Disinformation about Determinism, Pt. 1

In which we address some common misconceptions.

Fear of determinism runs deep, driven by misconceptions about what it means to be a natural creature fully embedded in a cause-and-effect world. That we are such creatures as shown by science was argued briefly in the previous installment. Many, perhaps most folks, being of dualist or supernaturalist persuasions, not scientific, suppose we humans are not thus embedded, but have powers and capacities that transcend our physicality. So they probably got off the bus after being told they should stick with science, if not before. But since you’re reading this you’re likely not among them. You basically agree we are physical, natural, fully caused beings, sans immaterial souls and “soul control.” Terrific. But you might still suppose that determinism – pragmatic, not universal (see the first installment) – robs us of some important desiderata related to effective agency, e.g., origination, control, responsibility, rationality, and authenticity, so it needs to be resisted, or at least not discussed in polite company. You’ve seen that indeterminism can’t add to effective agency or choices being more up to you, but you perhaps still think that determinists can’t justifiably call themselves real choice-makers, real reasoners, or be held really responsible. I say this because I’ve seen many folks encounter determinism (more broadly naturalism) and immediately jump to such conclusions. That’s a worry. It paints determinism, unfairly and inaccurately, as the enemy of agency, thus blocking its acceptance in the wider community. We need to get determinism right and reassure folks that telling the full causal story about ourselves has no dire consequences.

In this first set of reassurances, I’ll address a list I came across recently of objections to determinism in a Facebook discussion group. I’ll quote them verbatim since they illustrate the misconceptions about it nicely:

1. Loss of Control: It [determinism] suggests that our conscious will might be more of an observer or narrator than the ultimate decision-maker. This can feel like a loss of control over our own lives.

2. Challenging Identity: If our thoughts and actions are just the inevitable outputs of a biological machine, what does that say about our individual identity, our sense of self?

3. Moral Implications: If we're automatons, how can we be held morally responsible for our actions? The foundations of our legal and ethical systems start to feel shaky.

4. The Mechanistic View of Consciousness: It reduces the richness and complexity of subjective experience to mere physical processes, which can feel cold and impersonal.

5. Questioning Free Will: It directly confronts the deeply held belief in free will, which is central to many people's understanding of what it means to be human.

6. Existential Implications: If we're automatons, does life have inherent meaning or purpose, or are we just carrying out pre-programmed instructions?

For each of these objections we can ask: how would adding some indeterminism (causal slack we might call it) to the human agent, the process of self-formation, or our choice-making capacities help to block the dire conclusion? If you think it can, please let me know in the comments.

Control. A common theme in the above is that if determinism holds then we are somehow mere machines or automatons (2, 3, 6), thus lack capacities for situationally responsive, voluntary action in service to our goals and intentions. This seems an obvious non sequitur since we clearly have such capacities, nor as argued in the first installment would adding some indeterminism to the behavioral mix give us more control over our choices instead of less. That consciousness (1,4), conceived of as something independent of our neurally-instantiated cognitive capacities, might not be the contra-causal (“ultimate”) controller some imagine it to be doesn’t diminish the real control we embodied agents have over our behavior. Adding some further level of control besides what the perceptually-informed brain already affords us means telling a story about immaterial-material interaction, and no such (Cartesian dualist) story is on offer. Moreover, the regress of control has to stop somewhere: even an immaterial agent riding herd on the brain would necessarily be limited in its own control capacities. As it is, the physically and socially situated brain does a creditable job most of the time, and the fact that we are fully caused by circumstances we didn’t choose to become who we are doesn’t in the least subtract from our own causal powers to exert our will.

The worry (in my experience) also seems to be that even if our behavior in an actual situation is a situationally responsive function of who we are, want, and decide, then we still aren’t really exerting control unless we might have chosen otherwise given all things as they were. But as argued in the first installment, wanting the capacity to do other than what you as a decider determine is irrational. It wouldn’t get you anywhere, practically speaking, to somehow act outside and independently of the capacities that actually determined - actually controlled - your choice and behavior. Reliable causation in the choice-making process is a requirement for control, not an impediment. Nor, as some might think, does the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior somehow disappear in a deterministic universe. Both are causal processes, but only the former engages our higher-level capacities for perception and action selection.

