The Freewill Question

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For the purposes of this question, I am assuming that some form of physicalism holds. When I read about hard determinism and compatibilism, it struck me that they seem to be placing different Kevin 2 Can strong omnipotence be decomposed into logically possible and logically impossible aspects? A lot of debate in the "omnipotent being" or "omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, etc. I consider the "strong form" of LightCC 1 4 Can the Universe be deterministic and still allow free will?

As asked in the title, can a Universe Sadiq Ahmed 11 1. Free will in the face of determinism? Does the notion of an all-powerful God conflict with the idea of free will? In Abrahamic religions, God is often believed to be wholly omnipotent. People also seem to believe that humans have "free will", esp. What is the difference between intension and intention? What is the difference between intention and intension? If one intends to do something is this intent part of the concept of intension?

It seems to me that talk about free will is premature, until 'will' itself has been examined. As Hume noted, we don't have any direct experience of "causality" Ameet Sharma 3 Did Thomas Aquinas state randomness as a prerequisite of free will? Does any one know where he expressed this Why would a God create animals that manifest homosexual behavior if he thought that homosexuality is a sin? There are some people who think that homosexuality is a choice. They would argue that we can make this choice because we have free will. I will focus on those who think this way because of religious Andrei Geanta 1 9.

Is the B-theory of time compatible with libertarian free will? As I understand the B-theory of time it says that we can talk about things happening in time just by using tenseless sentences — which for me implies that the past, present and future are equally real Is there a third way, distinct from determinism and randomness? It seems to me Dave 3, 9 Sketch of a proof for real free will? I have read many contemporary philosophers and the mainstream view seems to be that real free will is an illusion in the sense that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon which is only set on top of Is there freedom in determinism?

I'm contemplating the idea that regardless of whether or not there is randomness involved in physics, the universe is still pretty much deterministic in the way of our actions being defined by physics CuriousWebDeveloper 1 9. Is compatibilism still considered a valid approach to free will? Robert Haraway 4. Have there been any proposed empirical tests for free will?

Have any observational, i. That is, given an arbitrary entity, how would one test whether it has free will. Trouble understanding Chomsky's answers on the free will question Now, I don't think there's any scientific grasp, any hint of an idea, as to how to explain free will. Suppose somebody argues that free will is an illusion. This could be the case, but I don't The very fluffy Panda Are there philosophers who have considered free will for agents who are not considered rational?

The tag for "free-will" currently has the following with my emphasis in bold: Frank Hubeny 6, 5 13 Free Will and Intelligence What is the relation between free will and intelligence. I'll identify free will with conscious mind and wonder what their relation is. Obviously there is free will without intelligence. 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. In Elbow Room , Dennett presents an argument for a compatibilist theory of free will, which he further elaborated in the book Freedom Evolves. 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. Therefore, all of our actions are controlled by forces outside ourselves, or by random chance. In the philosophy of decision theory , 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 and other philosophical problems pose questions about free will and predictable outcomes of choices.

Compatibilist models of free will often consider deterministic relationships as discoverable in the physical world including the brain. Cognitive naturalism [] is a physicalist approach to studying human cognition and consciousness 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 and cognitive robots , and so must be studied by the methods of empirical science, such as the behavioral and cognitive sciences i.

Overall brain health, substance dependence , depression , and various personality disorders clearly influence mental activity, and their impact upon volition is also important. The "will" is disconnected from the freedom to act. This situation is related to an abnormal production and distribution of dopamine in the brain. 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.

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. According to him, physical, psychological and rational restrictions can interfer at different levels of the causal chain that would naturally lead to action.

Corrrespondingly, 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. The suicidal agents were not conscious that their free will have been manipulated by external, even if ungrounded, reasons. Some philosophers' views are difficult to categorize as either compatibilist or incompatibilist, hard determinist or libertarian. For example, Ted Honderich 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: 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. David Hume 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. Arthur Schopenhauer put the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in these terms:.

But a posteriori , through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns In his essay On the Freedom of the Will , Schopenhauer 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.

However, will [urging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring] as noumenon is free.

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Rudolf Steiner , 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 — initially divides this into the two aspects of freedom: 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 and the teachings of Chrysippus — 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 point 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. 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. William James ' 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. 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 , 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. 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.

