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Let’s explore how
the hedonic imperative makes free
will impossible, but before we do
that, let’s briefly review the basic
purpose of the show, and review our
definition of free will. We’ve had
this illusion of free will for
millennia, and the hope is that by
overcoming it, we can create a
better world – a world that is more
understanding and intelligent. If
we believe we have a free will, when
other people do things that are
wrong, we’ll blame them and conclude
that they deserve to be punished.
When we do things wrong, we’ll feel
the pain of guilt. Naturally,
understanding that we don’t have a
free will doesn’t give us license to
do whatever we want to do simply
because we’re not ultimately we’re
not responsible for what we do. We
need to hold ourselves accountable
in a sense, but if we do it from a
causal will, rather than a free
will, perspective we create a kinder
and fairer world.
When people say
that they have a free will, they
mean that they can choose whatever
they want, and that nothing outside
of their control is compelling their
choice. Their choice is completely
up to them. In the area of
morality, where the issue of human
will is extremely important, if
someone does something right, for
example, feel that because it was
their doing completely, they not
just practically, but fundamentally,
deserve the credit.
The term free
will means that when we do something
right or wrong, it is completely up
to us. With moral decisions, the
problem is that if we do something
wrong, and we don’t recognize that
we were completely compelled to do
it, we often punish ourselves. We
would say to ourselves “I deserve to
feel pain for my wrongdoing.” Much
of this show is about transcending
the illusion of free will so we are
kinder toward ourselves and others.
A proper understanding of reality
will presumably lead to a kinder
world.
The reality, of
course, is that we don’t have a free
will; we have a causal will. What
causes our decisions and moral
actions can generally be described
as the past. What happened in the
past causes what happens in the
present, and what happens in the
present causes what happens in the
future. This basic principle of
causality governs the entire
universe. Naturally, it must govern
our human will.
This question of
human will has been debated since
the time of the Greeks, and in all
of that time there has never been
any convincing evidence that we have
a free will. Some people claim, “of
course we have a free will. We
experience ourselves as having a
free will.” The reality is that we
don’t really experience having a
free will; we experience having a
will. We don’t experience having a
will that is free of the past --
free of how we were raised, what we
learned, what we didn’t learn, our
genetic makeup, our personality, and
our unconscious. These factors come
together to actually decide for us
what we do.
One of these
factors is what I’ve coined the
Hedonic Imperative. Actually, it’s
like Freud’s Pleasure Principle and
experiences the basic principle in
science that we as human beings are
hard-wired to seek pleasure and
avoid pain. That’s what we do.
Through every moment of our lives,
we’re making decisions based on the
prediction that our decision is
going to result in the greatest
pleasure to us, immediately or in
the future, or is going to minimize
any kind of pain we might feel.
We’re completely programmed in this
way.
We are like a
computer that must do exactly what
it is programmed to do. We have no
choice but to seek pleasure and
avoid pain. Naturally, if every
decision that we make is based on
this hedonic imperative – this
hard-wired compulsion and
programming to do and think and feel
what we predict is going to result
in the greatest pleasure or the
least pain – then how could that
decision be free? How could that
decision be up to us?
If a robot is
programmed to make a left turn every
time it runs into a wall or some
kind of obstacle, then you certainly
would not say that that robot has a
free will. It is doing what is has
been programmed to do. It can’t do
otherwise. We human beings are
genetically and biologically
programmed to seek pleasure and
avoid pain. Some people might raise
the objection that there are times
when we could do what is most
pleasant, but we choose to do what
will create more pain for us. This
is true, but in those cases we obey
a conscience that needs to do what
we consider right. I’m recording
this show while the Libyan
revolution is taking place. There
are many Libyan citizens that are
going out into the street risking,
or losing, their lives for the
greater good of Libya. The pain
that they would feel by not fighting
for this democracy and freedom from
Gaddafi as a cruel dictator would
apparently be greater than the pain
of risking getting injured or
killed. That is what our conscience
is about.
There are other
examples of this. Sometimes as
parents, we will sacrifice and work
very hard. Mothers have to
constantly attend to their infants.
Their conscience won’t allow them to
just simply do what they want, and
seek their own pleasure at the
expense of the health and well-being
of their children. If necessary,
they will choose to undergo the pain
of being very attentive to the
child, sacrificing their own
pleasure for the sake of the child.
This sacrifice is a satisfaction of
the demands of their conscience.
The hedonic imperative isn’t the
only hard-wired reason why free will
is impossible. We also have a moral
imperative, which is actually quite
related to the hedonic imperative in
the sense that we’re hard-wired to
always do what we consider to be
right, and what is right generally
leads to the greatest pleasure.
Of course some
people may know that what they are
doing is wrong, and may decide to do
it anyway. But when you think about
it, in their mind, at the time that
they do that wrong, they are
justifying their decision. Consider
an employee who steals from a
company. That employee is saying “I
know I’m doing something that others
and I may generally consider wrong,”
but another part is saying “well,
this company has been stealing from
its employees and hurting those
employees in various ways,” There is
always a justification -- right or
wrong.
There are many
ways of understanding why free will
is impossible, and why we simply
don’t have a free will. Cause and
effect and the fact that we have an
unconscious that is always awake and
taking part in our decisions are
prime examples. There have been
experiments where subjects have been
primed – have been led
through a certain exercise that
influences them to think in a
certain way – and they are observed
as they make a decision. They are
then asked why they made that
decision. They will give an answer,
but that answer will generally not
have anything to do with the priming
that has taken place. In other
words, they are just guessing at why
they did what they did, and they are
guessing wrongly. They are not
conscious of how the priming they
underwent actually compelled their
behavior.
