u/MarvinBEdwards01

It is odd that the “Determinism Versus Free Will” hoax has continued for so long. The SEP authors tout that the issues “have been taken up in every period of Western philosophy and by many of the most important philosophical figures”. That’s disappointing, because this is a rabbit hole we’ve fallen into by our own careless thinking. And once anyone noteworthy falls for it, the bait-and-switch question is taken seriously by others of note. Taking the question seriously is the trap.

Consider, for example, Albert Einstein. In an interview with the “Saturday Evening Post” back in 1929, he said this: “In a sense, we can hold no one responsible. I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will.” And then, a few lines later, he adds this, “Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.”

On the one hand, Einstein insists that free will and responsibility do not exist. And then he turns around and suggests that he must act as if they do exist. The position is incoherent.

None of the three SEP articles, on Causal Determinism, Free Will, and even Compatibilism, offers us the key for resolving this unnecessary riddle.

For example, in the SEP article on Free Will, in section 1.2 Modern Period and Twentieth Century, you’ll find another example of the bait-and-switch question. They say that if “all physical objects are governed by deterministic laws of nature, how does contingency and freedom fit into such a world?” The question falsely suggests that “real” contingency and “real” freedom must “surely” be “free of reliable causation”. But, as we’ve already discussed, “freedom from reliable cause and effect” is an oxymoron. So, their question is nonsense.

Contingency is rational causation. It is based on conditional (e.g., “if x then y, else z”) logical operations. It is part of the practical operation of choosing. Choosing is a deterministic process that inputs two or more options, applies some criteria of comparative evaluation, and outputs a single choice.

The choice is deterministic. It will be causally necessitated by some specific combination of rational, biological, and physical causation. For example, the accuracy of the mental function may be impacted by biological conditions, such as lack of sleep, chemical stimulation, or general mood. It can also be altered by physical events, such as a stroke or transcranial magnetic stimulation. But, generally, it is a simple matter of reasoning, of our thoughts and feelings about a given issue, and how we expect things to turn out if one option versus another is chosen. And this makes the process deterministic.

In summary, every choice we make of our own free will also happens to be deterministic. It will be causally necessary/inevitable from any prior point in eternity, and yet it will still be our choice, and ours alone. No prior cause will make this choice for us.

And that is how the “Determinism Versus Free Will” paradox is resolved.

Experiments by Benjamin Libet and others reveal that there is unconscious brain activity that precedes one’s awareness of choosing in some very simple decisions, such as deciding when to push a button. The fact that the choice is being made prior to conscious awareness is used to suggest that our unconscious mind is in the driver’s seat, and that our conscious mind is just along for the ride.

Those making such claims seem to forget that, prior to that unconscious activity, the experimenter had to explain to the subject what to do and the subject had to interpret and internalize these instructions before they could perform the task. Both the explaining and the interpreting required conscious awareness.

After that, it didn’t really matter whether the conscious or unconscious areas of the subject’s brain were determining when to push the button. Both parts were serving the same person and the same conscious purpose.

Consider a college student who chooses to study for tomorrow’s exam. Her intention to do well on the exam motivates and directs her subsequent actions. She reviews the textbook and her notes, deliberately priming the neural pathways in her brain to recall the facts and concepts when reading the test questions tomorrow. This is a clear case of top-down causation, where the consciously chosen intent causes physical modifications within the brain. (The brain is modifying itself via the rational causal mechanism).

Neuroscience helps us to understand how the mind operates as a physical process running upon the infrastructure of the central nervous system. It helps to explain what we are and how we work. But it cannot suggest that something other than us, other than our own brain, our own memories, our own thoughts, and our own feelings is controlling what we do and what we choose. The hardware, the software, and the running process are us.

No, It’s Not About Religion

In the Section, 1.2 Modern Period and Twentieth Century, the SEP authors list the many modern philosophers who have weighed in on the imaginary problem.

But first, the authors spend a little time exploring free will from a religious and theological perspective. As a Humanist, I view free will and moral responsibility as secular issues. The arguments between theists and atheists over the existence of the supernatural are irrelevant to the issues of determinism and free will.

Next, the SEP authors point out that the idea of causal necessity (“the idea that every event must have a reason or a cause”) and the idea of natural law (“the physical world is one in which all physical objects are governed by deterministic laws of nature”), seem to suggest that something other than us is in control. Which brings us to another deception:

Deception #8 – Delusion by Metaphor

The “laws of nature” are a metaphor for the reliable behavior of natural objects. In the SEP article on “Causal Determinism”, in section “2.4 Laws of Nature”, Carl Hoefer describes it this way:

>“In the physical sciences, the assumption that there are fundamental, exceptionless laws of nature, and that they have some strong sort of modal force, usually goes unquestioned. Indeed, talk of laws “governing” and so on is so commonplace that it takes an effort of will to see it as metaphorical.”

The force of gravity causes the Moon to fall into a circular orbit about the Earth. The Moon does not consult the “law” of gravity to decide what it will do next. The “laws of nature” simply describe and predict what the Moon will do and where it will be at a given point in time. It is the mass and inertial force of the Moon itself that is causing it to move as it does in relation to the Earth. The Moon is just doing what an inanimate object of that size and mass naturally does.

When it comes to human behavior, we too are just being us, doing what we naturally do. The “laws of nature” that apply to us, such as those described in the Life Sciences and the Social Sciences, are not an external force acting upon us. They can be used to describe, explain, and in theory even predict what we will do. But the doing, the choosing, and the controlling, is still us.

A close relative of delusion by metaphor is deception by figurative speech:

Deception #9 – Deception by Figurative Speech

In conversations with “hard determinists” (also known as “free will skeptics”), we often hear claims like this, “since it was inevitable that you would choose A rather than B, you never really had a choice”. This is an example of “figurative speech”. Figurative speech is deceptive due to an implicit, but missing, “as if”.

