The Collective Rationality of Responsibility

Everett Young writes:

A thought occurred to me regarding the ongoing discussions of morality and ethics and the lack of free will. There's actually a very neat point that is hidden in your take on "holding people responsible" which I don't think is explicitly made, but could be made explicit. I'm borrowing here from some of the basics of political economy and game theory.

It is certainly the case that by holding people responsible, their behavior is caused to be more pro-social. But there are two points I'd like to add here.

The first is that I not only want to hold others responsible for their actions, but it's actually advantageous to me to be held responsible for my own actions! Why is this? It's not because I want to harm others wantonly--evolution has mostly made it so that most animals don't want to do that to conspecifics, even without the benefits of conscious, deliberative thought. No, actually, the reason I want to be held responsible for my actions is that if I'm not, then in a competitive world, others may be forced to defensively assume that, not being held responsible, I will outcompete them. They are then forced to "defect" in game-theoretical terms, or behave anti-socially toward me. I, in turn, knowing that they know that I'm not held responsible for my actions, know that they will anticipate this and will try to outcompete me, so when I'm not held responsible, I'm not just "free" to behave anti-socially, I'm forced to. Indeed, since everyone knows that everyone else is not held responsible for their actions, even the presence of a few anti-social people forces everyone in the population to behave anti-socially, producing a Hobbesian state. Ultimately, then, the absence of laws holding me responsible could, in many if not most populations (in particular, populations that are seeded with even a tiny number of defectors), cause me to behave anti-socially. This would be rational behavior as well as fully caused, at the macro level (i.e., I'm not talking about the neuronal level).

The second point is that being held responsible not only benefits beings with no free will, it also benefits beings that aren't even conscious, entities that could not possibly experience any "want."

There is an example I can think of, of a non-conscious entity which is designed for a certain purpose, and so it's clear what is "good" and what is "not good" for this entity. I'm speaking of a corporation. A corporation has no thoughts or feelings, certainly no free will of its own. But it does have a purpose: to make money for its investors. Now, a corporation is subject to the same causes and forces as an individual in a political economy sense. A good example would be a logging company. A logging company does not benefit from clear-cutting the forest. That might lead to short-term profit, but it also leads directly to the death of the corporation, because there are no more trees.

However, the existence of a population of several logging companies logging the same forest leads almost certainly to the companies racing to clear-cut the forest as fast as possible, because each company "knows" that if it does not cut as many trees as possible, the competition will. How do they know the competition will? Because they know that the competition knows this same thing about them. Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows, so every corporation must race to clear-cut the forest as fast as possible. This requires no free will and no consciousness. A non-conscious computer could run the corporation based on purely logical, rational principles, and would come up with the same strategy without a need for "evil" uncaused intent. There is only one solution, of course, to this tragedy of the commons: every corporation must be held responsible for over-cutting the forest--including disincentives, such as financial penalties. The corporations can only fulfill their chartered purpose if they are held responsible. This, without their even being conscious beings, let alone entertaining illusions of being free.

I think this conclusively illustrates that "holding responsible" members of a society, whether those members are conscious or not, is not only good, but necessary for the common good. And rational organisms, even non-conscious ones, would not only elect to have "others" held responsible, but themselves too, because if they themselves are not held responsible, others will be caused to defy the law and defect, lest they be outcompeted. That is, if you and I are in competition, holding you responsible for what you do doesn't help me unless you know that I am also held responsible for what I do.

Laws then are a rational solution to a collective action problem, not a moral concoction invented by beings who need to stop each other from making too much use of their freedom.

________________

About the contributor: Everett Young is a political science instructor and Ph.D. candidate specializing in political psychology at Stony Brook University. His research currently focuses on individual differences in cognitive process variables that may produce opinion formation along the left- right ideological dimension.

Do We Lack Character?

Larry More writes:

Dear Tom,

I want to bring to your attention I book that I think you will find useful and interesting. It is entitled Lack of Character by John Doris, 2002. The author is a philosopher of ethics, and main theme of the book is that character (in what we speak of as "moral character") does not exist in the way that we tend to believe, and therefore character ethics is a rather different enterprise than we usually assume, which he goes on to discuss.

Doris thoroughly reviews and discusses the social psychology research which has repeatedly evidenced that there is little empirical justification for our assuming any internal, temporal, or cross-situational consistency to behavior (as is implied, if not required, by our usual notions of moral character).

As a psychologist, I remember well the furor that was created in 1968 when persistent findings of low trait-behavior correlations and negligible cross-situational consistency resulted in suggestions that there was no central personality structure. The urgency around this issue lasted over 10 years, and was never really resolved; the field just passed it by. It seems to me that this response was in some sense the same one that is now arising around naturalism, determinism, retribution, will-power, responsibility, and so on. Doris does no more than touch in passing on the philosophical issue of determinism vs. free will (a page on compatibilism) and talks about supernaturalism not at all. Nevertheless, I am thinking that his emphasis on situational influences on (determinants of) behavior mark this book as naturalistic in orientation.

Although he doesn't seem to realize the importance of this direction, Doris' text actually touches on where we get our assumptions of a powerful single, coherent central self determining our actions. He points to substantial research regarding how children develop their conceptions of persons through their life-span; and even contrasts conceptions developed in other (less individualistic) cultures. Surely our notions of contra-causal free-will, the primacy of person over situation and the focus on individual responsibility raised to the level of metaphysical principle, our readiness to justify reflexive emotional reactions with judgmental cognitive categorizations, and to unwittingly engage in punitive retributive practices, -- etc -- all of these have such a developmental history. It strikes me that this is a sort of Foucauldian genealogical project, but there is a good bit of child-development research that bears on it. Showing how these concepts are embedded in a culturally-local developmental history that we (around here) share in common, does not of course directly challenge the "objective truth" of these points, but it surely would undermine and soften our reflexive attachment to them by offering (like I think Foucault's work did in its field) another direction of understanding.

Anyway, Doris' book is written in a thoughtful and somewhat informal, personable style even though it is fairly heavily annotated and referenced. Although it doesn’t take sides in the freedom-determinism wars, it seems to me that it straddles both psychology and philosophy in a way similar to materials on Naturalism.Org, so I figured you would find it of interest.

_____________

About the contributor: Larry More is psychotherapist in the Philadelphia area with a masters in counseling from the University of Georgia. He has worked over 15 years in the substance abuse area with a family-therapy orientation, and has conducted a more generalized practice in the last 15. Since the 70's, his main intellectual interest has been in the topic of "the self," with a masters thesis focused on the notion that no such self exists. If so, what, then, is therapy ?

Naturalism and Nihilism

In an article based on his recently published book God and the New Atheism, theologian John Haught argues that the new atheism is just as bad as “the politically and culturally insipid kind of theism it claims to be ousting.” He says the new atheism is essentially faith-based, replacing faith in god with faith in scientism. It’s “creedal,” dogmatic, without a stiff cognitive spine, a “life-numbing religiosity…religiosity in a new guise.” It’s therefore epistemically and morally inferior to the theism Haught champions, which has no truck with faith, at least not the insipid, life-numbing kind. Haught’s belief in god is instead based in what he calls a “richer empiricism” which goes beyond science, as explained in his book Is Nature Enough?, reviewed here.

But is Haught being fair to tar atheism, and therefore naturalism, with the brush of religiosity and faith? Are naturalists creedal about scientism, which Haught defines as the idea that “science alone is a reliable road to true understanding of anything”? No. Naturalists don’t (or shouldn’t) suppose that all truths are scientific truths, only that science is our best guide to understanding the ultimate constituents of reality and the things they compose – the “furniture of the universe.” (More on distinguishing science from scientism is here, here and here.) Naturalists’ commitment to science in this regard isn’t a matter of faith, it’s based on experience – the widely shared experience that beliefs about the world based in science are generally more reliable than those that aren’t. If we want reliable beliefs, then it’s rational to stick with science, not a matter of faith. So it isn’t, as Haught says, self-contradictory to assert we shouldn’t base beliefs about the world on faith, but rather on science, since this assertion isn’t based on faith.

Haught takes the new “soft-core” atheists to task for accepting mainstream values and modern lifestyles, saying that they aren’t being true to the real implications of atheism. The old hard-core atheists such as Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre saw that “a full acceptance of the death of God would require an asceticism completely missing in the new atheistic formulas.” They would advise, as Haught puts it, that

If you're going to be an atheist, the most rugged version of godlessness demands complete consistency. Go all the way and think the business of atheism through to the bitter end. This means that before you get too comfortable with the godless world you long for, you will be required by the logic of any consistent skepticism to pass through the disorienting wilderness of nihilism. Do you have the courage to do that?

For Haught, true atheism and naturalism necessarily end up in nihilism. Since the new atheists obviously aren’t nihilists, being good bourgeois and all, they aren’t real, rugged atheists. He asks

Has [Sam] Harris really thought about what would happen if people adopted the hard-core atheist's belief that there is no transcendent basis for our moral valuations? What if people have the sense to ask whether Darwinian naturalism can provide a solid and enduring foundation for our truth claims and value judgments? Will a good science education make everyone simply decide to be good if the universe is inherently valueless and purposeless? At least the hard-core atheists tried to prepare their readers for the pointless world they would encounter if the death of God were taken seriously.

