Determinism

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Determinism
“They alone truly see who understand that all actions are performed by material nature, while the self actually does nothing.” - Bhagavad Gita

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Freewill is a subject hardly give much serious thought. It is a topic that, for most, is relegated to the wastebin of freshman philosophy classes where the obvious conclusion is that determinism is wrong; however, the topic does engage young minds to think and thus begin their journey into the realm of critical thinking about topics where the answers are already assumed. We all have freewill, right? No, we do not. I will approach the arguments against the claim of freewill by presenting evidence from two fields of study: philosophy and neurology.

In the “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race” Ligotti succinctly lays out one of the main philosophical arguments against freewill from ideas of British philosopher Galen Strawson. Ligotti writes, “Within the strictures of commonsense reality and personal ability, we can choose to do anything we like in this world...with one exception: we cannot choose what any of our choices will be. To do that we would have to be capable of making ourselves into self-made individuals who can choose what they choose as opposed to being individuals who simply make choices...” Ligotti continues, “...we may want to become bodybuilders and choose to do so. But if we do not want to become bodybuilders, we cannot make ourselves into some who does want to become bodybuilders. For that to happen, there would have to be another self inside us who made us choose to want to become bodybuilders. And inside that self, there would have to be still another self who made that self want to choose to choose to make us want to become body builders. This sequence of choosing...would result in the paradox of infinite selves...”'

I must admit I spent days struggling over this passage until I began to understand it. I found the following notes in my personal journal:

1. You do what you do because of how you are. So, you are presumably responsible for what you do because you are responsible for how you are.
2. However, you cannot be responsible for what you do because you are not responsible for how you are.
   
3. Why are you not responsible for what you do?
   
4. Ask the question, “What would it take to be responsible for how you are?” The answer is that you must be able to make yourself the way you are.
5. However, you can never make yourself the way you are because that would mean that you already knew beforehand what you want yourself to be.
   
6. In order to know what you want yourself to be, you would have to have some sort of “self” within yourself guiding you to do what you want beforehand.
   
7. Who would be telling yourself what to do before you knew it?
8. Another self? Who told that self?
   
9. You cannot be the cause of yourself, but you must be if you take responsibility for your actions.
   
10. Thus, there is no freewill.
    

Galen Strawson puts it more simply, “If one is responsible for what one does in a given situation (S), then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. This because to be responsible in some situation (S), one must have been responsible for the way on was at S-1 (S minus one). To be responsible for the way one was at S-1, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S-2, and so on. At some point there must have been an act of origination of a new causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create his mental state ex nihilo (out of nothing).” You cannot go back behind yourself and be the cause to effect change to become something other than you already are.

Modern thinkers bog the debate down with differentiating determinism into “causal determinism”, “predeterminism”, “fatalism”, “omniscient fatalism”, “logical fatalism”, and even “physical fatalism”. All of these ideas simply muddy the waters with jargon and poor reasoning in order to create an atmosphere of doubt about determinism in order to eventually argue for freewill. However, philosophy in general outside of Swanson’s arguments that Ligotti shows, has made no real progress on the debate in the last thousand years. However, the study of the brain and neuroscience has made great strides in the last 40 years.

In the early 1980s Benjamin Libet did an interesting experiment. We assume when do any action that we think a thought, give our bodies a command, then the body responds. This, however, is probably not the case. Libet wired subjects with sensors to measure brain activity and placed a screen in front of them displaying a circle and a small dot revolving around the circle. There was a button in front of the viewer that they can press anytime they wish. He also had the subjects make a note of the time when they made the conscious decision to press the button. Libet found that brain activity was highest before they made the conscious decision to press. His experiment showed that a conscious decision did not cause the behavior to act. Something was going on beforehand.

In the late 2000s John-Dylan Hayes successfully used an MRI machine to predict choices presented to subjects up to seven seconds before the subjects consciously made a choice. This was done by analyzing brain images for activity in the parts of the brain known to handle certain types of stimuli. Then he correlated these brain images in a database of what other brains looked like when confronted with similar choices. This research showed that it is the brain that actually decides, then the person thinks it, and only then the action takes place. So, where does this leave responsibility for conscious decision making if our brains have already decided?

But the final nail in the coffin comes from Dr. Robert Sapolsky who is a neuroendocrinology researcher, a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. He states that all pro-freewill arguments boil down to two ideas. First, whether we intend to do something in a moment in time regardless of previous history. Or, they argued that if it looks as though there was no freewill in a person's actions there was actually freewill but it occurred in the past, it happened in a different part of the brain or it occurs between brains in social interactions. These “Compatibilist” philosophers and even other neuroscientists (who should know better) attempt reconcile freewill and determinism end up arguing something akin to “We are not saying things happen for no reason, we are saying they happen for magical reasons.” Sapolsky also sarcastically sums up every philosopher's work on freewill and determinism while trying to incorporating neuroscience into three sentences:​

1. Neuroscience is discovering wonderful things.
   
2. These things they are discovering are making us question freewill, morality, agency, and raises the possibility we must rethink everything.
   
3. We don’t believe it. There is freewill.

Sapolsky’s research shows us that every moment from our conception until now, our past traumas, stress, nutrition, hormones, and even cultural and current sensory environments, that we find ourselves in all shape every behavior in ways that are too complex to be understood. And although we can predict behavior through brain imaging, Sapolsky challenges science to show which particular neuron firing was the initial “cause” for any behavior or choice. This is not even taking the into consideration evolution, genomics, the organization of the brain, and every other variable listed above. How can something be in your brain, but not of your brain? Sapolsky sees no room for freewill considering this all in its entirety.

However, Sapolsky is not saying that change is impossible. He is just saying that we cannot change. Circumstance change, and the same chemical processes that Pavlov discovered ringing a bell to make dogs salivate are the same processes happening to us all the time just in a far more complex way. Yet through all of this, Sapolsky still acknowledges that we can, although it is almost impossible, strive to rewire our brains through neuroplasticity to become better people through diligent study and practice. He does not recommend throwing our hands into the air and giving up. Still, I would like to point out that any success or failure to change is wholly dependent upon your experience in changing yourself in the past (how else?) and thus determined.

I agree with Sapolsky, Ligotti, and Swanson. Freewill is something we experience not something that is real. Our choices and behavior are nothing more than a combination of our collective evolution, heredity, parenting, experience, senses, chemistry, culture, health, and randomness. As neuroscience advances, we make look back at our current systems of authority, justice, and accountability in the same way that we currently look back upon past failed sciences such as the four humors, alchemy, or geo-centricity.

-Jim Walker
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