You can spot figurative statements by asking yourself, “Is this literally true?” Figurative statements are always literally false.

For example, even when it is inevitable that you will choose A rather than B, it remains literally (actually, objectively, and empirically) true that at the beginning you have two options: A and B. And it will literally (actually, objectively, and empirically) be you that does the choosing.

We also hear these pseudo-determinists suggest that we are just “puppets on a string”. The problem with that analogy is that there is no puppet master to be found. Causal inevitability is not an entity with a will of its own, forcing its will upon us. The motives behind our choices are located within us. And the operation of choosing, when neither coerced nor subject to undue influence, is performed by us, and not by any other object in the physical universe.

Deception #7 – The Solution is Indeterminism

In modern times, the Epicurean notion of atoms subject to “indeterministic swerves” is mirrored in the suggestion of quantum indeterminacy. Unfortunately, causal indeterminism, if it exists anywhere, reduces our ability to understand, predict, and control the event, because the event has no reliable cause (if the cause is reliable, then the event is deterministic). Ironically, causal indeterminism does not increase our freedom at all, but instead reduces it, by limiting our ability to control events.

The concept of “causal indeterminism” is impossible to imagine, because we’ve all grown up in a deterministic universe, where, although we don’t always know what caused an event, we always presume that there was a cause.

To give you an idea of a “causally indeterministic universe”, imagine we had a dial we could use to adjust the balance of determinism/indeterminism. We start by turning it all the way to determinism: I pick an apple from the tree and I have an apple in my hand. Then, we turn the dial a little bit toward indeterminism: now if I pick an apple, I might find an orange or banana or some other random fruit in my hand. Turn the dial further toward indeterminism, and when I pick an apple I may find a kitten in my hand, or a pair of slippers, or a glass of milk. One more adjustment toward indeterminism and when I pick an apple gravity reverses!

If objects were constantly popping into and out of existence, or if gravity erratically switched between pulling things one moment to pushing them the next, then any attempts to control anything in our lives would be hopeless. In such a universe,  we could not reliably cause any effect, which means we would not be free to do anything. Fortunately, that does not appear to be the case.

We, ourselves, are a collaborative collection of deterministic mechanisms that keep our hearts beating, and enable us to think and to act.

Continuing with the SEP article on “Free Will” …

The SEP authors continue with the Stoics and Epicureans. These two introduce the concept of natural law. The authors point out that the Stoics did not take the view that natural law replaced us as the cause of our choices. They provide an example:

>“Chrysippus ably defended this position by contending that your actions are ‘up to you’ when they come about ‘through you’—when the determining factors of your action are not external circumstances compelling you to act as you do but are instead your own choices grounded in your perception of the options before you.”

So, Chrysippus also defines free choice as the absence of external coercion. Had he taken other undue influences into account, such as mental illness, then he would have echoed the original definition: free will is when we decide for ourselves what we will do, free of coercion and undue influence.

The Epicureans, on the other hand, appear to presage the quantum indeterminacy issue in their “atomism”. The SEP authors note of the Epicureans:

>“They held that all things (human soul included) are constituted by atoms, whose law-governed behavior fixes the behavior of everything made of such atoms. But they rejected determinism by supposing that atoms, though law-governed, are susceptible to slight ‘swerves’ or departures from the usual paths.”

Deception #6 – It’s All Just Physics

Epicurus’s “atomism” introduces the next deceptive suggestion: that the “laws” of physics are sufficient to explain all events. But the laws of physics cannot even explain simple things like why a car stops at a red light. Between the red light hitting the driver’s eyes and his foot pressing the brake pedal, you’ll find the biological motivation to survive and the rational calculation that the best way to do this is to stop at the light.

The “laws” of physics are never broken, they are just incomplete. This event cannot be explained, for example, without referring to the “Laws of Traffic”, which you will not find in any physics textbook. To explain why the car stopped at a red light, you’ll need all three causal mechanisms: physical, biological, and rational.

A bowling ball placed on a slope will always roll downhill, because an inanimate object has no purpose and no reason. But put a squirrel on that same slope and he will go in any direction that he expects will lead to his next acorn. His behavior is not controlled by gravity, but by an innate purpose to survive, thrive, and reproduce. And, if you put humans on the same spot, they will fell trees to build houses, hunt for food, raise families, build a community, and eventually form a nation.

To recap: The behavior of physical objects will vary according to how they are organized. The behavior of inanimate objects is different from the behavior of living organisms. The behavior of intelligent living organisms is different from that of non-intelligent species.

For the sake of determinism, we will assume that each of the three causal mechanisms is perfectly reliable in its own domain. And that every event that ever happens is the necessary result of some specific combination of physical, biological, and/or rational causation. The car’s driver, in our example, is a living organism motivated to survive. The intelligent species has created traffic laws to make driving safer. The driver calculates that things will turn out best if he stops at the red light, so he applies the brakes. That explains why the car stopped at the light.

Physics is quite adequate to explain why a cup of water flows downhill. But it has no clue as to why a similar cup water, heated and mixed with a little coffee, hops into a car and goes grocery shopping.

Failures in Academic Philosophy

There are many other deceptive suggestions that reinforce the paradox. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) has an article on “Free Will” [1] that demonstrates several more.

The SEP authors correctly state that free will is used to convey “a significant kind of control over one’s actions”. And that is consistent with free will as described above. Both coercion and undue influence impair our normal control over our choices.

