ȁȈȃ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophysome such expression as “the complex of unknown causes called chance.”
Perhaps he had good reason for speaking so carefully. (In hisȀȈȂȇbook,
p.ȃȂȅ, he lists three assumptions underlying the derivation of the normal
curve of error: “(Ȁ)Ļe causal forces affecting individual events are numer-
ous, and of approximately equal weight.(ȁ)Ļe causal forces affecting
individual events are independent of one another.(Ȃ)Ļe operation of
the causal forces is such that deviations above the mean of the combined
results are balanced as to magnitude and number by deviations below
the mean.”)
Another reservation about sheer chance or randomness requires men-
tion. Chance poses no less difficulty for commonsense notions of human
freedom and responsibility than tight causality would. To the extent that
a person’s actions, decisions, deliberations, inclinations, feelings, experi-
ences, capabilities, and character traits occur by sheer chance, they are no
more meaningfully his own, and he is no more truly responsible for them,
than would be true if they all traced fully to external causes. Actions and
thoughts governed by sheer chance are no more compatible with human
dignity and responsibility, as ordinarily conceived, than their being dom-
inated by external causes. Dignity and responsibility, if genuine, presup-
pose something beyond chance linking events; they presuppose a causal
link in which the individual plays some independent part.
While elements of sheer chance in the world do not imply freedom of
the will, “the presence of random phenomena at the quantum level does
take the sting out of the argument that man cannot will freely because the
material world is governed by determinism. Clearly, a completely deter-
ministic world and a man with an absolutely free will are incompatible
conditions” (Georgescu-RoegenȀȈȆȀ, p.ȀȆȆ, in part citing H. Margenau,
Hermann Weyl, and A.S. Eddington). (I’ll add that not merely an “abso-
lutely” but even a partially free will is incompatible with complete deter-
minism.) Ļe point so far is not that indications of sheer chance in the
world establish the case for free will but only that they defuse one partic-
ular kind of argument against it.
Causality as opposed to chance is required for any predictability in
human behavior. Yet predictability does not rob human beings of the dig-
nity usually associated with free will and responsibility. If anything, the
contrary is true. Suppose that a friend of yours had an opportunity to steal
ȉȀǿ,ǿǿǿwhile escaping suspicion. In fact the money remains unstolen.
Which would your friend rather hear from you: “I was sure that you would
not steal the money”or“I didn’t have a clue whether or not you would steal