Determinism (D’Holbach)

This lecture will help you understand: • French “materialism”

– Baron d’Holbach – Julien Offray de La Mettrie

• Laws of Nature – Pleasure-Pain Principle – Self-preservation

• Voluntary vs. Non-voluntary behavior • Effective Desire • Fatalism vs. Determinism • Morality

Question 1: What does d’Holbach argue?

A. some free actions are uncaused B. all actions are random C. some actions are free D. there are no free actions

Determinism

• Determinism: is the view that that every event has a cause, and thus everything that happens, including human actions, simply proceeds from previous events.

• For every event that happens, there are previous events in conjunction with laws of nature that are a sufficient condition for the occurrence of that event.

• There is no such thing as free will. • In principle, the future can be predicted.

Baron d’Holbach

• An atheist, a determinist, a materialist, a severe critic of religion, absolute monarchy, and feudalism

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789)

Atheism

• “If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests” (D’Holbach, System of Nature)

French Materialism

• Denied the existence of a deity. • Denied evidence all a priori arguments.

Man the “Machine”

• “all the motion of his machine springs as a necessary consequence from his primitive impulse.” (IP 312)

• “if his machine were less complicated.” (IP 318)

• “the complicated motion of his machine” (IP 318) “The Rock Drill” 1913-4—Jacob

Epstein (1880-1959)

"Man the “Machine”

• In L'Homme Machine (1748), La Mettrie argues that “man” is simply a machine, subject to the laws of motion like any mechanism of eighteenth-century science.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Mind = Brain (Holbach)

• “The will . . . is a modification of the brain” (IP 313).

Laws of Nature

• Pleasure-Pain Principle • Self-preservation

• It is the actual essence of man to tend to his well being, or to be desirous to conserve his existence; if all the motion of his machine springs as a necessary consequence from this primitive impulse; if pain warn him of that which he ought to avoid; if pleasure announce to him that which he should desire; if it be in his essence to love that which either excites delight, or that from which he expects agreeable sensations; to hate that which either makes him fear contrary impressions or that which afflicts him with uneasiness; it must necessarily be that he will be attracted by that which he deems advantageous; that his will shall be determined by those objects which he judges useful; that he will be repelled by those beings which he believes prejudicial, either to his habitual or to his transitory mode of existence. (IP 312)

What about Voluntary Behavior?

• What is “voluntary” behavior? • Clearly there is a difference

between: – an automatic or “reflex” reaction – deliberately raising one’s arm

• How does Holbach explain this?

Desire • Desire = the “inherent” cause

Auguste Rodin, The Kiss, 1886

Pleasure-Pain Principle

• The tendency or drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain as the chief motivating force in behavior. We always tend toward that which gives us pleasure; and have an aversion to that which threatens pain.

• See Epicurus, Bentham, and Freud

• When it is said, that man is not a free agent, it is not pretended to compare him to a body moved by a simple impulsive cause: he contains within himself causes inherent to his existence; he is moved by an interior organ, which has its own peculiar laws, and is itself necessarily determined in consequence of ideas formed from perceptions resulting from sensations which it receives from exterior objects. As the mechanism of these sensations, of these perceptions, and the manner they engrave ideas on the brain of man, are not known to him; because he is unable to unravel all these motions; because he cannot perceive the chain of operations in his soul, or the motive principle that acts within him, he supposes himself a free agent; which, literally translated, signifies, that he moves himself by himself; that he determines himself without cause: when he rather ought to say, that he is ignorant how or for why he acts in the manner he does. (IP 318)

Conflict of Desires

Desire to drink (because thirsty)

vs. Desire not to drink

(because don’t want to get sick)

Will =

the outcome of deliberation =

the stronger desire

“Effective Desire”

• Will is “effective desire” • American philosopher Harry Frankfurt (“Freedom of

the Will” 1971) calls the desire that moves (or will or would move) a person all the way to action “effective desire.”

Question 2: According to d’Holbach, the fact

that a person often makes choices proves

A. That the person has free will B. That motives do not control the will C. That the person has no motives D. Nothing about whether the person has free

will

Fatalism

• Don’t confuse determinism with fatalism.

• Fatalism is the idea that the future is fixed regardless of what we do.

"The Appointment in Samarra" • A merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the market. The servant

returned, trembling and frightened. The servant told the merchant, "I was jostled in the market, turned around, and saw Death. "Death made a threatening gesture, and I fled in terror. May I please borrow your horse? I can leave Baghdad and ride to Samarra, where Death will not find me.” The master lent his horse to the servant, who rode away, to Samarra. Later the merchant went to the market, and saw Death in the crowd. "Why did you threaten my servant?" He asked. “I did not threaten your servant,” Death replied.“ It was merely that I was surprised to see him here in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

Morality

• In the moral as well as in the physical world, every thing that happens is a necessary consequence of causes, either visible or concealed, which are of necessity obliged to act after their peculiar essences. In man, free agency is nothing more than necessity contained within himself. (IP 319)

• “So many crimes are witnessed on earth only because everything conspires to render man vicious and criminal; the religion he has adopted, his government, his education, the examples set before him, irresistibly drive him to evil. Under these conditions morality preaches virtues to him in vain . . . . Such societies . . . frequently have the injustice to condemn those in penalty of death, whom public prejudices, maintained by constant example, have rendered criminal” (IP 316-317).

Punishment

• Cesare di Beccaria (1738-1794), Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, and politician, one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment.

• First person to condemn torture and the death penalty in his On Crimes and Punishment (1764)

• Cesare Beccaria's works had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States

Conclusion • In no one moment of his existence is man a free agent.

He is not the architect of his own conformation, which he holds from nature; he has no control over his own ideas, or over the modification of his brain; these are due to causes, that, despite him, and without his own knowledge, unceasingly act upon him; he is not the master of not loving or coveting that which he finds amiable or desirable; he is not capable of refusing to deliberate, when he is uncertain of the effects certain objects will produce upon him; he cannot avoid choosing that which he believes will be most advantageous to him; in the moment when his will is determined by his choice he is not competent to act otherwise than he does. (IP 319)