Anibal R. Buch

Dr. Daniel Hampikian

PHI 2010 Tuesday –Thursday 8:30-9:45 PM

21 March 2013

EXTRA CREDIT: FREE WILL AND CAUSALITY/DETERMISM

I think to myself having read some of Phillip K. Dick works for years, is no wonder

that Mr. Dick is one of cinema's favorite authors. Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total

Recall, Scanner Darkly and Adjustment Bureau are just a few examples based on his

writings. I will however, concentrate in the film Minority (2002) I found it be a good

introductory film to presents some specifics in dealing with the issue of determinism and

free will as one the main topics in the movie itself .

In the Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report; it tries to describe a near future in which

a bewildering criminal system works by using precognition, which is the ability to

foresee future events. This is accomplished by exploiting three individuals gifted by the

ability of precognition. Also known as Precogs, these people are the future version of

genetically modified humans for the sake of science and profit, some of them, the

discarded sons and daughters of drug users using a highly addictive futuristic drug

called Neuroin or Clarity as is known colloquially in the movie and where the protagonist

Chief John Anderton is victim of its addictive power. These Precogs have the innate

ability to penetrate with their minds in the future; these future events are recorded and

played beforehand to detect crimes before they are committed.

Following confirmation of the future events by agents of the Pre-Crime division, the

culprits are arrested and thrown into a seemingly indefinite subliminal limbo storage

facility (much alike in Demolition Man) for a crime that in our current perception of

reality, they did not commit.

To my first impression, it appears that the main theme of this movie revolves around

predestination, the eternal question of whether we are subjected to an inexorable fate,

or do we have a free will that allows us to fight it. But after further analysis and having

watched the movie throughout the years, this is not entirely clear to me. It seems by

statistics in the movies, the Pre-crime system works, and no murder has occurred in

years since the system is implemented. It also seems true that the fate of those

persecuted by Precrime seems inescapable: they are predestined to become

murderers. But it is no less true that the very actions of this Pre-Crime institution and its

main character are constantly changing the apparent predestination.

To understand the methodology of the thought process of these Precogs we need to

step back for a second in our current time frame and into the realm of real science.

Among the leading areas of science, modern neuroscience is the one that most affects

our perception of the essence of what being a human being is. Are our brains

preinstalled with justice or other moral concepts? What part of us is rational and what

part sentimental? Are we deterministic machines without free will? Little by little, thanks

to modern technology and the scientific method, we have begun to solve the unknowns

that philosophers and books/movies like Minority Report, have been debating for many

years. As mentioned earlier in philosophy class, American scientist Benjamin Libet

found correlating facts that the brain can predict a decision to 7 seconds before the

decision is made consciously. This researcher's experiments were controversial and led

to heated debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions were prepared

unconsciously in the brain, then our feeling of "free will" is an illusion. From this

perspective it is the brain that makes decisions and not the conscious mind of the

person. Libet's experiments were particularly controversial because they found a delay

between brain activity and conscious decision.

However, I do not rule out the existence of free will. The decisions are unconsciously

prepared long before it had been thought, but researchers do not know where or how to

take the final decision.

In the film Minority Report, Precrime Chief John Anderton becomes a criminal a priori

because he finds out he will be killing someone in the future. So in an ironic twist of fate,

Anderton becomes the accused and not the accuser. He seems to commit the murder

of a man he’s never met. The man he's expected to kill in the future is named Leo F.

Crow. When Anderton discovers Crow’s location, he ends up going to the apartment

where Crow lives and the image of him pointing the gun at Crow becoming a self-

fulfilling prophecy or so it seems. However, at an earlier time Agatha, the most

psychically gifted (or cursed) precog individual who foresaw Anderton’s crime,

emphatically states, ―You have a choice. Walk away. Do it now.‖ Anderson proceeds

because he wishes to know what’s happened to his life and his son’s (who was

kidnapped and killed), and believes Crow might have some sort of answer.

He assures Agatha that he won’t kill Crow. ―I don’t even know him,‖ Anderton mentions.

