The proper naturalist position counts the mind as part of the world, as McDowell wants to do. What a naturalist proper cannot coherently talk about is the Kantian subject. Instead, there are only objects. For those who would say that things are only objects in the sense that they are the object of some subject, then we may use the word ‘substance’, in the earlier Greek sense, to talk about physical things. Thus, the naturalist position is that everything is a substance; in Heidegger’s terminology, everything is essentially present-at-hand[1] and though further supposed properties or features of substances (readiness-to-hand, the existence of Dasein, the mind, intentionality, subjectivity) are reducible to that raw substance. In contemporary physics, that substance is identified with particles, though the details may be somewhat more complex than that[2]. The manifest image of the world[3], the normative space in which intentionality and morality are thought to lie, is composed of that same physical substance that makes up the brains of those who experience and project outwards.

So, for the naturalist proper, the space of reasons is not a realm outside of the natural or physical world, as it is in rampant platonism, nor is it an autonomous space within the world as it is in McDowell’s naturalized platonism. Rather, all rationality, normativity and intentionality is identical with brain states. There is no one space of reasons with which human beings have a connection; rather, each human being can be thought to have their own space of reasons. This space is not especially private, though. It can be seen physically by examination of the neurological states of the brain, and with the proper technology, those states may even be translatable into intelligible images. In another sense, it is not fully private, since glimpses into its content can be seen through behaviour.

‘Content’ needs qualification in that last remark. Intentional mental states are mental states that are about something else in the world. But they are neither a metaphysical link through some imaginary (or real) space to other substances which they are about, nor are they really representations of the substances they seem to be about. They are not the former because such space doesn’t exist in any important way. They are not the latter because, of course, the neurological features of our brain do not form a structure that mimics the outside world. Rather, they form a structure that allows us to have a mental state (which is identical with that brain state) such that we think we have a representation of the substance we are thinking about. So, when I close my eyes and picture the CN Tower, I do not obtain or summon some representation of that object. That object may be gone, moved, or different than I remember. Instead, my brain generates a certain arrangement such that it looks like the CN Tower to itself.[4] All of the qualia, ‘what it’s like to be’[5] and private world phenomena that philosophers expect to find in a separate mental world are  merely what the brain’s activity looks like from the point of view of that very brain.

Against the rampant platonist, the naturalist’s response is brief. Whatever attitudes one has towards the empirical observations with which one is presented, one does not survive without indulging in them. With a proper account of naturalism, any reason to favour a platonic account dissolves. Naturalism proper offers an explanation of intentionality, removes the “spookiness” (McDowell 92) of a separate space of reasons that McDowell complains of. We don’t need to add anything ontologically, and we have a hope to answer the how questions about mental states and intentionality through study of the brain. Spontaneity doesn’t need any explanation here, either, because it is not sui generis, if it’s counted as existing at all. We’re better off with the naturalist account.

Against McDowell’s naturalized platonism, the proper naturalist has to say that McDowell is wrong about naturalism. He argues against his ‘bald naturalist’, saying that “knowing one’s way around the space of reasons, the idea of responsiveness to rational relationships, cannot be reconstructed out of materials that are naturalistic” (McDowell 77). But the naturalist proper doesn’t want to reconstruct a space of reasons, really. The naturalist proper holds that all reasoning, all intentionality, all communication—the entire manifest image—takes place between physical substances across physical substances. The naturalist isn’t committed to reconstructing any intentional state beyond this because she doesn’t hold it to exist. What counts as intentionality for a naturalist proper is evidenced through behaviour, and it consists of a brain processing incoming information. The space of reasons, the finer points of language, art, morality, knowledge and so forth can be talked about as abstractions. They are useful in the processing that the brain must do; they result in digestible inputs. But the naturalist proper is ever-mindful that these are not things in themselves, but that they are always identical with and reducible to the states of the brain. The same holds of spontaneity. The naturalist counts human judgments to be determined (in a deterministic or indeterministic sense[6]) by the physical processes that cause them. Thus, spontaneity can be said either to not really exist, or at least to be denied status as sui generis, as is the case with the other ideas McDowell wants to preserve. Where McDowell wants to say that human beings are free to choose their beliefs, to take their experiences and spontaneously form judgments about them, the proper naturalist denies this. For the naturalist proper, sometimes brain states will have the disposition to respond to the stimulus of a red bench and form the belief that there is a red bench. Sometimes, because of other beliefs, brain states will not have such a disposition and will not form such a belief. Whether or not this happens is not an act of spontaneity, but a function of the states of the brain, including the stimulus received and the beliefs already held.

By positing an autonomous space of reasons, and a second nature with which humans can access it, the naturalized platonist gains little in the way of explanation and much in the way of recalcitrant philosophical questions. McDowell thinks that he gets out of the “threat of supernaturalism” (78) by saying that scientific advancements don’t clarify nature as a whole, but only the realm of law. This step does not work; it only redefines “nature” to include what the naturalist counts as supernatural. McDowell renames nature as the realm of law, says that the platonic heaven, the space of reasons, also exist, and says that there’s this new thing, now called nature, previously called existence, which encompasses all of them. The connection between the realms of laws and reasons is as sketchy as ever, and it is only through proper naturalism of intentionality and spontaneity that the confusion is finally dissolved.

Determinism is the view that all things in the physical world are determined by previous physical causes, including human action. Two asteroids collide in space because they’re on a path that brings them together. Water falls off a cliff because gravity pulls it down. And you are reading this because some physical process in your brain has led you to browse the Internet and stumble across this article.

