Free Will vs. Determinism

There is a fact of particle physics that will be helpful to this debate. I mean to cite those cases in which we can know either the velocity of a particle or we can know its position, but not both—so it is with free will vs. determinism. The two are mutually exclusive, or so the traditional argument goes. Our traditional definitions of freedom and determinism dictate that we can countenance either the presence of free will or the presence of a deterministic, material cause, but not both at the same time. And yet there may be a way that we can paradoxically accommodate both views. (After all, a particle has both a position and a velocity, hence our trouble might be one of perspective.)

If pressed I am first inclined to lean towards determinism,  since if we subscribe, at minimum, to the possible reduction of mental events to material causes then determinism clearly follows; in a materialistic universe there will always be a citable physical cause for any given event. However, if we define free will as a psychological event—the experience of choice—then clearly it exists as well, even if the causes of our choices are material. It is good philosophical practice to mark a delineation between the physical cause of any mental occurrence and the phenomenon of human beings actually undergoing that said occurrence. You can hardly argue that the two are one in the same. (I posit this in full awareness of the thorough and seamless overlaying of consciousness with the activities of the brain; you will find no dualistic theory of mind here.) For example, the cascade of biological events, of electrochemical impulses that account for what we would call amorous feelings, it can hardly be argued, give a full account of what it is like for human beings to experience even a loose approximation of love. A clear difference exists, then, between the utterly material and the unique phenomena experienced by those with cognitive faculties.

There comes a point, I would argue, when we can take the physical cause as so remote with regard to what appear to be autonomous rational decisions that the case for free will becomes that much stronger. Consider first a proximate cause by relating the experience of hunger and the subsequent decision to eat with a sudden drop in blood sugar. Here most of us will be comfortable attributing the experience of “choice” as being, for the most part, false. The material cause of the mental event is plain. If, on the other hand, we behave as Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man and rationalize our behavior in such a way as to attempt freedom from determinism—even if through highly neurotic and abstracted means—it becomes evident that the material cause of our behavior is very remote. (The possibility of psychological determinism, Freudian childhoods, Skinner’s mechanistic account of our desire to avoid pain and seek pleasure—all such objections—are duly noted: yet none rule out the ability to rationalize our own behavior, and it is here, through metacognition, that the purview of choice is expanded.) While all brain states are reducible to material ones, it is worth bearing out that, in fact, many brain states are caused by other brain states; in other words, while many motives are not, certain others are highly rationalized.

This may not completely liberate us from the eventual deterministic explanation of our behavior, but it certainly does make the deterministic cause of that behavior much more distant in some cases, and in this hinterland between cause and effect I find it irresistible to wonder if there might be something very interesting happening here. Too often we forget about matters of degree when discussing such topics. It appears to me that in some cases the material cause is strong, but in other remote cases the influence of clear material causes becomes asymptotic, that is, it never quite reaches zero but the end behavior of the line is such that it becomes negligible. From the living specter of determinism rises the shade of free will.