Free Will

Free will is the power to choose one’s actions. The interest of free will in academic philosophy primarily lies in whether free will exists, although some attention is given to precisely what it is and how it is important in our lives. The topic of free will is a specific topic in the field of metaphysics. For this reason, free will is often referred to as ‘metaphysical freedom.’

Philosophers are interested in free will for several reasons, but the most important reason is because free will is considered to be a requirement for moral responsibility. For example, it makes sense to punish criminals only if they choose their fates. Nevertheless, the discussion of free will in metaphysics is divided into at least two parts: whether there is free will and whether free will is required for moral responsibility. However, free will is also an issue in religious metaphysics, and for that reason, there will be some discussion of the problem of free will in one major religious study, Christian theology.

Does Free Will Exist?

An Example of the Problem

Before delving into the problem of whether free will exists, it will be helpful to present an example of the problem. So here is a simple one:

We often praise valedictorians for their intelligence or industriousness (or both). But some philosophers would argue that since no one can choose to become a valedictorian, no one deserves praise for becoming a valedictorian. For instance, if a person Jen is a valedictorian because she is very smart, then Jen’s genes, not Jen, determined her accomplishment. Furthermore, if Jen is a valedictorian because she is hard working, then either her environment (e.g. her parents) or her genes determined her accomplishment— because these are the only causes of character traits. However, Jen did not choose her environment, and we already know that Jen did not choose her genes. Hence, Jen did not choose to become a valedictorian, it was determined from the day she was born.

Thus generalizing this reasoning to all of our actions poses a dilemma: that all of our actions might be determined. But just what does it mean for an action to be determined?

Determinism or Indeterminism?

The debate over whether free will exists is a debate about the compatibility of free will with how the world’s events proceed. The two dominant philosophical views on how the world’s events proceed are known as determinism and indeterminism. Determinism claims that the laws of nature and all past events fix all future events. For example, according to Newtonian mechanics—which is a deterministic physical theory—after two elastic bodies A and B come into contact with initial momentums p_A and p_B, the final momentums of A and B are fixed from p_A, p_B, and the law of conservation of linear momentum.

In contrast, indeterminism claims that it is not true that the laws of nature and all past events fix all future events. For example, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics—which is an indeterministic physical theory—Heisenberg’s relations stipulate that the momentum and position of quantum particles are two physical quantities of which we cannot simultaneously assign values. Thus we cannot predict the momentum and position of an electron at a future time even if we knew its momentum and position at a past time.

Theories on Free Will and Determinism

The major metaphysical theories on the compatibility of free will with how the world’s events proceed are outlined below:

• Incompatibalism. If determinism is true, then free will does not exist.
• Hard Determinism. Determinism is true and free will does not exist.
• Soft Determinism (or Compatibalism). Determinism is true and free will exists.
• Libertarianism. Indeterminism is true and free will exists.

Discussion of the Theories

Incompatibalism

Incompatibalism is a view about the inconsistency of free will and determinism. It is not a view about whether determinism or free will exists. So, an incompatibalist can believe that free will exists if she does not believe that determinism is true. Peter van Inwagen (1983) is a philosopher that holds an incompatibalist view. He defends incompatibalism with what he calls the Consequence Argument. Van Inwagen summarizes the consequence argument as follows:

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. 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. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us (Van Inwagen 1983).

Although van Inwagen elaborates on the consequence argument, his main point is that compatibalism is incoherent because in order to have free will in a deterministic world, people must be able to violate the laws of nature, because we certainly cannot change past events. Since it is absurd to think that anyone (with the possible exception of God) can violate a law of nature, it is absurd to believe in compatibalism.

Hard Determinism

Hard determinism is the bold view that determinism is true and that, as a result, free will does not exist. Thus hard determinists are nothing more than incompatibalists who are also determinists. Some hard determinists believe that science (especially biology and psychology) shows that human behavior is ultimately reducible to mechanical events. For example, thinking is just neuron firing and bodily movement is just muscle contraction, both of which reduce to certain chemical reactions, which themselves reduce to certain physical events. So, these hard determinists claim that if we could acquire all of the past facts about a human, then we could predict his or her future actions from the laws of nature.

Soft Determinism

Soft Determinism (or Compatibalism) is the view that determinism is true, but free will exists nevertheless. Soft determinists have two critics: incompatibalists and hard determinists. Although the arguments against soft determinism seem insurmountable, there are several ways to reply to the critics. One way is to challenge the truth of incompatibalism. For example, some philosophers disagree that we would need to violate a law of nature in order to have free will. One such philosopher is David Lewis (1981), who argues that we might be able to do things that require a law of nature to be broken without ourselves breaking a law of nature. Lewis calls such an action a “divergence miracle” because it requires that a miracle occurs, but not that we are the ones conducting the miracles. For example, God could render a law of nature false so that one of us can act in a way that violates a law of nature.

