What is the difference between determinism and free will

The fundamental premises of genetic determinism, therefore, come to be that:. Though a fascinating and long-debated theory, determinism raises serious difficulties regarding the nature of human knowledge and its bearing on our understanding of morality. For example, if one adheres to the idea of determinism and believes that one's life is simply the mechanical and unchangeable outplay of forces beyond one's control, then how does this affect one's relationship to the world and other people.

Further questions arise: Does adherence to determinism not lead one into a sense of meaninglessness and impotence regarding one's fate and actions? Does determinism not also lead one into the belief that whatever one does is morally acceptable, by virtue of the fact that whatever one does is already pre-determined, and therefore, meant to be? If determinism is in fact true, then our whole conception of morality is a pointless illusion.

Since everything in existence is the result of necessary and pre-determined causes, then even something like murder can be considered normal. Here, determinism fails to take into account human freedom and choice. The majority of humans would choose not to be killed, just as most humans would choose not to kill another human.

Determinists can claim that our choice to be killed or not to kill is itself already a determined effect, but this is only of theoretical interest since the issue of one's life or death is of extreme existential significance. In other words, in relation to issues of morality, determinism is an interesting theory, but in practice it is quite untenable. In essence, the acceptance of determinism makes one into a mere thing, a mechanical and non-autonomous entity without the power to deliberate or change one's direction in life.

The alternatives to determinism are non-deteminsm, freedom or free will. Here we shall focus on the notion of free will, the doctrine that we as conscious human beings are free to make genuinely undetermined choices in circumstances where we are genuinely able to do so, and where we so freely, or relavently unconstrainedly, choose to do so.

Like determinism, free will comes in a variety of types and strengths. Here we shall consider the general scientific view of free will and two common types of philosophical approach to this notion.

There is a general scientific picture of the world that lends itself to predictability and certainty of outcomes and hence more to determinism than any notions of freedom or free will. Indeed in many minds, science is still associated with the deterministic picture of the world, as it was in the nineteenth century. Modern science, however, draws a picture that is quite different.

The world according to nineteenth century science was, broadly, as follows. Very small particles of matter move about in virtually empty three-dimensional space. These particles act on one another with forces that are uniquely determined by their positioning and velocities. The forces of interaction, in their turn, uniquely determine, in accordance with Newton's laws, the subsequent movement of particles. Thus each subsequent state of the world is determined, in a unique way, by its preceding state.

In such a world there was no room for freedom: it was illusory. Human beings, themselves merely aggregates of particles, had as much freedom as wound-up watch mechanisms.

In the twentieth century the scientific worldview underwent a radical change. It has turned out that subatomic physics cannot be understood within the framework of the Naive Realism of the preceding scientists. The Theory of Relativity and, especially, Quantum Mechanics require that our worldview be based on a critical scientific philosophy, according to which all our theories and mental pictures of the world are only devices to organise and foresee our experience, and not the images of the world as it "really" is.

Thus along with the twentieth-century's specific discoveries in the physics of the micro-world, we should consider the emergence of a properly critical philosophy as a scientific discovery, and as one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. We also know that determinism, i. On the contrary, freedom, which was banned from the science of the nineteenth century as an illusion, became a part, if not the essence, of reality.

The mechanistic worldview saw the laws of nature as something that uniquely prescribes how events should develop, with indeterminacy resulting only from our lack of knowledge; contemporary science regards the laws of nature as only restrictions imposed on a basically non-deterministic world. It is not an accident that the most general laws of nature are conservation laws, which do not prescribe how things must be, but only put certain restrictions or constraints upon them.

There is genuine freedom in the world. When we observe it from the outside, it takes the form of quantum-mechanical unpredictability; when we observe it from within, we call it our free will. We know that the reason why our behaviour is unpredictable from the outside is that we have ultimate freedom of choice. This freedom is the very essence of our personalities, the treasure of our lives.

It is given us as the first element of the world we come into. Logically, the concept of free will is primary, impossible to derive or to explain from anything else. The concept of necessity, including the concept of a natural law, is a derivative: we call necessary, or predetermined, those things which cannot be changed at will, or by will.

