This is a quick look at issues concerning the nature of free agency.
| Determinism |
Here are three more or less equivalent ways of defining determinism:
1. Everything has a sufficient cause. (A "sufficient cause" is a cause which suffices to insure that the event in question will take place.)
2. The facts about the state of the universe at a given time, together with the laws of nature, imply the state of the universe at any later time.
3. If one knew enough about the state of the universe at a given time, and the laws of nature, and had sufficient computational power, one could predict the state of the universe at any later time.
It should be noted that quantum physics is generally believed to show that determinism is false. Nevertheless, it remains an interesting issue whether freedom is compatible with determinism, because (1) it is not clear that quantum indeterminacies have an effect on human action, and (2) if they do, it is hard to see how this could be the sort of effect which helps make it intelligible how we could be free.
Classification of Views about Free Will |
| determinism is true | determinism is false | |
| free will is compatible with determinism (i.e. compatibilism is true) | soft determinism | [no name] |
| free will is not compatible with determinism (i.e. incompatibilism is true) | hard determinism | libertarianism |
Note: the view that there are causal constraints on action, but that our actions are not entirely determined by these constraints, is not soft determinism. Rather, it is a version of libertarianism. Determinism is the view that every event is completely determined by prior causal factors, so any view that denies this cannot be a version of determinism.
| Attempts to Define Freedom |
It is interesting to attempt to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for an action to be free. Incompatibilists (hard determinists and libertarians) hold that one necessary condition of an action's being free is that it is not (completely) caused. This clearly does not provide a sufficient condition, since various subatomic events (e.g. the decay of a radioactive atom on a particular date) are not completely caused, but are also not therefore free.
Compatibilists think that in fact not being caused is not only not a sufficient condition for freedom, but not even a necessary condition. The basic trouble with the idea that free actions must be uncaused, in their view, is that, to the extent that an action is uncaused, it seems to be random: we happen to perform one action, but there is no explanation of why we performed this action instead of some other. This seems to reduce the realm of free action to utterly trivial decisions: if I am completely indifferent as between chocolate and strawberry, then my decision between the two flavors might be random or arbitrary in the relevant sense. But the cases in which we are most interested in freedom of action are cases in which we do have reasons that favor one action over another. It seems that in such cases there is an explanation of why we perform the action in question instead of some other action, and the fact that there is an explanation of the action seems to imply that it is caused. The view of compatibilists, then, is that free actions are not uncaused actions, but rather actions that are caused in a particular way.
A first attempt at a compatibilist definition might be this:
1. An action is free if and only if its cause is internal to the agent rather than external to the agent.
However, this clearly is not a successful definition, since an action can have internal causes and yet not be free (for example, sneezing has internal causes but is not a free action). A second attempt might be:
2. An action is free if and only if it is caused by the agent's beliefs and desires.
This seems much more plausible. However, there still appear to be counterexamples -- that is, cases in which an action is caused by an agent's beliefs and desires and yet is not a free action. Apparent counterexamples include:
brainwashing (I act because of my beliefs and desires, but my beliefs and perhaps desires have not been acquired normally, but rather in a sense forced on me)
addiction (I act because of my beliefs and desires, but my desires have been affected by my addiction)
coercion (I act becaue of my beliefs and desires, but someone has manipulated the situation in such a way that the only options open to me are options I would not normally choose)
lying (I do something because of my beliefs and desires, but I have acquired some of the beliefs because someone lied to me)
A compatibilist might argue that the first two counterexamples rest on mistakes about brainwashing and addiction, and that in the second two cases we actually are free in the relevant sense. Or the compatibilist might agree that these are counterexamples to the proposed definition, and try to construct a more sophisticated definition. One direction in which such a definition might go is the following attempt to define freedom in terms of rationality:
3. An action is free if and only if: (a) it is performed by a rational person, and (b) it is caused by beliefs and desires which make that particular action rational. A person is rational if and only if (i) the person has beliefs and desires (thus a person in a coma cannot act freely); (ii) these beliefs and desires make one's actions rational (thus if one is forced or compelled to do something against one's will, one's action is not free); (iii) one's beliefs and desires are open to modification in the face of incoming information and considerations of coherence (thus the actions of the brainwashed or addicted person are not free, because their beliefs and desires are extremely resistant to change even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are mistaken or harmful).
Last update: April 16, 2001. |