Determinism, Free Will and Ethics

Take a look at an essay I wrote for my high school Philosophy class in Grade 12:

Determinism, Free Will and Ethics

FLETCHER: The commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics.  The Precogs see the future.  And they're never wrong.

WITWER: But it's not the future if you stop it.  Isn't that a fundamental paradox?

ANDERTON: Yes, it is. You're talking about predetermination, which happens all the time.

         - Gordon Fletcher, Danny Witwer and John Anderton,  Minority Report

      Minority Report is an engaging futuristic movie that deals with the philosophical issues of determinism, free will and ethics. In the movie, John Anderton is a leading officer and advocator of a new crime prevention system called Precrime. The system requires three (psychics called) precogs, two boys (Arthur and Dashiell) and a gifted girl (Agatha), which can predict the future murder of a person (or persons).  When a precog has a vision, depending on the circumstance of the murder, a red ball (for passion) is created indicating the victim of the murder and afterwards another ball is created stating the perpetrator of the murder.

      Anderton believes Precrime is fool-proof and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the system. A challenging Department of Justice agent named Danny Witwer thinks otherwise, and soon Anderton thinks there is something wrong too - because he becomes accused of murder. On the run and searching for answers, Anderton discovers that there is a minority report in which one precog predicts something differently from the other two. Anderton thinks his future of murder might be a minority report and breaks all the rules in order to prove his innocence.

      The first issue Minority Report deals with is determinism. Determinism is the idea that everything is inevitable and happens out of consequence. In general, murders do happen out of consequence - a whole string of events and factors. However, as Aristotle states in the Prime Mover, all movement is determined by a mover. Behind every movement there is a chain of events. Aristotle believes something happens as a result of something else. In Aristotle’s context, he believes the Prime Mover is God, who is the first and necessary mover of all things. St. Thomas Aquinas also tangents off the idea of the mover (whom he calls necessary being) and the moved (which he calls contingent being). St. Thomas uses this idea as an argument for the existence of God. Minority Report does not address God, but it does hint at the idea of something higher than humans.

       The precogs are ‘human’ oracles; they predict gruesome futures and other things as well (when Agatha was kidnapped she predicted rainfall). The place the precogs are kept at is called ‘the temple’. The precogs are very much revered and not even thought of as human. At one point Rufus Riley, an accomplice of John Anderton’s, bows down to Agatha. Although the precogs are human and were born of human parents (drug addicts), they are used as devices for tracking down murderers (as objects), and are disregarded as humans. Determinism and the idea of superior beings are two prevalent ideas in Minority Report.

      Minority Report also deals with pre-determinism, the idea that everything was determined at the origin of the universe. Is everything pre-determined? Is a person’s life already mapped out and decided? If a person knew their future would there be any way for them to change their destiny? Minority Report toys with these questions. On one hand, all the agents of Precrime believe that everything (or at least all of the murders) is already decided, and that if a person is destined to kill someone, then they will kill that person. On the other hand, with the information from the precogs, the agents physically stop the murder from happening, therefore interfering with, and changing, destiny. Precrime is almost a contradiction. The precogs see a person’s destiny (of being murdered) and the Precrime officers interfere with that future.

      Determinism and pre-determinism, depending on the extremities, disregard the idea of free will and the ability for a person to change their destiny. In the beginning, when Anderton tries to clarify his idea of Precrime, he compares a murder to the ball Witwer caught. Although the ball was destined to fall, it was caught by Witwer and therefore its destiny changed. Although a murder was supposed to happen, because of predictions, the Precrime officers stopped it before it happened. When Anderton sees his future (murdering a man he does not even know) he is determined to change that future with the use of his free will. He is convinced that the prediction is a minority report and goes to the apartment of the man he is supposed to murder. Anderton also brings Agatha with him, and in Anderton’s rage (he discovered that Leo Crow, the victim, had pictures of Anderton’s dead son) Agatha tells him that, “the others never saw their future [he] still [had] a choice”. Anderton overcomes his rage, but because Crow was so insistent on being killed, and put pressure on Anderton, Anderton pulled the trigger and the prediction came true. Free will is about the ability to make a choice regarding something and the ability to be held accountable for everything you do. With determinism (and pre-determinism) a person does not have a choice for what becomes of their actions, with free will a person does have a choice.

      Lastly, the movie deals with ethics. There are two main ethical issues that the movie deals with and they are: the treatment of people who have not yet committed a murder (the idea of Precrime itself) and the treatment of the precogs. Firstly, are the Precrime officers justified in putting away people who have not yet committed a murder? Secondly, is the system justified in isolating and drugging three humans for the sake of saving other people’s lives? Looking at Precrime from a purely Utilitarianism point of view, Precrime would be justifiable because it is serving the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Who cares about the one or two minority reports where the perpetrators are innocent? Who cares about the social lives of three people? As Anderton stated in the beginning, there had not been a single murder since the start of Precrime. As long as Precrime helps the majority, Precrime is a good thing (in the Utilitarianism point of view).                                                          
     What John Anderton proves is that the minority counts, and that Precrime is unethical. There are flaws to the system as Lamar Burgess (the director of Precrime) demonstrated when he murdered Agatha’s mother (without getting caught). When Burgess was exposed as the killer he was, it just showed how the system was flawed and it also showed how precogs are only human. The precogs were drugged everyday so that they were compliant to Precrime. Their only purpose was to predict murders and nothing else. Sometimes they disagreed about a murder. The treatment of the precogs was unethical. They were treated more like objects or animals than they were treated like humans. Fortunately, by the end of the movie, the system of Precrime is shut down and the pre-cogs are released to their own home (also secluded from society, but for their own benefit) to live normal lives.