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Sample essay on free will and moral responsibility.

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Free will is a fundamental aspect of modern philosophy. This sample philosophy paper explores how moral responsibility and free will represent an important area of moral debate between philosophers. This type of writing would of course be seen in a philosophy course, but many people might also be inclined to write an essay about their opinions on free will for personal reasons.

History of free will and moral responsibility

In our history, free will and moral responsibility have been longstanding debates amongst philosophers. Some contend that free will does not exist while others believe we have control over our actions and decisions. For the most part, determinists believe that free will does not exist because our fate is predetermined. An example of this philosophy is found in the Book of Genisis .

The biblical story states God created man for a purpose and designed them to worship him. Since God designed humans to operate in a certain fashion and he knew the outcome, it could be argued from a determinist point of view that free will didn't exist. Because our actions are determined, it seems that we are unable to bear any responsibility for our acts.

Galen Strawson has suggested that “in order to be truly deserving, we must be responsible for that which makes us deserving.”

However, Strawson also has implied that we are unable to be responsible. We are unable to be responsible because, as determinists suggest, all our decisions are premade; therefore, we do not act of our own free will. Consequently, because our actions are not the cause of our free will, we cannot be truly deserving because we lack responsibility for what we do.

Defining free will

Free will implies we are able to choose the majority of our actions ("Free will," 2013). While we would expect to choose the right course of action, we often make bad decisions. This reflects the thinking that we do not have free will because if we were genuinely and consistently capable of benevolence, we would freely decide to make the ‘right’ decisions.

In order for free will to be tangible, an individual would have to have control over his or her actions regardless of any external factors. Analyzing the human brain's development over a lifetime proves people have the potential for cognitive reasoning and to make their own decisions.

Casado has argued “the inevitability of free will is such that if one considers freedom an illusion, the internal perspective – and one’s own everyday life – would be totally contradictory” ( 2011, p. 369).

On the other hand, while we can determine whether or not we will wake up the next day, it is not an aspect of our free will because we cannot control this. Incidentally, determinism suggests everything happens exactly the way it should have happened because it is a universal law ("Determinism," 2013). In this way, our free will is merely an illusion.

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The determinism viewpoint

For example, if we decided the previous night that we would wake up at noon, we are unable to control this even with an alarm clock. One, we may die in our sleep. Obviously, as most would agree, we did not choose this. Perhaps we were murdered in our sleep. In that case, was it our destiny to become a victim of violent crimes, or was it our destiny to be murdered as we slept? Others would mention that the murderer was the sole cause of the violence and it their free will to decide to kill.

Therefore, the same people might argue that the murderer deserved a specific punishment. The key question, then, is the free will of the murderer. If we were preordained to die in the middle of the night at the hand of the murderer, then the choice of death never actually existed. Hence, the very question of choice based on free will is an illusion.

Considering that our wills are absolutely subject to the environment in which they are articulated in, we are not obligated to take responsibility for them as the product of their environment. For example, if we were born in the United States, our actions are the result of our country’s laws. Our constitutional laws allow us the right to bear arms and have access to legal representation. In addition, our constitutional laws allow us the freedom to express our thoughts through spoken and written mediums and the freedom to believe in a higher power or not. We often believe we are free to act and do what we want because of our free will.

Harris (2012) has agreed that “free will is more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot even be rendered coherent” conceptually.

Moral judgments, decisions, and responsibility for free will

Either our wills are determined by prior causes, and we are not responsible for them, or they are a product of chance, and we are not responsible for them” (p. 46). This being the case, can we be deserving if we can so easily deflect the root of our will and actions? Perhaps, our hypothetical murder shot us. It could be argued that gun laws in the United States provided them with the mean to commit murder.

Either the murderer got a hold of a gun by chance or he or she was able to purchase one. While the purchase is not likely, one would have to assume that someone, maybe earlier, purchased the weapon. Therefore, it was actually the buyer’s action that allowed this particular crime to take place. Essentially, both would ‘deserve’ some sort of punishment.

According to The American Heritage Dictionary (2001), the word “deserving” means "Worthy, as of reward or praise” (p. 236), so it regards to punishments, it seems deserving has a positive meaning.

Free will and changing societal views

However, the meanings will change depending on our position. For example, some would suggest that the murderer acted with his or her own free will. However, once they are caught and convicted, they are no longer free in the sense that they can go wherever they want. On the other hand, they are free to think however they want.

If they choose to reenact their crimes in their thoughts, they are free to do so. Some many say, in the case of the murderer, he or she is held responsible for his or her crime, thus he or she deserves blame. However, if the murderer had a mental illness and was unaware he or she committed a crime, should we still consider that the murderer acted with his or her free will? With that in mind, it seems that Strawson’s argument is valid because the murderer was not acting of his or her free will.

Many would consider Strawson to be a “free will pessimist” (Timpe c. Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, and Pessimism, 2006, para. 5). Strawson does not believe we have the ability to act on our own free will. However, he does not believe our actions are predetermined either.

Specifically, in his article “Luck Swallows Everything,” Strawson (1998) has claimed that “One cannot be ultimately responsible for one's character or mental nature in any way at all” (para. 33).

Determining when free will is not applicable

While some would agree young children and disabled adults would not hold any responsibility, others would claim that criminals should bear responsibility when they commit a crime. What if the actions are caused by both nature and nurturing of the parents ? Or, what if they're caused by prior events including a chain of events that goes back before we are born, libertarians do not see how we can feel responsible for them. If our actions are directly caused by chance, they are simply random and determinists do not see how we can feel responsible for them (The Information Philosopher Responsibility n.d.).

After all, one would not argue that murderers are worthy of a positive reward; however, Strawson has argued that we, whether good or evil, do not deserve any types of rewards. Instead, our actions and their consequences are based on luck or bad luck. In order to have ultimate moral responsibility for an action, the act must originate from something that is separate from us.

We consider free will the ability to act or do as we want; however, there is a difference between freedom of action and freedom of will. Freedom of action suggests we are able to physically act upon our desire. In a way, some believe that freedom of will is the choice that precedes that action. In addition to freedom of act or will, free will also suggests we have a sense of moral responsibility. This moral responsibility, however, is not entirely specified. For example, is this responsibility to ourselves or those around us? While this is a question that may never be answered, no matter how many essays are written on the subject, it is one that many consider important to ask, nonetheless.

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Student Writing Sample: “Do We Have Free Will?”

Do we have free will? CISL San Francisco students were asked this question last month for our writing contest. The winning entry, from Maxime Bindzi, is a wonderful example of a five-paragraph English essay. Enjoy his musings on free will. Congratulations, Maxime! Your writing skills are truly impressive!

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Philosophical Concepts — Free Will

Essays on Free Will

Dive into the depths of one of philosophy's most enduring questions with our curated selection of free will essay samples. This collection is designed to provide students, philosophers, and curious minds with a comprehensive overview of the debates and discussions surrounding the concept of free will. Whether you're examining the determinism versus free will debate, exploring the implications of free will on morality, or seeking inspiration for your own free will essay, our assortment of essays offers valuable perspectives and in-depth analysis.

The Concept of Free Will

Free will touches upon the ability of individuals to make choices that are not predetermined by past events, genetic makeup, or divine intervention. Essays on free will traverse the realms of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience , and ethics, offering insights into how we understand human agency and responsibility. By engaging with these essays, readers can explore various positions within the free will debate, from libertarianism to compatibilism and hard determinism, enriching their understanding of this complex philosophical issue.

Highlights from Our Essay Collection

Our free will essay samples cover a broad spectrum of topics and viewpoints, ensuring that readers can find material that resonates with their specific interests and academic needs. From analytical discussions on the existence and nature of free will to explorations of its implications for legal and ethical responsibility, our essays provide a platform for deep engagement with the question of human autonomy. Each essay not only serves as a resource for academic exploration but also as a source of inspiration for developing nuanced and critical perspectives on free will.

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Engaging with the concept of free will through academic writing offers a profound opportunity to delve into questions of human nature, responsibility, and ethics. Our collection of free will essay samples is here to support you in this intellectual journey, providing a solid foundation for informed and compelling writing. By exploring our essays, you can deepen your understanding of free will and contribute thoughtfully to the ongoing philosophical conversation.

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“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.)

Philosophers who distinguish freedom of action and freedom of will do so because our success in carrying out our ends depends in part on factors wholly beyond our control. Furthermore, there are always external constraints on the range of options we can meaningfully try to undertake. As the presence or absence of these conditions and constraints are not (usually) our responsibility, it is plausible that the central loci of our responsibility are our choices, or “willings.”

I have implied that free willings are but a subset of willings, at least as a conceptual matter. But not every philosopher accepts this. René Descartes, for example, identifies the faculty of will with freedom of choice, “the ability to do or not do something” (Meditation IV), and even goes so far as to declare that “the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained” (Passions of the Soul, I, art. 41). In taking this strong polar position on the nature of will, Descartes is reflecting a tradition running through certain late Scholastics (most prominently, Suarez) back to John Duns Scotus.

The majority view, however, is that we can readily conceive willings that are not free. Indeed, much of the debate about free will centers around whether we human beings have it, yet virtually no one doubts that we will to do this and that. The main perceived threats to our freedom of will are various alleged determinisms: physical/causal; psychological; biological; theological. For each variety of determinism, there are philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds; (ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will; or (iii) accept its reality and deny its compatibility with free will. (See the entries on compatibilism ; causal determinism ; fatalism ; arguments for incompatibilism ; and divine foreknowedge and free will .) There are also a few who say the truth of any variety of determinism is irrelevant because free will is simply impossible.

If there is such a thing as free will, it has many dimensions. In what follows, I will sketch the freedom-conferring characteristics that have attracted most of the attention. The reader is warned, however, that while many philosophers emphasize a single such characteristic, perhaps in response to the views of their immediate audience, it is probable that most would recognize the significance of many of the other features discussed here.

1.1 Free Will as Choosing on the Basis of One's Desires

• 1.2 Free Will as Deliberative Choosing on the Basis of Desires and Values

1.3 Self-mastery, Rightly-Ordered Appetite

2. ownership, 3.1 free will as guidance control, 3.2 free will as ultimate origination (ability to do otherwise), 3.3 do we have free will, 4. theological wrinkles, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. rational deliberation.

On a minimalist account, free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling some desire. David Hume, for example, defines liberty as “a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will.” (1748, sect.viii, part 1). And we find in Jonathan Edwards (1957) a similar account of free willings as those which proceed from one's own desires.

One reason to deem this insufficient is that it is consistent with the goal-directed behavior of some animals whom we do not suppose to be morally responsible agents. Such animals lack not only an awareness of the moral implications of their actions but also any capacity to reflect on their alternatives and their long-term consequences. Indeed, it is plausible that they have little by way of a self-conception as an agent with a past and with projects and purposes for the future. (See Baker 2000 on the ‘first-person perspective.’)

1.2 Free Will as deliberative choosing on the basis of desires and values

A natural suggestion, then, is to modify the minimalist thesis by taking account of (what may be) distinctively human capacities and self-conception. And indeed, philosophers since Plato have commonly distinguished the ‘animal’ and ‘rational’ parts of our nature, with the latter implying a great deal more psychological complexity. Our rational nature includes our ability to judge some ends as ‘good’ or worth pursuing and value them even though satisfying them may result in considerable unpleasantness for ourselves. (Note that such judgments need not be based in moral value.) We might say that we act with free will when we act upon our considered judgments/valuings about what is good for us, whether or not our doing so conflicts with an ‘animal’ desire. (See Watson 2003a for a subtle development of this sort of view.) But this would seem unduly restrictive, since we clearly hold many people responsible for actions proceeding from ‘animal’ desires that conflict with their own assessment of what would be best in the circumstances. More plausible is the suggestion that one acts with free will when one's deliberation is sensitive to one's own judgments concerning what is best in the circumstances, whether or not one acts upon such a judgment.

Here we are clearly in the neighborhood of the ‘rational appetite’ accounts of will one finds in the medieval Aristotelians. The most elaborate medieval treatment is Thomas Aquinas's. [ 1 ] His account involves identifying several distinct varieties of willings. Here I note only a few of his basic claims. Aquinas thinks our nature determines us to will certain general ends ordered to the most general goal of goodness. These we will of necessity, not freely. Freedom enters the picture when we consider various means to these ends, none of which appear to us either as unqualifiedly good or as uniquely satisfying the end we wish to fulfill. There is, then, free choice of means to our ends, along with a more basic freedom not to consider something, thereby perhaps avoiding willing it unavoidably once we recognized its value. Free choice is an activity that involves both our intellectual and volitional capacities, as it consists in both judgment and active commitment. A thorny question for this view is whether will or intellect is the ultimate determinant of free choices. How we understand Aquinas on this point will go a long ways towards determining whether or not he is a sort of compatibilist about freedom and determinism. (See below. Good expositions of Aquinas' account are Donagan 1985, Stump 1997, and MacDonald 1998.)

There are two general worries about theories of free will that principally rely on the capacity to deliberate about possible actions in the light of one's conception of the good. First, there are agents who deliberately choose to act as they do but who are motivated to do so by a compulsive, controlling sort of desire. (And there seems to be no principled bar to a compulsive desire's informing a considered judgment of the agent about what the good is for him.) Such agents are not willing freely. (Wallace 2003 offers an account of the way addiction impairs the will.) Secondly, we can imagine a person's psychology being externally manipulated by another agent (via neurophysiological implant, say), such that the agent is caused to deliberate and come to desire strongly a particular action which he previously was not disposed to choose. The deliberative process could be perfectly normal, reflective, and rational, but seemingly not freely made. The agent's freedom seems undermined or at least greatly diminished by such psychological tampering.

Some theorists are much impressed by cases of inner, psychological compulsion and define freedom of will in contrast to this phenomenon. For such thinkers, true freedom of the will involves liberation from the tyranny of base desires and acquisition of desires for the Good. Plato, for example, posits rational, spirited, and appetitive aspects to the soul and holds that willings issue from the higher, rational part alone. In other cases, one is dominated by the irrational desires of the two lower parts. [ 2 ] This is particularly characteristic of those working in a theological context—for example, the New Testament writer St. Paul, speaking of Christian freedom (Romans vi-viii; Galatians v), and those influenced by him on this point, such as Augustine. (The latter, in both early and later writings, allows for a freedom of will that is not ordered to the good, but maintains that it is of less value than the rightly-ordered freedom. See, for example, the discussion in Books II-III of On Free Choice .) More recently, Susan Wolf (1990) defends an asymmetry thesis concerning freedom and responsibility. On her view, an agent acts freely only if he had the ability to choose the True and the Good. For an agent who does so choose, the requisite ability is automatically implied. But those who reject the Good choose freely only if they could have acted differently. This is a further substantive condition on freedom, making freedom of will a more demanding condition in cases of bad choices.

