![Abm2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Abm2.jpg)
Free will is the capacity of agents to
choose between different possible courses of
action
Action may refer to:
* Action (narrative), a literary mode
* Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
* Action game, a genre of video game
Film
* Action film, a genre of film
* ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford
* ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of
moral responsibility
In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission in accordance with one's moral obligations.
Deciding what (if anything) counts as "morally obligatory" is a princi ...
,
praise
Praise as a form of social interaction expresses recognition, reassurance or admiration.
Praise is expressed verbally as well as by body language (facial expression and gestures).
Verbal praise consists of a positive evaluations of another's a ...
,
culpability
In criminal law, culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. It has been noted that the word, culpability, "ordinarily has ...
,
sin
In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, s ...
, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of
advice
Advice (noun) or advise (verb) may refer to:
* Advice (opinion), an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct
* Advice (constitutional law) a frequently binding instruction issued to a constitutional office-holder
* Advice (p ...
,
persuasion
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence, influence. Persuasion can influence a person's Belief, beliefs, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, Intention, intentions, Motivation, motivations, or Behavior, behaviours.
...
,
deliberation
Deliberation is a process of thoughtfully weighing options, usually prior to voting. Deliberation emphasizes the use of logic and reason as opposed to power-struggle, creativity, or dialogue. Group decisions are generally made after deliberation ...
, and
prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
. Traditionally, only actions that are freely
willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion. Some conceive of free will as the right to act outside of external influences or wishes.
Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events.
Determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will.
Ancient Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empire ...
identified this issue,
which remains a major focus of philosophical debate. The view that conceives free will as incompatible with determinism is called ''
incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available ...
'' and encompasses both
metaphysical libertarianism
Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position which argues that fre ...
(the claim that determinism is false and thus free will is at least possible) and
hard determinism
Hard determinism (or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomol ...
(the claim that determinism is true and thus free will is not possible). Incompatibilism also encompasses
hard incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several availabl ...
, which holds not only determinism but also
indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical prob ...
to be incompatible with free will and thus free will to be impossible whatever the case may be regarding determinism.
In contrast,
compatibilists hold that free will ''is'' compatible with determinism. Some compatibilists even hold that determinism is ''necessary'' for free will, arguing that choice involves preference for one course of action over another, requiring a sense of ''how'' choices will turn out.
[An argument by ]Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He ...
described by: Compatibilists thus consider the debate between libertarians and hard determinists over free will vs. determinism a
false dilemma.
[See, for example, ] Different compatibilists offer very different definitions of what "free will" means and consequently find different types of constraints to be relevant to the issue. Classical compatibilists considered free will nothing more than freedom of action, considering one free of will simply if, ''had'' one counterfactually wanted to do otherwise, one ''could'' have done otherwise without physical impediment. Contemporary compatibilists instead identify free will as a psychological capacity, such as to direct one's behavior in a way responsive to reason, and there are still further different conceptions of free will, each with their own concerns, sharing only the common feature of not finding the possibility of determinism a threat to the possibility of free will.
History of free will
The problem of free will has been identified in
ancient Greek philosophical literature. The notion of compatibilist free will has been attributed to both
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
(fourth century BCE) and
Epictetus
Epictetus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκτητος, ''Epíktētos''; 50 135 AD) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present-day Pamukkale, in western Turkey) and lived in Rome until his banishment, when ...
(1st century CE); "it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them".
According to
Susanne Bobzien
Susanne Bobzien (born 1960) is a German-born philosopherWho'sWho in America 2012, 64th Edition whose research interests focus on philosophy of logic and language, determinism and freedom, and ancient philosophy. She currently is senior research ...
, the notion of incompatibilist free will is perhaps first identified in the works of
Alexander of Aphrodisias
Alexander of Aphrodisias ( grc-gre, Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Ἀφροδισιεύς, translit=Alexandros ho Aphrodisieus; AD) was a Peripatetic school, Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristo ...
(third century CE); "what makes us have control over things is the fact that we are causally undetermined in our decision and thus can freely decide between doing/choosing or not doing/choosing them".
The term "free will" (''liberum arbitrium'') was introduced by Christian philosophy (4th century CE). It has traditionally meant (until the Enlightenment proposed its own meanings) lack of necessity in human will, so that "the will is free" meant "the will does not have to be such as it is". This requirement was universally embraced by both incompatibilists and compatibilists.
Western philosophy
The underlying questions are whether we have control over our actions, and if so, what sort of control, and to what extent. These questions predate the early Greek
stoics
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that th ...
(for example,
Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli (; grc-gre, Χρύσιππος ὁ Σολεύς, ; ) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. When Clean ...
), and some modern philosophers lament the lack of progress over all these centuries.
[
][
]
On one hand, humans have a strong sense of freedom, which leads them to believe that they have free will. On the other hand, an intuitive feeling of free will could be mistaken.
[
Quoted by Shariff, Schooler & Vohs: ''The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will'' For full text on line se]
this
.
It is difficult to reconcile the intuitive evidence that conscious decisions are causally effective with the view that the physical world can be explained entirely by
physical law
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...
.
The conflict between intuitively felt freedom and natural law arises when either
causal closure
Physical causal closure is a metaphysical fallacy about the nature of causation in the physical realm with significant ramifications in the study of metaphysics and the mind. It's based on the misconception that the physical world is a combinator ...
or
physical determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
(
nomological determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and cons ...
) is asserted. With causal closure, no physical event has a cause outside the physical domain, and with physical determinism, the future is determined entirely by preceding events (cause and effect).
The puzzle of reconciling 'free will' with a deterministic universe is known as the ''problem of free will'' or sometimes referred to as the ''dilemma of determinism''.
This dilemma leads to a
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
dilemma as well: the question of how to assign
responsibility for actions if they are caused entirely by past events.
[
Also found in ][
]
Compatibilists maintain that mental reality is not of itself causally effective.
[
][
] Classical
compatibilists have addressed the dilemma of free will by arguing that free will holds as long as humans are not externally constrained or coerced.
Modern compatibilists make a distinction between freedom of will and freedom of ''action'', that is, separating
freedom of choice
Freedom of choice describes an individual's opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties.
In politics
In the abortion debate, for example, the term "freedom of ch ...
from the freedom to enact it.
Given that humans all experience a sense of free will, some modern compatibilists think it is necessary to accommodate this intuition.
[
referring to a critique of Libet's experiments by
][
] Compatibilists often associate freedom of will with the
ability
Abilities are powers an agent has to perform various actions. They include common abilities, like walking, and rare abilities, like performing a double backflip. Abilities are intelligent powers: they are guided by the person's intention and exec ...
to make rational decisions.
A different approach to the dilemma is that of
incompatibilists, namely, that if the world is deterministic, then our feeling that we are free to choose an action is simply an
illusion
An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the mind normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. Although illusions distort the human perception of reality, they are generally shared by most people.
Illusions may o ...
.
Metaphysical libertarianism
Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position which argues that fre ...
is the form of incompatibilism which posits that
determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
is false and free will is possible (at least some people have free will).
This view is associated with
non-materialist constructions,
including both traditional
dualism, as well as models supporting more minimal criteria; such as the ability to consciously veto an action or competing desire.
Yet even with
physical indeterminism, arguments have been made against libertarianism in that it is difficult to assign ''Origination'' (responsibility for "free" indeterministic choices).
Free will here is predominantly treated with respect to
physical determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
in the strict sense of
nomological determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and cons ...
, although other forms of determinism are also relevant to free will.
For example, logical and
theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
challenge metaphysical libertarianism with ideas of
destiny
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
and
fate
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
, and
biological,
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
and
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
determinism feed the development of compatibilist models. Separate classes of
compatibilism
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
Compatibilists believe that freedom can be present or absent in situations for re ...
and
incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available ...
may even be formed to represent these.
[ See also ]
Below are the classic arguments bearing upon the dilemma and its underpinnings.
Incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the position that free will and determinism are logically incompatible, and that the major question regarding whether or not people have free will is thus whether or not their actions are determined. "Hard determinists", such as
d'Holbach
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (; 8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), was a French-German philosopher, encyclopedist, writer, and prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Lan ...
, are those incompatibilists who accept determinism and reject free will. In contrast, "
metaphysical libertarians", such as
Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he wa ...
,
Peter van Inwagen, and
Robert Kane, are those incompatibilists who accept free will and deny determinism, holding the view that some form of indeterminism is true.
Another view is that of hard incompatibilists, which state that free will is incompatible with both
determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
and
indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical prob ...
.
Traditional arguments for incompatibilism are based on an "
intuition pump
An intuition pump is a thought experiment structured to allow the thinker to use their intuition to develop an answer to a problem.
In Dennett's work
The term was coined by Daniel Dennett. In ''Consciousness Explained'', he uses the term to desc ...
": if a person is like other mechanical things that are determined in their behavior such as a wind-up toy, a billiard ball, a puppet, or a robot, then people must not have free will.
This argument has been rejected by compatibilists such as
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
on the grounds that, even if humans have something in common with these things, it remains possible and plausible that we are different from such objects in important ways.
Another argument for incompatibilism is that of the "causal chain". Incompatibilism is key to the idealist theory of free will. Most incompatibilists reject the idea that freedom of action consists simply in "voluntary" behavior. They insist, rather, that free will means that someone must be the "ultimate" or "originating" cause of his actions. They must be ''
causa sui
''Causa sui'' (; ) is a Latin term that denotes something that is generated within itself. Used in relation to the purpose that objects can assign to themselves, the concept was central to the works of Baruch Spinoza, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sa ...
'', in the traditional phrase. Being responsible for one's choices is the first cause of those choices, where first cause means that there is no antecedent cause of that cause. The argument, then, is that if a person has free will, then they are the ultimate cause of their actions. If determinism is true, then all of a person's choices are caused by events and facts outside their control. So, if everything someone does is caused by events and facts outside their control, then they cannot be the ultimate cause of their actions. Therefore, they cannot have free will. This argument has also been challenged by various compatibilist philosophers.
A third argument for incompatibilism was formulated by
Carl Ginet Carl Ginet (born 1932) is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. His work is primarily in action theory, moral responsibility, free will, and epistemology.
Ginet received his BA from Occidental College in 1954, and h ...
in the 1960s and has received much attention in the modern literature. The simplified argument runs along these lines: if determinism is true, then we have no control over the events of the past that determined our present state and no control over the laws of nature. Since we can have no control over these matters, we also can have no control over the ''consequences'' of them. Since our present choices and acts, under determinism, are the necessary consequences of the past and the laws of nature, then we have no control over them and, hence, no free will. This is called the ''consequence argument''.
Peter van Inwagen remarks that C.D. Broad had a version of the consequence argument as early as the 1930s.
The difficulty of this argument for some compatibilists lies in the fact that it entails the impossibility that one could have chosen other than one has. For example, if Jane is a compatibilist and she has just sat down on the sofa, then she is committed to the claim that she could have remained standing, if she had so desired. But it
follows from the consequence argument that, if Jane had remained standing, she would have either generated a contradiction, violated the laws of nature or changed the past. Hence, compatibilists are committed to the existence of "incredible abilities", according to Ginet and van Inwagen. One response to this argument is that it equivocates on the notions of abilities and necessities, or that the free will evoked to make any given choice is really an illusion and the choice had been made all along, oblivious to its "decider".