This empiricist view was often denied by trying to prove the so-called apriority of causal law i. In the s Immanuel Kant 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. 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 Thirteenth century philosopher Thomas Aquinas 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.

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 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". Now counsel is terminated, first, by the judgment of reason; secondly, by the acceptation of the appetite [that is, the free-will].

A compatibilist interpretation of Aquinas's view is defended thus: 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: 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. 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 fourth century BCE and Epictetus 1st century CE ; "it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over 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. Science has contributed to the free will problem in at least three ways.

First, physics has addressed the question 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. Modern science, on the other hand, is a mixture of deterministic and stochastic theories. 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 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. 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, and mental processes as experienced have no influence on the probabilistic outcomes such as volition , [27] 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.

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. 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.

It has become possible to study the living brain , and researchers can now watch the brain's decision-making process at work. 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. The bearing of these results upon notions of free will appears complex. 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 " 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 , Daniel Dennett 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.

According to their suggestion, man has relative freedom, i. 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". A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS [] 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.

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 , [] because they are not strictly involuntary: Tics are experienced as irresistible and must eventually be expressed. 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 afflicted individual's limb will produce unintentional movements without the will of the person.

The affected limb effectively demonstrates 'a will of its own. This phenomenon corresponds with an impairment in the premotor mechanism manifested temporally by the appearance of the readiness potential see section on the Neuroscience of Free Will above 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. 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 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. 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 '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:.

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.

For instance, priming subjects with information about an effect increases the probability that a person falsely believes is the cause. 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.

Psychologists have shown that reducing a person's belief in free will makes them less helpful and more aggressive. 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. Miles contradicts the idea that free will has prosocial benefits, recognizing that many distinguished minds have already brought up the negative effects that such a belief would ensure. Miles analyzed the methods of popular studies and concluded that such research purported to be examining associations between behavior and disbelief in free will are actually examining the associations between behavior and belief in fatalism.

While evidence of the negative effects of a belief in fatalism is legitimate, the research fails to study the effects of belief on free will which they claim to discuss. This occurrence is due to an incorrect understanding and implication that fatalism accompanies determinism. Fatalism is distinguished by the idea that decisions lack effect on the future because everything is determined. Conversely, determinism is the belief that everything operates under cause and effect; every action determines a reaction. Determinism, therefore emphasizes the importance and responsibility one has in decision making as every choice will have an accompanying effect.

Ultimately, the point of this research is to encourage accurate knowledge of the free will debate when conducting and evaluating such studies in experimental psychology. Regardless of the validity of, or benefit of, belief in free will, it may be beneficial to understand where the idea comes from. One contribution is randomness. This misconception applies both when considering oneself and others. Another contribution is 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. In recent years, 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.

Whether people naturally adhere to an incompatibilist model of free will has been questioned in the research. 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. The first part of their analysis which the only relevant part to this section was not meant to discover the types of free will that actually exist. The researchers instead sought to identify what people believe, how many people believed it, and the effects of those beliefs.

Baumeister 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. More than a half of surveyed people were US Americans. 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 that causes those negative effects. 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, "provoking disbelief in free will" probably causes a belief in fatalism. Fatalism, then, may be what threatens people's sense of self-efficacy. Lay people should not confuse fatalism with determinism, and yet even professional philosophers occasionally confuse the two.

It is thus likely that the negative consequences below can be accounted for by participants developing a belief in fatalism when experiments attack belief in "free will". Some studies have been conducted indicating that people react strongly to the way in which mental determinism is described, when reconciling it with moral responsibility. Eddy Nahmias has noted that when people's actions are framed with respect to their beliefs and desires rather than their neurological underpinnings , they are more likely to dissociate determinism from moral responsibility.

Various social behavioural traits have been correlated with the belief in deterministic models of mind, some of which involved the experimental subjection of individuals to libertarian and deterministic perspectives. After researchers provoked volunteers to disbelieve in free will, participants lied, cheated, and stole more. Kathleen Vohs has found that those whose belief in free will had been eroded were more likely to cheat.

Baumeister and colleagues also note that volunteers disbelieving in free will are less capable of counterfactual thinking. Along similar lines, Tyler Stillman has found that belief in free will predicts better job performance. The six orthodox astika schools of thought in Hindu philosophy do not agree with each other entirely on the question of free will. For the Samkhya , 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.

