Hard Determinism: The Casefor Determinism and Its Incompatibility with AnyImportant Sense of Free Will

PAUL HaLBACH

The Illusion of Free Will*

Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), a

French philosopher, was one of the Encyclopedists.His book, System of Nature, was called by his ene-mies "the Bible of Atheists."

Motives and the Determinism of the Will. In what-ever manner man is considered, he is connected touniversal nature, and submitted to the necessary andimmutable laws that she imposes on all the beingsshe contains, according to their peculiar essences or

to the respective properties with which, without con-sulting them, she endows each particular species.Man's life is a line that nature commands him to

describe upon the surface of the earth, without hisever being able to swerve from it, even for an in-stant. He is born without his own consent; his orga-nization does in nowise depend upon himself; hisideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the

power of those who cause him to contract them; he

ris unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or\ concealed, over which he has no control, which nec-

Iessarily regulate his mode of existence, give the hue, to his way of thinking, and determine his manner of

L:cting. He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise::or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will

being for anything in these various states. Neverthe-less, in spite of the shackles by which he is bound, it

Es pretended he is a free agent, or that independent

'From System of Nature by Baron Paul d'Holbach, pub-lished in 1770. Translated by H. D. Robinson.

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of the causes by which he is moved, he determineshis own will, and regulates his own condition. . . .

The will, as we have elsewhere said, is a modifi-cation of the brain, by which it is disposed to action,

or prepared to give play to the organs. This will isnecessarily determined by the qualities, good otbad, agreeable or painful, of the object or the mo-tive that acts upon his senses, or of which the idearemains with him, and is resuscitated by his mem-

ory. In consequence, he acts necessarily, his actionis the result of the impulse he receives either fromthe motive, from the object, or from the idea whichhas modified his .brain, or disposed his will. Whenhe does not act according to this impulse, it is be-cause there comes some new cause, some new mo-

tive, some new idea, which modifies his brain in adifferent manner, gives him a new impulse, deter-mines his will in another way, by which the action ofthe former impulse is suspended: thus, the sight of

an agreeable object, or its idea, determines his willto set him in action to procure it; but if a new objector a new idea more powerfully attracts him, it givesa new direction to his will, annihilates the effect ofthe former, and prevents the action by which it was

to be procured. This is the mode in which reflection,experience, reason, necessarily arrests or suspendsthe action of man's will: without this he would ~f

necessity have followed the anterior impulse whichcarried him towards a then desirable object. In all

this he always acts according to necessary laws fromwhich he has no means of emancipating himself.

If when tormented with violent thirst, he figuresto himself in idea, or really perceives a fountain,whose limpid streams might cool his feverish want,is he sufficient master of himself to desire or not to

desire the object competent to satisfy so lively awant? It will no doubt be conceded, that it is impos-sible he should not be desirous to satisfy it; but itwill be said-if at this moment it is announced to

him that the water he so ardently desires is poi-soned, he will, notwithstanding his vehement thirst,abstain from drinking it: and it has, therefore, been

falsely concluded that he is a free agent. The fact,however, is, that the motive in either case is exactlythe same: his own conservation. The same necessitythat determined him to drink before he knew the

water was deleterious upon this new discovery equallydetermined him not to drink; the desire of conserv-

ing himself either annihilates or suspends the formerimpulse; the second motive becomes stronger thanthe preceding, that is, the fear of death, or the desireof preserving himself, necessarily prevails over thepainful sensation caused by his eagerness to drink:but, it will be said, if the thirst is very parching, aninconsiderate man without regarding the danger willrisk swallowing the water. Nothing is gained by thisremark: in this case, the anterior impulse only re-gains the ascendency; he is persuaded that life maypossibly be longer preserved, or that he shall derivea greater good by drinking the poisoned water thanby enduring the torment, which, to his mind, threat-ens instant dissolution; thus the first becomes the

strongest and necessarily urges him on to action.Nevertheless, in either case, whether he partakes ofthe water, or whether he does not, the two actionswill be equally necessary; they will be the effect ofthat motive which finds itself most puissant; whichconsequently acts in the most coercive manner uponhis will.

