In PHI 101, we recently discussed free choice. At about the same time, my student success skills course (which, at my age I didn’t really need but it was a requirement ), presented a chapter on discrimination and included a section on how environment affects behavior.
Clearly, with enough influence, a person’s behavior can be severely altered. People can be driven crazy by rabies, and we don’t expect rabies victims to overcome their negative influences and remain productive members of society. Similarly, we know that poor education and an hostile environment affect people’s behavior, but the phrase “Your mama didn’t raise you right” is an insult, not call for empathy. But if we accept that fact that a child’s environment determines the person who that child becomes, than we should have empathy for that person, no matter how unsavory that person turns out to be. This empathy is based on the realization that who we are is determined by an environment which is beyond our control (including internal factors such as brain chemistry). Variations of this idea are given names like determinism, the idea that all outcomes, including human choices, are determined by previous events, and materialism, the idea that our minds are just objects, subject to the same cycles of actions and reactions that any object is subject to.
Arguments against the idea that our choices are a result of influences beyond our control are often based on false pragmatism. If people don’t have free choice, then punishment is unfair and in order to be fair we should unlock all the prisons. That’s hardly pragmatic, therefore, some say, we must believe in free choice. Nobody wants to keep people locked up while also believing that people don’t really have free choice. But the fact that an idea is unpalatable doesn’t make it false. Also, the fact that a choice is unpalatable doesn’t make it wrong. A more pragmatic view of justice is that we punish criminals to prevent recurrence of bad behavior. It’s a necessary action. We can do so even while feeling empathy for the offender; even while believing that his choice to offend and our choice to keep him from offending again, are all guided by forces beyond our control. People can have empathy for criminals while also considering empathy for possible victims. This balance can lead to a pragmatic decision to enforce even the harshest of penalties.
My wife says this is a moot point. She asks, “if you choose to punish someone, just as severely as you would had you no empathy, what difference does it make if deep down inside you have empathy for that person?” The difference is empathy allows me to consider other options, when available. Someone who believes that we are all fully responsible for our choices looks at the high crime rate in bad neighborhoods and doesn’t believe the neighborhoods have any bearing on people’s choices. Thus, the solution is to build more prisons and electric chairs rather than change the neighborhoods so they stop producing so many criminals. But social programs are effective at reducing crime. Here, it is not empathy that prevents pragmatism, it’s a lack of empathy that does so.
Empathy for offensive people is just one pitfall in considering the external influences on our choices. Another is a feeling of hopelessness. If we have no free choice, then why bother getting up in the morning? But whether or not we actually have free will, it certainly seems like we do and we know that the choices we make, be they predetermined or not, will have certain results. If I am caught in a trap, I will try to break free rather than accept the fate that my death in the trap is predetermined. Similarly, I will assist someone else who may be caught in the trap. I don’t know what our fate is, so I will work for the best outcome. It seems somewhat contradictory, as if I’m just acting in a play that has been written by someone else, but to me the play seems real and so I will act as well as I possibly can.