In considering such rightly-ordered-appetites views of freedom, I again focus on abstract features common to all. It explicitly handles the inner-compulsion worry facing the simple deliberation-based accounts. The other, external manipulation problem could perhaps be handled through the addition of an historical requirement: agents will freely only if their willings are not in part explicable by episodes of external manipulation which bypass their critical and deliberative faculties (Mele 1995). But another problem suggests itself: an agent who was a ‘natural saint,’ always and effortlessly choosing the good with no contrary inclination, would not have freedom of will among his virtues. Doubtless we would greatly admire such a person, but would it be an admiration suffused with moral praise of the person or would it, rather, be restricted to the goodness of the person's qualities? (Cf. Kant, 1788.) The appropriate response to such a person, it seems, is on an analogy with aesthetic appreciation of natural beauty, in contrast to the admiration of the person who chooses the good in the face of real temptation to act selfishly. Since this view of freedom of will as orientation to the good sometimes results from theological reflections, it is worth noting that other theologian-philosophers emphasize the importance for human beings of being able to reject divine love: love of God that is not freely given—given in the face of a significant possibility of one's having not done so—would be a sham, all the more so since, were it inevitable, it would find its ultimate and complete explanation in God Himself.

Harry Frankfurt (1982) presents an insightful and original way of thinking about free will. He suggests that a central difference between human and merely animal activity is our capacity to reflect on our desires and beliefs and form desires and judgments concerning them. I may want to eat a candy bar (first-order desire), but I also may want not to want this (second-order desire) because of the connection between habitual candy eating and poor health. This difference, he argued, provides the key to understanding both free action and free will. (These are quite different, in Frankfurt's view, with free will being the more demanding notion. Moreover, moral responsibility for an action requires only that the agent acted freely, not that the action proceeded from a free will.)

On Frankfurt's analysis, I act freely when the desire on which I act is one that I desire to be effective. This second-order desire is one with which I identify : it reflects my true self. (Compare the addict: typically, the addict acts out of a desire which he does not want to act upon. His will is divided, and his actions proceed from desires with which he does not reflectively identify. Hence, he is not acting freely.) My will is free when I am able to make any of my first-order desires the one upon which I act. As it happens, I will to eat the candy bar, but I could have willed to refrain from doing so.

With Frankfurt's account of free will, much hangs on what being able to will otherwise comes to, and on this Frankfurt is officially neutral. (See the related discussion below on ability to do otherwise.) But as he connects moral responsibility only to his weaker notion of free action, it is fitting to consider its adequacy here. The central objection that commentators have raised is this: what's so special about higher-order willings or desires? (See in particular Watson 2003a.) Why suppose that they inevitably reflect my true self, as against first-order desires? Frankfurt is explicit that higher-order desires need not be rooted in a person's moral or even settled outlook (1982, 89, n.6). So it seems that, in some cases, a first-order desire may be much more reflective of my true self (more “internal to me,” in Frankfurt's terminology) than a weak, faint desire to be the sort of person who wills differently.

In later writings, Frankfurt responds to this worry first by appealing to “decisions made without reservations” (“Identification and Externality” and “Identification and Wholeheartedness” in Frankfurt, 1988) and then by appealing to higher-order desires with which one is “satisfied,” such that one has no inclination to make changes to them (1992). But the absence of an inclination to change the desire does not obviously amount to the condition of freedom-conferring identification. It seems that such a negative state of satisfaction can be one that I just find myself with, one that I neither approve nor disapprove (Pettit, 2001, 56).

Furthermore, we can again imagine external manipulation consistent with Frankfurt's account of freedom but inconsistent with freedom itself. Armed with the wireless neurophysiology-tampering technology of the late 21st century, one might discreetly induce a second-order desire in me to be moved by a first-order desire—a higher-order desire with which I am satisfied—and then let me deliberate as normal. Clearly, this desire should be deemed “external” to me, and the action that flows from it unfree.

3. Causation and Control

Our survey of several themes in philosophical accounts of free will suggests that a—perhaps the —root issue is that of control . Clearly, our capacity for deliberation and the potential sophistication of some of our our practical reflections are important conditions on freedom of will. But any proposed analysis of free will must also ensure that the process it describes is one that was up to, or controlled by, the agent.

Fantastic scenarios of external manipulation and less fantastic cases of hypnosis are not the only, or even primary, ones to give philosophers pause. It is consistent with my deliberating and choosing ‘in the normal way’ that my developing psychology and choices over time are part of an ineluctable system of causes necessitating effects. It might be, that is, that underlying the phenomena of purpose and will in human persons is an all-encompassing, mechanistic world-system of ‘blind’ cause and effect. Many accounts of free will are constructed against the backdrop possibility (whether accepted as actual or not) that each stage of the world is determined by what preceded it by impersonal natural law. As always, there are optimists and pessimists.

John Martin Fischer (1994) distinguishes two sorts of control over one's actions: guidance and regulative. A person exerts guidance control over his own actions insofar as they proceed from a ‘weakly’ reasons-responsive (deliberative) mechanism. This obtains just in case there is some possible scenario where the agent is presented with a sufficient reason to do otherwise and the mechanism that led to the actual choice is operative and it issues in a different choice, one appropriate to the imagined reason. In Fischer and Ravizza (1998), the account is elaborated and refined. They require, more strongly, that the mechanism be the person's own mechanism (ruling out external manipulation) and that it be ‘moderately’ responsive to reasons: one that is “regularly receptive to reasons, some of which are moral reasons, and at least weakly reactive to reason” (82, emphasis added). Receptivity is evinced through an understandable pattern of reasons recognition—beliefs of the agent about what would constitute a sufficient reason for undertaking various actions. (See 69-73 for details.)

None of this, importantly, requires ‘regulative’ control: a control involving the ability of the agent to choose and act differently in the actual circumstances. Regulative control requires alternative possibilities open to the agent, whereas guidance control is determined by characteristics of the actual sequence issuing in one's choice. Fischer allows that there is a notion of freedom that requires regulative control but does not believe that this kind of freedom is required for moral responsibility. (In this, he is persuaded by a form of argument originated by Harry Frankfurt. See Frankfurt 1969 and Fischer 1994, Ch.7 for an important development of the argument. The argument has been debated extensively in recent years, and Widerker and McKenna 2002 offers a representative sampling.)

Many do not follow Fischer here, however, and maintain the traditional view that the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility does indeed require that the agent could have acted differently. As Aristotle put it, “…when the origin of the actions is in him, it is also up to him to do them or not to do them” (1985, Book III). [ 3 ]

A flood of ink has been spilled, especially in the modern era, on how to understand the concept of being able to do otherwise. On one side are those who give it a deflationary reading, on which it is consistent with my being able to do otherwise that the past (including my character and present beliefs and desires) and the basic laws of nature logically entail that I do what I actually do. These are the ‘compatibilists,’ holding that freedom and causal determinism are compatible. (For discussion, see O'Connor, 2000, Ch.1; compatibilism ; and incompatibilism: arguments for .) Conditional analyses of ability to do otherwise have been popular among compatibilists. The general idea here is that to say that I am able to do otherwise is to say that I would do otherwise if it were the case that … , where the ellipsis is filled by some elaboration of “I had an appropriately strong desire to do so, or I had different beliefs about the best available means to satisfy my goal, or … .” In short: something about my prevailing character or present psychological states would have differed, and so would have brought about a different outcome in my deliberation.

Incompatibilists think that something stronger is required: for me to act with free will requires that there are a plurality of futures open to me consistent with the past (and laws of nature) being just as they were . I could have chosen differently even without some further, non-actual consideration's occurring to me and ‘tipping the scales of the balance’ in another direction. Indeed, from their point of view, the whole scale-of-weights analogy is wrongheaded: free agents are not mechanisms that respond invariably to specified ‘motive forces.’ They are capable of acting upon any of a plurality of motives making attractive more than one course of action. Ultimately, the agent must determine himself this way or that.

We may distinguish two broad families of ‘incompatibilist’ or ‘indeterminist’ self-determination accounts. The more radical group holds that the agent who determines his own will is not causally influenced by external causal factors, including his own character. Descartes, in the midst of exploring the scope and influence of ‘the passions,’ declares that “the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained” (1984, v.I, 343). And as we've seen, he believed that such freedom is present on every occasion when we make a conscious choice—even, he writes, “when a very evident reason moves us in one direction….” (1984, v.III, 245). More recently, John Paul Sartre notoriously held that human beings have ‘absolute freedom’: “No limits to my freedom can be found except freedom itself, or, if you prefer, we are not free to cease being free.” (567) His views on freedom flowed from his radical conception of human beings as lacking any kind of positive nature. Instead, we are ‘non-beings’ whose being, moment to moment, is simply to choose:

For human reality, to be is to choose oneself; nothing comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can receive or accept….it is entirely abandoned to the intolerable necessity of making itself be, down to the slightest details. Thus freedom…is the being of man, i.e., his nothingness of being. (568-9)

Scotus and, more recently, C.A. Campbell, appear to agree with Descartes and Sartre on the lack of direct causal influence on the activity of free choice while allowing that the scope of possibilities for what I might thus will may be more or less constricted. So while Scotus holds that “nothing other than the will is the total cause” of its activity, he grants (with Aquinas and other medieval Aristotelians) that we are not capable of willing something in which we see no good, nor of positively repudiating something which appears to us as unqualifiedly good. Contrary to Sartre, we come with a ‘nature’ that circumscribes what we might conceivably choose, and our past choices and environmental influences also shape the possibilities for us at any particular time. But if we are presented with what we recognize as an unqualified good, we still can choose to refrain from willing it. And while Campbell holds that character cannot explain a free choice, he supposes that “[t]here is one experiential situation, and one only , … in which there is any possibility of the act of will not being in accordance with character; viz. the situation in which the course which formed character prescribes is a course in conflict with the agent's moral ideal: in other words, the situation of moral temptation” (1967, 46). (Van Inwagen 1994 and 1995 is another proponent of the idea that free will is exercised in but a small subset of our choices, although his position is less extreme on this point than Campbell's. Fischer and Ravizza 1992, O'Connor 2000, Ch.5, and Clarke 2003, Ch.7 all criticize van Inwagen's argument for this position.)

A more moderate grouping within the self-determination approach to free will allows that beliefs, desires, and external factors all can causally influence the act of free choice itself. But theorists within this camp differ sharply on the metaphysical nature of those choices and of the causal role of reasons. We may distinguish three varieties. I will discuss them only briefly, as they are explored at length in incompatibilist (nondeterministic) theories of free will .

First is a noncausal (or ownership) account (Ginet 1990, 2002 and McCann 1998). According to this view, I control my volition or choice simply in virtue of its being mine—its occurring in me. I do not exert a special kind of causality in bringing it about; instead, it is an intrinsically active event, intrinsically something I do . While there may be causal influences upon my choice, there need not be, and any such causal influence is wholly irrelevant to understanding why it occurs. Reasons provide an autonomous, non-causal form of explanation. Provided my choice is not wholly determined by prior factors, it is free and under my control simply in virtue of being mine.

Proponents of the event-causal account (e.g. Nozick 1995 and Ekstrom 2001) would say that uncaused events of any kind would be random and uncontrolled by anyone, and so could hardly count as choices that an agent made . They hold that reasons influence choices precisely by causing them. Choices are free insofar as they are not deterministically caused, and so might not have occurred in just the circumstances in which they did occur. (See nondeterministic theories of free will and probabilistic causation .) A special case of the event-causal account of self-determination is Kane (1996). Kane believes that the free choices of greatest significance to an agent's autonomy are ones that are preceded by efforts of will within the process of deliberation. These are cases where one's will is conflicted, as when one's duty or long-term self-interest compete with a strong desire for a short-term good. As one struggles to sort out and prioritize one's own values, the possible outcomes are not merely undetermined, but also indeterminate : at each stage of the struggle, the possible outcomes have no specific objective probability of occurring. This indeterminacy, Kane believes, is essential to freedom of will.

Finally, there are those who believe freedom of will consists in a distinctively personal form of causality, commonly referred to as “agent causation.” The agent himself causes his choice or action, and this is not to be reductively analyzed as an event within the agent causing the choice. (Compare our ready restatement of “the rock broke the window” into the more precise “the rock's being in momentum M at the point of contact with the window caused the window's subsequent shattering.”) This view is given clear articulation by Thomas Reid:

I grant, then, that an effect uncaused is a contradiction, and that an event uncaused is an absurdity. The question that remains is whether a volition, undetermined by motives, is an event uncaused. This I deny. The cause of the volition is the man that willed it. (Letter to James Gregory, in 1967, 88)

Roderick Chisholm advocated this view of free will in numerous writings (e.g., 1982 and 1976). And recently it has been developed in different forms by Randolph Clarke (1993, 1996, 2003) and O'Connor (2000). Nowadays, many philosophers view this account as of doubtful coherence (e.g., Dennett 1984). For some, this very idea of causation by a substance just as such is perplexing (Ginet 1997 and Clarke 2003, Ch.10). Others see it as difficult to reconcile with the causal role of reasons in explaining choices. (Clarke and O'Connor devote considerable effort to addressing this concern.) And yet others hold that, coherent or not, it is inconsistent with seeing human beings as part of the natural world of cause and effect (Pereboom 2001).

A recent trend is to suppose that agent causation accounts capture, as well as possible, our prereflective idea of responsible, free action. But the failure of philosophers to work the account out in a fully satisfactory and intelligible form reveals that the very idea of free will (and so of responsibility) is incoherent (Strawson 1986) or at least inconsistent with a world very much like our own (Pereboom 2001). Smilansky (2000) takes a more complicated position, on which there are two ‘levels’ on which we may assess freedom, ‘compatibilist’ and ‘ultimate’. On the ultimate level of evaluation, free will is indeed incoherent. (Strawson, Pereboom, and Smilansky all provide concise defenses of their positions in Kane 2002.)

The will has also recently become a target of empirical study in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Benjamin Libet (2002) conducted experiments designed to determine the timing of conscious willings or decisions to act in relation to brain activity associated with the physical initiation of behavior. Interpretation of the results is highly controversial. Libet himself concludes that the studies provide strong evidence that actions are already underway shortly before the agent wills to do it. As a result, we do not consciously initiate our actions, though he suggests that we might nonetheless retain the ability to veto actions that are initiated by unconscious psychological structures. Wegner (2002) masses a much range of studies (including those of Libet) to argue that the notion that human actions are ever initiated by their own conscious willings is simply a deeply-entrenched illusion and proceeds to offer an hypothesis concerning the reason this illusion is generated within our cognitive systems. O'Connor (forthcoming) argues that the data adduced by Libet and Wegner wholly fail to support their revisionary conclusions.