Then they set the table for debate, by raising three questions about free will:

1. “does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise”
2. “does it require and do we have…the power of self-determination”
3. “is it necessary for moral responsibility”

The answers are simple:

1. Free will means we choose for ourselves what we will do. Choosing always begins with (a) at least two real possibilities and (b) the ability to choose either one. This ability to choose either option is the freedom to do otherwise.
2. “Self-determination” is self-evident in that we, ourselves, are doing the choosing.
3. When it is our deliberate choice to commit a wrongful or illegal act, then we are the meaningful and relevant cause of the harm done, and we will be held responsible.

Pretty simple, right? But philosophy has a way of wandering away from the practical and the obvious. For example, in the section, Ancient and Medieval Period, the SEP authors are looking for “philosophical reflection on choice-directed control over one’s [own] actions”.

They note that Plato poses moral choices as contests between our reasoning and our base desires. And that Aristotle credits this history of choosing with the formation of our character. As we habitually choose “well” (or choose “poorly”), our character becomes more “virtuous” (or more “vicious”).

But the SEP authors choose “poorly” when they begin sucking us into the “vicious” paradox. On Aristotle, they comment:

>"One might worry that this seems to entail that the person could not have done otherwise—at the moment of choice, she has no control over what her present character is—and so she is not responsible for choosing as she does. Aristotle responds by contending that her present character is partly a result of previous choices she made.”

There are three deceptions subtly introduced in that short paragraph. It is suggested that “she is not responsible for choosing as she does” for three reasons: (a) because her character, not her, is in control (deception #3), (b) because her character has already been determined by prior causes even though they involved her own prior choices (#4), and (c) because she will inevitably do one thing, it must be true that she “could not have done otherwise” (#5).

Deception #3 – Splitting “Me” in Two

The next deception suggests that she and her character are two separate entities, such that it is her character, and not herself, that is in control. The truth, of course, is that her character is an essential part of who and what she is. So are her genetic dispositions and her life experiences. So are her beliefs and her values, and all the other things that make her uniquely her. These things are integral to who she is at the time she makes her choice. To suggest that she exists separate from these things, and is being controlled by them, would be an ironic dualism. The truth is that whatever these things together decide, she has decided, and whatever they choose, she has chosen. There is only one, single, complex entity, and it is herself. She is doing the choosing.

Deception #4 – Shifting Causation to Prior Causes

The next little hoax suggests that we cannot call something a cause if it has prior causes, because those prior causes are the real causes. But is that true? Well, no. You see, every prior cause also comes with its own prior causes. So, if we say that a cause is not real if it has prior causes, then every prior cause would cease to be a real cause! The buck would pass backward from prior cause to prior cause all the way back to the Big Bang (and beyond, depending upon your cosmology) with no “real” causes to be found anywhere along the way. The notion, that something with prior causes cannot be a real cause itself, is clearly absurd.

A true cause must be both meaningful and relevant. To be meaningful, it must efficiently explain the occurrence of the event. To be relevant, it must be something that we can potentially do something about, either to predict the event, avoid it, produce it, or otherwise exercise some control over it. The Big Bang is neither a meaningful nor a relevant cause of human events. Nor is the fact of universal causal necessity/inevitability.

The most meaningful and relevant cause of a deliberate act is the act of deliberation that preceded it. The history of social influences that created that pattern of deliberation can also be meaningful and relevant when explaining criminal behavior in a society. When correction is called for, it would be short-sighted to deal solely with the individual’s correction without also dealing with the social causes. However, both the individual and the society will require correction to minimize future harm. That’s simple risk management.

Deception #5 – Confusing “Can do” with “Will do”

The next false suggestion is that, because she will choose only one option, the one that best suits her at that moment, she “could not have done otherwise”. The error here is a conflation of the concept of “can do” with the concept of “will do”.

This error ignores the contextual difference that separates these two concepts. At the beginning of the choosing operation we must have at least two real possibilities, for example A and B. And we must also have the ability to choose either one: “I can choose A” is true and “I can choose B” is also true (even if “I can choose both A and B” is false). At the end of the operation, we have a single choice, setting a single intent, expressed as a single “I will”, that directs our subsequent actions.

Whenever we speak of what we “can do” or “could have done”, our context is the beginning of the choosing operation. And whenever we speak of what we “will do”, our context is the end. At the beginning, we can choose either A or B. The fact that we will choose A does not contradict the fact that we could have chosen B. Each fact is true in its own context. Thus, it is common practice to interpret “I chose A, but I could have chosen B” as a true statement.

Deception #2 – What We Will Do Has Already Been Determined

Predetermination suggests that something other than us has already caused what we will to do. Is that true? No, it’s not. If our deliberate action is one of the necessary causes of an event, then the event will not occur without our own deliberation, our own choosing, and our own action. Prior causes cannot leapfrog over us, to bring about the event without us.

Consider this: If our choice is causally inevitable from any prior point in eternity, then which point should we choose as the cause? After all, there are an infinite number of such points in time. For convenience, many people use the Big Bang. But what is the Big Bang’s interest in what I should have for lunch today?

To be meaningful, a cause must efficiently explain why an event occurred. To be relevant, a cause must be something that we can do something about. The Big Bang is neither a meaningful nor a relevant cause of what we choose to do.

The most meaningful and relevant causes of our deliberate choices are found within us. Our choices are causally determined by our own interests and concerns, our own beliefs and values, our own genetic dispositions and life experiences – and all the other things that make us uniquely “us”. We, ourselves, are the final responsible cause of our deliberate actions.

When someone commits a crime, we want to know why. What was the thinking that led them to that choice? What might we do to change how they think about such choices in the future? These questions lead to rehabilitation programs: counseling, addiction treatment, education, job training, post-release follow-up, job placement, and other practical steps that give the offender new options and better choices.

Social conditions can also increase criminal behavior. Poverty, unemployment, racial inequities, drugs, ineffective schools, lack of after school activities and youth programs, and other factors contribute to a higher rate of criminal behavior. Intelligent risk management would lead us to address these contributing factors as well.

