Free Will: An Introduction

If I stop a man and ask him for directions, and he tells me to go east and west at the same time, I do not need to compare his directions to a map in order to know that he is wrong.

If a man sends me an email containing the argument that emails never get delivered, I do not need to know anything about how emails are delivered in order to reject his hypothesis.

If a woman tells me she does not think I exist, I do not need to know any metaphysical proofs for my own existence in order to reject her hypothesis. Since she addresses her words to me, she cannot rationally claim that I do not exist.

In other words, we first examine the rational consistency of the argument before comparing it to empirical evidence. A self-contradictory argument can be dismissed without the requirement to appeal to contradictory empirical evidence.

If I tell you that you cannot trust the evidence of your senses, and that language is meaningless, these can be positions consistent within themselves, but they are not consistent with my actions.

If I say you cannot trust the evidence of your senses, but I rely upon the trustworthiness of the evidence of your senses in order to communicate my argument, then my argument contradicts its own hypothesis. If I use language to convey to you the idea that language is meaningless, then my methodology contradicts my hypothesis. If language is meaningless, then I cannot use it to convey any idea to you, let alone an idea about language. If language is not meaningless, then I can use it to convey an argument to you, I just can’t use it to convey that language is meaningless, because then my hypothesis contradicts my methodology.

Testing the hypothesis of an argument against the methodology of communicating the argument is a powerful method for rejecting irrational arguments.

You cannot argue that the senses are invalid, since you must use the senses to communicate – the ears for hearing the argument, the eyes for seeing it, and so on.

You cannot use logical arguments to disprove the value of logic.

You cannot use empirical arguments to disprove the value of empiricism.

Before embarking on the task of repudiating a particular hypothesis, it is essential to examine the arguments embedded in the hypothesis. Sophists, in particular, always want to drag you into disproving a hypothesis, when nine times out of ten, the disproof is embedded in the methodology of the way they communicate the argument.

Embedded in every attempt to use the senses to communicate reason and evidence to prove an argument are a number of unshakable assumptions:

1.       Reason is infinitely preferable to unreason.

2.      Empirical evidence is infinitely preferable to conceptual hypotheses.

3.      Truth is infinitely preferable to error.

5.      The person communicating the argument and the person receiving it both exist independent of each other within an objective and empirical universe.

6.      The senses are valid enough to accurately transmit and receive an argument.

7.       Language is meaningful enough to accurately transmit and receive an argument.

8.      The person communicating the argument assumes that those receiving the argument have the capacity to change their minds based on reason and evidence.

9.      Rational argument is superior to physical force.

This list goes on for a long time, but you get the general idea. The very act of engaging in a debate reveals a packaged list of accepted assumptions and axioms that really need to be examined before everyone goes around chasing the conclusion and debating the surface arguments.

One of the main problems people have with debates is that implicit assumptions are not made explicit, but become horrifyingly clear over the course of a disastrous conversation. If a man wants to debate you, and he openly states that he considers truth equivalent to error, reason equivalent to screaming, that he will never ever change his mind, and if you refuse to submit to his argument, he will kick you hard in the shins – would you agree to debate him?

So often, people pretend to debate, when they are really seeking to dominate, justify themselves, or frustrate others.

Causality and Determinism

The determinist position states that the human mind is not magically exempt from the general laws of causality in the universe.

If determinists really accept this position, then clearly they should not treat the human mind any differently from any other object in the universe.

If you owe me ten dollars and I say I don’t care which ten-dollar bill you give me, then I have no rational right to object to any one ten-dollar bill.

If you ask me whether I would prefer pasta or fish for dinner, and I tell you I have no preference whatsoever, does it make any sense for me to rage at you for serving me fish, and throw the plate out the window? If I do such a crazy thing, then clearly I was lying to you when I said I had no preference.

To go even further – and trust me, even this isn’t going far enough – if your wife tells you she doesn’t care whether you both go to Florida or California for vacation, and you choose Florida, and she then tells you only a truly insane person would ever vacation in Florida and she thinks you are mentally ill for even suggesting it, what would you think of her behaviour?

