Philosophy

Completed Manuscripts

Is 'Black' Really Beautiful? Ethics of Color and Philosophy of Race

This is an analytical look at the ethical and metaphysical relationship between people and their describing colors and also, how people's description, color-wise, plays a larger part in how a racial group is perceived and how that group perceives itself in terms of societal functionality. The main thesis in the manuscript is the idea that the color that describes people and the ontic or noumenal nature of the people per se aren't one and the same. There is possible a separation between blackness and the African person; and also, between whiteness and the European person. While this sounds commensical, there is more to it than this statement conveys.

It is also maintained in the manuscript that any description of any racial group should pass a moral gauge; otherwise, inconsiderate, unethical description of a group of people puts them at the mercy of a mocking society.

Myths and Incapacities: Glorification of Human Weakness

Myths and Incapacities looks at how human nature affects many aspects of our lives. While our human nature is seen as leaning towards our capabilities to be innovative and productive, it is actually the idea that we couldn't do or couldn't understand some things that drove and continue to drive our industrious race.  We invented the idea of god (s) to make up for some of our inabilities and fears; we invented counting and numbers to make our lives easy; and we invented 'Race' to make us feel good about our unique qualities. Some of the questions answered: Are numbers references or abstractly emergent? Did we create god or did god create us? Did Einstein objectify the subjective? Did Capitalism actually triumph in 1989? Will Marx's revolution ever happen? And many more...

Research Interests

1. Practical and applied Ethics
2. Ethics and Metaphysics of Race and Color
3. Free Will, Agential Nature and Control
4. Existentialism
5. Metaphysics of Object and Identity
6. Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, General and Special Relativity

Mechanistic Moral Agents and the Fate of Free Will

Jan 8, 2012.

Kuir ë Garang

Philosopher Robert Kant writes in his introduction to 'Free Will' that "the problem of free will and necessity (or determinism)...has puzzled the greatest minds for centuries." (Kane, 1, 2004) This sentiment is shared by other philosophers: (Ekstrom, 1, 2000 and Doyle, 249, 2011). With Kane's apt quote in mind, I have no illusion of presenting the solution to the problem of free will verses determinism. This article, notwithstanding the above quote, explores the arguments in favor of determinism by arguing that free will is a coinage that is either an unphilosophical dogmatism or it is an ad hoc religious argument whose premises are not well thought out. I will also argue that free will problem cannot be appropriately tackled without any clear and established definition and understanding of what an agential self and the acting part of it actually is. I will begin by giving brief, skeletal definitions and overview of both determinism and free will before I present available arguments in favor of determinism and those against the fate of free will. A mechanistic understanding of the nature of the agent will be presented and defended; and also used to determine whether free will makes sense or not.

Free Will

To put it in the layman's terms, free will is the claim that whatever a given agent (moral or otherwise) does, originates in the agent herself. In other words, whatever actions (mental or otherwise) the agent does isn't enforced by any causal factors outside the agent in question.That is, the agent has some control over her actions. Let's see this indetermistic example. For instant, if Yar walks to a vending machine to buy a drink, there are many choices available to her. She can buy a Coke, a Fanta, a Nestea or Pepsi. Now, if Yar decides to buy Pepsi, the decision, according to free will argument, is a function of Yar's desires or inclinations and is therefore inherently internal to Yar. She could have decided to buy Nestea, Fanta or Coke. But she, as free willers maintain, decided to buy Pepsi because she has a free will to do or not so. Nothing prevented her from buying Fanta or Mountain Dew. Other explanatory free will examples are:

• Yar can decide to go to the theatre or rent movies on Netflix
•  Achol can cook or order Chinese food
• Deng can decide to write a poem or read a chapter in Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival
• Galuak can decide to marry Akuol or Nyakuoth

In our everyday life, we do all these things. These examples seem to suggest that our Free Will actually functions in our everyday activities. Here’s a sample free will argument.

Free Will argument

P1:  Deng went to a book store and bought a book he should not have

P2:  Deng could or could not have bought the book in the book store
P3:  If Deng could or could not have bought the book, then it is in Deng’s capacity to have or
       not have bought the book
P4:  If Deng had the capacity to have either bought or not bought the book, then Deng had some control
       over his decision.
P4:  It was therefore possible for Deng not to have bought the book
P5:  If it was possible for Deng not to have bought the book then Deng was free in his decision to buy
       the book.
C:  Deng therefore had some freedom (free will) in his decision to buy the book

If we go by our intuitive, traditional definition of what a person (moral agent is) then there is nothing controversial about free will. And going by the above argument, the conclusion arrived at is sound. However, because it hasn’t been established philosophically what the a moral agential self is and where it is as Daniel Dennett and Luara Ekstrom have argued, then some wordings in premises 3-4 become problematic (Dennett, p.75, 1984; Ekstrom, 3, 2000). But let’s leave it until later.

