From "Einstein’s Morality"
by Ching-Hung Woo Now in the scientific framework favored by Einstein, where events unfold by deterministic laws, once an initial state of the world is completely specified, all subsequent phenomena are determined. Hence when a person faces multiple alternatives and makes a choice, the will of the decision-maker at the moment of decision was actually already fixed from the beginning of the universe. Hence the feeling of having a choice is only an illusion.
This part I can understand. If
all is governed by the immutable laws of nature, it certainly makes sense that this includes the phenomena embodied in human interaction.
As for the parts embedded in quantum interaction, Einstein suggested that what appears to be random is only a reflection of our lack of understanding of the deeper reality.
And that will, perhaps, always be there: the parts that we don't even know that we don't even know yet. Ultimately though, all philosophical quests come back to this.
But then comes the part about determinism and moral responsibility:
A correspondence between Einstein and his friend Otto Juliusburger on Hitler’s responsibility for the crimes of WWII illustrates how Einstein proposed to deal with the moral consequences of the absence of free will. He acknowledged that since everyone’s action are determined by prior factors, Hitler could not help but to do what he did, and so the moral arguments used for instance to exempt a madman from retributive punishment – that they couldn’t help or didn’t know what they were doing – could also be applied to Hitler. In other words, the distinction that lawyers make between a psychopath not knowing right from wrong and someone acting immorally but knowing that it’s wrong, appeared to Einstein unimportant, since both are doing what they must do from the confluence of events ultimately in their brains, which inexorably follow from previous causes. So instead of focusing on retributive punishment, legal action should be guided by the welfare of mankind; and the welfare of mankind justifies actions to prevent future would-be Hitlers from destroying other people’s lives, just as society might justifiably act to prevent a dangerous delusional schizophrenic from harming others. Einstein also took the non-existence of free will as a wake up call for us not to take our supposed autonomy too seriously: what we jealously protect and shrewdly promote as our autonomy is actually the result of myriads of factors of which we are only vaguely aware.
This would seem to be just one more rendition of "compatibilism". And I am still unable to "wrap my mind around it". It just doesn't make sense given the manner in which I think about these things.
Whether we focus on "retributive punishment" or are "guided by the welfare of mankind", we are still doing
only that which we could not not have done.
There does not seem to be a way in which to extract ourselves from that which, "for all practical purposes", must be. Instead, some are able to "trick" themselves by creating this distinction between two different sorts of cause and effect that [to me] seem to be just a word game "in their heads".
This in other words:
People who meet this logic for the first time tend to become alarmed – what happens to our vaunted freedom if we have no free will? There is actually no need to be alarmed if we distinguish between two kinds of freedoms: a freedom from prior causes, and a freedom from coercion. The idea of ‘absolute free will’ supposes that our choices are not determined by prior causes; but few of us actually think of freedom in that way. Rather, we feel a loss of freedom when we are coerced, that is, when we are forced to do something or be in a certain state against our values. There are certain likes and dislikes that a person regards as characterizing him. This set of values may change with time, but they are stable in the immediate term. Hence it makes sense to redefine ‘free choice’ as a choice compatible with a person’s self-affirmed set of values.
This distinction seems like bullshit to me. Whether we call the laws of matter a manifestation of "prior causes" or "coercion", we still do only that which we have always been "determined" to do.
As for so-called "self-affirmed" values, what the fuck can that really mean if the "self" itself is only as it could ever be?
Again, the compatibalists may be on to something here, but it has never seemed reasonable to me. So, I am back to either accepting or not accepting that it could never
have seemed reasonable to me -- in order that "I" be in sync
with the immutable laws of matter. At least here and now.
In line with this view of freedom as the ability to fulfil individual values, Einstein urged society to give ample room for each individual to explore a particular idea to its rational fulfilment: “Whether it be a work of art or a significant scientific achievement, that which is great and noble comes from the solitary personality,” he said.
But what here [including the words I am typing and the words you are reading] has anything to do with "ability"? As though what turns out to be could ever have turned out any other way. We "choose" for it to happen, but we really didn't
choose for it to happen.
But then I can see how a belief in this sort of deterministic approach to reality can be comforting for some. After all, they can't really be held responsible for their fucked up, miserable lives because, well,
because.