The metaphysics of the Nyaya and Vaisheshika 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 , a Vedantist , offers a good example of the worry about free will in the Hindu tradition. Therefore we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by conditions of time, space and causality.

To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here. However, the preceding quote has often been misinterpreted as Vivekananda implying that everything is predetermined. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate. Buddhism accepts both freedom and determinism or something similar to it , but in spite of its focus towards the human agency, rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources. It preaches a middle doctrine, named pratitya-samutpada in Sanskrit , often translated as "inter-dependent arising".

This theory is also called "Conditioned Genesis" or " Dependent Origination ". 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.

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 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. 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 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 Methodist and some Baptist , 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 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. Paul the Apostle discusses Predestination in some of his Epistles. As we understand desert, if an agent deserves blame, then we have a strong pro tanto reason to blame him simply in virtue of his being accountable for doing wrong.

Importantly, these reasons can be outweighed by other considerations. While an agent may deserve blame, it might, all things considered, be best to forgive him unconditionally instead. When an agent is morally responsible for doing something wrong, he is blame worthy: However, it would seem unfair to treat agents in these ways unless their actions were up to them. Thus, we arrive at the core connection between free will and moral responsibility: Consequently, we can assess analyses of free will by their implications for judgments of moral responsibility.

We note that some might reject the claim that free will is necessary for moral responsibility e. In what follows, we focus our attention on the two most commonly cited features of free will: While some seem to think that free will consists exclusively in either the freedom to do otherwise van Inwagen or in sourcehood Zagzebski , we think that the majority of philosophers hold that free will involves both conditions—though philosophers often emphasize one condition over the other depending on their dialectical situation or argumentative purposes cf.

Questions tagged [free-will]

In what follows, we will describe the most common characterizations of these two conditions. For most newcomers to the problem of free will, it will seem obvious that an action is up to an agent only if she had the freedom to do otherwise. But what does this freedom come to? The freedom to do otherwise is clearly a modal property of agents, but it is controversial just what species of modality is at stake. It must be more than mere possibility: A more plausible and widely endorsed understanding claims the relevant modality is ability or power Locke [], II.

Locke ; Clarke ; Vihvelin But abilities themselves seem to come in different varieties Lewis ; Horgan ; van Inwagen , ch. A satisfactory account of the freedom to do otherwise owes us both an account of the kind of ability in terms of which the freedom to do otherwise is analyzed, and an argument for why this kind of ability as opposed to some other species is the one constitutive of the freedom to do otherwise. As we will see, philosophers sometimes leave this second debt unpaid. As we saw above, classical compatibilists Hobbes [], []; Locke []; Hume [], []; Edwards []; Moore ; Schlick ; Ayer sought to analyze the freedom to do otherwise in terms of a simple conditional analysis of ability:.

Part of the attraction of this analysis is that it obviously reconciles the freedom to do otherwise with determinism. There are two problems with the Simple Conditional Analysis. The first is that it is, at best, an analysis of free action, not free will cf. Reid []; Chisholm ; , ch. It only tells us when an agent has the ability to do otherwise, not when an agent has the ability to choose to do otherwise. One might be tempted to think that there is an easy fix along the following lines:. The problem is that we often fail to choose to do things we want to choose, even when it appears that we had the ability to choose otherwise one might think the same problem attends the original analysis.

Suppose that, in deciding how to spend my evening, I have a desire to choose to read and a desire to choose to watch a movie. Suppose that I choose to read. By all appearances, I had the ability to choose to watch a movie. I do desire to choose to watch a movie and yet I do not choose to watch a movie.

2. The Nature of Free Will

It is unclear how to remedy this problem. Hobbes [], []; Edwards []. The problem is that this assumes, implausibly, that we always choose what we most strongly desire for criticisms of this view see Reid []; Campbell ; Wallace ; Holton But each of these proposals is also problematic.

Even if there are fixes to these problems, there is a yet deeper problem with these analyses. There are some agents who clearly lack the freedom to do otherwise and yet satisfy the conditional at the heart of these analyses. That is, although these agents lack the freedom to do otherwise, it is, for example, true of them that if they chose otherwise, they would do otherwise. Picking up on an argument developed by Keith Lehrer ; cf. Campbell ; Broad ; Chisholm , consider an agoraphobic, Luke, who, when faced with the prospect of entering an open space, is subject not merely to an irresistible desire to refrain from intentionally going outside, but an irresistible desire to refrain from even choosing to go outside.

