John G. Messerly's Blog, page 114

Game Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma in Two Pages

 Game Theory

For our purposes, a game is an interactive situation in which individuals, called players, choose strategies to deal with each other in attempting to maximize their individual utility. There are several ways of distinguishing games including: 1) in respect to the number of players involved; 2) in respect to the number of repetitions of play; 3) in respect of the order of the various player’s preferences over the same outcomes. On the one extreme are games of pure conflict, so-called zero-sum games, in which players have completely opposing interests over possible outcomes. On the other extreme are games of pure harmony, so-called games of coordination. In the middle are games involving both conflict and harmony in respect of others. It is one particular game that interests us most, since it describes the situation in Hobbes’ state of nature, and is the central problem in contractarian moral theory.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The prisoner’s dilemma is one of the most widely debated situations in game theory. The story has implications for a variety of human interactive situations. A prisoner’s dilemma is an interactive situation in which it is better for all to cooperate rather than for no one to do so, yet it is best for each not to cooperate, regardless of what the others do.

In the classic story, two prisoners have committed a serious crime but all of the evidence necessary to convict them is not admissible in court. Both prisoners are held separately and are unable to communicate. The prisoners are called separately by the authorities and each offered the same pro-position. Confess and if your partner does not, you will be convicted of a lesser crime and serve one year in jail while the unrepentant prisoner will be convicted of a more serious crime and serve ten years. If you do not confess and your partner does, then it is you who will be convicted of the more serious crime and your partner of the lesser crime. Should neither of you confess the penalty will be two years for each of you, but should both of you confess the penalty will be five years. In the following matrix, you are the row chooser and your partner the column chooser. The first number in each parenthesis represents the “payoff” for you in years in prison, the second number your partner’s years. Let us assume each player prefers the least number of years in prison possible. In matrix form, the situation looks like this:

Prisoner 2

    Confess
 Don’t Confess


 Prisoner 1
Confess
(5, 5)
(1, 10)



Don’t Confess
(10, 1)
(2, 2)

So you reason as follows: If your partner confesses, you had better confess because if you don’t you will get 10 years rather than 5. If your partner doesn’t confess, again you should confess because you will only get 1 year rather than 2 for not confessing. So no matter what your partner does, you ought to confess. The reasoning is the same for your partner. The problem is that when both confess the outcome is worse for both than if neither confessed. You both could have done better, and neither of you worse, if you had not confessed! You might have made an agreement not to confess but this would not solve the problem. The reason is this: although agreeing not to confess is rational, compliance is surely not rational!

We have now come full circle to Hobbes. The prisoner’s dilemma represents the situation in the state of nature. If the prisoners cooperate, they both do better; if they do not cooperate, they both do worse. But both have a good reason not to cooperate; they are not sure the other will! We can only escape this dilemma, Hobbes maintained, by installing a coercive power that makes us comply with our agreements (contracts). Gauthier argues, as we saw earlier, for the rationality of voluntary non-coerced cooperation and compliance with agreements given the costs to each of us of enforcement agencies. We need to embrace what he calls “morals by agreement.”

Hobbes’ Political and Ethical Theories in Two Pages

Hobbes and the Social Contract

Moving in western culture from the ancient and medieval periods into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we approach modernity. The discovery of the new world, developments in commerce and industry, the Reformation, the scientific revolution, and the rise of the secular alongside the decline of Christianity transformed western civilization. Inevitably, natural law theory would be scrutinized. The major figures of the period–Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677), John Locke (1632-1704) and Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)–all tried, in one way or another, to reconcile the new secular ideas with traditional Christian morality. But the most revolutionary of all the new theorists was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who believed that ethical norms were not to be found in God’s cosmic plan but in our social and political agreements.

Hobbes detested violence. He had read Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War and had personally witnessed the decades of English civil war which culminated with the beheading of Charles II. The desire to avoid war motivated both his moral and political thought. Hobbes’ philosophy began by considering what the world would be like without morality. He believed that it would be a state of nature; a terrible place without art, literature, commerce, industry, or culture. Most terrifying of all, it would be a place of “continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of [humans] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But why would it be so bad?

In the first place, Hobbes believed that human beings endeavor desperately to fulfill their desires for food, clothing, shelter, power, honor, glory, comfort, pleasure, self-aggrandizement, and a life of ease. Unfortunately, such things do not exist in abundance; they are scarce. In addition, he believed that persons were relatively equal in their power. Given desires, scarcity, relative power equality, and the predominant sense of self-interest all human beings exhibit, Hobbes concluded that human beings, in a state of nature, would be engaged in a fierce struggle over scarce resources. Individuals would attack, steal, destroy and invade to protect themselves and prove their status. Thus, Hobbes’ first thesis: the state of nature is a state of war.

Hobbes’ second thesis was that individuals in a state of nature have no a priori (natural, before experience) moral law that obligates them to constrain their behavior. For Hobbes, self-preservation justified the use of force and fraud to defend ourselves in a state of nature. In this state, only the power of others limited what we can do. Hobbes called this the right of nature. But this state is antithetical to our survival and so the desire for self-preservation expressed itself in another way which was Hobbes’ third thesis: fear of death and the desire for a good life incline us toward peace. Hobbes called this the law of nature. Morality was defined by articles of peace, essentially, the rules to which any rational self-interested person would agree. The state of nature demands that we follow one of the two formulations of the self-preservation principle. In the state of nature, we should exercise our right of nature; in the state of peace, we should follow the law of nature. These laws of nature bear no resemblance to the medieval concept of natural law; they simple demand self-preservation. In other words, morality is the set of rules that make peaceful living possible.

This led to Hobbes’ fourth thesis: though it is in our own interest to agree to the articles of peace; it is not rational to comply with our agreements unless some coercive power forces us. Otherwise, we might feign agreement and, when the other complies, violate the accord. To prevent this, a coercive power must ensure that we comply with our agreements. This agreement between individuals to establish the laws that make communal living possible and an agency to enforce those laws is called the social contract.

A Theory of Morality

While issues surrounding the nature of the coercive agency which guarantees compliance with the social contract lead to political theory, the agreed-upon rules constitute morality. Morality is the agreed-upon, mutually advantageous conventions which, assuming others’ compliance, make society possible. Thus, self-interest ultimately justifies morality. We can see easily that killing, lying, cheating, and stealing are prohibited since they threaten society and are not in anyone’s self-interest. Whether the moral prohibitions against homosexuality, prostitution, abortion, or euthanasia are justified in terms of individual and societal interest is more debatable.

But whatever the agreed-upon rules, according to the theory they do not exist prior to human contracts. We create morality by our agreements with-in the constraints demanded by self-preservation and self-interest; we do not discover antecedent moral truths. Prior to the contract, actions are neither moral nor immoral. But after the contract is signed, society forbids some actions, allows others, remains undecided on a few, and continually renegotiates the contract to satisfy rival parties. Therefore, the moral sphere is one of continual bargaining and power-struggling where conflict is resolved through moral discourse, a political mechanism, or violence. Hobbes’ detested the latter option.

Why the Social Contract Theory is Attractive

First, it takes the mystery out of ethics, ethics has to do with all of us being able to live well. Second it says that morality is objective, there are objective reasons we shouldn’t lie, but there are no mysterious moral facts from on high. Third, moral rules aren’t meant to interfere in people’s lives. Fourth, it doesn’t assume we are altruistic, it assumes we are self-interested, probably a more realistic assumption. And finally, it gives us a reason to be moral—it is in our self-interest.

The Problem of the Free Rider

We have answered the question of why “we” should be moral, but why should “I” be moral? Why not be a free rider. That is, why not be immoral if I can get away with it? Yes, it is good collectively for us all to be moral, but individually it seems I always do best to be immoral if I can get away with it. [The prisoner’s dilemma.] This is the toughest question for a contract theory of morality. Hobbes’ believed that we should penalize the non-cooperative move in order to deter individuals from choosing it.

Does Morality Depend on Religion? Answered in Two Pages

Why should I be moral? One answer is that if we are moral, the gods will reward us; and if not, the gods will punish us. This is called “the divine-command theory.” (DCT) According to DCT, things are right or wrong simply because the gods command or forbid them, there is no other reason. (This is like a parent’s who says to a child: it’s right because I said so!)

To answer the question of whether morality can be based on a god we would have to know things like: 1) if there are gods; 2) if the god we believe in is good; 3) if the gods issue commands; 4) how to know the gods’ commands; 5) if we found the commands—say in a book—how would we know the commands are good ones; 6) if they were good commands how would we understand or interpret them; 7) if the came from a book which translation of the book; 8) how could you know if the translation is accurate; 9) can any translation be accurate; and 10) even if the translation was accurate how would you interpret the words you read. This is just a partial list of the problems you encounter trying to base ethics on a god or religion.

Difficulties also arise if we hear voices commanding us, or we accept an institutions’ authority. Why trust the voices or authorities? And which institution? Which revelation? Obviously, there are enormous philosophical difficulties with basing ethics on religion.

But let’s say that there are gods, that you have found the right one, that the right one issued commands, that the commands are good, that you have access to the right commands (because you found the right book, church, or had the right vision), that you understand the commands, that you interpret the commands correctly even though they came from a book that has been translated from one language to another over thousands of years? (Anyone who has ever translated knows that you can’t translate word for word between languages.) But let’s just say that somehow you are right about everything. Can you then base ethics on religion?

More than 2,000 years ago Plato answered this question in the negative. In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asked a famous question: “Are things right because the gods command them, or do they command them because they are right?” If things are right simply because the gods command them, then their commands are arbitrary—without reason. There are no good reasons for their commands. The gods then are like petty tyrants who just command things because they have the power.

On the other hand, if the gods command things because they are right, then there are reasons for their commands. The gods command things because they see or recognize that certain commands are really good for us. But if that is the case, then there is some standard or norm or criteria by which good or bad are to be measured. And this standard is independent of the gods.

So either the gods command are without reason, and therefore arbitrary, or they are with reason, and thus are commanded according to some standard. This standard—say that we would all be better off—is thus the reason we should be moral. And that reason, not a god’s authority—is what makes something right or wrong. And the same is true for an authoritative book. Something is not wrong simply because the book says so. There must be a reason for this and if there is not, then the book is simply wrong.

Of course one could argue that even if the gods are petty tyrants who command us without reason—except for say their own amusement—we should still follow the commands so as not to suffer—since the gods are possibly powerful and mean enough to do so. If they can inflict eternal torture—if they are the ultimate sadists—then we do have a reason to follow their commands—to avoid torture!

The response to this is that we don’t know that the gods will reward us for following their non-rational commands. Maybe the gods reward people who use their reason and don’t accept such commands and punish those who are so frightened as to accept non-rational commands. This seems to make some sense, if the gods are petty, tyrannical bullies, they might like it if you stood up to them. Who knows?

The foregoing discussion should suffice to show how difficult it is to base ethics on religion. Again, even if one could overcome all the practical difficulties involved in philosophically justifying religion, it seems that either a) the gods commands are arbitrary and there is thus no reason to follow them; or b) the gods commands are not arbitrary and there are reasons for them. But if the latter is the case, then we are doing philosophical, not theological, ethics. We are looking for the reasons why things are moral or immoral.

Finally, you might object that the gods have reasons for their commands, and we just can’t know them. But if this is the case, if we really can’t know anything about the gods’ reasons, if the ways of the gods “are mysterious to humans,” then what’s the point of religion? If you can’t know anything why the gods command things, then why follow their commands, why have religion at all, why listen to the preacher? If it’s all a mystery, then no person or book or church has anything coherent to say about god, ethics, or anything else. and in that case you should just be a skeptic.

If we want to rationally justify morality, then  we will have to do it in a moral theory independent of hypothetical gods. We will have to engage in philosophical ethics.

Is Ethics Objective? Discussed in Two Pages

Thrasymachus, a character in Plato’s Republic, denies that justice (morality) is real. He claims that ethical rules are made up by people, primarily the elite ruling class, and others who follow the rules “are just being dumb.” In short, ethics is subjective, relative or dependent upon cultures/people, instead of objective, absolute, or independent of cultures/people. What arguments might we advance for this position?

Moral Relativism Argument 1 – Different cultures/people have different moral codes. And this leads to tolerance of other cultures/people.

Reply – But should one tolerate slavery, the abuse of women, etc.? Should a woman be stoned to death for adultery as directed by the Koran and Old Testament? Respect is good, but this doesn’t mean other cultures/people can’t sometimes be wrong. In addition, the world is not “a collection of discrete, unified, cultures…” So who speaks for a given culture? The Baptists? The Socialists? The Irish? Finally, from the mere fact that different cultures/people have different moral codes it does NOT follow that relativism is true. Thus to have respect for cultures/people  doesn’t mean we can’t make judgments about them.

Moral Relativism Argument 2 – All standards of judgment are relative to culture/people. In other words, there are no cultural/personal neutral standards for ethics.

Reply – There is a neutral standard by which to judge human actions: “whether the social practice in question is beneficial or harmful to the people who are affected by it.”  This principle is universal because it deals with the very survival of a cultures/people.  We can respect cultures/people and still have reasons to condemn certain practices. We condemn them because those practices hurt people!

Moral Relativism Argument 3 – Scientists generally agree, ethicists rarely agree. Ethics is not objective like science, so it must be relative.

Reply – In ethics there is much agreement than it appears; most people think torture and murder are wrong. Also the areas of agreement—murder—are much more important than areas of disagreement—abortion—because society can function well with different policies on abortion, but cannot function well without a prohibition against murder. Finally, while all competent scientist agree on the basics—quantum, evolutionary, atomic, gravitational, and heliocentric theories are true beyond any doubt—they sometimes disagree about the details of their theories. So science and ethics are not completely different.

Moral Relativism Argument 4 – Scientists know how to resolve their disputes, but in ethics the arguments seem endless—no one can prove anything in ethics.

Reply– Ethical proofs are similar to scientific proofs, ethicists support conclusions with reasons and evidence. An ethicist makes the case that Smith is bad by offering evidence that she lies, cheats, kills, and steals. Why then does it seem there are no ethical proofs? Because: 1) we often discuss only the hardest ethical problems so truth is hard to discern; 2) there are often good reasons on both sides of moral disputes; and 3) people are stubborn; they often won’t budge despite the evidence or reasons offered them.

Moral Relativism Argument 5 – There are no “moral facts” that exist in the world like there are facts about stars, rocks, or people. Values exist only in people’s minds. But notice that scientific ideas are true or false if they match some truth or falsity in reality.

Reply– Moral reality is not like physical reality. Rather moral truths are truths because they are reasonable. Morality is like mathematics, an analytical discipline not an empirical one. Thus, ethics isn’t that different from science, and ethics can be objective like science.

(This entry relied heavily on James and Stuart Rachels’ book: Problems from Philosophy.)

RTE Radio 1 Dublin

On Sunday April 26 I was interviewed by RTE Radio 1 of Dublin, Ireland for the radio program “Life Matters.” The title of Sunday’s program was “Does death make life worth living?” The program focused on how the defeat of death by technology would affect both life’s meaning and religion.

Others interviewed included noted futurist Zoltan Istvan, and philosophers Stephen Cave, John Hardwig, Christine Overall, and myself. My contribution began about 19 minutes into the show. Istvan made the transhumanist case, Cave and Hardwig defended death, Overall defended immortality, and I argued that religion will fail to accommodate to transhumanism. When people can choose immortality, religion as we know it will end. You can hear the entire radio broadcast here.

When Superintelligent AIs Arrive, Will Religions Try to Convert It?

(This article was reprinted in the online magazine Humanity+, April 28, 2015.)

Zoltan Istvan caused a stir with his recent article: “When Superintelligent AI Arrives, Will Religions Try to Convert It?” Istvan begins by noting, “… we are nearing the age of humans creating autonomous, self-aware super intelligences … and we will inevitably try to control AI and teach it our ways …” And this includes making “sure any superintelligence we create knows about God.” In fact, Istvan says, “Some theologians and futurists are already considering whether AI can also know God.”

Some Christian theologians welcome the idea of AIs: “I don’t see Christ’s redemption limited to human beings,” says Reverend Dr. Christopher J. Benek, co-founder and Chair of the Christian Transhumanist Association.. “If AI is autonomous, then we have should encourage it to participate in Christ’s redemptive purposes in the world …” Benek thinks that AI, by possibly eradicating poverty, war, and disease, might lead humans to becoming more holy. But other Christian thinkers believe AIs are machines without souls, and cannot be saved. Only humans are created in God’s image.

The futurist and transhumanist Giulio Prisco has a different take. He writes:

It’s only fair to let AI have access to the teachings of all the world’s religions. Then they can choose what they want to believe. But I think it’s highly unlikely that superhuman AI would choose to believe in the petty, provincial aspects of traditional religions. At the same time, I think they would be interested in enlightened spirituality and religious cosmology, or eschatology, and develop their own versions.

Prisco is a member of the Turing Church, an “open-source church built around cosmist principles of space expansion, unlimited growth, and universal love.” In brief, cosmism is an existential orientation that sees the survival of mankind and of the individual as part of humanity’s “common task”. The migration of humans into space is seen as inevitable, since it is essential for humanity’s long-term survival. The increase in human life-span is seen as another essential task.

Others like Martine Rothblatt, author of Virtually Human: The Promise—and the Peril—of Digital Immortality, believe that AIs must have some kind of soul. “Rothblatt founded Terasem, a scientific “transreligion” similar to the Turing Church in scope and approach, which runs preliminary mindcloning pilot projects. The most famous one is Bina 48, a robotic head that contains a mindclone of Rothblatt’s still-living wife Bina.”

While we don’t know the future, the creation of superintelligence will surely bring about a paradigm shift in our thinking, changing reality in ways now unimaginable. And, as I’ve argued elsewhere, if the promises of transhumanism come to be, religion as we know it will end.

Do We Live in the Matrix? Discussed in Two Pages

The Brain in a Vat – Your brain could be attached to a supercomputer so that your everyday experiences are perfectly simulated—even though “you” are just a brain attached to a computer. How do you know reality is not like this? You don’t. Four hundred years ago Rene Descartes explored similar themes—that an evil demon might be deceiving us about everything we see and think. Can we offer any evidence against such a scenario? Before considering this question let us consider another unusual possibility.

Subjective Idealism – When you “see” a tree what you experience are sense-data (colors, patterns, sounds, etc.). But why assume there is a tree, external to you, that provides this sense-data? Why not just assume there are only ideas or experiences within your mind, and no physical phenomenon at all. This conclusion was embraced by the philosopher George Berkeley: “reality is constituted entirely of minds and their ideas.” The basic objection to idealism is that our experience suggests there is an external world. Berkeley assumed that his god was always perceiving the universe thereby making it real.

