Techno-optimism

 

1. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

In 2023, Marc Andreessen published The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. There is a link at the end of this post.

The Manifesto makes the following claims.

Technology is the way forward, with the potential to improve our lives.

Resources may be scarce, but technology holds out the promise of unlimited growth. It will let us make more with less.

Free markets impose the best discipline. They encourage producers to make things better and cheaper. And they create the surplus wealth that makes social welfare systems possible.

There are great gains from having human and artificial intelligence working together.

Technology allows increased energy production, which is essential to economic progress, without undue environmental impact.

Technology brings down prices, so that low-income people can enjoy the same goodies as high-income people.

The extension of technology is a heroic and exciting enterprise.

The enemies include visions of a deliberately engineered utopia, and the precautionary principle.

The message of the Manifesto is overwhelmingly optimistic, but conditional on innovators being allowed to get on with their jobs as they see fit. State intervention to tell them how to do their jobs is not welcome, and intervention to stop them would be even worse.

Technology has indeed made a huge difference to our lives. One high point has been the management of large amounts of energy (steam power, internal combustion engines, nuclear power, electricity distribution networks, and so on). Another has been the management of information, from Jacquard cards to computers and the Internet. A third has been the management of chemistry, for example in the extraction of useful elements from the Earth and in the manufacture of plastics. A fourth has been the management of biology, whether in medicine or in the genetic engineering of crops. The aristocrats of past centuries about whom we learn when we tour stately homes may have had fine enough lives, at least until they got seriously ill. But the vast majority of the population had a far worse time of it than they do today.

There are however questions to consider. Here are some of them, and answers that may allow optimism to be sustained.

2. Will the trend continue?

We may start by asking whether the trend of advances improving lives will continue. We do not know what the next innovations will be. So we cannot tell either whether they will be of great benefit to humanity, or whether the right innovations will arrive in time to address pressing challenges we may face.

2.1 Benefit or harm?

We might reasonably suppose, on the basis of past experience, that technology would go well. There are no obvious refutations of a claim that benefits are likely to be considerable. There is only a valid point that considerable benefits are not certain. But there is also reason not to be confident that detrimental effects will be small or manageable. This is because recent innovations have brought ever more energy, information, chemistry and biology under management. There is therefore greater potential than in the past to do serious damage, either by the deliberate direction of energy, information, chemistry or biology to do harm, or by accident.

We should however distinguish between known and unknown unknowns. The known unknowns relate to technology that we can already introduce and technology that, while it is not yet practical, we can already adumbrate. This latter category would broadly cover the technology that we can imagine bringing within reach by the use of existing scientific knowledge or by filling in well-defined gaps in existing knowledge. The unknown unknowns relate to technology that we cannot yet describe in any scientific detail, although we might be able to imagine its capabilities in broad terms. Supersonic flying cars have now moved into the category of known unknowns. Implants to enable human telepathy are still in the category of unknown unknowns. And then there are the totally unknown unknowns, where we cannot imagine the capabilities of technologies even in broad terms but they will nonetheless become feasible eventually.

In fact there is a scale with fine gradations, from the technology we could introduce simply by investing resources to mass produce it, through the technology we can imagine with high scientific precision, then the technology we can only imagine in vaguer terms, up to the wholly unimaginable but in fact feasible in the far future.

The location of a technology on this scale affects the confidence we may have in any judgement as to its potential for harmful effects. The closer to the known end a technology is, the greater our confidence may be. We should however never have complete confidence in such a judgement. The future is never perfectly predictable.

There is a specific reason for optimism in the face of uncertainty about the future. Lack of knowledge about the potential effects of a new technology is likely to reflect a lack of specific detail as to how it would work. We may reasonably hope that the less detail we have, the further away introduction of the technology will be and the longer we will have to work out what precautions might be needed. As introduction of a technology comes closer to being feasible, there should be more detail that we could use to improve our predictions.

We may however wonder how much confidence to repose in this optimistic thought. It is possible for technology, including some potentially highly destructive technology, to develop very fast. In addition, both commercial and government developers may be inclined to keep their work secret in order to prevent others from catching up and taking away their commercial or military advantage. Secrecy would hamper the assessment of risks and the development of precautions.

2.2 Will developments arrive in time?

Humanity always faces challenges. It does not make much sense to complain that technical solutions may not arrive quickly to address existing problems. If they do not, that is not an objection to the message of the Manifesto. And letting technology advance is the best hope of hastening the arrival of solutions.

It it is more of an objection to point out that challenges brought about by new technology can arise, and to be concerned as to whether technology will also address them quickly. Challenges can arise because of the direct side-effects of technology. They can also arise because of more indirect effects, as when technology increases lifespans so that there are new pressures both on total population and on the ratio of active to inactive people.

The fact that technology cannot be relied upon to address reasonably quickly the challenges that it itself creates, although it will sometimes do so, should temper the optimism of the Manifesto. But we should make a broad utilitarian calculation. If technology creates new challenges for which there are no quick solutions, we should weigh in the balance the problems that the new technology does solve. That benefit may substantially outweigh the disadvantage of the new challenges, at least unless those new challenges are severe and will not be addressed fast enough to avoid significant damage.

3. Should governments regulate?

3.1 For and against

3.1.1 Utilitarian arguments

It is easy to make a plausible case for government regulation of new technology. We cannot know in advance what all the consequences of innovation will be, and we may very well not even have the data to estimate either the sizes or the probabilities of undesirable effects. Several such concerns are outlined in Hossenfelder, "Our Enemy is the Ivory Tower" American Tech Billionaire Says. That video also points out that knowledge has to precede technology, so knowledge is the true source of progress.

We should however hesitate to endorse regulation.

One reason to hesitate, which applies in all contexts, is that governments typically show considerable enthusiasm for regulation and downplay its adverse effects. Politicians have an urge to be seen to be doing something, and officials are happy to play along because regulations that must be administered secure their continued employment.

Another reason to hesitate is specific to the regulation of new technology. Technology can bring great benefits. If governments slow its introduction, people who would benefit from it for large parts of their lives may only benefit for smaller parts of their lives. To that extent the total happiness of those who live at any time from the present onward, and their average happiness, will be diminished. The effects over the entire future of humanity might be tiny proportions of total happiness and average happiness, because new technology would only be delayed for a few years. But if one were to concentrate on people now alive, or on them plus those who will be born during the lifetimes of people now alive, the effects would be proportionately much greater. Not only would it be natural to concentrate on that select group, as the people to whom we can relate. It would also be defensible in utilitarian terms, because the far future is so hard to predict that bringing it into utilitarian calculations amounts to mere guesswork.

Moreover, given that each advance enables new advances, the loss to people alive now or to be born during the lifetimes of people now alive could be even greater than would appear from looking at each technology separately. A delay in one technology would delay the development of another. And this would be so even if regulation did not prevent scientific research, but only widespread implementation. Widespread implementation may be needed both to  fund future development, and to identify the gaps in benefit that could usefully be filled by the next round of development.

We must also consider the point that given the unknown consequences of new technology, there is a good chance that governments will regulate in unhelpful ways. They suffer from the same ignorance as everyone else. And in addition, government decision makers often lack both technical expertise and business sense. It is not surprising that they often fall back on the precautionary principle, that things ought to be forbidden whenever there might be adverse consequences. And this principle has been much criticised as a shackle on progress.

This is not to say that there should definitely be no regulation. One of the features of some recent technological developments is that they could easily have very large adverse consequences across the whole planet. The greater the extent of our control over energy, information, chemistry and biology, the more damage we could do at one fell swoop.

3.1.2 An argument of principle

As well as utilitarian arguments for and against regulation, we should consider an argument of principle. This is the argument that government intervention is inherently objectionable and must be thoroughly justified. The starting point of this argument is that we are free human beings who may choose to establish governments because we find them helpful, but who thereby become citizens and not subjects. We surrender some of our liberties because it is worthwhile to do so, but we retain the rest, which were ours to begin with and do not become gifts from the state. So governments should not interfere with our lives beyond their proper remit, and there is at least a rebuttable presumption against regulation.

Applying this argument to the regulation of new technology, we might say that not regulating is in principle preferable to any degree of regulation, and that less regulation is in principle preferable to more regulation. One could fill out the argument by reference to a specific right to use one's talents and labour. In outline, the argument would be that if someone has an idea for a new technology, he or she should be free to make use of the idea. And this could be so whether or not there was any system of intellectual property rights to allow exclusivity of exploitation.

3.2 The pointlessness of control

3.2.1 Difficulties in exercising government control

Governments could not always regulate the spread of new technology, even if it were good that they should do so. We can easily identify some problems they would face.

