Free Will - Determinism versus Agency

Bertrand Russell wrote that "the circumstances of men's lives do much to determine their philosophy" ["History of Western Philosophy", p14]. He adds that our philosophies can also determine our circumstances, but this page argues that our circumstances, in line with the strict determinism of physics and biochemistry, predetermines all our choices and therefore, that free will is an illusion.

Contents:

1. Free Will as an Illusion - Consciousness arises after we make choices.

2. Causality - 'Choices' are determined by laws of physics.

3. Our Behaviour Determines Our Attitudes - research shows changing our behaviour changes our beliefs, but changing beliefs rarely changes behaviour.

4. God has No Free Will and Negates the Free Will of Others
5. Randomness: Quantum uncertainty, chaos theory and neurones
6. Morals and Social Justice
7. Altruism & Determinism
8. Why live?
9. Compatibalism
10. Free Will in the Christian Bible
11. Conclusions; Determinism

1. Free Will as an Illusion

Free will is an illusion. Our amazingly, wonderfully complex brains is comprised of various cognitive systems cycling amongst themselves and generating our thoughts, consciousness, choices and behaviour. These systems and their effects all result from the mechanical, inorganic laws of physics, over which we have no control.

The vast majority of all the processing our brain does is subconscious; we ultimately have no idea why we prefer particular actions over others. We are, I believe, observers. We become aware of what our brains are thinking but don't have any free will. In other words, our consciousness is not a vessel of free will but an attention-processing side-affect of the complexity of our brains. We become conscious of our chosen actions. There is no philosophical free will. Some biologists and psychologists believe that consciousness is an unintended side-effect of the complexity of our nervous system [Gross p75]. Others believe that consciousness serves an evolutionary function. In either case, the things that are brought into conscious focus, and the results of our decisions, are still based on biochemistry and therefore on deterministic physics.

“In one rather extreme form of this denial, Harnad (1982) has argued that only after the functioning of our brains has determined what we will do does an illusion of conscious awareness arise, along with the mistaken belief that we have made a choice or had control over our behaviour.”

"Animal Minds" by Donald Griffin

Donald Griffin may have believed that Harnard was extreme in his denial, but there are serious psychologists who have came to similar conclusions:

“Nisbett and Wilson (1977) go so far as to claim that all psychological activities (including social behaviour) are governed by processes of which we are unaware. [...] Emotions can occur with rapid onset, through automatic appraisal, with little awareness and with involuntary changes in expression and physiology; indeed, we often experience emotions as happening to us rather than chosen by us. [...]

Apart from Freud [...] probably the most outspoken person advocate of the view that the person is not free is Skinner. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) he argues that behavioural freedom is an illusion. Just as Freud believed that freedom is an illusion to the extent that we are unaware of the unconscious causes of our feelings and behaviours, so Skinner claimed that it is only because the causes of human behaviour are often hidden from us in the environment that the myth or illusion of free will survives.”

"Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross, p75, 121 & 875

The classic studies by Benjamin Libet in the 1970s provided neurological evidence that this was the case.

“He wired people to an electroencephalogram and measured when they reported having a particular conscious thought about an action [...] and when the actual action started. Astoundingly, the latter came first: that is, subjects had actually made (unconsciously) the decision to act measurably earlier than when they became aware of it consciously. The conscious awareness, in a sense, was a "story" that the higher cognitive parts of the brain told to account for the action. It's as if the conscious brain was not the decider but simply the spokesperson.”

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci (2007)₉

I believe consciousness plays an active and important role in decision-making, but, that the role it plays is beyond our genuine control. So although I believe consciousness has a purpose (i.e., it evolved and isn't just a byproduct), I believe that it's "purpose" is just as deterministic as everything else science has discovered. In many ways, it is as if the conscious part of ourselves, the part we think makes 'choices', is actually just an observer, watching and trying to explain our own actions just as it watches and tries to explain other agents' actions. Dr Libet's research concurs:

“That something in the brain really is performing the role of an observing self is suggested by the work of Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Libet used eletroencephalography to look at brain activity during the process of making simple decisions such as when to move a finger. He showed that the process which leads to the act starts about three-tenths of a second before an individual is consciously aware of it. In other words, the observer is just that: an observer, not a decider. This may explain the feeling that most people have experienced at one time or another of having deliberately done something that they had not actually wanted or intended to do.”

