I Could Be Watching TV Right Now I Could Be Watching TV Right Now by
Am I me, or am I constantly creating me? That is the question
facing me right now and has been facing me for almost all my
life. The question of whether or not I am capable of making
choices has been in debate for as long as man has philosophized.
There is a plethora of views on this topic, but they are all
either pro-choice or pro-determinism. Two of the most commonly
supported views that I have come across concern soft determinism
and hard determinism Soft determinism bases its arguments on
people's values, while still allowing everyone a bit of free
will. Hard determinism, on the other hand, holds that no one has
any choice about anything in his or her life. I happen to
disagree with both forms of determinism, and intend to disprove
them by arguing first, that one's values do not necessitate one's
actions, and second, that Liebniz's conceptions of foreknowledge
and a complete individual concept are false, since foreknowledge
requires a deterministic order and each person is able to control
some things which are true of them.
There was a time in my life when I thought that I was the
decider of all things, that I was the maker of my destiny. Now
I'm not so sure. I mean, 99% of all the decisions I made and will
make today depend upon value judgments that I have created or
that have been instilled in me during my lifetime. Does it not,
then, make sense to say that 99% percent of all the decisions I
made and will make today are determined since all my decisions
are based on the same values? Well, in a way, yes, it does make
sense. For example, given the choice between cheating on a test
and not cheating, even when guaranteed that I will not be caught,
I probably will not choose to cheat on that particular test. I
can say this because I value honesty and consider cheating to be
wrong. To this end, if you ask my friends, "Will Cory cheat
on a test if he is guaranteed not to be caught?" they will
be able to confidently answer no, since they know that my values
will, in a limited sense, determine my future actions.
This is soft determinism. This argument relies on a person's
beliefs and values in order to anticipate that person's future
actions. However, when examined more closely, this argument fails
to provide any sort of conclusive evidence that a person is
determined by his or her values. Consider the above example once
more, My friends may be able to confidently say that I will not
cheat on that test, but does that mean I will not cheat? My
values certainly do not necessitate my actions in that situation.
Indeed, my values function as a set of guidelines defining
appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. They are like a
criterion for helping me make choices between several
possibilities. When considering whether or not to cheat, I will
consult my values and make a choice. However, what is
necessitating my choice to be inline with my values? Is it
impossible to choose an action that is contrary to my values? No.
For example, I have cheated on tests in the past despite my
belief that cheating is wrong Therefore I am able to choose
actions that are contrary to my values.
In response to this, a supporter of soft determinism may say
that when I cheated, I didn't really go against my values at all;
instead, a new set of values prompted me to cheat on the test. In
other words, I suddenly valued getting a high mark more than not
cheating, so I was acting in line with my values when I cheated.
This may sound all well and good, but values are not so
arbitrary. Values are not something that one makes up on the spot
and changes to suit the needs of the situation. It is true that
values do evolve and change, but this process is complicated and
takes time. As I write the test my values will not suddenly shift
telling me that it is OK to cheat because I want a high mark.
Furthermore, how would the proponents of the above argument
explain my feelings of guilt that will inevitably arise after I
cheat? Did my values suddenly shift back to where they were? No
they didn't shift back, because they didn't shift in the first
place! I would feel guilty after cheating because I chose an
action that ran contrary to my values.
Pursuing determinism farther, we come across Gotfried
Leibnitz, a philosopher for whom each person has a complete
individual concept. According to Leibnitz, everything that can be
known of a person is contained in the predicates of that person,
just as everything that can be said of a circle is contained
within the notion of a circle. Indeed, whatever it is that I will
be doing tomorrow is true now, was true yesterday and will be
true tomorrow; I have no way to change what is true of me. What
Leibnitz describes is fatalism, the belief that people have no
say at all in what happens to them, that all our actions are
already mapped out and just waiting for us to do them. Who maps
out these actions? God does of course.
From this then, we can say that God has foreknowledge. He/she
has the ability to know all actions that are happening now and
will happen in the future, precisely because God knows all the
predicates assigned to each individual complete concept. So, if
God has foreknowledge, it means that God knows every action that
is going to take place in the future, and has known these actions
for all eternity. For instance, God knows if/when World War 3
will take place and if/when a comet is going to destroy the
earth. God also knows the less weighty things like, what I will
have for breakfast tomorrow morning, and how many times I will
crave chocolate covered almonds tonight. The result of this
foreknowledge is that all of our actions seem to become
necessitated. If God knows exactly when and how many chocolate
almonds I am going to eat tomorrow, then it follows that I have
no choice but to eat that exact amount of chocolate almonds at
that exact time. For if there was no plan, no kind of
deterministic force pushing me to eat those almonds, it would be
utterly impossible for God to have any guaranteed knowledge of my
actions. The best God could do then is to make educated guesses.
