The Freewill Question

It used to be common for philosophers to argue that there is empirical reason to believe that the world in general is causally determined, and since human beings are parts of the world, they are too. While quantum mechanics has proven spectacularly successful as a framework for making precise and accurate predictions of certain observable phenomena, its implications for the causal structure of reality is still not well understood, and there are competing indeterministic and deterministic interpretations. See the entry on quantum mechanics for detailed discussion.

But this idea, once common, is now being challenged empirically, even at the level of basic biology. Furthermore, the social, biological, and medical sciences, too, are rife with merely statistical generalizations. Plainly, the jury is out on all these inter-theoretic questions.

But that is just a way to say that current science does not decisively support the idea that everything we do is pre-determined by the past, and ultimately by the distant past, wholly out of our control. For discussion, see Balaguer , Koch , Roskies , Ellis Now some of the a priori no-free-will arguments above center on nondeterministic theories according to which there are objective antecedent probabilities associated with each possible choice outcome.

Why objective probabilities of this kind might present special problems beyond those posed by the absence of determinism has been insufficiently explored to date. But one philosopher who argues that there is reason to hold that our actions, if undetermined, are governed by objective probabilities and that this fact calls into question whether we act freely is Derk Pereboom , ch. Pereboom notes that our best physical theories indicate that statistical laws govern isolated, small-scale physical events, and he infers from the thesis that human beings are wholly physically composed that such statistical laws will also govern all the physical components of human actions.

Finally, Pereboom maintains that agent-causal libertarianism offers the correct analysis of free will. The proposal that agent-caused free choices do not diverge from what the statistical laws predict for the physical components of our actions would run so sharply counter to what we would expect as to make it incredible. Others see support for free will skepticism from specific findings and theories in the human sciences.

They point to evidence that we can be unconsciously influenced in the choices we make by a range of factors, including ones that are not motivationally relevant; that we can come to believe that we chose to initiate a behavior that in fact was artificially induced; that people subject to certain neurological disorders will sometimes engage in purposive behavior while sincerely believing that they are not directing them. Finally, a great deal of attention has been given to the work of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet If one is a compatibilist, then a case for the reality of free will requires evidence for our being effective agents who for the most part are aware of what we do and why we are doing it.

If one is an incompatibilist, then the case requires in addition evidence for causal indeterminism, occurring in the right locations in the process leading from deliberation to action. Instead, incompatibilists usually give one of the following two bases for rational belief in freedom both of which can be given by compatibilists, too. First, philosophers have long claimed that we have introspective evidence of freedom in our experience of action, or perhaps of consciously attended or deliberated action.

Augustine and Scotus, discussed earlier, are two examples among many. In recent years, philosophers have been more carefully scrutinizing the experience of agency and a debate has emerged concerning its contents, and in particular whether it supports an indeterministic theory of human free action. For discussion, see Deery et al.

Most philosophers hold that some beliefs have that status, on pain of our having no justified beliefs whatever. It is controversial, however, just which beliefs do because it is controversial which criteria a belief must satisfy to qualify for that privileged status. Our belief in free will seems to meet these criteria, but whether they are sufficient will be debated.

Other philosophers defend a variation on this stance, maintaining instead that belief in the reality of moral responsibility is epistemically basic, and that since moral responsibility entails free will, or so it is claimed, we may infer the reality of free will see, e. A large portion of Western philosophical work on free will has been written within an overarching theological framework, according to which God is the ultimate source, sustainer, and end of all else. Some of these thinkers draw the conclusion that God must be a sufficient, wholly determining cause for everything that happens; all of them suppose that every creaturely act necessarily depends on the explanatorily prior, cooperative activity of God.

It is also commonly presumed by philosophical theists 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 [] is a good example. These positions turn on subtle distinctions, which have recently been explored by Freddoso , Kvanvig and McCann , Grant , and Judisch A standard argument for the incompatibility of free will and causal determinism has a close theological analogue.

But it is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Since God cannot get things wrong, his believing that something will be so entails that it will be so. An excellent discussion of these arguments in tandem and attempts to point to relevant disanalogies between causal determinism and infallible foreknowledge may be found in the introduction to Fischer See also the entry on foreknowledge and free will.

