In this paper, I will argue that the principle of universal causation is inconsistent with free will. Universal Causation is the principle that all events or actions that occur have a prior event or action that caused that specific event or action to take place. Varying philosophical schools of thought including the hard determinism, libertarianism, and both the traditional and the hierarchical compatibilism strive to explain the problem surrounding free will in societies. Arguments promoting and criticizing the aspect of free will are presented in the different theories.

One of the theories that argue that free will is an illusion is hard determinism which is the doctrine that there are no free actions. People who accept this are known as hard determinists. They believe that everything is causally determined and because of this, no one acts freely. (Vaughn, 180-181) The philosophical theory of hard determinism is based on the principles of causal determinism, which is the doctrine that every event is the consequence of past events plus the laws of nature. Incompatibilism is the doctrine that causal determinism is incompatible with the view that we sometimes act freely. (Vaughn, 184)

Libertarianism is the doctrine that free actions are caused by selves (agents, persons). (Vaughn) Two arguments that correlate with the libertarian free will are the argument from experience and the argument from deliberation. The argument from experience explains that there are alternatives opens to us and that nothing prevents us from choosing any one of them. We as humans are under the impression that we act freely because we experience making alternative choices or decisions every day. The argument from deliberation is the experience of deliberating about which action to choose.

Traditional compatibilism is the doctrine that free actions are (1) caused by one’s will and (2) not externally constrained. (Vaughn, 203) Hierarchical compatibilism is the doctrine that free actions are caused by second-order volitions that one decisively identifies with. (Vaughn, 209) First-order desire is a desire directed on an object or state of affairs. An example of these desires would be things like food, clothing, and shelter as well as conditions like being healthy, being well informed, and being well paid.

Second-order desire is a desire directed on a first-order desire. An example of these desires would be a smoker that has a desire to not desire to smoke. Second-order volition is a second-order desire on which one wants to act. An example of these desires would be a priest who regularly counsels people with marriage problems. In this situation, the priest might have the desire to know what it’s like to be married however if he got married, he could no longer be a priest. (Vaughn, 208)

Events experienced individually and collectively are the outcomes of previous processes which operate within the confines of the law of nature (Schmidtz et al., 64). It is important to note that human actions result from an informed decision making process and while some conclusions made might be deemed as non-optimal, prior knowledge about the given scenario plays a critical role in informing the choice of an alternative cause of action.

Human development is attributed to the socialization process where individuals are able to learn the society’s way of life and ascribe to the given routine through the observation of what other people are doing or through direct experimenting and experience. A person’s actions are bound to support the expectations of the rest of the society or seek to avoid previous mistakes and improve on an existing state of life. In this case, free will can be deemed as impossible as every aspect of the human actions will contain effects from the external environment. While an individual can presume that the decision making process and the ability to exercise self-determination is an indication of free will, the given presumption is deemed as an illusion in that, all the human actions are a result of previous events (Ekstrom, 68).

1. Some agent, at some time, could have acted otherwise than he or she did.
2. Actions are events.
3. Every event has a cause.
4. If an event is caused, then it is causally determined.
5. If an event is an act that is causally determined, then the agent of the act could not have acted otherwise than in the way that he or she did.

This specific instance provides 6 different concepts which are an agent, an action, could have done otherwise, event, cause, and causal determination.

Free will is an illusion and determinism is real as asserted by the hard determinism theorists based on the fact that every event has an explanation which can be available or yet to be discovered and that events are outcomes of previous process. Human beings are not able to exercise free will due to the fact that determinism is evident in influencing mental processes such as decision and choice thus providing the basis for the prediction and explanation of actions. The lack of free will among human beings indicates that sufficient reason can be accorded to every occurrence thus ensuring that balance and sensitivity is achieved among individuals. However, in the event that determinism can be further defined to understand the influence on free will, deeming independent mental actions as free actions despite the influence of past events can indicate that free will is not an illusion.

Work Cited

1. Ekstrom, Laura W. Free Will: A Philosophical Study. Routledge, 2018
2. McKenna, Michael, and D. Justin Coates. “Compatibilism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 25 Feb. 2015, plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#FreWilPro.
3. Schmidtz, David, and Carmen E. Pavel. The Oxford Handbook of Freedom. New York, NY Oxford University Press, 2018
4. “The Problem of Free Will.” Determinism, www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/problem/.
5. Vaughn, Lewis, and Theodore Schick. Doing Philosophy : an Introduction through Thought Experiments. 5th ed., David Patterson, 2012.

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The problem of causation with respect to fact constructivism questions how can our descriptions cause the existence of things like mountains, whose existence seems to come before ours? For example, let's think of a disease. There are known, accepted facts about meningitis. These facts cause other facts, such as what it does to your spine and brain, as well as its ability to be contagious, to be true. According to fact constructivists, these facts came out in the 1900s when experts first learned about meningitis. However, if someone died from meningitis before the 1900s, it still would be from the facts that cause the things to happen, such as the fever and headaches. Therefore, the facts that caused someone to be affected by meningitis are true, and were prevalent before the 1900s. So the obvious problem with causation is that certain facts are true, and were true even before they were discover, such as the facts of meningitis because it is impossible to claim that facts are only true after they have been discovered.