Determinism is the result of applying our scientific notion of causality to ourselves, which we intuitively believe to be somehow immune to the tides of causality. But determinism says that we’re a part of the system.

What, exactly, that system is, we’re not sure. It may be that everything has been determined since the beginning of the universe — the big bang set things in motion, and everything that has happened is simply further consequence of that event, or even an earlier one. It may be that things are determined by the quantum nature of the universe — if quantum mechanics is true, then there’s some element of randomness, but things are still determined by physical events. But both of these are forms of determinism.

So, no free will?

If determinism is true, there’s no free will. (The compatibilists will disagree with me — compatibilism tries to marry the ideas of determinism in the physical world and freedom of will in consciousness.)

In other words, the things you do have been determined by physical events, and, when you act, you could not have acted differently.

Why should I be OK with that?

If your will is not free then every action you make has been determined by something outside of yourself. You can’t choose what you’re going to do, or rather, you can’t choose to act differently than you do.

When some people encounter the possibility that we lack free will, they freak out. What they imagine is a situation in which they want to do something, but are unable to act according to their will. They imagine that they want to make one choice, but are forced into another.

This is not the consequence of determinism. If determinism is true, then, like actions, the will is determined. You’ll never will something you don’t want to will, because your desires, your thoughts, your will itself is the result of a physical process. It will never be the case that you will against your own will — this is a logical impossibility.

So, your actions will always correspond to your will. You may still err, experience internal compulsions, or be forced into things just as you would if your will were objectively free. But you’ll never be in the situation where you want to will something other than you will, or where you will one thing but act differently. You will never experience the force of determinism, because you will always feel that you are doing what you will to do.

As a result, you are OK with determinism, because if determinism is true, it has absolutely no bearing on what you want. You’ll always be able to act as you will to, exactly as you would if determinism were false and your will were “free” in the sense that it was undetermined.

Hard determinism says that all events, including your actions, are caused by a
chain of causality, like the movement of balls in a game of pool.

What about responsibility?

The biggest problem with the absence of free will is an ethical one. Here is where we have a problem coping with the lack of free will, because we have the notion that we must be responsible for our actions. If our actions are ultimately caused by things external to us, then it seems wrong that we should be punished for those actions, or that we should feel any guilt. If I were to steal money, unjustifiably, in a determined world, that theft would not be my fault, or not totally my fault, because my decision to steal, and my action to do so, was determined by some physical processes that I do not control.

There are two ways to deal with such a problem. The first is to point out that, even though I may not have chosen to unjustifiably steal because of a strictly internal decision, it is still my will to steal. My consciousness believes that, whether or not the idea originated with me, I chose to steal. Even if the desire to steal came from outside of me, there is no desire within me strong enough to have stopped me from stealing. So, even though perhaps I am not at fault for the theft as if I were an individual self-contained agent, there is no claiming that I am truly innocent, either. I stole because some physical process both made me steal and made me want to steal. It may not be my own choice that led to my moral corruption in this example, but nevertheless, I am a thief.

(I’ll clarify that this is just an example — believe what you will, I am not a thief.)

The second way to deal with this is by pointing out that whether it’s right or wrong, both my actions and the response of others are determined. The idea that we ought to do something else is pointless, because we will do what we will necessarily do. There are no alternative possibilities. If I am determined to commit a crime, I will commit it. If you are determined to punish me, then you will punish me.

That’s not to say that we do not influence each other. It would be an interesting world if everyone suddenly thought in this manner. If everyone suddenly believed in determinism, people may become apathetic. Economies may fall apart, the justice system may disappear, and anarchy would result. This may make people suddenly believe in free will again, since their actions obviously changed based on their belief.

But that would not actually imply free will. Rather, it would merely be the case that the determined system led us to that unorganized social state because of our determined attitudes. If we believe that morality is important we will behave according to morality, but not because we chose to believe that morality is important, but because we were determined to form this structure and follow it.

What about predictions?

Another possible consequence of determinism is that we could, in theory, make very accurate predictions about the future if things are perfectly determined by past events. For instance, if the universe is determined in the sense that classical physical causality carries forward, and that all events were determined way back at the beginning of the universe, then we would simply need the technology to know the position and velocity of every particle in the universe in order to predict the future, and essentially create prophecy.

I use the term “simply” very liberally. It’s obviously no simple undertaking to record such vast amounts of information, and we’re nowhere close to this — so you don’t need to worry about someone calling your every move before it happens anytime soon.

Even if we had such technology, quantum mechanics seems to make this fundamentally impossible anyways. According to quantum mechanics, the more we know about the position of a particle, the less we know about its velocity, and vice-versa. Therefore, if quantum mechanics accurately describes physical processes, then it’s impossible to predict the future even if it is determined. Again, it looks like determinism wouldn’t be such a big problem.

Convinced?

This may not have you embracing the idea that you do not have freedom. The idea that we have free will is generally an important concept to the way we think about ourselves, and the way our societies function. We value responsibility and choice as important features of the human experience, and the idea that these are merely illusions can be unsettling.

My point is simply that, even if this position (of determinism and incompatibilism) turns out to be true, you won’t miss free will. There’s simply no practical consequence, at least in the sense that there’s nothing you would miss about free will.

(Sorry for coming back suddenly with such a long post! One note that I will make about this account of determinism and free will — the effect of determinism on free will described here presupposes a physicalist response to the mind-body problem. That is, we’re assuming that consciousness is caused by physical events, and that the mind is not a separate ontological substance from the body.)

What do you think? If free will turned out to not exist, would you be disappointed? Why? — Am I missing something important?

PHOTO CREDITS: (1) stevendepolo / (2) Nic’s events / CC BY 2.0