DETERMINISM (THE DENIAL OF FREE WILL) AND REASON
- DO THEY CONFLICT?
Each one of your actions is the result of a complicated process even more than
you realise. But the action is as much down to cause and effect as a snowflake
falling.
Determinism says that your free choices are physically caused and so are not really free choices. Forces that are bigger than you and which comprise you are their true origin. If this calls our feeling that we can do other than what we do, that no secret force has us choosing tea not coffee today, a mistake, then so what? If I inject you with a vitamin I cause changes in you. That is a physical cause. But if I give you good news and you respond with happiness I think I caused that. You think it too. The fact is I did not put your response in you at all. I simply cannot do that. There is physical cause and the latter being an example of cause is only an illusion.
Determined and fixed mean the same thing.
It is commonly presumed that determinism, and we know determinism is true,
denies the validity of reason. If we were produced without the agency of an
all-truthful God and are programmed by chance it seems that our reason might be
unreliable. It seems it might not have been programmed or set right. But no
matter what we do we are still assuming that our reason is right anyway. We know
by experience that reason works. For instance, reason says that if I step into a
hole I will fall and experience verifies this so I don’t need circles and
assumptions.
A deeper thought is that if determinism is true then instead of reasoning we just react. There is no real thinking. We are conditioned and we react to that. Determinism says we have no real volition. And now there is a new problem, if we had the power to be free we would not be able to be anyway if we didn't have the power to think without being conditioned.
If you assume that reason is right for a God of total
truth exists and made us and it and that God exists for reason says so then you
are using circular reasoning. It is akin to saying that the Devil is God because
I feel he is and that my feeling is right for the Devil is God. You could prove
anything with that kind of thinking. It is called a vicious circle too. Circular
reasoning denies the authority of reason. You are still assuming with circular
reasoning that reason is set correctly. So you might as well assume it without
bringing God into it. The argument of the religionists is making reason depend
on the assumption that there is a God. If you say God exists therefore reason is
true it gets interesting. You are just assuming that reason is true because you
are assuming God. You are saying that God exists without reason which is
irrational. It would be more reasonable to simply assume that reason is right
without bringing a God into it for the God hypothesis is only a guess itself
anyway.
It is said that if we were programmed by our past we would make no progress. But
in fact the programming might have planted the power to do better than before in
us which lies latent until then. A computer that always performs at the same
level of efficiency can contain an element waiting to work that makes it
improve. The computer is not free so progress does not refute the denial of free
will.
Also if God exists then reason is probably delusion for he made deception and
tolerates it and says he cannot abide temptation and has hypocritically made our
bodies to tempt us to sin.
God is said to be so free that he can make things from nothing. Free will would
be creating an action out of nothing. Can God give us the power to create? True
free will would be the power to create choices out of nothing. But to choose
before a choice is made is impossible. To choose to create your choice out of
nothing means you have already made your choice.
If determinism is a denial of reason, it is an endorsement compared to the
notion that our choices are self-created out of nothing which is what the
popular notion of free will entails. The popular notion of free will is made up
to look like free will but in fact contradicts itself. It is not really a
doctrine of free will at all.
The other thing is that if we pretend free will would not require that you be
able to make choices and actions out of nothing, it would be the case that any
form not involving the power to create would be inferior. It would not be worth
celebrating.
You are prewired to believe in determinism if determinism
is true. So those who deny determinism must be prewired as well. Another point
is that if you pretend that free will and determinism can fit together and
indeed complement each other, compatiblism, then you can be prewired to believe
in it. None of this has any relevance to the debate. The fact is you can
be deterministically caused to think you are not a personality type robot.
Animals are programmed but are not the same as robots. We can be
programmed and not notice it for we don't really know how we work only that we
work.
We know we reason. Free will or not, we know that. No argument against
determinism can change what we know.