Another issue concerns how knowledge of God, the ultimate Good, would impact human freedom. Many philosophical theologians, especially the medieval Aristotelians, were drawn to the idea that human beings cannot but will that which they take to be an unqualified good. As noted above, Duns Scotus is an exception to this consensus, as were Ockham and Suarez subsequently, but their dissent is limited.

Following Pascal, Murray , argues that a good God would choose to make His existence and character less than certain for human beings, for the sake of preserving 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. See also the other essays in Howard-Snyder and Moser If it is true that God withholds our ability to be certain of his existence for the sake of our freedom, then it is natural to conclude that humans will lack freedom in heaven.

And it is anyways common to traditional Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologies to maintain that humans cannot sin in heaven. Even so, traditional Christian theology at least maintains that human persons in heaven are free. What sort of freedom is in view here, and how does it relate to mundane freedom? Two good recent discussions of these questions are Pawl and Timpe and Tamburro 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 appearances notwithstanding. 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 takes as its point of departure the distinction noted in section 2. 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. As is generally the case, things are different on this point in the case of God. As Anselm observed, 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. Well, then, might God have willed otherwise in any respect?

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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.

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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 [] , 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.

One way this could be is if there is no well-ordering of worlds: Another way this could be is if there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds: 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 threshold value of overall goodness. However, William Rowe has countered that the thesis that there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds has a very different consequence: It seems we can now imagine a morally better Creator: For critical replies to Rowe, see Almeida , ch.

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. 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 discusses a somewhat similar line of thought in the Puritan thinker Jonathan Edwards. Alexander Pruss , however, raises substantial grounds for doubt concerning this line of thought. Major Historical Contributions 1. The Nature of Free Will 2. Do We Have Free Will? While it is intelligible to ask whether a man willed to do what he did, it is incoherent to ask whether a man willed to will what he did: While keeping this controversy about the nature of moral responsibility firmly in mind see the entry on moral responsibility for a more detailed discussion of these issues , we think it is fair to say that the most commonly assumed understanding of moral responsibility in the historical and contemporary discussion of the problem of free will is moral responsibility as accountability in something like the following sense: As we saw above, classical compatibilists Hobbes [], []; Locke []; Hume [], []; Edwards []; Moore ; Schlick ; Ayer sought to analyze the freedom to do otherwise in terms of a simple conditional analysis of ability: One might be tempted to think that there is an easy fix along the following lines: Sourcehood Accounts Some have tried to avoid these lingering problems for compatibilists by arguing that the freedom to do otherwise is not required for free will or moral responsibility.

Here is a representative Frankfurt-style case: Pereboom offers a forceful statement of this worry: Theological Wrinkles A large portion of Western philosophical work on free will has been written within an overarching theological framework, according to which God is the ultimate source, sustainer, and end of all else. Bibliography Adams, Robert, Oxford University Press, 51— Brigham Young University Press. Causality and Determination , New York: Bramhall, John, [] Cambridge University Press, 1— James Stacey Taylor, New York: Selected Essays , London: Free Will and Consciousness: Keith Lehrer, New York: Open Court, Clarke, Randolph, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will , Oxford: Routledge and Kagan Press.

Meditations on First Philosophy , in Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings , eds. Cambridge University Press, 73— Principles of Philosophy , in Descartes: Cambridge University Press, — Human Ends and Human Actions: An Exploration in St. Thomas's Treatment , Milwaukee: University of California Press.

An Historical and Philosophical Introduction , London: Duns Scotus, John, Catholic University of America Press. Lectura I 39 , tr. Vos Jaczn et al. Edwards, Jonathan, []. Freedom of Will , ed. Paul Ramsey, New Haven: Ekstrom, Laura Waddell, How Can Physics Underlie the Mind? Fischer, John Martin, New Essays on Moral Psychology , ed. Ferdinand Schoeman, New York: Cambridge University Press, 81—; reprinted in Fischer 63— Citations refer to reprinted edition. The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control , Oxford: Essays on Moral Responsibility , New York: Fischer, John Martin and Mark Ravizza, A Theory of Moral Responsibility , Cambridge: Fischer, John Martin and Neal Tognazzini, Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress , eds.