Another way to reply to the critics is to argue that while determinism is true, the interpretation of it that leads to incompatibalism is not true. This reply answers hard determinists. Roderick Chisholm (1964) is one philosopher who takes this approach.

Chisholm revives Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.E.) view that not all events are caused by events, but rather, some events are caused by agents. In Aristotle’s words, “A staff moves a stone, and is moved by a hand, which is moved by a man” (Chisholm 1964). Thus Chisholm claims that agents or events can determine events. He calls the former “agent causation” and the latter “event causation.” So, although determinism that assumes only event causation leads to incompatibalism, determinism that assumes event and agent causation leads to compatibalism.

A popular criticism against soft determinism inspired from the thesis of agent causation is that this form of soft determinism is implausible because agent causation appears from nowhere. In short, science cannot explain how agent causation is possible because scientific laws apply to events. Specifically, how does a man move a stone, as Aristotle claims, if not by a series of events such as muscle contraction and neuron firing? Hence agent causation is mysterious from a scientific point of view.

Chisholm’s response to this concern is that this criticism applies equally well to event causation. For example, how do positively charged bodies cause negatively charged bodies to move toward them? There is no answer to this question because electromagnetic force is a fundamental—and thus inexplicable—physical cause. Thus causation between events is equally mysterious. Chisholm’s explanation of this dual mystery is that what is not well understood is causation. Thus all apparent problems about agent causation are really problems about causation itself.

Libertarianism

Libertarianism is the view that indeterminism rather than determinism is true, and as a result, free will exists. A major impetus of defending indeterminism instead of determinism is the advent of quantum mechanics. However, one should be aware that not all interpretations of quantum mechanics are indeterministic, such as Bohmian mechanics and other hidden-variable theories (Bohm 1952). But more importantly, even if the world’s events are indeterministic, some philosophers argue that indeterminism is incompatible with free will.

For example, J. J. C. Smart (1961) argues that libertarianism posits the absurd concept of “contra-causal freedom,” which is metaphysical freedom that exists in the absence of causes, since all undetermined events should occur by chance, instead of a cause, in an indeterministic world.

Robert Kane (1999), a well-known libertarian, claims that philosophers who attribute contra-causal freedom to libertarianism misunderstand the thesis of indeterminism because their view rests on the false assumption that the Luck Principle is true. The luck principle states the following:

If an action is undetermined at a time t, then its happening rather than not happening at t would be a matter of chance or luck, and so it could not be a free and responsible action (Kane 1999).

However, the luck principle is false according to Kane because indeterminism does not reject causation, only deterministic causation. In fact, some philosophers have constructed reasonable and detailed theories of probabilistic causation (Suppes 1970; Salmon 1993). To prove the possibility of indeterministic causation, Kane provides a “shaky assassin” counterexample to the luck principle:

Consider an assassin who is trying to kill the prime minister but might miss because of some undetermined events in his nervous system which might lead to a jerking or wavering of his arm. If he does hit his target, can he be held responsible? The answer (as J.L. Austin and Philippa Foot successfully argued decades ago) is “yes”, because he intentionally and voluntarily succeeded in doing what he was trying to do—kill the prime minister (Kane 1999).

Thus Kane argues that an indeterministic world does not undermine our control over our actions because we can voluntarily and intentionally cause events to happen even though we cannot guarantee their occurrence due to indeterminacy.

Is Free Will Required for Moral Responsibility?

Society generally holds people responsible for their actions, and says that they deserve praise or blame for what they do. However, many believe that moral responsibility requires free will. Thus, another important issue is whether individuals are ever morally responsible for their actions — and, if so, in what sense.

Incompatibilists tend to think that determinism is at odds with moral responsibility. It seems impossible that one can hold someone responsible for an action that could be predicted from the beginning of time. Hard determinists say, "So much the worse for free will!", and discard the concept. Clarence Darrow, the famous defense attorney, pleaded the innocence of his clients, Leopold and Loeb, by invoking such a notion of hard determinism. During his summation, he declared:

What has this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay.

Conversely, libertarians say, "So much the worse for determinism!" Daniel Dennett asks why anyone would care about whether someone had the property of responsibility and speculates that the idea of moral responsibility may be "a purely metaphysical hankering". Jean-Paul Sartre argues that people sometimes avoid incrimination and responsibility by hiding behind determinism: "... we are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse". However, the position that classifying such people as "base" or "dishonest" makes no difference to whether or not their actions are determined is quite as tenable.

The issue of moral responsibility is at the heart of the dispute between hard determinists and compatibilists. Hard determinists are forced to accept that individuals often have "free will" in the compatibilist sense, but they deny that this sense of free will can ground moral responsibility. The fact that an agent's choices are unforced, hard determinists claim, does not change the fact that determinism robs the agent of responsibility.

Compatibilists argue, on the contrary, that determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. Society cannot hold someone responsible unless his actions were determined by something. This argument can be traced back to David Hume. If indeterminism is true, then those events that are not determined are random. It is doubtful that one can praise or blame someone for performing an action generated spontaneously by his nervous system. Instead, one needs to show how the action stemmed from the person's desires and preferences—the person's character—before one can hold the person morally responsible. Libertarians may reply that undetermined actions are not random at all, and that they result from a substantive will whose decisions are undetermined. This argument is considered unsatisfactory by compatibilists, for it just pushes the problem back a step. It also seems to involve some mysterious metaphysics, as well as the concept of ex nihilo nihil fit. Libertarians have responded by trying to clarify how undetermined will could be tied to robust agency.

St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans addresses the question of moral responsibility as follows: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" In this view, individuals can still be dishonoured for their acts even though those acts were ultimately completely determined by God.

A similar view has it that individual moral culpability lies in individual character. That is, a person with the character of a murderer has no choice other than to murder, but can still be punished because it is right to punish those of bad character. How one's character was determined is irrelevant from this perspective. Hence, Robert Cummins and others argue that people should not be judged for their individual actions, but rather for how those actions "reflect on their character". If character (however defined) is the dominant causal factor in determining one's choices, and one's choices are morally wrong, then one should be held accountable for those choices, regardless of genes and other such factors.

One exception to the assumption that moral culpability lies in either individual character or freely willed acts is in cases where the insanity defense—or its corollary, diminished responsibility—can be used to argue that the guilty deed was not the product of a guilty mind. In such cases, the legal systems of most Western societies assume that the person is in some way not at fault, because his actions were a consequence of abnormal brain function.

Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, researchers in the emerging field of neuroethics, argue, on the basis of such cases, that our current notion of moral responsibility is founded on libertarian (and dualist) intuitions. They argue that cognitive neuroscience research is undermining these intuitions by showing that the brain is responsible for our actions, not only in cases of florid psychosis, but even in less obvious situations. For example, damage to the frontal lobe reduces the ability to weigh uncertain risks and make prudent decisions, and therefore leads to an increased likelihood that someone will commit a violent crime. This is true not only of patients with damage to the frontal lobe due to accident or stroke, but also of adolescents, who show reduced frontal lobe activity compared to adults, and even of children who are chronically neglected or mistreated. In each case, the guilty party can be said to have less responsibility for his actions. Greene and Cohen predict that, as such examples become more common and well known, jurors’ interpretations of free will and moral responsibility will move away from the intuitive libertarian notion which currently underpins them.

Greene and Cohen also argue that the legal system does not require this libertarian interpretation. Only retributive notions of justice, in which the goal of the legal system is to punish people for misdeeds, require the libertarian intuition. Consequentialist approaches to justice, which are aimed at promoting future welfare rather than meting out just desserts, can survive even a hard determinist interpretation of free will. The legal system and notions of justice can thus be maintained even in the face of emerging neuroscientific evidence undermining libertarian intuitions of free will.

Free Will in Christian Theology

Given Kant’s effort to secure free will for God, we can see how important metaphysicians consider the issue of free will in the context of religion. Particularly, in Christian theology, God is described as not only omniscient, but omnipotent; a fact which suggests that God not only knows what choices individuals will make tomorrow, but has actually determined those choices. That is, they believe by virtue of God’s foreknowledge, he knows what will influence individual choices, and by virtue of his omnipotence, he controls those factors. This problem becomes especially important for the doctrines relating salvation to predestination. Thus incompatibalism in the Christian sense, is somewhat different from the standard philosophical version, since the determinism under question does not involve the laws of nature, but rather, God’s omnipotence.

Proponents of Christian compatibalism make the point that knowledge of a future happening is entirely different from causing the event to happen. Proponents of Christian incompatibalism agree with this point, but question whether knowledge of the future is possible without the presence of a determining cause. Thus the definition of ‘predestination’ varies among Christians. Nevertheless, the following is a summary of views on free will in three Christian theologies: Calvinism, Catholicism, and Mormonism.

Free Will in Calvinism

Calvinists embrace the idea that God chose who would be saved before creation. They quote Ephesians 1:4: "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." One of the strongest defenders of this theological viewpoint was the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards.

Edwards believed that indeterminism was incompatible with individual dependence on God and hence with his sovereignty. He reasoned that if individuals' responses to God's grace are somehow free, then their salvation depends partly on them and therefore God's sovereignty is not "absolute and universal."