Most people, if asked, would like genuine freedom of choice, proper free will, but can we really have it? Philosophy offers a more complex analysis of this issue than the general scientific view outlined above. Within the philosophical tradition, and given the general set of philosophical principles belonging to this tradition, there are two main strands of argument for free will, i ethical and, ii psychological. It is the set of psychological considerations that concern us more directly here, though, of course the ethical concerns are always present in the background to any debate.

As the main features of the doctrine of free will have been sketched in the history of the problem, a very brief account of the argument for moral freedom will now suffice. Will, where viewed as a free power, is defined by defenders of free will as the capacity of self-determination. By self is here understood not a single present mental state William James , nor a series of mental states David Hume and JS Mill , but an abiding rational being which is the subject and cause of these states.

We should distinguish between:. Spontaneous acts and desires are opposed to coaction or external compulsion, but they are not thereby morally free acts. They may still be the necessary outcome of the nature of the agent as, e.

The essential feature of free volition is the element of choice - the vis electiva, as St. There is a concomitant interrogative awareness in the form of the query "Shall I acquiesce or shall I resist? It is this act of consent or approval, which converts a mere involuntary impulse or desire into a free volition and makes me accountable for it. A train of thought or volition deliberately initiated or acquiesced in, but afterward continued merely spontaneously, without reflective advertence to our elective adoption of it, remains free in causa for there was a choice, a free choice, about bringing it about.

I am therefore responsible for it, though actually the process has passed into the department of merely spontaneous or automatic activity. In response, the classical compatibilist holds that that the conditional analysis brings into relief a rich picture of freedom.

This just is the distinction between what an agent was free to do and what she was not free to do. This is not at all a superficial freedom; it demarcates what persons have within their control from what falls outside that purview. The classical compatibilists wanted to show their incompatibilist interlocutors that when one asserted that a freely willing agent had alternatives available to her—that is, when it was asserted that she could have done otherwise—that assertion could be analyzed as a conditional statement, a statement that is perspicuously compatible with determinism.

But as it turned out, the analysis was refuted when it was shown that the conditional statements sometimes yielded the improper result that a person was able to do otherwise even though it was clear that at the time the person acted, she had no such alternative and therefore was not able to do otherwise in the pertinent sense Chisholm , in Watson ed. Here is such an example:. Suppose that Danielle is psychologically incapable of wanting to touch a blond haired dog.

Imagine that, on her sixteenth birthday, unaware of her condition, her father brings her two puppies to choose between, one being a blond haired Lab, the other a black haired Lab.

He tells Danielle just to pick up whichever of the two she pleases and that he will return the other puppy to the pet store. Danielle happily, and unencumbered, does what she wants and picks up the black Lab. When Danielle picked up the black Lab, was she able to pick up the blond Lab? It seems not. Picking up the blond Lab was an alternative that was not available to her. In this respect, she could not have done otherwise. Given her psychological condition, she cannot even form a want to touch a blond Lab, hence she could not pick one up.

But notice that, if she wanted to pick up the blond Lab, then she would have done so. Of course, if she wanted to pick up the blond Lab, then she would not suffer from the very psychological disorder that causes her to be unable to pick up blond haired doggies.

According to the analysis, when Danielle picked up the black Lab, she was able to pick up the blonde Lab, even though, due to her psychological condition, she was not able to do so in the relevant respect.

Hence, the analysis yields the wrong result. So even if an unencumbered agent does what she wants, if she is determined, at least as the incompatibilist maintains, she could not have done otherwise. Since, as the objection goes, freedom of will requires freedom involving alternative possibilities, classical compatibilist freedom falls.

The classical compatibilists failed to answer the Classical Incompatibilist Argument. What they attempted to do by way of the conditional analysis was deny the claim that if determinism is true, no one can do otherwise. But, given their failure, it was incumbent upon them to respond to the argument in some manner.

It is only dialectically fair to acknowledge that determinism does pose a prima facie threat to free will when free will is understood as requiring the ability to do otherwise.

