DEATH IS EASY by Russell Madden   Softcover, $14.95 Hardcover, $24.95     (Preview. Also available in a digital edition, $4.81.)	FREEDOM, As If It Mattered by Russell Madden   Softcover, $24.95 Hardcover, $34.95   (Preview. Also available in a digital edition, $5.63.)

Claim: That all human behavior can be explained by appealing to genetics and/or environment; free will is, at best, a convenient illusion; it does not, in fact, exist.

Analysis: Accepting this claim requires accepting a number of contradictions.

This claim is offered as an epistemological, i.e., knowledge, claim. This claim is said to be a more accurate description of reality. It claims that the truth regarding explanations for human behavior is X rather than not-X, that the situation is one way rather than a different way. It asks that other people who disagree change their minds/beliefs and accept X as the truth.

However, if people's behavior is fully explained by their genetics and/or environment, then so must be their beliefs, i.e., what people believe is also explained by/caused by/determined by genetic and/or environmental factors.

Yet, if beliefs are explained/caused/determined by genetic/environmental factors and there is no choice, then one cannot "choose" to change one's mind. At best, one can describe one's belief as changing due to genetic/environmental factors. One must, therefore, simply believe what one's genetics/environment has caused/made one to believe. One is helpless to believe other than as one does. One cannot legitimately claim/judge that someone else's position is "wrong" or "incorrect" if different from one's own. At best, one can only state that that person, as well, simply believes what he/she does because of his/her genetics/environment.

Gaining knowledge and the process of persuasion presuppose that one can evaluate evidence -- poorly or well -- and select among the possibilities and decide/make the identification that the situation is X or not-X. Yet that selection process, i.e., testing and then validating or rejecting a claim, i.e., making a choice, is denied by the claim as being the case.

If knowledge is genetically or environmentally determined, then one cannot sift through evidence, openly and objectively weigh that evidence, and decide/choose what is the best identification of the truth. If, however, one then claims that knowledge itself is impossible, then that is also self-contradictory, i.e., that claim makes a knowledge claim that knowledge is impossible.

Contradiction 1: The claim asks people to decide (i.e., to choose voluntarily) to believe differently than they do when choice/free will itself is claimed not to exist.

 

Contradiction 2: This claim makes a knowledge claim while simultaneously implicitly stating that the foundation for making a knowledge claim does not exist.

If the claim is accepted, however, i.e., that one's beliefs are determined by genetics/environment, and that these beliefs are sufficient for making a knowledge claim, then we are confronted with a situation in which there is no basis for making an independent selection among differing knowledge claims. Again, all that can be said is that one believes what one is determined/caused/made to believe by one's genetics/environment. One cannot even claim that the means claimed for "knowing" something is valid since that belief, too, would be determined by one's genetics/environment.

Contradiction 3: X and not-X cannot both be true.

One individual can claim that person Y exists while another individual can claim that person Y does not exist (at the same time and in the same respect). Yet if all individual knowledge claims are equally valid, then there are potentially an infinity of knowledge claims that contradict and are mutually exclusive. All claims are equally plausible/implausible.

If all individual beliefs are valid foundations for evidence and/or for proving X, then we are left with pure subjectivism, i.e., X is true because one believes X (and one must believe X because one has no choice since X is caused/explained/determined by one's genetics/environment). One must simultaneously both accept and reject both the claim that free will does not exist and the claim that free will does exist. Both are equally "true" and equally "false."

Contradiction 4: If X is true merely because one believes X, then one can never be wrong, i.e., the claim implies both infallibility and omniscience.

The claim above ultimately leads to the rejection of choice, personal responsibility, reason, logic, morality, truth, and knowledge. It also leads to the acceptance of subjectivity, infallibility, and omniscience. (Also: to the acceptance of choice, etc. and the rejection of subjectivity, etc.; both positions are, according to the claim, determined by one's genetics/environment). The theory advanced by the claim excludes itself and is thus meaningless.