A large portion of Western philosophical writing on free will was and is written within an overarching theological framework, according to which God is the ultimate source and sustainer of all else. Some of these thinkers draw the conclusion that God must be a sufficient, wholly determining cause for everything that happens; all suppose that every creaturely act necessarily depends on the explanatorily prior, cooperative activity of God. It is also presumed that human beings are free and responsible (on pain of attributing evil in the world to God alone, and so impugning His perfect goodness). Hence, those who believe that God is omni-determining typically are compatibilists with respect to freedom and (in this case) theological determinism. Edwards (1957) is a good example. But those who suppose that God's sustaining activity (and special activity of conferring grace) is only a necessary condition on the outcome of human free choices need to tell a more subtle story, on which omnipotent God's cooperative activity can be (explanatorily) prior to a human choice and yet the outcome of that choice be settled only by the choice itself. (For important medieval discussions—the period of the apex of treatments of philosophical/theological matters—see the relevant portions of Aquinas 1945 and Scotus 1994. For an example of a more recent discussion, see Quinn 1983.)

Another issue concerns the impact on human freedom of knowledge of God, the ultimate Good. Many philosophers, especially the medieval Aristotelians, were drawn to the idea that human beings cannot but will that which they take to be an unqualified good. (Duns Scotus appears to be an important exception to this consensus.) Hence, in the afterlife, when humans ‘see God face to face,’ they will inevitably be drawn to Him. Murray (1993, 2002) argues that a good God would choose to make His existence and character less than certain for human beings, for the sake of their freedom. (He will do so, the argument goes, at least for a period of time in which human beings participate in their own character formation.) If it is a good for human beings that they freely choose to respond in love to God and to act in obedience to His will, then God must maintain an ‘epistemic distance’ from them lest they be overwhelmed by His goodness and respond out of necessity, rather than freedom. (See also the other essays in Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002.)

Finally, there is the question of the freedom of God himself. Perfect goodness is an essential, not acquired, attribute of God. God cannot lie or be in any way immoral in His dealings with His creatures. Unless we take the minority position on which this is a trivial claim, since whatever God does definitionally counts as good, this appears to be a significant, inner constraint on God's freedom. Did we not contemplate immediately above that human freedom would be curtailed by our having an unmistakable awareness of what is in fact the Good? And yet is it not passing strange to suppose that God should be less than perfectly free?

One suggested solution to this puzzle begins by reconsidering the relationship of two strands in (much) thinking about freedom of will: being able to do otherwise and being the ultimate source of one's will. Contemporary discussions of free will often emphasize the importance of being able to do otherwise. Yet it is plausible (Kane 1996) that the core metaphysical feature of freedom is being the ultimate source, or originator, of one's choices, and that being able to do otherwise is closely connected to this feature. For human beings or any created persons who owe their existence to factors outside themselves, the only way their acts of will could find their ultimate origin in themselves is for such acts not to be determined by their character and circumstances. For if all my willings were wholly determined, then if we were to trace my causal history back far enough, we would ultimately arrive at external factors that gave rise to me, with my particular genetic dispositions. My motives at the time would not be the ultimate source of my willings, only the most proximate ones. Only by there being less than deterministic connections between external influences and choices, then, is it be possible for me to be an ultimate source of my activity, concerning which I may truly say, “the buck stops here.”

As is generally the case, things are different on this point in the case of God. Even if God's character absolutely precludes His performing certain actions in certain contexts, this will not imply that some external factor is in any way a partial origin of His willings and refrainings from willing. Indeed, this would not be so even if he were determined by character to will everything which He wills. For God's nature owes its existence to nothing. So God would be the sole and ultimate source of His will even if He couldn't will otherwise.

Well, then, might God have willed otherwise in any respect? The majority view in the history of philosophical theology is that He indeed could have. He might have chosen not to create anything at all. And given that He did create, He might have created any number of alternatives to what we observe. But there have been noteworthy thinkers who argued the contrary position, along with others who clearly felt the pull of the contrary position even while resisting it. The most famous such thinker is Leibniz (1985), who argued that God, being both perfectly good and perfectly powerful, cannot fail to will the best possible world. Leibniz insisted that this is consistent with saying that God is able to will otherwise, although his defense of this last claim is notoriously difficult to make out satisfactorily. Many read Leibniz, malgre lui , as one whose basic commitments imply that God could not have willed other than He does in any respect.

On might challenge Leibniz's reasoning on this point by questioning the assumption that there is a uniquely best possible Creation (an option noted by Adams 1987, though he challenges instead Leibniz's conclusion based on it). One way this could be is if there is no well-ordering of worlds: some worlds are sufficiently different in kind that they are incommensurate with each other (neither is better than the other, nor are they equal). Another way this could be is if there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds: for every possible world God might have created, there are others (infinitely many, in fact) which are better. If such is the case, one might argue, it is reasonable for God to arbitrarily choose which world to create from among those worlds exceeding some threshhold value of overall goodness.

However, William Rowe (1993) has countered that the thesis that there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds has a very different consequence: it shows that there could not be a morally perfect Creator! For suppose our world has an on-balance moral value of n and that God chose to create it despite being aware of possibilities having values higher than n that He was able to create. It seems we can now imagine a morally better Creator: one having the same options who chooses to create a better world. For a critical reply to Rowe, see the Howard-Snyders (1994) and Wainwright (1996). Rowe (2004) continues the discussion in response to a variety of views, both historical and contemporary.

Finally, Norman Kretzmann (1997, 220-25) has argued in the context of Aquinas's theological system that there is strong pressure to say that God must have created something or other, though it may well have been open to Him to create any of a number of contingent orders. The reason is that there is no plausible account of how an absolutely perfect God might have a resistible motivation—one consideration among other, competing considerations—for creating something rather than nothing. (It obviously cannot have to do with any sort of utility, for example.) The best general understanding of God's being motivated to create at all—one which in places Aquinas himself comes very close to endorsing—is to see it as reflecting the fact that God's very being, which is goodness, necessarily diffuses itself. Perfect goodness will naturally communicate itself outwardly; God who is perfect goodness will naturally create, generating a dependent reality that imperfectly reflects that goodness. (Wainwright (1996) is a careful discussion of a somewhat similar line of thought in Jonathan Edwards. See also Rowe 2004.)

Further Reading . Pink (2004) is an excellent, concise introduction. Pereboom (1997) provides good selections from a number of important historical writers on free will. Bourke (1964) and Dilman (1999) provide critical overviews of many such writers. For thematic treatments, see Fischer (1994); Kane (1996), esp. Ch.1-2; 5-6; Ekstrom (2001); Watson (2003b); and the outstanding collection of survey articles in Kane (2002).

• Adams, Robert (1987). “Must God Create the Best?,” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology . New York: Oxford University Press, 51-64.
• Aquinas, Thomas (1945). Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (2 vol.). New York: Random House.
• ----- (1993). Selected Philosophical Writings , ed. T. McDermott. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Aristotle (1985). Nichomachean Ethics , translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
• Augustine (1993). On the Free Choice of the Will , tr. Thomas Williams. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
• Ayer, A.J. (1982). “Freedom and Necessity,” in Watson (1982b), ed., 15-23.
• Baker, Lynne (2000). Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bourke, Vernon (1964). Will in Western Thought . New York: Sheed and Ward.
• Campbell, C.A. (1967). In Defence of Free Will & other essays . London: Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• Chisholm, Roderick (1982). “Human Freedom and the Self,” in Watson (1982b), 24-35.
• ----- (1976). Person and Object . LaSalle: Open Court.
• Clarke, Randolph (1993). “Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will,” in O'Connor (1995), ed., 201-15.
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• ----- (1996). “Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action,” Philosophical Topics 24 (Fall), 19-48.
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• Descartes, René (1984). Meditations on First Philosophy [1641] and Passions of the Soul [1649], in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , vol. I-III, translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., & Murdoch, D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Fischer, John Martin and Ravizza, Mark. (1992). “When the Will is Free,” in O'Connor (1995), ed., 239-269.
• Fischer, John Martin (1998) Responsibility and Control . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Frankfurt, Harry (1969). “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66, 829-39.
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• Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Moser, Paul, eds. (2002). Divine Hiddenness: New Essays . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hume, David (1977) [1748]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding . Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
• Kane, Robert (1995). “Two Kinds of Incompatibilism,” in O'Connor (1995), ed., 115-150.
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• Kant, Immanuel (1993) [1788]. Critique of Practical Reason , tr. by Lewis White Beck. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
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• Morris, Thomas (1993). “Perfection and Creation,” in E. Stump. (1993), ed., 234-47
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• ----- (2002). “Deus Absconditus,” in Howard-Snyder amd Moser (2002), 62-82.
• Nozick, Robert (1995). “Choice and Indeterminism,” in O'Connor (1995), ed., 101-14.
• O'Connor, Timothy (1993). “Indeterminism and Free Agency: Three Recent Views,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 53, 499-526.
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action | compatibilism | determinism: causal | fatalism | free will: divine foreknowledge and | incompatibilism: (nondeterministic) theories of free will | incompatibilism: arguments for | moral responsibility

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30 Existence of Free Will

Determinism and freedom.

Determinism and free will are often thought to be in deep conflict. Whether or not this is true has a lot to do with what is meant by determinism and an account of what free will requires.

First of all, determinism is not the view that free actions are impossible. Rather, determinism is the view that at any one time, only one future is physically possible. To be a little more specific, determinism is the view that a complete description of the past along with a complete account of the relevant laws of nature logically entails all future events. 1

Indeterminism is simply the denial of determinism. If determinism is incompatible with free will, it will be because free actions are only possible in worlds in which more than one future is physically possible at any one moment in time. While it might be true that free will requires indeterminism, it’s not true merely by definition. A further argument is needed and this suggests that it is at least possible that people could sometimes exercise the control necessary for morally responsible action, even if we live in a deterministic world.

It is worth saying something about fatalism before we move on. It is really easy to mistake determinism for fatalism, and fatalism does seem to be in straightforward conflict with free will. Fatalism is the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. If fatalism is true, then nothing that we try or think or intend or believe or decide has any causal effect or relevance as to what we actually end up doing.

But note that determinism need not entail fatalism. Determinism is a claim about what is logically entailed by the rules/laws governing a world and the past of said world. It is not the claim that we lack the power to do other than what we actually were already going to do. Nor is it the view that we fail to be an important part of the causal story for why we do what we do. And this distinction may allow some room for freedom, even in deterministic worlds.

An example will be helpful here. We know that the boiling point for water is 100°C. Suppose we know in both a deterministic world and a fatalistic world that my pot of water will be boiling at 11:22am today. Determinism makes the claim that if I take a pot of water and I put it on my stove, and heat it to 100°C, it will boil. This is because the laws of nature (in this case, water that is heated to 100°C will boil) and the events of the past (I put a pot of water on a hot stove) bring about the boiling water. But fatalism makes a different claim. If my pot of water is fated to boil at 11:22am today, then no matter what I or anyone does, my pot of water will boil at exactly 11:22am today. I could try to empty the pot of water out at 11:21. I could try to take the pot as far away from a heating source as possible. Nonetheless, my pot of water will be boiling at 11:22 precisely because it was fated that this would happen. Under fatalism, the future is fixed or preordained, but this need not be the case in a deterministic world. Under determinism, the future is a certain way because of the past and the rules governing said world. If we know that a pot of water will boil at 11:22am in a deterministic world, it’s because we know that the various causal conditions will hold in our world such that at 11:22 my pot of water will have been put on a heat source and brought to 100°C. Our deliberations, our choices, and our free actions may very well be part of the process that brings a pot of water to the boiling point in a deterministic world, whereas these are clearly irrelevant in fatalistic ones.

Three Views of Freedom

Most accounts of freedom fall into one of three camps. Some people take freedom to require merely the ability to “do what you want to do.” For example, if you wanted to walk across the room, right now, and you also had the ability, right now, to walk across the room, you would be free as you could do exactly what you want to do. We will call this easy freedom.

Others view freedom on the infamous “Garden of Forking Paths” model. For these people, free action requires more than merely the ability to do what you want to do. It also requires that you have the ability to do otherwise than what you actually did. So, If Anya is free when she decides to take a sip from her coffee, on this view, it must be the case that Anya could have refrained from sipping her coffee. The key to freedom, then, is alternative possibilities and we will call this the alternative possibilities view of free action.

Finally, some people envision freedom as requiring, not alternative possibilities but the right kind of relationship between the antecedent sources of our actions and the actions that we actually perform. Sometimes this view is explained by saying that the free agent is the source, perhaps even the ultimate source of her action. We will call this kind of view a source view of freedom.

Now, the key question we want to focus on is whether or not any of these three models of freedom are compatible with determinism. It could turn out that all three kinds of freedom are ruled out by determinism, so that the only way freedom is possible is if determinism is false. If you believe that determinism rules out free action, you endorse a view called incompatibilism. But it could turn out that one or all three of these models of freedom are compatible with determinism. If you believe that free action is compatible with determinism, you are a compatibilist.

Let us consider compatibilist views of freedom and two of the most formidable challenges that compatibilists face: the consequence argument and the ultimacy argument.

Begin with easy freedom. Is easy freedom compatible with determinism? A group of philosophers called classic compatibilists certainly thought so. 2  They argued that free will requires merely the ability for an agent to act without external hindrance. Suppose, right now, you want to put your textbook down and grab a cup of coffee. Even if determinism is true, you probably, right now, can do exactly that. You can put your textbook down, walk to the nearest Starbucks, and buy an overpriced cup of coffee. Nothing is stopping you from doing what you want to do. Determinism does not seem to be posing any threat to your ability to do what you want to do right now. If you want to stop reading and grab a coffee, you can. But, by contrast, if someone had chained you to the chair you are sitting in, things would be a bit different. Even if you wanted to grab a cup of coffee, you would not be able to. You would lack the ability to do so. You would not be free to do what you want to do. This has nothing to do with determinism, of course. It is not the fact that you might be living in a deterministic world that is threatening your free will. It is that an external hindrance (the chains holding you to your chair) is stopping from you doing what you want to do. So, if what we mean by freedom is easy freedom, it looks like freedom really is compatible with determinism.

Easy freedom has run into some rather compelling opposition, and most philosophers today agree that a plausible account of easy freedom is not likely. But, by far, the most compelling challenge the view faces can be seen in the consequence argument. 3  The consequence argument is as follows:

• If determinism is true, then all human actions are consequences of past events and the laws of nature.
• No human can do other than they actually do except by changing the laws of nature or changing the past.
• No human can change the laws of nature or the past.
• If determinism is true, no human has free will.

