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rationality
June 2008 
Why Materialists Cheat
Posted on Jun 18th, 2008
by 
Staale
Staale
Why Materialists Cheat
The 2008 Shift Report: Changing the Story of Our Future, published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, recently arrived at the offices of WIE. Among its many other compelling facts, we were struck by this description of an experiment conducted by Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia that investigated the ways in which believing, or disbelieving, in free will affects moral choices:
This shocking e-mail dumped into my inbox this morning and I've not been able to relax properly since I read it. Perhaps blogging about it will make the unpleasant feeling go away.
What does this mean? It means that it does not matter wether we have free will or not, what matters is whether or not we believe we do! How about that?
But to be fair. Surely materialists aren't all determinists? I don't have any trouble seeing materialism hand in hand with rational free will. Some of the most hardcore objectivist/materialist people I know are avid proponents of, not just the softie "yes you can influence your choices, even though biology sets you up quite good" but hardcore 100% free will, which again is a bit on the extreme side making homeless junkies and alcoholics people who just happen to choose that kind of lifestyle.
Still this research does support the latter view.
Hm. I feel better now.
Thanks for listening.
The 2008 Shift Report: Changing the Story of Our Future, published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, recently arrived at the offices of WIE. Among its many other compelling facts, we were struck by this description of an experiment conducted by Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia that investigated the ways in which believing, or disbelieving, in free will affects moral choices:
- [W]hat one believes about free will has an important social consequence.... In the Vohs and Schooler study, [some] participants read passages from The Astonishing Hypothesis by Nobel laureate biologist Francis Crick, which promotes the idea that free will is an illusion: “Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.” Others read more neutral statements as a control condition. The results of the study showed that participants who read [Crick's] anti-free will statements were significantly more likely to cheat on several experimental tasks. If exposure to [anti-free will messages] increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then what does this same message, repeated by authoritative scientists and promoted by the media, do to societal behavior?
This shocking e-mail dumped into my inbox this morning and I've not been able to relax properly since I read it. Perhaps blogging about it will make the unpleasant feeling go away.
What does this mean? It means that it does not matter wether we have free will or not, what matters is whether or not we believe we do! How about that?
But to be fair. Surely materialists aren't all determinists? I don't have any trouble seeing materialism hand in hand with rational free will. Some of the most hardcore objectivist/materialist people I know are avid proponents of, not just the softie "yes you can influence your choices, even though biology sets you up quite good" but hardcore 100% free will, which again is a bit on the extreme side making homeless junkies and alcoholics people who just happen to choose that kind of lifestyle.
Still this research does support the latter view.
Hm. I feel better now.
Thanks for listening.
Access: PublicTagged with: rationality
It is indeed a very disturbing study. If people really had free will, would they be so easily affected by their verbal environment? If you can manipulate people that easily, their will must be very malleable at least.
Of course, this is generally true. It takes only a few words or a gesture to make most people completely change their behavior, at least to the worse but sometimes also to the better.
If we were sane, we should be able to freely choose what to do regardless of what was done to us; but only a few saints seem capable of this in every situation. Still, practice of awareness does expand this option for any of us. It is certainly not the default though, strangely enough.