Part 5

Free Will

Wednesday, October 23, 13

Determinism

The thesis of determinism: There are exceptionless laws of nature that, together with the totality of past circumstances, determine all events, including human choice, and rule out any alternative possibilities.

What does determinism imply?

Wednesday, October 23, 13

Two Camps

Incompatibilism: Free will is incompatible with determinism.

Perhaps because the principle of alternate possibilities is true (one is morally responsible for what one does only if one could have done otherwise).

Compatibilism: Free will and determinism are compatible.

Perhaps because free actions are determined by psychological states of the agent, and this is compatible with determinism.

Wednesday, October 23, 13

Frankfurt-Style Cases

Black wants Jones to perform action x. Suppose that Black can bring about whatever conditions necessary to ensure that Jones does x and not some other thing. But suppose also that Black never has to intervene because Jones decides to do x and does x for reasons of his own.

The case is such that (i) Jones could not have done otherwise than x, but (ii) Jones is morally responsible for doing x.

So it is a counterexample to the principle of alternate possibilities.

Are you convinced?

Wednesday, October 23, 13

The Dilemma of DeterminismThe universe is either deterministic or

indeterministic. We must choose which is the correct view on the basis of which option seems more rational to us.

The strength of the deterministic view is founded on the apparent irrationality of chance, which is implied by indeterminism.

But to say that something is chance is only to say that it is not necessitated by what came before it, things might have been otherwise. It is not to say anything about the thing in question.

Wednesday, October 23, 13

The Dilemma of DeterminismWe make judgments of regret. We wish that

things had been otherwise than they are.But on the deterministic view, the universe

forms a single whole that could not have been otherwise. To judge that this one event is bad is to judge that the entire universe of which it is a necessary part is bad.

Determinism pushes us from judgments of regret to pessimism.

Wednesday, October 23, 13

The Dilemma of DeterminismWe might escape by abandoning our judgments of

regret. But then we face a logical predicament. These judgments themselves exist, and so they are just as necessary as the bad events they are about.

Determinism presents a dilemma: Either evil is necessary, or error is necessary.

We can escape the dilemma by accepting indeterminism. Our judgments of regret presuppose genuine possibilities and thus chance. This seems to be the better option because it entails fewer difficulties.

Wednesday, October 23, 13

Hume on Cause and EffectAll ideas originate in sense impressions.

We have no original idea of causal power. Rather, we experience the constant conjunction of events in many similar instances and, by habit, infer that the one is the cause of the other.

We can define a cause to be one object followed by another, where all objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second.

Wednesday, October 23, 13

Hume on Liberty and NecessityWe assume that the connection between physical

objects and their effects is different than the connection between our motives and actions.

But we are mistaken. In any case, effects are events constantly conjoined to causes and inferred from them by a habit of mind.

By liberty we can mean only the power to act or not according to the determinations of the will. And this does not conflict with the doctrine of necessity properly understood. Surely our behavior follows with some uniformity from our motives.

For the two doctrines to conflict, one must define liberty as action in accordance with chance. This

Wednesday, October 23, 13