Making a Case for Hardcore Determinism, and My Next Tattoo
By Arlo Eisenberg
“Antisocial” tattoo by Baby Ray of Spotlight Tattoo in Los Angeles, California, circa late 90s.
ANTISOCIAL
There is a tattoo on my back, stretching from shoulder to shoulder, that reads, “antisocial.” I had a friend who worked at a renowned tattoo shop in LA, Spotlight Tattoo, and I got the antisocial banner kind of impulsively one night while hanging out there. This was back in my early twenties when I had a shaved head and was touring the world as a pro skater. Now that I am in my forties with a job, a kid, and a household pet (I guess I’m a cat person) I don’t think that the sentiment has aged particularly well—it feels kind of like being a middle-aged man in a high school parking lot smoking a pack of Camel cigarettes and flipping off the principal.
I’ve collected many more tattoos since then but the antisocial banner still stands out, not just because of the heavy-handed angstiness, but also because after all these years it is still surrounded by so much empty space. My arms, chest, stomach, and sides have all more or less filled up with ink in the decades since getting the antisocial tattoo but my back remains stark, mostly because finishing it has always seemed like such a daunting task that I’ve never known where to start.
Whereas the antisocial tattoo was an impulsive and testosterone-addled attempt to be provocative and to broadcast some vague notion of defiance or discontent to the world (“fuck you, principal!”), all of the tattoos I’ve collected since then have benefited from a more mindful process and generally coalesce around the themes of science and Skepticism.
The back is prime tattoo real estate and for my back tattoo I’ve felt the pressure to come up with an idea that was big enough to warrant the placement. Fortunately, thanks to years of procrastination, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and I always keep coming back to the same idea, inspired by something Sam Harris wrote in his book, Free Will:
You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.
Sam Harris holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He has written five New York Times bestsellers including The End of Faith and The Moral Landscape. He is one of my favorite authors.
I consulted with my tattoo artist and provided a down payment to start the drawing. Although fairly committed to the Sam Harris concept at this point, I am still working my way through a couple of arguments whose stakes could dramatically impact the wisdom (or not) of getting the Sam Harris-inspired tattoo.
One of the arguments is personal and ongoing, with a close friend of mine. Steven, a fellow-Skeptic, and also a fan of Sam Harris, thinks I am over-committing to a position, and good Skeptics, as he is wont to point out, do not commit to positions. Steven does not think I should get the tattoo.
The other argument is taking place today among scientists and philosophers. At stake is the very act of choosing; whether or not we are free to make choices at all. It is the question of free will. Am I really free to choose whether or not to get a tattoo? Is there really any such thing as a free choice? Does free will exist?
The tattoo will be big. Very big. And permanent. So, the implications of these arguments are not trivial. And I suppose the question of whether or not we have free will is of some consequence as well.
Drawing for back tattoo done by Dominik Cichowski of Davis Street Tattoo, Dallas, Texas.
EVIL GENIUS
My friend Steven and I both collect tattoos with scientific or Skeptical themes. I have a tattoo across my chest inspired by an etching that appears in Copernicus’s seminal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Copernicus, using math and observation, and in defiance of religious orthodoxy, removed the Earth from the center of the universe and helped ignite the Scientific Revolution. On my stomach there is a tattoo of a black swan; it is a nod to Karl Popper’s famous example of falsifiability.
Steven has tattoos inspired by Darwin, Occam’s Razor, and Hypatia of Alexandria on his legs. On his knee, Steven has a tattoo of a demon with the words, “Evil Genius” inscribed in banners wrapping around the demon’s horns.
Rene Descartes was a seventeenth-century philosopher who conjured the evil genius as part of a thought experiment, to cast doubt on how we perceive reality. Descartes described the evil genius as a demon of "utmost power and cunning” that “has employed all his energies in order to deceive me;" a demon with so much power that he could make us question the very nature of reality. Basically, the seventeenth-century equivalent of the obligatory stoner refrain, “Dude, what if we’re living in a simulation?”
“Evil Genius” tattoo.
Without knowing the context, Steven worries that instead of recognizing his knee tattoo for what it is, an homage to one of Descartes’ most influential philosophical concepts, observers will instead assume that the inscription is self-referential and that Steven simply fancies himself an evil genius.
