driven? – more by our emotions and intuitions than a reasoning mind, emotions and intuition are [to me] no less rooted existentially in dasein.

You can focus in on the right way to think about the morality of capital punishment…or the right way to feel about it.

It’s not for nothing [in my view] that some “think up” their own rendition of an “intrinsic self”. They “just know” and “just feel” deep down inside that capital punishment is either moral or immoral.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

Hume rightly considered that the passions, or in modern terms, our emotions, are essential for understanding human motivation. As he famously put it: “Reason is and only ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office but to serve and obey them.”

Okay, but if both our reasons and our emotions are [existentially] the embodiment of dasein out in a particular world historically and culturally [and ever and always evolving and changing], how are we not then stuck there until philosophers or scientists are able to encompass something in the way of a deontological moral philosophy and political agenda?

Instead, we live in a world where there are hundreds and hundreds of hopelessly conflicting One True Paths to Enlightenment, with all the advocates insisting that their own path really is the One True Path.

He was rightly scathing about Kant’s idea that bloodless reason could motivate action. We now know that our emotional responses have their source in the limbic system deep in the brain. Anger and fear reside in our amygdala, while the reward centre of our brains is the ventral striatum.

Claiming knowledge of that is one thing, providing a step-by-step explanation as to how the brain and the mind and “I” are intertwined when we choose, “choose” or “choose” a particular behavior another thing altogether.

There are those who will be rewarded for aborting an unborn baby and those who will be punished for doing so. They all have pretty much the same brain components, however. But the lives they live [their own set of memes] predispose them to go in different directions.

The frontal cortex, just behind your forehead, by contrast, is both the rational instrument by which we work out how to satisfy our desires, and the source of plenty of rationalisations of them.

Psychological defense mechanisms let’s call them. That way everyone is able to rationalize, well, anything right?

History to date, for example.

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Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

Hume was good at recognising our tendency to go in for such rationalisations, but, I’d suggest, a little too sniffy about the role of reason as a moderator of our urges. I say this because we also know quite a bit about how the ‘impulse control function’ of the frontal cortex can be either nurtured or neutered. Specifically, people with a damaged frontal lobe tend to be very bad at impulse control.

Sometimes the more you think about things like this the queasier you…feel?

Reflect on the many afflictions to the brain that are completely beyond your control. You do things such that never in a million years would you have ever imagined doing them before…simply because the tumor or the chemical and nerological interactions in your brain compel you to. Freedom and ethics and moral responsibility…then?

The combinations can be…mind-boggling?

Damage to the frontal cortex can be the result of head trauma (a good reason not to let children play high impact sports), neglect, abuse, poor diet, or a lack of certain micro-nutrients including lithium, or due to environmental pollution by, amongst other things, lead and nitrous oxides.

Then the “social” consequences…

Not surprisingly, exposure to these things seems correlated with relative poverty. Moreover, social inequality itself may be a major trigger of the production of the stress hormone cortisol, which is the key neurotransmitter for the amygdala and the chemical enemy of serotonin. Serotonin is the ‘fuel’ of the frontal cortex and the impulse control associated with it.

Let’s not go there? In particular the “rugged individualist” conservatives. They convince themselves that success and failure revolve entirely around your own efforts. If they are successful they deserve to be. If others are failures they have no one to blame but themselves.

Straight out of “the gilded age”, right Agnes?

And all the more mind-boggling still is trying to wrap your head around the belief that nothing any of us do is not beyond our control.

[iambiguous]

Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

In short, what the development of neuropsychology has done is to extend the causal chain so we don’t have to stop our explanation, as Hume did, with the individual’s personality.

“Neuropsychology is the branch of science that studies the physiological processes of the nervous system and relates them to behavior and cognition, in terms both of their normal function and of the dysfunctional processes associated with brain damage.” APA

Over and again the assumption being that one day we might actually grasp where the somatic stops and the psychological begins. Or the other way around? And as soon as we note brain damage we are recognizing “conditions” that are often “beyond our control”.

We now know quite a bit about what makes us the way we are, including understanding certain genetic predispositions. This has profound implications for ideas about responsibility and freedom.

However much some think they know “in their head” about moral responsibility and human freedom, it’s still not enough to resolve anything. In other words, “for all practical purposes”. As for “ideas” about it, those are important, sure. But to the extent the “resolution” revolves around definitions and deductions, not much hasn’t already been assumed regarding the human brain here.

Hume’s view of freedom as lack of coercion was too simple. We can say that, to the extent that a person has a fully functional frontal cortex, they have good impulse control and so are responsible for their actions. This is the materialistic compatibilism I referred to at the start of the article.

Hume’s view of freedom. My view of Hume’s view of freedom. Your view of my view of Hume’s view of freedom. Okay, but what if the frontal cortex of all human brains are no less an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality? Hume said and we say only that which we were never able not to say. About materialistic compatibilism…about everything.

Including this…

My frontal cortex is, largely, the reason that the flash of anger I feel when you rear-end my car doesn’t turn into a physical assault upon you. If I lack such frontal cortex function, I may well pose a danger to others and this may justify intervention to prevent me causing them harm. It does not, however, justify retribution being visited upon me for any supposedly ‘willful’ wickedness, as my action is now beyond my willful control.

Everything is justified in a wholly determined universe because everything is fated, destined. To harm or not to harm is not really the question at all in a world where to harm or to not harm others is entirely scripted by nature itself.

[iambiguous]

Materialism, Freedom & Ethics
Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

A Positive Conception of Political & Social Liberty

The tendency to equate freedom with a lack of coercion has a long history and some complex motivations.

Okay, but what if this history of complex motivation is in and of itself just another inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possible reality? Again, back to “external coercions” and “internal components” of the compatibilist frame of mind. Someone puts a gun to Mary’s head and tells her to abort Jane or he’ll pull the trigger. Meanwhile the internal interactions in her brain – chemical, neurological – “somehow” allow her to embody something in the vicinity of autonomy?

John Stuart Mill, who was much influenced by Hume’s compatibilism, explicitly states at the beginning of his famous 1859 essay On Liberty that it is not going to deal with issues pertaining to the “so-called liberty of the will” but instead with civil or social liberty.

Right. As though civil and social liberties are not themselves dependent on the extent to our “will” either is or is not autonomous.

Meanwhile, back up into the intellectual clouds “analysis”…

He tells us this as a point of clarification, but as scholars such as John Skorupski have suggested, Mill’s occasional nods to paternalism in terms of state intervention belie his claims to see liberty in purely negative terms (that is, as non-coercion). Specifically, he acknowledges that certain social goods, such as education and free debate, are prerequisites for the growth and development of the individual “according to the inward forces which make them a living thing.” He even goes so far as to suggest that the state should fund such education for those who can’t afford it, although he worries about the state limiting what might be learnt in school. This is one reason why Mill is sometimes held to be at the crossroads between ‘classical’ or ‘negative’ liberalism, and its ‘progressive’ or ‘positive’ successor.

It seems predicated on the assumption that the author and Skorupski and Mill and Hume were/are in possession of free will when discussing and debating free will.

And, sure, maybe they [and we] are. But arguing one way or the other is not the same as demonstrating it one way or the other.

And then, even in assuming free will, the distinction between what we choose to think, feel, say and do in the either/or world, with a minimal of communication breakdowns, and the manner in which communication often breaks down in regard to conflicting value judgments.