You would think that she was crazy, right? To say that she has no preference – and then to scream that you are insane for choosing one thing over the other only reveals her own instability, hypocrisy and dangerously manipulative nature.

The determinist position is that the human brain is exactly like everything else in the universe. The brain contains no special magical capacity for free will – and believing it does is akin to

believing that the last domino in a stacked line chooses to fall over when it is bumped by the previous falling domino.

Very well, let us take determinists at their word – the human brain is exactly the same as everything else in the universe, and therefore should be treated no differently from anything else.

The human brain has no free will, just like a television, a blade of grass, a cloud, a clock or a water tower.

A sports fanatic may very well encourage his team by yelling at the television, but he does not believe that his team is able to hear him and change their behaviour based on his ranting. A gambler may cheer for a lucky roll, but he does not think his cheering encourages the dice to do what he wants.

People will vent at inanimate objects – a golfer may throw his club in frustration – but we recognize this as immaturity. When questioned, the angry golfer does not argue that his club has grown a brain and free will and works viciously to thwart his desire for a good swing. It is an irrational eccentricity to treat inanimate objects as if they have a human brain. When people do, we do not believe their tantrums are philosophically sound – and neither do they, we hope, after they calm down.

If a man stabs a woman, we do not blame the knife for dragging the poor man’s hand towards her flesh. We do not blame his hand, we do not blame his arm – we blame his consciousness, if we blame anything at all.

This is then the central question for those who hold the determinist position: If human consciousness is exactly the same as everything else in the universe, then why do you treat human consciousness so differently?

This is really the heart of the matter. A determinist believes that the human mind has no more free will than a television set, but a determinist would look at someone arguing with a television set and say, that person is crazy!

In the Shakespearean drama King Lear, the mad king rages at a storm. This is considered a sign of insanity – but why? The weather is a highly complex system, whose behaviour can only be predicted in the short term, and in general. Even determinists admit that a group of human beings is a highly complex system, and human behaviour can only be predicted in the short term, and in general – as in the basic economic premise that human beings respond to incentives.

Raging at a man who has done you great evil is not insane. Raging at a storm clearly is. But for a determinist, what is the difference? The man has no more free will than the storm, so raging at the man is exactly the same as raging at the storm.

If you are injured by the side of the road, you may choose to flag down a passing motorist in the hope of getting help. If a tumbleweed is blowing down the road, would any sane person try to flag it down to beg for help?

However, if someone runs up to you and says that they saw a man pushing the boulder down the hill, then you have a very different situation. If you can find that man, you can get angry at him and demand that he pay reparations for damaging your car.

Why?

What’s the difference?

Suppose that a hard rain had loosened the foundations keeping the boulder in place, causing it to roll down the hill and crush your car. These are mere acts of physical determinism – no choices are involved, no free will is involved. It is just matter and objects obeying inevitable physical laws.

However, if it turns out that a man purposefully dislodged the boulder that ended up rolling down the hill and crushing your car, is it really that hard to understand that we have an entirely different situation?

If it turns out that the man who dislodged the boulder has a grudge against you and pushed it on purpose to crush your car – perhaps with the hope that you were inside it – then it is not even an accidental occurrence.

When I was a little boy, I liked throwing rocks. Once, when I was walking with my mother by the side of the road, I threw a rock in the air, and it ended up landing on the expensive hood of some man’s sports car, leaving a white spiderweb of divots. I was very young, so the man mostly got angry at my mother for letting me engage in such risky behaviour.

The first situation is where the rock dislodges on its own, in which case the crushing of your car is no one’s fault – except possibly yours, for parking in a place where that could happen.

In the second case, a man dislodges a rock just for fun, crushing your car by accident. He acts carelessly and dangerously, and therefore is responsible for the car being crushed, but not responsible for wilfully crushing your car. A reasonably just solution would be to have him pay for repairs, but not to put him in jail for trying to cause you harm.

In the third case, the man dislodges a rock with the intention of crushing your car. He is then responsible for wilfully damaging the car, and therefore he should face sanctions over and above merely paying to have it repaired.