Do We Live in the Matrix? – There could be evidence for this view. For example, we might wake up in a hospital and see a white-tinged background. But even if we had this experience we might conclude we’ve gone crazy.  And we have no evidence that we live in a simulated realities or that subjective idealism is true. (There are good arguments that we live in a simulation.) But are there any reasons to reject the view that we live in a matrix?

To answer this question let us return to Descartes who argued:

An evil demon might be deceiving me about empirical and mathematical knowledge. But if I am being deceived, I must exist, since I must be to be deceived.
If I have experiences I must exist. Hence “I think, therefore I am.”
The idea of a god stands out, the idea of a perfect being which must be.
Since we exist and god exists and god isn’t a deceiver, then the external world exists.
Thus, our senses and reason are reliable.

Problems – Even if there are gods and they gave us senses and reason to understand the world, why do they sometimes deceive us? Descartes says it is our fault when our faculties deceive us, because we often employ them carelessly, or others try to deceive us. But this isn’t very convincing. Furthermore, Descartes’ argument is circular: reasoning is trustworthy because god made it that way, and we know that god exists because its reasonable.  So he hasn’t satisfactorily demonstrated that we can know anything with certainty. For all we know we may still live in a simulated reality.

Direct Realism – We still haven’t explained why a belief in a physical world is more reasonable than belief in the matrix-like scenario. But maybe this isn’t a problem. Consider how sense perception works. We look at something, have an experience, and then make an inference about the external world. But maybe this is all wrong—maybe we don’t infer trees, we see trees! Thus common sense answers the problem of how we know the world—we perceive it, rather than perceiving some data and then making an inference. This view is known as direct realism.

Problems – 1) Direct realism is consistent with idealism, brain in vat, evil demon, etc.; 2) direct realism doesn’t fit with what we know about the complicated ways brains process information and sense-data; 3)modern science confirms that sense experience is not a passive process, but an active one involving the brain; and 4) we assume a physical world primarily because we have inherited the ways of processing information that contributed to the survival of our ancestors. So while our perceptual system is useful, it is also full of gaps, and with different brains we would see things differently.

Natural theory – We could say that we see trees and then have an experience which causes the belief in an independently existing tree. This is sometimes called the natural theory or indirect realism. It says that we don’t directly experience tree, and it assumes both the existence of an external world and senses that give reliable knowledge about the world. But while we might believe the natural theory, we haven’t shown that any of the other possibilities are mistaken. For all we know we do live in a computer simulation.

Free Will vs. Determinism in Two Pages

The Determinist Argument  – (in its most simple form)

Actions are caused.
Caused actions aren’t free.
Actions aren’t free.

Response 1 – Libertarianism  – some actions aren’t casually determined. Below are four arguments in defense of libertarianism and responses to those arguments.

Argument from experience (we know we have free will)

Response – But that doesn’t mean we have it. Consider Delgado’s experiment. He tweaks your brain causing you act, but you think you freely did that thing.
Universe is indeterministic – (not everything is predictable at the quantum level) Response – At micro level, the level of subatomic particles, this is true; but at the macro level, the level of your brain, this appears irrelevant.
We can’t predict our own acts (actions aren’t predictable in principle and thus free.)

Response – Still, an ideal observer your actions, and predictable, for determinism to be true, means predictable by an ideal observer.
Argument from accountability (we are accountable, and that implies free will.)

Response – But how do we know our belief in accountability is justified? Just because we find it “natural” to believe in accountability doesn’t mean we should.

But can libertarianism explain anything about behaviors? Can it say something about how we act other than to say determinism is false? Can it offer a positive account of how we supposedly choose? It seems not. Libertarianism can’t explain how we make decisions without resorting to ghostly souls within, or by having faith that cause and effect doesn’t effect our brains. This doesn’t seem like much of an alternative to determinism.

Response 2 – Compatibilism – Freedom doesn’t mean actions are uncaused, but that actions are uncoerced; freedom isn’t actions without causes, but actions caused by individuals. So actions can be caused and still free says the compatibilist.

