Locke Illusion of Determinism

Why Free Will Is Real and Causal
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5439-1423-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 132 Seiten

This book shows that the theory of determinism, the doctrine that everything we believe, feel or do is determined by forces outside our control, is false (and actually self contradictory). The book shows that free will is self caused and involves the choice to use our rational faculty or not. Experiments that claim to prove determinism are refuted. The 'libertarian' view that free will is based on randomness is also show to be fallacious. A distinction is made between what free will entails and what its limits are. The book shows that determinists' scorn for people who believe in free will (calling this view 'folk psychology' based on ignorance) is misguided. It is determinists who are victims of a false view of human nature.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Locke, Edwin A.

Leseproben

3

Causality

For many years the concept of causality was held in disrepute by philosophers, thanks to an influential skeptic named David Hume (1711-1776). He argued that one could perceive spatial and temporal contiguity between one event and another but not actual causality—that is, necessary connections. Following Hume, another philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), agreed that causality could not be observed but asserted that it was a category built into the human mind which imposed causal perceptions on our experiences. Both agreed that you could not observe or discover actual causality based on observations of the outside world.

What’s wrong with these views?

Let us consider how we come to grasp causality philosophically. It starts with the axiom noted earlier: existence exists—i.e., reality is real (Rand 1990). Contrary to Kant, reality is knowable by means of consciousness (the second axiom), starting with our senses.16 What do we first perceive in reality? Entities. Every entity is something specific, that is, it has specific attributes or characteristics. This is the third axiom, the law of identity. Only particulars exist (as Aristotle pointed out). Every entity has a nature; to be is to be something. An entity that is nothing in particular is nothing. Nothing is not a different form of existence; nothing means: no thing. The axiom of identity is implicit in (a corollary of) the axiom of existence (Peikoff 1991). To put it simply: everything is something.

An entity’s attributes and characteristics determine what it can do or will do in any specific circumstance. Every entity has specific capacities or potentialities. “Causality is the law of identity applied to action” (Binswanger 1986; for this and other relevant quotes from Ayn Rand on causality). It is critical to note that causes are entities, not disembodied actions. A cause is a thing acting. Every action is the action of something. For example, there are many different compounds composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms; each has a different arrangement of atoms giving each a unique identity, e.g., gas, liquid, solid, polymer—with many variations within each (Gray 2014). Each compound has a unique capacity for action.  

Given that the law of identity is an axiom and thus universal, causality must be universal. If a thing is what it is, it can only act in accordance with its nature. (This is fully compatible with volition, as we shall see in Chapter Eight.) Paper burns when exposed to flame; ice melts under the same condition. Plants grow when exposed to CO2 and sunlight; rocks do not. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water; helium and lithium do not. Acorns grow into oak trees but not into petunias. Fertilized human eggs produce babies, not cell phones. As to elementary particles, we may not now be able to measure or predict, given our present knowledge, the speed and position of single elementary particles at the same time, but this does not mean that they have neither. Particles (atoms, electrons, etc.) cannot act randomly. Particles do not “spontaneously” turn into hot fudge sundaes or become airplanes—not rarely, not ever. We know that elementary particles in the aggregate follow mathematical laws, which would be impossible if single particles acted randomly (Hawking 1996).

Causality as such applies to both inanimate matter and living organisms. Consciousness is an attribute of certain living organisms and has a nature. Animals approach prey and avoid predators guided by conscious desires and perceptions. Human beings use the senses plus reason to gain knowledge and to guide their choices and actions (see Chapter Two and other chapters to follow.)

Given the law of identity, there can be nothing random in the universe. To what then does the term randomness refer? Randomness is an epistemological concept—it pertains to our lack of knowledge, not to a lack of causality. When we have partial knowledge, we can make estimates of probability.

Some free will defenders argue for “probabilistic causation” but metaphysically (in reality) there is no such thing. There can only be probabilistic prediction based on partial knowledge. Your chance of winning the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes is one in about thirty million; your chance of dying in a commercial plane crash in a first world country is one in ten million; your chance of dying of heart disease or stroke is one in three (varying by age, lifestyle, gender, and other factors); your chance of flipping a coin that will come up heads is one out of two. Probabilistic laws in science, such as radioactive decay (e.g., the half-life of radium is 1,600 years), which allow for prediction, could never be formulated and would never hold up unless the particles as a group behaved in a lawful fashion. Imagine that radioactive decay were actually random. The half-life of a specific radioactive substance as measured today might be three minutes, tomorrow 3,000 years and the next day three million years. All would be chaos; science would collapse.

Some claim there is metaphysical randomness and use the example of unexpectedly meeting a future romantic partner at, say, a bookstore. However, the actions of both parties in going to the bookstore are caused, the result of their own choices. But they did not know that they would meet a special person there. Meeting “by chance” in this context means they did not plan or predict the meeting. Their meeting was coincidental (i.e., lucky). They might have secretly hoped for such a meeting but did not know it would happen. The same applies to a “random number,” a concept used by statisticians. A random number is a number taken from, for example, a “random number table,” that you did not choose or expect, even though the table was created by a computer programmed in a certain way.

Now consider how people come to grasp the concept of causality experientially, starting with a newborn infant. Let me start by describing the daily life of a real newborn across the first twelve months. We will call this child Pat (P for short). In this period, P is pre-verbal and not yet able to walk unaided.

Here are some selected observations, partly chronological but with a lot of overlap:

• P reaches their hand out to try to touch a mobile; this goes on for weeks until P is able to grasp it.
• P pulls it; if it is attached to a mechanism that makes sound, he pulls it again.
• P pushes a ball away.
• P repeatedly tries to turn over when laid down; after weeks of trying P succeeds.
• When placed in a harness attached to a stand, P bounces up and down.
• P starts crawling everywhere and goes after the cat (who runs away).
• When P is ready to start eating solid food, P learns to grab food from the tray.
• As his skill develops, P throws food on the floor. As P gets older and learns that this is not particularly appreciated, P pushes food down into the high chair between his legs.
• P gradually learns to manipulate plastic boxes, fitting them clumsily (but not very consistently) into one another and taking them apart.
• While being bathed, P grabs toys and splashes them into the water.
• P crawls to the sofa and is lifted onto it, then tries to get down.
• When taken to the children’s section of the local library, P goes after someone’s iPad and tries to take library books off the shelves.
• P lifts himself up by the handle of a small, wheeled cart and pushes it across the room until it crashes into a wall; when the cart is turned around, P pushes it to the other end of the room until it crashes again.
• At about a year old, P becomes fascinated by containers and lids, first just getting the lid on and off. Then, it becomes about what can fit in different type of containers. When a stuffed lion won’t fit into one of them, P gets frustrated and throws them both.
• When P does not want to take a nap, he throws all of his stuffed animals out of the crib and onto the floor.
• P becomes fascinated by his mother’s swim cap and goggles and signals her by handing them to her to put them on over and over again.  The same goes for her hats.

Later, usually in the second year, P tries deliberately to get his mother and/or father to do things by the use of words and gestures.

What is going on here? It is quite obvious that much of P’s daily life consists of doing uncontrolled causal “experiments” through trial and error. P is trying to control his or her own body and objects in the environment most of the day, every day. Of course, infants only grasp even simple connections gradually, through many repetitions. They will reach, temporarily, some mistaken, implicit “conclusions” along the way—e.g., that pulling the ribbon tied to the crib railing will move a mobile or that a larger box will fit into a smaller box. Due to perceptual feedback, such errors are eventually corrected.

All this, of course, is years prior to the infant’s ability to understand causality at the conceptual level. The child’s experience and understanding of causality is solely perceptual; but this is...