Can Any Mechanism Account for Free Will?

Believer, whose smile had now disappeared, leaned back again and said, “Let me begin with one of those answers and see what objection you can raise against it.

“First, we need to examine the stages through which a decision comes into being, so that we can determine at which stage human free will comes into play.”

Skeptic interrupted him and asked, “You want to break down the mechanism and stages by which a decision is ‘brought into being,’ correct?”

Believer: “Yes, exactly.”

Skeptic: “Before you spend time doing that, let us talk a little about the concept of a ‘mechanism,’ or the ‘stages through which a phenomenon comes into being.’

“When we seek to explain how a phenomenon comes into existence, we are not thereby trying to deny the existence of a cause, or of a chain of causes, responsible for bringing that phenomenon into existence. We are merely trying to identify the phenomena that occur one after another until the final phenomenon is produced.

“No matter how complex or strange the mechanism by which a phenomenon comes into being may be, it cannot mean that the law of causality has somehow been eliminated from the production of that phenomenon.

“I accepted the existence of the Necessary Existent whose existence you tried to prove. Whether I was mistaken in accepting it is irrelevant here. In any case, I accepted it. I can now say that there are two possible ways in which that Necessary Existent could create a phenomenon:

“1. It could create that phenomenon through a chain of causes and effects. For example, it could itself create phenomenon A, after which phenomenon A would be the sufficient cause of phenomenon B, so that B would necessarily come into existence. B, in turn, would become the sufficient cause of C, and the chain of causes and effects would continue in this manner until phenomenon Y was produced.

“In this case, once phenomenon A has been created, phenomenon Y will inevitably come into existence. Therefore, the one responsible for creating phenomenon Y is the same Necessary Existent that created phenomenon A. Phenomenon Y had no alternative but to come into existence.

“If creation takes place in this manner, knowing the mechanism by which phenomenon Y is produced simply means knowing the phenomena that must arise one by one before Y until it is finally Y’s turn to come into existence. No matter how numerous and diverse the phenomena preceding Y may be, and no matter how complex their arrangement may appear to our minds, this would not mean that the law of causality had somehow been violated, nor would it mean that the chain of causes and effects did not ultimately lead back to the Necessary Existent.

“2. The second way in which the Necessary Existent could create phenomena would be for the phenomena not to bring one another into existence at all, but rather for the Necessary Existent itself to create each of them individually and successively—that is, first to create phenomenon A, then phenomenon B, and so on until the end.

“In this case, the Necessary Existent would act like an animator. The animator himself creates each image separately and places the images one after another. Although, when we watch the animation, we may imagine that the first image and what occurs within it are the cause of the next image, in reality the successive images have no causal relationship with one another. All of them are effects produced by the animator.

“If the world is created in this way, then once again the cause of every phenomenon is the Necessary Existent itself, and describing the mechanism by which a phenomenon is produced merely means describing which phenomena the animator creates before creating that particular phenomenon.

“In this case too, no matter how complex the mechanism of creation may appear to our minds, its complexity cannot absolve the Necessary Existent of responsibility for creating any phenomenon. It is it that creates all those phenomena, as well as all the phenomena that precede and follow them, and there has never been, nor is there, any phenomenon that had any alternative but to come into existence.”

Believer and Skeptic remained silent for several minutes. Then Skeptic continued:

“If some mechanism could be found showing that the Necessary Existent ‘might’ not be responsible for creating a phenomenon, and that the phenomenon might instead have come into existence spontaneously, or that a phenomenon such as you or I might itself be responsible for bringing it into existence, this would lead to two consequences:

“First, the law of causality would become violable. We could consequently suppose that the first moment of the universe, too, might have come into existence without the Necessary Existent. In that case, it could no longer be proven that a Necessary Existent—or, as you call it, a God—must have created the universe. We could then ask: why not accept that an existent like other phenomena was itself the first cause of the universe? In that case, positing God would become entirely arbitrary. One could suppose that God exists, or one could suppose that God does not.

“If phenomena such as our ‘desire,’ ‘will,’ or ‘action’ could exist without being directly or indirectly created by the Necessary Existent, and could instead be created solely by another phenomenon such as a human being, then we could equally accept that the ‘first moment of the universe’ could have existed without being created by the Necessary Existent.

“Second, a phenomenon whose chain of creation does not begin with the Necessary Existent would show that somewhere along the way, one of the phenomena came into existence from nonexistence. In that case, there would be a situation in which a phenomenon could arise without requiring a cause. Its coming into existence would then have no connection with the phenomena preceding it, since those preceding phenomena would not be the cause of its existence. We would therefore have to accept that somewhere in the chain of causes and effects, a phenomenon simply emerges from nothingness into existence.

“In that case, what this phenomenon turns out to be would have no connection with what the preceding phenomena were. If human will were one of these phenomena that did not depend upon the Necessary Existent, we still could not reasonably believe in a heaven and hell that reward or punish our actions. For our will would not be an effect of the Necessary Existent through a causal chain; rather, it would suddenly and spontaneously emerge out of nothingness and enter existence, severing the connection between our entire past—which produced ‘our self at the moment of willing’—and our ‘will,’ which would spontaneously emerge from nothingness into existence. We might therefore will absolutely anything, without being able to predict what that act of will would be. Naturally, rewarding or punishing us for such spontaneously generated desires and acts of will would not be just.”

Believer: “I didn’t understand what you meant by that last point.”

Skeptic: “What I meant was that whether the law of causality holds or not, the existence of heaven and hell as places of reward and punishment is unjustified. Let me give you an example:

“You are sitting here now, with a cup of tea in front of you. Whether, at this moment, you decide to drink it or not depends on how creation works.

“In the first case, let us suppose that the Necessary Existent created only the first moment of the universe and thereafter ceased creating anything. In that case, every phenomenon it created would become the cause of the next phenomenon. And since, whenever the sufficient cause of a phenomenon exists, the occurrence of that phenomenon is inevitable, the next phenomenon would necessarily come into existence as well. This chain would continue in the same manner until it reached this very moment, in which you and I are sitting here.

“At this moment, it is already determined what decision you will make about your tea in the next moment. Indeed, we must say that from eternity—from the very beginning of creation—it was already determined what decision you would make at this moment. We call this ‘determinism’.

“If someone could acquire complete and flawless knowledge of every property and coordinate of existence at the present moment, he could predict exactly what decision you would make in the next moment. Of course, this is on the condition that his acquisition of this knowledge did not interfere with the phenomena themselves.”

Believer: “What do you mean by ‘interfere’?”

Skeptic: “Look... if determinism holds, and if I could know the universe at the present moment in all its details—if I could know you completely, all your internal characteristics and environmental circumstances, the entire world around you, and also the laws governing the causal relations between phenomena—if, for example, I had complete knowledge of physics, chemistry, and physiology—then I would be able to predict correctly what decision you would make about your cup of tea in the next moment.

“But if, in the process of acquiring this information, I disturbed the world—for example, if you became aware of the information I had obtained and learned what I had predicted about your decision—then this could cause my prediction to fail, and you might change your decision. I might have altered the conditions in such a way that you would no longer make the decision I had predicted.

“At the quantum level, too, suppose we wanted to measure an electron’s position and velocity with complete precision so that we could predict its position one second later. Sending a photon toward the electron, having it collide with the electron, and then detecting the returning photon might appear to determine the electron’s position, but the collision itself would deflect the electron and alter its velocity, making an exact prediction of its position at the next moment impossible.

“Therefore, if determinism holds, the more information we gather about the present moment, and the less we disturb the present world in the process, the more accurately we can predict the next moment or the future. Now, if there were an existent such as your omniscient God, capable of knowing the universe completely without disturbing it, he could know which phenomenon would arise at every moment. If this God himself created the universe at its first moment, then he would not merely know which phenomenon would arise at every subsequent moment; he would also be responsible for every phenomenon that comes into existence after that first moment of the universe—including your decision about your cup of tea.

“Your decision has been known to him from eternity, and not only has it been known to him, but he himself willed it. Your decision and your will are among the countless phenomena for which that same Necessary Existent is responsible.

“This was under the assumption that creation operates in such a way that phenomena cause one another and that the Necessary Existent ceased creating after creating the first phenomenon.

“The second mode of creation is for the Necessary Existent to act like an animator and itself create every moment of the universe and every individual phenomenon. In that case, it is obvious that it will itself create your decision concerning your cup of tea, and the one responsible for what you do will be that same animator-like Necessary Existent, which may create these successive phenomena according to a rule, or perhaps without any rule at all.

“If it creates successive phenomena according to a rule—for example, if that rule consists of the laws of physics—then the future can be predicted with precision, and your decision will likewise be predictable.

“But if it produces this animation without any rule, then phenomena will follow one another in a disorderly fashion, and the phenomenon of ‘your act of will concerning your cup of tea’ will be unpredictable.

“But whether it acts according to a rule or without one, the one responsible for all phenomena is the Necessary Existent itself.”

If Causality Does Not Hold, Does That Solve the Problem of the Day of Judgment?

Skeptic: “In the third mode of creation—which, of course, you have already shown to be impossible—let us suppose that some phenomena do not obey the law of causality at all, but spontaneously emerge from nonexistence and enter into existence.

“In this case, even the Necessary Existent, however much knowledge it might possess, could not predict what your act of will would be, because knowledge cannot pertain to something that absolutely does not exist, is not going to arise from anything that exists, and bears no relation to existence through any law or rule whatsoever.

