Lecture 7: free will, good and evil

Discuss the importance of free will.

Free will is a concept which is a belief underpinning a range of societal things (economics, criminal justice system).

• We agree that we have freewill to an extent, but measuring it is difficult (could entail intentional agency, open future, and ultimate responsibility)

Discuss the three potential components of freewill.

• Intentional agency = a product of beliefs, desires, and intentions (could have done something different if the states were different, and if they were the same)

• Open future = the past is fixed, but we can make choices to reach many different possible futures.

• Ultimate responsibility = actions are not coerced (determined) externally, can be influenced but not determined.

What are the problems with seeing behaviour in terms of free will.

There is a mismatch between how we see ourselves and the world, more specifically, some propositions we have are mutually exclusive.

• We freely choose our behaviour (freedom of will)

• Every event has a cause (determinism)

• Freedom of will cannot co-occur with causal determinism (incompatibilism)

Discuss the four different positions on the determinism/freewill debate.

• Hard determinism: rejects the proposition that we have freewill.

• Libertarian free will: rejects the proposition of casual determinism (rejects determinism and causal laws).

• Compatibilism: rejects that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive.

• Impossibilism: states that free will and determinism are strictly mutually exclusive

Discuss the pre-modern era views on the determinism/freewill debate.

• Ancient Greece: many views on determinism, but less so on free will (precursors from Plato and Aristotle)

• Medieval Period: free will developed as an idea by St Augustine (true freedom aligned with the goodness in religion)

• Renaissance: belief in predestination?

Discuss the enlightenment era views on the determinism/freewill debate.

Descartes contrasted deterministic world with a mind in freewill.

• Rousseau (pro-free will) and Hobbes (soft determinism) took contrasting views on it.

Discuss the relatively modern views on the determinism/freewill debate.

• Kant: free will is an antinomy (both ideas could be correct), in sense a compatibilist approach

• Darwin: sceptical of free will (placed greater focus on nature characteristics influencing us)

Discuss libertarian free will as a position on the spectrum.

Libertarian free will argues we have ultimate control of our own thoughts, actions, and behaviours (these can be influence, but we do not need to act on these).

• We have the capacity to make our own decisions without causal determinism (contra-casual free will)

• Event causal libertarianism suggests free will is more a bottom-up process

Discuss event causal libertarianism as an explanation on the development of free will.

Event causal libertarianism suggests that rather than free will being caused by the agent, it is actually a bottom-up process.

• Such that events are caused but not causally-determined (argues there is indeterminism in the process to initiate actions, prior event knowledge can cause us to disregard influence)

Discuss hard determinism as a position in the freewill debate.

Hard determinism argues there are physical, causal laws of the physical world, with an unchangeable past.

• We cannot have free will (the world is, in principle, always predictable), we might make choices but these are determined

• There are interlocking causal chains which stretch to the beginning of the universe.

Discuss different ideas which support hard determinsm.

• Laplace’s Demon is a thought experiment (imagine a demon can predict the universe’s entire future), which is reflected in modern science with things like supercomputers and artificial intelligence

• Evidence, most scientific disciplines attributed causes to our actions and behaviours, and psychology (in a way) can predict behaviour.

Discuss how chaos theory might support indeterminism (free-will).

Chaos theory suggests that some physical systems (e.g., weather) cannot be predicted, as small changes lead to massive changes.

• Popper (1950) suggests this unpredictability implies indeterminism

• However, whilst this may undermine a Laplacian idea on prediction, it doesn’t necessarily support free-will altogether.

With reference to quantum physics, discuss how research at subatomic level supports indeterminism.

Quantum physics studies subatomic things with the principle of indeterminism (some things occur genuinely random).

• But does this necessarily support free-will (not all physicists agree, and from the scale, it would have little influence on the brain)

• And, indeterminate behaviour would be chaotic, rather than free (Harry Frankfurt)

Discuss arguments against the libertarian free-will position.

• Maturing neuroscience: some have argued that as neuroscience develops, the possibility of free-will decreases (eliminative materialism idea), although, other suggest neuroscience just tells us how actions occur, rather than that they are determined

• Range of influencers: many things like genes, prenatal environment, later-life experiences, influence our behaviours (whilst we may choose our later environments, we don’t exactly choose our early-life environments)

Discuss arguments against determinism.