Franklin, Christopher Evan, a. Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism , ed. Cornell University Press, 74— Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought , Berkeley: On Action , Cambridge: Freedom, Teleology, and Evil , London: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns , eds. Oxford University Press, — Puzzles, Proposals, and Perplexities , New York: Haji, Ishtiyaque and Michael McKenna, Hobbes, Thomas, []. Cambridge University Press, 15— Cambridge University Press, 69— Willing, Wanting, Waiting , New York: Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Paul Moser eds.

New Essays , Cambridge: Hume, David, []. A Treatise of Human Nature , eds. Nidditch, 2 nd edition, Oxford: Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals , ed. Nidditch, third edition, Oxford: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity — , Oxford: Robert Kane, 2 nd edition, New York: Kant, Immanuel, []. Critique of Pure Reason , trs. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals , tr.

Critique of Practical Reason , tr. Charles Taliaferro and Paul Draper, 2 nd edition, Oxford: The Metaphysics of Theism: Kvanvig, Jon and Hugh McCann, Myles Brand and Douglas Walton, Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, — Essays Presented to Richard Taylor , ed. Peter van Inwagen, Dordrecht: Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays , trs. Daniel Garber and Roger Ariew, 9 th edition. Theodicy , LaSalle, IL: Robert Kane, 1st edition, New York: Locke, John, []. An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding , ed. The Metaphysics of Mind and Action , Oxford: Marchal, Kai and Christian Helmut Wenzel, The Works of Agency: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities , eds.

Springs of Action , New York: Autonomous Agents , New York: Free Will and Luck , Oxford: The Power of Conscious Will , Oxford: New Essays , eds. Cambridge University Press, 62— Free Will and Moral Responsibility , ed. Philosophical Explanations , Cambridge, MA: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will , ed. Agents, Causes, and Events: Theism and Ultimate Explanation: Free will in the Christian sense is the ability to choose between good or evil.

Among Catholics, there are those holding to Thomism , adopted from what Thomas Aquinas put forth in the Summa Theologica. There are also some holding to Molinism which was put forth by Jesuit priest Luis de Molina. Among Protestants there is Arminianism , held primarily by Methodist and some Baptist , and formulated by Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius ; and there is also Calvinism held by most in the Reformed tradition which was formulated by the French Reformed theologian, John Calvin.

John Calvin was heavily influenced by Augustine of Hippo views on predestination put forth in his work On the Predestination of the Saints. Martin Luther seems to hold views on predestination similar to Calvinism in his On the Bondage of the Will , thus rejecting free will. In condemnation of Calvin and Luther views, the Council of Trent declared that "the free will of man, moved and excited by God, can by its consent co-operate with God, Who excites and invites its action; and that it can thereby dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of justification.

The will can resist grace if it chooses. It is not like a lifeless thing, which remains purely passive. Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race Sess. Paul the Apostle discusses Predestination in some of his Epistles. Maimonides reasoned that human beings have free will at least in the context of choosing to do good or evil. Without free will, the demands of the prophets would have been meaningless, there would be no need for the Torah , and justice could not be administered. In Maimonides's view, human free will is granted by God as part of the universe's design.

In Islam the theological issue is not usually how to reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge, but with God's jabr , or divine commanding power. Actions taken by people exercising free will are counted on the Day of Judgement because they are their own; however, the free will happens with the permission of God. Furthermore, God would voluntarily do so because "the greatest good Some philosophers follow William of Ockham in holding that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient.

This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article " Free will ", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the philosophical questions of free will. For other uses, see Free will disambiguation.

Free will in antiquity. Philosophy of mind , Dualism philosophy of mind , Monism , and Physicalism. Neuroscience of free will. Principle of sufficient reason. Neurophilosophy and Neuroscience of free will. Cognitive science , Cognitive psychology , and Neuroscience. An alternative explanation builds on the idea that subjects tend to confuse determinism with fatalism It is not that their basic desires and drives are defeated.

It is rather, I suggest, that they become skeptical that they can control those desires; and in the face of that skepticism, they fail to apply the effort that is needed even to try. If they were tempted to behave badly, then coming to believe in fatalism makes them less likely to resist that temptation. Free will in theology. Philosophy portal Ethics portal Metaphysics portal. The degree of freedom within. The Monist , Vol. Recent research on free will: Conceptualizations, beliefs, and processes. Determinism and freedom in Stoic philosophy. In the latter authors it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them.

In Alexander's account, the terms are understood differently: Methods and Design 6th ed. New Light on Physics, Cosmology, and Consciousness. Human Nature After Darwin: Justin 1 January The View From Nowhere. Nothing that might be a solution has yet been described. This is not a case where there are several possible candidate solutions and we don't know which is correct.

It is a case where nothing believable has to my knowledge been proposed. The persistence of the traditional free will problem in philosophy seems to me something of a scandal. After all these centuries Free Will and Consciousness: One of the strongest supports for the free choice thesis is the unmistakable intuition of virtually every human being that he is free to make the choices he does and that the deliberations leading to those choices are also free flowing..

Freedom of choice affirmed. In John Baer; James C. Psychology and Free Will. A compatibilist critique of The Volitional Brain ". Journal of Consciousness Studies. Feelings or intuitions per se never count as self-evident proof of anything. The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will For full text on line see this Archived at the Wayback Machine.. The Will to believe, and other essays in popular philosophy. Archived from the original PDF on Are behaviors, judgments, and other higher mental processes the product of free conscious choices, as influenced by internal psychological states motives, preferences, etc.

Also found in John A Bargh Free will is un-natural". In John Baer, James C. Logic, "liberty", and the metaphysics of responsibility". Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it.

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The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility. The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will". Understanding Consciousness 2nd ed.

Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy. Archived from the original on 26 August Retrieved 12 December In Judy Illes; Barbara J. Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics. Free will, compatibilists argue, is here to stay, and the challenge for science is to figure out exactly how it works and not to peddle silly arguments that deny the undeniable Dennett referring to a critique of Libet's experiments by DC Dennett Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Instead of postulating a universal law of causality and then having to deny the possibility of choice, we start with the premise that freedom of choice exists, and then we seek to explain causality as a property of brains.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter ed. Four Views on Free Will Libertarianism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Spring ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall ed. See also McKenna, Michael Living without Free Will. George Allen and Unwin. Sartre also provides a psychological version of the argument by claiming that if man's actions are not his own, he would be in bad faith.

Freedom and belief Revised ed. A Contemporary Introduction 2nd ed. First published in English in by Cambridge University Press. The Information Philosopher, dedicated to the new information philosophy. For instance, it is impossible, from our standpoint, to attach an unambiguous meaning to the view sometimes expressed that the probability of the occurrence of certain atomic processes in the body might be under the direct influence of the will. In fact, according to the generalized interpretation of the psycho-physical parallelism, the freedom of the will must be considered a feature of conscious life that corresponds to functions of the organism that not only evade a causal mechanical description, but resist even a physical analysis carried to the extent required for an unambiguous application of the statistical laws of atomic mechanics.

Without entering into metaphysical speculations, I may perhaps add that an analysis of the very concept of explanation would, naturally, begin and end with a renunciation as to explaining our own conscious activity. Full text on line at us. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. Parkinson 12 October Retrieved 26 December VanArragon 21 October Key Terms in Philosophy of Religion. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved 22 December Midwest Studies in Philosophy. The Philosophy of Science: N—Z, Indeks, Volume 1. Retrieved 27 December Intentionality, Deliberation and Autonomy: The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedom.

Mele 30 March Free Will and Luck. Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Peterson, Michael; Fischer, John Martin A Reply to Widerker". Necessity, Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory. An Essay on Free Will. Essays on Freedom of Action: Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism. The Significance of Free Will. It would seem that undetermined events in the brain or body would occur spontaneously and would be more likely to undermine our freedom rather than enhance it. Chisholm 30 June The Essential Element in Human Action. Oxford Hb Of Free Will: Dualist and Agent-Causal Theories.

Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. An essay on human action. A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , ed. Retrieved August 17, , online Archived at the Wayback Machine. Blackwell 21 December Retrieved 8 December Retrieved 20 December Retrieved 19 December On this doctrine events throughout eternity have been foreordained by some supernatural power in a causal sequence.

Pre- determinism at the Planck scale". Predeterminism is here defined by the assumption that the experimenter's 'free will' in deciding what to measure such as his choice to measure the x- or the y-component of an electron's spin , is in fact limited by deterministic laws, hence not free at all , and Sukumar, CV Quantum Theory provided a beautiful description of the behaviour of isolated atoms and nuclei and small aggregates of elementary particles. Modern science recognized that predisposition rather than predeterminism is what is widely prevalent in nature.

Far Western Philosophy of Education Society. See for example Ormond, A. The problem of predeterminism is one that involves the factors of heredity and environment, and the point to be debated here is the relation of the present self that chooses to these predetermining agencies , and Garris, M. Science of Artificial Neural Networks. However, predeterminism is not completely avoided. If the codes within the genotype are not designed properly, then the organisms being evolved will be fundamentally handicapped.

Journal of Economic Issues: Many religions of the world have considered that the path of history is predetermined by God or Fate. On this basis, many believe that what will happen will happen, and they accept their destiny with fatalism. Dictionary of World Philosophy. Encyclopedia of science and religion.

Free will - Wikipedia

The Consolation of Philosophy. The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge. Mental causation and intentionality in a mind naturalizing theory". The world of conscious human processes I shall call 'World 2', and the world of the objective creations of the human mind I shall call 'World 3'. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sensation and Perception 12th ed. Cutting consciousness down to size Jonathan Sydenham translation of Maerk verden ed.

Oxford University Press , Oxford. A limited resource theory of volition, choice and self-regulation". In Ezequiel Morsella; John A. The nonconscious forms of self-regulation may follow different causal principles and do not rely on the same resources as the conscious and effortful ones. In Ezequiel Morsella, John A. Yet perhaps not all conscious volition is an illusion. Our findings suggest that the traditional folk notions of willpower and character strength have some legitimate basis in genuine phenomena.

Free Will and Illusion. Retrieved 6 February Trends in Cognitive Sciences. An Essay on Moral Responsibility. The Oxford Handbook to Free Will. See Hylton, Peter Apr 30, The Ethics Original work published ed. Mit Einleitung von Dr. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung Nachfolger, o. The Chyrsippean notion of fate: The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy.

Rudolf Steiner Press, London, , , , , pp. The significance of free will Paperback ed. An established order then implies the existence of some necessary conditions and causes, that is: Without established causality, both in subject and in the external world, the passing of time would be impossible, because it is essentially directional. Intellect in his works is strictly connected with recognizing causes and effects and associating them, it is somewhat close to the contemporary view of cerebral cortex and formation of associations.

The intellectuality of all perception implied then of course that causality is rooted in the world, precedes and enables experience. The critique of morality: The three pillars of Kantian ethics". A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press. Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? Circular causality departs so strongly from the classical tenets of necessity, invariance, and precise temporal order that the only reason to call it that is to satisfy the human habitual need for causes The very strong appeal of agency to explain events may come from the subjective experience of cause and effect that develops early in human life, before the acquisition of language Compatibilist or Libertarian" PDF.

The Saint Anselm Journal. Aquinas, Arguments of the philosophers series. 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".

Free-will Prima Pars, Q. Here the online text of the Summa. In order to avoid, at least in concept, the absolution of man of any guilt he then notes the contingency of all that takes place, i. A typical choice was not separately ordained to be so-and-so by God; St. Thomas says the choice is not necessary, but in fact that apparently means it was contingent with regard to God and the law of nature as a specific case that could have not existed in other circumstances , and necessary with regard to its direct previous cause in will and intellect.

The contingency, or fortuity, is even intuitive under modern chaos theory , where one can try to show that more and more developed products appearing in the evolution of a universe or, simpler, an automaton are chaotic with regard to its principles. The free will problem — real or illusory".

2. The Nature of Free Will

The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates. Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will , c. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Physics is simply unable to resolve the question of free will, although, if anything, it probably leans towards determinism. The Modern Denial of Human Nature. It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and other Illusions.

Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Human Motor Control 2nd ed. Epiphenomenalism and the problem of free will". In Susan Pockett; William P. The Illusion of Conscious Will. The will and its brain — an appraisal of reasoned free will. Definitions and Classification of Tic Disorders. Retrieved 19 August Functional neural correlates of alien hand syndrome". Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews.

The Power of Conscious Will. Archived from the original on Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Of course, explaining to subjects exactly what the experimenter wants them to experience can bring its own problems— The integrity of social psychology turns on the free will dilemma". British Journal of Social Psychology.

However, these two positions are not exhaustive. It is possible that one is an incompatibilist, thinks that the actual world is not deterministic, and yet still thinks that agents in the actual world do not have free will. While it is less clear what to call such a position perhaps "free will deniers" , it illustrates that hard determinism and libertarianism do not exhaust the ways to be an incompatibilist. Since all incompatibilists, whatever their stripe, agree that the falsity of determinism is a necessary condition for free will, and since compatibilists deny this assertion, the following sections speak simply of incompatibilists and compatibilists.

It is also important to keep in mind that both compatibilism and incompatibilism are claims about possibility. According to the compatibilist, it is possible that an agent is both fully determined and yet free. The incompatibilist, on the other hand, maintains that such a state of affairs is impossible. But neither position by itself is making a claim about whether or not agents actually do possess free will. Assume for the moment that incompatibilism is true. If the truth of determinism is a contingent matter, then whether or not agents are morally responsible will depend on whether or not the actual world is deterministic.

Likewise, assume both that compatibilism is true and that causal determinism is true in the actual world. It does not follow from this that agents in the actual world actually possess free will. Finally, there are free will pessimists [see Broad and G. Pessimists agree with the incompatibilists that free will is not possible if determinism is true.

However, unlike the incompatibilists, pessimists do not think that indeterminism helps. In fact, they claim, rather than helping support free will, indeterminism undermines it. Consider Allison contemplating taking her dog for a walk. According to the pessimist, if Allison is determined, she cannot be free.

Questions tagged [free-will]

But if determinism is false, then there will be indeterminacy at some point prior to her action. Let us assume that that indeterminacy is located in which reasons occur to Allison. But if Allison decides on the basis of whatever reasons she does have, then her volition is based upon something outside of her control. It is based instead on chance. Thus, pessimists think that the addition of indeterminism actually makes agents lack the kind of control needed for free will. While pessimism might seem to be the same position as that advocated by free will deniers, pessimism is a stronger claim.

Pessimists, however, have a stronger position, thinking that free will is impossible. Not only do agents lack free will, there is no way that they could have it [see G. The only way to preserve moral responsibility, for the pessimist, is thus to deny that free will is a necessary condition for moral responsibility.

As pessimism shows us, even a resolution to the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists will not by itself solve the debate about whether or not we actually have free will. Nevertheless, it is to this debate that we now turn. Incompatibilists say that free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. Not all arguments for incompatibilism can be considered here; let us focus on two major varieties.

The first variety is built around the idea that having free will is a matter of having a choice about certain of our actions, and that having a choice is a matter of having genuine options or alternatives about what one does. In other words, we lack the ability for self-determination. Let us consider a representative argument from each set. The most well-known and influential argument for incompatibilism from the first set of arguments is called the "Consequence Argument," and it has been championed by Carl Ginet and Peter van Inwagen [see Ginet and van Inwagen ].

The Consequence Argument is based on a fundamental distinction between the past and the future. First, consider an informal presentation of this argument. There seems to be a profound asymmetry between the past and the future based on the direction of the flow of time and the normal direction of causation. The future is open in a way that the past is not.

