The Problem of Free Will

A Contemporary Introduction

Mathew Iredale

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317547648
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Do we really have freedom to act, or are we slaves to our genes, environment or culture? Regular TPM columnist Mathew Iredale gets to grips with one of the most intractable issues in philosophy: the problem of free will. Iredale explores what it is about the free will problem that makes it so hard to resolve and argues that the only acceptable solution to the free will problem must be one that is consistent with what science tells us about the world. It is here, maintains Iredale, that too many works on free will, introductory or otherwise, fall down, by focusing only on how free will relates to determinism. Iredale shows that there are clear areas of scientific research which are directly and significantly relevant to free will in a way that does not involve determinism. Although these areas of scientific research do not allow us to solve the problem, they do allow us to separate the more plausible ideas concerning free will from the less plausible.

1

Introduction

All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Dr Samuel Johnson

What is it about free will that makes it such a difficult problem? One obvious answer is its complexity. Although philosophers refer to the problem of free will, it is in fact made up of a number of interrelated problems: Do we have free will? Why do we think that we have free will? What affects or limits our free will? Do such affecting or limiting factors apply equally to everyone? How is free will related to moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism (the thesis that there is only one physically possible future or only one physically possible outcome following a series of events)? This last question raises what is for many philosophers the core problem of free will. Over the centuries the determining agent has varied (fate, God, the laws of nature or logic, our heredity and environment, and social conditioning, to name the most obvious contenders), but the overall fear has remained the same: are we determined to make the decisions that we make, and if we are, in what meaningful or valuable sense, if any, are our decisions free?

Since at least the seventeenth century, the free will debate has been dominated by three main groups, defined by their attitude to determinism. Those who believe that free will is incompatible with determinism are known, with admirable clarity, as incompatibilists. They can be divided into two opposing groups. Those incompatibilists who reject determinism because they believe that we have free will are known as libertarians. Those incompatibilists who deny that we have free will because they believe that we are determined are known as hard determinists. The other main group, those who believe that free will is compatible with determinism, are known as compatibilists. In contrast to hard determinists, compatibilists used to be called soft determinists, but as few compatibilists now defend the view that we live in a deterministic universe (they only argue that if we did, we could still be free), this term has become almost redundant. In a similar fashion, some of those who would have traditionally been called hard determinists now go by the term hard incompatibilist. They are agnostic about whether we actually live in a deterministic or indeterministic universe but argue that free will is incompatible with either possibility.

Although determinism still dominates many of the current debates about free will, it is important to realize that for some philosophers determinism is just a side issue. Nicholas Maxwell, for example, argues that the traditional formulation of the problem “Is free will compatible with determinism?” should be replaced by “Is free will compatible with what modern science tells us about the universe?” (Maxwell 2005; Iredale 2009). Galen Strawson argues that the central issue of the free will problem is the logical impossibility of absolute or ultimate responsibility (G. Strawson 1986), while for Richard Double it is that free will is not a logically coherent concept (Double 1991b). To such philosophers, determinism is at best an irrelevance, a distraction from the real issues to be tackled, and at worst the cause of years and years of misguided and wasted time and effort.

Compatibilism, libertarianism and hard determinism were once thought to exhaust the possibilities as far as responses to the free will problem are concerned. That they do not is clear from the work of Strawson and Double, and also from an increasing number of others who have proposed alternative solutions to the problem. One of these is John Martin Fischer, who defends what he calls the metacompatibilist view that we do not have free will as traditionally conceived, but that we can still be held morally responsible for our actions (Fischer 2007). Other alternatives to the traditional solutions include Manuel Vargas’s revisionism (Vargas 2007) and Bruce Waller’s natural autonomy (Waller 1998). In contrast to Fischer, they each accept that we have a degree of freedom, or autonomy, but deny that we are free and morally responsible agents in either a libertarian or a compatibilist sense.

This already complex debate has been further complicated in the last few decades by those philosophers who have become aware of the relevance to free will of certain areas of scientific research. The indeterminism that is a feature of the area of physics known as quantum mechanics, and its implications for free will, have been most widely discussed in the literature, but increasing attention is also being given to cognitive neuroscience, evolution, the special theory of relativity and psychological experiments into rationality, all of which raise interesting questions about the nature of free will – questions largely undreamt of by those who discussed free will in previous centuries.

