Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! A very good friend of mine recently linked me to an article written by hambydammit at the Rational Response Squad. I will be referring to the writer of the article as Hamby from now on. His post was “Free Will: Why We Don’t Have it, And Why That’s A Good Thing.” For all who want to make sure I represent Hamby’s views fairly, the link can be found here.
Hamby starts from a materialistic basis. Now I’m not going to fault him for not supplying the reason for that basis. At this blog, I obviously can’t go into a basis for theism every time. It is understood that I am arguing from a theistic perspective and I hope most realize that if need be, I can give a basis for that perspective.
Hamby’s argument is essentially that everything is matter in motion and that objects will not violate the laws of motion. Matter will move as it is predetermined to and that will include everything else that is taken along for the ride. This means that your brain is responding as it should under each circumstance due to the laws of matter at work. Now I do have some objections to this all, but I want to stress something at the start. If materialism is true, I agree entirely with what Hamby has said. If there is no God and matter is all we have, I hold that there is no free will.
This doesn’t mean that if there is a God however, that we have free-will. It could be some hyper-Calvinists are right. Of course, I have an objection to Hamby’s view however and one that I think the hyper-Calvinists can avoid for reasons given when I get there. I just want to say at the start that I think Hamby’s conclusion follows naturally from what he has said.
Now it’s time to raise some questions.
For instance, Hamby at one point says this:
At some point, though, we’re going to have to address the philosophical leap that comes with the existence of what we call “sentience.” For our purposes, it won’t matter precisely what sentience is, but it is important to note something of critical importance. Whatever sentience is, it is that way because there are genes within the sentient animal which, according to the law survival of the stable, caused chemicals to interact in completely predictable ways to “build” a being capable of sentient thought.
At this point I was thoroughly stunned. It doesn’t matter what sentience is, but whatever it is, it has to be material. My problem at this point is that this is an objection someone could raise to his thesis. They would be saying “But we do possess free-will for we have sentience. Sentience is not material.”
Hamby has given a naturalism of the gaps. Whatever the case may be, we can be sure that sentience is possible by naturalistic means. Now it could be the case that that has happened. However, why should I assume that such is the case? Why should it also not really matter what sentience is? For dealing with one of the strongest objections, more should be said.
Hamby goes on to say this about the spirit of the free-will argument:
When I speak of the spirit of the free will argument, I mean this: humans possess consciousness and sentience, which allow us to control ourselves in any way we desire, and to enforce our “will” upon the universe. What I want you to see is that this kind of thinking is backwards, for it assumes something existing independently of the law of survival of the stable. For us to be conscious, impulses must move through neurons in our brain. These impulses exist before consciousness. They must. The inescapable conclusion is that our brains cause us to be conscious.
At this point honestly, I have the impression of a small child making his case saying “They must!” I also wonder about the difficulty of what is being said. “Our brains cause us to be conscious.” Are we something other than our brains? What exactly are we? Before I can decide “Do I have free-will?”, I need to know who and/or what I am.
He goes on to speak about individual choices saying the following:
Let’s think now about what happens when we humans make a choice. Suppose I am at a restaurant, and am offered the choice of chicken or fish. The waiter asks me which one I want. My ears receive the vibrations caused by the waiter’s mouth and vocal cords. Without any external “will” causing it to happen, the vibrations are translated into nerve impulses which travel, completely on their own – because they are obeying the law of survival of the stable – to the part of my brain which, through no conscious will of its own, processes sound. I cannot help but comprehend the waiter, for my brain is doing what it must do. It is sending neural impulses to and from various parts of my brain, all of them unavoidably doing what they must do because they are matter and they are seeking stability.
Once my brain has translated the vibrations into a concept, I cannot help the reality that follows. My brain is now in a state. Either I desire chicken, or I desire fish, or I desire neither. I cannot change this state, for I am matter, and my brain has done what it had to do, and my preference is now a reality in time. I cannot help but move forward in time, and I must act in one the thousands of ways potentially available to me. If you think about it, there are probably hundreds of thousands of things I could do in the next second after entering the state of being aware of my preference.
I will do something in response to the question. Most likely, I will speak, expressing my desire for one or the other. The important question is this: Did I decide to speak, or did I speak because my brain caused me to do so? Here is where the survival of the stable plays its trump card. We really have two choices here. Either my brain caused me to have a preference, and then caused me to speak, or something else caused me to have a preference and then speak.
Hamby says that it cannot be something else for in that case, something else would be acting on matter. Now I agree that if matter is all there is, there is nothing outside of matter to act on that matter. However, my main question is what caused someone to have preference A over preference B? What is there that is genetic that determines that? I will say more on this later.
Hamby’s first objection he deals with is that if there is no free-will, why have laws? I believe Hamby is right when he says that these laws can be the means through which it is registered in us that we ought to behave a certain way. The laws can change attitudes. What I’m wondering about however is why the laws are made in the first place? Why does matter believe matter needs to be a certain way? As Dawkins would say “DNA neither knows nor cares. It just is, and we dance to its music.”