The Economist (2006)₆

Another thread of medical history provides more evidence: the cases of split-brain patients.

“The philosopher Thomas Gilovich explains studies where two different pictures are presented to a split-brain patient. The language center in the left hemisphere gives responses according to its interpretation of the right's actions. A patient can point to a picture in accordance with what one eye has seen, but the left-hand side of the brain couldn't see, and the person tries to explain their selection of photo in accordance with the wrong input. For example a picture of a snow-filled field is shown to a patient's non-verbal right hemisphere, and they select a shovel from a list of pictures. But the left-hand side of their split-brain doesn't know what input they have seen. When asked, they construct a rational-sounding reason and when quizzed, believe that this made-up reason is the actual reason whey they selected it.”

"Split Brain Studies: One Mind per Hemisphere" by Vexen Crabtree (2006)

When we chose to change our attitudes, or attempt to change ourselves, it may feel like we are exercising free will. However if such changes are themselves part of a structurally determined pattern, then there is none. The thinking that all things are caused is old, and since the atomists in the fourth century BCE there has been a strong strain of determinism in Western philosophy. Theologians such as Calvin and Hobbes have upheld the belief that, even though it appears to be due to free will, all actions are the results of predetermined factors [Russell 1946, p532]. Modern science holds that all mental processes are a result of neuronal patterns that are themselves controlled by deterministic physics [Hawking 1996, Dawkins 2004] and as such cognitive psychologists have also held that all our mental processes are, in the detail, controlled by biochemistry and physics [Eysenck & Keane, 1995]. If our self-perception is itself is determined by biochemistry, then our conscious choices are only an illusion of agency. We look at some of these issues below.

2. Causality

2.1. Reductionism

Consciousness is presented to us as a result of our neurones, our brains, our senses. When we lose these, we lose consciousness. These systems are governed and controlled by neurochemicals, hormones, ionisation, impulses: in short, by biochemistry. Biochemistry is in turn merely a type of chemistry, and when we look at the molecules and atoms that make up our chemistry, they obey the laws of physics.

Balls bouncing around a pool table have no free will. The basic chemicals that make up our bodies and minds have no free will. Neurones fire when they should fire, according to their electrochemical properties. They don't randomly fire: They fire when they're stimulated to fire [Bloom, Cooper and Roth, ch.3]. Stimulation results from a constant biochemical cycle. These natural cycles determine our states of mind and our choices. Through a long and complicated series of cause and effect, our choices are made. As such, all our 'choices' are ultimately the result of impersonal and mechanical forces. There is, therefore, no room for free will. There is no "free will force" that causes neurones to fire sometimes and not at others. They fire in accordance with the rules of physics, firmly beyond our control but not beyond our appreciation.

The facts of determinism - that external factors that form our development, such as experiences, and internal factors such as biochemistry, predestine us to our fates - are noted as mentioned by neurologists, physicists and philosophers. Above these, these facts are proclaimed also by none other than Albert Einstein:

“I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.”

Albert Einstein [7]

2.2. Philosophy

Everything has a cause. Nothing happens for no reason. So, when we make a choice, we do so for a reason. Our minds become made up as a result of specific causes. If you follow all the cause-and-effect chains that cause a person to make specific choices, you will find that you trace the causality of their actions to a time previous to when they were actually born. Hence our decisions are predetermined, free will could only exist if it could somehow break the normal chain of cause and effect.

