HE BUDDHIST VIEW OF CAUSALITY

Note: the discussion on freedom and determinism at end of this document is not fully edited and readers will find some repetition but I hope no confusion.

I. SELF-CAUSATION (Hindu Vedanta philosophy): there is atman in everything and it is the cause of all actions. External causation from physical things is an illusion. Western parallel: Aristotle's final causation, a causation of purpose. Hegel’s absolute Spirit closest to Vedantist philosophy.

II. EXTERNAL CAUSATION: Aristotle's efficient causation and material causation. Just like the Western version: material atoms colliding with one another in space.

III. JAIN SYNTHESIS of I and II. Western version: Cartesian dualism of mind and matter. Mental causes along side and interacting with (somehow) with physical causes.

THE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ARE FUSED. More than just physical causes, but distinction between the "physical" and the "mental" is overcome. Human self is a psycho-physical unity, merging both physical and mental causes.

NO SUBSTANCE CAUSATION. Things do not have "inherent" nature or substance. Mental events are not caused by "mind" and physical events are not caused by "matter."

THINGS AND EVENTS CONDITIONS ONE ANOTHER. Events "condition" one another rather than "cause" one another.

1. OBJECTIVITY. The Buddha rejected the subjective status of causality he found in Vedantist philosophy. Similar subjectivist position found in David Hume and Immanuel Kant. For the Buddha causality is just as real as any other phenomenon.

2. NECESSITY. Effects always have causes "external" to themselves. Rejection of both indeterminism and self-determination.

4. CONDITIONALITY. The Buddha's insight here is supposed to establish a middle way between strict determinism (and the destruction of freedom) and indeterminism and the implication of chaos.

Buddhist causality amounts to a causality with substance metaphysics. We have to try to envision events conditioning one another rather than physical and mental causes pushing, pulling, or otherwise interacting with one another.

The Buddha's view of causality represents a middle way between strict determinism and indeterminism. It represents a causality without metaphysics, but also a causality that is both uniform and universal. No aspect of experience is outside the causal network. Except there is no causal links, of course, to the future. Past is knowable through inductive inference and some direct experience because of retrocognition, but the future is "known" only through inductive generalization and prediction. (A prediction, just like a prophecy is not foreknowledge.)

Kalup (1), 30: "He who knows causality knows the dhamma." Moral interpretation: one who knows her personal history knows what to do.

12-fold chain of causality, starting with ignorance. If anyone of these conditions are not present, then rebirth will not happen. Please study the hand-out on the 12-fold chain.

One might see Buddhist conditionality in terms of Aristotle’s formal causation, as the following authors do: "As a theory of causation, this ‘dependent co-arising’ concerns the formal concomitances among things rather than their material derivation from one another. It resembles a medical diagnosis in several ways. By showing that the ailment depends on a series of conditions, it indicates the point at which the series can be broken and so facilitates a cure" (R. H. Robinson and Willard L Johnson, The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction [Wadsworth, 1992], p. 17). The problem with this interpretation, however, is that the Buddha claims that one can perceive causal relations as real connections among things rather than just formal relations.

•Holism and organicism based on internal relations.

•Whitehead: symmetrical and asymmetrical internal relations.

•Rejection of substances of any kind.

•Momentary dharmas of existence=actual occasions (AOs) of experience, both the "building blocks" of reality.

•Two fallacies: of misplaced concreteness and of simple location.

The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is placing reality on something, such as sense data for Hume, that obviously has only derivative reality. The fallacy of simple location follows from atomistic views that place things at simple points and are sometimes space-less and time-less. As relativity theory has shown us moment of energy spread over both time and space and therefore are not simply located.

The Perception of Causality

•Kalup’s example: grabbing on to a high voltage wire with both hands! Hume can respond to this example quite easily.

•English empiricists believed that sense impressions are the ultimate concrete facts. They are, however, very derivative from a deeper and more basic causal web of existence.

•Heidegger: “closer than sensa are the things themselves.”

•Whitehead: closer to the AOs than sensa.

•Time as simple succession of atomic events (Hume) or past flowing into and conforming to the present (Whitehead)?

Whitehead vs. Buddhism

•Whitehead theism vs. Buddhist non-theism. Whitehead's God orders all AOs according to aesthetic ideals.

•Actual occasions of experience are self-determining. They are final causes.

•Cosmic teleology vs. human teleology only for Buddhism.

•Speculates beyond experience just like later “dharma” occasions of experience of the Abhidharma.

