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Core Concepts
Adequate Determinism Agent-Causality Alternative Possibilities Causa Sui Causality Certainty Chance Chance Not Direct Cause The Cogito Model Compatibilism Conceptual Analysis Control Could Do Otherwise Creativity De-liberation Determination Determination Fallacy Determinism Disambiguation Either Way Ethical Fallacy Extreme Libertarianism Event Has Many Causes "Free Will" Free Will in Antiquity Free Will Mechanisms Free Will Requirements Future Contingency Hard Incompatibilism Illusion of Determinism Illusionism Impossibilism Incompatibilism Indeterminacy Indeterminism Libertarianism Liberty of Indifference Luck Modest Libertarianism Moral Responsibility Moral Sentiments Naturalism Necessity Noise Non-Causality Predictability Probability Pseudo-Problem Random When?/Where? Rational Fallacy Responsibility Same Circumstances Science Advance Fallacy Second Thoughts Semicompatibilism Soft Causality Standard Argument Temporal Sequence Tertium Quid Torn Decision Two-Stage Models Ultimate Responsibility Uncertainty Up To Us Philosophers Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine A.J.Ayer Mark Balaguer William Belsham Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien George Boole F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Carl Ginet Nicholas St. John Green Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume William James Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus C.I.Lewis David Lewis John Locke John R. Lucas Lucretius Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin G.H. von Wright R. Jay Wallace Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Margaret Boden Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Max Born Stephen Brush Arthur Holly Compton Abraham de Moivre John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Albert Einstein Richard Feynman A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Erwin Schrödinger Herbert Simon B. F. Skinner William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg |
"Free Will"
"Free Will" - in scare quotes - refers to the common but mistaken notion that the adjective "free" modifies the concept "will." In particular, it indicates that the element of chance, one of the two requirements for free will is present in the determination of the will itself.
Critics of "libertarian free will" usually adopt this meaning in order to attack the idea of randomness in our decisions, which clearly would not help to make us morally responsible.
Unfortunately, even defenders of libertarian free will (Robert Kane, for example) continue to add indeterminism into the decision itself, making such free will "unintelligible" by their own account.
Despite their claim that they are better equipped than scientists to make conceptual distinctions and evaluate the cogency of arguments, professional philosophers have mistakenly conflated the concepts of "free" and "will." They (con)fuse them with the muddled term "free will," despite clear warnings from John Locke that this would lead to confusion.
Locke said very clearly, as had some ancients like Lucretius, it is not the will that is free (in the sense of undetermined), it is the mind.
John Locke liked the idea of Freedom and Liberty. He thought it was inappropriate to describe the Will itself as Free. The Will is a Determination. It is the Man who is Free. "I think the question is not proper, whether the will be free, but whether a man be free." "This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and, as I guess, produced great confusion," he said. It has and still does produce confusion
In chapter XXI, Of Power, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke calls the question of Freedom of the Will unintelligible. But for Locke, it is only because the adjective "free" applies to the agent, not to the will, which is determined by the mind, and determines the action.
Philosophers of logic and language are further muddled in their argument that if determinism is false, indeterminism is true. This is of course logically correct. Strict causal determinism with a causal chain of necessary events back to an Aristotelian first cause is indeed false, and modern philosophers know it, though most hold out hope that the quantum mechanical basis of such indeterminism will be disproved someday. Many analytic simply declare themselves agnostic on the truth or falsity of determinism, missing the empirical point.
These agnostic philosophers go on to argue that the principle of bivalence requires that since determinism and indeterminism are logical contradictories, only one of them can be true. The law of the excluded middle allows no third possibility. Now since neither determinism nor indeterminism allow the kind of free will that supports moral responsibility, they claim that free will is unintelligible or an illusion. This is the standard argument against free will.
The practical empirical situation is much more complex than such simple black and white logical linguistic thinking can comprehend. Despite quantum uncertainty, there is clearly adequate determinism in the world, enough to permit the near-perfect predictions of celestial motions, and good enough to send men to the moon and back. But this "near" (Honderich) or "almost" (Fischer) determinism is neither absolute nor required in any way by logical necessity, as Aristotle himself first argued against the determinist atomists, Democritus and Leucippus.
When we unpack the complex concept of "free will," we find the freedom is in our thoughts, the determination is in our willed acts.
In our Cogito model, "Free Will" combines two distinct concepts. Free is the chance and randomness of the Micro Mind. Will is the adequately determined choice of the Macro Mind. And these occur in a temporal sequence.
Concerning a man's liberty, there yet, therefore, is raised this further question, Whether a man be free to will? which I think is what is meant, when it is disputed whether the will be free. (s.22) This, then, is evident, That a man is not at liberty to will, or not to will, anything in his power. (s.24)Freedom of human action requires the randomness of absolute chance to break the causal chain of determinism, yet the conscious knowledge that we are adequately determined to be responsible for our choices. Freedom requires some events that are not causally determined by immediately preceding events, events that are unpredictable by any agency, events involving quantum uncertainty. These random events create alternative possibilities for action. Randomness is the "free" in free will.In short, there must be a Randomness Requirement, unpredictable chance events that break the causal chain of determinism. Without this chance, our actions are simply the consequences of events in the remote past. This randomness must be located in a place and time that enhances free will, one that does not reduce it to pure chance. (Determinists do not like this requirement.) Freedom also requires an adequately determined will that chooses or selects from those alternative possibilities. There is effectively nothing uncertain about this choice. Adequate determinism is the "will" in free will.So there is also a Determinism Requirement - that our actions be adequately determined by our character and values. This requires that any randomness not be the direct cause of our actions. (Libertarians do not like this requirement.) Adequate determinism means that randomness in our thoughts about alternative possibilities does not directly cause our actions. A random thought can lead to a determined action, for which we can take full responsibility. We must admit indeterminism Our Thoughts are Free, Compatibilists and Determinists were right about the Will, For Teachers
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