One problem would arise for governments of separate countries. Technology is transmitted in three forms: ideas for how to do things, software (including both programs and data), and physical objects. The flow of the third can be regulated, but not the flow of the first two. Nor can use of the first two be regulated without the heaviest of surveillance of everyday activity - and even then, some users will mange to hide from the surveillance. So when it comes to ideas and software, individual governments can do very little once technologies become available somewhere in the world. And if they do find ways to block ideas and software at their borders, people will find ways round those blocks. They may for example use encryption or virtual private networks.

Another problem would arise both for governments of separate countries and for any hypothetical world government. Some innovations are easily introduced, without any need for rare resources, once the ideas are available. Software is like this. So the innovations are likely to be used by lots of people in many locations. Stopping a few people might be possible. Stopping many people would not be. And with anything in the software field, there are plenty of methods to hide what one is doing from the authorities.

These two problems would not arise with every new technology. Some things require physical objects, sometimes large ones. Some, such as new ways to generate electricity, require changes to existing infrastructure. And some, such as medical interventions, require both the participation of skilled professionals whom governments could identify reasonably easily, and the use of substantial laboratories or care facilities. But the two problems would arise with quite a lot of new technology. And even when physical objects were involved, it might be difficult to maintain boundaries between countries. Small items can be smuggled, and genetically modified seeds and animals can stray across frontiers.

Finally, there is the concern that blocking use of some new technology in one country while it is introduced in others may be economically detrimental. It may for example lead to other countries destroying the market for important exports from the country that introduces a block, because they have a better product or a more efficient way to make the same product.

3.2.2 International agreements

We have noted that having a world government would remove some but not all of the obstacles to the regulation of innovation. There is no realistic prospect of a world government being introduced in the near future. But international agreements represent a step in that direction. Do they give a route to control?

Alas for those who favour regulation, they cannot be relied upon to do the job. They are often vague in their content. This can be because vagueness is necessary in order for large numbers of countries to agree. And in the specific context of new technology, it can also be because the precise nature of future technology is unknown. So rules cannot be set out with sufficient precision even to come close to regulating all and only the members of a sensible set of targets. Moreover, not all countries will sign any given agreement, and those which do not sign will make up their own regulations or have no regulations at all. Then the difficulties of preventing the spread of technologies from countries that allow them to countries that do not allow them will arise again.

3.2.3 "Ought" and "can"

We may conclude that for some technologies, whatever the case for control may be, control cannot be applied. There are things that people might argue governments should do, but they simply cannot do them. "Ought" may not imply "can".

Having said that, there might be a case for introducing ineffectual controls. They can be a political statement of the kind of society that a government sees as desirable. They can also create an atmosphere of caution or abstention. This would however be a very weak case for ineffectual controls. Such controls could equally have the effect of making the state into a laughing stock.

3.3 Utopia

3.3.1 The danger of an ideal

The Manifesto comes out against Utopias. One might wonder why. Is it not sensible to want to make things as good as possible? There are however reasons why opposition to Utopian visions can make sense.

One reason is that there is no such thing as a perfect world. At least, there is no perfect world that human beings can create. There will always be scope to improve. If we ever thought we had reached perfection, we would rest on our laurels and forgo further improvement. And if we decided in advance what would constitute Utopia, we would be limited by what we could currently imagine. That would be likely to fall far short of what would in fact be possible, because new possibilities would emerge as advances currently beyond us were made.

Another reason to oppose Utopian visions is that if there is a predefined shared goal, someone will have to direct activity so as to achieve it. So central direction of economic activity would be needed. And ample experience shows that this would be disastrous.

What we can laud as an ideal it would be sensible to have would be a world in which the direction was upward, a world of continual improvement. But we should not try to define in advance what improvements there should be, save in the short term when we have well-defined problems to solve such as the security and privacy of information stored online, or a medical condition without an available cure.

3.3.2 Sub-optimal courses of development

We should also be aware that it is possible for us accidentally to follow a path of improvement that would trap us in a sub-optimal corner of the space of possibilities, requiring us to backtrack. But such risks are inherent in any progress into the unknown, and are not to be avoided by any kind of central planning or by an absurd extension of the precautionary principle to not doing things that would be good because they might not be the best.

We may note an interesting way in which sub-optimality might arise. This is a less than ideal order of work. Suppose that two developments, called B and C, are already envisaged in sufficient detail for it to be possible to start work, and that we could work on either of them first. If we worked on development B first and then development C, we might miss out on an opportunity to have done better by starting with C. This could happen because C might have opened up the way to a better form of B, or to an alternative to B that would have been preferable.

While there are unavoidable risks of sub-optimality, we can console ourselves with the thought that losses would probably be for the short term only, with the option to backtrack as necessary. And there would be no reason to let governments regulate in an attempt to avoid sub-optimal paths of development, because they would be as much in the dark as to the best choices as anyone else.

3.4 Accelerationism

3.4.1 The push for progress

There is a trend in modern thought that goes by the name of accelerationism. The broad idea is deliberately to push for progress to happen faster and faster. Various political beliefs have clustered around this idea, some rather strange and some incompatible with others. They include a belief that faster progress is a good way to bring down existing political and social structures, with a view to creating a new and allegedly better world.

The Manifesto explicitly endorses accelerationism as a a general concept, although fortunately there is no commitment to strange political beliefs associated with it. The endorsement gives rise to the question of whether governments should force the pace of progress. The political beliefs give rise to the question of whether progress itself carries a risk of destruction.

3.4.2 Should governments force the pace?

Should governments force the pace of progress, rather than merely not regulate and avoid creating any other barriers to progress?

Forcing the pace of progress would be unwise. It would require applying pressure in particular ways, encouraging some forms of progress more than others. Even if the forms were only defined in very broad terms, there would be an influence of political priorities in an arena in which decisions should be taken by businesses and private individuals. There would also be a degree of selection of likely winners, and politicians are very bad at that.

3.4.3 Political beliefs and the risk of destruction

There are political beliefs sometimes associated with accelerationism which see rapid progress as a way to break down existing institutions. Such beliefs are often rather silly. Deliberately breaking down institutions is not an intelligent thing to do unless one has a well-tested and widely acceptable set of institutions with which to replace them, along with the means to ensure a smooth transition.

However, even if we simply dismiss such political beliefs, we are prompted to ask whether progress itself can be too destructive. If the people with the political beliefs see rapid progress as a way to destroy institutions, maybe institutions and social structures could also be destroyed by accident. And maybe governments should at least intervene to reduce the risk of this.

We can see some ways in which excessive destruction might happen. Developments that quickly eliminated many jobs, at times when the redundant workers had little opportunity to find alternative employment, could lead to a degree of social breakdown. This reflects the fact that work is the leading way we have to distribute income. To take another example, developments that introduced new ways to undertake everyday transactions and to make social connections, which some people adopted quickly and others refrained from using, might create patterns of exclusion. These and similar social strains might in turn lead to a widespread, although probably not universal, loss of confidence in existing political institutions.

These risks are not to be dismissed. We should face them. But it is unlikely that they mean we should put brakes on the introduction of new technology. The losses from doing so could easily be far greater than the gains from avoiding difficulties. It is likely that a better approach would be to assess the risks and see what measures might be held in readiness to counter adverse effects that actually arose. For widespread redundancy, this might be retraining programmes. For social exclusion, it might be steps to preserve old methods of transaction and interaction. And so on.

3.5 Security concerns

3.5.1 National security

There is one specific area in which it may seem that state intervention would be entirely justified, and perhaps essential. This is national security.

There are valid concerns about new technology that would gather and store data on people, on economic activity, or on infrastructure, and that might then transmit the data to potentially hostile foreign powers. New technology might also hand remote control of processes to foreign powers.

In such cases, there would be no point in trying to stop the development of the technology. If a hostile power saw the advantages of using it, that power would develop it. One could only try to limit its deployment.

In the public sector, this would in principle be straightforward. One would simply insist that all technologies be analysed for such risks before buying them. It might however be difficult in practice, because objectionable pathways of data transmission and of remote control might be well hidden.

In private sector businesses, it would be harder to control deployment. One can try to regulate private sector procurement, but there might not be the resources to analyse all potentially objectionable technology. And if a supplier was condemned, some other supplier might replace it, repackaging a product with the same objectionable qualities. Moreover, the heavy hand of the state regulating the use of all technology that fell within a broad range when only a small proportion of examples of use might in fact be objectionable would be economically counter-productive. One might therefore have to take the risk, recognising that it could be a considerable risk. The risk could be considerable if tools on which businesses relied included ways for hostile powers to turn them off remotely. A hostile power could cause considerable disruption by turning off banking services, supermarket logistics, or water and sewage services.

