Free will, a concept as intriguing as it is complex. Delve into the labyrinth of choice, autonomy, and determinism. Unravel the philosophical, scientific, and ethical implications of this profound notion. Prepare to challenge your understanding and reshape your perspective on free will.
Need to know
All your choices are in a sense inevitable
- We live in a universe governed by cause and effect
- Nothing happens without a cause and none of those causes is a choice
- Voluntarist free will therefore appears to be an illusion
- Freedom is not the ability to act randomly, without any control about what effects follow
- The final nail in free will’s coffin came from neuroscience
- Various brain studies have claimed to show that actions are initiated in the brain before we have any awareness of having made a decision
- Actions are determined by unconscious, unchosen brain processes
Why it matters
Adopting the compatibilist view of free will encourages a more humane society
- It tells us we shouldn’t just let people off the hook, but we should also become more aware of what has shaped people’s behavior and therefore be more understanding of it
- Compatibilism also allows for the undeniable fact that what we think changes how we act
- Many of our decisions are made unconsciously
Links & Books
A much fuller account of the problem and my preferred solution can be found in my book Freedom Regained: The Possibility of Free Will (2015).
- I discuss some of the issues of the book in this video talk for the Weekend University and in this episode of ABC’s podcast The Philosopher’s Zone.
- The book Four Views on Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (2007) by John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom and Manuel Vargas gives a thorough overview of the contemporary philosophical debate.
Think it through
It would be quixotic to deny both the findings of neuroscience and the fact that the world is governed by laws of physical cause and effect
- A better strategy is to think again about what free will means
- Having voluntarist free will would mean being entirely capricious
- Our freedom to choose matters precisely because it reflects our personalities, preferences and values, not because it can override them
- The constraints upon our choices allow for the concept of character
- Every choice we make will be the one that, at the time, best matches our motivations, conscious and unconscious
- Praise and blame don’t depend on absolute freedom
- Responsibility does not need to be ultimate to be real
- To accept that one has done wrong and take responsibility for it is to resolve to try not to do it again and to put right anything that went wrong
How to think about free will
All your choices are in a sense inevitable
- There’s no escaping the chain of cause and effect
- Even quantum physics and the randomness of quantum causation cannot offer us an escape
- The constraints upon our choices allow for the concept of character
- Praise and blame don’t depend on absolute freedom
- It’s useful to feel you could have done things differently, even if it’s a fiction