This is a powerful argument. It is very difficult to see where this argument goes wrong, if it goes wrong. The first premise is merely a restatement of determinism. The second premise ties the ability to do otherwise to the ability to change the past or the laws of nature, and the third premise points out the very reasonable assumption that humans are unable to modify the laws of nature or the past.

This argument effectively devastates easy freedom by proposing that we never act without external hindrances precisely because our actions are caused by past events and the laws of nature in such a way that we not able to contribute anything to the causal production of our actions. This argument also seems to pose a deeper problem for freedom in deterministic worlds. If this argument works, it establishes that, given determinism, we are powerless to do otherwise, and to the extent that freedom requires the ability to do otherwise, this argument seems to rule out free action. Note that if this argument works, it poses a challenge for both the easy and alternative possibilities view of free will.

How might someone respond to this argument? First, suppose you adopt an alternative possibilities view of freedom and believe that the ability to do otherwise is what is needed for genuine free will. What you would need to show is that alternative possibilities, properly understood, are not incompatible with determinism. Perhaps you might argue that if we understand the ability to do otherwise properly we will see that we actually do have the ability to change the laws of nature or the past.

That might sound counterintuitive. How could it possibly be the case that a mere mortal could change the laws of nature or the past? Think back to Quinn’s decision to spend the night before her exam out with friends instead of studying. When she shows up to her exam exhausted, and she starts blaming herself, she might say, “Why did I go out? That was dumb! I could have stayed home and studied.” And she is sort of right that she could have stayed home. She had the general ability to stay home and study. It is just that if she had stayed home and studied the past would be slightly different or the laws of nature would be slightly different. What this points to is that there might be a way of cashing out the ability to do otherwise that is compatible with determinism and does allow for an agent to kind of change the past or even the laws of nature. 4

But suppose we grant that the consequence argument demonstrates that determinism really does rule out alternative possibilities. Does that mean we must abandon the alternative possibilities view of freedom? Well, not necessarily. You could instead argue that free will is possible, provided determinism is false. 5  That is a big if, of course, but maybe determinism will turn out to be false.

What if determinism turns out to be true? Should we give up, then, and concede that there is no free will? Well, that might be too quick. A second response to the consequence argument is available. All you need to do is deny that freedom requires the ability to do otherwise.

In 1969, Harry Frankfurt proposed an influential thought experiment that demonstrated that free will might not require alternative possibilities at all (Frankfurt [1969] 1988). If he’s right about this, then the consequence argument, while compelling, does not demonstrate that no one lacks free will in deterministic worlds, because free will does not require the ability to do otherwise. It merely requires that agents be the source of their actions in the right kind of way. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Here is a simplified paraphrase of Frankfurt’s case:

Black wants Jones to perform a certain action. Black is prepared to go to considerable lengths to get his way, but he prefers to avoid unnecessary work. So he waits until Jones is about to make up his mind what to do, and he does nothing unless it is clear to him (Black is an excellent judge of such things) that Jones is going to decide not to do what Black wants him to do. If it does become clear that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what Black wanted him to do, Black will intervene, and ensure that Jones decides to do, and does do, exactly what Black wanted him to do. Whatever Jones’ initial preferences and inclinations, then, Black will have his way. As it turns out, Jones decides, on his own, to do the action that Black wanted him to perform. So, even though Black was entirely prepared to intervene, and could have intervened, to guarantee that Jones would perform the action, Black never actually has to intervene because Jones decided, for reasons of his own, to perform the exact action that Black wanted him to perform. (Frankfurt [1969] 1988, 6-7)

Now, what is going on here? Jones is overdetermined to perform a specific act. No matter what happens, no matter what Jones initially decides or wants to do, he is going to perform the action Black wants him to perform. He absolutely cannot do otherwise. But note that there seems to be a crucial difference between the case in which Jones decides on his own and for his own reasons to perform the action Black wanted him to perform and the case in which Jones would have refrained from performing the action were it not for Black intervening to force him to perform the action. In the first case, Jones is the source of his action. It the thing he decided to do and he does it for his own reasons. But in the second case, Jones is not the source of his actions. Black is. This distinction, thought Frankfurt, should be at the heart of discussions of free will and moral responsibility. The control required for moral responsibility is not the ability to do otherwise (Frankfurt [1969] 1988, 9-10).

If alternative possibilities are not what free will requires, what kind of control is needed for free action? Here we have the third view of freedom we started with: free will as the ability to be the source of your actions in the right kind of way. Source compatibilists argue that this ability is not threatened by determinism, and building off of Frankfurt’s insight, have gone on to develop nuanced, often radically divergent source accounts of freedom. 6  Should we conclude, then, that provided freedom does not require alternative possibilities that it is compatible with determinism? 7 Again, that would be too quick. Source compatibilists have reason to be particularly worried about an argument developed by Galen Strawson called the ultimacy argument (Strawson [1994] 2003, 212-228).

Rather than trying to establish that determinism rules out alternative possibilities, Strawson tried to show that determinism rules out the possibility of being the ultimate source of your actions. While this is a problem for anyone who tries to establish that free will is compatible with determinism, it is particularly worrying for source compatibilists as they’ve tied freedom to an agent’s ability to be source of its actions. Here is the argument:

• A person acts of her own free will only if she is the act’s ultimate source.
• If determinism is true, no one is the ultimate source of her actions.
• Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will. (McKenna and Pereboom 2016, 148) 8

This argument requires some unpacking. First of all, Strawson argues that for any given situation, we do what we do because of the way we are ([1994] 2003, 219). When Quinn decides to go out with her friends rather than study, she does so because of the way she is. She prioritizes a night with her friends over studying, at least on that fateful night before her exam. If Quinn had stayed in and studied, it would be because she was slightly different, at least that night. She would be such that she prioritized studying for her exam over a night out. But this applies to any decision we make in our lives. We decide to do what we do because of how we already are.

But if what we do is because of the way we are, then in order to be responsible for our actions, we need to be the source of how we are, at least in the relevant mental respects (Strawson [1994] 2003, 219). There is the first premise. But here comes the rub: the way we are is a product of factors beyond our control such as the past and the laws of nature ([1994] 2003, 219; 222-223). The fact that Quinn is such that she prioritizes a night with friends over studying is due to her past and the relevant laws of nature. It is not up to her that she is the way she is. It is ultimately factors extending well beyond her, possibly all the way back to the initial conditions of the universe that account for why she is the way she is that night. And to the extent that this is compelling, the ultimate source of Quinn’s decision to go out is not her. Rather, it is some condition of the universe external to her. And therefore, Quinn is not free.

Once again, this is a difficult argument to respond to. You might note that “ultimate source” is ambiguous and needing further clarification. Some compatibilists have pointed this out and argued that once we start developing careful accounts of what it means to be the source of our actions, we will see that the relevant notion of source-hood is compatible with determinism.

For example, while it may be true that no one is the ultimate cause of their actions in deterministic worlds precisely because the ultimate source of all actions will extend back to the initial conditions of the universe, we can still be a mediated source of our actions in the sense required for moral responsibility. Provided the actual source of our action involves a sophisticated enough set of capacities for it to make sense to view us as the source of our actions, we could still be the source of our actions, in the relevant sense (McKenna and Pereboom 2016, 154). After all, even if determinism is true, we still act for reasons. We still contemplate what to do and weigh reasons for and against various actions, and we still are concerned with whether or not the actions we are considering reflect our desires, our goals, our projects, and our plans. And you might think that if our actions stem from a history that includes us bringing all the features of our agency to bear upon the decision that is the proximal cause of our action, that this causal history is one in which we are the source of our actions in the way that is really relevant to identifying whether or not we are acting freely.

Others have noted that even if it is true that Quinn is not directly free in regard to the beliefs and desires that suggest she should go out with her friends rather than study (they are the product of factors beyond her control such as her upbringing, her environment, her genetics, or maybe even random luck), this need not imply that she lacks control as to whether or not she chooses to act upon them. 9  Perhaps it is the case that even though how we are may be due to factors beyond our control, nonetheless, we are still the source of what we do because it is still, even under determinism, up to us as to whether we choose to exercise control over our conduct.

Free Will and the Sciences

Many challenges to free will come, not from philosophy, but from the sciences. There are two main scientific arguments against free will, one coming from neuroscience and one coming from the social sciences. The concern coming from research in the neurosciences is that some empirical results suggest that all our choices are the result of unconscious brain processes, and to the extent choices must be consciously made to be free choices, it seems that we never make a conscious free choice.

The classic studies motivating a picture of human action in which unconscious brain processes are doing the bulk of the causal work for action were conducted by Benjamin Libet. Libet’s experiments involved subjects being asked to flex their wrists whenever they felt the urge to do so. Subjects were asked to note the location of a clock hand on a modified clock when they became aware of the urge to act. While doing this their brain activity was being scanned using EEG technology. What Libet noted is that around 550 milliseconds before a subject acted, a readiness potential (increased brain activity) would be measured by the EEG technology. But subjects were reporting awareness of an urge to flex their wrist around 200 milliseconds before they acted (Libet 1985).

This painted a strange picture of human action. If conscious intentions were the cause of our actions, you may expect to see a causal story in which the conscious awareness of an urge to flex your wrist shows up first, then a ramping up of brain activity, and finally an action. But Libet’s studies showed a causal story in which an action starts with unconscious brain activity, the subject later becomes consciously aware that they are about to act, and then the action happens. The conscious awareness of action seemed to be a byproduct of the actual unconscious process that was causing the action. It was not the cause of the action itself. And this result suggests that unconscious brain processes, not conscious ones, are the real causes of our actions. To the extent that free action requires our conscious decisions to be the initiating causes of our actions, it looks like we may never act freely.

While this research is intriguing, it probably does not establish that we are not free. Alfred Mele is a philosopher who has been heavily critical of these studies. He raises three main objections to the conclusions drawn from these arguments.

First, Mele points out that self-reports are notoriously unreliable (2009, 60-64). Conscious perception takes time, and we are talking about milliseconds. The actual location of the clock hand is probably much closer to 550 milliseconds when the agent “intends” or has the “urge” to act than it is to 200 milliseconds. So, there’s some concerns about experimental design here.

Second, an assumption behind these experiments is that what is going on at 550 milliseconds is that a decision is being made to flex the wrist (Mele 2014, 11). We might challenge this assumption. Libet ran some variants of his experiment in which he asked subjects to prepare to flex their wrist but to stop themselves from doing so. So, basically, subjects simply sat there in the chair and did nothing. Libet interpreted the results of these experiments as showing that we might not have a free will, but we certainly have a “free won’t” because we seem capable of consciously vetoing or stopping an action, even if that action might be initiated by unconscious processes (2014, 12-13). Mele points out that what might be going on in these scenarios is that the real intention to act or not act is what happens consciously at 200 milliseconds, and if so, there is little reason to think these experiments are demonstrating that we lack free will (2014, 13).

Finally, Mele notes that while it may be the case that some of our decisions and actions look like the wrist-flicking actions Libet was studying, it is doubtful that all or even most of our decisions are like this (2014, 15). When we think about free will, we rarely think of actions like wrist-flicking. Free actions are typically much more complex and they are often the kind of thing where the decision to do something extends across time. For example, your decision about what to major in at college or even where to study was probably made over a period of months, even years. And that decision probably involved periods of both conscious and unconscious cognition. Why think that a free choice cannot involve some components that are unconscious?

A separate line of attack on free will comes from the situationist literature in the social sciences (particularly social psychology). There is a growing body of research suggesting that situational and environmental factors profoundly influence human behavior, perhaps in ways that undermine free will (Mele 2014, 72).

Many of the experiments in the situationist literature are among the most vivid and disturbing in all of social psychology. Stanley Milgram, for example, conducted a series of experiments on obedience in which ordinary people were asked to administer potentially lethal voltages of electricity to an innocent subject in order to advance scientific research, and the vast majority of people did so! 10  And in Milgram’s experiments, what affected whether or not subjects were willing to administer the shocks were minor, seemingly insignificant environmental factors such as whether the person running the experiment looked professional or not (Milgram 1963).

What experiments like Milgram’s obedience experiments might show is that it is our situations, our environments that are the real causes of our actions, not our conscious, reflective choices. And this may pose a threat to free will. Should we take this kind of research as threatening freedom?

Many philosophers would resist concluding that free will does not exist on the basis of these kinds of experiments. Typically, not everyone who takes part in situationist studies is unable to resist the situational influences they are subject to. And it appears to be the case that when we are aware of situational influences, we are more likely to resist them. Perhaps the right way to think about this research is that there all sorts of situations that can influence us in ways that we may not consciously endorse, but that nonetheless, we are still capable of avoiding these effects when we are actively trying to do so. For example, the brain sciences have made many of us vividly aware of a whole host of cognitive biases and situational influences that humans are typically subject to and yet, when we are aware of these influences, we are less susceptible to them. The more modest conclusion to draw here is not that we lack free will, but that exercising control over our actions is much more difficult than many of us believe it to be. We are certainly influenced by the world we are a part of, but to be influenced by the world is different from being determined by it, and this may allow us to, at least sometimes, exercise some control over the actions we perform.

No one knows yet whether or not humans sometimes exercise the control over their actions required for moral responsibility. And so I leave it to you, dear reader: Are you free?

Chapter Notes

• I have hidden some complexity here. I have defined determinism in terms of logical entailment. Sometimes people talk about determinism as a causal relationship. For our purposes, this distinction is not relevant, and if it is easier for you to make sense of determinism by thinking of the past and the laws of nature causing all future events, that is perfectly acceptable to do.
• Two of the more well-known classic compatibilists include Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. See: Hobbes, Thomas, (1651) 1994, Leviathan , ed. Edwin Curley, Canada: Hackett Publishing Company; and Hume, David, (1739) 1978, A Treatise of Human Nature , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• For an earlier version of this argument see: Ginet, Carl, 1966, “Might We Have No Choice?” in Freedom and Determinism, ed. Keith Lehrer, 87-104, Random House.
• For two notable attempts to respond to the consequence argument by claiming that humans can change the past or the laws of nature see: Fischer, John Martin, 1994, The Metaphysics of Free Will , Oxford: Blackwell Publishers; and Lewis, David, 1981, “Are We Free to Break the Laws?” Theoria 47: 113-21.
• Many philosophers try to develop views of freedom on the assumption that determinism is incompatible with free action. The view that freedom is possible, provided determinism is false is called Libertarianism. For more on Libertarian views of freedom, see: Clarke, Randolph and Justin Capes, 2017, “Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-theories/ .
• For elaboration on recent compatibilist views of freedom, see McKenna, Michael and D. Justin Coates, 2015, “Compatibilism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ .
• You might be unimpressed by the way source compatibilists understand the ability to be the source of your actions. For example, you might that what it means to be the source of your actions is to be the ultimate cause of your actions. Or maybe you think that to genuinely be the source of your actions you need to be the agent-cause of your actions. Those are both reasonable positions to adopt. Typically, people who understand free will as requiring either of these abilities believe that free will is incompatible with determinism. That said, there are many Libertarian views of free will that try to develop a plausible account of agent causation. These views are called Agent-Causal Libertarianism. See: Clarke, Randolph and Justin Capes, 2017, “Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-theories/ .
• As with most philosophical arguments, the ultimacy argument has been formulated in a number of different ways. In Galen Strawson’s original paper he gives three different versions of the argument, one of which has eight premises and one that has ten premises. A full treatment of either of those versions of this argument would require more time and space than we have available here. I have chosen to use the McKenna/Pereboom formulation of the argument due its simplicity and their clear presentation of the central issues raised by the argument.
• For two attempts to respond to the ultimacy argument in this way, see: Mele, Alfred, 1995, Autonomous Agents , New York: Oxford University Press; and McKenna, Michael, 2008, “Ultimacy & Sweet Jane” in Nick Trakakis and Daniel Cohen, eds, Essays on Free Will and Moral Responsibility , Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 186-208.
• Fortunately, no real shocks were administered. The subjects merely believed they were doing so.

