My Complete Views on Free Will

The difference between compatibilism and hard determinism is often just a difference in belief in what we mean when we say someone has free will, and not a difference in belief in what we have.  I am going to focus on the question of what we have.

I am pretty sure the world is determinite (at least in all the ways that matter).  If you were to plug in every fact about the world's past into a supercomputer it would be able to predict what would happen next.  Well this may sound radical to those who haven't spent time reflecting on free will, it really amounts to the thoroughly non-radical proposition that every effect has a cause.  It says nothing about the material or immaterial state of the world we live in.  Importantly, it also does not involve bypassing - the notion that our deliberation and reason isn't part of this causally determined universe.

Determinism usually results in two different reactions: a panic that this must lead to nihilism and/or a view that this discovery doesn't lead to any prescriptions (because prescriptions can't make sense anymore!).  I will argue that both of these are incorrect.

Don't panic. An important part of our supercomputer is that it is really really super.  We don't have access, and likely will never have access, to anything close to it's predictive power.  To all of us the future is unknown.  Further all of our actions are going to have causal power.  Yes, these actions themselves where caused, but that doesn't make them less real.  Let's say at T0 I walk into the kitchen for breakfast and see my options for breakfast are a bowl of oatmeal or a donut.  I begin my thought, instinct, action sequence.  I think about how I had a donut yesterday for breakfast.  I think about how I am putting on some weight. The thought of oatmeal with only a touch of brown sugar and some raisins being tasty crosses my mind.  I decide to eat the oatmeal.  After considering reasons and being confronted with a choice I choose the oatmeal.  The fact that a hypothetical really really super supercomputer could have told me T- whatever what choice I was going to make doesn't change the relevant factors that make this a choice that I made.  In this case,  a close friend that was paying enough attention to my lifestyle and previous choices, could have accurately predicted what choice I was going to make...it doesn't mean I didn't make a choice.  A common reaction however, upon being confronted with determinism is, "Well, nothing I do matters anymore, it will all happen a certain way regardless of what I do."  One thing, which is theoretically knowable will happen and there isn't anything you can do to change that--that is true.  And if your background of nature and nurture has brought you to a place to hear that and this and reflect on them in a way that will paralyze you into a nihilistic inaction then that is what will happen.  If you can't accept that and your reflection leads you to realize the future is and will likely always be completely unknowable and exciting and that you want to continue to use all your best reasons to deliberate and make choices than that is what will happen.

If you find meaning and happiness in pleasure this is not negated by determinism.  Likely the reasons and choices you are making are going to lead to those things. My determined self in this determined universe leads me to the conclusion that I want to still deliberate using the best reasons possible to achieve the best goals I have set for myself and so am thankful that I am not caught in nihilistic inaction.

So why does this matter if I can go back to just pretending it doesn't and since no-one will likely ever get close to predicting things to a level that matters?  The insight presents me with several additional reasons and consequences to consider in consequent deliberation.  One re-think how you look at every should claim.  Not that they can't exist anymore, just they will require removing the blame for the individual self to the process.  A shift of focus when something like a murder occurs from the vague "that is an evil person" to what stimuli and reasons does this person need to act differently.  What can we do in the future so that someone does not come to this point.  If there is a gene that makes someone "born to kill" and that is why they commit the murder, then maybe nothing can be done other than keeping them locked up, since a world with less people murdering is more appealing to me. I predict that our focus would shift in other ways as well.  We would no longer praise the one or few heroes in our society and blame the one or few villians, but rather take part in some of that praise and the blame.  We wouldn't be grabbed by the allure of rugged individualism and rather recognize that it takes a world to raise a child. Of course whether we do this or not is already determined by our supercomputer, but part of what it is processing are my desires and I have a strong desire that we do make this shift and hope that other people will as well and that together we create a world that is better and filled with more pleasure and less pain...but who knows what the future will hold.

*I have a deep aversion to my actions being predictable and it may be a human-wide instinct.  We are rea
lly tied to the idea of being a causa-sui actor.  This is seen in examples where we want to break out of predictable life-patterns (these being the ones that are predictable to others).  It is also shown in how the event of our friend predicting our choice of oatmeal might introduce a new reason not to eat the oatmeal. I think this shows that we think we have a free-will that we don't...but since we have never had it, we shouldn't miss it. (For why we have this view of free-will and how pervasive it is in our society see the forthcoming...How Plato Ruined the World: A Story of the Invention of Other-worldliness and the Benefits of Convincing People they are Ultimately Morally Responsible.)