If the man’s actions were careless, the financial consequences of his carelessness should teach him to be more careful.

If the man’s actions were malevolent, then mere financial consequences would not likely be enough to prevent him from trying to hurt you in the future, which is why further punishments are needed to keep you – and society – safe.

Thus, we have accident, carelessness or malevolence. If you are a determinist, these different situations are exactly the same, because there is no difference between a boulder and a human being. The boulder has no free will, and the human being has no free will either.

Why would it be any different, if you are a determinist, with a man? A man is just a boulder, no different at all.

If, from the bottom of the hill, you look up and see a man pushing at a boulder that could fall on your car, you would surely call out for him to stop. If he has already dislodged the boulder, do you think you would call out for the boulder itself to stop in its tracks?

If you are a parent, and you see your child running too fast down a hill, you will most likely call out for your child to slow down. If you are a parent, and you see a boulder rolling downhill, does it make any sense to call out for the boulder to slow down?

If you are a determinist, you need to explain why you call out to the child, but not to the boulder, since both are identical, in your worldview. The child has no free will, and the boulder has no free will.

Determinists reply to this objection by saying that the child has an input and can change his behaviour based on external stimuli, such as a parent calling out for the child to slow down.

But that’s the point, now, isn’t it?

The child can change his behaviour.

The determinist would reply that the child can change his behaviour just as a dog can change its behaviour and come running towards you if you call its name. Are we saying the dog also has free will, and that its free will is equivalent to that of a human being?

Furthermore, you could program a robot to respond to your voice commands, and the robot would “change its behaviour” based upon what you say. Are we then saying that the robot has free will?

Although this may seem like a compelling argument, it actually works against the determinist position.

Referring to a mechanical device such as a robot in lieu of a person does not solve the problem of human consciousness and choice because it takes a human being to create a robot. It’s like saying I have superhero hearing because I can hear someone talking from thousands of miles away – when all I have done is use a phone.

Saying a robot is like a human being is ridiculous, because a robot is created and programmed by human beings. Do we often mistake a radio for a person, or an MP3 for the band? If a friend of yours stands at the bottom of a canyon and calls back every word that you shout down, is he exactly the same as an echo?

If a robot is like a human being, then the argument is that entities that can respond to spoken commands must have been created by an external intelligence. Do determinists really want to make the case for God in that manner? You cannot have a robot without an external non-robot living intelligence that created it. Thus by this logic you cannot have a human being without an external non-human living intelligence that created it.

If God exists, then immaterial consciousness exists. Since determinism is bound only by the material, immaterial consciousness escapes the inevitabilities of determinism.

No, determinism cannot be proved with reference to anything other than human consciousness. If free will is valid, then a man can choose to create a robot. The deterministic nature of the robot tells you nothing about the choices of the man. I can choose to throw a rock off a cliff. The fact that the rock’s path is then determined tells you nothing about whether my brain is determined. Referencing the effects of free will to disprove free will is like using a statue’s shadow to disprove a statue.

I would sooner say that an elevator allows a man to defy the laws of gravity than I would say the existence of a robot disproves free will.

Regarding the dog example – yes, a dog can come when you call him, but that does not support the determinist position. A dog’s brain is more complex than a worm’s brain, and we can expect a dog to come when we call him, but not a worm. We can train a dog, but not a worm. Thus this argument supports the concept of free will, since a more advanced and complex brain is used as an example, rather than a simpler and less complex brain. The capacities of a dog are invoked, not the capacities of a worm.

It’s not so much that dogs come when you call them, but rather that human beings recognize that dogs have a sophisticated enough brain to be trained to come when you call them. No one tries to train a boulder to come when you call it, for obvious reasons.

Since a more complex brain is required for the argument against free will, it supports the argument for free will, since the human brain is the most complex of all.

Arguments and Uniqueness

Ask yourself this – can you imagine debating with any known entity other than a human being? I don’t debate with the television, because the television has no free will, and will not change.

I understand when the behaviour of an entity is predetermined, and so do not pretend that I can have any effect on its behaviour. I do not debate with clouds, watches, robots or heating ducts. I only debate human beings – and only some human beings, to be more precise.

