A letter in response to arguments against Determinism

"It is unthinkable to me that a living being can be compelled to move by something outside of itself. Influenced, certainly. Threatened, certainly. But utterly dominated to the extent that it is no longer separate from that which would control it? This is surely impossible."

Is it really that impossible? A few weeks ago in the Philosophy Takeaway there was an article on "Twelve Years a Slave" where the author seems to complain that the slaves did not stand up for themselves, to free themselves from the tyranny that was their existence, that they had a choice but failed to take it. Whilst this is all very well said, I don't believe that many did have a choice - for many it was either get on with life as it was or get beaten or killed, mauled by dogs as they tried to escape, whipped if they attempted to express creativity through writing, genocide for those that planned an overthrow of any kind.

Biologically we are predetermined not to put ourselves at deaths door (of course there are always exceptions to the rule which we will go into later). I assume the level of fear for these people kept them down, they did not have a choice - the ones who did rise up, what made them do this? Was it simply a choice one day? Or was it something that made them snap, that caused them to do this?

You put your hand in a hot oven. Your biological reaction (determined) is to remove your hand as soon as possible, you do not physically have time to think of a reaction, the person in themselves makes no choice - it is determined. Only if that person in themselves has trained themselves to not react - (what we must look at is the reason they trained themselves to do this) do they not remove their hand from the oven - only if they are determined not to. The very phrase 'determined to do something' in itself implies choice, a decision - but a decision does not just pop out of nowhere - even the smallest one. The burning protesting monks are determined to make a point, but what socio-political-religious beliefs have contributed to them doing this? If that monk had all his memories removed, was put into a different body, even had a different brain - would he still burn himself? I don't think so. It seems you have an idea of a sense of self that is more like a soul, a mind, as you put - free will. Where is this free will, how is it independent to our biological functions, to our memories, emotions, reactions, relationships?

In your second point you claim "deterministic theories are often used to take away responsibility from certain groups in society" and go on to say that this cultivates failure Surely here you are allowing for determinism itself, you are saying that our actions are determined by determinism itself. There is a round circle of cause and effect. You are claiming the point you are trying so hard to argue against. You are saying people are forced to take welfare, when in your opinion we all have free choice - thus contradicting yourself.

In order to say whether determinism negates responsibility we must first derive what responsibility is. As far as I can tell responsibility is a feeling, a feeling of ownership - "I am responsible for what happens on my deals at work" - which can turn into feelings of guilt "I feel responsible that I knocked that old lady over" or feelings of happiness "I feel responsible for putting a smile on my child's face." If this is the case then determinism in no way negates responsibility, it creates it through cause and effect - if we did not have these - then we wouldn't have the emotions, the feelings that come with responsibility. But what about those pesky criminals I hear you ask? Are they not just victims to their circumstances? Of course this is one logical conclusion. But if we stop locking people up, stop punishing people as they couldn't help it then there would be bloody murder. Responsibility has evolved to protect society, locking people up is supposedly a deterrent, it is meant to rehabilitate those that could not see how their actions affect people and trying to cause them to next time look at the affects. I'm not saying it always works or is a good system - but these at least are the aims.

"The fact that there are people from privileged backgrounds who rally against such privilege, the late Tony Benn being a prime example, indicates that we can never remove the individual's reaction to their surroundings from the equation; we can always reject our surroundings once we are mature enough to do so. As much as we are influenced by our surroundings so too can we influence them in turn."

How is this maturity determined? The fact that someone goes against their background does not imply a sudden change of free will. One does not simply change one’s mind one day, there must have been factors that made him do so. Those who believe in determinism are not saying that things will never change, that every day will be the same, that because things are the way they are there is no escape, that there will never be a chain of events that cause us to develop as a society in one way or another. The woman who leaves her abusive husband does not just choose to leave him because she decided to, she does so because she has finally had enough, that he has done something that has gone too far, that her friends or family have convinced her, or quite simply she has reached her level of tolerance.