However, when Anderton gets inside Crow’s apartment, he finds what looks like

evidence that Crow was the man who kidnapped (and presumably murdered)

Anderton’s son six years earlier, he is given the justification for wrathful retribution.

Understandably, Anderton has the desire to kill whoever took his son and destroyed his

life, and now believes he has the man. ―You said so yourself: there is no minority

report,‖ Anderton tells Agatha. ―I don’t have an alternative future. I am going to kill this

man.‖

Yet Agatha insists, ―You still have a choice!‖ As it turns out, Anderton doesn’t execute

Crow; instead, Anderton tries to arrest Crow. Crow still dies, primarily because Crow

wishes to die, but at least it was not caused by Anderton; rather, it was caused by Crow

himself pulling on the gun in Anderton’s hands. Anderson finds out Crow’s family is to

be given a lot of money, if he goes ahead and gets killed and all happens to frame

Anderton. Thus, Anderton in a lucid example of free will apparently does make a

choice—a choice not to kill Crow.

In all of Phillip K. Dick’s books and movies based in his works, the underlying major

ideas is that there is a real world and one that is in the illusory realm, of the relationship

between what we see and what is true, and the participation of a will that overcomes us

and conditions us. Minority Report, tries to illustrate the problem of determinism: "We

stop for the future murder of an unknown party from happening, all of this before the

actual desire idea is implanted in our brain. The ethical consequences of this technology

or use are valid examples for further deliberation and philosophical scrutiny.

In my opinion, compatibility between determinism and free will, is framed in the same

dated debate between nature and nurture, or between biology and culture would be

annulled by a cosmological deterministic position. That is, the behavior of animals is the

result of a genetic program that builds itself in continuous interaction with their

environment, and according to the same laws that govern the matter. The causes of our

actions depend on a genetic program containing the egg and sperm at the time of

fertilization. This genetic program can change over the life course of the organism by

stimuli from the environment. According to evolutionary psychology, human behavior is

the result of complex molecular gear of our brain, designed by evolution to solve the

problems of our ancestors. For humans they happen to have a very big brain that allows

flexibility and variability in their responses is a good head start to take advantage of an

unequal distribution of resources.

But the difference with a worm or a frog is one of degree, not substance, and therefore,

we act motivated by desires that regulates our body and are subject to the same laws

that govern the deterministic cosmos. Thus the concept of free will seems an illusion

within the brain. We have degrees of freedom to do whatever we want (more than an

amoeba, a mouse or a gorilla), but no freedom to want what we want. This does not

contradict our experience to decide is a real process with the function of selecting

different options according to the likely consequences for the organism, and therefore

we should behave "as if" we had free will, even if it is an illusion of the brain. We are

agents of behavior but it is only knowledge or awareness of having made such conduct.

That is, the brain acts then believed to have been the driving force of his will that action

or what is the same, acts and then thinks that he could choose another option, although

you cannot. Proponents of alleged human freedom unconditionally reject the fact that

our actions are caused but I cannot think how you can improve things if the cause is

pure chance or no cause at all. This view leads to some the problem of denial of

personal responsibility within the context of the film, but in my opinion not be reduced

but definitely clarified. The explanation of behavior does not mean the exoneration of it.

Today we try to avoid responsibility very deviant behavior under a wide range of

biological and environmental explanations that could add to the confusion to this

debate.

Moral responsibility would thus become a convention, i.e. a series of rules to ensure

and maximize the common good. The punishment serves to divert offenders from the

rest of society and serve as an example to deter similar conduct by the rest of us. The

behaviors by individual performing these behaviors that are deemed worthy of

punishment, for deviating from the standards set by common set of laws to improve

coexistence, are liable by definition. The wants of the few does not outweigh the needs

of the many as Mr. Spock so cleverly mentioned in an old Star Trek episode.

Thus the cosmological determinism and lack of free will are not incompatible with the

concept of responsibility, and the concept of social defense is the focus of this morality

based on conventions. It's the only way I can think to Hume's famous guillotine "or our

actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or are the result

of random events, in which case we are not responsible for them.