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The International Journal of

Religion and Spirituality in Society

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VOLUME 3 ISSUE 4

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No Need to Deify How Determinism Generates Free Will

A. GRANVILLE FONDA

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No Need to Deify: How Determinism Generates

Free Will

A. Granville Fonda, Osher Institute, Temple University, USA

Abstract: For much of humanity the simplest and the best explanation to date of human mental capability and free will,

notwithstanding the many advances of science, is its derivation directly from God, thereby exempting from corporeal

principles the evident interaction between mind and body. No explanation which lacked some such an exception has ever

met with widespread favor. In the philosophical sphere the corresponding problem of free will despite determinism is in

that sphere considered to be either insoluble, soluble only by the denial of either determinism or free will, or arguably

soluble but not yet by consensus. -- Which enigma is one to accept, then: cold monistic perplexity, or warm dualistic

mystification? Many prefer the mystification to the perplexity, and structure their lives and indeed their cultures

accordingly. In ancient Greece, however, a monistic solution did originate, one which now by means of modern-day

control systems theory can incorporate equally modern neuropsychological findings. At its core even in Athens was the

psychological “ownership” of the deterministic chain of causation as it passes through the mind. -- When conjecturally

recast in modern terms, in a brain plastically prepared by both recent and long-term experience, non-conscious

awareness generates alternatives for possible action. After testing for fitness the best scenario incites in succession actual

or imagined action, a post facto feeling of willing, and further refinement of the plastic brain. The “will” which

cumulatively emerges, goes the argument, is fully determined – physical cause alone producing every physical effect –

and yet de facto free. This is how we become otherwise, so as to do otherwise. -- While for many dualism will still provide

the preferred solution, for others it is this monistic account which will at last close the intellectual and the emotional

explanatory gaps. For them religion may thereafter provide not a metaphysical imperative but a powerful secular

metaphor.

Keywords: Freewill, Determinism, Naturalism

“Methinks that in the discussion of natural problems we ought not to begin at the

authority of places of scripture, but at sensible experiments and necessary

demonstrations. ...Nor does God less admirably discover himself to us in Nature's

actions, than in the Scripture's sacred dictations.” — Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), in

his Letter to the Grand Duchess, 1615 (Burtt 1924 83)

“Some faculties and operations of the reasonable soul in man are of so peculiar and

transcendent a kind, that as I have not yet found them solidly explicated by corporeal

principles, so I expect not to see them in haste made out by such.” — Robert Boyle

(1627 – 1691), in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch,

London, v II, 47, 1772 (Burtt 1924 195)

Introduction

A major subject of human inquiry has long been explanation of not only the world around us but

also the world within us — not only reality as experienced seemingly in common with others like

us but also our quite different incorporeal reality of personal thoughts, feelings, and decisions. In

every era the unanswered question has been this: does the evident difference between these

domains predicate exemption on the inside from the causal laws we identify on the outside?

“How can people act freely,” asks Joshua Knobe (2008 63) “if, as the ‘scientific world view’

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holds, all behavior is causally determined by antecedent forces, forces beyond the actor’s

control?”

To be neither robots nor zombies, to claim our accomplishments as our own, it indeed seems

necessary that we humans be exempt from the otherwise strict laws of nature. If we should pause

to review the evidence, it seems to follow from own direct experience that beyond a doubt “the

supernatural” is real. Yet by the contrary argument we lack any such freedom; it seems to be

beyond all doubt that all of our seemingly free choices must be determined by prior events.

This conflict has been expressed in successive philosophical eras as "Responsibility despite

Fate,” “Liberty despite Necessity,” and “Free Will despite Determinism.” Arthur Schopenhauer

famously dubbed this paradox the World Knot (Weltknoten) (1813 211) and deemed it

“inexplicable.” Steven Pinker (1997 561) said that “perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like

free will and sentience.” As in effect did David Chalmers (2002 2) by considering “strong

emergence” to be non-physical, and effective strictly in the case of human consciousness — but

only “if it exists.”

Our aim here is to set forth and explain a different answer to that question, an answer once

known but long forgotten. This solution entails acceptance of people’s intuitive and logical

identification with their volitions and actions even though they are the outcomes of entirely

deterministic, initially subconscious, dynamically re-entrant neurological sequences active in a

plastically malleable brain.

Necessity, Else Liberty?

Whether or not the ape was the ancestor of the human, survival would have benefitted from

reflexive predictions of the response of the environment to various disturbances including their

own. Later, at least in humans, such prediction could have been facilitated by reason: by

conscious modeling of future events based on the agent’s remembrance of past events. With the

growth of civilization, reasonably the attribution of volition even to the inanimate – all other

things have intentions like mine – would gradually have lost credence to the reliable response of

physical events to their precursors — all new sequences are like old ones. Even as we saw

spontaneity, or “Liberty,” in the domain of mental events, we also saw constant conjunction, or

“Necessity,” in the domain of physical events. It is this time-honored mystery into which we

once more inquire.