The equation of naturalism with nihilism is a standard scare tactic, but it doesn’t bear on the truth or plausibility of naturalism or theism. Even if Darwinian naturalism can’t provide “a solid and enduring foundation for our truth claims and value judgments” this isn’t proof that it’s false, or that god exists. It’s only a reason to hope god exists, on the questionable assumption that his authority provides a secure basis for moral values (see here).

It turns out, however, that the hard-core atheists (at least as Haught describes them) were wrong: an atheistic naturalism doesn’t end up in nihilism, so we needn’t run scared into the arms of god. Without a transcendent, theistic basis for our moral valuations, there are still compelling reasons for naturalists to be moral: we are animals whose flourishing within a society critically depends on behaving morally toward others. Moreover, we are built by evolution to take moral rules as universally binding (see here). This explains why the new atheists are just normal folk, not nihilists, when it comes to values and lifestyles: they, like pretty much everyone else, are moral by nature.

Haught closes with a question:

Belief in God or the practice of religion is not necessary in order for people to be highly moral beings. We can agree with soft-core atheists on this point. But the real question, which comes not from me but from the hard-core atheists, is: Can you rationally justify your unconditional adherence to timeless values without implicitly invoking the existence of God?

The answer, as we’ve seen, is an unequivocal yes. Of course it isn’t that naturalism avoids value conflict and moral ambiguity, but patently neither does theism, whether it’s what Haught considers the insipid, faith-based varieties, or the more "empirical" theological varieties. Since he admits that belief in god isn’t necessary for being moral, this puts naturalists and theists on at least an equal moral footing. That naturalists are not nihilists doesn’t implicitly invoke the existence of god, it’s simply evidence that morality is a natural phenomenon. As Dan Dennett would say, thank goodness!

Playing Catch with Dr. Tallis

Raymond Tallis, physician, philosopher, poet and novelist, is a very smart and amusing champion of free will against determinism. You can see him in action as a panelist in Fora TV’s Battle of Ideas, where he read a paper denying that neuroscience can help us decide about criminal culpability (comments here). He’s also defended free will at the Manifesto Club in London (comments here), and most recently in the pages of Philosophy Now, in an article titled Who caught that ball? (warning: sports metaphors ahead). Tallis is a one man whirlwind of well intentioned, well expressed, but ultimately misguided arguments to the effect that in order to be free and responsible, human beings must transcend causation in some respect. Here I’ll respond to his latest sally, returning the ball to his court.

Tallis considers a cricket player who’s just made an amazing catch, and asks whether he deserves the praise coming from his teammates. On a close analysis of the rapid fire physical processes underlying the catch, most of which were necessarily carried out automatically and unthinkingly, it might appear that the player himself didn’t do much. He’s just the “lucky possesor of bodily mechanisms” that did the real work. Tallis points out that much of our behavior is in fact automatic and mechanistic, it “does itself” without intention on our part. If so, that seems to leave the conscious agent without much of a role to play. Further, as neuroscience is telling us, consciousness itself seems to be a function of the physical brain. If so, Tallis says we might worry that

...our brain is calling the shots. We persons are merely the site of those events we call ‘actions’. It all looks pretty bleak for those who believe that we really do do the things we think we do.

In rebutting this point, he goes on to point out, quite properly, that it’s only by virtue of conscious, voluntary decisions (to practice hard, schedule his time, show up for games) that the cricket player is ultimately able to make the catch. Further, to understand all this requires not just consideration of his brain, but the whole person and the field of action in which he is engaged. We are active conscious agents, not merely a collection of passive, unconscious processes.

All this is certainly true, but Tallis seems to think that broadening our explanation to include the person and environment somehow escapes determinism:

…we are always positioning ourselves to acquire the experience, skills, knowledge and even the attitudes that will enable us to perform effectively. And this is how it is with much of our lives, which consist of acting on ourselves in order to change ourselves, from going to a pub to have a drink to cheer oneself up, to paying good money to cut a better figure in Paris by polishing up one ’s French. Stuffing all this back in the brain and denying the larger background to our actions, which are to a significant degree chosen and shaped by us, is the first step to handing actions over to the impersonal material world and making determinism seem almost plausible.