People do surprise us however - people moving up either financially, in society, spiritually, artistically, intellectually, and so on. A genius (which you have claimed is proof against determinism) is always an intellectual surprise. You account for this as free will, a determinist will account for this as the fact that we don't know all the facts. You take the case that if there is an increase in unemployment an increase in robbery will follow. This is a well known statistic, but of course we cannot just say our actions are determined but also our opinions. Not only is there a circular determinate that this will possibly give people more of an idea, more of a belief that this an option for them - causing them to do it; as a society we will be surprised by the exceptions to the rule as we have been determined to believe this. These exceptions may feel themselves to have other choices; they may just feel themselves to choose not to. But dig deeper and ask why has this person come to the conclusion that they can do something else, and why am I surprised by that. There are many ideas we have to take time to rationally consider and throw out, if we have the opportunity/capacity/are inclined to do this.

Another point is that we do not know everything yet - to make a completely correct statistical judgment of what is going to happen in the future you need all the facts of every possible situation. At this point in time this seems like an impossibility - but once we called the weather God's will, and now we are getting closer and closer to predicting what it will do next.

Even if free will does exist - you have admitted that interactions can influence people. If we were not to encroach on anybody's liberties then we would not have relationships at all, nobody would ever do anything as they'd be worried how it would affect someone else. With determinism, yes you are part of one big stinking whole, bad things happen, good things happen - it does not mean we should just sit in bed and go well whatever happens, happens. We are part of something; our actions mean something, even if they are not chosen. We are still conscious, this consciousness is just made up of lots of things that have happened to us, that have determined our hopes, our dreams, our limits and our responsibilities. They will inflict (hopefully positively) on the consciousness of others. We should ride the waves of cause and effect and if you're that way inclined, hopefully put our own mark on the world that causes it to be a better place.

Rhiannon Whiting

Six Points Against Determinism

I) It is unthinkable to me that a living being can be compelled to move by something outside of itself. Influenced, certainly. Threatened, certainly. But utterly dominated to the extent that it is no longer separate from that which would control it? This is surely impossible. Each conscious living being has its own inner-world. Each living being experiences the world in a way that is shared, but nonetheless unique to it. We are all intertwined, undoubtedly. But we are not all One.

We cannot say, therefore, that it is possible for any outside influence to dominate us; to make us act in a way that was unavoidable, or absolute. Any environment allows us some element of choice. To succeed in any environment requires us to meet it half way. The work is never done for you. Even in the most perfect conditions imaginable, you will still need to be driven into action from within yourself.

If we generated an economic and political system which was fairer (and less stupid) than our current grotesque chimera, we would still see some people meeting life half way and others not doing so. We must always include the 'chance-element' of individual human will.

We should strive to understand the influences which shape our character, and we should try to evolve society into a more equal and moral body. But this does not mean that we can engineer away all of the toxins of Man through a mere system change. Many are the social and material determinists who would say otherwise.

II) Deterministic theories are often used to take away responsibility from certain groups in society. The consequences of such thought might lead to the most supreme elitism: we have the ability to decide our own destiny, they do not. Are we not then granting certain generalized sections of society a free pass to be self-pitying and self-hating? By offering people the chance to fail and deny responsibility, are we not cultivating failure?

By maintaining a system which steals away responsibility from anyone (particularly the poor) we are justifying the woeful institutions which sustain their conditions. By reducing and simplifying the experiences of such groups we are not only lazy thinkers, we are allowing the lazy 'solution' to triumph: “They cannot look after themselves, so they must spend their lives on welfare. See, we are doing our part by considering them!” (Middle Class Liberal 1A, The Book of General Middle Class Liberalisms). Yet we must surely have realized by now the psychic and spiritual poverty which can exist regardless of our material conditions.

Even if welfare pay-outs were to the tune of a million pounds a week I would oppose them, for they would not be able to fulfil the need to feel useful and personally responsible for one's own actions - two necessary conditions for flourishing esteem. They would still deflate and flatten the human spirit!

For a person to be governed from above is insult enough. For a person to be grateful for a subsistence wage is equally upsetting. But for a person to be forced to suckle from the teet of a faceless institution, where grown adults are treated like school-children, is the greatest of insults. And an insult against one individual is an insult against individualism itself, for true individualism must be a universal principle to be just. This is why we must consider the suckling State to be a debilitator, preventing the growth of any empowering consciousness by drip feeding us just enough to survive.

III) “If only I had been born into better conditions; a better school, a better house, with better parents. I too could have been a parasitic Chief Executive of a parasitic corporation.” If this sentence sounds familiar to you, then you are surely in the minority! Advocates of determinism will speak of the most 'successful' members in a society and use them as examples of how economic and social factors shape our chances to succeed. These same advocates of determinism are often, without speaking too generally, of an egalitarian stripe, and are trying to convince us all that our position in society is determined, and that 'success' can therefore be engineered.

