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There will be two short, 1-1

Sociology

There will be two short, 1-1.5 page writing reflections. You can turn them in at any point before Friday, August 13th at 11:59pm. Just turn in two writing assignments in total. If you want to write two in one week on each of the two readings we cover in the same week, feel free to do so. I just need two writing assignments from you by the end of the semester, at any point before Friday August 13th, at 11:59pm.

Instructions:

Here’s the format: for each short writing assignment, write 1 paragraph of summary and 1 paragraph of analysis that comments on what you’ve summarized from the piece. Done. You’re welcome to add more if you’d like, but at minimum, I need to see 1) that you’ve read the piece, and 2) that you have your own (respectful, non-abusive) thoughts about it.

I need to emphasize this: you can’t just give me a summary—you also need to give your own critical take on the reading. If you just give me 2 paragraphs of summary, it’s half credit., Likewise, if I get 2 paragraphs of your thoughts but no summary of what you’re analyzing, it’s half credit. I need to see that you’ve both read and thought about the reading, so summarize then analyze. Quickly lay out the part of the reading you’re addressing—describe it and the relevant point you’ll be picking on. Then, pose a criticism, offer a constructive comment for strengthening the argument (adding a premise or replacing one with a stronger claim), point out what’s wrong (does the argument commit any logical fallacies), ask whether the scope of the argument is appropriate (are they over-generalizing or under-generalizing), etc. I want to see that you’ve critically thought about the piece. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but I want to see that you’re engaged with the reading.

Since this course covers a semester’s worth of materials and only two writing responses, you’re free to pick any two readings from any day and week that suits you. All I ask is that you respond to at least two readings. Just be sure to come up with your two written responses by Friday, August 13th, at 11:59pm.

chapter 6 Free Will and Determinism Theodore Sider The Problem Suppose you are kidnaped and forced to commit a series of terrible murders. The kidnaper makes you shoot a first victim by forcing your finger to squeeze the trigger of a gun, hypnotizes you into poisoning a second, and then throws you from an airplane, causing you to squash a third. Miraculously, you survive the fall from the airplane. You stagger from the scene, relieved that the ordeal is over. But then, to your amazement, you are apprehended by the police, who handcuff you and charge you with murder. The parents of the victims scream obscenities at you as you are led away in disgrace. Are the police and parents fair to blame you for the killings? Obviously not, for you have an unassailable excuse: you did not act of your own free will. You couldn’t help what you did; you could not have done otherwise. And only those who act freely are morally responsible. We all believe that we have free will. How could we not? Renouncing freedom would mean no longer planning for the future, for why make plans if you are not free to change what will happen? It would mean renouncing morality, for only those who act freely deserve blame or punishment. Without freedom, we march along pre-determined paths, unable to control our destinies. Such a life is not worth living. Yet freedom seems to conflict with a certain apparent fact. Incredibly, this fact is no secret; most people are fully aware of it. We uncritically accept free will only because we fail to put two and two together. The problem of free will is a time bomb hidden within our most deeply held beliefs. Here is the fact: every event has a cause. This fact is known as determinism. We all believe in causes. If scientists discovered debris in the upper stratosphere spelling out ‘Ozzy Osbourne!’, they would immediately go to work to discover the cause. Was the debris put there by a renegade division of NASA comprised of heavy-metal fans? Was it a science project from a school for adolescent geniuses? If these things were ruled out as causes, the scientists would start to consider stranger hypotheses. Perhaps aliens from another planet are playing a joke on us. Perhaps the debris is left over from a collision between comets, and the resemblance to the name of the heavy-metal singer is purely coincidental. Perhaps different bits of the debris each have different kinds of causes. Any of these hypotheses might be entertained. But the one thing the scientists would not contemplate is that there simply is no cause whatsoever. Causes can be hard to discover, or coincidental, or have many different parts, but they are always there. It’s not that uncaused events are utterly inconceivable. We can imagine what it would be like for an uncaused event to occur. For that matter, we can imagine what it would be like for all sorts of strange things to occur: pigs flying, monkeys making 10,000 feet tall statues from jello, and so on. But it is reasonable to believe that no such things in fact occur. Likewise, it is reasonable Free Will and Determinism 115 to believe that there are in fact no uncaused events—that is, it is reasonable to believe in determinism. Our belief in determinism is reasonable because we have all seen science succeed, again and again, in its search for the underlying causes of things. Technological innovations owe their existence to science: skyscrapers, vaccination, rocket ships, the internet. Science seems to explain everything we observe: the changing of the seasons, the movement of the planets, the inner workings of plants and animals. Given this track record, we reasonably expect the march of scientific progress to continue; we expect that science will eventually discover the causes of everything. The threat to freedom comes when we realize that this march will eventually overtake us. From the scientific point of view, human choices and behavior are just another part of the natural world. Like the seasons, planets, plants, and animals, our actions are studyable, predictable, explainable, controllable. It is hard to say when, if ever, scientists will learn enough about what makes humans tick in order to predict everything we do. But regardless of when the causes of human behavior are discovered, determinism assures us that these causes exist. It is hard to accept that one’s own choices are subject to causes. Suppose you become sleepy and are tempted to put down this book. The causes are trying to put you to sleep. But you resist them! You are strong and continue reading anyway. Have you thwarted the causes and refuted determinism? Of course not. Continuing to read has its own cause. Perhaps your love of metaphysics overcomes your drowsiness. Perhaps your parents taught you to be disciplined. Or perhaps you are just stubborn. No matter what the reason, there was some cause. You may reply: ‘But I felt no compulsion to read or not to read; I simply decided to do one or the other. I sensed no cause.’ It is true that many thoughts, feelings, and decisions do not feel caused. But this does not really threaten determinism. Some116 Free Will and Determinism times the causes of our decisions aren’t consciously detectable, but those causes still exist. Some causes of behavior are preconscious functions of the brain, as contemporary psychology teaches, or perhaps even subconscious desires, as Freud thought. Other causes of decisions may not even be mental. The brain is an incredibly complicated physical object, and might ‘swerve’ this way or that as a result of certain motions of its tiniest parts. Such purely physical causes cannot be detected merely by directing one’s attention inward, no matter how long and hard and calmly one meditates. We can’t expect to be able to detect all the causes of our decisions just by introspection. So: determinism is true, even for human actions. But now, consider any allegedly free action. To illustrate how much is at stake here, let’s consider an action that is horribly morally reprehensible: Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. We most certainly blame Hitler for this action. We thus consider him to have acted freely. But determinism seems to imply that Hitler was not free at all. To see why, we must first investigate the concepts of cause and effect. A cause is an earlier event that makes a later effect happen. Given the laws of nature,1 once the cause has occurred, the effect must occur. Lightning causes thunder: the laws of nature governing electricity and sound guarantee that, when lightning strikes, thunder will follow. Determinism says that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was caused by some earlier event. So far, there is little to threaten Hitler’s freedom. The cause of the invasion might be something under Hitler’s control, in which case the invasion would also be under his control. For instance, the cause might be a decision that Hitler made just before the invasion. If so, then it seems we can still blame Hitler for ordering the invasion. 