But the plausibility of determinism – the law-like cause and effect regularities exhibited by events in the world that science describes at many interlocking levels – isn’t abrogated by being a person, since after all we are fully embodied beings. Nor is it abrogated by being very complex, recursively self-modifying beings that have reasons and intentions. There’s no basis to suppose that our choices to self-modify, and the reasons for those choices, aren’t fully explicable as a function of the intricate causal interplay between us and our “larger background.” As Nancey Murphy and Warren Brown argue in their book, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? (pp. 191-237), reasons aren’t opposed to causes, they are a category of causes. Indeed, to understand ourselves rationally requires that we analyze our choices and reasons in a deterministic fashion, to see them as causal operators with their own antecedents in our desires and motives, which in turn have their causal antecedents in our life history and genetics. Absent this sort of understanding, our behavior ends up an inexplicable, indeterministic fluke. In short, there’s no antinomy between determinism and personhood, between determinism and full-blooded voluntary intentional agency, or between determinism and the ability to modify ourselves or the environment to our own advantage. To suppose otherwise, as Tallis does, is to think we must be something more than natural creatures to be properly dignified and self-shaping. But this something more can only be an inexplicable, a-causal mystery.

It’s ironic that by objecting to “stuffing all this back in the brain” Tallis actually distributes part of the responsibility for our choices to the wider context of action, including other people. This is not what a defender of a buck-stopping free will would want, one supposes. But the point (an own goal, perhaps) is nevertheless well-taken: seeing that choices arise within a larger background, that we are not “stand-alone brains” as he puts it, militates against the idea of an uninfluenced, self-caused chooser within the person that bears ultimate responsibility for action.

Tallis ends his paper on a tentative note, saying that his argument “does not entirely refute the notion that we are small mechanisms in the great mechanism of the universe, but it makes it more difficult to hold.” This concession gives away a great deal, since the difficulty of holding a properly nuanced idea of ourselves as mechanisms is not that great. Remember, Tallis thinks for us not to be mechanisms we must transcend cause and effect determinism in some important respect; if we don’t, then we are mechanisms. Now, since we don’t transcend determinism (and importantly even if we did, that wouldn’t help us be responsible agents, see here) we are mechanisms, by Tallis’ definition.

But notice what amazing mechanisms we are, namely the kind Tallis describes in his essay: capable of all sorts of self-modifying, intentional, conscious and voluntary actions. We are a far cry from simple, inflexible mechanisms, which is usually what people mean by the word. So perhaps we should use a word that better suits our capacities. How about person? So long as we don’t have something supernatural or contra-causal in mind when thinking about persons and their capacities, this is the way to go.

It isn’t clear that Tallis believes that persons have something supernatural or contra-causal at their core, since after all he’s a medical doctor and therefore most likely a physicalist. But his desire to wiggle free of determinism in defending free will necessarily introduces an obscurity into his account of human action. This is too bad, since otherwise his is a first class intelligence, one that naturalists would love to have on their team. Meanwhile, Dr. Tallis, the ball is approaching rapidly.

Living with Darwin

In the culture wars, Charles Darwin is the icon of our conflicting attitudes toward science. His portrait is familiar: unsmiling, the troubled brow reflects the disturbing hypothesis generated by years of careful observation in the field and laboratory. We humans are, he conjectured, the outcome of an unsupervised process of natural selection. We are distant kin to the very earliest life forms, close cousins to chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas.

The study of biological evolution has amply confirmed what Tufts philosopher Daniel Dennett calls Darwin’s dangerous idea, dangerous (to some) because the scientific explanation of human origins manifestly competes with the traditional religious belief that we are God’s intentional creations, made flesh in his image. Indeed, because he knew his hypothesis would be deeply controversial, Darwin delayed making his ideas known. Only when he learned that Alfred Russel Wallace was working along similar lines was he finally moved to publish.

On his 199th birthday, Darwin’s legacy still disturbs many of us. But the potential to upset our most cherished convictions is the hallmark of science, the cognitive discipline that places public and experimental evidence above intuition, tradition, ideology and received truths. If we want to know how the world works, we must necessarily submit to the truths of nature, not cling to conventional wisdom, whether religious or secular.

The drive to fully comprehend the human condition sometimes leads to disconcerting conclusions, so it’s little wonder we are of two minds about science. Cognitive neuroscience now joins evolutionary biology in the search for self-knowledge, and again the findings challenge our fondest hopes, in this case about the existence of the soul. The material brain, we are learning, accomplishes consciousness, perception, feeling, cognition, and the control of behavior quite nicely on its own. As Harvard neurophilosopher Joshua Greene suggests, this puts the immaterial, immortal soul out of a job.

