Rational Philosophy

On biobigotry, regular bigotry, and the apparent contradiction of free-will.

Natalie Angier writes about our tendency to project human characteristics onto, and make human judgments of, animals. We take a dislike to certain species and favor others. And we justify our preferences on the basis of an animal’s behavior, its choice of habitats, its degree of invasiveness, its plumage… in short, on anything that inspires our appreciation or dislike. Angier calls this biobigotry.

Angier rightly implies that an animal is what it is and does what is in its nature to do; any judgment we put on it has relevance only as an artifact of our mind. By using the word biobigotry Angier connects the concept to the human-human bigotry of judgments based on race, gender, age, weight, etc.

Here we come to the paradox: If we say that animals do what it is their nature to do and shouldn’t be judged for it, then carry this idea forward and apply it to people, who likewise do what it is their nature to do, we end up concluding that people, too, can’t be judged as inherently despicable or adorable.

Is this a supportable premise?

It is wrong for Angier to condemn cowbirds for leaving their eggs in other birds’ nests; that’s what cowbirds do. But is it likewise wrong to condemn a person who steals, for instance? Isn’t the act of theft a result of a certain set of circumstances — genetic, environmental, and circumstantial.

If we follow this approach to its rigorous conclusion we can end up deciding that no one can be blamed for anything. For most of us this doesn’t sit well. So how can we resolve this paradox.

The resolution lies in the concept of free-will. The cowbird does not reflect on a set of choices available to it and decide it would prefer to leave its eggs in another bird’s nest. But the person who steals has a range of options from which to choose. Stealing is a choice.

Immediately, though, we see a problem with this approach. One could argue that for someone who is going to steal the range of possible options is illusory. The options exist in theory, but in practice he or she is preconditioned to reject the other options.

In this new paradox we have reached the limits of the applicability of human judgment. When we judge someone we judge them against a range of possible responses and actions, regardless of whether the person could have actually chosen differently given his or her psychological makeup and the situation at hand. We judge and condemn, in effect, not the person, but the person’s inability to make a better choice.

On the notions of free will and government influence in society.

In Ireland, back in 2002, the government imposed a hefty tax (33 cents) on plastic shopping bags. Supermarkets and stores resisted the change at first, anticipating that it would be unpopular with customers. But as the NY Times reports, avoiding the use of plastic bags has become not just an accepted fact of life but a mark of personal commitment to environmental change. “When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said one Dubliner.

Dominique Browning writes in an op-ed piece that she saw plenty of plastic bags and other refuse on her visit Patagonian glaciers. Dominique laments the self-absorption of many of her fellow eco-tourists. If we can’t check ourselves when faced with of the decline of such monumental beauty close up, Dominique’s piece asks, how can we check ourselves when global warming and environmental protection are simply abstract concepts?

In unveiling his proposed $3.1 trillion budget package, President Bush speaks of “the hard work of the American people and spending discipline in Washington.” His formula for achieving a balanced budget? “Simple: Create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low, and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all.” Meanwhile, as White House budget documents reveal, the accumulated total of all federal borrowing will grow from $3.3 trillion in 2001, when President Bush took office, to $5.4 trillion this year and $5.9 trillion in 2009. Even if we’re giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, it’s clear that his economic policies haven’t met with great success.

Like many people, I tend to dislike any overt external influence on what I do. This applies just as well to my wife’s influence as it does to the government’s. When my wife told me I should be taking a canvas bag to the grocery store to cart our groceries, I bridled and ignored her. If the government told me I should be taking a canvas bag to pick up my groceries I would probably ignore it, too. I don’t like irrational parking regulations, or jay-walking laws, or prohibitions against buying alcohol on Sunday. But I was struck by the report of the sea-change against the use of plastic bags in Ireland that began with a very pointed and determined government initiative to raise people’s awareness.

The success of Ireland’s plastic bag tax shows us is that if a government attaches a societal cost to something, publicizes that cost, and acts on it (levies a charge to offset or avoid the cost,) the result can be an improved awareness of the right thing to do. As a result, the Irish don’t resent the tax, they resent those who don’t respect the underlying impetus for the tax.

It strikes me that this translates into something akin to a free will for society or societal free will. Armed with an awareness and a perspective on its behavior, society can choose to do things that don’t necessarily come naturally or easily.

Raising society’s awareness of global warming has been a major challenge in the United States since we’ve had a government that refused to acknowledge that global warming was really a problem related to society’s actions. When other forces began to raise US society’s awareness, though, even a recalcitrant government couldn’t prevent a change in society’s will to change.

But what does any of this have to do with Bush’s budget package? Implicit in Bush’s budget package and explicit in his statements is an argument for the free market, and for hands off government. But since inaction is another form of action, hands-off government isn’t really hands-off. What we don’t do can have just as much impact as what we do do. And when we think about the role that government can play in raising awareness of the populace and championing policies that foster and catalyze people to act in ways that help improve society and the world we live in we realize just what a flawed governing philosophy the free-market, hands-off mantra makes.

On the concept of free will and its application to personal development.

As I watched March of The Penguins with my family the other evening my wife asked whether the penguins, who spend months of each year huddled together in freezing conditions, gradually starving, ever wonder whether there’s something better out there. The film’s accompanying commentary (narrated by Morgan Freeman) often wanders into sappy projections of human psychology, ascribing human thoughts and feelings to the penguins, spoiling to some extent a fascinating documentary.

We can say with some degree of certainty that penguins do not conceive of choice in the same way people do. But how do people conceive of choice and is it an illusion?

As a teenager I was sure that there was no such thing as free will, no such thing as choice. It seemed obvious to me that any response to any stimulus must be pre-determined by environment and instinct. At the most fundamental level, our minds are complex but absolute mechanisms, sets of synaptic switches, and every “choice” is simply the next configuration of these switches determined by the configuration that came before as influenced by a new set of external stimuli.

In a way I still believe this, but I now think that it skips over an explanation for the concepts of free will and choice, and in doing so lets us abdicate responsibility for our actions or inactions.

Perversity, I think, provides one of the clearest ways to conceive of free will: Imagine someone sitting in a temperature-controlled room with a thermostat. The person can raise or lower the temperature in the room by adjusting the thermostat. If he’s cold he can make it warmer. If it’s hot, he can make it cooler. But, if he’s feeling perverse, he can make it colder when he’s cold or hotter when he’s hot.

It’s at this level that free will and choice have meaning. We conceive of a set of choices and decide to act or not act either according to what we feel we should do, or according to what we feel we shouldn’t do. (This is why perversity provides such a good mental template for the concept.) Being conscious and having access to abstract concepts, we can conceive of doing things that counteract our physiological and emotional instincts.
At the next level down a conscious choice may well reflect a pre-conditioned set of psychological and environmental switches, but that’s not the point. We encounter free will and choice as we conceive of an action or inaction and consider them abstractly, consciously.

Now, here’s the trick. We can train ourselves to reset our switches, essentially changing the current conditions of our psychology. You can read this post and go away with a newly set switch, a switch that will permit you to decide to change a behavior that you don’t like. You have then exerted free will and contributed to your own personal development.

The most important part of this insight is that the results of these changes can be cumulative and can snowball. A choice to practice yoga or start therapy or quit drinking, for instance, can lead to a whole new set of experiences that reset a whole bunch of switches in our minds. Small choices can lead to big changes.

This, I believe, is the level at which we experience free will. Acknowledging the power of choice, even if it is mechanistically illusory, can lead to profound and powerful changes that help us get more out of life.

(My book LIFE! contains a more searching discussion of these ideas.)