Chapter 3.
Morality Within a Causal Will
Perspective
Let’s explore our causal will from
the perspective of morality. If we
don’t have a personal free will,
then it’s not accurate to say that
we have a personal morality. When we
talk about morality, we’re basically
talking about right and wrong, and
personal responsibility. We do what
is good, and we expect God, or the
universe, to reward us. If we do
what is bad, we expect that the
universe will punish us. That tends
to be the way it generally works,
but the salient point here is that
it’s not up to us whether we do
right or wrong, good or bad.
Every moral decision that we make is
based on our understanding of the
morality of the issue. Take, for
example, a young boy who is raised
in a culture where stealing is, for
some reason, done and promoted. The
culture teaches stealing. This young
boy is raised in this culture, and
learns is that stealing is not
wrong; stealing is right. This young
boy, when he becomes a man, steals.
He considers himself to be right in
doing so. Let’s now consider another
person, a young girl, who was raised
in a different culture. She was
taught by her culture that stealing
is wrong, and grows up to not steal.
Is the boy who becomes a man and
steals to be blamed for his
stealing, and is the girl who
doesn’t steal to be credited for not
stealing? If we believe we have a
free will, we’ll say “yes.” But to
the extent we understand that we
don’t have a free will, we
understand that the boy could not
have morally done other than to
steal because when he steals he
thinks he’s doing good. That’s what
he was taught. That’s how he was
conditioned. With the girl, it’s the
same thing. She was conditioned to
think stealing is wrong, and she
doesn’t steal.
The rightness and wrongness of what
we do is not up to us. It’s up to
how we were taught. If we’re in a
certain culture, we’re going to
believe that certain acts are right
and certain acts are wrong. If we’re
in a completely different culture,
we may believe that other acts are
right, and other acts are wrong. But
we don’t get to choose what culture
we are raised in. We don’t get to
choose what parents we have, what
ethics they instill in us, what
books we read in school relating to
morality, etc. That is a good way to
understand why we don’t have a free
will, and how this relates to our
moral decisions. We’re not truly
morally accountable. We’re puppets,
or robots, or automatons, or
whatever, and we do good and evil
because we’re either lucky in the
first case or unlucky in the second.
When we do good, then the proper
response is to be and feel grateful.
If we define good as that which
creates happiness, that’s the reason
we would be feeling grateful. We’re
doing what is going to benefit us,
and, ideally, benefit the world
around us.
In our relationships with our best
friends, our spouses, our parents,
our brothers and sisters, all of the
people around us, we essentially
interact. What we say and do – our
morality toward each other – is
based on our understanding of
morality and our understanding of
whether our wills are free or
causal. To the extent we fall for
this illusion of free will – that we
believe we are the captains of our
fate, and can decide what we want –
when someone does something wrong to
us, we will tend to blame the
person. We attribute moral
accountability to the person, and
say to ourselves “well, if the
person did wrong, the person
deserves to be punished.” That will
often breed anger and judgment
toward the person. More often than
not, this blame hinders rather than
helps our relationships. Now let’s
explore our interactions with the
people around us as having been the
result of our causal will, or the
causal past.
Suddenly, that person who did wrong
to us is no longer our enemy and
adversary, per se. He is no longer
someone we believe deserves some
kind of punishment. When we
understand that we don’t have free
will, and we have causal wills, and
people do not behave as we believe
they should, we might say to
ourselves “it would have been nice
if the causal universe, or God,
would have compelled that person to
act differently, but s/he didn’t.
You can’t logically blame a robot –
a human being without free will –
for doing what they were completely
compelled to do. This perspective
helps with our relationships. It
helps us to be more understanding,
compassionate, and forgiving, not
just toward others, but also toward
ourselves. We do wrong all of the
time. That’s almost the definition
of being human – we make mistakes.
We have high goals and aims, but we
also have a part of our nature that
causes us to do what is not in our
best interest, or the best interest
of others.
Let’s look at this from the
perspective of how we might treat a
very young child – a two-year-old.
When a two-year-old does something
wrong, what do we do? Generally, we
tend to be understanding toward the
two-year-old. We say to ourselves
“the two-year-old couldn’t have done
any better because the child doesn’t
know any better.” At two years old,
a child does not have enough
experience, or knowledge, or
maturity, or information. Because
the child doesn’t have sufficient
cognitive and emotional ability, we
don’t attribute free will to the
two-year-old. We conclude that
two-year-olds do not have a free
will. They can’t think and do
whatever they want because they are
limited by their degree of education
and psychological development. What
happens? Because we recognize that
the two-year-old does not have a
free will, we are compassionate
toward him or her. We think to
ourselves “hey, that two-year-old is
not responsible for spilling that
drink, or doing whatever s/he may
have done that we may consider
wrong. And, we’re therefore much
kinder toward the two-year-old.
We’re much more forgiving and
accepting. That is why morality is
so important to this question of
whether human beings have a free or
a causal will. When we come to
understand that we don’t have a free
will – that free will is an illusion
– then we can apply the same
understanding and rational
compassion that we apply toward the
two-year-old toward everyone in our
lives, including ourselves.
It’s not going to be without
challenges. Even how we address
those challenges, incidentally, is
just as compelled and unfreely
willed as anything else. For
example, let’s say someone does
something that we are compelled to
dislike. We’re compelled to see it
as wrong. What do we do? If we
operate under a causal will
perspective, we say to ourselves
“alright, the person is not to
blame.” But what if the person
keeps, for example, stepping on our
foot? That can’t be the end of it.
We basically have to take action
even though we know that the person
does not have a free will, and is
completely compelled to do what they
have done or not done that we
consider a threat. If someone is
physically threatening us, we might
say to ourselves “alright, the
person does not have a free will,
but neither do I, and, the causal
past may have us engage in self
defense.
The point is that when we understand
that we have causal wills instead of
free wills, it doesn’t mean that
other people, or we, have license to
do what we want. We don’t. It’s
important to remember that when the
universe compels us to do what is
right, it usually rewards us with
some kind of pleasure. When we do
what’s wrong, the universe will
often punish us in some way or
another. So, even though we might be
compassionate toward someone who is
doing wrong, that doesn’t mean we
absolutely have to be a doormat, or
be vulnerable to other people’s
aggression. And again, it doesn’t
give us license to say to ourselves
“well, I don’t have a free will, so
I can do whatever I want.” It just
doesn’t work that way. This is very
important to remember, because many
people see the reasoning of why we
don’t have a free will, but can’t
completely accept it because they
are afraid that if we give up this
illusion of free will, it will spell
the end of civilization. Such a fear
is much more likely than not to be
unwarranted because we human beings
are hedonic creatures. We seek
pleasure and avoid pain. If somebody
is doing something wrong, we may not
blame them for it, but we’ll
certainly have to take some kind of
action to minimize the impact of
that wrong. The same goes for us if
we do wrong. We don’t have to be
afraid of civilization collapsing
because of our understanding that
free will is an illusion. I think
the potential benefits of
understanding our wills as causal
far outweigh its potential
detriments.
Our whole civilization – our
judicial system and system of
business and economics – is based on
the illusion of free will. With our
criminal justice system, there is an
appreciation of extenuating
circumstances. There is somewhat of
an understanding of our causal will.
For example, if in our criminal
justice system somebody does
something wrong, and there is a
mitigating factor – perhaps the
person was distraught, or ignorant
of certain facts, or has some kind
of disability – our law accounts for
that. It might minimize a sentence
or find the person innocent. That’s
recognition of causality. That’s
recognition that a certain person
could not have helped what they did.
In business, it’s the same. We
ascribe personal attribution to each
other based on the belief in a free
will. Some of us do much better at
whatever than the rest of us. Our
current free will perspective has us
reward that person above another
person who was not as lucky. That
leads to the kind of economic
competition that, if you want to get
very real about it, is likely the
main engine for climate change. We
have a competitive culture that
promotes the idea that “I of my own
free will did something good, and I
deserve to be rewarded for it”
rather than saying, “No, what I did
was not of my own free will. It was
simply fortune or luck, and my
personal well-being is not any more
important than that of those of us
who have been less lucky, and
certainly not more important than
the fate of our entire civilization
over the next several decades
because of climate change.”
Our understanding of the nature of
human will has profound implications
and effects. When we understand that
morality is not a personal
attribute, the only entity you can
talk about as moral or not is the
causal past, or God. Whatever is
making us do what we do is the only
moral agent that exists. We’re not
moral beings as human beings because
we’re compelled to do whatever moral
or immoral act we do. We’re just
like a hand that might do something
right or wrong. We’re not going to
attribute responsibility to this
hand; we’re going to attribute it to
the brain that makes it do what it
does. Naturally, by the same
reasoning, we’re not going to
attribute responsibility to the
brain that leads the hand – we’re
going to attribute it to the causal
past.
We’re like a hand, and we think
we’re the brain or causal past. When
it comes to morality, the better we
understand that everything is
causal, and that there is no
personal morality, the less
judgmental we will be. Think about
some of the principle tenets in the
major religions. Even though these
religions get this question of human
will wrong, they get much right.
Religion tends to be about morality.
Sometimes it doesn’t live up to its
ideals, but there is within most, if
not all, religions, this idea of
right and wrong. Sometimes it’s not
good to be judgmental, per
se. We have to differentiate between
right and wrong, but to be
judgmental means to blame. So, this
whole concept of non-judgment,
whether it be Christian, Jewish,
Islamic or whatever, really has its
basis in the idea that judgment
doesn’t fundamentally, as distinct
from pragmatically, make sense. If
someone is doing something, and
you’re judging them based on what
they are doing, and they don’t have
a free will, then the judgment is
misplaced.
You could, conceivably judge the
causal past, or God. I tend to do
that. I say to myself “well, if I
was God, I would not have created
pain. Naturally, if there is no pain
there would be no evil, because evil
is, by basic or utilitarian
definition, what creates pain. In
other words, if there was no pain,
there could be no evil.” If the
causal past has compelled us to do
wrong, we could say to ourselves
“the causal past should not have
done that.” But, does the causal
past have a free will? Does God have
a free will? My guess is “no.”
Within our reality, there are a few
aspects that transcend our ability
to understand. I’ll go through them
briefly, and relate them to what we
are talking about. Infinity; it’s
impossible to know whether space
goes outward infinitely, or stops at
some point. Either prospect appears
illogical when contrasted with its
alternative. The same goes for the
eternities, going into the eternal
past and into the eternal future.
Our mind cannot wrap itself around
the idea of reality going on forever
and ever, just like it can’t wrap
itself around the idea of everything
just ceasing to be. Within that
context, it seems impossible for us
to know whether the universe that is
compelling us is compelled itself,
or not. It’s an open question. The
reality that rings through is that
the causal past may have a free will
– may decide of its own accord what
will be and won’t be – but certainly
we can’t do that as human beings.
It’s because we don’t have a free
will that morality is not properly
applicable to us. In other words,
we’re neither moral nor immoral.
We’re actors on a stage, doing what
the causal past compels relative to
morality. Sometimes it has us do
what we consider to be good, and
other times not. It’s just not up to
us.
Our world is at a very challenging
time. Climate Change will be with us
for at least the next several
decades, and it’s going to be
extremely challenging. The global
economy is going to be challenging.
To the extent we understand that we
do not have a free will, we will
understand that we are not
essentially morally responsible, and
can be much more compassionate and
non-judgmental toward the people in
our world. That, I think, will be
the way we solve these problems,
because the free will perspective
causes blame and moral judgment,
which causes denial, conflict and
aggression, whereas the causal will
perspective would likely lead to
more intelligent responses.
Next chapter
|