Can One Be a True Determinist?

My Intro to Philosophy Essay

Introduction

Love, freedom, purpose, conscience; are these fundamental human experiences reducible to blind material forces? According to the philosophy of physical determinism, everything in the universe, including human experience, is a material process of cause and effect that has been “determined” since the beginning of time. While there are ancient equivalents of this philosophy, it was not until the modern age, specifically the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment (exemplified by Isaac Newton and John Locke, respectively),¹ that it became a popular position held by all classes of people, but especially the European intellectuals and scientists. As I shall argue throughout this essay, Richard Cocks successfully argues for the philosophical absurdity of physical determinism, along with its disastrous implications for the foundational institutions of human civilization.

1. What is physical determinism?

According to J.R. Lucas, “Physical determinism is easily the most important type of determinism today.”² Lucas emphasizes not only the relative popularity of physical determinism as a worldview but also the intellectual threat it poses to the prospect of human freedom. According to Lucas, physical determinism is the most philosophically convincing of all the various forms of determinism, and its implications are notably “frightening.” The most frightening implication of physical determinism is that it undermines human freedom by reducing it to an illusion caused by blind, random, and purely material causes. The philosophy in question reduces everything to physical causes, so much so that an alternative name for it is “causal determinism.”³ Under causal or physical determinism, all things and events occurring at any point in time are the product of a past series of physical causes governed by natural laws. Its foundations are rooted in a strictly empirical worldview, wherein all knowledge of the natural world is gained through the senses. Physical determinism must affirm empiricism because the former reduces everything in the universe to physical things and natural forces, so, consistent with the empiricist claim, all knowledge must be of these material realities. As Alex Rosenberg, an unashamed naturalist and determinist, puts it, “the physical facts fix all the facts,”⁴ thereby ruling out the need for non-empirical and non-scientific explanations for things like consciousness, morality, and purpose. Under physical determinism, all three of these phenomena are actually epiphenomena, that is, things that arise from underlying causes without any causal power of their own. For example, while the human brain may generate the experience of freedom and conscience, these experiences are entirely determined by the physical function of the brain. There is no underlying agent or transcendental subject in control of what we call “our” actions; rather, the latter is under the dominion of natural laws and is the product of a blind and random evolutionary history. Thus, physical determinism reduces human freedom and purpose to illusions and asserts that the rigid laws of nature bind all aspects of existence.

2. Determinism is self-refuting

While the philosophy of physical determinism is quite popular today, it is not without its critics. One such critic is Richard Cocks, who, in his essay “The Illogicality of Determinism,” argues, as the title suggests, that determinism is wanting of logical consistency and is philosophically absurd. According to Cocks, physical determinism is self-refuting because it contradicts the very possibility of argumentation, reasoning, and rational persuasion and, therefore, cannot be consistently defended on rational grounds. He explains that if determinism is true, then “the person arguing for it has no choice as to whether he believes in physical determinism or not, nor whether he argues for determinism or not. He is in the grip of physical forces beyond his control.”⁵ Cocks illustrates this absurdity by likening a physically determined conversation to “a cosmic tape machine playing its predetermined recording” in an empty room. The self-refutation of physical determinism is at full display when determinists attempt to persuade others of their beliefs, as Cocks points out: “If it were possible to freely choose when to do something and when not to do something determinism would be false.”⁶ Persuasion implies that there is freedom and rational deliberation, as, without the possibility to freely accept or reject a given belief, there is no genuine possibility to persuade or be persuaded in any given direction. Cocks will argue that determinists implicitly accept this, as they argue as though they possess the freedom to choose and, further, that their interlocutor is free to concede to or reject their arguments. Ultimately, Cocks concludes that determinism in practice undermines its own assertions by negating the very capacity for rational persuasion and by necessitating a world where, ironically, there is “no meaningful ‘thinking,’”⁷ despite physical determinism being a theory thought up by humans and grounded in philosophical and scientific arguments.

