Chapter dzǷ: Free Will and Ethics ȁȈȈunfortunate links in a causal chain. (Incidentally, doesn’t determinism
undermine even the concept of unfairness?) In either case, policymakers
will hear the arguments they are fated to hear and respond as they are
fated to do.
In short, the determinist theory not only has built-in immunity to
adverse evidence but also lacks implications about how to apply it in prac-
tice. It is empty. Individuals, by and large, cannot bring themselves to
regard it as meaningful and to conduct their own lives and public policy
in accordance with it.
I am saying not that full determinism is wrong but that it is an empty,
meaningless doctrine. Ļis conclusion is not, I believe, one of the airy
dismissals of philosophical issues that used to characterize a crude logical
positivism.
őŤŠŞőřő ŜśşŕŠŕśŚş ōŚŐ ŜōŞŠŕōŘ ŐőŠőŞřŕŚŕşř
I have tried to show that total fatalistic determinism is empty, perhaps
even absurd. We might now try to focus on the opposite extreme position,
except that complete free will and absoluteindeterminism are downright
inconceivable. No conceivable self is free of a biological nature and of the
influences imposed by an external world. Still, let us see how far we can
get in imagining a self whose will isessentiallyfree.
A self whose character had been determined not by heredity and envi-
ronment but only internally would be the product of a core self, a minia-
ture self within the self, as R.E. Hobart says (ȀȈȂȃ/ȀȈȇȃ). But how could
that core self be free from external influences? Only by its character having
been determined by a further internal miniature self, and so on in prepos-
terous infinite regress. “To cause his original self a man must have existed
before his original self. Is there something humiliating to him in the fact
that he is not a contradiction in terms?” (HobartȀȈȂȃ/ȀȈȇȃ, p.ȄǿȄ).
In some respects, of course, a person’s earlier self does partially shape
his later self: his earlier decisions and actions affect his capacity for and
inclinations toward later experiences, decisions, and actions. But if a per-
son does improve his qualities, what could merit praise but the ingredient
of aspiration and resolution in him that made his effort possible (Hobart
ȀȈȂȃ/ȀȈȇȃ, p.ȄǿȄ)? What could merit praise except features of an already
existing character that could not have been fully its own creation? One
praiseworthy character trait is the capacity to respond suitably to praise,
blame, and the concept of responsibility.