As the argument goes, if everything in the universe is determined, then we are determined too. It seems something everyone can accept, but for some this destroys any possibility of having free will. Thus, the argument goes, any form of retributive punishment is left over from a prescientific understanding of action.
I'm personally a compatibilist, but for the sake of argument, let's assume there is no such thing as moral responsibility because of this determinism. If people have no moral control, then what good does it do to punish them?
I can think of two reasons in which retributive punishment would be desired. First: if our psychology worked through negative feedback; that punishment was an important means to be aware of the wrongness of such an action. Perhaps retributive punishment, may be a means to show the seriousness and the unacceptability of such behaviours. Second: if such punishments were a means to deter crime; that as agents that can predict future states and desirability of outcomes, the notion of retributive punishment was itself a preventative measure.
This is not to say that because we can justify retributive punishment that any form of retributive punishment is acceptable, or that one is justified in wanting harsher treatment for individuals - after all, they're still humans and torturing someone who has committed a crime for example won't uncommit the crime. But that even if we have no moral responsibility in the way that an incompatabilist would describe does it mean that therefore retributive punishment is never warranted.
Showing posts with label free will. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free will. Show all posts
Friday, 13 May 2011
Monday, 28 February 2011
Naive Will
Free Will is one of those conceptions that can come in and out of existence depending on what is meant by it. Libertarian free will, for example, is absurd as decisions are made by purely causal systems. But at the same time, to try and separate one's thoughts and decisions from their brains in an egregious abuse of language. If you didn't make the decision to do something on your behalf, then what are you?
But from the conception of free will stems personal responsibility. How responsible can we all really be? A naive conception of free will dictates ultimate responsibility, which is a level of responsibility that simply isn't realistic. It's evident that relying on such a conception of free will just doesn't work in the real world.
Through education, new possibilities arise. Inform people of choices, of consequences, and give them an empowerment of choices, and this increases the responsibility one has over their behaviour. For those concerned about all those women "choosing" to get abortions, perhaps they would be heartened if they looked at statistics from countries like The Netherlands where comprehensive sex education and empowerment of women means low teen pregnancy rates and low abortion rates. Surely if the desire was to lower abortion rates then this would be the path to follow. But when it's treated like an ultimate choice, that the girl is ultimately responsible for her pregnancy, it justifies punishment. For the girl could have chosen otherwise...
But from the conception of free will stems personal responsibility. How responsible can we all really be? A naive conception of free will dictates ultimate responsibility, which is a level of responsibility that simply isn't realistic. It's evident that relying on such a conception of free will just doesn't work in the real world.
Through education, new possibilities arise. Inform people of choices, of consequences, and give them an empowerment of choices, and this increases the responsibility one has over their behaviour. For those concerned about all those women "choosing" to get abortions, perhaps they would be heartened if they looked at statistics from countries like The Netherlands where comprehensive sex education and empowerment of women means low teen pregnancy rates and low abortion rates. Surely if the desire was to lower abortion rates then this would be the path to follow. But when it's treated like an ultimate choice, that the girl is ultimately responsible for her pregnancy, it justifies punishment. For the girl could have chosen otherwise...
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Morning Scepticism: Will
While I agree that to some extent we have control over our actions, the concept of free will is something that is quite problematic. To have ultimate responsibility, then there would have to be some conception of the self akin to a Cartesian model. But we don't have that, we have conflicting drives and desires that make up our will. It's not just as easy as saying that it's their choice, it's true in a way but misleading to talk in such terms.
Thursday, 29 July 2010
More On Free Will
To many determinism prohibits free will because the inescapable fact that all actions are an expression of the laws of physics. Take Anthony Cashmore's[1] definition of free will:
A parallel is moral relativism. If I advocate fox hunting and you think it abhorrent, what sense is it useful to say that it's true for me that fox hunting is good and for you it is bad? It doesn't address the issues of concern[2] which still remain at the heart of the disagreement. Trying to explain free will in terms of a definition that everyone would agree couldn't be true doesn't address the issues surrounding what it means to be free.
Stopping A Thrown Ball
Imagine two children throwing a ball to each other in the front yard of the house. One of the throws is too hard and off-target and is heading straight for a window. You are standing nearby and are within reach that would prevent the ball from hitting and therefore breaking the window.