Among the general public, control over deployment would be harder still. If people like a product, and it can be obtained without bringing physical goods across a boundary where there are controls (typically a national boundary), they will get it. Blocks to the sharing of software can generally be circumvented. So technology that will result in the sharing of data on individuals or in remote interference with their devices can easily be deployed, and there is not much that governments can do about it. Fortunately, the scope to harm national security in this way is limited.

There are two general points to draw out of what we have just said. The first is that controls might reasonably be desired, but they may be hard to impose. The second is that if one were to take a strictly utilitarian approach, one would proportion attempts to control deployment to the risks involved. The risks are bound to be high in some parts of the public sector, most obviously the military, security services, and some parts of the police. They can be substantial in some other parts of the public sector and in parts of the private sector that are critical to the smooth running of society. Risks at the societal level are much lower in the generality of businesses and among individuals.

Fortunately, ease of controlling deployment of technologies is positively correlated with level of risk at the societal level, although the correlation is far from perfect.

We should also note that none of the concerns here would make much of an argument against development of the technologies in question. Those technologies may bring considerable benefits. If they would also bring risks, the point at which the risks arose would be deployment. And while control at that point may be difficult, it would in any case be the only option given that development can happen anywhere in the world.

3.5.2 Personal data and the state

A specific concern with much new technology is that it allows the collection and analysis of large amounts of personal data. Sometimes this will be done by private enterprise, and sometimes by the state. 

The obstruction of technology that allowed the collection of data would be a bad move. If a service provider, whether a business or for example a state health service, has information on the people with which it interacts, it can provide a better service. The sensible response is therefore likely to be laws that give people rights over the use of their data.

Here the state is a particular concern. It is unlikely to make laws against itself. It may even make laws to frustrate attempts to keep data private, for example when the UK government issues secret orders to technology companies to undermine the encryption that they offer to their customers.

State monitoring may help to fight crime, but it has adverse effects too. If people think they are being constantly watched, they will self-censor. Even if current governments are not at all likely to intervene against opinions they do not like, so that there is no immediate reason to be concerned, data will be saved up for an indefinite period and future governments might not be so benign. Moreover, state surveillance would make it very difficult for a whistle-blowing civil servant, aware of wrongdoing, safely to pass information to journalists, so the level of corruption would be very likely to rise.

Given that government regulation of technology is useless in the area of state data collection, our best hope to control the adverse effects of state monitoring that relies on new technology is more new technology. Examples are encryption systems that are developed by companies or communities immune to orders from particular governments to build in backdoors, and software such as virtual private networks to hide web browsing.

3.5.3 Misinformation

The world wide web in general, and content generated by artificial intelligence in particular, have been seen as threats to the social and political environment by virtue of their scope to distribute false information in ways that make it easy for people to think it is true. Fiction and guesses, masquerading as established fact, can be disseminated very quickly. And deepfakes can be used to make it look as though respected authorities have made certain assertions when in fact they have not.

There are two reasons why this might be regarded as a security issue. The first is that people may be led to act in ways that are foolish and disruptive. The second is that the normal functioning of democracy may be undermined, because that functioning requires voters to have accurate information on issues facing the state and on political parties so that they can choose accordingly.

As already noted, there would be no prospect of controlling the development and the widespread use of such technologies. And there would be a strong case against attempts to control either development or deployment. On utilitarian grounds, such controls would limit the considerable benefits available from technologies like the web and artificial intelligence. On grounds of principle it is a basic liberty to be able to exchange ideas. The controls that would be necessary to, for example, prevent the generation of messages by using artificial intelligence, would greatly limit the exchange of ideas more widely.

One might make a case for control downstream, targeting particular messages or categories of message. But that would be outright censorship, to which there are ample objections. One could add that established political parties themselves happily mislead people and misrepresent issues as part of the routine political process.

4. Control by corporate interests

It is a common concern that new technologies which play a significant part in people's lives are controlled by corporations that are in turn under the control of their founders. These are seen as immensely wealthy people who may try both to frustrate government attempts at control and, more broadly, to foist their own political agendas on society.

It is not surprising that control by a few very wealthy people should be reasonably common in relation to new technologies. Specific people had to have the new ideas, then drive them forward to commercial reality. And there has not been time to diffuse control through the sale of equity in the relevant businesses to a broad range of shareholders.

We shall not spend time on moral objections to striking disparities of wealth. There is however one point about disparities that is particularly relevant to technological progress. This is that innovations which generate vast wealth for a few are also ones that confer great benefits on the many. Those benefits are why there are many customers, and hence vast wealth to be made. In consequence, the rewards to the innovators are a tiny fraction of the benefits to people generally. Looked at that way, large rewards to innovators may look entirely proportionate.

Should we be concerned that innovators may try to frustrate attempts at government control? Perhaps not, if we think that governments are too keen to control and too unaware of the damage that excessive control can do. It may well be that innovators who resist control provide a useful counterweight to the urges of governments. And to the extent that attempts to control are ineffective anyway, for the reasons we set out in section 3.2, there will be little loss from effective resistance to what governments may attempt.

There is however a way in which innovators may positively encourage government control. They may want measures to shut out competitors. They may for example seek to strengthen existing intellectual property protections, or they may seek new regulations that impose safety conditions which they happen to satisfy without any difficulty but which new competitors would find hard to satisfy. This is something that governments should of course resist.

Turning to rich people seeking to impose wide political agendas, this is not a problem specific to innovators. It just so happens that many of the most publicly recognised rich people have made their money in that way. So if controls are needed, they are not specifically for innovators, nor does innovation create a new need. Any controls would be a matter for the wider political system, and would raise general political questions such as those that have come up in relation to super-PACs in the United States. 

It might still be thought that there should be a special concern because innovation can so easily give rise to many rich people. But the loss from attempts to hold back innovation would be so great that it would be folly to tackle the supposed political problem in that way. There is also the point that the more billionaires there are who seek to influence the political process, the greater is the likelihood that they will have a range of political views and will to some extent work against one another, thereby lessening their overall impact.

5. Value and fulfilment

The Manifesto portrays technological advance as an inherently noble pursuit. It is valuable and a source of human fulfilment. There is an implicit nod to some of Ayn Rand's characters, particularly Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged and Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, and a mention of John Galt from Atlas Shrugged.

5.1 Value

We could agree with the value of technological advance by reference to long-standing approaches to ethics.

Most obviously, utilitarians would endorse actions that increased overall human happiness, and technology can certainly do that - although utilitarians would also want to avoid innovations that were on balance harmful.

Virtue ethicists could also endorse innovation because it is mostly a way to benefit humanity. And they could endorse work to advance technology, because it requires the exercise both of intellectual virtues such as sound reasoning, creativity and skill, and of other virtues such as determination.

So the view that technological advance is ethically valuable could enjoy widespread support.

One might hesitate here. People who drive our technology forward are easily viewed as selfish, out to make as much money as they can, and selfishness tends to attract ethical opprobrium. On the other hand, there are those (such as Ayn Rand) who argue that selfishness is a virtue, so long as one relies on the consent of others to make deals and does not coerce people into handing over their resources. If you set out to improve your own position by non-coercive means, the only ways to succeed are first to use resources that are lying around unused and unowned, and second to offer to fulfil the needs of others so that they are willing to do business with you. Thus the pursuit of your own ends leads to the fulfilment of other people's ends.

5.2 Fulfilment

Whether work on technology is fulfilling depends on the individual.  But it can very easily be fulfilling. It demands the exercise of intellect, and sometimes physical skill. And the benefits to humanity mean that what is done can be seen as worthwhile. The career of an engineer can be as fulfilling as the career of a poet.

This may however sometimes be hard to see. An engineer will typically work in a big team, and there may be many other people who would have done the same work. A poet, on the other hand, will typically work alone. And the poems written will be such as would not have been written by anyone else, even if plenty of other people would have written poems of equal merit. So if uniqueness of contribution matters to fulfilment, the poet will have the edge over the engineer. On the other hand, if consistent acknowledgement of merit that does not vary much with individual taste matters to fulfilment, the engineer will have the edge over the poet.

References

Andreessen, Marc. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. Online publication, 2023.

https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

Hossenfelder, Sabine. "Our Enemy is the Ivory Tower" American Tech Billionaire Says. Video, 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kibFAk8HwS4

Schopenhauer and free will

1. Introduction

Schopenhauer remarked that the only freedom of the will we can coherently have is freedom to do what we will, not to will what we will.

More recent philosophers have not all respected the boundary that Schopenhauer drew. Some of them have defined the freedom of the will that they defend in terms that push in the direction of being able to will what one wills.

In this post we shall start by touching on a few well-established positions (section 2). Then we shall look at the option of choices being random within a constrained range (section 3). Finally we shall explore one feature of human beings that may promise to place them close to willing what they will. This is the ability to choose to make changes to one's own character (sections 4 and 5).

Our concern is with ways to look at the human experience of making choices and acting on them. We do not seek to study what happens in the way that psychologists would study us. Our approach is philosophical, rather than scientific.

We do not claim originality for the various theories that we shall use. They have mostly been around for quite some time. But we shall offer a way to put some options to work against the background of Schopenhauer's remark.

2. Theories of free will

2.1 Choices as the focus of theories

We take freedom to be freedom in choice of action. Two questions that are regarded as absolutely central by some philosophers, and unimportant by others, are these:

(a) Could the subject have made a different choice?

(b) Was a choice truly the subject's choice?

The focus on choices leaves some things out of account. On the side after a choice, we shall take no interest in whether a subject is physically restrained or otherwise incapable of carrying out a chosen action. On the side before the choice our focus will not be on the origins of subjects' desires, except when we consider choosing to change one's character and therefore the desires that may carry weight on future occasions of choice. Apart from that, we shall be happy to take desires as given. We shall not be concerned with whether it is physically determined that a given subject shall have any particular desire. We shall however be very concerned with the mechanism by which desires and perhaps other things give rise to choices.

2.2 Schopenhauer

In chapter 1 of his Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer starts by pointing out that the concept of freedom from physical restraint makes perfect sense. Such freedom means that one can do what one wills. He then points out that freedom to will what one willed would demand a will that chose in one way rather than another without grounds for its choices. The rest of the essay is largely an attack on the view that we have or even could have such a freedom.

In chapter 2 he examines the role of motives, arguing that the way to provide a ground for the will's choices would be for the will to choose on the basis of the strongest motive, not to be free to decide whether to be guided by motives. He also refuses a half-way position in which motives would incline but not determine the will. And he points out that self-consciousness only reveals our choosing as we will, in response to our motives, not any trace of willing as we will. (There is here a dependence on Schopenhauer's more general doctrine of the Will, in which a person is his or her will.)

Moreover, while we can wish for several contradictory things, we can only will one of them. The possibility of wishing does not mean that we could in fact have willed differently without any reason (such as a stronger motive) determining us to do so. And in that case we could not have willed the option we in fact chose.

In chapter 3 Schopenhauer sets out the necessity of the effects of causes, up to and including motives as causes, even when they are the motives of human beings who can rationally consider the past and the future as well as the present when deciding how to act. He adds that an effect, a human action, will not follow without a cause, a motive. And he goes on to explore the notion of a person's character. It is the combination of character and external circumstances that will determine the choices made. The fact that the choices made cannot be reliably predicted by the subject does not mean that other choices could have been made. 

In chapter 3 Schopenhauer also sets out his view that a person's character is unalterable. Apparent changes merely result from being at different stages in life. And a change in conduct results not from a change in character but from increasing knowledge of the consequences of different choices. Moreover, the idea of a free will unbound by anything at all, a will that could will what it willed, would not only be incompatible with having a definite character. It would prevent such a character from being developed over a life.

Chapter 4 is a survey of views expressed in theology, philosophy and literature in the past.

In chapter 5 Schopenhauer rounds off his essay with an attribution to each of us of moral responsibility for our actions, despite their being determined, precisely because each person's actions are determined by his or her character. Here he comes close to basing moral responsibility on the guidance control that is now favoured by many compatibilists.

2.3 Compatibilists

Compatibilists, who seek a freedom that is entirely compatible with a deterministic physical world and the supervenience of the mental on the physical, have on the whole respected Schopenhauer's boundary. Guidance control, one's own brain and character having significant roles in the causal chains that lead from circumstances to actions, is enough for many compatibilists. It is a formulation of freedom to do what one wills which places emphasis on the will having substantive content and playing a significant role.

2.4 Incompatibilist libertarians

Incompatibilist libertarians maintain that a deterministic universe would be incompatible with the free will they seek, but that we have that free will anyway. If we ask what the implications of such a freedom would be, we find that we at least edge toward the freedom to will what one wills that Schopenhauer wanted to deny us.

A great deal hinges on the mechanism by which it is alleged that we make free choices. What mechanism could there be which would give freedom without degenerating into randomness?

There is not usually any suggestion that choices are random and inexplicable. To that extent, Schopenhauer's warning is heeded. But the deterministic physical world cannot be allowed to have total control. Nor can it be the sole guiding factor, leaving a residue of mere randomness, for that would leave us with a disrespectful vision of the subject who chooses.  And given that the link from willing to acting is within the physical world and therefore deterministic or subject merely to vagaries of the world by virtue of which results happen not to be what was intended, there would have to be a guiding factor before the willing of a particular action. To that extent the subject would need a method to will what he or she willed.

The deterministic physical world may be allowed to set some limits, even at the level of the neurons that embody decisions, but there is also a role for some rational influence on choices that does not supervene on the physical - and must not supervene on it if the incompatibilist libertarian position is to survive.

One candidate for such a rational influence is the subject's character. Another is the reasons for possible choices of which the subject is consciously or subconsciously aware. (We shall call these the available reasons, which may not be the full set of reasons that would be relevant to a decision.)

The avoidance of supervenience on the physical may be achieved by a denial that such things do supervene on the physical, perhaps on the basis that characteristics and reasons are inherently mental things. Then their causal efficacy may be achieved through some physical force of agency that characteristics and reasons invoke in favour of a particular choice. Alternatively characteristics and available reasons may supervene on structures in the physical brain, so that they are as determined as anything else, but some force of agency that is not part of a closed physical order of causes and effects may select and put into effect options chosen from a range that is already narrowed down by characteristics and available reasons. These may not be the only possibilities, but they indicate the kind of thing that would be needed.

A physical force of agency that was invoked by something not supervenient on the physical or a force that was itself not part of a closed physical order of causes and effects would be somewhat mysterious. But the idea of a force that operates within limits laid down by characteristics and reasons, whether or not those characteristics and reasons correspond to structures in the physical brain, does give us a clue to an approach that would avoid the need for a mysterious force. This approach is constrained randomness, and we shall now turn to it.

3. Constrained randomness

3.1 The basic idea

Suppose that a subject who faces a decision has a reasonably set character and a range of available reasons to prefer options. And suppose that the reasons cannot all be added up on a single scale to yield a clear conclusion as to which is the best option. (Such a computation would indeed often be impossible.) Then there would seem to be scope to make a free choice between a limited range of options. How would it be if that choice were random?

3.2 Kinds of randomness

We must first think about what we have in mind by way of randomness. It might be genuine physical randomness, such as is seen under some interpretations of quantum mechanics, triggering or not triggering neurons. Or it might be the result of some deterministic physical process, such that the selection of one option rather than another from within the range set by character and available reasons could not be explained in terms of the relative weights of characteristics of the subject or the weights of available reasons because there was no even remotely comprehensive way reliably to link the relevant physical process to any such explanation. (The writings of Donald Davidson on anomalous monism and of Christian List provide a point of comparison here. See Davidson, "Mental Events", as a starting point, although there is much subsequent discussion; List, Why Free Will is Real.)

Genuine randomness and non-explanatory determinism would be equally good for our purposes, because our concern will be with how things are when a subject's choices are not to be explained entirely in terms that look like respectable ways to explain choices - broadly, in terms of characteristics and reasons.

3.3 Assessing constrained randomness

How would constrained randomness look? Would it keep the worry of a lack of explanations of choices at bay? And would it give rise to a different worry, by constituting an attack on the unity and the reflexive transparency of the self?

3.3.1 Randomness and explanation

Constrained randomness would mean that people generally acted in character, and were not often liable to make strange choices that would lead observers to regard them as out of control. To that extent, it would fit our observations of how people act. It would also be a good fit with the observation that there is a degree of unpredictability in people's choices, however well one knows their characters and the ranges of reasons available to them.  And the restrictions imposed by characteristics and available reasons would accommodate the point Schopenhauer made that we can think of all sorts of implausible choices (which could happen through a deterministic exercise of imagination), tell ourselves that we could make them, but in fact find it difficult to the point of practical impossibility to do so (Schopenhauer, Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, chapter 3).

How would constrained randomness seem from the inside? One might anticipate a sense of lack of control when the randomness took effect, which would certainly be disturbing and would undermine one's self-conception as a free subject steering one's own life. But actually a sense of lack of control should not be expected, even though there might be justification for attributing lack of control.

Justification would require the detection of randomness. It could be detected in the following way. If we think about choices we have made, we may give explanations by reference to characteristics and available reasons. An ability to give such explanations allows us to see ourselves as captains of our lives. But what we may not notice is that we could have given equally good explanations had we made other choices. If we do notice that, we can expect to notice a residue of unexplained choice of one option over another.

Despite this, one would still not expect a sense of lack of control. The sensation one had as a choice was made would be the same, whether the choice was made by virtue of something random or by virtue of a mysterious force of agency. So the randomness would be hidden from the subject at the time of decision, even though it could be appreciated later.

3.3.2 The unity and transparency of the self

While constrained randomness might fit the data on what people do, and while it might also be consonant with the impression of choice that one has from the inside, there is a concern. Choice through such a mechanism might seem to undermine the unity and the reflexive transparency to oneself of the I that willed.

It is natural to think that there should be a central locus of control which sees all, or at least sees everything that makes a substantive contribution to choices (so that its own contents, perhaps not transparent to itself save in the form of an inactive copy that may not reflect current operations, are merely formal and do not have substantive content).

If such a central locus of control were to see a source of randomness, that would preserve the transparency of everything outside itself to the extent of recognising contributing entities. But on the other hand the source of randomness would be something outside the central locus's control. And its internal workings would have to be opaque in the sense that they could not be seen well enough for its outputs to be predicted reliably in specific cases, because that would eliminate randomness and reduce us to the determinism which provokes incompatibilist fears and drives those who have such fears but who want a strong form of free will to posit mysterious forces of agency.

(There might however be enough transparency of the source of randomness to allow statistical predictions about the relative frequencies with which different outputs would arise. That would not impugn the indeterminism achieved on individual occasions. To that extent the objection that agent-level compliance with the implications of micro-level statistical laws would be a wild coincidence, an objection set out in Pereboom, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, pages 66-69, may be one that can be ignored.)

Moreover, in order to fit the picture of constrained randomness, it would have to be impossible for the central locus to disconnect the source of randomness so that it had no effect on choices. If that happened, we would be back to a purely deterministic mechanism which would leave nothing that might satisfy the yearnings of those who feared incompatibilism. Nor would it make sense to allow the central locus a substantive as opposed to a merely formal contribution to choices, on pain of either losing transparency or falling back into the picture of willing what one willed that Schopenhauer found unsatisfactory.

We could of course give up on the unity and the transparency to oneself of the I that wills. We might say that imperfect unity and transparency were good enough. We could even say that imperfection here was a good fit with our first-person observation of ourselves. Sometimes we and our choices are puzzles to ourselves, and it is through living, making choices, and acting on those choices that we engage in an unending process of self-discovery.

4. Choosing to change one's character

4.1 The scope to change

There is another way in which a subject's presumed central locus of control might be given a role. This would be to consider deliberate changes of character. We would here exploit a scope for flexibility in character that Schopenhauer denied (Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, chapter 3).

What we consider here would not satisfy the incompatibilist libertarian as he or she focused on individual decisions, but it might still allow us to go beyond the mere guidance control of the compatibilists and safely edge a bit toward a subject's being able to will what he or she willed. And we would do so without any need for randomness, whether constrained or unconstrained. 

A human being is capable of standing outside himself or herself, contemplating his or her own character, and considering whether changes would be appropriate. One cannot stand entirely outside oneself, because the standpoint is within oneself. There is no Archimedean point on which to stand. A subject engaged in changing his or her character is in the position of repairing a raft at sea. The raft can be repaired piecemeal, but one must always stand on a part that it not currently under repair. (It is not clear whether there is any part of a personality that by virtue of its centrality can never be changed. In that respect things may be different from how they would be on a raft, in that the part of a raft where one was currently standing could always be repaired later.)

Inability to stand outside oneself means that unity and reflexive transparency of the subject cannot be perfect. But a degree of detachment is possible. Then it is possible to make a plan to change one's character, not by giving direct orders to oneself (which are likely to be ineffective) but by adopting habits that will in due course effect the desired changes. Success in this is never assured, but it is not out of reach.

4.2 Willing what one wills?

To the extent that one does succeed and that one's choices on individual occasions are constrained by one's character, there is a form of willing what one wills. The willing does not relate to any immediate choice, but to future choices. It is a willing that in certain circumstances one should have a will to do certain things and not others. At the present time, one only wills that one's character should change in certain ways, and freedom at that point consists in one's being able actually to promote those changes, to do what one currently wills. We would not have a case of freely willing to will to change one's character.

The modest nature of the claimed victory over a supposed inability to will what one wills, a victory that relies on separating in time various elements in an individual's psychic history, means that it would not matter if the process of deciding to make certain changes to one's character and then acting to make them was deterministic, rendered inevitable in every detail by supervenience on the physical universe. And it would also not matter if the process were supervenient on a physical universe that incorporated a mixture of determinism and randomness. It would suffice for the choice to make certain changes to one's personality to be one that was internally driven, along the lines of the guidance control beloved of compatibilists.

4.3 Two-layer structures

To what would this victory amount? Would it provide any comfort to someone whose natural inclination was to be a libertarian but who felt unable to sustain that position because of its seeming incompatibility with the nature of the world as viewed scientifically?

One point of comparison is the structure of first-order and higher-order desires that has been set out by Harry Frankfurt and that has been seen as providing comfort on questions of free will (Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person"). A subject can have first-order desires to do different and incompatible things, for example to eat delicious food and to stick to a diet. But a subject can also have a higher-order desire, that the desire to stick to the diet should prevail. The effect on conduct of having a higher-order desire that was strong enough to ensure that the preferred first-order desire would prevail could be seen as comparable to the effect on conduct of having a certain characteristic. And in Frankfurt's view, acting on first-order desires that are in conformity with higher-order desires is a sign that the actions really are one's own, and are in that sense free. The subject wills certain choices (at the first-order level) and wants (at the higher-order level) to will those choices. This is not the willing what one wills to which Schopenhauer objected, because the desires of the two orders are different and the higher-order desire has substantive content.

Comparability of effect should not be assumed to imply comparability of underlying source of the effects. There is a difference between a conscious higher-order desire, cited at the time when first-order desires are in conflict, and a standing disposition, perhaps unconscious, to choose to satisfy certain first-order desires rather than others.

When however we restrict our comparison to conscious higher-order desires at the moment of choice and characteristics that were at some time in the past deliberately developed, they do seem to come together as examples of a limited form of willing what one wills.

They come together because the form of willing is in both cases willing that there be an efficacious rule concerning how to decide on specific actions, a rule that is separable from those decisions on specific actions. A characteristic, whether deliberately developed or not, gives a rule that can be applied over and over. Likewise a higher-order desire is a rule that can be applied repeatedly. Unlike a characteristic, it might not be so well established that it would be applied reliably. It might come to consciousness on only a few of the occasions on which it was relevant, and might sometimes arise but be too weak to have the effect it promoted. But it would naturally be thought of as a rule to be applied repeatedly. And any thought that a higher-order desire was only meant for occasions when the first-order desire to be opposed was not especially strong would be odd.

This is however only a limited form of willing what one wills because we still find no reason to see the end results as entirely optional. It is perfectly possible, indeed highly likely if the mental supervenes on the physical, that the only way things could have turned out differently, either inside a subject's head or in his or her conduct, would have been by virtue of random processes that were in no sense under the subject's direction.

We may compare choices of characteristics and conscious higher-order desires with Robert Nozick's approach, which could be seen as a programme for the establishment of higher-order desires on the fly. Nozick speaks of a decision as setting a precedent under which it is itself subsumed (Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, chapter 4, section 1). He sets out how we assign weights to the various considerations that might bear on a decision. The assignment of weights on one  occasion will influence assignments on future occasions by setting a precedent, but not an inviolable one. Nozick also argues that the assignment of weights on a given occasion can set a precedent under which that assignment is itself subsumed (pages 300-301). He also addresses the risk of seeing our choices as random and uncontrolled by arguing that a choice can be explicable without its falling under a covering law, and in making that argument he uses our own experience of choosing (pages 301-306).

4.4 The advantages of two-layer structures

How much comfort does a two-layer structure give, whether the upper layer is chosen characteristics or higher-order desires?

It does not suffice to allow that things could have turned out differently, save by the unflattering subjection of subjects to randomness. But it does look significantly different from a single-layer picture in which a subject, faced with a given situation, automatically follows the tramlines of the world into a particular choice. It is a modest form of willing what one wills, and one that it is unsurprising Schopenhauer did not develop given his conviction that we have settled and invariable characters.

What is perhaps most comforting about a two-layer structure is that it makes explicit that we are subjects with directed and consistent lives which are not random, while we still have the option to change direction. At this point the idea of a rule to be applied repeatedly becomes important. We can create our future selves, at least to a limited extent, and the choices made in that process of creation are validly our own even if they were inevitable. Moreover, when it comes to choosing characteristics, the chosen characteristics can eventually seep into our bones, so that they do indeed become aspects of who we are.

It is here important to reflect on the process of deliberately moulding character. One consciously makes certain choices. This is an instance of a higher-order desire to take on some new characteristic which will in due course direct choices that may be influenced by first-order desires. Eventually the habit of choosing in what the subject considers to be the right way becomes automatic. In this respect the process of choosing characteristics has the edge over higher-order desires that operate by coming to consciousness on specific occasions of choice. Those higher-order desires do not seep into the bones of the subject, and there is a marked risk that they will not arise or not be strong enough when they are needed.

A further elaboration is possible, whether or not one accepts the supervenience of the mental on a physical world that may be entirely deterministic or perhaps deterministic with a bit of randomness. Within the range of characteristics that a subject might aim to develop through the practice of appropriate habits, there may be higher-order and lower-order ones. Examples of higher-order characteristics would be being thoughtful rather than impulsive, and not being indulgent in relation to pleasures in general. Examples of  lower-order characteristics would be not making assumptions about people newly encountered, and refusing foods that would be bad for one's health.

Higher-order characteristics would be of wider application than lower-order ones. But they would be of less certain application to specific choices. This would be both because their lack of much concrete content would make it hard to compute precise recommendations, and because a subject who did not relish the choices they indicated would have scope to argue internally that other choices more or less complied with their imperative content. Indeed, higher-order characteristics might largely take effect through their influence on the selection of lower-order characteristics, which would have enough concrete content to be of reasonably certain application to specific choices.

This point about influences of some characteristics on the selection of others brings out an advantage of having interactions between different characteristics in the process of their being chosen or otherwise coming to accrue to a subject. Such interactions can enhance the coherence of a set of characteristics, with some possible characteristics failing to accrue because of their conflict with other characteristics. And such interactions would not be limited to downward influences through hierarchies of characteristics. They might include influences upward, or influences back and forth across a network that might not have a clear hierarchy. Nor should we ignore a broader picture of influences, as set out in Michael Bratman's discussion of the formulation of coherent plans to be implemented over time (Bratman, "Planning Agency, Autonomous Agency").

5. Stability and flexibility of character

5.1 The importance of stability

While we have made use of the ability deliberately to change one's character, it would be undesirable if people's characters did not have considerable inertia, resisting change. Fortunately, they do have such inertia.

If a subject's character has inertia and hence stability, we can speak of the subject's personality. If the character fluctuated widely, either over the full range of possibilities for someone of that age, sex and culture or over some narrower but still reasonably broad range, we would have to say that the subject had no personality in particular. And that would be an attack on the very notion of a human subject. It would also make social interaction difficult, because people like that would be a good deal more unpredictable than people in general actually are.

Another aspect is that a degree of settled personality is required for whatever freedom of the will we have to be something worth having. A subject exercises his or her will to carry out his or her projects, in accordance with his or her own ideas of what is valuable. If the subject had no stable character, the subject could not say "I did this" with any more than an etiolated sense of "I". For a subject's utterance of "I did it my way" to carry weight and be a source of satisfaction, the way has to be the subject's in the sense that it reflects how the subject actually is. And if the subject is unstable from moment to moment, it is not possible to say how the subject is in a sense that would allow him or her to look back on something done and affirm that it reflected how he or she really was at any time other than the moment of action. Even potential great instability which had not been actualised would cast doubt on a claim that the action reflected how the subject really was, because truly having one's characteristics requires having them securely.

Stability is also needed for the compatibilist view that is based on guidance control to be at all appealing. If satisfaction comes from being able to claim that a subject's choices and actions reflect substantial causal roles for the subject's own brain and the psyche that supervenes on it, the psyche had better be stable for the claim of substantial roles to have much significance.

5.2 Layers and networks

Layers or networks of interacting characteristics may be a source of stability. An isolated characteristic is at constant risk of losing its grip on choices and conduct, prompted by some immediate temptation. But if different characteristics, vulnerable to different temptations, interact, any one characteristic may be kept at its task because a tendency for it to lose its grip would be corrected by the fact that this would be inconsistent with other characteristics to which it was related. This might be so either within a non-hierarchical network or, in a specifically top-down way, within a hierarchy of  higher-order and lower-order characteristics. Indeed the higher-order characteristics, having only limited concrete content, should be relatively invulnerable to temptations to relax their grip, although on the other hand their grip at the level of specific choices and conduct would be limited by the very fact that they were short of concrete content.

5.3 The balance between stability and flexibility

We can reflect on the balance between the twin desiderata of stability of character to give ownership of our choices and freedom to change character. Here we stop thinking about how to conceptualise what we actually have, or what it is that we actually have, and consider what we might like.

We can imagine a horizontal axis of fixity of personality, going from great changeability on the left to great fixity on the right. A vertical axis can measure desirability. One curve, representing the benefit of flexibility, can run downward from left to right. Another, representing the benefit of stability, can run upward from left to right. The curve representing overall benefit can be some function of values indicated by those two curves, perhaps addition or perhaps something more complicated. Then in designing a world that would be ideal, we could identify the point at which the curve representing benefit achieved a maximum.

(What constituted benefit would be a separate question. It might be contentment, or degree of respect for oneself or for human subjects as agents, or something else.)

This picture of a graph is of course somewhat fanciful. It is not at all clear how the relevant variables could be quantified or the function defined. And even if those obstacles were overcome, there might be no unique point of maximum benefit. But the picture may bring out how conflicting desiderata can be related to one another.

6. Conclusion

We have not found a coherent notion of willing what one wills that Schopenhauer would consider admissible. Nor have we come up with anything that would entirely satisfy the incompatibilist libertarians, because constrained randomness is tainted by randomness, something that does not look compatible with human dignity, and because what appeared in hierarchies of desires or characteristics could still be fully determined by the merely physical. What would still be lacking would be a will that was neither determined by the physical world nor undetermined, but determined by the subject.

What we can do is move a little way in the direction of willing what one wills, giving more freedom than either Schopenhauer or compatibilists would allow, without exposing ourselves to Schopenhauer's complaint of incoherence. But central to this move is a rejection of Schopenhauer's belief in the unalterability of human character. If we see character as changeable, and in particular as open to deliberate moulding by the subject, we can exploit the passage of time to let what is willed at one time have influence not only over what is done at a later time, but also over what is willed at a later time.

References

Bratman, Michael E. "Planning Agency, Autonomous Agency". Chapter 1 of James Stacey Taylor (ed.), Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Davidson, Donald. "Mental Events". Essay 11 of Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, second edition. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2001.

Frankfurt, Harry G. "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person". Chapter 16 of Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will, second edition. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.

List, Christian. Why Free Will is Real. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2019.

Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press, 1981.

Pereboom, Derk. Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, edited by Günter Zöller, translated by Eric F. J. Payne. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Truth becomes fiction

1. The couplets

In chapter 1 of the truly wonderful eighteenth century novel by Cao Xueqin known as Dream of the Red Chamber, and alternatively as The Story of the Stone, we find this (in the David Hawkes translation):

"Shi-yin took the object from him and saw that it was a clear, beautiful jade on one side of which were carved the words 'Magic Jade'. There were several columns of smaller characters on the back, which Shi-yin was just going to examine more closely when the monk, with a cry of 'Here we are, at the frontier of Illusion', snatched the stone from him and disappeared, with the Taoist, through a big stone archway above which

THE LAND OF ILLUSION

was written in large characters. A couplet in smaller characters was inscribed vertically on either side of the arch:

Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;

Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real."

Then in chapter 116 (in the John Minford translation), we go back through the arch.

"On the lintel of the arch were inscribed in large characters the words:

THE PARADISE OF TRUTH

A couplet in smaller characters ran down on either side:

When Fiction departs and Truth appears, Truth prevails;

Though Not-real was once Real, the Real is never unreal."

2. Our enquiry

2.1 This post and the novel

This post takes its rise from the first couplet, and makes brief reference to the second. We shall however not analyse the couplets in their context. A huge amount has been written about Dream of the Red Chamber, to the point where there is a recognised discipline known as Redology. We do not expect to add anything within that discipline. Instead we shall make connections between the first couplet and ideas culled from elsewhere in order to find some philosophical relevance of the couplet to life. We should in any case be wary of relating what we say to the novel itself, because we shall use the English terms "truth", "fiction", "real" and "unreal" without heed to their degree of correspondence with the Chinese terms.

2.2 The relevance to life we seek

On the one hand, we have the natural sciences. These work up from physics and, importantly, keep the human perspective out of their work. Whatever they say should make sense to non-human intelligent beings just as much as to us. That is one aspect of their objectivity. And associated with that, we tend to think of the things identified by them as real.

On the other hand, we have our own experience of life. Thinking about how we live requires that we find places for our self-conception as free agents and for values that we regard as more objective than they would be if they were merely chosen by us. These are not merely moral values. They include values that indicate the nature of human flourishing and aesthetic values.

(In the middle there are the Geisteswissenschaften and the notion of Verstehen. The middle ground would certainly need to be fitted into any complete picture, but we shall not attempt to do so here. We shall concentrate on a single tension between the extremes.)

Free agency and value appear to find no place in the scientific view, except in the etiolated form of observations about the unpredictability of human conduct and about what people say to explain the things they do. Even the use of explanatory language does not on its own make the things of which people speak real in the eyes of science. The words people use may be given meaning by their being or being related to words for scientifically recognised things, or they may derive their meanings from examples of their use in relation to circumstances or conduct and from their places in a linguistic structure, but they are otherwise void of scientifically recognised content.

This is hardly satisfactory. And the problem is not to be dissolved by saying that all we need is a way to talk about our human lives in a way that makes sense to us, and adding that we can make use of all the usual human vocabulary of choice, value and the rest without conflict with our scientific knowledge because it is simply a way of speaking to which no ontological significance need be attached. We need a sense of reality, not just of making sense, in order to give our understanding of our lives the force we need to validate our actions. Non-overlapping magisteria, to borrow Stephen Jay Gould's phrase, are not enough.

Our aim here is to be inspired by the first couplet to identify a way to allow this. Our proposal is imperfect but it may be as good as we can have for now, given that integration with our scientific knowledge still appears to be some way off.

3. Truth and fiction

3.1 Types of truth

Factual truths may be everyday, such as truths about which cities are the capitals of countries. Or they may be sophisticated, such as the truths identified in fundamental physics. Such well-established truths are not liable to become fiction, whatever fiction may be thought true. The closest one gets is when science fiction describes something that violates known laws of physics, but there is no temptation to think that the known laws are fiction. We are conscious that we are being invited to suspend disbelief.

We also speak of statements having truth in them, in the sense that they capture some understanding of how life is for human beings.

While this latter sort of truth closes in on what we want to have correspond to the fiction that becomes true, so that we can make use of the first couplet, we are not quite there. We need to bring truths under this heading into a relationship with straightforward factual truth to reach what we need.

The relationship is this. There are claims about human life that from within such a life seem to be both plainly true and important. And yet straightforward albeit scientifically sophisticated facts seem to be at variance with those claims. The reality of free will and the existence of objective values are leading examples.

It is not that the scientific facts are definitely at variance with these things. There may be modifications of our notions of free will and objective value that remove incompatibilities. Indeed, philosophers have for a long time been busy devising such modifications and testing them in argument. But arguments continue, and we have not yet definitively removed the incompatibilities.

The way forward we shall propose here, in line with the first couplet, is to park the inconvenient scientific truth as though it were fiction in order to allow apparent fictions that are essential to our self-conception and our way of life to be regarded as true, and to allow scientifically dubious features of humanity to be regarded as real.

3.2 Making truth become fiction

The problem with our beliefs in free will and objective value is that we do not yet have an indubitably satisfactory way to integrate these beliefs, and therefore our self-conception, with our scientific knowledge. There is a tantalising prospect that we might one day manage such an integration. But for the time being, we must make do with a way to park those elements of our scientific knowledge that give rise to difficulty.

To see the kind of conflict that is involved, we may take free will as an example. The physical universe seems to offer us only a mixture of determinism and randomness, or maybe only determinism, depending on how one interprets quantum mechanics. And there is every reason to think that our thoughts and actions supervene on the physical. If the physical could not be different, nor could the mental. But from the inside, we have a clear sense that we freely decide what to do. And we need a reasonably strong conception of free will in order to justify our attributions of personal responsibility.

There are responses other than just giving up on free will. One response is to cut down our conception of free will to something less ambitious. This is for example what is done by compatibilists, who favour mere guidance control (Fischer, "Compatibilism"). Another response, which takes the first line of the first couplet as an invitation to treat some physical truths as fiction, is to overlook the causal closure of the physical, the principle that every physical phenomenon that has a sufficient cause has a sufficient physical cause. This is the line taken in Baron, Deliberation and Reason, chapter 2. With some such approach, the fiction of free will can become true.

(The causal closure of the physical is more of a metaphysical principle than a scientific fact, but it is enormously plausible in the light of our scientific knowledge. That knowledge keeps on growing through the identification of sufficient physical causes, and does not suggest any plausible way to find non-physical causes to invoke when there are gaps in our knowledge of physical causes.)

Another example is objective value. We feel uneasy if we are told that our values are optional social constructs that would evaporate if most of us chose to abandon them. And this is so not only for moral values, but also for values that indicate the nature of human flourishing and for aesthetic values. But there is nothing in the physical universe that looks apt to be a foundation for values.

Again, there are philosophical responses. One response is to give up on the idea of values that are independent of what we choose to think. Another response is to say that there are evolutionarily successful principles of conduct, justified by their success and thereby given more solidity than they would get from our merely choosing them. But that would leave us vulnerable to the risk that values we do hold, such as personal freedom, might turn out to be evolutionarily disadvantageous. A third response is to say that while our values may not be objective, we can legitimately regard them as objective. Here we find positions along the lines of quasi-realism. And a fourth response, encouraged by the first couplet, would be to regard as fiction the depressing claim that there was nothing independent of our thoughts on which to found our values. Thus could the fiction of objective value become true.

In pursuing this last approach, we would not need to claim that there was something magical in the physical world. Rather, we would regard as fiction the claim that only the physical and what could be built on it was objective. That claim would be in a similar position to the claim of the causal closure of the physical: not a scientific fact, but a metaphysical claim that was highly plausible in the light of our scientific knowledge. Having said that, it would be plausible for a different reason. Here, the reason would be the fact that the notion of objectivity which motivates the search for a foundation for values includes stability and non-optionality within its content. That which was not deeply embedded in our scientific understanding could all too easily be a figment of our imagination, providing an apparent foundation which would be at constant risk of collapse.

Note that in both examples, we do not actively deny what science seems to tell us. We do not deny the causal closure of the physical, or the lack of anything that looks apt to be a foundation for value. Rather, we overlook these annoying facts. This does mean that we have to allow for a degree of mental dissonance. We know that we are not pursuing all the implications of a view that we have some strong form of free will, or a view that our values have objectivity. And ordinarily, it is good epistemic practice to pursue the implications of one's thoughts in order to see whether any of those thoughts are rendered unacceptable through modus tollens. But this modest dissonance may be the best we can do in order to ensure our mental equilibrium. We shall return to this theme of not pursuing implications in section 4.3.

4. Reality and unreality

4.1 Identifying the real

There is more than one way we could identify the real.

We could take the real to include the referents of our best scientific theories. But then reality would include unobservable entities, and would at least seem to be mutable as our scientific theories evolved. Here lies the debate in the philosophy of science between realism and anti-realism, with structural realism as another option.

We could take the real to include that which we must accept and understand in order to get on in the world, either in order to overcome practical obstacles or in order to discover more about the world. Broadly, the real would include that which demanded that we work with and not against its grain.

We could take reality to be that which existed whether we thought about it or not. Or we could take reality to be that which had its properties regardless of our thoughts about those properties. One special form of this would be to say that reality was that about which we could straightforwardly be mistaken.

So far we have suggested ways to identify the real, with the unreal to form a residual category. And while that would be the correct approach for some purposes, particularly ontology and the philosophy of science when undertaken within the analytic tradition, it is not the way most consonant with the first couplet and its context in the novel. Rather, the couplet and its context encourage us to start with the unreal. So let us now do so.

4.2 Identifying the unreal

The world forces us to recognise some things - shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings. Once we start to do serious science, we are forced to recognise other things - electrons, the cosmic microwave background, the enthalpy of chemical reactions, and metabolic cycles. We do not want to ask whether forced recognition betokens reality. Purported definitions of the real are apt to run into difficulties. And anything that fell short of a definition, such as a list of some examples of real things, would be a disappointment given that one naturally expects the real to be amenable to epistemically robust identification. But we can use the absence of forced recognition to identify an important category of things that we may regard as unreal.

The category we shall identify comprises items which we could coherently consider to be real but can, given our evidence, reasonably consider to be unreal. When we add the principle that good evidence for reality is required in order to recognise anything as real, "can reasonably consider to be unreal" implies "should consider to be unreal". So basing our category on mere permission to consider as unreal does not lead to an improper expansion in the category of the unreal, taking big bites out of the range of scientifically appropriate attributions of reality.

The exclusion of that which could not coherently be considered real keeps our focus on the unreal that might somehow become real, as proposed by the first couplet. We are not concerned with round squares. And the condition based on evidence does mean that we must regard our identification of the unreal as provisional. New evidence might come along. That would however not be the transformation envisaged in the second line of the first couplet.

