Years ago I decided that the issue of "free will vs. determinism"
is
irrelevant to questions of ethics, and untestable with respect to
matters of science. Since then I have tried to avoid wasting time on
it. But it comes up every now and then in Freethinker circles, and
many people are lured into arguing at length over it.
Our ordinary practice is to ascribe "free will" to beings
which are
conscious and intelligent. "Conscious" meaning that they have
an
internal ("mental") model of the external world, which they
use to
anticipate the consequences of different "imagined" courses
of
action. "Intelligent" meaning that their model is complex
and
sophisticated, and their imagination likewise, so they can find
courses of action that will serve their purposes even in novel
situations. "Free will" in such cases means that the great
bulk of
the IMMEDIATE causes of their actions lie inside their "skin"
rather
than outside, AND that their actions are not easily or reliably
predictable by an outside observer.
This use of the term "free will" does not require denying
the
hypothesis of "universal causation", nor does it depend in
any way on
whether "causation" is always a single-valued function (i.e.
whether
the same inputs always produce the same output, or whether instead
the output may be any of several values with some statistical
probability for each.) In other words, this use of the term "free
will" is fully compatible with "determinism". Beings
with "minds"
sufficiently sophisticated to have "free will" may operate
their
"minds" deterministically.
We assign "moral responsibility" to beings with "free
will", we
assign praise and blame, rewards and punishments, to such beings,
because that is the easiest (often the only) way we know to intervene
in the causal chain. We want them to behave in one way rather than
another, so we initiate some causes that we hope will have the effect
of modifying their behavior. We hope they will include in their
"mental" model that we will respond to their actions with
praise/blame, reward/penalty, and that they will therefore "choose"
a
different course of action. The hypothesis of "universal causation"
is irrelevant to this.
If we gain some ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of the causal chain affecting their
actions, then we may intervene at a different place. For example, if
we find that childhood exposure to high levels of lead in the
environment leads to neurological damage that results in a lack of
ability to control impulses, i.e. their ability to control their own
behavior by "rationality" is impaired, then we may seek to
reduce
crime by banning leaded gasoline, lead-based paint, lead solder in
water pipes, and so forth. But this is not the same as "determinism",
considered as a philosophical hypothesis.
"Determinism", the hypothesis of Universal Causation, says
that "all
events have causes; there are no uncaused events". This is a
universal claim. The critic may offer as a counterexample some event
with no apparent cause. The believer in Determinism will reply "the
cause may be unknown at present, but there must be one". This is
not
something that can ever be proved or disproved, by any amount of
evidence, short of complete examination of the entire Universe
throughout all of Time. It is a starting assumption, a working
hypothesis. Some have claimed that it is a NECESSARY assumption for
the practice of science, but I don't think so. Science can be
practiced perfectly well under the assumption that many/most events
have causes.
So: I see no reason to spend one more second debating the question
of
"free will versus determinism".
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