Behavior cause and free will

Posted in August 18, 2010 ¬ 7:06 amh.Hamed Movahedipour

If you consider any cause for the behavior then free will may be undermined. If the behavior be considered as a result

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

of neurons activities then where we can fit the free will. If it is result of upbringing and culture again how we can explain free will? Or more precisely, if we consider behavior as a complex interaction of our genes, brains, upbringing, stimuli, social experience and learning, how we can hold people responsible for their behavior. It seems finding any cause for behavior can lead to annihilation of free will; meanwhile it is ultimate goal of science to find causes.

So how free will can be possible? When there is a mysterious cause for behavior? Or when there is a random or chaotic cause? But still they are a kind of cause.

Steven Pinker investigates this concept quite interestingly. He explains that science and ethics are two distinct self-contained systems utilized to explain human behavior. In science people are considered as material objects following scientific processes and rules. In ethics people are sentient and rational agents with free will in which the moral value of the behavior is measured according to its inherent nature or its consequences. He adds “Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game playable. Euclidean geometry requires idealizations like infinite straight lines and perfect circles and its deductions are sound & useful even though the world does not really have infinite straight lines. The world is close enough to the idealization of free will that moral theory can meaningfully be applied to it.”

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