In Liberty despite Necessity, or Free Will despite Determinism, we seem to have

incontrovertible support for the existence of two differing domains, the natural and the

supernatural. No debate need be conducted here as to the validity of the supernatural in general;

we need only seek some other interpretation of the evidence, and the simpler the better. Indeed,

we will provide within modern neuroscience and Newtonian physics an arguably credible and

satisfying explanation for free will and, along the way, consciousness. Given that predicate, it

would be beside the point to even consider the acausality of events at the quantum level of

observation, much less the question of whether they could appreciably affect the brain.

We begin with a forgotten gem, an explanation established several centuries before the

Common Era. When the new Socratic concept of one’s freedom to act virtuously and responsibly

was seen to conflict with the old Homeric concept of Fate, one of the founders of the Athenian

Stoic philosophy, Chrysippus (c280 – c210 BCE), according to historian David Cooper (Cooper

1996 136) “is said to have ‘sweated’ over the problem.” He was

“one of the first to argue that there is no incompatibility between holding me responsible

for some outcome and the conviction that this outcome was the result of a deterministic

causal process. Just as the intrinsic features of a cylinder are required to explain why it

rolled when pushed, so typically the intrinsic features of a person, as well as external

causes, explain his behaviour. If so, it is proper to hold him responsible for this

FONDA: NO NEED TO DEIFY

behaviour. That the person is as he is as a result of Fate is neither here nor there, for it is

still he – and not external factors alone – who is responsible for the behavior.”

While his book “On Fate” was lost, Chrysippus is reported by his contemporaries to have

explained there (Inwood and Gerson 1988 135) that

“Many things cannot occur without our being willing and indeed contributing a most

strenuous eagerness and zeal for these things, since, he says, it was fated for these things

to occur in conjunction with this personal effort. . . . But it will be in our power, he says,

with what is in our power being included in fate. Just as, if you throw a cylindrical stone

down a steep slope, you are indeed the cause and origin of its descent, nevertheless the

stone afterwards rolls down not because you are still doing this, but because such is its

nature and the ‘rollability’ of its form: similarly, the order and reason and necessity of

fate sets in motion the general types and starting points of the causes, but each

[person’s] own will or decisions and the character of [his or her] mind govern the

impulses of [his or her] thought and mind and actions.”

This argument is also discussed by Shaun Nichols, professor of Philosophy and Cognitive

Science at the University of Arizona. In his series of video lectures on Free Will and

Determinism he says (Nichols 2008 Lecture 5) that

“The Stoics embraced a deterministic picture of the world, but continued to maintain

that people were responsible. Chrysippus acknowledges that people are not exempt from

the causal order, but maintains that our own characters play a critical role in how the

causal order unfolds — and that, he thinks, is what really matters in issues of

responsibility. As an example, suppose you throw a cylindrical stone [etc. as above] ...

Similarly, Chrysippus says, our actions are generated out of necessity, following from

whatever the causal order dictates. There is no indeterminist element in the generation

of our behavior.

“I see a person in distress; that is like the initial push on the stone. But my character

responds to that perception. Even though all actions are fated, they are nonetheless

special. They are fated in the sense that they are the inevitable product of the causal

order. Be they good or bad, a person is responsible for [his or her] actions according to

[his or her] character. ...What Chrysippus and later compatibilists claim is that once we

recognize the distinction between external and internal compulsion, our concerns about

determinism should just evaporate.”

In the rolling-cylinder metaphor, physical causation applies equally to the shaping, the setting in

motion, and the subsequent rolling of the cylinder. Just so, physical causation applies equally to

the shaping, the setting in motion, and the subsequent functioning of the character of the

individual. The effects occur not without physical cause but as reliable consequences of the

intrinsic features of the person. The key to the Athenian view is self- and observer-identification

of the person with the process, so as to feel and be felt responsible when “they err [or not] and

are harmed [or helped] voluntarily and by their own plan and decision.” This is how it is the case

that – per our subtitle – Determinism generates free will.

In this view our impulses are not self-originating “first causes.” Our minds and our actions

have, rather, been set in motion by antecedent events, and those in turn by further antecedents, ad

infinitum. This indefinitely long causal chain differs in only one respect from those we recognize

for billiard balls and the like: en route it passes through our minds, there to be shaped by the

characteristics – the “rollability,” so to speak – it encounters. This is how it can be that it is by

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means of fate, not despite fate, that it is “still me – and not external factors alone” – who is by me

and by others deemed responsible for my behavior.

