Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (16 page)

This is how we regard ourselves, and regard other normal people,
and normally it is how we want to be regarded.

The fear is that something essential to human living is being lost.
It is essential to us that we think of ourselves as agents, not just as
patients. And it is essential to us that other people so regard us. In a
famous paper the philosopher Peter Strawson (t9t9- ) contrasts
an 'objective' or impersonal attitude to other people with a 'personal' or human attitude. On the objectifying track, other people are just there like blocks to our progress, needing to be`managed or
handled or cured or trained'. They are not the objects of personal
attitudes. People are looked at as if they were mad, rather than intelligent agents who can be understood.

There is an interesting `gestalt switch' in Strawson's Picture. At
first, it might seem that the moral attitudes associated with blame
are hard and harsh, and we might think that it is an improvement
if we can get past them to more liberal and understanding attitudes
to such things as crime or `deviant behaviour'. Treating people as
patients rather than as criminals looks to be a step in a humane, decent direction. Strawson asks us to confront what is lost in this
change. He suggests that a lot of what makes human relationships
distinctively human is lost. Suppose, for instance, that I have
behaved in a way that I want to explain. But I find other people listening to my story with a look in their eyes that suggests that this
talk is just another symptom. It is just another sign that I need to be
managed or handled or cured or trained.Then I have been dehumanized. I want my decision to be understood, not patronized. I
want other people to'hear my voice', which means appreciating my
point of view, seeing how things appear to me, rather than wondering what causes a human organism to behave like this. This
kind of objectification concerns us again in Chapter 8, when
among other things we confront the therapy industry with it.

The right response to the highlighted complaint, taking account
of Strawson's point, is this. The compatibilist is not intending to
deny agency, but to give a particular accountof it. The account is in
terms of modular brain functions, in which data are taken in, and
alternatives generated and ranked, until eventually an output conies 'on Tine' and initiates action. True, these events are all things
that Just happen' (passively, as it were) but, according to the compatibilist, they are the things that happen, and all that happens,
when you, the person, do something. Describing you as doing
something, and for a reason, is a description at the pcrsonal level of
the upshot of these multiple micro-level happenings.

Some thinkers like to say that there are two perspectives on all of
this. There is the deliberative, first-person stance you adopt when
you yourself are making a choice. And there is an `objective' or
third-person stance, one that a scientist might take, seeing you as a
complex, determined, neurophysiological system. The problem
lies in reconciling the two stances.

If the problem is put this way, then the right solution is surely
this. There would only be a difficulty about reconciliation if what
is disclosed in the deliberative stance is incompatible with what is
disclosed in the third-person stance. But the deliberative stance
discloses nothing about causation. Thinking otherwise is making
the mistake that Schopenhauer's water made: mistaking absence of
awareness of the functioning of brain and body for awareness of
the absence of such functioning. The first is universal, but the second is impossible, for without the functioning there could be no
awareness.

So, since nothing is seen from within the deliberative stance that
conflicts with the scientific world-view, perhaps there is no need to
find the problem of reconciliation at all difficult. What we may he
left with is just a moral problem: one of making sure that we approach one another not with the objectifying stance, but with full
human understanding, enriched, rather than undermined, by knowledge of the conditions that bring about the decisions of
other people.

FATE, ORACLES, AND DEATH

I knew an old man who had been an officer in the First World War.
He told me that one of his problems had been to get men to wear
their helmets when they were at risk from enemy fire. Their argument was in terms ofa bullet'having your number on it'. If a bullet
had your number on it, then there was no point in taking precautions, for it was going to kill you. On the other hand, if no bullet
had your number on it, then you were safe for another day, and did
not need to wear the cumbersome and uncomfortable helmet.

The argument is sometimes called the 'lazy sophism'. If I am
going to get cancer, I am going to get it, says the smoker. You cannot avoid your fate. And if determinism is true, isn't the future
fixed already, by the indefinite chain of states of the world already
passed? These give birth to the future: it unfolds inevitably from
the womb of the past. And if the future is fixed shouldn't we just resign ourselves to our fates? Doesn't action become pointless? Is it
not better to withdraw, and perhaps sit in an orange shawl saying
'Om' all day?

'T'here are many stories reminding us that we cannot avoid our
fates. Here is a version of the famous Islamic parable of Death in
Samarkand:

'T'he disciple o/ a Sufi of ivaas sitting in an inn one day when he heard two figures talking. He realized that one of
them was the Angel of Death.

`I have several calls to make in this city,'said the Angel to
his companion.

The terrified disciple concealed himself until the two had
left. To escape Death, he hired the fastest horse he could, and
rode day and night to the fardistant desert city ofSamarkand.

Meanwhile, Death met the disciple's teacher, and they
talked of this and that. 'And where is your disciple, so-andso?' asked Death

'I suppose he is at home, where he should be, studying,'said
the Sufi.

