Science maintains that everything happens for a reason. It also confronts us with the possibility of La Place’s demon: the claim that: given all the conditions at time A, then B must inexorably follow. If this is true of the world, in general, then it must also be true of what goes on in our minds as brains. There are two possible answers to this claim. Firstly, strict determinism may be foiled by sheer complexity, non-linear dynamics, or quantum effects. Secondly, there may be events that are not determined, or which are determined by non-material factors such as God, a soul or inner ‘spirit’ (libertarian incompatibilism).
If everything follows a strictly determined path then how can we believe that the choices we make are not of a strictly determined kind, that we have choices and alternatives that we can follow in an unconstrained way? How can we reconcile our sense of intellectual freedom with scientific deterministic claims? For some philosophers there need be no conflict: it is possible for determinism to exist alongside free will (compatibilism).
The question of free will and determinism seems to boil down to four basic questions:
1. Is there an ‘I’ that is independent of my biology?
2. Is there a difference between behaviour that is instinctive and automatic and behaviour that is considered and assessed?
3. Is my behaviour predictable?
4. Can I be held responsible for my choices?
We might behave intuitively in many ways but the law demands moral responsibility as the exercise of ‘free will’. This side of the law assumes a side of us that deliberates and is aware of consequences – that we have the capacity to behave differently.
Moral competence and moral responsibility
For civilization to exist we need the idea of free will aligned with socially acceptable and responsible behaviour.
If our behaviour is ‘determined’ then it seems we need no longer accept responsibility for our actions. But this confuses the morally responsible and those who are morally irresponsible (children, the psychologically disturbed or damaged, animals, those undergoing torture etc.)
The morally responsible (morally free) agent is well-informed, can control desires, accepts reasons of others or self, is not controlled by another agent, is punishable or amenable to penalty, and could have done otherwise. This account of a moral agent does not include causation or unpredictability.
Punishment
Society can only exist if there are agreed codes of behaviour – accepted contracts of various kinds, from agreements about property ownership to codes of moral behaviour. Broken contracts demand penalties of some kind. This can take on the character of retribution or revenge, even in situations involving the law. But all laws require penalties if ignored. Some people, the morally irresponsible, are dealt with as though they are morally incompetent. They may be fined, imprisoned or institutionalized accordingly. There is a separate procedure for the morally competent. If our behaviour is treated as determined in a mechanistic way then it seems that those we currently treat as morally responsible must now be placed in the category of morally incompetent – thus making current basis of moral responsibility appear foolish and retribution less appealing. But what is the alternative to penalties of some kind?
Free will exists but it isn’t what we think it is. Just as we need the language of consciousness and beliefs for our manifest image so we need the notion of free will for civil society to proceed. The scientific image may give us a different take on what is going on.
Science maintains that everything happens for a reason. Given the conditions at time A, then B must inexorably follow. If this is true of the world, in general, then it must also be true of what goes on in our minds as brains. There are two possible answers to this claim. Firstly, strict determinism may be foiled by sheer complexity, non-linear dynamics, or quantum effects. Secondly, there may be events that are not determined, or which are determined by non-material factors such as God, a soul or inner ‘spirit’ (libertarian incompatibilism).
If everything follows a strictly determined path then how can we believe that the choices we make are not of a strictly determined kind, that we have choices and alternatives that we can follow in an unconstrained way? How can we reconcile our sense of intellectual freedom with scientific deterministic claims? For some philosophers there need be no conflict: it is possible for determinism to exist alongside free will (compatibilism).
The question of free will and determinism seems to boil down to four basic questions:
1. Is there an ‘I’ that is independent of my biology?
2. Is there a difference between behaviour that is instinctive and automatic and behaviour that is considered and assessed?
3. Is my behaviour predictable?
4. Can I be held responsible for my choices?
We might behave intuitively in many ways but the law demands moral responsibility as the exercise of ‘free will’. This side of the law assumes a side of us that deliberates and is aware of consequences – that we have the capacity to behave differently.