Frankfurt, Harry. (1969) 1988. “Alternative Possibilities and moral responsibility.” In The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays , 10th ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Libet, Benjamin. 1985. “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 529-566.

McKenna, Michael and Derk Pereboom. 2016. Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge.

Mele, Alfred. 2014. Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mele, Alfred. 2009. Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Milgram, Stanley. 1963. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67: 371-378.

Strawson, Galen. (1994) 2003. “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility.” In Free Will, 2nd ed. Edited by Gary Watson, 212-228. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

van Inwagen, Peter. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Further Reading

Deery, Oisin and Paul Russell, eds. 2013. The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates . New York: Oxford University Press.

Mele, Alfred. 2006. Free Will and Luck. New York: Oxford University Press.

Attribution

This section is composed of text taken from Chapter 8 Freedom of the Will created by Daniel Haas in Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind , edited by Heather Salazar and Christina Hendricks, and produced with support from the Rebus Community. The original is freely available under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license at https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-of-mind/ . The material is presented in its original form, with the exception of the removal of introductory material Introduction: Are We Free?

A Brief Introduction to Philosophy Copyright © 2021 by Southern Alberta Institution of Technology (SAIT) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• What is the difference between compatibilsm and incompatibilist in relation to free will The no choice statement provides that if a person lacks choice in relation to p, and also lacks choice in relation to whether if p, then q, then there is no choice in relation to […]
• The Issue of the Free Will On the one hand, the opponents of the hard determinism state that free will exists and people do not base their own decisions on anything, however, it is possible to say that the decision was […]
• Faith or Free Will Used in the Movie – Minority Report and the Drama – Antigone In life, people have the freewill to choose what they want; however, in some cases, faith and fate takes the center stage despite the choices made through freewill.
• The Workings Of Destiny, Fate, Free Will And Free Choice In Oedipus The King
• The Natural Law on Free Will and the Nature of Evil According to St. Thomas Aquinas
• The Unalienable Right of Free Will in A Clockwork Orange, a Novel by Anthony Burgess
• Were Adam and Eve Influenced By the Snake or Free Will
• The Three Claims on the Debate on Free Will Between Libertarianism and Determinism
• What is The Meaning of Free Will in Life
• The Theme of Free Will in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Novel by Mark Twain
• The Role of Fate Versus Free Will in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
• Determinism Vs. Indeterminism And The Existence Of Free Will
• Critically Examine the Claim That Free Will and Determinism Are Incompatible
• The Struggle Between Fate and Free Will in One Hundred Years of Solitude, a Novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• How Free Will And Inborn Neurological Hardwiring Influence Morality
• Triumph of Free Will in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
• An Overview of the Imposition of Law as Free Will and the Myth of the Social Contract
• Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice – Prophecies in Oedipus, Antigone, and Agamemnon
• An Analysis of Fate and Free Will in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
• Baron D’holbach And William James On Free Will And Determinism
• Can Free Will And Determinism Co-exist
• The Theory Of Free Will And Determinism
• What is Frankfurt’s account of free will? Is it successful?
• Aeneas’s Free Will Despite His Fate in The Aeneid
• The Theme of Free Will and Spirituality in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• An Argument in Favor of Hard Determinism in the Debate on Free Will and Determinism
• Comparing Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Oedipus the King and Antigone
• Boundaries of Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Oedipus the King
• Analysis of the Actions of Macbeth and Doctor Faustus Based on Free Will and Fate
• Who Is Responsible for the Downfall of Oedipus Fate or Free Will
• The True Nature And Extent Of Influence Of Free Will Versus Fate
• The Varying Levels of Free Will in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
• Understanding the Foreknowledge of God and Its Influence in Free Will and Predestination
• Concept Of Free Will In The Brothers Karamazov
• Understanding the Existence of Free Will and Determinism
• Compatibility Of Free Will In The Tenseless Theory Of Time
• Emotions and Free Will in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
• The Scorch Trials Movie And The Issue Of Free Will
• The Question of Free Will Versus Determinism in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
• Control and The Role of Destiny, Free Will, and Fate
• Existence, Conee And Sider Go Over The Description Of Free Will
• The Witches In Macbeth: Corruption And Fate Vs. Free Will In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• Augustine´s View on the Origins of Sin, Grace, and Free Will
• The Issue of Free Will in The End of Evil, an Article by Ron Rosenbaum
• Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Oedipus the King – Fate and the Modern World
• Attitudes and Free Will in the Book of Genesis and Paradise Lost by John Milton
• How Do Our Duties and Responsibility Affect Our Free Will, Determinism, and Compatibilism?
• Why Does Galen Strawson Think Free Will Is Impossible?
• What Was Benjamin Libet‘s Free Will Experiment?
• Does Advertising Erode Free Will?
• How Does Pride Effect Free Will and Fate?
• Can You Put Free Will Into an Equation?
• How Can Quantum Brain Biology Rescue Conscious Free Will?
• Does Free Will Exist or Is It All an Illusion?
• Is Free Will a Third Option Aside From Chance and Necessity?
• How Do Race, Gender, and Socioeconomic Class Limit the Free Will of Americans?
• Are Our Lives Governed by Fate or Free Will?
• Does Oedipus Have Free Will?
• Can Free Will and Determinism Coexist?
• Does Free Will exist within Milton’s Hierarchy’s Constraints in Paradise Lost?
• How Does the Conflict Between Free Will and the Predestination Play Out?
• Does Macbeth Have Free Will?
• How Do Fate and Free Will Play a Part in the Odyssey?
• Were Adam and Eve Influenced by the Snake or Free Will?
• What’s the Problem With Free Will?
• Is the Theory of Evolution a Good Basis for an Argument Against Free Will?
• Why Did God Give Us Free Will?
• For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility?
• How Does Shakespeare Present Macbeth as Having Free Will?
• What Is the Difference Between Free-Will and Randomness and or Non-determinism?
• Does Having Free Will Presuppose Consciousness, Can Philosophical Zombies Have It?
• What Are the Necessary Conditions for an Action to Be Regarded as a Free Choice?
• Is Free Will Reconcilable With a Purely Physical World?
• How Does Quantum Mechanics Affect the Modern Account of Free Will and Determinism?
• What Counters Are There to Spinoza’s Argument That Acts of Free Will Create Infinite Regress?
• Is Kant’s “Noumenal Self” Argument on Freedom Flawed?
• Individualism Topics
• Mind Research Ideas
• Abortion Paper Topics
• Consciousness Ideas
• Abraham Lincoln Topics
• Determinism Research Topics
• Antigone Ideas
• Moral Dilemma Paper Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Chapter 5: The problem of free will and determinism

The problem of free will and determinism

Matthew Van Cleave

“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.”

-Leo Tolstoy

“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

-Arthur Shopenhauer

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The term “freedom” is used in many contexts, from legal, to moral, to psychological, to social, to political, to theological. The founders of the United States often extolled the virtues of “liberty” and “freedom,” as well as cautioned us about how difficult they were to maintain. But what do these terms mean, exactly? What does it mean to claim that humans are (or are not) free? Almost anyone living in a liberal democracy today would affirm that freedom is a good thing, but they almost certainly do not all agree on what freedom is. With a concept as slippery as that of free will, it is not surprising that there is often disagreement. Thus, it will be important to be very clear on what precisely we are talking about when we are either affirming or denying that humans have free will. There is an important general point here that extends beyond the issue of free will: when debating whether or not x exists, we must first be clear on defining x, otherwise we will end up simply talking past each other . The philosophical problem of free will and determinism is the problem of whether or not free will exists in light of determinism. Thus, it is crucial to be clear in defining what we mean by “free will” and “determinism.” As we will see, these turn out to be difficult and contested philosophical questions. In this chapter we will consider these different positions and some of the arguments for, as well as objections to, them.

Let’s begin with an example. Consider the 1998 movie, The Truman Show . In that movie the main character, Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey), is the star of a reality television show. However, he doesn’t know that he is. He believes he is just an ordinary person living in an ordinary neighborhood, but in fact this neighborhood is an elaborate set of a television show in which all of his friends and acquaintances are just actors. His every moment is being filmed and broadcast to a whole world of fans that he doesn’t know exists and almost every detail of his life has been carefully orchestrated and controlled by the producers of the show. For example, Truman’s little town is surrounded by a lake, but since he has been conditioned to believe (falsely) that he had a traumatic boating accident in which his father died, he never has the desire to leave the small little town and venture out into the larger world (at least at first). So consider the life of Truman as described above. Is he free or not? On the one hand, he gets to do pretty much everything he wants to do and he is pretty happy. Truman doesn’t look like he’s being coerced in any explicit way and if you asked him if he was, he would almost certain reply that he wasn’t being coerced and that he was in charge of his life. That is, he would say that he was free (at least to the same extent that the rest of us would). These points all seem to suggest that he is free. For example, when Truman decides that he would rather not take a boat ride out to explore the wider world (which initially is his decision), he is doing what he wants to do. His action isn’t coerced and does not feel coerced to him. In contrast, if someone holds a gun to my head and tells me “your wallet or your life!” then my action of giving him my wallet is definitely coerced and feels so.

On the other hand, it seems clear the Truman’s life is being manipulated and controlled in a way that undermines his agency and thus his freedom. It seems clear that Truman is not the master of his fate in the way that he thinks he is. As Goethe says in the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter, there’s a sense in which people like Truman are those who are most helplessly enslaved, since Truman is subject to a massive illusion that he has no reason to suspect. In contrast, someone who knows she is a slave (such as slaves in the antebellum South in the United States) at least retains the autonomy of knowing that she is being controlled. Truman seems to be in the situation of being enslaved and not knowing it and it seems harder for such a person to escape that reality because they do not have any desire to (since they don’t know they are being manipulated and controlled).

As the Truman Show example illustrates, it seems there can be reasonable disagreement about whether or not Truman is free. On the one hand, there’s a sense in which he is free because he does what he wants and doesn’t feel manipulated. On the other hand, there’s a sense in which he isn’t free because what he wants to do is being manipulated by forces outside of his control (namely, the producers of the show). An even better example of this kind of thing comes from Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopia, Brave New World . In the society that Huxley envisions, everyone does what they want and no one is ever unhappy. So far this sounds utopic rather than dystopic. What makes it dystopic is the fact that this state of affairs is achieved by genetic and behavioral conditioning in a way that seems to remove any choice. The citizens of the Brave New World do what they want, yes, but they seems to have absolutely no control over what they want in the first place. Rather, their desires are essentially implanted in them by a process of conditioning long before they are old enough to understand what is going on. The citizens of Brave New World do what they want, but they have no control over what the want in the first place. In that sense, they are like robots: they only have the desires that are chosen for them by the architects of the society.

So are people free as long as they are doing what they want to—that is, choosing the act according to their strongest desires? If so, then notice that the citizens of Brave New World would count as free, as would Truman from The Truman Show , since these are both cases of individuals who are acting on their strongest desires. The problem is that those desires are not desires those individuals have chosen. It feels like the individuals in those scenarios are being manipulated in a way that we believe we aren’t. Perhaps true freedom requires more than just that one does what one most wants to do. Perhaps true freedom requires a genuine choice. But what is a genuine choice beyond doing what one most wants to do?

Philosophers are generally of two main camps concerning the question of what free will is. Compatibilists believe that free will requires only that we are doing what we want to do in a way that isn’t coerced—in short, free actions are voluntary actions. Incompatibilists , motivated by examples like the above where our desires are themselves manipulated, believe that free will requires a genuine choice and they claim that a choice is genuine if and only if, were we given the choice to make again, we could have chosen otherwise . I can perhaps best crystalize the difference between these two positions by moving to a theological example. Suppose that there is a god who created the universe, including humans, and who controls everything that goes on in the universe, including what humans do. But suppose that god does this not my directly coercing us to do things that we don’t want to do but, rather, by implanting the desire in us to do what god wants us to do. Thus human beings, by doing what the want to do, would actually be doing what god wanted them to do. According to the compatibilist, humans in this scenario would be free since they would be doing what they want to do. According to the incompatibilist, however, humans in this scenario would not be free because given the desire that god had implanted in them, they would always end up doing the same thing if given the decision to make (assuming that desires deterministically cause behaviors). If you don’t like the theological example, consider a sci-fi example which has the same exact structure. Suppose there is an eccentric neuroscientist who has figured out how to wire your brain with a mechanism by which he can implant desire into you.

Suppose that the neuroscientist implants in you the desire to start collecting stamps and you do so. However, you know none of this (the surgery to implant the device was done while you were sleeping and you are none the wiser).

From your perspective, one day you find yourself with the desire to start collecting stamps. It feels to you as though this was something you chose and were not coerced to do. However, the reality is that given this desire that the neuroscientist implanted in you, you could not have chosen not to have started collecting stamps (that is, you were necessitated to start collecting stamps, given the desire). Again, in this scenario the compatibilist would say that your choice to start collecting stamps was free (since it was something you wanted to do and did not feel coerced to you), but the incompatibilist would say that your choice was not free since given the implantation of the desire, you could not have chosen otherwise.

We have not quite yet gotten to the nub of the philosophical problem of free will and determinism because we have not yet talked about determinism and the problem it is supposed to present for free will. What is determinism?