This is an underappreciated form of “compatibilism,” a category more broadly defined by

Michael McKenna (2009 1) as the thesis that determinism is compatible with free will and/or

moral responsibility. Later versions of compatibilism tended toward what psychologist-

philosopher Henry James called Soft Determinism, a gentler determinism seeming necessary to

free the will. In criticizing one such compatibilism Stanford Encyclopedia expert McKenna notes

(2009 4), that “Determinism ...tells us that, at any time, given the facts of the past and the laws of

nature, only one future is possible. ...If determinism is true, no one has access to alternatives in

the way required by [this] model ...A determined agent does not have control over alternatives.”

Nichols (2008 Lecture 8) finds merit in contemporary compatibilism when for Harry

Frankfurt “The desire to have the desire might itself be determined; all that matters is whether

you fully identified with that first-order desire.” If this is as it seems substantially a return to the

Athenian philosopher’s view, interim compatibilisms merit no further discussion at this time.

Necessity without Liberty

At first thought Fate does deny Responsibility, Necessity does deny Liberty, and Determinism

does deny Free Will. This follows from the thesis of causality, the issuance of every effect from

some cause. Why such a thesis, if we cannot observe past causality in itself, and cannot know the

future? It is because otherwise the current state of affairs would be unintelligibly chaotic. As it is

not, we may infer that such conjunctions of events have always been regular; and absent any

other indication we can only infer more of the same. Causality, or determinism, is thus a

reasonable pragmatic inference from experience.

Galen Strawson derived from this his Consequence Argument as to human responsibility

(Strawson 2010): “You can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.”

Or, Due to determinism we are not free. Nichols (2008 Lecture 10) called this view Free Will

Impossibilism, a view held also in Buddhism although not then argued from determinism.

Einstein expressed Free Will Impossibilism when he said in his brief Credo (Einstein 1932) “I do

not believe in free will. Schopenhauer’s words: ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will

what he wills’ accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the

actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me.”

Neuroscientist Michael Gazziniga (2011 103) was constructing a case for Free Will

Impossibilism when he said that

“The psychological unity we experience [as Self] emerges out of the specialized system

called ‘the interpreter’ that generates explanations about our perceptions, memories, and

actions and the relationships among them. ...This is a post hoc rationalization process.

The interpreter that weaves our story only weaves what makes it into consciousness.

Because consciousness is a slow process, whatever has made it to consciousness has

already happened. It is a fait accompli.”

This could be a version of epiphenomenalism, the postulate that free will is not a significant

cause of anything, only a superfluous side effect — but with the addition of a delay attributed to

confabulation by an “interpreter.” While we will draw other inferences from such empirical

observations, Gazziniga proceeds to Free Will Impossibilism when he adds (2011 129, 218-19),

“The hard determinists in neuroscience ...[claim that] free will is an illusion, and [that]

we must revise our concepts of what it means to be personally responsible for our

actions. Put differently, the concept of free will has no meaning. The concept of free

will was an idea that arose before we knew all this stuff about how the brain works, and

now we should get rid of it.” “The whole arcane issue about free will is a miscast

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concept, based on social and psychological beliefs held at particular times in human

history.”

Impossibilism simply dismisses the usual objections, which are that psychologically we feel free,

and intellectually we believe we demonstrate freedom when upon willing a toe to wiggle it does

so. But since neither subjective feelings nor inferential reasoning can be certain, perhaps each

feeling and every twitch does follow from its antecedent.

Just learn to forget about free will? And – as Gazziniga suggests below – learn responsibility

from others? But without even bothering to argue that it is paradoxical to be “free” to “forget

freedom,” has not Chrysippus already given us a much better option?

Necessity, Hence Liberty

By way of an introduction to Dynamic Adaptation, the second phase of the present explanation,

consider that what is not in our power when the consideration is static may prove to be in our

power when the consideration is dynamic. No single frame of a movie adequately portrays the

movie. Time matters. The key phrase in “At first thought, Fate denies Responsibility” above is at

first thought. Deny responsibility it does — instantaneously. Biology is indeed destiny — for a

moment. But the first encounter is not the full encounter. The brain plastically changes when

exercised, so that an instant later the person is “as he (now) is, as a result of Fate” – that is,

deterministically – so that the new “he – and not external factors alone – is responsible for the

behavior” which follows.

As Chrysippus taught, causality continues to rule the brain even as the brain adapts, and the

result is de facto – existing in fact whether with lawful authority or not – free will. As a Neo-

Consequence Argument. “You are responsible for the way you are in many respects which

matter.” Or --- Due to determinism we are free.