Hamby then goes on to say this:
Another common objection I hear is that scientists cannot prove that humans are not different than the animals. Perhaps we do actually have something that has risen above the level of animal consciousness. Maybe we really are different in kind. Of course, this argument commits the same fallacy as the argument that atheists can’t disprove the existence of God. In all cases, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and anyone who claims that human consciousness is different in kind from any other animal has a brobdingnagian task set for himself. Certainly we can do mental tasks that other animals can’t, and our powers of abstraction and conceptualization are unrivaled, but this is no justification for the statement that we are not completely under the control of our genes, just like every other animal. We must remember that any mental ability we have is the direct result of our genes building us this way. If we have the choice to act in illogical ways, or contrary to the dictates of our nature, it is because it is in our nature to be able to do so!
On the contrary, I think both sides have a burden to prove. If I have an inability to prove theism, that does not prove atheism. If someone has an inability to prove atheism, that does not prove theism. Since Hamby is advocating a case, it is up to him to provide evidence for that case. However, I also agree that if someone wants to raise this objection, they should also have evidence on their side.
Next Hamby says this:
When the previous objections fail, people often say that lack of free will makes life meaningless, since we’re just mindless robots running around doing exactly what our programming tells us to do. This is a good example of finding the nearest pool and taking a belly flop into the deep end. Our programming gives us consciousness, and our consciousness gives us a sense of purpose and meaning. We get up in the morning because we’re programmed to have sleep cycles, but we also get up in the morning because we want to make money at our jobs. We want to make money because we want to have a house and attract a mate and be able to buy status symbols and gadgets to make our lives easier. Purpose comes from living, regardless of what causes us to live.
But if our programming gives us consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning, what does this mean exactly? Is the meaning something outside of us or something entirely within us? We think that such and such is meaningful, because it is in our genes, but is it really meaningful in itself?
Also, could a career criminal not say he is simply acting according to his genes? Why should my genes have authority over his? As soon as one reason is given, a moral standard has been evoked and that will have to be something that is beyond the genes. Otherwise, we’ll just have “might makes right.”
Of course, I see appeals to a moral standard with statements about society getting better and speaking about ideas that Hamby believes are harmful. A favorite was when he mentioned abstinence-only education and how unrealistic it is.
Well it seems my wife and I pulled off abstinence just fine until we were married.
Also, Hamby says that sex is in our nature, but we ought not go out and have orgies every night. That’s not in our nature either! While I agree we are sexual by nature, I would ask Hamby “Why not?” If I am simply an animal, as I believe Hamby is stating, then why not act like an animal? An animal does not have rules for sexual conduct generally. Animals just mate when they’re in heat. Why can’t I do the same?
And if we do have a nature, what is it? What is this nature that we all seem to have? We have different genes no doubt, for if we didn’t, everyone on this planet would be exactly alike. However, we also all seem to call each other human. What is it that we have that makes us human? How can it be something other than our genes if all is dictated by our genes?
However, I wish to ask a more fundamental question.
Suppose that what Hamby has said is entirely true. How does he know that? Could he appeal to reason? I would just say “Your genes are programming you to think that way.” Whatever line of reason he gives, he could not escape that I could just answer with “But you respond that way because your genes program you to.” (Ironic also that in an argument against free-will, it seems a hidden assumption that I should change my mind upon reading this)
Now I don’t believe a hyper-Calvinist is in the same problem since they could at least attempt to point to a reality outside of themselves that says they have no free-will, and that would be God. This doesn’t mean that I agree with them or find the point convincing, but it would be one that could be raised.
My other question however is based on the example of being in a restaurant with a waiter. Am I merely responding to sound waves? Suppose I am at a pizzeria and looking over a menu and ask “What are your specials today?” The waiter pulls out somehow a pair of cymbals and clangs them together. I would not say “Great! I’ll try the pepperoni!”
When the waiter comes and asks “Soup or salad?”, he is using sound waves to communicate of course, but he is conveying information in those sound waves. What is being responded to is not the sound waves themselves for there’s nothing inherent in the sound waves that contains the concept of “Soup or salad?” For example, someone could come up to you and ask that in Chinese and unless you know Chinese, you’re not going to know what to say. On the other hand, someone could say “Soup or Salad?” to someone who doesn’t speak English and they will have no clue what to say either.
What is being responded to is not the sound waves per se but the information of which the sound waves are a medium. Information is immaterial. If it is passed on from one to another, the original does not cease to possess it. He may cease to have the medium that it was presented in, but he can still have the information itself. I could have a written message for me from one friend to another. I could read that message in transit and see the second friend and give them the note. I would lose the note, but I could still have the information of the message in memory.
So if that is correct, the brain is actually responding to something immaterial and thus, we now have something that is not matter acting in some way on something that is not material. It could be that I do not know how this takes place and such a question I leave for those interested in the philosophy of science. However, if information is immaterial and there is a response indicating that the immaterial information was received, then we must accept that somehow the immaterial and the material interact even if we don’t understand the process.
As for realities like sex education, the purpose of society is to produce good men and I do not believe Hamby could give a real basis for that. Of course, he is free to try, but it will need to be a convincing case not based merely on what works, but if something is really good and if there is a way it can be known.
Hamby can’t do this however because he does say morality is subjective in this essay. All the while, he says that murder and rape are empirically bad. No. If it is subjective, murder and rape empirically take place, but they are not empirically bad. That is adding a judgment on them that is beyond science. It is then ethics.
Of course, moral subjectivism is a fun topic to discuss and maybe such can be done soon.
I conclude that Hamby’s case is fine from a materialistic perspective and I wish more materialists would see it to see the logical outworkings of materialism, but I also find problems with it seeing as I find materialism does not have explanatory power as a worldview.
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