COMMENSAL ISSUE 105

Cause and Motive are not the same thing. My dictionary defines "motive" as "an influence on the will". In a detective novel there will be a dozen suspects, each of whom had a motive for wanting the victim dead, but only one will have allowed that motive to influence his will so as to become the cause of death. The other eleven will have exercised their will contrary to their motive. In switching from "cause" to "motive" Roger Farnworth (C104/11) is conceding that there is a will to be influenced. QED.

Nobody ever says to himself: "An event is about to take place which ignorant people will describe as me making a choice or taking a decision. However, as a determinist, I know I have no will and therefore I am incapable of making a choice or taking a decision. All that is going to happen is that causes, over which I have no control, are going to have effects, over which I have no control, and I am merely the passive medium through which this will occur." The reality is that at the particular moment we do have an experience which we call making a choice or taking a decision. Subsequently we may look back and, with the benefit of hindsight, produce motives, causes or reasons which we think explain or justify that choice or decision. By their nature, arguments with the benefit of hindsight can never be proved wrong and, as Karl Popper has shown us, what cannot be proved wrong cannot be proved right either. None of this detracts from the fact that at the relevant moment we did have the experience that we were choosing or deciding. That is why I place free will in the same group as sight and hearing and the other senses: primary experiences which have to be the starting point in any attempt to understand anything.

I can observe A and B if A and B emit or reflect photons which subsequently make contact with the retina of my eye. I cannot observe a relationship (causal or otherwise) between A and B because relationships do not emit or reflect photons. (I have used photons and sight but the same holds true for all the senses.)

The fact that every previous observation of A has been followed by an observation of B, or that every previous observation of B has been preceded by an observation of A, does not justify the conclusion that the next observation of A will be followed by an observation of B, or that the next observation of B will be preceded by an observation of A. This is the familiar problem of induction. Moreover, it is not difficult to think of examples where A is regularly followed by B but where there can be no question of any causal relationship between them. Consequently "A followed by B" (which is the sum total of what we can observe) tells us nothing about whether A is cause or whether B is effect.

If we make the claim that A is cause and B is effect then we are making a claim that goes beyond observation. That is why I place determinism in the same group of mental phenomena as mathematics, logic and the laws of physics: the concepts, theories and hypotheses we formulate in our heads and then superimpose on that group of primary experiences which I referred to previously in the hope that if there is an adequate correspondence then, perhaps, we have discovered something useful and pushed our understanding a little further forward.

The purpose of my previous piece was not to argue "for" or against, or to claim that I had access to some ultimate metaphysical truth. My intention was rather to move away from a sterile, antagonistic polarity towards a fruitful, generous acceptance of dichotomy. We do not have, and are never going to have, access to any ultimate metaphysical truth. In our ignorance, we should have the humility to accept that the perspectives offered by determinism and free will are useful, partial and different. Each has something to tell us in the context that is appropriate to it, but neither justifies the rejection of the other in other contexts that are more appropriate to that other.

Malcolm Burn