Steven and I agree on a lot, especially when it comes to science and Skepticism. But Steven objects to the subject of my “storm” tattoo on the grounds that it represents a position—namely that free will does not exist. As Skeptics, we are fond of saying that we care more about the process than the position. In Steven’s estimation, a tattoo that celebrates neither the process nor the history of science, but instead endorses a position (that free will does not exist), makes for a poor Skeptic tattoo.
The position that Sam Harris advocates for in his book, Free Will, and elsewhere, is a “hard” form of determinism that does not allow for free will. It states that every choice we make is determined by preceding causes. As Harris describes it, “unconscious neural events determine our thoughts and actions—and are themselves caused by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware.” According to Harris, “we do not have the freedom we think we have.” There is no free will.
But this is far from settled science. Steven’s objection to my tattoo—to hitching myself to Sam Harris’s brand of hard determinism—is further rankled by the fact that there are many very smart, very reasonable people who disagree with Harris’s position. In fact, in a survey taken of professional philosophers in 2020, around 75 percent accepted some form of free will, and only around 10 percent leaned toward Harris’s brand of hard determinism.
Even within the Skeptic community there is not a consensus. Daniel Dennett is a prominent philosopher and cognitive scientist who gave a keynote address at a Skeptic conference that both Steven and I attended several years before the pandemic. Dennett advocates for a form of determinism that is compatible with free will called “compatibilism.” Dennett believes in free will, and he is not alone.
To be clear, Steven and I do not disagree about determinism. Steven is a hard-core determinist himself. He is the one who first turned me on to Sam Harris’s thoughts on the subject. Steven and I agree that the arguments for determinism best comport with all of the available evidence, and we agree that determinism leaves no room for free will. But as a matter of principle, Steven is uncomfortable with the thought of committing to a position—a controversial position, no less—for which there is not yet a clear consensus and for which good arguments are still being made on both sides.
The only thing that Steven enjoys more than trying to talk me out of getting my tattoo is imagining the ways that I might live to regret it. If I can’t be talked out of my folly, Steven’s thinking goes, then I should at least be punished for going through with it. There should be some price to pay for violating the edict that good Skeptics don’t stake themselves to positions.
My daughter graduated from high school in the top 5 percent of her class with a GPA over 100. During her senior year of high school she participated in an internship at a university neuroscience lab. She enjoyed the experience so much that she chose to go on to study neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin.
To most people this would be great news, but to Steven it is merely fodder for his Machiavellian plot. In Steven’s twisted fantasy, my daughter would go on to graduate from college, get her doctorate, establish a career as a successful neuroscientist, and then eventually go on to make a critical discovery validating free will, and, more crucially for Steven, invalidating Harris’s determined universe—and my tattoo along with it.
In Steven’s fantasy, I would spend the rest of my days rueing my blunder, regretting the abomination on my back. My miserable fate forever tied to the landmark achievement of the very person I care most about in the world; my greatest regret, inextricably—and eternally—linked to my greatest joy.
Admittedly, there is an elegance to Steven’s scheme; a cunning example of just deserts. It is a plot so cleverly conceived and so singularly diabolical that one could be excused for assuming that it was, in fact, the work of an evil genius.
NO REGRETS
I pride myself on being a good Skeptic, despite what Steven may think. I don’t get too attached to positions. I remain open to new (and better) evidence. And I try to maintain intellectual humility. And yet there is no question that my back tattoo could be viewed as a monumental exercise in hubris and a textbook example of Dunning-Kruger.
People much smarter than me, and much more knowledgeable on the topic, do NOT agree that free will is merely an illusion. People like the philosopher Daniel Dennett, and the professor, and Fellow of the British Academy, Dr. Christian List, and even the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Dr. Michael Shermer are all compatibilists, they all believe that determinism is compatible with some form of free will.
Maybe Steven is right to question my judgment. If the jury is still out on free will—if so many smart people that I respect believe that it exists—how can I possibly justify getting a tattoo that disputes it? What am I thinking?
Falsifiability is a defining feature of scientific inquiry, and the pursuit of conflicting, or disconfirming evidence is one of the hallmarks of good Skepticism. In an attempt to forestall the prophecy of Steven’s evil genius, and in the spirit of good Skepticism (and Karl Popper!), I will attempt to falsify the central premise underlying the storm tattoo, namely that we live in a purely deterministic universe and that (as a consequence) free will does not exist. I will consider the best arguments in defense of free will, from Dennett, Christian List, Shermer and others. I will seek out the best arguments against Sam Harris’s position of hard determinism.
