Bill's Big Stuff

“The Case Against Christianity” by Michael Martin, (Temple Press, Philadelphia, 1991) is written by a capital “A” Atheist, one who evangelizes for atheism. Having been an atheist for thirty years prior to becoming a theist, I have no problem with someone publishing a book in support of atheism. However, I would have expected something better than this from a professor of philosophy. Despite the claims on the back of the cover, the scholarship is lacking to the point of appearing as intellectual cowardliness, the premises of the argument are set up to guarantee his “winning,” and he sets up a caricature of Christianity as being the whole or at least the majority of it. His technique could be described as episodes of particular specificity surrounded by large amounts of generality. I think the writing could be described as rhetorical not scholarly. He also depends on a lack of proof being taken as disproof of Christian positions, as he presents them. This of course is a logical fallacy, so is not explicitly presented but is implied throughout the book. It is exactly the kind of book, I in my atheistic days, untrained in philosophy and having only a smattering of scholarship in the area would have written. As such it does a disservice to all involved, Christians, atheists, and philosophers, trivializing centuries of debate.

Were it not for the current atmosphere of hostility to Judeo-Christian belief in our society, this book could be ignored. Considering that it is twenty years old and little or no mention has been made of it, that I have seen, it has been ignored. However, it is also an example of the kind of argumentation that can have persuasiveness to wannabe intellectuals, who read it as support of their adoption of atheism, without the knowledge to evaluate it uncritically. (Even those who should be critical apparently aren’t, given their support on the back cover.) Apparently being an Atheist, as opposed to an atheist, blinds one to ones own illogic and poor argumentation, just as Fundamentalism blinds one to the current status of science and scholarly religious discourse. This review is presented to make an object lesson of this book in how not to argue religious questions.

From the first, Professor Martin engages in the use of sweeping generalization of history, dismissing the first few hundred years of debate over what constitutes the correct Christian doctrines as a massive suppression of dissent by the church. He also sees the rise of Biblical Criticism and emergence of Science in the Nineteenth Century as an attack on Christian doctrine not as an attempt better understand the world. An in-depth study of both of these periods would show it to be much more complex than that.

At this point he justifies his book and presents us with these two paragraphs:

“Although some nineteenth- and twentieth-century criticisms of Christianity deserve praise for raising important critical questions and for continuing the work of the earlier critics, an adequate, systematic, philosophical critique has yet to be produced. The purpose of this work is to present such a criticism. Although I have elsewhere argued at length for atheism, this view will not be presupposed in what follows. Indeed, a reader can believe in God and accept everything in this book without being inconsistent.

“My object in presenting the case against Christianity is theoretical, not practical. I am not so naïve as to suppose that the arguments set forth here will induce many people to give up their Christian beliefs. My claim is simply that in the light of my discussion rational people should give up these beliefs.”

The claims being made here are breath-taking in their sweep and scope. First is his claim that the book is an “adequate, systematic, philosophical critique.” Second is that it is the first such critique. The third is that his discussion is correct and rational, and finally that his rationality of argument is sufficient to cause a reversal of belief. If one looks at the footnotes, his reputed critical sources are pamphleteers from the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. There are no sources from the work of Higher Criticism that arose at that time. He places himself among poor competition from the start. But worse is his complete ignorance or active ignoring of the centuries of debate that started in the Seventeenth Century over Christian doctrine and its applicability. He is definitely not the first systematic critic. His last sentence is what is so wonderfully arrogant. Restated he says, “I am right and therefore you should change your beliefs. To not do so is to be irrational.” Rationality is based on premises that are given not proven. His premises have to be as convincing as those he is trying to replace, and the logic must flow without choices from those premises. Essentially he is making a claim to infallibility, since he creates an imperative statement.

He next establishes what he will call Christianity against which to make his case. He starts with the creeds, Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian. His presentation of the creeds and their history is quite fair. He uses an obscure 1877 book by Phillip Schaff, who Professor Martin describes as a scholar of the creeds, to support his claim that they are accepted and provide a description of their purposes in mainline churches. In my mind this is pseudo-scholarship. The fact that the three creeds are in prayer books and hymnals and used at services in almost all Christian churches is sufficient. He is simply trying to create a gloss of scholarship on his writing here. He then compares and discusses the various beliefs stated in the creeds and from that creates definitions of the beliefs of a “Basic Christian,” a “Liberal Christian,” and an “Orthodox Christian.”

It is in creating his definitions that he uses a stylistic device that is apparently an attempt to create the impression of deep analysis. He uses formal logic to create the definitions. Example:
“Person P is a Basic Christian if and only if P believes that …..”
Or
“Person P is an Orthodox Christian if and only if P is a Basic Christian and P believes…..”
This type of formality is only used here and in one or two other places. Yet nowhere does the reasoning or discussion use these formalities. I have seen the same kinds of devices in my early writing when I was trying to pretend I was very knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I suspect the same thing here. He then introduces an extra belief statement that Jesus is the model of ethical behavior. He also adds to the definition that a Christian attempts to follow the ethical teachings of Jesus.

At this point, he appears to be reasonable enough, and one can easily accept his starting premises so far. Based on what occurs in the rest of the book, one has to be very careful. He is actually setting up a bait and switch. He will define Orthodox Christianity very rigidly, add biblical literalism, attack it in detail, then claim he has made a case against Christianity, when all he has done is point out the illogic of literal reading and interpretation of the creeds and the Bible.

In the Introduction which we are still considering, he states that these articles of belief are assumptions, and then raises some questions concerning them. Here is where we see some beginnings of tilting the argument in the givens. He divides the beliefs into three groups, historical, theological, and ethical. That of itself is not an issue, it is how he sorts them that starts creating concern.

He groups the existence of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, the Crucifixion by Pilate, and the Resurrection as historical theses. He then states that historical methods are applicable to determining the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. He also makes the claim that historical research is relevant to the determination of the truth of the Second Coming, and in deciding whether Jesus was the Son of God and not a mere man. He also wants to use historical evidence in Jesus’ teachings about salvation and ethics. First of all, he is asking us to agree to the historicity of these events as determining their truth or falsity. These are articles of faith. To some degree they are based on historical events, but one does not make an argument strictly from history in these cases. Moreover, he is also making a claim that he can present a historical case for or against these. As we continue in the book, he does a poor job of it compared to the work I have seen written by true historians.

Considering that the issue of the Virgin Birth may possibly hinge on translation issues of the Koine Greek passages and on interpretation of other scripture, which is contentious in itself, it is hard to believe that historical analysis can provide light here. There have been many previous discussions of the Virgin Birth, and my former pastor said, “My belief is not based on the state of Mary’s hymen.” Of course this puts him outside the author’s definition of an Orthodox Christian, which, as we shall see, is what he is attacking. So the Virgin Birth is as important to our author’s case as it may be to some Christians. The literal Virgin Birth is essential to his case.

The Resurrection is still another issue that does not seem readily amenable to historical methods. The empty tomb may well be in the domain of history, but the explanations may not. The appearances of Jesus after death may be questioned, but ultimately one has not a definitive acceptance or rejection by logic and analysis, but a decision based on one’s own evaluation of the evidence for and against. It is a “fuzzy logic” decision. As for the Second Coming, it is a prediction not a historical event. What we shall see is that he wants to use the absolute, literal statements on when the Second Coming will occur to discredit it.

We shall leave the use of history to decide if Jesus was the Son of God and Jesus’ teachings until the author discusses them.

He then states that the assumptions of the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, and salvation through faith in Jesus raise theological issues as well. He asks some example questions, some of which are immediately not literally true, and some of which have engaged theologians for centuries. He also questions whether Jesus’ ethical views are plausible and if they should be a model of ethical behavior.

The remainder of the Introduction lays out the overall approach of the book. He also mentions that he has two appendices on Divine Command theory of ethics and theories of Atonement. I am not sure why he includes these since he admits that Divine Command theory of ethics is not part of his definition of Christianity, and theory of Atonement is not part of any of the creeds.

This is an ambitious program, requiring the abilities of a historian, a theologian, and an ethicist. People have made a lifetime career of discussion one of the issues he raises, and he is going to cover them all. And, as we shall see, he believes that if one destroys these beliefs by the use of logic one must have destroyed a belief in Christianity or else be deemed irrational. What he forgets is that failure to prove is not disproof. He also is extremely dependent on a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible, a view that is in the minority of Christianity today.

In the first chapter of the book, “The Basis of Christian Belief,” he asks the question, “Under what conditions should one believe Christian doctrines?” This is the first step in creating a tilted playing field for the discussion. He is assuming that belief is conditional, and that people arrive at belief via reason. For he then answers his question, “Surely the answer that recommends itself to reason and common sense is: Other things being equal, one should believe them only if there are good reasons to do so.” Of course his goal is to show there are no good reasons to do so. What is totally ignored is that religious issues are not decided solely on the basis of reason. They are more often decided on the basis of emotional perception and subjective experiences. Such inputs are not subject to reason and therefore “Other things” are never equal. He then creates a classification of reasons to believe into “epistemic reasons,” reasons that make the doctrines likely, and “beneficial reasons,” reasons that benefit the believer. He in turn creates two categories from the beneficial reasons, “moral” and “prudential.” He also considers interpretation of the answers either broadly, which includes all the reasons, or narrowly, which includes only epistemic reasons.

At this point we begin to see the outlines of his approach. The next sentence reads, “There is a strong presumption that one should believe Christian doctrines only on epistemic reasons.” He references his own prior book, Atheism: a Philosophical Justification to support the claim. Considering that epistemic grounds are those which can be demonstrated or supported with objective evidence, he has immediately created a bias in the rule set that eliminates any considerations other than physically evidential. If one buys that condition of the argument one has essentially ceded the battle before it starts. When he couples that with a demand for literal interpretation of creed and scripture, it is easy for him to claim that Christianity fails to be reasonable by his criteria. He waxes on in the paragraph about the unstated dangers of believing Christian doctrine on insufficient evidence. This begs the question: “Insufficient by whose standards?” He also makes a point of the possibility of being epistemologically irresponsible, which sounds good but has no useful meaning, unless one takes the time to define what is “epistemological responsibility.”

At this point he concludes: “…there is both a moral duty and an epistemic duty not to believe in Christian doctrines unless there are good epistemic reasons to believe them. It is indeed a strange view of belief that thinks it is totally subject to duty and reason. Like most fundamental parts of a person’s being, beliefs are built up from far more than just reason and physical evidence. Generally, in this author’s experience, belief is changed only by major experiential events or prolonged intellectual struggle, not some facile discussion of epistemic evidence.