This example will serve to explain the whole phe-nomena of the human will. This will, or rather thebrain, finds itself in the same situation as a bowl,which, although it has received an impulse thatdrives it forward in a straight line, is deranged in itscourse whenever a force superior to the first obligesit to change its direction. The man who drinks thepoisoned water appears a madman; but the actions

of fools are as necessary as those of the most prudentindividuals. The motives that determine the volup-tuary and the debauchee to risk their health, are aspowerful, and their actions are as necessary, as thosewhich decide the wise man to manage his. But, it

PAUL HaLBACH 419

will be insisted, the debauchee may be prevailed onto change his conduct: this does not imply that he isa free agent; but that motives may be found suffi-ciently powerful to annihilate the effect of those thatpreviously acted upon him; then these new motivesdetermine his will to the new mode of conduct hemay adopt as necessarily as the former did to the oldmode.. . .

The errors of philosophers on the free agency ofman, have arisen from their regarding his will as theprimum mobile, the original motive of his actions;

for want of recurring back, they have not perceived Ithe II1_ultip~~E_.Jh~com~~ causes which, inde- ipendently of him, give motion to the will itself; or Iwhich dispose and modify his brain, while he himself Iis purely passive in the motion he receives. Is he the;master of desiring or not desiring an object that ap-pears desirable to him? Without doubt it will be an-

swered, no: but he is the master of resisting hisdesire, if he reflects on the consequences. But, I ask,is he capable of reflecting on these consequences,when his soul is hurried along by a very lively pas-sion, which entirely depends upon his natural orga-nization, and the causes by which he is modified? Isit in his power to add to these consequences all theweight necessary to counterbalance his desire? Is he

the master of preventing the qualities which renderan object desirable from residing in it? I shall betold: he ought to have learned to resist his passions;to contract a habit of putting a curb on his desires. I

agree to it without any difficulty. But in reply, Iagain ask, is his nature susceptible of this modifica-

tion? Does his boiling blood, his unruly imagination,the igneous fluid that circulates in his veins, permithim to make, enable him to apply true.experience inthe moment when it is wanted? And even when his

temperament has capacitated him, has his educa-tion, the examples set before him, the ideas with

which he has been inspired in early life, been suit-able to make him contract this habit of repressing hisdesires? Have not all these things rather contributedto induce him to seek with avidity, to make himactually desire those objects which you say he oughtto resist? . . .

In short, the actions of man are never free; theyare always the necessary consequence of his temper-ament, of the received ideas, and of the notions,either true or false, which he has formed to himself

of happiness; of his opinions, strengthened by ex-

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420 DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL

ample, by education, and by daily experience. Somany crimes are witnessed on the earth only becauseevery thing conspires to render man vicious andcriminal; the religion he has adopted, his govern-ment, his education, the examples set before him,irresistibly drive him on to evil: under these circum-stances, morality preaches virtue to him in vain. Inthose societies where vice is esteemed, where crimeis crowned, where venality is constantly recom-

pensed, where the most dreadful disorders are pun-ished only in those who are too weak to enjoy theprivilege of committing them with impunity, thepractice of virtue is considered nothing more than apainful sacrifice of happiness. Such societies chas-tise, in the lower orders, those excesses which theyrespect in the higher ranks; and frequently have theinjustice to condemn those in the penalty of death,whom public prejudices, maintained by constant ex-ample, have rendered criminal.

Man, then, is not a free agent in anyone instantof his life; he is necessarily guided in each step bythose advantages, whether real or fictitious, that heattaches to the objects" by which his passions areroused: these passions themselves are necessary in abeing who unceasingly teuds towards his own hap-piness; their energy is necessary, since that dependson his temperament; his temperament is necessary,because it depends on the physical elements whichenter into his composition; the modification of thistemperament is necessary, as it is the infallible andinevitable consequence of the impulse he receivesfrom the incessant action of moral and physical

beings.Choice Does Not Prove Freedom. In spite of

these proofs of the want of free agency in man, soclear to unprejudiced minds, it will, perhaps be in-sisted upon with no small feeling of triull}ph, that ifit be proposed to anyone, to move or not to movehis hand, an action in the number of those calledindifferent, he evidently appears to be the master ofchoosing; from which it is concluded that evidencehas been offered of free agency. The reply is, thisexample is perfectly simple; man in performingsome action which he is resolved on doing, does notby any means prove his free agency; the very desireof displaying this quality, excited by the dispute, be-comes a necessary motive, which decides his willeither for the one or the other of these actions: What

deludes him in this instance, or that which persuades

him he is a free agent at this moment, is, that he

does no~gLsc"ern t,he true£1o.tive which sets him in'aCti6ii,-namely, the"des"ire of convincing his oppo-nent: if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks,"Am I not the master of throwing myself out of thewindow?" I shall answer him, no; that whilst he pre-serves his reason there is no probability that the de-

sire of proving his free ageucy, will become a motivesufficiently powerful to make him sacrifice his life tothe attempt: if, notwithstanding this, to prove he isa free agent, he should actually precipitate himselffrom the window, it would not be a sufficient war-

ranty to conclude he acted freely, but rather that itwas the violence of his temperament which spurredhim on to this folly. Madness is a state, that dependsupon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. Afanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a

more phlegmatic man or coward flies from it.There is, in point of fact, no difference between

the man that is cast out of the window by another,and the man who throws himself out of it, exceptthat the impulse in the first instance comes immedi-ately from without whilst that which determines thefall in the second case, springs from within his ownpeculiar machine, having its more remote cause alsoexterior. When Mutius Scaevola held his hand in the

fire, he was as much acting under the influence ofnecessity (caused by interior motives) that urgedhim to this strange action, as if his arm had been

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held by strong men: pride, despair, the desire ofbraving his enemy, a wish to astonish him, and anx-iety to intimidate him, etc., were the invisible chainsthat held his hand bound to the fire~Th~

glory, enthusiasm for their country, in like mannercaused Codrus and Decius to devote themselves fortheir fellow-citizens. The Indian Colanus and the

philosopher Peregrinus were equally obliged to burnthemselves, by desire of exciting the astonishmentof the Grecian assembly.

It is said that free agency is the absence of thoseobstacles competent to oppose themselves to the 2tions of man, or to the exercise of his faculties: it

pretended that he is a free agent whenever, makinguse of these faculties, he produces the effect he hasproposed to himself. In reply to this reasoning, it issufficient to consider that it in nowise depends uponhimself to place or remove the obstacles that eitherdetermine or resist him; the motive that causes hisaction is no more in his own power than the obstaclethat impedes him, whether this obstacle or motive"'be within his own machine or exterior of his person" .

he is not master of the thought presented to hismind, which determines his will; this thought is ex-cited by some cause independent of himself.

To be undeceived on the system of his free

\agency, man has simply to recur to the motive bywhich his will is determined; he will always find this.

motive is out of his own control. It is said: that in)consequence of an idea to which the mind givesbirth, man acts freely if he encounters no obstacle.But the question is, what gives birth to this idea in

his brain? Was he the master either to prevent it frompresenting itself, or from renewing itself in hisbrain? Does not this idea depend either upon ob-jects that strike him exteriorly and in despite of him-self, or upon causes, that without his knowledge, actwithin himself and modify his brain? Can he preventhis eyes, cast without design upon any object what-ever, from giving him an idea of this object, andfrom moving his brain? He is not more master of theobstacles; they are the necessary effects of eitherinterior or exterior causes, which always act accord-ing to their given properties. A man insults a cow-

ard; this necessarily irritates him against his insulter;but his will cannot vanquish the obstacle that cow-ardice places to the object of his desire, because his

natural conformation, which does not depend upouhimself, prevents his having courage. In this case,the coward is insulted in spite of himself; and againsthis will is obliged patiently to brook the insult he hasreceived.

Absence of Restraint Is Not Absence of Necessity.The partisans of the system of free agency appearever to have confounded constraint with necessity.Man believes he acts as a free agent, every time hedoes not see any thing that places obstacles to hisactions; he does not perceive that the motive which

causes him to will, is always necessary and indepen-dent of himself..A prisoner loaded with chains iscompelled to remain in prison; but he is not a freeagent in the desire to emancipate himself; his chains

prevent him from acting, but they do not preventhim from willing; he would save himself if theywould loose his fetters; but he would not save him.

self as a free agent; fear or the idea of punishmentwould be sufficient motives for his action.

Man may, therefore, cease to be restrained,without, for that reason, becoming a free agent: inwhatever manner he acts, he will act necessarily,according to motives by which he shall be deter-

mined. He may be compared to a heavy body thatfinds itself arrested in its descent by any obstacle

PAUL HaLBACH 421

whatever: take away this obstacle, it will gravitate or

continue to fall; but who shall say this dense body isfree to fall or not? Is not its descent the necessaryeffect of its own specific gravity? The virtuous Soc-

rates submitted to the laws of his country, althoughthey were unjust; and though the doors of his jailwere left open to him, he would not save himself;but in this he did not act as a free agent: the invisiblechains of opinion, the secret love of decorum, theinward respect for the laws, even when they wereiniquitous, the fear of tarnishing his glory, kept himin his prison; they were motives sufficiently powerfulwith this enthusiast for virtue, to induce him to wait

death with tranquility; it was not in his power to savehimself, because he could find no potential motiveto bring him to depart, even for an instant, fromthose principles to which his mind was accustomed.

Man, it is said, frequently acts against his incli-nation, from wh<;:nce it is falsely concluded he is a

free agent; but when he appears to act contrary tohis iuclination, he is always determined to it by somemotive sufficiently efficacious to vanquish this incli-nation. A sick man, with a view to his cure, arrives

at couquering his repugnance to the most disgustingremedies: the fear of pain, or the dread of death,then become necessary motives; consequently thissick man cannot be said to act freely.

When it is said, that man is not a free agent, it isnot pretended to compare him to a body moved bya simple impulsive cause: he contains withiu himself

causes inherent to his existence; he is moved by aninterior organ, which has its own peculiar laws, andis itself necessarily determined in cousequence ofideas formed from perception resulting from sensa-tion which it receives from exterior ebjects. As themechanism of these sensations, of these perceptions,and the manner they engrave ideas on the brain ofman, are not known to him; because he is unable to

unravel all these motions; because he cannot per-ceive the chain of operations in his soul, or the mo-

tive principle that acts within him, he supposeshimself a free agent; which literally translated, sig-nifies, that he moves himself by himself; that he de-termines himself without cause: when he rather

ought to say, that he is ignorant how or why he actsin the manner he does. It is true the soul enjoys anactivity peculiar tojtself: but it is equally certain thatthis activity would never be displayed, if some mo-tive or some cause did not put it in a condition to

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422 DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL

exercise itself: at least it will not be pretended thatthe soul is able either to love or to hate without

being moved, without knowing the objects, withouthaving some idea of their qualities. Gunpowder hasunquestionably a particular activity, but this activitywill never display itself, unless fire be applied to it;this, however, immediately sets it in motion.

The Complexity of Human Conduct and the Illu-sion of Free Agency. It is the great complication ofmotion in man, it is the variety of his action, it is themultiplicity of causes that move him, whether simul-taneouslyor in continual succession, that persuadeshim he is a free agent: if all his motions were simple,if the causes that move him did not confound them-

selves with each other, if they were distinct, if hismachine were less complicated, he would perceivethat all his actions were necessary, because he wouldbe enabled to recur instantly to the cause that madehim act. A man who should be always obliged to gotowards the west, would always go on that side; buthe would feel that, in so going, he was not a freeagent: if he had another sense, as his actions or hismotion, augmented by a sixth, would be still morevaried and much more complicated, he would be-lieve himself still more a free agent than he doeswith his five senses.

It is, then, for want of recurring to the causes thatmove him; for want of being able to analyze, fromnot being competent to decompose the complicatedmotion of his machine, that man believes himself afree agent: it is only upon his own ignorance that hefounds the profound yet deceitful notion he has ofhis free agency; that he builds those opinions whichhe brings forward as a striking proof of his pre-tended freedom of action. If, for a short time, eachman was willing to examine his own peculiar actions,search out their true motives to discover their con-catenation, he would remain convinced that the sen-

timent he has of his natural free agency, is a chimerathat must speedily be destroyed by experience.

Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that themultiplicity and diversity of the causes which contin-ually act upon man, frequently without even hisknowledge, render it impossible, or at least ex-tremely difficult for him to recur to the true princi-ples of his own peculiar actions, much less theactions of others: they frequently depend upon

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causes so fugitive, so remote from their effects, andwhich, superficially examined, appear to have so lit-tle analogy, so slender a relation with them, that it

requires singular sagacity to bring them into light..This is what renders the study of the moral man atask of such difficulty; this is the reason why' hisheart is an abyss, of which it is frequently impossiblefor him to fathom the depth.