Responsibility. If determinism (supposedly) robs us of control (1) and free will of the libertarian variety (5), it implies we can’t be held responsible or be morally responsible (3). This very common worry forgets that our responsibility practices have ample justification as a forward-looking means to shape behavior and reinforce moral norms. Since most of us are behaviorally flexible creatures with robust control capacities, even if we’re fully caused to be who we are and act as we do, it’s our very sensitivity to the prospect of praise or blame that justifies their application to us. Anticipating being held responsible is a powerful motivator for keeping bad behavior in check, as is anticipating praise for good an inducement to do good. It’s only because the moral community has causal influence over us as social beings that morality gets a grip on us. Were we in some respect uninfluenced deciders of our behavior, that would attenuate, not increase, the effectiveness of moral norms in shaping behavior. All told, determinism doesn’t upset our moral compass (most of us understand and for the most part respect the distinction between right and wrong) or undermine its socially-based capacity to guide us. Such a capacity depends on our being at the influence of norms, not free agents in the libertarian sense. Accepting pragmatic determinism might, however, affect both our norms and the responsibility practices that instill and reenforce them. Once we’ve dispensed with the libertarian agent, backwards-looking rationales for reward and punishment might lose their plausibility, thus affecting how we hold each other responsible. More on this in later installments about the positive implications of seeing ourselves as fully included in the causal order.

Identity, meaning, and the richness of experience. The concerns expressed in the list above illustrate worries about what we might call disenchantment by determinism: the complete causal, naturalistic story about who we are and what we do supposedly threatens personal identity, the importance of conscious experience, and the possibility of meaning. But again, such conclusions are non sequiturs driven by a dualist conception of human nature rooted in our religious, pre-scientific cultural inheritance. If we sign up with science and accept a basically materialist account of our origins as biological beings, our individuality (2) remains perfectly intact: the soul isn’t required to secure one’s identity, rooted as it is in each person’s unique DNA (twins excepted) and developmental history. The conscious sense of being a self (the self-sensation we might call it) is, likewise, a robust if incompletely understood function of how your embodied brain models the you-the-organism situated in the world. And the richness of your conscious experience (4) remains, also produced (somehow, an open question!) by the embodied brain - the “merely physical” ain’t so mere. All told, a naturalistic account of human agency is no threat to the reality of personal identity and the complex, qualitative subjectivity of being a conscious creature. That account is incomplete, awaiting a settled theory of consciousness, a point seized on by dualists and anti-naturalists to call science-based naturalism into question. Which is fine, since the naturalist’s epistemic commitment to empiricism means that we remain open to correction as the evidence accumulates. We don’t take things on faith, but rather observations in principle available to anyone.

Lastly, the naturalistic worldview, including determinism, is seen as disenchanting because as (6) would have it, meaning and a meaningful life require us to be more than physical beings embedded in a cause and effect world. It’s to suggest that we, caricatured as mere mechanisms, are barred from meaningful experiences and the activities and insights that engender them. This too, obviously, is a non sequitur based on religious or dualist traditions, when in fact meaning(s) in life and experiences of meaning are perfectly available to materialists and naturalists. The supernaturalist assumption is that the natural world alone can’t supply the basis for meaning that the supernatural is claimed to supply: we’re here to fulfil some cosmic or God-given purpose. But we can always ask the reasonable question fatal to such claims: what’s the point of the existence of that purpose, of that god and its agenda? For what reason does it exist? It looks as though the totality of existence, conceived of as either entirely natural or split between the natural and supernatural, can’t be assigned a purpose or meaning in that sense. Still, our biological nature, bequeathed to us by evolution, affords us the opportunity to find plenty of local meaning in all the domains - moral, affective, cognitive, aesthetic, and even spiritual - that we’re capable of exploring.

Having addressed the concerns listed above, in the next installment we’ll have a look at further misconceptions about determinism having to do with rationality, fatalism, creativity, human rights, and the authoritarian state. Determinism is not an invitation to passivity, nor does it serve to justify political regimes opposed to equal access to opportunities for human flourishing. We can’t wait for determinism to happen.