But the individual still requires correction. Rehabilitation presumes free will. The goal of its programs is to release a person capable of making better choices on their own, autonomously, of their own free will.

In summary, if our choosing is one of the necessary causes of the event, then our role cannot be bypassed, or overlooked, or called an “illusion”. It’s really us, and we’re really doing it.

What’s Determinism About?

All human science rests upon the faith that the causes of events are reliable and thus might be discovered, studied, and understood.  With knowledge of the causes of an event, we might predict, avoid, reproduce, or otherwise control it. For example, knowing that a virus causes polio, and that the body can be primed to attack that virus by vaccination, we have controlled the occurrence of polio in nearly all the world.

Determinism is logically derived from the presumption of reliable cause and effect.  Determinism notes that each cause is itself an effect of prior causes, such that a chain of causation can, at least in theory, be traced back to any prior point in history. If every event is reliably caused by prior events, and these prior events were themselves reliably caused by earlier events, then every event is “causally necessary” and inevitably will happen.

Assuming perfectly reliable cause and effect, every event, from the motion of the planets to the thoughts and feelings you’re experiencing right now, were “causally inevitable” from any prior point in eternity.

Wow! That sounds ominous. But what does that mean, in practical terms? Well, not a whole lot. To say that something is “causally inevitable” means nothing more than that it came about by normal cause and effect — something that we are all familiar with and that we all take for granted.

For example, when I press the “H” key on my keyboard, I expect to see an “h” in the text that I am typing. If my keyboard did not reliably produce the letters I expected, but instead produced random letters, I could no longer control what I was typing. I would need a new keyboard. My ability to control what I am typing requires reliable cause and effect.

Not only does the keyboard need to be reliable, but my hands and fingers must behave reliably as well. If I had uncontrolled tremors in my hands then my fingers might not reliably press the right keys. Or, if I had a mental illness or injury that affected my ability to think rationally, then that too could diminish my control over what I was typing.

In fact, all of our abilities, to do anything at all, require reliable cause and effect. To put it simply, without reliable cause and effect, we could not reliably cause any effect. We would have no freedom to do anything at all. Also, without reliable cause and effect, we could no longer predict the outcomes of our actions, and would no longer have any control over what we do.

Because reliable cause and effect is a prerequisite to both our freedom and our control, any discussion of freedom and control already subsumes a world of reliable cause and effect.

It is important to note that determinism doesn’t do anything. Only the actual objects and forces that make up the physical universe can cause events to happen. And determinism is neither an object nor a force. It is simply a comment, an assertion that the behavior of the objects and forces is reliable, and thus theoretically understandable and potentially predictable.

Three Causal Mechanisms

Natural objects behave differently according to their organization. For example, atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are gases until you drop their temperatures several hundred degrees below zero. But if we reorganize them into molecules of water, we get a liquid at room temperature that we can drink.

There are three broad classes of organization that affect the behavior of natural objects:

1. Inanimate objects behave passively in response to physical forces.
2. Living organisms behave purposefully to satisfy biological needs.
3. Intelligent species behave deliberately by calculation and reason. And that’s where free will emerges.

We, ourselves, happen to be natural objects. Like other natural objects, we cause stuff. The Sun, by its physical mass, causes the Earth to fall into a specific orbit around it in space. We, by our choices and our actions, cause trees to be felled and houses to be built to keep us warm in Winter.

We are living organisms of an intelligent species. Like all living organisms, we cause events in the real world as we go about meeting our biological need to survive, thrive, and reproduce. As members of an intelligent species, we can imagine different ways to pursue these goals. We consider how different options might play out, and then choose the option that we feel is best.

Causal necessity/inevitability does not replace us. It is not an inevitability that is “beyond our control”. Rather, the concept incorporates us, our choices, and our actions, in the overall scheme of causation.

Universal causal necessity, while being a logical fact, is irrelevant to any practical issue. While we can readily apply the knowledge of specific causes and their specific effects, there is nothing one can do with the general fact of universal causal necessity.

After all, what can you do with a fact that is always true of every event, that cannot distinguish one event from another, and which cannot be altered in any way? Nothing. It makes itself irrelevant by its own ubiquity. It is like a constant that always appears on both sides of every equation; it can be subtracted from both sides without affecting the result.

For example, if causal necessity is used to excuse the thief for stealing your wallet, then it also excuses the judge who cuts off the thief’s hand.

But what about our freedom? Does causal necessity constrain us in any meaningful way? Well, no. What we will inevitably do is exactly identical to us just being us, choosing what we choose, and doing what we do. And that is not a meaningful constraint.

Then, what about free will? Does determinism constrain our ability to choose for ourselves what we will do? Nope. It is still us doing the choosing. Only specific causes, such as the guy holding a gun to our head, can compel us to act against our will.

So, determinism poses no threat to free will. It is not a guy holding a gun to our head.

And that again begs the question: What’s all the fuss about?

What’s Free Will About?

In 2013, the Tsarnaev brothers set off home-made explosives at the Boston Marathon, killing several people and injuring many others. They planned to set off the rest of their devices in New York city. To do this, they hijacked a car, driven by a college student, and forced him at gunpoint to assist their escape from Boston to New York.

On the way, they stopped for gas. While one of the brothers was inside the store and the other was distracted by the GPS, the student bounded from the car and ran across the road to another service station. There he called the police and described his vehicle. The police chased the bombers, capturing one and killing the other.

Although the student initially gave assistance to the bombers, he was not charged with “aiding and abetting”, because he was not acting of his own free will. He was forced, at gunpoint, to assist in their escape. The surviving bomber was held responsible for his actions, because he had acted deliberately, of his own free will.

