Comments on a Paper Titled: Implications of Determinism by Mecca Chiesa, University of Kent

IMPLICATIONS OF DETERMINISM

From time to time I read academic papers mostly to do with Christian issues. I soon get into the weeds and well over my head, but on occasion I glean something useful. The title of this paper caught my attention. It is written by a proponent of behaviorism. I give you a quote for context:

 Since human action takes place in the same physical universe as all other phenomena, behaviorists have no objection to determinism, and, for the behaviorist, determinism does nothing to undermine the richness, individuality, and complexity of the human experience.

Her thesis is that we have a rich and diverse human experience despite the determined nature of our actions. When we act, we take that action based on a long and complex series of causal events. This is naturalism which must reject free will because we are the product of evolution. We are the sum of random natural events.

This chapter attempts to respond to objections to determinism by emphasizing some of its more positive implications. Where other listeners react with fear or despair to an implied loss of control and with terror to an implied loss of self-identity, behaviorists react in more optimistic ways to determinism. While other listeners dread the consequences of not being able to hold people responsible for their behavior, behaviorists are quite able to accommodate determinism and accountability.

When I read the quote above, I no longer thought I was reading an academic paper. Those who reject behaviorism react with fear, despair and terror at the implications of this natural science. They “dread” not being able to hold people accountable for their moral actions. The horror of it all! She is implying that any who reject her science are doing so emotionally rather than rationally therefore her view is correct. This commits a fallacy and does nothing to support her view.

In discussing the tension between determinism and free will, she makes the following statement:

Although theologians account for the soul by asserting that it is God-given, neither compatibilists nor indeterminists are concerned to provide an account of how the autonomous self comes to be. They simply assert its existence, assign causal status to it and thus justify holding persons responsible for their behavior. The autonomous self seems to be exempt from the laws of science that operate in the rest of nature.

Here is a clear denial of the Biblical account of human creation. The soul cannot exist unless it occurs through some natural/explainable process. One cannot make the claim that humankind is in anyway different from animals. Self is the product of our environment, experiences, positive and negative reinforcements. Self does not direct behavior. It is these external influences that direct our actions.  We maintain our uniqueness because of the complex nature of the inputs we receive:

…the entity we call the self comes to be that unique entity through interaction with the contexts to which it has been exposed (including other people and the verbal behavior of the culture), through the consequences of its own acts, through positive and aversive conditioning, and through its genetic susceptibility to reinforcing and punishing contingencies.  

One of the consequences of determinism/naturalism is despair. The author counters this by saying that we should not confuse fatalism with determinism. She provides the following to support her thesis:

Fatalism also views everything as caused, but it denies that human beings have any role in changing or influencing the course of events. Yet even the most casual of observations refutes fatalism: if my car has a fault and if I call the garage, make an appointment to take the car there, and subsequently take the car, the fault will be repaired (assuming the mechanics also engage in appropriate behavior). If I fail to behave in those ways, my car will not work properly. My actions bring about events in the world and are causally related to subsequent events. Similarly, if the student spends some time studying for an exam, that action will have a different outcome than if the student watches television or plays computer games without opening a textbook. It is true that lots of things will happen regardless of our behavior – the next lunar eclipse for example – but behavior itself produces changes in the environment (that is the definition of the operant or operant class). So the behavior of an individual at any given time does affect subsequent events, including subsequent behavior, and thus the subsequent events are not due to some mysterious force called fate, rather they can be causally traced to an individual’s own actions on a prior occasion.

This is supposed to be an argument against fatalism. Look at the variety of outcomes possible from our behavior. The car is fixed, and the student passes his test. Those are not fatalistic outcomes like an eclipse whose event no human action can prevent. They are not fatalistic because we have an immediate, identifiable cause. Our decision making has immediate and viewable effect. This argument fails when you realize the author ignores the length of the causal chain. I failed the test because of a long line of causal events, much unseen and unconscious, that determined my rejection of doing anything to help me pass the test. My car still doesn’t run not because I chose not to get it fixed, but because a long series of conditioning made my negative behavior unavoidable in this circumstance. Yes, we can clearly see the immediate consequences of certain behaviors, but under determinism these behaviors are the consequence of random processes that have inevitable effect. Their fate is as assured as that of the eclipse.

In a section addressing blame and moral responsibility the author states:

Let us for a moment remove the word moral from the expression moral responsibility and just consider what is meant by responsibility.

She provides a morally neutral situation where a student fails to turn in an assignment.

As a behaviorist, I fully appreciate that my student is not to blame. Given that the behavior (or lack of it) is determined by genetic endowment, learning history, and features of the current context, the student could do nothing other than fail to submit the assignment. Therefore, I do not make any “moral” judgements about the behavior. Nevertheless, my student and I are involved in a complex set of contingencies (including statements delivered orally or in writing about what will follow from the non-submission of assignments) that require some action on my part, that require me to provide consequences for the failure to perform in specified ways.

She argues that there is no blame/judgement of the student, but there are consequences based on transactional agreements.

In situations where a person is to be considered responsible (where the culture is going to provide consequences) legal systems recognize the importance of learning history when they allow for what are called mitigating circumstances to be taken into account.

Notice the assertion that it is appropriate to hold a person responsible for their actions. See the problem? The person is not response-able under her system. The person’s actions are determined by causal events that the person cannot avoid. They cannot be blamed for their actions because the actions are determined, but they can be held responsible. To have the ability to respond requires free will, the ability to choose to do otherwise.

In relation to the kinds of behavior normally considered in the literature of ethics, stealing, harming other people, damaging their property and so on, Young (1991) notes that determinism continues to allow for the control of unacceptable behavior at the same time as it de-emphasizes moral responsibility and blame.

One cannot lay blame or make moral judgements, yet “unacceptable behavior” can be controlled. We are no different than animals. Our actions are determined. We can not choose to do otherwise, yet we can be punished for our actions. The lion hunts and kills its prey. No court of law will charge the lion for murder. Based on naturalism/behaviorism why should I be treated any differently. Would punishing a lion for murder cause any change in his determined actions towards other animals. If I, as a human being, am determined to be a murderer what law, what punishment would change that?

There is another glaring problem. Who gets to decide what is “objectionable behavior?” Without God there are no objective moral values or duties.

Naturalism at heart must rely on random processes to explain the present state of creation including the human condition. In their view we are only animals subject to the whiles of those random processes. No matter how complex the processes, or their results, the effect is the same. Assume all things are determined by natural processes there is then no escaping the conclusion that humans are not in control of their behavior. The result of this world view can be nothing more than despair and fatalism. No argument can surmount the truth that a person whose behavior is determined cannot be held responsible for that behavior morally or otherwise.

I am grateful that I am God breathed. I have a soul and am morally aware. I can make free decisions despite the long list of influences that go into to those decisions. I am free to do otherwise. These truths make God’s redemption necessary and my hope assured.