Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (13 page)

In the Gospel according to Mark, n: 12-14, 20-1, there is a strange
story:

And on the nnorrow, when they were conning from Bethany, he
was hungry:

And seeing a fig tree f iir of f, having leaves, he came, if haply
he might find any thing thereon; and when he came to it he
found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.

And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of
thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.. .

And in the morning, as they, passed by, they saw the fig tree
dried up from the roots.

And Peter calling to remembrance, saith unto hire, Master,
behold, the fig tree that thou cursedst is withered away.

Let us ignore the disturbing social, economic, and ecological problems with this story, and concentrate on the apparent injustice to
the fig tree. It is true that Jesus did not curse the fig tree for not
hearing, say, apples, or plums. It was figs he was after. And fig trees
do sometimes bear figs. But it still seems unfair on the fig tree. It is
as if Jesus is arguing'You sometimes bear figs, so you could be hearing figs now'. To which is seems a completely adequate defence for
the fig tree to point out that it bears figs in the summer, but it is now
winter, or at any rate'the time of figs was not yet'. It takes a certain set of circumstances for a fig tree to hear figs: even the best tree does
not do so out of season, any more than it bears plums.

The fig tree might not be aware of this. Perhaps if it was a
thoughtful fig tree it would have felt had because it was itself
unaware of the precise causes necessary for it to hear figs: perhaps
it only remembers that it sometimes does so, and then feels had
about not doing so on this occasion. But that is just ignorance. If
the fig tree feels had about not hearing figs in winter, then that is irrational: the time was not right, that is all.

You might think like our imagined fig tree: I just know that I am
free. I stand here, able to raise my arm or not, just as I please. Suppose I do it-thus-then I have felt myself controlling the way
events unfolded. My consciousness reveals my freedom to me.

But here is the German philosopher Schopenhauer (1788-1860):

Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street,
would say to himself: 'It is six o'clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or 1 can go to the club;
1 can also climb up the tower to see the sun set; I can go to the
theater; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can
run out of thegate, into the wide world, and never return. All
of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But
still l shall do none ofthese things now, but with just as f iee a
will I shall go home to my wife.' This is exactly as if water
spoke to itself: '1 can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a
storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can
plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I
can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the
fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond.'

In this parable, the water is not conscious of the causal setups necessary for it to boil, make waves, and so on. It only remembers that
it sometimes does these things. Hence, it thinks, it can do them. So
it attributes its calm to its own voluntary decision. But in this it is
mistaken: if it `tries' to boil when the temperature is wrong, or
`tries' to make waves when there is no wind, it will soon discover
that these things do not depend on its own decision. To make the
same point, Wittgenstein imagines the leaf falling in the autumn
winds, and saying to itself,'Now I'll go this way, now I'll go that:

Schopenhauer denies that our own self-understanding, our
self-consciousness, displays our real freedom. We can interpret
him as criticizing this argument:

I am not conscious of the causal background needed for me
to do Y.

I know I sometimes do Y.

So, I am conscious that there is no causal background
needed for me to do Y.

His point is that this argument is invalid. Being unconscious of
something cannot be parlayed into being conscious of its absence.
When I speak I am not conscious of the incredible causal structures that make it possible for me to speak: the musculature, the
coordination of muscle and breath control, the movement of the
tongue and palate, the configuring of my jaw. But all these things
are necessary, as I would quickly discover if just one of them went
wrong.

At this point one might start thinking something like this:

Perhaps if we confine our thoughts to the physical world,
we seem to have no option but determinism or random indeterminacies, and we lose sight of real freedom. But suppose there is another level. Behind or above the evolutions
of brain and body, there is the Real Me, receiving information, and occasionally directing operations. There will be
times when left to themselves the brain and body would
move one way. But with direction from the Real Me, they
will go the other way. I can take over, and interfere with the
way things would otherwise have gone. This is where my
freedom lies.

This conceptualizes the relationship between me on the one hand
and my brain and body on the other in terms of a two-way interaction. The brain and body bring the Real Me messages, and this Real
Me then issues them instructions. The Real Me sits in the control
room, and the whole person behaves freely when it is in command.
If it is not in command, the brain and body get on with their
(`mindless') physical evolutions.

This is mind-body dualism again. The Real You dictates events.
Messages cone in, perhaps through the pineal gland. A breath of
soul then fans neurones and synapses into action, and initiate new
causal chains. There is a ghost in the machine, and the machine behaves freely when the ghost is in charge. Now, we have already seen
something of the mystery of mind-brain interaction on this picture. But here we can raise a different objection. Dualism tries to
understand human freedom by introducing an extra ingredient, the controlling soul. But how do we understand the freedom oft he
soul?

