I have created a horrific reality for myself. I vividly remember in my junior year of high school, in my AP Psychology class, learning about hard determinism. Hard determinism is defined as every action in a human’s life being predetermined by their environment. Thus, this invalidates the conception of free will. If everything is determined, then we are merely spectators, like the audience of a film, but with very real feelings and pain. This is a nightmare. I imagine a loss of control is many people’s greatest fear, including mine.
The class period was split in half due to lunch. Our teacher challenged us. We were to come back from lunch in support of free will or against it. I was in its support before she even finished explaining the activity. I was naive at the time. I came up with a mashed-up list of random, unrelated arguments in my notes app, which I found on someone’s blog such as this one, and I ran with them. All of them were copy and paste, and I had no clue about their intricacies. I was vastly outnumbered by those for hard determinism, and I attempted to explain free will as having to be true since humans make art. Those two things are distant cousins at best or total strangers at worst. I lost, and I made an ass out of myself. I was too stubborn to concede. In hindsight, I had one decent point that still haunts me, but it doesn’t prove free will. It only makes the lack of freedom an even more horrifying idea.
Every person on Earth has had feelings of guilt. It is a very human emotion, and it likely suggests a higher level of consciousness. Most animals will never feel guilty (except some other primates). When someone yells at their dog for ripping apart their new shoes, the dog isn’t looking sad due to guilt. It is distressed and upset due to the yelling. The dog knows from past experiences that messes result in anger, and the dog does not respond positively to its angry owner, obviously. However, humans do not need this negative reinforcement to feel bad. If someone steals twenty dollars from their friend, the thief does not need to be scolded by their friend ever to feel bad about it. They may feel bad even if their friend doesn’t notice. Simply put, guilt is feelings of remorse or regret due to an action taken, whether consequences are given or not.
Now, when somebody takes an action, we are to assume it was by their own will (unless in extreme cases). Sometimes these actions will cause guilt, but what if free will is not something that exists? Are humans supposed to then feel guilty for something they have absolutely no control over? This is quite a scary thought, and it breaks down every foundation in a civilized world.
Justice is not possible if someone has no control over their actions. Moreover, when society punishes a criminal, it must be unfair since they had no control over the crime they committed. It is similar to being clinically insane. We accept that they don’t have control over their crimes, so we cannot convict them ethically. If nobody has control over their actions, as hard determinism suggests, then we are just like those who cannot stand trial due to insanity. We have no control over what we did. To a greater extent, this also means that no one has achieved anything. Their environment gave them everything. Which suggests everything good that comes to someone is from plain luck. Skills that humans develop were chosen by their environment, and their successes were a result of their environment’s choice.
Imagine that every moment that you have felt guilty, whether you hurt someone you love or caused an accident, it wasn’t your fault. However, you are still condemned to live with the internal pain. If hard determinism is true, then we can be likened to prisoners being tortured. The torturer is our environment. Instead of hot irons and knives, our pain is caused by emotions from an experience in which we are hostage.
This keeps me up at night, but I suppose there is another way to look at this. Guilt confirms that we have free will. Why should we feel bad over an action we have no control over? We shouldn’t, and we typically don’t. If someone hears of a burglary and feels guilty about it, that would be nonsensical. It is the same in the case of hard determinism. Why would humans feel any negative emotions if nothing is in their control? When viewing art, humans feel all of the basic emotions, such as happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. However, humanity typically doesn’t feel guilt when viewing art, which is an emotion associated with higher levels of cognition. If our lives are truly a viewing experience and not something we actually live, then why do we feel guilty?
While this argument brings me great comfort, it is actually quite weak under further scrutiny. For example, say somebody is kidnapped and has their fingers tied around a gun. The kidnapper then pulls a rope, and the kidnapped involuntarily shoots and kills an innocent person. Many people would still feel guilty after this, even though they had no control and couldn’t have stopped it.
Another thing is that if we assume that hard determinism is true, then how could society even be created? Why aren’t humans killing each other randomly and committing crimes? Why does the environment mostly favor order? Is it a matter of survival? Is it collective consciousness or luck? Is it something spiritual? It’s almost contradictory. If we have no control, then why does our environment seem so controlled? How can humanity inhabit an environment that created us but also reflects our sensibilities and emotions? This is a whole other topic, which makes free will an even more impossible subject to navigate. However, all of this doesn’t really matter. The logic isn’t that important; both sides seem impossibly irrational. Free will’s existence seems more comfortable, but it is equally likely that something compels all humans to do something without our input.
This brings me to an unfortunate truth: even if we have no control, we are still condemned to terrible feelings of despair.
No matter our degree of control, nothing will stop our guilt. Guilt serves as a punishment for being thinking creatures, and we will suffer until death from things being out of our control. This is, of course, assuming that hard determinism is true, but at this point, I cannot find a reasonable argument to disprove such a horrible reality. Has our intelligence cursed us and created a hell where death is the only cure? I do not know.