Edwards' book, Freedom of the Will, defends theological determinism. In this book, Edwards attempts to show that libertarianism is incoherent. For example, he argues that by 'self-determination' the libertarian must mean either that one's actions including one's acts of willing are preceded by an act of free will or that one's acts of will lack sufficient causes. The first leads to an infinite regress while the second implies that acts of will happen accidentally and hence can't make someone "better or worse, any more than a tree is better than other trees because it oftener happens to be lit upon by a swan or nightingale; or a rock more vicious than other rocks, because rattlesnakes have happened oftener to crawl over it."

However, it should not be thought that this view completely denies metaphysical freedom. It claims that man is free to act on his moral impulses and desires, but is not free to act contrary to them, or to change them. Proponents, such as John L. Girardeau, have indicated their belief that moral neutrality is impossible; that even if it were possible, and one were equally inclined to contrary options, one could make no choice at all; that if one is inclined, however slightly, toward one option, then they will necessarily chose that one over any others.

Non-Calvinist Christians attempt a reconciliation of the dual concepts of predestination and free will by pointing to the situation of God as Christ. In taking the form of a man, a necessary element of this process was that Jesus Christ lived the existence of a mortal. When Jesus was born he was not born with the omniscient power of God the Creator, but with the mind of a human child - yet he was still fully God. The precedent this creates is that God is able to abandon knowledge, or ignore knowledge, while still remaining God. Thus it is not inconceivable that although omniscience demands that God knows what the future holds for individuals, it is within his power to deny this knowledge in order to preserve individual free will.

However, a reconciliation more compatible with non-Calvinist theology states that God is, in fact, not aware of future events, but rather, being eternal, He is outside time, and sees the past, present, and future as one whole creation. Consequently, it is not as though God would know that Jeffrey Dahmer would become guilty of homicide years prior to the event as an example, but that He was aware of it from all eternity, viewing all time as a single present. This was the view offered by Boethius in book V of The Consolation of Philosophy.

Loraine Boettner argued that the doctrine of divine foreknowledge does not escape the alleged problems of divine foreordination. He wrote that "what God foreknows must, in the very nature of the case, be as fixed and certain as what is foreordained; and if one is inconsistent with the free agency of man, the other is also. Foreordination renders the events certain, while foreknowledge presupposes that they are certain.

Some Christian theologians, feeling the bite of this argument, have opted to limit the doctrine of foreknowledge if not do away with it altogether, thus forming a new school of thought, similar to Socinianism and Process Theology, called Open Theism.

Free Will in Catholicism

Theologians of the Catholic Church universally embrace the idea of free will, but generally do not view free will as existing apart from or in contradiction to divine grace. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote extensively on free will, with Augustine focusing on the importance of free will in his responses to the Manichaeans, and also on the limitations of a concept of unlimited free will as denial of divine grace, in his refutations of Pelagius.

Catholic Christianity's emphasis on free will and divine grace is often contrasted with predestination in Protestant Christianity, especially after the Counter-Reformation, but in understanding differing conceptions of free will it is just as important to understand the differing conceptions of the nature of God, focusing on the idea that God can be all-powerful and all-knowing even while people continue to exercise free will, because God does not exist in time.

Free Will in Mormonism

Mormons or Latter-day Saints, believe that God has given all humans the gift of free will and agency where the ultimate goal is to return to His presence. Having the choice to do right or wrong was important because without the choice, returning to the presence of God would not have meaning. Before this Earth was created, this dispute rose to such a level that there was a "war in heaven" resulting in Lucifer and his followers being cast out of heaven.

References

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• Bohm, David. (1952). A Suggested Interpretation of the Quantum Theory in Terms of ‘Hidden’ Variables, I and II. Physical Review 85: 166-193.
• Chisholm, Roderick. (1964). Human Freedom and the Self: Lindley Lecture. Lawrence: University of Kansas.
• Frankfurt, Harry. (1969). Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility. Journal of Philosophy 66 (23): 829-839.
• Kane, Robert. (1999). Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free Will and Indeterminism. Journal of Philosophy 96 (5): 217-240.
• Kant, Immanuel. ([1785] 1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (James W. Ellington, trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Morris, T.V. (1993). 'Perfection and Creation' in E. Stump (ed.) Reasoned Faith, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univeristy Press.
• Lewis, David. (1981). Are We Free to Break the Laws? Theoria 47: 112-21.
• Smart, J.J.C. (1961). Free Will, Praise and Blame. Mind 70: 291-306.
• Salmon, Wesley. (1993). Probabilistic Causality. In Ernest Sosa and Michael Tooley (eds.), Causation (pp. 137-153). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Suppes, Patrick. (1970). A Probabilistic Theory of Causality. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publication Company.
• Van Inwagen, Peter. (1983). An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Watson, Gary. (2005). Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

External links

• Philosophy Talk episode on Free Will
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Free Will

General Philosophy Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Philosophy Sources on Internet EpistemeLinks
• Guide to Philosophy on the Internet
• Paideia Project Online
• Project Gutenberg

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