You can probably make an educated guess as to the "decision making" process of the brain. The desire to stick one's hand up comes from the laws of physics in the most trivial sense, but really it's the patterns of brain cognition that are able to map objects, movements and consequences. To highlight this, consider the same scenario only instead of the ball flying into a window think of it falling harmlessly on the ground. The consequence of it moving into the glass matters in the cognition of whether to stop the ball or not.
The same laws of physics are applied in each situation, the same agent - the only difference was an "awareness" of the consequences. Same goes for the situation where in the focus on the throwing the lack of awareness of their being a window in the path. In this situation, the agent doesn't realise there would be consequences for letting the ball go.
Cartesian Theatre[3]
Take the Cartesian form of cognition, that there is an immaterial source that drives the material vessel. We can think of examples analogous to this idea: a woman driving a car works fine in illustrating this mind-body problem as it is classically thought. Think of the original Terminator movie where the view from inside the terminator was one much like our own but except with a few visible calculations. Which is to say this does nothing to tell us how the Terminator artificial intelligence works.
People make a homunculus argument[4], a non-explanation masquerading as something explanatory. So when faced with a regress boiling down to a physical brain interacting, it's easy to interject "that cannot be free will!" as if the only possible experience is of will as a single indivisible entity.
Yet how would such an entity calculate how to express that will? We can just chalk it off to something immaterial and not think about it. The idea of an immaterial will is equivalent to magic. It's not about how it happens but that it can in ways we can't fathom.
Apply such an entity to the situation with the ball. So instead of having a brain that calculates the consequences and acts accordingly there's a will that does the same, only through some supernatural means. As agents now we can act to influence outcomes as much as an immaterial will can, only difference is that we can dissect how a material mind can work and find ourselves as victims of circumstances.
It wasn't me, it was my neurons!
I think the contention lies that the indivisible element is not the element which we experience. But that really shouldn't be a problem, if you think otherwise stick a knife through your hand and see whether the pain is any less illusory. That pain can ultimately be reduced down to brain activity acting on impulses doesn't make it go away. This is the difference between reductionism and greedy reductionism.
That consciousness is a composed entity shouldn't pose a problem. After all, how does a desire created by the firing of synapses differ from one that is immaterial? Being able to blame the agent for their actions apparently. If the will is the ultimate source then it has an ultimate responsibility. But as finite beings we can't have that to begin with, decisions are finite and contingent.
Take the example again of the ball throwing, what could an immaterial will do that is different to what a material will could? If one desired not to have their window broken, then it wouldn't matter whether the desire was immaterial or material. The same capacities, the same abilities to produce a different potential outcome (either the window gets smashed or it doesn't) and the same fact that there is only one outcome.
The problem is that the will reduces down to the laws of physics, so while this kind of will that desires an outcome is indistinguishable in action from an indivisible will, with the divisible will one can always point to the decision being out of their control. So while the subject can experience a sense of self and all the pleasure and pain that comes with it, when it comes to responsibility we treat that will as an illusion. This is Cartesian thinking taped over materialism, no wonder it comes out as absurd!
Our sense of will is us as much as anything else, material or immaterial it doesn't change that ultimately we are saying "this is the self". We have decision-making processes which can work already in the sense we want them to. To want otherwise is essentially to want the capacity for randomness in decision-making.
An argument from knowledge
I think we already know that we are decision-making machines. At the age of 5 I was put in school where they tried to teach me ways of thinking and behaving; to read and calculate, to consider and take lessons. So much is invested in education because education is about giving mind tools, to mould someone's actions and understanding.
We aren't free from the laws of physics but we are free in the way that matters - to be able to evaluate the world and make judgements that matter. Back to the ball scenario. If someone didn't understand what a window was then why would they feel the need to stop the ball from crashing into the window? After all, the decision is made by someone for the purpose of preventing a possible future in which the window shatters. Knowing what the outcome is changes the abilities of an agent.
To put this into much higher stakes, imagine someone being put in a room that had a button which would launch an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Without knowing what the button does, how can the person be held responsible for pressing it? But if they did know what the button would do and what the consequences of that would be, then they are responsible because they affected a potential outcome.
