INTRODUCTION TO DETERMINISM

Last spring, I listened to a talk given by a lawyer who specialized in capital punishment cases.  He morally opposed the death penalty because he believed that his clients’ crimes were not a reflection of their inherent “goodness” but rather a reflection of their environment and upbringing.  The lawyer elaborated that every single one of his clients had come from underprivileged or traumatizing households or were plagued with a mental illness.  Starting with their childhood, these people lived through terrible life circumstances that progressively worsened until they hit rock bottom and committed a capital crime.  In many cases, the lawyer believed that these convicts were not in need of punishment but rehabilitation.

Note that understanding why a convict did what they did and sympathizing with their life circumstances does not equate to forgiveness.  Yet, the lawyer’s contention introduces the interesting notion that humans may not be 100% responsible for their actions.  Specifically, it raises the question of whether we are free agents in our lives or merely the product of our environment.  For example, had any one of us grown in the shoes of a death row convict and were brought up with the same values, beliefs, and experiences that they did, what is to say we would not have made the exact same decisions that they did?

This topic is a slippery slope because if we question whether or not humans can be held responsible for their actions we must question whether or not humans possess free will at all.  And, if humans do not possess free will then you cannot morally punish them for their actions since they cannot be held responsible for them.  20th-century philosopher Galen Strawson laid forward the following “Basic Argument”:

1. We do what we do, in a given situation, because we are what we are.
2. In order to be ultimately responsible for what we do, we have to be ultimately responsible for what we are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But we cannot, as the first point avers, be ultimately responsible for what we are, because, simply, we are what we are; we cannot be [self-caused].
4. Therefore, we cannot be ultimately responsible for what we do.

Essentially, we cannot be responsible for our decisions if we are not responsible for our character.  But, our character is a result of various factors that we had no control over, including the environment we were born in and the genes we were given.  Therefore, since we lack responsibility for who we are, we cannot be held responsible for the decisions we make.  However, if we are not accountable for our decisions, that means that we actually lacked the free will to make a different choice in the first place.

Like a chain reaction, the environment we were born into and the genetic code we possess affected the type of person we were as a toddler, which affected the type of person we were as an adolescent, which affected the type of person we were as an adult, and so forth.  Perhaps every action we take is just one in a long chain of cause-and-effects starting with our birth that is constantly but predictably molding our character.  Everything we did or will do in our lives is inevitable.  Our lives were pre-determined and therefore we cannot be held responsible for any of it.

Now imagine if every single thing in the universe was also pre-determined in this way.  Starting with the creation of the universe and ending with the death of it, everything that happens is part of one huge but inevitable causal chain of events.  In that case, since everything that inescapably happens is the direct result of many pre-existing factors, provided omniscient knowledge about the state of the universe and an insanely powerful calculator, one could theoretically predict the entire future of the universe.

In philosophy, this idea that free will does not exist and everything is determined is known as “hard determinism”.  The concept of predicting the future with a super-calculator was proposed by 18th-century French philosopher Pierre-Simon de Laplace.

However, if you are feeling skeptical about hard determinism, you are not alone.  Those that oppose determinism, known as libertarians, put forth their own arguments as to why free will exists and we are very much in control of our actions.