He next discusses beneficial reasons. He states that beneficial reasons might be used when the epistemic evidence is even, i.e. as a tie-breaker. He also says that it is allowable for belief for beneficial reasons if the epistemic evidence is inadequate or, in very special instances when it goes against belief. His justification, however, for this approach is utilitarian, saying that the belief from beneficial reasons will result in benefits and not result in “long-term adverse effects on society, its institutions, and human personality and character.” He presents a couple of rather far-fetched examples of possible beneficial reasons to believe. He is attempting to make the decision to believe one of utilitarian choice, and finally states that there are no reasons to accept a Christian God over any other supernatural being, and that personal happiness is a decision based on individual background. It is interesting that in his discussion of beneficial reasons, he mentions Pascal and William James as having made beneficial arguments, but he simply dismisses them. The fact is that other than his straw men, he does not deal with any of the theological discussions over the ages concerning beneficial reasons to believe. It is a case of silence and tip-toeing by.

He then asks, “Cannot Christian doctrines be based on faith? “ He then looks at the discussions of faith by Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He uses them as stalking horses, considering them as representative of their type of faith arguments and states that if he finds problems with these then there will be problems with discussions that are similar. Of course he ignores the possibility that there might be discussions that are not based on the same ideas as these three.

I have not read Thomas Aquinas and therefore cannot judge the accuracy or the fairness of his summary of Aquinas’ arguments. Professor Martin states that Aquinas uses the existence of miracles the success of the Christian church, and the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy as evidence of the truth of Christian doctrine. He then proceeds to state that these are not adequate supports. Though I would have liked to see more of why he considers miracles a problem, in a generic sense I agree with that statement. His saying other religions are successful by the same criteria is true today, but in Aquinas time, the Roman Catholic church was the only major church. His disputing the Biblical Prophecies by pointing out the failure of the Second Coming, is to revert to Biblical literalism. On this last issue, even by Aquinas’ time it was being interpreted as symbolic rather than literal. The problem is that Professor Martin is disputing a thirteenth century discussion using modern perspectives. That is similar to arguing that a flintlock muzzle-loader is ineffective and useless because there are now automatic rifles. At the time the flintlock was used it was effective. It is the same for Aquinas. There have been many more modern discussions of faith since then, and many of them could be considered “traditional.”

The choice of Kierkegaard for faith is to choose one of the extremes of justification of faith. According to Professor Martin, Kierkegaard argues that a total commitment to a Christian God is necessary even in the face of all contrary evidence, that a belief in God is not justified by reason. Furthermore, Dr. Martin then identifies a Kierkegaardian faith as fanaticism, and discusses the dangers of fanaticism. Dr. Martin then states, “We know from history the incalculable harm that can be done by fanaticism,” and continues with a build-up of the evils of fanaticism. He then condemns Kierkegaard’s definition of faith as a vice not a virtue because he has equated it to fanaticism. At this point he has made several errors. First, he thinks that it is dangerous to be guided by blind, passionate faith. I would argue that it depends on what the guidance is. The example he uses is Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac. That may have seemed dangerous for Isaac, but for Abraham, it would have risked an even greater danger. Professor Martin cannot have his cake and eat it too. If we are going to use utilitarian ethics to judge then don’t suddenly use absolutes of judgment. The discussion of the evils of fanaticism are out of place in the discussion of faith by Kierkegaard. Professor Martin has greatly oversimplified and then caricatured it as fanaticism.

I see no constructive reason why the author chose Wittgenstein as the third exemplar of faith. I know of no Christian doctrine or discussion that is based on Wittgenstein, and from Dr. Martin’s discussion it would not occur. All religions believe in words as common to all of humanity, not as special constructs for their own use. If Dr. Martin’s summary is accurate, Wittgenstein is a retreat from meaning to meaningless internal analysis. Professor Martin and I agree in his last paragraph in this section: “…Christian and non-Christian are really disagreeing and that there is a common language and common categories.” However, we disagree in what he has accomplished. He thinks he has undermined faith as a reason for believing in Christian doctrine. I think he has failed in this task because he chose an outdated discussion of faith, a caricature of faith, and a meaningless view of faith as his exemplars, and having disposed of them generalized it to all of Christian faith, a error.

Now he turns to Christian doctrines as basic beliefs. Using the ideas from the foundational approach to epistemology, one states there are beliefs that are accepted as is and not justified by other beliefs to avoid infinite regress or vicious circularity. Dr. Martin points out that foundational epistemology originally related to simple mathematical and logical statements and to sense experiences. He then discusses the extensions of foundational epistemology to belief in God according Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga supposedly holds that a belief in God is properly basic, i.e. the same as the foundational statements “2+2=4” or “a thing is one thing or not one thing but not both.” However, apparently Plantigna continues by saying that even though it is basic it has grounds for belief. Professor Martin considers this an error and from there to a description of what he considers the problems with Plantigna’s formulation. Finally, he states that Plantigna 1) violates the spirit and intention of foundationalism, 2) claims that no belief can become a basic belief, 3) it makes it too easy for a belief to be considered rational, and 4) that all Christians hold common beliefs that are basic and that they agree on the conditions that make them so. The validity of his arguments is tied up in both his reading of Plantigna and foundational epistemology, neither of which I can comment on. However, his fifth observation is that a belief in God is not appropriate for inclusion in the class of basic beliefs. This I strongly disagree with. To believe in God or not believe in God, i.e. believe in no-God, is of necessity the first choice. It is foundational. Once that decision has been made, everything else is justification for that belief. His discussion is fairly effective in disputing Plantigna on a belief in God as a basic belief. However, I think he has cherry-picked the philosopher he disputes for his particularly weak presentation.

I seriously doubt that Alvin Plantigna is the only religious philosopher to discuss belief, and to take Plantigna, a single example, and then consider the defeat of his arguments as defeating the entire concept of Christian doctrine as belief is analogous to taking out a Sergeant of a company and consider one has defeated the company. His goal in this chapter is to force the discussion of Christianity into a discussion of the epistemological basis of Christian doctrine. For atheists, myself included when I was an atheist, this is the easiest ground upon which to criticize Christian doctrine. However, that does not make it a slam-dunk. To base the entire case against Christianity solely on it epistemology is to ignore most of what religions are about. They are not solely about facts and logic but also the meaning of those facts, and the further implications when allied with personal subjective experience, and testimony of those one wishes to believe.

This essay will deal with the next Chapter in some detail since it concerns itself with the historical Jesus. Since the existence of Jesus is fundamental to Christianity, Dr. Martin’s treatment of the subject is important. This is an area in which I have done some study, so am slightly familiar with the literature and the scholars in the field.

Chapter 2, “The Historicity of Jesus,” begins with a very cursory overview designed to lead to the question, “Did Jesus really exist?” To quote the final paragraph of this peroration: “This chapter, then, considers the question of whether there is reliable historical evidence for the assumption for the historicity of Jesus. It will also ask if there is any historical evidence against this assumption.” To do this he draws primarily on one author, G. A. Wells, and does not discuss any work of the main scholars in the search for the historical Jesus (A review of the current activity in the field lists 19.) A reading of the end notes reveals a preponderance of titles indicating disbelief in the existence of Jesus. Considering that Gert Theissen and Annette Mertz published a major book (The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, Fortress Press, 1998) that was a guide to the literature on the historical Jesus and contained hundreds, if not close to or over a thousand references to the literature, Dr. Martin can hardly claim to have properly researched the topic. From my reading to date, there is much judgment in evaluating the evidence, and I think that Dr. Martin cannot claim any kind of impartiality here.

On with the review. Dr Martin opens the main thrust of his arguments with the common observations concerning the difficulties verifying independently the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. He generalizes the issue by saying, “Skepticism about the details of Jesus’ life can generate skepticism about his very existence.” He then claims that the most respected contemporary critique of the life of Jesus is G. A. Wells. He claims he is well known, and that his position is singled out by apologists for the historical Jesus. (A survey of the literature in my library, including authors that do not favor the current interpretations of Jesus’ life, do not list G. A. Wells as a source, despite Dr. Martin’s claim.)

Regardless of his esteem or lack of it, one still has to look at Well’s argument on its own merits. A proper presentation of Well’s argument is beyond the scope of this essay. It consists primarily of pointing to the Gospels as inadequate historical documents, Paul’s lack of mention of the details of Jesus’ life, the theological goals of the Gospels, the inadequacies of secular confirmation of the events in Jesus’ life, the inability to state dates accurately, and some reasoning on the sequence of appearance of certain narratives in the post-Gospel literature. Wells then concludes that Jesus was actually a myth based on the Jewish Wisdom literature. However, as one reads this summary, one finds that Wells exercises considerable judgment on what is and is not adequate evidence or mention of Jesus.

In discussing the criticisms of Wells, Dr. Martin quotes men that are not part of the mainline historical Jesus scholarship. He thus can be accused of trying to win his point by deliberately skewing the evidence. This area is so complex and difficult, that to try to treat it in a single chapter of 36 pages is not realistic. Based on the selection of scholars, the conclusion was foregone. Because of his own position and the goal he is trying to attain, Dr. Martin gives high credibility to skeptical positions and low credibility to affirmative positions on the existence of Jesus. Since there are figures in history from about the same time that are considered real on the basis of equivalent or even less information, it would appear that for Dr. Martin the stringency of proof for the life of Jesus’ is higher than for others.

The chapters on the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth and Second Coming, and The Incarnation deal with material that can be widely interpreted among Christians. Dr. Martin consistently requires a literal reading when referring to the Gospel stories, which literal reading is easily disputed and defeated. He uses his apparent destruction of a preceding doctrine as part of his case against the current doctrine under discussion. I am not going to discuss these chapters in any detail, as I would not present an effective discussion. I am currently working on my own formulations of the Resurrection and is sequels; I am partial to Mark, not Matthew or Luke concerning Jesus origins (unknown), I think the statements of the Second Coming has much to be discussed as to how and why they were recorded, and I do not believe in the Incarnation. However, unlike Dr. Martin, I do not consider these as reasons to discard Christianity or partial Christian belief.

I do think Dr. Martin’s discussion of Christian ethics warrants looking at in some detail. Though I don’t think it alone can make a case against Christianity, it does reveal some interesting overlaps between Christian and secular ethics.

Dr. Martin considers Jesus’ ethical teachings and example as essential to the case against Christianity. He also considers them important in substantiating the Incarnation. I directly disagree with this last statement. If Jesus’ behavior is to be emulated, to validate it by appealing to the Incarnation is to provide what I call the Divine Cop-out—how could we possibly be as good as Jesus, since he was divine? For Jesus to provide an example of proper human behavior, that behavior must come from someone who is completely and absolutely human while acting. Any other interpretation is to require behavior that is not possible for humans. From my point of view, Incarnation and Jesus example as a human are not related. Dr. Martin does consider the emulation of Jesus’ teachings and behavior as part of being a Christian, even the most liberal type of Christian, and in that I would agree.

