Last night I had a QQ chat with an online friend. Although there was nothing especially profound in it, it may count as a basic expression of my approach to the question of free will and determinism.
This friend had originally fallen into anguish over such questions as “Does the world around us exist?”, “Do human beings have free will?”, and “Is causality something objectively existent?”, after reading The Big Questions, and came to me for help. I replied with an email at the time, though perhaps I did not quite hit the point; I was only trying to indicate a general way of release. This time, through QQ, we chatted again about a more specific issue—determinism and free will—so let me post both my reply at the time and yesterday’s chat here. I have omitted the other party’s letter, and I have also cut down the other party’s QQ chat (shown in italics); the ordinary-font text is all mine:
Reply:
Thank you for your letter. I am not very willing to communicate by phone, because I am very unaccustomed to talking by phone; if I had to do that, I would feel extremely constrained. Please forgive me.
Your problem is not something philosophy can solve. Philosophers are no more able than ordinary people to penetrate the meaning of life. To borrow a saying: life is to be lived clearly, not thought through clearly.
The most frightening thing of all is “existence” itself: the existence of this world, and the possibility that it could become sheer nothingness, are infinitely terrifying. Only numb and idiotic fools would not fear this absolute nothingness. Brave people do not eliminate their fear; they are merely able to face fear and go on living. What can overcome nihilism is not those word games, but living life itself. In life, we feel genuine joy and satisfaction, and we also feel equally genuine fear and loss. Such real feeling is something no skepticism can dissolve.
The reason philosophers can keep on asking the great questions of existence and nothingness without going insane, panicking, or losing their way, is only that they have turned philosophical questioning into a way of life. In questioning, thinking, and criticism, just as in eating, adventuring, and fighting, they obtain vivid feeling. It is the questioning itself, rather than the answers obtained from questioning, that gives one the feeling of meaning. For this reason, the philosopher’s questioning is also hard to stop; because once one pauses to look at what conclusion one has actually reached, one will find that all answers are also nothingness—nothing has been gained.
Perhaps life is just a game, a video game (I hope you’ve played one). What is the outcome of this game? You fail, and then GameOver; you win, and it is still GameOver; or perhaps the maze of life never reaches a finish line, or perhaps beyond the finish line everything is Over…… In short, this game has no result. So, is the game still meaningful? Of course it is. If one were to speak of the meaning of the game, it lies only in the process of playing: every challenge encountered, every puzzle, every level cleared, is a joyful thing. As for what comes after this game finally ends—whether it is utter over, or the next game, or eternal recurrence—we do not know; as for whether the course of this game can be freely chosen and determined by me, or whether it has already been arranged as a completely determinate progression, we also do not know; and even whether there are many participants in this game who communicate with one another, or whether I alone exist and everyone else is an unconscious NPC, we likewise do not know. But in any case, what we can grasp is the fun of playing the game: on the one hand, we bracket these hard-to-answer questions; on the other hand, we can still enjoy ourselves in it. Whether this game is interesting depends on its unfolding and on my investment in it, not on the answers to those big questions. That is all I can say.
Chat record:
……
Mm, what is determinism?
A web of causes and effects
Causal connection is not the same as determinism
It dissolves the self-evident equation people habitually make between autonomy and free will.
If there were no causality, then free will would really be dissolved. If I want to do something, I do something, and then there is the result of my doing it—if there is no causal connection among these events, then where would free will come from?
Only with causality is there free will
You are understanding causality as necessary and sufficient conditions, which is why you make them equal. Causality is, first of all, nothing more than a relation among things; “everything has its cause” does not mean that there must be certain determinate causes that necessarily produce a specific effect.
Saying that A is caused by B does not mean that if B then necessarily A, or that if C then A cannot occur. For example, if you suddenly become rich overnight, there must be a reason—say, you bought a lottery ticket—but buying a lottery ticket does not necessarily lead to becoming rich, nor does not buying a lottery ticket necessarily mean you cannot become rich. Yet there is indeed a connection between your becoming rich and your buying a lottery ticket, and that connection is a kind of causality.
