Socratic Dialogue - Essay Example

School A conversation between the three: a determinist (further as D), a compatiblist (C), and libertarian (L). C: - Have you guys ever seen this movie “The Butterfly Effect”? Pretty much inspiring, isn’t it? Even though there is some cause-and-effect link, which determines the chain of events, we still have free will to decide and change everything. D: - Too much attention to human decisions, I think. I don’t believe humans actually decide in this world, the reality is absolutely deterministic. L: - Such a radical notion! This reality is a product of our decisions, haven’t you noticed that every decision of yours leads to some changes, and I wouldn’t say that we cannot decide. Tell me, does anything really limit you in your decisions? D: - Of course, a bunch of different factors. Fine, let’s consider what do you mean by freedom? L: - I believe that to be free means not being limited by anything. C: - But this is obviously a very abstract definition and may lead to misunderstanding, because it may be considered as, let’s say, arbitrariness. L: - So what definition do you propose? C: - I’d rather be in favor of the following idea suggested by Nietzsche, but he actually declined the typical concept of free will, still I think his definition is clear and describes my position. He said that free will means being responsible for your decisions and make changes, to be free both from anything and for something. Because “no one is responsible for man’s being there at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his essence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be” (Nietzsche, “The Four Great Errors”, 8). L: - And does this responsibility mean that you have free will? C: - Indeed, but not in a typical way. The point is that you can decide only for yourself, because you can be responsible for your own life and change it. But people are definitely determined by circumstances and other people, and also we can’t forget that we are products of certain societies and cultures, so they also define whether we make this or that decision. There are some omissions in your definition of freedom as being absolutely unbounded; you missed the essence of human being, which will always be determined by the environment. D: - And not only by it. L: - What else? What do you think? Do we have free will? D: - First of all, we will always be determined by different circumstances that we cannot control. L: - What kind of circumstances? D: - It’s a sort of natural cause-and-effect link. L: - So you’re saying that some metaphysical force moves everything in this world and subsequently certain events happen? D: - There is no special force, just natural necessity. I believe in Laplace’s theory that everything in this world is a result of matter’s movements. (Jones, 538-539) By the way, did you know about such thing as Laplace’s demon? L: - No. How is it connected with the discussion? D: - Directly. Laplace said that if one day somebody counts the movement of atoms, this person will be able to predict all the possible events in this world. Such person is called Laplace’s demon, the one who will reveal the mystery of the universe. L: - Fine, but there must be some moving force, that at least started all these processes at the very beginning. And nobody can definitely say how does this force look like, furthermore no one can even prove its existence. C: - Well, maybe, but Immanuel Kant’s solution of this problem probably can answer some of your questions on this issue. D: - But Kant considered the cause-and-effect link and free will as antinomies of mind, which in fact are a kind of contradictory problem impossible to be solved. I mean, in this case there must be either determinism or free will, so there is also no solution in his theory. C: - Actually, you’re almost right. Indeed Kant sees a logical problem of co-existing of determinism and free will, that’s why he suggests separating the reality into two levels in which causality and freedom work without any particular connection to each other. D: - Which levels do you mean? C: - I mean the phenomenal world of things we perceive empirically, where deterministic law of nature works; and the noumenal world of things-it-themselves, where the causal reasons of everything are free will and spontaneity. (Rosen, 126) D: - But still, Kant never said that freedom actually existed. This separation of the reality doesn’t really prove free will, moreover I can say that Kant didn’t even claim that the possibility of freedom is truth, he considered freedom as some transcendental idea, through which intelligence just thinks that it makes a chain of empirical phenomena, but doesn’t know it for sure. And as I have studied Kant’s philosophy, this proposition of the solution actually deals with determinism and morality, but not within the problem of free will as the moving force of the reality. I mean, when we make a decision and it becomes a reason of changes in the reality. Kant evolves free will from his hypothesis that things might have some kind of intelligence, which we cannot perceive, and as far as we cannot perceive them, we cannot prove anything with this theory. C: - Do you think that our decisions are also the product of movements of matter, as you said before? How do we think then? What is thinking? You cannot argue that we don’t have thinking or that thinking is material. D: - Why not. Probably thinking is some process produced by our brains and it doesn’t exist out of us. We think that we think, but do we actually make some metaphysical process while thinking? Do you really consider