The delay in consciousness noted by Gazzinaga (above) provided the title of the book The

Illusion of Conscious Will (Wegner 2002), which cited 1979 and later experiments by Benjamin

Libet (1916 – 2007) and others. Many publications resulted, but perhaps the most concise

summary was that provided by Libet editor Kosslyn (Libet 2005 Foreword):

“Libet asked people to move their wrist at a time of their choosing. The participants

were asked to look at a moving dot that indicated the time, and note the precise time

when they decided to flex their wrist. ...The brain events that produced the movement

...occurred about 350 milliseconds before the participant was aware of having made a

decision. ...The finding suggests that being conscious of having made a decision might

be best thought of as a result of brain processes that actually do the work, rather than as

part of the causal chain of events leading up to a decision.”

When Nichols discusses the matter (2008 Lecture 14) he acknowledges many independent

confirmations, and affirms that

“It takes time for a cognitive process to unfold. But of course! Nonetheless this is not

how it seems to me. If Libet is right, common sense is quite wrong about the role of

consciousness in decision snaking. But this may not be too damaging. No doubt

disorienting, but still the decision might reflect my values, my principles. But the

decision processes happen in the dark, and consciousness only gets told about the

results. Surprising, but I think we can live with it.”

Let us at least suspend judgement on Libet’s proposition long enough to decide if we can live

with it. Let us hope so, for if free will need not be an immediate cause then it need not be

uncaused, providing an escape from the contradiction – the World Knot – without the predication

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of a supernatural event. But neither need it be the futile illusion suggested by Wegner. It may

rather be a useful and productive allusion — an action report to consciousness on work in

progress in the body under the direction of the subconscious. It may be not an epiphenomenon, a

useless byproduct, but a useful product, namely feedback.

Feedback being a fundamental principle of cybernetics (more below) and “Higher-Order

Thought,” the central hypothesis of Dynamic Adaptation is that by the action of this allusion the

brain is plastically modified even as it works, with the result that “it is still he – and not external

factors alone – who is responsible for the behavior” which follows.

The argument is that when metaphysics is not relied upon, deterministic subconscious

activity is necessarily the physical source of the conscious feeling of free will; and it is that

feeling which serves to keep the ball rolling as our brain plastically develops. Free will is thus a

feeling (and an inference) which emerges from rather than being denied by determinism. The

supposed annihilator of freedom is actually its progenitor!

Free will as experienced does present the impression of an other-than-natural factor in an

orderly natural world. We do affectively experience intent and we do intellectually infer our own

efficacy when we voluntarily energize our muscles. Our interpreter does – importantly – infer

from the affect our authorship and from the effect our ownership of our voluntary actions.

Throughout life we continue to identify with the result and confabulatively accept it as our

personal accomplishment — we experientially created it, and we demonstrably own it.

And we can rebuild it. As Mill said (Mill 1882 Book 6, Chapter 2), “We, when our habits

are not too inveterate, can, by similarly willing the requisite means, make ourselves different. We

are exactly as capable of making our own character, if we will, as others are of making it for us.”

From Fate, thus, Responsibility; from Necessity, Liberty; and from Determinism, Free Will.

Note especially that as in any closed-loop system this is an ongoing process, not a static

post-condition. An analogous effect is seen in the course of a projectile which gravity continually

deflects downward from its initial course, as Galileo figured out (Van Helden 1995) — rather

than, as Aristotle reasoned, continuing to exhaust all of its initial linear impetus before suddenly

succumbing to gravity. What has been analogously overlooked in neuroscience is that thought

must have effects on brain structure so promptly that the neural modification affects the

trajectory of ongoing thought. We do not first act, then feel the willing, then change the brain,

and then act according to the changed brain. We are subject only to the smoothly blended effect

of successive antecedents on our mental trajectory — which is always and entirely deterministic

and never uncaused, spontaneous as it seems in the moment.

We identify with this consequence when it is credited to internal as opposed to external

compulsion, just as Chrysippus taught. So taught also Free Will Impossibilist Derk Pereboom

when he said (Pereboom 2001 23) that “if determinism is true then everything that happens can

ultimately be attributed to something encompassing — God perhaps, or something more

impersonal, such as nature or the universe. Then, by psychological identification with this entity,

perhaps by taking on its perspective, one can achieve a sort of acceptance of whatever happens.”

Indeed, in conventional religion we are not the puppets of our all-powerful God because

(believers are told) God wants no puppets. We may choose to hold rather that in bestowing self-

identity Mother Nature has dispassionately freed us to calmly accept whatever happens.