If you insist on treating causality as necessary and sufficient conditions, then you are insisting on treating the real world as a mathematical world. And yes, the mathematical world is indeed deterministic. But how can the real world be treated as a mathematical world in the first place? That is the real question. So determinism is not about causality; it is about mathematization.
Right, that is exactly how I understand it. But isn’t it the case that a specific series of causes necessarily leads to that specific result? Isn’t that what the laws of physics are?
Mm, you’re right: mathematization = determinism
Is the butterfly effect a model of mathematized idealization?
So physics is the mathematization of the world. This is a construction. In the real world, the so-called “specific series of causes” cannot be exhaustively enumerated; only in carefully fashioned laboratory conditions can this be done. It is possible to artificially construct a local environment similar to a mathematical ideal world, and by designing, for example, an accurate calculator or other machinery, one can display the precise causal relations of the mathematical world. So mathematization is also mechanization, and a mechanized world is also deterministic. But is the entire real world “itself” really like this? That is also a question. So the issue is still not causality, but the belief that a mechanical, artificially constructed environment can in theory be extended to the whole world.
The butterfly effect precisely reveals the fundamental difficulty that this extension is bound to face. Causal relations in the real world are extremely complex and are simply impossible for human beings to grasp. One butterfly may cause a hurricane, but you can never determine exactly which butterfly. What the butterfly effect says is precisely that people are fundamentally unable to exhaust the causes of some real event, and this difficulty is mathematical—that is to say, even if you know all the equations and laws, you still cannot solve them exactly in mathematical terms. So only an ideal God could truly exhaust causality. But can a causality that only God can fully see still be regarded as causality in the real world? That is also a question. So the issue is still not causality, but rather a certain belief in a transcendental world. Just as before modern science, Christian belief in God’s omniscience and omnipotence likewise produced the so-called idea of determinism, because an omnipotent God knows everything, so everything has already been determined by God. Although the modern problem of determinism is entangled with mathematics and physics, in essence it is continuous with theological determinism.
But if one cannot exhaust all causes (enumerate them), does that mean determinism is false? Though determinism may perhaps be only a belief.
No one says determinism is false; in fact, determinism cannot be false. How could you possibly prove determinism wrong? Theoretically, that is impossible. If, according to some law, you make a scientific prediction and the prediction fails, does that mean determinism is wrong? We can always explain it as some unknown cause having led to the inaccuracy of the prediction.
Then what reason do we have to believe that human beings have free will?
What reason do we have not to believe it? Can you choose to believe or not believe? If you can make such a choice, then that is free will.
But isn’t it contradictory to believe in determinism and free will at the same time?
Just look at Kant and it is no contradiction…
Isn’t Kant’s freedom only a postulate?
It is a positing, something you must posit: both a belief and a necessity of reason. Because if you want reason, if you want to discuss questions, then you must set up this assumption. If you want to ask questions and make choices, then you must set up free will. Not positing freedom is fine; it does not hinder life much, but then you cannot carry out reflection in practical reason, and you cannot ask: Is this thing done right? What should I do? Which one should I believe? and so on. All these questions then become meaningless. So if you want to discuss, you must posit it. That is what Kant meant.
Then isn’t Kant too “pragmatic”? It sounds like nothing more than a human wishful thinking…
But determinism is also human wishful thinking. Why should we believe that the world is a mathematical machine? Why should we believe that the mechanically related patterns constructed by limited human capacities are the world’s most fundamental model of causal relation? Free will really is such a positing, but determinism is similar: it is also a kind of positing, and only by positing determinism can scientific discussion proceed. We can only, in a wishful way, assume that an unknown conclusion is caused by some unknown cause; only then can scientific inquiry continue. Although quantum mechanics has shattered mechanical determinism, it is still some kind of mathematical determinism.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply