Even if a superpowerful computer predicts, years in advance and with absolute precision, what we are going to do, we will do it freely even so!
Imagine that, a century from now, we know all the laws of nature and we build a supercomputer capable of deducing, on the basis of these laws and the present state of the world, everything that is going to happen.
If it knows the present state of the world down to the last detail, it will be able to predict with absolute precision every action and every event to come.
Imagine that this supercomputer knows the state of the world down to the last detail on March 25, 2150, twenty years before the birth of Charlie. The supercomputer deduces from the state of the world and the laws of nature that Charlie is going to commit a holdup at the Bank of America (which still exists of course) on the street corner, on January 26, 2195, at 6:00 P.M.
The prediction is correct, obviously, and Charlie commits a holdup, on January 26, 2195, at 6:00 P.M.
Do you think that, when Charlie commits the holdup, he is acting freely?
This scenario has been submitted to a group of students who had no training in philosophy.
Of them, 76 percent replied: “Yes, Charlie acts freely"
1But we know that our tendency to estimate that a person is responsible for his actions is much stronger when these actions are judged to be immoral.
Two other scenarios have therefore been devised along the lines of the same model but with a moral or neutral ending in order to check if this factor might by itself suffice to explain why liberty was attributed to a person whose actions were known in advance.
SCENARIO 2
The supercomputer predicts that Charlie is going to save a child on January 26, 2195, at 6:00 P.M.
SCENARIO 3
The supercomputer predicts that Charlie is going to go jogging on January 26, 2195, at 6:00 P.M.
Scenarios 2 and 3 have been submitted to other groups with the same general characteristics. What is astonishing is the fact that the results do not vary significantly:
68 percent answer that Charlie acts freely when he saves the child exactly as the supercomputer predicted;
79 percent answer that Charlie acts freely when he goes jogging exactly as the supercomputer predicted.
One can compare these percentages with the first result, where 76 percent answered that Charlie acts freely when he commits the holdup predicted by the supercomputer.
In other words, if we reckon that a person is free even when his actions are known in advance, this is not only in cases where those actions are judged to be immoral.
2Professional philosophers have long wondered, without having made much progress, whether it is possible to reconcile what we know of the behavior of humans, subjected, like everything belonging to the natural world, to forces that elude them, and our tendency to judge them as if they were free and responsible for their actions.
How can we set about rendering these somewhat contradictory ideas and attitudes compatible?
The philosophers have proposed different solutions to this conflict. One of the most widely discussed derives from Hobbes. It consists in observing that a free act is not an act that is mad, arbitrary, or without reasons, but an act caused or determined by our own reasons, that is to say, a voluntary act. In reality, “free” would not be the contrary of “caused” or “determined,” but merely of “nonvoluntary” “constrained,” or “imposed by a threat or by force.” It is in this voluntarist sense that liberty and determinism are compatible.
But those who are called “incompatibilists” are more demanding. For them, to be free is not only to act according to our own reasons, but to have, in addition, the power to choose our reasons or to be at their origin. Now, according to them we do not have that power. This is why liberty and determinism are incompatible.
3Another way of attempting to resolve the conflict involves saying that our beliefs in determinism and in liberty can happily coexist without contradicting each other, for they come under wholly different aspects of our lives.
On the one hand, we know that there exist reasons for believing that we are subject to forces that elude us or that we cannot act otherwise than we do.
On the other hand, we cannot help having emotional reactions of joy, anger, and indignation toward what we do or what others do—as if we were free. These attitudes express the deep necessities of life in society. It would be absurd to imagine that we could eliminate them.
4In other words, our belief in determinism and our belief in liberty reflect different necessities. Each belief has its own independent life. The one has no reciprocal influence upon the other. It is in this sense that they are compatible.
But an “incompatibilist” could always object that our emotional reactions of joy, anger, and indignation toward what we do or what others do are simply irrational and should not influence our judgments.
In short, for certain philosophers, known as “incompatibilists,” liberty and determinism are irreconcilable. If determinism is true, we are not free. And if we are not free, all ideas of responsibility or of “deserved” punishment are cruel and irrational human inventions.
For other philosophers, known as “compatibilists,” liberty and determinism are reconcilable. Even if determinism is true, we can be free to act and responsible for our actions.
Certain experiments show that, contrary perhaps to what we might expect, the majority of people tend to align themselves with the second group. They are compatibilists.
Thus, as we have seen, a majority has tended to answer that a person acts freely, even if a superpowerful computer predicted years in advance and with absolute precision what he was going to do.
5To this kind of experiment, we can level the following objection: There is no obvious answer to the question of knowing why we should take into account people’s opinions on this metaphysical question of determinism and liberty. It may be that the majority of people have mistaken views on these difficult questions.