Because I deal with human beings as the only entities I can debate with, I cannot then put them in the same category of every other conceivable entity that I will not debate with. If I consider it sane to debate with a human being, but consider it insane to debate with a television – as surely it is – then it would be insane for me to treat these two entities as the same.

It is hard to think of any categories as singular and oppositional as the difference between entities you are willing to debate with, and entities it would be insane to pretend to debate with. Try it – try and think of a category that small and that oppositional to everything not in that category.

It is virtually impossible.

Determinism and Uncertainty

You do not have to be able to explain a phenomenon in order to accept it. You also do not have to be able to explain a phenomenon in order to reject irrational pretend explanations of it.

I do not have to be able to explain the origins of the universe in order to accept that the universe exists. I do not know the incontrovertible facts about the origins of the universe, but I reject that it was created by a giant space turtle, that it was both created and destroyed simultaneously, or that it expanded and contracted at the same time, and so on.

A baseball pitcher does not need to know the detailed equations of air resistance to be able to throw a ball, nor to understand that he cannot throw a ball in opposite directions at the same time.

Determinists will often demand that those who accept free will provide an incontrovertible explanation of the origin and process of free will. This is a silly form of intellectual baiting, similar to theists who demand that atheists provide an incontrovertible explanation of the origin and process of the universe, or supply the details of every conceivable stage of evolution.

I cannot explain free will; I cannot describe and provide incontrovertible explanations of its origins and processes – but so what? Before Darwin, no one had any idea how complex life came about – does that mean that they had no right to believe in horses or people, or the value of selective breeding? Because I cannot accurately describe the development and evolution of my eyes, does that mean I cannot open them and see?

All knowledge is preceded by ignorance – that is the entire point of knowledge. Knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t know – but could know – is the entire progress of human thought. Admitting you don’t know something is not a confession of impotence, but of possibility. The fact that we don’t yet know all the biological underpinnings of free will gives us something to explore, to examine – a goal to pursue. It is not a bad thing – it is a wonderful thing. It is not a failing; it is an opportunity.

Demanding that we not accept or believe in something before we can explain everything about it is truly putting the cart before the horse. I must believe in a stable phenomenon before I can examine its underlying causes, which is one reason why I am interested in the physics of objective reality, and not in the physics of nightly dreaming. I must believe that something exists before I will set aside time to find and examine it. I don’t believe in ghosts, so I don’t spend any time trying to find and examine them. I don’t believe in telepathy, so I don’t check out my prowess in the field. I’m not trying to find investors to fund a dragon zoo, either, since that involves fiat currency, which is even less real than fire-breathing lizards.

Demanding that I be able to prove everything about free will before I can accept free will is ridiculous. If ultimate proof were required for any acceptance, then no patient hierarchy of knowledge building would be possible – no one could have any theories on physics before atoms were discovered – and all current theories would be invalid and useless because no unified field theory has yet been developed.

However, the stability and predictability of matter and energy were accepted long before atoms were discovered – and such stability is accepted by lower and less complex life forms as well, down to and including jellyfish. Just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we can’t know some things. It’s a cheap and silly way to tell people to shut up, and it is fundamentally anti-scientific in nature.

What Is Free Will?

The definition of free will is challenging and complicated, because it must be something unique to the human mind – therefore, it cannot be anything as simple and tautological as “choice.”

One unique capability of the human mind is to compare proposed actions to abstract standards. A beaver will build a dam, but a beaver does not use a blueprint to design the dam. A bird will fly, but a bird does not plot out a flight course on a map ahead of time.

One defining aspect of human consciousness is our capacity for morality, which is basically comparing proposed actions to ideal standards. When we think of the “big four” evil actions – theft, rape, assault and murder – moral responsibility requires that we have the capacity to compare proposed actions to abstract standards. If we want to steal something, we can compare our action to a standard such as “stealing is wrong.”

(Please understand that this is not a proof of morality, which will come later in this book, but an example of commonly accepted moral reasoning.)

