Doesn't a lack of free will provide a framework for an ethical model?

Question

Without free will, I struggle to see the noteable difference between humans and animals. The only difference is the way they manifest themselves in the world. I do not feel it follows logically that just because we are so different in how we interact with the world, we are categorically different than, say, other primates. By this I mean the internal process is as much slave to input-output responses as any other animal.

If it does not follow logically, then I feel it is appropriate to conclude we are akin to other animals. If we wanted to help another animal, for example Beaver, we would be able to establish a framework that would be beneficial for them, which I feel I can then describe as our ethical model for helping Beavers.

Would it not be entirely possible to define not only an ethical framework for humans, but one that can be aligned with the biological framework, and use that as a baseline to express the rest?

EDIT 1: Thank you for all the answers and hopefully discussions. I will answer more as the day goes on, but for now, here are three replies:

Reply to Jo Wehler Comment I do understand your point, but it seems to shift the focus from humans as a whole and over to what I would call internal harmony with ones own experience and decisionmaking. This has very little to do with the free will defintion I am trying to get at. I am aiming at the free will defined as "the ability to make a decision free from influence by external elements or free from influence at all". As such, the inner factors you describe are subject to the same influence of external elements as anything else.

tkruse reply: Your characterization of my assumption does not map on to my actual intent. If my elaboration on the question is insufficient for you, I will gladly clarify. It appears you liken my claim to environmentalism, and either believe I am attempting to say that humans and beavers are alike to such an extent that we should extend citizenship to them, or that I am advocating for protecting the nature because we are similar enough for it to be compatible. If I am incorrect, please tell me and we can try to reach a common understanding. But as I find it hard to find another comprehensive way of describing your reply, I will await your clarification.

haxor789: It seems you very readily throw the baby out with the bathwater when removing free will. At one point you agree that all animals can be categorized as biological machines, and from there you start reducing complexity by taking the meaning humans associate with certain words and absolve them of their applicability. I struggle to follow this reduction, as I don't see any sufficient reason for it. Moral systems are reduced to input-output adaptations defined by preference profiles that keep machines running, and establishing systems reduced to threats.

I do not see by what mechanism you can reduce human complexity down to simple machinistic behaviour that does not have an internal experience worth accounting for. I cannot either find sufficient reason to do so. Complexity need not be abset for a fully automated process, and there is no reason to think we can not find new ways of desiging systems that take human complexity properly into account. Human nature doesn't melt away if I put a "machine" tag on the species, so what ever system we design would have to account for this in order to make it a useful system.

If I am misunderstanding you, I would love a clarification.

Thank you all again!

Answer 1

Neuroscience provides very serious evidence against free will

Libet's experiments. Benjamin Libet showed that brain activity predicting a decision occurs before conscious awareness of making that decision.

Predictive brain imaging. Studies have demonstrated that brain scans can predict simple decisions up to 10 seconds before subjects report deciding.

Split-brain studies. Research on patients with severed corpus callosums reveals that the brain can make decisions without conscious awareness.

Neurotransmitter influence. Our choices are heavily influenced by brain chemistry, which we don't consciously control.

Given this evidence, we're indeed not fundamentally different from other animals in our decision-making processes. We're all responding to genes, environment, and experiences. Your beaver analogy is interesting. We could theoretically establish an ethical framework for humans based on our biological needs and tendencies, just as we might for beavers. However, our capacity for abstract thought and complex culture complicates this.

While our moment-to-moment decisions might be deterministic, we can reflect on our actions and create complex ethical narratives. Our ethical systems can be seen as attempts to create rules allowing our species to thrive, given our biological and psychological predispositions. The challenge is that our technological capabilities have outpaced our inherited ethical frameworks. We need a new ethical model that acknowledges our animal nature and the absence of free will, while accounting for our unique human capabilities and technological realities.

Such a framework is not only possible but necessary. It should align with our biological reality while being flexible enough to adapt to rapid change. However any such framework will still be an 'imagined order' – a human creation rather than an objective truth.

Answer 2

It's always fascinating how people on the one hand reject their own agency, yet on the other hand pretend as if they could still have moral agency.

