Is Belief in Free Will Obsolete? (Pt. III)

In yesterday's post we looked at an argument made by philosopher Stephen Cave in an article in The Atlantic wherein he assumes that libertarian free will is an illusion.

Picking up where yesterday's post left off, Cave next addresses the human and social consequences of a widespread belief in the truth of determinism. They're not good:

Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency....This development raises uncomfortable — and increasingly non-theoretical — questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

Some philosophers have suggested that given the consequences of living consistently with an awareness of the truth of determinism that the philosophical elites ought (strange word in this context) to deceive the masses and just not tell them about it. The elites should foist upon the public a kind of Platonic Noble Lie.

Cave, however, demurs:

[F]ew scholars are comfortable suggesting that people ought to believe an outright lie. Advocating the perpetuation of untruths would breach their integrity and violate a principle that philosophers have long held dear: the Platonic hope that the true and the good go hand in hand.

This is a strange reaction, it seems, for if determinism is true, why should scholars be uncomfortable promoting a lie? What would make such a tactic morally wrong if their decision to employ it was actually compelled by their environment or their genes?

Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has wrestled with this dilemma throughout his career and come to a painful conclusion: “We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth” about free will.

Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. The idea of determinism, and the facts supporting it, must be kept confined within the ivory tower.

There's something very odd about a metaphysical view - physicalism - the implications of which are so destructive that they can't be shared even among many of those who accept the view. If a belief is such that one cannot live with it consistently there's probably something deeply wrong with the belief.

Physicalism, however, does entail determinism and as Cave points out in his essay, the consequences of determinism are bleak. Here are a few other consequences of determinism:

• Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are never deserved since these assume that the recipient could have acted otherwise than he or she did act.
• There are no moral obligations, no moral right and wrong, since morality is contingent upon uncompelled free choice.
• There's no human dignity since dignity is predicated on the ability to make significant choices.
• If it's true one's belief that it's true is determined by many factors which have nothing to do with its truth value.

It's hard to see how people could live with a belief which has these consequences without falling into nihilism and despair. Yet that's where physicalism - and the closely related views called naturalism and materialism - lead.

Philosopher John Searle offers an antidote to the determinism described by Cave in this Closer to the Truth interview: