Free Will vs Determinism

Throughout the millennia, free will has been a hot topic on the minds of many thinkers and philosophers with intelligent people taking both sides of the debate. Today, I discuss two philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre and B. F. Skinner, and their positions on the free will debate. I have disagreements with these philosophers and believe my position to be more accurate in light of modern science. Feel free to like, comment, and follow me. But most importantly, I hope that this springs an interest in some of you to continue the research into both Skinner's and Sartre's philosophy, as well as even more modern speakers on this topic including Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Noam Chomsky.

The principle of alternate possibilities is what sets the rubric whereby freedom can be defined. This principle states that an action is called “free” if an agent doing that action could have done otherwise. Free will is defined as the belief that actions are freely chosen while determinism is the belief that all events are caused by past events such that nothing other than what does occur could occur. Those who believe in free will, like Sartre, make a distinction between event causation and agent causation. Event causation is the idea that no physical event can occur without having been caused by a previous physical event, while agent causation is the idea that a being with a mind can start a whole chain of causality that wasn’t caused by anything other than his free will. Determinists like Skinner, however, would argue that there is no distinction between event causation and agent causation because an agent itself is shaped by its environment and is therefore a collection of events which would still rely on deterministic processes. Skinner’s view is ultra-reductionist because he believes that all parts of the world, and of our own experience, can be traced back or reduced down to the environment.

Jean-Paul Sartre is an existentialist who believes that existence precedes essence. This means that humans are born with no inherent essence or meaning and that it is key that humans exercise their free will in order to escape the apparent absurdity of their raw existence. Since humans are born with no inherent essence, people have the absolute freedom to do with their life what they wish. Sartre may believe that the environment can influence our decisions; however, he believes that if we strip away all ascribed essence in things then we will reveal that we try to use our absolute sense of free will in order to ascribe meaning to a meaningless universe. What we choose according to Sartre is ultimately up to us and in no way are our actions deterministic. I agree with Sartre in that existence precedes essence, but I disagree with his assumption that this necessarily makes us uncomfortably free or even free at all. I do agree that things in the universe only have meaning because we ascribe meaning to them, but we can only develop a sense of personal meaning via biology and environment, which in a much larger sense is wholly deterministic.

B. F. Skinner believes that people are born as blank slates, which means that a person is a pure product of their environment. Though the environment does indeed shape conscious agents to a large extent, biology is also a major determining factor which Skinner seems to ignore. I believe that humans are not born as a blank slate but rather a limited slate that the environment shapes and builds upon. He disregards all sense of the biologically innate when he talks about Walden II. Walden II is a fictional Utopia achieved through the control of environmental factors. Skinner believed that environmental factors in theory could be controlled and thus people’s behaviors could be controlled via force, the threat of force, or positive reinforcement. He believed positive reinforcement to be the only feasible way to achieve a Walden II type scenario. Sartre however, would not want to live in Skinner’s idea of a behaviorist Utopia because to him, there would be no free will. Skinner would argue that Walden II is as free as the real world. According to Skinner, there would be no psychopaths in his Utopia because psychopaths result only from a blank slate which has been corrupted via the environment. Therefore, if no corruption, no psychosis. In light of modern science, we know this to be false. It is simply a fact that there are some people who cannot be rehabilitated, regardless of how much you use environment to shape them. Some people’s brains are structured in such a way that environmental factors will never be enough for a rehabilitation necessary to reintroduce these people back into society. Environment alone is not adequate in explaining behavior because everyone has a unique brain structure which perceives the environment in different ways, and so the brain is the final stopping point between the outside world and a thought or an action.

I consider myself as a determinist but in a different sense than Skinner. While Skinner believes everything can be reduced down to the environment, I believe in reductionism in a much deeper sense. We know the laws of physics to be deterministic because things in the world behave according to rigid unchanging patterns, though those patterns may seem complex with many variables. Examples of these rigid unchanging patterns are scientific laws like gravity or electromagnetism. If the laws of physics are deterministic then all resulting physical states are determined through these laws including biological states. If biological states are determined then brain states are determined because the brain is a biological organ. Since mental states, including our apparent sense of free will are inextricably linked to brain states, which are deterministic, then all resulting thoughts and actions are already determined by said states.

Admitting that everything is determined in no way delegitimizes thoughts and actions. We still live in a world where we have to lock murderers in jail even if we acknowledge that the murderer is just a victim of their own biology and environment, because the actions of the individual affects others. There are still very good logical reasons why it is important to play this game of life. We still maintain this illusion of freedom and so it is only in the best interest of our species that we act in a way as if we are truly free in order to prevent nihilism and chaos. As the neuroscientist Sam Harris said, “A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.” The universe is like a giant computer program with a seemingly uncountable number of variables in it, but still a computer program nonetheless. What we call “freedom” is a neurological illusion. It is just a complex array of determined biological and environmental factors which give us a strong impression of freedom of choice.