If he understood the play of his organs, if he were'able to recall to himself all the impulsions they havereceived, all the modifications they have undergone:all the effects they have produced, he would per-ceive that all his actions are submitted to the fatality,which regulates his own particular system, as it doesthe entire system of the universe: no one effect in

him, any more than in nature, produces itself bychance; this, as has been before proved, is word vcof sense. All that passes in him; all that is donehim; as well as all that happens in nature, or that isattributed to her, is derived from necessary causes,which act according to necessary laws, and which

produce necessary effects from whence necessarilyflow others.

Fatality, is the eternal, the immutable, the nec!

essary order, established in nature; or the indispens-able connexion of causes that act, with the effects

they operate. Conforming to this order, heavy bod-ies fall: light bodies rise; that which is analogous inmatter reciprocally attracts; that which is heteroge-neous mutually repels; man congregates himself insociety, modifies each his fellow; becomes either vir-tuous or wicked; either contributes to his mutual

happiness, or reciprocates his misery; either loveshis neighbour, or hates his companion necessarily,'according to the manner in which the one acts uporithe other. From whence it may be seen, that the

same necessity which regulates the physical, alsoregulates the moral world, in which every thing is iriconsequynce submitted to fatality. Man, in runningover, frequently without his own knowledge, often y...-in spite of himself, the route which nature has>\wmarked out for him, resembles a swimmer who is'

obliged to follow the current that carries him along:

he believes himself a free agent, because he some-,times consents, sometimes does not consent, to glide'with the stream, which notwithstanding, always hur-ries him forward; he believes himself the master of

his condition, because he is obliged to use hisunder the fear of sinking. . . .

B. F. SKINNER

ing to them. (Punitive contingencies are not to be

confused with aversive control, through which peopleare induced to behave in given ways. Punishment is

used to induce people not to behave in given ways.)A person resorts to punishment when he criticizes,ridicules, blames, or physically attacks another inorder to suppress unwanted behavior. Government

is often defined -in terms of the power to punish, andsome religions teach that sinful behavior will be fol-lowed by eternal punishments of the most horriblesort.

We should expect the literatures of freedom anddignity to oppose measures of this sort and to worktoward a world in which punishment is less common

or even absent, and up to a point they have done so.But punitive sanctions are still common. People stillcontrol each other more often through censure or

blame than commendation or praise, the militaryand the police remain the most powerful arms ofgovernment, communicants are still occasionally re-minded of hellfire, and teachers have abandoned thebirch rod only to replace it with more subtle formsof punishment. And the curious fact is that those

who defend freedom and dignity are not only notopposed to these measures but largely responsiblefor the fact that they are still withps. This strangestate of affairs can be understood only by lookingat the way in which organisms respond to punitivecontingencies.

Punishment is designed to remove awkward, dan-gerous, or otherwise unwanted behavior from a rep-ertoire on the assumption that a person who hasbeen punished is less likely to behave in the sameway again. Unfortunately, the matter is not that sim-

ple. Reward and punishment do not cliffer merely inthe direction of the changes they induce. A childwho has been severely punished for sex play is not

Beyond Freedom and Dignity*

B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), the leading behavioral psy-

chologist of his time, taught at Harvard University.

I -----

Freedom is sometimes defined as a lack of resistance

or restraint. A wheel turns freely if there is very littlefriction in the bearing, a horse breaks free from thepost to which it has been tethered, a man frees him-

self from the branch on which he has been caughtwhile climbing a tree. Physical restraint is an obviouscondition, which seems particularly useful in defin-ing freedom, but with respect to important issues, itis a metaphor and not a very good one. People areindeed controlled by fetters, handcuffs, strait jack-ets, and the walls of jails and concentration camps,but what may be called behavioral control-the re-straint imposed by contingencies of reinforcement-is a very different thing.

Except when physically restrained, a person isleast free or dignified when he is under threat of

punishment, and unfortunately most people oftenare. Punishment is very common in nature, and we

learn a great deal from it. A child runs awkwardly,falls, and is hurt; he touches a bee and is stung; hetakes a bone from a dog and is bitten; and as a result

he learns not to do these things again. It is mainly toavoid various forms of natural punishment that peo-ple have built a more comfortable and less danger-ous world.

The word punishment is usually confined to con-

tingencies intentionally arranged by other people,who arrange them because the results are reinforc-

'From B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (NewYork: BantamlVintage Books, 1971), pp. 56-77. Skinner's owntitle for this chapter of his book was "Punishment." Reprintedbypermission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. @ 1971 by B. F. Skinner.