1 Chapter 9 discusses laws of nature. Free Will and Determinism 117 But now consider this decision itself. It is just another event. So determinism implies that it too must have a cause. This new cause might be an even earlier decision Hitler made, or something his advisers told him, or something he ate, or, more likely, a combination of many factors. Whatever it is, call this cause of Hitler’s decision to invade Poland ‘c’. Notice that c also caused the invasion of Poland. For as we saw above, a cause is an earlier event that makes a later event happen. Once c occurred, Hitler’s decision had to occur; and once that decision occurred, the invasion had to occur. We can repeat this reasoning indefinitely. Determinism implies that c must have an earlier cause c1, which in turn must have an earlier cause c2, and so on. The resulting sequence of events stretches back in time: . . . c2 ! c1 ! c ! the decision ! the invasion Each event in the sequence causes the invasion, since each event causes the event that occurs immediately after it, which then causes the next event occurring immediately after that one, and so on. The final few events in this sequence look like ones under Hitler’s control. But the earlier ones do not, for as we move back in time, we eventually reach events before Hitler’s birth. This argument can be repeated for any human action, however momentous or trivial. Suppose an old man slips while crossing the street, and I laugh at him instead of helping him up. Using the above chain of reasoning, we can show that my laughter was caused by events before my birth. Things now look very bad for freedom. Hitler no longer seems to have had a free choice about whether to invade Poland. I seem to have had no choice but to laugh at the old man. For these actions were all caused by things outside our control. But then what was morally wrong about what Hitler or I did? How can we blame Hitler for invading Poland if it was settled 118 Free Will and Determinism before his birth that he would do it? How can we blame me for laughing? How can we blame anyone for anything? We can restate the challenge to freedom in terms of physics. Any action or decision involves the motion of sub-atomic particles in one’s body and brain. These sub-atomic particles move according to the laws of physics. Physics lets us calculate the future positions of particles from information about (i) the previous states of the particles, and (ii) the forces acting on the particles. So, in principle, one could have examined the sub-atomic particles one hundred years before the invasion of Poland, calculated exactly how those particles would be moving one hundred years later, and thereby calculated that Hitler would invade Poland. Such calculations are far too difficult to ever complete in practice, but that doesn’t matter. Whether or not anyone could have completed the calculations, the particles were there, before Hitler’s birth, and the fact that they were there, and arranged in the way that they were, made it inevitable that Hitler would invade Poland. Once again, we have found a cause for Hitler’s invasion that already existed before Hitler was born. And the existence of such a cause seems to imply that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was not a free action. And yet, it must have been free, for how else can we blame him for this despicable act? The time bomb has exploded. Two of our most deeply held beliefs, our belief in science and our belief in freedom and morality, seem to contradict each other. We must resolve this conflict. Hard Determinism The simplest strategy for resolution is to reject one of the beliefs that produce the conflict. One could reject free will, or one could reject determinism. The rejection of free will in the face of determinism is called hard determinism. Think of the hard determinist as a hard-nosed intelFree Will and Determinism 119 lectual who tolerates no softies. Free will conflicts with science, so free will has got to go. Here is a typical hard determinist speech: We must get used to the idea that no one is really responsible for anything. Belief in freedom and moral responsibility was a luxury of a pre-scientific age. Now that we have grown up, we must put aside childish ways and face the facts. Science has disproved the existence of freedom and morality. Can we live with this depressing philosophy? Philosophers must seek the truth, however difficult it may be to accept. Maybe hard determinism is one of those difficult truths. Hard determinists might attempt ‘damage control’, arguing that life without freedom is not as bad as one might think. Society might still punish criminals, for instance. Hard determinists must deny that criminals deserve punishment, since the crimes were not committed freely. But they can say that there is still a use for punishment: punishing criminals keeps them off the streets and discourages future crimes. Still, accepting hard determinism is nearly unthinkable. Nor is it clear that one could stop believing in free will, even if one wanted to. If you find someone who claims to believe hard determinism, here’s a little experiment to try. Punch him in the face, really hard. Then try to convince him not to blame you. After all, according to him, you had no choice but to punch him! I predict you will find it very difficult to convince him to practice what he preaches. Hard determinism is a position of last resort. Let’s see what the other options look like. Libertarianism If the hard determinist is the intellectually hard-nosed devotee of science, the libertarian2 has the opposite mindset. Libertarians 2 120 The use of the word ‘libertarian’ in politics is unrelated. Free Will and Determinism resolve the conflict between free will and determinism by rejecting determinism. Their guiding thought is that people are special. The march of science, subjugating observed phenomena to exceptionless law, is limited to the non-human realm. For libertarians, science is good as far as it goes, but it will never succeed in completely predicting human behavior. Humans, and humans alone, transcend the laws of nature: they are free. What makes people so special? Some libertarians answer that we have souls, non-physical sources of consciousness, which make choices that are not controlled by laws of nature. Others say that humans are indeed purely physical systems, but that they are not subject to the natural laws that govern other physical systems. Either way, laws of nature do not wholly determine human behavior. Although libertarians are clear on what freedom isn’t— namely, determinism—they have a little more trouble telling us what freedom is. They do not want to say that freedom is merely uncaused action. Saying that would equate freedom with randomness, and libertarians don’t want to do that. Here’s why. Suppose Mother Teresa discovers a hand-grenade in an orphanage in Calcutta. As you might expect, she picks up the handgrenade in order to dispose of it safely. But now an utterly uncaused event occurs: to her horror, her hand suddenly pulls out the pin and throws the grenade into the heart of the orphanage. The grenade explodes, resulting in mayhem and destruction. When I say ‘uncaused’, I really mean that there is no cause, none whatsoever. As I am imagining the example, the action of pulling the pin and throwing the grenade was not caused by any decision on Mother Teresa’s part; nor did it have an external physical cause. No dormant dark side of Mother Teresa’s personality has finally come to light. She has no nervous tic. Her hand simply flew up from absolutely no cause whatsoever. This clearly is not a free action. We could not blame Mother Teresa; she is the victim of a cruel accident. Free Will and Determinism 121 The alarming thing for libertarians is that Mother Teresa seems unfree precisely because her action was uncaused. Freedom now appears to require causation. This obviously threatens the fundamental libertarian claim that the key to the problem of freedom is indeterminism of human action. Libertarians must