A person’s will is their specific intent for the immediate or distant future. A person usually chooses what they will do. The choice sets their intent, and their intent motivates and directs their subsequent actions.

Free will is when this choice is made free of coercion and undue influence. The student’s decision to assist the bombers’ escape was coerced. It was not freely chosen.

Coercion can be a literal “gun to the head”, or any other threat of harm sufficient to compel one person to subordinate their will to the will of another.

Undue influence is any extraordinary condition that effectively removes a person’s control of their choice. Certain mental illnesses can distort a person’s perception of reality by hallucinations or delusions. Other brain impairments can  directly damage the ability to reason. Yet another form may subject them to an irresistible compulsion. Hypnosis would be an undue influence. Authoritative command, as exercised by a parent over a child, an officer over a soldier, or a doctor over a patient, is another. Any of these special circumstances may remove a person’s control over their choices.

Why Do We Care About Free Will?

Responsibility for the benefit or harm of an action is assigned to the most meaningful and relevant causes. A cause is meaningful if it efficiently explains why an event happened. A cause is relevant if we can do something about it.

The means of correction is determined by the nature of the cause: (a) If the person is forced at gunpoint to commit a crime, then all that is needed to correct his or her behavior is to remove that threat. (b) If a person’s choice is unduly influenced by mental illness, then correction will require psychiatric treatment. (c) If a person is of sound mind and deliberately chooses to commit the act for their own profit, then correction requires changing how they think about such choices in the future.

In all these cases, society’s interest is to prevent future harm. And it is the harm that justifies taking appropriate action. Until the offender’s behavior is corrected, society protects itself from further injury by securing the offender, usually in a prison or mental institution, as appropriate.

So, the role of free will, in questions of moral and legal responsibility, is to distinguish between deliberate acts versus acts caused by coercion or undue influence. This distinction guides our approach to correction and prevention.

Free will makes the empirical distinction between a person autonomously choosing for themselves versus a choice imposed upon them by someone or something else.

So, what’s all the fuss about? Why are some people today questioning free will, or calling it an “illusion”?

The "best possible good and the least possible harm for everyone" is an Ideal. An Ideal is something we strive for but never reach. The point of an Ideal is to provide a direction for our efforts. And if we all head in the right direction we are more likely to find a means of cooperation and mutual support for getting there.

The "best good and the least harm for everyone" is a criteria that can be repeatedly applied to each moral judgment, between any two rules or any two courses of action. Each choice then brings us closer to that ideal.

Thus the state of our morality improves over time. At one point in time it seemed best to fully eradicate an enemy, killing every man, woman, and child to prevent their future revenge. But then it was decided it would be better just to kill the soldiers of our enemy, and enslave the women and children. So, yes, at one point in time, slavery was the better of two options.

And then we made further progress by putting an end to slavery, which eliminated the harms that came with it. And that made the world better for everyone than it was before.

And then we took the next step and freed our women, giving them the same freedoms that men enjoyed.

You've probably heard the quote, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". Justice is an ideal. And when speaking of the ideal of something like Justice, we traditionally capitalize the first letter.

Well, first, we need to figure out where these possibilities exist, so that we know where to look for them.

We have only one actual reality in a deterministic universe. And we know where to find it. It's right in front of us, and all around us. And it even includes us. We can reach out and touch it. We can see it, hear it, taste it, and feel it. And we can describe it to each other.

But where do these things we call "possibilities" exist? We can't point out any possibilities in the actual reality. We cannot see them, hear them, taste them, or feel them.

But wait, we can imagine seeing them, we can imagine hearing them, we can imagine tasting them, and we can imagine touching them. So, hurray! We've found them. All possibilities exist within the imagination of intelligent living organisms. And nowhere else.

How does this fact relate to a deterministic universe? Well, we may assume that mental events occur deterministically, just like any other event. Mental events are reliably caused to happen within the brain, by the brain, and for the utility they provide to the person in whose body that brain exists.

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, imagined an airplane. And by learning how birds flew, and how bicycles worked, and how engines worked, they could imagine an airplane. They came up with many possibilities for construction, and experimented with many different options until they finally built a successful plane.

Imagining possibilities is one of the laws of our nature. And using those possibilities to invent something new is, well it's "how we roll".

Determinism does not change anything. It does not change how people think and work and do the things they do. Determinism merely asserts that the causal mechanisms involved, including those within our mind, will reliably cause the events we see, like the Boeing 747.

So, all of those possibilities that we and others imagine were always going to be imagined exactly when, where, and how they occurred to us.

The answer to the question "How many possibilities are there within a deterministic universe?" is simply the total of all the possibilities that occurred to us within our minds as we went about doing all the things that we do.

We are limited to a single actuality, but our possibilities are nearly infinite. All within a deterministic universe.

The Universe consists of material objects and the forces they exert upon each other. The objects include everything from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy. And they come in three basic types: inanimate objects that respond passively to physical forces, living organisms that behave purposefully to survive, thrive, and reproduce, and intelligent species that can behave deliberately by learning, inventing, planning and choosing what they will do. These are three distinct mechanisms of causation: physical forces, biological drives, and rational choices.  

The mass of the Sun and the mass of the Earth exert the physical force of gravity that keeps the Earth in orbit. They do not do so purposefully or deliberately. It is a purely physical attraction between their two masses.

Living organism like an Oak tree or a Squirrel have mechanisms to create their own energy and they use that energy to survive, thrive, and reproduce. That’s their purpose. Both the Oak and the Squirrel “defy gravity”, the Oak by growing woody trunks to support its branches above the ground, the Squirrel by using its legs to travel and to climb. Both doing what they naturally do to survive, thrive, and reproduce. That is the purpose of their behavior.