The second paragraph of this chapter is a minefield full questions that can only be answered subjectively:

”Our first job is to try to become clear on what Jesus’ teachings were. As we shall see, this is not as easy as it may seem. Once we have some idea of Jesus’ ethics we must consider his gospel impartially and ask: Do Jesus’ teachings provide a workable ethics? Would a sensitive moral observer agree with what he taught? Was Jesus an ideal moral model? Would a sensitive moral person do what Jesus did? In addition, we must ask how Christian ethicists have interpreted Jesus’ saying. In so doing we must determine how Christian ethics differ from plausible systems of secular ethics and if Christian ethics have clear advantages over these secular systems.

His second sentence is a massive understatement. What Jesus said and what he meant by what he said is an active and controversial field today. Dr. Martin can only make his own evaluation of the issue, not a complete and overarching one that would allow him to make a clear pronouncement on Christian ethics. So from the start we have to take the position that he is discussing HIS interpretation of Jesus teachings. Dr. Martin makes a common mistake in the next sentence, the Gospels are not Jesus’ gospels, they are about Jesus not by him. This is a nit in one sense, but possibly important in how he deals with them. We must always keep in mind that the Gospels are what their authors wanted us to know about Jesus, and as such are not true biographies. Their purpose is to teach religious truth, not historical truth. The next four questions are completely open to subjective judgment—workable by what standard, what is meant by “a sensitive moral observer”, what is “an ideal moral model,” and what is meant by “a sensitive moral person?” The last two sentences actually have valid grounds for discussion, and a program of comparing the understanding of Christian ethicists to that of secular ethicists would be a topic for a major book in itself. I don’t doubt that there have been such books written. The one caveat that we must keep in mind for such a discussion is who are the Christian ethicists and who are the secular ethicists? One must be either very comprehensive or at least representative or the discussion becomes simply the comparison of two ethicists to one another, not a general comparison of Christian to secular ethics.

One of the major themes in the discussion of the historicity of Jesus, was that Paul and the Epistles, several of which were written prior to the Gospels do not quote Jesus’ teachings, even when in Dr. Martin’s opinion, it would be to the advantage of the writer to do so. He uses this a presumptive evidence that Jesus’ teachings were actually made up after the fact. This is a naïve representation of the issue, as the purpose of the Epistles was quite different from the purposes of the gospels. The analogy would be the Epistles are to the Gospels, as administrative letters are to the papers of incorporation of a company. The former does not necessarily need to quote the latter in performing their purpose. We must also remember that we do not know the complete context of any of the Epistles or the Gospels other than their internal content and the times in which they were written. There is far more room for selective interpretation than Dr. Martin would have us believe. However, Dr. Martin uses this argument to immediately cast doubt on Jesus’ teachings as being those of Jesus. He then chooses to continue his discussion as if the teachings as related in the Synoptic Gospels were the teachings of Jesus.

In developing his interpretation of Christian ethics, he acknowledges indebtedness to the following: An Atheist’s Values, by Richard Robinson, Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H. Smith, and “Why I am not a Christian” in Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, by Bertrand Russell. From the start he is using an interpretation from three atheists, not even his own interpretation. Immediately one wants to question whether he has read the Gospels himself or is simply taking someone else’s word for it. The remainder of the section quotes some of the most contentious and difficult of the Gospel verses—the so-called “hard verses”—because of the difficulty of preaching on them when taken literally. This, of course, is exactly what Dr. Martin wants to do, regardless of whether this is indeed what is commonly done in Christian churches. What follows is the playing of verses from one Gospel against another, without regard to any of the higher criticism that has occurred over the last one hundred years. This is the same kind of sophistry that Shelby Spong exhibited in one of his books, showing that literal interpretation of the Bible is contradictory. This is not news to any person educated in Christianity. This is where much of the intellectual work of biblical scholars, atheist, agnostic, and theist, has gone over the past hundred and fifty years.

When Dr. Martin discusses Jesus’ life as an example of his ethical teachings, he is selective in what he chooses and plays off the gentleness in Luke against the more judgmental stories in Matthew and Mark. He also accuses Jesus of anti-intellectuality because of his teachings that say to be as children, and to believe what he said. This ignores much of what Jesus said and did at other times, and definitely ignores the context of his teaching. One of the interpretations of his teachings is that he was working against the legalism of the Pharisees to get back to the spirit of the Law, not its absolute behavioral proscriptions. What comes out of the selections of Jesus behavior is more a caricature than a picture of him. His teachings are also evaluated by modern criteria rather than by the times in which he taught. Again, this time implicitly rather than explicitly, Dr. Martin is depending on a literal rather than a metaphorical or allegorical reading of the scripture. Such literalism is confined to only a subset of Christianity. In using a literal interpretation, he makes charges of unrealism and anti-intellectualism.

The section on “What Jesus’ Practices and Teachings Neglect” again depends on literalism in interpretation. Here is the opening of the section:

“Many Christians profess to find in the moral teachings of Jesus answers to all the moral questions of modern life. Needless to say, he explicitly addressed few of the moral concerns of our society today. For example, he said nothing directly about the morality or immorality of abortion, the death penalty, war, slavery, contraception, or racial and sexual discrimination.”

The implication is that since Jesus did not explicitly discuss these issues it is not possible to obtain moral guidance on them. In this case it is not scripture, but Dr. Martin that is being anti-intellectual. He fails to credit the reader with being able to extend a lesson beyond its examples.

Dr. Martin then continues stating that it is not clear what can be deduced from his sayings and activities. He tries to show that Jesus was inconsistent on the subject of poverty, and also condemns him for not explicitly condemning slavery. Such simplistic analyses do not belong in a serious book. These areas have been the subject of much comment and study over hundreds of years. When one considers that the evangelists that wrote the Gospels were selecting material to present their interpretation of Jesus and his teachings, and that they also had to work within a highly censorious atmosphere socially, not all topics would necessarily be quoted. Also slavery in Roman times varied in its causes and the way it was carried out. In fact, some slavery was voluntary. Our modern image of slavery did not necessarily fit the reality of Roman times in many cases. So not only has Dr. Martin depended on a literalism that is inappropriate, he also fails to consider the overall context of Jesus’ times vs. ours.

In the next section of this chapter, “Evaluation of Jesus’ Ethics,” Dr. Martin discusses specific “commandments” that form what he considers Jesus’ ethics. These “commandments” are a formulation by Richard Robinson, in his book, An Atheist’s Values The first is what he terms the Love of God and Faith in Jesus commandments. To quote the first paragraph:

The harsh otherworldly aspect of the Love of God Commandment is accepted by few Christians today. For example, only sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses hold doctrines approximating to the view that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that one should not be concerned about the future, that one should give up everything, including one’s family, to follow Jesus. Although these are clear messages of Jesus they are ignored by most Christians.

Yet he goes on to expand on this, claiming that Jesus was not simply pointing out that people need to focus less on the future and more on enjoying living, but that people should rely on God for everything. He admits that many theologians reject a complete dependency on God to do it all. But he cannot resist pointing what he sees as the error, even though it is not part of mainline Christian thought. Again his discussion depends on a simple literalistic interpretation of what Jesus was saying as if it were a stenographic quote of his words.

He dismisses what he terms the Faith in Jesus Commandment by saying that it depends on the truth of the Incarnation, which he considers to already be destroyed by his discussion of it. This so-called commandment is based on an interpretation of Luke, and is also heavily dependent on the translation being used to justify it. It concerns the belief that Jesus was the actual son of God and that he claimed to be the Messiah.

The next “commandment” is labeled the Purity of Heart and Language Commandment. This is not a direct commandment but is a synthesis by Robinson from the verses in Matthew 5:21-36. Dr. Martin then goes on to discuss how these are in conflict with modern psychology, leading to harmful repression, followed by a discussion in which he points out that following certain lines of thought can indeed be harmful. He then attempts to argue that modern discussion is based on consequences but that is not what Jesus was saying, that Jesus was arguing the thoughts were harmful in themselves. Dr. Martin appears to be following someone else’s discussion and has not created his own from direct reading. The discussion of this section is inconclusive, and actually is one of the more honest sections in the book.

The Commandment of Humility is also synthesized from sayings in the Synoptic Gospels concerning giving and praying in secret, and serving others. Dr. Martin tries to first show that taken to the extreme, being totally retiring can be foolish, using a crisis example. He also tries to say that public giving may be altruistic, that it depends on motive. He also takes the extreme position of not judging others to show it is also unrealistic. He considers it unclear if a less extreme position is what Jesus meant.

At this point, the discussion of Jesus’ ethics is based on another atheist’s synthesis of the commandments from the Synoptic gospels. It also appears to be based on an absolute literalism and an ignoring of both social, Biblical, and temporal contexts. To this point, Dr. Martin almost appears to want his cake and eat it too. He admits that few modern Christians accept the harsh literal interpretation he is condemning, yet still makes the effort to condemn it. It is almost as if he desperately need to score every negative point he can.

The remainder and bulk of the chapter is spent on a discussion of the Love Your Neighbor Commandment. Here is his opening paragraph:

Whatever problems there may be with the ethical teachings and practice of Jesus as they are portrayed in the synoptic Gospels, many Christians would insist that the essential core of the Christian message is the commandment to love your neighbor. Let us sample some of the interpretations of this commandment that have been provided by recent Christian ethical theorists and see if it is acceptable. It should be clear in what follows that some of these contemporary interpretations of Christian ethics have come a very long way from Jesus’ obscure and questionable pronouncements in the Gospels. Indeed, stripped of its theological gloss, recent Christian ethics has a considerable overlap with secular ethical theory. Thus, the question arises of why it should be preferred.

He chose as his examples, Paul Ramsey, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Gene Outka. He also mentions in a footnote a source for four other examples.

Dr. Martin considers Paul Ramsey’s Basic Christian Ethics to be “[o]ne of the clearest and most thoughtful interpretations of contemporary Christian ethics.” From the extensive quotes and discussion presenting Ramsey’s views, Ramsey interprets the scripture concerning loving ones neighbors as having an apocalyptic basis, but that basis is not necessary for them to be valid today. One of the points Dr. Martin makes is the dropping of the hellfire and damnation and vengefulness portions (as Dr. Martin sees them) from Jesus’ teachings. The emphasis is on Jesus mercy and kindness. Dr. Martin then says:

Non-Christians and even humanists can in principle accept Ramsey’s ethical teachings when they are divorced from their theological underpinnings, and despite Ramsey’s claim that Christian ethics cannot be separated from its religious foundation, they can be. There seems to be no reason why non-Christians and secularists could not hold Ramsey’s view about, for example, self-defense and the problems of utilitarianism. The crucial question is whether there would be any justification for them to do so.