Unless you provide a better explanation for what you think constitutes "free will" I'd go with something like the following:

If you throw away all your knowledge of the world and look at it anew with semi-fresh eyes. What what you see? You could for example categorize your field of vision by forming objects, things that look like they belong together, either because of the same or similar color or contrast with the stuff around them or because you can touch them, move them or other wise interact with them. Furthermore you could distinguish these objects into stationary, lifeless and living stuff. Now stationary stuff is just sitting around and can't move on it's own (idk a table), lifeless stuff moves but in regular predictable patterns (idk a clock) and living stuff is weird and moves in unpredictable or only semi-predictable patterns.

Now the first group has no will, but only directly reacts to physical forces. While if you put objects of the second group into an environment without external physical forces that would move it directly, it would still move somewhere. So you could argue that it has a "will" to move in a direction, that could even withstand some level of external physical disturbances. And in the 3rd group you have living creatures who could have not just one put many wills, so that an outsider can't tell where they are going to go, but they are nonetheless going somewhere or at least could if that's their will. And last but not least you'd have a "free will" which would be the ability to freely choose which of the various wills to act upon or even a "libertarian free will" which would let you freely pick any will.

Now you could argue that objects of the 2nd group are just complex conglomerates of objects of the 1st group and that they don't really posses a will, but are just subject to direct reactions to physical forces.

And similarly the rejection of "free will" comes close to arguing that also objects of the 3rd group are just complex conglomerates of objects of the 2nd group which are just objects of the first group. Which means that either this complexity gives rise to emergent phenomena (somewhat free-ish will but still deterministic or probabilistic or random) or that this is all an illusion and in reality there are not different wills to choose from, but in the end we just follow physical forces on one path, we just don't understand which one, how or why.

So sure in that case we as well as animals would fall into the same category of complex automotive biological machines. Though automotive biological machines are still machines. So this entire language of "wanting", "defining", "establishing" etc, doesn't really apply.

We could nonetheless have a rudimentary "system of morality" and define an "ethical framework". Though that would rather come down to using big words for the rather simple concept that through evolution and machine learning you'd build up a preference profile of what is beneficial for keeping the biological machine running and what isn't.

So "morality" would not be this objective things, but just "what I like and what I don't like" which itself would be information that I'd passively pick up either by evolution and/or trial and error. While "ethics" would just be "you better ought to behave the way I like it".

So sure you could learn what a beaver is, where to find them, how they behave and what they do. And if your personality matrix deemed it good to help beavers you could take steps to help them.

So your millage may vary in terms of what "helping" means. Like you are not a beaver, you don't see what they see, you don't feel what they feel and you don't readily have an idea why they are doing the things they do. You can try to extrapolate from yourself towards the beaver but what you think is a relaxing walk in the park, might be the beaver scouting, what you think constitutes their natural way of life might be their emergency protocol given that they'd detected a large predator (you) around them and whatnot. So your assumption of their life could be totally wrong and hence your "help" could be the complete opposite of that. And depending on the animal you're literally not on the same wavelength, meaning you don't see or hear in the same spectrum and might not even realize each other's presence in the first place.

The other thing with regards to free will is this weird problem that subjectively we think we have it because our conscious self has the ability to pick it's own path and to deliberately readjust it's movement accordingly, while on the other hand our entire algorithm of explaining the world tries it's best not to incorporate free will as that would be unpredictable. So we have a tendency to deny free will in order to make things predictable, understandable and enable us to manipulate our environment according to our preference matrix, while at the same time not being fond of the idea of applying this same non-agency to ourselves.

Or the other way around, we experience a free will inside of ourselves, actually being ourselves. We further see similar patterns in other human beings giving rise to the assumption that they are like us and then further extrapolate that to animals and in some cases even to machines that behave erratically and that where we thus apply action patterns that we've learned for interactions with humans, idk negotiating with them, kicking or gently touching them, giving them time and space or whatnot, even though we know that this makes no sense because they work completely different.

So yeah the trivial answer would either be "yes" we can build these interfaces by means of passively learning a preference matrix. Or "no" because without a free will we would actually "doing" these things, they would just happen.

Answer 3

The problem of free will is entangled and several proposals for its solution are leading astray.

1. IMO the following attemps of a solution are erroneous:

• To start with the definition “free will means one could have decided in a different way”.

  This definition is not operationable: One cannot rewind the time and reconstruct the original situation with the same side conditions.

• To start with the alternative “Either free will or determinism” and then accepting free will because the consequences of determinism seem catastrophical, e.g., for moral and responsibility or for discriminating between humans and non-human animals.

2. The challenge is to conciliate free will and determinism. Free will as our experience from the first person stance, and determinism as the ruling principle from the third person stance of science.

   Several strategies of compatibilism have been proposed, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

   Two attemps to dissolve the seeming contradiction between free will and determinism are due to

   • Kevin J. Mitchell: Free Agents. How Evolution gave us Free Will. Arguing from neuroscience and biology.

   • Peter Bieri Das Handwerk der Freiheit. (In German). Arguing from philosophy on the basis of an adapted definition of free will.

     See also the answer to a question on this side about a Branch of philosophy that addresses the futility of arguing for or against free will.

3. There was also a discussion on this side about taking the biological framework of sociobiology as a base for ethics, see sociobiology and ethics.

Answer 4

Free will is a red herring here. Humans can simply hold more complex models in their minds and relatedly greater impulse control, just like an adult can than a child, and similarly face greater accountability. We can measure skills involved, like with a Mirror Test, Stanford Test on delayed gratification, and so on.

I make the case here ethical behaviour is founded on our cognitive capacity for intersubjectivity Is the Categorical Imperative Simply Bad Math? :) This relates to how our neocortex developed for our social landscape as indicated by the Dunbar Number, and this poses serious challenges for understanding of the ethics of solitary intelligences like octopuses, or hive-insects.

Biologist Robert Sapolsky who champions that free will is scientifically incoherent, draws an analogy to how we blame people for things beyond their control, and the way witch trials blamed people for things they could not have caused. For instance growing up in care, traumatic head injuries, and functional illiteracy, are hugely correlated with being in prison. But we overwhelmingly focus on personal accountability, in a way that feels like we need it, like we think we need to at least imagine free will, but we could choose to shift our paradigm to something more evidence based. The shift from punishment to reform and lowering reoffending, in fact embodies such a shift.

Answer 5

> "If there is no free will, does that provide a framework for an ethical model?"

No, it provides a framework for an unethical model:

Answer 6

When evaluating any philosophy as a potential way of living your life, there are two criterion that must be met:

1. The philosophy in question must be "true"--that is, it must be logically consistent with itself and other deeply held beliefs that you may have; and

2. The philosophy must be "useful" to yourself and to the society around you. A prime example is the argument that all reality is an illusion, and everyone else exists inside your own head. This statement cannot be proven false; however, it fails the second test because it is not useful to society. Any philosophy that leads you* to treat others as though they are of no value fails the criterion of being "useful" to society, because it leads us to treat others as things**, which is not conducive to a peaceful or happy life by anyone's definition!

By this test, the question of whether or not humans have free will is, in fact, moot. Whether or not humans truly do possess it, all functional ethical frameworks must treat everyone as though they possess it, because without this assumption:

1. Nobody can be held responsible for their own actions; and

2. Society collapses, because of the inherent injustice associated with not holding people responsible for their actions.

There is therefore little purpose in debating this any further, because no matter what the truth of the matter may be, we are all constrained by our inherent nature as social animals to treat ourselves and others as if they have free will, no matter our own personal convictions.

---

*I'm using "you" as a general term to refer to readers, here, not to any specific person

**See Granny Weatherwax's definition of sin in Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett. "Sin is when you treat people as things". I don't consider this a complete definition of sin, but it's pretty close to what I mean in this context.

Answer 7

Determined: Life without Free Will with Robert Sapolsky

https://youtu.be/rv38taDUpwQ

The video is 53 minutes long. Sapolsky is a biologist who argues against free will. But I don't know if he has a deterministic theory of ethics.

Reasoning in Contract and Tort Law

The Common Law incorporates theories of contract and torts. The underlying idea of social psychology is that humans are at liberty to act according to their will. If they make deals to exchange benefits under principles of contract law then coercion, or police force, will be used to enforce those deals. But contracts against public policy, such as contracts for sex, will not be enforced by police coercion. The law has an ethical foundation: it is good to accord liberty and enforce contracts. The law holds that when humans act according to their will they should not cause harm to others. The elements of a tort claim are duty to avoid harm to others, breach of duty, causation of harm, and injury. Maybe biology compels us to invent theories of law that incorporate ethical and moral judgment but even so we cannot map ethical and moral judgment in any specific context to any specified deterministic process. In a court of law Sapolsky might be called as an expert to argue that the will of some person is not the proximate cause of contract deal or tort outcome. But then why would we hold court trials in a deterministic world unless some unspecified deterministic process is causing us to have ethical and moral disputes?

Answer 8

Locus of responsibility

From the context of evaluating whether the actions of someone else are ethical, the question of free will becomes irrelevant - if we assume that some person is replaced by a mechanical robot without free will, we can still apply all the same reasoning for condemning prohibited actions. The question of free will is essentially about the locus of decision-making within the body of some person (or another entity), but there is no dispute that this locus is "somewhere" within them, and thus the whole entity/body/person can be held responsible for actions, no matter if these actions were determined by some free will within them or by a mechanistic rule set within them.

The concepts of retribution and deterrence are just as valid - the expectation of consequences and/or punishment can and would be taken into account by a robot with sufficient reasoning capacity, and so would act as motivation to deter unwanted acts just as if they had free will; and in the same manner upholding social reputation would still be just as relevant.

The concept of re-education or reform is just as valid - the 'mechanistic programming' could be adjusted towards the expected direction just as the free will choices of that agent. Etc, etc.

Answer 9

Without free will, I struggle to see the noteable difference between humans and animals.

The same would be true if some other animal than the humans has free will? Or most of them? Modern philosophy does not draw such a line between humans and other animals.

If we wanted to help another animal, for example Beaver, we would be able to establish a framework that would be beneficial for them

We can do that, regardless of who has free will or not. We have already done so, it's called environmentalism (though it's broader than just beavers).

Would it not be entirely possible to define not only an ethical framework for humans, but one that can be aligned with the biological framework, and use that as a baseline to express the rest?

You can define ethical frameworks all day long, one for each day of the year, there are infinitely many possible ones. And most of them are inconsistent, or would not be accepted or adopted, or even understood. So the possibility to define frameworks seems granted but useless.

If there is no free will, doesn't that provide a framework for an ethical model?

So the assumption seems to be that humanity sees other animals as different from humans, in particular having free will, and has established an ethical framework that allows us to exploit and hunt and destroy animals, but if we reject free will, all will be well.

There is multiple problems with that. While historically, western society has believed in creationism and thus human exceptionalism, at the same time it also believed in absolute morals as dictated by god and revealed to prophets. There are no Beavers mentioned in the 10 commandments. And we cannot add an eleventh one for beavers.

So as long as people believed in religious claims about morality, philosophy is irrelevant. You'd have to found a religion like the cult of the Beaver to change anything (and I'd suggest a different name).

In philosophy though, humanity has moved on from religious morality, to other frameworks which are grounded in reason, not revelation by prophets.

These modern frameworks however do not draw a line between humans and other animals, and do not presuppose human exceptionalism. So we already have such frameworks in philosophy that do not define a difference between humans and animals.

You might ask then why Beavers don't have citizenship and a right to vote, the right to legal defense in a court of law and so on.

But societies structures, laws and attitudes are only sluggishly trailing philosophy, like a mum trying to drag a kid from the sweets section of a supermarket to the exit. Plenty of Bible belters in the US still carry their Bibles to birth control events to proclaim the will of God. They don't care about philosophy or definitions.