David Lewis suggests that compatibilists are only committed to the ability to do something otherwise if ''different circumstances'' had actually obtained in the past.
Using ''T'', ''F'' for "true" and "false" and ''?'' for undecided, there are exactly nine positions regarding determinism/free will that consist of any two of these three possibilities:
[
]
''Incompatibilism'' may occupy any of the nine positions except (5), (8) or (3), which last corresponds to ''soft determinism''. Position (1) is ''hard determinism'', and position (2) is ''libertarianism''. The position (1) of hard determinism adds to the table the contention that ''D'' implies ''FW'' is untrue, and the position (2) of libertarianism adds the contention that ''FW'' implies ''D'' is untrue. Position (9) may be called ''hard incompatibilism'' if one interprets ''?'' as meaning both concepts are of dubious value. ''Compatibilism'' itself may occupy any of the nine positions, that is, there is no logical contradiction between determinism and free will, and either or both may be true or false in principle. However, the most common meaning attached to ''compatibilism'' is that some form of determinism is true and yet we have some form of free will, position (3).
Alex Rosenberg makes an extrapolation of physical determinism as inferred on the macroscopic scale by the behaviour of a set of dominoes to neural activity in the brain where; "If the brain is nothing but a complex physical object whose states are as much governed by physical laws as any other physical object, then what goes on in our heads is as fixed and determined by prior events as what goes on when one domino topples another in a long row of them."
[
] Physical determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
is currently disputed by prominent
interpretations of quantum mechanics
An interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain how the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics might correspond to experienced reality. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and extremely precise tests in an extraord ...
, and while not necessarily representative of intrinsic
indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical prob ...
in nature, fundamental limits of precision in measurement are inherent in the
uncertainty principle
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physic ...
.
The relevance of such prospective indeterminate activity to free will is, however, contested,
even when chaos theory is introduced to magnify the effects of such microscopic events.
Below these positions are examined in more detail.
[
]
Hard determinism
Determinism can be divided into causal, logical and theological determinism. Corresponding to each of these different meanings, there arises a different problem for free will. Hard determinism is the claim that determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
is true, and that it is incompatible with free will, so free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomological determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and cons ...
(see causal determinism below), it can include all forms of determinism that necessitate the future in its entirety. Relevant forms of determinism include:
;Causal determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and cons ...
: The idea that everything is caused by prior conditions, making it impossible for anything else to happen. In its most common form, nomological (or scientific) determinism, future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature. Such determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment
A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.
History
The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most anci ...
of Laplace's demon
In the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and moment ...
. Imagine an entity that knows all facts about the past and the present, and knows all natural laws that govern the universe. If the laws of nature were determinate, then such an entity would be able to use this knowledge to foresee the future, down to the smallest detail.[
The view of ''scientific determinism'' goes back to Laplace: "We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state." For further discussion see
]
; Logical determinism: The notion that all proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
s, whether about the past, present or future, are either true or false. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how choices can be free, given that what one does in the future is already determined as true or false in the present.
;Theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
: The idea that the future is already determined, either by a creator deity
A creator deity or creator god (often called the Creator) is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatris ...
decreeing or knowing its outcome in advance. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how our actions can be free if there is a being who has determined them for us in advance, or if they are already set in time.
Other forms of determinism are more relevant to compatibilism, such as biological determinism
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether i ...
, the idea that all behaviors, beliefs, and desires are fixed by our genetic endowment and our biochemical makeup, the latter of which is affected by both genes and environment, cultural determinism
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
and psychological determinism. Combinations and syntheses of determinist theses, such as bio-environmental determinism, are even more common.
Suggestions have been made that hard determinism need not maintain strict determinism, where something near to, like that informally known as adequate determinism, is perhaps more relevant. Despite this, hard determinism has grown less popular in present times, given scientific suggestions that determinism is false – yet the intention of their position is sustained by hard incompatibilism.
Metaphysical libertarianism
Metaphysical libertarianism
Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position which argues that fre ...
is one philosophical view point under that of incompatibilism. Libertarianism holds onto a concept of free will that requires that the agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
be able to take more than one possible course of action under a given set of circumstances.
Accounts of libertarianism subdivide into non-physical theories and physical or naturalistic theories. Non-physical theories hold that the events in the brain that lead to the performance of actions do not have an entirely physical explanation, which requires that the world is not closed under physics. This includes interactionist dualism
Interactionism or interactionist dualism is the theory in the philosophy of mind which holds that matter and mind are two distinct and independent Substance theory, substances that exert causal effects on one another. It is one type of dualism (ph ...
, which claims that some non-physical mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
, will, or soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".
Etymology
The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...
overrides physical causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
. Physical determinism implies there is only one possible future and is therefore not compatible with libertarian free will. As consequent of incompatibilism, metaphysical libertarian explanations that do not involve dispensing with physicalism
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...
require physical indeterminism, such as probabilistic subatomic particle behavior – theory unknown to many of the early writers on free will. Incompatibilist theories can be categorised based on the type of indeterminism they require; uncaused events, non-deterministically caused events, and agent/substance-caused events.
Non-causal theories
Non-causal accounts of incompatibilist free will do not require a free action to be caused by either an agent or a physical event. They either rely upon a world that is not causally closed, or physical indeterminism. Non-causal accounts often claim that each intentional action requires a choice or volition – a willing, trying, or endeavoring on behalf of the agent (such as the cognitive component of lifting one's arm). Such intentional actions are interpreted as free actions. It has been suggested, however, that such acting cannot be said to exercise control over anything in particular. According to non-causal accounts, the causation by the agent cannot be analysed in terms of causation by mental states or events, including desire, belief, intention of something in particular, but rather is considered a matter of spontaneity and creativity. The exercise of intent in such intentional actions is not that which determines their freedom – intentional actions are rather self-generating. The "actish feel" of some intentional actions do not "constitute that event's activeness, or the agent's exercise of active control", rather they "might be brought about by direct stimulation of someone's brain, in the absence of any relevant desire or intention on the part of that person". Another question raised by such non-causal theory, is how an agent acts upon reason, if the said intentional actions are spontaneous.
Some non-causal explanations involve invoking panpsychism
In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism () is the view that the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists thro ...
, the theory that a quality of mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
is associated with all particles, and pervades the entire universe, in both animate and inanimate entities.
Event-causal theories
Event-causal accounts of incompatibilist free will typically rely upon physicalist models of mind (like those of the compatibilist), yet they presuppose physical indeterminism, in which certain indeterministic events are said to be caused by the agent. A number of event-causal accounts of free will have been created, referenced here as ''deliberative indeterminism'', ''centred accounts'', and ''efforts of will theory''. The first two accounts do not require free will to be a fundamental constituent of the universe. Ordinary randomness is appealed to as supplying the "elbow room" that libertarians believe necessary. A first common objection to event-causal accounts is that the indeterminism could be destructive and could therefore diminish control by the agent rather than provide it (related to the problem of origination). A second common objection to these models is that it is questionable whether such indeterminism could add any value to deliberation over that which is already present in a deterministic world.
''Deliberative indeterminism'' asserts that the indeterminism is confined to an earlier stage in the decision process. This is intended to provide an indeterminate set of possibilities to choose from, while not risking the introduction of ''luck'' (random decision making). The selection process is deterministic, although it may be based on earlier preferences established by the same process. Deliberative indeterminism has been referenced by Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
and John Martin Fischer
John Martin Fischer (born December 26, 1952) is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside and a leading contributor to the philosophy of free will and moral responsibility.
E ...
. An obvious objection to such a view is that an agent cannot be assigned ownership over their decisions (or preferences used to make those decisions) to any greater degree than that of a compatibilist model.
''Centred accounts'' propose that for any given decision between two possibilities, the strength of reason will be considered for each option, yet there is still a probability the weaker candidate will be chosen. An obvious objection to such a view is that decisions are explicitly left up to chance, and origination or responsibility cannot be assigned for any given decision.
''Efforts of will theory'' is related to the role of will power in decision making. It suggests that the indeterminacy of agent volition processes could map to the indeterminacy of certain physical events – and the outcomes of these events could therefore be considered caused by the agent. Models of volition have been constructed in which it is seen as a particular kind of complex, high-level process with an element of physical indeterminism. An example of this approach is that of Robert Kane, where he hypothesizes that "in each case, the indeterminism is functioning as a hindrance or obstacle to her realizing one of her purposes – a hindrance or obstacle in the form of resistance within her will which must be overcome by effort." According to Robert Kane such "ultimate responsibility" is a required condition for free will. An important factor in such a theory is that the agent cannot be reduced to physical neuronal events, but rather mental processes are said to provide an equally valid account of the determination of outcome as their physical processes (see non-reductive physicalism
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physics, physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenience, supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological mo ...
).
Although at the time quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
(and physical indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical prob ...
) was only in the initial stages of acceptance, in his book ''Miracles: A preliminary study'' C.S. Lewis stated the logical possibility that if the physical world were proved indeterministic this would provide an entry point to describe an action of a non-physical entity on physical reality. Indeterministic
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical probl ...
physical models (particularly those involving quantum indeterminacy
Quantum indeterminacy is the apparent ''necessary'' incompleteness in the description of a physical system, that has become one of the characteristics of the standard description of quantum physics. Prior to quantum physics, it was thought that
: ...
) introduce random occurrences at an atomic or subatomic level. These events might affect brain activity, and could seemingly allow incompatibilist
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several availabl ...
free will if the apparent indeterminacy of some mental processes (for instance, subjective perceptions of control in conscious volition) map to the underlying indeterminacy of the physical construct. This relationship, however, requires a causative role over probabilities that is questionable, and it is far from established that brain activity responsible for human action can be affected by such events. Secondarily, these incompatibilist models are dependent upon the relationship between action and conscious volition, as studied in the neuroscience of free will
Neuroscience of free will, a part of neurophilosophy, is the study of topics related to free will ( volition and sense of agency) using neuroscience, and the analysis of how findings from such studies may impact the free will debate.
As it has b ...
. It is evident that observation may disturb the outcome of the observation itself, rendering limited our ability to identify causality. Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...
, one of the main architects of quantum theory, suggested, however, that no connection could be made between indeterminism of nature and freedom of will.[
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Agent/substance-causal theories
Agent/substance-causal accounts of incompatibilist free will rely upon substance dualism in their description of mind. The agent is assumed power to intervene in the physical world.
Agent (substance)-causal accounts have been suggested by both George Berkeley and Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he wa ...
. It is required that what the agent causes is not causally determined by prior events. It is also required that the agent's causing of that event is not causally determined by prior events. A number of problems have been identified with this view. Firstly, it is difficult to establish the reason for any given choice by the agent, which suggests they may be random or determined by ''luck'' (without an underlying basis for the free will decision). Secondly, it has been questioned whether physical events can be caused by an external substance or mind – a common problem associated with interactionalist dualism.
Hard incompatibilism
Hard incompatibilism is the idea that free will cannot exist, whether the world is deterministic or not. Derk Pereboom has defended hard incompatibilism, identifying a variety of positions where free will is irrelevant to indeterminism/determinism, among them the following:
:#Determinism (D) is true, D does not imply we lack free will (F), but in fact we do lack F.
:#D is true, D does not imply we lack F, but in fact we don't know if we have F.
:#D is true, and we do have F.
:#D is true, we have F, and F implies D.
:#D is unproven, but we have F.
:#D isn't true, we do have F, and would have F even if D were true.
:#D isn't true, we don't have F, but F is compatible with D.
::::::Derk Pereboom, ''Living without Free Will'', p. xvi.
Pereboom calls positions 3 and 4 ''soft determinism'', position 1 a form of ''hard determinism'', position 6 a form of ''classical libertarianism'', and any position that includes having F as ''compatibilism''.
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
denied that the phrase "free will" made any sense (compare with theological noncognitivism
Theological noncognitivism is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as "God", is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like "God exists" are cognitively meaningless. It may be c ...
, a similar stance on the existence of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...
). He also took the view that the truth of determinism was irrelevant. He believed that the defining feature of voluntary behavior was that individuals have the ability to ''postpone'' a decision long enough to reflect or deliberate upon the consequences of a choice: "…the will in truth, signifies nothing but a power, or ability, to prefer or choose".
The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson
Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British analytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, and the self), John Locke, David Hume, ...
agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the
problem.[Strawson, G. (1998, 2004). "Free will". In E. Craig (ed.), ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. London: Routledge. Retrieved August 17, 2006]
((online))
He argues that the notion of free will leads to an infinite regress and is therefore senseless.
According to Strawson, if one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. This is because to be responsible in some situation ''S'', one must have been responsible for the way one was at ''S−1''. To be responsible for the way one was at ''S−1'', one must have been responsible for the way one was at ''S−2'', and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of origination of a new causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create himself or his mental states ''ex nihilo
(Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe comes to exist. It is in contrast to ''Ex nihilo ni ...
''. This argument entails that free will itself is absurd, but not that it is incompatible with determinism. Strawson calls his own view "pessimism" but it can be classified as hard incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several availabl ...
.
= Causal determinism
=
Causal determinism is the concept that events
Event may refer to:
Gatherings of people
* Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion
* Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest
* Event management, the organization of ev ...
within a given paradigm
In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field.
Etymology
''Paradigm'' comes f ...
are bound by causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states. Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. Causal determinists believe that there is nothing uncaused or self-caused. The most common form of causal determinism is nomological determinism (or scientific determinism), the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
poses a serious challenge to this view.
Fundamental debate continues over whether the physical universe is likely to be deterministic
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
. Although the scientific method cannot be used to rule out indeterminism
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical prob ...
with respect to violations of causal closure
Physical causal closure is a metaphysical fallacy about the nature of causation in the physical realm with significant ramifications in the study of metaphysics and the mind. It's based on the misconception that the physical world is a combinator ...
, it can be used to identify indeterminism in natural law. Interpretations of quantum mechanics
An interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain how the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics might correspond to experienced reality. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and extremely precise tests in an extraord ...
at present are both deterministic
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
and indeterministic
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical probl ...
, and are being constrained by ongoing experimentation.
= Destiny and fate
=
Destiny or fate is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. It is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the cosmos.
Although often used interchangeably, the words "fate" and "destiny" have distinct connotations.
Fate
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
generally implies there is a set course that cannot be deviated from, and over which one has no control. Fate is related to determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
, but makes no specific claim of physical determinism. Even with physical indeterminism an event could still be fated externally (see for instance theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
). Destiny likewise is related to determinism, but makes no specific claim of physical determinism. Even with physical indeterminism an event could still be destined to occur.
Destiny
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
implies there is a set course that cannot be deviated from, but does not of itself make any claim with respect to the setting of that course (i.e., it does not necessarily conflict with incompatibilist
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several availabl ...
free will). Free will if existent could be the mechanism by which that destined outcome is chosen (determined to represent destiny).
= Logical determinism
=
Discussion regarding destiny does not necessitate the existence of supernatural powers. Logical determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
or determinateness is the notion that all propositions, whether about the past, present, or future, are either true or false. This creates a unique problem for free will given that propositions about the future already have a truth value in the present (that is it is already determined as either true or false), and is referred to as the problem of future contingents
Future contingent propositions (or simply, future contingents) are statements about states of affairs in the future that are '' contingent:'' neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.
The problem of future contingents seems to have been fi ...
.
= Omniscience
=
Omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an God#General conceptions, attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In B ...
is the capacity to know everything that there is to know (included in which are all future events), and is a property often attributed to a creator deity. Omniscience implies the existence of destiny. Some authors have claimed that free will cannot coexist with omniscience. One argument asserts that an omniscient creator not only implies destiny but a form of high level predeterminism
Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known (by God, fate, or some other force), including human actions.
Predeterminism is closely related to determinis ...
such as hard theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
or predestination
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby G ...
– that they have independently fixed all events and outcomes in the universe in advance. In such a case, even if an individual could have influence over their lower level physical system, their choices in regard to this cannot be their own, as is the case with libertarian free will. Omniscience features as an incompatible-properties argument
The incompatible-properties argument is the idea that no description of God is consistent with reality. For example, if one takes the definition of God to be described fully from the Bible, then the claims of what properties God has described th ...
for the existence of God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
, known as the argument from free will
The argument from free will, also called the paradox of free will or theological fatalism, contends that omniscience and free will are incompatible and that any conception of God that incorporates both properties is therefore inconceivable. See ...
, and is closely related to other such arguments, for example the incompatibility of omnipotence
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one o ...
with a good creator deity (i.e. if a deity knew what they were going to choose, then they are responsible for letting them choose it).
=Predeterminism
=
Predeterminism
Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known (by God, fate, or some other force), including human actions.
Predeterminism is closely related to determinis ...
is the idea that all events are determined in advance. Predeterminism is the philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
that all events of history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
, past, present and future, have been decided or are known (by God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
, fate
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
, or some other force), including human actions. Predeterminism is frequently taken to mean that human actions cannot interfere with (or have no bearing on) the outcomes of a pre-determined course of events, and that one's destiny was established externally (for example, exclusively by a creator deity). The concept of predeterminism is often argued by invoking causal determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and cons ...
, implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences
A chain of events is a number of actions and their effects that are contiguous and linked together that results in a particular outcome. In the physical sciences, chain reactions are a primary example.
Determinism
''Determinism'' is the philos ...
stretching back to the origin of the universe. In the case of predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, and human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established chain. Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre-established causal determinism, in which case it is categorised as a specific type of determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
. It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism – in the context of its capacity to determine future events. Despite this, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism. The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether i ...
.
The term predeterminism suggests not just a determining of all events, but the prior and deliberately conscious determining of all events (therefore done, presumably, by a conscious being). While determinism usually refers to a naturalistically explainable causality of events, predeterminism seems by definition to suggest a person or a "someone" who is controlling or planning the causality of events before they occur and who then perhaps resides beyond the natural, causal universe. Predestination
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby G ...
asserts that a supremely powerful being has indeed fixed all events and outcomes in the universe in advance, and is a famous doctrine of the Calvinists in Christian theology
Christian theology is the theology of Christianity, Christian belief and practice. Such study concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Christian tradition. Christian theology, theologian ...
. Predestination is often considered a form of hard theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
.
Predeterminism has therefore been compared to fatalism
Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are tho ...
. Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future.
Theological determinism
Theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
is a form of determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
stating that all events that happen are pre-ordained, or predestined to happen, by a monotheistic deity
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...
, or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an God#General conceptions, attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In B ...
. Two forms of theological determinism exist, here referenced as strong and weak theological determinism.
* The first one, strong theological determinism, is based on the concept of a creator deity
A creator deity or creator god (often called the Creator) is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatris ...
dictating all events in history: "everything that happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity."
* The second form, weak theological determinism, is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge – "because God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
's omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed."
There exist slight variations on the above categorisation. Some claim that theological determinism requires predestination
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby G ...
of all events and outcomes by the divinity (that is, they do not classify the weaker version as 'theological determinism' unless libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence), or that the weaker version does not constitute 'theological determinism' at all. Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and cons ...
, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God. With respect to free will and the classification of theological compatibilism/incompatibilism below, "theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions," more minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological determinism.
There are various implications for metaphysical libertarian free will as consequent of theological determinism and its philosophical interpretation.
* Strong theological determinism is not compatible with metaphysical libertarian free will, and is a form of ''hard theological determinism'' (equivalent to theological fatalism below). It claims that free will does not exist, and ''God'' has absolute control over a person's actions. Hard theological determinism is similar in implication to hard determinism
Hard determinism (or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomol ...
, although it does not invalidate compatibilist
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
Compatibilists believe that freedom can be present or absent in situations for r ...
free will. Hard theological determinism is a form of theological incompatibilism (see figure, top left).
* Weak theological determinism is either compatible or incompatible with metaphysical libertarian free will depending upon one's philosophical interpretation of omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an God#General conceptions, attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In B ...
– and as such is interpreted as either a form of hard theological determinism (known as theological fatalism
The argument from free will, also called the paradox of free will or theological fatalism, contends that omniscience and free will are incompatible and that any conception of God that incorporates both properties is therefore inconceivable. See ...
), or as ''soft theological determinism'' (terminology used for clarity only). Soft theological determinism claims that humans have free will to choose their actions, holding that God, while knowing their actions before they happen, does not affect the outcome. God's providence is "compatible" with voluntary choice. Soft theological determinism is known as theological compatibilism (see figure, top right). A rejection of theological determinism (or divine foreknowledge
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
) is classified as theological incompatibilism also (see figure, bottom), and is relevant to a more general discussion of free will.
The basic argument for theological fatalism in the case of weak theological determinism is as follows:
# Assume divine foreknowledge or omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an God#General conceptions, attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In B ...
# Infallible
Infallibility refers to an inability to be wrong. It can be applied within a specific domain, or it can be used as a more general adjective. The term has significance in both epistemology and theology, and its meaning and significance in both fi ...
foreknowledge implies destiny (it is known for certain what one will do)
# Destiny eliminates alternate possibility (one cannot do otherwise)
# Assert incompatibility with metaphysical libertarian free will
This argument is very often accepted as a basis for theological incompatibilism: denying either libertarian free will or divine foreknowledge (omniscience) and therefore theological determinism. On the other hand, theological compatibilism must attempt to find problems with it. The formal version of the argument rests on a number of premises, many of which have received some degree of contention. Theological compatibilist responses have included:
* Deny the truth value of future contingents
Future contingent propositions (or simply, future contingents) are statements about states of affairs in the future that are ''contingent:'' neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.
The problem of future contingents seems to have been firs ...
, although this denies foreknowledge and therefore theological determinism.
* Assert differences in non-temporal knowledge (space-time independence), an approach taken for example by Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
, Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
, and C.S. Lewis
CS, C-S, C.S., Cs, cs, or cs. may refer to:
Job titles
* Chief Secretary (Hong Kong)
* Chief superintendent, a rank in the British and several other police forces
* Company secretary, a senior position in a private sector company or public se ...
.
* Deny the Principle of Alternate Possibilities: "If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely." For example, a human observer could in principle have a machine that could detect what will happen in the future, but the existence of this machine or their use of it has no influence on the outcomes of events.
In the definition of compatibilism
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
Compatibilists believe that freedom can be present or absent in situations for re ...
and incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available ...
