Stuart K. Hayashi
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| Portrait of Spinoza from 1665; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
Roderick Fitts’s essay on free will, “The Freedom of Human Action,” has given me new insight. It pointed out that at least some understanding of the Law of Causality — of the causal link between cause and effect — is implicit in long-term decision-making. I want outcome Y instead of outcome B. I ascertain that doing X will result in outcome Y, whereas doing A will result in outcome B. Therefore, I choose to do X instead of A.
This conflicts with Spinoza’s argument that the Law of Causality precludes free will. If Spinoza is correct that the Law of Causality precludes free will, how can Roderick Fitts argue that some recognition of cause-and-effect connections is implicit in exercises of free will?
Brief Summary of What Spinoza’s Argument Is and What It Overlooks
I have already summarized Spinoza’s argument and given my rebuttal to it. But I will review briefly here. (This link to all my blog posts on free will.)
Spinoza’s argument against free will is as follows: when you observe objects and come to understand the nature/identity of each object observed, you find that one event will yield an easily predictable outcome. The event is an entity — a storm cloud — raining down on another entity, a rock. The rock erodes. Moreover, the storm cloud raining down on the rock caused the rock to erode. Due to the respective natures of both storm clouds and rocks, in any instance wherein a storm cloud drops rain on a rock, the rock will erode. That is because of the nature of rocks; the rock could not do anything else. For a rock to respond in any other manner under those conditions would be contrary to the rock's nature as a rock, contrary to the Law of Identity. If you understand the Law of Identity, and the respective natures of each entity in a situation, you know how the entity being acted upon (in this case, a rock) will act in response.
Spinoza then points out that human beings are also entities — we humans are entities no less than rocks are. Accordingly, the Law of Causality is just as applicable to human beings as it is applicable to rocks. To Spinoza, it follows that human beings are just as predictable as rocks are when heavy rain falls on rocks. It also follows that no human being is proactive but is only reactive to outside stimuli, just as a rock only reacts to outside stimuli. For a human to have free will, that human would have to be proactive, not merely reactive.
As Spinoza puts it,
...nature is always the same... ...that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change, from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules. Thus the [human] passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same [metaphysical] necessity [meaning the same mechanistic determinism of cause-and-effect] and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood... I shall, therefore,...consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner...as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.Spinoza’s argument overlooks (1) in Nature, an unprecedented effect can occur (this is called an Emergent Property) and (2) that the respective Laws of Identity and Causality are valid does not preclude an unprecedented phenomenon (an Emergent Property) from occurring. What an Emergent Property means is this: when particular physical components end up arranged in most particular arrangements, usually nothing new happens. However, when those physical components end up arranged in a particularly fortuitous matter, something unprecedented can occur.
As an example, all of the chemicals that make life possible were already on Earth for billions of years before there were any organisms. When those chemicals ended up being arranged in most possible arrangements, nothing new happened — and that was for billions of years. But one day, those chemicals ended up in an arrangement that resulted in something unprecedented: the first primitive organism emerged. Hence the respective Laws of Identity and Causality being contextual absolutes, which apply consistently in most circumstances for millennia, does not preclude unprecedented phenomena from occurring. And the presence of volition in organisms started off as an Emergent Property. That is why the respective Laws of Identity and Causality can apply consistently in most contexts and remain contextually absolute even if there are natural phenomena that are not as predictable as what happens to a rock when it is rained upon heavily.
Now I will get to how, when Spinoza invokes the Law of Causality to deny free will, he falls prey to the Stolen Concept fallacy. Objectivists are familiar with how a commentator such as Sam Harris engages in this fallacy when he tries to persuade you to reject the idea of free will. (My longer rebuttal to Sam Harris is over here.) If everything you do is a foregone conclusion — being the result of unconscious processes (Sam Harris says your conscious mind only rationalizes taking the action that your unconscious reptilian brain compelled you to perform) — then it is pointless for him to try to convince your conscious mind to change its opinion. Any time a debater tries to convince you to reject the idea of free will, it is premised on the implicit recognition that what your opinion will be by that argument’s end is not a foregone conclusion. Furthermore, when it comes to Sam Harris’s case in particular, it is self-contradictory for him to attempt to appeal to your conscious mind when he argues that it is not the conscious mind that is behind the steering wheel anyway.
Objectivists are familiar with that argument, but that argument only places emphasis on the implicit fact that the person to whom the appeal is being made is the person who possesses free will. I want to point out the other side. The person pitching his own argument against free will — be it Sam Harris or Spinoza — also relies on the implicit recognition of free will as he comes to that anti-free will conclusion. Indeed, Spinoza would be relying on an implicit recognition of his own free will even if Spinoza kept his own conclusions against free will in his own head and never tried to sell anyone on those arguments.