• Irrelevant: a criticism of determinism is that our determined future is pointless (thinking about what will happen in the future is as pointless as thinking about what you would do yesterday), a sort of epiphenomenal perspective.

  • Fatalism - this argues that our deliberations (about the future) are influenced as well.

Discuss the Peter Strawson’s idea of compatibilism

Compatibilism (by Strawson) is anti-libertarian free will (our emotions are reactive to other people’s behaviours).

• Our behaviour predates free-will. Strawson argues we cannot reject reaction emotions if we accept hard determinism.

Discuss Harry Frankfurt’s idea of compatibilism

Compatibilism (by Frankfurt) suggests there are different levels of desires (first order = impulses; second order = meta-desires).

• Frankfurt used a thought experiment with willing and unwilling drug addicts to support this.

• Results: conflict in the orders of desire in unwilling addicts (no conflict in willing), Frankfurt argues only those who are willing have free-will.

Discuss the idea of compatibilism in general.

Compatibilism (also soft determinism) which suggests free actions are done, but these still have some causation.

• In the absence of coercion we can make rational, free decisions, but (compared to libertarian views) we do not have free-will at gunpoint.

Discuss evaluations of compatibilism (soft determinism).

• For:

  • Someone on trial is considered for a range of factors (more focus on voluntary decision to act, rather than contra-causal free will)

• Against:

  • Changes the definition of free-will to be contextual

  • Argued too be fundamentally different from free-will

Discuss the idea of incompatibilism as a position of the free-will debate.

Incompatibilism argue that compatibilism is not logically coherent. Peter van Iwagen argues the Consequences Argument for the flaws in compatibilism.

• No one is above the laws of nature, no one is above the idea that the past laws entail every future fact (determinism is true), therefore no one has power of the future (therefore, free will cannot exist).

Discuss how Galen Strawson does not support impossibilism.

Impossibilism argues that free will is impossible (regardless of if determinism is true; indeterminism is randomness not free will).

Galen Strawson argues that ultimate responsibility for our actions is the incoherent bit.

• Supports compatibilism with a 5-stage arguments (you act based on heredity, to be truly responsible you have change yourself, these efforts to change are determined by who you are, future changes are influence in the same way, therefore you cannot be morally responsible)

Discuss research which challenges to the idea of compatibilist free will.

Benjamin Libet in the 1980s studied participants motor response times to commands using an EEG (used to measure readiness potential in the supplementary motor cortex).

• Results: found a gap with potential preceding the action initiation (not was was expected)

Haynes (2008) replicated the findings with a greater gap using an fMRI, could predict the readiness to act up to 10 seconds before.

Discuss what Libet’s research suggests for free will.

Benjamin Libet’s work could at face value suggest we do not act with free-will, and instead the process is unconscious (philosophically rejecting compatibilism)

• Libet argues that we don’t decide to act, but we can consciously veto our decisions to act in the last second (e.g., the idea of ‘free wont’ of self controle)

Discuss different explanations for the findings of Libet’s research.

• sa

• Low external validity: ?

• Nahmias: it only shows something occurring before a decision is made, not verifying if the brain is making an unconscious decision.

Discuss ego-depletion as an explanation of free-will results from Libet.

Ego-depletion was introduced by Baumeister (2007), and argues that Libet’s findings need to look at free will in terms of self-control which is a finite resource.

• Ego-depletion was tested by giving participants a depletion task, then a second task which needs self-control, participants in depleted condition performed worse (Baumeister et al., 1998).

Evaluate the ego-depletion explanations of Libet’s findings.

• Failure to replicate on a large-scale studies (e.g., Hagger et al., 2016).

• Early meta-analysis did show medium to large effects (Hagger et al., 2010), but there are massive variations in how to induce ego-depletion.

• In controlling for variation, Carter et al. (2014; 2015) found small effect sizes.

Discuss how individual differences in self-regulation can influence the magnitude in free-will.

To build further on Baumeister’s Ego-Depletion idea, individual differences can suggest some people are ‘freer’ than others.

• Impulsivity often suggests less control, especially in mental health conditions.

Discuss the history of the view of good and evil.

• ?

Discuss Hobbes’ ideas of if humans are evil.

Hobbes argued that all human motivation is selfish and tied to survival (basic emotions of fear and desire for behaviour).

• Aggression is a basic and central part of human experience. Life without government is negative.