It's the assurance of MAD[5] that prevents nuclear war, the knowledge of what nuclear warfare would do ensures that no-one wants to be the one who starts it. Each brain doing its own calculations still in the bounds of the laws of physics yet despite the hair-trigger nature of nuclear payloads there hasn't been any nuclear weapons used in warfare since WW2. That should say something about the nature of free will.
As Dan Dennett puts it, we shouldn't be looking to physics for free will but to biology[6]. It's natural selection that creates agents of evitability, our capacity of abstract thinking and accumulated knowledge that gives us the capacity to be morally-accountable agents. In that sense we are much more free than a bowl of sugar or a bacterium or a dog, because we can and do act on what we know. That is a free will that should be as desirable as any versions of free will on offer.
[1] - Cashmore, A. R. 2010. The Luretian swerve: The biological basis of human behavior and the criminal justice system. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107:4499-4504.
[2] - Philosophy Bites: Simon Blackburn on Relativism
[3] - Daniel C Dennett. (1991), Consciousness Explained
[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
[5] - Mutually Assured Destruction
[6] - Video lecture: here.
I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature.While I'm sure most people would agree that free will defined that way cannot exist, all one has to do is define free will as being something else and the definition fails. Imagine the same example but for the concept of life:
I believe that life is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological organisms that is something more than the interacting non-living matter of the organism.In other words, how do you get life from non-living matter? Many ask this as if there's a great distinction between the living and non-living. Those who believe in distinguishing life from non-life aren't advocating a vitalist difference, so to define life as believing in some form of vitalism doesn't actually explain anything useful, and is misleading by trying to explain away something of great value.
A parallel is moral relativism. If I advocate fox hunting and you think it abhorrent, what sense is it useful to say that it's true for me that fox hunting is good and for you it is bad? It doesn't address the issues of concern[2] which still remain at the heart of the disagreement. Trying to explain free will in terms of a definition that everyone would agree couldn't be true doesn't address the issues surrounding what it means to be free.
Stopping A Thrown Ball
Imagine two children throwing a ball to each other in the front yard of the house. One of the throws is too hard and off-target and is heading straight for a window. You are standing nearby and are within reach that would prevent the ball from hitting and therefore breaking the window.
You can probably make an educated guess as to the "decision making" process of the brain. The desire to stick one's hand up comes from the laws of physics in the most trivial sense, but really it's the patterns of brain cognition that are able to map objects, movements and consequences. To highlight this, consider the same scenario only instead of the ball flying into a window think of it falling harmlessly on the ground. The consequence of it moving into the glass matters in the cognition of whether to stop the ball or not.
The same laws of physics are applied in each situation, the same agent - the only difference was an "awareness" of the consequences. Same goes for the situation where in the focus on the throwing the lack of awareness of their being a window in the path. In this situation, the agent doesn't realise there would be consequences for letting the ball go.
Cartesian Theatre[3]
Take the Cartesian form of cognition, that there is an immaterial source that drives the material vessel. We can think of examples analogous to this idea: a woman driving a car works fine in illustrating this mind-body problem as it is classically thought. Think of the original Terminator movie where the view from inside the terminator was one much like our own but except with a few visible calculations. Which is to say this does nothing to tell us how the Terminator artificial intelligence works.
People make a homunculus argument[4], a non-explanation masquerading as something explanatory. So when faced with a regress boiling down to a physical brain interacting, it's easy to interject "that cannot be free will!" as if the only possible experience is of will as a single indivisible entity.
Yet how would such an entity calculate how to express that will? We can just chalk it off to something immaterial and not think about it. The idea of an immaterial will is equivalent to magic. It's not about how it happens but that it can in ways we can't fathom.
Apply such an entity to the situation with the ball. So instead of having a brain that calculates the consequences and acts accordingly there's a will that does the same, only through some supernatural means. As agents now we can act to influence outcomes as much as an immaterial will can, only difference is that we can dissect how a material mind can work and find ourselves as victims of circumstances.
It wasn't me, it was my neurons!
I think the contention lies that the indivisible element is not the element which we experience. But that really shouldn't be a problem, if you think otherwise stick a knife through your hand and see whether the pain is any less illusory. That pain can ultimately be reduced down to brain activity acting on impulses doesn't make it go away. This is the difference between reductionism and greedy reductionism.
That consciousness is a composed entity shouldn't pose a problem. After all, how does a desire created by the firing of synapses differ from one that is immaterial? Being able to blame the agent for their actions apparently. If the will is the ultimate source then it has an ultimate responsibility. But as finite beings we can't have that to begin with, decisions are finite and contingent.
Take the example again of the ball throwing, what could an immaterial will do that is different to what a material will could? If one desired not to have their window broken, then it wouldn't matter whether the desire was immaterial or material. The same capacities, the same abilities to produce a different potential outcome (either the window gets smashed or it doesn't) and the same fact that there is only one outcome.
The problem is that the will reduces down to the laws of physics, so while this kind of will that desires an outcome is indistinguishable in action from an indivisible will, with the divisible will one can always point to the decision being out of their control. So while the subject can experience a sense of self and all the pleasure and pain that comes with it, when it comes to responsibility we treat that will as an illusion. This is Cartesian thinking taped over materialism, no wonder it comes out as absurd!
Our sense of will is us as much as anything else, material or immaterial it doesn't change that ultimately we are saying "this is the self". We have decision-making processes which can work already in the sense we want them to. To want otherwise is essentially to want the capacity for randomness in decision-making.
An argument from knowledge
I think we already know that we are decision-making machines. At the age of 5 I was put in school where they tried to teach me ways of thinking and behaving; to read and calculate, to consider and take lessons. So much is invested in education because education is about giving mind tools, to mould someone's actions and understanding.
We aren't free from the laws of physics but we are free in the way that matters - to be able to evaluate the world and make judgements that matter. Back to the ball scenario. If someone didn't understand what a window was then why would they feel the need to stop the ball from crashing into the window? After all, the decision is made by someone for the purpose of preventing a possible future in which the window shatters. Knowing what the outcome is changes the abilities of an agent.
To put this into much higher stakes, imagine someone being put in a room that had a button which would launch an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Without knowing what the button does, how can the person be held responsible for pressing it? But if they did know what the button would do and what the consequences of that would be, then they are responsible because they affected a potential outcome.
It's the assurance of MAD[5] that prevents nuclear war, the knowledge of what nuclear warfare would do ensures that no-one wants to be the one who starts it. Each brain doing its own calculations still in the bounds of the laws of physics yet despite the hair-trigger nature of nuclear payloads there hasn't been any nuclear weapons used in warfare since WW2. That should say something about the nature of free will.
As Dan Dennett puts it, we shouldn't be looking to physics for free will but to biology[6]. It's natural selection that creates agents of evitability, our capacity of abstract thinking and accumulated knowledge that gives us the capacity to be morally-accountable agents. In that sense we are much more free than a bowl of sugar or a bacterium or a dog, because we can and do act on what we know. That is a free will that should be as desirable as any versions of free will on offer.
[1] - Cashmore, A. R. 2010. The Luretian swerve: The biological basis of human behavior and the criminal justice system. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107:4499-4504.
[2] - Philosophy Bites: Simon Blackburn on Relativism
[3] - Daniel C Dennett. (1991), Consciousness Explained
[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
[5] - Mutually Assured Destruction
[6] - Video lecture: here.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
The Hard Problem Of Free Will
The death of mind-body dualism should be the death of free will, no matter what we do we can't escape that we are composed of physical objects all of which act according to physical laws. Thus any decision we appear to make is merely the summation of physical properties and contingency. We don't have the power to change the future despite how real our decision-making process feels. Contra-causal free will is dead.
Many grudgingly acknowledge this, just as there is the acknowledgement that quantum uncertainty can't help with the problem of free will. Random or contingent, both don't help with the fact that our decisions are still the product sum of forces below the conscious level.
Yet the debate continues about whether we have free will, compatibilism[1] is the philosophical position that despite determinism there is such thing as free will. Yet as much as compatibilism is desirable, it does feel like someone is trying to put lipstick on a pig. Because no matter what the musings it is seemingly impossible to answer the hard problem of causation, because someone couldn't have done otherwise that what they did, because that would be breaking the summation of the processes that led to it.