For a Philosopher to Gain a Sophisticated Understanding of the Law of Causality, He Must Recognize Free Will, At Least Implicitly
The reasons are:
- To make any major philosophic inquiry is a long-term decision. That means:
- To make a philosophic inquiry is an exercise of free will. And:
- To reach a sophisticated philosophic understanding the Law of Causality is a philosophic inquiry. That means:
- To reach a sophisticated philosophic understanding of the Law of Causality, one must exercise free will.
- Y – Spinoza has a confident, philosophically sophisticated conclusion about whether there is a Law of Causality, a conclusion supported by solid reasoning.
- B – Spinoza has no firm conclusion about whether there is a Law of Causality; he is agnostic on it.
- X – Spinoza initiates a philosophic inquiry on whether there is a Law of Causality, meaning whether causality — cause-and-effect — applies consistently.
- A – Spinoza refrains from launching into a philosophic inquiry on this.
Wait; Am I Contradicting Myself Over Whether It’s Recognition of Free Will or Recognition of Causality That Comes First?
At this point, a critic might say that I am the one who is contradicting himself. The critic can say,
First you stated agreement with Roderick Fitts that within every act of free will there is, at least on an implicit level, a recognition of the Law of Causality. That would imply that someone understands causation before one exercises free will by choosing one alternative over another. But then you argue that for someone to arrive at a sophisticated, philosophically literate understanding of the Law of Causality, one must both exercise free will and, at least on an implicit level, acknowledge the existence of one’s own free will. But that would imply that someone acknowledges his own free will before coming to understand causation. Well, which is it?Here is the difference: you do not need to engage in a conscious, long-term decision-making process to grasp causation on a primitive, implicit level. However, for you to gain a sophisticated, philosophically literate comprehension of the Law of Causality, you do need to engage in a conscious, long-term decision-making process while recognizing, at least on an implicit level, that this is an implementation of free will. Therefore, this is what happened: Spinoza first understood causality on a primitive, implicit/unconscious level. It was with that primitive, implicit/unconscious acknowledgment of causality that he first exercised free will. Then he exercised free will in order to gain his sophisticated, philosophically literate comprehension of the Law of Causality.
As noted by child researcher Alison Gopnik in her book The Philosophical Baby, psychologists have conducted controlled experiments on babies that evince that this is the case. In both the control and experimental samples, a baby is placed under a mobile. In the experimental sample, the mobile is tied to the baby’s leg and, when the baby moves her leg, it moves the mobile. In the control sample, nothing ties the baby to the mobile; the mobile moves independently. The babies in the experimental sample stare at the mobile for longer periods of time than do the babies in the control sample, and it is always after the baby has caused the mobile to move. From this, the psychologists infer that the babies in the experimental sample show more interest than those in the control sample exactly because the babies in the experimental sample are first coming to grasp, at least implicitly, that it is their own movements that are causing the mobile’s movements.
This suggests that when a person first comes to understand causality on an implicit, primitive level, that was not the result of some conscious decision. However, we do know that when someone gains a strong and sophisticated philosophical understanding of the Law of Causality, such as Spinoza’s, that is attributable to that person making the conscious long-term decision to study the Law of Causality. And we know that that conscious, long-term decision, picked among various possible options, was an exercise in free will.
Conclusion
Hence, Spinoza both exercised free will and implicitly (but not consciously) understood his own free will in order to come to his sophisticated, philosophically literate comprehension of the Law of Causality. But then he improperly invoked that sophisticated, philosophically literate comprehension of the Law of Causality to deny the existence of free will. That is how his argument commits the Stolen Concept fallacy.
And here is another way that that happens: recognition of any entity as an object that is impacted upon is contingent on the presence of a subject (a conscious observer, such as you) observing that entity as an object. In this context, “object” refers to an entity being observed and the “subject” refers to the consciousness that is observing the object. That is, the subject is a conscious person doing the observing (in this case, you in particular). In this context, the “subject” has agency; it can choose which particular objects it does or does not place its focus upon. In Spinoza’s argument, all conscious, decision-making humans are treated only as objects that are acted upon; his argument overlooks that there are any subjects possessing any agency. But no entities could be recognized as objects if not for there being a subject — you — to focus on them. And which objects you do or do not focus on, depends on your agency — that is, your exercise of free will.
No, Spinoza, an understanding of causality does not preclude free will. On the contrary, a recognition of causality, at least on an implicit and simple level, is what helps someone exercise free will.
On September 2, 2017, I changed every use of the word causation to the word causality.
