Determinism vs Conscious choice

Does our human consciousness allow us to make any choice we please? How far does our free choice go? Can we always override our natural impulses? Are we responsible for our actions when we can't?

Because we live in the real world, we are exposed to different situations every day that lead us to feel jealousy or greed. What stops us from acting on our impulses?  Is it some sort of rational choice?

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt instead suggests our innate moral sense leads us to control our impulses. Emotions and feelings like awe, gratitude, sympathy, compassion, empathy, guilt, shame and embarrassment, all contribute to the moral sense, which can override the more negative emotions.

I would add that we're also kept in line by our innate desire to please authority figures, like bosses, priests, and government officials. The ability to feel awe for higher beings is innate, and is designed to be spurred by social institutions like churches.

So some human emotions and impulses (greed, lust) are kept in check by other emotions ("the moral sense"). This leaves little room for rational choice.  Instead, the mind is like the "whack-a-mole" game, where moles (emotions) keep popping up to our conscious attention. Consciousness is like a spotlight, that allows us to focus on our feelings (both negative and moral), weigh them against each other, and act on them. We only have one body, and many desires, which is why our consciousness must prioritize our actions.

Our moral sense is designed to be given shape and tuned by external institutions (although it can also be affected by drugs).  We want to believe in our leaders, and others in positions of authority.  We have a strong innate pre-disposition to believe what they tell us, at least for a while.  If a well-known artist says that a piece of art has merit, we want to believe him, even if it's just his own "social construction" of reality.  If a so-called "great leader" (like Chairman Mao, for example) says it would be a great leap forward if we all lived on collective farms, he is exploiting our innate tendency to trust leaders.  But people are not infinitely flexible.  Our sense of duty and allegiance toward leaders is only one of several innate emotions that our consciousness must juggle when making choices.

Our emotions didn't just arrive yesterday, in the same way that genes are not just normal matter.  Emotions serve as dispositions toward objects and situations that evolved over billions of years.  Genes are experience made manifest.  In other words, the experience of our ancestors is transported through time into the present, in the form of our genes and innate emotions. Having the ability to recognize greed-inducing situations is a developed capability of the brain.  You have to perceive before you can react!

Being accountable (to society) for your actions is not the same thing as having a free choice and being responsible. If you have a strong sense of greed, but a weak moral sense, you will probably steal things from other people, and society will throw you in jail once you're caught. Perhaps you weren't free to make another choice. But as Gandi wrote, you are always accountable for your actions, and you must accept the punishment. Social punishment will thus be part of your new environment, and it acts as a deterrent to others (or perhaps instead your civil disobedience will inspire others to overthrow the current government). It is the environment you choose, of your own free will, but it is deeply rooted in the interplay of innate emotions.

Comments

[Topher]

I like how you simply and crisply show that genetics does not simply give an out for people to play the determinism card when being punished. In a way this also reminds me of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer who put forward the idea that the will pushes us towards survival first, everything else is second to survival.