Yet surely it makes more sense, if one is an egalitarian, to see the so-called winners in the capitalist system as the ultimate losers - people who were too callous or unimaginative for anything more than accumulation of power and material wealth; the basest and lowest desires available to us. Far from being privileged and enviable, the so-called Great Man or Woman is a soulless slave to their own desires, one who despoils other people's chances for their own twisted ideals of self-worth; one who sees no value outside of monetary gain; the most pitiable and empty creature imaginable, one whom I struggle to call a complete human or feel even the remotest love for.

The fact that there are people from privileged backgrounds who rally against such privilege, the late Tony Benn being a prime example, indicates that we can never remove the individual's reaction to their surroundings from the equation; we can always reject our surroundings once we are mature enough to do so. As much as we are influenced by our surroundings so too can we influence them in turn.

To be successful is not to be a parasite or a dictator or a slavering monster. To be successful is to be just, to be fair, to be creative and to love liberty for all. These virtues of character are available to anyone, and as such any determinist who claims that success is out of the hands of each individual ought to re-examine their own criteria.

IV) Deterministic predictions can be useful in a broad sense. ”If there is an increase in unemployment, an increase in robbery will follow.” This is useful to know, especially if you are in a position of political power. Although it does not mean that the increase in robbery is due to the actions of people being determined by their social and material conditions, only that they are choosing a new means to fulfill their basic needs (there is after all, the percentage of newly unemployed in the example who did not turn to robbery). Our choices may be limited by circumstance, this is a sad and unjust truth, but there are always choices to be made.

Furthermore, these kinds of predictions often assume that the values people have absorbed, or chosen, are some kind of fundamental law of reality. An increase in robbery will follow an increase in unemployment if and only if the people within a society accept the values of that society (i.e. acquisition of material wealth, work ethic, shame and praise, and so forth). I highly doubt a group of newly enlightened zen buddhists would turn to robbery if they faced unemployment!

Deterministic predictions are not so useful in a narrower sense. The nearer we close in on an individual's character, the harder it becomes to make any form of predictions. To introduce a scientific analogy, gravity seems all well and good when you are dropping a hat onto a table, but examine it at a quantum level and it becomes harder, if not impossible, to predict the motion of its infinitesmal components. The more complex the prediction, the less likely it is to be fulfilled. The vaguer and broader the prediction, the more likely it is to be fulfilled. This could put the determinist on the same par as a tabloid horoscope if they are not too careful!

V) Genius! Genius is not predictable. Of necessity, it 'transcends' (or rather just pushes out) the boundaries. Genius indicates that the world is not static, and not entirely predictable. It is in flux, and sometimes it allows an out-and-out genius to flourish and benefit us all. How many men and women of genius will emerge in the next fifty years? What will they bring to the narrative of humanity? Who knows!

VI) To close, let us consider a (possibly) utopian scenario. We can imagine a state where everyone is free to act so long as they do not harm the liberty of another, recognising that liberty springs from society, and society requires equality. In this truly free state, can it be said that anyone's actions are determined by their environment, social and material conditions?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Freedom

Determinism - By Rudy Mcnair

A number of Ancient Greek philosophers from various different schools once concluded that, for everything that happens, there are inescapable conditions that determine its occurrence.  Diodorus arrived at logical determinism, I think, as a consequence of belief in signs, omens and portents from which can be discovered what is going to happen and why.  However, in the development of Western philosophy, “antecedent causes” and “initial conditions” are still useful clues to the workings of “reality” and what is logically necessary.  Materialist philosophers of the Enlightenment maintained that men are stranded in nature and can govern neither themselves nor anything else.  Even Schopenhauer accepted that irrational forces influence human events.  A.J. Ayer  decided that all significant statements are “scientific”, or are nonsense. This means that value statements (socially meaningful, ethical terms, like “good” or “wrong”) are thought to violate this philosophy. Logical positivism has consequently sought to distinguish between ‘logical’ concepts (which are true or false) termed “nonmodal” and problems of what might and might not be possible or “fulfilled”.

Desperate for meaning, so desperate - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

Desperate for meaning, so desperate

Determinism states that things could not have been different to how they are now. This also means that the future cannot be any different to how it is 'planned' out to be. If we believe that we are just the end of a long chain of cause and effect outside of our control, then the future must also be equally discoverable.

