Dilemma of determinism

In philosophy the dilemma of determinism historically was posed as a moral quandary, the quandary posed by a belief that 'fate' determines everything, leaving no room for humans to make decisions about their conduct, and if that is so, no room for them to be held responsible for their conduct. A modern version of the quandary does not rely upon 'fate' as determining events, but rather the 'laws of nature' in some form or another and, as before, we have the moral quandary of assigning moral responsibility.

Sometimes the dilemma is cast in a somewhat different manner, suggesting that 'fate' or the 'laws of nature' are not the sole agency for change, but that as an alternative at least some events might simply be random. That does not settle the dilemma, as humans are not responsible for random events any more than those controlled by outside agency. It does complicate the dilemma somewhat by suggesting a dichotomy of explanation, 'fate' or 'randomness', that appears unnecessarily to introduce the added issue of an alternative to 'fate'. Possibly that addition was intended to account for the probabilistic nature of some laws of physics, but if so, it is a poorly phrased way of doing so. A better approach would be to say that the 'laws of nature' determine the statistical probabilities for the occurrence of events, which leaves the moral dilemma intact without postulating a silly false dichotomy.

Horns of a dilemma

A common description of the 'dilemma of determinism' is as a forced choice between two alternatives referred to as the 'horns' of a dilemma. This formulation has a long past, and was already used in a discussion by David Hume, who referred to it as a 'false dilemma'. The 'horns of a dilemma' description has modern adherents as well:

"One horn of this dilemma is he argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it." —Paul Russell: Freedom and Moral Sentiment, p. 14

Martin Fischer also uses the 'horns of a dilemma' description, calling the two horns the 'deterministic' horn and the 'indeterministic' horn. The deterministic horn is the belief that "causal determinism implies that we never have the freedom to do other than we actually do". The indeterministic horn is the belief that "if causal indeterminism is true, then an agent's choices are--in a sense to be specified--purely a matter of luck." But what Fischer actually discusses is whether these two 'horns' preclude attribution of responsibility to an agent, regardless of one's choice between them. In other words, the interest in the 'horns' is not which horn to choose (which doesn't matter a whit), but the dilemma is that whichever horn is chosen it appears we must deny agent responsibility. Fischer goes on to suggest that the argument against allowance of agency has a similar structure regardless of which 'horn' is selected. There is no dilemma involved in choosing between them, but only in choosing either one, no matter which.

Moral responsibility

The older formulation in terms of 'fate' predates the Stoics and their major apologist Chrysippus. In a critique of Chrysippus, Plutarch proposed that responsibility implied humans had a possible influence over events, and the 'possible' necessarily must be able to occur, and cannot be 'possible' if fate denies its occurrence. The conclusion is that if 'fate' exists, then at least it is not invincible. This division into the fated and the unfated persists to this day.

In an address titled The dilemma of determinism in 1884, William James suggested that "A common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free‐will controversy". James formulated the implications of the 'dilemma of determinism' for moral responsibility like this:

1. Either causal determinism is true, or it is false.

2. If it is true, then I am compelled to act as I do, and am not morally responsible for my actions.

3. If it is false, then how I act is random, and I am again not morally responsible for my acts.

Therefore,

4. I am not morally responsible for my actions.

This syllogism is sometimes called the classical formulation of the free will problem.

James went on to argue that this syllogism argues against acceptance of the dilemma, because moral responsibility is a fact of life that cannot be abandoned. Just as did Plutarch, James posited that events fall into two groups: the causally determined and the rest.

"I myself believe that all the magnificent achievements of mathematical and physical science — our doctrines of evolution, of uniformity of law, and the rest — proceed from our indomitable desire to cast the world into a more rational shape in our minds than the shape into which it is thrown there by the crude order of our experience. The world has shown itself, to a great extent, plastic to this demand of ours for rationality. How much further it will show itself plastic no one can say...If a certain formula for expressing the nature of the world violtates my moral demand, I shall feel as free to to throw it overboard, or at least to doubt it, as if it disappointed my demand of uniformity of sequence...The principle of causality, for example, — what is it but a postulate, an empty name covering a demand that the sequence of events...manifest a deeper kind of belonging of one thing with another than the mere arbitrary juxtaposition which now phenomenally appears?" —William James: The Will to Believe, p. 147

In short, if forced to choose between determinism and morality, James would sacrifice the first.

Steven Pinker also has made a division:

"The faculty with which we ponder the world has no ability to peer inside itself or our other faculties to see what makes them tick.":

—Steven Pinker: How the Mind Works, p. 4

"Science is guaranteed to appear to eat eat away at the will, regardless of what it finds, because the scientific mode of explanation cannot accommodate the mysterious notion of uncaused causation that undermines the will. If scientists wanted to show people had free will, what would they look for? Some random neural event that the rest of the brain amplifies into a signal triggering behavior? But a random event does not fit the concept of free will any more than a lawful one does, and could not serve as the long-sought locus of moral responsibility.

"Either we dispense with all morality as an unscientific superstition, or we find a way to reconcile causation...with responsibility and free will." "Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by recognizing them as separate can we have them both."

—Steven Pinker: How the Mind Works, pp. 54 -55

A similar division between the scientific or 'theoretical' explanation of the behavior of objects and the arena of human decision is proposed by Bok:

"The word 'determined' is here deliberately ambiguous...Theoretical reason is concerned to provide causal explanations of events. If we interpret claims about the ways in which something is determined as theoretical claims, we must interpret 'determined' as 'caused', since causation is the type of determination to which theoretical explanations appeal...the claim that persons are free while objects are not must mean that there is some difference in kind between the causes of our choices and actions and those of the behavior of other objects...As long as we regard ourselves as objects of theoretical reasoning...we will be unable to resolve the problem of freedom of the will."

—Hilary Bok: Freedom and Responsibility, pp.199-203

In effect, these philosophers are attacking a position that is sometimes called the mind-brain identity hypothesis, the idea that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. Such explanations that separate moral responsibility and the intuitive experience of free will from the domain of the 'laws of nature' are not universally accepted. There are philosophers that attempt to leave human decision making within the realm of scientific explanation, but claim that moral responsibility does not actually require the ability to enforce our decisions, which remain determined by natural law. This position was expressed by Zeno:

"The story goes that Zeno was flogging a slave for stealing. “I was fated to steal”, said the slave. “And to be flogged”, was Zeno's reply"

—Anthony Gottlieb: The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, p. 317

Still others deny that humans have any capacity to make decisions at all, and the impression that we can is simply illusory.