Free Will and Determinism

At one point during the philosophy course which resulted in this page, we were assigned a paper supporting either free will or determinism. I decided to be ornery and support neither. I instead decided to answer the following question: "Defend hard incompatibilism (the belief that neither free will nor determinism exist). Include discussion of how the arguments of well-known philosophers apply to this viewpoint." So without further ado, here is my response to that question.

Many philosophers have argued in favor of either free will, determinism, or the mutual compatibility of both. However, few have supported hard incompatibilism, the view that neither free will or determinism can exist. As it turns out, many of the arguments attempting to support compatibilism (the theory that free will and determinism can coexist) can be reversed and used to support hard incompatibilism. In this essay, I will first defend hard incompatibilism using my own arguments, and then I will demonstrate how the arguments of other philosophers can be used to support this stance.

To begin this defense, I will define some of the key terms involved. Free will in this essay will be defined, as it was by Hobart, to mean implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert implying, after an act has been performed, that one could have done otherwise than one did. For determinism, van Inwagen s definition will be used, to whit: (a) For every instant of time, there is a proposition that expresses the state of the world at that instant, and (b) If A and Bare any propositions that express the state of the world at some instants, then the conjunction ofA with the laws of physics entails B. Given these definitions, it is fairly simple to show that freewill and determinism do not match with what we know about the actual laws of physics.

First of all, determinism conflicts directly with most interpretations of quantum mechanics. Were the deterministic hypothesis true, the exact outcome of any experiment could be completely and accurately predicted each time the experiment is performed. However, according to quantum physics, the outcomes of experiments can only be predicted probabilistically; though repeated experiments will eventually match predictions, each individual experiment is unpredictable. The classic metaphor for this is Schrodinger s Cat. In the Schrodinger s Cat thought experiment, a cat is placed in a closed box along with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison. If the atom decays, the Geiger counter will detect it, releasing the poison and killing the cat. After, say, an hour, the atom has a fifty percent chance of decaying. Is the cat alive or dead? Classical determinism would demand that we give a hard answer to that question; either the cat is alive or dead. Quantum mechanics, however, says that the answer can be probabilistic; the cat is fifty percent alive and fifty percent dead. Each time you run the experiment, the cat will be either alive or dead in an essentially random fashion; only over a number of experiments will the results match the theory. So, for these reasons classical determinism does not match with the observed reality.

One could counter the above criticism of determinism, claiming that while rigid determinism may not be true, a form of probabilistic determinism could take its place without much effect on philosophy. However, I would claim that this statement is false, and that rigid determinism is very different philosophically than probabilistic determinism. The key feature of rigid determinism is inevitability; if the deterministic hypothesis is true, than the choices that one will make are already written in stone, and free will must deal with that. With probabilistic determinism, however, nothing is certain; essentially anything could happen, though not with equal probabilities. Therefore, because rigid determinism cannot exist, and probabilistic determinism does not fill the void left, determinism cannot be valid. Note also that because determinism is so easily invalidated, the rest of this essay will concern the validity of free will.

Disproving free will is a little bit tricker, but still fairly simple. According to the laws of physics, every action has a cause (perhaps a probabilistic cause, but a cause nonetheless). While this might have interesting implications for the beginning of the universe, it does make free will very difficult. What cause creates one s free will choice? If it just comes from the interaction of atoms within one s brain, then this is not true free will; those atomic interactions were somehow caused by outside events, and one s choice was not truly free. But if that choice was not caused by some interaction of atom s within one s brain, then what caused it? Is there some form of extra- material stuff that interacts with people s brains and gives them choices? Is there any way to prove the existence of this stuff beyond philosophical theorizing? Of these two possibilities, it s clear that the second one makes the more unlikely claim. Furthermore, they both make the same predictions. Since the illusion of free will would feel the same as true free will, the fact that people feel free will does not support either claim over the other. Occam s Razor says that when two theories make the same predictions, one should assume the simpler theory to be true until proven otherwise. Since both free will and the illusion of free will make the same predictions, and free will demands the existence of non-material stuff that interacts with the material world, Occam s Razor suggests that free will is most likely not true.