Given all these various aspects to the free will problem, its sheer complexity, it is perhaps not so surprising that it has lasted for so long. Nor does it look like being resolved any time soon. Anyone now entering the debate is assaulted from all sides by detailed and often persuasive arguments purporting to show that we clearly do (or do not) have free will. Indeed, so entrenched and apparently endless has the debate become that in recent years the longevity of the free will problem has itself become a hot topic of discussion in the free will literature, particularly among those who are frustrated by the constant back and forth between compatibilism and incompatibilism. One of these is Richard Double, who asserts:

Anyone who argues for any position on free will needs to ask why the free will problem remains so completely intractable despite the efforts of many of the ablest thinkers in the history of philosophy.

(Double 1996: 3)

The dispute between compatibilism and incompatibilism may be “one of the most persistent and heated deadlocks in Western philosophy” (Nichols & Knobe 2007: 1), but there are some broad areas of agreement in the free will debate, even among those on different sides; from time to time concessions are made by one side to the other, and there is no doubt that the debate has made progress since Thomas Hobbes and John Bramhall locked philosophical horns in the seventeenth century. The simple fact, as we shall see, is that it is a very complicated problem. But let me add (since I do not wish to put anybody off) that it is also a very rewarding one. It is real philosophy. It requires a great deal of thought and has a genuine bearing upon our lives and upon society as a whole. To appreciate this last point, just consider how society might change – its laws, customs, attitudes and practices – if we were to come to believe (as some indeed do) that we do not have free will and that we should not be held morally responsible for our actions.

As this volume is an introduction to free will it does not seek to cover every aspect of the current debate, but rather to give a general overview, with particular emphasis on what I think are the most interesting arguments that have been made in the last few decades. Nor does it seek to defend any particular position. Compatibilism, libertarianism and several of those positions that deny that we have free will are each described and criticized with equal vigour. Having said that, there is one area in which I am unashamedly biased, and this is the issue of whether free will is consistent with the current scientific worldview. If there is a theme running through this book it is that the only acceptable solution to the free will problem must be one that is consistent with what science tells us about the world. And it is here that too many works on free will, introductory and otherwise, fall down.

Free will and how it relates to determinism is seen as the central part of the free will debate. Science and its relevance to free will is either seen as a subsidiary part of the “free will and determinism” problem, or simply ignored. The authors of one recent discussion of free will are unequivocal in their belief that science is only of interest to the free will debate because of how it relates to determinism:

If we accept that the universe isn’t deterministic there are still good reasons to think about the compatibility of free will and determinism. First, it could turn out that future physicists conclude that the universe is deterministic, contrary to the contemporary consensus about at least quantum mechanics. It is notoriously difficult to predict how future science will turn out, and it might be useful to have an answer to the question in advance of the scientific issues getting sorted out. Second, even if the universe were not fully deterministic, determinism might hold locally (either as a matter of how local spacetime is constructed, or as a matter of how the physics for non-quantum physical objects operates). Third, we could be interested in whether free will is compatible with a broadly scientific picture of the universe. Since some aspects of the universe seem deterministic and others do not, we might ask if free will is compatible with determinism as a first step to answering the more general question of whether free will is compatible with a broadly scientific picture of the universe.

(Fischer et al. 2007: 2)

But as we shall see later in the book, there are clear areas of scientific research that are directly and significantly relevant to free will in a way that does not involve determinism (see also Iredale 2009). Any treatment of free will that focuses only on how free will relates to determinism will either not give these significant influences on free will the detailed consideration that they deserve or, more seriously, will not consider them at all.

My views have no doubt been coloured by 13 years of writing about science and its relevance to philosophy for The Philosophers’ Magazine, but in this day and age philosophers simply cannot ignore the importance of certain areas of scientific research to free will. For this reason, I have taken the time to go into some detail about those areas of science that are particularly relevant to free will so that the reader is not left wondering quite how or why they are relevant. This does not allow us to solve the problem, of course, but I believe that it does allow us to separate the more plausible ideas concerning free will from the less plausible.

2

What is free will?

Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: “It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to the see the sun set … All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife.” This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: “I can make high wave (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Why free will?

Why do we believe that we have free will? There are several answers to this question, some of them better than others. The first answer is what we may term the theological justification. We are the creation of God and he has imbued in us the capacity for free will. For some, this may be justification enough, although for others it will look like a distinct fudge. Surely we have a greater justification, and require a better explanation, for our belief in free will than unquestioning acceptance or adherence to our faith? And for those who do not believe that we were created by God, this answer is clearly unacceptable.

The next answer is what may be termed the cultural justification. The belief that we have free will is a vital and unavoidable part of our cultural life. It is central to our laws, our history and our society, and is also crucial to how we treat each other and view ourselves. But even if we grant that belief in free will has played an essential part in our cultural lives for many millennia, as with the theological justification, this answer appears to be little more than an attempt to sidestep the question. It is still just a form of acceptance, rather than explanation. And surely we really need an explanation, if we are to justify regarding people as free, morally responsible agents, truly deserving of reward or punishment for their actions.

A further answer is what may be termed the moral responsibility justification; we clearly have free will because we are morally responsible agents. Peter van Inwagen is one prominent advocate of this argument:

[T]he existence of moral responsibility entails the existence of free will … therefore, if free will does not exist, moral responsibility does not exist either. It is, however, evident that moral responsibility does exist: if there were no such thing as moral responsibility nothing would be anyone’s fault, and it is evident that there are states of affairs to which one can point and say, correctly, to certain people: “That is your fault.”

(van Inwagen 2008: 328)

One response to such an assertion is to point out that there are a fair number of philosophers, scientists and others who argue that it is most certainly not evident that moral responsibility (or free will) exists (e.g. G. Strawson 1986; Breer 1989; Double 1991b; Honderich 1993; Waller 1990, 1998; Pereboom 2001; Greene & Cohen 2004). But van Inwagen is clearly not impressed by such sentiments:

I have listened to philosophers who deny the existence of moral responsibility. I cannot take them seriously. I know a philosopher who has written a paper in which he denies the reality of moral responsibility. And yet this same philosopher, when certain of his books were stolen, said, “That was a shoddy thing to do!” But no one can consistently say that a certain act was a shoddy thing to do and say that its agent was not morally responsible when he performed it.

(van Inwagen 1983: 207)

But this example tells us nothing about whether we are morally responsible, only that there is sometimes an inconsistency between what people believe and what they say they believe. Compare van Inwagen’s philosopher with a man who denies the existence of luck as a genuine force in the world and yet who, when asked if he has ever been hospitalized, replies “No, touch wood”. Would we take his reply, even if it was accompanied by his actually looking for some wood to touch as he said it, to be evidence that he truly believes that luck is as real a force as gravity or electromagnetism? And even if we did take it as evidence that the man himself truly does believe in luck as a genuine force, would we take his belief in luck as a genuine force as evidence that luck actually was a genuine force, acting upon the world just like gravity or electromagnetism? Of course not. The idea seems ridiculous. So why should we take someone’s belief that we are morally responsible agents to be sufficient evidence for the existence of moral responsibility?

And surely van Inwagen’s argument gets the relationship between free will and moral responsibility the wrong way around? We want to be able to say that we are morally responsible for the consequences of our actions because those actions arise from our freely made decisions. Free will should be the justification for our belief in moral responsibility, and not vice versa. As Richard Double puts it,

It would not be too strong to say that, for many philosophers, the whole point of trying to explicate the free will concept is to show how it is possible for persons to be morally responsible.

(Double 1991a: 75)

And van Inwagen (1983: 209) himself states that “Without free will, we should never be morally responsible for anything.” But he cannot have it both ways. To argue that we must have free will because we are morally responsible while also arguing that we are morally responsible because we have free will is unavoidably circular and gets us nowhere.

A further answer to the question of why we believe that we have free will, and perhaps the most obvious answer, is that very often when we make a decision we really feel as if we are making it freely. Although we may be open to persuasion, suggestion and argumentation from others, we really feel, in the end, that our decisions are still up to us; they are our decisions in a very real and important sense. And, again, despite various persuasions, suggestions, etc., we really feel that very often we do not have to make the decisions that we make; we are able to deliberate in a reasoned manner about the opportunities which are available to us before making a decision. In short, we feel as though we have alternatives open to us and that we are in control of our thought processes such that we can pick whichever of these alternatives we prefer.

Imagine that you are working at home one afternoon and a friend calls you up and suggests that you meet for a drink in the pub by the river. You can finish the work later, perhaps tomorrow, although you would like to get it over and done with today. On the other hand, it’s a sunny day, and there are few things more pleasant than sitting by the river with a drink in conversation with your friend. Your friend says he will call you back, and at this point it feels obvious to you that it is entirely up to you what you do next. You are free to choose whether to continue working or to go for a drink in such a way that it is you who is completely responsible for subsequent events, whether those events consist of you finis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What is free will?
• 3 Obscure and panicky metaphysics
• 4 A glaring absurdity
• 5 Weeds in the garden of forking paths
• 6 A wretched subterfuge
• 7 The quagmire of evasion
• 8 Of puppies and polyps
• 9 Two overridden and wearied nags
• 10 Whither free will?
• Further reading: a personal top ten
• Bibliography
• Index