Determinism or Free-Will?

by Chapman Cohen

Now there are numerous cases, the majority probably, where action does follow immediately upon the presence of desire. And in such cases we are not aware of any process of deliberation, although there may be a truly intentional action. And from this single case we have a whole series of examples that will take us to the other extreme where the desires are so numerous and so conflicting that an excess of deliberation may prevent action altogether. Let us take an illustration. Sitting in my room on a fine day I am conscious of a desire for a walk. Provided no opposing feeling or desire is present I should at once rise and go out. But I may be conscious of a number of other feelings based upon various considerations. There is the fact of leaving the task on which I am engaged, and the desire to get it finished. There is the trouble of dressing, the consideration that once out I may wish I had stayed in, or that it may rain, or that I may be needed at home: all these result in a state of indecision, and induce deliberation. Imagination is excited, ideal feelings are aroused, and eventually a choice is made. I decide on the walk. What is it, now, that has occurred? My first desire for a walk has been enforced by a representation of all the advantages that may be gained by going out, and these have proved themselves strong enough to bear down all opposition. Had any other desire gained strength, or had the conviction that it would rain been strong enough, a different motive would have emerged from this conflict of desires and ideas. No matter how we vary the circumstances, this is substantially what occurs in every case where deliberation and choice are involved. Not only is this what does occur, but it is impossible to picture clearly any other process. The only evidence we can have of the relative strength of ideas is that one triumphs over others. To say that the weaker desire triumphs is to make a statement the absurdity of which is self-evident.

This conclusion cannot be invalidated by the argument that a particular desire becomes the stronger because the "will" declares in its favour. One need only ask, by way of reply, Why does the "will" declare in favour of one desire rather than another? There is no dispute that a choice is made. Those who say that a man can choose what he likes are not making a statement that conflicts in the slightest degree with Determinism. The Determinist says as clearly as anyone that I do what I choose to do. The real question is why do I choose this rather than that? Why does the "will" pronounce in favour of one desire rather than another? No one can believe that all desires are of equal strength or value to the agent. Such an assumption would be too absurd for serious argument. But if all desires are not of equal strength and value, the only conclusion left is that certain ones operate because they are, in relation to the particular organism, of greater value than others. And in that case we are simply restating Determinism. The action of the environment is conditioned by the nature of the organism. The reaction of the organism is conditioned by the character of the environment. The resultant is a compound of the two.

It is, moreover, an absurdity to speak of the "will" or the self as though this were something apart from the various phases of consciousness. In the contest of feelings and desires that calls forth deliberation I am equally involved in every aspect of the process. As Professor James points out, "both effort and resistance are ours, and the identification of our self with one of these factors is an illusion and a trick of speech." My self and my mental states are not two distinct things; they constitute myself, and if these are eliminated there is no self left to talk about.

Further, in the growth of each individual, conscious and deliberative action can be seen developing out of automatic action—the simplest and earliest type of action. Not only does deliberative action develop from reflex action, but it sinks into reflex action again. One of the commonest of experiences is that actions performed at one time slowly and after deliberation are at another time performed rapidly and automatically. Every action contributes to the formation of a habit, and frequently repetition results in the habit becoming a personal characteristic. Deliberation and choice are not even always the mark of a highly developed character; they may denote a poorly-developed one—one that is ill adapted to social requirements. One man, on going into a room where there is a purse of money, may only after long deliberation and from conscious choice refrain from stealing it. Another person, under the same conditions, may be conscious of no choice, no effort, the desire to steal the purse being one that is foreign to his nature. In two such by no means uncommon instances, we should have no doubt as to which represented the higher type of character. Morally, it is not the feeling, "I could have acted dishonestly instead of honestly had I so chosen," that marks the ethically developed character, but the performance of the right action at the right moment, without a consciousness of tendency in the opposite direction. But the aim of education is, in the one direction, to weaken the sense of choice by the formation of right habits, moral and intellectual; and on the other hand by bringing man into a more direct contact with a wider and more complex environment, deliberation becomes one of the conditions of a co-ordination of ideas and actions that will result in a more perfect adaptation.