With psychological identification comes responsibility, although Gazziniga (2011 107-8)

asks:

“Is personal responsibility a mechanism that resides in the individual brain? Or ...does

the concept have meaning only when considering actions within a social group? If there

were only one person in the world, would the concept of personal responsibility have

any meaning? I would suggest ...it is not something to be found in the brain.”

But as already noted “the key to the Athenian view is [to the contrary] self- and observer-

identification of the person with the process, so as to feel and be felt responsible” for the

FONDA: NO NEED TO DEIFY

consequences. In the process of confabulation of identity by the interpreter, the feeling of

personal responsibility is generated in the brain. Responsibility would have meaning even if there

were only one person in the world, although having been built on that base it is strongly

augmented by social interaction. Likewise from observation of the behavior of others we impute

to them like responsibility.

We do assign that responsibility more intimately to acts which appear to be freely willed

than those which appear to be dictated by antecedents. This is consistent with clinical studies

with carefully varied narratives, as Nichols and Knobe have reported (Nichols 2007 2, 7):

“Evidence suggests that affect plays an important role even in people's intuitions about

thinly described, purely hypothetical cases. ...Our findings help to explain why the debate

between compatibilists [allowing free will] and incompatibilists [disallowing free will] is so

stubbornly persistent. ...Each of the two major views appeals to an element of our

psychological makeup.”

Woolfolk et al similarly note, likewise from clinical data (Knobe 2008 78), that “What causes

people to attribute responsibility, to praise or blame, is to some extent what is believed to be in

the ‘heart’ of the actor, and this is so even for actions committed under overwhelmingly coercive

or constraining circumstances.” The “heart” being, of course, the affect we have called character.

Dynamic Adaptation – a Process

The argument, while already strong, may be clarified by use of control systems theory. Many

processes such as Dynamic Adaptation can be functionally represented by a network of discrete

transistor- or valve-like elements, the output of each constituting the input to the next. The

operative feature of each component is its influence coefficient, transfer function, or gain – the

faithful change of its output with its input or in some instances the time integral thereof –

establishing the basic building block of the causal chains which comprise a network or process.

One result commonly achieved is hierarchical immunity to disturbance or “noise” and errant

component behavior, accomplished through comparison of imposed and feedback signals –

intended and achieved output – with actuation persistently reducing their difference. Such

processes are called “cybernetic,” a word derived from the myth of Cyberos the helmsman, who

steers as needed to oppose detected departures from a chosen course. In the further case of an

adaptive process there is re-entrant modification – hierarchical helmsmanship, choosing of the

particular course to be held – of the lower-level causal paths or gains according to the quality of

the results achieved; hence, dynamic system adaptation. Such a system will be increasingly adept

at performing its assigned task.

When used for the elucidation of brain function this concept organizes a type of mapping

which is helpfully more explicit than the linguistic descriptions used above but less explicit, also

helpfully for present purposes, than most biologically inspired brain maps. In functional mapping

it is the causal chaining of functions (A→B→C→...) which is mapped, not the hardware which

performs those functions. Here it is the mentation of the brain which will be mapped, not its

neural or biological correlates. The author accordingly offers as an instructive conjecture a

relatively simple block diagram which, while originated quite independently of the teachings of

Chrysippus and the findings of Libet et al, will be seen to be consistent with both.

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Figure 1a. Dynamically Adaptive Mentation: Anticipation and Evaluation

Figure 1b. Dynamically Adaptive Mentation: Enactment and Confirmation

Starting at the top right in Figure 1a, in a brain plastically prepared by both recent and long-term

experience, perception of either the current or an imagined situation excites a series of

reminiscences which coalesce into consecutive anticipatory candidates for possible action. In a

feed-forward causal chain shown as a side branch to the right, following rehearsal to the likely

effect of each candidate action in turn, summed with the mentally modeled observation of

present circumstances, followed by comparison of successive results with various preferred

effects, the first non-vetoed candidate for action is permitted to issue as an intended action.

FONDA: NO NEED TO DEIFY

Starting at the top left in Figure 1b this initially undiminished intention is a dissatisfaction or

desire which then deterministically incites an action, whether actual or imagined, combining

with the present circumstances to accomplish some effect, a measure of which is subtracted from

the intent. It is central to this closed loop that the typically muscular (functionally, energetic)

actuator block “A” produces in mathematical terms the time integral of its input Δ, which is its

first or second integral (∫Δdt or ∫∫Δdt²)) (eg Force and thence Acceleration and Distance).

Accordingly it will, given some initial magnitude of intent, act on the environment to (hopefully)

eventually match that intent with a cumulative accomplishment, with commanded action ceasing

as the residual dissatisfaction is diminished to zero. That end effect is the faithful achievement of

some intended steady state, such as a wrist flex, by means of negative feedback control.