Determinism, Free-Will, and Morality

The freedom of the will is one of the most difficult problems that challenges the human mind. We all would like to assert with confidence that we do have free-will; indeed, our basic notions about morality require free-will. Close and honest reflection, however, reveals a disturbing contradiction. On the one hand, we immediately feel the spontaneity and freedom of our mental processes, especially if the world is going our way. On the other hand, we habitually concede the assumption that all events and things have causes, causes which are independent of their effects.

The contradiction is this: free-will requires a situation in which the will is not externally caused or coerced; but this is incompatible with our otherwise strong intuitions that every event has causes independent of itself. The principal assumption of morality is at odds with the principal assumption of science. In science we assume that all effects are rendered inevitable by their causes; in morality we attempt to make an exception to this universal law for the human will. Many philosophers agree that we are simply wrong in making this exception. This would amount to conceding that there is some indeterminism in the world and that there are effects that are not caused by external causes.

What does it take to say with assurance that the will is free? Let us first make an important distinction between a free-will and a free act. The necessary conditions for a free-will are internal. We can almost always observe human actions, but we cannot observe the will. A free-will must stem from an originative power within us, i.e., a power that is truly our own.

Actions, on the other hand, are externally observable and the conditions for a free act are two: (1) open alternatives from which we can decide, choose, and act; and (2) an absence of external constraints or barriers in the acting out of a choice. It is clear then that a person can have free-will and yet be prevented from acting freely. A person chained from head to foot may have the originative power necessary for a free act, but obviously is prevented from using that power by external constraints.

Let us use the case of Patty Hearst as another example. F. Lee Bailey probably advised his client to plead "no contest" on the sporting goods store charge because of the fact that Patty was at one time completely alone outside in the getaway truck. In other words, there were no external constraints preventing her from driving off without her companions. On the other hand, Bailey did take the bank robbery charge to court, hoping to convince the jury that the SLA gang coerced her to go along with the crime, thus leaving her no alternatives. Bailey was foiled: the jury was not even persuaded in this case.

A court of law deals with the external conditions of a person's behavior, not the internal conditions. A jury can decide whether or not a person acted freely but it cannot decide whether the will is free. It is here where science and philosophy step in; and it is here, unfortunately where the real dilemma lies.

The major stumbling block is the necessary condition for a free-will. Is it possible for any agent to have the originative power to perform those acts for which the agent is morally responsible? If that power is derivative and not originative, then the agent cannot be held responsible for her acts. Is a self-determining moral being a possibility given what we know about the causes and conditions of human behavior and the nature of reality? The physical sciences tell us that there is no escape from determinism; therefore, human will cannot be exempted from the universal law of cause and effect. (Incidentally, some free-will theorists are wrong in appealing to Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle for a metaphysical basis for self-determinism.)

The behavioral sciences are now telling us the same thing: humans are in no way self-determining; rather, they appear fully determined by the environment, previous conditioning, and general psycho-physiological laws. Some "socio- biologists" are even now adding genetic determinism as well.

With the Buddha's emphatic denial of indeterminism and any notion of self-causation, there is no hope for a traditional view of the freedom of the will. Such a view held that the will is self-caused and is somehow immune from external conditions and causes. But the Buddha is not a "hard" determinist, either, because he believes in an open future and in moral responsibility. The hard determinist accepts universal determinism, denies free-will in the traditional sense and also has to accept the fact that we are not morally responsible for our actions.

The "soft" determinist agrees with the Buddha that a notion of a self-caused moral agent is a metaphysical fiction. In this view free-will and moral responsibility are redefined in the following ways. One is free in so far as one has formed one’s own desire to do something. (One’s path must also be free from external obstacles so that one can act on those desires.) On the other hand, one is not free when one is forced to do something that one has not formed a desire to do. One is morally responsible in the first case, but not responsible in the second. Notice that there is no exception to universal determinism has been made (all desires have antecedent causes and conditions) and that there is no appeal to some hidden self-causing agent. The soft determinist, therefore, affirms the free action as defined above, but denies the metaphysical freedom of the will.

The Buddha's position can be compared to B. F. Skinner's soft determinism and his affirmation of an open future and moral responsibility. Skinner believed in social engineering, and said that if we raise funds to rebuild a ghetto, then it will have a rosy future. But if we don't rebuild the ghetto, then it will have no future. The fatalist believes in a closed future and proclaims that there is nothing we can do to change the conditions in a ghetto.

The soft determinist has changed the definition of free-will to be, as C. A. Halverson phrases it, a "circumstantial freedom of self-realization" as opposed to a "natural freedom of self-determinism." The latter position of course requires some indeterminism, some "cosmic slack" or gap in the causal chain, so that the free-will can operate. The first freedom is the same a "free action" as defined above.