somehow distinguish between free undetermined action and randomness. Some libertarians address this problem by postulating a special kind of causation that only humans wield, called agent causation. Ordinary mechanistic causation, the kind studied in physics and the other hard sciences, obeys laws. Mechanistic causes are repeatable and predictable: if you repeat the same cause again and again, the very same effect is guaranteed to occur each time. Agent causation, on the other hand, does not obey laws. There is no saying which way a free human being will exercise her agent causation. The very same person in exactly similar circumstances might agent-cause different things. According to the theory of agent causation, you act freely when (i) your action is not caused in the ordinary, mechanistic way, but (ii) your action is caused by you—by agent causation. If you freely decide to eat Wheaties one morning rather than your usual helping of Apple Jacks, it would have been impossible to predict beforehand which cereal you would choose. Nevertheless, your choice was not a random occurrence, for you yourself caused it. You caused it by agent causation. It is unclear whether agent causation really solves the problem of randomness. Consider what an agent-causation theorist would say about your freely making a difficult decision. There are two important factors in decision-making: what you desire, and what you believe is the best means to achieve that desire. If you are undecided whether to vote Democrat or Republican in a US presidential election, for instance, this is because some of your beliefs and desires favor a Democratic vote, and others favor a Republican vote. Suppose that, in the end, the set favoring a 122 Free Will and Determinism Democratic vote wins out. A libertarian would say that mechanistic causes that occurred in the past did not determine this outcome. It was you yourself, via agent causation, that selected the Democratic vote. Your selection was subject to no laws; it was unpredictable. This activity of agent causation was not caused by your beliefs and desires. But now—and here is the problem—since the selection was not causally based in your beliefs and desires, it seems entirely detached from you. The selection did not emerge from what you know about the candidates and what sort of leader you want for your country. Your vote didn’t arise from who you are. It just appeared in the world, as if by magic. Given this, it would be odd to praise or blame you for it. And this suggests that it was unfree. Whether or not libertarianism relies on agent causation, its most worrisome feature is its clash with science. First, libertarians must reject the possibility of an all-encompassing psychology. Human behavior would be governed by the laws of such a science, and libertarians deny that human behavior is controlled by any laws. But the clash does not end there. Libertarians must also reject the possibility of an all-encompassing physics. The realms of psychology and physics cannot be neatly separated, for human bodies are physical objects, made up of subatomic particles. An all-encompassing physics could predict the future motions of all particles—even those in human bodies— based on the earlier states of particles. Since libertarians say that human behavior cannot be scientifically predicted, they must deny the possibility of such a physics. According to libertarians, if physicists turned their measuring instruments on the subatomic particles composing a free person, formerly observed patterns would break down. This attitude toward science seems rash. Here in the twentyfirst century, we have the benefit of hindsight on various disagreements between science, on the one hand, and religion and philosophy, on the other. Remember the Catholic Church’s Free Will and Determinism 123 decision to censor Copernicus and Galileo for saying that the Earth moves around the Sun. No one wants to repeat that mistake. And remember the dramatic successes of science, both theoretical and technological. Of course, science is not infallible. But a philosopher had better have very good reasons to declare that an existing science is just plain wrong, or that a certain kind of scientific progress will never happen. One’s philosophy should avoid colliding with or limiting science. Our choices look grim. On the one hand, there is the dismal philosophy of hard determinism, which robs life of all that is distinctly human and worthwhile. On the other hand, there is the radically anti-scientific philosophy of libertarianism—which, given the problem of randomness, may not even succeed in salvaging free will. Interlude: Quantum Mechanics Before moving on, we should investigate a side issue: whether quantum mechanics bears on the problem of freedom. Quantum mechanics is a theory about the behavior of tiny particles. This theory was developed in the early part of the twentieth century and continues to be accepted by physicists today. Quantum mechanics (or at least, a certain version of it) is a radically indeterministic theory. It does not predict with certainty what will occur; it only gives probabilities of outcomes. No matter how much information you have about a particle, you cannot predict with certainty where it will be later. All you can say is how likely it is that the particle will be found in various locations. And this is not a mere limitation on human knowledge. The particle’s future position is simply not determined by the past, regardless of how much we know about it. Only the probabilities are determined. In the previous sections I was ignoring quantum mechanics. For instance, I assumed that if a cause occurs, its effect must 124 Free Will and Determinism occur, even though quantum mechanics says that causes merely make their effects probable. Why did I ignore quantum mechanics? Because randomness is not freedom. Let us try a little thought experiment. First pretend that quantum mechanics is incorrect and physics is truly deterministic. The threat to human freedom that this presents is what we have been talking about so far in this chapter. Next, in each person’s brain, add a little lottery, which every so often randomly causes the person to swerve one way rather than another. This is like what quantum mechanics says really happens: there is an element of randomness to what events occur. Does the threat to freedom go away? Clearly not. If the original, wholly determined person had no free will, then the new, randomized person has no free will either; the lottery injects only randomness, not freedom or responsibility. And as we learned from the case of Mother Teresa, randomness does not mean freedom. If anything, randomness undermines freedom. A libertarian might concede that quantum randomness is not sufficient for freedom, but nevertheless claim that quantum randomness makes room for freedom, because it makes room for agent causation. Imagine that it is 1939, and Hitler has not yet decided to invade Poland. He is trying to decide what to do among the following three options: Invade Poland Invade France Stop being such an evil guy and become a ballet dancer Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to each of these possible decisions; it does not say which one Hitler will choose. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the probabilities are as follows: 95.0% Invade Poland 4.9% Invade France 0.1% Become a ballet dancer Free Will and Determinism 125 After assigning these probabilities, the work of quantum mechanics is complete. According to some libertarians, agent causation now steps in. After quantum mechanics sets the probabilities, Hitler himself chooses, by agent causation, which decision he will in fact make. Physics sets probabilities, but people, by agent causation, ultimately decide what occurs. If this picture were correct, then my criticism of libertarianism as being anti-scientific would be rebutted: agent causation could peacefully coexist with quantum mechanics. In fact, though, the coexistence picture makes agent causation a slave to quantummechanical probabilities. Imagine running the following interesting (if wildly unethical) experiment. First produce one million exact clones of Hitler as he was in 1939. Then, in one million separate laboratories, reproduce the exact conditions that Hitler faced before he decided to invade Poland. Put each clone in his own laboratory and deceive him into thinking that it is really 1939 and that he is in charge of Germany. Then sit back and watch. Record how many clones attempt to invade Poland, how many attempt to invade France, and how many attempt