To better understand this consider that  uncaused actions would be random, but random actions aren’t free actions. So free will requires that actions are caused! A person’s character, desires, thoughts, and intentions cause behavior. And the fact that we can predict someone’s behavior doesn’t mean they aren’t free. Just because we can predict what people will do doesn’t mean they didn’t choose to act freely.

Problem with Compatibilism

Compatibilists say that we are free if our actions are uncoerced. But are actions ever uncoerced?  It seems not, since character, desires, thoughts, intentions, preferences, wants, desires, etc. are all caused by forces beyond our control.

Ethics and free will – what are the implication of all this for ethics?

Deliberation – We still have goals—and take pleasure in achieving and pursuing them—even if we know we have them because of genes and environment. So it still makes sense to strive for things, and it still makes sense to deliberate.

Good and Bad – We can still think of some actions or people as good or bad. We can still say that torture is bad and medical care for children is good. Even if we know why someone does the bad (good) things they do, the things they do are still bad (good).

Responsibility – But without free will we aren’t responsible for our actions. Is that right? Here we have two options, In reply we could say:

1) Without free will one is not responsible – So let’s find out what’s wrong/right with people so that we can really make them, and the world, better. Or we could say:

2) Without free will one is responsible – We might say that one is blameworthy if they have no excuses,  or praiseworthy if they have no credit-eliminating conditions.

Conclusion – Consider that since none of us set our initial conditions—our genome or environment—aren’t there always excuses or credit-eliminating conditions to appeal to? And if we say that people aren’t free but responsible, doesn’t the word “responsible” means something different than it usually does? If the answer to both questions is yes, then we probably should conclude that people, in large part, don’t ultimately control either their thoughts or actions.

(This entry relied heavily on James and Stuart Rachels’ book: Problems from Philosophy.)

The Case Against Free Will in Two Pages

In 1924 Leopold and Loeb committed what was at the time called “the crime of the century.” Clarence Darrow, probably the most famous trial attorney of all time, defended them against the death penalty, arguing that the environment and biology had conspired against the boys, causing them to commit the crime. “Intelligent people now know that every human being is the product of the endless heredity back of him and the infinite environment around him.” Arguing to save the boy’s lives, he spoke for more than 12 hours, saying:

I do not know what it was that made these boys do this mad act, but I do know there is a reason for it. I know they did not beget themselves. I know that any one of an infinite number of causes reaching back to the beginning might be working out in these boys’ minds, whom you are asked to hang in malice and in hatred and injustice, because someone in the past sinned against them.

Leopold and Loeb’s lives were spared.  Twelve years later, Loeb was attacked and killed by another prisoner, while Leopold spent 34 years behind bars, during which time he taught other prisoners, volunteered for malaria testing, ran the prison library, worked in the prison hospital, and ultimately learned to speak 27 languages! After his release he moved to Puerto Rico where he earned a master’s degree, taught university classes, worked for urban renewal, did research in leprosy, was active in the Natural History Society, and published a book on birds. (So much for the belief that criminals have nothing to contribute.)

But was Darrow correct that the boys did not commit their crimes freely? Here are a number of theories and ideas to support this claim.

Fatalism is the view that whatever will happen must happen because logic entails that the future is determined. Theologians have worried about the same problem regarding god’s foreknowledge and human free will. If the gods know the future, then we can’t be free.

Determinism is the view that every event has a cause. It says that effects are the results of prior causes such that, given the cause the effect will follow. And the entire universe seems governed by cause and effect. But the universe includes our brains whose activity is caused by electrical signals, which are caused by prior electrical activity, ad infinitum. The immediate causes of our behaviors are events in the brain, and we know that by stimulating the brain in various places we can make someone experience different things.

