I am going to make an assertion that many of you may find quite unsettling. Michael Vick should not be considered morally blameworthy for the animal abuse crimes he has been convicted of. What I mean by this is that Michael Vick should not be considered to have possessed the free will to act other than how he did. Why? Well, the simple answer is as follows: if I were to put you in Michael Vick's shoes, you would have committed the same crimes. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.
The more complicated answer is that free will is a mirage. What do I mean when I say that? What I mean is that every supposedly free choice we make is the product of causes that determine the choice we make. That's right. While you may think that you have the "freedom" to go and buy a one-way ticket to Tahiti, the simple fact of the matter is that you are no more "free" to make that decision than a monarch butterfly is free to decide whether they will migrate south this fall or not. The only difference between you and the monarch is that you are higher functioning and there are a combination of biological and environmental factors which will influence you to buy or not buy the ticket. Heck, you might even decide to flip a coin! However, the suggestion that you made the decision free from causal factors that entirely determined your decision is an absurdity.
If you accept this argument, does this mean that Vick should not be punished for his crimes? Of course not. However, it does mean that punishment for any crime for the sake of retribution is a waste of time because the agent who acted could not have acted otherwise. Punishing people for bad behavior because you think they should be punished for making the wrong choice is just as silly as heaping praise on them for doing something good when they supposedly could have chosen to do something bad. No, the reason for punishment should be to deter the offender and others from committing the crime in the future.
If you give this concept a bit of thought, it makes perfect sense but also has some unsettling implications. As I discussed this with my wife, she asked: "does this mean that I shouldn't blame you if you cheated on me"? The answer to this question, I believe, is "no" - not in the sense that I could have made a different decision than the one I made at the time. If the spurned spouse's desire is to save the relationship, there may be plenty to be gained by trying to impose moral blame on the cheater but only insofar as that blame might cause the actor to act differently in the future. If the spurned spouse has decided that the marriage has been irreparably harmed, there is truly no point in blaming the actor for something which they did not have the free will to change.
Please note that the phrase "did not have free will" is simply meant to connote that there is no such thing as contra-causal free will. If this topic interests you (and I must admit that I find it utterly fascinating), I recommend a list of resources which you can find at the website for Naturalism.org: http://www.naturalism.org/freewill.htm and, in particular, the superb article: "Fully Caused: Coming to Terms with Determinism" by the Center for Naturalism director Tom Clark: http://www.naturalism.org/determinism.htm. I particularly like Clark's definition of determinism:
Determinism says that given a physical state of affairs, for instance the state of your brain, body and environment at this instant (time T), there’s a single possible next state of affairs at T+1 as necessitated by causal laws discovered to hold at various levels of description, atomic, chemical, and biological.
As Clark explains in his article, the fact that our actions are fully caused does not change the fact that we are active, moral and rational agents in our own right. We remain "capable of creativity, self-actualization and initiative. Taking the cause and effect, deterministic perspective doesn’t lessen human variability, nor does it undercut our capacities for self-change, innovation, or determination to get things done. It only explains where these valuable capacities come from: our biological and cultural heritage, our upbringing, education and role models."
The amusing upshot of all of this: I don't really have the choice about whether or not to be an atheist nor do theists have free will to disbelieve. However, I can continue with my efforts to exert a cause that will result in them achieving what I believe (though apparently not freely) to be the only rational course.
We are only getting to know how brain really works: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227141.200-disorderly-genius-how-chaos-drives-the-brain.html.
ReplyDeleteThanks * for the link to a great article. However, a random cause is still a cause. Determinism doesn't have to result in predictability.
ReplyDeleteThe most obvious assumption would be that all of us are a short step away from mental illness. I bet researchers would love to have the opportunity to study Friedrich Nietzsche.
Tell all of that to the politicians. The most frequently cited principle of sentencing criminal behaviour in both Canada and the United States continues to be denunciation.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. (Of course, if you're right, then I shouldn't compliment you, you couldn't have done otherwise).
ReplyDeleteBut you're right: if biology, chemistry, and laws of physics, etc. are all that exists, then free will is an illusion. But I know I have free will. So do you. So I think that assumption is fatally flawed.
Matthew, how do you know you have contra-causal free will (i.e. the freedom to act aside from the biological and enviromental factors leading up to your action). Free will is an illusion my friend ... but a damn convincing one.
ReplyDeleteThe Atheist Missionary, who knows what else we will find there...
ReplyDeleteThere is a small set of things we can properly claim to know just because we directly experience them. "I exist" is probably one of them. I'd say "I think" and "I choose" are also things we know directly.
ReplyDeleteIf a belief system starts leading you farther and farther away from a common sense understanding of the world, and towards beliefs that are more and more contrary to what seems to be our experience - at what point do you abandon those beliefs? The "illusion" of free will is so convincing, I think it's enough to rethink the assumptions that force one to say there is no free will.
One more link: http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/2009/05/experimental-logic.html
ReplyDelete*, first of all, let me say that you are golden. One of the pleasures of maintaining this blog is that people far smarter than I drop by from time to time and leave me the wiser for it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a fascinating article. To my mind, a borderline contradiction is still a contradiction - it's black and white. You simply cannot be near and not near something at the same time as long as near is a defined term. I believe using the term requires it to be (at least implicitly) defined. While I find Ripley's discussion interesting, I think his results simply reconfirm what religion already tells us: humans are often illogical! Understanding why won't change that fact any more than understanding why chimps can't comprehend the special theory of relativity will assist in teaching them the theory.
I strongly suggest you listen to this Daniel Denett talk where he reconciles quite elegantly the notions of determinism and free will, using human's capacity for avoidance and competence.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLAbWFCh1E
"No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same": Victor Frankl.
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