Sermon for 5 February 2006, 1^st Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois

DETERMINISM, FATALISM, AND FREE WILL

Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction

A. One of the most interesting issues of philosophy and religion is understanding how we could be free and morally responsible beings if everything that happens is determined to occur as it does by causal laws. If everything happens as it must happen, how can we be viewed as free or as even partly responsible for what we do? How could anyone of us be different from what we are?

B. This issue is interesting because it requires us to deal with several complicated matters such as the nature of causality; the meaning of key terms such as "determinism," "fatalism," "free," and "responsible," and the relation between one's body and one's mind. Are persons only their minds or eternal souls that are somehow independent of their bodies?

II. There is a religious dimension to this issue which is very important to most traditional believers.

A. If people believe that they have souls that will spend an eternity in heaven or hell depending on how they live their lives and at the same time believe that there is an omnipotent God that creates and controls everything that happens, they are bound to wonder how these two ideas can be reconciled. If God controls everything, how can humans control anything, including their own behavior? How can people be held accountable during eternity for doing what God causes them to do in this life?

1. One possible response to this dilemma is to adopt the idea of "predestination." Each person is destined before birth, that is, is "pre-destined", to either go to heaven or go to hell. It doesn't matter what efforts one makes, whether one tries to do what is good or not. Each person is fated (that is, pre-destined) to have a certain eternal destiny. Such a fatalistic view does not address the issue of accountability but focuses only on God's omnipotence.

2. At this point let me call your attention to the subtle but real distinction between "determinism" on the one hand and "fatalism" on the other. "Determinism" is the view that all occurrences, including my own actions, have causes while "fatalism" is the view that there are some occurrences, such as when I will die and whether I will do to heaven or hell, which are bound to occur no matter what I do or try to do. That is, fatalism is the view that at least in some respects my own behavior cannot have effects.

3. Let me go over this subtle point again. Determinists say that everything is caused, that nothing happens randomly, but fatalists say that my own behavior cannot have effects, cannot produce consequences. Thus fatalists are saying that, at least in some respects, I am totally helpless. I cannot influence what happens. For example, some fatalists believe that one is fated to die on a certain day no matter what one does. The fatalist says that there is no point in driving carefully or taking care of one's health because one is fated to die on a particular day and there is nothing that can be done about it. Such a fatalist view is quite different from the determinist view that everything has a cause, that if one drives carefully or takes care of one's health there is undoubtedly some cause or explanation of why one behaves in such a manner.

4. It is evident that fatalism engenders inactivity or passivity while determinism does not. Determinists recognize that there are causes for our behavior but our actions also have effects. We can influence what happens. According to determinists our behavior has effects. It makes a difference whether we drive carefully and take good care of our health.

5. Fatalists may be fatalists about only some things, such as when one will die, or they may be fatalists about everything. That is, among fatalists, there are different degrees of fatalism. With regard to those who believe in pre-destination, that one is fated to go to heaven or to hell, one can also ask whether there really is any life-after-death at all. But that is a totally different issue that I don't intend to get into at this point.

6. Returning to determinism, the fact that determinists believe that we can sometimes make a difference doesn't mean that they believe that we can always make a difference. We have some power over our own behavior, but we are far from omnipotent. Many things are outside of our control, including some very important things such as when and where we are born, what gender we are, what race we are, whether we have siblings or not, what financial resources our parents have, what inherited abilities or disabilities we have, and what accidents may befall us. Even the most enthusiastic advocates of free-will must admit that our freedom to influence events is very limited.

7. Even after distinguishing between fatalism and determinism, many people go on to say that determinists must logically also be fatalists. They will claim that if everything is caused, it follows that humans could not be different from what they are or act differently from the way they do, so humans (as well as everything else in the universe) are essentially unable to produce different effects from what they do. They can produce effects but those effects cannot be different from what would occur if those particular persons did not exist. I will address this viewpoint later.

