Sunday, February 27, 2011

Free Will and Determinism (2)

After looking into both sides of the issue here, I have to say that I believe that free will and determinism can exist together. Determinism seems to imply that just because everything has a cause or causes, that those causes will always lead to a certain effect. I believe that can be true with basic cause and effect relationships, such as dropping something to the ground to prove gravity, or that people need energy to stay alive and so they will always require food. However, I don't think this relationship is strong enough to imply that even when a being has the ability to think about its actions that it is still stuck in the chain. Just because there are always causes for how I act, it does not necessarily mean that I had no choice, or that my actions were predetermined in any way. My ability to reflect on the possibilities of a future choice breaks this chain, because I can alter the cause and effect chain before it has a chance to happen. My example is this: a being that does not have the ability to react beyond instinct will follow a certain set of rules for itself; it will eat when it is hungry, sleep when it is tired, and so on. A being that does have the ability to think deeply about its decisions can alter the outcomes. It might choose not to eat, even though it is hungry, because it has principles against eating the food that is in front of it. It might not sleep just because it is tired because it has work to do, obligations to fill, and decides to put off sleep temporarily.
So, my view is this: A person who does not tend to think about their actions lives a more determined life than someone who does think about what they do. A truly thoughtful and learned person begins to break away from the basic flow of cause and effect, thus becoming more free. I believe this because of the argument that I stated earlier: if a being does not learn how to react thoughtfully to its environment, much of its life will happen simply as "this is what I must do now" and they will go do it, whereas if they do learn to react thoughtfully, their life becomes "must I do this, or is there something better I can do instead?"
Now, it was stated in our discussions that this is still just cause and effect, that you can never truly break away from determinism unless you manage to act against all cause, but that view insists that all causes have equal chance to make an effect. I believe that is only true if you lack the ability to think about the causes leading up to your choice. The cause of "I'm tired" doesn't lead me to go to sleep until I am ready, because I think, "Well, should I go to sleep now, I have work to do". Now, you can label the fact that I had work to do as my cause for staying up, but if every cause had just as much of a chance to make me act a certain way, I could just go to sleep. It is because I thought about which cause had more relevance that one of them wins out over the other, and not because one of the causes was inherently stronger. My ability to think about what I am doing is the only catalyst towards what I end up doing. Free thought such as this is what makes free will, to label it determinism would be to relabel what free will actually is.
The two work against each other, but they can exist together.

Q: If determinism is truly and exclusively the way the universe works, then where does the nearly universal conception of free will come from?

No comments:

Post a Comment