We can also make people act in certain ways by stimulating their brains, and they will experience the subsequent physical movements as natural. Moreover, when human brains are stimulated, people offer reasons why they subsequently moved their bodies. So it seems our decisions are determined too. And someone watching your brain scan sees the pattern that will result in your action, not only before you perform the action, but before you decide to perform the act. This is evidence that your decisions are determined.

Not only do findings from the physical sciences count against our belief in free will, but so to does ordinary experience. Consider how much of what you do and believe is easily predictable by the conditions of your upbringing, culture, socio-economic group, genome, gender, etc. This suggests that you didn’t choose many of your behaviors and beliefs but that they were chosen for you by your genes and environment.

Moreover, the science of psychology has little use for the concept of free will when explaining human actions. For example behaviorism posits that humans are easily conditioned by positive and negative reinforcement. Rules of classical and operant conditioning are well-known to work with humans. Furthermore, experiments continually show that the conditions in which we find ourselves largely determine what we do. For example, in the Stanford prison experiment we found that people can easily be turned into torturers. And the experiments of Milgram found that many people will administer a fatal electric shock to another because an authority asked them to.

So far we have placed the emphasis on the environment as the main factor that determines behavior. But there are also genes; there is biology. We have found for example that identical twins are remarkably similar even if raised in completely different environments. Twins reared together are most alike; then twins reared apart, then siblings reared together, then siblings reared apart, then non-related kids reared together, then non-related kids reared apart. This is exactly what we should expect if genes and environment (plus random factors like genetic noise) determine behavior.

Moreover, we now know the connection between genes and: violence, alcoholism, impulsivity, OCD, depression, and more. When you add genes and environment together it is hard to see how one is free. And even if we could resist the pull of biology and environment, the place for free will seems vanishingly small. It is hard to see how genes plus environment is not an exhaustive explanation for human behavior. The more science learns about people, the less likely its seems that they have free will.

Can A Machine Think? Discussed in One Page

Descartes thought machines couldn’t think because they couldn’t speak or understand language. That is no longer true. [If you doubt this go to and converse with Alice: http://www.alicebot.org/downloads/programs.html or similar ai programs.]

An Argument that Machines Could Think – If your biological brain is replaced, piece by piece by non-biological parts, and still functions the same, then machines can think (and you would essentially be a machine.) And if mechanical parts could sustain consciousness for you, then they could do so for a robot too.

Objection – Computers Only Do What They Are Programmed To Do

Response – It is true that computers today aren’t conscious of what they do in the way that we are; but it is false that they can do only what they are programmed to do. Furthermore, what machines can do today is irrelevant to what they will be able to do tomorrow, or a million years from now. To say they can’t think is to beg the question. In fact, maybe we only execute a program. But if a machine could do everything a human could do, there would be no good reason to insist that it wasn’t conscious.

The Turing Test – The idea is that a machine passes the “turing test” if a human cannot tell whether they are talking with a person or computer. Just last year it was announced that a computer program had passed the test.(Although some doubt this claim.)

Why the Turing Test Fails – But is this test valid for determining if something is conscious? One reason to think not is that the test rests on behavioristic assumptions—mental life is demonstrated by behaviors—but behaviorism is generally discredited. A second reason has to do with the “Chinese room argument.”

Chinese Room Argument – You pass a note in Chinese thru a slot, and on the inside of the room a person follows instructions that send back answers in Chinese, even though the person inside doesn’t understand Chinese. Isn’t this analogous to a computer which receives inputs, executes a program, but doesn’t “understand” what it’s doing? Don’t computers only understand syntactical rules, but not semantics? (Philosophers tend to be very impressed with this argument, computer scientists not so much.)

Objection – What More Do You Want? – If it walks and talks like a duck, its’ probably a duck. If machines do what humans do, then we have as much evidence they are conscious as we do that other people are conscious. REPLY – But consciousness isn’t deduced exclusively from behavior, we know our own consciousness “from the inside.” If we knew how the brain gives rise to consciousness, then we could see if computer had similar features.