The following extended deduction allows us to draw out various alternatives to the problem of free-will. Each view will respond differently to these premises.

4. If there are no free wills, then humans are not responsible for their actions.

5. If humans are not responsible for their actions, then there is no reason to blame or praise them.

Hard determinism accepts all premises as true and therefore accepts all the conclusions. As there is no rational foundation for praise or blame, hard determinists usually propose a behavioristic approach to human problems. All punishment would then be practical, future-oriented rehabilitation. In practice, the "soft" determinist and hard determinist would use the same methods. Theoretically, the soft determinist believes that a revised concept of moral responsibility is intelligible within the confines of universal determinism.

It would be quite difficult to deny the truth of the second premise, but there is no reason for a non-materialist to accept the first premise as true. If Karl Popper and John Eccles are correct in assuming there is such a thing as "downward" causation from the mind to physical events, then this represents a plausible alternative to the view expressed in the first premise. Determinists cannot force us to accept the first premise until they have convinced us of the validity of the materialist arguments.

Martin Buber poetically expresses this position: "The unlimited sway of causality in the it-world, which is of fundamental importance for the scientific ordering of nature, is not felt to be oppressive by the man who is not confined to the it-world, but free to step out of it again and again into the world of relation. Here I and Thou confront each other freely in a reciprocity that is not involved in or tainted by any causality; here man finds guaranteed the freedom of this being and of being" (Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufman [New York: Scribner's, 1970], p. 100).

Radical free-will theorists accept the second premise, but reject the first; therefore, none of the conclusions follow. For the sophisticated free-will theorist determinism is true, but it is not universal. It would be foolish to insist that the events in the natural world on which we rely for our normal activities are exempt from cause and effect. The free-will theorist need only have some indeterminism, so that voluntary events for which we can be praised or blamed can have an acausal or contra-causal basis.

Some free-will theorists have used Heisenberg's "indeterminancy principle" as support for the indeterminism they need for the will to operate. There are at least two grave problems with this view. First, some believe that the indeterminism of particle physics is epistemological only; that is, it involves an uncertainty in our knowledge about atomic particles. After all, if an electron had consciousness, it would certainly "know" where and what it was.

Second, even if there is true metaphysical indeterminism at the subatomic level, this would actually be the worst possible basis for a self-determining will. There is a world of difference between chaotic subatomic events and the deliberate actions of the human will. JohnHick phrases the point well: "It is very difficult to see how such concepts as responsibility and obligation could have any application if human volitions occurred at random instead of flowing from the individual nature of the agent. From the point of view of ethics the cost of equating freedom with volitional randomness would thus be so great as to be prohibitive"(John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, p. 312).

A common line of argument for radical free-will theory is the appeal to the fact that we deliberate. If hard determinism is true, decisions ought to come as soon as the right causes and conditions are in place. According to universal determinism, effects ought to spring immediately and unhesitatingly from their antecedent causes. The behaviorist, however, has a quite plausible counter- argument to this. The reason why we deliberate is that there exists certain sets of conditioning which are of equal "strength." One could visualize this as a sort of tug-of-war in the mind of a college student who is caught between "doing his duty" (making up an exam) or "having a good time" (going to the Phi Delt's Turtle Race).

In Leviathan Thomas Hobbes gives a similar argument: "When in the mind of man, appetite, and aversions, hopes, and fears, concerning one and the same thing, arise alternately; and diverse good and evil consequences of the doing, or omitting the thing propounded, come successively into our thoughts, so that sometimes we have an appetite to it; sometimes an aversion from it; sometimes hope to be able to do it; sometimes despair, or fear to attempt it; the whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes and fears continued will the thing be either done, or thought impossible, is that we call deliberation." As a determinist and proto-behaviorist, Hobbes defines the will as the "last act" of deliberation.

Hard determinism and radical free-will theory are sometimes called "incompatiblist" theories, because they both believe that the second premise of our deduction above is true—that universal determinism is incompatible with free-will. Hard determinism chooses determinism over free-will and the radical free-will theorist does just the opposite. "Soft" determinism believes that the premise is false. The proponents of this view contend that our dilemma is a false one, primarily because we have insisted on too strict a definition of free-will. The soft determinists redefine free-will as the free action we discussed above. They reject the notion of an inner power or faculty called the will as a metaphysical fiction. All that is necessary for a person to be morally responsible is for that person to be unrestrained in what they truly want to do. Halverson calls the free-will of the soft determinist a "circumstantial freedom of self- realization" as opposed to the "natural freedom of self- determination" of the radical free-will theorist.