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Chapter 6. How
the Hedonic Imperative Makes Free
Will Impossible
Before exploring how the hedonic
imperative makes free will
impossible, we’ll briefly review the
basic purpose of this book, 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 wrong, we’ll blame
them and conclude that they deserve
to be punished. When we do 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 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, they
feel that because it was their doing
completely, they, not just
practically but fundamentally,
deserve the credit.
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 expresses 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 it 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
getting it wrong. 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,
everyone on the planet would be
completely happy 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 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. We
may be 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 a
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 what they had
absolutely no choice but 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 everyday 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
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