to become ballet dancers. The coexistence picture says that you will observe a distribution of behaviors that roughly matches the probabilities listed above, for the coexistence picture says that quantum mechanics correctly gives the probabilities of outcomes. Thus, you will observe around 950,000 clones trying to invade Poland, around 49,000 trying to invade France, and around 1,000 practicing ballet. If you repeat the procedure again and again, you will continue to observe outcomes in approximately the same ratios. (The more times you repeat the experiment, the closer the total ratios will match the probabilities, just as the more times one flips a coin, the closer the ratio of heads to tails approaches one-to-one.) If 126 Free Will and Determinism you change the laboratory conditions faced by the clones, so that quantum mechanics predicts different probabilities, you will observe a new distribution of behaviors that fits the new probabilities. The distribution keeps following what quantum mechanics says. What good then is agent causation? It seems to mindlessly follow the probabilities, having no effect of its own on the distribution of outcomes. This sort of agent causation is empty; it adds nothing to freedom or responsibility. Agent causation, if it is to be worth anything, must be capable of disrupting the probabilities given by quantum mechanics. There can be no peaceful coexistence: agent causation theorists must clash with science. Quantum mechanics does not help the agent-causation theorist. So I will go back to ignoring quantum mechanics. We are back to the grim dilemma. Apparently, we must reject science or reject freedom. Yet neither option seems at all appealing. Compatibilism Many philosophers believe that there is a way out of this dilemma. Others think that this way out is a big mistake. You must decide for yourself. The way out is called compatibilism. According to compatibilists, our discussion took a wrong turn all the way back when we said that the available options were rejecting freedom or rejecting determinism. Compatibilists say that this overlooks a third option. We can have our cake and eat it too: we can retain both freedom and determinism. That way we can preserve both our science and our humanity. The argument in the first section, which concluded that freedom and determinism are opposed to each other, was a mistake. Free will is in fact compatible with determinism. The alleged conflict is an illusion, based on a misunderstanding of the concept of free will. Our actions (or at Free Will and Determinism 127 least their probabilities) are indeed caused by events before our births. But they are often free despite this. To explain what compatibilists are up to, let’s first consider some examples. Imagine a very young boy with a serious misunderstanding of the concept of a man. This boy thinks it is part of the definition of the word ‘man’ that men never cry. As far as he knows, the men in his family never cry, the men on television never cry, and so on. He believes that his father is a man, of course, but one day he sees his father crying. The boy becomes very confused. Two of his beliefs now conflict: his belief that his father is a man and his belief that his father is crying. Which should he give up? Should he decide that his father is not a man after all? Or should he decide that his father was not really crying—that he was only cutting up onions, say? Obviously, he should do neither. Instead, he should clear up his conceptual confusion about the nature of manhood. Then he will see that his beliefs about his father’s manhood and about his father’s crying are compatible after all. Here is a second example. How would you define the word ‘contact’, as in ‘Barry Bonds’ bat made contact with the baseball’? If you are like most people, your first answer is probably something like this: things are in ‘contact’ when there is no empty space between them. But now remember your high-school science. Baseballs and bats are made up of atoms. These atoms consist of nuclei and surrounding clouds of electrons. When one atom approaches another, the electrons of the atoms repel one another with electromagnetic forces. The closer together the atoms get, the stronger the forces become. Eventually the forces become so strong that they push the atoms away from each other. This occurs when the atoms get very close to each other, but before their clouds of electrons start to overlap. Thus, as Bonds’ bat closed in on the baseball, the outermost atoms of the bat began to repel the outermost atoms of the ball, until eventually the ball came to a halt and flew in the opposite direction. At every 128 Free Will and Determinism moment there was some space between the bat and the ball. In fact, there is never absolutely zero space between bats and balls, nor between fists and jaws, fingers and computer keyboards, or any other things we consider to be in contact. Yet we all believe that contact regularly occurs. So we have another apparent conflict, this time between our belief in high-school science and our belief that things are regularly in contact. Should we renounce one of these beliefs? Obviously not. We should instead reject the proposed definition of ‘contact’. Those who accept that definition are in a sense conceptually confused. For things can be in contact even when there is a small amount of space in between them. (What then is the correct definition of contact? Tough question! What about: things are in contact when there is no visible space in between? This is only a start.) The compatibilist makes a similar claim about free will. Determinism seems to conflict with freedom only because we misunderstand the concept of freedom. If ‘free’ meant ‘uncaused’, then the conflict would be real. But that’s not what ‘free’ means. (Remember Mother Teresa.) Once we clear up our conceptual confusion, the conflict will vanish. Then we can believe in both free will and determinism. Properly understood, they were never really opposed. So far so good. But if ‘free’doesn’t mean ‘uncaused’, what does it mean? The compatibilist wants to say, roughly, that a free action is one that is caused in the right way. When you were kidnaped and forced to commit murders, your actions were unfree because they were caused in the wrong way. Free actions, such as Hitler’s invasion of Poland, my writing of this chapter, and your reading it, also have causes, but they are caused in the right way. All actions have causes, but having a cause doesn’t settle whether an action is free. Whether it is free is settled by what kind of cause it has. If free actions are those that are caused in the right way, as this definition says, then an action can be both free and caused. Free Will and Determinism 129 Thus, given this definition, freedom and determinism do not conflict. Hard determinists and libertarians may object that all causes should be treated alike. So long as my choice is caused by events before my birth, it is unfree; it does not matter how it is caused. But for some purposes, compatibilists can reply, it is clear that causes are not all alike. Causing a running back to fall by tackling him is legal football; causing him to fall by shooting him with a crossbow is not. The rules of football treat some causes differently from others. According to compatibilists, we can think of freedom and morality in an analogous way. Morality, like football, has rules. These rules treat some causes differently from others. If an action is caused in a certain way—the right way— then the rules of morality count that action as free. But if an action is caused in the wrong way, then the rules count that action as unfree. It is admittedly strange that my actions can be free even though they were caused by events that occurred before I was born. Some philosophers reject compatibilism on this basis. But given the implausibility of hard determinism and libertarianism, compatibilism at least deserves a fair hearing. Compatibilists must refine their theory, though. When they say that free actions must be caused ‘in the right way’, what exactly does that mean? Examples were given: Hitler’s invasion was caused in the right way; murders coerced by your kidnaper were caused in the wrong way. But examples are not good enough. We need a definition. Here is a first stab: a free action is one that is caused by the person’s beliefs and desires. This checks out with some of the examples. When kidnaped, your beliefs and desires did not cause you to shoot the first victim or to fall from the airplane onto the third. You did not want to do these things; your actions were