Given such (literally) dispiriting conclusions, science is sometimes portrayed as the big reductionist bully, robbing us of necessary reassurances. But these insults to our certainties are self-inflicted, since after all science is a quintessentially human enterprise. It evolved in response to one of our highest aspirations: the desire to discover, to the limit of our abilities, what is real and true from a culturally and personally unbound perspective.

Precisely because it aims for universal knowledge, science can draw those of different cultures and backgrounds together. So it is, on the occasion of Darwin’s birthday, that the organizers of international Darwin Day invite us to a “global celebration of science and humanity.” Despite its discomforts, science has given us much to be thankful for, and celebrating Darwin’s contribution is an apt expression of our appreciation.

Still, as we probe deeper into the cosmos, and into the brain, it remains to be seen whether we can assimilate the scientific truth about ourselves. We are caught, it seems, between competing desires, for knowledge on the one hand and existential security on the other. Will we come of age as a species, daring to fulfill our potential as knowers, or will we retreat to empirically unwarranted consolations?

As this drama plays out, we might recognize the nobility of staying unbowed under the impersonal gaze of science, of refusing the comforts of the soul and the supernatural. Moreover, as Darwin himself put it, there is grandeur in the scientific view of life, the majestic sweep of nature that has now produced us, a creature mindful of its own contingency. We may not play a starring role in existence as science reveals it, but we are nevertheless privileged to be here in Darwin’s world, marveling at the scale, complexity and diversity of what might well be an unscripted universe.

Happy birthday, Charles!

Displacing the Immaterial Self

The naturalistic worldview has gained ground, slowly and incompletely, by means of scientific explanations for phenomena that have displaced supernatural explanations. The process of explanatory displacement has relegated god, in the unlikely event he exists, to the role of remote controller: the guy who got the ball rolling, but whose day-to-day supervision isn’t necessary. Things seem to happen quite nicely on their own, in accordance with physical laws and higher-level regularities we discover in the domains of biology, psychology and maybe someday even sociology.

God hasn’t been the only victim of explanatory displacement. Our understanding of life no longer includes the rather elusive concepts of élan vital or protoplasm: we now see it’s all a matter of complex interlocking mechanisms that encode information and control reproduction and behavior.

Next up, and it’s a biggie, is consciousness and the self. It seems pre-theoretically that the mind and body are very different things, and the mind, what we think of as the essential immaterial self, still seems beyond what physicalist science can account for.

But they’re working on it. A team of scientists and philosophers, including neurophilosopher and Center for Naturalism advisor Thomas Metzinger, has published a fascinating paper on how the experience of being a self located in the body can be altered experimentally, thus mimicking, at least partially, so-called out of body experiences. As the abstract in Science has it:

…we designed an experiment that uses conflicting visual-somatosensory input in virtual reality to disrupt the spatial unity between the self and the body. We found that during multisensory conflict, participants felt as if a virtual body seen in front of them was their own body and mislocalized themselves toward the virtual body, to a position outside their bodily borders. Our results indicate that spatial unity and bodily self-consciousness can be studied experimentally and are based on multisensory and cognitive processing of bodily information.

So the quintessential me that I so confidently and continuously feel sitting behind my eyes will move in response to perceptual cues (see the video on the experiment here). This supports the idea that the felt sense of self is construction of the brain in response to sensory input, not the result of being an immaterial something or other. In short, it’s another instance of explanatory displacement, in which a materially based informational process explains what was previously thought to be a categorically mental phenomenon. Out of body experiences can now be understood as what the brain does, not a matter of the soul floating outside the body. As a New York Times article on the experiment put it:

“The research provides a physical explanation for phenomena usually ascribed to otherworldly influences, said Peter Brugger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich, who, like Dr. Botvinick, had no role in the experiments. In what is popularly referred to as near-death experience, people who have been in the throes of severe and sudden injury or illness often report the sensation of floating over their body, looking down, hearing what is said and then, just as suddenly, finding themselves back inside their body. Out-of-body experiences have also been reported to occur during sleep paralysis, the exertion of extreme sports and intense meditation practices.”

The basic sense of self, according to the original paper, is attributable to the fact that we experience “the transparent content of a single, whole-body representation.” In effect, what we experience is a model of ourselves, interestingly enough. Further, in their conclusion the authors speculate that “humans’ daily experience of an embodied self and selfhood, as well as the illusion reported here, relies on brain mechanisms at the temporoparietal junction.” So it looks like the brain, astounding machine that it is, constructs the self, for the self. That’s quite a trick. In displacing the immaterial soul, the physicalist explanation of self doesn’t diminish us, rather it shows what amazing things the physical world can cook up, including, remarkably, our very selves.

Behavior Tech: Lose Weight and Save the Planet

On the strength of his expertise in consumer behavior and diet, Cornell food psychologist Brian Wansink has been appointed director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, home of the food pyramid. His 2006 book, Mindless Eating, has been getting attention and he was recently named Person of the Week on ABC World News (the interview and other news stories are posted on Amazon). His work is all about behavioral technology (behavior tech): how to actually get behavior to change in the direction we want. His thesis is that if we become aware of the determinants of our eating habits, especially the cues surrounding the presentation of food, we can gain more control over them. Supposing we can simply will our way to losing weight doesn’t cut it, since it turns out the will itself is controlled by various factors, internal and external.

This of course isn’t a new idea, but it might seem that way since the myth of willpower perpetually overshadows the practical wisdom of understanding our determinants. We tend to be radical individualists, supposing that behavior is governed by a self that’s more or less immune to influences, but the science of behavior (remember BF Skinner?) calls that assumption into question. A smarter approach, which Wansink’s work exemplifies, is to admit we’re fully in the causal mix. Then we’re in a much better position to realize our ambitions, whether its weight loss or anything else, by means of manipulating our environment to elicit the behavior we want. Example: use smaller plates, keep serving platters and dishes of candy out of sight. The will is weak when temptation is nigh, so get smart and banish temptation.

The idea of becoming aware of our determinants fits in nicely with some spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, which emphasizes the importance of self-knowledge gained through practices such as mindfulness meditation. In fact, the deepest self-knowledge is that there isn’t a substantial self in there, controlling behavior and witnessing experience. We are physical, dynamic processes responsive to contingencies, not puppet masters of ourselves. This very un-American idea won’t catch on anytime soon, but it’s what both science and Buddhism tell us, and what Wansink is ultimately driving at (although he may not realize it).

Getting good at controlling food intake is, as the ABC news story says, behavior change on a small, personal scale. But Wansink understands it can be scaled up: "If you can see that just making certain small changes can have this ripple effect on your life -- man, that's doing people a tremendous service that goes way beyond nutrition and physical activity and health." Behavior tech on a large scale is exactly what’s necessary to address looming collective threats to the environment and global stability. If we can agree on goals (and even many conservatives now admit that action on climate change is necessary), then we we’re much more likely to attain them if we understand the factors that shape behavior. But this first requires admitting that behavior is indeed caused, not a matter of self-initiated will.

Unfortunately, the ideology of radical freedom – the idea that each of us can and should simply choose to make the right choice, independent of circumstances – prevents the smart application of behavior tech, for instance in building safe and healthy schools and communities which elicit good behavior by design. Likewise, the political will to respond to climate change can be mustered, if we come to terms with the fact that the will itself is a function of conditions. Understanding our determinants, we can lose weight and save the planet.

Worldview Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) works on the principle that by fixing faulty beliefs, people can learn to behave more effectively and be happier. As one CBT web site puts it, “clients change because they learn how to think differently and they act on that learning.” According to Wikipedia, “The objectives of CBT typically are to identify irrational or maladaptive thoughts, assumptions and beliefs that are related to debilitating negative emotions and to identify how they are dysfunctional, inaccurate, or simply not helpful. This is done in an effort to reject the distorted cognitions and to replace them with more realistic and self-helping alternatives.”

From a naturalistic standpoint, many people harbor distorted cognitions with respect to their true nature, since they suppose they possess souls, or some non-physical essence which has the power to transcend or contravene causality. They imagine that their choices arise in some respect independently of their body, brain and surroundings, the product of a libertarian, contra-causal free will that moves the body without itself being fully caused by anything else. If we were CBT therapists, concerned for the mental health and optimum functioning of our clients – people at large, let’s imagine – wouldn’t we want to fix this faulty belief? Wouldn’t knowing the naturalistic truth about themselves support healthier attitudes and more effective behavior?

Understanding that cause and effect applies universally (except perhaps in the quantum realm), people would see that they’re determined to act as they do instead of chalking up choices to a mysterious uncaused or self-created self. They’d stop beating themselves (and others) up so much over mistakes, accepting that these were fully determined, not the product of libertarian free will. Armed with the knowledge of the causes behind what they did, they’d be in a better position to change their behavior. (Remember, just because things are determined doesn’t mean they don’t change. They usually do, and often for the better when we put our minds to it in the light of reliable knowledge.) Indeed, some CBT-oriented psychotherapists now use explicit naturalism in their practice when it’s therapeutically appropriate, gently prompting clients to reexamine their belief in contra-causal free will. They’ve found this can help to relieve guilt and shame, lessen anger directed at others (parents, for instance), and open up possibilities for more effective action.

A good therapist uses techniques appropriate to the client, taking her particular problems, strengths and weaknesses into account. Challenging someone’s fundamental beliefs about themselves, however gently, can itself cause distress, which is why not all clients in treatment are candidates for what we might call worldview cognitive therapy. What about people at large? Would they be able to assimilate the naturalistic truth about themselves and put it to good use?

Since people come in all psychological shapes and sizes, responses to naturalism will be equally diverse. Many, perhaps most at least initially, will dismiss out of hand the idea that we don’t have contra-causal freedom. However preposterous from a scientific perspective, the meme of the causally transcendent self, like that of god, is a deeply embedded assumption in our culture, not easily uprooted. And after all, it’s what many (even therapists and counselors) suppose is the locus of responsibility and the necessary catalyst for change. Since determinism is widely equated with fatalism, from a commonsense perspective challenging the existence of the freely willing soul seems to challenge the very possibility of a life worth living. (That it does not is what the naturalist must reassure them about – a big part of memeing naturalism.) So it’s likely that the majority of those hearing about naturalism will remain happy, or not so happy, supernaturalists, psychologically insulated from the logical and empirical case against libertarian free will.

Others, perhaps a significant minority (i.e., those 15% in US polls who count themselves non-religious, up to 50% in Europe, see here), will be in a better position to re-evaluate their ideas about the self and its place in nature. Those receptive to worldview naturalism will likely have already questioned the existence of god and the supernatural “up there,” and so are primed to take the next step. Such individuals are usually independent-minded, open to having their beliefs challenged, and thus more psychologically resilient. Even so, for some the realization that they aren’t little gods will indeed prove stressful. Anecdotally, I’ve heard of several instances in which naturalism provoked an existential crisis of sorts, not a surprise given that one’s deepest assumptions and beliefs are in play. But to my knowledge, in each case the crisis was resolved by a healthy, even transformative, adaptation to the insight that we’re completely included in the causal web. For others, the transition will be easy, either because they have no particular psychological investment in having souls, or were skeptical about libertarian free will from an early age, or both.

For most of those ultimately convinced of naturalism, the change will likely involve a halting but not unduly stressful reconfiguring of the self-concept. The day-to-day subjective experience of being themselves will continue on much as before, but within a very different cognitive context. It’s that new context which, in the considered opinion of naturalists, offers so much. Having discarded the soul, the person is in a far better, reality-based position to think and act effectively, taking into account the cause and effect relations that link her in all respects to her physical and social environment. She’s also better able to take an accepting and compassionate, but not passive, stance towards herself and all other sentient beings caught up in the tumultuous project of life. Once we get past the initial worries about naturalism, the advantages accrue rapidly (as argued at Naturalism.Org and in Encountering Naturalism).

On the other hand, Israeli philosopher Saul Smilansky thinks that large-scale naturalistic worldview therapy is just what the doctor shouldn’t order, since the illusion of libertarian free will is, he thinks, is the irreplaceable basis for psychological and social stability (see his book Free Will and Illusion and a summary of his position here). Daniel Dennett, less dire in his imaginings, still worries about the “environmental impact” of naturalism, suggesting we be cautious in its dissemination (see his book Freedom Evolves). Dennett is right – we have to be responsible in memeing naturalism, making sure people realize that we remain effective agents, who make real choices, whose actions make a difference, who can be held (compassionately) accountable, who are capable of positive self-change, and whose values don’t disappear. All this is perfectly doable, and indeed communities of naturalists (mostly academics at the moment, but increasing numbers of lay folk) are getting along just fine without the myth of supernatural freedom. Progressive skeptics about free will such as Susan Blackmore, Joshua Greene, Derk Pereboom, Will Provine, Tamler Sommers, Bruce Waller and others are making the case that Smilansky is wrong: there are good naturalistic replacements for belief in the soul and free will. We don’t need to traffic in illusions about our fundamental nature to have lives worth living, or to stabilize society. (Smilansky is critiqued here, and free will illusionism is discussed on the Garden of Forking Paths, a blog about Agency Theory.)

Advocates of naturalism believe that by uprooting harmful myths about ultimate responsibility, and by shedding light on the actual causes of behavior, it can ground a stronger personal psychology and a more humane social compact. Imprisoned by the myth of free will, people aren’t as mentally healthy or behaviorally effective as they might otherwise be: they don’t have the power and control conferred by a clear grasp of their causal connections to the world, and they’re barred from the self-acceptance and compassion that flow from seeing that yes, we are the world in its unfolding.

