Internal Causal Determinism: Reasons as Causes
Metzler
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Introduction
All human actions are based on reasons. Besides those actions that are better referred to
as reactions (such as jumping when surprised or putting one‟s arms up when about to
encounter a blow) there are, I would argue, virtually no human actions that lack reasons.
In this paper I will give an argument for the claim that I have just made, and will explain
some of the ramifications that this claim, if found to be true, has for free will.
1. Reasons as Causes
Reasoning is something that occurs within each of us; it is a phenomenon that we not
only observe but also take part in. In this section I will argue that reasons are the causes
of our actions (in the same way that heat „causes‟ water to boil). And I will argue that, in
a very direct and immediate way, we can trace the roots of our reasoning far enough back
to come up with a solid argument for causal determinism.
First, I should define „reasons.‟ Let me make a distinction between „reasons‟ and
„reason.‟ Reason is the faculty of the mind that solves problems and calculates data; it
uses logic and experience to inform an agent of a situation and of an agent‟s options.
Reason is an agent‟s tool. A reason, on the other hand, is the information that is produced
by reason; it is the product of reason‟s work.
Some examples of reasons are the following: “eating makes me full,” “I like the
color red,” “Jimmy told me that he is a democrat,” and “I want to be a good person.”
One might decide to eat because she wants to be full, one might choose the red sweater
over the grey one because she likes red, one who is politically undecided might sway
towards the left because her new boyfriend is a democrat, and one might decide not to lie
because she wants to be a good person. Briefly stated, a reason is a piece of information
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that is relevant to a person‟s situation and has a potential effect on her actions or beliefs.
Reasons are the basis of human choice.
As I have stated, reasons are the causes of our actions. Thereby, all human action
has its roots in reasons. I can think of two significant objections to this claim. The first
is that children‟s actions surely cannot all be attributed to conscious reasons. The second
is that there seem to be some actions that are exerted in the heat of emotion; for example,
the immediate flying of a fist when one is suddenly threatened or the blurting out of
affection between two lovers. I will briefly address the first objection and then more
extensively address the second.
As a child grows his reasoning starts to resemble that of an adult‟s, but there are
at least three years of his life in which very little higher reasoning occurs. This does not
mean, however, that a child is without reason. As young as a few weeks old a baby
learns that his hands are attached to him. He figures out that he can cause those two
strange objects to move about, and that whenever he so desires the objects will move. He
begins to experiment with different motions and positions, and he notices the difference
between moving those objects by himself and others moving them for him. He learns all
of this using some form of reason. He begins to reason that because he has moved his
hands numerous times before he will be able to do it again in the same way. This is how
babies begin to control their bodies and interact with their environment. Although a
child‟s reasoning is less complex than an adult‟s, he certainly uses reason; which means
that reasons are just as much a source of his actions as they are of the adult‟s.
Heated, emotional acts can also be seen as reasonless. Some actions, one might
argue, are driven purely by overwhelming emotion. However, consider the fact that an
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emotional act is still usually considered the responsibility of its actor. I would suggest
that although an emotion-based action might not itself be immediately dependent on
reasons, there were reasons previous to the moment of intense emotion that affected the
action taken in that moment.
Let me give an example of what I am talking about. Let us say that in the heat of
an argument, an insult is hurled that is too much for one of the arguers, Jenna, to take.
She, without thinking, and almost without realizing it, picks up a heavy object and hurls it
at her opponent. Jenna does not, perhaps, even think about what she has done until after
her opponent has been injured. Once she realizes the extent of her opponent‟s injury she
immediately regrets her action, having not taken the time to consider the consequences,
which would have served as reasons not to do as she did.
Not everyone, though, would attack their opponent in such a way, even if deeply
offended. This is because people make reason-based decisions prior to extreme or testing
circumstances, which eventually determine how they will act in an extreme or testing
situation. Jenna might have been raised in a family in which throwing and hitting were
viable options in an argument, so she developed a habit of behaving in this way. When
she grew older she found that this kind of behavior was not acceptable in some of her
friends‟ families. At that point Jenna had the choice to change her view on the matter or
to retain her childhood beliefs about the issue. Perhaps she chooses not to change her
view on the matter, or simply chooses not to try to change her behavior. If so, Jenna
found convincing reasons for not bothering to change her views or her ways. Perhaps
one of those reasons was that such actions got one‟s point across when in an argument, or
that no real harm ever came to members of her family, or even that it would just be too
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hard to change. In any case, such reasons caused her, in the end, to throw the object at
her opponent, whereas a different set of reasons might have caused her to refrain from
doing so.
So emotional, “reason-less” reactions to situations are based on previous
reasoning. This is why we hold people accountable for their actions even and sometimes
especially when the actions are done in the heat of emotion.
2. The Most Convincing Reasons Every Time
Jurgen Habermas says that reasons are not the same as natural causes, which he defends
by pointing to the “indeterminacy that attends them.” However, I argue that there is a
kind of determinacy that attends our reasoning. Although we may not always be able to
discern what the reasons are, I suggest that we always follow the reasons that we find
most convincing. In this section I will defend my claim that people always act upon the
reasons that they find most convincing; and, in fact, that they cannot do otherwise. In the
following section I will investigate the sources of our reasons.
Let us look at a scenario in which “Leah” chooses to drop out of high school.
Leah‟s reasoning is as follows: 1) Those who drop out of high school have a very hard
time finding well-paying jobs, 2) Her parents will kick her out of the house once they
find out that she has dropped out, 3) In order to make enough money to live on, she might
have to cut a few moral corners such as stealing and/or selling illegal substances 4)
selling illegal substances can land one in prison and be dangerous, and 5) she hates
school. Although the reasons listed clearly weigh in favor of staying in school, Leah
chooses to drop out. In light of these reasons, one might accuse her of doing something
that she knew would not end well, or of choosing to take a certain path even though it
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was against her best interests. In fact, Leah herself might believe that she has chosen
against the „better reasons.‟ But if Leah had actually found reasons 1 through 4 to be
more convincing she never would have decided to drop out. Leah‟s disdain for school
must have been enough to make her worry for her well-being and overall happiness; and
that worry must have been weightier than all of the other reasons combined.
Leah acted according to the reasons that actually convinced her, not according to
those that might have seemed best. If my reader has doubts about the plausibility of
someone acting upon reasons of which she is not even aware, I invite him or her to think
of the goals of a psychologist with his patient. A psychologist attempts to help his patient
discover the real reasons for her actions (perhaps she is remaining in an abusive
relationship because she is terrified of being alone, not because she loves him); reasons
that are driving her but do not immediately present themselves to her conscious thought.
It seems clear to me that one never does, and in fact cannot, follow the reasons
that she finds less convincing. In some form or fashion her actions conform to the
reasons that most convince her at any given moment.
3. Environment, Experience, and Genetics: The Roots of Reasons
If all actions are birthed by reasons (that is, if reasons are considered the efficient causes
of action) we may be left with a causal determinism that does not allow for free will after
all. In order to decipher what implications my claim has on the idea of free will we will
need to 1) come up with a working definition of free will, and 2) examine the roots of
reasons.
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Compatibilism is “the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism.” 1
However, if the thesis of determinism is that all events that occur, occur out of necessity
because they are caused by prior events, and if free will is the thesis that one can choose
between genuinely possible alternatives, then the two notions are logically incompatible.
The compatibilist, then, must define free will differently. He or she must say that free
will does not have to do with having genuinely possible alternatives, but rather with
something like the ability to act according to what is best for oneself, or, perhaps, to act
in alignment with God‟s will; whether or not these actions are determined is, for the
compatibilist, irrelevant.
But the compatibilist‟s argument seems to me to be nonsense; it does not sit well
with common sense. Free will is easily recognized as a basic human feeling. That is,
most people, even if they do not believe in free will, feel that they are, in some sense,
„free.‟ And before the discussion gets very intellectual, at the most basic level, „free‟
means something like, „free to speak or not to speak,‟ „free to wiggle my toes or not to
wiggle my toes,‟ or „free to pick up the stick or not to pick up the stick.‟ The feeling of
freedom comes from the direct control we seem to have over our bodies and over objects
that are around us. This feeling is not the feeling that one can „do what is best‟ or „carry
out God‟s will,‟ but is quite fundamentally the feeling that one has a genuine option to act
or not to act. Where else, then, should we take our definition of free will but from our
very first and immediate conception of it? In my view, if we are not talking about a
1
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/.
