Your question of crime and punishment has nothing to do with the useless debate between determinism and free will (as pointed out repeatedly by many, we, ironically, have no other sensible choice but to act as if we had free will).
It is rather about reasonable ways of protecting people from harm and ways to rehabilitate the offenders, two hard civic and political problems currently lumped together and bandaided by the woefully inadequate penal system.
You may have concluded that crime+punishment should have nothing to do with determinism/free will, and that conclusion is IMHO a good one. But in the real world, crime+punishment do have a lot to do with determinism/free will. Our philosophy and our legal system is riddled with explicit statements about the issue. That is why we call it “crime and punishment” instead of “crime and prevention”. See my post, Crime and Punishment.
(as pointed out repeatedly by many, we, ironically, have no other sensible choice but to act as if we had free will)
This is not true. Susan Blackmore has spoken a lot about his. Quick example:
It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will. As Samuel Johnson said, “All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.” With recent developments in neuroscience and theories of consciousness, theory is even more against it than it was in his time. So I long ago set about systematically changing the experience. I now have no feeling of acting with free will, although the feeling took many years to ebb away.
But what happens? People say I’m lying! They say it’s impossible and so I must be deluding myself in order to preserve my theory. And what can I do or say to challenge them? I have no idea—other than to suggest that other people try the exercise, demanding as it is.
When the feeling is gone, decisions just happen with no sense of anyone making them, but then a new question arises—will the decisions be morally acceptable? Here I have made a great leap of faith. It seems that when people discard the illusion of an inner self who acts, as many mystics and Buddhist practitioners have done, they generally do behave in ways that we think of as moral or good. So perhaps giving up free will is not as dangerous as it sounds—but this too I cannot prove.
I’ve done the same thing and have no feeling of free will left. (I’m not even sure I ever had it to begin with.) I find the whole idea of “agency” problematic and free will just blatantly incoherent, even as a useful illusion.
This has neither destroyed my life, nor made me any less moral. Rather to the contrary, I suspect it has improved both aspects.
Does everyone wonder about free will? Certainly the world’s great thinkers have done so for millennia, the existence of God has been challenged by arguments about this very subject and modern science merely makes its existence seem less and less plausible.
But this is not a problem we should leave to the experts, for it concerns us all, tangling as it does with issues of morality, wisdom and the meaning of life.
I suspect that at some level everyone who thinks at all must have asked themselves questions such as Who am I? Why do I end up doing things I didn’t want to do? Is everything inevitable, and if so why should I bother doing anything at all?
To my surprise I recently discovered that even my Dad does.
My father is not an educated man. He left school at fifteen, fought in the Second World War, came home to take over his father’s printing business and, as far as I know, never read a book for the rest of his life. He was a straightforward, honest and kindly man; a father I could admire, but not one I could share my ideas with – not someone I thought would have anything to say about free will. But I was wrong, as I learned one evening, sitting with him by the fire.
“Where did you say you were going dear?” he asked for the third or fourth time.
“To Sharpham House. It’s a Buddhist centre near Totnes.”
“Why are you going there?”
“I’m giving a lecture on free will.”
“Free will? What on earth is there to say about that?”
How do you explain the problem of free will to a man of ninety who has advanced dementia, just about knows who you are, and whose world consists of a bed, a fireside chair, and the daily paper he can no longer understand?
I did my best. I said that it seemed to me that my body and brain are clever machines that can function perfectly well without there being any inner me, or spirit or soul, to direct them. So there’s a problem – I seem to be in control but I cannot really be. This is, I said, what I was going to be talking about.
To my complete surprise this set him alight. He was quite sure that he had an inner spirit. Otherwise why would anything matter? I asked him where this spirit came from, and he said from God. I protested that there was no God, and that spirits controlling a body would have to be magic, and he came back with a comment I have never forgotten.
“If there is no God and no spirit, then why do we want to be good?”
This struck me so hard because I, too, have come to this point in my own, very different, struggles. I have long assumed that free will is an illusion and have worked hard to live without it, but doing this provokes a simple fear – what if I behave terribly badly? What if I give up all moral values and do terrible things? What indeed are moral values and how can I make moral decisions if there’s no one inside who is responsible? Why do I want to work hard at spiritual practice (link to previous blog on spiritual path) if there’s no one who acts and no freedom not to?
I’m sure I needn’t go on. I suspect that this natural fear is the main reason why so few people sincerely try to live without free will. Like my Dad, they want to be good, and fear that if they stop believing in a self who chooses to do the right thing they might do something terrible.
Is the fear justified? I suspect not.
Evolutionary psychology provides reasons why we want to be good, such as nurturing instincts shaped by kin selection, and the desire to earn brownie points in the game of reciprocal altruism; memetics explains how altruistic memes can spread so successfully; and most of us have been trained since early childhood to behave at least reasonably decently. So it may just come naturally to us to want to be good, even though we so often fail. If this is true, this common fear is no excuse to carry on living in delusion.
Arguably our cruellest and most selfish behaviour is caused by clinging to the false idea of a self who has free will, in which case we might even behave better, rather than worse, if we could throw off the illusion. So it is by no means obvious that giving up believing in free will must be morally dangerous.
Another deep seated fear is that we will fail to do anything at all, and lose all motivation. I have frequently had students who thought this way, “Why would I ever get up in the morning?” they ask. I suggest they try the exercise and see what happens. What happens is that they get bored. Then they need to go to the loo, and once in the bathroom it seems nicer to have a shower and clean their teeth than go back to bed. And so the day goes on and things get done. In fact, if you keep practicing this way it becomes increasingly obvious that the physical body you once thought you inhabited does not need a ghostly driver. It really is OK to trust in the universe and in one’s own spontaneous actions. Then the feeling of free will simply loses its power and fades away.
Huh? I don’t understand what you mean. Are you saying that you model me as having free will because that’s the only way you can model human behavior? If so, I would say your models are seriously lacking.
Your question of crime and punishment has nothing to do with the useless debate between determinism and free will (as pointed out repeatedly by many, we, ironically, have no other sensible choice but to act as if we had free will).
It is rather about reasonable ways of protecting people from harm and ways to rehabilitate the offenders, two hard civic and political problems currently lumped together and bandaided by the woefully inadequate penal system.
You may have concluded that crime+punishment should have nothing to do with determinism/free will, and that conclusion is IMHO a good one. But in the real world, crime+punishment do have a lot to do with determinism/free will. Our philosophy and our legal system is riddled with explicit statements about the issue. That is why we call it “crime and punishment” instead of “crime and prevention”. See my post, Crime and Punishment.
This is not true. Susan Blackmore has spoken a lot about his. Quick example:
I’ve done the same thing and have no feeling of free will left. (I’m not even sure I ever had it to begin with.) I find the whole idea of “agency” problematic and free will just blatantly incoherent, even as a useful illusion.
This has neither destroyed my life, nor made me any less moral. Rather to the contrary, I suspect it has improved both aspects.
This exercise sounded interesting, and I wanted to research it a bit more. I found another article by Susan Blackmore which I think relates: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2007/03/free-spirit-god-fear-anything
There is a difference between feeling and acting. Both of you act as if you had free will, which was my point.
Huh? I don’t understand what you mean. Are you saying that you model me as having free will because that’s the only way you can model human behavior? If so, I would say your models are seriously lacking.