An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy by Scruton Roger

Author:Scruton, Roger [Scruton, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 1999-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

FREEDOM

Can this be done? Can philosophy restore the faith in human freedom, when science seems so entirely to dispense with it? I believe that the answer is yes. But there is no greater proof of human freedom, than the vested interest in denying it; and philosophy, which persuades only by speaking softly, is unlikely to win by a show of hands.

We make choices, and carry them out; we praise and blame one another for our acts and omissions; we deliberate about the future and make up our minds. Like the animals, we have desires; but, unlike the animals, we also make choices - we can choose to do what we do not want to do, and want to do what we do not choose. All these facts seem to imply that we are free to do more than one thing, and that what we actually do is our choice, and our responsibility.

The belief in freedom seems at first sight to conflict with scientific determinism, which is the view that every event has a cause, and that every event is also determined by its cause. A determines B if B has to happen, given A. The usual argument given for determinism is that the relation between cause and effect is ‘law-like’: one event causes another only if there is a law connecting them. And laws have no exceptions. In which case, given the sum of true scientific laws, and a complete description of the universe at any one time, a complete description of the universe at any other time may be deduced. Hence the way the world is at any future time is fully determined by the way the world is now. This goes for my actions too. What I shall do at any future moment is therefore inexorable, given present (and past) conditions. So how can I be free?

A very old-fashioned view of science is supposed in that account. Scientific laws do have exceptions. They tell us, as a rule, what is probable, given certain conditions. Quantum mechanics holds that even the ultimate laws of the universe must be phrased in terms of probabilities. It is therefore never true that the effect must follow, given the cause; only, at best, that it is very likely to follow.

This does not remove the problem, however. For even if the law connecting cause and effect is expressed in terms of probability, it is still the case that the effect was produced by the cause, which was produced by its cause, and so on ad infinitum. Hence an action is the result of causes which stretch back in time, to some point before the agent’s own existence. His wielding the dagger was caused by movements in the muscles which were caused by impulses in the nerves which were ... Eventually we emerge from the series of causes at the other side of the human person, in a place where he is not. So what part did he play in the action, given that the

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