Following this initially subconscious activity will be re-entrant modification of these lower-

level functions according to higher-level results achieved. Words must suffice for the present to

describe these causal chains as upward tendrils from enactment (Fig. 1b) to anticipation and

evaluation (Fig. 1a). Most immediately, the post facto residual of initial intent is consciously

construed by Gazzinga’s interpreter to be dissatisfaction or desire. Finally, by re-entrant

feedback the lower-level gains or paths of the plastic brain are refined — and that constitutes

dynamic neural adaptation.

By this means the tendency to have a desire is deterministically strengthened when it has

produced a good match between the observed accomplishment and recapitulated preferred

effects, or deterministically suppressed when it has produced a poor match. The result is the

ongoing character modification described by Chrysippus in terms of his rollable yet malleable

cylinder. It has frequently been mentioned again here, and was described above by Shaun

Nichols (in Lecture 5) as crucially distinguishing a deterministic internal compulsion from a

deterministic external compulsion, also (in Lecture 8) as related to the Chrysippean factor of

identification, recaptured by Harry Frankfurt.

These functions of anticipation, evaluation, enactment, confirmation, and adaptation could

be said to encompass the normal human cognitive process. They can be recognized as being

variously exercised in personality types as diverse as, say, the phlegmatic, the flighty, the

intuitive, and the deliberative.

Such causal sequences are well known in sophisticated industrial control (eg García 1989

335–348), and (more recently) as Cyber Physical Systems (Lee 2008); the present conjecture is

novel only in being applied to the cognitive domain. As an approach which involves survival on

their merits of neural patterns and memes replicated with modification it embodies the basic

Darwinian principles. It thus has much in common with another neural Darwinism, that of

Gerard Edelman (Edelman 1987), although it puts to the test Edelman’s arguments (Edelman

1992 223f) against functional and computational models of mentality.

By inferential conjecture the successive mental functions are then

1. Perception of the present situation (and prompt retention, discernment, composition, and abstraction per John Locke).

2. Reminiscence of like situations stored in memory. 3. Rehearsal of possible cause-and-effect actions which adapt the reminiscences to present

circumstances.

4. Comparison between the various imaginable effects and pre-existing outcome preferences.

5. Inhibition of any candidate scenarios clearly lacking merit. 6. Else, by survival (per Darwin) of the fittest scenario, application of intention to the

physical activation of a plan.

7. Ongoing sensing and modulation of muscular energization to reduce residual discrepancy and completion of the activity as planned.

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8. Post facto proprioceptive sensing, probably of the differential command signal, confabulated into feelings of self, effectiveness, and free willing.

9. Continuation of a triggered automatic routine, else subconscious or (later) conscious observation of the ongoing bodily action and any changes in the perceived

environment, else discontinuation of the work in progress.

10. Feedback to “change our minds” by means of neural plasticity. Here is where both short-term and long-term learning take place.

11. Re-initialization, re-construction, re-evaluation, and re-execution to eventual satisfaction.

12. De facto identification of the results as having been the (actually indirect) effects of our conscious intent.

Thus, through re-entrant deterministic neurological control we adaptively reconfigure our own

character, which instantly commences to re-determine our execution of the task at hand. In

conformance with the modern principles of control of ordinarily inanimate adaptive systems, by

means of our neural plasticity we achieve action which is first only post facto free

(retrospectively, looking back on the past), but becomes de facto free (introspectively, existing in

effect even if not as an immediate cause), despite being also a strictly deterministic effect.

We plan the work and then work the plan, and then as we see what ensues we may re-work

the plan. All but the restarts are virtually instantaneous, signal transport and processing speed

permitting. Despite the feeling of spontaneity it is in every respect (even as to its plastic

modification) a fully deterministic process, a temporal chain of effects each of which has its

antecedent sufficient causes never requiring the postulation of anything even uncaused (as in

quantum mechanics and putatively in “chance”) much less overtly supernatural. The brain

produces the ongoing feeling of self-ness and freely willing (feeling desires and acting on them)

even as it is, by feedback and neuroplasticity, guided and modified by it. Per the anecdote above

the dynamic trajectory is not Aristotelian, it is Galilean.

We may entertain also the proposition that our consciousness is a sensory perception of our

own neural processing, instantiated, as has been discussed by J. J. C. Smart (Smart 2011 7), by

means of interoception or proprioception. As such it is a variation on ordinary exteroception

(sight, touch, etc.), and thus is neither more ineffable nor more infallible than our more easily

recognized senses.

