Apparently, I decided to write a single philosophical piece about a meme (The Stars and Planets Will Affect Your Life in Some Way) and it snowballed into a bunch of smaller pieces to explain certain pieces that I discussed in the aforementioned piece. For example, I discuss how planets will affect your life in many ways based on quantum mechanics. Before I get into the ethical issues for hard determinism, I figured we should go through a primer on quantum mechanics and how you have zero free will but perceive that you have free will. This is the same type of argument one would discuss if someone believed God was all knowing, all powerful, and all moral; God knows everything so nothing you do is a surprise to God, so you don’t have freewill, it is all pre-determined, but you don’t know that so you don’t realize you lack free will and instead perceive that you are free. (I got wordy, so I added a [Read More] link so you can choose to continue reading or not)
In quantum mechanics the focus is on the tiny particles that make up the universe and how they interact. An analogy would be the butterfly theory. This theory states that if a butterfly flaps its wings then there is an earthquake on the other side of the world or some shit. But the key takeaway is that the butterfly has a direct impact on the world by existing – it is the cause in cause and effect. In quantum mechanics, an electron impacts another through some force (gravity or magnets or some shit) and that makes another electron move, these all together shift a proton, which shifts a molecule, which makes you scratch your ass. Cool stuff, but also depressing if you think you make your own decisions but believe in quantum mechanics. I’ll write up something on the randomness principle which could allow for free will, but it isn’t relevant for this discussion, here we will believe that quantum mechanics explains everything and it is the particles making you make decisions not you making decisions.
While I’ve reduced a lot here, basically the argument here is about hard determinism – both the religious version where God knows all and the scientific one where quantum mechanics explains everything’s interactions and what will happen. In both of these scenarios, you have a hard determinism construct where you feel like you have free will, but if your belief structure is in quantum mechanics or an all knowing and all powerful god, then you don’t actually have free will. Furthermore, we get to the true nugget of my post: the ethics.
Ethics requires that someone has performed an action. Then you apply frameworks to that person’s decision and deduce if it was ethical or not. For example, providing food that has gone bad to food banks – some say it is a risk and could lead to food poisoning. However, if you apply a Utilitarianism filter, then one would say that it provides more good for those who don’t get food poisoning so it is a good action to provide this rotten food to the masses. Utilitarianism can be summed up by the phrase: “for the greater good”, and as an ethical framework, Utilitarianism can lead to massive ethical issues (the eugenics program in America and various other countries). As I always say to someone, give me a problem, I will use ethics to tell you it is acceptable and ethical or I can tell you it is unacceptable and unethical – it all depends on which framework I apply (personally I apply Levinasian ethics to all situations as it is the strictest and focuses on the Other not the Self, but if I used something like Utilitarianism I could justify anything).
Now I deviated, but to sum up the above paragraph: ethics is applied to decisions with the idea that you made a decision, and ethics says if it is okay or not. So if you kill someone, you have broken a law and must go to jail. However, is it ethical to take someone and put them in jail if they don’t control their own actions? Under hard determinism, a person thinks they have free will, but as I described above, they don’t – it is predetermined by electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and all other insane sub atomic particles interacting with one another. As such, a person’s decision isn’t their own, it is just the physical manifestation of electrons and protons interacting. So how can we punish them, and isn’t our punishment also a predetermined action? Thus the ethical quandary.
Our laws and ethical frameworks are designed based on the idea that we make decisions. If we don’t make decision, then it is unjust and unethical to punish someone for their actions as it isn’t their action. There’s the rub. So… yeah, enjoy that.