I wish to concentrate on the oldest form of determinism, Fate. Great heroes throughout history have risen up to meet their destiny and do the bidding of Fate. Fate represents a certain form of order or balance that must be restored. With this destiny comes a sense of purpose; an end result that we have to strive for. I wish to demonstrate that, sadly, purpose is not simple, is not black and white, and that beyond humanity there is probably nothing but the slow march of nature.

Everything happens for a reason?

It does not take much imagination to think of a child being born mutated by radioactive waste - this happens every day in certain warzones. If we examine the misfortune of the child on an individual level we quite simply have to ask 'why is this particular child suffering this particular fate?' What could the child have done to deserve being born with such deformities, with a lifespan no greater than a few tortured breaths. There is quite simply no way the child could have deserved or earned this particular situation for some wrong doing. Evidently, if Fate does exist it is greatly unfair, and does not always reward or punish who it is supposed to.

 

Is the child then part of some greater scheme of things? If this is the case, then Fate is not accounting for us on an individual basis, but is considering some larger overall narrative - the horrors of war, for instance, could be part of some fateful plan to end a greater suffering by shocking us with its horrible nature. However if this is the case then why is one individual sacrificed over another? What possible explanation is there for my being born in a materially rich environment and someone else being born in the worst imaginable scenario? It seems random, without reason. Yet fate is not random and it cannot decide lightly who shall live and who shall die, or else it is no longer fate – a reason requires reasoning.

Now we have a greater question. Why is one part of the world suffering the worst imaginable fate (the death of children) when another isn't? This idea of deserving, reaping what one sows, is heavily undermined by the events happening in the world at this very moment. People are not getting what they deserve – the people we would call bad are not being punished, and the people we call good are not always rewarded. Does Fate have a reason to punish the greater percentage of humankind?

Fate is nothing more than a tradition from a more superstitious age. At one time it would have been used to justify the status of the powerful and placate the powerless by assuring them it could not have been any other way. When combined with power, this ability to look into the future with as much certainty as we can look into the past, is a dangerous thing. Clearly it is an idea which could only have survived in a world where knowledge of the world was incomplete. Fate could only exist in a world where progress was slow, or non-existent, with cultures imagining themselves to hold eternal answers to eternal questions; fate could only exist if the thinkers of a culture thought they had reached the end of their development on earth.

  To prove that knowledge of the world decreases the credibility of fate, we need only look at the vast increase in the human population in the last century, the annihilation of diseases and the dramatic raising of our material conditions. If there is a reason for everything, and everything leads back to fate, then this cosmic force has chosen now of all times to populate the earth with humans. Ideas of reincarnation are massively threatened; for once being born human was the sign that your soul was rising up the ladder to nirvana. The simple conclusion from this is that there have been a lot of good tigers around recently. Can you see how absurd a chain of reincarnation (insects at the bottom, humans at the top) would be if it was proposed in our modern world of massive population growth and endless technological change?

So, where do we stand?

Those who claim  they can see into the future should not be written off. How do we know that someone doesn't have visions of what may be, the creativity to combine elements in some incredible way, or some special sensitivity to human character in relation to unseen forces? We do not, and cannot write off people as not possessing these powers. However, the seer or the oracle, when they are so blatantly political, we should be very, very sceptical of; it certainly is not their task to order our societies or tell us what to think.

Is fate then a comfort to people in an age where god has fallen as a power? I cannot see how it can be a comfort to know that some cosmic power has given myself a well-functioning body and some other person severe mutations and a painfully brief life Suffering does not need to be explained away with fate, because suffering is not inevitable.

There is probably no purpose beyond humanity. It strikes me as odd why we would need to search for powers beyond the world, to explain the world, when there is so much on offer in good old human greed, ignorance, violence, apathy, and so on. Going back to the children being cursed to short and painful lives, we can explain it in purely human terms – that is, societies still going to war with one another without universal regard for human life. Human beings are more concerned with their own immediate experiences and not so much on distant people they consider different to them, or mere statistics. This is an earthly explanation for suffering that makes sense.

  And take note. We do not need to wait for some afterlife to win what we would call justice. We could have it today if only we were empowered to do so (and if only we could philosophize until we came up with an adequate explanation for it!).

By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 31