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freedom to choose between genuine alternatives and to act accordingly, then,
fundamentally, we are no longer talking about free will.2
So, I will define free will as „the ability to choose between genuine alternatives
and to act accordingly.‟ Now to address our second concern: the roots of reasons.
It seems to me that all reasons can be traced back to environment, experience, or
genetics; three things that are not within a person‟s control. Most moral considerations,
for example, come from one‟s culture and one‟s family. If there are any „moral
considerations‟ that are solely one‟s own it seems likely that they stem from one‟s
genetics or brain chemistry. For example, sociopaths are usually incapable of feeling
empathy or remorse; this is a part of their brain‟s chemical make up. If an individual is
raised in a family and society in which almost everyone agrees on certain basic moral
codes (such as do not murder) but does not or cannot follow those codes, most likely the
difference can be attributed to brain chemistry or genetics.
It is even clearer that reasons having to do with preference (such as preferring rice
over mashed potatoes) or training (such as having been taught that spending money on an
extravagant lifestyle is bad) stem from environment, experience, or genetics. It seems to
me impossible to find any sort of reason that is not rooted in environment, experience,
genetics, or in a combination of the three.
Julia Tanney, in her essay, “Reason-Explanation and the Contents of the Mind,”
seems to understand this. In it, Tanney argues that a person‟s mental states have little if
Humans are not infinitely free, of course. We cannot choose to do whatever we
please and we do not have the ability to act upon whatever we choose. But this, I
think, is an obvious consideration that does not alter the fact that what most people
mean by ‘free will’ is the ability to choose to act or not act.
2
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anything to do with how we explain a person‟s actions (and reasons, one should suppose,
are mental states). Her argument goes as follows.
If we were to see a woman running out of a burning building we would assume
that she has run out because the building is on fire. The entire scenario is available to any
onlooker, and thereby can be discerned without having to ask the woman what her
reasons were for running out of the building. Moreover, if one were to talk to the woman
about the reasons for her actions, he would gain little if any new knowledge about the
situation. For example, if the woman tells her inquirer that she ran out of the building
because she was desperate to get lunch, her inquirer would assume that either she was
lying or that she had not realized that the building was on fire.3 For Tanney, a person‟s
circumstances tell us all we need to know about their actions. The only issue is whether
or not we have direct epistemic access to those circumstances.
So reasons can be traced back to observable circumstances; circumstances such as
environment, experience, and genetics. And although we do not have direct access to the
totality of those circumstances that cause others‟ (or even our own) reasons and actions,
the „formula,‟ so to speak, is there to be read. That is, mental states and reasons are
determined by outside forces, and if we were able to discern every outside force – from
the most obvious to the most minute – we would be able to determine, with certainty,
what one‟s mental state and actions will be. Whether we will ever actually be able to
„read‟ the formulas that concoct mental states is another issue.
Julia Tanney, “Reason-Explanation and the Contents of the Mind,” Ratio Volume 18
Issue 3 (September 2005): 341, 347.
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4. The Loss of Free Will
If reasons are causes that determine our actions in a very necessary, inescapable way, we
might have to do away with the notion of free will. Allow me to recap my argument. I
have suggested that 1) all human action is based on particular reasons 2) when we
examine the reasoning behind our actions we find that we always act in accordance with
the reasons that we find most convincing, 3) when we investigate the origin of these
reasons we find that they are either from our environment, our experiences, or our
genetics (all of which are external to us and beyond our control), so 4) we have a solid
case for causal determinism, which renders our free will “perfectly illusory.”4
5. Is There Hope for Free Will?
My argument thus far has been in favor of determinism and against the possibility of free
will; but I do not wish to end here. I want to introduce two ideas – one suggested by
Peter Strawson and one of my own – that might provide the possibility of free will after
all; or that might at least subdue the panic that could ensue if someone were to find my
previous argument persuasive.
So I would like to suggest another possible explanation of free will (call it my last
attempt to salvage free will from the closing stages of my earlier argument). Perhaps the
existence of free will begins when the will decides to become free. Humans, it seems
clear, are not free – we are bound by necessity, causation, laws, etc. – until we free
ourselves. Initially, I‟m sure, the absurdity of this idea might cause my reader to want to
immediately dispose of it. But my proposal is not baseless; there is, in fact, a two
thousand year old tradition that might back it up. That tradition is Christianity.