2.3. Causality is Already a Social Assumption

People assume that behaviour is caused. When people behave in a certain way, psychologists look for the causes, so do friends and family. We seek to influence peoples' choices through our own actions, sometimes very subtly. All of this only makes sense once we admit that deep down we act as if behaviour is caused directly through events, and not through uncaused free will.

“Everyone has always believed that it is possible to train character; everyone has always known that alcohol or opium will have a certain affect on behaviour. The apostle of free-will maintains that a man can by will power avoid getting drunk, but he does not maintain that when drunk a man can say "British Constitution" as clearly as if he were sober. And everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world. The one effect that the free-will doctrine has in practice is to prevent people from following out such common-sense knowledge to its rational conclusion. When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth, and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell, p39

2.4. An Illusion

Our conscious world and our biological bodies proceed step by step according to set physical laws, yet many assume that we do have free will because it feels like we do. If we have free will, at what point does it assert itself? At what point does free will change the way our thought processes progress? As neurones fire and trigger cascading events, at what point does it suddenly stop, or suddenly start? There is no such point. There is no point in the cycles of our brains' processes where "free will" determines the outcome. There is no room for free will.

Our thoughts progress without our genuine intervention - we do not choose the things that we think about, but they present themselves to us as observers rather than as commanders of thought. We do not choose to make the choices we make, but they are presented to us as choices we have already made. When we think of something, we are only observers becoming aware of our own thoughts, we don't directly control the process.

A person (The Optimist), who has proven to me that he is wise, once said:

Free will does not exist and it's easy to prove. If we put a person back in time, and observe, they will make exactly the same choices, of course.

I've never heard the fundamentals of the problem put so simply! It shows, to an extent, that our futures are predetermined - that whatever happens next is a result of what has happened so far, and not a result of us "choosing" what to do.

The activity of a persons brain can be monitored and (with carefully placed electrodes) controlled. In experiments on cats a small electrode can be placed on the red nucleus in the brain (a small part of the medulla) and when activated, the cat will immediately curl up and go to sleep. In Human Beings most experiments have been on the Cerebral Hemispheres and Frontal Lobes, which are the memory and major character storage respectively. Stimulating parts of the Cerebral Hemispheres will immediately cause the person to recall certain memories (sometimes ones that they had forgotten), and operating on the Frontal Lobes radically changes people's emotions and behaviour. This is because our personalities and behaviour are a result of our physical brains.

Slowly removing a persons brain slowly takes away their consciousness, and even a brief study of various neuronal diseases can show that 'brain' and 'consciousness' are synonymous. Causality penetrates and forms our consciousness and thought procedures.

When I want to make a choice, my consciousness picks up, observes, and passes information around via the Limbic System. I can't make choices before I know what the options are, but when I know what the options are my brain makes the choice for me. We are in this sense, observers of ourselves observing our realities.

2.5. Free Will and Time Travel

The contradictions of time travel have been explored in many films. Time-travel has to be combined with another dubious type of travel - through dimensions into alternate realities - in order to make any action have potential impact. If when travelling back in time we changed the facts of history - however minor - then in the future when we go back, we will not be able to make those changes because they will not have occurred. As we can't make those changes, it means they will always occur as they did originally. This is especially true for time when one imagines intentionally going back to change specific things. If you are successful, then, there is no incentive to have gone back and changed them because they wouldn't have occurred. Therefore you would never do so. Discounting multiple realities, it seems that the contradictions of time travel have implications for free will. The philosopher Prof. Le Poidevin explains two examples but I hope he will excuse me if I quote only one of them, followed by his brief conclusion on this particular matter:

“Disappointed in love, I wish myself dead. More than that, I wish that I had never lived.[...] Given that I have a time machine, I am in a position to bring this about. So I travel back to some suitably distant moment before my conception, find a relevant relative (a grandparent will do if neither of my parents has yet been conceived) and, with malice aforethought, strike them dead. I thus bring it about that I was never conceived. But now this unsettling narrative must be exposed for the nonsense it is. If my action is successful, who is it who prevents my conception? It cannot be me, for it is now apparently true that I was never conceived, and so never grew up to step into a time machine to prevent my conception. I cannot, then, prevent my conception.

