Indeterminism This lecture will help you understand: • Indeterminism • “Soft determinism” (compatibilism) • The theoretical insolubility of the free

will problem • The dilemma • “Garden of Forking Paths” (Borges) • Free will vs. randomness • Objections

William James (1842-1910)

Question 1: James rejects which premise of the

following argument? P1: If every event has a cause, then there are no free actions. P2: Every event has a cause. C:. There are no free actions.

A. P1: If every event has a cause, then there are no free actions.

B. P2: Every event has a cause. C. Both Premises D. Neither Premise

Incompatibilism

• James agrees with d’Holbach that if determinism is true, then there is no room for free will, and thus man cannot be held morally accountable for his actions.

• But unlike d’Holbach, James does not believe that determinism is true.

Terms

• Determinism • Indeterminism • Libertarianism/Free Will(ism) • Fatalism • Incompatibilism • Compatibilism

“Soft Determinism” (Compatibilism)

• Soft determinism is intended to be a half way position between so-called “hard determinism” (Holbach) and libertarianism (Reid, James).

• It basically says that determinism and free will are compatible.

• We’ll look at the compatibilist position in more detail when we examine Hume’s position in the next lecture.

“quagmire of evasion”

• James rejects the compatibilist position, which constitutes an evasion of the real issue: – “Now, all this is a quagmire of evasion under

which the real issue of fact has been entirely smothered” (IP 321).

• For James, you are either a determinist or an indeterminist; there is no middle ground. Soft determinism is a form of sophistry or deception.

Free will Thesis

• “The question relates solely to the existence of possibilities, in the strict sense of the term, as things that may, but need not, be” (IP 322)

Definition of Determinism (“block universe”)

• It professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb; the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning. (IP 322)

Definition of Indeterminism

• Indeterminism, on the contrary, says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another, so that the laying down of one of them does not necessarily determine what the others shall be. It admits that possibilities may be in excess of actualities, and that things not yet revealed to our knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous. Of two alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible; and the one becomes impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real itself. (IP 322)

No Scientific Solution

• According to James, there is no scientific or evidential solution to the problem of metaphysical freedom since facts are always actualities. – “If we have no other evidence than the evidence

of existing facts, the possibility-question must remain a mystery never to be cleared up.” (IP 323)

James’s thought experiment to show that there is nothing incoherent in the indeterminist position

Divinity Avenue Oxford Street

Lecture Hall

“El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan“ (1941)

“no criterion”

• Determinists in hindsight will say that James couldn’t have gone home via Oxford Street.

• However, James argues that this is sheer dogmatism and not a claim based on real evidence. – “There would be absolutely no criterion by which

we might judge one necessary and the other a matter of chance” (IP 324).

Question 2: According to James, indeterminism

allows that the world has A. no ambiguous possibilities

B. a fixed future C. ambiguous possibilities D. no shadow of turning

“Rationality”

• Since there is no theoretical proof of either determinism or indeterminism (the matter is theoretically undecidable or insoluble) the question for James becomes: Which belief (determinism or indeterminism) would it be more rational to adopt given other beliefs we generally hold?

The Dilemma of Determinism

• James’s answer is that indeterminism is the more rational belief to hold because determinism gives rise to a dilemma.

• What is that dilemma?

A Dilemma

• A dilemma in general is a situation that requires a choice between mutually exclusive options that are equally unfavorable.

The Formal Argument

P1 I must accept either D (determinism) or not-D (indeterminism). P2 If I accept D, then I must accept either P (pessimism) or O (optimism) (a dilemma!) P3 But I cannot accept P. P4 But I cannot accept O. C Therefore, I cannot accept D (and thus must accept not-D).

Brockton Murder

. . . to get rid of the wife whose continued existence bored him, he inveigled her into a desert spot, shot her four times, and then, as she lay on the ground and said to him, “You didn't do it on purpose, did you, dear?” replied, “No, I didn't do it on purpose,” as he raised a rock and smashed her skull (IP 325).

• According to James the determinist would have to say either: – 1) it is regrettable that the murder had to occur, thus the

universe was set up in such a way that murder was inevitable (pessimism)

• James argues that 1) is undesirable because it makes life not worth living

• Or – 2) it is not regrettable that the murder had to occur

because it leads to the “best of all possible worlds” (optimism)

• James argues that 2) is morally objectionable because it turns bad actions into good things.

• Both implications are unacceptable!

Pessimism

• “We feel that,” continues James, “although a perfect mechanical fit to the rest of the universe, it is a bad moral fit, and that something else would really have been better in its place” (IP 325).

Optimism • The only deterministic escape from pessimism is

everywhere to abandon the judgment of regret. That this can be done, history shows to be not impossible. The devil, quoad existentiam, may be good. That is, although he be a principle of evil, yet the universe, with such a principle in it, may practically be a better universe than it could have been without. On every hand, in a small way, we find that a certain amount of evil is a condition by which a higher form of good is brought. . . . Thus, our deterministic pessimism may become a deterministic optimism at the price of extinguishing our judgments of regret. (IP 326)

Indeterminism

• If I don’t accept determinism, then I must accept indeterminism and the pluralism which goes with it, namely, that there is good and bad in the universe, but it is possible that through our action we may improve it. This is called “meliorism.”

Chance • “The sting of the word ‘chance’ seems to lie in the

assumption that it means something positive, and that if anything happens by chance, it must needs be something of an intrinsically irrational and preposterous sort. Now, chance means nothing of the kind. It is a purely negative and relative term, giving us no information about that of which it is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with something else-not controlled, secured, or necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence.” (IP 323)

• “Chance” doesn’t mean “uncertain” or “fate.”

Is indeterminism possible?

Quantum Mechanics?

• A gram of uranium-238, a commonly occurring radioactive substance, contains some 2.5 x 1021 atoms. It has a half life of 4.47 billion years. About 12,600 times a second one of the atoms in each gram will decay, emitting an alpha particle. This decay does not depend on external stimulus and no scientific theory predicts when any given atom will decay, with realistically obtainable knowledge.

Criticisms

• 1) Violation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Consider, for instance, an experiment where an electron goes through a magnetic field and either moves upward or downward, but the direction of its movement is not determined by the previous state of the system. Should there not be a reason why the electron moved, say, upwards?

Albert Einstein • “God doesn’t play dice with

the universe.” • “I claim credit for nothing.

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper” (October, 1929).

• 2) Indeterminacy v. Free Will – It is difficult to see how the indeterminacy of

quantum mechanics makes free will more plausible. On the contrary, free will presumably implies rational thought and decision, whereas the essence of the indeterminism in quantum mechanics is that it is due to intrinsic randomness. When I claim my action was done freely, I do not mean to say that it was random!