caused by the beliefs and desires of your kidnaper. So the proposed definition correctly counts your behavior in those cases as not being 130 Free Will and Determinism free. It also correctly counts Hitler’s invasion as being free, since the invasion was caused by Hitler’s sinister beliefs and desires. Likewise, since my beliefs and desires caused me to write this chapter, and yours caused you to read it, these actions are also free, according to this definition. But the definition’s success does not last. Recall the second victim, whom you poisoned while you were hypnotized. If your kidnaper hypnotized you into wanting to poison the victim, then the poisoning was caused by your beliefs and desires. So the definition says that you were free. Yet you obviously were not free. So the definition is wrong. The compatibilist needs a better definition. When you were hypnotized, you acquired beliefs and desires against your will. So maybe we should change the definition to say: a free action is one that is caused by the person’s beliefs and desires, provided that the person has freely chosen those beliefs and desires. But this definition is circular: the word ‘free’ is used in its own definition. If circular definitions were kosher, we could have used a much simpler one: a free action is one that is free. But this is clearly unhelpful. Circular definitions are unacceptable. (Circularity aside, it’s not even clear that the modified definition is correct. I have freely decided to continue to work on this chapter. My decision was caused by my desire to complete this book. Is it really true that I have freely chosen this desire? I doubt it. I want to complete the book simply because that’s the kind of guy I am. I didn’t choose to have this desire; I just find myself having it. But this doesn’t seem to undermine the fact that my decision to continue working is free.) What about this then: a free action is one that is caused by the person’s beliefs and desires, provided that the person was not compelled by another person to have those beliefs and desires? This new definition raises as many questions as it answers. What does the word ‘compelled’ mean here? (Philosophers always ask questions like this.) When you think about it, ‘compelled’ in its ordinary sense Free Will and Determinism 131 means something like: ‘caused so as to destroy freedom’. But then it is circular to define ‘free’ in terms of ‘compelled’, for ‘compelled’ is itself defined in terms of ‘free’. The circularity is not so blatant as when the word ‘free’ itself was used in the definition, but it is circularity all the same. So the compatibilist had better not be using ‘compelled’ in its ordinary sense. The definition would not be circular if ‘compelled’ just meant ‘caused’. But then the definition wouldn’t work. Recall my free decision to continue to work on this chapter. The definition requires that this decision is caused by my beliefs and desires, and it is—by my desire to complete the book. The definition further requires that this desire is not caused by any other person. But one of the causes of this desire does involve other people: my parents instilled diligence and a love of learning in me. So if causal involvement by another person renders a desire compelled, then my desire to continue working is compelled. We all believe and desire as we do in part because of our causal interactions with others; no one is an island. So if ‘compelled’ meant ‘caused’, the definition would imply that no one ever does anything freely. That’s not what the compatibilist intends. Another problem with the definition is that not all compulsion is by another person. A kleptomaniac compulsively desires to steal, and so steals. But he is not free; he cannot help his compulsive desires. Yet the definition counts him as free. For his stealing is caused by his beliefs and desires, and he is not compelled by another person to have those beliefs and desires. We could just delete ‘by another person’. The definition would then read: a free action is one that is caused by the person’s beliefs and desires, provided that the person was not compelled to have those beliefs and desires. But the problem of the meaning of ‘compelled’ remains. It cannot mean ‘caused’ (given determinism, all beliefs and desires are caused). It cannot mean ‘caused so as to not destroy freedom’ (that would be circular). 132 Free Will and Determinism Let’s take one final crack at a definition: a free action is one that is caused by the person’s beliefs and desires, provided that those beliefs and desires flow from ‘who the person is’. The idea of ‘who the person is’ needs to be explained. As a human being moves toward adulthood, she gradually develops her character, her moral beliefs and habits, her self-conception, and other qualities that give her ‘an identity’. It is these qualities, which make her distinctive from a personal and moral point of view, that I am referring to when I speak of who a person is. Who an adult person is is partly a matter of upbringing and circumstance, but also partly a matter of choice. As we mature we shape ourselves; and even after reaching adulthood we continue to reflect on ourselves, and try to change if we aren’t living up to our ideals. So when the definition says that the beliefs and desires must flow from who the person is, this means that the beliefs and desires must be ‘in character’ for that person: they must fit with the character, moral beliefs and habits, and self-conception that the person has shaped for herself over time (and continues to fine-tune). In the example at the beginning of the chapter, after you snap out of your hypnotized state, you will be inclined to protest that poisoning the second victim does not result from ‘who you are’. It is out of character for you. Even though you desired to poison him at the time (because of the hypnosis), that desire conflicts with the values by which you have always lived. The case of the kleptomaniac is trickier, but here too we can say that even though her thievery is caused by her beliefs and desires, it may not be free. For suppose that even though she has always found herself desiring to steal, this desire has always been unwelcome to her. She has always tried to resist the desires—sometimes successfully, but unfortunately, sometimes not. Further, suppose that she believes that stealing is morally wrong. Given all these facts about who she is—her moral beliefs, her desire not to desire to steal, and her pattern of resisting her desires to steal—the desire Free Will and Determinism 133 to steal does not flow from ‘who she is’. The definition therefore says that her stealing is not free. This last definition may be on the right track, but there is still work to be done. First, the definition says that your desires under hypnosis do not flow from ‘who you are’ because they do not match the desires you usually have; they are uncharacteristic. But many perfectly ordinary free actions are caused by uncharacteristic desires. Though I am generally a nice person, a couple of times in my life I have irritably snapped at someone. Despite being uncharacteristic for me, my snapping was obviously a free action. So my desire to snap had better count as flowing from ‘who I am’. Somehow, the definition must treat my desire to snap differently from your hypnotized desire to poison—even though each desire is out of character. Second, compare two ways of changing ‘who one is’. Way one: someone permanently brainwashes me into becoming a horrible person. The brainwashing is so thorough that for the rest of my life I want nothing more than to harm people. At first, my actions seem out of character. But soon everyone forgets my former good qualities and regards me as a monster. Are my subsequent actions free? The question is hard, but it seems that they are at least partially unfree, since the new, evil ‘who I am’ results from brainwashing. Way two: I undergo moral transformation. After recognizing that my life is going badly and in need of reform, I change ‘who I am’, perhaps with the help of a spiritual leader, therapist, or other moral guide. (Moral transformation can also go from better to worse: we have all heard stories of promising young people who make the wrong decisions, fall in with the wrong crowd, and become self-destructive and immoral. The members of the ‘wrong crowd’ serve as negative moral ‘guides’.) Unlike brainwashing, moral transformation does 134 Free Will and Determinism not destroy free will. But in each case, one acts in accordance with ‘who one is’, though that has changed under the influence of other people. Somehow, the