[After another example] They are but two illustrations of the unassailable truth that I cannot change any past fact, however trivial.

This itself may seem to have further worrying implications. For if I cannot prevent my own conception, and cannot prevent the First World War, despite being present at the right time, does this not suggest that I am not, as a traveller into the past, a free agent? If this is an implication, then it extends to our ordinary, non-time-travelling situation. For I am not free to change the future, either.”

"Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time" by Prof. Le Poidevin (2003), p179

As this exploration of cause-and-effect shows, it appears that as long as the present flows into the future (who can then examine the past), free will was impossible at any particular point in the history of time, and in the history of times to come.

3. Our Behaviour Determines Our Attitudes

Sociology is famous for expending much research in proving common-sense things that everyone knows. One important counter-example arose in studies of attitudes and behaviour. It was assumed that our attitudes are what determine our behaviour. It is not common sense to say that our behaviour causes our attitude. But, researchers found that changing peoples' expressed attitudes frequently did not change their behaviour. Tentative researchers then tested the unlikely possibility that our behaviour causes our attitude. Since then, a flood of studies have confirmed that our attitudes are caused by our behaviour. What does this mean in practice?

It means that, "provided they weren't bribed or coerced into doing so" [Myers, p142], people come to believe in what they do. One common-sense thing that has been proved in studies is that people tend to say what others' want them to hear. So, when writing reports, people can be pretty harsh if they don't think the person will read their own report. But, if people see their own reports, we tend to write nice ones. Using this effect, sociologists have studied how behaviour determines our beliefs about how nice a person is. If a person writes a good report, they will then like the person that they've wrote the report about. This is because their behaviour of 'writing a good report' is internalized because they chose to write a good report, and this causes an attitude of liking the person. In the future, the report-writer will remember the good things about the person. But, if the person writes a bad report, they will tend to dislike the person, and remember bad things about meeting them. Remember that this all hinged on whether they thought the person would see the report, and not actually on whether they initially liked the person. This is because when we commit to actions, our attitudes follow us. It wasn't belief about the person that led to them writing a good or bad report... but it was the action of writing, that caused the belief. Odd, but true. [Myers, p141-2, p144]

“After people are induced to act in an outgoing, talkative manner (during an interview), their self-presentation may carry over into greater self-perceived outgoingness and more outgoing social behaviour (Schlenker & others, 1994; Tice, 1992). Act as if you are outgoing and you may become more so. [...]

Walk for a minute taking short, shuffling steps, with eyes downcast. It's a great way to feel depressed. "Sit all day in a moping posture [...] and your melancholy lingers," noted William James (1890, p463). Want to feel better? Walk for a minute taking long strides with your arms swinging and your eyes straight ahead.”

"Social Psychology" by David Myers, p157-8

We explain our behaviour unconsciously, by observing our behaviour and then realizing what the correct attitude is. When this occurs because we simply don't know, it is explained in sociology by self-perception theory. When this occurs because our behaviour is different to our beliefs, our beliefs will begin to change until they match our behaviour, this is explained by dissonance theory, which holds that we like to be self-consistent. Strongly held or rehearsed opinions, though, break this trend, and it is also less apparent amongst those who are more individualistic; those who do not conform to social roles as easily as others, will also have their attitudes changed less by behavioural changes. In either case, free will is clearly threatened by our discovery that much of our psychology is procedural and deterministic, not self-controlled.