The Classical Incompatibilist Argument is merely a codification of this natural thought. How can the freedom to do otherwise be reconciled with determinism? In the s, three major contributions to the free will debate radically altered it. One was an incompatibilist argument that put crisply the intuition that a determined agent lacks control over alternatives. This argument, first developed by Carl Ginet, came to be known as the Consequence Argument Ginet Finally, P.

Strawson defended compatibilism by inviting both compatibilists and incompatibilists to attend more carefully to the central role of interpersonal relationships and the reactive attitudes in understanding the concept of moral responsibility Strawson Each of these contributions changed dramatically the way that the free will problem is addressed in contemporary discussions.

No account of free will, compatibilist or incompatibilist, is advanced today without taking into account at least one if not more of these three pieces.

This argument invokes a compelling pattern of inference one that is perhaps lurking in the background of the Classical Incompatibilist Argument regarding claims about what is power necessary for a person. Or, put differently, it concerns facts that a person does not have power over.

To say that a person does not have power over a fact is to say that she cannot act in such a way that the fact would not obtain. To illustrate, no person has power over the truths of mathematics.

That is, no person can act in such a way that the truths of mathematics would be false. Hence, the truths of mathematics are, for any person, power necessities. The intuitive pattern of inference applied to these claims is this. If a person has no power over a certain fact, and if she also has no power over the further fact that the original fact has some other fact as a consequence, then she also has no power over the consequent fact.

Powerlessness, it seems, transfers from one fact to its consequences. This general pattern of inference is applied to the thesis of causal determinism to yield a powerful argument for incompatibilism. The argument requires the assumption that determinism is true, and that the facts of the past and the laws of nature are fixed.

Given these assumptions, here is a rough, non-technical sketch of the argument:. According to the Consequence Argument, if determinism is true, it appears that no person has any power to alter how her own future will unfold. This argument shook compatibilists, and rightly so.

If, according to the Argument, determinism implies that the future will unfold in only one way given the past and the laws, and if no one has any power to alter its unfolding in that particular way, then it seems that no one can do other than she does. It is fair to say that the Consequence Argument earned the incompatibilists an important dialectical advantage. So even though many compatibilists are committed to thinking that the Consequence Argument is unsound, it nevertheless set the agenda for many contemporary compatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility.

One compatibilist strategy for responding to the Classical Incompatibilist Argument is to concede that perhaps the Consequence Argument provides us with good reason for thinking that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise while maintaining that such an ability is not necessary for free will.

In other words, the compatibilist might sidestep the issues raised by the Consequence Argument by directly attacking the first premise of the Classical Incompatibilist Argument, which states is if a person acts of her own free will, then she could have done otherwise.

This compatibilist response rejects a conception of human agency that locates control in the ability to do otherwise. PAP : A person is morally responsible for what she does do only if she can do otherwise.

Here is a close approximation to the example Frankfurt presented in his original paper:. Jones has resolved to shoot Smith. But Black would prefer that Jones shoot Smith on his own. However, concerned that Jones might waver in his resolve to shoot Smith, Black secretly arranges things so that, if Jones should show any sign at all that he will not shoot Smith something Black has the resources to detect , Black will be able to manipulate Jones in such a way that Jones will shoot Smith.

As things transpire, Jones follows through with his plans and shoots Smith for his own reasons. No one else in any way threatened or coerced Jones, offered Jones a bribe, or even suggested that he shoot Smith. Jones shot Smith under his own steam. Black never intervened. In this example, Jones shot Smith on his own, and did so unencumbered — did so freely.

Hence, we have a counterexample to PAP. If determinism threatens free will and moral responsibility, it is not because it is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise. Even if determinism is incompatible with a sort of freedom involving the ability to do otherwise, it is not the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility.

Strawson broke ranks with the classical compatibilists. Strawson developed three distinct arguments for compatibilism, arguments quite different from those the classical compatibilists endorsed. But more valuable than his arguments was his general theory of what moral responsibility is, and hence, what is at stake in arguing about it.

Strawson held that both the incompatibilists and the compatibilists had misconstrued the nature of moral responsibility. Each disputant, Strawson suggested, advanced arguments in support of or against a distorted simulacrum of the real deal.