It may well nevertheless be true that if Luke chose to go outside, then he would have gone outside. After all, any possible world in which he chooses to go outside will be a world in which he no longer suffers to the same degree from his agoraphobia, and thus we have no reason to doubt that in those worlds he would go outside as a result of his choosing to go outside.

While simple conditional analyses admirably make clear the species of ability to which they appeal, they fail to show that this species of ability is constitutive of the freedom to do otherwise. Agents need a stronger ability to do otherwise than characterized by such simple conditionals. Some argue that the fundamental source of the above problems is the conditional nature of these analyses Campbell ; Austin ; Chisholm ; Lehrer ; van Inwagen , ch.

He lacks the ability to do otherwise than refrain from choosing to go outside, according to this analysis, because there is no possible world in which he suffers from his agoraphobia and yet chooses to go outside. If the Categorical Analysis is correct, then free will is incompatible with determinism.

According to the thesis of determinism, all deterministic possible worlds with the same pasts and laws of nature have the same futures Lewis ; van Inwagen , 3. Therefore, John lacked the ability, and thus freedom, to raise his hand. This argument, carefully articulated in the late s and early s by Carl Ginet , and Peter van Inwagen , and refined in important ways by John Martin Fischer , has come to be known as the Consequence Argument.

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born [i. Therefore, the consequences of these things including our present acts are not up to us. Like the Simple Conditional Analysis , a virtue of the Categorical Analysis is that it spells out clearly the kind of ability appealed to in its analysis of the freedom to do otherwise, but like the Simple Conditional Analysis , critics have argued that the sense of ability it captures is not the sense at the heart of free will.

The objection here, though, is not that the analysis is too permissive or weak, but rather that it is too restrictive or strong. While there have been numerous different replies along these lines e. See the entry on arguments for incompatibilism for a more extensive discussion of and bibliography for the Consequence Argument , the most influential of these objections is due to David Lewis Weak Thesis I am able to do something such that, if I did it, a law of nature would be broken.

While it is absurd to think that humans are able to do something that is a violation of a law of nature or causes a law of nature to be broken, there is nothing incredible, so Lewis claimed, in thinking that humans are able to do something such that if they did it, a law of nature would be broken. In essence, Lewis is arguing that incompatibilists like van Inwagen have failed to adequately motivate the restrictiveness of the Categorical Analysis.

But there is a different and often overlooked problem for Lewis: One might think that ii and iii are incompatible with i. Consider again Luke, our agoraphobic. Suppose that his agoraphobia affects him in such a way that he will only intentionally go outside if he chooses to go outside, and yet his agoraphobia makes it impossible for him to make this choice. Moreover, Luke is not able to choose or cause himself to choose to go outside. Intuitively, this would seem to imply that Luke lacks the freedom to go outside. But this implication does not follow for Lewis. For other important criticisms of Lewis, see Ginet [, ch.

Lewis must point out a principled difference between these two cases. As should be clear from the above, the Simple Conditional Analysis is of no help. However, some recent work by Michael Smith , Kadri Vihvelin ; , and Michael Fara have attempted to fill this gap.

It is important to note that Vihvelin [] has come to reject the view that free will consists exclusively in the kind of ability analyzed below. Revised Conditional Analysis of Ability: This analysis appears to afford Vihvelin the basis for a principled difference between agoraphobics and merely determined agents.

But appearances can be deceiving. The new dispositionalist claims have received some serious criticism, with the majority of the criticisms maintaining that these analyses are still too permissive Clarke ; Whittle ; Franklin b. The Categorical Analysis , and thus incompatibilism about free will and determinism, remains an attractive option for many philosophers precisely because it seems that compatibilists have yet to furnish an analysis of the freedom to do otherwise that implies that phobics clearly lack the ability to choose or do otherwise that is relevant to moral responsibility and yet some merely determined agents have this ability.

Some have tried to avoid these lingering problems for compatibilists by arguing that the freedom to do otherwise is not required for free will or moral responsibility. In a ground-breaking piece, Harry Frankfurt presented a series of thought experiments intended to show that it is possible that agents are morally responsible for their actions and yet they lack the ability to do otherwise.