This page has so far presented two much simpler examples of behaviours causing behaviour. The first was a hypnotised woman... she was hypnotized to take her shoes off at a certain point. When asked, later, why she took them off, she said it was because she was hot. This is her conscious attitude-adjustment: It is an excuse that she believes, but we know it is not the reason. Her consciousness explains her behaviour by giving a likely explanation, afterwards. Her belief followed-on from her actions, even when her action was blatantly not caused by what she thought it was. In another example, an electrode makes George turn his head... but he seems to randomly make up reasons for why he turns his head. He believes that he turned his head because he 'heard a noise', because his consciousness thinks that that is a likely reason. It doesn't know that the electrode made him turn his head. He says 'I was looking under the bed' because his consciousness tries to explain his actions... not because his actions were determined by his free will. Even in clear circumstances where the subject had no free will in the matter, they think they do... and they even think they know the reasons for their behaviour. Their beliefs about themselves occurred after their behaviour, not before, yet they are completely unaware of it. Free will is an illusion... our 'attitudes' and self-opinions are not the self-made things we think they are, they are determined by cold, hard biochemistry, yet it still feels like free will to us!

4. God has No Free Will and Negates the Free Will of Others

There are two ways to prove that God has no free will. We are assuming the following properties about God:

• Omniscient (all-knowing)
• Benevolent (Perfectly good)

This section is taken from my essay:
"God has no free will" by Vexen Crabtree

Morality : Out of the possible options in a situation God always makes the best choice because it is benevolent. It cannot do something that is less moral than something else. So in every situation, God only has one choice: The most moral one. It is easy to see that God itself does not have free will. It can make no choices, every moment in time for an omniscient-benevolent God only allows one action.

Knowledge : If a God is omniscient it has no free will. An omniscient being already knows every action it will make. In effect God is an observer. An omniscient being has no free will - its entire future is set out and it has no choice but to follow its predestined path. To change its mind would be to contradict its knowledge about what actions it will take, therefore, omniscience is incompatible with free will.

Conclusion on the Free Will of God(s):
An omniscient being cannot have free will.
A benevolent God cannot have free will.

God is doubly denied its free will if it is all-knowing and perfect.

What is the point of saying that God is moral if it cannot choose to do anything bad? How can it be a moral being, if it has no choice? The answer is that God is not a moral being, it must be a morally neutral being.

God Negates Others' Free Will

If an omnipotent and omniscient being created the universe at time=0, do we have free will? The answer is no, of course, and the proof follows: God is omnipotent. It can do any (logical) thing. It is a requirement of omnipotency that it also must be omniscient - it knows everything. If it can do anything, then in an instant it can look at the position of everything in the universe and know everything. No problem so far.

When it created the universe, or life, it knew full well what it was doing. Every event that affects a persons have already been laid down and foreseen (and therefore instigated) by this God. It is these events that affect a persons character, etc, and therefore what choice they will make.

Let us presume a person has two choices to make: He can go to heaven or hell. The crux of the matter balances on him doing whatever act is required to get him into heaven. Life revolves around many points so let us consider the exact moment of truth, for this man, when he can finally make the right choice and get to heaven.

How does he decide? It depends entirely on all the information he had gathered through his life and on the current state of his body and memory. All these things were not his doing, not his devising and not his choice, yet the choice he finally makes depends on them. It is for this reason that God has already made the man's choice for him.

God, in setting the seeds for the universe, knew full well, in omniscience, which factors that it was setting would affect this poor mans outcome. When setting up a certain atom, molecule, object, etc, it could foresee the exact consequences. I.e., this slight change here will mean that this event happens slightly differently and the man will experience a slightly difference occurrence and therefore make the right choice. Depending on whether God aligns the object one way or another, the man will make the right or wrong choice.

The theists refutations, the hardest ones to immediately overcome is: "God knows what choice he will make, but leaves it up to the man to make it" - we have already refuted this one, by explaining the way that God has already set up the circumstances of the persons life which dictate his decisions. Causality refutes free will - God's omnipotent sovereignty contradicts free will.

"We still have a choice, though, whether to do the right thing or not" - this is about the final line for the theist. A stake on your conscience, perhaps. It is wrong, because the persons very perception of right and wrong is a result of the circumstances already projected by God. Also, the question of whether the man makes the right decision or not is decided by the same causality-bound things.