There is always the possibility that my inability to understand the best arguments for compatibilism will reflect my own limitations, more than the limitations of the arguments themselves (this is a real possibility, and it happens all the time), but I will make every effort to be fair and unbiased. In addition to wanting to get the facts right, I also have a genuine interest in not wanting to get a shitty tattoo that I will regret for the rest of my life.
No Regerts.
THE FREE WILL WE NEED
The arguments for (and against) free will can generally be divided into two categories: empirical and philosophical. Determinists like Sam Harris are attempting to answer the question of free will empirically, through observation and evidence; utilizing so-called “hard” sciences like physics and neuroscience. Compatibilists, like Daniel Dennett, are focused on a broader philosophical discussion of moral responsibility, of which free will is seen as a necessary component.
Even though it sounds like a big question, the kind of question that fuels hours of late-night coffee house conversations—DOES FREE WILL EXIST?—the truth is, that from an empirical point of view, the consensus is pretty uncontroversial and the answer is surprisingly simple.
Free will does not exist.
Free Will by Sam Harris.
It seems outrageous that it should be this simple. But it really is an empirical question. And the science is clear.
Actions cannot precede their antecedent causes. Every event is determined by preceding events. You can’t have it any other way without breaking the laws of physics. We live in a deterministic universe.
When you stop to think about it, all of your thoughts and actions have to originate somewhere. If you trace the chain of events back far enough, you will invariably encounter a point outside of your awareness. The genesis of your “will,” to think or act, has to occur somewhere beyond your control. It can’t happen any other way. You simply cannot will a thought into existence. You cannot tell yourself to think a thought.
Paraphrasing Sam Harris, our thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. As the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” This view is supported by our best understandings of physics and neuroscience, and is fairly uncontroversial. It is even accepted by most compatibilists.
The question of moral responsibility is much harder to resolve. It descends from a long line of philosophical contemplation dating back millenia. The ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, appearing just one generation after Aristotle, wrote:
...our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach.
To this day the concept of moral responsibility underlies most philosophical inquiry. Any meaningful discussion of praise, blame, reward, or punishment begins with a presumption of agency. Entire edifices of justice and morality are built upon the simple premise that we are responsible for our actions.
Without the ability to make free, rational choices moral responsibility loses its meaning. The foundation for accountability disappears. If you take away free will, you take away moral responsibility with it. And much of what we know about the human condition. It is for good reason that philosophers are so reluctant to give up on free will. Even if free will doesn’t exist, we still kind of need it to.
OF TODDLERS AND TATTOOS
By every measure getting a back tattoo is a major investment. It could take somewhere in the range of 30-40 hours to complete (spread out over multiple sessions, typically around 3-4 hours each). It will cost thousands of dollars. And it will be the single biggest tattoo I ever get.
The tattoo will require a significant investment in time, money, and pain. There is a lot of incentive to make sure that it is done right. I chose my tattoo artist, Dominik Cichowski, not just because I believe he will do a good job, which I do, but also because I know I can trust him with my investment. But what does it mean, exactly, to trust my tattoo artist?
I trust my tattoo artist because he is both qualified to do the work—he is competent—and because I can count on him to make good decisions—he is responsible. I trust that Dominik will lay down clean lines, that he will not hurt me (more than necessary), and that he will work cleanly and efficiently. I also trust that he will exercise good judgment; he won’t be too drunk, too tired, or too distracted to give me a good tattoo. The ability to discern degrees of competence and responsibility is critical to how we assign trust and by extension, accountability.
Dominik Cichowski giving a tattoo at Davis Street Tattoo, Dallas, Texas.
When my daughter was a toddler I would discipline her for misbehaving. She was learning responsibility. But she did not yet possess it. I put her in time-out. I held her accountable for her actions, but she was not yet culpable for them. The concept of trust was not yet in play. She was not competent at anything and she lacked the ability to exercise good judgment.
Now that my daughter is a teenager she knows right from wrong. She can be held accountable for her actions. I can trust her—with my car, for instance. Responsibility is ascribed differently to toddlers than it is to teenagers, or to adults, or even to animals (or tattoo artists). There is a reason that neither toddlers nor chimpanzees ever stand trial. They cannot be convicted of crimes. It would be absurd. Neither is considered to have a sophisticated enough understanding of their actions or of their consequences to be held accountable. So what then would it mean to trust them? What moral responsibility do they possess?
