13 Free Will and Determinism USE THESE NEXT

13. Free Will and Determinism

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What is determinism? • Determinism states that there are laws of nature which govern everything that happens and that all our actions are the result of these scientific laws and every choice we make was determined by the situation immediately before it, and that situation was determined by the situation before it and so on as far back as you want to go. • Freedom of choice is just an illusion and so personal responsibility is a meaningless concept, as are blame and punishment.

What is determinism? • Hard determinists accept determinism and reject freedom and moral responsibility. • Libertarians reject determinism and accept freedom and moral responsibility. • Soft determinists or compatibilists reject the two previous views that free will and determinism are incompatible and argue that freedom is not only compatible with determinism but actually requires it.

Determinism • Determinism states that everything in the universe has a prior cause, including all human actions and choices. • This means that all our decisions, viewpoints and opinions can be best understood when translated into the neutral language of natural science. • This view has a long history and may be seen in the fatalism of Greek tragedy, in which people are the helpless victims of circumstances, necessity and the Fates.

Hard determinism Hard determinists are called ‘hard’ because their position is very strict: • according to hard determinism all our actions had prior causes – we are neither free nor responsible. • Hard determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility, and as all our actions are caused by prior causes we are not free to act in any other way. • A person is like a machine, and if a machine is faulty it just needs fixing.

Libertarianism • The view of those who reject determinism and say we have complete moral responsibility is called libertarianism, as they believe determinism is false and we have free will. • Libertarians say that the ideas of cause and effect cannot be applied to human behaviour and choices; we do have freedom to act and we are morally responsible for our actions.

Genetics and environment • The influence of environment, upbringing and education upon our actions, and so our lack of responsibility for them, is illustrated by the Leopold and Loeb Case in 1924, when Clarence Darrow (1857– 1938), an American lawyer and civil libertarian, defended two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, on a charge of murdering a young boy, Bobby Franks. • The perfect crime the two men planned went wrong and in the subsequent court case Darrow, their defence lawyer, pleaded for the death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment, as the two young murderers were the product of their upbringing, their ancestry and their wealthy environment.

Free will curtailed by volition • According to Thomas Hobbes, free will means that a person can act freely and could choose to act in a different way if the person decided to. • If someone’s free will is denied through some form of constraint or, for example, through rape, it is because someone else is overriding the victim’s own preferences and choices. • So you could also say that a person who is not in control of their actions through drink or drugs also has no freedom of choice in their decisions.

Free will curtailed by volition • However, we do need to consider what sort of freedom our minds actually have – our choices are curtailed by our knowledge, our values and how we see both ourselves and our environment. • Not only are our choices curtailed by external influences: they are curtailed also by our past thoughts and past decisions. • Nor can our choices do the impossible – we cannot fly using our own bodies just because we freely will to do so.

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Soft determinism • Soft determinism says that some of our actions are determined but that we are morally responsible for our actions. • Soft determinists argue that there is confusion between determinism and fatalism about what we mean by freedom of choice. • Freedom of choice is not compatible with fatalism, ‘what ever will be’, which says that nobody can change the course of events, but it is compatible with determinism, a theory of universal causation, if we include our own values, choices and desires among the choices that determine our actions.

Soft determinism • Soft determinists agree that all human actions are caused, since if they were not they would be unpredictable and random. • They mean that, when an individual’s actions are free, they are not forced or compelled by any external pressure.

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A religious perspective on libertarianism • The idea of libertarianism is that people are free to make autonomous decisions, free from constraint and coercion. • Initially this idea seems to fit well with Christianity, which talks of Jesus setting people free. • However, the New Testament writers do not mean that people are free to do as they like. • The epistle of James refers twice to ‘the law of liberty’ and at first this seems a bit odd, as laws usually prevent us from doing things.

A religious perspective on libertarianism Free Will Defence theory: • Humans have to be free to choose God, as he does not want autonomous robotic people who are determined to choose him, he wants them to choose good but if that is the case there must also be the possibility for people to choose evil. • The Free Will Defence explains why God created us free, and justifies evil.

The conflict of free wills • If God knows everything and all our actions are predetermined, then we have no free choices, no free will. • This also means that there can be no praise or blame for any of our actions – they were simply inevitable. • God, with his foreknowledge, not only knows exactly what choices we will make but actually chooses what we would choose. • He knows what will influence our choices, and he controls these factors.

Predestination – a religious perspective on determinism • Within the Judaeo-Christian tradition humans are in general considered to be autonomous and morally responsible to God. • However, the more God’s omniscience and omnipotence are stressed, the greater a problem our free will becomes. If God is omniscient then he knows every decision we make – does this then mean that our future is already decided by God?

Predestination – a religious perspective on determinism • It is important to consider what Paul actually meant by ‘predestined’. • The Greek word used here means ‘set before’ or ‘resolve’. • Rather than the traditional understanding of predestination, this seems to imply that God knew beforehand that there would be people open to the gospel and willing to answer God’s call. • However, God does not determine how each person will respond – that is up to us.