Free will does not mean that we can do anything we want – that would be omnipotence. We are not free to fly unaided, or jump to Mars. But it does mean that we have the capacity to compare our proposed actions to abstract standards – ideal standards, generally.

Some of these ideal standards are pure abstractions – Platonic, almost – such as a universal respect for persons and property. Others are more personal, reciprocal and empathetic – “How would you like it if someone stole from you?”

Children who don’t want to eat their dinner are sometimes informed of the existence of starving children in the Third World. Challenges sometimes referred to as “First World problems” are generally marked as being silly and unimportant relative to the survival challenges of living in a poverty-stricken landscape.

We may refrain from stealing because we accept that stealing is universally wrong – or we may refrain from stealing because we empathize with the upset and anger that our potential victim would doubtless experience.

The comparison of potential actions to abstract rules falls into the category of direct moralizing. The comparison of such actions to negative emotions falls into the category of empathy, or indirect moralizing.

In the first case, the principle is that stealing is wrong; in the second, it is that actions that cause negative emotions are wrong, and stealing just happens to be one of those.

I fully understand that the phrase “stealing is wrong” is not satisfying philosophically, and I will strive to satisfy you philosophically later in the book. I also understand that the supposed “principle” called “don’t make people feel bad” is even less satisfying, for a variety of reasons we will get into later.

However, we certainly must accept that human beings have the capacity to develop universal abstractions – abstractions that have a positive obligation. If you want to learn truths about the physical world, you need to use the scientific method. If you want to build a bridge that stands up efficiently, you need to use principles of engineering. If you want to sell medicine that makes people better, you need to use the principle of medical research – in particular, the double-blind experiment – to stave off the inevitable possibility of mistaking the placebo effect and other false positives for an imaginary cure.

Given that we have the capacity to develop universal abstractions with positive obligations – abstractions that we need to use to objectively achieve a particular end – we must also accept that we have the capacity to compare our proposed actions to those universal abstractions.

When we ask a child to accept that two and two make four, we are not asking the child to believe this truth for any particular instance, but rather for all instances of that equation. It’s not just that these two coconuts and two coconuts make four coconuts, but rather that two and two of anything make four. When we ask a child to write the number “4” on an answer sheet, we are asking the child to compare his proposed action – writing a number – with the ideal standard of writing the correct number.

With regards to criminal guilt, we generally think of punishing a man because he knew what he was doing at the time was wrong. If a man is insane, has a brain disease, or is mentally retarded to the point that he does not have the capacity to know the immorality of his actions, then we may decide to confine him, not as a moral punishment, but rather just to keep everyone else safe.

We may decide to put down a dog that keeps biting people – not as a moral punishment, and certainly not as any kind of ethical instruction to other dogs, but rather just to keep people from being bitten.

Thus we do not judge a man morally if we decide that he is unable to morally judge his own actions. In other words, if he is unable to compare his contemplated actions to an ideal moral standard, then we do not judge him to be in possession of free will. We do not expect a rabid dog to understand that the initiation of the use of force is immoral, and so we do not call such dogs evil for biting.

If we do not have the capacity to compare our own potential actions to some idealized standard, then we can never be held morally responsible for failing to conform to that standard.

Imagine that a thief steals a wallet, and then has that wallet stolen from him in turn. The thief cries out in frustration at the violation of his “property rights.” We can clearly see the hypocrisy here. The thief violates his original victim’s property rights, and then in turn has his own rights violated as another thief takes off with the stolen property.

Can we imagine applying this judgement of hypocrisy to any other animal in the world? If a squirrel steals a nut from another squirrel, and in turn is stolen from, would we call the first squirrel a hypocrite for chasing the second “thief”?

Of course not – because we recognize that the squirrel does not have the capacity to compare a potential theft to the concept of universal property rights.

We were all asked when we were children, if we hit another child, “How would you like it if another child hit you?” The endless repetition of this empathy programming – along with other factors – helped us develop a sense of responsibility for the feelings of others as we grew up. The golden rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – is a reflection of this basic understanding. As human adults, we are generally expected to recognize that other human beings have feelings and preferences, just as we do, which need to be taken into account when considering potential actions.