It looks as though there is nothing that Allison can now do about the fact that Booth killed Lincoln, given that Lincoln was assassinated by Booth in This point stands even if we admit the possibility of time travel. For if time travel is possible, Allison can influence what the past became, but she cannot literally change the past. Consider the following argument:.

So, at most the possibility of time travel allows for agents to have causal impact on the past, not for agents to change what has already become the past. The past thus appears to be fixed and unalterable. However, it seems that the same is not true of the future, for Allison can have an influence on the future through her volitions and subsequent actions. For example, if she were to invent a time machine, then she could, at some point in the future, get in her time machine and travel to the past and try to prevent Lincoln from being assassinated.

However, given that he was assassinated, we can infer that her attempts would all fail. On the other hand, she could refrain from using her time machine in this way. While Allison might deliberate about whether a past action was really the best action that she could have done, she deliberates about the future in a different way.

Allison can question whether her past actions were in fact the best, but she can both question what future acts would be best as well as which future acts she should perform. Thus, it looks like the future is open to Allison, or up to her, in a way that the past is not. In other words, when an agent like Allison is using her free will, what she is doing is selecting from a range of different options for the future, each of which is possible given the past and the laws of nature.

For this reason, this view of free will is often called the "Garden of Forking Paths Model. The Consequence Argument builds upon this view of the fixed nature of the past to argue that if determinism is true, the future is not open in the way that the above reflections suggest. For if determinism is true, the future is as fixed as is the past. Remember from the above definition that determinism is the thesis the past P and the laws of nature L entail a unique future. Let " F " refer to any true proposition about the future. The Consequence argument depends on two modal operators, and two inference rules.

According to Alpha, if p is a necessary truth, then no one has, or ever had, any choice about whether p was true. Similarly, according to Beta, if no one has, or ever had, any choice about p being true, and no one has, or ever had, any choice that p entails q , then no one has, or ever had, any choice about whether q is true. To see the plausibility of Beta, consider the following application. Let p be the proposition "The earth was struck by a meteor weighing metric tons one billion years ago," and let q be the proposition "If the earth was struck by a meteor weighing metric tons one billion years ago, then thousands of species went extinct.

Beta thus looks extremely plausible. But if Beta is true, then we can construct an argument to show that if determinism is true, then I have no choice about anything, including my supposed free actions in the future. The argument begins with the definition of determinism given above:. The second premise in the Consequence Argument is called the "fixity of the past. The final premise in the argument is the fixity of the laws of nature.

No one has, or ever had, a choice about what the laws of nature are try as I might, I cannot make the law of universal gravitation not be a law of nature:. And from 5 and 6, again using Beta, we can infer that no one has, or ever had, a choice about F:. Given that F was any true proposition about the future, the Consequence Argument concludes that if determinism is true, then no one has or ever had a choice about any aspect of the future, including what we normally take to be our free actions.

Thus, if determinism is true, we do not have free will. The second general set of arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism builds on the importance of the source of a volition for free will. Again, it will be helpful to begin with an informal presentation of the argument before considering a formal presentation of it. According to this line of thought, an agent has free will when her volitions issue from the agent herself in a particular sort of way say, her beliefs and desires. In other words, an agent acts with free will only if she originates her action, or if she is the ultimate source or first cause of her action [see Kane ].

Consider again the claim that free will is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. If Allison is coerced into walking her dog via brainwashing, then her walking of the dog originates in the brainwashing, and not in Allison herself. Consider, then, the similarities between cases of coercion and manipulation, on the one hand, and the implications of the truth of determinism on the other. If determinism were true, it might be true that Allison chooses to walk her dog because of her beliefs and desires, but those beliefs and desires would themselves be the inevitable products of causal chains that began millions of years ago.

Thus, a determined agent is at most a source, but not the ultimate source, of her volitions. We can represent a formal version of the argument, called the "Origination Argument," as follows:. The Origination Argument is valid. So, in evaluating its soundness, we must evaluate the truth of its three premises. Premise 3 is clearly true, since for an agent to be an originator just is for that agent not to be ultimately determined by anything outside of herself.