this vast universe as a product of some small humans and their thinking? Isn’t it obvious that such negligible creatures can’t cause all these infinite things? L: - Not talking about the beginnings of the universe, do you really think that you never make any decisions? Even a decision whether to turn your head either to the right or to the left? D: - Well, obviously I have some reasons to do it, some objective reasons. L: - Like what? D: - For example, you call my name and I turn my head to see you. And you did what you did because you saw me somewhere on a street, but why we met each other? There must be some chain of actions and consequences before our meeting. L: - But what about your decision itself. Sometimes you decide something without any reasons for it. Rene Descartes claimed that freedom is a fundamental feature of human spirit, because it is connected with our self-consciousness and our inner experience. (Christofidou, n.pag). D: - What do you mean by “inner experience”? L: - I mean when we make decisions and realize that we make them because we want it and we are free to make them. We experience our freedom and don’t see anything that might limit us in our decisions. D: - Actually, I’d rather agree that we always have some reasons to do something, even if we don’t realize them. Because Descartes argument explains freedom only by thinking rationality, but its existence must be proved first, as we mentioned before. C: - But how do you reconcile deterministic nature of this world with a free will? D: - I believe that what we consider as freedom in fact is the necessity we are aware of. C: - But this statement is a pure antinomy. D: - No it’s not. Actually, we cannot argue that reality determines our actions and decisions. Am I right? C: - Definitely. L: - Well in some cases yes, it does. D: - But as were agreed upon, we realize that many of our decisions we make by ourselves. C: - Indeed. D: - But haven’t you thought that we can just think that our wishes and will are our own? C: - Are you trying to say that we deceive ourselves? D: - Not really. I mean that our existence itself is necessity. Let’s consider the following situation. Think about a river. Water flows in a river. Seems like it flows freely, doesn’t it? C: - Obviously it does. Water is free in its movements. D: - But it flows in a certain way, making a river. What a river is? L: - It is a flow of water, watercourse. D: - Which means that its water follows exactly the special course, neither more nor less than its borders. So does it mean that the water is free? Or maybe it is not that free as it seems to us? L: - Looks like it is not free at all. But you’re talking about river, and we are human beings, we have thinking and intelligence and we can spontaneously make a decision any moment. D: - Why are you so sure that your decisions don’t result from some factors that had the influence on you, even if you don’t realize it. L: - Give me an example please. D: - For example, you don’t eat insects, because you’re a human, and in your culture where you’ve been raised it is not appropriate to eat insects. This means that you are determined by your culture and society. And when you see insect you decide not to eat it, but not because you just don’t want to do it, because you’ve been taught not to want it. C: - Yes, exactly. I see what you’re talking about! This means that freedom and the thing that we call “free will” is possible just in case we’re aware of the factors that limit us in our actions. D: - Anyway, it turns out that if there are such things, we cannot be completely free. So there is no freedom and free will. We live in this deterministic world under its laws. L: - But what can you say about the situations when we crave something and it happens in some mysterious way? Doesn’t it mean that our thoughts can change the reality? Doesn’t it show that our thinking really has some power as well as our decisions and will, which is free to wish everything? D: - This is the simplest thing to explain! An elementary coincidence! L: - And how do you think it is possible? I told you, it might happen in the most mysterious way. What is a possibility for such impossible concatenation of circumstances! There must definitely be something coming from us and our way of thinking, which may cause it. C: - Yes, probably it can be so, but it is too theoretical to be proved. All we can do is to contemplate, but there are no proves that such theories are truthful. Whereas, the position of free will as the necessity we are aware of is really corresponding to the facts. L: - Well maybe. It also seems to me that it may be truthful, but still I want to believe that we are rational creatures and we are able to rule our reality through our decisions. D: - We all want to believe in something, this believing feature of us is really essential for human beings. You know, it is really difficult to say something definite in this world, because all the statements require to be proved before being called truthful. That’s why we may all be wrong now… Or we may all be right, don’t we? Works Cited: Christofidou, Andrea. “Descartes on Freedom, Truth, and Goodness”. Noûs. 43(2009): n.pag. Jones, Roger. “Determinism in Deterministic Chaos”. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. 1990(1990): 537-549. Maclntyre, A.C. “Determinism”. Mind. 66(1957): 28-41. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols, tr. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Press, 1954. Rosen, Michael. “Kant’s Anti-Determinism”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. 89(1988): 125-141. Read More