Determinism is the doctrine that every cause is itself the effect of a prior cause. More precisely, if an event (E) is determined, then there are prior conditions (C) which are sufficient for the occurrence of E. That means that if C occurs, then E has to occur. Determinism is simply the claim that every event in the universe is determined. Determinism is assumed in the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology (with the exception of quantum physics for reasons I won’t explain here). Science always assumes that any particular event has some law-like explanation—that is, underlying any particular cause is some set of law- like regularities. We might not know what the laws are, but the whole assumption of the natural sciences is that there are such laws, even if we don’t currently know what they are. It is this assumption that leads scientists to search for causes and patterns in the world, as opposed to just saying that everything is random. Where determinism starts to become contentious is when we move into the human sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and economics. To illustrate why this is contentious, consider the famous example of Laplace’s demon that comes from Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

Laplace’s point is that if determinism were true, then everything that every happened in the universe, including every human action ever undertaken, had to have happened. Of course humans, being limited in knowledge, could never predict everything that would happen from here out, but some being that was unlimited in intelligence could do exactly that. Pause for a moment to consider what this means. If determinism is true, then Laplace’s demon would have been able to predict from the point of the big bang, that you would be reading these words on this page at this exact point of time. Or that you had what you had for breakfast this morning. Or any other fact in the universe. This seems hard to believe, since it seems like some things that happen in the universe didn’t have to happen. Certain human actions seem to be the paradigm case of such events. If I ate an omelet for breakfast this morning, that may be a fact but it seems strange to think that this fact was necessitated as soon as the big bang occurred. Human actions seem to have a kind of independence from web of deterministic web of causes and effects in a way that, say, billiard balls don’t.

Given that the cue ball his the 8 ball with a specific velocity, at a certain angle, and taking into effect the coefficient of friction of the felt on the pool table, the exact location of the 8 ball is, so to speak, already determined before it ends up there. But human behavior doesn’t seem to be like the behavior of the 8 ball in this way, which is why some people think that the human sciences are importantly different than the natural sciences. Whether or not the human sciences are also deterministic is an issue that helps distinguish the different philosophical positions one can take on free will, as we will see presently. But the important point to see right now is that determinism is a doctrine that applies to all causes, including human actions. Thus, if some particular brain state is what ultimately caused my action and that brain state itself was caused by a prior brain state, and so on, then my action had to occur given those earlier prior events. And that entails that I couldn’t have chosen to act otherwise, given that those earlier events took place . That means that the incompatibilist position on free will cannot be correct if determinism is true. Recall that incompatibilism requires that a choice is free only if one could have chosen differently, given all the same initial conditions. But if determinism is true, then human actions are no different than the 8 ball: given what has come before, the current event had to happen. Thus, if this morning I cooked an omelet, then my “choice” to make that omelet could not have been otherwise. Given the complex web of prior influences on my behavior, my making that omelet was determined. It had to occur.

Of course, it feels to us, when contemplating our own futures, that there are many different possible ways our lives might go—many possible choices to be made. But if determinism is true, then this is an illusion. In reality, there is only one way that things could go, it’s just that we can’t see what that is because of our limited knowledge. Consider the figure below. Each junction in the figure below represents a decision I make and let’s suppose that some (much larger) decision tree like this could represent all of the possible ways my life could go. At any point in time, when contemplating what to do, it seems that I can conceive of my life going many different possible ways. Suppose that A represents one series of choices and B another. Suppose, further, that A represents what I actually do (looking backwards over my life from the future). Although from this point in time it seems that I could also have made the series of choices represented in B, if determinism is true then this is false. That is, if A is what ends up happening, then A is the only thing that ever could have happened . If it hasn’t yet hit you how determinism conflicts with our sense of our own possibilities in life, think about that for a second.

As the foregoing I hope makes clear, the incompatibilist definition of free will is incompatibile with determinism (that’s why it’s called “incompatibilist”). But that leaves open the question of which one is true. To say that free will and determinism are logically incompatible is just to say that they cannot both be true, meaning that one or the other must be false. But which one? Some will claim that it is determinism which is false. This position is called libertarianism (not to be confused with political libertarianism, which is a totally different idea). Others claim that determinism is true and that, therefore, there is no free will. This position is called hard determinism. A third type of position, compatibilism , rejects the incompatibilist definition of freedom and claims that free will and determinism are compatible (hence the name). The table below compares these different positions. But which one is correct? In the remainder of the chapter we will consider some arguments for and against these three positions on free will and determinism.

Libertarianism

Both libertarianism and hard determinism accept the following proposition: If determinism is true, then there is no free will. What distinguishes libertarianism from hard determinism is the libertarian’s claim that there is free will. But why should we think this? This question is especially pressing when we recognize that we assume a deterministic view in many other domains in life. When you have a toothache, we know that something must have caused that toothache and whatever cause that was, something else must have caused that cause. It would be a strange dentist who told you that your toothache didn’t have a cause but just randomly occurred. When the weather doesn’t go as the meteorologist predicts, we assume there must be a cause for why the weather did what it did. We might not ever know the cause in all its specific details, but assume there must be one. In cases like meteorology, when our scientific predictions are wrong, we don’t always go back and try to figure out what the actual causes were—why our predictions were wrong. But in other cases we do. Consider the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. Years later it was finally determined what led to that explosion (“O-ring” seals that were not designed for the colder condition of the launch). There’s a detailed deterministic physical explanation that one could give of how the failure of those O-rings led to the explosion of the Challenger. In all of these cases, determinism is the fundamental assumption and it seems almost nothing could overturn it.

But the libertarian thinks that the domain of human action is different than every other domain. Humans are somehow able to rise above all of the influences on them and make decisions that are not themselves determined by anything that precedes them. The philosopher Roderick Chisholm accurately captured the libertarian position when he claimed that “we have a prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us, when we really act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing and no one, except we ourselves, causes us to cause those events to happen” (Chisholm, 1964). But why should we think that we have such a godlike ability? We will consider two arguments the libertarian makes in support of her position: the argument from intuitions and the argument from moral responsibility.

The argument from intuitions is based on the very strong intuition that there are some things that we have control over and that nothing causes us to do those things except for our own willing them. The strongest case for this concerns very simple actions, such as moving one’s finger. Suppose that I hold up my index finger and say that I am going to move it to the right or the to the left, but that I have not yet decided which way to move it. At the moment before I move my finger one way or the other, it truly seems to me that my future is open.

Nothing in my past and nothing in my present seems to be determining me to move my finger to the right or to the left. Rather, it seems to me that I have total control over what happens next. Whichever way I move my finger, it seems that I could have moved it the other way. So if, as a matter of fact, I move my finger to the right, it seems unquestionably true that I could have moved it to the left (and vice versa, mutatis mutandis ). Thus, in cases of simple actions like moving my finger to the right or left, it seems that the strong incompatibilist definition of freedom is met: we have a very strong intuition that no matter what I actually did, I could have chosen otherwise, were I to be given that exact choice again . The libertarian does not claim that all human actions are like this. Indeed, many of our actions (perhaps even ones that we think are free) are determined by prior causes. The libertarian’s claim is just that at least some of our actions do meet the incompatibilist’s definition of free and, thus, that determinism is not universally true.

The argument from moral responsibility is a good example of what philosophers call a transcendental argument . Transcendental arguments attempt to establish the truth of something by showing that that thing is necessary in order for something else, which we strongly believe to be true, to be true. So consider the idea that normally developed adult human beings are morally responsible for their actions. For example, if Bob embezzles money from his charity in order to help pay for a new sports car, we would rightly hold Bob accountable for this action. That is, we would punish Bob and would see punishment as appropriate. But a necessary condition of holding Bob responsible is that Bob’s action was one that he chose, one that he was in control of, one that he could have chosen not to do. Philosophers call this principle ought implies can : if we say that someone ought (or ought not) do something, this implies that they can do it (that is, they are capable of doing it). The ought implies can principle is consistent with our legal practices. For example, in cases where we believe that a person was not capable of doing the right thing, we no longer hold them morally or criminally liable. A good example of this within our legal system is the insanity defense: if someone was determined to be incapable of appreciating the difference between right and wrong, we do not find them guilty of a crime. But notice what determinism would do to the ought implies can principle. If everything we ever do had to happen (think Laplace’s demon), that means that Bob had to embezzle those funds and buy that sports car. The universe demanded it. That means he couldn’t not have done those things. But if that is so, then, by the ought implies can principle, we cannot say that he ought not to have done those things. That is, we cannot hold Bob morally responsible for those things. But this seems absurd, the libertarian will say.

Surely Bob was responsible for those things and we are right to hold him responsible. But the only we way can reasonably do this is if we assume that his actions were chosen—that he could have chosen to do otherwise than he in fact chose. Thus, determinism is incompatible with the idea that human beings are morally responsible agents. The practice of holding each other to be morally responsible agents doesn’t make sense unless humans have incompatibilist free will—unless they could have chosen to do otherwise than they in fact did. That is the libertarian’s transcendental argument from moral responsibility.

Hard determinism

Hard determinism denies that there is free will. The hard determinist is a “tough-minded” individual who bravely accepts the implication of a scientific view of the world. Since we don’t in general accept that there are causes that are not themselves the result of prior causes, we should apply this to human actions too. And this means that humans, contrary to what they might believe (or wish to believe) about themselves, do not have free will. As noted above, hard determininsm follows from accepting the incompatibilist definition of free will as well as the claim that determinism is universally true. One of the strongest arguments in favor of hard determinism is based on the weakness of the libertarian position. In particular, the hard determinist argues that accepting the existence of free will leaves us with an inexplicable mystery: how can a physical system initiate causes that are not themselves caused?

If the libertarian is right, then when an action is free it is such that given exactly the same events leading up to one’s action, one still could have acted otherwise than they did. But this seems to require that the action/choice was not determined by any prior event or set of events. Consider my decision to make a cheese omelet for breakfast this morning. The libertarian will say that my decision to make the cheese omelet was not free unless I could have chosen to do otherwise (given all the same initial conditions). But that means that nothing was determining my decision. But what kind of thing is a decision such that it causes my actions but is not itself caused by anything? We do not know of any other kind of thing like this in the universe. Rather, we think that any event or thing must have been caused by some (typically complex) set of conditions or events. Things don’t just pop into existence without being caused . That is as fundamental a principle as any we can think of. Philosophers have for centuries upheld the principle that “nothing comes from nothing.” They even have a fancy Latin phrase for it: ex nihilo nihil fir [1] . The problem is that my decision to make a cheese omelet seems to be just that: something that causes but is not itself caused. Indeed, as noted earlier, the libertarian Roderick Chisholm embraces this consequence of the libertarian position very clearly when he claimed that when we exercise our free will,

“we have a prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us, when we really act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing and no one, except we ourselves, causes us to cause those events to happen” (Chisholm, 1964).

How could something like this exist? At this point the libertarian might respond something like this:

I am not claiming that something comes from nothing; I am just claiming that our decisions are not themselves determined by any prior thing. Rather, we ourselves, as agents, cause our decisions and nothing else causes us to cause those decisions (at least in cases where we have acted freely).

However, it seems that the libertarian in this case has simply pushed the mystery back one step: we cause our decisions, granted, but what causes us to make those decisions? The libertarian’s answer here is that nothing causes us. But now we have the same problem again: the agent is responsible for causing the decision but nothing causes the agent to make that decision. Thus we seem to have something coming from nothing. Let’s call this argument the argument from mysterious causes. Here’s the argument in standard form:

• The existence of free will implies that when an agent freely decides to do something, the agent’s choice is not caused (determined) by anything.
• To say that something has no cause is to violate the ex nihilo nihil fit principle.
• But nothing can violate the ex nihilo nihil fit principle.
• Therefore, there is no free will (from 1-3)

The hard determinist will make a strong case for premise 3 in the above argument by invoking basic scientific principles such as the law of conservation of energy, which says that the amount of energy within a closed system stays that same. That is, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Consider a billiard ball. If it is to move then it must get the required energy to do so from someplace else (typically another billiard ball knocking into it, the cue stick hitting it or someone tilting the pool table). To allow that something could occur without any cause—in this case, the agent’s decision—would be a violation of the conservation of energy principle, which is as basic a scientific principle as we know. When forced to choose between uphold such a basic scientific principle as this and believing in free will, the hard determinist opts for the former. The hard determinist will put the ball in the libertarian’s court to explain how something could come from nothing.

I will close this section by indicating how these problems in philosophy often ramify into other areas of philosophy. In the first place, there is a fairly common way that libertarians respond to the charge that their view violates basic principles such as ex nihilo nihil fit and, more specifically, the physical law of conservation of energy. Libertarians could claim that the mind is not physical—a position known in the philosophy of mind as “substance dualism” (see philosophy of mind chapter in this textbook for more on substance dualism). If the mind isn’t physical, then neither are our mental events, such our decisions.

Rather, all of these things are nonphysical entities. If decisions are nonphysical entities, there is at least no violation of the physical laws such as the law of conservation of energy. [2] Of course, if the libertarian were to take this route of defending her position, she would then need to defend this further assumption (no small task). In any case, my main point here is to see the way that responses to the problem of free well and determinism may connect with other issue within philosophy. In this case, the libertarian’s defense of free will may turn out to depend on the defensibility of other assumptions they make about the nature of the mind. But the libertarian is not the only one who will need to ultimately connect her account of free will up with other issues in philosophy. Since hard determinists deny that free will exists, it seems that they will owe us some account of moral responsibility. If, moral responsibility requires that humans have free will (see previous section), then in denying free will we seem to also be denying that humans have moral responsibility. Thus, hard determinists will face the objection that in rejecting free will they also destroy moral responsibility.

But since it seems we must hold individuals morally to account for certain actions (such as the embezzler from the previous section), the hard determinist

needs some account of how it makes sense to do this given that human being don’t have free will. My point here is not to broach the issue of how the hard determinist might answer this, but simply to show how hard determinist’s position on the problem of free will and determinism must ultimately connect with other issues in philosophy, such issues in metaethics [3] . This is a common thing that happens in philosophy. We may try to consider an issue or problem in isolation, but sooner or later that problem will connect up with other issues in philosophy.

Compatibilism

The best argument for compatibilism builds on a consideration of the difficulties with the incompatibilist definition of free will (which both the libertarian and the hard determinist accept). As defined above, compatibilists agree with the hard determinists that determinism is true, but reject the incompatibilist definition of free will that hard determinists accept. This allows compatbilists to claim that free will is compatible with determinism. Both libertarians and hard compatibilists tend to feel that this is somehow cheating, but the compatibilist attempts to convince us arguing that the strong incompatibilist definition of freedom is problematic and that only the weaker compatibilist definition of freedom—free actions are voluntary actions—will work. We will consider two objections that the compatibilist raises for the incompatibilist definition of freedom: the epistemic objection and the arbitrariness objection . Then we will consider the compatibilist’s own definition of free will and show how that definition fits better with some of our common sense intuitions about the nature of free actions.

The epistemic objection is that there is no way for us to ever know whether any one of our actions was free or not. Recall that the incompatibilist definition of freedom says that a decision is free if and only if I could have chosen otherwise than I in fact chose, given exactly all the same conditions. This means that if we were, so to speak, rewind the tape of time and be given that decision to make over again, we could have chosen differently. So suppose the question is whether my decision to make a cheese omelet for breakfast was free. To answer this question, we would have to know when I could have chosen differently. But how am I supposed to know that ? It seems that I would have to answer a question about a strange counterfactual : if given that decision to make over again, would I choose the same way every time or not? How on earth am I supposed to know how to answer that question? I could say that it seems to me that I could make a different decision regarding making the cheese omelet (for example, I could have decided to eat cereal instead), but why should I think that that is the right answer? After all, how things seem regularly turn out to be not the case—especially in science. The problem is that I don’t seem to have any good way of answering this counterfactual question of what I would choose if given the same decision to make over again. Thus the epistemic objection [4] is that since I have no way of knowing whether I would/wouldn’t make the same decision again, I can never know whether any of my actions are free.

The arbitrariness objection is that it turns our free actions into arbitrary actions. And arbitrary actions are not free actions. To see why, consider that if the incompatibilist definition is true, then nothing determines our free choices, not even our own desires . For if our desires were determining our choices then if we were to rewind the tape of time and, so to speak, reset everything— including our desires —the same way, then given those same desires we would choose the same way every time. And that would mean our choice was not free, according to the incompatbilist. It is imperative to remember that incompatibilism says that if an action is not free if it is determined ( including if it is determined by our own desires ). But now the question is: if my desires are not causing my decision, what is? When I make a decision, where does that decision come from, if not from my desires and beliefs? Presumably it cannot come from nothing ( ex nihilo nihil fit ). The problem is that if the incompatibilist rejects that anything is causing my decisions, then how can my decisions be anything but arbitrary?

Presumably an arbitrary decision—a decision not driven by any reason at all—is not an exercise of my freedom. Freedom seems to require that we are exercising some kind of control over my actions and decisions. If my action or decision is arbitrary that means that no reason or explanation of the action/decision can be given. Here’s the arbitrariness objection cast as a reductio ad absurdum argument:

• A free choice is one that isn’t determined by anything, including our desires. [incompatibilist definition of freedom]
• If our own desires are not determining our choices, then those choices are arbitrary.
• If a choice is arbitrary then it is not something over which we have control
• If a choice isn’t something over which we have control, then it isn’t a free choice
• Therefore, a free choice is not a free choice (from 1-4)

A reductio ad absurdum argument is one that starts with a certain assumption and then derives a contradiction from that assumption, thereby showing that assumption must be false. In this case, the incompatibilist’s definition of a free choice leads to the contradiction that something that is a free choice isn’t a free choice.

What has gone wrong here? The compatibilist will claim that what has gone wrong is incompatibilist’s idea that a free action must be one that isn’t caused/determined by anything. The compatibilist claims that free actions can still be determined, as long as what is determining them is our own internal reasons, over which we have some control, rather than external things over which we have no control. Free choices, according to the compatibilist, are just choices that are caused by our own best reasons . The fact that, given the exact same choices, I couldn’t have chosen otherwise doesn’t undermine what freedom is (as the incompatibilist claims) but defines what it is. Consider an example. Suppose that my goal is to spend the shortest amount of time on my commute home from work so that I can be on time for a dinner date. Also suppose, for simplicity, that there are only three possible routes that I can take: route 1 is the shortest, whereas route 2 is longer but scenic and 3 is more direct but has potentially more traffic, especially during rush hour. I am leaving early from work today so that I can make my dinner date but before I leave, I check the traffic and learn that there has been a wreck on route 1. Thus, I must choose between routes 2 and 3. I reason that since I am leaving earlier, route 3 will be the quickest since there won’t be much traffic while I’m on my early commute home. So I take route 3 and arrive home in a timely manner: mission accomplished. The compatibilist would say that this is a paradigm case of a free action (or a series of free actions). The decisions I made about how to get home were drive both by my desire to get home quickly and also by the information I was operating with. Assuming that that information was good and I reasoned well with it and was thereby able to accomplish my goal (that is, get home in a timely manner), then my action is free. My action is free not because my choices were undetermined, but rather because my choices were determined (caused) by my own best reasons—that is, by my desires and informed beliefs. The incompatibilist, in contrast, would say that an action is free only if I could have chosen otherwise, given all the same conditions again. But think of what that would mean in the case above! Why on earth would I choose routes 1 or 2 in the above scenario, given that my most pressing goal is to be able to get to my dinner date on time? Why would anyone knowingly choose to do something that thwarts their primary goals? It doesn’t seem that, given the set of beliefs and desires that I actually had at the time, I could have chosen otherwise in that situation. Of course, if you change the information I had (my beliefs) or you change what I wanted to accomplish (my desires), then of course I could have acted otherwise than I did. If I didn’t have anything pressing to do when I left work and wanted a scenic and leisurely drive home in my new convertible, then I probably would have taken route 2! But that isn’t what the incompatibilist requires for free will. As we’ve seen, they require the much stronger condition that one’s action be such that it could have been different even if they faced exactly the same condition over again. But in this scenario that would be an irrational thing to do. Of course, if one’s goal were to be irrational and to thwart one’s own desires, I suppose they could do that. But that would still seem to be acting in accordance with one’s desires.

Many times free will is treated as an all or nothing thing, either humans have it or they don’t. This seems to be exactly how the libertarian and hard determinist see the matter. And that makes sense given that they are both incompatibilists and view free will and determinism like oil and water—they don’t mix. But it is interesting to note that it is common for us to talk about decisions, action, or even whole lives (or periods of a life) as being more or less free . Consider the Goethe quotation at the beginning of this chapter: “none are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Here Goethe is conceiving of freedom as coming in degrees and claiming that those who think they are free but aren’t as less free than those who aren’t free and know it. But this way of speaking implies that free will and determinism are actually on a continuum rather than a black and white either or. The compatibilist can build this fact about our ordinary ways of speaking about freedom into an argument for their position. Call this the argument from ordinary language . The argument from ordinary language is that only compatibilism is able to accommodate our common way of speaking about freedom coming in degrees—that is, as actions or decisions being more or less free. The libertarian can’t account for this since the libertarian sees freedom as an all or nothing matter: if you couldn’t have done otherwise then your action was not truly free; if you could have done otherwise, then it was. In contrast, the compatibilist is able to explain the difference between more/less free action on the continuum. For the compatibilist, the freest actions are those in which one reasons well with the best information, thus acting for one’s own best reasons, thus furthering one’s interests. The least free actions are those in which one lacks information and reason poorly, thus not acting for one’s own best reasons, thus not furthering one’s interests. Since reasoning well, being informed, and being reflective are all things that come in degrees (since one can possess these traits to a greater or lesser extent) and since these attribute define what free will is for the compatibilist, it follows that free will comes in degrees. And that means that the compatibilist is able to make sense or a very common way that we talk about freedom (as coming in degrees) and thus make sense of ourselves, whereas the libertarian isn’t.

There’s one further advantage that compatibilists can claim over libertarians. Libertarians defend the claim that there are at least some cases where one exercises one’s free will and that this entails that determinism is false. However, this leaves totally open the extent of human free will. Even if it were true that there are at least some cases where humans exercise free will, there might not be very many instances and/or those decisions in which we exercise free will might be fairly trivial (for example, moving one’s finger to the left or right). But if it were to turn out that free will was relatively rare, then even if the libertarian were correct that there are at least some instances where we exercise free will, it would be cold comfort to those who believe in free will. Imagine: if there were only a handful of cases in your life where your decision was an exercise of your free will, then it doesn’t seem like you have lived a life which was very free. In other words, in such a case, for all practical purposes, determinism would be true.

Thus, it seems like the question of how widespread free will is is an important one. However, the libertarian seems unable to answer it for reasons that we’ve already seen. Answering the question requires knowing whether or not one could have acted otherwise than one in fact did. But in order to know this, we’d have to know how to answer a strange counterfactual—whether I could have acted differently given all the same conditions. As noted earlier (“the epistemic objection”), this raises a tough epistemological question for the libertarian: how could he ever know how to answer this question? And so how could he ever know whether a particular action was free or not? In contrast, the compatibilist can easily answer the question of how widespread free will is: how “free” one’s life is depends on the extent to which one’s actions are driven by their own best reasons. And this, in turn, depends on factors such as how well-informed, reflective, and reasonable a person is. This might not always be easy to determine, but it seems more tractable than trying to figure out the truth conditions of the libertarian’s counterfactual.

In short, it seems that compatibilism has significant advantages over both libertarianism and hard determinism. As compared to the libertarian, compatibilism gives a better answer to how free will can come in degrees as well as how widespread free will is. It also doesn’t face the arbitrariness objection or the epistemic objection. As compared to the hard determinist, the compatibilist is able to give a more satisfying answer to the moral responsibility issue. Unlike the hard determinist, who sees all action as equally determined (and so not under our control), the compatibilist thinks there is an important distinction within the class of human actions: those that are under our control versus those that aren’t. As we’ve seen above, the compatibilist doesn’t see this distinction as black and white, but, rather, as existing on a continuum. However, a vague boundary is still a boundary. That is, for the compatibilist there are still paradigm cases in which a person has acted freely and thus should be held morally responsible for that action (for example, the person who embezzles money from a charity and then covers it up) and clear cases in which a person hasn’t acted freely (for example, the person who was told to do something by their boss but didn’t know that it was actually something illegal). The compatibilist’s point is that this distinction between free and unfree actions matters, both morally and legally, and that we would be unwise to simply jettison this distinction, as the hard determinist does. We do need some distinction within the class of human actions between those for which we hold people responsible and those for which we don’t. The compatibilist’s claim is that they are able to do with while the hard determinist isn’t. And they’re able to do it without inheriting any of the problems of the libertarian position.

Study questions

• True or false: Compatibilists and libertarians agree on what free will is (on the concept of free will).
• True or false: Hard determinists and libertarians agree that an action is free only when I could have chosen otherwise than I in fact chose.
• True or false: the libertarian gives a transcendental argument for why we must have free will.
• True or false: both compatibilists and hard determinists believe that all human actions are determined.
• True or false: compatibilists see free will as an all or nothing matter: either an action is free or it isn’t; there’s no middle ground.
• True or false: compatibilists think that in the case of a truly free action, I could have chosen otherwise than I in fact did choose.
• True or false: One objection to libertarianism is that on that view it is difficult to know when a particular action was free.
• True or false: determinism is a fundamental assumption of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, and so on).
• True or false: the best that support the libertarian’s position are cases of very simple or arbitrary actions, such as choosing to move my finger to the left or to the right.
• True or false: libertarians thinks that as long as my choices are caused by my desires, I have chosen freely.

For deeper thought

• Consider the Shopenhauer quotation at the beginning of the chapter. Which of the three views do you think this supports and why?
• Consider the movie The Truman Show . How would the libertarian and compatibilist disagree regarding whether or not Truman has free will?
• Consider the Tolstoy quote at the beginning of the chapter. Which of the three views does this support and why?
• Consider a child being raised by white supremacist parents who grows up to have white supremacist views and to act on those views. As a child, does this individual have free will? As an adult, do they have free will? Defend your answer with reference to one of the three views.
• Consider the eccentric neuroscientist example (above). How might a compatibilist try to show that this isn’t really an objection to her view? That is, how might the compatibilist show that this is not a case in which the individual’s action is the result of a well-informed, reflective choice?
• Actually, the phrase was originally a Latin phrase, not an English one because at the time in Medieval Europe philosophers wrote in Latin. ↵
• On the other hand, if these nonphysical decisions are supposed to have physical effects in the world (such as causing our behaviors) then although there is no problem with the agent’s decision itself being uncaused, there would still be a problem with how that decision can be translated into the physical world without violating the law of conservation of energy. ↵
• One well-known and influential attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with determinism is P.F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962). ↵
• The term “epistemic” just denotes something relating to knowledge. It comes from the Greek work episteme, which means knowledge or belief. ↵

Introduction to Philosophy Copyright © by Matthew Van Cleave is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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13.7 Cosmos & Culture

The choice is yours: the fate of free will.

Marcelo Gleiser

BASE jumping : Could there be any other explanation for this than free will? iStockphoto hide caption

BASE jumping : Could there be any other explanation for this than free will?

Everyone wants to be free; or at least have some choice in life. We all have our professional, family and social commitments. On the other hand, most people believe that they are free to choose what to do, from the simplest to the more complex: should I drink coffee with sugar or sweetener? Do I put some money in the savings or do I spend it all? Who should I vote for in the next elections? Should I marry Carmen or not?

The question of free will is essentially a question of agency, of who is in charge as we go through our lives making all sorts of choices.

Traditionally, it's been a topic for philosophers and theologians. But recent work in neuroscience is forcing a reconsideration of free will, to the point of questioning our freedom to choose. Many neuroscientists, and some philosophers, consider free will to be an illusion. Sam Harris, for example, wrote a short book arguing the case .

His shocking conclusion comes from a series of experiments that have revealed something quite remarkable: our brains decide a course of action before we know it. From Benjamin Libet's pioneering experiments in the 1980s using EEG to more recent investigations using fMRI , or implants directly in the neurons, the motor region responsible for making a motion in response to a question fired up before the subject was aware of it . The brain seems to be deciding before the mind knows about it.

If this is indeed true, the choices we think we are making, expressions of our freedom, are being made subconsciously, without our explicit control. Could it really be that we are so deluded?

The situation is not so simple. For one thing, defining free will is complicated. An operational definition is that free will is the ability to make one's own choices. Of course, we are always subjected to all sorts of constraints in our lives, from our genetics to our upbringing to our experiences. There is no blank slate over which we choose. Still, can it be that we are led to believe that we are the conscious agents of our choices when we aren't?

A popular argument against free will goes like this: imagine that in the future scientists will be able to map and decode all your mental states with arbitrary precision. They could then predict what you will do before you are aware of your choice. If this situation were ever to be possible — and it seems to me that it couldn't be in many different ways — free will would presumably be in trouble. But of course, such abstraction is mere fantasy: machines can't measure all our mental states in rapid succession if we don't even know how these states emerge. Any measurement that needs to track billions of neurons and trillions of synapses in time is far-fetched.

There is a risk of trivializing a question, cutting it down to shape so that it can be analyzed quantitatively.

Furthermore, the experiments in question here are limited to decisions that are far removed from the truly complex choices we make in our lives, those that involve a lot of back and forth thinking, prompt confusion, result in pondering, require talking to other people and generally take time to arrive at a conclusion. There is a huge gap in cognitive complexity from pushing buttons in a lab experiment to deciding whom you will marry, your profession or if you will commit a murder (psychopathic pathologies aside). When it comes to the choices we make in life, there is a spectrum of complexity and this is reflected in the issue of free will. Some do indeed happen before conscious awareness, and others don't.

