An Argument for Determinism
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Friday, December 08, 2006 at 11:09 AM
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In the free will literature, one often encounters arguments for the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. There are also arguments concluding that free will is incompatible with indeterminism. Arguments like the latter, to my knowledge, have not been employed to claim further that determinism is true. But it seems to me that this is a quite natural extension of the project. Consider the following:
1. If determinism is false, then no one ever freely acts.
2. But someone somewhere has acted freely.
3. Therefore, determinism is true.
One might believe (1) on the basis of the so-called Mind argument. If indeterminism is true, then there is a metaphysical wiggle-room, a randomness that rules out free will. So determinism is a necessary condition of free action.
(2) is the minimal free will thesis, and I here register my belief that it is not a Moorean fact. That is, there’s nothing crazy about denying (2). For sure, those who think free will is a necessary condition of moral responsibility and deliberation will find (2) obvious. But for the rest of us, it isn’t. I’m not going to comment on these debates about the relation between freedom and deliberation or responsibility. Rather, I suggest that they can be bypassed. The argument can be reframed so that (2) comes out as a Moorean fact:
4. If determinism is false, then no one is morally responsible for anything.
5. But someone is responsible for something.
6. Therefore, determinism is true.
It seems to me that (5) is more obviously true than (2). I could find myself believing not-(2), but belief in not-(5) is just inconceivable. If it’s a Moorean fact for me that I have hands, then it’s also a Moorean fact for me that I’m a person, and that I have in this life done good and bad things for which I am morally responsible.
So the argument when framed in terms of moral responsibility has at least one advantage over its free will cousin; it’s second premise is more obviously true. But I think the same can be said for its first premise too.
First see that both (1) and (4) are, strictly speaking, false. Indeterminism might be true at a world in virtue of something having nothing to do with us humans, say, one subatomic particle somewhere in the universe swerving indeterministically. And that wouldn’t rule out someone’s acting freely or being morally responsible for something. But we can rephrase. Put the argument in terms of determinism*, which is true just in case all or very nearly all human actions are fixed by the conjunction of the laws and some state of the world at a time. Indeterminism*, then, is true just in case all or very nearly all human actions aren’t fixed by the past and the laws. Or something like that. And indeterminism* is what the Mind argument must really be about, it seems to me.
The Mind argument does more work in supporting (4) than it does for (1). Here’s why. It’s not at all clear what connections an action must have to the past and the laws for it to be freely performed (if any!). But because moral responsibility is connected so closely with the evaluation of agents, it seems to me that an action for which an agent is morally responsible must have connections to the past and the laws (namely, the features of the past having to do with the agent’s beliefs, desires, and character). It’s not clear what these connections are and if they must be deterministic connections, but it is clear that moral responsibility requires them in a way that free will may not.
For the record, I do not think the Mind argument is sound in terms of either moral responsibility or in terms of free will. But it seems to me that if one is at all inclined to buy the Mind argument with respect to free will, one should a fortiori buy it with respect to moral responsibility. Furthermore, the moral responsibility Mind argument puts substantial pressure on its proponent to affirm determinism, more pressure than the free will Mind argument. This is because of the different epistemic statuses of (2) and (5). Denying (2) doesn’t make one crazy in the way that denying (5) does.