, the literature often fails to distinguish between physical determinism and higher level forms of determinism (predeterminism, theological determinism, etc.) As such, hard determinism with respect to theological determinism (or "Hard Theological Determinism" above) might be classified as hard incompatibilism with respect to physical determinism (if no claim was made regarding the internal causality or determinism of the universe), or even compatibilism (if freedom from the constraint of determinism was not considered necessary for free will), if not hard determinism itself. By the same principle, metaphysical libertarianism (a form of incompatibilism with respect to physical determinism) might be classified as compatibilism with respect to theological determinism (if it was assumed such free will events were pre-ordained and therefore were destined to occur, but of which whose outcomes were not "predestined" or determined by God). If hard theological determinism is accepted (if it was assumed instead that such outcomes were predestined by God), then metaphysical libertarianism is not, however, possible, and would require reclassification (as hard incompatibilism for example, given that the universe is still assumed to be indeterministic – although the classification of hard determinism is technically valid also).
Mind–body problem
The idea of ''free will'' is one aspect of the mind-body problem, that is, consideration of the relation between mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
(for example, consciousness, memory, and judgment) and body (for example, the human brain
The human brain is the central organ of the human nervous system, and with the spinal cord makes up the central nervous system. The brain consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. It controls most of the activities of the ...
and nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...
). Philosophical models of mind are divided into physical
Physical may refer to:
*Physical examination
In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally co ...
and non-physical expositions.
Cartesian dualism Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descartes—from his Latinized name ''Cartesius''. It may refer to:
Mathematics
*Cartesian closed category, a closed category in category theory
* Cartesian coordinate system, moder ...
holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance, the seat of consciousness and intelligence, and is not identical with physical states of the brain or body. It is suggested that although the two worlds do interact, each retains some measure of autonomy. Under cartesian dualism external mind is responsible for bodily action, although unconscious brain activity is often caused by external events (for example, the instantaneous reaction to being burned).[See for example: ] Cartesian dualism implies that the physical world is not deterministic – and in which external mind controls (at least some) physical events, providing an interpretation of incompatibilist
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several availabl ...
free will. Stemming from Cartesian dualism, a formulation sometimes called '' interactionalist dualism'' suggests a two-way interaction, that some physical events cause some mental acts and some mental acts cause some physical events. One modern vision of the possible separation of mind and body is the "three-world" formulation of Popper. Cartesian dualism and Popper's three worlds are two forms of what is called epistemological pluralism __notoc__
Epistemological pluralism is a term used in philosophy, economics, and virtually any field of study to refer to different ways of knowing things, different epistemological methodologies for attaining a fuller description of a particular ...
, that is the notion that different epistemological methodologies are necessary to attain a full description of the world. Other forms of epistemological pluralist dualism include psychophysical parallelism
In the philosophy of mind, psychophysical parallelism (or simply parallelism) is the theory that mental and bodily events are perfectly coordinated, without any causal interaction between them. As such, it affirms the correlation of mental and bod ...
and epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism is a position on the mind–body problem which holds that physical and biochemical events within the human body ( sense organs, neural impulses, and muscle contractions, for example) are the sole cause of mental events (thought, ...
. Epistemological pluralism is one view in which the mind-body problem is ''not'' reducible to the concepts of the natural sciences.
A contrasting approach is called physicalism
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...
. Physicalism is a philosophical theory holding that everything that exists is no more extensive than its physical properties
A physical property is any property that is measurable, whose value describes a state of a physical system. The changes in the physical properties of a system can be used to describe its changes between momentary states. Physical properties are o ...
; that is, that there are no non-physical substances (for example physically independent minds). Physicalism can be reductive or non-reductive. Reductive physicalism
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substa ...
is grounded in the idea that everything in the world can actually be reduced analytically to its fundamental physical, or material, basis. Alternatively, non-reductive physicalism
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physics, physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenience, supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological mo ...
asserts that mental properties form a separate ontological class to physical properties: that mental states (such as qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
) are not ontologically reducible to physical states. Although one might suppose that mental states and neurological states are different in kind, that does not rule out the possibility that mental states are correlated with neurological states. In one such construction, anomalous monism, mental events ''supervene'' on physical events, describing the emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
Emergence ...
of mental properties correlated with physical properties – implying causal reducibility. Non-reductive physicalism is therefore often categorised as property dualism
Property dualism describes a category of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that, although the world is composed of just one kind of substance— the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties ...
rather than monism
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
, yet other types of property dualism do not adhere to the causal reducibility of mental states (see epiphenomenalism).
Incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available ...
requires a distinction between the mental and the physical, being a commentary on the incompatibility of (determined) physical reality and one's presumably distinct experience of will. Secondarily, metaphysical libertarian free will must assert influence on physical reality, and where mind is responsible for such influence (as opposed to ordinary system randomness), it must be distinct from body to accomplish this. Both substance and property dualism offer such a distinction, and those particular models thereof that are not causally inert with respect to the physical world provide a basis for illustrating incompatibilist free will (i.e. interactionalist dualism and non-reductive physicalism).
It has been noted that the laws of physics
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...
have yet to resolve the hard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how humans have qualia or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give us and other animals the ability to d ...
:[
See or
] "Solving the hard problem of consciousness involves determining how physiological processes such as ions flowing across the nerve membrane ''cause'' us to have experiences."[
] According to some, "Intricately related to the hard problem of consciousness, the hard problem of free will represents ''the'' core problem of conscious free will: Does conscious volition impact the material world?"[
] Others however argue that "consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
plays a far smaller role in human life than Western culture has tended to believe."[
Quote from
]
Compatibilism
Compatibilists maintain that determinism is compatible with free will. They believe freedom can be present or absent in a situation for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics. For instance, courts of law
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance ...
make judgments about whether individuals are acting under their own free will under certain circumstances without bringing in metaphysics. Similarly, political liberty
Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central concept in history and political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies.Hannah Arendt, "What is Freedom?", ''Between Past and F ...
is a non-metaphysical concept. Likewise, some compatibilists define free will as freedom to act according to one's determined motives without hindrance from other individuals. So for example Aristotle in his ''Nicomachean Ethics
The ''Nicomachean Ethics'' (; ; grc, Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, ) is Aristotle's best-known work on ethics, the science of the good for human life, which is the goal or end at which all our actions aim. (I§2) The aim of the inquiry is ...
'', and the Stoic Chrysippus.
In contrast, the incompatibilist
Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have free will, the latter being defined as the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several availabl ...
positions are concerned with a sort of "metaphysically free will", which compatibilists claim has never been coherently defined. Compatibilists argue that determinism does not matter; though they disagree among themselves about what, in turn, ''does'' matter. To be a compatibilist, one need not endorse any particular conception of free will, but only deny that determinism is at odds with free will.
Although there are various impediments to exercising one's choices, free will does not imply freedom of action. Freedom of choice (freedom to select one's will) is logically separate from freedom to ''implement'' that choice (freedom to enact one's will), although not all writers observe this distinction. Nonetheless, some philosophers have defined free will as the absence of various impediments. Some "modern compatibilists", such as Harry Frankfurt
Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is an American philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002. Frankfurt has also taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and ...
and Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
, argue free will is simply freely choosing to do what constraints allow one to do. In other words, a coerced agent's choices can still be free if such coercion coincides with the agent's personal intentions and desires.
Free will as lack of physical restraint
Most "classical compatibilists", such as Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influent ...
, claim that a person is acting on the person's own will only when it is the desire of that person to do the act, and also possible for the person to be able to do otherwise, ''if the person had decided to''. Hobbes sometimes attributes such compatibilist freedom to each individual and not to some abstract notion of ''will'', asserting, for example, that "no liberty can be inferred to 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."[Hobbes, T. (1651) ''Leviathan']
Chapter XXI.: "Of the liberty of subjects"
(1968 edition). London: Penguin Books. In articulating this crucial proviso, David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
writes, "this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains."[Hume, D. (1740). ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' Section VIII.:]
Of liberty and necessity
(1967 edition). Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, Oxford. Similarly, Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his ...
, in his ''Dictionnaire philosophique
The (''Philosophical Dictionary'') is an encyclopedic dictionary published by the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire in 1764. The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism, Islam, and other institutions. T ...
'', claimed that "Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will." He asked, "would you have everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices?" For him, free will or liberty is "only the power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of our organs."
Free will as a psychological state
Compatibilism often regards the agent free as virtue of their reason. Some explanations of free will focus on the internal causality of the mind with respect to higher-order brain processing – the interaction between conscious and unconscious brain activity. Likewise, some modern compatibilists in psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
have tried to revive traditionally accepted struggles of free will with the formation of character.[
] Compatibilist free will has also been attributed to our natural sense of agency, where one must believe they are an agent in order to function and develop a theory of mind
In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...
.
The notion of levels of decision is presented in a different manner by Frankfurt.[ Frankfurt argues for a version of compatibilism called the "hierarchical mesh". The idea is that an individual can have conflicting desires at a first-order level and also have a desire about the various first-order desires (a second-order desire) to the effect that one of the desires prevails over the others. A person's will is identified with their effective first-order desire, that is, the one they act on, and this will is free if it was the desire the person wanted to act upon, that is, the person's second-order desire was effective. So, for example, there are "wanton addicts", "unwilling addicts" and "willing addicts". All three groups may have the conflicting first-order desires to want to take the drug they are addicted to and to not want to take it.
The first group, ''wanton addicts'', have no second-order desire not to take the drug. The second group, "unwilling addicts", have a second-order desire not to take the drug, while the third group, "willing addicts", have a second-order desire to take it. According to Frankfurt, the members of the first group are devoid of will and therefore are no longer persons. The members of the second group freely desire not to take the drug, but their will is overcome by the addiction. Finally, the members of the third group willingly take the drug they are addicted to. Frankfurt's theory can ramify to any number of levels. Critics of the theory point out that there is no certainty that conflicts will not arise even at the higher-order levels of desire and preference. Others argue that Frankfurt offers no adequate explanation of how the various levels in the hierarchy mesh together.
]
Free will as unpredictability
In '' Elbow Room'', Dennett presents an argument for a compatibilist theory of free will, which he further elaborated in the book ''Freedom Evolves
''Freedom Evolves'' is a 2003 popular science and philosophy book by Daniel C. Dennett. Dennett describes the book as an installment of a lifelong philosophical project, earlier parts of which were '' The Intentional Stance'', ''Consciousness Ex ...
''.[Dennett, D. (2003) ''Freedom Evolves''. Viking Books. ] The basic reasoning is that, if one excludes God, an infinitely powerful demon
A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, ani ...
, and other such possibilities, then because of chaos
Chaos or CHAOS may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional elements
* Chaos (''Kinnikuman'')
* Chaos (''Sailor Moon'')
* Chaos (''Sesame Park'')
* Chaos (''Warhammer'')
* Chaos, in ''Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy''
* Cha ...
and epistemic limits on the precision of our knowledge of the current state of the world, the future is ill-defined for all finite beings. The only well-defined things are "expectations". The ability to do "otherwise" only makes sense when dealing with these expectations, and not with some unknown and unknowable future.
According to Dennett, because individuals have the ability to act differently from what anyone expects, free will can exist. Incompatibilists claim the problem with this idea is that we may be mere "automata responding in predictable ways to stimuli in our environment". Therefore, all of our actions are controlled by forces outside ourselves, or by random chance.[Kane, R. ''The Oxford Handbook to Free Will''. Oxford University Press. .] More sophisticated analyses of compatibilist free will have been offered, as have other critiques.
