In a naturalistic worldview, all events are understood to be the necessary result of antecedent events called “causes” and the resulting events are the “effects.” These causes are also called “determinants.” From the Big Bang forward events in our universe involving things on a molecular scale or larger appear to be part of a continuous process of cause and effect and human behavior is not an exception. The common assumption is that our choices originate from within us, and that we can choose to defy causation and behave contrary to all unchosen influences, but belief in our ability to behave in a contra-causal manner is erroneous. The choices we make are the inexorable result of every genetic and environmental determinant leading up to that instant.
On a superficial level, the feeling that we are always free to behave as we will ourselves to seems unassailable — unless threatened with mental or physical coercion, we are of course free to behave as we choose, free to act in accordance with our “freewill.” But even when we act free of coercion, of our own freewill, the factors which cause us to choose as we do are themselves unchosen. The result is that the way we behave at any given moment does not ultimately emanate from us but is the inescapable result of all of the determinants which precede.
Understanding that how we behave is the unavoidable consequence of our determinants requires reason-based thinking. The belief that our behavior can completely originate from us can seem compelling, it is, however, no more accurate than our mistaken intuitive sense that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones, or that the earth we stand on is static and not spinning at 1000 miles per hour. In each of these cases our intuitive sense fails us.
With the events leading up to our behavior as they are, the way we behave is the only way we can, although, this is not to suggest that alternative behaviors are impossible. For an alternative behavior to occur, however, the proximate and distal determinants would have had to have been different. So, for an event to unfold in an alternative way, the preceding event would have had to occur differently, and for that to have happened, the event preceding the preceding event would also have had to occur differently, ultimately necessitating an infinite series of regressions.
Most people can readily accept that our genes and our experiences have a powerful impact on our personalities and behaviors. Obviously, we inherit physical traits from our biological parents. Additionally behavioral genetic researchers believe that many other characteristics, such as tendencies towards personality traits and cognitive abilities, are inherited as well. It is also clear that environmental factors such as the time and the place in which we grow up influences characteristics like the way we speak and dress. Many researchers who study the impact of environment on behavior believe that our environmental influences are even more decisive than our genes in making us who we are.
But genes and environment also affect us in far less obvious ways frequently confounding analytical efforts. Complicating our understanding of how genetic and environmental factors cause us to be who we are is the impact of epigenetics — an area of research which examines how conditions in our environment cause some genes to become expressed or inhibited, and how those epigenetic effects might alter our physiology, thoughts, behaviors, and emotional health.
While we may not know whether it is our environment, our genes, or our epigenome that play the most decisive role in making us who we are, what is clear is that, aside from our genetic and environmental determinants, and their interaction, there is nothing else. The factors causing all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not of our own making — they are unchosen and completely a matter of luck. Accepting that our thoughts and behaviors are fully the result of our determinants is a crucial step toward letting go of self-blame which impairs personal growth, the blaming of others that damages relationships, and the self-righteous narratives that rationalize social inequity.