Choice, agency, and morality 

Of course there is an argument for the need to respond to even non-intentional circumstances, often quite strongly. A wild bull that charges you may need to be stopped, regardless of whether his actions are the product of moral agency as we understand it. We simply wouldn’t frame the problem or the response in moral terms, except insofar as we might have a moral responsibility to act to prevent harm from be falling ourselves and others, even when it’s source is non-moral. An out of control trolley car isn’t a moral danger, but our choices about how to respond to the danger it poses might be.

In any case, the first part of the argument is pretty well established and accepted, despite this complication. A moral response might be necessary, even when a moral cause is lacking. But at least, in any case, we don’t see much sense in labeling the cause itself as moral if it is the product of mere chance or wholly mechanical and irresistible natural forces and conditions.

Of course there are those who would argue that there are no actions that are not the result of wholly mechanical and irresistible natural forces. Physical and biological determinism leaves little room for such concepts as will, choice, volition, etc. Such phenomena are merely illusions that arise from the operation of physical and chemical interactions. Such positions may, in fact, be true, but even if true are quite unhelpful. Because we do not perceive our own experience as physical and chemical phenomena but as objects of consciousness, the discovery that all our experiences and even the self that encounters them are essentially illusory meta-phenomena doesn’t really lead anywhere. We’re still stuck living in that world and navigating it as if we did have a self and choices to make. Believing they don’t exist won’t save us from having to deal with them, even if they are illusory. And believing such a theory in practice is quite likely to disadvantage us in our existence and experience, such as it is.

So for now let us set aside the theory that all actions are deterministic and non-moral. Most people act as if there are at least some choices which are contingent and moral. That there are some things we can choose. Some of those things we can choose are, presumably, non-moral or at least minimally moral. What cereal to have for breakfast, what piece of music to listen to, what color to paint your walls. What makes these non-moral choices? Well, presumably the fact that they are merely a matter of somewhat arbitrary preference and don’t really have any serious existential consequences positively or negatively for either us or anyone else. They’re both roughly equivalent alternatives. Whichever one you pick won’t radically affect what happens in the world.

Where choices do start to become moral is when they start having consequences for our future selves and the selves of others (and the world in general) across time. Even seemingly non-moral choices can become moral choices with just some minor additions. What color I choose to paint my walls might matter if I deliberately choose a paint with lead in it in a house with children, or if I choose a color I know my wife has explicitly said she dislikes and doesn’t want. My breakfast might be morally significant if I’m eating the last food in the house and my children are sick and hungry, of if my scrambled eggs happen to be made from the last of the dodo eggs, or if I know it’s laced with arsenic. The consequences of my choices are no longer insignificant in their impact on the world and others (and myself) across time.

So morality is fundamentally about the ability of thinking creatures such as us who can make choices that have far reaching effects, choosing to make one state of affairs and not another come into existence. It’s about our amazing ability to understand how our actions could affect the future and using that power and the power of choice to selectively bring that state into existence.

OK, so we’ve covered a lot of ground quickly and established some of the basic background of ethical thinking. We accept that most people believe that there are some decisions that are contingent and are also moral decisions. We have the ability to knowingly choose to bring certain states of affairs into present or future existence, and we can therefore be held at least somewhat morally responsible for them. These are the unspoken assumptions that undergird our judgements about our actions and the actions of others. Good enough.

To what degree any of our actions are wholly free or wholly determined is up for discussion. There are problems at both extremes, because none of us can be said to be gods, possessing the perfect kind of freedom that comes from complete and infinite knowledge, power, and autonomy. We are all, in our own ways, finite, dependent, surrounded by and shaped by forces of which we have little control (most especially the fixed landscape of the past that we did not exist in), contingent, and limited in both knowledge and power. Similarly, we do not appear, on the face of things, to be mere automatons or mechanisms, with no agency or knowledge. Instead, we seem to exist somewhere in the muddy continuum between these sharper extremes, in the cloudy world where the two mix and interact and are difficult to separate. Neither gods nor worms, we seem be a bit of both.

As we contemplate our own natures and the courses of our lives, one of our favorite moral tactics in this day and age is to rely on the appeal to deterministic nature to solve questions of moral responsibility. I’m just a victim of circumstance, is as common an instinctive explanation for behavior among adults as it is among children. And we’ve accepted that it has some weight. The ability to know and to choose are closely associated with whether we see the freedom of the gods or the twitching of the worm in our actions.

And we would like, of course, to have some nice, definitive answers. We would like to be able to say that this case is definitely a case where we have efficacy and responsibility and this is a case where we definitely don’t. We are very certain, for example, that racism is a contingent choice, something we choose and could choose differently about but voluntarily decide not to do so, and therefore are morally culpable. And similarly we are very certain that being transgender is not a contingent choice, but is something that is determined, that we had no choice about, cannot voluntarily decide to choose differentisolt about, and therefore is not a matter of moral responsibility.