Cocks will further defend his argument that physical determinism is self-refuting by appealing to the distinction between “causes” and “reasons.” While causes are blind, physical realities that act upon other things, reasons are meaningful and non-physical thoughts produced by conscious agents. According to Cocks, physical determinism mistakenly reduces reasons to mere causes, thereby eliminating any real basis for logical coherence. He argues that, unlike causes, reasons are not bound by physical necessity and natural laws but are freely and rationally arrived at and argued for by rational agents. As he explains, “Physical things work by causes. Arguments work by reasons. Causes are not reasons.”⁸ For Cocks, physical determinism implies that any apparent coherence in our thoughts is totally coincidental, likening our brains to Powerball machines that randomly blow out numbered ping pong balls. If, after some time, the Powerball machine produces the first digits of the number pi, then this would be solely the result of a blind process of chance. Likewise, if our thoughts are entirely the product of blind and natural processes, then even if our thoughts “seem conceptually coherent, and importantly related to each other in the form of an argument, this is just a coincidence.”⁹ Thus, the determinist has no reason to accept the validity of the process of reasoning that led him to his beliefs, as his worldview reduces any form of conceptual coherence to an effect of a causal chain governed by pure chance.

3. Can one be a true determinist?

Cocks further contends that physical determinism undermines essential human experiences such as love, morality, and purpose, ultimately leading to the negation of certain foundational beliefs upon which many of our institutions–such as the legal system–are founded. He argues that “in order for determinism to be true, moral responsibility must be an illusion and meaningful love must be an illusion.”¹⁰ If all actions are predetermined, holding individuals morally accountable becomes irrational, as they have no genuine control over their actions. Cocks points out that “determinists continue to hold other people and themselves morally responsible for their actions, and hopefully, they manage to love other people,”¹¹ which highlights the incongruence often found between determinist philosophy and the reassuringly humane behaviour of most of its defenders.

Furthermore, under physical determinism, the legal system itself would be undermined, as punishing criminals only makes sense if we believe they freely choose to break the law. In fact, courts recognize that actions performed under duress lessen both moral and legal culpability. As Cocks puts it, “If someone is compelled to do something by being threatened with something dire [...] then he is not held responsible for his actions. And so it should be.”¹² Determinism, by asserting that all actions are compelled by prior causes, would render all individuals blameless and unknowingly “under duress” on an ontological level and at a universal scale. Thus under physical determinism, the possibility of an ethical act is ruled out a priori, thereby dismantling the basis for justice and legal responsibility.

Concerning love, Cocks asserts that “love is not meaningfully love if it is not freely given.”¹³ If our feelings and attachments are merely the results of deterministic processes, then there can be no authentic love at all. In fact, it seems that a determinist cannot even speak of a “lover” and their “beloved,” as their worldview undermines the belief in conscious agents by reducing humanity–and all living things–to biologically programmed automatons. There is no “I” or “you” to freely love or be loved, but only the illusion of subjectivity produced by the brain. The value of love lies in its being free and uncoerced; determinism negates this freedom, reducing love to an illusion.

Since physical determinism undermines so many fundamental human experiences, we must ponder the question: is it possible to be a true determinist? Cocks answers in the negative, arguing that determinists are merely “classroom determinists” who do not apply their beliefs consistently in real life. Determinists continue to make choices, hold others accountable for their actions, and engage in loving relationships–all of which presume the existence of free will. This inconsistency suggests that to live as a true determinist is practically impossible because it negates fundamental human experiences and societal structures that we all participate within.

4. Contradiction and incoherence in physical determinism

Cocks presents multiple arguments against physical determinism, and we have outlined three above. They are as follows: (1) To argue for determinism is self-refuting, (2) determinism reduces all conceptual coherence to coincidence, and (3) determinism undermines foundational human experiences and beliefs such as purpose, love, and moral culpability.

