Sunday, June 05, 2011

More Bad Philosophy From Sam Harris
Free Will and Morality This Time

Jeez.

I wish I had known that one could get rich by packaging breezy summaries of middle-brow philosophy for the internet. Good work, in a way, if you can get it...

I mean, I hate to harsh on people who are genuinely interested in philosophical problems, and who are popularizing them. But when you present only one side of complex discussions and try to make the answers seem not only easy, but obvious...that's not so good. Added demerits if you get it wrong...though at this point, we enter more controversial territory.

Harris here sketches a sketch of a very sketchy case for hard determinism plus a view that hard determinism is not incompatible with morality. The basic determinist argument is not original with Harris, of course. Harris's arguments appear in better forms in Schopenhauer's Essay on the Freedom of the Will. The bit about morality and punishment is the sort of thing that's also appeared in B. F. Skinners horrifyingly awful Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. I'm not an expert on the freedom debate, for one thing. But one thing to note here is that people like Harris want to pretend that the implications of hard determinism can be easily contained. Harris's basic commitment--like that of Dawkins and company--is to a breezy scientism. His M.O. is to take difficult issues, make them sound easy, and make the solutions sound obvious and painless and quasi-scientific.  The point is not that Harris is obviously wrong, of course. The point is that it is an egregious mistake to pretend, as he does, that he is obviously right. He either doesn't understand or doesn't care to think about the implications of the conclusion that we are all just squishy robots.

The objection is not, of course, that determinism is unpleasant. Rather, the problem is that we cannot simply accept determinism without radically revising our view of human beings and human life and its (apparent) value. The view that we have at least some measure of freedom is so central to our view of humans and their value that abandoning that view is not going to be possible with just a few teaks here and there. Rather, it requires a large-scale revision of our thinking. It's not just a matter of a wee revision to our view of moral criminals; rather, we would, it seems, have to abandon the idea (for example) that anyone ever deserved anything, good or bad. And certainly it would, in this brave new world, make more sense to imprison someone prone to past and future dangerous accidents than it would to imprison someone who had committed horrible, premeditated crimes in the past, but who would not do so again in the future.

We ought also note that metaphysical determinism--the view that every event has a(n efficient) cause--is simply false. It is not, or so the physicists tell us, even true of macroscopic objects like you and me. Harris asserts that no view of causation is consistent with freedom, but that is false. Although mechanistic, efficient causation seems inconsistent with freedom (and: so does randomness), it is in no way clear that final causation is incompatible with freedom. But breezy scientism has no place for hard thinking about final causes.

And, finally, it's important to stress again that the problem isn't that hard determinism makes us sad. The problem is that it is an unproven view built on presuppositions that are largely at odds with current physics, as well as a view which is inconsistent with much of what we're convinced of about ourselves, our lives and our capacities. Hard determinism may be true, though currently I'd bet against it. And if it is true, it's going to force us to radically rethink our place in the world. 

Though, of course, one problem with determinism is that it has head-spinning implications even for thinking about its implications. It's very difficult to make any room for any types of obligations if determinism is true--and that includes logical obligations. So, suppose that I come to believe that determinism is true, and I recognize that I am obligated to come to believe the implications of the view. But then I realize that, if determinism is true, I simply either will or will not recognize those implications, and there is nothing that I can do about it. It has been determined since the Big Bang that, for any implication, M, of determinism, I either will or won't believe it. In fact, I can't do otherwise. And since--despite Harris's drive-by of the subject--'ought' does imply 'can', if I don't come to believe M, then I can't, so it is not true that I ought to. The determinist might point out that determinism does not entail that my actions are ineffectual--it may very well be true that if I thought about it harder, I'd accept M. True, but irrelevant. The fact is that, if determinism is true, then I can't think harder than I do; it has been determined since the big bang that I will think this hard about it and no harder...  And so on.

5 Comments:

Blogger The Mystic said...