In the philosophy of decision theory
Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...
, a fundamental question is: From the standpoint of statistical outcomes, to what extent do the choices of a conscious being have the ability to influence the future? Newcomb's paradox
In philosophy and mathematics, Newcomb's paradox, also known as Newcomb's problem, is a thought experiment involving a game between two players, one of whom is able to predict the future.
Newcomb's paradox was created by William Newcomb of the ...
and other philosophical problems pose questions about free will and predictable outcomes of choices.
The physical mind
Compatibilist
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
Compatibilists believe that freedom can be present or absent in situations for r ...
models of free will often consider deterministic relationships as discoverable in the physical world (including the brain). Cognitive naturalism[A key exponent of this view was ]Willard van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". ...
. See is a physicalist
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...
approach to studying human cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
and consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
in which the mind is simply part of nature, perhaps merely a feature of many very complex self-programming feedback systems (for example, neural networks
A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
and cognitive robots), and so must be studied by the methods of empirical science, such as the behavioral
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well ...
and cognitive sciences (''i.e.'' neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
and cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
).[
A thoughtful list of careful distinctions regarding the application of empirical science to these issues is found in ] Cognitive naturalism stresses the role of neurological sciences. Overall brain health, substance dependence
Substance dependence, also known as drug dependence, is a biopsychological situation whereby an individual's functionality is dependent on the necessitated re-consumption of a psychoactive substance because of an adaptive state that has develope ...
, depression, and various personality disorders
Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the individual's culture ...
clearly influence mental activity, and their impact upon volition is also important. For example, an addict may experience a conscious desire to escape addiction, but be unable to do so. The "will" is disconnected from the freedom to act. This situation is related to an abnormal production and distribution of dopamine
Dopamine (DA, a contraction of 3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine) is a neuromodulatory molecule that plays several important roles in cells. It is an organic compound, organic chemical of the catecholamine and phenethylamine families. Dopamine const ...
in the brain.[
] The neuroscience of free will places restrictions on both compatibilist and incompatibilist free will conceptions.
Compatibilist models adhere to models of mind in which mental activity (such as deliberation) can be reduced to physical activity without any change in physical outcome. Although compatibilism is generally aligned to (or is at least compatible with) physicalism, some compatibilist models describe the natural occurrences of deterministic deliberation in the brain in terms of the first person perspective of the conscious agent performing the deliberation. Such an approach has been considered a form of identity dualism. A description of "how conscious experience might affect brains" has been provided in which "the experience of conscious free will is the first-person perspective of the neural correlates of choosing."
Recently, Claudio Costa developed a neocompatibilist theory based on the causal theory of action that is complementary to classical compatibilism. According to him, physical, psychological and rational restrictions can interfere at different levels of the causal chain that would naturally lead to action. Correspondingly, there can be physical restrictions to the body, psychological restrictions to the decision, and rational restrictions to the formation of reasons (desires plus beliefs) that should lead to what we would call a reasonable action. The last two are usually called "restrictions of free will". The restriction at the level of reasons is particularly important since it can be motivated by external reasons that are insufficiently conscious to the agent. One example was the collective suicide led by Jim Jones
James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American preacher, political activist and mass murderer. He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. In what he called "revolutionary suicide ...
. The suicidal agents were not conscious that their free will have been manipulated by external, even if ungrounded, reasons.
Non-naturalism
Alternatives to strictly naturalist physics, such as mind–body dualism
In the philosophy of mind, mind–body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical, Hart, W. D. 1996. "Dualism." pp. 265–267 in ''A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind'', edited by S. Guttenplan. Oxford: Blackwell. ...
positing a mind or soul existing apart from one's body while perceiving, thinking, choosing freely, and as a result acting independently on the body, include both traditional religious metaphysics and less common newer compatibilist concepts. Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism
Darwinism is a scientific theory, theory of Biology, biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of smal ...
, they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics. While less popular among 21st-century philosophers, non-naturalist compatibilism is present in most if not almost all religions.
Other views
Some philosophers' views are difficult to categorize as either compatibilist or incompatibilist, hard determinist or libertarian. For example, Ted Honderich
Ted Honderich (born 30 January 1933) is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.
Biography
Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich o ...
holds the view that "determinism is true, compatibilism and incompatibilism are both false" and the real problem lies elsewhere. Honderich maintains that determinism is true because quantum phenomena are not events or things that can be located in space and time, but are abstract entities. Further, even if they were micro-level events, they do not seem to have any relevance to how the world is at the macroscopic level. He maintains that incompatibilism is false because, even if indeterminism is true, incompatibilists have not provided, and cannot provide, an adequate account of origination. He rejects compatibilism because it, like incompatibilism, assumes a single, fundamental notion of freedom. There are really two notions of freedom: voluntary action and origination. Both notions are required to explain freedom of will and responsibility. Both determinism and indeterminism are threats to such freedom. To abandon these notions of freedom would be to abandon moral responsibility. On the one side, we have our intuitions; on the other, the scientific facts. The "new" problem is how to resolve this conflict.
Free will as an illusion
:"Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined." Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
, ''Ethics''
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
discussed the possibility that the entire debate about free will is nothing more than a merely "verbal" issue. He suggested that it might be accounted for by "a false sensation or seeming experience" (a ''velleity''), which is associated with many of our actions when we perform them. On reflection, we realize that they were necessary and determined all along.
According to Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
, the actions of humans, as phenomena
A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...
, are subject to the principle of sufficient reason
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhau ...
and thus liable to necessity. Thus, he argues, humans do not possess free will as conventionally understood. However, the will
Will may refer to:
Common meanings
* Will and testament, instructions for the disposition of one's property after death
* Will (philosophy), or willpower
* Will (sociology)
* Will, volition (psychology)
* Will, a modal verb - see Shall and will
...
rging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring as the noumenon
In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; ; noumena) is a posited object or an event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term ''phenomenon'', which ...
underlying the phenomenal world, is in itself groundless: that is, not subject to time, space, and causality (the forms that governs the world of appearance). Thus, the will, in itself and outside of appearance, is free. Schopenhauer discussed the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in ''The World as Will and Representation
''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition ...
'', Book 2, Sec. 23:
Schopenhauer elaborated on the topic in Book IV of the same work and in even greater depth in his later essay ''On the Freedom of the Will
''On the Freedom of the Will'' (german: Ueber die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens) is an essay presented to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in 1839 by Arthur Schopenhauer as a response to the academic question that they had posed: "Is ...
.'' In this work, he stated, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can ''will'' only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing."
In his book ''Free Will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actio ...
,'' philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics ...
argues that free will is an illusion, stating that "thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control."
Free will as "moral imagination"
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a ...
, who collaborated in a complete edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's work, wrote ''The Philosophy of Freedom'', which focuses on the problem of free will. Steiner (1861–1925) initially divides this into the two aspects of freedom: ''freedom of thought'' and ''freedom of action''. The controllable and uncontrollable aspects of decision making thereby are made logically separable, as pointed out in the introduction. This separation of ''will'' from ''action'' has a very long history, going back at least as far as Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century Common Era, BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asser ...
and the teachings of Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli (; grc-gre, Χρύσιππος ὁ Σολεύς, ; ) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. When Clean ...
(279–206 BCE), who separated external ''antecedent'' causes from the internal disposition receiving this cause.
Steiner then argues that inner freedom is achieved when we integrate our sensory impressions, which reflect the outer appearance of the world, with our thoughts, which lend coherence to these impressions and thereby disclose to us an understandable world. Acknowledging the many influences on our choices, he nevertheless points out that they do not preclude freedom unless we fail to recognise them. Steiner argues that outer freedom is attained by permeating our deeds with ''moral imagination.'' "Moral" in this case refers to action that is willed, while "imagination" refers to the mental capacity to envision conditions that do not already hold. Both of these functions are necessarily conditions for freedom. Steiner aims to show that these two aspects of inner and outer freedom are integral to one another, and that true freedom is only achieved when they are united.
Free will as a pragmatically useful concept
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
' views were ambivalent. While he believed in free will on "ethical grounds", he did not believe that there was evidence for it on scientific grounds, nor did his own introspections support it. Ultimately he believed that the problem of free will was a metaphysical issue and, therefore, could not be settled by science. Moreover, he did not accept incompatibilism as formulated below; he did not believe that the indeterminism of human actions was a prerequisite of moral responsibility. In his work ''Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
'', he wrote that "instinct and utility between them can safely be trusted to carry on the social business of punishment and praise" regardless of metaphysical theories.[James, W. (1907) ''Pragmatism'' (1979 edition). Cambridge, MA: ]Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
He did believe that indeterminism is important as a "doctrine of relief" – it allows for the view that, although the world may be in many respects a bad place, it may, through individuals' actions, become a better one. Determinism, he argued, undermines meliorism
Meliorism (Latin ''melior'', better) is the idea that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which ...
– the idea that progress is a real concept leading to improvement in the world.
Free will and views of causality
In 1739, David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
in his ''A Treatise of Human Nature
'' A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects'' (1739–40) is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, considered by many to be Hume's most important work and one of the ...
'' approached free will via the notion of causality. It was his position that causality was a mental construct used to explain the repeated association of events, and that one must examine more closely the relation between things ''regularly succeeding'' one another (descriptions of regularity in nature) and things that ''result'' in other things (things that cause or necessitate other things).[
] According to Hume, 'causation' is on weak grounds: "Once we realise that 'A must bring about B' is tantamount merely to 'Due to their constant conjunction, we are psychologically certain that B will follow A,' then we are left with a very weak notion of necessity."
This empiricist view was often denied by trying to prove the so-called apriority
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...
of causal law (i.e. that it precedes all experience and is rooted in the construction of the perceivable world):
* Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
's proof in ''Critique of Pure Reason'' (which referenced time and time ordering of causes and effects)
* Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
's proof from ''The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason'' (which referenced the so-called intellectuality of representations, that is, in other words, objects and qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
perceived with senses)
In the 1780s Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
suggested at a minimum our decision processes with moral implications lie outside the reach of everyday causality, and lie outside the rules governing material objects.[
] "There is a sharp difference between moral judgments and judgments of fact… Moral judgments… must be ''a priori'' judgments."[
]
Freeman introduces what he calls "circular causality" to "allow for the contribution of self-organizing dynamics", the "formation of macroscopic population dynamics that shapes the patterns of activity of the contributing individuals", applicable to "interactions between neurons and neural masses… and between the behaving animal and its environment". In this view, mind and neurological functions are tightly coupled in a situation where feedback between collective actions (mind) and individual subsystems (for example, neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...
s and their synapse
In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell.
Synapses are essential to the transmission of nervous impulses from ...
s) jointly decide upon the behaviour of both.
Free will according to Thomas Aquinas
Thirteenth century philosopher Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
viewed humans as pre-programmed (by virtue of being human) to seek certain goals, but able to choose between routes to achieve these goals (our Aristotelian telos
Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of a work of human art. Intentional actualization of potential or inherent purpose,"Telos.''Philosophy Terms'' Retrieved 3 May 2020. ...
). His view has been associated with both compatibilism and libertarianism.