The conceptual competence problem with fact constructivism states that competence with concepts, such as the existence of electrons, does not seem to depend on us. Boghossian states that asking experts is the best way to find out about these concepts. And when you ask, they will specifically say that we do not depend on such concepts and ideas. It is impossible to claim that certain things, like electrons, which are independent of us, depend on our descriptions. The experts will explain in detail how certain things were created and demonstrate that they were created well before we did the facts for an object.

The traditional argument says that global relativism is disjointed and inconsistent because any relativistic thesis requires at least some absolute truths, but global relativism says that there are no absolute truths. Relativism stats that the fact “there are not absolute facts” is a relative fact. This fact is relativistic, therefore, and is not an argument for relativism. We should not worry about this because accepting this statement is relative to our own system. Boghossian looks at a version that Nagel argues that there are no absolute truths or standards of justification for traditional epistemological relativists. The affirmation of the relativist view is offered as an absolute truth that violates their relativism or is offered as relative truths that do not combat the absolutism that they originally intended to deny. Boghossian does not agree with the traditional argument because he stats that the idea that relativism is only true in relation to a theory is not clear and that he believes that relativism can be true of a theory that both relativists and non- relativists accept.

To understand the acceptance problem, let's look at an hypothetical Epistemic system called “S”. S states that:

• I set visual evidence that there is a dog in the room
• If set visual evidence that there is a dog in the room, then you’re justified in believing there is a dog in the room.
• I am justified in believed there is a dog in the room.

Relativism states that S is incorrect because there are no objectively justified statements and one of the things that implied this belief of a dog in the room is therefore false. It is no the evidence, but rather the principle. Relativism encourages our epistemic systems to incorporate principles like S, but also leads them to believe that principles such as S are wrong. This example of a confusing and unclear way of thinking suggests that there are actually restrictions. Clearness of thinking, for example, is where our epistemic systems must meet. Boghossian says that we should not accept general judgments about what confirms certain things, but rather base our decisions on our own epistemic systems and acceptances.

First, we must understand the “no arbitrary distinctions principle”. This principle, according to Boghossian, states that

• If an epistemic system proposes to treat two propositions p and q according to distinct epistemic principles, it must recognize some epistemically relevant difference between p and q.
• If an epistemic system proposes to treat two propositions p and q according to the same epistemic principles, it must not recognize any epistemically relevant difference between p and q.

This principle is saying that if we encountered any other epistemic system fundamentally different to ours, we would not be able to justify our system over it. The alternative system has to be at least coherent for it to compare with our own. However, if we did find a coherent epistemic system that is different to ours, we would have to accept it. If we found a system that is different but not valid according the “coherence standards”, we would have a hard time believing it. Consider the Epistemic system below,

1. If an expert tells you that smoking is dangerous, then you’re justified in believing smoking is dangerous.
2. If an expert tells you that humans are contributing to climate change, than it’s not the case that you’re justified in believing that humans are contributing to climate change.

In order to be considered a coherent epistemic system, a certain degree of uniformity must be achieved, taking into account the beliefs of certain proposals. The above systems distinguish between statements. Boghossian says the “coherent argument' is too strong and people are too strong and that people do not need to prove their own epistemic system and that they have their own independent should be able to answer to the question of what I believe is answered differently based on their own, coherent, system. 

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One additional approach that is classified between the meso-theories is the cumulative causation theory. The Cumulative Causation Theory was developed by Gunnar Myrdal in 1957. It was further developed by D. J. Massey and his colleagues. The theory explains as to why a migration flow begins and continues to grow.

Causality is cumulative when every migratory action changes the social context in which, later in time, other migratory decisions take place. It affects the context so that additional individuals are likely to migrate. Social scientists discussed about six potential socio-economic factors which have a potential impact on migrations in a cumulative fashion:

• Income distribution: higher levels of income, in absolute terms, and diversification of risks are not the only reasons why individuals tend to migrate. They take this decision also to increase their relative income, which is measured on the basis of their social reference group (relative deprivation);
• Distribution of land: buying a land guarantees personal prestige, and it is also a good source of income for the retirement days. Secondarily, it represents a productive investment;
• Organisation of agricultural production: the use of capital-intensive methods is more common for migrants, than for non-migrants.
• Culture of migration: the higher the impact of migration on a community, the more cultural values and perceptions are subject to change, leading to an increase in the probability to migrate;
• Regional distribution of human capital: in the initial phase, the self-selection process of migration causes an depletion of human capital in the areas affected by depopulation;
• Social labels: occupations recognised as ‘jobs for immigrants’, due to the high concentration of foreign labour force in a specific activity.

Briefly, the cumulative causation theory explains how the trend of migration outflows increases over time, since the first migrant provides social capital to relatives, friends and others in the country of origin, encouraging them to find jobs easily and minimise their risks in destination countries. This situation stimulates and influences people to migrate more and more.

In conclusion, it is worth mentioning another theory that contributed to analyse migration theories at a meso-level: the institutional theory.

At the beginning of international migrations, a number of private institutions and organisations were set up to satisfy the requests resulting from the imbalance between the big amount of migrants flowing to developed countries and the limited labour supply provided by these labour-receiving countries. This mismatch fosters the creation of a specific niche in the clandestine economic market based on illegal activities (i.e. counterfeiting of travel documents, arrangement of marriages between migrants and legal citizens) and the exploitation of foreigners at low wages.

As a result, profit-seeking organizations often engage in illegal behaviour, while not-for-profit institutions provide relief to the affected migrants by means of counselling, social services, legal advice, awareness on immigration laws etc.

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The progression of technology has had a tremendous impact on daily life. This technological evolution has had a significant influence on the criminal justice system. The article Illusory Causation in the Courtroom by G. Daniel Lassiter explained, via a three-stage experiment, that the camera point of a videotaped confession can cause bias in the conviction rate, a videotaped confession is not ironclad proof that a defendant is guilty nor should videotaped confessions be allowed in court. This study consists of three stages.

The study hypothesized that if the camera point concentrated on the suspect, then the suspect has an increased chance of being found guilty due to bias and prejudistic effects of illusory causation. The independent variable, what is being manipulated or changed, is the camera point; for example, the camera is entirely focused on the suspect compared to the camera point equally focusing on both the suspect and the interrogator. The dependent variable, what is being quantified and responds to the manipulation or change, in the study is the rates at which they found the suspects guilty. The overarching goal of stage one of the study is to identify the presence of bias due to the camera angle. It was comprised of eight studies.

Five of the experiments included brief videos, under five minutes each, and utilized components that police texts propose should transpire in true interrogations or that befall in official investigations; the additional content of the three additional experiments utilized exclusively of police interrogation transcripts each roughly 30 minutes. Participants across all experiments in stage one consisted solely of college students enrolled in introductory psychology courses. A rating system was utilized for data acquisition.

Stage one demonstrated that the participants of the study perceived the confession as more voluntary when the camera angle was focused on the suspect rather than other angles — the perception of voluntariness effects the severity of sentencing recommendation, even when everything else was kept constant including the dialogue. The findings were that harsher sentencing was recommended when the suspect was the primary focus of the videotaped confession when compared to other camera angles including views equally focused on both the suspect and the interrogator. These findings remained constant even when the participants were told they would have to elaborate their findings to a judge. While stage two is more complex and diverse in participants than stage one, it maintains the same overarching theme of camera angles altering the perception. The purpose of diversifying participants is to increase the receptiveness of the courts to the study.

Stage two entailed three experiments. Participants in two of the experiments had adults not enrolled in college who are qualified to serve on a jury from both urban and rural areas of Ohio; the other experiment both students and nonstudents participated. Conviction rates were doubled when camera angles were solely centered on the suspect. This remained true even when the participants were allowed to view the videotape a second time and were explained the possibility of bias due to the camera angle. Age nor gender had any factor in the study. In stage three the focus shifted to recognizing and assessing the underlying mechanisms, specifically the memory and perception mediated rationals, of illusory causation. Stage three was composed of four experiments that found 'a person’s literal point of view (which, in these instances, was determined completely by the camera’s perspective) affects how he or she initially registers, or extracts, information from an observed interaction, which in turn affects his or her judgments regarding the causal influence exerted by each interactant.' (Lassiter, 2002) These findings support the hypothesis and aid in the validation of stages one and two.

Due to bias caused by Illusory Causation and nonassaultive psychological manipulation videotaped confessions are not ironclad proof that a defendant is guilty. According to the article, 101 death row inmates were released in 2002, many due to wrongful conviction tracked to the integration period. Often nonassaultive psychological manipulation is not perceived as coercion therefor videotaping the interrogation and confession are unjust to defendants. These videotaped confessions also are persuasive in the courts; for example, changing the point of view from including both the interrogator and the suspect to just being focused on the suspect doubled the conviction rate in this study. Due to these reasons, videotaped confessions should not be permitted in court.

Illusory Causation in the Courtroom is a phenomenal paper written by G. Daniel Lassiter. It explains that the camera angle of a videotaped confession can cause bias in the conviction rate. Due to this paper and experiments, it is justified that videotaped confessions are not ironclad proof that a defendant is guilty nor should videotaped confessions be allowed in court. There are three stages to the experiments described in Lassiter's paper. Stage one recognized the ubiquity of bias because of the camera angle. Stage two reemphasized what stage one discovered; however it including more diverse participants and more complicated cases. Stage three investigated illusory causation as the mechanism behind the prejudice based on the camera perspective. Overall technology has evolved our everyday life and has even made its way into the courtroom.

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