But Dr. Martin’s payoff in choosing Paul Ramsey is that Ramsey preaches total non-resistance to anything, not even non-violent resistance. Dr. Martin then pounces on this to show that Ramsey is unjustified in his self-defense position and that his discussion of utilitarianism adds nothing to the criticisms of utilitarianism. He also points out that a justice principle might be an adequate substitute for the love of neighbor. To a secularist this may seem plausible, but not to a Christian. There is depth and implications to loving ones neighbor as oneself that go beyond a simple principle of justice. Dr. Martin also points out that ignoring indirect consequences can be harmful even if one is exactly following the principle of loving ones neighbor as oneself. He of course resorts to an extreme example, but then he has also selected an extreme example of an ethicist to discuss in the first place.

Dr. Martin’s discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr interprets Niebuhr as saying that Jesus preached an impossible ethical ideal that nonetheless has validity today as a guide to our own day-to-day ethical behavior. Niebuhr is taken as thinking that “we cannot live up to the ethical ideal of Jesus because of our human nature.” There is further explication on Niebuhr’s themes, and much of it appears fair. Martin then points out. “Although Niebuhr ties his ethical view closely to Christian religious doctrines there is no a priori reason to do so. Thus a non-Christian and even a secularist could maintain that although the ethics of Jesus is an impossible ideal, it nevertheless provides insights abut and serves as a source of criticisms of actual ethical systems.” He expands on this idea showing how a secularist might find the same ideals but with different justification.

Then Dr. Martin suddenly shifts to his belief system.

I have suggested that even secularists could accept the view that human beings are fundamentally egoistica and attempt to base their belief on the findings of history and the social sciences. However, I am skeptical that this attempt would be successful. Although the rindings of history and social science provide much evidence of human beings acting selfishly there is little reason to suppose that selfish human action is innate and unchangeable or that altruism on a worldwide scale is impossible. There is, after all, ample evidence of human beings acting on purely altruistic motives. We are far from knowing when and under what conditions, however, human beings act with unselfish motives and how altruism can be promoted.

Dr. Martin then considers that Niebuhr’s description of what the law of love amounts to as inadequate and providing clearly what it entails. On those grounds he rejects the interpretation and offers an example of having to chose whether oneself or ones neighbor dies, and the law of love providing no answer. I don’t know that any ethical system other than pure immediate self-interest does provide that answer.

The third ethicist is Gene Outka, who wrote Agape: An Ethical Analysis. Outka is shown to discuss agape as an equal regard for all humans, but a response that takes into account their needs and abilities. That despite regarding them as of equal worth, one responds and treats different people differently. Dr Martin dismisses the theological justifications for agape as being dependent on a belief in God. He does raise the idea that theological statements of is do not necessarily entail the ought of our behavior, and considers Outka to have inadequately addressed this.

Dr. Martin then briefly describes Outka’s comparisons of agape to contemporary secular ethical thinking. He then posits that there might not be any real difference between Outka’s agape and a principle of equalitarian justice combined with a principle of beneficence. His concluding discussions for this section dwell primarily on the issues of the is-ought gap, and also concludes that Outka does not generate more doubt for creating a secular version of agape than a religious one, and that the open question of how much overlap there is between secular and religious agape is not due to disagreement among philosophers but to a lack of evidence and clarity on the notion itself.

Dr. Martin then finishes the discussion of agape with the question of whether there might be times when it is moral to be selfish. He provides examples of situations where a short-term constant self-negation leads to long-term negative consequences. In this he is again taking an absolute literal extreme, which few take, as the attempt to discredit agape. He then posits that there are Christian ethicists that would not allow purely selfish action, action which does not at least indirectly carry concern for others.

He concludes the chapter with this statement:

I have argued that it is possible to develop a plausible secular equivalent to the Christian ethics of neighbor love that in this world at least may well have significant overlap with it. Uncertainty on this score reflects our ignorance over the consequences of our actions and the unclarity in the concept of neighbor love itself.

As a consequence I do not see where this forms part of a case against Christianity. I think he is trying to imply that, if one can form an equivalent ethics without God or Jesus, then why bother with either? Overall, however, I consider this his best chapter in the book. Though I question his choice of Ramsey and Niebuhr as model ethicists, suspecting that they were chosen for their ease of disputation, his presentation and discussion of Outka was quite enjoyable to read and made its points well. What comes from the discussion, however, is that making a choice of belief on the basis of ethical systems is not particularly useful, since almost equivalent systems can be constructed within and outside Christianity. In fact, I would argue that such equivalence is a point in favor of tolerance on the part of both non-Christian and Christian for the other.

I will not discuss the chapter on “Salvation by Faith” in any detail. Partly this is because I have my own issues with the doctrine, and partly because I do not see Dr. Martin as raising any new significant points. It does appear that in order for him to argue against salvation, he has an interpretation of an all-good God that implies there is no judgment of people if God is all-good. He also argues that if one accounts for the “scandal of particularity,” i.e. that the infidels that have no opportunity to learn of Jesus are condemned to Hell, then there is no need for salvation by faith in Jesus.

In his concluding chapter, “Christian Responses,” Dr. Martin picks a number of positions, the main one being nonliteralism. He selects Thomas Boslooper, Rudolf Bultmann, and Richard Braithwaite as his exemplars of nonliteral interpretation. The problem is, as Dr. Martin points out, once one rejects literalism, the field is wide open to an infinitude of interpretations. What he has selected are some of the easier ideas to reject. He also makes brief mention of other Christian responses. The commentary on those is based on his earlier arguments in the book.

His concluding paragraph is of importance:

There are alternatives to rejecting Christianity but either they do not seem promising or else they transform Christianity beyond recognition. It would be far more straightforward and rational to reject Christianity outright rather than attempt to salvage it. However, for most of the 1.6 billion Christians in the world rejection if not at the present time a practical possibility. They are either unaware of the problems of the Christian faith or because their training and background, they are believers nevertheless. I have no recommendations to make here about what can or should be done about this regrettable situation.

The Christianity that Dr. Martin would reject exists only for a segment of people calling themselves Christian, the Fundamentalists. Dr. Martin’s arguments rely on literal readings of the scriptures, and even there one could argue over meaning simply because of the many different translations. I have found in my own researches that all theologically important scriptures are translated to be compatible with the translator’s own beliefs. Among the nine translations I own, many passages are identical across all of them, and the critical passages are all different there being as many as nine different versions. The truth is that there are forms of Christianity that are an anathema to other forms of Christianity. It has already been transformed.

I disagree with his statement that it would be more rational to reject rather than to salvage it. Religion does more than provide a system of ethics and belief. It motivates social interaction and individual well-being. People appear to have an innate need to believe in something. In Dr. Martin’s case it would appear to be “rationality,” which he then uses to justify his belief in no-God, just as Christian scholars justify their belief in God. It is a sad commentary, however, that there are people of both types that feel they are justified in trying to force their views on the rest. What Dr. Martin fails to understand is that there is no value to educating non-questioning Christians about the problems with Christianity, as he sees them. He may have the time, energy, and ability to ask and analyze such questions, but most people do not. Even if they have the ability, they have neither the interest nor the time. Their religious beliefs are incorporated in their lives and form part of a behavioral “shorthand” when making judgments. This is of great value in day to day living. Though I question my religion deeply, I do not find other peoples beliefs regrettable. That they do not agree with me is perfectly fine. I don’t have a monopoly on the correct answers, and truth to tell, neither does Dr. Martin. His view of “1.6 billion Christians” is really quite arrogant.

This book is similar to other books of its type. It does everything it can to destroy Christianity, but fails to provide anything in its place. Overall, by the standards of what I have been reading for the past couple of years or more, this is really quite amateurish. It is a long version of much that I wrote when an undergraduate first becoming an atheist. It has an absolute dependence on literal interpretation of the scriptures, which in turn has a heavy dependence on the translation from which the words are taken. I don’t think Professor Martin would stand a chance in a discussion with a Jesuit, or many of the well-known Christian philosophers and theologians. That I, in my modest state of knowledge, could find it so easy to dispute his writing, is in itself a harsh critique of its quality. What we have here is Atheist Fundamentalism, a warping of the religious intellectual landscape to support his anti-Christian, atheistic belief structure, just as the religious Fundamentalist Christians warp the scientific intellectual landscape to support their beliefs.

Introductory Comments
As I have explored in my first attempt at this discussion, determinism can be approached from various levels, and to varying degrees of absoluteness. I explored physical, psychological, and situational determinism. However, when the issue comes up in such discussions as this one, the issue really relates to choice—“Could I have done otherwise?”—to quote from Daniel Dennett. Thus we see the entanglement of free will with determinism and their potential antithetical characters.

Having shown in the preceding papers that the problem of a deterministic universe is insoluble, we now arrive at the question of free will. In the discussions I have seen, the argument is simplified to “if the universe is deterministic there is no free will and if it is not, there is.” What I shall try to do in this paper is show that free will exists regardless of the deterministic state of the universe.

So how should we approach this issue? Do we consider free will as existing when we could have done otherwise but did not know of the other choice(s)? Or does it exist only to the degree of our ability to see the choices? In the day to day world, this is probably the most common concept of free will, though we often will later do a Homer Simpson (Say, “Doh!” And smack our foreheads.). For this discussion to even attempt to be conclusive or effective, we will adopt the definition of having a choice whether we see the choice or not. In saying we have a choice, we are saying that at the point of choice, there is no influence on the choice but our own real or potential considerations. But there is a subtlety here. We could certainly say there is free will if the choice can be made randomly, but the choices that mean something are not random.

This is the importance of the whole discussion, our ethical decisions. It is having free will that makes us responsible agents. If we do not have a choice, then how can we be held responsible for the consequences? However, as important as our ethical choices are, the issue is more general and deals metaphysically with all our choices. In other words do we have any choice at all, or is it just an illusion? Here much as our emotions and intuitions motivate the investigation of the question, they are not a reliable guide, because we naturally want our choices, and believe we have them.

The definitions of determinism are frequently assumed in these discussions, at least in the more casual ones. Since we are dealing with human choice we need to look at what determinism means in that context. Implied in all discussions of this question is that ultimately the choice is connected to the physical world and the question is one of, “Is the physical world deterministic?” If we accept the concept of a separate, independent soul[2], then the question becomes moot, because such a soul is not influenced by the physical world and therefore has free will in this sense. One can postulate other non-physical influences, but then we are into speculation and not philosophy. This is the dualism problem. The difficulty with it is, how does the soul exist in a physical body? So whether we accept having a soul or not, for our discussion here, whatever is making the choices is dependent upon our brain for the means and methods.