In the first film of the Matrix trilogy, Morpheus offers Neo the choice of a red pill – the route to a rather disconcerting truth – or a blue pill, the way back to a pleasant, but illusory existence. Neo’s choice of the red pill represents the claim on us of truth, the desire to live free of illusion whatever the cost. Fortunately our choice isn’t that stark, since there’s good reason to think that being undeluded about human nature, although initially disconcerting for some, can be the basis for mental and social well-being. As worldview cognitive therapists, we can therefore confidently recommend naturalism to the world’s attention.

Joshua Greene Battles Dualism

Among the more vigorous advocates of progressive naturalism, although he doesn’t call it that, is Harvard neurophilosopher Joshua Greene. His experimental work using MRI scans of subjects engaged in moral decision-making strongly suggests that even the very highest human cognitive and moral functions are carried out solely by the brain; there’s nothing else there to do it, and the brain is up to the job. The conclusion that we are not of two natures, body and soul, is the gateway, he argues, to a more enlightened, humane view of ourselves.

Linked at his website are many articles worth reading, including his wonderfully titled doctoral dissertation, destined for publication as a book by Penguin Press. His paper with Jonathan Cohen, “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing, and everything,” has been widely cited in the growing literature on how neuroscience might impact the criminal justice system. It sets the progressive standard for what criminal law might look like should we someday accept a fully science-based, naturalistic understanding of ourselves. Conservatives content with the retributive and highly punitive status quo must now contend with his arguments, and his data.

Among recent additions at Greene’s homepage is a forthcoming book chapter, “Social Neuroscience and the Soul’s Last Stand,” in which he briefly describes a good deal of his research. He writes

…the soul will officially expire when the mechanics of the moral mind become transparent. I believe that the death of the soul may prove to be one of psychology and neuroscience’s most lasting contributions.

It’s seeing the “clockwork” of the brain in vivid detail that might eventually cement the death of the soul, although committed dualists can always insist there’s something more science can’t see. But that aside, why is it so important to really know, in our gut, that we don’t have such a thing? Isn’t that the most dispiriting conclusion we could possibly reach, figuratively and literally?

There’s no question that for many the death of the soul is unthinkable, or if thought, rejected immediately. There’s simply too much at stake: life after death, the special dignity of not being “merely” material, the soul’s contra-causal, determinism-defying freedom, among other invaluables. As one concerned dualist said recently (personal correspondence) “No matter how you parse it, determinism requires that we regard ourselves as things rather than as subjects.” Without the soul, perhaps, we become mere things. Responding to such concerns is one responsibility of those advocating naturalism, for instance see here and Appendix A of Encountering Naturalism.

But as Greene points out, whatever our discomforts might be, belief in the soul does a lot of damage, so if it’s false we should give it up. It helps to motivate religious conflict, regressive anti-choice abortion policies, opposition to stem cell research, complacency about environmental problems (since the life to come is what really matters), moralistic attitudes about mental illness, and a needlessly punitive and inefficient criminal justice system. On this last point he says

In the United States, at least, our prison system is very good at making people suffer, but its merits as a system for preventing future crime are highly questionable (Tonry, 2004). If we were more interested in reducing crime, and less interested in making guilty minds [that is, souls] suffer, we might all be better off.

All told, giving up the soul, if we can reconcile ourselves to it, would be an important contribution in achieving a more humane, sustainable culture. And this is why the intellectual and scientific battle against dualism is so worth fighting. In his conclusion, Greene says

Officially, we scientists already know that the operations of the mind are the operations of the brain, and not those of an immaterial soul. This is, at the very least, our working assumption. In making this assumption, however, we part ways with the rest of humanity, the vast majority of whom explicitly believe that we are souls housed in bodies. Such dualist tendencies are, in my opinion, a major social problem, and may become increasingly destructive. If that is correct, then dispelling dualism is serious business, at least as serious as curing cancer, and probably more so. If anything can cure us of our dualist tendencies, it is social neuroscience, the physical science of human experience. By decomposing the social brain into its mechanical components we can do good science in the conventional sense, but that is, I think, the least of what we’re doing. Social neuroscience is, above all else, the construction of a metaphysical mirror that will allow us to see ourselves for what we are and, perhaps, change our ways for the better.

Progressive naturalists and humanists can only agree, and wish Greene all luck and power in his challenge to dualism.