Here's a semi-famous thought experiment that asks us to consider the issue of determinism. It comes from Gregory S. Kavka's book The Toxin Puzzle (1983). Read the puzzle and then speculate on its implications. Do not use any outside sources or google. Being confused is fine--plagiarism is not.
There is a toxin which, upon consumption, will make you violently ill for a few hours. You will receive a sizeable lump of money if you are able to intend, at present, to drink this toxin a few days into the future. If the intention is truly and successfully formed, you will be awarded the money without ever having drunk the toxin, and whether you fulfill your original intention or not will not change your reward.
So what's the problem here? This is a tough one. Try to work it out.
14 comments:
The problem here is how to determine whether the intent is true or not. A person could quite easiy say that they indeed do intend to drink, but how can you tell if they are lying or not? If they are told that they don't have to drink the toxin, and all they have to do is "intend" to drink it, they can fake it. They can act. What qualifications make intent 'successfully formed'? It is almost impossible to determine true intent of people, you can only look at actions and try to judge from there. But if the person is not going to drink the toxin, how do you know they intended to drink it? Only if someone follows through with actions, can you know if they ever truly intended to do anything. But in this scenario, you can never really tell for sure.
There are a few problems with this puzzle. One is whether or not you intend to drink the toxin you will still be awarded the money without having to drink the toxin. So the question is how the intention actually measured. Someone may intend to drink the toxin just to get the money but once the money is present their mindset will change because who would really be that dedicated if the reward comes before the task. Humans are programmed to work hard and then have something to show for that. Without something in return many would not even think twice about drinking the toxin. The second problem with this puzzle is the value of the money. You are not told what the effects of the toxin will do to you, so within that period of receiving the money and getting sick, it will be beneficial to you, but what happens to it afterwards. The money will be worthless and that person will have just drunk a toxin for no apparent reason.
To be honest, I have no idea what this question is asking. From what I can gather from this, there is a toxin that if you take it, will make ill. If your goal is to eat the toxin in the future, then you will get the money, whether or not you will in fact drink the toxin. Thus, all you have to do is to decide that yes, you will drink it in order to get the money. It doesn't matter whether or not you actually follow through with this, it just matters that you have chosen to drink it. If there is a problem here, it is that you have chosen to consume this toxin, but after you have chosen to do it, you can choose not to do it. However, this is not a paradox because this is simply a suppression of the truth. People can believe in a lie enough so that it becomes a truth, and thus, can pass a lie detector test. Thus, you can "truly" intend to drink it, but still not drink it.
This is extremely confusing. How can you truly intend to do something and not actually do it? I feel like the situation is impossible. If I truly and honestly intended to drink the toxin then what would stop me from drinking it? There would have to be some sort of force or something to stop me from actually drinking it after I intended to do so. I understand that all I have to do is intend to drink it to receive the lump of money, but even after I received the money wouldn't I still drink it because I intended to? Plus, how can anyone tell if I am honestly intending to drink it? I don't even think I could ever get myself to honestly intend to drink a toxin. I see a lot of problems with this and have to ask a lot of questions about it. I believe that if you truly intend to drink the toxin, your going to drink it unless something gets in your way.
According to this, you’ll get a lot of money if you decide to drink a toxin that will make you violently ill for hours. Wouldn’t this deal with whether you believe all your choices are already determined or not? This seems to believe in the idea of determinism. That our decisions are already made for us. Since it’s stated that “whether you fulfill your original intention or not will not change your reward.” It seems it would mean that once you intend to drink the toxin, you would really intend to drink the toxin and they know it. So you’ll receive the money even if you don’t drink the toxin later. Just because they know you did intend to drink it and that would be enough for them. This is hard to explain since I’m confused about this.
It is easy to see that this has to do with determinism. You can choose whether or not to drink this toxin. Since I am a "Hard Determinist" I believe that our decision has already been planned due to the series of events that led up to this. Either way, whether I drink it and recieve my award or not drink it, has been determined already. Everytime that I would, or could do this, the events that led up to it, will be the reason why I did one thing or another. I also this that this scenario has a lot to do with doing the right or wrong thing, whether something is moral or immoral. Because if you were to drink this toxin, and the other who do so also, recieve money for the pain that they would endure. If you didn't drink it, and still recieved the money it would be unfair to the people who drank it so that they would get the money. All i can say is that this is a confusing scenario.