When a perpetrator wrongs a person, she, the wronged party, typically has a personal reactive attitude of resentment. When one is oneself the wronging party, reflecting upon or coming to realize the wrong done to another, the natural reactive attitude is guilt.

Strawson wanted contestants to the free will debate to see more clearly than they had that excusing a person — electing not to hold her blameworthy — involves more than some objective judgment that she did not do such and such, or did not intend so and so, and therefore does not merit some treatment or other.

It involves a suspension or withdrawal of certain morally reactive attitudes, attitudes involving emotional responses. Crucially, the indignation is in response to the perceived attitude of ill will or culpable motive in the conduct of the person being held responsible.

Hence, Strawson explains, posing the question of whether the entire framework of moral responsibility should be given up as irrational if it were discovered that determinism is true is tantamount to posing the question of whether persons in the interpersonal community — that is, in real life — should forswear having reactive attitudes towards persons who wrong others, and who sometimes do so intentionally. Strawson invites us to see that the morally reactive attitudes that are the constitutive basis of our moral responsibility practices, as well as the interpersonal relations and expectations that give structure to these attitudes, are deeply interwoven into human life.

These attitudes, relations and expectations are so much an expression of natural, basic features of our social lives — of their emotional textures — that it is practically inconceivable to imagine how they could be given up.

Every resultant compatibilist account in the contemporary literature is shaped in some way by at least one of these influences. This section will focus upon six of the most significant contemporary compatibilist positions.

Those wishing to learn about cutting edge work can read the supplement on Compatibilism: The State of the Art. The Consequence Argument section 3. Assuming that determinism is true, it states that:. Compatibilists who accept that alternative possibilities are necessary for moral responsibility must show what is wrong with this powerful argument. They also should offer some account of what John Martin Fischer has called regulative control —a form of control agents possess when they can bring about X and can refrain from bringing about X — that makes clear how it is possible even at a determined world.

We will first consider three different compatibilist attempts to unseat the Consequence Argument. Then we will consider how some compatibilists, the so-called New Dispositionalists, explain regulative control, that is, how they might explain the freedom to do otherwise in a way that is compatible with causal determinism. Some compatibilists have argued against the first premise of the Consequence Argument by attempting to show that a person can act in such a way that the past would be different.

Consider the difference between a person in the present who has the ability to act in such a way that she alters the past , as opposed to a person who has the ability to act in such a way such that, if she did so act, the past would have been different.

Notice that the former ability is outlandish; it would require magical powers. But the latter ability is, at least by comparison, uncontroversial. It merely indicates that a person who acted a certain way at a certain time possessed abilities to act in various sorts of ways.

Had she exercised one of those abilities, and thereby acted differently, then the past leading up to her action would have been different. Certainly this claim does not mean that if I go to the French Riviera to dance, I will thereby be made richer.

It only means that were I to have gone there to tango, I would have to have had a lot more cash beforehand in order to finance my escapades. Some compatibilists e. But, these compatibilists maintain, the first premise is falsified when interpreted with a milder notion of ability. Other compatibilists have argued against the first premise of the Consequence Argument in a parallel way by attempting to show that a person can act in such a way that a law of nature would not obtain.

As with the distinction drawn regarding ability and the past, consider the difference between a person who has the ability to act in such a way that she violates a law of nature , as opposed to a person at a deterministic world who has the ability to act in such a way that, if she were to so act, some law of nature that does obtain would not.

Notice that the former ability would require magical powers. According to the compatibilist, the latter, by contrast, would require nothing outlandish. It merely tells us that a person who acted a certain way at a certain time possessed abilities to act in various sorts of ways. Had she exercised one of those abilities, and thereby acted differently, then the laws of nature that would have entailed what she did in that hypothetical situation would be different from the actual laws of nature that did entail what she did actually do.

This latter ability does not assume that agents are able to violate laws of nature; it just assumes that whatever the laws of nature are at least at deterministic worlds , they must be such as to entail, given the past, what an agent will do. If an agent acts differently in some possible world than she acts in the actual world, then some other set of laws will be the ones that entail what she does in that world. Some compatibilists most notably Lewis , but see also Graham and Pendergraft , fixing upon ability pertaining to the laws of nature, have argued that incompatibilist defenders of the Consequence Argument rely upon the outlandish notion of ability in the first premise of their argument.