Cocks’ argument that determinism is logically inconsistent is based on his assertion that it undermines the possibility for persuasion and genuine belief, despite being a belief held to and argued for by many. If determinism is true, each thought and conclusion inevitably follows from preceding physical states, leaving no room for reflective choice or reasoned belief. This raises a profound epistemological problem for determinists, who act as though they possess valid reasons which once persuaded them to make a rational decision to affirm physical determinism. I am convinced of the strength of Cocks’ argument due to the fact that it exposes the performative self-contradiction every physical determinist gets caught in when arguing for their beliefs. A performative self-contradiction “arises when a rule that speakers pragmatically invoke by the illocutionary act of, say, assertion, is contradicted by the semantic content of that assertion.”¹⁴ An example of a performative self-contradiction is the act of saying, “I am dead,” since if I am to say anything, I must be alive. Another example of a performative self-contradiction is the act of attempting to persuade someone of the truth of physical determinism since the latter negates the possibility of persuasion, as Cocks demonstrates. Cocks’ argument is powerful because it not only exposes a contradiction in physical determinism, but he locates this contradiction in the very act of defending the worldview.

The second of Cocks’ arguments we have discussed is his distinction between causes and reasons. He’ll argue that while causes operate through a chain of physical events without regard to meaning or rationality, reasons imply a conscious and intentional process that ought to be oriented towards coherence and truth. But if we suppose our beliefs are caused as opposed to reasoned towards, as physical determinism asserts, there is no way to know that our beliefs are justified on any rational or objective basis. Alvin Plantinga makes a similar argument, which he calls the “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.”¹⁵ He argues that naturalism and the theory of evolution create a problem regarding the reliability of our mental faculties. Evolution favours survival and the propagation of one’s genes through reproduction—not rational deliberation and acquiring true knowledge. Thus, if physical processes in our brains entirely determine our beliefs, and if our brains are the product of millions of years of evolutionary development, then there is no guarantee nor even any likelihood that our beliefs align with the truth. While distinct in terms of emphasis, both Cocks and Plantinga make a very similar argument, refuting physical determinism for its inability to account for the possibility of justified beliefs. Notably, the reduction of all thought to coincidence undermines science by Alex Rosenberg’s own criteria:

If what physics says about reality doesn’t go, that track record would be a totally inexplicable mystery or coincidence. Neither science nor scientism stands still for coincidence. The no miracles/inference to the best explanation arguments for scientific realism are on the right track. Their alternatives are obviously mistaken.¹⁶

Given the theoretically infinite possible ways we could be misinterpreting reality (paired with Plantinga’s argument that Darwinism alongside determinism undermines the likelihood of accurate perceptions and beliefs), the reduction of all thought to some stochastic physical process or processes essentially nullifies the possibility of both philosophy and science.

5. The problem of persons

Finally, Cocks argues that determinism negates the reality of love, morality, and purpose and thereby undermines the foundational beliefs upon which many, if not all, modern institutions rest. While there are many angles from which one could evaluate this critique, we shall focus our attention on one root problem in physical determinism from which many others derive: it undermines the fact of personhood..

In both philosophy and theology, the definition of “person” or the “subject” remains a challenging and ongoing discussion. A lot of this debate is complex and nuanced, but the physical determinist resigns to the inevitable (as they must, after all) conclusion that there is no such thing as “persons” at all but only an impersonal and physical process that generates the illusion of personhood. While this is a simple explanation–as most reductionary explanations are–it is far from convincing, as it fails to account for essentially every human experience.

In 1995, David Chalmers coined the term “hard problem of consciousness” to refer to a simple but fundamental problem with physicalism/naturalism: why is there conscious experience at all?¹⁷ Chalmers’ question moves away from the “functional” operation or dynamics of consciousness (which is the domain of neuroscience) and sheds light on the much more immediate fact of the phenomena of self-awareness, intentionality, and identity over time, along with any experience that constitutes what we have called “personhood.” The hard problem of consciousness, while certainly problematic for all forms of determinism, is particularly difficult for physical determinists as the merely physical does not possess the qualities experienced by every conscious person. Even if one concedes, to the rapturous encouragement of the determinists, that consciousness is merely an “epiphenomenon” as defined above, the problem still remains for the physicalist to account for the inescapable reality (or “fact”) of one’s own conscious experience and–assuming one is not a solipsist–the experience of others. What is this conscious experience, epiphenomenon or not? Any reductive appeal to a physical cause risks committing a sort of genetic fallacy, wherein an account of the origins of a given phenomenon is presumptively taken as an exhaustive explanation of it. If not a fallacy, the common naturalist supposition of some mysterious “emergence” of experience from the physical brain is, in the words of

