Hard Determinism
Overview
It is generally believed that punishment presupposes responsibility.
That is, it would be unjust to punish someone for doing something if he
was not responsible for doing it. If I bonk your head with mine on
purpose that is assault. If I bonk your head because I trip, that’s an
accident. It would be fair to punish me for assaulting you. But it would
be unfair to punish me for an accident. After all, I could not help
it.
So what does it take for me to be responsible for my actions? Another
thing that is widely believed is that I can be responsible only for
those things that I freely will to do.
OK, so what is a free will? You will not be surprised to hear that
there are different schools of thought about this question.
One side believes that my will is free only if my decisions are not
determined by causes I have no control over. The other side thinks that
this makes no sense: how could anything not have a cause? They think
that my actions are free only if I am not impeded from doing what I want
to do and that this could be true even if what I do is determined by
causes lying outside of my control.
This is the philosophical debate about free will. It strikes many
people as a merely academic question. Since we will never know whether
our actions are causally determined or not, we cannot apply it to real
world institutions like the law. But the achievements in neuroscience
have made the free will debate a more urgent matter. While we are not
yet capable of showing exactly how decisions are caused, it seems quite
possible that we will do so. That gives the free will debate a new kind
of urgency.
Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, and Libertarianism
There are two questions each of which has two answers: “yes” and
“no”.
Is determinism true? The two answers make up the columns in the
table below.
Is it possible that our actions are free and we are responsible
for at least some of the things we do even if determinism is true? The
answers here are the rows.
|
Determinism is true |
Determinism is false |
Yes, freedom & responsibility are compatible with
determinism |
Compatibilism (Morse) |
– (no one) |
No, they aren’t (Incompatibilism) |
Hard Determinism (Greene and Cohen) |
Libertarianism (Libet) |
These labels are wonky. “Incompatibilism” is the name of the bottom
row but “compatibilism” is only the name of the northwest box. And “hard
determinism” is the name for only the southwest box while plain
“determinism” refers to the whole western column. But we play the hand
we’re dealt. Here is what they mean.
Determinism is the view that everything that happens is
causally determined. To put it another way, everything that happens is
the effect of a separate cause and causes make their effects happen.
This includes human actions.
Compatibilism is the view that our actions can be free, and
we can be held responsible for what we do, even if determinism
is true. Punishment is a way of holding people responsible for their
actions.
Incompatibilism is the view that actions cannot be
free, and we cannot be held responsible for what we do, if determinism
is true.
Hard determinism combines incompatibilism and
determinism.
- If determinism is true, actions cannot be free, and we cannot be
held responsible for what we do. (Incompatibilist premise)
- Determinism is true. (Determinist premise)
- Therefore, our actions are not free and we cannot be held
responsible for what we do. (Conclusion)
Libertarianism combines incompatibilism with the denial of
determinism.
- If determinism is true, actions cannot be free, and we cannot be
held responsible for what we do. (Incompatibilist premise)
- Determinism is not true because some things that happen are not
causally determined. In particular, the decisions of the human will are
not always causally determined. (Libertarian premise)
- Therefore, our actions can be free and we can be held responsible
for what we do. (Conclusion)
How can you be a compatibilist?
Compatibilism is the more difficult position to understand, so I am
going to spend a little time going over it. I am going to take a fairly
simple version of compatibilism derived from Thomas Hobbes, a
seventeenth century philosopher and mathematician. There can be other
versions that are more complicated, but this will do to get us
started.
A person’s actions are free, according to this simple version of
compatibilism, if she can do what she wants to do. The idea is that
freedom means there is nothing external blocking you from doing what you
want to do. It does not matter whether your decision to do one thing
rather than another was caused by factors outside of your control.
Here is a boring example to illustrate this simple version of
compatibilism. No one can control whether they are are thirsty; thirst
is not a matter of will. But thirst can cause us to do things like
getting a drink of water. Imagine the following dialog:
“Where are you going?”
“To the kitchen to get a drink.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m thirsty.”
That’s the most ordinary thing in the world. But no one really thinks
that the fact that I have no control over whether I am thirsty means I
am not free when I go to get a drink of water. By contrast, if you
blocked my way and prevented me from getting a drink, that would impede
on my freedom.
Yes, yes, you can decide not to go to the kitchen even if you are
thirsty. Maybe sitting through class is more important to you than
getting a drink right now. But a compatibilist is going to say the
desire to sit through class is something else that you do not control.
One way or the other, your decision is going to be caused by something
outside of your control.
Compatibilists think that this kind of example shows that they are
describing what we ordinarily call free actions. They concede that if
you asked someone an abstract question about whether freedom is
compatible with causal determination, that person would say no. But,
they think, the ordinary person’s descriptions of concrete actions as
free or unfree will match his definition. And the ordinary person’s
abstract philosophical opinions are just confused: no one really
understands what an uncaused action would be.