But, these compatibilists maintain, that first premise is falsified when interpreted with an uncontroversial notion of ability. Michael Slote attempted to refute the Consequence Argument by showing that its central inference is invalid. Let us work with the idea of unavoidability. It is unavoidable for me, for instance, that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or that most motor vehicles now run on gasoline.

Nothing about my agency — about what I can do — can alter such facts. But notice that in the Consequence Argument unavoidability or power necessity trades between a context in which the notion is appropriately applied, and one in which, according to Slote, it is not. It is claimed that these facts are unavoidable for a person, but from this a conclusion is drawn that the very actions a person performs are unavoidable for her.

Even if some compatibilist reply proves that the Consequence Argument is unsound, this alone would not amount to a positive argument for compatibilism.

It would merely mean that one key argument for the incompatibility of determinism and regulative control is untenable. But that is consistent with the incompatibility of determinism and regulative control. Indeed, some argue for this incompatibility without relying upon the potentially problematic assumptions about power necessity at work in the Consequence Argument Fischer ; and Ginet , Furthermore, even if the compatibilist could discredit all current arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and regulative control, it still behooves her to offer a positive argument demonstrating the compatibility of determinism and regulative control.

Compatibilists wishing to defend regulative control, such Berofsky , , , Campbell , Nelkin , and Vihvelin , still have their work cut out for them. Recently several compatibilists have offered a positive account of regulative control e. Smith ; and Vihvelin , Call the view these compatibilists advance, the new dispositionalism. In advancing a compatibilist thesis, Vihvelin speaks of the ability to do otherwise and especially choose otherwise in terms of a bundle of dispositions , p.

Likewise, Fara proposes a dispositional analysis of the ability to do otherwise. For Fara, Vihvelin, and Smith, we assess claims about the disposition constitutive of the ability to do otherwise, or the dispositions in the bundle, or the possibilities in the raft, by attending to the intrinsic properties of an agent in virtue of which she acts when she tries Fara , p.

How so? Fara does not say, though it seems likely he would agree to something like the proposals offered by Vihvelin and Smith. Does the agent in an appropriately rich range of such counterfactual conditions wave hello or tell the truth? If she does, then even if in the actual world she does not wave hello or tell the truth, she was able to do so.

She had at the time of action the pertinent agential abilities or capacities. And this is true even if that world is determined see, e. Because there is no basis for contending that when we test the relevant dispositions at other possible worlds, we have to restrict the worlds to ones in which we hold fixed the past and the laws. The new dispositionalism clearly improves upon classical compatibilism. But how does it fare in its own right?

Do we have here a compelling positive account of the ability—and so the freedom—to do otherwise that is compatible with determinism? One slippery matter has to do with the way the relevant worlds are identified in the preceding paragraph.

We have to restrict our attention to possible worlds in which the causal base of, or underlying structure for, the ability operates unimpaired. Some will claim that this restriction is not dialectically innocent. Consider a Frankfurt example section 4. Fara , pp. They say Jones could have done otherwise, was able to do otherwise, and was free to do otherwise when he shot Smith on his own.

Then we will be able to specify a range of true counterfactuals in which an agent had some reason, for instance, to do otherwise, and she did otherwise. The delicate question here, one which we will not attempt to resolve, is whether in accounting for the freedom to do otherwise the new dispositionalists are entitled to restrict attention only to worlds in which the relevant causal base operates unimpeded. But in doing so, they only mean to explain the nature of the freedom or control exhibited in how the agent did act—that is, what Fischer has termed her guidance control.

In striking contrast to how the new dispositionalists reason, they do not think they are thereby entitled to claim that an agent in a Frankfurt example is free to do otherwise. So it is possible that what the new dispositionalists have identified with the pertinent counterfactuals they fix upon is not the freedom to do otherwise, but instead, a freedom located in what an agent does do which is a matter of guidance control, not regulative control. This, at least, is how compatibilists like Fischer and Ravizza would reason.