8. Now let us return to the main religious issue, the apparent incompatibility of God's omnipotence and human responsibility? What about the traditional religionists who do not believe in pre-destination? How can they reconcile a belief in an omnipotent God with a belief that people are at least to some extent free?

a. A common response to this problem is that God could completely control the behavior of humans but elects not to do do. God deliberately limits his own power in order to grant humans "free-will" to choose how they will behave, and consequently it is perfectly rational to reward those who choose to behave as they should and to punish those who choose to misbehave.

b. But just saying that people have "free-will" is very different from explaining what this term means. A common view is that "free" means simply the absence of causes which would determine a person to act one way or another. But to understand this concept of "free" we need to understand what "absence of causes" means in particular cases. Aren't people's choices always greatly influenced by their upbringing? Aren't people's choices always related to their particular situations? For example, how could a person make a choice between being a Christian and not being a Christian if they have never even heard of Christianity?

c. We also need to understand what a person is in relation to these causes. Are persons to be thought of as some kind of eternal immaterial souls unconnected with their bodies and the things experienced while living in those bodies? If people are immaterial souls not influenced by anything that happens to their bodies, what would make one immaterial person different from another immaterial person?

II. Our understanding of how causes determine what happens in the physical world has changed in the last 100 years, from "absolute determinism" to "statistical determinism."

A. Absolute determinism was the underlying assumption of Newtonian physics. The universe runs in accord with laws such as the law of gravity and the law of the conservation of matter and energy, laws which are invariable and which could generate 100% predictions of what would happen not only for the next few weeks but for centuries. The only uncertainties in the predictions (such as with weather predictions) were due to the difficulty of getting enough information about details. In such a universe, anyone who had complete knowledge of the physical state of the universe at one moment could explain completely everything that had happened up to then and could predict everything that was going to happen into the distant future.

B. In such a mechanistically determined universe, it seems that the only way that persons could be "free" instead of being mere robots would be if they consisted of immaterial souls that were somehow outside of or independent of the physical realm. This is precisely what earlier Christian philosophers such as René Descartes had maintained. But this view of how people can have free will runs into great difficulties. How could an immaterial mind or soul make a physical body move? How could those immaterial minds or souls cause the body to do anything other than what it was physically determined to do. Later Immanuel Kant tried to deal with this problem by saying that human minds were part of the noumenal world where the laws of science do not apply. But he still had to admit that our bodies were in the phenomenal world where the laws of science do apply, so he still had the problem of how the "free" noumenal minds could make any difference in the behavior of their physical bodies. The traditional religionists could continue to assert that humans have some kind of non-physical "free will" or soul not determined by physical laws, but they couldn't explain how this free will or soul has any influence on what is actually happening in the physical world. They also couldn't explain how the immaterial mind could function independently of what is happening in the physical brain. All the evidence indicates that the events in the brain are the basis of what happens in the mind. Philosopher Gilbert Ryle described this traditional Christian view of human nature as "the ghost in the machine" view.

C. The newer statistical determinism is still a form of determinism, but the "laws" in accord with which changes occur are now viewed as incorporating probabilities rather than 100% certainties. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is based on the fact that the mathematical formulae for predicting the future behavior of sub-atomic particles must incorporate statistical probabilities. One can still make good predictions, especially with regard to objects larger than atoms. But because the probabilities build on each other over time, the farther into the future one tries to predict the less accurate one's predictions become.

D. Some scientists and philosophers claimed that this "looseness" in the physical universe would allow for human freedom and responsibility. But this view was based on the mistaken notion that freedom and responsibility are linked to unpredictability. In fact, unpredictability is totally irrelevant to our ways of thinking about freedom and responsibility in everyday life.

1. First, consider this. Does the fact that predictions about the future movements of electrons must use formulae which incorporate statistical probabilities show that the electrons have free will and thus could be held accountable for their movements? Suppose that when you drop a pingpong ball on a knife-blade you can predict which direction it will go only on the basis of probability. You can predict that 50% of the time it will go to the north and 50% of the time it will go to the south. Does this show that the pingpong ball has free-will? Would it make sense to punish the ball for going one direction rather than the other because it did not use its "freedom" in an appropriate way? The word "Freedom" as we use it in everyday life must mean something other than "unpredictability."

