Free Will

An Introduction to Philosophy: 05 © James Mooney 2012

What is the Problem of Free Will? The Problem

Consider the effectiveness of advertising: it is unlikely that powerful corporations would expend millions of pounds in a failed attempt to manipulate our desires and choices – and hence our actions.

More particularly, there is a wealth of psychological literature showing that we are less free in our choices as we might think.

E.g. Phobias, addictions, neuroses, ‘brainwashing’, hypnosis Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious

Firstly, there are a set of specific reasons for thinking that we are neither so free in forming our desires, nor in acting on them, as we might think.

Socialisation, Conditioning,

and Psychology

Secondly, science operates on the assumptions that: i.  Every event is caused; and ii.  The cause of every event is an antecedent event.

–  Thus the natural world is governed by deterministic causal laws.

–  The scientific world view (evident in, for example, Darwinian theory) is that human beings are part of nature.

–  Therefore, everything we do, along with everything else, is governed by deterministic causal laws. This is the thesis of determinism.

Determinism

The Determinist’s Argument ‘Given determinism, there will always be some much earlier set of conditions s that is connected by laws of nature to any human action a that takes place. But nothing can be done to alter, nothing can be done, about those laws; and neither, it may be added, can anything be done about s at any time when the doing of a is immediately in question. Since s is thus necessary (e.g. unalterable) at the time when a is in question and since a law leading from s to a is similarly necessary (unalterable) at that time, it would seem to follow that a itself is necessary (unalterable, unavoidable) at that time – however ignorant of that fact the agent of a may be. Presumably, then, the agent in question does not act freely in performing a, and, since the argument has been entirely general in its assumptions, one may conclude that no human being ever acts freely in a deterministic universe.’

Michael Slote, The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 79 (1982)

Determinist’s Argument P1 If determinism is true, then every human action is

causally necessitated P2 If every human action is causally necessitated, no

one could have acted otherwise P3 One only has free will if one could have acted

otherwise P4 Determinism is true C No one has free will

Determinism

“Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe on the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant.”

(Baron D’Holbach, 1723-89)

“Man’s craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow.”

(Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis)

Why is it a problem? •  There are two considerations that make the

truth of the thesis of determinism seem so alarming:

1.  The phenomenology of freedom. 2.  Moral responsibility.

The Various Positions •  Hard Determinism

–  Hard Determinists accept the soundness of the above argument and so embrace its conclusion.

•  Libertarianism –  Libertarians deny the conclusion (and thus the soundness of the

argument), and do so by denying the truth of determinism (P4). •  Note that it is not enough just to deny determinism. Libertarians must say

what to put in its place, and it is quite unclear, as we shall see, what could play that role.

•  Thus, although differing greatly in their conclusions, both hard determinists and libertarians agree that free will and determinism are incompatible (they cannot both be true). Both are, therefore, incompatibilists.

•  Compatibilism –  Compatibilists deny the conclusion of the above argument and accept

P4 – they want to hold that free will and determinism are compatible – and so standardly want to reject one of the other premises; typically P2 or P3 (or both).

Libertarianism •  Recall that the libertarian will attempt to escape the determinists’ argument

by denying the truth of determinism. •  It is not enough however, for libertarians to deny that human actions are

subject to deterministic causal laws, they must give an alternative explanation of human action.

•  However, they do not, they leave a blank where an explanation should be. And it would take a very odd something to fill in that blank.

‘The desired entity (self, soul, agent, originator) must be sufficiently connected to the past to constitute a continuing locus of personal responsibility, but sufficiently disconnected so that its past does not determine its present. It must be sufficiently connected to the causal chain to be able to interrupt it, but sufficiently disconnected not to get trapped. It must be susceptible to being shaped and maybe governed by motives, threats, punishments, and desires, but not totally controlled by them. It resembles very much the river god, who serves as an explanation for what seems to be the free behaviour of the river until a better explanation comes along through physical geography, meteorology, and physics.’

(Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy)

Classical Compatibilism

“A FREE-MAN, is he, that . . . is not hindred to doe that he has a will to . . . from this use of the word Free-will, no Liberty can be inferred of the will, desire or inclination, but the Liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop in doing what he has the will, desire or inclination to doe.”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651

“By liberty . . . we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.”

David Hume,

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748

Freedom of Action •  What this amounts to is freedom from constraint or coercion.

–  If one is constrained then one is stopped from acting in accordance with one’s will.

–  If one is coerced then one is forced to act against one’s will. •  Classical compatibilism, then, understands the ‘ability to do

otherwise’ in a conditional sense: –  ‘if I had desired to do otherwise, I could have done otherwise.’ (GE Moore) –  As such, P3 in the determinists’ argument is understood as P3* One only has free will if one could have acted otherwise (if one had

desired to act otherwise) •  But then P2 is straightforwardly false: our actions could be

causally necessitated whilst it is true that we could have done otherwise (if we had desired to do otherwise).

•  As such the argument is unsound and the conclusion (that no one has free will) is not necessarily true.

Freedom of the Will •  One of the major problems with classical compatibilism is that it tends to

just push the problem back onto our desires. •  For what if my desires were not free? Suppose that they were implanted in

me by hypnosis or whatever. Then we wouldn’t think my act was free even if it were true that had I desired otherwise I would have acted otherwise. –  The case of the addict

•  Therefore, although the ability to act on our desires granted us by Classical Compatibilism is a necessary condition for what we take, intuitively, to be a wholly free act, it is not sufficient.

•  In addition a person requires freedom of will, or, in other words, the ability to control those desires upon which we act.

•  Such an account is offered by Harry Frankfurt in his ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’. Frankfurt maintains that: when someone has freedom of action and freedom of will

‘then he is not only free to do what he wants to do; he is also free to want what he wants to want . . . he has, in that case, all the freedom it is possible to desire or conceive.’

A further worry “JoJo is the favourite son of Jo the First, an evil and sadistic dictator of a small, undeveloped country. Because of his father’s special feelings for the boy, JoJo is given a special education and is allowed to accompany his father and observe his daily routine. In light of this treatment, it is not surprising that little JoJo takes his father as a role model and develops values very much like Dad’s. As an adult, he does many of the same sorts of things his father did, including sending people to prison or to death or to torture chambers on the basis of whim. He is not coerced to do these things, he acts according to his own desires. Moreover, these are desires he wholly wants to have. When he steps back and asks, “Do I really want to be this sort of person?” his answer is resoundingly “Yes.” for this way of life expresses a crazy sort of power that forms part of his deepest ideal.”

Susan Wolf, ‘Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility’

•  Does JoJo act freely? •  Is he responsible for his actions? •  What point is Wolf attempting to make here?

“We have to believe in free will. We have no choice.”���

(Isaac B. Singer)

James Mooney Open Studies The University of Edinburgh j.mooney@ed.ac.uk www.filmandphilosophy.com @film_philosophy

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