A recent paper published in the PNAS[2] compared the belief in free will to vitalism:
Buridan's ass[3]
Imagine going to a restaurant you have never been to and seeing multiple things on the menu that sound equally appetising and cost the same amount. Unable to choose which meal is best, you get up and leave with an embarrassed look on your face. That's happened to you, right? I'm guessing not.
So lets say you choose one of the dishes and enjoy the meal, but afterwards you wonder if you made the right choice. The chicken was a little overcooked after all and the person at the next table who had the beef did nothing but compliment it. If only you had chosen differently, after all it was your choice...
...well no. It was the sum total of the laws of physics acting out from the big bang until the very second when you proclaimed to the waiter that you had the chicken. It felt like you were making a choice but if we rewound the universe to that moment again you would have had the same outcome of getting the chicken which was slightly overcooked and you'd be sitting around later pondering why you didn't take the beef. The best you can hope for is to learn for next time.
The selfish altruist
A parallel: Think of the notion of altruism. There are two classic notions of altruism, psychological and biological. We can see acts of altruism all through nature and even in ourselves, yet underneath this apparent costly action lies self-serving motivations. It is to be altruistic because of advantages it can bring[4].
One can take this underlying biological selfishness to dismiss the psychological phenomena, even going so far as to ask "how can one be altruistic when the underlying motivations are selfish?" Of course to call the biological process selfish is somewhat misleading as the biological process has the appearance of behaving selfishly but of course has no mind.
In that sense, it's not pertinent to talk about altruistic or selfish acts. What motivations are there? There can be none at all because matter has no mind, it just does. Daniel Dennett calls this kind of thinking greedy reductionism[5], like trying to explain a website to someone by talking about electrical fluctuations through semi-conducting arranged metal. Yes, ultimately a website can be reduced to such an explanation, but it's useless to explain it in that sense. Moreover it can be downright misleading to conclude that websites are merely an illusion!
Laplace's Demon[6]
From our individual point of view we are not able to see all the physical interactions that make someone do something. Even if we could successfully map a brain, the sheer number of calculations make it computationally impossible to derive that mental compulsion.
So we can imagine a God's eye view of what it would look like to something that determine what's going to happen next. If there were such an entity that knew any given state of a universe and how all interactions would interact, it would be able to work out what would happen next. From that we can gather that any action taken on the volition of an agent is really the sum total of all that came before it. We have to be causally determined, just as what comes next is determined.
Laplace's demon has been exorcised away by quantum mechanics, making the system we live in indeterminate. But still the causal problem remains for free will. Randomness or causality are inevitably at the heart of what it means to be a monist[7], free will as a contra-causal phenomenon is incoherent unless our will itself is contra-causal. Quantum indeterminacy does not give wiggle-room for the free will on offer.
So it goes.
It must be concluded that free will in the contra-causal sense must be false. We can't do otherwise than what can be done, our thoughts and actions are part of the causal process. The compatibilist and the incompatibilist both agree on this. So why the distinction?
It matters because we are decision-making agents. From our point of view, our actions can change outcomes. Think of the trolley problem[8], we have the power to pull the switch and thus change the outcome. The trolley can't do that, a chopped-off hand can't do that but we as individuals can. This requires no breaking of causality, whether the switch gets pulled is determined by the underlying brain chemistry but the outcome was not inevitable.
In the view offered by Cashmore[2], there is no distinction between a thrown brick and a brick thrower. Both are victims of circumstance and it is no more to blame someone from throwing a brick that smashes a window than blaming the brick itself. The mental state of the thrower is determined wholly by everything that came before.
Tackling The Hard Problem
The hard problem of free will is seemingly impossible to argue with, I can't deny the argument though I will say it's an unhelpful view to the point of being useless. The question sounds like "how can we have intelligence if all the parts are unintelligent?" While one could argue that intelligence doesn't exist because at the core matter cannot think, surely people would object that a dam is different to a beaver dam even if both are merely matter rearranging matter. The beaver has a programmed behaviour[9], human dams are the product of thinking.
Evolution can produce adaptations that exist for the same reason as a human mind would design[10], an example would be sonar which evolved naturally in bats and dolphins but was also designed by intelligent people and for the same purpose in each. Only in dolphins and bats the reasons for sonar aren't representative of the process.
