Critically assess the claim that people are free to make moral decisions (35)
Free Will is a controversial issue, with vast ethical implications on either outcome. According to the hard determinist standpoint, every action and event in the world has been predetermined. Thus James Rachels’ view that “true morality requires autonomy” becomes truthful, as we are not free to make moral decisions. However, the views of the libertarians and compatibilists would say humans are in fact free. Therefore, we have a responsibility for our actions, as we could have done otherwise and therefore this choice and possibility means we can make moral decisions.
The viewpoint of hard determinism states that as humans are not free, moral decisions cannot be made. As a hard determinist, I find that the philosopher Ted Honderich agrees with me about the implications on morality if hard determinism is to be accepted. Honderich gives an analogy of a walker on Hampstead Heath. The walker’s legs do not move about on their own accord, they are not free because the entireties of the actions of the leg are caused by something else. In the case of the walker the brain is the cause, the state of the brain causing the leg to move in a certain way. The leg cannot be compatibilist, it is not simply influenced by the brain and still “chooses”, but is directly and utterly the product of the brain’s thought pattern. As such the leg has no responsibility, and is not free to make any moral decisions that a leg may face, such as whether or not to tread upon the snail beneath it. As such, choice is an illusion. Determism does not necessarily denote the concepts of good and evil to arbitrary concepts, but rather the idea that humans can be good and evil in themselves. We cannot be blamed for a course of action that we could not have changed or prevented, as we are simply subject to cause and effect- it is just as irrational to blame the universe or Richard Dawkins for something that has gone wrong. Surprisingly, some Christians, such as John Calvin, founder of Calvinism, suggests people have no free will as far as their ethical decisions go. In Institutes of the Christian Religion “life is fore-ordained for some, and eternal damnation for others… he is predestined to life or death”. However I feel Calvin’s point is irrational and contradictory. His argument for predeterminism and the lack of ability to freely make moral decisions requires the existence of Yahweh. It would be irrational to suggest Yahweh would send people to hell, when they had no choice of their actions, which had been predetermined by Yahweh himself.
John Hospers is another Hard Determinist who agrees with my views on the subject. We both agree there is something which compels us both externally and internally to act in such a way that we consider is our own “free will”, but is in fact not. He used Freud’s psychoanalytic views to support hard determinism, saying we are simply predestined by past experience and the effect of this on the unconscious mind. We act in a certain way because we are caused to by our genes, and societal values pit upon us. We cannot act freely as we simply follow our “programming”. From the views of Hospers and Freud then, we are little more than computers, which common sense dictates cannot make free moral decisions. One academic who has similar, yet differing views us novelist Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, which deals with the consequence of having freewill removed upon morality. Although not a hard determinist, Burgess writes about the consequences on morality if our freedom is removed. In A Clockwork Orange Burgess uses the character of the Chaplain to forward his own views on the morality of the “Ludovico treatment” which via drugs and violent clips removes the victim’s ability to choose good and evil. “Choice, he had no real choice does he? He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice”. Burgess is suggesting here that without an ability to choose, we cannot commit acts of evil, and thus cease to be able to be free moral agents. Without being able to commit evil acts, we cannot essentially be good if we have no choice in performing good actions, like the character of Alex in the novel. Burgess however faults hard determinism on the grounds we are free unless we are physically forced to behave in a certain way, like Alex under the Ludovico treatment. Burgess goes as far to say that “when one ceases to be able to make moral decisions one ceases to be a man”. According to Burgess, being free is what constitutes us as human. Therefore as humans we are free to make moral decisions.
In a biological context, philosophes such as Richard Dawkins would argue against autonomy. Dawkins believes we are little more than survival mechanisms for our genes. Our actions therefore are a result of our genes and the evolutionary desire to protect the species. This lack of free will therefore, leads to nature becoming “pitilessly indifferent”, rather than immoral or moral. Another biological determinist is Steven Pinker who states “I do not believe in free will in the sense of a ghost in the machine, a soul that somehow leads the TV screen of the senses and pushes buttons and pulls levers… Our behaviour is a result of physical products in the brain. When you have a brain made of one hundred trillion neurons connected by one billion synapses you get a vast amount of complexity, which results in a multitude of actions which cause an illusion of freedom”. Pinker’s view is similar to Dawkins’, our behaviour is result of biological makeup, which is beyond our control and thus not able to freely make moral decisions. Pinker’s view is a convincing one in terms of the title statement, as unless evidence for the soul can be accurately verified, free will must be, in the words of Gordon M.Orloff, “unnatural and magic”.