Look again at the dilemma of determinism. How does a ghost or
soul inside the machine escape the same problem? Are there laws
governing how ghost-stuff behaves, so that if a ghost is in one state
at a particular time, there is a law determining what its next state
will be? If not, then is ghost-stuff subject to random fits and starts?
How does that help me to be free and responsible? Remember as
well that there is no God-given correlation between an event being
`mental' and the event being under my free control: I cannot wish
away pains, desires, obsessions, unwelcome thoughts, and confusions, just like that.

The dualist approach to free will makes a fundamental philosophical mistake. It sees a problem and tries to solve it by throwing
another kind of `thing' into the arena. But it forgets to ask how the
new `thing' escapes the problems that beset ordinary things. We
meet this kind of mistake again in Chapter 5, on the philosophy of
religion. In fact, if you think about it, you will find that you surreptitiously think of the freedom of any non-physical soul, any ghost
in the machine, on the model of human freedom. That is, far from
helping to understand human freedom, the idea depends upon it.
For the ghost is really a kind of ethereal little human being, a
`homunculus' that takes in information, deliberates, wants various
things, is swayed or influenced or guided by different pieces of information, and that in the light of all that does something. If we
cannot understand how human beings are free, we cannot understand how such a homunculus can be free either.

And of course there is the whole problem of mind-brain interaction, which is so intractable given Cartesian dualism. The
physical system is a closed system. It takes a physical cause to produce a physical effect.

To try to reconcile freedom with a deterministic universe composed of small, hard, indivisible atoms in motion, the Greek
philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) had already suggested that the
spirit of a person could step in and make the atoms `swerve' in direction. In fact, Lucretius, who is interpreting Epicurus in the passage at the beginning of the chapter, goes on to talk of a minute
swerving of the atoms, and the way in which `that which] the
minute swerving of the atoms causes is neither place nor time determinate. Unfortunately, the laws of motion are not very hospitable to this `swerve'. The laws that we actually find tell us that
linear momentum, a joint function of motion and direction, is
physically conserved. It would shatter the laws of motion just as
badly if the Real Me could make the Moon change direction by just
thinking, as if the Real Me could make it speed up or slow down.

As an aside, it is worth noticing, however, that the Greek and
Roman atomists, including Epicurus and Lucretius, were better off
in one respect than Descartes. For they thought, as he did not, that
the spirit itself must be understood in mechanical terms. The mind
or spirit, they held, was composed of particularly fine, small, and
exceedingly mobile mechanical particles, so there is no reason in
principle why these should not influence the directions and velocities of the larger particles of the body. Lucretius explains the way
in which this subtle stuff is `of seeds extremely small, through
veins, flesh, sinews, woven. The soul has to he made of thin stuff,
for `dreams of smoke and mist can move it'. Such dreams are pre sumably made of much smaller particles than even smoke and
mist themselves. But Lucretius unfortunately fails to revisit the
question of how the motions of even tiny particles can break the
bonds of fate and foil the infinite chain of cause and effect. Ancient
atomists liked to compare the action of the soul on the body with
the action of the wind on a ship, but of course the wind is part of
the infinite chain of cause and effect. It is not something standing
outside it, and neither, on this model, is the soul.

PULLING YOURSELF TOGETHER

Is there any better way of breaking the argument for incompatibilism?

The argument for hard determinism does not talk of the kindsof
causal influences in play as an agent performs a given action. Now
sometimes the causal routes are totally independent of what we
think. The causal route that leads from my being irreversibly under
water to my drowning is one of them. The same outcome is inevitable for Einstein and for a donkey. But sometimes the causal
routes only go via high-level neural processes. This is no more than
to say that we often move as we do because our brains are functioning properly.

So let us try a primitive model. Think of the brain in `software'
terms, as having various `modules'. One (a `scanner') takes in information about a situation. Another (a `tree producer') delivers options for behaviour in the light of what the scanner says. A third (an
`evaluator') ranks the options in the light of concerns that it has programmed into it. It may work by attaching emotional indicators such as fear or joy to the different paths. Finally a fourth (a
`producer) fixes on the option ranked best by the preceding
processes, and outputs neural signals that move muscles and
limbs. Here is a schematic diagram:

Remember that all this is supposed to be just a `software'
description of parts of the brain. Now suppose a decision is the upshot of these modules functioning. Suppose it is one of your decisions, and these parts function to produce it in the way that they
normally do. If we call these modules, `decision' modules, and if
these modules are engaged in producing the output, then we can
say that you chose the output. It was not forced on you, in the way
that drowning is forced on the trapped swimmer.

Suppose the decision was to do something really bad. You come
into my room, and chuck my peaceable old dog out of the window.
I am outraged, and minded to blame you. Suppose you try to defend yourself by invoking the incompatibilist argument.