In facing choices, he argued that humans are governed by ''intellect'', ''will'', and ''passions''. The will is "the primary mover of all the powers of the soul… and it is also the efficient cause of motion in the body."[
A discussion of the roles of will, intellect and passions in Aquinas' teachings is found in
] Choice falls into five stages: (i) intellectual consideration of whether an objective is desirable, (ii) intellectual consideration of means of attaining the objective, (iii) will arrives at an intent to pursue the objective, (iv) will and intellect jointly decide upon choice of means (v) will elects execution. Free will enters as follows: Free will is an "appetitive power", that is, not a cognitive power of intellect (the term "appetite" from Aquinas's definition "includes all forms of internal inclination"). He states that judgment "concludes and terminates counsel. Now counsel is terminated, first, by the judgment of reason; secondly, by the acceptation of the appetite hat is, the free-will
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
"
A compatibilist interpretation of Aquinas's view is defended thus: "Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature."
Free will as a pseudo-problem
Historically, most of the philosophical effort invested in resolving the dilemma has taken the form of close examination of definitions and ambiguities in the concepts designated by "free", "freedom", "will", "choice" and so forth. Defining 'free will' often revolves around the meaning of phrases like "ability to do otherwise" or "alternative possibilities". This emphasis upon words has led some philosophers to claim the problem is merely verbal and thus a pseudo-problem.[
] In response, others point out the complexity of decision making and the importance of nuances in the terminology.
Eastern philosophy
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
accepts both freedom and determinism (or something similar to it), but in spite of its focus towards the human agency
Agency may refer to:
Organizations
* Institution, governmental or others
** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients
** Employment agency, a business that ...
, rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources.[Gier, Nicholas and Kjellberg, Paul.]
Buddhism and the Freedom of the Will: Pali and Mahayanist Responses
in Freedom and Determinism. Campbell, Joseph Keim; O'Rourke, Michael; and Shier, David. 2004. MIT Press According to the Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lu ...
, "There is free action, there is retribution, but I see no agent that passes out from one set of momentary elements into another one, except the onnectionof those elements." Buddhists believe in neither absolute free will, nor determinism. It preaches a middle doctrine, named ''pratītyasamutpāda
''Pratītyasamutpāda'' (Sanskrit: प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद, Pāli: ''paṭiccasamuppāda''), commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key doctrine in Buddhism shared by all schools of ...
'' in Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
, often translated as "dependent origination", "dependent arising" or "conditioned genesis". It teaches that every volition is a conditioned action as a result of ignorance. In part, it states that free will is inherently conditioned and not "free" to begin with. It is also part of the theory of karma in Buddhism
Karma (Sanskrit, also ''karman'', Pāli: ''kamma'') is a Sanskrit term that literally means "action" or "doing". In the Buddhist tradition, ''karma'' refers to action driven by intention (''cetanā'') which leads to future consequences. Those i ...
. The concept of karma in Buddhism is different from the notion of karma in Hinduism. In Buddhism, the idea of karma is much less deterministic. The Buddhist notion of karma is primarily focused on the cause and effect of moral actions in this life, while in Hinduism the concept of karma is more often connected with determining one's destiny
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
in future lives.
In Buddhism it is taught that the idea of absolute freedom of choice (that is that any human being could be completely free to make any choice) is unwise, because it denies the reality of one's physical needs and circumstances. Equally incorrect is the idea that humans have no choice in life or that their lives are pre-determined. To deny freedom would be to deny the efforts of Buddhists to make moral progress (through our capacity to freely choose compassionate action). ''Pubbekatahetuvada'', the belief that all happiness and suffering arise from previous actions, is considered a wrong view according to Buddhist doctrines. Because Buddhists also reject agenthood, the traditional compatibilist strategies are closed to them as well. Instead, the Buddhist philosophical strategy is to examine the metaphysics of causality. Ancient India had many heated arguments about the nature of causality with Jain
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...
s, Nyayists, Samkhyists, Cārvākans, and Buddhists all taking slightly different lines. In many ways, the Buddhist position is closer to a theory of "conditionality" (''idappaccayatā
Idappaccayatā (Pali, also ''idappaccayata''; Sanskrit: ''idaṃpratyayatā'') is a Buddhist term that is translated as "specific conditionality" or "this/that conditionality". It refers to the principle of causality: that all things arise and exi ...
'') than a theory of "causality", especially as it is expounded by Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna . 150 – c. 250 CE (disputed)was an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, scholar-saint and philosopher. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers.Garfield, Jay L. (1995), ''The Fundamental Wisdom of ...
in the ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
The ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' ( sa, मूलमध्यमककारिका, ''Root Verses on the Middle Way''), abbreviated as ''MMK'', is the foundational text of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. It was compose ...
''.
Hindu philosophy
The six orthodox ( astika) schools of thought in Hindu philosophy
Hindu philosophy encompasses the philosophies, world views and teachings of Hinduism that emerged in Ancient India which include six systems ('' shad-darśana'') – Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta.Andrew Nicholson (20 ...
do not agree with each other entirely on the question of free will. For the Samkhya
''Samkhya'' or ''Sankya'' (; Sanskrit सांख्य), IAST: ') is a Dualism (Indian philosophy), dualistic Āstika and nāstika, school of Indian philosophy. It views reality as composed of two independent principles, ''purusha, puruṣa' ...
, for instance, matter is without any freedom, and soul lacks any ability to control the unfolding of matter. The only real freedom (''kaivalya'') consists in realizing the ultimate separateness of matter and self. For the Yoga
Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...
school, only Ishvara
''Ishvara'' () is a concept in Hinduism, with a wide range of meanings that depend on the era and the school of Hinduism.Monier Monier Williams, Sanskrit-English dictionarySearch for Izvara University of Cologne, Germany In ancient texts of H ...
is truly free, and its freedom is also distinct from all feelings, thoughts, actions, or wills, and is thus not at all a freedom of will. The metaphysics of the Nyaya
(Sanskrit: न्याय, ''nyā-yá''), literally meaning "justice", "rules", "method" or "judgment",[Vaisheshika
Vaisheshika or Vaiśeṣika ( sa, वैशेषिक) is one of the six schools of Indian philosophy (Vedic systems) from ancient India. In its early stages, the Vaiśeṣika was an independent philosophy with its own metaphysics, epistemolog ...]
schools strongly suggest a belief in determinism, but do not seem to make explicit claims about determinism or free will.
A quotation from Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the intro ...
, a Vedantist, offers a good example of the worry about free will in the Hindu tradition.
However, the preceding quote has often been misinterpreted as Vivekananda implying that everything is predetermined. What Vivekananda actually meant by lack of free will was that the will was not "free" because it was heavily influenced by the law of cause and effect – "The will is not free, it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect, but there is something behind the will which is free."Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the intro ...
(1907) Vivekananda never said things were absolutely determined and placed emphasis on the power of conscious choice to alter one's past Karma in Hinduism, karma: "It is the coward and the fool who says this is his Destiny, fate. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate."
Scientific approaches
Science has contributed to the free will problem in at least three ways. First, physics has addressed the question of whether nature is deterministic, which is viewed as crucial by incompatibilists (compatibilists, however, view it as irrelevant). Second, although free will can be defined in various ways, all of them involve aspects of the way people make decisions and initiate actions, which have been studied extensively by neuroscientists. Some of the experimental observations are widely viewed as implying that free will does not exist or is an illusion (but many philosophers see this as a misunderstanding). Third, psychologists have studied the beliefs that the majority of ordinary people hold about free will and its role in assigning moral responsibility.
Quantum physics
Early scientific thought often portrayed the universe as deterministic – for example in the thought of Democritus or the Cārvākans – and some thinkers claimed that the simple process of gathering sufficient information would allow them to predict future events with perfect accuracy. Modern science, on the other hand, is a mixture of deterministic and stochastic theories. Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
predicts events only in terms of probabilities, casting doubt on whether the universe is deterministic at all, although evolution of the universal state vector is completely deterministic. Current physical theories cannot resolve the question of whether determinism is true of the world, being very far from a potential theory of everything, and open to many different Interpretation of quantum mechanics, interpretations.
Assuming that an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, one may still object that such indeterminism is for all practical purposes confined to microscopic phenomena. This is not always the case: many macroscopic phenomena are based on quantum effects. For instance, some hardware random number generators work by amplifying quantum effects into practically usable signals. A more significant question is whether the indeterminism of quantum mechanics allows for the traditional idea of free will (based on a perception of free will). If a person's action is, however, only a result of complete quantum randomness, mental processes as experienced have no influence on the probabilistic outcomes (such as volition). According to many interpretations, non-determinism enables free will to exist, while others assert the opposite (because the action was not controllable by the physical being who claims to possess the free will).
Genetics
Like physicists, biologists have frequently addressed questions related to free will. One of the most heated debates in biology is that of "nature versus nurture", concerning the relative importance of genetics and biology as compared to culture and environment in human behavior. The view of many researchers is that many human behaviors can be explained in terms of humans' brains, genes, and evolutionary histories. This point of view raises the fear that such attribution makes it impossible to hold others responsible for their actions. Steven Pinker's view is that fear of determinism in the context of "genetics" and "evolution" is a mistake, that it is "a confusion of ''explanation'' with ''exculpation''". Responsibility does not require that behavior be uncaused, as long as behavior responds to praise and blame. Moreover, it is not certain that environmental determination is any less threatening to free will than genetic determination.
Neuroscience and neurophilosophy
It has become possible to study the living Human brain, brain, and researchers can now watch the brain's decision-making process at work. A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their brain; in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential (after German Bereitschaftspotential, which was discovered by Hans Helmut Kornhuber, Kornhuber & Lüder Deecke, Deecke in 1965.). Although it was well known that the readiness potential reliably preceded the physical action, Libet asked whether it could be recorded before the conscious intention to move. To determine when subjects felt the intention to move, he asked them to watch the second hand of a clock. After making a movement, the volunteer reported the time on the clock when they first felt the conscious intention to move; this became known as Libet's W time.
Libet found that the ''unconscious'' brain activity of the readiness potential leading up to subjects' movements began approximately half a second before the subject was aware of a conscious intention to move.
These studies of the timing between actions and the conscious decision bear upon the role of the brain in understanding free will. A subject's declaration of intention to move a finger appears ''after'' the brain has begun to implement the action, suggesting to some that unconsciously the brain has made the decision ''before'' the conscious mental act to do so. Some believe the implication is that free will was not involved in the decision and is an illusion. The first of these experiments reported the brain registered activity related to the move about 0.2 s before movement onset.[
] However, these authors also found that awareness of action was ''anticipatory'' to activity in the muscle underlying the movement; the entire process resulting in action involves more steps than just the ''onset'' of brain activity. The bearing of these results upon notions of free will appears complex.[A brief discussion of possible interpretation of these results is found in ]
Some argue that placing the question of free will in the context of motor control is too narrow. The objection is that the time scales involved in motor control are very short, and motor control involves a great deal of unconscious action, with much physical movement entirely unconscious. On that basis "…free will cannot be squeezed into time frames of 150–350 Millisecond, ms; free will is a longer term phenomenon" and free will is a higher level activity that "cannot be captured in a description of neural activity or of muscle activation…" The bearing of timing experiments upon free will is still under discussion.
