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Responsibility & Free Will

Section 2Laws of Nature, ‘Ought’ &

‘Can’

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Laws of Nature

The discovery of laws of nature gave a boost to determinism in the seventeenth century.

If they apply to all events, then all events are in principle predictable.

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Explained all events including human actions as resulting from mechanical forces.

Human freedom simply consists in actions being unimpeded by external obstacles.

Determinism can thus be redefined as the belief that every event is in principle predictable by reference to laws of nature & antecedent states of the world.

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To Consider

Why do you think Hobbes’s attempt to explain human action mechanically, & to construe human liberty as action unimpeded by external obstacles revived compatibilism?

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Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688)

Replied that freedom consists not just in unimpededness but in the power to act or react in more than one way.

Yet this power is present in a limited range of circumstances only.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

Was also opposed to belief in liberty to act/react indifferently.

But held that agents are free to respond to a range of motives, which ‘incline without necessitating’.

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David Hume (1711-1776)

Defined necessity, causation & liberty in ways intended to show that they’re compatible.

Actions are everywhere constantly conjoined to motives just as effects are to causes.

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But…

Hume fails to clarify whether agents are ever free in the same circumstances, & with the same antecedents of actions in place, to act or nor to act.

This is a problem for his defence of compatibilism.

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Held that the moral law depends on human freedom, for ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (& ‘ought to do otherwise’ implies ‘is able to do otherwise’).

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Robert Stern

Argues that while we can argue from people’s obligations to their capacities, we cannot argue from the limits of our capacities to our obligations being limited.

Also argues that Kant doesn’t argue in the latter way, as opposed to moving from the moral law to agents’ capability of compliance with it.

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Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

Rejects necessitation by motives.

It’s not motives that cause actions but agents.

He is thus the modern progenitor of the agent-causation theory of free & responsible action.

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Reid

Denies that agents are propelled by ‘the strongest motive’, but holds that motives resemble advocates, & that agents, who resemble judges, need not be swayed by them, & can sometimes resist them.

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Agent-causation

Reid’s theory of agent-causation resuscitates, in response to determinism & compatibilism, Aristotle’s belief that voluntary action is caused by agents.

These two philosophers shared similar methods too.