So environmentalism typically does not need to find new definitions, but just needs to raise awareness and support for existing definitions (and plain science). Free will of either humans or other animals is mostly irrelevant in this context. Except: Consciousness and the ability to reason and speak might be more helpful. If you can get a cow to speak about it's thoughts and feelings about being cattle, that might quickly change a lot, granted.

Answer 10

I have not seen a single person that does not believe in free will, act as if (s)he does not have free will. Everybody acts as if they have free will even those that do not believe in it! Since there is no free will, you cannot help asking the question you did and feeling the way you do, and I can't help typing this. Without free will it all becomes moot.

Answer 11

Corrections Free will, and how it relates to determinism and morality, is a complex subject. Your question includes multiple assumptions that are not valid.

First, all non religious views of willing extend willing to animals, so the “animals don’t have free will so how can humans” assumption is … simply wrongheaded. Both humans and animals appear to have wills.

You also presume that for humans and animals to be “The internal process is as much slave to input-output responses”. This is an explicit assumption of behaviorism, which is a widely discredited and rejected framework in both psychology and philosophy.

In response to Haxor789 you wrote: “ I do not see by what mechanism you can reduce human complexity down to simple machinistic behaviour that does not have an internal experience worth accounting for.” But almost no materialist models of consciousness allow for an internal experience worth accounting for. Eliminative reduction holds that we are mistaken about what consciousness is, and we will eventually replace that confusion with neural terms. Identity theories hold that material or functional properties are entirely responsible for all causation associated with consciousness, and if we happened not to be conscious there would be no exterior difference to the world. And delusionist deny that we are conscious at all. The only materialist models that allow for a consciousness that matters are the strongly emergent ones. So, reducing to mechanistic behavior” has in every proposal so far led to “experience not worth accounting for”. This is the core of non reductionists rejection of reductionism for consciousness. And is the reason that the majority in even physicalist philosophy of mind for the last half century has been non reductive.

For internal experience to matter morally, as a minimum your ontology has to include emergent phenomena. Proposed ontologies get a lot more complex than just allowing emergence.

You presume moral relevance to optimization analyses. Why? Of what moral relevance is there for a larger vs smaller landslide on a lunar crater? There is loads of “complexity” to a landslide, but this does not create moral relevance.

Additionally, other posters have assumed our world is determined, and that human and animal behaviors are predictable based on neural state. This is not true, Quantum Mechanics is explicitly probabilistic. And probability extends up to all Chaotic systems that are influence able by a single quantum event. Which is the case for all living things, which can be mutated by a single gamma particle. Neural systems are not any less chaotically unpredictable in principle than chromosomes are, so assuming they are bounded chaotic systems is — more than plausible.

So what does it take to have morally relevant free will?

Moral relevance requires a moral patient. There must be experienced “what it is like” and this has to include positive and negative experience.

To get to morality, one must also be able to make choices. Morality only matters for moral agents. Moral agents should include moral patients in their moral thinking, but for morality to even matter, we need agency.

So what does it take to have agency? First, the world has to not be determined. We have that with our QM/chaotic world.

Second, our world has to be causally open. Otherwise agents cannot matter, as physics would proceed uninfluenced by the agent. Now physicalism assumes causal closure of physics, but physics itself, and all sciences, are intrinsically open. Science holds hat all our assumptions are subject to overturning, and that there are causal things that we do not yet understand. AND science cannot be justified scientifically so not all causation can possibly be scientific, making science logically open too.

Third, causal agents have to be a 3rd source of causal power in addition to classic causation and randomness. This is called Agent Causation Theory. Given that logic is infinitely pluralistic, it is reasonable to assume that we will be able to find an agency causation logic that fits our world, even if we have not found one yet.

Note all three of these assumptions are needed for a full moral agent causation and responsibility model. Several posters have asserted a motivational causation that moves determinism back to the realm of motivational psychology. These thoughts are exemplified in the moral thinking of Richard Swinburne, who assumes spiritual dualism and open physics, but still holds that moral choices are only possible in the very rare case of nearly perfectly balanced psychological preferences. Swinburne does not accept the third causal option of Agency, and so his conception of free will is constrained to near irrelevance.