Wolf , 3—4; Fischer , 3; Mele , 17 , then if Frankfurt-style cases show that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, then they also show that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise. Let us consider this challenge in more detail. Imagine, if you will, that Black is a quite nifty and even generally nice neurosurgeon. Jones, meanwhile, knows nothing of this.

Fischer draws two interrelated conclusions from this case. The first, negative conclusion, is that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. Jones is unable to refrain from deciding to vote for Clinton, and yet, so long as Jones decides to vote for Clinton on his own, his decision is free and one for which he is morally responsible. The second, positive conclusion, is that freedom and responsibility are functions of the actual sequence.

What matters is not whether the agent had the ability to do otherwise, but whether he was the source of his actions. The success of Frankfurt-style cases is hotly contested. According to this criticism, proponents of Frankfurt-style cases face a dilemma: But if the connection is nondeterministic, then it is possible even in the absence of showing any inclination to decide to vote for Bush, that Jones decides to vote for Bush, and so he retains the ability to do otherwise.

Either way Frankfurt-style cases fail to show that Jones is both morally responsible for his decision and yet is unable to do otherwise. While some have argued that even Frankfurt-style cases that assume determinism are effective see, e. Supposing that Frankfurt-style cases are successful, what exactly do they show? In our view, they show neither that free will and moral responsibility do not require an ability to do otherwise in any sense nor that compatibilism is true. The Consequence Argument raises a powerful challenge to the cogency of compatibilism.

But if Frankfurt-style cases are successful, agents can act freely in the sense relevant to moral responsibility while lacking the ability to do otherwise in the all-in sense. This allows compatibilists to concede that the all-in ability to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism, and yet insist that it is irrelevant to the question of the compatibility of determinism with moral responsibility and perhaps even free will, depending on how we define this cf.

But, of course, showing that an argument for the falsity of compatibilism is irrelevant does not show that compatibilism is true. Thus, if successful, Frankfurt-style cases would be at best the first step in defending compatibilism. The second step must offer an analysis of the kind of sourcehood constitutive of free will that entails that free will is compatible with determinism cf. At best, Frankfurt-style cases show that the ability to do otherwise in the all-in sense —in the sense defined by the Categorical Analysis —is not necessary for free will or moral responsibility cf.

To appreciate this, let us assume that in the above Frankfurt-style case Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise in the all-in sense: Even if this is all true, it should take only a little reflection to recognize that in this case Jones is able to do otherwise in certain weaker senses we might attach to that phrase, and compatibilists in fact still think that the ability to do otherwise in some such senses is necessary for free will and moral responsibility. Consequently, even though Frankfurt-style cases have, as a matter of fact, moved many compatibilists away from emphasizing ability to do otherwise to emphasizing sourcehood, we suggest that this move is best seen as a weakening of the ability-to-do-otherwise condition on moral responsibility.

A potentially important exception to this claim is Sartorio [], who appealing to some controversial ideas in the metaphysics of causation appears to argue that no sense of the ability to do otherwise is necessary for control in the sense at stake for moral responsibility, but instead what matters is whether the agent is the cause of the action. In this section, we will assume that Frankfurt-style cases are successful in order to consider two prominent compatibilist attempts to construct analyses of the sourcehood condition though see the entry on compatibilism for a more systematic survey of compatibilist theories of free will.

The first, and perhaps most popular, compatibilist model is a reasons-responsiveness model. While compatibilists develop this kind of account in different ways, the most detailed proposal is due to John Martin Fischer , , , ; Fischer and Ravizza For similar compatibilist treatments of reasons-responsiveness, see Wolf , Wallace , Haji , Nelkin , McKenna , Vargas , Sartorio One mechanism they often discuss is practical deliberation. For example, in the case of Jones discussed above, his decision to vote for Clinton on his own was brought about by the process of practical deliberation.

What must be true of this process, this mechanism, for it to be moderately reasons-responsive? Fischer and Ravizza maintain that moderate reasons-responsiveness consists in two conditions: The second condition is more important for us in the present context. Fischer and Ravizza argue that the kind of reasons-reactivity at stake is weak reasons-reactivity, where this merely requires that there is some possible world in which the laws of nature remain the same, the same mechanism operates, there is a sufficient reason to do otherwise, and the mechanism brings about this the alternative action in response to this sufficient reason 73— Fischer and Ravizza offer a novel and powerful theory of freedom and responsibility, one that has shifted the focus of recent debate to questions of sourcehood.

Moreover, one might argue that this theory is a clear improvement over classical compatibilism with respect to handling cases of phobia. By focusing on mechanisms, Fischer and Ravizza can argue that our agoraphobic Luke is not morally responsible for deciding to refrain from going outside because the mechanism that issues in this action—namely his agoraphobia—is not moderately reasons-responsive.

There is no world with the same laws of nature as our own, this mechanism operates, and yet it reacts to a sufficient reason to go outside. No matter what reasons there are for Luke to go outside, when acting on this mechanism, he will always refrain from going outside cf. As we have just seen, Fischer and Ravizza place clear modal requirements on mechanisms that issue in actions with respect to which agents are free and morally responsible. Indeed, this should be clear from the very idea of reasons-responsiveness.

Whether one is responsive depends not merely on how one does respond, but also on how one would respond. Thus, any account that makes reasons-responsiveness an essential condition of free will is an account that makes the ability to do otherwise, in some sense, necessary for free will Fischer [forthcoming] concedes this point, though, as noted above, the reader should consider Sartorio [] as a potential counterexample to this claim.

The second main compatibilist model of sourcehood is an identification model. Accounts of sourcehood of this kind lay stress on self-determination or autonomy: Like the contemporary discussion of the ability to do otherwise, the contemporary discussion of the power of self-determination begins with the failure of classical compatibilism to produce an acceptable definition. While Hobbes seems willing to accept this implication [], 78 , most contemporary compatibilists concede that this result is unacceptable.

The idea is that while agents are not or at least may not be identical to any motivations or bundle of motivations , they are identified with a subset of their motivations, rendering these motivations internal to the agent in such a way that any actions brought about by these motivations are self -determined. The identification relation is not an identity relation, but something weaker cf.

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What the precise nature of the identification relation is and to which attitudes an agent stands in this relation is hotly disputed. Lippert-Rasmussen helpfully divides identification accounts into two main types. The second are authenticity accounts, according to which agents are identified with attitudes that reveal who they truly are But see Shoemaker for an ecumenical account of identification that blends these two accounts. Proposed attitudes to which agents are said to stand in the identification relation include higher-order desires Frankfurt , cares or loves Frankfurt , ; Shoemaker ; Jaworska ; Sripada , self-governing policies Bratman , the desire to make sense of oneself Velleman , , and perceptions or judgments of the good or best Watson ; Stump ; Ekstrom ; Mitchell-Yellin According to classical compatibilists, the only kind of constraint is external e.

Identification theorists have the resources to concede that some constraints are internal. For example, they can argue that our agoraphobic Luke is not free in refraining from going outside even though this decision was caused by his strongest desires because he is not identified with his strongest desires. On compatibilist identification accounts, what matters for self-determination is not whether our actions are determined or undetermined, but whether they are brought about by motives with which the agent is identified: It is important to note that while we have distinguished reasons-responsive accounts from identification accounts, there is nothing preventing one from combing both elements in a complete analysis of free will.

Even if these reasons-responsive and identification compatibilist accounts of sourcehood might successfully side-step the Consequence Argument, they must come to grips with a second incompatibilist argument: Suppose Diana succeeds in her plan and Ernie murders Jones as a result of her manipulation. Many judge that Ernie is not morally responsible for murdering Jones even though he satisfies both the reasons-responsive and identification criteria. There are two possible lines of reply open to compatibilists.

On the soft-line reply, compatibilists attempt to show that there is a relevant difference between manipulated agents such as Ernie and agents who satisfy their account McKenna , For example, Fischer and Ravizza propose a second condition on sourcehood: The problem with this reply is that we can easily imagine Diana creating Ernie so that his murdering Jones is a result not only of a moderately reasons-responsive mechanism, but also a mechanism for which he has taken responsibility.

