1. The Problem of Free Will
Metaphysics
The Problem of Free Will
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

2. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
What is freedom?
“surface freedom”
Being able to ‘do what you want’
Being free to act, and choose, as you will
BUT: what if ‘what you will’ is not under your control?
“free will”
Being an agent capable of influencing the world
Source of ones own actions
Actions and choices are “up-to-us”
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

3. Why is freedom important?
We ‘feel’ that we are free; that we are the originators of our own actions
We need to be free in order to be responsible for our actions; our practices of praise and blame presuppose that we are free (compare the kleptomaniac to the ordinary thief)
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

4. Could we be mistaken about ‘feeling free’?
Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world and never return. All this is strictly up to me; in this I have complete freedom. But still, I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife.’ This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the fountain) I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear in the reflecting pond.
(Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of The Will)
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

5. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Causal determinism
(Roughly): the view that the state of the world at a given time determines the state of the world at the next moment
Every event that occurs, including human action, is entirely the result of earlier causes [event causation]
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

6. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Determinism: types
Causal determinism*
Theological determinism
Psychological determinism
Sociological determinism
Biological determinism
Environmental determinism
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

7. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
So, determinism and free will would appear to be in tension with one another
This raises two big questions
The determinist question - is determinism true or false?
The compatibility question - is free will compatible with determinism?
The combination of answers that can be given form the standard positions in the debate
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

8. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Incompatibilism
Incompatibilists believe freedom is not compatible with determinism; if determinism is true, then one cannot be held truly free and responsible for one’s actions
Incompatibilists may be divided into two groups …
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

9. Incompatibilism: Hard Determinism
Free will is not compatible with determinism
Determinism is true
So, we do not have free will
HARD DETERMINISTS are incompatibilists who hold that determinism is true
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

10. Incompatibilism: libertarianism
Libertarians believe
We do have free will
Free will is not compatible with determinism
Determinism is therefore false
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

11. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Compatibilism
COMPATIBILISTS believe that freedom and responsibility are in every significant sense compatible with determinism; thus there is no conflict between determinism and free will
SOFT DETERMINISTS are compatibilists who believe determinism is true
Classical Compatibilists: Hobbes, Hume, Mill
Modern Compatibilists: Ayer, Dennett, Frankfurt
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

12. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Hard Determinism
Free will is not compatible with determinism
Determinism is true
Therefore, free will is an illusion
Support?
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

13. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Hard Determinism
CONSEQUENCE ARGUMENT (informal)
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.
Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (p. 56)
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

14. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Hard Determinism
Problems:
How can the HD explain our behaviour of praising and blaming agents for their actions, and ascribing responsibility?
What happens to morality? If nobody can ever ‘do otherwise’ than they in fact do, then notions of responsibility, desert, praise, and blame are redundant.
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

15. Soft Determinism (compatibilism)
Determinism is true
Free will exists
There is no tension between these claims
If some people see a tension here, it is because they are misunderstanding the notions of freedom and determinism, of ‘free-choice’ and ‘causal necessity’
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

16. Challenge for the compatibilist:
Incompatibilists say:
For our actions to be free, it must be the case that, when we act, we could do otherwise than we actually do
This insistence on the ability to do otherwise is often referred to as the “principle of alternate possibilities”
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

17. Compatibilist responses:
Interpret the CDO-condition of freedom as having a hypothetical or conditional meaning, i.e.
To say one ‘could have done otherwise’ is to say that one would have done otherwise had things been different (given a different set of beliefs, desires, etc.)
[classical compatibilist response]
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

18. Compatibilist responses:
So what if I couldn’t ‘do otherwise’?
The ability to do otherwise is not in fact required for moral responsibility, and so determinism is no threat to free will
The proper contrast to freedom is not determinism, but constraint/coercion
As long as we are not constrained, coerced or forced in our actions then we do what we will, and it doesn’t matter whether our wills are determined or not
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

19. Compatibilism: problems
compatibilist freedom is only ‘surface’ freedom - it is not free will in the full, proper sense
Compatibilism is a “wretched subterfuge” (Kant), a “quagmire of evasion” (William James)
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

20. Libertarian (free will) position
Libertarians believe
Free will is not compatible with determinism
Free will exists
Determinism is therefore false
Support?
Criticism?
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

21. Libertarian (free will) position
Criticism: our sense of free will is just an illusion, as Schopenhauer shows with his water example
Also, “leaf” example
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

22. Libertarian (free will) position
More serious problem:
If determinism is false, then events are not subject to chain of cause-and-effect
So events occur randomly, by chance (indeterminism)
If events occur by chance, then they are not under our control
So, how can we be free and responsible?
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

23. Libertarian (free will) position
This is known as the “Intelligibility Question” - how do we make sense of a non-determined free will?
3 common responses:
Agent-causal theory (self-determination)
Simple indeterminism
Causal indeterminism
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

24. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Agent causation
Not only events can be causes; agents themselves can be causes too (distinction between event-causation and agent-causation)
Agent-causation is not reducible to causation by events (agent-causes are not explainable by reference to other events)
A STAFF MOVES A STONE, AND IS MOVED BY A HAND, WHICH IS MOVED BY A MAN - Aristotle, Physics 256a
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

25. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Agent causation
Problems:
Many people, including many libertarians, find the notion of ‘agent-causation’ far too mysterious and problematic
Requires agents to be the uncaused cause of their actions, to be “prime movers unmoved”
Problem of economy - positing a second, additional, category of causation
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

26. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
So…
… are you free?
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

27. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Positions in the ‘Free Will Debate’ Diagram taken from
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

28. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Film resource:
Minority Report
Psychic creatures called ‘pre-cogs’ can “see” crimes before they happen, so murderers are apprehended and tried before they commit their crimes (this is done under the “Pre-crime Programme)
Would you support the pre-crime programme?
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

29. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

30. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

31. Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
Causal determinism
We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it - an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis - it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of such an intelligence.
(Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities [1820] 1951: 4)
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews

32. 1. Is Determinism true? 2. Can there be Free Will?
Determinists
1. YES
2. Depends …
Compatibilists (Soft Determinists)
2. YES
Hard Determinists
2. NO
Libertarians
2. YES
1. NO (since FW exists)
(Another position)
1. Maybe …
2. No (doesn’t matter whether Determinism is true or not)
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews