Groucho Marxism

There is a longstanding rift in the world of philosophy between those who think we have free will and those who think that we don’t. I have always been inclined to side with the latter group as I’ve never been able to see how free will can possibly be compatable with determinism – that is, the idea that all events, including human actions, are causally predetermined by prior events. However there is a school of philosophy, to which the majority of philosophers apparently adhere, which says that they are compatable; this view is known as ‘compatabilism’, for obvious reasons. But what do we mean by ‘free will’? The popular notion of free will is actually quite easy to define. This refers to the intuitive feeling we all have that if we could re-run the tape of our lives, we could have done things differently.

Now I think both compatibilists and incompatibilists agree with me that this popular notion if free will is incompatible with determinism, and as determinism is true, this intuitive feeling that we have must be incorrect. The difference between the two schools lies in how they respond to this fact. The incompatibilist response is to infer from this that we must be mistaken and that free will must therefore be an illusion. The compatibilist approach is to say: Nonsense! Free will does exist – we just need to refine what we mean by ‘free will’! To me, the incompatibilist response seems to be the logical one, and the one that is most likely to advance our understanding. An analogy might be useful to explain why I think this.

For thousands of years humans believed that the sun went around the earth, until a few hundred years ago it was discovered that it was actually the other way round. Acceptance of this was the first step in allowing us to completely revise our view of our place in the universe. Now suppose that instead of accepting this, people had responded by saying: Nonsense! The sun does go around the earth – we just need to refine what we mean by ‘go around’! We could have then spent the next several hundred years trying to come up with a new definition of ‘go around’ which is compatible with the facts, but where would that have got us exactly? The answer is, not very far – yet this is what compatibilists seem to be trying to do with free will. Therefore, I don’t think we should take their arguments very seriously.

The non-existence of free will has many practical consequences, almost all of which are, as it turns out, positive. For example, a logical consequence of the non-existence of free will is that nobody is truly responsible for their actions. This means that hating someone for their actions doesn’t make any sense, and neither do other negative emotions like pride and shame. In fact, the whole idea of retributive justice makes no sense. Just think how many prison places we could free up! These practical consequences are what I think makes the subject of free will so interesting. It’s not just a load of old philosophers pontificating about something which is of no relevance to everyone else (not that all philosophers do that of course).

Determinism is closely related to materialism. A materialist perspective, which posits that only matter exists, implies that our choices and actions are ultimately predetermined by physical processes. That is, materialism implies determinism; and therefore, as determinism is incompatible with free will, materialism implies that free will is an illusion. Thus any committed Marxist has to accept the non-existence of free will. This makes perfect sense as the lack of free will completely undercuts right-wing ideology, which is based around individual freedom and the idea that people should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The ‘self-made man’, an idea beloved by conservatives everywhere, is a myth.

What’s interesting about the argument I am putting forward here is that it suggests the split between left and right does not merely reflect a divergence of opinion, as is usually assumed. Rather, it reflects a split between those with beliefs based on logic (the left), and those with beliefs based on a logical fallacy (the right). The idea that people are fundamentally responsible for their own actions is central to right-wing ideology, but it simply cannot be correct. It is the material conditions people find themselves in that determines their actions. Only those on the left have fully internalized this fact and thought through its consequences.