We thus appear to ourselves to act spontaneously, free of causation, but we actually do so

only (goes the argument) as an effect of exclusively deterministic processes in a dynamically

adaptive, survival-of-the-fittest, plastic neural system. We are determined to be free in both

senses of the phrase. On a less immediate basis, even as we follow the dictates of our conscience,

indeed of our entire character, so guided we also at times dispute, restructure, and dictate to it,

nudging it into somewhat new paths, not necessarily wisely or even knowingly reconditioning

our own reflexes for future use. In our individual evolution we recapitulate that of our species as

we adapt our seemingly intangible selves to better fit our environment.

It is for just such reasons that “inspiration favors the prepared mind.” Hobbes said (Chappell

1999 19) that “an agent who does something suddenly or automatically ...nonetheless had time or

occasion to deliberate all the precedent time of his life whether he should do that kind of action.”

Although Hobbes did not envision the lightning pace of ongoing self-modification, he was

among the many, Mills included, who have taught that it is individually not only our privilege

but our duty – to ourselves and to others – to guide our (confabulated) self toward maturity.

It seems likely that during evolution simple reflexes evolved into initially subconscious but

eventually conscious deliberation. We cannot pause now to consider more fully that emergence,

nor explanations of free will involving post-Newtonian physics, speculative cosmology, or,

despite their arguable equivalence to dynamic adaptation, “top-down causation” and “strong

emergence.”

FONDA: NO NEED TO DEIFY

A “New” Paradigm

As Chrysippus had gone quite unappreciated since his time, the threat of determinism – the grim

specter of fate and the frozen mask of automatism – has long been of concern in philosophy, its

circumvention much sought but never accomplished. But for that lapse, Fate arguably would not

thereafter have seemed to negate freedom. Had we retained the old paradigm, we would not now

have needed a “new” one. But as it is we have struggled for more than two millennia with

depictions of our functioning which seemed intransigently and unresolvably contradictory.

As between determinism and free will, to abandon one is no more a proper solution to the

problem than to abandon the other. Nor has any supposed softening of determinism to make

room for free will been any more than a non-solution of a non-problem. While many formidable

intellects have been collegially entrapped by the mistaken premise, such efforts may eventually

seem to have been only a tempest in a teapot.

We already concede that when we are subject to obsessive-compulsive disorder and the like

we know not why we act. We readily concede also that reflex, or habit, acting without thinking,

often will not only get the job done but will do it more quickly — as William James pointed out

in his essay Habit (James 1890). Although James even then (1890 5ff) attributed habit

specifically to brain plasticity, as much as others he failed to see what Chrysippus saw: that habit

– deterministic response – in continuing interplay with learning – brain plasticity – achieves free

will. To state very concisely the principle James overlooked, habit tutors itself.

“Free will” is both deterministic and free, which solves the age-old riddle. Fate is not our

foe — fate is our friend and our ally. It gives us the means, the reliable tools, to accomplish as

much as we do. The common perception of antecedent causation as intransigent (which it is) but

not transient (which it also is) has always concealed its benefits. While indeed we are, to state it

strongly, automatons, we are self-directing, self-reforming, ever-maturing, elegant, and very

“human” automatons. It would be a healthy development in attitude were we to accept this as not

a notorious but a meritorious feature of being human – a feature which makes us one with

Nature.

What would be the everyday effect of dismissal of dualism as an explanation of the mind-

body problem? Not major, for those who already otherwise bar miracles; but they would do so

with even greater confidence. As naturalists, physicalists, or humanists we would even more

securely relate to each other as internally motivated and imperfect yet often loving and noble

fellow human beings. We might make more of a practice of conscious mental modeling and

evaluation prior to enactment, and less often seize the first result to issue from our subconscious.

We might intentionally now leave a particularly difficult decision to simmer in our subconscious

for hours or overnight. We might now more readily concede the unconscious shaping of our own

preferences and judgements by our past and present environments. We might more confidently

shape our own futures and feel more responsible for our past acts, and more graciously expect the

same of others. While under the already secular law all of us would remain responsible when

competent, as the culture gradually absorbed the lesson our juries might more often hold

perpetrators, even if disadvantaged, responsible for their failure to have self-improved. Penal

“reform” might by the same token become more enlightened, and Einstein might become less

pained by his fellows.

Mathematics might be recognized as tautological, and meaning might become generally

acknowledged to consist of pragmatic wisdom personally constructed “in here,” not a set of Neo-

platonic absolutes waiting to be discovered “out there.” Ethics and morals might become not

universal or divine mandates but private best approximations to what is natural, human, and

rewarding (cf Bloom 2013). Foremost might be a personal duty to learn, to mature, to not repeat

one’s mistakes, to nurture what could now be more properly called one’s “character” than one’s

“soul.” Also, to collegially assist others in doing the same, within reason. Essentially, we might

accept the privilege and adopt the duty of seeking and helping others seek the contented state of

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

being happy (cf Hanson 2013), healthy, and prosperous which Aristotle called eudaimonia. With

“doing well while doing good” being an aspect of happiness, health, and prosperity.

