3\Implications

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for Psychopaths and Satirists

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In the previous two posts, I discussed how a free-will perspective could add value to psychology. A deterministic approach to understanding human thoughts and behaviour seems insufficient. Instead, understanding human beings as free-willing agents sheds light on our conscious choice-making, and empowers us individually.

But how about the broader implications, beyond just the individual? What can a free-will perspective contribute to society? When considering this question, I thought back to my very first artifact: my psychopathy paper. As mentioned, my lecturer had assigned us to write about any disease of our choice. I picked psychopathy, believing that psychopathy could be viewed as a “disease”. After all, psychopathy was a condition that individuals suffered from, with adverse effects on other people around them as well. I saw that psychopathy had roots in biological and environmental influences beyond the psychopath’s conscious control. Below is another snippet from my paper, discussing psychopathy as a “disease” – a “condition” with ill effects on society.

 

 

If psychopathy is a “disease”, then can psychopaths be held responsible for what they have done? British philosopher Galen Strawson thinks not. In fact, he thinks that no one can be held morally responsible for any act. In the same introductory philosophy class where I encountered determinism, I encountered Strawson. Strawson argued that human beings are ultimately not in control of any event, and so cannot be held morally responsible for anything. This conclusion is known as moral nihilism. Below is a more fleshed-out structure of his argument, from my class:

 

 

Strawson’s argument undermines the whole notion of responsibility – not just moral responsibility. Psychopaths cannot control their killing sprees. Their brains made them do it. So perhaps psychopaths can’t be held responsible? In a similar vein, no human being can really control their actions, however vile or saintly, laborious or lazy. Thus, no one can be held responsible for any action. You could procure a kitchen knife and start stabbing strangers in the middle of Orchard Road. Sure, you might get arrested and hanged. But wouldn’t that be a miscarriage of justice? If you were not in control of those actions, how can you be held responsible – morally or otherwise? When we deny control over our actions, we also seem to deny any responsibility over those actions.

So this raises the question: can we really say that psychopaths and the rest of us have no control over our actions? From a free-will perspective, this position makes little sense. In fact, this characterisation of psychopathy as a “disease” seems odd now. To label psychopaths “diseased” is to negate their control over their psychopathy. But psychopathic behaviours are characterised by aggression and deceitfulness, behaviours that a person consciously performed. Killing people is not a symptom of a disease. Cheating others is not an involuntary tic that eludes the psychopath’s control. Psychopaths are willfully performing these behaviours that society deems inappropriate. Yes, perhaps psychopaths are more tempted to stray towards such behaviours, due to biological or environmental influences. Psychopaths can experience emotional detachment and egotism that are hard to shake off. But ultimately, their psychopathic behaviours passed through the decision-making process of the person. A life of psychopathy was chosen.

My point is not to condemn psychopaths for their cowardly evil, but the opposite. My point is that a free-will perspective helps us to be responsible to society. Instead of pleading determinism, we can acknowledge our control over our lives and take responsibility for our actions. Each of us can claim to be “diseased” by determinism. And granted, some of us may face greater struggles in our lives than others. But – to settle Hamlet’s question – instead of surrendering to our outrageous fortune, ’tis nobler to take arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.

One underpinning of a successful society is for people to take responsibility for what they do. We all expect government officials, corporate actors, and individual citizens to have some sort of responsibility for their actions. We do not expect them to deny control over their embezzlement of funds or cheating of their fellow citizens.  A free-will perspective helps to sharpen our sense of being responsible agents. Instead of seeing our society as millions of mindless machines being nudged around by biological and environmental forces, we can hold ourselves accountable for our actions.

A free-will perspective also empowers us to change things. While reflecting on our capacity to drive change, I thought about a class I had taken under the University Scholars Programme (USP): Satires and (Un)Serious Histories. In this class, we discussed several satirists, the satirists’ works, and their place in history. Among these satirists was comedian Stephen Colbert, whose political satire shaped American discourse. For the class, I wrote a paper that brought together different perspectives on satires. My paper argued that satires could be more than just futile pieces of humour: we can use satires to challenge some accepted status quo, and to resolve existing problems in society. Below is a snippet from my paper, with an example about Colbert driving change in public policy.

 

 

In the example, Colbert challenged an accepted status quo, to drive a change in which he believed. Colbert was not a wealthy lobbyist but a small-time television host, taking on a Congress that was often too gridlocked to produce meaningful action. Yet, Colbert fought against the forces that would otherwise quell his cause.

This spirit of the satirist inspires me to drive change as well. The satirists challenge the supposedly deterministic forces around us with their choice to carve another way. They do not accept the conditions that we are wont to accept. In a sense, reflecting on this paper reminded me that we are free from the status quo around us. We can break off and drive our own change.

In my second year of university I took another class, The Biomolecular Revolution. In the class, we discussed how scientific revolutions have drastically changed society. In one assignment, we were instructed to

Describe what living in Singapore will be like in the year 2070, as a result of revolutions in biology.

I painted a dystopian narrative, where biotechnology would have widened the rich-poor divide, enabling the rich to play God while the poor suffer. Will the year 2070 really turn out this way? Possibly. We could try and read the trends of everything happening in the world today, and see where our extrapolations take us. For example, I saw the rise of nature-defying biotechnologies against the backdrop of a selfish world. I thus divined that further leaps in biotechnology would only worsen the status quo. Such an approach may help us to predict our future with some reliability. And with the rise of big data, we may be able to process even more information and churn out more successful predictions. We can then attribute this success to our deterministic approach.

 

 

Or we can read the trends, and then defy them. In an “accepted pattern” supposedly painted by determinism, we can be the rebellious satirists. We can laugh in the face of destiny, and then carve our own. For example, we can possibly ban all further research on biotechnology. That’s possible. We can also possibly build a more inclusive society that helps everyone to benefit from biotechnology, narrowing the rich-poor divide instead. The point is that we can imagine a wide array of possibilities that we can will upon reality. Will we achieve exactly what we want? Perhaps not. But we can try, and we can possibly succeed against all odds. And to defy the odds does not demonstrate a failure of determinism per se. It would merely demonstrate a failure of our predictive methods – built upon determinism, but neglecting our capacity for change. We cannot predict everything, but we can try to change things.

In this post, I explored the broader implications of a free-will perspective on society. We are constantly bombarded by different influences, both biological and environmental. And it is tempting to go with the flow of these influences, to lay blame on these influences if anything goes wrong. But seeing ourselves as free-willing agents can be healthy for society, by reminding us all of our responsibilities and of our potential to radically drive change.

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I see two alternative views on life. The first: that we are all machines, completely directed by biological material and environmental stimuli. Our futures have been pre-determined. We might not know exactly what our future holds, but there is nothing we can do to change it. The second view: that we feel like we are in control, and so we really can take control. We can build a society of responsible individuals, who can drive change as they see fit. Of course, it is easy to take the first view of life, to see human action as choiceless. (And if we can’t choose, are we just pointlessly going through the motions?) But instead of rolling down the path to nihilism, we can embrace our free wills. At the very least, we can embrace the feeling of our free wills. Even if we may be pre-determined machines in a pre-determined Universe, we can seem to direct our lives freely.  And when we fail, we can laugh in the face of the absurdity. I choose now the second view on life. And I invite you to as well.

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