definition must treat these cases differently. Coming up with a good compatibilist definition of freedom is no piece of cake. Then again, who ever said it should be easy? Defining anything interesting is hard. (A few paragraphs ago, we couldn’t even define a measly word like ‘contact’.) And look at the alternatives to compatibilism: libertarianism (‘I know from my armchair that physics is incomplete!’) and hard determinism (‘I reject everything good about humanity!’). If our first attempts to give a compatibilist definition of freedom don’t succeed, we should just keep trying. further reading Gary Watson’s anthology Free Will (Oxford University Press, 1982) contains a number of interesting papers on free will. See especially the papers by Roderick Chisholm, Peter van Inwagen, A. J. Ayer, and Susan Wolf. Chisholm defends libertarianism, van Inwagen gives a careful argument against compatibilism, Ayer defends a simple form of compatibilism, and Wolf defends a sophisticated form of compatibilism and also discusses compatibilist definitions of freedom like the final one discussed in the chapter. Timothy O’Connor, Persons and Causes (Oxford University Press, 2000) defends libertarianism. Free Will and Determinism 135 Science and Ethics Bertrand Russell Those who maintain the insufficiency of science, as we have seen in the last two chapters, appeal to the fact that science has nothing to say about "values." This I admit; but when it is inferred that ethics contains truths which cannot be proved or disproved by science, I disagree. The matter is one on which it is not altogether easy to think clearly, and my own views on it are quite different from what they were thirty years ago. But it is necessary to be clear about it if we are to appraise such arguments as those in support of Cosmic Purpose. As there is no consensus of opinion about ethics, it must be understood that what follows is my personal belief, not the dictum of science. The study of ethics, traditionally, consists of two parts, one concerned with moral rules, the other with what is good on its own account. Rules of conduct, many of which have a ritual origin, play a great part in the lives of savages and primitive peoples. It is forbidden to eat out of the chief's dish, or to seethe the kid in its mother's milk; it is commanded to offer sacrifices to the gods, which, at a certain stage of development, are thought most acceptable if they are human beings. Other moral rules, such as the prohibition of murder and theft, have a more obvious social utility, and survive the decay of the primitive theological systems with which they were originally associated. But as men grow more reflective there is a tendency to lay less stress on rules and more on states of mind. This comes from two sources - philosophy and mystical religion. We are all familiar with passages in the prophets and the gospels, in which purity of heart is set above meticulous observance of the Law; and St. Paul's famous praise of charity, or love, teaches the same principle. The same thing will be found in all great mystics, Christian and non-Christian: what they values is a state of mind, out of which, as they hold, right conduct must ensue; rules seem to them external, and insufficiently adaptable to circumstances. One of the ways in which the need of appealing to external rules of conduct has been avoided has been the belief in "conscience," which has been especially important in Protestant ethics. It has been supposed that God reveals to each human heart what is right and what is wrong, so that, in order to avoid sin, we have only to listen to the inner voice. There are, however, two difficulties in this theory: first, that conscience says different things to different people; secondly, that the study of the unconscious has given us an understanding of the mundane causes of conscientious feelings. As to the different deliverances of conscience: George III's conscience told him that he must not grant Catholic Emancipation, as, if he did, he would have committed perjury in taking the Coronation Oath, but later monarchs have had no such scruples. Conscience leads some to condemn the spoliation of the rich by the poor, as advocated by communists; and others to condemn exploitation of the poor by the rich, as practised by capitalists. It tells one man that he ought to defend his country in case of invasion, while it tells another that all participation in warfare is wicked. During the War, the authorities, few of whom had studied ethics, found conscience very puzzling, and were led to some curious decisions, such as that a man might have conscientious scruples against fighting himself, but not against working on the fields so as to make possible the conscription of another man. They held also that, while conscience might disapprove of all war, it could not, failing that extreme position, disapprove of the war then in progress. Those who, for whatever reason, thought it wrong to fight, were compelled to state their position in terms of this somewhat primitive and unscientific conception of "conscience." The diversity in the deliverances of conscience is what is to be expected when its origin is understood. In early youth, certain classes of acts meet with approval, and others with disapproval; and by the normal process of association, pleasure and discomfort gradually attach themselves to the acts, and not merely to the approval and disapproval respectively produced by them. As time goes on, we may forget all about our early moral training, but we shall still feel uncomfortable about certain kinds of actions, while others will give us a glow of virtue. To introspection, these feelings are mysterious, since we no longer remember the circumstances which originally caused them; and therefore it is natural to attribute them to the voice of God in the heart. But in fact conscience is a product of education, and can be trained to approve or disapprove, in the great majority of mankind, as educators may see fit. While, therefore, it is right to wish to liberate ethics from external moral rules, this can hardly be satisfactorily achieved by means of the notion of "conscience." Philosophers, by a different road, have arrived at a different position in which, also, moral rules of conduct have a subordinate place. They have framed the concept of the Good, by which they mean (roughly speaking) that which, in itself and apart from its consequences, we should wish to see existing - or, if they are theists, that which is pleasing to God. Most people would agree that happiness is preferable to unhappiness, friendliness to unfriendliness, and so on. Moral rules, according to this view, are justified if they promote the existence of what is good on its own account, but not otherwise. The prohibition of murder, in the vast majority of cases, can be justified by its effects, but the practice of burning widows on their husband's funeral pyre cannot. The former rule, therefore, should be retained, but not the latter. Even the best moral rules, however, will have some exceptions, since no class of actions always has bad results. We have thus three different senses in which an act may be ethically commendable: (1) it may be in accordance with the received moral code; (2) it may be sincerely intended to have good effects; (3) it may in fact have good effects. The third sense, however, is generally considered inadmissible in morals. According to orthodox theology, Judas Iscariot's act of betrayal had good consequences, since it was necessary for the Atonement; but it was not on this account laudable. Different philosophers have formed different conceptions of the Good. Some hold that it consists in the knowledge and love of God; others in universal love; others in the enjoyment of beauty; and yet others in pleasure. The Good once defined, the rest of ethics follows: we ought to act in the way we believe most likely to create as much good as possible, and as little as possible of its correlative evil. The framing of moral rules, so long as the ultimate Good is supposed known, is matter for science. For example: should capital punishment be inflicted on theft, or only for murder, or not at all? Jeremy Bentham, who considered pleasure to be the Good, devoted himself to working out what criminal code would most promote pleasure, and concluded that it ought to be much less severe than that prevailing in his day. All this, except the proposition that pleasure is the Good, comes within the sphere of science. But when we try to be definite as to what we mean when we say that this or that is "the Good," we find