Fate is the view that what
will be, will be, and no
human actions can change
it.
Oedipus rex
• Materialism: matter and energy
• Particles, atoms, molecules,
cells, tissues, organs: body
(brain): mind
The problem of free will:
How is free will possible
given that every event
seems causally determined?
Can we be held responsible
for our actions if we have no
free will?
Free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling
some desire.
Free will is “a power of acting or of not acting, according to the
determination of the will.”
Freewill is the capacity of an agent to make an intentional choice
unconstrained by any factor outside that which the agent identifies
itself with.
• Determinism: The doctrine
that every event is
determined by preceding
events and the laws of nature.
• The past generates the
present.
Hard determinism claims
that free will does not
exist.
• (1) determinism is true.
• (2) If determinism is true, there
is no free will.
• (3) Therefore, there is no free
will.
Incompatibilism: The view that if • Indeterminism The view that not
determinism is true, no one can every event is determined by
act freely. preceding events and the laws
of nature
Free will and moral responsibility: If there is no free will, there is no
personal moral responsibility.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST FREE WILL
• “Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the
surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it,
even for an instant. . . . Nevertheless, in despite of the shackles by
which he is bound, it is pretended he is a free agent.”
• —Baron
d’Holbach
2
• If we do not choose our thoughts and our thoughts are the cause of our
acts, then we do not choose our acts.
3
• Thought Probe: Many believe that God is all-knowing, which means
He knows the future. If God knows the future, can there be free will?
5
• The unconscious: Freud argued that we are governed by unconscious
powerful forces and that even our most noble accomplishments are the
result of prior events and instincts.
• Is your breathing voluntary or involuntary?
LIBET’S EXPERIMENT 4
Neuroscientific Determinism: Consciousness of a decision
What we think and what we do arises only after the decision has
are determined by unconscious already been made. Brain
neurophysiological events about activity precedes conscious
which we have no knowledge thought about 7-10 seconds.
and over which we have no
control.
Decisions to act are made in the
brain before we are conscious of
them.
5
Psychological Determinism: your choices are driven by your
preferences… but you did not create your preferences.
You cannot make yourself prefer something that you don’t like. Do you
know why prefer you Vanilla over Chocolate? You just do.
6
Sociobiology: behavior is determined by natural selection and what’s
encoded in our genes. Our personality, attitudes, character is rooted in
our genes.
• Incompatibilism: The view that if determinism is true, no one can act
freely.
Consequence argument:
• (1) If causal determinism is true, then every event is the consequence of past events plus
the laws of nature.
• (2) We are powerless to change the past, the laws of nature, or their consequences, which
includes our actions.
• (3) If we are powerless to change our actions – if we can’t do otherwise than we are destined
to do – then we can’t act freely.
• (4) Therefore, if causal determinism is true, we can’t act freely.
• (5) If we can’t act freely, we can’t be held responsible for our actions.
• (6) Therefore, if causal determinism is true, we can’t be held responsible for our actions.
• There are no free actions.
ARGUMENTS FOR FREE WILL
• Moral responsibility: • Principle of Alternative
determinism conflicts with the Possibilities : one can be held
thesis that we have moral responsible for doing something
responsibilities, for only if one could have done
responsibility implies that we otherwise.
could have done otherwise than
we did.
Argument 2: Libertarianism is the doctrine that free actions are caused
by our own selves (agents, persons).
Agent causation: free action is caused by an agent or person and is not
wholly determined by previous events.
PRO-LIBERTARIAN VIEW
• The best evidence for the existence of free will comes from our own
experience:
When making a choice, we often sense that we have genuine options, that we
have the power to choose (or not choose) among alternative courses of action,
and that what we finally choose and do is genuinely and ultimately up to us.
Compatibilism is the doctrine that free actions are (1) caused by one’s
will and (2) not externally constrained.
Even though our desires are determined, we can still act freely as long
as
1. We have the power to do what we want, and
2. Nothing is preventing us from doing it (for example, no one is restraining
or coercing us).
•“Could do otherwise” =
•You would have been able to do something different if you had
wanted to.
• You are free in the sense that if you had desired to do something
different than what you actually did, nothing would have prevented you
from doing it.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST COMPATIBILISM
• 1- It seems clear (from thought experiments) that an agent can do
what she wants without external constraints and still not act freely.
• 2- Real freedom is not just the power to act if we will to act, but power
over the will itself.
Argument 4: Quantum indeterminacy in physics has found that some
events, for example, those at the sub-atomic level, have no cause e.g.
decay of a radioactive atom.
Randomness exists at the sub-atomic level of reality.
Randomness does not mean freedom…
5
• If determinism is true, creativity is impossible. It is also the death of
philosophy.
SARTRE’S PROFOUND FREEDOM
• We are not only free but are radically free.
• “Existence precedes essence.”
• “We are condemned to be free.”
6
Argument from deliberation: there 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.
• Deliberation assumes that we are free to choose between alternatives and
that we are not determined to do simply one action. Otherwise, why
deliberate?
ARGUMENT 7
A first-order desire is a desire Second-order desire: desire that
directed on an object or a state is directed on a first-order desire
of affairs. (desire about other desires).
• Desires for food, clothing, • For example, a desire not to
shelter as well as conditions desire to smoke is a second-
like being healthy, wealthy order desire.
A second-order volition is a • Hierarchical compatibilism
second order desire on is the theory that free
which one wants to act. actions are caused by
• For example: a priest acting second-order volitions that
on the desire to be married. one decisively identifies
• Or a smoker throwing away with.
his cigarettes.