What separates toddlers and chimps from my teenage daughter and tattoo artists is the ability to make free, rational choices. Without the freedom to make choices, and the ability to exercise good (or poor) judgment, the concept of moral responsibility starts to break down. Without some form of free will, the moral differences between groups—between toddlers and teenagers and tattoo artists—becomes meaningless. This is what philosophers mean when they say that free will is a necessary condition of moral responsibility.
In a conversation with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett describes two different ways of thinking about free will, “one is that it is incompatible with determinism,” which we discussed above—free will cannot exist in a causal universe—“and the other is that it is the basis of moral responsibility.”
To understand the bugaboo with free will you have to understand the philosophers who are defending it, and you have to understand where they are coming from. Dennett himself tells us, unequivocally, that the basis of moral responsibility is the important issue, it’s “the variety of free will worth wanting,” he says, “the other one’s a throwaway.”
The existence of free will is simply not the question that compatibilists, like Daniel Dennett, care about, at least not in the way that determinists, like Sam Harris, care about it. What interests compatibilists is the question of moral responsibility.
From The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. [Emphasis mine]
Philosopher Daniel Dennett.
THE BABY IS THE BATHWATER
We don’t think this variety of free will is an illusion at all, but rather a robust feature of our psychology and a reliable part of the foundations of morality, law and society. Harris, we think, is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
It should be clear by now that compatibilists are not making a defense of free will. At least not a very full-throated one. In the quote above, Daniel Dennett once again makes clear that what compatibilists are defending is moral responsibility, the “variety of free will worth wanting.” Free will is merely a means to an end. A necessary condition of moral responsibility.
Whereas determinists are concerned with how we make choices—what is happening at the neurological level, for instance—compatibilists are primarily concerned with why we make choices, about our motivations and reasoning, and about the moral and philosophical implications.
Compatibilists do not share the determinists enthusiasm for pulling back the curtain on free will to investigate the mechanistic, physical, neurological underpinnings of human behavior. In fact, it seems the only reason compatibilists engage with determinists at all on the existence of free will is because determinists, like Harris, keep insisting upon it. Remember, this is not the variety of free will that compatibilists even care about.
Nevertheless, once engaged, and dragged onto the turf of hard determinism, compatibilists are forced into the very difficult (and awkward) position of trying to fit the square peg of free will, which they have deemed a necessary condition of moral responsibility, through the round hole of determinism—a position they ostensibly accept, but that does not allow for free will (even though they have deemed it a necessary condition??). This stupefying conundrum, impossible as it is to get your head around, is essentially the compatibilists’ position, and lies at the heart of the schism between Harris and Dennett.
Compatibilists offer assurances that they don’t want to invoke anything magical or mysterious to explain free will, as in Dennett’s quote below:
I agree with you, that magic doesn’t exist, and if we’re gonna tie free will to that, I would say, “No, free will doesn’t exist.”
Yet, this is exactly the corner that compatibilists paint themselves into. Constrained by a philosophical framework that considers free will a necessary condition, but confronted by a reality that does not permit free will to exist, compatibilist philosophers are forced to twist and contort themselves into impossible knots.
In his conversation with Sam Harris, for example, attempting to carve out some wiggle room for free will, Daniel Dennett speculates about physics and neuroscience, when he muses about “micro” and “macro” levels of cognition:
Mozart says that, “These tunes come to me and I write them down,” but he claims authorship for them, and so he should. Why should he? Well, because nobody else wrote them, and they were processes in his brain, and he controls them to some degree. He controls them not at the micro-level—he controls them at a temporally macro-level.
Similarly, Dr. Christian List attempts an end-run around causality to make room for free will by invoking different “levels of description.” In his conversation with Michael Shermer List makes a distinction between the “agential level,” where presumably, free will can exist, and the “physical level,” where he recognizes it cannot:
We can look at human beings either as biophysical systems, which consist of a very large number of atoms and molecules, where all sorts of chemical, biological mechanisms take place...But then there’s another way in which we can look at human beings...as intentional agents, agents with goals and purposes...If we look at human beings in the first way then we are adopting what is in effect a physical level of description, or maybe a neuroscientific, or physiological level of description. If we look at human beings in this other way, as agents, then we are adopting an agential level of description or a psychological level of description.