The situation is not resolvable: If an omnipotent being created life then we have no free will.

5. Randomness: Quantum uncertainty, chaos theory and neurones

Chaos theory holds that the smallest, tiniest events in the physical world can have knock-on effects that are unpredictable and significant on a much larger scale to that on which they occur_{[Dean 1997]}. The position that an electron can be found at in its shell around an atom, the spin of certain pairs of particles, the moment of decay of radioactive material, etc, are all examples of the quantum-level behaviours that are sometimes described as 'random'. Random means that they are unpredictable: You cannot make measurements that allow you to predict what these properties will be, and sometimes even they change (apparently) every time you measure them. It may follow (chaos theorists would say so) that these tiny events could, perhaps, cause a cascade of physical interactions in an atom that eventually leads to a biochemical change in a cell. If the cell is a neurone, potentially, quantum 'random' phenomenon could result in a neurone firing. This would mean that sometimes, if the right events (of the billions that would not cause a neurone to fire) lead to the right neurone firing (out of the billions that would not lead anywhere), some of our actions might be the result of random factors, not determined ones.

If such randomness of causes sometimes effects whether or not a neurone fires then it is still not our choice whether it fires or not. On a larger scale it means that these important possibility-trees are not willed into existence. If these facts of quantum randomness and chaos theory are sound, it merely provides another element of non-choice, another argument for the lack of free will.

Not only does randomness result merely in another sublayer of non-choice, but, it is very doubtful if random quantum events have any significance above the smallest scale. Each neurone has between 100 and 10000 synapses that influence when it fires_{[Gross 1996, p47]}; it would require millions of spontaneous 'random' cascades of quantum effects to cause a neurone to overcome it's position in the network and fire without cause; otherwise, the various inhibitors prevent small sudden biochemical events from causing misfires. Statistically, it is unlikely if quantum randomness has ever made a single neurone fire without cause.

6. Morals and Social Justice

An English court of law once saw a defendant plea philosophically that as all actions are determined, as we have seen, that a person was not "responsible" for their own actions and could not be punished for them. Society at large was to blame. The judge rejected that defence. If such a defence holds up, all justice is undermined. I'm going to present two arguments that punishment (and reward, less interestingly) are required and just as moral in deterministic systems as in free will systems, to counter the short sighted who say that determinism undermines morality, and say that if free will exists, that would undermine social justice.

1. "Choices" exist, so behaviour can be influenced by justice and morals

A person is free to act if they can choose between options. If this choice exists, they have freedom to choose. Once a person makes that choice, they will suffer the good, bad or neutral consequences of their choice. This is justice as it should be. Law and society chooses to impose rules, so when its members choose certain actions they are punished for the collective good. Determinism does not change any of this. It means that the person is still free to choose between the choices that he had, but also that his choice is a result of a milliard of factors and processes; a result of natural events. We all know that such events affect the way we make choices, and no one thinks that this undermines our morals in any way.

"The preceding doctrines about necessity and freedom do not undermine morality, but rather are absolutely essential to its support. Everyone, even when they are moralizing, assumes that behavior is all caused, and that predictions about behavior can be made. The legal system uses rewards and punishments. These make sense only if they have a regular and uniform influence, to produce the desired results. That is, the legal system rests on the presumption that behavior is caused."

http://www.ptproject.ilstu.edu/pt/fwdthu.htm

Our moral systems require that behaviour is caused. If it were otherwise our legal systems would be undermined. How could we deliver justice if a person's behaviour wasn't going to be affected by that justice? If behaviour is not predetermined by histories factors and influences, then there is no point in trying to influence people at all, and that undermines everything we know about the Human condition. The doctrine of free will undermines justice. If behaviour had no causes, then punishment could not deter crime. It would be pointless and immoral to subject people to it. Only if we accept that our actions are determined does social justice have moral worth.