Two kinds of incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that responsibility for our actions is
incompatible with the causal determination of our actions.
Incompatibilists split into two camps depending on whether they think
our actions are caused or not.
Libertarians think that our actions are not caused. That’s why they
deny that determinism is true. They think that there are some things in
the universe that are not causally determined, namely, human actions. So
they do not think that everything is causally determined.
Why would you be a libertarian? Perhaps you think that human beings
are not exclusively material. If you think that a person has an
immaterial soul and that this soul is what is responsible for making
decisions, then you might think that our decisions are not subject to
the laws that govern the physical universe. That is true of Bramhall,
the author of the other optional reading. Benjamin Libet, a
neuroscientist, is also a libertarian. He thinks that we have the
ability to veto decisions made by our physical brains. We will encounter
Libet when we read Morse; I also have an optional reading by him on
Sakai.
The other branch of incompatibilism is called hard determinism. Hard
determinists believe that our actions are caused and that causation is
incompatible with responsibility. That is the view that Greene and Cohen
will defend in the part of the article that we will read next time.
Consequentialism and Retributivism
Compatibilists are usually consequentialists about punishment.
Incompatibilists, by contrast, are usually retributivists.
Compatibilists think our behavior is caused, so they tend to look for
causes of good behavior, like deterrent threats.
Incompatibilists think that we are responsible for our actions only
if we are free from causal influence. They think responsibility for
actions has to be attached solely to the person who acts. So it is
natural for them to think that the point of punishment is retribution
for freely chosen evil.
That said there is no logical reason why the views on free will
have to line up with those views about punishment. For example,
Greene and Cohen are consequentialists about punishment but
incompatibilists about responsibility.
Greene and Cohen on the law
Pay attention to the title: “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes
Nothing and Everything” (italics added). There are
going to be two sides to this: an argument for the conclusion that
neuroscience changes nothing and an argument for the conclusion that it
changes everything.
Greene and Cohen contend that the law is superficially compatibilist.
The law only requires the capacity for rational behavior as a condition
of criminal liability. That is compatible with the causal determination
of our actions. You can be rational and have your actions causally
determined at the same time. So, on the face of it, nothing that we can
learn from neuroscience would directly contradict anything that the law
says. That is why the title of their article starts with “For the Law,
Neuroscience Changes Nothing.”
However, Greene and Cohen argue, we accept this superficially
compatibilist rationality condition for incompatibilist
reasons. They claim that we think of the rational person as a
non-physical mind, distinct from the physical brain (the view that mind
and brain are distinct entities is called dualism). They think
we believe that a rational person can be held responsible because we
think reason is free from the constraints of physical causation. The
brain, by contrast, is subject to causal determination just like every
other physical thing.
Neuroscience, according to Greene and Cohen, will undermine this
dualist picture of persons by explaining more and more of our behavior
as the product of physical causes. As a result, they believe, we will
abandon the retributivist parts of our practices of punishment. The
retributive ideal is that punishment is reserved for the guilty: those
who freely chose to do bad things. Neuroscience, they believe, will show
that no one freely chooses anything and so punishment for retributive
reasons makes no sense.
In place of retributivism, they believe, we will take up a
consequentialist approach to antisocial behavior. They think this is a
good thing because they view consequentialism as the more humane
approach to punishment. Because they believe that neuroscience will lead
us to fundamentally rethink the purposes of the criminal justice system,
they end the title of their article with the word “everything,” as in:
“For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything.” So really,
in their opinion, neuroscience will change everything.
Mr. Puppet and Hard Determinism
Greene and Cohen claim to show that we are tacitly incompatibilists
with their example of Mr. Puppet. The idea is that Mr. Puppet would not
be held responsible for his actions because they were so clearly formed
by the scientist. But, they reason, if we aren’t willing to hold
Mr. Puppet responsible for behavior that was caused, we should not hold
anyone responsible for their behavior. Why? Everyone’s behavior is
caused!
It seems to me that this is their main argument, so we will probably
discuss it for some time. We are supposed to think that Mr. Puppet is
not responsible and that, in turn, is supposed to show that we are
incompatibilists. Without Mr. Puppet, I don’t see that they have another
way of showing that people are implicitly incompatibilists.
Main points
You should be familiar with these points from today’s class.
- Compatibilism.
- Incompatibilism.
- Why the law is at least superficially compatibilist.
- Why the law is actually incompatibilist, according to Greene and
Cohen.
- Why Greene and Cohen think neuroscience will move us towards
consequentialism.
- The case of Mr. Puppet.
References
Greene, Joshua, and Jonathan Cohen. 2004. “For the Law,
Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything.” Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society 359 (1451): 1775–85.