Though we haven’t proven it, the connection to physical determinism, if that exits, is at least plausible or probable, if not true. But at what level do we take that determinism. In my earlier writing, and here as well, I show that the psychological processes as mediated by the nervous system were inherently non-deterministic, and independent of atomic determinism even if that existed. But even if atomic determinism does not apply, and that might still be an open issue, can we argue determinism from our experiences? In the sense that our experiences create the knowledge base from which our choices are made, we might argue that our choices are determined by experience. (But this is not the same exact meaning of determinism we are trying to deal with.) To the degree that our knowledge is deficient we might have our choices constrained. But above I explicitly stated that having unknown choices constitutes free will. It is analogous to the legal standard that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for wrong behavior.

Actually I think we have here an actual disconnect from the ethical free will question and the metaphysical question of determinism. The metaphysical question does not make assumptions concerning the connection of the physical world to the mental one. It assumes the connection exists. But I have never seen the connection explicitly stated. Is it via the influence of physics and chemistry on the nervous system or is it via our experiences? In my earlier discussions I assumed the former, and we will have to explicitly discuss this connection below, but the latter changes the basis for discussion. If determinism is via our experiences, then the question is either moot or subject purely to our definition of determinism and free will. However, in the preceding paper in this series, I showed we cannot determine if the physical universe is or is not deterministic. Thus any discussion of free will must be in the context of universal determinism as being a moot question.

The Nature of Choices
One of the things that is important here is what actually constitutes a choice? In saying that free will is the capability to make choices, what do we mean by making choices? A compulsive gambler or a drug addict is said to chose to do what they do, and yet they appear to be constantly doomed to make the same choice over and over. That they can be cured, if not in all cases, shows that these behaviors are indeed choices. If we simplify the nervous system involved and look at a rat in a maze that is subject to conditioning, we see that even there the concept of choice applies. Over time the rat will chose to go the preferred route, but if the reward is removed, eventually it will chose randomly or by some innate preference, e.g. preferentially the right or left branch. In the case of the rat, the choice is more primitive, but there still appears to be some process by which a selection is made.

We are still assuming that we know what a choice is. But if we look deeper at it, the issue is less obvious. Choices are alternatives that can be taken in an exclusive sense, i.e. A or B but not A and B, or rather, A then C or D, or B then E or F, where at some point we can no longer take the alternative. Having followed or chosen one path, the other becomes closed. So how do we go about selecting among alternatives? Often, and probably most of the time, the process is not a fully conscious, logical one.

One way of looking at the process is that there is a large, complex set of desires, criteria, and aversions that we compare events and alternatives to, and based on the overall “score” against this set, we make the choice. To make it even more complex there are weights or importance attached to various criteria, which can cause a high value of one criteria to outweigh all the others. This type of selection process could be semi-automatic when the primary criteria are sensory. It may be almost completely sub-conscious when the decisions have a strong emotional content, e.g., falling in love. Ask someone why they love someone, and there will be all sorts of specifics mentioned, but none of them sound like something that would be overwhelming on the surface. Sorting out these sorts of unconscious choices is the basis of psychotherapy when the choices lead to detrimental behavior.

There are also choices made consciously that are either due to logic or the application of an overriding principle, regardless of the emotional state associated with it. Here we can introduce a factor that I will come back to later, prediction. Emotional states and choices are here and now. They are based on an instant summation of our lives to date with respect to the choice. Consciousness, however, can look at a situation and consider what might happen in the future as a result of the choice, and do so for various alternatives. In so doing, it may find that what is momentarily desirable, is not so in the longer term, and lead to a choice counter to the emotional desire. At other times, the emotional state wins over rationality. Here we see what might be considered true choices or the expression of free will.

However, deciding the question based on outcomes is wrong. So far we have done nothing to rule out or rule in determinism in the choices. After all, one could argue that the emotions are determined in one way and the rationality in another. Even if we consider the times we make a mistake on something that we normally do correctly, the question is not resolvable, since one can argue either side, we were not sufficiently aware to catch the mistake or see our error as it was occurring and consider inattention a choice, or that some event occurred that made the mistake inevitable.

The Nature of the Nervous System
Since we are stating that choices are a function of the physical brain, the question becomes more complicated because the central nervous system really can be seen to have three levels, brain-stem and spinal cord, mid-brain and limbic system, and neo-cortex or the grey and white matter. All the discussions I have seen focus on the neo-cortex for that is where our rational thinking occurs. But our emotions come from the mid-brain and limbic system, and the automatic functions that control our body and maintain its constant internal environment come from the brain-stem and spinal cord. The brain-stem and spinal cord are also the first stages in sensory input and the final stages in output. For our choices to be determined, we have to demonstrate determinism at all levels of functioning. In this discussion we also must not confuse constraint or lack of options as the same as determinism. For example, in an ideal world in a dangerous situation we might have the choices of dealing with the danger in one of several ways or simply fleeing. If we are physically incapable of fleeing or cannot for some external reason, we still have choices as to how to deal with it.

In any given situation, all three levels of the brain are making some sort of decision. The closest to determinism is the brain-stem and spinal cord. There behaviors are reflexive, i.e. a given stimulus will elicit a standard response. The integrity of the spinal column and peripheral nerves is what a doctor tests with a reflex hammer. The expression of reflexes can be over-ridden from a higher level, such as not flinching or not drawing away from pain, but the nervous pathways still are activated. There are some reflexes that cannot be over-ridden, for example closing ones eyes while sneezing. I’ve tried, more than once. So at the level of the brain-stem and spinal cord, we may say that behavior is determined, that there are no choices expressed at this level. All responses to stimuli are hard-wired in. In this case the determinism is that of a machine, which unless it breaks does the same thing every time to a given external input.

When we move to the mid-brain and limbic system, the situation seems to be less obvious. To some degree emotions seem to be inate or hard-wired in. Even new-born babies seem to express emotion, sadness, anger, and happiness. But these emotions are related to survival in the new-borne. They are a crude form of communication with the mother for needs to be met. As humans mature however, emotions become far more complex and nuanced in their expression. After puberty a whole new set of emotional responses becomes available, based on sexual capability. Emotional responses can be trained or conditioned, depending on the sum of our life experiences. But there are variations on this, for example, one single extremely emotional event can cause a life-long response to similar situations regardless of whether the outcome is the same or not, or a response may be built up over years of similar experiences with similar outcomes.

I also think this area of the brain is part of the source of our intuitions and snap-judgments. There is what is called archecortex. This is analogous to the rat brain of Skinnerian fame. It is at this level that conditioning occurs in rats and other lower level vertebrates. However, when one looks at conditioning experiments, one sees that they never achieve 100% success. There is always a small chance that the rat will chose the “wrong” pathway. If we look at the apparent nature of conditioning, the reason for this becomes fairly obvious. When a rat starts to negotiate a maze, it chooses either randomly or always preferentially one direction or the other. Over time the successful passages (the ones obtaining a reward) increase until they overcome the “randomness” factor. The archecortex seems to be a statistical sum of experience. If portions of it are removed from a trained rat, the performance in a maze is reduced according to how much cortex is removed.. [3] There are two points to be made here, that there is a fundamental choice mechanism that is overridden by experience, and that performance is never perfect. The longer a rat is trained the better is does, but it is never perfect. That is in the nature of statistics. If I have 10 bad events out of 100 there is only a 90% probability that I can make a successful choice. If it becomes 10 of 990 the probability becomes %99.0, and if 10 of 1000, it becomes %99.90. Note that I have to do ten times more runs to get the next order of magnitude of improvement and that I NEVER reach perfection. This is our first hint that brains may not be deterministic.

Note that we haven’t reached free will yet, but we seem to have reached non-determinism, which is a necessary condition for the existence of free will. However, behavioral observation have the same weakness as any other measurement—it is not proof. Even if all we do is hypothesize a random neuron firing that sometimes throws the choice mechanism off course , we have created a situation that is non-deterministic. We have arrived at a very important finding. The issue is not determinism vs. free-will, but determinism vs. non-determinism as the first step in the discussion. However, just because we have non-determinism, it does not mean we have demonstrated, much less proved, free-will, but we have made an important first step. Having a demonstration that it might be possible to eliminate determinism from our discussion (We haven’t done this conclusively. We will have to return to the issue at a more fundamental level.), we have at least acquired grounds to argue for free-will.

Now let us explore the wonderful part of the brain that sets primates off from other vertebrates, and in particular humans, dolphins and other cetaceans. Other than to state that from my readings, it appears that the huge neocortex of cetaceans appears to be specialized to the analysis of sound and location, rather like a huge biological GPS and radar system combined, I will not discuss the neocortex in other than humans. Though it may be interesting speculation, ethical systems and right and wrong in cetaceans has no importance to the current discussion, which has implicitly to this point, and from now forward explicitly, concerns only human free-will and its relationship to determinism.

Though we will have to come back to the question from a more fundamental level later, at the moment we have laid grounds to consider that the human brain is non-deterministic. That from time to time a random event will cause a “wrong” answer at the archecortex level. Just for a moment let us consider the importance of this to survival. Nature changes over time. Climates change, Earth undergoes geologic change such as mountain building or continental drift. What is a “right” answer now may become a “wrong” answer later and vice versa. From an overall survival standpoint, it is necessary to waste energy on an occasional wrong answer, in case it may suddenly become a right answer.

The neocortex or what we normally refer to as the “grey matter” first becomes important in the primates, and it is at this phylogenic level that we start seeing the evidence of what we call intelligent behavior. Humans have the most highly developed form of neocortex, with various areas of the neocortex showing different microscopic structure. This structure is extremely complex with five or six layers, depending on the area, with connections both internal to a given region and external to the rest of the body.

At the cellular level, all neurons behave the same. They receive impulses from other neurons and when enough impulses arrive within a short time span, the nerve fires with a given intensity. Note that additional impulses beyond the firing threshold do not increase the intensity of the firing. Impulses arriving for a time after the firing are ignored, and, in fact, once the neuron has fired it is actually refractory to further impulses, requiring more than the normal threshold, even after it has recovered from the firing. It appears that the neocortex is created with many more connections than it eventually has in the adult. During the first two years of life, these connections diminish but apparently in a way that provides a tuning to the environment the child is being reared in. So there appears to be no pre-determined hard-wiring in the neocortex as in the spinal column and brain-stem.

One of the important features of the neocortex is that a single event can provide retrievable experience for making choices. Unlike the archecortex, the neocortex maintains single discrete events in memory, not the statistical sum of those events. Not only that, but the memory of the event is usually very rich in information, not just the essential information. The detailed mechanisms by which this occurs are still an active area of research. So in the functioning of the neocortex which seems to be where our consciousness is centered, we have a very complex, interconnected network that, in principle, can retrieve any single event or datum that is desired or needed. This is the part of the brain that engages in rational thought, where we create logical arguments for choices or determine choices by some defined algorithm , e.g. writing pros and cons down on paper.

The neocortex can override the archecortex in the expression of behavior, but it is actually subject to the emotions more than we realize. Strong emotion will alter our perception of events, filtering and discarding data that do not agree with our emotional state. Strong emotion can skew our thought processes as well, leading to rationalization of what was not a logical but an emotional decision. In these cases we make the decision at the archecortex level, and then create reasons why we do what we have decided to do.

Looking at how the neocortex works, with no inherent programs and the capability to learn, each choice and its outcome become conscious data for the next choice. We can make nuanced judgments on results, quantifying them vs. a simple good/bad type of classification. We also bring into play many factors, not just the few that have emotional significance, and can override the emotional factors. Because we can recall single events, we can make a choice based on the single event instead of the sum of all similar events. But in all this apparent flexibility, can there be determinism?

In the sense of neurological determinism, no. The neocortex is not hard-wired, everything is a function of our experience. But in addition, the structure of the underlying archecortex comes into play providing an emotional ground for our thinking. As we have shown earlier the emotional ground is empirically non-deterministic, and we can create a rationale for this. In the case of the neocortex with its ability to constantly learn, every moment of the day is creating changes in its structure and connections. The same response to a given situation is not guaranteed the next time, because the brain making the decision is not the same. But can we say that given a set of experiences the choice is determined for the next time? Only if we can say that the responses of the brain to that set of experiences is the same. This condition is essentially impossible. It would not be possible to control all the environmental variables to recreate the same responses. Ultimately the question would be, if we put a person through the same set of events multiple times, would they react the same every time? As I have tried to show above, putting them through the same set of events sequentially would not give the answer, as each time through, the brain and the knowledge would change. Plus, how could one completely recreate the same set of events. The amount of sensory information the brain processes is enormous. The only way to answer this question is to return in time to the same set of circumstances with the brain in the same state. This is meaningless because the decision has been made before and is fixed in history.

Then can we ask the question in a different form? Does a given set of events cause a particular structure change in the brain from which comes a determined choice? Starting with the set of events, how can we adequately define them? Only in a tightly controlled environment would there be a true definition of the events. In terms of their impact on the brain and its structure and knowledge content, the prediction can only be in very general terms, i.e. the knowledge appears to be stored in a given area, but because of the impact of various emotional states and the undetermined nature of the existing connections to date, it is not possible to say that a particular structure will occur. Since we cannot determine a structure, we cannot determine behavior from the structure. This is not a question that can be determined empirically, because our knowledge will never be sufficiently complete to answer the question.

Though one might argue that if we knew all the connections, we could then predict the subsequent changes, knowing all the connections or for that matter any specific connections when the organism is living is not possible. Any measuring technique that could detect a connection without destroying the organism would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of connections, which is on the order of ten to a very large power. Also once one had the connections, there is still the matter of the firing state of every neuron, because that impacts the next firing. We cannot answer the question from a prediction-by-humans standpoint, but can we answer it on principles alone?

Let us start with a brain in a given instant of time with a particular structure and a particular neuro-electrical state. A complex stimulus is generated and the brain reacts. The stimulus first passes through the senses to the spinal cord and brainstem. It is processed reflexively there, and continues at the same time upward to the archecortex and the neocortex. In the meantime, those two structures are continuing to process earlier data. There is a lag time between stimulus and conscious response on the order of two-tenths to half a second. During that time millions of neuronal firings have occurred and the state of the brain has changed extensively. If those firings can all be shown to be determined then the response to the stimulus might conceivably be determined.

The factors that go into determining a single neuronal response include, the excitatory and inhibitory inputs and their order, strength, timing, and number. The body environment in which the neuron is existing also has an impact, a fever changes the firing and metabolism of the neuron, and different neurons will respond differently. An electrolyte imbalance will also create neuronal problems. Adding to the mix is the fact that nerves have varying propagation times. Some nerves are myelinated (in effect, insulated) and others are not. The myelinated nerves propagate their impulse faster than non-myelinated nerves. In addition, the synapses or junctions between nerves are not direct physical connections, but rather microscopic gaps across which a chemical (neurotransmitter) diffuses. The gap is small enough that the diffusion time is in the millisecond range, but still that microscopic environment is subject to molecular influences, which on an empirical level are random in nature and predictable only statistically for the total volume. In a sense our question then becomes are all these items determined, or in principle determined? And if they are determined for a single neuron, does that imply they are determined for the brain en masse as the summation of all the neurons?

With all the possible influences on a single neuron multiplied by the number of neurons and then by the number of connections, it becomes very tempting to simply state non-determinism in the brain as a fundamental premise. However, convincing as the appearances are, it is necessary to try to determine if those influences are themselves determined. With respect to the neurons, if one neuron is subject to determinism, then all are, and the network connections are also then determined in principle. This leaves the macroscopic and microscopic environments to examine. Actually we can argue that the macroscopic physical environment as a grand summation of the microscopic and atomic environments via statistical mechanics is determined if the atomic environment is determined. By this reasoning we are back to the idea that if the universe is determined on an atomic level then it is determined absolutely.

As I tried to show in the first paper of this series, we cannot demonstrate absolute determinism. We inherently have imperfect measurements, and to actually demonstrate determinism we must have perfect measurements. In the second paper I established criteria for determinism or non-determinism. We can apply these criteria to the nervous system as an entity.

It is easy to show that the nervous system is both irreversible and discontinuous, and thereby non-deterministic. Every nerve impulse is generated by an irreversible procedure. The sum of the various impulses from other nerves finally causes the membrane of a given nerve cell to become permeable to sodium ions. At this point there is a rapid influx of sodium ions that generates a voltage which propagates along the nerve. Any further inputs from other nerves have no effect for a period of time, and also do not enhance the impulse in the discharging nerve. The sodium is then relatively slowly pumped out of the nerve cell by metabolic pumps using energy to force the ions out against a gradient. Reversing this process would be similar to trying to reverse the breaking of glass in its required effort.

The structure of the nervous system is inherently discontinuous, being composed of discrete nerve cells, which do not actually physically merge into one another, but are connected by synapses which are microscopic gaps across which so-called neurotransmitters diffuse in a discharge. Nerve impulses can travel many different paths and are generated in many different combinations of nerves coming together at another nerve. Any nerve cell has hundreds of connections via synapses from other nerves and the total discharge of only a fraction of those are necessary for it to fire. When it does fire, it is a single impulse of the same intensity, regardless of how many stimuli led to the discharge. So not only is the nervous system physically discontinuous, but also electrically in it impulse propagation.

But having gotten to non-determinism does not automatically take us to free-will and responsibility. It lays some necessary ground-work, however.

From Non-determinism to Free Will
Undetermined responses are not the same as a choice. There may be multiple options for behavior at any point, but for them to simply be randomly followed does not constitute free will. Actually, it might be considered a form of determinism in that the individual is not accountable for the path chosen, it was chosen at random. Given what has been said above concerning the overall structure and working of the nervous system, we can proceed to a conclusion that individuals make choices and therefore have free will.

First, we can say that there is intentionality, in the sense that once a “choice” has been made, then action is taken to implement the choice. That can be as simple as wanting something within reach and reaching for it. It is the preceding events that we will deal with in discussing choice, but without the ability to act, whether or not constrained, choices are meaningless.

At the other end of the process are the inputs, and these are complex. Sensory inputs are fundamental, and the processing of sensory input goes through all the levels of the nervous system. Any of the five senses start with nerves at the outside of the nervous system, whose impulses first reach the spinal column or its cerebral equivalent the cranial nuclei. There the reflexive behaviors occur, if not suppressed. These in turn will produce some external events that are sense, and so on. Sensory events are also relayed to the mid-brain (the archecortex areas where the emotions are generated) and to the neocortex, both the conscious mind and unconscious mind.

Before we go any further with a discussion of what happens to the sensory inputs, we need to address and issue that causes a lot of discussion—where is the “I” in me, or where does the sense of self reside. Daniel Dennett in “Consciousness Explained” would have it as distributed throughout the brain and actually being the summation of all the brain activity. As he puts it, there is no Cartesian Theater, a place in the brain from where everything is observed and controlled. I argue from two standpoints that there is indeed a location at which the “self” effectively resides—the frontal lobes.

The first standpoint is that of physical structure. The cortex of the brain has specialized regions for each sense, the temporal area handles hearing and language processing, the back of the brain vision, the top center of the brain touch, the bottom front, smell. Taste is handled by the sensation area in close connection with the smell centers. The frontal lobes receive extensive connections from all of these areas, but no direct sensory information. This physically argues that it is some sort of coordination or correlation center. Also when the connections to this area are cut (the so-called pre-frontal lobotomy), the person typically loses most or all volition and becomes quite passive.

The other argument is from psychiatry. There is a disorder called dissociation, commonly known as multiple personalities. In this disorder, a person can assume a personality totally different from their normal or “host” personality. When the quest personality is active, the host has no awareness of anything. When they come back to control, it is as if there is a gap in experience, and they have no idea of what occurred during the gap. This indicates that there are definite foci at which a personality operates. There needs to be considerable research in brain activity of people afflicted with this disorder. It could be quite revealing in understanding how people are self-aware.

We need to also understand the input data to the ego or self that is used in making decisions or choices. There is of course the sensory data that is relayed from the grey matter areas that originally receive it. There is also the emotional data that is projected to the cortex from the more primitive areas of the brain, what has been termed the archecortex. The emotions amount to a summary to date of all experiences (weighted as to intensity) and the net reaction to them. However, they also tend to be a global, instantaneous average—how I feel right now about my existence, not just how I feel about the thing to be considered, unless it is of great importance. Unless we pay specific attention to them, they create a strong bias in the thinking.

Additionally there are some mental constructs that appear to be unique to humans, specific memories of events and abstract concepts. Specific memories include the sensory, emotional, and intellectual content of the event—what I thought, what I felt emotionally, what I heard, saw, touched, tasted, and/or smelled. We even seem able to focus on parts of the event in more detail, albeit with some effort. The vividness of the memory will depend to a great degree on the emotional involvement with the event. It is similar to the way archecortex operates on its summation of experience, weighting the impact of an experience more heavily, the more intense the emotion. In the case of the neocortex it is the amount of detail that is remembered.

Abstract concepts seem to be summaries based on experiences and/or other abstract concepts but without the sensory and emotional content. They may contain descriptions of the emotions or sensations, but not the memory of them. They are about events rather than being events or memories of events. Abstract concepts can also be rules or guides to behavior, and explanations of how the world works. It is part of the uniqueness of humans that they appear to respond not just habitually or from repeated training, but also on the basis of the application of concepts. It is this latter that leads to the idea of making choices, but we need to look at the processes a bit more closely.

There is a computing technique that has developed over the last thirty years called neural network processing. It is an implementation of a simplified model of a nervous system that is used to make decisions using data that is not necessarily well-defined. I have lost track of the details of its development over the last several years, but it is now a regularly used application, and apparently a lot of what was “art” when I learned about it is now more defined. Essentially it consists of inputting various bits of data relating to a problem and reading out from the output a solution. In between there are various “layers” of emulated neurons. Like a nervous system these emulated neurons have multiple inputs and multiple outputs. They also have a response that is all or none, just as real neurons do. Neural networks have to be trained by feeding them inputs and comparing the result to the expected output. This creates feedback to the network which then adjusts itself to get a closer answer the next time. The adjustment usually consist of changing the weighting that a neuron gives to its inputs in arriving at a threshold for “firing”. When I was playing with these, there was almost a magical quality about watching the adjustments. The same starting network would not create the same final network with the same training, even though the results were the same.

What is important about the above digression, is the concept of weighting of inputs—how much attention does a neural center pay to any given input. Apparently any input associated with an emotion carries a greater weight than either reason or a simple sensation. One of the strongest emotions is fear, and a perceived situation which has fear associated with it, leads to avoidance behavior, either conscious or unconscious. On the opposite pole, ecstatic feelings will lead to behavior which attempts to maximize the feeling, witness narcotic addiction. Despite these commonly occurring patterns, I would contend that there was a choice involved at every instance, and that the behavior becomes habitual only from a phenomenon similar to the training of neural networks.

In the discussion to follow, it is not possible to reduce the actions to the actual nervous impulses, though in principle it should be possible if we completely understood how the brain works. With millions of neurons continually discharging on other neurons and causing, in turn, those to discharge, the situation becomes extremely complex very quickly, especially since the number of connections in the brain has been estimated to be a pretty large exponent of ten. Nerve cells may connect with a few or with hundreds of other nerve cells. However, I still think the overall picture given below is correct in its outlines, given the current state of knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology.

Rather than try to deal with the extreme examples, let us look at more ordinary examples. Let us suppose we are standing in the kitchen, and it is time to fix a meal. The question is what to fix, and is it a reasoned choice, a random choice, or a conditioned choice [4]. Actually it could be any of the three, but still it is a choice. The situation is one is standing in the kitchen, it is time to fix dinner. To be decided is what to fix. Here one can take several approaches, open the pantry and/or refrigerator and see what is available to fix, remember what is available to fix, recall a desire for a particular food, look at a menu plan already created at a past date and time, look at the state of the kitchen and decide that regardless of what is cooked, it has to be cleaned up, ordered, or other non-cooking activity first. Even in this very preliminary step(s) choices are being made.

So let’s try to dig a little deeper into this. If one is standing in the kitchen one has sensory input that is continually being processed. One of the characteristics of the human brain is it is able to focus, in that it can filter from consciousness stimuli that don’t directly relate to the current interest(s). If we are in the kitchen to prepare a meal, we may ignore a curtain out of place, a book on a chair or table (at least until it is time to set the table or move the chair), or other such things that are at least theoretically sensible but not consciously registered. In effect there is an unconscious decision to ignore certain sensations or perceptions, but this is not choice of the type we are trying to demonstrate. However, we may pay attention to the fact that it is hot or cold outside, as that plays into preferences for food. In addition to the sensory data, there is also internal data, memories of food, associations with certain foods, either good or bad, emotions concerning eating both specific food-item directed and more general, self-concepts such as whether or not we are overweight, underweight, weight doesn’t matter, etc. Self-concepts such as “I can’t cook”, “I’m a great cook,” and self-awareness such as “I am exhausted”, “I am happy”, I am feeling sorry for myself.” There are also goal-oriented thoughts such as “I need to lose x pounds”, and evaluation thoughts such as “I can’t stand to eat pre-prepared frozen meals”. Even this kind of sketchy list of inputs is rich enough to show the complexity of the process to arrive at a decision on what to fix.

Based on the model of the brain I subscribe to, all of this is coming together at the frontal lobes. Interestingly enough, it is easy to see the same givens arriving at different decisions, simply depending on how priorities are assigned. Let us suppose that “I have to lose x pounds” has a strong support from emotion, possibly via a negative feeling about how one currently looks, or less support from an abstract notion that one’s current weight is too high. In most situations this leads to choices of what to fix that involve low-calorie, high-nutrient foods. However, supposed one’s emotional state is sad, or self-pitying. This may more than neutralize the emotional support from the negative feelings about one’s appearance. It is important to note that it does not negate the thought that one has a goal to lose weight.

Now let’s look at the materials available for preparing the meal. Assuming that one has had the goal of losing weight for a while, most of the food stuffs will be low calorie, high nutrient ingredients. However, it is possible the makings for so-called comfort food also are present. If we are feeling down in some way, then the comfort food avenue will be the preferred emotional choice. If in the past, that particular food was always associated with someone (usually a mother or grandmother) trying to comfort and make one feel better the choice may be to eat the comfort food. In which case one can argue this is a conditioned choice, as that is the nature of conditioning in the psychological sense—associating a given action with a desirable outcome emotionally or sensorially. In such a decision, the rational process may be subverted into creating rationalizations for the decision. In the event that despite the feelings, and the availability of the comfort food, one chooses the diet food, it could be called a rational decision. I however, there is no food that could act as a comfort food, and the emotions have no input to the choice, then it could well be a random choice. What one has is the first thing that one happened to see or grab.

Depending on upbringing, a person can control the amount of input emotion has to decisions. Though many times emotions control decisions, this does not have to be the case. One can see it in the “count to ten” type of situations, or the teeth-gritting situations, where the non-emotional part is in control. These would qualify as true choices, where the options were strongly opposed, and the weight is strongly on the emotional side. One could have done otherwise—beat the crap out of someone, or chewed them out.

At this point, it is not possible with current knowledge to chart the entire process by which thoughts occur or decisions are made or memories created and recalled. However, all these go into the process which interacts in the frontal lobes with sensations and emotions to produce the ultimate behaviors we see in people. It is possible to argue that even those instances where it appears that principle or reason is stronger than emotion is due to conditioning that came from the emotions giving negative results. However, it also can occur that a single exception to a pattern can permanently change behavior in humans to a different set of behaviors. If it were conditioning, a single exception would have little or no result.

In the last section of this essay I have tried to present the idea that the human brain makes true, conscious choices and therefore does, indeed, have free will. It does not negate the existence of free will if certain choices have extremely negative outcomes such as violent death. After all, early Christians knowingly refused to worship the emperor, and suffered death in the arenas as a result. One cannot argue that their belief system was rooted in conditioning, it was too new, and was strictly abstract. Though we often see choices as far different from those we would make ourselves, it does not negate their being choices.

Regardless of the state of the Universe, deterministic or non-deterministic, we as humans do have free will, and it behooves us to use it the best we can.



[2] Vallicella has looked at this question and wrestled with the problems of dualism extensively in his blog, (and elsewhere?)
[3] This has interesting implications with respect to the functioning of the archecortex. It says that the archecortex does not deal with individual events, but that experience is distributed over the entire cortex. This is in contrast to the neo-cortex, which we have not discussed yet, that deals with individual events.
[4] This is a potentially contentious category given all the history of Skinnerian conditioning. What is meant is a choice that has been weighted by either past history or by emotions.

Labels: determinism, free will, philosophy

Part 2: Metaphysical Reality

Introductory Comments
In working with reality from a metaphysical point of view, we are not as concerned with what we measure as in what we conceive as a result of these measurements. We deal with concepts and their implications as such. We are trying to work with their relationships and what they mean. In this case, we are dealing with absolutes or universals which science can corroborate but cannot prove or disprove. Only internal contradictions may disprove them, and they are proven only to the degree that we accept the truth of the original premises upon which they are based. Because of this we have to first of all decide what we are discussing when we discuss determinism and free will.

As I have explored in my first attempt at this discussion, determinism can be approached from various levels, and to varying degrees of absoluteness. I explored physical, psychological, and situational determinism. However, when the issue comes up in such discussions as this one, the issue really relates to choice—“Could I have done otherwise?”—to quote from Daniel Dennett. Thus we see the entanglement of free will with determinism. If everything is determined then we cannot be held responsible for our choices, but if it is not determined we are. Metaphysics impacts morality. In the third part of this discussion I will show that the two may become disentangled. I will show that whether the Universe is deterministic or not, has no bearing on Free Will.

For this part of the discussion however, I want to deal with the issue of universal determinism. To do this I will work with two concepts first presented in Part 1, reversibility and continuity. By developing the concepts of reversibility and continuity, we will be able to put some constraints on the problem. However, I conclude that the issue is actually moot, that we cannot determine the Determinism of the Universe. [Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.]

What is meant by Determinism
Absolute physical determinism
Absolute physical determinism is synonymous with absolute cause and effect—there is a complete, necessary, and sufficient cause for any effect being observed, or conversely, in principle, one can make observations of causes and exactly predict the resultant effect. This has nothing to do with measurement limitations. It is saying that in principle, without specifying the method, that all events can be exactly predicted.

One of the implications of such a statement is that, if one knows all the positions of the billiard balls in a specific formation, and the exact force used on the cue ball, as well as the configuration of the playing surface and the bumpers and their resilience, one could predict exactly where every billiard ball will go until they all come to rest. Taking it a level lower, if one could in principle specify the exact positions and momenta of all the particles of a collection of atoms or molecules, one can predict its ensuing history. This idea can be expanded to encompass the entire universe, taking into account that the universe is simply a large collection of atoms and molecules.

However, one consequence of such a formulation is, that if a single atom or even a sub-atomic particle moved differently, then the entire history of the universe would be different. (A version of this idea has been used in time-machine science fiction, where someone goes back in time and accidentally kills a butterfly and changes the present he returns to.) In the ensuing discussions, this is what is meant by determinism. This is the only determinism that can possibly be argued to have any implications on free will, as will be shown later on.

Approximate physical determinism
What appears to be more commonly referred to as determinism, is the determinism of science and experience, that under most, if not all observed, circumstances, certain events or actions are followed by other certain, corresponding events or actions—in other words, the epistemological definition of determinism which was invalidated in the first part of this series. This form of determinism will be discussed further later in this paper.

Continuity
A fundamental property relating to the determinism of the universe is continuity. This was discussed in the first paper in comparing the descriptions of the universe according to the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Relativity assumes an infinitely continuous universe, and quantum mechanics assumes a discontinuous universe, or one can say its assumptions lead to a description of a discontinuous universe.

One way to understand the difference between continuous and discontinuous is in simple mathematical equations. The equation ax + by = c can be solved for any, in the absolute since of any, values of x and y. There are no values of a,b,c,x,or y other than the undefined value of infinity (∞), for which the equation has no solution. However, the equation, 1/y=a, cannot be solved for the exact value of y=0. As y becomes smaller and smaller, a becomes larger, without limit. Exactly at y=0, a has no defined value other than the abstract one of infinity.

Another way to approach the idea, a way more like what we will discuss below, is to think of a set of boxes in a row, each one labeled with a unitary value, e.g., 0,1,2,3,…n into which objects will be sorted by weight. The objects can have any weight, but by rule one must either truncate the fraction to select a box, round the fraction, or take the next highest unit value. One has created a discontinuous environment for the sorting. Now let us add a second dimension, say, length. Now we need a row of boxes for the weight brackets for each length bracket. The sorting rules are the same, only now instead of a line of boxes we have a large area of boxes.

The concept can be generalized to as many dimensions as desired. The mathematics of physics uses six, three of space location, and three of energy as measured by momentum in three dimensions. From this we can say that the universe is discontinuous, if, at some very small scale, values must be separated by some amount. That amount can be an extremely small fraction of a unit, something represented only by a number with many negative exponents, but it is still a separation between the values of position and energy a particle may have. As a consequence any value falling between contiguous six-dimensional boxes is forbidden, particles must be in one region or the other, and cannot assume those values. However, it is also important to understand that once in a “box”, the object may have any value between the upper and lower limits of the box.

In contrast, if space is continuous, then no matter how small a value we choose to separate the dimensions of two items there can be still a smaller separation. There are no forbidden values. Any particle may assume any value, the only restriction being that no two particles may have exactly the same values. All objects in the universe change state in a smooth manner assuming all possible values between the starting and ending states.

Reversibility
Reversibility is the other property we will use in this discussion. The first part of this series had an extensive discussion of reversibility in relation to the discussion of entropy. Though the discussion was confined to observable physical systems both ideas of absolute and local (cyclic) reversibility can be generalized for the discussion here.

Local or cyclic reversibility applies to some subset of the objects in the universe. The earlier example of the billiard balls can be considered here. If the billiard balls are first racked and then broken by the cue ball, they scatter in various directions. One can immediately, or after the conclusion of a game, re-rack them, place the cue ball at the original position, and, in effect complete a locally reversible process, in the sense that the configuration of the billiard table was returned to a previous state. However, in order for the billiard balls to be returned to their previous state, outside agents (players) had to perform various actions that in themselves are not reversible. Even if the players returned to their exact positions, one can find a level at which there was a non-cyclical process involved, for instance, in the internal biochemistry of their bodies. This local type of reversibility is not applicable to our discussion of determinism, because at some point one always finds a point of irreversibility.

Absolute reversibility is defined as motion or action back through exactly the path that was previously followed. In the first paper this was discussed as a theoretical concept, and it is possible to envision local systems that are exactly reversible, though they require irreversible actions external to them. If we were to generalize the concept of absolute reversibility to universe as a whole, then we would find phenomena entirely contrary to our actual experience, water flowing up hill, glass coming together from broken shards, people coming alive and growing younger, etc. Though it is possible to persuasively argue that the universe in not reversible, for the moment I would like to keep the concept for the following discussion.

Analysis of Reversibility, Continuity, and Determinism
If we consider the following pairs of ideas, reversible-irreversible, continuous-discontinuous, deterministic-non-deterministic, we can set up eight symbolic representations of the possible relations and discuss them. The value of this is that it will lead to some interesting constraints on the idea of a deterministic universe.

Representing reversible-irreversible by R r , continuous-discontinuous by C c, and deterministic-non-deterministic by D d, we can set up the following possibilities:

R + C = D
r + C = D
R + C = d
r + C = d

R + c = D
r + c = D
R + c = d
r + c = d

We can discuss these in turn.
The first generalization I would like to make is that R and c are incompatible, that it is not possible to have and absolutely reversible system with a discontinuous universe. Note, however that the inverse is not true—it is possible to have r and C. The idea can be fairly easily illustrated. If we have a set of objects moving from one “box” to another, when one reverses the direction, how does one “choose” which box the object should return to. It is not enough to simply state “the one it came from” because while in the newer location, it might be able to have values that are forbidden in older location, so when moving backwards it will have to move into a “box” that may not have been the original, because in a discontinuous universe, objects may have any allowable value in the range that defines the current location, or the newer location has at least one value that is forbidden in the older location.

This simplifies our eight relations to six, as R + c = D and R + c = d are both false by the above discussion.

If we look at absolute reversibility and continuous as a combination, then the universe is deterministic. Whether moving backwards or forwards in time, any position is, in principle, determined by a prior position. There is nothing to disrupt the paths of the objects. This removes another relation as false, namely R + C = d, and says that one way the universe may be deterministic is if it is absolutely reversible and continuous. However, though logically true, I believe that we can dismiss this option in reality, because it can be argued that the universe is not absolutely reversible, as it leads to contradictions to reality, as stated earlier.

This leaves us with the four relations involving r or irreversibility, and these are definitely more interesting.
r + C = D
r + C = d
r + c = D
r + c = d

Let’s start with the idea that the universe is continuous (C), that is, every state change is gradual or potentially gradual and, in principle, every object can assume any value. Though we used this to show that combined with reversibility, the universe would be determined, without reversibility, that is not necessarily so. It is possible for an object to have an arbitrary interaction and divert from its projected course in a smooth manner. In a continuous universe, both time and space are absolutely smooth in the sense of continuous, and any change can happen to the ultimate degree of fineness in transitions. And we can argue that if the universe is continuous, then in principle all interactions can be defined and therefore predicted—thus determined. So if the universe is irreversible and continuous we can argue that it could be deterministic.

Can we argue that it could also be non-deterministic if it is continuous? This would be saying that as an object moves along its space-time trajectory, at any next infinitesimal point, that point could possibly be of more than one overall value. There is such a possibility when the trajectory encounters a natural split in the energy of the environment. We can conceive of it as similar to a ridge, one with a knife-edge. In one sense, this is a discontinuity and violates our assumptions, yet in another sense it is consistent in that there are differential equations that can describe such a circumstance. If the mathematical surface is a saddle, that is a smooth curve , then there is a continuous flow, and the object will follow one way or another, or possibly move along the top of the saddle for some time. However, if it is a knife-edge, an infinitely sharp edge, then it is a discontinuity, and the object cannot reside on it, it must fall one way or another.

This argues that if the universe is continuous then it is deterministic. It also argues that if the universe is discontinuous (c), it is non-deterministic, as the object has a value that suddenly is not allowed, and there is no way to predict which way it will go. What we have done with this discussion is to restate our problem to say that if the universe is continuous, then it is determined, and if it is discontinuous, then it is non-determined. The problem now becomes one of determining (!) if the universe is continuous or discontinuous. The first paper in this series showed that though quantum mechanics argued for a discontinuous universe observationally, relativity assumed a continuous universe, and both arrive at confirmable results. That paper also concluded that science cannot answer a metaphysical question in the first place.

Perceptible Reality
Because of the inherent nature of measurement, any state is discrete, plus or minus some error. This does not matter whether it is an instrumental or a direct sensory measurement. At the same time we perceive motion as continuous, not jumping from state to state. At any instant of time, if we measured the state of an object it would have an error, but overall, the process appears continuous. There are a couple of interesting consequences of this.

If the universe is continuous, then we can never measure it exactly, and we can never have perfect prediction of the next state of an object. As a result, we might conclude, incorrectly that it is discontinuous or non-deterministic. If the universe is discontinuous, then it is at a level that we cannot measure, or we would observe the discontinuity. Quantum Mechanics makes the claim of measuring this discontinuity, but that is only at level accessible to measurement by photon. By our first paragraph of this heading, and by arguments in the first paper in this series, it may only be measuring its own inherent error and not the discontinuity of the universe.

We as humans consider the universe to be generally predictable. If the universe is non-deterministic then how can this be? According to earlier discussion, determinism and predictability are tightly coupled. This can be explained if we do not observe the universe at the potential level of non-determinism. All of our observations, at least the common ones, are on very large-scale aggregates of objects—planets, trees, people, rocks, galaxies, etc., all of which consist of massive collections of atoms, which in turn are possible collections of objects described by Quantum Mechanics. Using the same kind of reasoning as Stephan Boltzmann, the state of our perceivable objects are the sum of all the states of lesser objects of which they are composed. In any collection of similar objects, extreme members balance themselves out in all dimensions, though not exactly pairing one-for-one. It is these slight differences that accounts for such things as a pure block of iron eventually rusting—some few iron atoms on the surface will be in a state to interact with the atmosphere, especially if there is a trace of moisture, and form iron oxide which then causes an imbalance in the object and catalyzes further oxidation.

We measure and observe the overall sum of the constituents in the behavior of objects, and it is this sum upon which we base our predictions. However, due to both the imprecision of our measurements and the potential state changes of the constituents, our predictions always have some error. As we make more and more observations and predictions, we take into account more and more components of the object and its environment, but nonetheless, we are never perfect in our predictions. Hence we often cite either a margin of error or a statistical percentage on the goodness of the measure. [Carl Popper has an excellent book on the implications of statistical measurement in science, The Logic of Science.]

Large scale aggregates tend to be overall very stable, so that our predictions are generally quite good. However, there are dynamic phenomena that are subject to changes that are of a finer grain than we can measure. This has been discussed under chaotic dynamics in the first paper of the series. In such cases, our predictions only hold for relatively short periods of time. Also, if our theories by which we create our predictions are incorrect, we will also see unpredictable behaviors.

Summary
There are several major points to be re-emphasized from this installment in the series. First, if the universe is continuous it is deterministic, and if it is discontinuous it is non-deterministic. Second, we cannot decide if it is continuous or discontinuous by measurement. Third, the scale of potential discontinuity is far below our level of perception, even with instrumental enhancement. This last point will be explored from a totally different standpoint in the next installment, which will look at the interaction, or the lack there of, between the universe and free will.

Though this paper concludes one cannot decide if the universe is deterministic or not, the problem has been constrained, to whether the universe is continuous or not. The analytical framework from this installment will be used in the next installment to discuss free-will and determinism the goal of this series.

Labels: determinism, free will, philsophy