ourselves involved in very great difficulties. Bentham's creed that pleasure is the Good roused furious opposition, and was said to be a pig's philosophy. Neither he nor his opponents could advance any argument. In a scientific question, evidence can be adduced on both sides, and in the end, one side is seen to have the better case - or, if this does not happen, the question is left undecided. But in a question as to whether this or that is the ultimate Good, there is no evidence either way; each disputant can only appeal to his own emotions, and employ such rhetorical devices as shall rouse similar emotions in others. Take, for example, a question which has come to be important in practical policies. Bentham held that one man's pleasure has the same ethical importance as another man's, provided the quantities are equal; and on this ground he was led to advocate democracy. Nietzsche, on the contrary, held that only the great man can be regarded as important on his own account, and that the bulk of mankind are only means to his well-being. He viewed ordinary men as many people view animals: he thought it justifiable to make use of them, not for their own good, but for that of the superman, and this view has since been adopted to justify the abandonment of democracy, We have here a sharp disagreement of great practical importance, but we have absolutely no means, of a scientific or intellectual kind, by which to persuade either party that the other is in the right. There are, it is true, ways of altering men's opinions on such subjects, but they are all emotional, not intellectual. Question as to "values" - that is to say, as to what is good or bad on its own account, independently of its effects - lie outside the domain of science, as the defenders of religion emphatically assert. I think that in this they are right, but I draw the further conclusion, which they do not draw, that questions as to "values" lie wholly outside the domain of knowledge. That is to say, when we assert that this or that has "value," we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact which would still be true if our personal feelings were different. To make this clear, we must try to analyse the conception of the Good. It is obvious, to begin with, that the whole idea of good and bad has some connection with desire. Prima facie, anything that we all desire is "good," and anything that we all dread is "bad." If we all agreed in our desires, the matter could be left there, but unfortunately our desires conflict. If I say "what I want is good," my neighbour will say "No, what I want." Ethics is an attempt - though not, I think, a successful one - to escape from this subjectivity. I shall naturally try to show, in my dispute with my neighbour, that my desires have some quality which makes them more worthy of respect than his. If I want to preserve a right of way, I shall appeal to the landless inhabitants of the district; but he, on his side, will appeal to the landowners. I shall say: "What use is the beauty of the countryside if no one sees it?" He will retort: "What beauty will be left if trippers are allowed to spread devastation?" Each tries to enlist allies by showing that his own desires harmonize with those of other people. When this is obviously impossible, as in the case of a burglar, the man is condemned by public opinion, and his ethical status is that of a sinner. Ethics is thus closely related to politics: it is an attempt to bring the collective desires of a group to bear upon individuals; or, conversely, it is an attempt by an individual to cause his desires to become those of his group. This latter is, of course, only possible if his desires are not too obviously opposed to the general interest: the burglar will hardly attempt to persuade people that he is doing them good, though plutocrats make similar attempts, and often succeed. When our desires are for things which all can enjoy in common, it seems not unreasonable to hope that others may concur; thus the philosopher who values Truth, Goodness and Beauty seems, to himself, to be not merely expressing his own desires, but pointing the way to the welfare of all mankind. Unlike the burglar, he is able to believe that his desires are for something that has value in an impersonal sense. Ethics is an attempt to give universal, and not merely personal, importance to certain of our desires, I say "certain" of our desires, because in regard to some of them this is obviously impossible, as we saw in the case of the burglar. The man who makes money on the Stock Exchange by means of some secret knowledge does not wish others to be equally well informed: Truth (in so far as he values it) is for him a private possession, not the general human good that it is for the philosopher. The philosopher may, it is true, sink to the level of the stock-jobber, as when he claims priority for a discovery. But this is a lapse: in his purely philosophic capacity, he wants only to enjoy the contemplation of Truth, in doing which he in no way interferes with others who wish to do likewise. To seem to give universal importance to our desires - which is the business of ethics may be attempted from two points of view, that of the legislator, and that of the preacher. Let us take the legislator first. I will assume, for the sake of argument, that the legislator is personally disinterested. That is to say, when he recognizes one of his desired as being concerned only with his own welfare, he does not let it influence him in framing the laws; for example, his code is not designed to increase his personal fortune. But he has other desired which seem to him impersonal. He may believe in an ordered hierarchy from king to peasant, or from mineowner to black indentured labourer. He may believe that women should be submissive to men. He may hold that the spread of knowledge in the lower classes is dangerous. And so o and so on. He will then, if he can, so construct his code that conduct promoting the ends which he values shall, as far as possible, be in accordance with individual self- interest; and he will establish a system of moral instruction which will, where it succeeds, make men feel wicked if they pursue other purposes than his.[1] Thus "virtue" will come to be in fact, though not in subjective estimation, subservience to the desires of the legislator, in so far as he himself considers these desires worthy to be universalized. The standpoint and method of the preacher are necessarily somewhat different, because he does not control the machinery of the State, and therefore cannot produce an artificial harmony between his desires and those of others. His only method is to try to rouse in others the same desires that he feels himself, and for this purpose his appeal must be to the emotions. Thus Ruskin caused people to like Gothic architecture, not by argument, but by the moving effect of rhythmical prose. Uncle Tom's Cabin helped to make people think slavery an evil by causing them to imagine themselves as slaves. Every attempt to persuade people that something is good (or bad) in itself, and not merely in its effects, depends upon the art of rousing feelings, not upon an appeal to evidence. In every case the preacher's skill consis ts in creating in others emotions similar to his own - or dissimilar, if he is a hypocrite. I am not saying this as a criticism of the preacher, but as an analysis of this essential character of his activity. When a man says "this is good in itself," he seems to be making a statement, just as much as if he had said "this is square" or "this is sweet." I believe this to be a mistake. I think that what the man really means is: "I wish everybody to desire this," or rather "Would that everybody desired this." If what he ways is interpreted as a statement , it is merely an affirmation of his own personal wish; if, on the other hand, it is interpreted in a general way, it states nothing, but merely desires something. The wish, as an occurrence, is personal, but what it desires is universal. It is, I think, this curious interlocking of the particular and the universal which has caused so much confusion in ethics. The matter may perhaps become clearer by contrasting an ethical sentence with one which makes a statement. If I say "all Chinese are Buddhists," I can be refuted by the production of a Chinese Christian or Mohammedan. If I say "I believe that all Chinese are Buddhists," I cannot be refuted by any evidence from China, but only by evidence that I do not believe what I say; for what I am asserting is only something about my own state of mind. If, now, a philosopher says "Beauty is good," I may interpret him as meaning either "Would that everybody loved the beautiful" (which corresponds to "all Chinese are Buddhists") or "I wish that everybody loved the beautiful" (which corresponds to "I believe that all Chinese are Buddhists"). The first of these makes no assertion, but expresses a wish; since it affirms nothing, it is logically impossible that there should be evidence for or against it, or for it to possess either truth or falsehood. The second sentence, instead of being merely optative, does make a statement, but it is one about the philosopher's state of mind, and it could only be refuted by evidence that he does not have the wish that he says he has. This second sentence does not belong to ethics, but to psychology or biography. The first sentence, which does belong to ethics, expresses a desire for something, but asserts nothing. Ethics, if the above analysis is correct, contains no statements, whether true or false, but consists of desires of a certain general kind, namely such as are concerned with the desires of mankind in general - and of gods, angels, and devils, if they exist. Science can discuss the causes of desires, and the means for realizing them, but it cannot contain any genuinely ethical sentences, because it is concerned with what is true or false. The theory which I have been advocating is a form of the doctrine which is called the "subjectivity" of values. This doctrine consists in maintaining that that, if two men differ about values, there is not a disagreement as to any kind of truth, but a difference of taste. If one man says "oysters are good" and another says "I think they are bad," we recognize that there is nothing to argue about. The theory in question holds that all differences as to values are of this sort, although we do not naturally think them so when we are dealing with matters that seem to us more exalted than oysters. The chief ground for adopting this view is the complete impossibility of finding any arguments to prove that this or that has intrinsic value. If we all agreed, we might hold that we know values by intuition. We cannot prove, to a colour-blind man, that grass is green and not red. But there are various ways of proving to him that he lacks a power of discrimination which most men possess, whereas in the case of values there are no such ways, and disagreements are much more frequent than in the case of colours. Since no way can be even imagined for deciding a difference as to values, the conclusion is forced upon us that the difference is one of tastes, not one as to any objective truth. The consequences of this doctrine are considerable. In the first place, there can be no such thing as "sin" in any absolute sense; what one man calls "sin" another may call "virtue," and though they may dislike each other on account of this difference, neither can convict the other of intellectual error. Punishment cannot be justified on the ground that the criminal is "wicked," but only on the ground that he has behaved in a way which others wish to discourage. Hell, as a place of punishment for sinners, becomes quite irrational. In the second place, it is impossible to uphold the way of speaking about values which is common among those who believe in Cosmic Purpose. Their argument is that certain things which have been evolved are "good," and therefore the world must have had a purpose which was ethically admirable. In the language of subjective values, this argument becomes: "Some things in the world are to our liking, and therefore they must have been created by a Being with our tastes, Whom, therefore, we also like, and Who, consequently is good." Now it seems fairly evident tha t, if creatures having likes and dislikes were to exist at all, they were pretty sure to like some things in their environment, since otherwise they would find life intolerable. Our values have been evolved along with the rest of our constitution, and nothing as to any original purpose can be inferred from the fact that they are what they are. Those who believe in "objective" values often contend that the view which I have been advocating has immoral consequences. This seems to me to be due to faulty reasoning. There are, as has already been said, certain ethical consequences of the doctrine of subjective values, of which the most important is the rejection of vindictive punishment and the notion of "sin." But the more general consequences which are feared, such at the decay of all sense of moral obligation, are not to be logically deduced. Moral obligation, if it is to influence conduct, must consist not merely of a belief, but of a desire. The desire, I may be told, is the desire to be "good" in a sense which I no longer allow. But when we analyse the desire to be "good" it generally resolves itself into a desire to be approved, or, alternatively, to act so as to bring about certain general consequences which we desire. We have wishes which are not purely personal, and, if we had not, no amount of ethical teaching would influence our conduct except through fear of disapproval. The sort of life that most of us admire is one which is guided by large impersonal desires; now such desires can no doubt be encouraged by example, education, and knowledge, but they can hardly be created by the mere abstract belief that they are good, nor discouraged by an analysis of what is meant by the word "good." When we contemplate the human race, we may desire that it should be happy, or healthy, or intelligent, or warlike, and so on. Any one of these desires, if it is strong, will produce its own morality; but if we have no such general desires, our conduct, whatever our ethic may be, will only serve social purposes in so far as self- interest and the interests of society are in harmony. It is the business of wise institutions to create such harmony as far as possible, and for the rest, whatever may be our theoretical definition of value, we must depend upon the existence of impersonal desires. When you meet a man with whom you have a fundamental ethical disagreement - for example, if you think that all men count equally, while he selects a class as alone important - you will find yourself no better to cope with him if you believe in objective values than if you do not. In either case, you can only influence his conduct through influencing his desires: if you succeed in that, his ethic will change, and if not, not. Some people feel that if a general desire, say for the happiness of mankind, has not the sanction of absolute good, it is in some way irrational. This is due to a lingering belief in objective values. A desire cannot, in itself, be either rational or irrational. It may conflict with other desires, and therefore lead to unhappiness; it may rouse opposition in others, and therefore be incapable of gratification. But it cannot be considered "irrational" merely because no reason can be given for feeling it. We may desire A because it is a means to B, but in the end, when we have done with mere means, we must come to something which we desire for no reason, but not on that account "irrationally." All systems of ethics embody the desires of those who advocate them, but this fact is concealed in a mist of words. Our desire are, in fact, more general and less purely selfish than many moralists imagine; if it were not so, no theory of ethics would make moral improvement possible. It is, in fact, not by ethical theory, but by the cultivation of large and generous desires through intelligence, happiness, and freedom from fear, that men can be brought to act more than they do at present in a manner that is consistent with the general happiness of mankind. Whatever our definition of the "Good," and whether we believe it to be subjective or objective, those who do not desire the happiness of mankind will not endeavour to further it, while those who do desire it will do what they can to bring it about. I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of values, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know. Notes 1. Compare the following advice by a contemporary of Aristotle (Chinese, not Greek): "A ruler should not listen to those who believe in people having opinions of their own and in the importance of the individual. Such teachings cause men to withdraw to quiet places and hide away in caves or in mountains, there to rail at the prevailing government, sneer at those in authority, belittle the importance of rank and emoluments, and despise all who hold official posts." Walsey, The Way and its Power, p. 37.

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