[This is a part of a series of posts on determinism. It starts here.]

A bit of cognitive bias can’t fully explain our strong experience of free will on its own though. The other move that we tend to make is down-playing the extent to which determinism is a force in our lives.

Sometimes the rejection of “nature” (“it’s in our genes”) as a determining factor in favour of “nurture” (“it’s in our upbringing”) is presented as a rejection of biological determinism in favour of choices we make about the way we organise society, support we give parents and children, educational policies and so on. But the point, as far as we’re concerned, is that we can’t chose what kind of home, society, socio-economic context we’re born into. We don’t choose our parents or the time and space we’re born into. Nature and nurture are forces of determinism influencing the way we are.

How is it that we reject the idea of determinism due to our lived experience of exercising free will in our every day life, but we don’t reject the idea of free will due to the influence of deterministic forces in our lives. Do we systematically avoid thinking about what it means for us that over a lot of our lives we exercise no control and have no choices to make. We do this not only by forgetting how much about is given by the circumstances of our birth, but when we don’t admit to ourselves that we perform many actions without choosing what we do.

We do this by pretending that exercising a deliberate choice is the paradigm case of action for us. We pretend that consciously deciding to do one thing after another is the normal way in which our daily life develops. Here are some of the things we need to ignore or play down in order to maintain that pretence:

Addictions: The addict does things because the addiction forces him to do so. By definition, he doesn’t chose to do them but is subject to forces outside of his control. We can blame the addict for not having got over his addiction. In doing so, we can refer to former addicts who have learned to control their addiction. “If he really tried,” we can tell ourselves, “the addict could exercise control over his life.” But in the moment where the addict is an addict, as opposed to a former addict, the addiction controls his actions. At that point, whatever happens later in his biography, the actions relating to his addiction are determined by forces outside of his control.

Phobias: The arachnophobe should be able to walk near the tiny little spider in the room to do what she needs to do. The person who is scared of heights should be able to walk up the mountain to enjoy the view. The agoraphobic should be able to leave her house like any other person. But they can’t. From a non-phobic perspective, we pretend that they’d have a choice if only they pulled themselves together. But that is a simplistic view of their condition. The phobia determines the action or inaction in this case. There is no choice.

Reactivity, Habit, Auto-pilot: But much as the forces of determinism can take obvious and strong forms, it’s just also the case, that often we act without thinking much. The science and meditative discipline of mindfulness show us that we don’t control the thoughts going through our minds which often are the basis for actions we take.

What proportion of our actions would we be want to perform after full deliberation, intentionally and conscious of all the facts having weighed up the pros and cons carefully in order to say that we are exercising free will in a meaningful way in our lives? What proportion would we be happy to cede to the forces of determinism? Is it enough to be able to say that for the things that really count, for the big life decisions and when it really matters we exercise free will? And can we really say that? Is it enough to tell ourselves that even when we don’t, we could if we tried?

[The next post in this series is here.]

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