Lost to those who had equivocated as between the secular and the sectarian positions would

be the vague image of a nonphysical self mystically in control of one’s physical body. Until now

even the most erstwhile scientist might have so presumed, perhaps quite unwittingly, but perhaps

persisting despite introspection, contemplation, and analysis. Lost along with that image of a

nonphysical self would be the image of nonphysical others and their actions, be they benevolent

or malevolent; spirits, chance, “fate,” and self-characterization as the benighted victim – or the

knighted beneficiary – of ineluctable forces. The solemn pronouncement that “everything

happens for a reason” would lose its mystical portent, becoming a mere restatement of mundane

determinism. And the harboring of regret, anxiety, and dislike would be limited to the period

needed for recovery of emotional equilibrium.

What would be gained in exchange would be an intellectually comprehended and in time

intuitively apprehended view of the self as remarkable rather than miraculous ...natural rather

than supernatural ...physical rather than transcendent ...free even while determined. A self-

sensing and self-perpetuating biological process having no need to be deified.

Revising the Role of Religion in Society

Dualism, the postulate of a grant from a benign higher power, remains a live option. Long

accepted by many as the simplest, best, and arguably the only comprehensible way to explain our

own autonomy, predicating interaction, incomprehensible as it is, between the physical and the

nonphysical; between the natural and the supernatural. Interaction between things which have

dimension, mass, and energy and other equally real things which lack all those attributes.

Christianity, for instance, explicitly acknowledges as inexplicable the simultaneous

transcendence and immanence of its God. The interaction between the mind and the body of the

individual human is then no less mysterious. A respectful prayer might in this case impart

guidance in regard to one’s higher power.

An alternative which is both physically comprehensible and functionally simpler now stands

at the ready. The alternative is to accept physically and naturally determined processes as the full

explanation of all functioning within our skulls, if not as the sole non-paradoxical explanation

then at least as the simplest and most credible account. In this view we are in principle purely

physical beings quite on our own, with no need to deify our own powers. A mindful meditation

might in this case impart guidance in regard to one’s inner self.

While this internal explanation would not require a like postulate in regard to the external

world, more likely lost also would be the crediting of benevolent action by a higher power and its

invocation by means of prayer, and its active assistance in balancing the perplexities of

complexly lived existence. So be it; as William of Ocham famously said, “plurality” – of which

the simplest instance is duality – “is not to be postulated without necessity.”

In rejecting duality we turn away from worries, concerns, and trepidations and acquire calm

resolve regarding —

 Natural as opposed to managed creation and evolution ...

 Termination as opposed to perpetuation of self upon death ...

 Matters of degree of responsibility as opposed to matters of decree...

 Material body as opposed to immaterial mind...

 Necessity as (not) opposed to Liberty ...

 DETERMINISM as (not) opposed to FREE WILL!

Reassessing the function of religion in society, under this view religion as an institution

would lose theism and its claim to the effect of “divine power” on matter, including neural

FONDA: NO NEED TO DEIFY

matter. As a new direction for humanity, the seemingly supernatural, the “something-elsery”

which once had seemed both obvious and necessary would diminish to no more than a metaphor

and a useful fiction. But it still could be an explanatory tool which, even if no longer an

imperative, no longer sufficient to guide unreasoned belief, could yet guide responsible action. It

could have power not through causes purportedly mystical and intangible but through rational

appeals to the fully physical human mind ...which we would now better understand.

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

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FONDA: NO NEED TO DEIFY

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A. Granville Fonda: Lecturer, Osher Institute, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Consulting/Professional Engineer, King of Prussia, PA, USA

The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society aims to create an intellectual frame of reference for the academic study of religion and spirituality, and to create an interdisciplinary conversation on the role of religion and spirituality in society. It is intended as a place for critical engagement, examination, and experimentation of ideas that connect religious philosophies to their contexts throughout history in the world, places of worship, on the streets, and in communities. The journal addresses the need for critical discussion on religious issues—specifically as they are situated in the present-day contexts of ethics, warfare, politics, anthropology, sociology, education, leadership, artistic engagement, and the dissonance or resonance between religious tradition and modern trends.

Papers published in the journal range from the expansive and philosophical to finely grained analysis based on deep familiarity and understanding of a particular area of religious knowledge. They bring into dialogue philosophers, theologians, policymakers, and educators, to name a few of the stakeholders in this conversation.

The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2154-8633

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