2. Reward & Punishment are moral within determinism

It is up to Human society to accuse and deal with those who are immoral. Be this with advice, punishment, or death. How can we justify this in the view that the accused did not have a free-will-choice? Well, we too do not have a choice when we accuse and trial them. We all pay & gain fully for all of our actions: social retributions are part of that causality. Our punishment is determined by their action. We are no less moral for punishing than they are for misbehaving. Morality and immorality are our constructs with which we do as we please, and it is a fact that they are no more solid than the accusations of antisocial behaviour but nonetheless, they have made a decision that other living beings do not wish hir to have made.

It is this, the decision that others do not want you to make, that is the core of morality. Pressure, justice and ethics are all moral methods of regulating the methods that people choose to execute - whether or not it was their "real" choice or not the reward and punishment system works, and without it society would be destabilized. If free will existed, the same system would still be required so it can be said that determinism vs. free will has no practical affect on systems of reward and punishment.

3. God's Goodness

Despite the sensible arguments above, some scholars in history have preferred to justify evil by saying that it serves God's purpose (not the Devil's, but God's). Spinoza provides an example of the style of argumentation from the point of view of a theist who believes that God is good, that evil exists, and that there is no free will:

“Everything, according to Spinoza, is ruled by an absolute logical necessity. There is no such thing as free will in the mental sphere or chance in the physical world. Everything that happens is a manifestation of God's inscrutable nature, and it is logically impossible that events should be other than they are. This leads to difficulties in regard to sin, which critics were not slow to point out. One of them, observing that, according to Spinoza, everything is decreed by God and is therefore good, asks indignantly: Was it good that Nero should kill his mother? Was it good that Adam ate the apple? Spinoza answers that what was positive in these acts was good, and only what was negative was bad; but negation exists only from the point of view of finite creatures. In God, who alone is completely real, there is no negation, and therefore the evil in what to us seem sins does not exist when they are viewed as parts of the whole."”

"History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, p554

7. Altruism & Determinism

“

Biologists, sociologists, philosophers and above all, psychologists, have held to the "universal egoism" theory; that all apparent altruism is really selfishness in disguise. Most arguments for altruism are based on ignorance of the underlying reasons for behaving good towards others or are purely semantic in nature, not logical.

People behave altruistically for a number of selfish reasons. We are programmed genetically to behave in a way conducive to the sociability of the species: This unconscious species-instinct is the closest thing we have to true selfless altruism. In nearly every other conscious sense, altruism is an illusion. We behave well because social good behaviour fires off pleasant neurochemicals in our brains (the pleasure reward), because consciously or unconsciously we want others to see us as a good person (the social reward) or to feel good about ourselves (for pride and self-esteem). Altruism is image and illusion. [...]

Despite the facts of determinism, a doctrine called 'compatibalism' is useful. Compatibalism is the acceptance of the use of the word "altruism", despite its hollowness, because it is nonetheless a useful English word. So, I talk of "altruism" and mean it to refer to the acts that seem selfless. [...] So, we can still work to increase 'altruistic' behaviour and we can still praise it, despite the fact that we know it is a purely caused behaviour. In fact, because it is a caused behaviour, we know that our praising of selfless acts and our moralizing is effective. If altruism was not derived from deterministic factors, it would be useless to teach children to be nice because our teachings wouldn't go on to cause good behaviour.”

"Altruism: Is It Real?" by Vexen Crabtree, 2006

8. Why live?

Somebody asked me what the point of life would be if we had no free will. Why do you go on? The answer is in biology as to why I go on. Because I'm programmed to. I do not want to die, because I am alive. The ultimate aim of biology is to produce organisms that want to live! I want others to live too, because I respect my species as biology compels me to. I have no choice.

The question "Why go on?" is irrelevant for another reason... it implies that to die would be better. Killing yourself is no more a valid course of action that not killing yourself. If you wander "Why live?" and then kill yourself, you will never find the answer to your question.

Why should you eat a chocolate bar to make you happy, when you know that eventually it will all be gone? The answer: Why not? Given that I am predetermined and unfree, why is there any reason for me to kill myself? Pain, excitement, sadness, happiness, love and fear are all part of being alive, and I like it all. Pain is better than death, indulgence is better than abstinence. Respecting life, respecting the processes that allowed me to be alive, is better than the opposite. If I do wrong, it is better that you punish me because otherwise, within my life context, I would be useless.

9. Compatibalism

Some find that the facts of determinism are abhorrent and difficult to digest. There are ways to view both determinism and free will as aspects of our mental lives. Because, no matter what the causes of our wishes are, we can still act as we wish. Bertrand Russell (1935) describes this:

“The wish is the cause of action, even if the wish itself has causes. [...] It seems unreasonable to complain of this limitation. [...] Nor does determinism warrant the feeling that we are impotent. Power consists in being able to have intended effects, and this is neither increased nor diminished by the discovery of causes of our intentions.”

"Religion and Science" by Bertrand Russell, p163-167

Another way of looking it is to say that what we call 'free will' is a state of imagination, that because we can imagine different futures, we have free will, even though our attempt to choose between different actions are really determined by underlaying factors, at least we think we have choice.

“Perhaps the philosopher who has gotten closer to a sensible understanding of free will is Daniel C. Dennett (for example, in his book Elbow Room [MIT Press, 1984]. Dennett rejects any non-naturalistic view of free will, and thinks of the phenomenon [...] as a result of both biological and cultural evolution, "the power to veto our urges and then to veto our vetoes... the power of imagination, to see and image futures." He goes on to say that it is our ability to "see" ahead with our minds, to play in our heads several possible causal scenarios, that "makes us moral agents. You don't need a miracle to have responsibility."”

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci (2007)₉

It makes no practical difference to ourselves, our sense of justice or self-worth, to admit that our chosen courses of action were determined by sub- and pre- conscious factors. Whatever the underlying causes are, it is still true that the working us chose to act as we did. This compatibalist position is echoed in the closing lines of a clever poem penned for the American Journal Free Inquiry, by Barbara Smoker, president of the UK's National Secular Society from 1981:

“
Opposing Hume's deterministic view,
Freewill for humankind did Kant infer
To justify God's ire when people err.
Which view is true? Has Hume or Kant won through?
While we may choose to do what we prefer,
We cannot choose what we prefer to do.
”

"Freethoughts" by Barbara Smoker, p231

10. Free Will in the Christian Bible

An essay on the Bane of Monotheism: Essays on Free Will website by Vexen Crabtree examines free will in the Christian Bible. Only the introductory summary is relevant here:

“The Bible also says and teaches that there is no free will. Examining Exodus, Ecclesiastes 7, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 2, Romans 8, Romans 9, 2 Timothy, 2 Thessalonians and Revelations, we see that God's plan overrides our free will; those that do good do the specific good that God predestined them to do, and all others are ruled by Satan because God sends "powerful delusions" to them. The Christian Bible frequently states that God creates our future and decides our fates, no matter what our own will is. It constantly denies that we have free will. Some of the foremost Christians in history have taught that there is no free will, including St. Augustine (one of the four great founders of Western Christianity [Russell 1946, p335]), Martin Luther (founder of Protestantism) and John Calvin.”

"The Bible Affirms Predeterminism and Denies Free Will" by Vexen Crabtree (2005)

11. Conclusion: Determinism

The conclusions reached is the non-existence of free will of all living beings. If you think there is a living Creator, then our free will is refuted twice over, and the free will of the omniscient creator itself is thrice denied.

I conclude that as schematically and morally we are required, philosophically and logically to consider ourselves and others as having free will, and that we behave in life exactly the same whether or not we believe in free will, and behave the same towards others, it makes no practical difference whether there is free will or not.