So yesterday afternoon I found myself very nearly defending a form of moral relativism, which discomfited me, since I do not believe in moral relativism. This bothered me so much that I checked out The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on moral relativism*, just to brush up on it. Let me explain how I ended up in this predicament, at least as far as I can recall while still keeping this entry brief.
It began as a discussion of free will. The problem of free will is that it seems that we make choices, and that it is possible that we could have chosen to do other than what we did (this last is debatable) - but it also seems that minds are physical, and that physical things obey uniform natural laws which are determined and predictable. So, do our minds obey predictable laws or not?
Morality comes in because it seems that if we do not have free will, then we are not free to choose to do otherwise than we did. But our conception of moral responsibility hinges on the fact that we could have chosen to do other than we did.
Most philosophers want to preserve our concept of moral responsibility, because there doesn't seem to be any way to build up a workable ethics without it.
I have a problem in that the determinist position makes the most sense to me, but I believe in moral responsibility. So, I was trying to figure out a way of understanding the two concepts such that they are compatible.
What I came up with - and this is only the barest sketch of a theory - is that the utility of moral responsibility arises out of the fact that even though our behavior is determined in principle, we do not have an understanding of everything that determines our behavior. In order to develop this thought properly, I would have to write a lot more than I want to do here.
There is a whole can of worms here, so many that now that I have got to this point I don't know where to go. How did I get to the point of defending moral relativism? I forget. The conversation went in many directions and my thoughts right now are going in many directions.
Here's the thing: there is abundant evidence that our actions are determined. When we make choices, we usually have reasons. When we humans communicate with each other, we often try to convince each other to choose something or another, by offering reasons. Aren't our choices determined by reasons? If reasons do not determine our choices, then why would we try to convince each other of things?
Some choices may not be governed by reasons (at least conscious ones). Suppose I sometimes prefer cereal for breakfast, sometimes fruit. I may not have any good (rational) reason for choosing one over the other; the choice is purely based on my preference at the time. In this case, isn't the choice a result of my state of mind - which is a brain state - which is just chemistry and electricity and other physically determined events going on?
Wilbur pointed out that when we speak, each word we utter narrows the possiblities for what the next word will be. (Even gibberish follows a pattern.) When we listen to someone else speak, we often mentally fill in the ends of sentences before we hear them. If we can predict what someone is about to say with good accuracy, and we can sometimes know how others will react in a situation, then why would we think that this could not be refined and better understood to the point that we could completely predict what someone will do under any circumstances at all?
If we could do that, then we could say that the person's actions are determined. But the person would still make choices - it's just that we would know what the person would choose, before the person chose. Even though the choices were determined, it seems like the person is still morally reponsible for the actions he or she performs.
I have played fast and loose here and I don't know if I have expressed the issues very clearly, but I think free will and determinism are actually compatible, and that ethics need not be sacrificed.
Maybe Arglor will remind me how it came about that I said, "There's nothing self-contradictory about the term 'moral relativism'."
* For those of you who actually attempt a full read of the article, my hat's off to you. I think DMR is plausible for ordinary conversation but I don't really believe it. MMR is right out as far as I am concerned.
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8 comments:
hmmm... damn you. Yeah that conversation through me for a loop. I still can't wrap my head around an "Ethical" system that exists without the belief of free will.
I know you recognize my failure in this regard.
There is a science fiction author called Issac Assimov, stated as though he isn't popular, that wrote a series of novels detailing a science that can predict what humans do globally.
Harry Celdin, the mathemetician behind the psycho-history (can't remember the exact name), argued that if you could stand far enough back and analyze society as a whole you could build a road map of the future, composed of macro level predicitions.
He did it, and the story is talking about how he predicted the future and creates a time capsule that has standard releases of information that assist the people in doing what they need to do. His conception is that humanity on the macro scale has no free will and is very determined. The part that fails is on the individual level. In fact, later in the Foundation series there arises and indiividual who was not forseen by the mathemetician's predicitions. He was called the mule, because he was sterile and supposedly gortesque. He also had the ability to sway people's emotions.
Wow i've gotten of track. My point: I believe that whether or not free will exists, i think there must maintain a mythology of free will. I was trying to explain that at my car, and i wasn't doing it very well. Hmm, i want to say that to be a conscious individual free will must exist in some form, even if it were a myth, but i'm not sure i can support such a claim. Ok i've wasted enough time.. back to my paper.
Well I just wrote a really nice long reply that was thoroughly scintillating and brilliant and the *&^%~* Blogger lost it!
Anyway, Arglor, I think you're right ... anytime we have a disagreement it is attributable to some failure of yours ...
HUH?
Seriously, I know that the best arguments I have seen are on your side of this discussion. And I know that this is an old problem in philosophy, not a new one. I should maybe not be wasting my time with this. I should be looking at problems that are more exciting, more tractable, more promising. Easier problems.