Leaving all other
factors aside, the hedonic
imperative completely describes why
free will is impossible. Again, if
we’re programmed to always seek
pleasure, we must do that.
We have no other
choice. I’m a vegan. I can’t
conscience how cruelly we treat farm
animals. If I we’re given a choice
between an apple and a pizza, my
conscience would lead me to not eat
the pizza because it contains
cheese. Part of me might prefer a
pizza because it might taste better
to me than the apple. But, I
derive more pleasure from satisfying
my conscience than from satisfying
my taste for food. Sometimes we are
faced with competing pleasures.
It’s not just that we are always
compelled to seek pleasure; we’re
also compelled to seek the most
pleasant of various available
options.
If we had a free
will, everybody on the planet would
be blissed out every moment of every
day. A free will, by definition,
means that we can think whatever we
want regardless of what is
happening, what has happened, and
what will happen. It means that,
regardless of anything and
everything, our decisions and our
feelings are completely up to us.
The doctrine of free will teaches
that what we think, feel, say, and
do is completely up to us.
We’re hardwired
to seek pleasure, but many times we
are not successful at acquiring that
pleasure. If we had a free will,
who among us wouldn’t choose to
think completely blissful thoughts
all of the time, and to feel
completely blissful feelings all of
the time? It is so clear and
obvious that this is what we would
do. If we had a free will, like St.
Paul expressed in his letter to the
Romans, we would do good and be good
always. Whenever we are confronted
with a moral decision, we would
never yield to temptation. We would
never yield to emotions that might
be driving us to make the wrong, or
immoral, decision. The hedonic and
moral imperatives are a good way to
understand why free will is
impossible.
There are other
imperatives – other kinds of
programming that we are hard-wired
for. We have a reason imperative.
It works alongside the hedonic
imperative to help us make the most
reasonable of two or more options.
It gives us pleasure to be
reasonable. If we’re trying to
transfer a liquid from a container
to either of two other containers,
and one of the containers is clearly
not large enough to hold the liquid,
we’re naturally not going to choose
that container. It wouldn’t make
sense, and would oppose our logic
and reasoning. We usually do what
we consider to be the most
reasonable of available options.
Sometimes,
however, we do what is clearly
unreasonable because it is not just
reason that compels our decisions.
There are so many factors that make
free will impossible. Let’s say we
are trying to be reasonable about
something, but our emotions kick
in. We’ve all had experiences when
we’re discussing something with
someone – someone we may love or
care very much about – and we and
they are trying to be reasonable.
But then emotions like anger and
fear come into play, and our reason
is over-ridden by these emotions.
We are also
programmed to act according to an
imperative we know as the survival
instinct. We will choose based on
our prediction of what is going to
lead to our greatest chance of
survival. All animals appear to
have this instinct. Another
imperative is the instinct to
procreate. We have a hard-wired
drive to reproduce, and propagate
our species.
If we’re always seeking pleasure, or
goodness, or to be reasonable, then
our wills are not free of those
imperatives. We must seek
pleasure. We must avoid pain. Why
is this important? We live in world
where our entire civilization is
founded on an illusion. In our
criminal justice system, we have
people who have spent years in jail
or prison for things that they had
absolutely no choice but to do.
There are people in our world who
may not want to fund our education
system because they feel that we can
educate a child as well as we like,
but at the time they have to make a
decision as an adult, that education
will be meaningless because that
adult can freely choose whatever
they want, regardless of any and all
influence from that education. In
our every day lives, we have many
interactions with other people, and
to the extent we don’t understand
that they are compelled to do
whatever they feel is either the
most right, or the most pleasant, or
the most reasonable, then we will be
more understanding toward them.
We’re not going to blame them when
they invariably do wrong. We’re not
going to say to ourselves “they
deserve punishment.”
A good example of this is Libya.
Gaddafi has killed over a thousand
civilians, mostly unarmed. The
general tendency is to hold him
responsible, and hate him. Because
I understand that Gaddafi does not
have a free will, I can’t blame
him. At the same time, however, my
conscience won’t allow me to, in a
certain sense, not hold him
responsible. What I say to myself
is “God willing, our military or the
Libyan People will stop him somehow,
or ideally he will step down. But
if he doesn’t, we may need to kill
him in order to stop him from
killing more people. This is a
decision I would make not from blame
or hate. Hate is generally a vile
and unpleasant emotion, and even to
the extent we might enjoy hating, we
probably hurt ourselves much more
than we realize with our hatred.
Abandoning the
illusion of free will doesn’t mean
that we’re abandoning morality. We
can do what we have to do from a
more understanding causal
perspective. It may be that if we
treated criminals with less hatred
and more understanding, we might
dissuade them from continuing their
criminal ways. In police work there
is a strategy referred to as “good
cop – bad cop” wherein the good
officer shows compassion and
understanding toward the suspect.
Basically, that officer is acting
according to a causal rather, than a
free will, perspective. We often
find that when people are treated in
that way, their defenses drop. They
think to themselves, “Hey, this
person really isn’t blaming me.
This person understands my
predicament. I can trust him.”
This question of
human will is very important to our
personal lives and the structure of
our society and civilization. I
hope you have a better understanding
of how the hedonic imperative, or
always seeking pleasure and avoiding
pain, makes free will impossible.
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