Continuing with being able to make free moral decisions in relation to science, behaviourists such as Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments that may seem useful in answering the question. Pavlov is famous for his experiments involving dogs, and that he could cause them to salivate with the sound of a bell. This form of “conditioning” influenced John B. Watson who suggested our behaviour can be predicted and controlled, due to humans living in a determined universe, so every action including ethical decisions is controlled by prior causes. Therefore our ethical decisions are a product of societal conditioning, and we cannot thus make free moral decisions.
Baruch Spinoza would argue we are not free to make moral decisions, going as so far as to question morality itself. Spinoza claimed everything happened through “the operation of necessity”. Everything must happen the way it does, as nothing is contingent, so humans have no free will. His view can be summed up in one of his letters “"men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." Spinoza claimed you could not make an immoral decision, because everything that happens is “excellent and divine” due to the nature of God, things only appear as evil because of a flawed understanding of nature. So, Spinoza rejects humanity’s ability to make free moral decisions on the ground everything is determined, and that morality is a somewhat meaningless concept.
Someone who suggested that human actions are results of both Dawkin’s biology and Watson’s society is Clarence Darrow, the defence lawyer on the Clarence Darrow case. Darrow argued that the two boy’s murderous actions were a result of their upbringing, ancestry and wealthy environment, all factors they had no influence upon. “He was not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All this was handed to him… He did not make himself. And yet he is compelled to pay”. According to Darrow’s logic we are unable to freely make moral decisions as our actions are a result of events we cannot control.
However there are viewpoints that suggest we can make moral decisions freely. Immanuel Kant was a strong advocator of moral autonomy, which was one of his three postulates of practical reason. Kant believed he had proved the existence of free will via rationalism. Kant observed (empiricism?) that morality existed in the world. Kant stated morality would be an arbitrary concept if we could not freely choose, therefore as morality exists we can freely choose. By this logic then, Kant believes we can make free moral decisions, purely because morality exists.
Soft determinism is an approach that suggests free will is compatible with determinism. Arthur Schopenhauer said "Man is free to do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills” By this he means someone may act freely according to a certain motive, but the nature of the motive is determined. Hume, a compatibilist, claimed “every event is the sum of a prior cause”, and that there is only one available outcome, alternatives are purely hypothetical. Responsible or morally free actions are caused by our own willings, whereas unfree actions are brought about by causes external to the agent. According to Hume, humans are indeed free to make moral decisions. Hume’s views seem to be mere wordplay however. Free will by definition is being able to choose between too possible outcomes. If there is no more than one possible outcome, as Hume suggests, then we cannot have free will. Kant is a critic here, (?) describing the idea as “word jugglery” and” wretched subterfuge”. William James, who came up with the perhaps derogatory term of “soft determinism” is also against the views, in The dilemma of determinism, accusing them of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism. These scholars support my view that soft determinism cannot aptly prove that humans are capable of make free moral decisions, as the compatibilist view simply relies on corrupted definitions.
One point of view, libertarianism, holds that we are completely free. According to C.A.Campbell, “A man can be said to exercise free will in a morally significant sense only in so far as his chosen act is one of which he is the sole cause or author”. If one is caused to act in a certain way, then that action is not free. Therefore to make free moral decisions, our decisions must not be caused, but be the cause in themselves. Jean-Paul Satre would agree with the libertarian stand point. He would say we make our own actions, and could have gone down another path. According to Satre we can always make a choice, e.g. suicide regardless of the situation. Sartre believed we show our freedom in our aim to be free and act freely; as a result “one is doomed to this eternal freedom”. Because of this freedom then, we can make decisions that could not have been made, so we are responsible for our actions and can make moral decisions freely. However this view may be flawed, as being you own cause seem illogical, deciding to do something must result from a certain state of mind, or else it would appear random- which is still outside one’s control and thus not free. Sartre’s ideas just seem to be wishful thinking, attempting to escape the moral nihilism that Sartre believed hard determinism brings.