Sometimes I can't ignore this HUGE gap in our knowledge. It just REALLY bothers me that we say, "Sure, all the evidence seems to indicate that determinism is true, but we are going to say that free will exists because if it doesn't then we don't have a moral leg to stand on."
I want to believe in free will. I feel like I make choices. I do believe that we should be able to hold others responsible for their actions. Where's the evidence?
I'm going to ask Korcz for suggested readings.
-Deleted and edited for grammatical fluxuations and errors.-
Ok you completly misunderstood my last post, or i completly misunderstood your current post.
A) When i said the conversation threw me for a loop, i was remarking at your insistence that ethics can exist minus free will. I disagree completly and i can't concieve of how you plan on arguing such a position. In that regard, yes it is my failure because i'm not understanding your conception of ethics. Even if free will is mythological, it exists as a myth and therefore has a use. If that were the case, i'd agree ethics can exist. This is how i've always seen ethics as defined, a study of morality, where as morality is the rightness and wrongness of actions. How can an action be right or wrong if it must and will always happen?
B) I was not in any fashion trivializing the problem, or your concern with the problem. The whole reason i took metaphysics, is precisely to discuss this problem. I don't like the fact that we assume free will exists because to not assume it leads to bad things. I am not sure where you got the idea that i wasn't concerned with the existence of free-will. I could have swore i had made my interest in free-will's existence well-understood. The whole reason i am concerned with it is because i cannot imagine a world where ethics can exist without free-will.* Therefore if free-will is in fact obsolete, my beloved ethics is in serious problems.
C) You seriously trivialize the argument for free will, but that is not your fault. Dr. Korcz has also, and he bawks every time he does it. He only just started free will, so we need to give him a bit to give us the basics and what to work with. The argument might be something like the following:
P1 Free-will either exists or does not exist.
P2 The arguments to suggest that Free-Will exists has major flaws, and therefore there are no good arguments for the non-existence of free-will.
P3 The evidence to suggest Free-Will does exist seems to outweigh the evidence to suggest the non-existence of free-will.
P4 If all the evidence suggests Free-Will's existence and there are no good arguments otherwise, then free will exists.
C1 Free will exists..
I'm so pulling this out of my ass, but you get the point. Dr. Korcz does these kind of arguments all the time.
P1 Morality is objective or subjective.
P2 Morality cannot be subjective.
C1 Therefore morality is objective.
All in all i'm sure tomorrow's class is going to be interesting, and i'm positive a lot of questions are going to be answered for good or for worse.
I really thought i had expressed my intentions concerning this idea all very clearly. Oh well.
*This is where we disagree. Not on the importance of free-will, but on free-will's relationship with ethics.
I didn't say you were trivializing anything. I wasn't really arguing anything in my last post, I was just elaborating on my motivation for looking at the problem. What I was saying is, I don't understand it, and you could very well be right in everything you said.
Now I am a bit confused, though. What is it about the argument forms Korcz uses that you object to (if indeed he does what you say)? We can talk about this later if you want, you don't have to post an answer.
About free will as a myth ... that's not exactly what I was saying. Suppose it is possible to determine what we will do in principle. Nevertheless we cannot do so in fact. Ethics is meant to tell us what we should do, and thus provides us with reasons for behaving a certain way in a certain situation. But reasons are a part of what determines our behavior. Therefore our ethics helps determine our behavior. Ethics then becomes integrated with determinism.
My gut feeling is that the scenario stated above contains a paradox, which is that free will must be brought in again because ethics is about what we "should" do ... but I'm not convinced that there's no solution.
Now I'm tired at the moment and this is not the time for me to be writing about this, as I am still trying to muddle through with this paper on possible worlds and I have to be at work at 8 in the morning.
--p.s. read this tomorrow morning, work on your paper now. I'm taking a small break to goof off... i don't want to somehow ruin your day by getting you in a meaningless argument.
[quote="snaars"][quote]Seriously, I know that the best arguments I have seen are on your side of this discussion. And I know that this is an old problem in philosophy, not a new one. I should maybe not be wasting my time with this. I should be looking at problems that are more exciting, more tractable, more promising. Easier problems. [/quote]
This whole paragraph gives me the impression that you think i believe this.
A) Whether or not a problem is new or not is irrelevant.
B) You only waste your time on a problem if it doesn't intrigue you.
C) Who said that free will isn't exciting, tractable, and promising? Who the hell wants to tackle the easy problems in life?
D) Just because i offer counterpoints in an argument against you does not mean i believe these arguments. At the time i see them as the most plausible, but if i believed them i wouldn't take physics.
[quote="snaars"][quote]Sometimes I can't ignore this HUGE gap in our knowledge. [/quote]
so don't ignore them. Attack them straight on. I am questioning the same things you are, ergo my litany of questions at the end of class last friday that left us in the position we were in. Just because i err in the favor of ethics doesn't mean i do not see the overarching dilemmas surrounding free-will.
[quote="snaars"][quote]It just REALLY bothers me that we say, "Sure, all the evidence seems to indicate that determinism is true, but we are going to say that free will exists because if it doesn't then we don't have a moral leg to stand on." [/quote]
At the end of class, Dr. Korcz said the same thing. I asked if this exact thing bothers other philosophers and he chuckled remarking that it does.
[quote="snaars"][quote]About free will as a myth ... that's not exactly what I was saying. [/quote]
I wasn't suggesting that you were saying this. I was saying that it was my only conception of a free-will-less society in which ethics remains.
-=tributary to be taken when you have free time=-
- Could our society continue in the same method if we were to discover that free-will is actually false, and determinism is true?
- is there something that you can concieve of that changing free-will logically neccessarily means changing?
The subject, moral relativism, interests me. But I'm having no end of difficulty following your dialogue. I think you need to narrow your argument down.
The basic issues are: (a) do human beings have free will?; (b) is it possible to believe in both free will and determinism?; (c) if human beings do not have free will, is it still possible to believe in moral responsibility / a system of ethics?.
If you settle on just one of these questions we may be able to make some progress. (Or maybe not; any of them is a huge field in itself.)
I'd pick issue (a). Personally, I believe that we are mostly but not entirely determined. We are determined by many forces. I have a dim understanding of genetics and socialization, and I'm sure there are others I can't think of at the moment.
Our moral responsibility is limited, to some extent, by the existence of such determinative forces. But there is a pocket within which we are not determined. Within that narrower scope, we are free (and responsible) to make ethical choices.
I will offer two pieces of evidence for free will. The first is precisely the phenomenon you mention: each of us "feels" free to make choices. The evidence is strong insofar as the feeling appears to be universal — we all "feel" free, even people who have an intellectual commitment to a deterministic philosophy.
The evidence is weak insofar as it is based on personal consciousness. We have no access to anyone's consciousness but our own: no way of examining consciousness objectively and falsifying or validating someone's inner experience. Some things can't be put under a microscope. But I am unwilling to have my options constrained by the limitations of science's tools.
Indirectly, this brings me to my second piece of evidence. Science is notoriously incapable of predicting human behaviour. We hear, for example, that the children of alcoholics are predisposed to become alcoholics themselves. But I believe only about 15% of them actually do. Even in this case, where there is an exceptionally strong correlation, science cannot predict which individuals will grow up to become alcoholics.
Why is that? Partly because, insofar as we are determined, multiple forces are at work. You can't isolate any one variable and predict behaviour on that basis.
But I also regard science's inability to predict human behaviour as evidence for free will: evidence which arguably corroborates that "feeling" each of us has of being free to make choices.
Q
Good post, Q.
The question that most interests me is (a) Do humans have free will? - because the answer would help us to make substantive progress in many areas of philosophy and perhaps the social sciences as well. But I'm not sure that's what Arglor and I are trying to answer. I don't think we had our sights aimed that high.
In (b) and (c) when you write "is it possible to believe __" I will interpret you to mean "is it rational to believe __" - because people commonly go around believing irrational and/or mutually contradictory things without realizing it. We do it all the time.
That being said, I think it is safe to say that (b) can be answered in the affirmative. There are good reasons to believe in determinism, so it is rational to believe in determinism. There are good reasons for believing in free will, so it is rational to believe in free will. Therefore, it is rational to believe in both. We know that this leads to a paradox, though.
Until we resolve the paradox, it is still rational to believe in both free will and determinism, for pragmatic reasons. But we naturally want to resolve the paradox. What are our options?
1. Prove that free will is true and determinism is not.
2. Prove that determinism is true and free will is not.
3. Analyze the concepts of free will and determinism and adjust one or the other or both to make them compatible with each other and with all the known facts.
If we do either 2 or 3 we should do it in a way that preserves ethics. So far all attempts have been inconclusive.
This brings me to your question (c). I do believe this was what we were trying to figure out. Indeed, this might be the heart of the paradox. If there is a way to understand how we can hold someone morally responsible without involving the notion of free will, then there would be no obstacle left to determinism, I think.
I could be wrong. Even if we can understand moral responsibility without free will, it could still be that we have free will.
Just one more comment - I'm not sure that science would have to be able to predict someone's actions in order to show that determinism is true. It might be enough to demonstrate that a person's actions are completely governed by certain factors, all of which are predictable in principle. If I have a bomb, I cannot randomly select a single atom of it and determine exactly where that atom will end up after the bomb explodes. Nevertheless I can make an excellent case that all the atoms of the bomb obey natural laws during the explosion, just as they do before and after the explosion.
Perhaps one way of altering our concept of free will such that it is compatible with determinism is to say that we are like the atoms of the bomb. There are so many factors and variables that determine our behavior, that it is utterly impossible to say for sure what a person will decide at any given moment.
We can map out probabilities using statistics, and we can make some very, very good guesses about behavior, just as We know that the atoms of the bomb will disperse in a certain pattern from the focal point of the explosion.
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