Part 9
Gunpowder was, according to the legend, invented by chance. Berthold Schwartz intended to make gold, yet when the mixture was ignited, he began to understand that it was an explosive. When I say that I met a friend by chance, I mean that the meeting was unintentional. I had not foreseen it and perhaps could not foresee it. When we call a throw of dice pure chance, we mean that the incidents which condition the turning up of these or those special faces of the dice have not been or cannot be calculated. We do not mean that the law of cause and effect is suspended; we mean that we are unable to determine the effect. That which would make this or that throw _eindeutig bestimmt_ is either not known to us, or, if it were known, is of such a nature that we cannot produce the desired effect with any certainty. Matters are so arranged in the game of dice that the slightest incident changes the result, and these incidents are either not within our ken or not within the range of our power. Chance, accordingly, as we understand it, is no exception to necessity; it does not happen contrary to law, and is in each case the strict result of a definite cause under definite circumstances.
Absolute chance is something quite different. Absolute chance is that which is incalculable because of the absence of law. Mr. Peirce says:
“Another argument, or convenient commonplace, is that absolute chance is _inconceivable_. This word has eight current significations. The ‘Century Dictionary’ enumerates six. Those who talk like this will hardly be persuaded to say in what sense they mean that chance is inconceivable.”
Absolute chance is “inconceivable” as the word is defined by the “Century Dictionary” in the second sense: It is
“unacceptable to the mind because involving a violation of laws believed to be well established by positive evidence.”
Absolute chance is not unthinkable in the sense of unimaginable. We can very well depict a case of absolute chance in our imagination, just as we can tell and describe in minutest details the fairy tale of Alladin’s lamp; just as we can in our imagination depict a creation out of nothing. But he who accepts that the world is in its innermost nature a cosmos, that its events are strictly and throughout regulated by law, cannot at the same time think that there are nooks and crevices in which the law does not operate. Absolute chance actually involves the idea of a creation out of nothing; and thus it stands in contradiction to the law of the preservation of matter and energy. Absolute chance which means that the very same thing under the very same conditions can act in this or in some other way, that it need not act in exactly the same way, involves a belief in either the creation of a not existing quality out of nothing, or the disappearance of existing qualities into nothing.
Mr. Peirce says:
“It seems to me that every throw of sixes with a pair of dice is a manifest instance of chance.”
Yes, of chance; but not of that chance the existence of which Mr. Peirce maintains—not of absolute chance. Every throw of dice, every toss of head or tail, are exactly determined by circumstances. We call it chance only in so far as we cannot calculate and predetermine the result.
Suppose you take two large silver coins between your thumb and the first two fingers, one coin parallel to and a little above the other. Suppose tails are up in both. Drop the lower coin without an effort just as it would fall, about twenty inches, and you may be sure that, in spite of yourself, it will turn up head. Then drop the upper one and it will not turn, but plump right down showing tail. There are certain mechanical reasons for the one case as well as for the other. As soon as we know the law and can apply it, the case ceases to be an instance of chance.
Dice, the roulette, and other games of chance are so arranged, that the determinating circumstances are too numerous and also too complex, one interfering with and being disturbed by the others, to admit of any adequate calculation or predetermination. An arrangement of conditions which in this way eludes the calculation of a definite set of possibilities, is called by Professor Kries _gleiche Spielräume_ or equal chances. And the province of equal chances is and will remain the proper sphere of the calculus of probabilities.
Professor Nitsche objects to Kries’s proposition, saying that absolutely equal chances are impossible and an equal chance (_ein gleicher Spielräume_) is nothing but the objectification of a judgment of equal value.[13] We find no fault with Nitsche’s objection; there are no absolutely equal chances; and what is called “equal chance” means that the strength of two or several anticipations is of the same degree; that our belief and doubt as to the turning up of one, two, three, four, five, or six spots of a die are equally justified. The objective conditions which justify such equality of several expectations is what Kries (if we understand him correctly) calls _gleiche Spielräume_. But _gleiche Spielräume_ do not imply absolute chance. We might as well expect that all the six faces of a die should turn up simultaneously in one throw, as that any one of them should turn up by absolute chance.
While absolute chance cannot be admitted, partly because we are not in need of it, (since the irregularities of nature can be sufficiently explained otherwise,) and partly because the idea of absolute chance if it were needed, is incompatible with our world-conception, we shall, nevertheless, have to concede to chance, as we understand the term, a very important rôle in the evolution of life. The formation of worlds and the history of mankind depend to a great extent upon chances similar to the throws of dice. There are many possibilities, and now this, now that, will, according to the circumstances, be realised—of course in each case with strict necessity.
Let us illustrate this idea by an example.
The formation of about seventy elements out of the original world-substance, which may be supposed to be homogeneous, does not appear to depend upon chance. Their universal appearance in all parts of the universe suggests the hypothesis that their formation is the inevitable result of a gradual condensation of nebular substances. We find everywhere, according to the stage of condensation, a gradual appearance, first of the lighter, then of the heavier elements. There seems to be no possibility of the formation of other elements than those known to us (including here the hypothetical elements which are still missing in the Mendeljeff series and at the same time, at least, not excluding a further continuance of the series). These elements or none, it appears, must be formed out of the original substance of our world. Let us here assume, for argument’s sake, that it were so beyond question, and that we knew the nature of the world-substance to be such as to condense, if it condenses at all, into no other but these forms, which we call chemical elements. This would be a limitation of possibilities. Exactly so the throws Of dice are limited. With the dice commonly in use we cannot throw fractions; nor can we throw either zero, or seven, or any other higher number. We can throw only whole numbers, integrals from one up to six. But while we thus assume that the formation of the elements is limited to those actually existing, the proportion in which the elements may be distributed in the different nebulæ and solar systems, is apparently very different. Suppose we had a full knowledge of the intrinsic nature of the world-substance and were standing outside the universe observing the process of world-formations; we could not from this knowledge alone predict all that would happen. We should on our assumption be able to predict _a priori_ that such elements would be formed. But whether the different elements would be generated in these or in other proportions appears to depend upon the presence of certain conditions, perhaps the rapidity of motion, the heat produced by friction, the temperature of the surrounding cosmic space, any knowledge of which is not included in our knowledge of the nature of the world-substance. These conditions may vary, nay, so far as we can judge they actually do vary; and any apparently slight variation of them, or even one of them, will result in different effects of great consequence. Without a detailed knowledge of all these special conditions, simply from a supposed _a priori_ knowledge of the world-substance, the idiosyncrasy of this or that particular solar system could not be _a priori_ determined. Here it will be such, and there, under perhaps slightly different circumstances, it will be entirely other. Here the centre of gravity may be in one great mass, there again it may be divided in two, so that the planets circle around two suns.
From this point of view we have to call these results products of chance.
To a being who not only might be supposed to know the intrinsic nature of existence, but could have present before his mind every event of the great interacting cosmos in its entire complexity, this kind of chance would, of course, also disappear. To him all states of things would appear throughout as _eindeutig bestimmt_. Yet, although in this way necessity permeates all events that take place, we do not intend to deny the irregularity of detail,[14] the specificalness of the particulars, the diversity of individual incidents and existences. According to our conception of nature they must remain, and we need not attribute them to absolute chance. To attribute irregularities to absolute chance (as Mr. Peirce does) is actually an abandonment of explaining them. The specificalness and particularity of nature can be said to be due to chance in so far only as they do not depend upon and are not determinable by the nature of the things under consideration, but result (with strict necessity of course) from the ever-changing conformations of surrounding circumstances.
Thus the fate of a man depends mainly upon his character,—the proverb says, “Every man is the architect of his own fortune”—but not entirely. There are sometimes coincidences determining the fates of men, and through them the fates of whole nations. And these coincidences do not result from their character.
Let everybody think of his own fate. Part of his life has been what it was because he is such a man as he is; and we can, within certain limits, predict the fate of a youth with whose character we are familiar. But how much of our lives depends upon circumstances which could be foreseen only by an omniscient being, and which, as we might properly say, if we do not misunderstand the term, is due to chance!
FREE WILL.
Compulsion is generally considered as a synonym of necessity. But the usage of the term necessity in the sense of compulsion is, in our opinion, very inappropriate, because misleading. Necessity and compulsion should not be confounded; for compulsion excludes free will and “necessity” does not.
A government compels its citizens to obey certain unpopular laws; the victorious army compels the enemy to surrender. The obedience of the citizens and the surrender of the enemy are acts done under compulsion; they are not acts of free will. But a man of a certain character wills, under given circumstances and in the absence of compulsion, _necessarily_ in the way in which he does. The determination of a free will is not a matter of chance but of necessity. Yet the determining factors are not outside but inside; they are not due to compulsion, not to the pressure of a foreign power, but to the nature of the willing being himself.
This, then, is the definition of “free”: A being is free if it is unrestrained, so that it acts according to its own nature. As is its nature, so it wills; as it wills, so it acts. If we know the character of a man and the situation in which he is placed, we can predict his choice as the necessary result of his nature. His decision, although it is free and not under compulsion, is not an outcome of chance which might under the same conditions be different, but is the inevitable result of necessity.
If by free will we had to understand that the decisions of the will are the result either of chance or of absolute chance, the foremost duty of the educator would be to make man unfree, to insert certain dominant ideas into his mind, destined to determine his will. The free man according to this definition of free will as being due to chance, would be a person whose actions are more whimsical than the fancies of lunatics. We reject this conception of the freedom of the will.
In our opinion a will is free if it is unrestrained so that it can act according to its nature. Our conception of free will does not stand in contradiction to the doctrine of “determinism” as defined by the “Century Dictionary” in its second sense:
“In general, the doctrine that whatever is or happens is entirely determined by antecedent causes.”
THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY.
We distinguish between (1) mechanical, (2) physical, (3) chemical, (4) physiological, and (5) psychical events.
A mechanical phenomenon is a change of place which does not involve a change of the constitution of the parts moved. E. g., a stone is pushed; its position is altered, but the stone remains the same.
A physical phenomenon is an event in which the molecular state of the bodies in action is altered. Water heated becomes steam, frozen it becomes ice. The three states have different molecular configurations.
Chemical phenomena are such in which the constitution of the atoms is altered. The characteristic qualities of hydrogen, for example, are different when combined with different elements or when isolated. Each combination is a peculiar substance with peculiar qualities and not a mixture or combination of the qualities of the isolated elements.
Physiological processes are all those changes that take place in the living irritable substance of plants and animals, such as nutrition, growth, and propagation. Its characteristic features are (1) hunger or thirst, i. e. the want of certain materials (food), (2) the reception of the wanted materials by suction or other means, which in some cases are a quite mechanical or physical process, not unlike the afflux of oxygen caused by a burning candle or the suction of water by a sponge, and (3) the assimilation of food. The materials received are distributed in the places wanted, thus adding to the building up of the living substance according to the nature of its structure. This produces as a natural result (4) the phenomenon of growth with a preservation of form. (5) Propagation is a special kind of growth; it is the growth of a part that at some stage of its development becomes an independent individual.
Psychical phenomena are such in which feelings and the meanings of feelings are the determinant factors.
It is apparent that all these terms, mechanical, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychical, are mere abstracts. In describing a mechanical phenomenon, we limit our attention to the mechanical change. We do not mean to say that the body moved does not possess chemical, physical, perhaps physiological, or even psychical qualities. The calculation of the curve of a jump is a mechanical problem, although the jumping body may be a human being. However, the question why did the man jump, is a psychical question. The motive of the jump is an idea in that class of mental activity characterised as purpose. The man had an end in view. And this idea of an end to be realised is the combined result of special conditions and of the character of the man.
The different spheres of mechanical, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychical actions being abstractions, it is obvious that science when dealing with so-called purely mechanical phenomena, has to do with a fiction. There are no purely mechanical phenomena. There are features of reality which are purely mechanical; and these we call motions. But the world does not consist of motions only. It also possesses other qualities.
The mechanical philosopher assumes that the world consists of matter and motion only, and so he feels warranted in the hope that every event that takes place, the actions of man included, can be explained by the laws of motion. Yet the premiss is wrong, and we may anticipate that the conclusion also will prove erroneous. And so it is.
The laws of motion are applicable to and will explain all motions; but they are not applicable to that which is not motion.
It is inconceivable how we can hope to explain a feeling by the laws of motion; and so the fond hope of explaining the problems of the nature of the soul by mechanics is preposterous. No objection can be made to the possibility of explaining the delicate motions in the nervous substance of the brain by the laws of molar or molecular mechanics. But these explanations would throw no light upon the causation that takes place in the mind. The properly psychical phenomena, the properly intelligent action of thought, could not be explained in this way. For the world of mentality introduces quite a new factor into the sphere of being.
What is this new factor?
The nature of mental activity consists in the symbolism of feelings. Feelings, being different under different conditions and the same under same conditions, become representative of their corresponding causes, and thus the objects of experience are depicted in feeling symbols.
Representativeness, accordingly, is the nature of mind.
The question, How certain brain-structures operate, is a question of the mechanics of nervous substance, and further, the question, How thought-operations take place, is a question, so to say, of logical mechanics. But the question, Why a certain idea responds to certain stimuli and not to others, does not admit of a mechanical explanation or formulation. The answer to this question will be a description of the nature of the idea; and the nature of the idea is not a motion: it is the meaning of which the idea is possessed.
The action of a mind depends upon the meaning of certain symbols. A written or spoken word has a special meaning, and this meaning becomes the determinant factor of mind action. The meaning of a word is not a piece of matter, neither is it a motion. It is something _sui generis_. I do not say that there is any inexplicable mystery connected with it. On the contrary, wonderful as the fact is, it is not mysterious; it does not stand in contradiction to any other fact of nature. Symbols stand for something; they indicate, denote, or signify something. This significance is called their meaning; and mind is a system of symbols in states of awareness.
Now, neither states of awareness are mechanical, nor is the meaning of words anything mechanical. How can we hope for a mechanical explanation either of the soul or the mind or of any mental action?
Suppose, for instance, a general receives a message containing a few words. He opens the paper, he reads it, and all on a sudden, his mind is in a tumult of excitement. What is it that produces the excitement? Is it any motion? Yes! In a certain sense, it is a motion: it is the reading of the paper. This is the cause. Yet not the reading as such excites his consternation. He might read other messages all the day long without any such an effect. Plainly, the causative element of the cause is not the reading, not the motions of which the reading consists, not the shape of the written characters and their combinations in groups, called words. It is something more subtle even than that. It is the significance of the writing. It is the meaning of the written characters. It is the purport that is attached to the word-symbols.
The origin of mind accordingly introduces a factor which has nothing to do with mechanics; and the simplest psychical reflexes, including those physiological reflexes which we must suppose to have originated by conscious adaptation and then been submerged into unconsciousness, cannot be explained from mechanical or physical laws alone.
SPONTANEITY.
While we thus reject the conception of the mechanical philosophy and also of materialism, we do not say that there are motions either in the brain or anywhere else which form exceptions to the laws of mechanics. The laws of mechanics hold good for all motions. The laws of mechanics are formal laws: they do not explain why bodies gravitate; but they describe how they gravitate; and the latter is much more useful to know than the former. There is (as we conceive it) no deep secret in the problem why bodies gravitate; they gravitate because they possess a quality which attracts them to each other with a force directly as their masses and inversely as the squares of their distances. In a word, gravity is the intrinsic nature of masses, it is an inalienable part of their existence. Thus whenever bodies gravitate, we are confronted with an act of spontaneity.
Attempts have been made to explain gravitation without the assumption of spontaneity, by the pressure of an atom-surrounding ether. But that only defers the question; for the spontaneity, in that case, would have to be placed in the ether. Whatever be the merits of the explanations of gravitation by a _vis a tergo_, we must recognise the fact that no motion can take place in the world, no pressure can be exercised, without there being somewhere some spontaneous something that moves or presses. Spontaneity is a universal feature of nature.
Mr. Peirce uses the term “spontaneity” in a different sense from ours. He identifies spontaneity with absolute chance. He means by it the irregularities that arise without cause, thus producing departures from law. We call that action spontaneous which is not due to external influence but springs from the nature of the things in action.
Spontaneous is derived from the Latin _spons_, “will,” which as a noun was obsolete at the classical period of Roman literature and occurred only in such forms as _sponte_, “of one’s own will, of one’s own accord.” If a man acts of his own will, free from and not biassed by the influence of other men, his action is spontaneous. A free man’s action is not arbitrary, unless arbitrariness[15] be the character of the man; it is not an exception to law; it is, if the character of the man is known, calculable in advance, for every free action is spontaneous: it springs immediately from the character of the man; it is the direct expression of his will; it reveals the nature of his very being, thus showing the man himself, and not something beyond or outside of him.
Taking the word spontaneity in this sense, we say: Masses gravitate spontaneously; they are self-moving; their motion is due to their gravity, and gravity is their intrinsic nature.
Exactly as the laws of mechanics explain the “how” of motions but not why there is motion at all, the “why” depending upon the nature of each moving body, so the “how” of the brain-motions is explicable by mechanical laws, but the “why” depends upon the nature of the moving material. The brain-atoms are possessed of the same spontaneity as the atoms of a gravitating stone. Yet there is present an additional feature; there are present states of awareness, and these states of awareness possess meaning, both of which are items which the chemist cannot find by chemical analysis. Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can be weighed on any scales, be they ever so delicate, nor are they determinable in foot-pounds.