On the back of his rejection of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, Harry Frankfurt developed a compatibilist theory that does not appeal to regulative control in any way. The key idea is that a person who acts of her own free will acts from desires that are nested within more encompassing elements of her self. On this view, when a freely willing agent acts, her actions emanate from her rather than from something foreign.

Frankfurt distinguishes between first-order and second-order desires. This serves as the basis for his hierarchical account of freedom. The latter are desires about desires.

Frankfurt also distinguishes between different sorts of second-order desires. Some are merely desires to have first-order desires, but not that those first-order desires would comprise her will. Frankfurt uses the example of a psychotherapist who wishes to experience a desire for narcotics so as to understand a patient better.

The therapist has no wish that this desire be effective in leading her to action , pp. She wants to know what it is like to feel the craving for the drug; she has no wish to take it.

On the other hand, other second-order desires that a person has are desires for effective first-order desires, desires that would comprise her will, and would thereby be effective in moving her all the way to action. For instance, the dieter who is constantly frustrated by her sugar cravings might desire a more effective desire for health, one that would be more effective in guiding her eating habits than it often is.

These second-order desires Frankfurt calls second-order volitions. The dieter in the above example might develop a third-order desire for her second-order desire regarding her desire for health not to play such a dominant role in her daily deliberations. Other things, she might reason, are of more importance in life than concerning herself with her dietary motivations.

Once this conceptual apparatus is in place, Frankfurt contrasts different sorts of addicts to illustrate his concept of free will. Consider first the unwilling addict , who is someone that has both a first-order desire to take the drug, and a first-order desire not to take the drug. Crucially, however, the unwilling addict also has a second-order volition that her first-order desire to take the drug not be her will. This is the basis for her unwillingness. Regrettably, her irresistible addictive desire to take the drug constitutes her will.

Next, consider the case of the willing addict. Their most forthright and articulate spokesman has been B. S he is propelled in this direction by environmental circumstances and a personal history, which makes breaking the law natural and inevitable.

For the law-abiding, an accumulation of reinforcers has the opposite effect. Having been rewarded for following rules in the past the individual does so in the future. There is no moral evaluation or even mental calculation involved. All behavior is under stimulus control.

Soft determinism represents a middle ground, people do have a choice, but that choice is constrained by external or internal factors. Soft determinism suggests that some behaviors are more constrained than others and that there is an element of free will in all behavior.

However, a problem with determinism is that it is inconsistent with society's ideas of responsibility and self control that form the basis of our moral and legal obligations.

Free will is the idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behavior, in other words we are self determined. For example, people can make a free choice as to whether to commit a crime or not unless they are a child or they are insane.

This does not mean that behavior is random, but we are free from the causal influences of past events. According to freewill a person is responsible for their own actions. One of the main assumptions of the humanistic approach is that humans have free will; not all behavior is determined. Personal agency is the humanistic term for the exercise of free will. Personal agency refers to the choices we make in life, the paths we go down and their consequences.

For humanistic psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers freedom is not only possible but also necessary if we are to become fully functional human beings.

Both see self-actualisation as a unique human need and form of motivation setting us apart from all other species. There is thus a line to be drawn between the natural and the social sciences. To take a simple example, when two chemicals react there is no sense in imagining that they could behave in any other way than the way they do. However when two people come together they could agree, fall out, come to a compromise, start a fight and so on.

The permutations are endless and in order to understand their behavior we would need to understand what each party to the relationship chooses to do. However there is also an intermediate position that goes back to the psychoanalytic psychology of Sigmund Freud. At first sight Freud seems to be a supporter of determinism in that he argued that our actions and our thoughts are controlled by the unconscious. However the very goal of therapy was to help the patient overcome that force.

Indeed without the belief that people can change therapy itself makes no sense. This insight has been taken up by several neo-Freudians. One of the most influential has been Erich Fromm As a result we give up our freedom and allow our lives to be governed by circumstance, other people, political ideology or irrational feelings. However determinism is not inevitable and in the very choice we all have to do good or evil Fromm sees the essence of human freedom.