Free Will and Determinism: Unraveling the Paradox

By Shabir Ahmad Shah

The worth of a book is rarely determined by its title but the class of a reader is surely determined by what title he or she reads. Although hundreds of books have already been written on this issue, yet the thirst of the people who are curious to its deepest sense have hardly been quenched, for the topic is no less than an abyss where a reader keeps free floating but never in vain; he keeps new layers of meaning and touches new horizons every moment. The book following the Islamic perspective of the issue Free Will and Determinism on the footprints of stalwarts like Al-Ghazzali, Shah Wali Allah and others, nevertheless, has taken the problem to its uniquely newest horizons where it opens new vistas of research by connecting the divine determinism with philosophical, psychological and genetic determinism in mosaic of free will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463486290

Shabir Ahmad Shah

The author is a polymath with a master’s degree in Botany, Islamic Studies and Education from the University of Kashmir and a Postgraduate in Philosophy from Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. The author’s interest in several different subjects is obvious from the research papers published in different international journals around the world.

Book preview

Preface

Free Will and Determinism is a treatise on one those logico-ethico-metaphysical problems which concern the philosophers and theologians equally. Although the issue is never a settled one, yet the problem was long ago classed into the likes of ‘what came first: egg or hen?’. Many a philosophers, both religious and secular, have tried to solve the issue by exhausting their argumentative capabilities and it seems the issue is there where we first began. It does not mean no progress has been made. Volumes have been written and definitely something has been said.

The book traces the development of the thoughts about free will and predestination right from the Greeks, through scholastic theologians, to modern philosophers. St Augustine, philosopher and theologian, has been discussed at length and rightly so; his concept of double predestination has been given due time and space. Almost two-thirds of the book discusses the non-Muslim philosophers, both from orient and occident. The remaining third of the book does discuss the dealing of the problem by the Muslim philosophers, particularly of those of Imam Al-Gazali and Shah Wali Allah. The book is marvellously concluded in an open manner which leaves the scope for further research. The writer’s illustrative style of writing adds spice to the very serious topic and makes it interesting and easy to understand.

The most remarkable thing about the book Free Will and Determinism is that the author has given space to almost all schools of thought which have taken on the problem in different dimensions and the author, in the meantime, has not let his predilections let prevail while dealing with any school of thought. Hardly a book has ever been written which has complied the thoughts of Christian theologians and Hindu philosophers of varied schools – both the theistic and the atheistic – in an unprejudiced manner.

What is new about the book is that it starts with discussing the problem, without any waffling, from modern scientific discoveries and theories like quantum mechanics and uncertainty principal, which opened new horizons in the research for the rational analysis on one hand and elusive nature on the other of the subject. This has been possible only when the author has the strong scientific background and unbiased scientific temperament. There is an additional chapter on genetic-determinism which deals with the determination not only of the phenotype, but the behavioural pattern as well by the genotype. Of course the analysis of a very fugitive subject on scientific lines makes the book a wonderfully good read.

Introduction

Amongst the many complex subjects pertaining to Theology and Philosophy, the concept of ‘Free Will and Determinism’ is, perhaps, the most debated one. It has engaged the imagination of thinkers and philosophers throughout the course of history, and many writers have ruminated over it. A moment’s thought would reveal that it’s an extremely complex subject as the two operative terms introduce, at once, a baffling paradox. The point is that the issue of Free Will and Determinism is neither settled nor irrelevant. Although modernists in psychology have attempted to cast the ‘Free Will and Determinism’ dilemma as either settled or irrelevant, it continues to emasculate theory, therapy and practice. The primary reason for this continuing enfeeblement is the modern dualistic framework for this dilemma: Either the will consisting of choices, decisions and motives is dependent on antecedent conditions, and thus is determined or the will is independent of antecedent conditions and thus is free. This framework, however, is not supported by current research and practical experience, indicating that the will is inextricably connected to the past but is not determined by it.

The philosophical problem of freewill and determinism of human actions emerges out of a profound conflict between two beliefs. The belief in the freedom of human action appears to contradict the belief that all human action are caused and, therefore, determined by physical or material factors beyond an individual’s control. Freedom of action is usually conceived as freedom from the laws of nature. This is broadly called liberalism. On the other hand, the view that all occurrences in nature including human actions are caused by physical conditions subsumable under casual laws is called determinism.

Determinism:

Determinism is a far-reaching term affecting many areas of concern that most widely and radically states that all events in the world are the result of some previous event, or events. In this view, all of reality is already in a sense pre-determined or pre-existent and, therefore, nothing new can come into existence. This closed view of the universe and of our world holds all events to be simply the effects of other prior effects. This has radical and far-reaching implications for morality, science and religion. If general radical determinism is correct, then all events in the future are unalterable, as are all events in the past. A major consequence of this is that human freedom is simply an illusion.

Genetic Determinism:

One area of contemporary discourse in science that relates to the issue of human freedom is the notion of genetic determinism. Here, the concept of determinism is linked directly to the genes in the DNA of a person. Because we already know that aberrations in certain genes can lead to various forms of physical and mental disease in humans, we can say with some certainty that people are physically determined by their genes. But genetic determinists want to extend this further, by claiming that even our behaviour is determined by our genes. In this line of thinking, we are but victims of our genetic makeup and any effort to change our moral nature or behavioural patterns is useless. This is sometimes termed ‘puppet determinism’, meaning metaphorically that we dance on the strings of our genes. There are two principle forms of genetic determinism; Genetic Fixity and Innate Capacity. Together, they link-up to produce the doctrine of statistical variation.

Determinism is a theory that all human action is caused by proceeding events and not by the exercise of the will. In philosophy, the theory is based on the metaphysical principal that an uncaused event is impossible (Jesse G Kalin: determinism, online). The success of scientists in discovering causes of certain behaviour and in some cases affecting its control tends to support this principle. Disagreement exists about the proper formulation of determinism – a central issue in philosophy that never ceases to be controversial. Physical determinism, which has its origin in the Atomism of Democritus and Lucretius, is the theory that human interaction can be reduced to relationships between biological, chemical, or physical entities; this formulation is fundamental to modern Socio-biology and neuropsychology. The historical determinism of Karl Marx, on the other hand, is transpersonal and primarily economic. In contrast to these two formulations, psychological determinism – the philosophical basis of psychoanalysis – is the theory that the purposes, needs and desires of individuals are central to an explanation of human behaviour. The recent behavioural determinism of B F Skinner is a modification of this view, in that Skinner reduces all internal psychological states to publicly observable behaviour. His stimulus – response account also uses modern statistical and probabilistic analyses of causation. Jean Paul Sartre and other contemporary philosophers have argued that determinism is controverted by introspection, which reveals actions to be the result of our own choices and not necessitated by previous events or external factors (Jesse G Kalin: determinism, online). Determinists respond that such experiences of freedom are illusions, and that introspection is an unreliable and unscientific method for understanding human behaviour. This