Going back to that restaurant, I can't help but think that I was more than an observer in the process. The observer feels like Cartesian-like, that consciousness is not part of the decision-making process but merely an effect. I can't see why something like that would be useful in an evolutionary sense; not even to give the illusion of moral responsibility[2]. How is that not me making the decision, after all I'm the one who has the experience!
And therein lies my problem with the hard problem of free will. We as individuals have the capacity to think through causation and outcomes, yet this is treated no different than a brick flying through the air. Yet we are decision-making agents, we just can't help being that way. If we can think through consequences, then motivations become important. If a person intended to harm others and did so, this is motivationally different to someone who caused harm completely unintended. Cashmore's paper says there is no real difference between the two because either way they are all just the laws of physics playing out. One can be no more responsible for their moral actions than they can their design actions, a great painting merely the rearrangement of matter at the behest of other matter.
If we can be free in any sense, it's between the ability to pursue our desires and when those desires are stifled by the actions of others. There's a difference between signing a confession with and without coercion, likewise making a decision when calm and stressed. But that's just matter changing matter, that's all it is...
[1] - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
[2] - Cashmore, A. R. 2010. The Luretian swerve: The biological basis of human behavior and the criminal justice system. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107:4499-4504.
[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
[4] - For an explanation of this, read Richard Dawkins' book: The Selfish Gene.
[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism
[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon
[7] - There is a good discussion of this in Bruce Hood's book: Supersense
[8] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
[9] - Read "The Beaver's Tale" in Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale
[10] - Dennett D(2009) Darwin's “strange inversion of reasoning.”. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106(Suppl):10061–10065.
Many grudgingly acknowledge this, just as there is the acknowledgement that quantum uncertainty can't help with the problem of free will. Random or contingent, both don't help with the fact that our decisions are still the product sum of forces below the conscious level.
Yet the debate continues about whether we have free will, compatibilism[1] is the philosophical position that despite determinism there is such thing as free will. Yet as much as compatibilism is desirable, it does feel like someone is trying to put lipstick on a pig. Because no matter what the musings it is seemingly impossible to answer the hard problem of causation, because someone couldn't have done otherwise that what they did, because that would be breaking the summation of the processes that led to it.
A recent paper published in the PNAS[2] compared the belief in free will to vitalism:
It is the author’s contention that a belief in free will is nothing other than a continuing belief in vitalism—something biologists proudly believe they discarded well over 100 years ago.And that because the laws of physics are uniform, we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar! The paper is well worth a read because it does give the scientific case as to what one could possibly mean by agency having responsibility. Can we as agents be responsible for our actions? Anthony Cashmore argues that any sense of responsibility is an illusion and thus no we can't be accountable.
Buridan's ass[3]
Imagine going to a restaurant you have never been to and seeing multiple things on the menu that sound equally appetising and cost the same amount. Unable to choose which meal is best, you get up and leave with an embarrassed look on your face. That's happened to you, right? I'm guessing not.
So lets say you choose one of the dishes and enjoy the meal, but afterwards you wonder if you made the right choice. The chicken was a little overcooked after all and the person at the next table who had the beef did nothing but compliment it. If only you had chosen differently, after all it was your choice...
...well no. It was the sum total of the laws of physics acting out from the big bang until the very second when you proclaimed to the waiter that you had the chicken. It felt like you were making a choice but if we rewound the universe to that moment again you would have had the same outcome of getting the chicken which was slightly overcooked and you'd be sitting around later pondering why you didn't take the beef. The best you can hope for is to learn for next time.
The selfish altruist
A parallel: Think of the notion of altruism. There are two classic notions of altruism, psychological and biological. We can see acts of altruism all through nature and even in ourselves, yet underneath this apparent costly action lies self-serving motivations. It is to be altruistic because of advantages it can bring[4].
One can take this underlying biological selfishness to dismiss the psychological phenomena, even going so far as to ask "how can one be altruistic when the underlying motivations are selfish?" Of course to call the biological process selfish is somewhat misleading as the biological process has the appearance of behaving selfishly but of course has no mind.