However, the argument that Leibnitz makes, along with other
writers/theologians of his time like Milton, is that God's
foreknowledge does not necessitate humans' actions because we
still have free will. Consider God's speech to the Son in
Milton's "Paradise Lost," where God is arguing
that Adam and Eve ought to be punished for eating of the Tree of
Knowledge even though God knew of their actions before hand and
could have stopped their transgression:
- They therefore as to right belonged, So were created, nor can justly accuse
- Their Maker or their making of their fate, As if predestination overruled
- Their will, disposed by absolute decree
- Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed Their own revolt, not I. If I foreknew,
- Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
- Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. (3.111-119)
God is saying that Adam and Eve themselves made the choice to
eat the apple, he did not predestine them to do it. Furthermore,
and here is the clincher, God says that they would have
transgressed whether or not he knew of their actions. There is
one point that must be made in response to this. It must be
pointed out that the only way God could not have foreknown Adam
and Eve's actions is if he could not tell what Adam and Eve were
going to do. This point is blatantly obvious, but it serves to
upon one another they are not the separate entities described by
Milton's God. If God is completely unable to see what choice am
going to make in the next few minutes, then it means that I am in
complete control of my choices and that there is no force
determining my choices. However, if God were able to foresee my
future choices and actions then there must be some force pushing
me to those actions, otherwise God would merely make educated
guesses and would not have foreknowledge. I can not see how God
could foresee my future decisions without some sort of forcing
pushing towards those choices. Leibnitz's claim that
foreknowledge does not necessitate my actions because
foreknowledge does not imply determinism seems flawed, for there
can be no foreknowledge without determinism, and God would have
no clue of my future actions and choices if God did not have
access to some super-cosmic plan which describes what I will be
doing tomorrow night.
Yet, God created me, and in doing so, created the complete
individual concept of Cory, in which all that can be true of Cory
is contained. The thing I do not understand about this claim is
that how can something be true of me when I have not made it
true? To say something like, "it is true that objects that
have a total mass less than that of the Earth will be attracted
to the Earth and lie at rest upon the Earth's surface," is a
far cry from saying something like, "it is true that Michael
Jordan will retire at the beginning of next season." To
illustrate this point, let's compare gravity with humans as
complete concepts. Firstly, gravity seems to fit very well into
Leibnitz's description of a complete individual concept because
it is possible to describe all the predicates attributed to
gravity, and furthermore, gravity is not capable of choosing to
change its complete concept. However, Michael Jordan does not
seem to fit Leibnitz's description because Jordan has the
capacity to choose some things that he wants to be true of
himself. Let's consider this in more detail.
On the one hand, we can say that it is true that people who
have jumped off of cliffs in the past have fallen to the Earth,
and it is true that people who jump off of cliffs in the future
will fall to the Earth. Thus, we are able to foretell the future
actions of gravity, providing something does not come along and
change the mass of the Earth. However, when we consider people,
we are faced with an entirely different situation. When
considering whether or not Michael Jordan will retire this year,
people are looking for an answer that will say either, "Yes,
it is true," or, "No, it is not true." But what
kind of truth is this? Is it even a truth at all? Michael Jordan
has said he will retire at the beginning of the next NBA season,
does that make it absolutely true that he will retire at the
begging of the season? No, not by any stretch of the imagination
is it true. Mr. Jordan can very easily change his mind about
retirement and come back to his team to play for another season.
The fact that he honestly said he would retire this season does
not make it true that he will retire this season. At best,
we are able to make predictions or bets as to whether or not it
will turn out to be true that Michael Jordan will retire.
In this sense, Jordan is able to choose what he wants to be true of him. It is true that Jordan did say he will retire. It is true that Jordan is a five-time winner of the Most Valuable Player Award. It is true that Jordan decided to take the game winning shot to win a sixth NBA championship. It is not true that Jordan will retire before the next season starts.
Why isn't it true? Because Jordan has not decided whether or
not he wants it to be true, that is why not. Jordan obviously
wanted to say he's going to retire, he obviously wanted to take
the game winning shot in the championship match, so he decided to
make those facts true of himself. Those facts were not true one
hour before, nor were they true one second before, they only
became true after Jordan decided it was time to make them true
and did whatever he needed to do in order to make them true. If
that's the case, then there can be no complete individual concept
of Michael Jordan, for he is in control of some things which
either will or will not be true of him. The only time there can
be complete concept of Michael Jordan is after he dies, and he is
no longer able to choose what he wants to be true of him.
In this paper have tried to argue that some of the traditional
views supporting determinism are not as convincing as they appear
to be. First of all, the kind of soft determinism that bases its
arguments on people's values necessitating their future actions
is not a sound argument, since values are not likely to determine
one's actions. Second of all, the kind of non-necessitating
foreknowledge that Leibnitz advocates can not possibly exist, for
no one can know what choices I am going to make if even I don't
know what they will be. Lastly, Leibnitz's complete individual
concept is insufficient to support a deterministic view, since I
am in control of at least some things that I want to be true of
me. Now, whether or not I have been successful in this endeavor
remains up in the air, for there can be no answer to this
question through arguments and counter-arguments and logical
proofs. I suppose the only way we'll really know is if we ever
get a chance to meet the big Kahuna and find out directly from
the source.
Works Cited
Milton, John. "Paradise Lost." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1993.