Gerges Basta #9 - The Dilemma of Determinism

 The Dilemma of Determinism

William James's Essay on Determinism and Free-Will

There is an interesting little story that the Greeks told about Oedipus, which you may be familiar with if you've taken some English classes. Long story short, Oedipus was prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother. Knowing this information, Oedipus's father decides to leave baby Oedipus into the woods to die but didn't kill him himself so that he doesn't carry the guilt of killing his own son. That fails, actually, as a family would find Oedipus and adopt him. Fast forward to the future, a more grown Oedipus learns of this prophecy and leaves his adopted family so that he doesn't kill his adopted parents. He later finds a man whom he kills - who happens to be his biological father - and then marries the widow - who happens to be his biological mother. All while having no idea of it the entire time.

Sure this story is a bit disturbing, but to philosophers it carries an important message:

You can not escape fate. 

Determinism vs. Free-Will

This notion of fate comes from the idea of Determinism, but what is that?

Determinism is the idea that all of our actions have already been pre-determined for us. In other words, determinists would argue that you have no free-will at all when it comes to the decisions that you make. 

You may have decided to go to the mall today, but to a determinist, that wasn't your choice. You were pre-destined to do that. This idea is that we are spectators of our own lives, and we do not control any of our choices. 

Free-Will, by the libertarian (not the political party) definition, is the exact opposite. 

Libertarians argue that we have control over our own actions because many times we just decide what we want to do with our time. We simply feel free. 

In the example of the mall, you can choose to go the mall on your own. Nobody forced you, you just chose to go to the mall because you simply wanted to go the mall.

This video explains Determinism and Free Will into more detail.

William James's Argument 

To understand William James's argument in his essay, The Dilemma of Determinism, you must understand that he disliked the idea of Determinism for various reasons.

To start off, he thought it was just sad. How is life worth living if your entire life is just you spectating yourself? How does one improve as a person if you can not make those choices on your own? 

William James then brings up two thought experiments to disprove Determinism:

1. After his lectures at Harvard, William James has to pick from one of two roads to go home. Both roads have equal benefit, so which route is more necessary to the over arching timeline? If both routes have equal benefit then how does nature determine which route he should take? But if both routes have equal benefit then wouldn't that mean we have some free-will?

2. At the time of his essay, there was an incident where a man had brutally killed his wife and children in cold blood. William James then poses a question to all hard determinists in his class: What benefit did we receive from this incident and, given that we live in a deterministic world, could we blame the guy for this murder? In other words, would the killer be morally responsible for his actions?

Remember, if we live in a deterministic society, then all of our choices were made for us so then we couldn't blame them for actions that they didn't really choose to make.

A more contemporary philosopher - Greg Caruso - attempts to respond to some of James' arguments.

In short Caruso challenges the notion of free-will by challenging our way of thinking about Determinism.

Caruso seems to assume that our actions are pre-determined because of a cause and effect chain, and he takes that and puts it into the practical use of morality in criminals. He starts off by saying that the world isn't really "just" and its just not fair to everyone - we all have different starting points that helped us get to where we are, so why assume any different for a criminal? Caruso then challenges us to think about criminals as victims of a poor system (the U.S. judicial system to be more specific) and realize that because of our policies we give no choice to criminals. He then proceeds to argue that instead of placing all of our effort into arresting criminals - which he claims doesn't really prevent crime - we should try and provide families with the support they need so that people will not become future criminals! Of course, we can still arrest some of those that can't be helped as long as it improves society but we should focus most of our attention on supporting people. 

As you can tell there are some flaws in this argument which James will likely argue against. First off, what if we took the criminals and changed it to something more much more serious, such as Hitler or Putin? How do you help those people and how do you stop them? With the harm brought up as a result of the actions of these dictators, why would nature create these people? The second argument William James would make is probably just by calling out the idea that we need to rethink some of our policies and to rethink some of our own mindsets. If we have no free will, how would we rethink anything?

Discussion Questions

What do you think? Do we live in a deterministic world or do we get to make our own free choices? Perhaps you may believe we live in a bit of a hybrid world? 

If you are a determinist, how would you respond to James's arguments above?