Another mantra we hear as children is: “You should have known better!” In this context, “better” means having “higher standards of behaviour.”

When you were a child, you doubtless attempted to avoid punishment for bad behaviour by saying that your friends told you to do something. At which point, adults doubtless asked whether you would jump off the Brooklyn Bridge or Toronto’s CN Tower if your friends told you to do that as well. Of course you wouldn’t, which means that you had the capacity to judge the value of your friends’ suggestions. You were increasingly required to use your own judgement, rather than blame your friends.

The entire purpose of civilizing children is to get them to compare their proposed actions to ideal standards – in a philosophical society, this means reason and evidence.

In Christian societies, the ideal standard is the Ten Commandments, combined with: What would Jesus do?

Morality itself is the comparison of proposed actions to ideal standards. Criminal judgement is the comparison of past actions to ideal standards. In other words, criminal judgement occurs when there has been a failure in moral judgement, which manifested in illegal action.

A baby who urinates on you has no capacity to compare his urination options to ideal standards – the average teenager who urinates on you is committing an egregious action.

When we think of a speeder on a highway, we condemn that person. We assume the driver has the capacity to compare his current speed with the ideal standard, the speed limit, and has chosen to exceed it.

If a man ties a blindfold over his eyes while he is driving, we do not blame him for hitting a garden gnome, since he cannot see. Instead, we blame him for tying the blindfold over his eyes. The ideal standard here is not don’t hit garden gnomes, but rather do not drive if you cannot see.

Similarly, if a driver hit a garden gnome because his brakes failed, and it turns out he had not maintained his brakes, we blame him not because his brakes failed, but because he chose to avoid necessary maintenance. On the other hand, if his car was well maintained, but someone sabotaged his brakes, then of course the person who tinkered with his car is to blame.

This can get quite complicated. If you set events in motion that produce a particular outcome, even if you did not anticipate and do not want that outcome, you can still be responsible. A fascinating example arises out of common law, wherein if a robber runs into a store, and the cashier shoots at him to prevent the robbery and accidentally hits and kills another customer, it is the robber who is charged with murder, not the cashier. The robber set the events in motion that resulted in the death of the customer, although the robber doubtless did not want the customer to die. In this case, the ideal standard is don’t rob – one reason being that highly random and uncertain events may be set in motion.

Another example is a simple barroom brawl that results in one man dying because he falls and hits his head on the edge of the bar. The man brawling with him probably did not want to kill him, but is still responsible for the death. He would be charged with a lesser offense than first- degree murder, but the charge would be more than simple assault. Everyone who gets into a bar fight recognizes that entirely unanticipated and even unwanted injuries can occur, just as every robber understands the same thing. Violence is almost always a form of Russian roulette.

No matter where we look in the realm of ethics or free will, we understand that there is ideal behaviour, and someone who has knowledge of that behaviour can choose to behave in non- conforming ways. If I go to a foreign country where I do not understand the customs, I can be forgiven for acting in ways that may otherwise be considered offensive – because I am not aware of the ideal standards, and therefore I am not consciously deviating from them.

If I fail to study for a test, I am deviating from an ideal standard. If I exercise or train to the point of injury, I am deviating from an ideal standard. If I’m attracted to an available woman and I do not ask her out, I am deviating from an ideal standard of courage. If I ask her out every day for a year, I am also deviating from the ideal standard of consideration.

Sometimes the ideal standard is an absolute – thou shalt not kill.

Sometimes the ideal standard is more relative, like the Aristotelian mean. Too much courage is foolhardiness; too little courage is cowardice.

There are entities that conform to ideal standards, but which do not have a choice – computers fall into this category. I can program a robot to kill people Terminator style, and that robot will conform to the ideal standards of my programming – but it has no choice. I could throw a random algorithm in the air, so that 10 percent of the time the killer robot will show mercy and let its victim live, but we would not assume I had given the robot any free will – randomness is not the same as choice.

If we understand this definition of free will – our human capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards – then the debate between determinism and choice becomes much easier to resolve.

With this definition in hand, we can clearly see that when a determinist tries to argue you out of your free-will position, the determinist is asking you to compare your position that free will is true to an ideal standard called determinism is true.

However, by asking the supporter of free will to compare the contents of his mind to an ideal standard, the determinist is already supporting the free-will position.

If a man attempts to correct a woman’s position, he is asking her to compare the contents of her mind to the ideal standard of truth – and if the contents of her mind do not conform to the ideal standard of truth, then she should discard them, and accept the truth.

Such a man accepts free will, because he accepts that human beings have the capacity to compare the contents of their mind to the ideal standard of truth – and free will is defined as our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.

I realize that I may be seen to have switched the definition a little bit – from “comparing his proposed actions to an ideal standard,” to “comparing the contents of his mind to an ideal standard,” but the two are really one and the same. The contents of the mind can only be discerned through actions, such as speaking or writing.

Change Your Mind, Change Your Behaviour

If I were able to convince you that the world is a sphere and not flat, I would attempt to do so only because I would expect you to no longer speak about supporting the flat earth model, and instead support that the world is in fact a sphere. If you continued to support the flat earth hypothesis, I would be confused and annoyed. I would say: “But you admitted that the world was a sphere!” If you replied, “Yes, the world is a sphere. I accept and admit that, but I’m still going to publicly talk about the world being flat” – well, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

Changing your mind without changing your behaviour makes no sense at all. It might happen for occasional reasons – think of priests who lose their faith, but continue in their occupation – but overall it is both strange and rare for such contradictions between thought and action to manifest. In general, a conflict between belief and behaviour only occurs where generally selfish incentives exist – a desire to continue drawing a salary, maintain a marriage, or avoid hostility or even attack from an ideological or religious group, for example. Most of us would have sympathy for a person keeping secret thoughts separate from public actions out of fear of consequences, but that is not what I’m talking about.

We strive to change people’s minds because we hope to alter their future actions – and conversations and debates and arguments are all potential future actions.

Determinism: What Changes?

Imagine that I used to be deeply religious. I went to church, prayed, baptized my children, donated 10 percent of my income to the church, volunteered, and did charity and missionary work – all in the name of my faith.

Now, imagine that one day I tell you I have become an atheist. What would you expect, in terms of my behaviour?

Surely you would expect me to stop going to church, stop praying, stop donating to the church and so on.

What if I told you I was an atheist, but nothing about my behaviour was going to change – I was going to continue attending church, praying and so on?

Surely you would be confused about my change of mind. Wouldn’t it be strange if I said I no longer believed in God, but I continued exactly the same behaviours as when I did believe in God?

Let us go one step further in terms of strangeness. Imagine that when I was religious, I spent countless hours converting other people to my religion. Surely you would expect this behaviour to change when I claimed to have lost my faith and became an atheist.

It’s one thing to pursue something you don’t believe in personally – it’s quite another to pour enormous energies into convincing other people of something you no longer believe in.

However bizarre this behaviour may appear, however incomprehensible and contradictory it is, it still falls far short of the irrationality of the determinist.

If I have a mental illness and believe that the president of the United States is speaking directly to me through my television set, and I spend an enormous amount of time talking back to him, engaging in imaginary conversations and debates – all with the deluded belief that I am profoundly altering public policy in America – surely this is something I should be cured of, not indulged in.

So – what exactly do I need to be cured of? What exactly is the nature of my delusion? Well, I am confusing an inanimate object – a television – with a conscious human being.

If I were actually teleconferencing with the president of the United States, and we were having actual conversations, this would not be a delusion to be cured, but perhaps a position of influence to be envied.

Are you beginning to see the problem?

The reason I should stop debating with my television is that my television does not possess free will.

We can imagine a similar and more understandable situation where you think you are debating a real live person on the other end of an internet chat program, when it turns out the program is an automatic “bot” response system.

Decades ago, there was a little program for primitive computers called “Eliza” that mimicked the neutral passive responses of a stereotypical psychiatrist. If you poured your heart out to this program and it prompted you to be more open, speak more honestly, and say more, it would be easy to imagine the computer had developed curiosity and empathy.

