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Summary A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will
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Chapter 1 – The Free Will ProblemThree important concepts: Freedom, responsibility, determinism
Surface freedom: Ability to make choices that satisfy our desires
But if our desires are manipulated by others, this is not real freedom: freedom of the will. Real
freedom is to have power over what we will.
Two utopian novels: Brave New World and Walden Two. In the first, lower class people are
drugged so that they never want what they cannot have. In the second, desires and purposes
are controlled by behavioural engineers through conditioning. People are free to do anything
they want, but they are not free to choose what they want. Their wills are determined by
forces beyond their control. They have only surface freedom. The question is: Is freedom
beyond surface freedom possible? In ordinary life, we are also heavily influenced by
upbringing and social factors. According to Skinner, being the creators of our will is
impossible.
Responsibility:
Genes and environment influence a person’s criminal behaviour. Is it entirely determined by
these factors or is does he also play a role in becoming the sort of person who cannot help but
commit a crime today? Is he merely a victim or does he have some responsibility? If no
responsibility, then no accountability, praise or blame.
Determinism:
A determined event is inevitable or necessary. If an act is determined, the person could not
have done otherwise, he doesn’t really have choice, the source of his actions is not really in
him. Thus he is not free or responsible. Freedom requires multiple options from which we
choose. It requires that the future is open, not already determined.
Two questions:
1. Is determinism really true?
2. Does it really conflict with free will?
We no longer live in a Newtonian, deterministic universe. Quantum physics entails
indeterminism and uncertainty. This is not just epistemological (human limitations) but also
ontological uncertainty. But there are four reasons why these developments did not make the
world a safe place for free will:
1. Quantum indeterminism is mysterious and we don’t know how to interpret it.
2. Human behaviour may be determined even if elementary particles are not.
3. Even if quantum events in the brain produce undetermined choices and behaviours, these
are not really free but just random. Randomness is not freedom.
, 4. Developments in psychology and neuroscience seem to support determinism of human
choice and behaviour by causes beyond our control.
But if determinism is in fact compatible with free will, we need not worry about these
developments. We shall deal with the compatibility question in the next chapter.
Chapter 2 – Compatibilism
Classical compatibilists: Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Mill
According to classical compatibilism, freedom is
1) the power to do what one wants, and
2) the absence of constraints (physical restraints, coercion, compulsion) that prevent us to
exercise this power.
Freedom in this sense can exist even if determinism is true. But what about freedom to do
otherwise? You would have done otherwise if you had wanted to, if your internal states had
been different.
But isn’t this just surface freedom, freedom to do as we choose? What about deeper freedom,
freedom of the will, freedom to choose? Compatibilists have two responses:
1. Free choices can be treated just as free actions. If the two conditions above hold, choices
can also be said to be free. If we are not brainwashed or under hypnosis, that is, if our choices
or desires are not externally manipulated, we can say they are free.
2. Freedom in any deeper sense is incoherent. It is impossible to do otherwise if everything
(external and internal) were the same. You cannot choose something else if you are in the
same circumstances, have the same desires and beliefs, go through the same deliberation, etc.
It is not just impossible but it makes no sense.
Confusions about determinism (according to compatibilists):
1. Determinism is not constraint, coercion or compulsion. Determinism does not prevent us
from doing what we want.
2. Causes of actions are not necessarily constraints. If our actions are caused by our beliefs
and desires, characters and motives, they are free. In fact, this is what they make them our
actions, actions for which we are responsible.
3. Determinism is not control or manipulation by other agents. Nature does not “control” us
because it is not an agent with beliefs and desires.
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