2. Here is another scenario to help you see my point. You need to use your imagination. Suppose that you are a contestant on a quiz show. There are two prizes that you might win, a $50,000 automobile or a two-dollar ball pen. In front of you are two buttons to be pushed, one labeled "A" and one labeled "B." Your prize depends on which button you push. The quiz master informs you that perhaps pushing the "A" button will get you the auto, but he also indicates that it may be the "B" button you need to push to get the auto. He explains that he is not going to tell you which button will win you the auto because in that case your choice would be determined and thus no longer be free in the sense of being "unpredictable."

a. At this point you might well protest that you need to know which button will win you the auto in order to exercise your free-will. But the quiz master objects. In order for your choice to be "free" in the sense of unpredictable, there must be nothing that would cause you to select one rather than the other.

b. So let's suppose that you push button "B." Then you are told that the prize for pushing "B" is the ball-pen. You might complain that your choice was not really free because you were never told which prize each of the two buttons represented. Your choice may have been undetermined, a totally unpredictable event, but that is not what one usually thinks of as a "free choice." You are supporting my point that it is wrong to define a "free choice" as an "undetermined choice." That is not what the term "free choice" means in ordinary everyday language.

c. The point about accountability is also clarified by this incident on the quiz show. Suppose your friends get on you after the show saying, "You idiot. You had a chance to win a $50,000 automobile and you ended up with a two-dollar ball pen." You would deny any accountability or responsibility. You would say, "I couldn't help it. I had no way of knowing which button stood for which prize."

3. To clinch the point that "free and accountable" does not mean "undetermined," let us return to the quiz-show scenario but with a few modifications. This time you are told that the "A" button is for the auto and the "B' button is for the ball pen because this time the quiz master wants to demonstrate that you are just an automaton whose behavior is completely predictable. He confidently predicts that you will choose the "A" button. He even notes that you may deliberate for a few moments on whether to push the "B" button just to spite him, but that in the end you will nevertheless push the "A" button.

1. So you do in fact push the "A" button and win the auto. The quiz master may crow that you are just an automaton whose behavior is completely predictable, but you don't care. You made a "free choice," but not in the irrelevant sense of "free" as an unpredictable choice. Here it is evident that the expression "free choice" has another meaning in everyday life.

2. Furthermore, suppose that after the show your friends get on you saying, "You automaton. You did just what the quiz master predicted you would do." What would your response be in this situation. You take responsibility for your action. You want to be held accountable. You say, "Yes, what I did was exactly what was predicted, but that doesn't matter. I acted freely because I got the auto, which is what I wanted to do."

3. I think that these quiz-show scenarios prove beyond doubt that in everyday language and thought the expression "free and accountable" does not mean "unpredictable."

4. But we still have the problem of saying what the expression "free and accountable" does mean, and that takes us to our next point.

III. I now want to shift away from comments addressed primarily to the issue of freedom as it is related to traditional supernaturalists with their view of an eternal immaterial soul apparently helplessly trapped in a totally alien physical body and to begin thinking about freedom and responsibility in the very different context of a naturalistic view of the self. We are now considering a person to be a functioning organism, a physical animal capable of complex thought. Looking at freedom and responsibility in this context requires us to begin by examining the important distinction between freedom of action (being free to do what we want to do) and freedom in choosing (being free when we are making decisions). This new naturalistic context also allows us to think in terms of degrees of freedom rather than being stuck with the old dichotomy of free (that is, uncaused) versus unfree (that is caused) events. It also means thinking in terms of freedom as something that can be expanded by one's efforts to learn more rather than as something that all persons automatically and equally have or don't have.

A. Freedom of action consists of being able to do that which we have decided we want to do. Thus a "free act" is the same as what we call a voluntary act. This freedom to act is restricted or constrained by our being in chains or by other things that physically prevent us from doing what we want to do.