Determinism

Determinism is the idea that whatever moral agents do are a causal result of the past and the laws of nature. So whatever moral agents perform now and in the future; is something over which they have no control over. They are caused or determined to act so because the past and laws of nature that determine what they do now is something over which they have no control. No one has control over the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow or that two fives make ten or that a triangle has three sides. This is what philosophers in ethics call the Consequence Argument, originally presented by Carl Ginet in 1966 (Haji, 29, 31, 2009). So no agent can render false any true proposition regarding what she does now because her actions are a consequence of past causal events and laws of nature she can't render false. Peter Van Inwagen formulated two rules (rule alpha and beta) for the Consequence Argument (Van Inwagen, 94, 1983). I will only give rule alpha here as an ilustrative example.
  
Rule alpha: p then Np

The logical operator ‘’ represents logical necessity. p means that p is necessarily true in all possible worlds. Np means that no one can render the past false. So rule alpha means that p is necessarily true and no one can render p false. So our actions are consequences of past events and laws of nature over which we have no control.

Causal Determinants

Determinants are factors or states of affairs that bring about the actions we do. I maintain, and as we all know, nothing happens uncaused (Pereboom,6, 2009; Clifford, 3,1980); discounting Aristotelian and Augustinian ‘unmoved mover.’ Laughter is caused; our desires have causal objects; our decisions are caused one way or another. So causal factors are all the things that make it possible for an agent to be a do-er. Gordon Orloff writes that “As sophisticated and complex animals, humans have determinants ranging from genes to upbringing, culture, current situation, unconscious activity, past experiences …” Just think of whatever you have done and what you plan to do and see whether nothing brought it about. See whether it just popped onto your mind without any prior causal deliberation that prompted you into considering whether to engage in getting it before you finally decide that getting it is apt for now.

You will come to understand that whatever we do has a cause. But still, without any clear definition of what an agent is then we still have a problem. If we have a human being that will, then causal determinants only prompt an agent. It could be argued that causal determinants don’t force an agent to do things. They only initiate.Telling someone to do something isn’t similar or equal to saying it will surely happen. So the fact that what we do is caused, doesn't mean we can’t stop doing what the causal factors suggest. And of course, many causal factors initiate events that don’t lead to the action supposed. Until we arrive at a grounded defination of the agential self, causal determinants can be conventionally accepted with free will issue still biting.

Moral Agent as a ‘Functional Complex Mechanism’

It isn’t funny to say that the average person on the street knows what a person or a moral is but philosophers (most of them that is) can’t say what a moral agent is. An average person will take less than two seconds to say it. A philosopher will either ask you a question before she answers you or she will hesitate or scratch her head before giving you an answer. I will assume we know what we mean by a moral agent in our intuitive understanding.

Intuitively, a moral agent is a conscious adult human being with knowledge of right and wrong, desires, inclination; can decide can refuse; respect the world around her etc. So such a person can will something and do it. She can decide to kill someone but then think against it when her conscience tells her that it is wrong. In this case, she has some control through her internal judgement that killing someone is wrong. If she goes ahead and kills someone, then we can say that she had the control (free will) to decide not to kill. So such a person can be held accountable for her actions because she could have done otherwise.

But things are not that easy here, my friends! I am not going to temper with the metaphysical aspects of what it means to be wrong or right. That is not an issue here. But what does it mean to will? What does it mean to have control? These things will force us to take a stance on what a moral agent is so as to answer the issue of willing and control.

A moral agent, as I propose in this work, is a functional mechanistic complex of interaction parts.[ 1*] These interacting parts can be physical, cognitive or physiological complexes. these parts can be singly the determinants by themselves or be co-determinants in a complex (es).So a moral agent is simply a housing complex within which a functional, mechanistic universe goes about its duty. Okay, what does this mean? Now that we have a working definition of a moral agent (person); let us go back to Free Will and Determinism.

1* See Dennett Enlightenment lecture. Dennett rejects any conceptualization of  a human being as a  mere automaton; something that I seem to suggest. I am not the first one to suggest the mechanical nature of human beings. Descartes has done so before but he confusedly excluded human mind from any mechanical determinism. See Doyle, Free Will, p.149

Free Will, Determinism and Causal Determinants

Let’s say a fat kid sees a cake. We know what a fat person feels when he sees a cake. Ordinarily, we frown at them for their failure to ‘control themselves.’ But how wrong can we be? First, we can talk of determinants inside the fat kid such as his genetic predisposition. There might be something in his genes that predisposes him to like fatty and sugary foods and gets fat. And there is nothing this kid can do to render false the fact that his genetic make-up is the way it is. He can try to will it away all he wants but he can’t change it. Think of rule alpha above. Other determinants could be his upbringing. He could have been exposed to such types of food at an early age. It could also be the fact that his parents aren’t educated enough to teach him to eat healthy foods. We can see that neither the upbringing nor the genetic make-up is in the kid’s power to control. Yet we still say he can control the desires whose origin he had no control over and their action processing mechanism is dauntingly complicated, to say the least.

If we see the fat kid as a complex-mechanism housing structure, control even fairs worse. When the fat kid sees cake, a mechanism is initiated; a desire mechanism that would determine whether the cake will be eaten or rejected. And we know that a mechanism that has a break in it isn’t fulfilled and the one that has no break goes to the end of its intended output. This, scientists understand well.The sight of the cake initiates a psychological mechanism and the brain deliberates. The brain simulates the smooth and sweet taste of the cake through the gustatory centres in the brain and the legs and the arms are ordered into action and the mechanism ends with the cake in the mouth.

 When the deliberative mechanism ends with a weak signal to the brain and the kid ends up not eating the cake, we say the kid has controlled his urge. But think about it. Sometimes a countering mechanism is initiated. It could be about what the teachers said about diabetes, or how kids tease him in school or how that beautiful girl in front row would get angry if he rushed shamefully to grab the cake. This counter-mechanism can end up sending a strong signal that can frustrate the ‘eat-the-cake’ mechanism, or it can send a signal that is the same as the ‘eat-the-cake’ mechanism.’ We either end with equilibrium (nonaction) or we end with a situation tipped in favor of ‘cake-is-unhealthy, don’t-eat-the-cake,’ mechanism. Or we end with one tipped in favor of eat-the-cake mechanism.

Now, don’t-eat-the-cake and eat-the-cake mechanisms happen inside the agent (taking the kids as an example). The agent is merely housing the mechanism or is part of the mechanism. The mechanism controls the agent not the other way around. Besides, all the causal determinants (what the teachers and kids say, or how the brain processes the information) is not up to the kid. He has no control over the fact that the teacher says eating the cake is not healthy. He has no control over the fact that the kids tease him. It is hard here to see where his control lies. What we see are mechanisms going against one another; and whether the cake is bought or not is up to the strength of the signal.

 Any action we do has causal factors and corresponding brain function that ends up either forcing the action to happen or frustrating the initiated mechanism. Whether it is a decision to kill someone or a decision to lie, all have corresponding brain mechanism and counter mechanism that determines whether the action is done or not. There is no free will here. We have the input, the signal and its strength, and the output.

The Fate of Free Will

Does this mean we don’t have free will? That depends, of course, on whether you are resistant to the above agential mechanical definition or not. Going by the mechanistic understanding of a moral agent, there is clearly no free will as traditionally understood because whether we do or not do something is up to the mechanism not up to the structure housing the mechanism.

However, if we take a moral agent as the organism as a whole and attribute whatever happens inside the agent as belonging to the agent, then we will end up still having free will. And this is the traditional understanding, which brings in confusion when we factor in control (ultimate). The agent isn't controlling herself but what is happening inside her (part, not whole of her). It is understood that the brain belongs to the agent, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the hand and everything that belongs to the person. So talking of a mechanism that happens inside the agent seems nonsensical. The brain did it, well; it is the agent’s brain. The body desires it; well, it’s the agent’s body. I can grant all that. We can take the housing structure and all that happens inside it as belonging to the structure. But look at this. When someone is sick we don’t blame them we blame the condition inside them. When someone delay in the bathroom our minds go straight to the mechanism going on inside the agent. I will leave that up to the reader to think about. I have made my point clear, I suppose.

But this seems to miss the point. The point is control. And this is why we don’t blame the person with the diarrhoea or the person vomiting in public or someone who can’t control his bladder. In our everyday life we make use of the mechanism in the way I have explained here but we acknowledge only because it serves its purpose just like free will does in religious or judicial circle.

To conclude therefore, I will say that free will exists only if we take a moral agent as an analogy; that is, every mechanism happening inside the agent belongs to the agent. Erroneous as that maybe, taking it as a conventional definition makes free will acceptable. If we analyse it philosophically and present an agent mechanistically speaking, then a free will fate is sealed. The supposed free will is the ability or failure of opposing mechanisms operating inside the agent; the agent acting only as a housing structure to the mechanism or as part of (materializing part only) the mechanism.

References

1.  Ekstrom, Laura Waddell, A philosophical Study, Boulder: Westview, 2000.
2. Dennett, Daniel C, Elbow Room: Varieties of Free Will worth Wanting, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 1984.
3. Orloff, Gordon M., WHERE'S THE FREE WILL? An Exploration of This Elusive Concept, 2002 < http://www.determinism.com/05042002.shtml&gt;
4. Kane, Robert, Free Will, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004
5. Doyle, Bob, Free Will: the scandal in philosophy, Cambridge: I-phil. Press, 2011.
6. Van Inwagen, Peter, An Essay on Free Will, Oxford: University Press, 1983.
7.  Dennett, Daniel, Is science showing we don't have free will? Enlightment lecture, University of Edinburg, July 27, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cSgVgrC-6Y
8.    Clifford, William, Free Will and Determine: dialogue, Hackett: Indiana, 1980
9. 
   

      Pereboom, Derek, Free Will, Indiana: Hacket Publishing Company, 2009.

 © Kuir ë Garang

 NB: To cite this work, please write to the author of the work at kuirthiy@yahoo.com