I read the first two paragraphs and could not continue.

My favorite part: "In fact, the concept of free will is a non-starter, both philosophically and scientifically. There is simply no description of mental and physical causation that allows for this freedom that we habitually claim for ourselves and ascribe to others."

Shorter Sam:

"Free will can't be explained causally, so it must not exist."

...

This guy has obviously thought about this for a very burdensome few seconds. I mean OBVIOUSLY everything in the universe is no more than the product of those causes which came before it! DUH!

Have you heard of this guy "Kant"? He was such an idiot, he actually thought that freedom is important, when it's so obviously impossible.

Seriously, dude, you should stop wasting your time reading this garbage. These lightweights feigning heavyweight status are just deleriously screaming about their victories through broken teeth and bruised faces.

10:31 AM  
Anonymous Picard1701 said...

So you didn't read his post, and yet you are criticising it? Brilliant! The matter of fact is, that Harris’s theory is inconsistent and self-contradictory at best, and immoral at worst.

For exemple he wrote; “If we cannot assign blame to the workings of the universe, how can evil people be held responsible for their actions?” So he said that we shouldn't judge those people, because they didn't have control over their actions, and yet, in the same sentence he labeled them as evil, which is judgmental and derogatory term. Work of genius! And what does he mean by evil? In deterministic universe concept of good and evil does not exist! In Harris’s universe Osama Bin Laden, was not more evil than a Influenza Pandemic of 1918 – neither of them had any agency, so you can’t call them evil. He also said that: we make choices based on our genes, our circumstances, and our molecules. Well, but that's not a choice, so he once more used wrong terminology - choice can't exist in deterministic universe. And entire notion that he want to change our minds is the most inconsistent idea of them all. How can you convince anyone by evidence and argument to do anything if we are just biologically predetermined? OK, so can he reason with serial killers – exemple used by him – and influence them to stop killing, or can he convince gay people to change sexual orientation? I bet he can’t. How anyone could influence biology with non biological, non material things like idea? If he can’t change a mind of presumably, biologically determined serial killer, then what make him think that he can change a mind of presumably, biologically determined, average Joe? And if he can use logic and reason – product of conscious mind – to influence biology, then what make him think that free will is impossible? Also he is almost obsessed with serial killers and he claims that, essentially we and they are identical - we are all just prisoners of our own biology and upbringing. This is like saying Mozart was genial musician, he was human, ergo, all humans must be genial musicians! But just like Mozart, serial killers are just exception from the rule, and not representation of normal human being.

As for moral implications of this theory... Well, we already know that people who believe in determinism are more likely to act immorally, than people who believe that, they are responsible for their own actions, look at "Nature 477, 23-25(2011)":

Of course, notions of good and evil, love and hate, also become irrelevant, even though Harris, quite inconsistently, claims otherwise. You can't really blame anyone for anything, and you can't really praise anyone for anything. Also notions of responsibility, consequences and justice are equally unimportant. Unless you are a serial killer, then you shouldn't worry about killing othet humans. Let's just say that I killed my uncle, because I needed his inheritance. After the fact, police caught me and scanned me with super-duper, advanced MRA device. They determined that for more than 99% I will never kill anyone ever again. So I should get off scot-free, since I'm not responsible I'm not posing a threat, right? Justice? I don't think so!

Not to mention, amount of psychological suffering that knowledge about determinism would cause. Knowledge that life is essentially pointless and consciousness is meaningless, would eventually drive me crazy - for me, and presumably for many others it would be like discovering Cthulhu, ;) Is this is this new brave world you want to live in?

8:33 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Not sure why you think I didn't read the post...also: there doesn't seem to *be* a post there anymore.

Just an ad for his book.

8:56 AM  
Anonymous Picard1701 said...

I was referring to post written by The Mystic - he didn't read your essay, and yet, he was criticising it

8:00 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Oh. Got it.

8:03 AM  

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