Meaning and Free Will

I recently wrote a paper in support of the compatiblist view of free will for my philosophy of science class. One thing that a philosopher (was it the Buddha?) once said was that if something is a conviction of yours, you should acknowledge it as such. I’ll admit that I’m not unbiased about a matter as of as much personal significance as free will. Free will matters a great deal to me, because so much hinges on it—our concepts of agency, accountability, etc.

Perhaps this view of mine is an egocentric view? I think that we’ve gotten quite carried away in opposing “anthrocentricism.” I understand that we should realize that the world doesn’t revolve around us, but must we think of ourselves as blind unfeeling machines in a cold indifferent world? I feel strongly against this view. It’s not so much that I oppose the notion of determinism—I disagree instead with the demeaning attitude that people carry with it. Compassion, love, and kindness are amongst the most important things that we have—and how can we hope to love others, to truly care for them, if we don’t love ourselves at all? If we think that we are accidental misshapen machines, then how can others be anything less?

I think that we should count ourselves equal to others; “love your neighbor as yourself”, not more or less than. If you value others less than yourself, then you’re self-centered. The opposite is little better though; if you love others significantly more than yourself, than you undermine the whole process. You need to provide justification for thinking that you are worthless and everyone else not so. Happiness and self-worth is contagious—others are heartened by a self-secure compassionate individual. If you are constantly concentrating on debasing and undermining your value as an individual, you’re being quite as self-centered as if you constantly praised and lauded yourself. Stop worrying about your own worth—just know it, take it as a given! Move on, and help others!

Universalism trumps altruism. Universalism is the belief that you should seek what is best for all, yourself included. Altruism is the notion that everyone else is worth more than you are, and that the noblest thing you can do is consciously and consistently sacrifice your own happiness for them. I think that this really just panders to the ego’s of both sides. And what if everyone in society was altruistic in this way? If the only thing that will make you happy is if I’m happy, and the only thing that will make me happy is if you’re happy, then how can either of us be happy or sad at all?! Partake in joy with others—by them an ice-cream cone, and get yourself one too. Eat them together, and have conversations. This is true beauty.

Ha, I just thought of a neat extra argument against incompatibles in addition to the arguments that I already have. Consider this incompatibles argument; “You are not responsible for eating the ice-cream cone. It’s the genes that are responsible.” Well, isn’t explaining things in terms of genes sort of like personifying the genes as a sort of agency? Consider this scenario—you coerced me to eat an ice-cream cone. If cause precludes free will, then you might say that I am not the one responsible for eating the ice-cream cone—it was you who is responsible. But by the same sort of argument, I might say that you are no more responsible that I, because your actions to were caused.

Now, consider the genes as the “second person” who convinced me to eat the ice-cream. We can’t say that the genes are responsible—they were caused just as much as I was! Blaming things on specific principles such as genes or evolution is really just to push the concept of agency back a level, and to a level considerably more anthropomorphic, since your supposing that genes can possess a sort of agency! Perhaps we can prescribe the agency to “universal laws” themselves? That simply won’t work; applying the concept of agency to laws that function throughout the entire process is to alter the fundamental meaning of agency itself. We are then faced with two options. Either drop the term agency entirely upon discovering that (surprise!) it doesn’t appear to be as universal and inherent as we supposed it, or simply use it as we always have.