There is something attractive about this line of reasoning, at least superficially—the feeling that there are important differences between these levels. But this is not really saying anything new. Psychology and neuroscience already exist as separate disciplines. We recognize that different approaches to the brain are appropriate in different situations. You wouldn’t visit your psychologist to remove a brain tumor and you probably wouldn’t visit a neurosurgeon to discuss your failing relationship (at least not yet). But suggesting that there is a level of understanding that transcends the laws of physics goes too far. List continues:
So the bottom line of my argument is that indeterminism at the level of agency or psychology can perfectly coexist with determinism at the level of fundamental physics.
No. It can’t. Indeterminism at the level of agency is nonsense, it is the professor pointing at “then a miracle occurs” in the famous cartoon. Compatibilists are caught in a quandary of their own making—reduced to a kind of sophistry—invoking magic and miracles to get out of their conundrums. List and Dennett are trapped in a philosophical maze of circular reasoning.
“I think you should be more explicit here in step 2.”
We live in a causal universe. Compatibilists acknowledge this. There is no reason to doubt it. There have not been any credible arguments to challenge it. Dennett’s micro and macro levels, and List’s levels of description both fall well short of the task. And yet, rather than concede to the evidence, and abandon the rejected hypothesis of free will altogether, compatibilists have dug their heels in, and “reasoned” their way into a position that compels them to defend the indefensible. Their arguments have become impossibly twisted, like a Penrose triangle of special pleading.
It is not just that compatibilists are reluctant to reject the hypothesis of free will, they are committed to a premise that weaves free will into their very conception of moral responsibility.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.
It is no wonder Sam Harris gets the feeling he and Daniel Dennett are always talking past each other. Free will, despite being discarded by determinism, was enshrined by compatibilists as a necessary condition of moral responsibility! Somehow, the very thing that a causal universe says cannot exist has become an indispensable pillar in the compatibilists’ philosophical framework.
Harris hasn’t thrown the baby out with the bath water, as Dennett claims. The free will of compatibilism, Dennet’s baby, is the hypothesis that is rejected by determinism.
The baby is the bathwater!
The Penrose triangle is an impossible shape.
WHY PHILOSOPHERS BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS
Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, wrote a book called, Why People Believe Weird Things, to which he added a chapter in subsequent editions titled, Why Smart People Believe Weird Things. The premise of the chapter is summarized by Shermer in the following quote:
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
In addition to being great at defending their beliefs, philosophers possess a combination of erudition and authority that provides a powerful prophylactic against criticism. Dennett unsheathes this confidence in his essay, Reflections on Free Will, when he critiques Harris’s book:
The book [Free Will] is, thus, valuable as a compact and compelling expression of an opinion widely shared by eminent scientists these days. It is also valuable, as I will show, as a veritable museum of mistakes, none of them new and all of them seductive—alluring enough to lull the critical faculties of this host of brilliant thinkers who do not make a profession of thinking about free will.
Dennett makes no bones about distinguishing “brilliant thinkers” (among whom Dennett goes on to list Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, and Albert Einstein, no less) from philosophers who make their profession “thinking about free will.” The implication is clear, that the question of free will remains a metaphysical one, solidly in the domain of philosophy, and that scientists should back off and leave the problem to the experts. Seemingly unmoved by advances in psychology, physics, biology, and neuroscience, Dennett insists that philosophers are still the most qualified experts to tackle the problem of free will.
When credible arguments, from credible experts (in relevant fields!) are flippantly dismissed, confidence devolves into arrogance, and the chasm between open inquiry and countervailing criticism widens. The entire philosophical foundation of compatibilism is built upon a faulty premise. A misguided notion, entrenched within a culture of confidence that shields it from credible critique. Free will cannot be the basis of moral responsibility. Free will does not exist. Philosophers are bamboozled, both by the artfulness of their own arguments, and by an overconfidence in their own abilities.
Instead of being free to bring the full weight of their cognitive abilities to bear upon the problem of moral responsibility and free will, philosophers are undermined by their arrogance, blind to the fatal flaws in their arguments. Instead of thinking about alternatives to free will, or other ways to solve the problem of moral responsibility in a determined universe, philosophers like Dennett and List, confident in their reasoning, and impervious to criticism, remain committed to the failed hypothesis of free will.
Their confidence, however well earned, when unchecked, robs them of the opportunity to consider the problem of free will fully, and without bias. Arrogance diverts their full, and considerable, cognitive abilities away from promising avenues of investigation, and instead leads them down blind alleys, defiantly (but skillfully) defending their weird notions.
ON THE SPECTRUM
I was standing in the tattoo shop, with my shirt off, so that Dominik could trace my back. He needed the outline to create his sketch for the tattoo. “Is anyone else burning up in here?” Dominik asked, addressing no one in particular. The owner of the shop shot back from across the room that the thermostat was set to 73 degrees. Dominik, pressing the yellow tracing paper to my back, and making quick strokes with his Sharpie, explained to me that the thermostat is located in a back corner of the shop. He said when the sun starts shining through all of the windows at the front of the shop the whole studio heats up, and it can take a long time before the thermostat makes any adjustments.
Sharpies are perfect for tracing large areas, and Dominik’s magenta Sharpie was no exception, laying down long, bold strokes to establish the boundaries for his sketch. But the permanent marker, useful as it was for tracing, added nothing to our conversation about the temperature in the room. Sharpies do not have opinions about room temperature, or thermostats—or anything for that matter. Borrowing from the language of philosopher Dr. Christian List, Sharpies do not have goals or motivations; Sharpies are not goal-driven “intentional agents.”
Dominik, on the other hand, who moved to the U.S. from Poland when he was seven years old, is full of opinions; ask him about cycling shorts, or how much hairdressers should charge for their services. According to Dominic, the tattoo studio had gotten way too “comfortable.” Whereas I, standing there with my shirt off, and unreasonably sensitive to the cold, found the moderate temperature in the studio quite nice. Although Dominik and I disagreed about the preferred state of our environment, there is no disagreement about our ability as humans, to form mental models, and to have preferences and the capacity to act on them. According to List, this leaves no doubt that humans are intentional agents:
The simplest definition of an intentional agent is an entity which has some representations of its environment. Secondly, it has some motivations as to what it would like to achieve in the environment. And then finally it has a capacity to interact systematically with its environment in pursuit of its motivational state, and in line with its representational state.
Sharpies, and other inanimate objects, like rocks and water bottles, lacking goals and motivations, are clearly not intentional agents within this model, whereas humans, like Dominik and me, with all of our cognitive complexity and sophistication (at least compared to Sharpies), clearly are. But what about the thermostat at the back of the shop? Are thermostats intentional agents?
Thermostats form models of their environments, via sensors. They have goals—of reaching desired temperatures—via their settings. And they have the ability to interact with their environment (in the pursuit of their goals) by activating the heating or air. So, are thermostats like Sharpies? Or is there room for thermostats, alongside Dominik and me, somewhere on the spectrum of intentional agents?
Philosopher Dr. Christian List.
In his conversation with Michael Shermer on the Science Salon podcast, List concedes that thermostats are in fact, serviceable, if rudimentary, examples of intentional agents. He claims to have “no problem saying that intentional agents come in many different shapes, sizes, and forms, and can display different levels of cognitive complexity and sophistication.”
But this isn’t very satisfying. Thermostats do not have desires and motivations. They have chips and sensors. The thermostat in the tattoo shop doesn’t “want” the studio to be cooler, not in the same way Dominik wants for it to be cooler. The thermostat simply functions according to its programming—it does not respond to its motivations, it responds to its code. Any definition of an intentional agent that is broad enough to include both humans and thermostats must be too broad to be meaningful—or useful. How can any model simple enough to describe a thermostat be adequate to describe a human?
Christian List appeared to address this concern in his conversation with Shermer, when he went on to clarify his statement, backtracking somewhat from his position that thermostats are intentional agents:
It is, nonetheless, a little bit of a stretch to call this [thermostat] an agent, because viewing that simple system as an intentional agent is not really explanatorily useful, or in any way indispensable for science. We have got a much simpler account of how thermostats function. We don’t need to refer to beliefs, desires, or rational action to think about the thermostat. But when we move to more complex systems, like nonhuman animals, and paradigmatically, like human beings, then for many explanatory purposes viewing those entities or organisms as intentional agents becomes completely indispensable.
Intentional agency is a prerequisite to free will, according to List, and only intentional agents can be candidates for free will. This provides even more incentive for List to distance himself from his initial claim that thermostats are intentional agents, lest he wind up defending the absurd notion that thermostats possess free will.