David Bentley Hart

, nothing short of an “appeal to magic.”¹⁸ Upon reflection, it is almost laughable to argue that my experience of the world and (what I call) “myself” are identical to neurons firing in my brain or some other physical process. Unless the neuroscientists are totally mistaken about the composition of the human brain, my current reverence towards their scientific rigour is no more identical to the organ in my skull than A is B. So if my experience is not identical to neurons in my brain, the question remains: what is consciousness? A hard problem indeed.

One aspect of consciousness and a unique characteristic of human persons is the quality of intentionality. Intentionality consists of mental experiences that are “about” things and behaviour that is “for” reasons. Only because our experiences possess an intentional character can we recognize things in the world as distinct and attribute names to them. All of this is predicated upon some sense of personhood and self-identity that is capable of consciously apprehending distinct things . As Immanuel Kant argues in Critique of Pure Reason, there must be a “unity of consciousness” behind one’s empirical experience that “synthesizes” the transient flux of one’s perceptions into a unified experience of meaningful, conceptualizable, and nameable things in space and time.¹⁹ The close association between naming and self-consciousness can be found in chapter two of the Book of Genesis, with Adam naming the animals (Genesis 2:19-20) shortly after receiving the Spirit of God and becoming a “living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Since a name is always “of” something or someone, naming is an intentional activity that is unique to free and rational persons, allowing us to engage with the world in a meaningful way. However, since physicalism reduces the experience of intentional or purposeful activity to mere illusions, it renders everything we strive for in life utterly meaningless. In a purely physical universe, our use of language and names to comprehend the world and relate to one another are divested of all significance beyond arbitrarily designating a particular configuration of particles that are totally unconcerned with and unrelated to our theories, morals, and experiences. Celebrity scientist and naturalist Neil Degrasse Tyson could not forget to remind his Twitter followers precisely this: “The universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent to our pain,” followed by a cheeky “Have a nice day!” While a harmless tweet, the late Canadian comedian Norm Macdonald unexpectedly exposed “a logic flaw in [Neil’s] little aphorism,” proceeding to explain that “Since you and I are part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, Neil, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it. Nice day, indeed.”²⁰ Norm essentially poses the hard problem of consciousness (or “the hard problem of care” in this case) in his reply to Neil, exposing a crucial blindspot in any worldview that would claim purpose (or consciousness, love, freedom, etc.) does not exist: we experience purpose and we exist. In response to this critique, the naturalists would surely assemble to chant the usual refrain about purposeful and free activity being an illusion. As Rosenberg puts it, humans are “conspiracy theorists” who see purpose and freedom where there is merely “the foresightless play of fermions and bosons.”²¹ But the hard problem of consciousness poses a challenge for this explanation, as a physicalist worldview fails to account for what it claims is illusory. The firsthand experience of personhood (determined or not) every developed human possesses is not identifiable with any physical thing nor is it a quality found within the natural world, therefore remaining entirely unexplained and unaccounted for under physical determinism or naturalism in general.

Other than intentionality, two related realities we experience firsthand are love and conscience. Admittedly, the experience of love does not seem to pose any unique problem for physical determinism other than its conscious quality. However, the bleak view of love that any consistent naturalist must take is entirely inconsistent with the way almost all of them behave. Ultimately, the negation of true love under physical determinism stems from its undermining of personhood. Personhood is the foundation of love since the reality of “love” only takes on meaning insofar as it describes the attachment between lovers. Persons are conceivable before love, but love cannot be conceived in the absence of persons. Love is always the love “of” someone “for” another, but physical determinism negates both persons and intentional activity and so must reject the possibility of true love.

