Presence

Philosophy Bites Podcast on Avicenna

If you've got 13 minutes, check out the Philosophy Bites podcast episode with Peter Adamson discussing the Muslim philosopher Avicenna. Besides the fact that his philosohpy is pretty interesting, Avicenna is quoted many times by Maimonides in the Guide.

In general, the Philosophy Bites podcast is excellent.

A Short Discourse on Determinism and Free Will

Approches to the question of free will (does Man have it, or not) can be divided into three basic categories:

• Determinism: everything in the visible universe is entirely determined by causal laws. What ever happens, including actions taken by Man, they are attributable to some set of antecedent causes, be they biological, psychological or theological.


• Libertarianism: some, not necessarily all, actions are done completely free of causal laws. The individual is the sole, decisive cause of the action.


• Compatabilism (also known as soft determinism): a combination of the two previous positions, which accepts determinism but Man can still be said to be free in so far as he can still act voluntarily.

I don't want to get into the ins and outs of each position here, you can find that in Wikipedia using the links above, or pickup Introduction to Philosophy, edited by Louis P. Pojman. My personal feeling is that determinism is the most likely of the three positions. It wins out on both logical and empirical grounds. Libertarianism, if you dig into it, is mostly based on arguments made from theological or emotional premises, which is all well and good, but doesn't make for a very cogent real-world argument. Soft determinism has many forms, so it's kind of hard to go into detail as to all the reasons why the theory doesn't quite work. Quickly: arguments from semantics, that try to redefine what it means to act freely, are a cop-out, and arguments that attributes free will to second-order volitions are faulty as one could simply claim that someone is predisposed, either biologically or psychologically (or even divinely), to have such a second-order volition, in which case, their wanting to want something is not their own free choice. Determinism itself does not present an air-tight case, but I think of the three it's the least assailable.

After discussing free will, determinism and compatibilism, it is only natural to turn to a discussion of moral responsibility. And from there, things usually progress to a discussion of theories of punishment. I hope to get into this later; for now, I want to take a closer look at determinism and attempt to distinguish it from it's cousin, fatalism.

Fatalism is "the doctrine that no matter what you (or anyone else) do, certain events will occur. For example, if it is fixed by the stars, god or dates that one will die in an airplane crash on a given date, no matter what you do, even if you stay away from airplanes, that event will take place." Fatalism is usually distinguished from determinism in that fatalism does not accept that humans can intervene, whereas determinism is fully accepting that Man can influence the antecedent states that lead up to future decisions.

I would argue, however, given the definition of determinism, that this is a false distinction, and that really there is no difference between determinism and fatalism. Part of the doctrine of determinism is that, if we were capable of comprehending all the various bits of data that contribute to a decision, we would be able to reliably predict someone's actions. For example, I am about to choose between two types of soup at a restaurant. If one knew enough about me, including my entire history of experiences of eating, the past and present state of my digestive system and how that affects my psychology, and that I once got violently ill from a bad bowl of French onion soup, one could predict with absolute certainty which soup I would pick. The only reason my choice appears to be uncertain is that the outsider does not have enough information to accurately predict the outcome.

Now, since we are accepting determinism, which holds that my current state is fully attributable to previous states; and, in turn, each of those states are fully attributable to states previous to them, and so on, one should have been able, given enough information, to predict, on the day I was born, what soup I would have picked on that fateful night in the restaurant! (Not to mention the fact that it should have been possible to predict that I would be in the restaurant that night, and who my date would have been). But that's exactly the same as what fatalism would say, only fatalism would base the statement on some sort of mystical or metaphysical intuition, but essentially they are the exact same claim. Therefore, there really is no difference between determinism and fatalism.

Now, one who would make a distinction between determinism and fatalism might say that the difference would be that perhaps it was my date's decision to go to a specific restaurant, and not my own. Meaning, there was input into my decision that came from outside of myself, from a third party. Fatalism would say that no matter what I or anyone else did, I would have chosen the split pea soup that night. Whereas determinism would say given all the pre-existing conditions in your life up to this point, including those by others that are outside of my control, that contributed to my choosing the pea soup. Had those outside conditions not been present, I might have done something different (although, I can tell you, there's no way I would have ever chosen the French onion soup).

This too, however, is a false distinction, because determinism applies not only to me, but to my date as well. So, given enough information, one could have predicted, at the time of my birth, that on a given date in the future, I would choose the pea soup. It doesn't matter that part of that decision was due to an outside entity injecting information into my set of pre-existing conditions; that person's actions and choices could also be known a priori due to the same rules of determinism. Granted, this is a massive amount of information to wrap one's head around, but what it all means is that there is absolutely no difference between fatalism and determinism. If a divine entity relays information regarding a future event, or it is predicted by feeding all the pre-existing conditions for myself and everyone in the whole world into some giant computer, it's exactly the same thing.

I am planning on writing more on determinism and free will, particularly how taking a determinist approach can be reconciled with moral responsibility and punishment. I would also like to attempt to outline the Torah's position on this subject, but that's really a massive topic, the best I can hope for is presenting a series of narratives/cases that show different positions. A related question: does anyone know of any books or texts that outline sources for how the Torah approaches philosophical topics like free will? Kind of like a Piskei Teshuvos, but for philosophy? If anyone could point me to something, I would be much obliged. I have a few books that detail the works of various Rishonim and how they individually approached philosophical topics, but it doesn't really get into concrete examples from Tanach or Talmud, which is what I'm really looking for.

Match Point - A Modern Tragedy

Just finished watching Match Point, a Woody Allen film. The movie takes the form of a quasi-operatic tragedy with a modern twist; traditionally, the main character in a tragedy suffers a downfall which is "downfall is brought about by either a character flaw or a conflict with some higher power such as the law, the gods, fate, or society." In contrast, the film opens with the following statement from the main character;

The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose.

What follows is begins as a somewhat interesting romance, progresses into a frantic drama, and ends as a thriller with a satisfying twist at the end. There's some slow parts in the middle, but I thought the end was worth the wait. I'd wanted to see this film for a while, I'm just lucky we rented it.

On Epiphanies

I had an epiphany this morning; it happend in shul, before davening, while I was reviewing this weeks parsha. This post is not about the content of the epiphany, but rather on the general experience of having an epiphany.

For me, the epiphany is not an instant, "eureka," moment. Rather, it's usually preceeded by a few days' (or weeks') of various different thoughts bouncing around inside my head. At some point, a theory is formed that explains the various different thoughts and puts them into some unified context. Now I'm working with a theory, but I don't know for sure that it's correct; it just seems to fit. And then, the epiphany happens, some thought or idea that ties it all together in such a way that it's just perfect. It's like a Tetris game, and you've got one really, really long straight piece, and you clear off the whole board.

In this case, it was the beginning of parshas Va'eschanan; I felt the epiphany gathering speed as I read the opening of the parsha. As I went through the Ten Commandments and Shema, everything was coming together, bits and pieces of ideas that had been floating around in my head were all rushing at me, as if propelled by some cognitive whirlwind. When I got to Duet 6:18, it was all over, everything fit together perfectly.

As for the content of the epiphany, I'm going to get to that later (I may podcast it, since it's easier to talk through these things than to write them down). But it really was a Perfect Storm; stuff from the previous posts on Devarim, Euthyphro, Genesis, everything just falling into place. I can only describe it as serendipitous; they are some of the only moments of my life that I might be convinced to acknowledge as attributable to a higher power.

This post also stands as proof that I can not write just two lines about anything.