More studies have since been conducted, including some that try to:
* support Libet's original findings
* suggest that the cancelling or "veto" of an action may first arise subconsciously as well
* explain the underlying brain structures involved
* suggest models that explain the relationship between conscious intention and action
Benjamin Libet's results are quoted in favor of epiphenomenalism, but he believes subjects still have a "conscious veto", since the readiness potential does not invariably lead to an action. In ''Freedom Evolves
''Freedom Evolves'' is a 2003 popular science and philosophy book by Daniel C. Dennett. Dennett describes the book as an installment of a lifelong philosophical project, earlier parts of which were '' The Intentional Stance'', ''Consciousness Ex ...
'', Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
argues that a no-free-will conclusion is based on dubious assumptions about the location of consciousness, as well as questioning the accuracy and interpretation of Libet's results. Kornhuber and Deecke underlined that absence of conscious will during the early Bereitschaftspotential (termed BP1) is not a proof of the non-existence of free will, as also unconscious agendas may be free and non-deterministic. According to their suggestion, man has relative freedom, i.e. freedom in degrees, that can be increased or decreased through deliberate choices that involve both conscious and unconscious (panencephalic) processes.
Others have argued that data such as the Bereitschaftspotential undermine epiphenomenalism for the same reason, that such experiments rely on a subject reporting the point in time at which a conscious experience occurs, thus relying on the subject to be able to consciously perform an action. That ability would seem to be at odds with early epiphenomenalism, which according to Huxley is the broad claim that consciousness is "completely without any power… as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery".
Adrian G. Guggisberg and Annaïs Mottaz have also challenged those findings.
A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenged assumptions about the causal nature of the readiness potential itself (and the "pre-movement buildup" of neural activity in general), casting doubt on conclusions drawn from studies such as Libet's and Fried's.
A study that compared deliberate and arbitrary decisions, found that the early signs of decision are absent for the deliberate ones.
It has been shown that in several brain-related conditions, individuals cannot entirely control their own actions, though the existence of such conditions does not directly refute the existence of free will. Neuroscientific studies are valuable tools in developing models of how humans experience free will.
For example, people with Tourette syndrome and related tic disorders make involuntary movements and utterances (called tics) despite the fact that they would prefer not to do so when it is socially inappropriate. Tics are described as semi-voluntary or ''unvoluntary'',[Tourette Syndrome Association]
Definitions and Classification of Tic Disorders.
Retrieved 19 August 2006. because they are not strictly ''involuntary'': they may be experienced as a ''voluntary'' response to an unwanted, premonitory urge. Tics are experienced as irresistible and must eventually be expressed.[ People with Tourette syndrome are sometimes able to suppress their tics for limited periods, but doing so often results in an explosion of tics afterward. The control exerted (from seconds to hours at a time) may merely postpone and exacerbate the ultimate expression of the tic.]
In alien hand syndrome, the affected individual's limb will produce unintentional movements without the will of the person. The affected limb effectively demonstrates 'a will of its own.' The sense of agency does not emerge in conjunction with the overt appearance of the purposeful act even though the sense of ownership in relationship to the body part is maintained. This phenomenon corresponds with an impairment in the premotor mechanism manifested temporally by the appearance of the readiness potential recordable on the scalp several hundred milliseconds before the overt appearance of a spontaneous willed movement. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with specialized multivariate analyses to study the temporal dimension in the activation of the cortical network associated with voluntary movement in human subjects, an anterior-to-posterior sequential activation process beginning in the supplementary motor area on the medial surface of the frontal lobe and progressing to the primary motor cortex and then to parietal cortex has been observed. The sense of agency thus appears to normally emerge in conjunction with this orderly sequential network activation incorporating premotor association cortices together with primary motor cortex. In particular, the supplementary motor complex on the medial surface of the frontal lobe appears to activate prior to primary motor cortex presumably in associated with a preparatory pre-movement process. In a recent study using functional magnetic resonance imaging, alien movements were characterized by a relatively isolated activation of the primary motor cortex contralateral to the alien hand, while voluntary movements of the same body part included the natural activation of motor association cortex associated with the premotor process. The clinical definition requires "feeling that one limb is foreign or has a ''will of its own,'' together with observable involuntary motor activity" (emphasis in original). This syndrome is often a result of damage to the corpus callosum, either when it is severed to treat intractable epilepsy or due to a stroke. The standard neurological explanation is that the felt will reported by the speaking left hemisphere does not correspond with the actions performed by the non-speaking right hemisphere, thus suggesting that the two hemispheres may have independent senses of will.
In addition, one of the most important ("first rank") diagnostic symptoms of schizophrenia is the patient's delusion of being controlled by an external force. People with schizophrenia will sometimes report that, although they are acting in the world, they do not recall initiating the particular actions they performed. This is sometimes likened to being a robot controlled by someone else. Although the neural mechanisms of schizophrenia are not yet clear, one influential hypothesis is that there is a breakdown in brain systems that compare motor commands with the feedback received from the body (known as proprioception), leading to attendant hallucinations and delusions of control.
Experimental psychology
Experimental psychology's contributions to the free will debate have come primarily through social psychologist Daniel Wegner's work on conscious will. In his book, ''The Illusion of Conscious Will,'' Wegner summarizes what he believes is empirical evidence supporting the view that human perception of conscious control is an illusion. Wegner summarizes some empirical evidence that may suggest that the perception of conscious control is open to modification (or even manipulation). Wegner observes that one event is inferred to have caused a second event when two requirements are met:
# The first event immediately precedes the second event, and
# The first event is consistent with having caused the second event.
For example, if a person hears an explosion and sees a tree fall down that person is likely to infer that the explosion caused the tree to fall over. However, if the explosion occurs after the tree falls down (that is, the first requirement is not met), or rather than an explosion, the person hears the ring of a telephone (that is, the second requirement is not met), then that person is not likely to infer that either noise caused the tree to fall down.
Wegner has applied this principle to the inferences people make about their own conscious will. People typically experience a thought that is consistent with a behavior, and then they observe themselves performing this behavior. As a result, people infer that their thoughts must have caused the observed behavior. However, Wegner has been able to manipulate people's thoughts and behaviors so as to conform to or violate the two requirements for causal inference. Through such work, Wegner has been able to show that people often experience conscious will over behaviors that they have not, in fact, caused – and conversely, that people can be led to experience a lack of will over behaviors they did cause. For instance, priming (psychology), priming subjects with information about an effect increases the probability that a person falsely believes is the cause. The implication for such work is that the perception of conscious will (which he says might be more accurately labelled as 'the emotion of authorship') is not tethered to the execution of actual behaviors, but is inferred from various cues through an intricate mental process, ''authorship processing''. Although many interpret this work as a blow against the argument for free will, both psychologists and philosophers have criticized Wegner's theories.
Emily Pronin has argued that the subjective experience of free will is supported by the introspection illusion. This is the tendency for people to trust the reliability of their own introspections while distrusting the introspections of other people. The theory implies that people will more readily attribute free will to themselves rather than others. This prediction has been confirmed by three of Pronin and Kugler's experiments. When college students were asked about personal decisions in their own and their roommate's lives, they regarded their own choices as less predictable. Staff at a restaurant described their co-workers' lives as more determined (having fewer future possibilities) than their own lives. When weighing up the influence of different factors on behavior, students gave desires and intentions the strongest weight for their own behavior, but rated personality traits as most predictive of other people.
Caveats have, however, been identified in studying a subject's awareness of mental events, in that the process of introspection itself may alter the experience.
Regardless of the validity of belief in free will, it may be beneficial to understand where the idea comes from. One contribution is randomness. While it is established that randomness is not the only factor in the perception of the free will, it has been shown that randomness can be mistaken as free will due to its indeterminacy. This misconception applies both when considering oneself and others. Another contribution is choice. It has been demonstrated that people's belief in free will increases if presented with a simple level of choice. The specificity of the amount of choice is important, as too little or too great a degree of choice may negatively influence belief. It is also likely that the associative relationship between level of choice and perception of free will is influentially bidirectional. It is also possible that one's desire for control, or other basic motivational patterns, act as a third variable.
Other experiments
Other experiments have also been proposed to test free will. Ender Tosun argues for the reality of free will, based on combined experiments consisting of empirical and thought experiments. In the empirical part of these experiments, experimenter 2 is expected to predict which object experimenter 1 will touch. Experimenter 1 is always able to negate the prediction of experimenter 2. In the thought experiment part, Laplace's demon makes the predictions and experimenter 1 is never able to negate his predictions. Based on the non-correspondence of the predictions of experimenter 2 in the empirical experiment with the predictions of Laplace's demon, and contradictions in the possible layers of causality, Tosun concludes that free will is real. He also extends these experiments to indeterministic processes and real-time brain observations while willing, assuming that an agent has every technological means to probe and rewire his brain. In this thought experiment, experimenter 1 notices the "circuit" of his brain which disables him from willing one of the alternatives, then he probes other circuits to see if he can have the will to rewire that circuit. Experimenter 1 notices that all circuits of his brain being so as to prevent him from rewiring or bypassing the circuits which prevent him from willing to touch one of the objects is impossible.
Believing in free will
Since at least 1959, free will belief in individuals has been analysed with respect to traits in social behaviour. In general, the concept of free will researched to date in this context has been that of the incompatibilist, or more specifically, the libertarian, that is freedom from determinism.
What people believe
Whether people naturally adhere to an incompatibilist model of free will has been questioned in the research. Eddy Nahmias has found that incompatibilism is not intuitive – it was not adhered to, in that determinism does not negate belief in moral responsibility (based on an empirical study of people's responses to moral dilemmas under a deterministic model of reality). Edward Cokely has found that incompatibilism is intuitive – it was naturally adhered to, in that determinism does indeed negate belief in moral responsibility in general. Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols have proposed that incompatibilism may or may not be intuitive, and that it is dependent to some large degree upon the circumstances; whether or not the crime incites an emotional response – for example if it involves harming another human being. They found that belief in free will is a cultural universal, and that the majority of participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism.
Studies indicate that peoples' belief in free will is inconsistent. Emily Pronin and Matthew Kugler found that people believe they have more free will than others.
Studies also reveal a correlation between the likelihood of accepting a deterministic model of mind and personality type. For example, Adam Feltz and Edward Cokely found that people of an extrovert personality type are more likely to dissociate belief in determinism from belief in moral responsibility.
Roy Baumeister and colleagues reviewed literature on the psychological effects of a belief (or disbelief) in free will and found that most people tend to believe in a sort of "naive compatibilistic free will".
The researchers also found that people consider acts more "free" when they involve a person opposing external forces, planning, or making random actions. Notably, the last behaviour, "random" actions, may not be possible; when participants attempt to perform tasks in a random manner (such as generating random numbers), their behaviour betrays many patterns.
Among philosophers
A recent 2020 survey has shown that compatibilism is quite a popular stance among those who specialize in philosophy (59.2%). Belief in libertarianism amounted to 18.8%, while a lack of belief in free will equaled 11.2%.
Among evolutionary biologists
79 percent of evolutionary biologists said that they believe in free will according to a survey conducted in 2007, only 14 percent chose no free will, and 7 percent did not answer the question.