IV.
SOME ALLEGED CONSEQUENCES OF DETERMINISM.

Not the least curious aspect of the Free-Will controversy is that those who oppose Determinism base a large part of their argumentation upon the supposed evil consequences that will follow its acceptance. In a work from which I have already cited, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller falls foul of Determinism because, he says, while incompatible with morality, its champions nevertheless imagine they are leaving morality undisturbed. The real difficulty of Determinism is, he says, that in its world, events being fully determined, there can be no alternatives. Things are what they must be. They must be because they are. No man can help doing what he does. Man himself belongs to a sequence unending and unbroken. "To imagine therefore that Determinism, after annihilating the moral agent, remains compatible with morality, simply means that the logical implications of the doctrine have never been fully explored." And he adds: "The charge against it is not merely that it fails to do full justice to the ethical fact of responsibility, but that it utterly annihilates the moral agent." This, he says, is the real dilemma, and Determinism has never answered it.

It is curious that so clever a writer as Mr. Schiller should fail to realize that taking Determinism in its most drastic form, and accepting it in the most unequivocal manner, nothing can suffer, because everything remains as it must be—including the facts, feelings, and consequences of the moral life. Observe, it is part of Mr. Schiller's case against Determinism that on determinist lines everything, down to the minutest happenings, is the necessary result of all antecedent and co-operating conditions. But this being the case, if Determinism leaves no room for chance or absolute origination, how comes it that an acceptance of Determinism initiates an absolutely new thing—the destruction of morality? Surely it is coming very near the absurd to charge Determinism with breaking an unbreakable sequence. It is surely idle to credit Determinism with doing what is impossible for it to accomplish. So far as morality is a real thing, so far as the facts of the moral life are real things, Determinism must leave them substantially unaltered. The problem is, as has been already said, to find out for what exactly all these things stand. To read wrong meanings into the facts of life, and then to declare that the facts cease to exist if the meanings are corrected, is unphilosophical petulance.

It is, indeed, quite open to the Determinist to meet these grave fears as to the consequences of Determinism with a denial that morality is vitally concerned with the question of whether man's "will" be "free" or not. The question of Determinism may enter into the subject of how to develop character along desirable lines; and, apart from Determinism, it is difficult to see how there can be anything like a scientific cultivation of character. But the fact of morality and the value of morality are not bound up with whether conduct be the expression of theoretically calculable factors, or whether it is, on the one side, determined by a self which originates its own impulses. Determinism or no Determinism, murder, to take an extreme illustration, is never likely to become an every-day occupation in human society. Neither can any other action that is obviously injurious to the well-being of society be practised beyond certain well-defined limits. The laws of social health operate to check socially injurious actions, as the laws of individual health operate to check injurious conduct in dietary or in hygiene. Determinists and Indeterminists, as may easily be observed, manifest a fairly uniform measure of conduct, and whatever variations from the normal standard each displays cannot well be put down to their acceptance or rejection of Determinism.

The real nature of morality is best seen if one asks oneself the question, "What is morality?" Let us imagine the human race reduced to a single individual. What would then be the scope and character of morality? It is without question that a large part of our moral rules would lose all meaning. Theft, murder, unchastity, slander, etc., would be without meanings, for the simple reason that there would be none against whom such offences could be committed. Would there be any moral laws or moral feelings left? Would there even be a man left under such conditions? One might safely query both statements. For if we take away from this solitary individual all that social culture and intercourse have given him—language, knowledge, habits both mental and moral, all, in short, that has been developed through the agency of the social medium—man, as we know him, disappears, and a mere animal is left in his place. Even the feeling that a man has a duty to himself, and that to realize his highest possibilities is the most imperative of moral obligations, is only an illustration of the same truth. For very little analysis serves to show that even this derives its value from the significance of the individual to the social structure.