Ironically enough, one of the best arguments in favor of hard incompatibilism was written by Hobart in his defense of compatibilism. In this defense, he brings up the question of what free will actually means. He creates a straw man of the indeterminist, claiming that the alternative to determinism is having one s decisions made randomly by a separate moral entity than one s actual character. To elaborate: The indeterminist, according to Hobart, believes that people have two distinct elements: their moral views, character, opinions, etc., and the I which actually makes decisions. This I takes the opinions of the person s main character into account when making decisions, but can overrule these if it so desires. Thus, the I is truly free to do as it pleases. However, as Hobart points out, this conception of the I is at odds both with everyday experience and with moral philosophy. We feel as though are morals, character, etc. have a direct effect on our actions, not an indirect one; even when we seem to choose something contrary to our desires, it is always the case that we had conflicting desires, and one of these won. Also, if it is the I which makes choices, not one s moral character, then what use is praise and punishment? These only affect the moral character, but if the I is responsible for choices, then the punishment and praise are going to the wrong entity. Clearly, the concept of an I which makes decisions independently of the moral character is nonsensical.

Hobart then jumps to a conclusion with which I do not agree. He suggests that because the moral character of a person determines that person s actions, that person has free will. Perhaps in some limited sense, this might be the case; if one s will is defined based on one s moral character, then one is going to end up doing whatever that will says. However, this goes directly against Hobart s own definition of free will, to whit that after an act has been performed, that one could have done otherwise than one did. If one s will is defined based on one s moral character, and one s moral character is defined based on one s environment and upbringing, there doesn t seem to be much room for a could have done otherwise to enter. It would appear, in fact, that there is no room for free will anywhere. As Hobart points out, some form of moral I doesn t make logical sense; neither does the concept of extra-material stuff that I raised a few paragraphs back. If free will can only be allowed by redefining will to be environmentally determined, then truly free will cannot exist.

The previous paragraph raises the question of where free will could fit in a picture of the decision-making process. In his analysis of this, Hobart classified the decision-making process as having three elements: the wish, the will, and the action. First, one wishes to do something, then one builds up the will to do it, and then one does it. In the view of Hobart s indeterminist, the I sits between the wish and the will. It takes the advice of the wish, and based on that and its own inherent properties, formulates the will to either conduct or not conduct the act. However, it has already been seen that such an I doesn t make sense; if the wish does not directly create the will, morality breaks down. So where else can free will be placed? Can it sit between the will and the action? That would be an troubling universe; one would try and do things, but find oneself unable to do so; perhaps one s legs might spontaneously walk off without any command to do so. In any event, this possibility can also be ruled out. Thus, the free will sits before the wish, as in Frankfurt s view of second-order desires. So how does the free will create our wishes? One cannot recurse forever; that would be turtles all the way down. Either the free will bases its choices on the environment, or it bases them randomly. Neither of these are true examples of freedom of choice; in the first, our will is based on the environment, and is therefore not truly free; in the second, our will is random, but this still is not a true freedom of choice.

In the end, it would appear that Hobart was right about one thing: the conventional definition of free will doesn t make much sense in a practical context. After having been killed, Schrodinger s cat could have done otherwise were the experiment re-ran. However, this by no means implies that the cat freely chose to die. Likewise, assuming one s decisions are reasonably logical, one would make the same decision given the opportunity to do so; therefore one could nothave done otherwise without being illogical, and the decision to make decisions logically was presumably arrived at in a similar manner. So conventional free will is nonsensical. Most authors overcome this obstacle by covertly redefining free will to mean freedom for the will to directly affect one s actions. However, this definition is still at odds with most people s common sense definition of free will; in this system, while choices are caused by your character, they aren t so much chosen by you as chosen for you by your environment. And since most people consider freewill to mean that your choices are made by you, this second academic definition also does notmake sense. If there does not exist a definition of free will which holds up both to logical and intuitive scrutiny, then free will does not exist. And as determinism also cannot exist (as shown with the discussion of quantum mechanics), only the hard incompatibilist point of view is supported by the facts.