If things are predetermined then, I believe it’s saying you will get the money anyway because it’s already been mapped out for you to receive this money. A few days into the future whether or not you choose to drink this toxin you will get this money because according to determinism on this future day you will receive money. That is what’s determined, not if you will drink the toxin that in itself is a choice. So, therefore if you believe the ideas behind determinism you wouldn’t drink the toxin because you know that no matter what that lump sum of money is yours. Yet free will also comes into play because you can choose to drink the toxin or not and still end up with the money. So free will and determinism in a way work hand in hand in this situation. But overall it just stating the no matter the choice you make by free will its determined that you receive the money.
The problem explains that you must intend to drink this toxin which will make you extremely ill for several hours. If you do this, you will receive a large amount of money. It also states that if you do make the intention to drink it they will hand you the money, but the scenario never says that they will have somebody check to make sure you have drinken it or become ill. So the problem, who is to know you will really follow through with your intentions. Also, its basically rewarding you with a large sum of money for just speaking of something, not actually doing(who in their right mind would ACTUALLY go through with this if they did not have to).
This problem has to do with determinism. This toxic will be able to determine what you think and as a result it will either make you extremely ill or fulfill the intention. However, there's a problem to this thought experiment because there is no way that it can be proven what the intention was - whether is was truly formed or not. A person may lie about this while taking the toxin, causing them to fall ill. On the other hand, someone may lie about their intentions and get away with it, and no one will ever know. We can compare it to the lie- detector test. This is a test that can tell when a person is lying, and liars have learned sneaky ways to go around the lie-detector test, which means people may learn to go around the toxin.
In my opinion, I think that the big decision here is more of the pre-decision than the decision itself. I believe that the decision is drinking the toxin itself; however, the pre-decision is how we are drinking the toxin. Now when you think about it, the way you drink the toxin, or the attitude inside of you as you drink the toxin, really makes a huge a difference. It is not really much of a decision, because we do not decide and say I’m going to be happy now, no I’m going to be sad now. Our emotions are just the feelings we have inside of us. Whether it happens because of our surroundings or it happens because we are created that way, it happens and it’s just there. Overall, I think that our attitude while we are drinking the toxin is not something that is between our hands so obviously it is not really a choice which is not really freedom!
If you intend to do something than you are choosing to follow through and commiting yourself to mean to do something. Therefore, if you intend to do something you can still mean to do it, but don't actually do it. Therefore, the indeterminist will say that you can intend all you want, but it is up to you whether you really do it because up to the point when you actually drink it, you can still not do it, despite intentions. The determinist might drink it or might not, intending to do something does not neccessarily mean that you will do it, but the determinist will say that whether you intend to or not, you either will drink it or not and the intention might be a circumstance that acts upon you to decide to drink it; however the fact that it is poisonous and that you received money for it and your own fear are also circumstances that act on you to determine whether you drink it or not. The determinist probably would say that it doesn't matter if you promise intentions because it's already decided what you are going to do, but the promise may change the circumstances that determine what you will do. The stance of the drinker does not matter whether he or she is a determinst or not, both could act in the same way or oppositely, but the way he or she views the bigger picture of the situation is different.
This situation is vaguely similar to the "momentuous option" from William James. In describing this, he mentions that deciding not to do something is the same as attempting it and failing to complete the task. In this case, the choice would be to intend on drinking this toxin, or not drinking this toxin. If choosing not to drink the toxin is the same as drinking it and failing to receive the money (the person could have backed out at the last moment), then how can this be fair?
Also, if you are to be rewarded with the money without needing to actually drink the toxin, then anyone could just pretend to intend to drinking it knowing that they will get the money anyway. This defeats the purpose of the experiment which is whether you would really consider drinking it, not based on the outcome of the experiment.
This post is now closed.
The true problem in this thought experiment is how to determine if your intentions are true. Anyone can just say yes i would drink this toxin. How do you know that the person is lying or not? I mean everyone wants to get a lot of money for free right? So, then they could easily just be lying and saying that they would drink the toxin just to get the money. Really, all one has to do is "intend" that he would drink the toxin. They can easily lie about it. I guess the only way you can really tell is if they put on a lie dector test but they could just be really good at lying and pass the test. So, I guess we will never really know.
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