In that sense, it's not pertinent to talk about altruistic or selfish acts. What motivations are there? There can be none at all because matter has no mind, it just does. Daniel Dennett calls this kind of thinking greedy reductionism[5], like trying to explain a website to someone by talking about electrical fluctuations through semi-conducting arranged metal. Yes, ultimately a website can be reduced to such an explanation, but it's useless to explain it in that sense. Moreover it can be downright misleading to conclude that websites are merely an illusion!
Laplace's Demon[6]
From our individual point of view we are not able to see all the physical interactions that make someone do something. Even if we could successfully map a brain, the sheer number of calculations make it computationally impossible to derive that mental compulsion.
So we can imagine a God's eye view of what it would look like to something that determine what's going to happen next. If there were such an entity that knew any given state of a universe and how all interactions would interact, it would be able to work out what would happen next. From that we can gather that any action taken on the volition of an agent is really the sum total of all that came before it. We have to be causally determined, just as what comes next is determined.
Laplace's demon has been exorcised away by quantum mechanics, making the system we live in indeterminate. But still the causal problem remains for free will. Randomness or causality are inevitably at the heart of what it means to be a monist[7], free will as a contra-causal phenomenon is incoherent unless our will itself is contra-causal. Quantum indeterminacy does not give wiggle-room for the free will on offer.
So it goes.
It must be concluded that free will in the contra-causal sense must be false. We can't do otherwise than what can be done, our thoughts and actions are part of the causal process. The compatibilist and the incompatibilist both agree on this. So why the distinction?
It matters because we are decision-making agents. From our point of view, our actions can change outcomes. Think of the trolley problem[8], we have the power to pull the switch and thus change the outcome. The trolley can't do that, a chopped-off hand can't do that but we as individuals can. This requires no breaking of causality, whether the switch gets pulled is determined by the underlying brain chemistry but the outcome was not inevitable.
In the view offered by Cashmore[2], there is no distinction between a thrown brick and a brick thrower. Both are victims of circumstance and it is no more to blame someone from throwing a brick that smashes a window than blaming the brick itself. The mental state of the thrower is determined wholly by everything that came before.
Tackling The Hard Problem
The hard problem of free will is seemingly impossible to argue with, I can't deny the argument though I will say it's an unhelpful view to the point of being useless. The question sounds like "how can we have intelligence if all the parts are unintelligent?" While one could argue that intelligence doesn't exist because at the core matter cannot think, surely people would object that a dam is different to a beaver dam even if both are merely matter rearranging matter. The beaver has a programmed behaviour[9], human dams are the product of thinking.
Evolution can produce adaptations that exist for the same reason as a human mind would design[10], an example would be sonar which evolved naturally in bats and dolphins but was also designed by intelligent people and for the same purpose in each. Only in dolphins and bats the reasons for sonar aren't representative of the process.
Going back to that restaurant, I can't help but think that I was more than an observer in the process. The observer feels like Cartesian-like, that consciousness is not part of the decision-making process but merely an effect. I can't see why something like that would be useful in an evolutionary sense; not even to give the illusion of moral responsibility[2]. How is that not me making the decision, after all I'm the one who has the experience!
And therein lies my problem with the hard problem of free will. We as individuals have the capacity to think through causation and outcomes, yet this is treated no different than a brick flying through the air. Yet we are decision-making agents, we just can't help being that way. If we can think through consequences, then motivations become important. If a person intended to harm others and did so, this is motivationally different to someone who caused harm completely unintended. Cashmore's paper says there is no real difference between the two because either way they are all just the laws of physics playing out. One can be no more responsible for their moral actions than they can their design actions, a great painting merely the rearrangement of matter at the behest of other matter.
If we can be free in any sense, it's between the ability to pursue our desires and when those desires are stifled by the actions of others. There's a difference between signing a confession with and without coercion, likewise making a decision when calm and stressed. But that's just matter changing matter, that's all it is...
[1] - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
[2] - Cashmore, A. R. 2010. The Luretian swerve: The biological basis of human behavior and the criminal justice system. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107:4499-4504.
[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
[4] - For an explanation of this, read Richard Dawkins' book: The Selfish Gene.
[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism
[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon
[7] - There is a good discussion of this in Bruce Hood's book: Supersense
[8] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
[9] - Read "The Beaver's Tale" in Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale
[10] - Dennett D(2009) Darwin's “strange inversion of reasoning.”. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106(Suppl):10061–10065.
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