Effects of the belief itself
Baumeister and colleagues found that provoking disbelief in free will seems to cause various negative effects. The authors concluded, in their paper, that it is belief in determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
that causes those negative effects.[ Kathleen Vohs has found that those whose belief in free will had been eroded were more likely to cheat.] In a study conducted by Roy Baumeister, after participants read an article arguing against free will, they were more likely to lie about their performance on a test where they would be rewarded with cash. Provoking a rejection of free will has also been associated with increased aggression and less helpful behaviour. However, although these initial studies suggested that believing in free will is associated with more morally praiseworthy behavior, more recent studies (including direct, multi-site replications) with substantially larger sample sizes have reported contradictory findings (typically, no association between belief in free will and moral behavior), casting doubt over the original findings.
Moreover, whether or not these experimental findings are a result of actual manipulations in belief in free will is a matter of debate.[ First of all, free will can at least refer to either Libertarianism (metaphysics), libertarian (indeterministic) free will or Compatibilism, compatibilistic (deterministic) free will. Having participants read articles that simply "disprove free will" is unlikely to increase their understanding of determinism, or the compatibilistic free will that it still permits.][ In other words, experimental manipulations purporting to "provoke disbelief in free will" may instead cause a belief in ]fatalism
Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are tho ...
, which may provide an alternative explanation for previous experimental findings. To test the effects of belief in determinism, it has been argued that future studies would need to provide articles that do not simply "attack free will", but instead focus on explaining determinism and compatibilism.[
Baumeister and colleagues also note that volunteers disbelieving in free will are less capable of counterfactual thinking.][ This is worrying because counterfactual thinking ("If I had done something different…") is an important part of learning from one's choices, including those that harmed others. Again, this cannot be taken to mean that belief in determinism is to blame; these are the results we would expect from increasing people's belief in fatalism.][
Along similar lines, Tyler Stillman has found that belief in free will predicts better job performance.
]
In theology
Christianity
The notions of free will and predestination are heavily debated among Christians. Free will in the Christian sense is the ability to choose between good or evil. Among Catholics, there are those holding to Thomism, adopted from what Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
put forth in the ''Summa Theologica.'' There are also some holding to Molinism which was put forth by Jesuit priest Luis de Molina. Among Protestants there is Arminianism, held primarily by the Methodist Churches, and formulated by Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius; and there is also Calvinism held by most in the Reformed tradition which was formulated by the French Reformed theologian, John Calvin. John Calvin was heavily influenced by Augustine of Hippo views on predestination put forth in his work ''On the Predestination of the Saints.'' Martin Luther seems to hold views on predestination similar to Calvinism in his ''On the Bondage of the Will,'' thus rejecting free will. In condemnation of Calvin and Luther views, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent declared that "the free will of man, moved and excited by God, can by its consent co-operate with God, Who excites and invites its action; and that it can thereby dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of justification. The will can resist grace if it chooses. It is not like a lifeless thing, which remains purely passive. Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race (Sess. VI, cap. i and v)." John Wesley, the father of the Methodist tradition, taught that humans, enabled by prevenient grace, have free will through which they can choose God and to do good works, with the goal of Christian perfection. Upholding synergism (the belief that God and man cooperate in salvation), Methodism teaches that "Our Lord Jesus Christ did so die for all men as to make salvation attainable by every man that cometh into the world. If men are not saved that fault is entirely their own, lying solely in their own unwillingness to obtain the salvation offered to them. (John 1:9; I Thess. 5:9; Titus 2:11-12)."
Paul the Apostle discusses Predestination in some of his Epistles.
"''For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.''" —Epistle to the Romans, Romans 8:29–30
"''He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.''" —Epistle to the Ephesians, Ephesians 1:5
There are also mentions of moral freedom in what are now termed as 'Deuterocanonical' works which the Orthodox and Catholic Churches use. In Sirach 15 the text states:
"Do not say: "It was God's doing that I fell away," for what he hates he does not do. Do not say: "He himself has led me astray," for he has no need of the wicked. Abominable wickedness the Lord hates and he does not let it happen to those who fear him. God in the beginning created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of God. Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand. Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them. Immense is the wisdom of the Lord; mighty in power, he sees all things. The eyes of God behold his works, and he understands every human deed. He never commands anyone to sin, nor shows leniency toward deceivers."
- Ben Sira 15:11-20 NABRE
The exact meaning of these verses has been debated by Christian theologians throughout history.
Judaism
In Jewish thought the concept of "Free will" (Hebrew: bechirah chofshit בחירה חפשית, bechirah בחירה) is foundational.
The most succinct statement is by Maimonides, in a two part treatment, where human free will is specified as part of the universe's Jewish principles of faith#God is the creator of the universe, Godly design:
#Maimonides's reasoned that human beings must have free will (at least in the context of choosing to do good or evil), as without this, the demands of Nevi'im#Latter Prophets, the prophets would have been meaningless, there would be no need for the Torah and mitzvah, ''Mitzvot'' ("commandments"), and Jewish principles of faith#Reward and punishment, justice could not be administered.
#At the same time, Maimonides - and other thinkers - recognizes the Free will in theology#The paradox of free will, paradox that will arise given (i) that Judaism simultaneously recognizes God's omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an God#General conceptions, attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In B ...
, and further (ii) the nature of Divine providence in Judaism, Divine providence as understood in Judaism. (In fact the problem may be seen to overlap Jewish principles of faith#Nature of God, several others in Jewish Philosophy.)
Islam
In Islam the theological issue is not usually how to reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge, but with God's ''jabr'', or divine commanding power. Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, al-Ash'ari developed an "acquisition" or "dual-agency" form of compatibilism, in which human free will and divine ''jabr'' were both asserted, and which became a cornerstone of the dominant Ash'ari position. In Shia Islam, Ash'aris understanding of a higher balance toward predestination
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby G ...
is challenged by most theologians. Free will, according to Islamic doctrine is the main factor for man's accountability in his/her actions throughout life. Actions taken by people exercising free will are counted on the Day of Judgement because they are their own; however, the free will happens with the permission of God.
Others
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard claimed that divine omnipotence cannot be separated from divine goodness. As a truly omnipotent and good being, God could create beings with true freedom over God. Furthermore, God would voluntarily do so because "the greatest good… which can be done for a being, greater than anything else that one can do for it, is to be truly free." Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a contemporary expansion of this theme, adding how God, free will, and problem of evil, evil are consistent.
Some philosophers follow William of Ockham in holding that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient.[Ockham, William. Predestination, God's Knowledge, and Future Contingents, early 14th century, trans. Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann 1982, Hackett, esp pp. 46–47] Some philosophers follow Philo of Alexandria, a philosopher known for his homocentrism, in holding that free will is a feature of a human's Soul (spirit), soul, and thus that non-human animals lack free will.[H.A. Wolfson, ''Philo'', 1947 Harvard University Press; Religious Philosophy, 1961 Harvard University Press; and "St. Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy" in Religious Philosophy]
See also
* Agency in Mormonism
* Angst#Existentialist angst
* Argument from free will
* Buridan's ass
* De libero arbitrio (Augustine book), ''De libero arbitrio'' – early treatise about the freedom of will by Augustine of Hippo
* Free will theorem
* Locus of control
* Karma
* Prevenient grace
* Problem of mental causation
* Prospection
* Superdeterminism
* True Will
* Voluntarism (philosophy)
References
Citations
Bibliography
* Hawking, Stephen, and Mlodinow, Leonard, ''The Grand Design'', New York, Bantam Books, 2010.
* Horst, Steven (2011)
''Laws, Mind, and Free Will.''
(MIT Press)
Sri Aurobindo about freedom and free will
PDF)
*
Further reading
* Daniel Dennett, Dennett, Daniel C. (2003). ''Freedom Evolves
''Freedom Evolves'' is a 2003 popular science and philosophy book by Daniel C. Dennett. Dennett describes the book as an installment of a lifelong philosophical project, earlier parts of which were '' The Intentional Stance'', ''Consciousness Ex ...
''. New York: Viking Press
* Joshua M. Epstein, Epstein J.M. (1999). ''Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science.'' Complexity, IV (5).
* Gazzaniga, M. & Steven, M.S. (2004) Free Will in the 21st Century: A Discussion of Neuroscience and Law, in Garland, B. (ed.) ''Neuroscience and the Law: Brain, Mind and the Scales of Justice'', New York: Dana Press, , pp. 51–70.
*
*
*
* Harnad, Stevan (2009) The Explanatory Gap #
PhilPapers
'
* Sam Harris (author), Harris, Sam. 2012. ''Free Will''. Free Press.
* Douglas Hofstadter, Hofstadter, Douglas. (2007) ''I Am A Strange Loop.'' Basic Books.
* Kane, Robert (1998). ''The Significance of Free Will.'' New York: Oxford University Press
* Lawhead, William F. (2005). ''The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach.'' McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages .
* Libet, Benjamin; Anthony Freeman; and Keith Sutherland, eds. (1999). ''The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will''. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic. Collected essays by scientists and philosophers.
* Muhm, Myriam (2004). Abolito il libero arbitrio – Colloquio con Wolf Singer. ''L'Espresso'' 19.08.200
larchivio.org
* Andrzej Nowak (psychologist), Nowak A., Vallacher R.R., Tesser A., Borkowski W. (2000). Society of Self: The emergence of collective properties in self-structure. ''Psychological Review.'' 107
* Arthur Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer, Arthur (1839). ''On the Freedom of the Will
''On the Freedom of the Will'' (german: Ueber die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens) is an essay presented to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in 1839 by Arthur Schopenhauer as a response to the academic question that they had posed: "Is ...
.'', Oxford: Basil Blackwell .
* Tosun, Ender (2020)
Free Will Under the Light of the Quran
* Van Inwagen, Peter (1986). ''An Essay on Free Will.'' New York: Oxford University Press .
* Velmans, Max (2003) ''How Could Conscious Experiences Affect Brains?'' Exeter: Imprint Academic .
* Dick Swaab, Wij Zijn Ons Brein, Publishing Centre, 2010.
*
* Williams, Clifford (1980). ''Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue''. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company
* John Baer, James C. Kaufman, Roy F. Baumeister (2008). ''Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will''. Oxford University Press, New York
* George Musser, "Is the Cosmos Random? (Albert Einstein, Einstein's assertion that God does not play dice with the universe has been misinterpreted)", ''Scientific American'', vol. 313, no. 3 (September 2015), pp. 88–93.
External links
*
*
Fate, Freedom and Neuroscience
– a debate on whether free will is an illusion and pre-determined by the Institute of Art and Ideas, featuring Oxford neuroscientist Nayef Al Rodhan, psychiatrist and broadcaster Mark Salter, and LSE philosopher Kristina Musholt.
*
*
* ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' entries:
*
"Foreknowledge and Free Will"
by Norman Swartz
*
"Free Will"
by Kevin Timpe
*
"Medieval Theories of Free Will"
by Colleen McClusky
*
"Middle Knowledge"
by John D. Laing
* ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' entries:
*
"Free Will"
by Timothy O'Connor
*
"Incompatibilism"
by Randolph Clarke
*
"Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will"
by Linda Zagzebski
*
"Hume on Free Will"
by Paul Russell
*
"Free Will"
by Galen Strawson
Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British analytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, and the self), John Locke, David Hume, ...
in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"Free Will"
in Catholic Encyclopedia
The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website
edited by Ted Honderich
Ted Honderich (born 30 January 1933) is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.
Biography
Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich o ...
"Freedom and the Laws of Nature"
by Steven Horst (The Montréal Review)
{{citizendium, title=Free will
Free will,
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Causality
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Concepts in metaphysics
Philosophical problems
Philosophy of life
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