Premise 2 of this argument is true by the definition of determinism. To reject the conclusion of the argument, one must therefore reject premise 1. Earlier we briefly noted one account of free will which implicitly denies premise 1, namely the hierarchical model of free will.

One way of emphasizing the need for origination over-against such a hierarchical model is to embrace agent-causation. What other options are there? Two options are that volitions are uncaused, or only caused indeterministically. It is difficult to see how an agent could be the originator or ultimate source of volitions if volitions are uncaused. For these reasons, some incompatibilists favor looking at the causation involved in volitions in a new light. Instead of holding that a volition is caused by a previous event either deterministically or indeterministically , these incompatibilists favor saying that volitions are caused directly by agents.

Proponents of agent-causation propose that agents are enduring substances that directly possess the power to cause volitions. Although many philosophers question whether agent-causation is coherent, if it were coherent, then it would provide support for premise 1 of the Origination Argument. The above way of delineating the Consequence and Origination Arguments may unfortunately suggest that the two kinds of arguments are more independent from each other than they really are.

A number of incompatibilists have argued that agents originate their actions in the way required by premise 1 of the Origination Argument if and only if they have a choice about their actions in the way suggested by the Consequence Argument. In other words, if my future volitions are not the sort of thing that I have a choice about, then I do not originate those volitions.

And as the above arguments contend, the truth of causal determinism threatens both our control over our actions and volitions, and our ability to originate those same actions and volitions. For if causal determinism is true, then the distant past, when joined with the laws of nature, is sufficient for every volition that an agent makes, and the causal chains that lead to those volitions would not begin within the agent.

Thus, most incompatibilists think that having a choice and being a self-determiner go hand-in-hand. Robert Kane, for instance, argues that if agents have "ultimate responsibility" his term for what is here called "origination" or "self-determination" , then they will also have alternative possibilities open to them.

Thus, the two different kinds of arguments for incompatibilism may simply be two sides of the same coin [see Kane and ]. Having laid out representatives of the two most prominent arguments for incompatibilism, let's consider arguments in favor of compatibilism. In considering these kinds of arguments, it is pedagogically useful to approach them by using the arguments for incompatibilism.

So, this section begins by considering ways that compatibilists have responded to the arguments given in the preceding section. As noted above, the Origination Argument for incompatibilism is valid, and two of its premises are above dispute. Thus, the only way for the compatibilist to reject the conclusion of the Origination Argument is to reject its first premise. In other words, given the definition of determinism, compatibilists must reject that free will requires an agent being the originator or ultimate source of her actions.

But how might this be done? Most frequently, compatibilists motivate a rejection of the "ultimacy condition" of free will by appealing to either a hierarchical or reasons-responsive view of what the will is [see Frankfurt, and Fischer and Ravizza, ]. Similarly, if an agent has free will if she has the requisite level of reasons-responsiveness such that she would have willed differently had she had different reasons, ultimacy is again not required.

Thus, if one adopts certain accounts of the will, one has reason for rejecting the central premise of the Origination Argument. Compatibilists have a greater number of responses available to them with regard to the Consequence Argument. One way of understanding the N operator that figures in the Consequence Argument is in terms of having the ability to do otherwise.

That is, to say that Allison has no choice about a particular action of hers is to say that she could not have performed a different action or even no action at all. Incompatibilists can easily account for this ability to do otherwise. According to incompatibilists, an agent can be free only if determinism is false. Consider again the case of Allison. If determinism is false, even though Allison did choose to walk her dog, she could have done otherwise than walk her dog since the conjunction of P and L is not sufficient for her taking her dog for a walk.

Compatibilists, however, can give their own account of the ability to do otherwise. For them, to say that Allison could have done otherwise is simply to say that Allison would have done otherwise had she willed or chosen to do so [see, for example, Chisholm ]. Of course, if determinism is true, then the only way that Allison could have willed or chosen to do otherwise would be if either the past or the laws were different than they actually are. In other words, saying that an agent could have done otherwise is to say that the agent would have done otherwise in a different counterfactual condition.