Intelligent species are living organisms with a highly evolved brain. We deliberately explore our environment to see how things work and then use that knowledge to make things happen. We chop down trees to build houses. We create tools and machines. We discover the causes of disease and create vaccines and antibiotics to protect the health of our families. That is the reason for our behavior.

Three distinct causal mechanisms make all this possible: physical forces, biological drives, and deliberate choices. They all run upon the physical infrastructure, of course. But they are significantly different mechanisms.

Everything that happens in the physical universe must be caused to happen by the behavior of these objects and the forces they exert upon each other, because that is all there is in the whole universe.

Matter, organized differently, behaves differently. Atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are gases until their temperature is dropped several hundred degrees below zero. But when organized as molecules of H2O they become a liquid at room temperature.

The bowling ball and the bowler are both made of atoms. But the behavior of a bowling ball is different from the behavior of the bowler. The bowler has a brain that assesses the best way to make that spare. And by practice he has trained his body to send the ball down the alley to hit the pins just right. But in the bowling ball the atoms are organized as an inanimate object, and in the bowler the atoms are organized as an intelligent living organism. Only one of them has any interest in how many pins are knocked down.

Determinism asserts that these objects and forces behave in a reliable fashion, such that all events are reliably caused to happen, and every future event is “theoretically predictable” from any prior point in time. But our practical ability to predict events is limited. While there may be a precise causal history leading up to your choosing what to have for lunch, all you know or care about are the most meaningful and relevant causes.

So, what are we to make of Determinism? Nothing really. It means nothing more than that all events come about by normal cause and effect. We are all familiar with cause and effect. It is something that we all take for granted in everything we think and do. We all expect that when something happens, it was somehow caused to happen. And we generally make this presumption even when we do not know what specifically caused it to happen.

Determinism itself does not cause anything to happen. All of the causing in the bowling alley is being done by the intent of the bowler and the energy the bowler transfers to the mass of the bowling ball. Determinism simply asserts that if he hits the pins just right, they will all fall down.

Determinism itself doesn’t do anything. It is only a comment about the reliability of our behavior, and the behavior of all the objects in the physical universe. All events simply come about by reliable causal mechanisms. And we are one of those objects that go about in the world causing things to happen, for our own purposes and our own reasons.

Deterministic causation (reliable cause and effect) is a presumption based on empirical evidence. Apples fall from trees. They do not jump from the ground back up into the tree. This is a reliable behavior caused by the force of gravity. The behavior of living organisms is different in that the tree itself grows roots into the ground for water and branches with leaves in the air to acquire food by photosynthesis. The structure defies gravity in order to do what is necessary for its life. Then we have intelligent species with an evolved brain capable of imagination, evaluation, and choosing. And it discovers ways to adapt to many different environments, by planning, inventing, and doing many other things by its own choices rather than solely by instinct.

So, we have at least three distinct causal mechanisms: physical, biological, and rational. And this makes prediction a bit more complex. But the rational mind wants to believe that there is some good reason why anything that happens, happens.

When things happen in a reliable fashion they become predictable. When the results of our actions are predictable we gain some control of things. And control gives us the ability, the freedom, to do things that we want or need to do.

Science seeks the causes of events, especially significant events that affect our lives. When it discovered that certain diseases were caused by viruses, and then discovered that the immune system could be primed to destroy that virus through vaccination, we gained control over many of the diseases that were significantly affecting our lives.

So, reliability of causation is a faith (that -ism at the end) and a hope.

Now, determinism may not be the best way to express that faith, because it carries a lot of false implications that are simply not good for us. It is perversely used by some to claim that we have no freedom and no control over the events in our lives, which is a destructive belief. It undermines our faith in ourselves. On the other hand it allows us to blame our failures and bad behavior on something other than ourselves...Which is comforting, but not always honest and not always helpful.

At the time of decision-making, it is who and what the person is at that point in time that will be doing the choosing.

The only reason the person will be doing any choosing at all is because he is faced with two or more real options to choose between, and must make a choice before he can continue whatever he is doing. For example, if what he is doing is having dinner at a restaurant, then he must choose a dinner from the menu. No choice, no dinner.

Who and what the person is will, of course, be causally determined by his own prior experiences, his own genetic dispositions, his own beliefs and values, his own needs and preferences, and all the other things that make him who and what he is at that point in time. Thus, it will legitimately be the person himself, and no other object in the physical universe that will be making that decision.

No prior cause of the person can participate in that decision without first becoming an integral part of who and what he is at that moment. It will truly be the person himself that is doing the choosing.

The mechanism by which he performs this choosing operation is a logical operation that inputs two or more real options, each of which he is able to choose and able to accomplish if he chooses it. This constitutes an "ability to do otherwise". No matter which option he chooses, he will have had other options that he could have chosen but which he would not choose at this time.

While there is only a single, actual outcome, there are multiple possible outcomes. One of the useful things about a possibility is that it never has to actually happen in order to be really possible to happen. Every dinner on the restaurant menu is a possible outcome. He is physically able to choose every item and the restaurant is physically able to deliver whatever he orders.

The fact that he does not choose an item does not make it an impossibility, but only unchosen. He could have ordered it, but he never would have at this time.

The notions of possibility and impossibility are not part of the actual world, except by being a part of the person's real mental operation. They exist in the mind to give it the flexibility to deal with matters of uncertainty (such as what will I have for dinner tonight).

They exist in the mind by logical necessity, because they are built into the logical operations that use them to get things done, like planning, inventing, choosing, etc.

Their significance is critical, because within the domain of human influence, the single actual future will be chosen by us from among the many possible futures that we will imagine.

Determinism? Determinism says that it was always going to happen exactly that way.

From the Same Studio that Brought You “Cause and Effect”…

It is sometimes suggested that a deterministic world, limited to one actual future, eliminates all other possibilities. But this is short-sighted. The same evolved intelligence that produced the notions of cause and effect, from which determinism derives its “causal necessity”, also produced the notion of possibilities.