It seems to me that the question of free will is not simply a black-and-white or yes-no kind of question, but one that embraces the full complexity of what it means to be human.

You can keep up with more of what Marcelo is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser

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Free Will: A Very Short Introduction

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Free Will: A Very Short Introduction asks: Are our choices really free? Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices. Are these choices ours, or are we compelled to act the way we do by factors beyond our control? Is the feeling that we could have made different decisions just an illusion? And if our choices are not free, why should we be held morally responsible for our actions? This VSI looks at a range of issues surrounding this fundamental philosophical question, exploring it from the ideas of the Greek and medieval philosophers through to the thoughts of present-day thinkers.

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How to Write a Short Essay

Last Updated: January 17, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 114,359 times.

Essay writing is a common assignment in high school or college courses, especially within the humanities. You’ll also be asked to write essays for college admissions and scholarships. In a short essay (250-500 words), you will need to provide an introduction with a thesis, a body, and a conclusion, as you would with a longer essay. Depending on the essay requirements, you may also need to do academic or online research to find sources to back up your claims.

Picking a Topic and Gathering Research

• If you have any questions about the topic, ask your instructor. If your essay doesn't respond to the prompt, you likely won't receive full credit.

• If you're writing an essay for an in-class test or for an application, tailor the essay to the given prompt and topic. Quickly brainstorm a few ideas; for example, think of positive things you can say about yourself for a college-entrance essay.
• For example, the topic “depression in American literature” is far too broad. Narrow down your topic to something like “Willie Loman’s depression in Death of a Salesman .”
• Or, you could write about a narrow topic like “the increase in the USA’s national debt in the 1950s” rather than a broad topic like “the American economy in the 20th century.”

• Depending on the field in which you’re writing the essay—e.g., hard sciences, sociology, humanities, etc.—your instructor will direct you towards appropriate databases. For example, if you’re writing a high-school or college-level essay for your English class, visit online literary databases like JSTOR, LION, and the MLA Bibliography.
• If you're writing the essay for a college or graduate-school application, it's unlikely that you'll need to include any secondary sources.
• If you're writing a timed or in-class essay, you may not be able to find research articles. But, still do draw information from texts and sources you've studied both in and out of class, and build from points made in any provided reading passages.

• If you’re writing about current events or journalism topics, read articles from well-known news sites like CNN or the BBC.
• Avoid citing unreliable websites like blogs or any sites that have a clear bias about the topic they’re reporting on.

Composing the Essay

• If you write the essay without outlining, the essay will be poorly organized.

• This thesis statement is far too weak: “ Death of a Salesman shows the difficulty of living in America after WWII.”
• Instead, hone your thesis to something like: “Arthur Miller uses Death of a Salesman to show that the American Dream is materialist and impractical.”

• So, avoid beginning the paragraph by writing something like, “Since the beginning of time, all people have been consumed with the desire for their father’s approval.”
• Instead, write something like, “In the play Death of a Salesman , Willie Loman’s sons compete for their father’s approval through various masculine displays."
• Then, you can say, "To examine this topic, I will perform a close reading of several key passages of the play and present analyses by noted Arthur Miller scholars."

• In a short essay, the conclusion should do nothing more than briefly restate your main claim and remind readers of the evidence you provided.

• So, take the example about Death of a Salesman . The first body paragraph could discuss the ways in which Willie’s sons try to impress him.
• The second body paragraph could dive into Willie’s hopelessness and despair, and the third paragraph could discuss how Miller uses his characters to show the flaws in their understanding of the American Dream.

• Always cite your sources so you avoid charges of plagiarism. Check with your instructor (or the essay prompt) and find out what citation style you should use.
• For example, if you’re summarizing the inflation of the American dollar during the 1930s, provide 2 or 3 years and inflation-rate percentages. Don’t provide a full-paragraph summary of the economic decline.
• If you're writing an in-class essay and don't have time to perform any research, you don't need to incorporate outside sources. But, it will impress your teacher if you quote from a reading passage or bring up pertinent knowledge you may have gained during the class.

• If no one agrees to read the essay, read over your own first draft and look for errors or spots where you could clarify your meaning. Reading the essay out loud often helps, as you’ll be able to hear sentences that aren’t quite coherent.
• This step does not apply to essays written during a timed or in-class exam, as you won't be able to ask peers to read your work.

• It’s always a mistake to submit an unrevised first draft, whether for a grade, for admissions, or for a scholarship essay.
• However, if you're writing an essay for a timed exam, it's okay if you don't have enough time to combine multiple drafts before the time runs out.

Condensing Your Essay

• So, if you’re writing about Death of a Salesman , an article about symbolism in Arthur Miller’s plays would be useful. But, an article about the average cost of Midwestern hotels in the 1940s would be irrelevant.
• If you’re writing a scholarship essay, double-check the instructions to clarify what types of sources you’re allowed to use.

• A common cliche you might find in an essay is a statement like, "I'm the hardest working student at my school."
• For example, this sentence is too verbose: “I have been a relentlessly stellar student throughout my entire high school career since I am a seriously dedicated reader and thoroughly apply myself to every assignment I receive in class.”
• Shortened, it could read: “I was a stellar student throughout my high school career since I was a dedicated reader and applied myself to every assignment I received.”

• Avoid writing something like, “Willie Loman can be seen as having achieved little through his life because he is not respected by his sons and is not valued by his co-workers.”
• Instead, write, “Arthur Miller shows readers that Willie’s life accomplishments have amounted to little. Willie’s sons do not look up to him, and his co-workers treat him without respect.”

• For example, if you’re trying to prove that WWII pulled the USA out of the Great Depression, focus strictly on an economic argument.
• Avoid bringing in other, less convincing topics. For example, don’t dedicate a paragraph to discussing how much it cost the USA to build fighter jets in 1944.

Short Essay Template and Example

Expert Q&A

• When composing the text of your essay, resist the temptation to pull words from a thesaurus in an attempt to sound academic or intelligent. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If your high school or college has an online or in-person writing center, schedule an appointment. Taking advantage of this type of service can improve your essay and help you recognize structural or grammatical problems you would not have noticed otherwise. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/research_papers/choosing_a_topic.html
• ↑ https://monroecollege.libguides.com/c.php?g=589208&p=4072926
• ↑ https://www.utep.edu/extendeduniversity/utepconnect/blog/march-2017/4-ways-to-differentiate-a-good-source-from-a-bad-source.html
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-outline/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/
• ↑ https://libguides.newcastle.edu.au/how-to-write-an-essay/essay-introduction
• ↑ https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/undergraduates/writing-guides/how-do-i-write-an-intro--conclusion----body-paragraph.html
• ↑ https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/writingsuccess/chapter/8-3-drafting/
• ↑ https://www.trentu.ca/academicskills/how-guides/how-write-university/how-approach-any-assignment/writing-english-essay/using-secondary
• ↑ https://patch.com/michigan/berkley/bp--how-to-shorten-your-college-essay-without-ruining-it
• ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/style/ccs_activevoice/
• ↑ https://wordcounter.net/blog/2016/01/26/101025_how-to-reduce-essay-word-count.html

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How do you choose the ideal car for a large family, sponsored post.

• May 28, 2024

A big family is always a big responsibility. Its head bears many responsibilities, from creating comfortable living conditions to providing relatives with quality transport. The latter should be selected based on standard criteria, which were previously adapted to the requirements of a large family. Let’s look at them together and imagine the ideal car. 

Purpose of the car  

Regardless of whether you buy vehicles at Hawaii auto salvage yards or similar sites in other American states, you need to know in advance what you want to use them for. Universal models will be the best option if you have a large family. They will be able to satisfy the needs of all relatives and provide the opportunity to travel any distance. 

If your needs are limited to short trips (for example, grocery shopping at the supermarket, to school, to work), choosing relatively small models is better. In such cases, you are unlikely to put all your relatives in the car simultaneously so that a compact 5-seater vehicle will be enough. However, if you plan to travel outside the city or use the vehicle for family trips, then try to choose a model that can accommodate as many passengers as the number of family members you regularly take with you. 

Body type  

Today, most people have access to cars of any body type. One should be chosen depending on the frequency of transport use and the purposes of the most frequent trips. A hatchback or sedan will be optimal for families, as the car will leave the garage daily. Models with this body type will perfectly cope with short and long trips and allow each family member to feel comfortable. 

For very large families, 7—or 8-seat minivans are the right choice. They will accommodate all children and adults and leave plenty of space for personal belongings. The latter can also be placed in the trunk, which is always quite voluminous in most minivans. Minibusses will be the only available option if your family consists of 9 or more people. Only they will make it possible to transport all relatives simultaneously. 

Another popular option for large families is crossovers. Many have a third row of seats, so there is enough space in the cabin for everyone. These cars will allow travel and overcome roads with poor surfaces. In addition, most crossovers have high safety ratings, which is especially important when transporting many people. 

Family financial capabilities  

Setting a spending limit right away is essential when choosing a family car. It is determined individually for each specific case, making it possible to narrow the search for a suitable vehicle significantly. This is especially important for families with limited financial resources who cannot afford to buy the first model they like. 

When choosing the maximum acceptable price for a car, it is essential to take into account the income of all working family members, monthly expenses for food, rent, payment for various services, as well as mandatory financial costs associated with the need to prepare multiple documents for future transport (for example, insurance costs). This approach will make it possible to determine the optimal price of the car so that your family will not experience financial difficulties in the months after making an expensive purchase. If your large family has very little money, buying vehicles at the online auctions mentioned earlier is the best solution. There, you can find models to suit any financial capabilities. 

Interior and trunk space  

For large families, such a criterion as the spaciousness of the car interior is essential. It determines how many people can fit in the transport simultaneously and how comfortable they will feel there. In this regard, large families are most often recommended to buy 7- or 8-seater cars. There will be a place for all people and their personal belongings. In families with nine or more people, transport that can accommodate up to 15 people (minibusses) will be required. 

In addition to the interior’s spaciousness, it is essential to pay attention to the similar trunk characteristics. Cars intended for large families should have a volume of 500-600 liters. This space is enough to accommodate large bags, various children’s accessories (toys, strollers, bicycles) and personal items that do not fit in the cabin. Models with an even larger trunk volume are advisable for families who plan to travel long distances frequently. If the car is used exclusively for short trips, then a 400-liter trunk will be sufficient. 

Degree of safety for the driver and passengers  

The more people in the car, the higher the likelihood that one will distract the driver’s attention from the road. In this regard, you should buy models full of modern control assistance systems for large families. Thanks to such developments, the safety of the driver and passengers will significantly increase, and the risk of an emergency will be minimal. 

For large families with children, it is necessary to choose cars with many unique additions that will enable even the most minor passengers to travel safely over short and long distances. The most useful will be unique mounts for child seats, a door locking system (prevents them from accidentally opening while driving) and much more. 

Of course, the car you choose must be equipped with traditional airbags. They will give the driver and passenger greater confidence and help save lives in a serious accident. Ideally, airbags should be accessible to everyone inside the vehicle. 

Comfort level  

Comfort is an essential component of the reliability and safety of a car. During trips, each family member’s fatigue and well-being depend on it. To ensure the required level of comfort, the selected vehicle must have the most comfortable seats (preferably moderately complex and with the correct anatomical shape), climate control, a high-quality audio system, good sound insulation, as well as various small devices (for example, drawers for temporary storage compact things, stands for writing, drawing, eating, etc.). 

Equally important are various family car functions that are responsible for the comfort of the driver and passengers. All of them will help achieve a cozy atmosphere in the cabin, in which even the most challenging and long trip will become a pleasant experience. The most famous comfort options are heated and ventilated seats, power steering, air humidity control, etc. 

A car is a must-have attribute for large families, without which it won’t be easy to cope with many everyday tasks. When choosing one, it is important to be guided by the criteria we described. Only in this case will it be possible to find the optimal model that can satisfy the needs of many people and become each of their favorite forms of transport. 

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Rich Paul calls LeBron James 'a free agent,' but stops short of confirming he will decline player option

James has a player option for next season with the lakers.

LeBron James is notoriously quiet about his free agency decisions before July arrives. In 2010 and 2014, he took meetings starting on July 1 and made his choices deeper into the month without offering any public hints. In 2018, he said nothing publicly, only releasing a statement on July 1 that he had chosen to join the Los Angeles Lakers . Now, for the first time since then, he can become an unrestricted free agent and potentially join a new team thanks to a $51.4 million player option with the Lakers.

James has, yet again, remained quiet on his plans for the offseason, but notably, his agent, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, appeared on the TNT alt-cast for Game 2 of the Western Conference finals and referred to James as "a free agent."

Rich Paul: “LeBron is a free agent.” … but LeBron currently has a pending player option. Interesting slip up from his agent. 👀 (via @ChrisBHaynes ) pic.twitter.com/5IrtdnP8C1 — Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) May 26, 2024

Notably, at the end of the video, Paul stops short of confirming that James will indeed opt out of the final year of his Lakers contract. When Chris Haynes presses him on that, Paul replies, "Chris, you know I don't do my business over the air, man." He went on to elaborate by saying that James' situation is still up in the air. "I don't know what he's gonna do. We're gonna do what we do every year. We're gonna evaluate the situation and we're gonna make the best decision."

So what does all of this mean? Obviously, these two notions are somewhat opposed. If James is, indeed, a free agent, it means that he will decline that option. Perhaps it was a slip by Paul, or, more likely, it was an allusion to the reality that the mere possibility of James becoming a free agent means he is currently treating himself like one. 

Essentially, that means he is considering his options at the moment. Returning to the Lakers is obviously one of them. Finding a new team would be as well, though Paul obviously would not state that directly. Notably, however, he said in a Friday interview with Haynes that "the Lakers' focus should probably be more so on  Anthony Davis  than LeBron at this point."

Davis is under contract with the Lakers for four more seasons after signing an extension last offseason. James is eligible to sign for only three years in total, either by opting in and extending for two more years for a total of roughly $164 million, or opting out and signing a new three-year deal for roughly $162 million (which would also allow him to add a no-trade clause). 

James has until June 29 to make up his mind on the player option, which is three days after the 2024 NBA Draft , when his son Bronny is expected to be selected. James has said in the past that he plans to play with Bronny at the end of his career, though he has softened on that stance of late.

Even if James isn't technically a free agent, he functionally is one. He has the capacity to get out of his contract, and even if he can't directly speak to teams yet, he knows that all 30 teams would be interested in adding him. If he is interested in other opportunities, he can explore them independently before making up his mind on that option. Ultimately, the expectation is that James will remain with the Lakers, but so long as that option exists, it's no guarantee.

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