4
Ibid.
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The Christian story goes like this. God created humans good, and He put them
into a paradise in which they could be together with Him. In the beginning, humans were
completely free to act in a way that was pleasing to God. But the humans disobeyed God
and lost their paradise, their union with God, and their ability to please Him. They and
all their offspring were then enslaved to a nature that rendered them unable to do what
was right. However God did not want humans to be forever separated from Him. So, He
decided to take the blame for their wrongdoing, and He thereby enabled them to be
reunited with Him and to be free again to follow His ways. But this union and freedom
was offered under a condition; humans had to decide to give up their enslavement to
wrongdoing and accept God‟s offer to take the blame for it.
In the Christian story, humans, who are enslaved, must choose to become free.
This paradox would be preposterous if the Christian story were false; but if the Christian
story were true, it would be the key to solving the problem of free will.5
So, again, perhaps the existence of free will begins with our will. Perhaps
humans are not free until we free ourselves.6 This means, in a very paradoxical way, that
Recall that on the top of page 19 I said that Peter Strawson purports that we can be
in control if we so “choose.” Strawson’s and my claims, it seems, are similar. The
difference is that mine is a metaphysical claim, while his disregards metaphysics
altogether. Metaphysical realism is crucial, I think, for such a claim to be valid or
helpful. Firstly, I have already suggested that Strawson is mistaken in supposing
that human behavior and attitudes could not and would not change were it revealed
to us that we were, in a metaphysical sense, not free. Secondly, in his essay “Belief
and Unbelief: A Metaphysical Choice?” Stephen T. Davis recognizes the importance
of metaphysical realism. He argues that religious claims are necessarily
metaphysical claims. I see claims about free will – and even those about the human
moral attitudes that Strawson discusses (C.S. Lewis argues that our moral attitudes
must have been instilled in us by some kind of Creator precisely because they are
shared and unavoidable, as Strawson says) – as primarily religious claims, and
therefore as metaphysical claims. So I do not think that a defense of free will or of
moral attitudes that dismisses metaphysics is valid.
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we must simply and spontaneously choose to be free while we are still enslaved; we must
choose to be able to choose. The twelve-step program teaches essentially this. The
program professes that addicts are powerless; that they have lost all control over their
addiction and their lives. Then it insists that the addict must freely choose to follow the
steps in order to regain free choice. The first step – prior even to the official first step – is
choosing to be able to choose.
So, although Jenna is determined by her genetics, environment, experiences, and,
most importantly, by her sinful nature, she can at any point decide that she will no longer
be enslaved. And Leah is able to make the decision, which her circumstances render her
unable to make, to stay in school.
This has, in fact, been my experience of free will. I have felt, from the moment
that I learned to move my hands about on my own, a sense of freedom over myself. But I
have also found that all of my actions are derived from reasons, and that those reasons,
whether good or bad, were developed in me because of my environment, my experiences,
and/or my genetics. And, lastly, I have found a tiny ray of hope for free will in that
which both the bible and the twelve steps profess – that free will lies within our grasp; all
we have to do is reach up and grab it.
It should be noted that Christianity does not claim that humans can save
themselves. The doctrine of total depravity explains that humans cannot choose
God without God’s help. The doctrine of prevenient grace explains that, because of
the Fall, God must make humans able to use the free will that he initially gave them.
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Bibliography
Anscombe, Elizabeth. “Causality and Determination,” in Agency and Responsibility:
Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom. Ed. Laura Waddell Ekstrom. Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 2001.
Davis, Stephen T. “Belief and Unbelief: A Metaphysical Choice?” at “Religion and the
End of Metaphysics,” Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion
Conference, Claremont Graduate University, 2006.
Habermas, Jurgen. “The Language Game of Responsible Agency and the Problem of
Free Will.” Philosophical Explorations Volume 10 No. 1 (March 2007): 13-50.
Schroeder, Timothy. “Reflection, Reason, and Free Will.” Philosophical Explorations
Volume 10 No. 1 (March 2007): 77-84.
Tanney, Julia. “Reason-Explanation and the Contents of the Mind.” Ratio Volume 18
Issue 3 (September 2005): 338-351.
Strawson, Peter. “Freedom and Resentment.” in Agency and Responsibility:
Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,
2001.