Moral competence and moral responsibility
For civilization to exist we need the idea of free will aligned with socially acceptable and responsible behaviour.
If our behaviour is ‘determined’ then it seems we need no longer accept responsibility for our actions. But this confuses the morally responsible and those who are morally irresponsible (children, the psychologically disturbed or damaged, animals, those undergoing torture etc.)
The morally responsible (morally free) agent is well-informed, can control desires, accepts reasons of others or self, is not controlled by another agent, is punishable or amenable to penalty, and could have done otherwise. This account of a moral agent does not include causation or unpredictability.
Punishment
Society can only exist if there are agreed codes of behaviour – accepted contracts of various kinds, from agreements about property ownership to codes of moral behaviour. Broken contracts demand penalties of some kind. This can take on the character of retribution or revenge, even in situations involving the law. But all laws require penalties if ignored. Some people, the morally irresponsible, are dealt with as though they are morally incompetent. They may be fined, imprisoned or institutionalized accordingly. There is a separate procedure for the morally competent. If our behaviour is treated as determined in a mechanistic way then it seems that those we currently treat as morally responsible must now be placed in the category of morally incompetent – thus making current basis of moral responsibility appear foolish and retribution less appealing. But what is the alternative to penalties of some kind?
Free will exists but it isn’t what we think it is. Just as we need the language of consciousness and beliefs for our manifest image so we need the notion of free will for civil society to proceed. The scientific image may give us a different take on what is going on.
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Free will
The debate over free will and determinism has lasted a long time. Is it soluble or is it a kind of semantic riddle? If everything is determined then there can only be one future – that being fate or the will of the gods.
A child says ‘If I am behaving badly then my behaviour must be the result of either my genes, or my environment, or some combination of the two. Whatever the case it must be your fault’. We laugh at this because it presents us with a real dilemma that needs an answer. How is there moral responsibility? What is the role of praise, blame, and free will? If everything has a cause then its consequences are inexorably determined, they could not be otherwise.
By free will in common parlance we mean the deliberate and conscious weighing up of options in the process of making decisions. We can direct our willpower, imagination and reason – this is what we mean by ‘choice’ the single major indicator of free will. By asking the question ‘Do you have free will?‘ are we not assuming that the person being questioned can make a choice, in which case we are also assuming free will.
This overcomes the semantic difficulty in everyday language but it doesn’t answer the scientific question of uncaused causation.
Perhaps we can accept free will as being at the same time deterministic when we think of a highly sophisticated computer beating a grand master at chess. We cannot follow the clever reasoning of the computer in the selection of its moves but we still assume that it is totally pre-programmed and predetermined. Our brains can thus be regarded as highly complex computers ranking, categorising, choosing without some mysterious additional mysterious entity called ‘free will’.
The contention that free will and determinism are not necessarily antagonistic is called ‘compatibilism’ one way of expressing this being ‘I am causally determined to choose freely‘.
Free will & determinism
The debate about determinism and free will, for all its mind-numbing persistence, puts on trial our intuitions about the nature of the world, our underlying metaphysics. It can keep us scientifically alert.
We proceed in life as though there are reasons for everything – from why I get out of bed in the morning to every aspect of the operations of the physical world. Given state X then state Y must follow. If this is correct, then where does our moral sense of freedom of choice come from?
Metaphysicians have populated the logical space for this debate:
Compatibilism – maintains that free will and determinism can co-exist: they are not mutually incompatible.
Libertarianism (in this context) – that free will is incompatible with determinism.
Hard determinists – that everything is indeed determined and therefore claims to free will are mistaken
At the outset it should be noted that the word ‘choice’, which crops up so frequently in this debate, is a weasel word that should always be qualified.
Scientific evidence suggests that there is an element of unpredictability in nature: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Chaos theory and others.