1. Freedom of action can also be limited by what we lack. For example, we cannot fly like birds because we do not have wings. Sometimes there are things that we would like to buy but can't because we lack the money needed to buy them. Freedom of action can also be limited by government or other institutions which have the power to punish us for disobeying them or rewarding us for obeying them. Our freedom of action is really quite limited, but we usually adjust quickly to just not wanting what we know we can't get.

2. Children often lack freedom of action because of lack of money or restraints place on them by parents. In fact, one important change that occurs as one enters adulthood is the acquisition of more freedom of action, more freedom to do what one wants to do instead of being constrained by others.

3. It is evident that there are degrees of freedom to act, and that our freedom of action is increased when our power to do as we desire is increased.

4. In order to be completely free to act as we desire, we would need to be omnipotent.

B. Freedom in choosing is a more complicated issue than freedom of action. What would keep us from making free choices? Our example of the quiz game where we didn't know which prize goes with which button suggests that one thing that can keep a choice from being free is ignorance of the consequences of the alternatives. In most decision-making situations there are more than two alternatives, and in order to make a free choice the chooser needs to know about all of them and the probable consequences of each. The chooser would also need to have sufficient background knowledge to evaluate those probable consequences as well as the mental capacity to do the evaluating.

1. In almost all actual situations freedom in choosing is a matter of degree. The more information one has about the consequences of the alternatives, the more adequate one's background knowledge is, and the more capable one is of carrying out the evalation, the freer one's choice is. In general we could say that freedom in choosing depends on knowledge.

2. In order to be completely free in choosing, one would need to be omniscient.

C. Note that in order to have complete freedom of action one must be omnipotent, and that in order to have complete freedom in choosing one must be omniscient. Thus in order to be completely free one would have to become like God is often supposed to be, that is, both all-powerful and all-knowing.

1. Humans become more free as they expand their power to do what they want to do and as they expand their knowledge to be better able to evaluate the alternatives before them. These goals are being pursued by people both individually and collectively.

2. It is worth noting that freedom in choosing is much more important than freedom of action since the choosing guides the action. Power unguided by knowledge can be disastrous.

3. The notion of "liberal education" (a freeing education) is focused on the importance of expanding one's knowledge in order to increase one's freedom in choosing. I think that we need to see liberal education as something that causes persons to become more free.

4. This church is also engaged in the mission of causing people to become freer, and this is especially true for the young people in our religious education program.

D. Today we are likely to hear the comment that people are "playing God" when they make decisions about when very sick persons should be allowed to die or when they seek to manipulate the DNA in plants and animals. It might be more appropriate to recognize that as our knowledge and power to manipulate nature increase humanity is in fact becoming God in terms of our knowledge and power. We humans collectively are becoming ever more free in our choices and more free in our actions, even though as individuals most of us are still quite limited. Nevertheless our freedom is much greater than those who lived a hundred years ago as well as many others who live in ignorance and poverty even today.

E. Because the knowlege and power of humanity collectively is increasing so rapidly, we all must become ever more watchful about who gets selected to be the rulers of society. We need leaders both nationally and globally who will direct this increasing knowledge and this increasing power to the general good and not just to more limited personal or tribal ends.

IV. Ultimately being free means moving beyond merely seeking rewards and avoiding punishments from those who may have power over us (that is, our parents and other family members, our friends, our employers, our government, and so on) to a concern for and commitment to universal goodness, not just to that which is good for ourselves or some limited community to which we belong.

A. Our voluntary behavior, our freedom of action, is generally directed to attaining some desirable object or experience which we believe is attainable given our limited power.

B. Our freedom in choosing is a matter of deciding which of various desirable objects or experiences are the most desirable, and we can expand this freedom by increasing our knowledge and by regularly reexamining our own thinking, as we do here each Sunday.

C. The highest degree of freedom happens when one makes informed choices about what is ultimately good just because it is good and then acts on those choices.

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