If you think you are talking to a person and it turns out you are talking to a robot, you would probably give up on the conversation, since you would recognize that the robot does not possess free will.

If I stop believing in ghosts, it makes sense for me to stop ghost hunting.

If I say that I have switched from being a Democrat to a Republican, but I continue to vote Democrat, and convert other people to Democrat positions, what does that mean?

I am a staunch empiricist, which means I judge people not by their words, but by their deeds – as the old biblical saying goes, “By their deeds shall you know them.”

I care what people say, but I really care what they do, since the truth of the mind is found in actions, not words. If someone claims to have learned better, but continues to do worse, I know they have not in fact learned better.

As Aristotle said, we are what we repeatedly do.

If I am hiking through a thick forest with someone, and she claims she wants to get to a certain distant destination, and knows how to get there, but refuses to check our direction with a map, a compass or a GPS, I know she is far more interested in being “right” than going in the right direction.

We are all generally raised with the personal responsibility of free will. As a child, if I took another child’s toy, I was told to give it back, and I learned the virtue of sharing, or respecting other people’s property. If I took another child’s toy, no one ever said about me, “Well, little Stef is just a machine. He has no free will, he’s just doing what he does, and there’s no point blaming him, any more than there is any point blaming a cloud for raining on you.”

If a boy deliberately drives a remote-controlled toy car into a dozing cat, we blame the boy, not the toy – but for a determinist, there is no difference between the two. Does the determinist refrain from assigning any responsibility to the boy? Somehow, I doubt it.

My eternal question to determinists is: Now that you have given up on the idea of free will, what changes?

What does change? I have had countless public debates with determinists, and I have never once received a straight answer. Determinists call into my philosophy show aiming to change my mind about free will. They bring arguments and evidence and empiricism and science to bear on the question, in the hopes that I will accept their perspective and change my mind. They want me to use my power to change my mind to give up on the idea that I can change my mind.

Once I accept that an entity does not have free will – a robot, for instance – then I no longer invest time and energy debating with that entity.

In video games, there are often preprogrammed enemies that attack you. I’ve never heard of any sane individual trying to reason these computerized avatars into pacifism or trying to get the two-dimensional robots to accept the non-aggression principle and learn how to debate, rather than fire giant rockets at their digital opponent’s head. Computer enemies in a video game have no free will of their own, so no one tries to reason with them. In massive combat games, no one ever offers up treaty conditions to the computerized opponent – assuming this option is not programmed into the game somehow – because the computer opponent is just following its predetermined script.

To put it another way, imagine that you woke up tomorrow with certain proof that everyone around you was a preprogrammed robot with no free will of their own. Surely this would be a shattering experience and would change your behaviour in countless fundamental ways.

Would you bother continuing to follow politics if you knew you could have absolutely no impact upon the outcome? Do you currently campaign to change the outcome of past elections?

Furthermore, imagine if you woke up the day after tomorrow with certain proof that you yourself were also a preprogrammed robot with no free will of your own. Would you give up trying to debate the other robots? Would this knowledge change your behaviour in any way?

It seems to me impossible to imagine that such a shattering revelation would have no impact on how you felt, what you thought, or what you did.

In the science-fiction movie The Matrix, one character decides he wishes to return to the artificial delusions created by the master robots – but the only way he can do that is by erasing his knowledge that his prior life was in fact a delusion. A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original shape – and morally and philosophically speaking, what is more important than the question of free will versus determinism?

If I accept certain absolutes, they must change my behaviour – that is how we know I accept them. If I think I can fly unaided, I am cured when I no longer try to fly unaided. As long as I continue the attempts, I am not cured, no matter what I say.

If I truly accept the idea that everyone – myself included – is just a robot, with no capacity for choice, free will, morality, preferring any particular state over any other state, or the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, then I will stop trying to change people’s minds. I must stop debating people, I must stop trying to improve the world, I must stop pretending to prefer truth over falsehood, and I must give up on the ideas of morality, personal responsibility, or any preferred state – such as freedom – over any other state, such as tyranny.