`That is surprising,' said Death, for here he is on my list.
And I have to collect him tomorrow, in Samarkand, of all
places.'

The disciple seeks to evade his fate, but it overtakes him all the
same. The story of the futile flight resonates worldwide. In Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex, King Laius of Thebes was told that his
son would murder his father and marry his mother. When he fathers a son, Oedipus, Laius seeks to avoid his prophesied doom by
crippling the baby, and leaving it to die on a hillside. Oedipus is
saved by a shepherd and grows up in Corinth, believing himself to
be the son of the king of that city. He learns rumours of his destiny,
and consults the oracle at Delphi, who confirms it. So he flees in the
opposite direction from Corinth, where he takes his father to be.
And thus, at a place in the wilderness where three roads meet, he
encounters Laius.... The twofold attempts at thwarting destiny are
exactly what make the doom unfold.

My friend's soldiers thought that taking precautions was as pointless as Oedipus's flight from his doom. But there is a crucial
difference. Oedipus is supposed to know his fate, but seeks to avoid
it in any case. On the other hand, the soldiers did not know
whether they would die that day or not. This leaves them open to
the proper reply, which is that whether a bullet has your number on
it or not may very well depend on whether you choose to wear a
helmet. A bullet that would otherwise have had your number on it
may he kept unwritten-on by this simple precaution. And since
you do not know whether any bullet has your number on it, and
you would like none to have it, you had better take the precaution.

Doing nothing-failing to put on a helmet, putting on an
orange shawl and saying 'Om'-represents a choice. To have your
choosing modules set by the lazy sophism is to be disposed towards
that kind of choice.'T'he lazy sophism can be represented as this argument for a course of action:

The future will be what it will be. Its events are already in
time's womb.

So, do nothing.

But why is it better to be impressed by this argument than by this
one?

The future will be what it will be. Its events are already in
time's womb.

So, get cracking.

The first might be a better argument if we knew that, as events unfold from time's womb, human actions make no difference. It
would he as if we were watching a game, behind one-way glass
walls, spectating events in which we can never participate, and whose players are deaf and blind to us. But it is not normally like
that. Events do unfold from time's womb, but in quite predictable
sequences. The event of someone eating an omelette is always preceded by the event of someone breaking an egg. The event of reaching the top of the mountain is always preceded by the event of
starting out. Doing nothing is invariably followed by no omelette,
or no summit. Which events unfold from time's womb depends on
what we decide to do-this is what the inside control of a person or
a thermostat means. Our choosing modules are implicated in the
process, unlike those of mere spectators.

Is this response to the `lazy sophism' final and conclusive?

I think it is, if the lazy sophism is taken as an argument for acting one way or another. There is no conceivable reason for preferring the `do nothing' conclusion to the `get cracking' conclusion.
Putting it another way, in this practical sphere, accepting one argument is equivalent to admiring or desiring to be someone whose
modules have a certain shape. The shape would be achieved by accepting this advice: on thinking about the future and the womb of
time, do nothing. But why should one admire anyone who genuinely follows that advice? They are simply good-for-nothings:
people who do not make omelettes and do not reach summits, nor
even set out for then.

But perhaps the line of thought bears a different interpretation.
Fatalism is usually thought of as dissolving choice rather than
recommending one kind of choice over another. It is supposed to
show that choice is an illusion.

But what, in turn, is that supposed to mean? We have already
argued that one conception of choice is an illusion. This was interventionist choice, or the full-scale uncaused intervention of
the Real Me into the physical and neurophysiological order of
events. We have retreated into thinking of the flexible choosing
nodules that are implicated in our doings. How could thoughts
about the passage of time show that their operations are unreal or
illusory? It seems no more plausible than suggesting that because
of the passage of time, the operations of computers, or thermostats
or chainsaws are illusory.

When you don't know what will happen, and you think events
will respond to your doings, you deliberate about what to do. We
have seen that fatalism affords no argument for conducting that
deliberation one way or another. And it affords no argument that
the process itself is unreal, unless the process is construed in the
outside way we have considered and rejected.

But suppose you don't know what is going to happen, but it is
known, perhaps to God. Or just: it is knowable. We think, as we deliberate, that the future is open, but the past fixed. But suppose the
future is as fixed as the past is. Thus we think like this:

-where the arrows represent open possibilities, spreading out
from now. But perhaps this way of thinking is illusory. Perhaps the
truth is only seen from a'God's eye view, or what has been called the'view from nowhen'. From this perspective, time is laid out like
a celluloid movie film; a frame of the film corresponds to the events
at any one time. Given the way the world works, we can be aware
only of past frames (sometimes people think that prophets can
`see' future frames). But there is no metaphysical asymmetry between past and future: