Free Will Vs Determinism: Is Compatibilism a Third Way?

...

To have really free will we would need to have access to everything that gives rise to the choice, and be in control of everything, and he claims that we can’t, given the fact that we are not aware of the activity of our brain at the time of making a decision, and we can’t control them.

Harris also asserts that the content of experience, upon which we may rely to make a decision, is not a free choice, the content is produced out of complex interaction with the individual, and the environment.

In that respect, coming back to the article already quoted, we can read about the importance of the environmental factors in the way the genes influence our life.

“Scientists and ethicists…are quick to note that environmental factors play a huge role in how genes are expressed. Having a gene that increases the risk for breast cancer doesn’t mean a woman will get breast cancer—and having a gene linked to schizophrenia doesn’t mean you will develop it. “Genes are programs that run every activity of every cell in your body every second you are alive,” says Daniel Weinberger, director of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at Johns Hopkins University. “If you inherit small glitches, little pieces of noise, this sets you on a path. But it doesn’t determine you will end up with mental illness. These glitches aren’t fate. They are for risk. Environmental factors are at play too.”

This environmental influences were most probably in the mind of Richard Dawkins when he wrote, in his Selfish Gene, that “We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators”. Certainly, in addition to the genetic influence, he is allowing to the influence we get from the culture, from the environment we live in. That is why he writes in response to his critics that: “it is perfectly possible to hold that genes exert a statistically influence on human behaviour while at the same time believing that this influence can be modified, overridden or reversed by other influences”.

Whilst not negating the genetic and environmental influences in the way we behave, compatibilist such as Professor Dennett would argue that despite such influences, we have freedom of choice in the sense that we can overcome them with culture, without forgetting the possibility of luck or chance.

In his Freedom Evolves, published in 2003, Dennett develops Dawkins idea of the meme (cultural influence) and criticizes genetic determinism, - as defined by Stephen Jay Gould, in his work Ever Since Darwin: If we are programmed to be what we are, then these traits are ineluctable [inescapable]. We may, at best channel them, but we cannot change them either by will, education, or culture” - by rightly stating that “I have never encountered anybody who claims that will, education, and culture cannot change many, if not all, of our genetically inherited traits” (Freedom Evolves, p.156)

But it is not only genetic determinism that we can overcome. When he considers environmental determinism he rightly points out that we cannot equate determinism with inevitability, as we have to give room to luck, chance and culture. For Dennett, as well as for Dawkins, the important thing is that “there is no general reason for expecting genetic influences to be any more irreversible than environmental ones” (Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype, p.13)

But to reverse such influence, Dennet shrewdly observes, we need to be able to recognize and understand it, which is a characteristic trait from human beings, our capacity to reason, that enables us to overcome internal (genetical) or external (environment) influences in our decision processes.

Using the classing analogy of a clock and its hands, the hands on a clock do not have free will, they follow the mechanism of the clock and cannot do anything else other than keep moving. We, on the other hand, although we have inclinations (mechanisms), we know them and by learning about them (seeking professional advice, for example) we can have an effect on them (we can slow down the speed of the clock).

Overall, it is fair to argue that the compatibilist position offers a stronger answer to the free will conflict based on the data we have available thanks to the new discoveries on genetics and neuroscience than the libertarian movement (were are not determined) or the hard determinists (we do not have free will).

It is true that our psychological traits have a lot to do with the way we react or behave, but that does not mean that we cannot rebel against it and put measures to avoid such influence on our decisions.

In fact, I would argue that more than determined we are conditioned. Yes, the genes and the meme may have an influence on our conduct but we can ultimately overcome such influence and go against the odds and do something “counter-natural” for us. For example, a conflictive relationship with your parents as a child may develop into a low self-esteem as an adult and can make an impact in the way to see people in a position of authority. But still you can fight against that natural tendency and go to seek professional advice to overcome that tendency and deal with it. The fact that you choose to go to counselling, for example, is a clear sign of free will.

We may not be able to choose to dislike a certain individual, but we certainly would not normally act about it, i.e., hit them with a baseball bat, although one may sustain that could be down to the coercive power of the state, and had you not been threaten by the state, you would have acted upon such dislike.

In other words, it is very difficult to separate whether human behavior is caused by free will or it is determined, as sometimes it is a combination of both. Trying to explain our thoughts and actions on one viewpoint on its own would be falling into reductionism, since they limit themselves into an unsatisfactory explanation and in that sense, this problem can be better tackled by adopting a compatibilist approach in which we allow for both the conditioning of the genetic inheritance and the cultural surroundings.

References

- Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz, Problems And Theories of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)

- “Compatibilism” in The Information Philosopher, URL= http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/pre-determinism.html>, [last accessed 7th May 2016}

- Gurmin Hayden J, Philosophy of Natural Science – Free Will, PowerPoint Presentation, St. Patrick’s College, April 2016

- Parshley, Lois; “Can your genes make