I have decided to summarize my views on determinism, compiling various excerpts from message boards. There is no rational reason to believe that free will exists. There is just no evidence for such a thing. I am going to list a few arguments FOR free will and refute them one by one. First of all, let's look at the definition of free will:
"Free will is the ability to choose otherwise than one might have chosen."
Why should this matter, that one could have chosen otherwise? To me, this is completely irrelevant. Fact is, what's done is done. Free Willies claim that without choice, there can be NO moral responsibility. "Moral" is a key term here; so what's the difference between "moral responsibility" and "responsibility"? I have no idea. I can only assume that if one is morally responsible, he can be morally condemned.
What is moral condemnation? The act of shaming someone for something harmful they have done. Once they've been morally condemned, they could also receive punishment. I don't believe moral condemnation is a constructive thing to do. Usually it's people who've been shamed all their lives that become criminals. So further shaming them for their hamrful behavior would be like putting out a fire with more wood. Once a person is given the label "criminal", they start perceiving themselves as such. "I'm a bad person". It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now that they believe it, they can embrace their evil selves and just go on being mean with even less remorse; because hey, "it's just the way I am".
Free Willies believe in punishment. There can be no punishment without moral condemnation. That's why they need free will to exist in order to justify their irrational beliefs, caused by bad parenting and the like. The deterministic solution to crime is prevention and self-defense. You either prevent things or they happen. Free Willies cannot be content with this because they need Revenge. They are caught up in the Game where you either win or lose; and they can't stand being the losers. Free Willies love to talk about empathy, but when it comes to a criminal, they usually have none for him. That's because they like to assume a role, where they're the good guys, and the criminals are the bad guys. The eternal battle between Good & Evil - it's nothing more than a delusional game.
Under the same circumstances, different individuals make different choices. If Dick acts in a destructive way, compared to Jack, who would have acted differently in the same situation, we can positively claim that Dick's behavior was immoral. The question "Could Dick have chosen otherwise?" is irrelevant to the morality of his actions, and rather they're trying to label Dick "immoral", himself. The question "Compared to what?" is much more practical and constructive. Dick chose this, compared to Jack, who would have chosen that. My point being, free will is not a prerequisite for morality. A rock falls on your head and kills you. It doesn't matter if the rock wanted to do it, it's still responsible for your death.
Here is the quantum mechanics perspective: "Because randomness exists at a quantum level, there's a reason to believe that people make random choices, too." They so badly want to believe that a person could have chosen otherwise, that they come down to quantum mechanics. The problem with this claim is that randomness is the opposite of intentional, willful action. Free Willies are now contradicting themselves. If Dick made a bad choice at random, how can he be held "morally responsible" for it?
The most famous claim against determinism is the fatalistic one: "If the future is determined and won't change, why not just sit back and watch it unfold? Nothing you do can change the future, right?" My answer is: If you're predetermined to decide to sit back and watch the future unfold, that means you've got issues. Nothing's gonna happen unless you act upon it. Determinism is simply the claim that everything happens for a reason. You chose to do this, BECAUSE you were influenced by a variety of events. The latter CAUSED you to make this choice, which makes it predetermined. If you want to fight psychological causation, check out my article: Introducing Chaos.
Stefan Molyneux's argument is similar to the fatalistic one: he says, "In the past, people prayed to Gods to alter the weather - however, these gods do not exist, and the weather is merely the complicated and predetermined movement of atoms and energy. When people gave up the idea that the gods controlled the weather, they stopped "debating" the weather, or attempting to alter its behavior through words, prayers, supplications and arguments." That's an argument from ignorance. It does in no way prove the existence of free will, but rather justifies it as a tool of comfort and convenience. My response: When the tribe finds out there are no Gods, they'll stop praying, but they'll start searching for ways to scientifically influence the weather into changing towards their benefit, after discovering what causes it to change. Once you find all the factors that influence an action, it becomes predictable and susceptible to change.
I'm gonna finish this with a quote from PCRS: Many questions on human behavior have been explained by finding causes in the past of the human being in question. Yet there is still a lot of ignorance about what moves men. Some people have given this ignorance a name (free will), called it an explanation for the remaining unexplained behavior and defined it as virtuous. When confronted with the contradictions in their uncaused cause, they defend it vigorously, bull charging determinists, thinking that disproving determinism gives their named ignorance more credibility as an explanation for yet unexplained human behavior. Science however will keep nibbling away on ignorance, leaving less and less room for their named ignorance (free will). Ignorance is not virtue.