On the hard-line reply, compatibilists concede that, despite initial appearances, the manipulated agent is free and morally responsible and attempt to ameliorate the seeming counterintuitiveness of this concession McKenna , — Some take the lesson of the Manipulation Argument to be that no compatibilist account of sourcehood or self-determination is satisfactory. Libertarians, while united in endorsing this negative condition on sourcehood, are deeply divided concerning which further positive conditions may be required.

It is important to note that while libertarians are united in insisting that compatibilist accounts of sourcehood are insufficient, they are not committed to thinking that the conditions of freedom spelled out in terms either of reasons-responsiveness or of identification are not necessary. Moreover, while this section focuses on libertarian accounts of sourcehood, we remind readers that most if not all libertarians think that the freedom to do otherwise is also necessary for free will and moral responsibility.

There are three main libertarian options for understanding sourcehood or self-determination: Non-causal libertarians contend that exercises of the power of self-determination need not or perhaps even cannot be caused or causally structured. According to this view, we control our volition or choice simply in virtue of its being ours—its occurring in us. We do not exert a special kind of causality in bringing it about; instead, it is an intrinsically active event, intrinsically something we do.

While there may be causal influences upon our choice, there need not be, and any such causal influence is wholly irrelevant to understanding why it occurs. Reasons provide an autonomous, non-causal form of explanation. Provided our choice is not wholly determined by prior factors, it is free and under our control simply in virtue of being ours. Non-causal views have failed to garner wide support among libertarians since, for many, self- determination seems to be an essentially causal notion cf.

Most libertarians endorse an event-causal or agent-causal account of sourcehood. Imagine a would-be accomplice of an assassin believes that his dropping his cigarette is the signal for the assassin to shoot his intended victim and he desires to drop his cigarette and yet this belief and desire so unnerve him that he accidentally drops his cigarette. While the event of dropping the cigarette is caused by a relevant desire and belief it does not seem to be self-determined and perhaps is not even an action [cf. To fully spell out this account, event-causal libertarians must specify which mental states and events are apt cf.

Brand —which mental states and events are the springs of self-determined actions—and what nondeviance consists in cf. We note that this has proven very difficult, enough so that some take the problem to spell doom for event-causal theories of action. See Stout for a brisk survey of discussions of this topic. While historically many have thought that nondeterministic causation is impossible Hobbes [], []; Hume [], [] , with the advent of quantum physics and, from a very different direction, an influential essay by G.

Anscombe , it is now widely assumed that nondeterministic or probabilistic causation is possible. There are two importantly different ways to understand nondeterministic causation: Given that event-causal libertarians maintain that self-determined actions, and thus free actions, must be caused, they are committed to the probability of causation model of nondeterministic causation cf. We note that Balaguer [] is skeptical of the above distinction, and it is thus unclear whether he should best be classified as a non-causal or event-causal libertarian though see Balaguer [] for evidence that it is best to treat him as a non-causalist.

Agent-casual libertarians contend that the event-causal picture fails to capture self-determination, for it fails to accord the agent with a power to settle what she does. Pereboom offers a forceful statement of this worry:. On an event-causal libertarian picture, the relevant causal conditions antecedent to the decision, i. In fact, because no occurrence of antecedent events settles whether the decision will occur, and only antecedent events are causally relevant, nothing settles whether the decision will occur.

Pereboom , 32; cf. But what more must be added? Agent-causal libertarians maintain that self-determination requires that the agent herself play a causal role over and above the causal role played by her reasons. But all agent-causal libertarians insist that exercises of the power of self-determination do not reduce to nondeterministic causation by apt mental states: Agent-causal libertarianism seems to capture an aspect of self-determination that neither the above compatibilists accounts nor event-causal libertarian accounts capture.

Some compatibilists even accept this and try to incorporate agent-causation into a compatibilist understanding of free will. See Markosian , ; Nelkin These accounts reduce the causal role of the self to states and events to which the agent is not identical even if he is identified with them. But how can self -determination of my actions wholly reduce to determination of my actions by things other than the self? Richard Taylor nicely expresses this intuition: Despite its powerful intuitive pull for some, many have argued that agent-causal libertarianism is obscure or even incoherent.

With respect to the first worry, it is widely assumed that the only or at least best way to understand reasons-explanation and motivational influence is within a causal account of reasons, where reasons cause our actions Davidson ; Mele For further discussion see the entry on incompatibilist nondeterministic theories of free will.

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