• Hobbes symbolised the state as the Leviathan (opposed the Commonwealth of England’s new government)

• Hobbes supported Charles I in the English Civil War, and argued through the Social Contract Theory that state-obedience to a monarch is necessary for peace.

Discuss Rousseau’s idea of humans being good.

Rousseau argued that people are naturally peaceful (his work influenced Marx and the French Revolution).

• Rousseau romanticised poverty (such that agriculture and civilisation ‘corrupted’ people).

• Rousseau also believed in stage-based learning for intellectual and religious topics.

• Rousseau was not a particularly nice person, but associated with human beings in rose-tinted glasses.

Discuss evaluations for Hobbes’ ideas of humans being inherently evil.

Hobbesian view is supported by many moral exhortations (e.g., “what you give is what you get”), although, these messages aim to promote altruism, with benefits for the self.

• If we were not naturally selfish, why would we need a moral system to promote altruistic behaviours.

Discuss evaluations for Rousseau’s ideas of humans being good.

Whilst we might be motivated by self-interest (as we see to support moral systems in Hobbesian views) there is a variety of evidence to suggest our behaviours are not purely selfish.

• Assumes our relationships are transactional, and something we could ignore, but many do not ignore the struggles of others (around a third of people do some charitable activity).

Discuss how behaviourism sees people as good or bad.

Behaviourism argues that people are in good or bad environments (rather than the person themselves being that), morality is a function of external factors

• Use of techniques like token economies and rewards to change environments, rather than change the person.

Discuss how personality theories break down our emotions

Most theories of personality reduce our personalities into smaller trait numbers (e.g., the Big Five)

Discuss the five emotions in the Big Five.

• Extraversion

• Neuroticism

• Openness to experience

• Agreeableness

• Conscientiousness

Discuss how personality models discuss humans as evil.

• Authoritarianism: a psychodynamic approach, which can be measured using the F-scale (methodologically-poor). Suggests people with this are susceptible to certain actions

• Psychoticism: Eysenck’s Personality Theory, psychoticism associated with impulsivity and increased criminality

• Big Five: low levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness seen to cause psychoticism.

Discuss ethological evidence against Rousseau’s view.

Wilson and Colleagues looked into murder rates in different chimpanzee colonies (close relatives of humans).

• There was two strategy arguments: adaptive (killing is evolutionary; Hobbesian) and human (killing is from being made evil by civilisation; Rousseau)

Results: the research found much stronger evidence for the adaptive strategy, therefore, supporting a Hobbesian view.

Discuss ethological evidence [? and Hobbes]

Research by De Waal suggested other animals show kindness and compassion to others.

• Chimpanzees spontaneously comforted each other when another fell over

• Other research has also shown animals will refrain from an action which results in harm to another animal.

• Other research has shown negative reactions from animal when they perceive unfairness to other animals.

Discuss research into the idea of selfishness making us happy.

Research by Dunn and Colleagues (2008) conducted two experiments:

• Study 1: Americans, showed spending more was associated with happiness (no effect if spending was on self).

• Study 2: Extended to look at the effect of a financial windfall (employees in cooperative) showed the similar effect

• Study 3: Students given some money and instructed to spend on self, or on someone else (greater happiness in those who spent in on others)

However, in both situations there were issues, this was just before the 2008 financial crisis, and there was an error in the dataset (when fixed negated the findings). In study 3 there was too small a sample.

Discuss research into the role of the situation on being good.

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s Obedience Study demonstrate that there are no good or bad people, rather the influence of an environment.

• Factors like authority and presence of others influence our behaviours.

Discuss some issues with use the Stanford Prison Experiment as support for a social explanation of behaviour.

• Zimbardo acted as the warden, whilst simultaneously running the study (bias)

• Conceptual replications have failed (e.g., Haslam & Reicher, 2006)

• Some claims, like spontaneous guard behaviour, have been disputed by consultants to the study (e.g., Le Texier, 2009)

• Participants were male (role of testosterone, and impulsiveness), thus not just environment.

Discuss evidence which implies both Hobbes and Rousseau are wrong.

Steven Pinker introduced the hypothesis of The Better Angels of Our Nature, explaining that negative human behaviours has been decreasing for 15 years (by 2011).

• To some extent this might be due to improvements in policing (Hobbesian) but other factors like proliferation of democracy (not Hobbesian).