For centuries, ethics and moral philosophy scholars have been pondering the question of the extent people should be held accountable when acting in a particular manner. In one of the last learning modules, the discussion was focused on determinism and the free will of a human being. On one side of the scale, there is an existential context that implies that people are subject to absolute freedom of will, holding them accountable for every action and its complication for the self and society. On the other side, however, there is the premise of determinism that implies people’s inability to take responsibility for any action due to the actions being a prerequisite of an antecedent action or experience (Blount et al., 2018). While every option seems rather extreme in the modern context, the primary question of this paper is to look into the problematics of applying determinism to today’s socio-cultural landscape.
One of the major arguments against free will and people’s ability to make decisions is the existence of various factors, both social and historical, that consciously or subconsciously weigh in when making a decision, Present in the form of impulses, people become immediately affected by their previous experiences to act in a manner implied by society rather than created by a human. Such an argument raises a series of questions, primarily concerning the strategies to make use of the determinist theory.
Essentially, suppose determinism implies that people’s actions are curated by past known and unknown experiences. In that case, one can assume that a certain socio-cultural background and similar experiences may result in a similar decision-making process. Thus, if to take a group of people from the same social and demographic context and place them in the same system of socio-cultural environment, their decision-making, with time, will be based on the same beliefs and views. Hence, the primary hypothesis here will be that people, while incapable of pursuing free will, can be trained to be exposed to a favorable environment leading to the most beneficial decisions and actions for them and society.
However, the complexity of the modern world and possible contributing factors make it extremely challenging to outline antecedent experiences and memories that would benefit society as a whole. As a result, neither a human being nor the environment could be held accountable for the action, as it is virtually impossible to trace back the cause of a certain action. The complete lack of responsibility thereof will eventually result in chaos, and the end of the world humans know it nowadays.
The criticism of free will, when applied to personal experiences, is especially harmful to the notion of interpersonal relationships. For example, when two people are communicating, any action that does not appeal to another person may result in triggering an impulse and provoking an immediate response such as yelling or using physical aggression. In this case, the person would not be responsible for the action because it was predetermined by something beyond the person’s control. If in the same scenario, the person would choose to calmly ignore the behavior or make a polite comment, the responsibility would not concern the person as well. Indeed, according to the researchers opposing free will, deliberation, the act of thorough analysis of the options, is still eventually a result of determinism. In such a case, both morally wrong and morally right responses to the situation would have equally no correlation to the human character and, thus, would be regarded as equally predetermined responses to the situation. The rhetorical question here would be whether people should ever resort to ethics and morality is those actions would never be perceived as the manifestation of their moral character.
On the other hand, however, it would be unreasonable to assume that the phenomenon of free will is entirely applicable in today’s social and moral contexts as well. In fact, when people exercise their free will, it does not mean that their choice does not depend on external factors per se. What it does imply, however, is the fact that human beings, while faced with a variety of choices, are prone to follow socially and biologically predetermined impulses or use the power of free will.
For example, in the reading material, students were working with an example of a girl choosing between three ice cream flavors. The doctrine of determinism implies that three options are nothing but an illusion of choice, and picking the strawberry flavor is nothing but a remaining option because the first two are unavailable. According to this philosophical dogma, people find themselves in a system of predetermined factors that motivate the person to subconsciously choose a particular option. However, this system does not eliminate the person’s ability to perceive the environment differently and opt for a different outcome. Hence, in a world as complex as it is today, people, although motivated and challenged by the antecedent, are still capable of exercising deliberation and free will and taking moral responsibility for every action.
Reference
Blount, Z. D., Lenski, R. E., & Losos, J. B. (2018). Contingency and determinism in evolution: Replaying life’s tape. Science, 362(6415).