What are Possibilities?

Possibilities exist solely within the imagination. We cannot walk across a possible bridge. We can only walk across an actual bridge. But this does not mean that possibilities are useless figments of our imagination. Possibilities are very important, because we can never build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.

In the safe sandbox of the imagination, we can run through many bridge design choices, estimate the likely outcomes of each, and choose the one we think is best. In the imagination we can lay out a plan of action, test it in our minds before we test it in the field, to see what steps must come in what order to successfully construct our bridge. Only then are we prepared to build a real bridge.

Uncertainty Necessitates Possibilities

If we were omniscient, and already knew every detail of what would happen in the future, then we would have no need for the notion of possibilities. We would never use words like “can”, “might”, or “may”, because we would always know exactly what “will” happen.

But, of course, we are not all-knowing. Quite often, we only have clues as to what will happen, clues that only tell us with certainty what “can” happen, but not what “will” happen. Special words, like “can”, “might”, or “may”, shift us from the context of actuality to the context of possibilities. And whenever we do not know for certain what “will” happen, we imagine what “can” happen, to better prepare for what does happen.

From Many to One

Whenever we must make a choice, there will be two or more options, and we must select one. Each option is a possible future. Some choices are small things, that affect our immediate future. Will we wear the white shirt or the blue shirt today? Will we have cereal or pancakes for breakfast? Other choices are major things that determine the course of our lives. Which college will we attend? What career will we pursue? Will we buy a house now or later?

Each choice selects a single actual future from among the possible futures available to us. From among the many things that we can do, it is up to us to select the single thing that we will do.

Within the domain of our influence (things we can make happen if we choose to), the single inevitable future will be chosen by us from among the many possible futures we will imagine.

There is a many-to-one relationship between what can happen and what will happen, and between what we can choose and what we will choose. This many-to-one relationship continues to exist when we reflect upon our past choices. There are many things that we could have done, but only one thing that we would have done.

This many-to-one relationship, between can and will, between possibility and actuality, is a matter of logical necessity, and thus cannot be altered by causal determinism.

Causal determinism may safely assert that we “would not have done otherwise”, but it cannot logically assert that we “could not have done otherwise”.

Everyone Makes Mistakes…

Hey, what?! But we’ve always heard that causal determinism implies that we “could not have done otherwise”!

Sorry, but we cannot conflate what “can” happen with what “will” happen, without destroying the logical mechanism we evolved to deal with matters of uncertainty.

Conflating “can” with “will” creates a paradox, because it breaks the many-to-one relationship between what can happen versus what will happen, and between the many things that we can choose versus the single thing that we will choose.

Using “could not” instead of “would not” creates cognitive dissonance. For example, a father buys two ice cream cones. He brings them to his daughter and tells her, “I wasn’t sure whether you liked strawberry or chocolate best, so I bought both. You can choose either one and I’ll take the other”. His daughter says, “I will have the strawberry”. So the father takes the chocolate.

The father then tells his daughter, “Did you know that you could not have chosen the chocolate?” His daughter responds, “You just told me a moment ago that I could choose the chocolate. And now you’re telling me that I couldn’t. Are you lying now or were you lying then?”. That’s cognitive dissonance. And she’s right, of course.

But suppose the father tells his daughter, “Did you know that you would not have chosen the chocolate?” His daughter responds, “Of course I would not have chosen the chocolate. I like strawberry best!”. No cognitive dissonance.

And it is this same cognitive dissonance that people experience when the hard determinist tries to convince them that they “could not have done otherwise”. The cognitive dissonance occurs because it makes no sense to claim they “could not” do something when they know with absolute logical certainty that they could. But the claim that they “would not have done otherwise” is consistent with both determinism and common sense.

Causal determinism can safely assert that we would not have done otherwise, but it cannot logically assert that we could not have done otherwise. If “I can do x” is true at any point in time, then “I could have done x” will be forever true when referring back to that same point in time. It is a simple matter of present tense and past tense. It is the logic built into the language.

Literal versus Figurative

One might ask, “How did we come to make this error in the first place?”. It comes from using figurative language.

Causal Determinism tells us that every event is both an effect of prior events and the cause of new events. Thus, every event is said to be “causally necessary”, in that it must happen where and when it happens, exactly as it does happen. But, what else would anyone expect?

We’re all used to the notion of cause and effect, and we take it for granted in everything that happens and in everything that we do. Causal necessity weaves these simple instances of cause and effect into a chain of events. One thing leads to the next, and so on, as far back in time, or as far forward, as anyone can imagine.

What are we to make of this? Well, nothing really. It is simply the way things happen. We open the restaurant menu and encounter a list of possibilities, the many things we can order for dinner. We consider these options in terms of our own desires, our own dietary goals. Our own reasoning causally determines what we will order for dinner.

It was always going to happen exactly as it did happen, with us in control of what we would have for dinner.

But some people look at the causal chain and suggest to us that, if our choice was causally necessary, from any prior point in time, then “it is AS IF we never had a choice at all.” That’s a “figurative” statement. We often use metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole and other figures of speech in our communication. But figurative statements share one serious problem: Every figurative statement is literally false.

Take the statement “it is as if we never had a choice at all”. It suggests that, because our choice was inevitable, we were not really making a choice. But we literally (actually, objectively, empirically) did make a choice. In fact, had we not made a choice, the waiter would have never brought us our dinner.

So, figurative statements may be colorful and rhetorical, but they cannot be taken literally, without distorting the truth.

Thus, causal necessity, through figurative usage, acquired many implications that are simply false. When we remove these many false suggestions, causal determinism once again becomes simple cause and effect, and not some monstrosity trying to rob us of our freedom and control.

Morality is the intent to achieve good, and to achieve it for others as well as for ourselves. Ethics is the pursuit of the best rules, those that will most likely achieve the best possible results for everyone.

To see the distinction, consider the Jewish family of Anne Frank hiding in the attic during Nazi occupation. The soldiers knock on the door and ask if there are any Jews. It would be unethical to lie, but it would be immoral not to.

We call something “good” if it meets a real need we have as an individual, a society, or a species. A “moral good” is actually good for us and benefits us in some way. A “moral harm” unnecessarily damages us or diminishes our rights in some way.

Morality seeks “the best good and least harm for everyone”. Moral judgment considers the evidence of probable benefits and harms to decide a course of action. This judgment is objective to the degree that the harms and benefits are easily observed and compared. But the ultimate consequences of a decision are not always known. Two good and honest individuals may differ as to what course of action will produce the best result. A democratic decision can be made to determine a working course of action, which can be further evaluated based on subsequent experience.

Ethics are about rule systems. Rules include customs, manners, principles, ethics, rights and law. When one speaks of “morals” or “moral codes” one is usually speaking of ethics. But morality is not the rule, but rather the reason for the rule, which is to achieve good.

Throughout history, rules have changed as our moral judgment evolved. Slavery was once permitted, but later outlawed. The equal rights of women to vote was established. The right to equal treatment without regard to races, gender, or religion was established.

Different cultures may have different rules. But all rules move slowly toward the same goal, to achieve the best possible good for everyone. And, to the degree that moral judgment is based in objective evidence, all variations are moving toward a common, ideal set of rules and rights.

In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest principle?”, and Jesus said the first principle is to love God and the second principle is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

A Humanist translation would be to love good, and to love good for others as you love it for yourself.

But Jesus said one more thing, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, this is the reason behind every rule. It is the criteria by which all other principles, ethics, and rules are to be judged.

There are obviously facts about reality that make some things physically possible and other things physically impossible. When making a choice we must begin with at least two real options. An option is real if it is both choosable and doable if chosen.

To be doable, it must be physically possible for someone to do it. For example, everything on a restaurant menu is physically possible for the restaurant to prepare and set on the table for me. I'm not imagining that physical possibility, it is a simple fact of reality. We can easily demonstrate this fact by ordering several things from the menu and seeing them arrive on the table.

To be choosable, it must be physically possible for me to choose it. And in the restaurant it is physically possible for me to choose any item from the menu. That too is a simple fact of reality. I can easily demonstrate this fact by choosing to order several different things from the menu.

There are two distinct claims that can express what determinism logically implies. One claim is ordinary and the other is extraordinary.

The ordinary claim is that what I chose to order was the only thing that I WOULD order at that place and time. And I'm happy to confirm that, because I know exactly why I made the choice I did at that time, and why I did not order anything else.

The extraordinary claim is that what I chose to order was the only thing that I COULD order at that place and time. This contradicts the fact that I had the ability to order whatever I wanted. There was nothing on the menu that was physically impossible for me to order.

An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.

If we go for a walk outside, we see houses and trees and perhaps some animals. But one thing that we never see is a possibility. We can see an actual house, but no possible houses. We see actual trees, but no possible trees. We cannot say “Good morning!” to any possible people, only to actual people.

Where then do possibilities “exist”?

A possibility exists solely within the imagination. It is a necessary logical token in many mental operations, like planning, inventing, speculating, and choosing.

Ontologically, a possibility would exist within the brain as a neurological process that sustains the thought of it while it is being used in a mental operation.

In our discussion of free will we are concerned mainly with the mental operation of choosing. Choosing inputs two or more real options, applies appropriate criteria of comparative evaluation, and outputs the best option as a single choice.

An option is real if it is both choosable and doable if chosen. Before we begin a choosing operation, we would exclude any option that is impossible to choose (for example, something that is not on the restaurant menu) or impossible to do if chosen (for example, using a Star Trek transporter to get to work).

But once we have at least two real options to choose from, we will begin comparing them and select the one that seems best to us.

Note that at the beginning of every choosing operation we will have at least two options that are each possible for us to choose. Thus, at the end of every choosing operation, we will have the single option that we will choose, and at least one other option that we could have chosen but that we would not choose at this time.

This is what we normally mean when we say that we “could have done otherwise”. There was at least one other real option available to us that we would not choose this time. We could have chosen it, but we would not choose it this time.  

So, when it is suggested to us that we “could not have done otherwise” our immediate intuition is that this is false. It directly contradicts what we knew to be true when we began the choosing operation, that we had at least two real options that were truly possible for us to choose.

But there is no contradiction when saying that we “would not have done otherwise”, because after comparing our options we knew for certain what we would and would not do.

There is a problem in the determinists' assertion that we “could not have done otherwise”. It contradicts the fact that we actually could have done otherwise.

But there is no problem in the determinist assertion that we “would not have done otherwise”. We know why we made the choice that we did, and why we did not do otherwise. There is no contradiction of the facts.

In summary, possibilities exist as logical tokens in certain mental operations. They do not exist outside of our minds. And the determinist claim that we “could not have done otherwise” contradicts the facts, while the claim that we “would not have done otherwise” avoids this contradiction.

The Laws of Nature are a description of how the many objects and forces that make up the physical universe work. One type of such objects is the intelligent living organism.

Intelligent living organisms include all the autonomic and instinctual behaviors of their biology plus the added flexibility of having an intelligent brain capable of imagining alternate possibilities, evaluating their options in terms of their own goals and reasons, and choosing which option they will physically implement by their own actions.

This the ability to do otherwise provides a survival advantage to all intelligent species, allowing them to come up with new ways to adapt to a wide variety of environments in which they find themselves. It gives them a survival advantage over species that are limited to hardwired instinctive responses.