Despite List’s cold feet, a spectrum with thermostats at one end and humans at the other is perfectly reasonable. List’s criteria for the spectrum are clear and unobjectionable; an intentional agent possesses three qualities:
some kind of representation of its environment
goals or motivations
an ability to interact with its environment (in pursuit of its goals)
Thermostats and humans both utilize models of their environments, they operate according to goals (and/or motivations), and they are both able to interact with their environments in pursuit of their goals. The spectrum is broad enough to include varying degrees of sophistication, from thermostats, to toddlers, to chimpanzees, to teenagers, to tattoo artists. And yet the spectrum is precise enough that it excludes inanimate objects like Sharpies and water bottles. That is to say, the spectrum is descriptive and useful.
And then the muddling bathwater of compatibilism starts to seep in. Uncomfortable with a set of criteria simple enough to describe both thermostats and humans, and a spectrum broad enough to accommodate them, List begins equivocating. Either unwilling or unable to let go of the seductive folk intuition that there must be something important that separates humans from thermostats, List abandons the straightforward “model/goals/action” criteria and instead interjects value-laden terms like “beliefs” and “desires.”
The fog of free will makes it hard to see the arguments right beneath their noses. The gravity exerted by the massive black hole at the center of the compatibilist position pulls otherwise promising ideas off course. The premise that free will exists and that it is a necessary feature of moral responsibility presents a major problem for List and other compatibilists. If humans are just more complex versions of thermostats, occupying a distant end along the same spectrum, then you never get to free will, and you never get to moral responsibility. This is why List balked at the idea of a thermostat being an intentional agent, even after he laid out the criteria, and succinctly made the argument that thermostats are, in fact, intentional agents. The very term List uses to label “intentional agency” belies his biases. Words like “agency” and “intention” presume the existence of free will. This is an example of the damage that is done to philosophers trapped in a paradigm built upon a faulty premise.
Once you get on the merry-go-round of circular reasoning, it is hard to get off.
ALL THE WAY DOWN
To illustrate how our actions are governed by conditions and causes outside of our control Sam Harris recounts in his conversation with Daniel Dennett the example of Charles Whitman, the former marine who stabbed his wife and mother to death the night before shooting and killing thirteen people from the Main Building tower at the University of Texas. In a suicide note, Whitman complained of uncontrollable violent impulses, and, suspecting that something was not right, requested that an autopsy be performed on his brain after his death. Sure enough, a tumor, about the size of a nickel, was found to be compressing his amygdala—the region of the brain associated with the emotional regulation of fear and aggression.
University of Texas sniper Charles Whitman.
Harris goes on to make the point that Whitman’s tumor is simply a dramatic example of what is true for all of us. We are no more able to control how our neurophysiology affects our behavior than Charles Whitman was able to control how his brain tumor affected his. “It is brain tumors all the way down,” as Harris says. However we view Whitman’s culpability, in light of his tumor, is how all behavior should be viewed. If Whitman was not responsible, then no one is responsible.
Needless to say, this presents a real challenge for moral responsibility. This is why compatibilists like Dennett and List work so hard to defend agency and freedom against the encroachment of determinism.
Dennett and List contend that we are intentional agents—that we have motivations and goals and the ability to act on them. Dennett imagines a “responsible adult” as being someone endowed with their full range of freedoms:
Is it not mainly true beliefs, a well-ordered set of desires, the cognitive adroitness to change one’s attention, to change one’s mind, to be moved by reasons—the capacity to listen to reasons, the capacity for some self-control? These things all come in degrees, but our model of a responsible adult, someone you would trust, someone you would make a promise to—or that you’d accept a promise from—is someone with all those degrees of freedom and control of them.
In Dennett’s view, Whitman’s ability to exercise his full range of freedoms was simply compromised. His “degrees of freedom” were limited by his tumor.
Some things have basically no degrees of freedom, like that rock over there, and some things, like you and me, have uncountably many degrees of freedom because of the versatility of our minds...What you want, if you’ve got free will, is the capacity—and it’ll never be perfect—to respond to the circumstances with all the degrees of freedom you need, to do what you think would be really the right thing to do.
Dennett likens Whitman’s condition to a faulty chess program, where the king’s degrees of freedom have been limited by some poorly written code:
the king could only move forward or back or left or right, like a rook, and it could not move diagonally; and this was somehow hidden in it so that it just never even considered diagonal moves...it’s missing a very important degree of freedom…
Both Dennett and List come tantalizingly close to presenting coherent models of behavior that are logically consistent, and that are explanatorily useful in their own right, without requiring any special appeals to agency or free will. But then Dennett and List are both undone by their commitment to the philosophical framework of compatibilism.