The tricky thing is, it’s often very hard to figure out, because of the kind of creatures we are, which things are matter of choice, which are matters of circumstance, and to what degree any matter in life might be a bit of both, and how then to apportion responsibility and agency to ourselves or not. There are, after all, a lot of behaviors that we are quite comfortable condemning as matters of choice that are not obviously different from matters we excuse as determined.

As we have said before, there is a fairly good argument that all behaviors are determined, and so excusable, however distasteful they may seem to us (rape, theft, genocide, racism, and homophobia included). And there are biologically deterministic arguments for why those behaviors might exist that make just as much sense, or even more sense, than the arguments in favor of behaviors we wish to excuse. The evolutionary arguments for (and mechanisms for the selection and preservation of) homophobia are just as good or better than the evolutionary arguments for homophilia. The former, after all, has a monopoly on the means of genetic transmission (and so the powers of selection and preservation of traits). And as the sole means for propagating the species, since we haven’t mastered fission or budding or spore formation yet, it has a natural investment in its own success, propagation, and continuance, so selection and preservation can occur across a maximum amount of the genetic spectrum of the species.

That’s a very, very strong argument, whereas the comparable arguments in favor of the evolutionary utility of homosexuality (and even the possible means for its transmission and preservation) have all proven very weak and speculative and have yielded few avenues for successful advancement. It’s hard to argue for the excusability of homosexuality on the grounds of evolutionary utility without also recognizing that it’s far easier to explain the evolutionary utility of homophobia, and accidentally grant it even more excusability by the same measure.

This is not an argument in favor of one or the other of these positions. It’s merely a point that, structurally, the amount of credence we give to one is very low, and the credence we give to the other is very high, simply because we wish it to be so, and not because of the actual plausibility of their claims. In fact it is a great problem that, if we were to succeed in proving that certain kinds of arguments were correct, we might accidentally prove correct more things than we wished to justify. If the arguments in favor of homosexual behavior being deterministic are true, then we will likely have to admit that arguments in favor of heterosexual behavior deing deterministic are also just as true or possibly even more so. And that could crate a huge moral conflict among our values.

There are easy biologically deterministic arguments to excuse rape, slavery, war, and murder as perfectly natural and inevitable phenomena. And the fact that we find them present (or the appearance of them, since we don’t generally judge animals as moral agents) in vast representation in nature is a great problem, if we once decide that the discovery of occurance in nature is proof of biological determinacy. Ants regularly wage terrible war and even take slaves. Killing and sexual assault in nature are so ubiquitous that enormous amounts of the physical characteristics of many animals are designed around it, from the stings of wasps who paralyze and then imprison and lay their eggs inside their prey, to serve as live nurseries for their young, to the explosive penises and gnarled, dead-ended vaginas of ducks, to the aggressive teeth of sharks they use to battle one another and to bite and subdue one another for mating.

My point is simply that we have to be careful about how much we stake on biological determinism, as opening that door sufficiently far enough to let in the minor cases we wish it to excuse is just as likely or more like to let in many cases we do not wish to excuse (but cannot, if we are being fair in applying our criteria).

And this, at long last, brings us down to the peculiar argument that I’ve heard advanced a lot lately. Basically, it comes down to the argument that certain types of behavior must be biologically determined because they’re disadvantageous or uncomfortable or harmful, and that people wouldn’t willingly choose something that was harmful to them.

It’s a strange argument because it’s advanced as being such decisively good reasoning, and yet it’s the sort of argument that almost everyone knows from direct experience to be

There are many problems with this argument, not least of which is that it runs afoul of the problems I’ve just explained of wedging to door too wide in an effort to get the desired result through. If I were to take this argument at face value, then I could assume that any behavior a person engages in that harms them must be biologically determined, and therefore non-moral, and that only behaviors that improve our lot can be construed as voluntary.

The argument also suffers from being almost childishly simple, as if harm and benefit were a simple calculation without greater or lesser weight given to different values. Going for a run harms me. It makes me hot, sweaty, tired, uncomfortable, exhausts me and makes me therefore vulnerable, exposes me to the risk of sunburn, traffic accidents, assaults, and joint injuries. These are very real risks and harms. And yet so many people go running. Why? Because calculations of value are complex and weighted. We value the gain or potential gain in strength and endurance and cardiovascular health as being worth the harm endured to gain it.

The argument also runs into the problem that it assumes too much on our behalf. It assumes that we are all only going to choose to make choices that benefit us, which is fine (Plato is on board with that and also argues that we are always seeking to do the good for ourselves). But it fails the test of Platonic skepticism by assuming that we are also able to make perfectoy accurate calculations about what the good for us is. People (and even whole societies) are often mistaken about what is good for them, their calculations are often quite wrong, something both societies and individuals often come to realize themselves upon later reflection.

This doesn’t mean that any particular use of this type of argument is definitely wrong, only that it isn’t definitely right or immune from questioning, and you should be careful how much you stake upon the assumption that people always know what’s best for them and are acting on it in any given situation. In fact there are whole classes of people whose judgment on such matters is best greeted with a bit of healthy skepticism. Young people, for example, those with little experience or education, little chance to have seen and lived with the results of their choices, those with mental or emotional instability in their lives, and those whose goals run counter to long established goals and strategies of society and the species. You need to take a little care before you give up on something that got you nearly everything you have.

Skepticism does not mean that it is a foregone conclusion that these people are wrong, not in the least. In fact they may be wonderfully, spectacularly, innovative right. It only means that their claims and calculations can’t as easily be taken at face value, their accuracy taken for granted. Corroboration, questioning, testing, and evaluation of results is of special importance, not only to preserve the general good, but to preserve the good of the people in question. As a parent, teaching your children how to question and evaluate and test their own assumptions and instincts so their calculations and ventures toward their good can be made more accurate and actually give them the best results is part of the job.

Lest this sound like condescension rather than the good sense, it’s worth pointing out the foundation of any proper understanding of wisdom is skepticism of ourselves and our own foolishness. We aren’t cautious about believing the claims of children just because they’re so dumb and we’re so smart, but because we’ve been children, and to some degree we recognize that we still are. And we’ve learned by experience about what it’s like to be human, including our own fallibility under many kinds of circumstances. Skepticism of self is the foundation of a helpful skepticism of others. We know that we can’t take for granted that our children know best and will always do what’s right and good for them because so often we can’t even trust ourselves to do that.

It’s strange that I’ve even heard it argued by economists that the reason certain economic forces can be relied upon so much is because people will always do whatever they can to their benefit (market forces). Half the time most people don’t even know what would be most to their benefit. And the other half the time they’re doing things they know aren’t to their benefit. Or they might be doing a dozen other things that are to their benefit in some sense and not to their benefit in others, for a hundred different reasons. Our motivations, beliefs, desires, fears, interests, weaknesses, prejudices, and neuroses are so complex and entangled that most of us will spend much of our lives just trying to work out who we are, what we really want or need, why we did what we did, and whether we can change. We are such complex, fallible creatures that the idea that we will always do “what’s right for us” or “what’s best for us” in some monolithic sense is absurd. And it’s one of those theories that sounds nice but is so easily proven untrue by our own direct experience of ourselves that it’s a wonder it persists. And probably it wouldn’t, except for our own remarkable ability to justify our own actions.

It’s a strange and disquieting fact that studies on people who have had the bridge between the two sides of their brain severed reveal an almost effortless ability of the rational side of our mind to invent post hoc justifications for whatever impulse the instinctive side of our brains pushes us to pursue. In fact it was shown by experiment that you can selectively relay commands to one side of the brain (such as “stand up”), without revealing them to the other side, causing the subjects to stand, and upon being asked why they stood up, the subjects would reply that they had numerous perfectly valid reasons for getting up that had nothing to do with the actual reason (such as needing to go to the bathroom or get a drink).

By severing the link that allows the two sides of the brain to be aware of what is happening on the other side, it allows us to trick the mind into revealing some of its secrets that are operating under cover. Some, of course, might take this experiment as an argument for skepticism, the idea that all rational thought is merely a post hoc justification for instinctive action, but that leap isn’t really necessary. Firstly because the subjects of these experiments are no longer in possession of a whole and properly integrated brain. There is meant to be an exchange and interaction taking place that has been severed. So we cannot define the limits of what a fully functioning brain can do by one that is not functioning properly.

Secondly, as anyone with half a mind knows, we often find ourselves pulled in different directions and often discourse and negotiate within ourselves and either follow our hearts or organize our impulses behind our decisions. We change our minds, we overcome our fears, we do things we don’t want to do and don’t do things we do want to do. We have many integrated mechanisms within our psyche that look after different interest and respond to different situations and stimuli and put them against each other and arbitrate between them.

On the spectrum between the biologically fixed and immutable and the arbitrary and socially constructed and mutable, the location of sex and race are at far different positions than you would guess by how willing we are to admit people’s ability to cross between them. The biological and genetic borders between the sexes are far, far more fixed and well defined than, say, the borders between the races, which are notoriously vague and unclear. And yet we consider it fairly easy and plausible to cross one border and absolutely impossible to cross the other and claim identity in it. The difference between a man and a woman is almost infinitely greater than the difference between a randomly chosen white or black person in America today. I could belabor the science on this point, but suffice to say that genetically men and woman are far closer to being separate subspecies, with their own independently inherited genetic lineages, than races. And the origin and borders between sexes are almost infinitely longer established than those between races. A huge majority of people you could find in America today are a massively mixed cocktail of races and lineages, their identity in one or another very hard to pin down, and all mix and arise in the fairly recent past (from a scientific standpoint) of mere hundreds to thousands of years. The division between the sexes, however, arose over a billion years ago, and the fixity of its genetic lineage in humans goes back continuously as far back as our ancestry can be traced. So our willingness to shove the door open for one while trying to keep the other from also slipping through is a bit confounding. It’s hard to see by what arguments you can deny transracialism that aren’t equally or more effective against transgenderism, or what arguments in favor of transgenderism you could advance that aren’t equally or more effective in favor of transracialism. On the basis of the kind of arguments we’ve been discussing, I mean. The acceptance of one and rejection of another when they are so oppositely weighted seems like merely the most base kind of prejudice.

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