Download Ways to look at issues of free will and determinism, baed on current

This is a summary for purposes of the Secular Humanist Society Book Club
Meeting, April 17, 2008, at the Muhlenberg Public Library .
Freedom Evolves
By Daniel C. Dennett
American philosopher Daniel Dennett discusse s ways of looking at life
which get us a bette r purchase on issue s of free will and responsibility
than traditional philosophy. He be lieves that “c oncern about free will
is the driving force behind most of the r esistence to materialism
generally and neo -D arwinism in particular” and he discusse s ways of
analyzing the issues which he thinks should alleviate that c oncern.
His analysis is infor med by modern scie nce, including the social
science s, giving us insight into conte mporary approaches in a very
accessible book.
There is a conver sation so conventional that everyone, from high school
student to philosophy professor, has joined in at some time. There are
two inc ompatible but widely - held premises: (1) If someone knew where
every atom was at a single moment in time, and all the physical laws
about their moveme nts, he could know everything that was going to
happen in advance, illustrating that free will is illusory. (2) We know
that we have free will and that we exerc ise it at least some of the time.
And y ou’re still fr ustrated if you stop and think about it, right? And
you’re still looking to quantum uncertainty (whic h you don’t really
understand, either) as a way out, right? Dennett shows us ways of
looking at the issue s that are genuinely useful.
For example, it is ge nerally assumed that determinism implies
inevitability, but he illustrate s that is not the case. Taking a generally
accepted definition of a deter ministic universe as one with precise
regularitie s, he give s us a very ele mentary model showing how a
universe with such regulari tie s can permit meaningful self - design just
one organizational level up.
Imagine a simple two -dimensional grid, each box in it either fille d in /
empty, or on/off, as you like. These “ pixels” live in a world strictly
determined by rule s that require them to turn on or off from moment to
moment based on which, if any, of the ir side s are adjacent to other s
that are on. You can run through as many moments of time as you want
under these physical rules, preferably on a computer so the y could be
truly vast numb ers of changes. Eventually, you will see patterns
emerge as the little boxes c luster in loose groups. (This is partly a
result of having rules based on the physical relationships of the boxes;
i.e., which boxes share which side s with each other -- a good mode l for
1
systems of life activity.) Certain clusters appear to move ar ound the
grid over time without losing their ide ntity. The cluster s can appear to
be eating each other , knocking each other apart or living happily
together while supporting differe nt pre sidential candidates (ok, that
last one has been disputed). Computers have run through se emingly
endless numbers of these in both 2 -dimensional and 3 -dime nsional
systems.
Among the simpler results that can be se en in eve n 2 -dimensional
models is t hat certain clusters of boxe s c an persist , and can evolve to
become safer from c lusters that tend to knock them apart . F or example ,
they get “ behind” other clusters that function like walls. What they
have done is develop in suc h a way as to avoid ge tting knoc ked apart
under certain circumstances. (To put it in more conventional
Darwinian language , they survive better than some because their
characteristics make them more fit for their environment.) It’s very
unmy sterious. Dennett reports that this system has create d stunningly
more comple x patte rns, de pending on initial conditions and rules.
In this simple syste m (which here inc ludes diagrams making them even
clearer), the “ lucky ” clusters developed what could be technically
described as a kind of “avoida nce be havior ”. That is the unused root of
the word inevitable, which means “ unavoidable”. So, even in a world
which is “ determine d” in the classic sense, many things at a higher
level of design and organization are not inevitable or unavoidable. We
avoid things every moment of our lives , and will continue to do so
whether the ultimate nature of the world turns out to be de terministic
or not.
We are off the hook we put ourse lves on. We don’t have to e stablish
whether the universe is ultimately deter mini stic or indeterministic to
meaningfully assert free will.
Our comple x nature s aren’t fixed because we have evolved to be
entities that c hange their natures in re sponse to interactions with the
rest of the world .
The Darwinian algorithms of evolution are substrate-neutral ;
they are about the e ffects of differential replication with mutation
wherever it occur s, in whatever medium. Those would include, for
example, evolution of proteins, or DNA or different types of ethical
systems which are like extende d meme s. The term “meme” r efers to
information that is transmitted horizontally from one mind to another,
words, ideas, image s, etc. , as opposed to something inherited vertically
through generations.
Unlike systems of morality which are suppose d to origi nate from pure
utilitarian calculation or the word of G od, or some other tr aditional
source, evolutionary theorists recognize that c ulture itself must obey
the constraints of evolution by natural selection. He make s a good case
for the c laim that an evolu tionary analysis supports, rather than
2
subverts, morality. Perhaps most importantly, it relie s on re alistic
models of how people behave.
Analyz ing the deve lopment of morality in a Darwinian way leads to
many fr uitful ideas. We read a lot nowadays about where you are in
your head, an impor tant issue since we began learning a little about
brain anatomy and function. De nnett shows that many issue s about
free will and re sponsibility have stumbled on shrinking the “I” to an
imaginary place where some ultimate ce ntral consciousness , the
decider, watc hes everything in its brain as in a theater, or settles in
some part of the brain that does not include every part that is active in
our decision making , suc h as the unconscious and preconscious. We
can deal be tter with free will and our own moral responsibility when
we recognize that we are our entire minds.
He also disc usse s the insights of how different essential func tions of
huma n moral and e thical life deve lop in an evolutionary way answering
Cui bono? (Who be nefits?)
“The point of morality is manife stly not restricted to ‘the good of the
specie s’ or ‘the survival of our ge nes’ or anything like that ,” he write s.
Darwin’s levels of genetic selection : natural selec tion, unconscious
selection, methodical selec tion, all just special cases of natural
selection, have now added gene tic engineering . Perhaps the most
important for us as humans is meme tic selection. A word, an idea, a
tune or image are often spread across the globe at electronic speed. But
even befor e today, with genetic e ngine ering a hot topic, memetic
engineering has bee n a major human e nterprise: “ the attempt to design
and spread (discuss consc iously and attempt to persuade each other of)
whole systems of human culture, e thical theorie s, political ideologie s,
systems of justice and governme nt, a c ornucopia of c ompeting designs
for living in social groups. Memetic e ngineering is a very recent
sophistication in the history of evolution on this planet, but it is still
several millennia older than gen etic engineering; among its first well known produc ts are Plato’s Republic and Aristotle ’s Politics.”
We now must secur e the most fundamental concept of a re sponsible
moral agent who choose s freely for considered reasons and may be he ld
morally accountab le for the acts chosen.
At the end of a very chatty book, he concludes, “Human culture
supported the evolution of minds power ful e nough to capture the
reasons for things and make the m our r easons. We are not perfectly
rational agents, but the social are na we live in sustains proc esse s of
dynamic interaction that both require and permit the rene wal and
endorseme nt of our reasons, making us into age nts that can take
responsibility for our acts. Our autonomy doe s not depe nd on anything
like the miraculous suspension of causation but rather on the integrity
of the processes of e ducation and mutual sharing of knowle dge .”
3