“In this case, the phenomenon of ‘your act of will’ would be related neither to natural phenomena nor to the Necessary Existent. It would therefore arise completely at random, without any rule, and entirely unexpectedly. For example, at this moment you might develop a strong ‘desire’ to drink your tea, but instead of ‘willing’ in accordance with that desire to reach out and pick up the cup, you might suddenly will to lift the table and throw it into a corner. Your act of will would be neither the product of the preceding phenomenon nor directly created by the Necessary Existent; rather, it would have unexpectedly emerged from nonexistence.

“Naturally, in such a case, your act of will would be a phenomenon for which you bear no responsibility, because it has spontaneously sprung from nonexistence into existence. Your will would have no connection with your desire. The causal connection between your will and your desire would be severed. By the same reasoning, the action you perform might also have no connection with your will and might itself emerge from nonexistence in an entirely unrelated manner.

“So, at this moment, a desire to drink tea arises in you. Let us call this phenomenon number one. But in the next moment, you will to throw the table. Let us call this act of will phenomenon number two, which has emerged from nonexistence and is neither the product of phenomenon number one nor something created by the animator-like Necessary Existent.

“In the following moment, the action you perform is this: you are holding your child’s hand and walking down the street. Let us call this phenomenon number three. You see that your action, too, has no connection with the act of will that preceded it, because the action itself has spontaneously emerged from nonexistence, without either phenomenon number two or the Necessary Existent being its cause.

“Your ‘desire’ was to drink the tea, your ‘will’ was to throw the table, and your ‘action’ was to walk alongside your child.

“In none of these three phenomena—your desire, your will, or your action—does anything make you deserving of punishment or reward from the Necessary Existent. Neither you nor the Necessary Existent is responsible for any of these phenomena. Rather, nonexistence is responsible for all three—or, more accurately, there is no one responsible for them at all.

“Whichever of the three modes of creation we assume—or even if creation consists of some combination of the three—the existence of an afterlife in which the Necessary Existent rewards and punishes us would be an unjustified belief, contrary to logic and reason.”

Should the Judicial and Punitive System in Our World Be Abolished?

Believer: “According to what you are saying, under none of the possible—or even impossible—modes of creation does a human being bear any responsibility. So we ought to abolish the entire judicial system, along with reward and punishment. There would no longer be any difference between good and bad people, and whenever someone wrongs us, we should simply say that it was God’s doing, or nature’s doing, and that in any case it had to happen. We would have to accept that the person who committed the wrongdoing was not himself at fault.”

Skeptic: “To some extent, you are right. Once a good or evil act has taken place, if either a deterministic system or an animator-like system governs the world, then this can indeed be said. But we human beings have, to a considerable extent, discovered that the system governing the world appears to be either ‘determinism’ or ‘rule-governed animation’1, because we can consistently discover rules and regularities connecting earlier phenomena with later ones. We have always tried to discover these rules in physics, chemistry, physiology, psychology, sociology, and economics, and, by identifying present phenomena, to predict future phenomena on the basis of those rules.

“In the case of natural evils, such as earthquakes and floods, whether we regard them as directly produced by a rule-governed, animator-like Necessary Existent, or as the work of a Necessary Existent that created the universe at the beginning of time and then left it to itself, or whether we do not attribute them to God at all and regard them entirely as the work of mindless nature, the result is the same: by gaining a proper understanding of the rules and laws governing the relation between earlier and later phenomena, we try to prevent further harm and future evils. We build dams, construct stronger buildings according to earthquake-resistant standards, and so on.

“In the same way, in order to prevent harmful human actions, we take measures such as education and the establishment of a judicial system. If we set aside our instinct for revenge and our feelings of resentment—which nature has instilled in us—and think only about how human wrongdoing can be prevented, we may still, in addition to relying on education, make use of the judicial system and punitive policies.

“If we become convinced that punishment and reward are among the mechanisms by which future harmful behavior can be prevented and future desirable behavior encouraged, we may make use of them. The fact that we punish or reward others in order to bring about a better future does not mean that we are acting inconsistently with a belief in determinism.

“But for the Necessary Existent, which itself brings all of these things into existence, to seek revenge upon phenomena that are its own effects—to punish someone for actions and beliefs that the Necessary Existent itself created, to burn that person forever, or to send that person to heaven and reward him—cannot be justified.

“If we had such complete control over a child that we ourselves could design and bring about every single one of his desires, inclinations, and actions, it would make no sense for us to punish him after everything was done.

“The Necessary Existent you speak of has complete and absolute control over all human desires, acts of will, and actions. Indeed, no desire, act of will, or action comes into existence except through the will of that Necessary Existent.”

Believer: “Let us continue the rest of this discussion next week. I want to think more about what you have said.”