The identification of this category is not meant as a formal definition. But a formal definition is less needful with the unreal than with the real, as there is no reason to think that the unreal is amenable to epistemically robust identification. And the category picked out has a good prospect of being a reasonably coherent one, not a ragbag of odd examples, because we have a reasonable sense of what it is for something to be a candidate for reality but a failed one. (Our focus on the unreal does not in this respect have an advantage over a focus on the real. Specific categories within the real, such as the physical, are also coherent and are not ragbags of examples.)

4.3 How the real becomes not-real

The real does not become unreal when it happens to suit us. It is a distinctive mark of the real that it does not do so, except by ordinary processes of dissolution over time. And the closing words of the second couplet, "the Real is never unreal", reminds us of this constraint. So to make sense of the first couplet, we must re-interpret the text that is translated as "not-real".

One option would be to say that real things become perceived as unreal. But that would require either the discomfort of knowingly false perception, or a dream-like state that might be what the novelist had in mind but that would place us out of touch with the world to the point where we could not get the kind of result we seek, some reasonably solid status for things that we find are important but for which science finds no place or at best offers no foundation.

Another option, and the one we shall pursue, is to shift from seeing real objects as unreal to seeing as ineffectual the constraints on our thought that the scientific view of the scope and nature of reality imposes. The reality that science offers is to that extent taken to be an ineffectual ghost. And it is the reality itself that is limited in this manner, not just our scientific theories, because those theories tell us about reality and they can only be regarded as losing any of their powers if reality itself is regarded as somehow different. If we did not go that far, we would only manage to stake out territories for non-overlapping magisteria of science and value.

Note that it is reality as a whole that is challenged in this way, rather than particular objects. The scientific view carries the implication that only the physical and what can be built on it can be integrated into reality. (We do here pass over Hempel's dilemma, which points out the difficulty of defining the scope of the physical when the content of science is itself mutable as we advance.) There is a claim of the total closure of the physical, whether in respect of causation or in respect of anything else. That imposes a constraint on what we can see as real. If we overlook the constraint, regarding it as ineffectual, we can find a place for the reality of some things that matter to us, and not merely the convenience of talking in terms that refer to them.

As in section 3.2, this means that we decline to pursue all the implications that it would normally be proper to pursue. If scientific reality is not regarded as imposing certain constraints on our thought, it must be seen as less substantial than it is ordinarily thought to be. And that would be a challenge to what we know about reality. The relevant constraints might be founded on metaphysical principles like the causal closure of the physical or the general closure we have noted, rather than their arising directly out of scientific results, but it would still be a significant step to regard them as ineffectual.

5. Directions of determination

5.1 The real and the unreal

Once we regard constraints as ineffectual, we can see such important things as free will and objective value as real. But when we make this kind of use of the second line of the first couplet, we must not think that it is the unreal's becoming real that makes the real become not-real. Rather, thinking of the real as not-real allows us to think of the unreal as real. Likewise in relation to the first line, truth needs to be regarded as fiction to allow the fiction to be regarded as true. The novelist may have had the opposite direction in mind. Absorption in a fiction can make truth fade to fiction, and encounters with the unreal as real can make the real become not-real. But that is not our direction.

5.2 Reality and truth

In each couplet, the first line concerns truth and fiction while the second line concerns reality and unreality. We are invited to consider the connection between questions of truth and questions of reality.

In the sciences, it is straightforward. The reality was there first, and our thoughts have to tag along or be mistaken. Even anti-realists in the philosophy of science do not maintain that we can make a free choice of theories. To the extent that any discipline allows our ideas of what is true to mould reality to fit, the discipline is unscientific. This does not mean that disciplines which find space for an element of thought-to-world determination are worthless. It is only that they are not science.

It is in the realm of understanding the human condition (as distinct from the scientific understanding of human nature), in art, and in the development of values, that we might expect to find some thought-to-world determination.

What we propose here is however an indirect determination, not a reversal of the direct determination we find in the sciences. Our desire to have certain things true creates pressure for us to see certain features of physical reality as not-real in the sense of being unable effectually to constrain our thoughts, so as to create space for some of the unreal to be real. When we see reality and unreality in that way, it allows us to fulfil our desire that certain claims be seen as true. But perceived reality has to change to allow for these apparent truths, just as in the sciences reality would have to be different for the set of claims that were straightforwardly true to be different. Reality continues to play a crucial active role.

Despite this role for reality, there are two important contrasts with science. First, it is perceived reality, where our perceptions are steered by what matters to us, and not actual reality, that is the proximate determiner of perceived truth. And second, what matters to us plays a role as a distal determiner of perceived truth which it does not have in science. This role is to prompt us to take a certain view of reality.

6. Conclusion

6.1 The frame

We have used the first couplet to open up a space to think about ourselves in a satisfactory manner, with both a strong form of free will and objective values. In the novel it and the second couplet are instead used to frame a story.

 This difference is not only a matter of content. There is also what at first glance appears to be a structural inversion. In the novel, the couplets provide a frame within which mundane and therefore plausibly true action takes place, with the supernatural action outside the frame (although in accord with the mystery of the work the frame is permeable, with some of the mundane outside the couplets and some of the supernatural between them). This location of mundane and comprehensible reality within a frame and the mysterious supernatural story outside it is quite the opposite of what one finds in an art museum, where the free adventure of imagination is within the frame and mundane reality is outside it. We have followed the art museum in that we have used the couplets to create a space within the frame for that which could be argued not to be real because it is not yet indisputably integrated with reality as viewed by the natural sciences. The troublesome parts of physics, which we must take as accurately describing reality, are parked outside the frame. So our structure is the same way round as is found in an art museum.

At second glance, however, this is not an inversion at all. The mundane world within the frame in the novel is the world of life and love, desires, fortune and misfortune. We take all of these to be real and important, yet there is a message from outside the frame that this is an unenlightened path and that we should step above such things (see Levy, Ideal and Actual in the Story of the Stone, chapter 1). To be absorbed in life as we normally think of it, characters in the novel must ignore the message from outside the frame. Similarly, within our frame we find freedom and value, while from outside the frame physics cries that this is all illusion. To honour and be guided by vital elements of our humanity, we must overlook some metaphysical implications of scientific information.

6.2 Our options

There is a way to cope with the inevitable intellectual discomfort. This is to argue that even if we took there to be a frame with an inside and an outside, we should not think that reality was stably on one side and illusion stably on the other. There might in fact be no stable priority of one side over the other. Sometimes the inside would be reality relative to which the outside was illusion, and sometimes it would be the other way round.

One could choose to take either perspective, and give intellectual respectability to the right to choose by borrowing loosely from perspectivism in the philosophy of science. We could add that even if one side was truly superior to the other, both that fact in general and knowledge of which side it was could not be deduced by us. The argument would be that we could only deduce which was reality and which was illusion from some Archimedean point outside both, and that we have no such point. (Nor can we have recourse to Descartes' ever-helpful God, once theism falls by the wayside.) We can only grow into recognising which is the real world, rather than deduce which one it is.

With the options presented in the novel, the world of human passions and the world in which those passions are regarded as foolish errors, a person's growth into recognition of which world is real is intimately bound up with how he or she lives. Someone can grow into either the life of passion or the life of detachment. Indeed at the end of the novel the central character, Jia Baoyu, having grown into the life of passion and desire, makes a different choice and grows into detachment.

With the options we have considered, our choice is not so free. There are people who explicitly or implicitly deny physics in order to accommodate belief in a spirit realm or something of the same ilk, but that cannot be accepted. The denials they require are too close in kind to the affirmations they make, as when they posit physics-like forces with effects on the body without any evidence for those forces or way to make them cohere with physics generally. More broadly, to grow into regarding the world as presented by science as unreal would be to choose a manifestly mistaken path. What we can do is say that we will overlook the more distal implications of physics, sometimes transmitted in the form of metaphysical principles, in order to take the life of passion to be real. And while we do not in fact grow into that approach from a starting point of contemplating the implications of physics, we may grow into taking the life of passion to be real and then notice that we have all our lives been overlooking the more distal implications of physics.

We may however hope that the intellectual discomfort we have identified is only temporary. One day we may be able fully to integrate the scientific view with our understanding of human life from the inside, so that we no longer need to regard any truths implied by the natural sciences as fiction in order to take what currently looks like essential fiction to be true.

References

Baron, Richard. Deliberation and Reason. Leicester, Matador, 2010. https://rbphilo.com/deliberation.html

Cao Xueqin. The Story of the Stone, translated by David Hawkes and John Minford. London, Penguin, five volumes, 1973-1986.

Fischer, John Martin. "Compatibilism". Chapter 2 of John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom and Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will. Oxford, Blackwell, 2007.

Levy, Dore J. Ideal and Actual in the Story of the Stone. New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 1999.