Dennett introduces his chess program as a metaphor to help illustrate his degrees of freedom. But he fails to recognize the more salient point, certainly for a discussion about free will, that the king can only ever act according to its programming.
It is the same thing with Christian List. His spectrum, with thermostats at one end, and humans at the other, is actually quite good. That is, as long as you don’t bog it down with muddling, incoherent concepts like “agency,” and “intentions.”
If List was providing a spectrum for things that “act according to their programming,” as laid out in the model/goals/action model, instead of attempting to define “intentional agency,” he would be onto something. On this scale, you could include thermostats and chess programs, and even things with increasingly complex, and sophisticated programs like toddlers and chimpanzees. And you would never have to struggle with fuzzy lines of demarcation trying to guess where the miracle of “free will” occurs. We all simply act according to our programming: the thermostat adjusts the temperature, the chess program moves its pieces, and the complex cognitive programming of human adults allows us to experience pride and shame, respond to incentives and deterrents, and remember the past and anticipate the future. From humans to thermostats to tattoo artists it is programming all the way down.
YOU ARE THE STORM
Determinism dictates that you are not the conscious author of your thoughts. There is no “captain of the ship,” so to speak. “You are not controlling the storm,” as the quote goes. But you are unique, and your experiences are unique to you. You are the product of all of your influences, internal and external. Your genetics and your upbringing. Your brain and your environment. Your memories and your dispositions. Every moment is delivered to you by a causal chain of actions that happen outside of your awareness, and beyond your control—a cascading cacophony of prior causes that shower down upon every moment, delivering the completely unique experience that is you. “You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it.” You are shaped in every moment by your own unique maelstrom of biology and experiences. You are your influences (so, choose them wisely). You are the storm.
EPILOGUE
The history of science is filled with occasions where our understanding is updated by new and better information, often despite strong intuitions to the contrary. Copernicus used mathematics to update our understanding of the cosmos and removed the Earth from the center of the universe. Galileo demonstrated the power of empirical evidence to solve intractable problems and ushered in the scientific revolution. Darwin replaced miraculous stories of creation with a natural theory of evolution. In many ways, the history of science is the history of new insights bumping up against old intuitions, and eventually replacing them.
My friend Steven, the “Evil Genius,” objects to my tattoo on the grounds that it takes too strong a position on the debate between determinism and compatibilism—before the science has settled, or before there is a strong scientific consensus. Skeptics don’t stake themselves to positions, Steven warns us, lest the evidence change.
Yet Steven has no objection to any of my tattoos commemorating Darwin, or Galileo, or Copernicus. The understanding is that each of these figures, these titans of scientific history, represents far more than the sum of their findings. Through systematic, methodical observation they each uncovered insights that profoundly changed and improved our understanding of reality. And they defended these fledgling new realities against fierce accusations of malfeasance and heresy.
Even if my daughter fulfills Steven’s prophecy by going on to become a neuroscientist and confirming the existence of free will she will be operating within the same framework of systematic observation and experimentation that made the great discoveries of Galileo and Darwin possible.
My tattoo is not about the debate between compatibilism and determinism. It is not about whether free will exists or not. To Steven’s point, my tattoo is not about any particular position, it is about the process. It is about how we find answers to questions. It is about the power of science to reveal the true nature of reality.
The mysteries of the mind used to be obscured behind an impenetrable veil; hidden from serious scientific inquiry. Theologians and philosophers and many great thinkers through the ages attempted to fill in the gaps. But now, through extraordinary advancements in technology, and methodology, we are able to study the brain systematically, and empirically, its mysteries at last exposed to the full light of scientific scrutiny.
Even if Sam Harris’s metaphor of “The Storm” turns out to be inaccurate or my daughter discovers that free will is compatible with a deterministic universe, the fact remains that the only way we will gain any of these insights—with any confidence—is through the scientific process. Sam Harris’s storm represents more than a metaphor for determinism, it is a symbol of the shift from the philosophical, suppositional approach to understanding the mind to a modern, scientific, evidence-based approach.
We are charting a new map of the human mind based on empirical data. The study of the mind—like the study of the cosmos, and the study of the diversity of life on Earth before it—has, at last, moved out from the shadows of superstition, speculation, and dogma. We no longer have to rely on the conjecture of philosophers and theologians to understand the brain. That ship has already sailed.
Tattoo by Dominik Cichowski.