And just as purposeful activity and love imply the existence of persons, moral action and accountability do as well. An act is only evil if done for evil reasons, which implies a free and deliberate choice made by a rational agent with a conscience. Our society recognizes that rationality and self-awareness are necessary for moral culpability, so infants are not punished for disobedience and are not judged as “good” or “evil” on account of their lack of conscience. Put another way, our society recognizes that the development of personhood and the maturation into self-aware agents is one of the fundamental conditions of moral and legal culpability. The capacity for intentional and free action is characteristic of developed human persons alone, and part of what it means to be a person is to act and experience the world with intentionality. Without intentionality, there can be no ethical action or moral culpability, as no act is done “for” any reason–good or bad–at all. And as we have determined, without moral culpability, the entire basis of the legal system is undermined, as there are no longer any rational grounds to hold people accountable for their actions. As we have argued, this is precisely because physical determinism asserts that “people” do not exist at all!

7. Conclusion

Thankfully, physical determinists do not typically behave as if they have no concept of moral accountability. As Cocks observes, they often remain “classroom determinists,” holding a philosophy that rejects freedom, love, and moral responsibility yet behaving in ways that imply all three. However, regardless of what seems to be the practical impossibility of physical determinism, the philosophy is also untenable on intellectual grounds. As Cocks demonstrates, physical determinism is self-refuting, as it denies the foundation of rational belief despite being a form of belief. If determinism is true, then the possibility of genuine persuasion is negated, and all persons are reduced to blind physical processes. Thus, to ask another person to consider believing in determinism is a performative self-contradiction, as consideration and genuine belief are negated under physical determinism.

Further, Cocks distinguishes between “causes” and “reasons,” demonstrating that determinism conflates the two. While causes are blind and material processes, reasons involve intentionality and rationality. Under physical determinism, beliefs no longer become grounded in “reasons” but in physical causes that are totally random, analogous to a Powerball machine that could only generate a coherent string of numbers by chance. This randomness effectively nullifies the possibility of justified belief, further undermining any reason to affirm physical determinism.

Finally, determinism cannot explain essential human experiences and reduces them to the (vexingly unexplained/unaccounted for) product of meaningless physical processes. We have determined that, at its core, determinism negates the reality of human experiences because it undermines the fact of human persons. Without persons capable of free and intentional behaviour towards and for other persons and things, there can be no purposeful action, love, or moral accountability whatsoever. In sum, Cocks’ critiques expose determinism as an untenable, irrational, and self-defeating philosophy that is—depending on the disposition of its respective proponents—either explicitly or surreptitiously anti-human. Its rejection of freedom, intentionality, and moral responsibility is not only philosophically unjustifiable but renders it impossible for either individuals or society to live out.

1. John Randolph Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 84.

2. Ibid.

3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Causal Determinism,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition).

4. Rosenberg, Alex, “Disenchanted Naturalism,” Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image, Vol. 12 (January - April 2015).

5. Cocks, Richard, “The Illogicality of Determinism,” in VoegelinView (November 20, 2019)

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Jürgen Habermas,” James Gordon Finlayson and Dafydd Huw Rees, ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition)

15. Plantinga, Alvin, “An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism,” in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

16. Rosenberg, Alex, “Disenchanted Naturalism,” Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image, Vol. 12 (January - April 2015).

17. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Josh Weisberg, "Hard Problem of Consciousness" https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/#H1.

18. David Bentley Hart, “Mind, Nature, Emergence,” Leaves in the Wind (Substack), November 21, 2021, https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/mind-nature-emergence.

19. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 232.

20. Macdonald, Norm (@normmacdonald). "How could they tell?" Twitter, April 10, 2019. https://x.com/normmacdonald/status/1116159872393867265.

21. Rosenberg, Alex, “Disenchanted Naturalism,” Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image, Vol. 12 (January - April 2015).