Anti-intellectualism contrasts the reedy scholar with the bovine boxer; the comparison epitomizes the populist
view of reading and study as antithetical to sport and athleticism.
Note the disproportionate heads and bodies, with the size of the head
representing mental ability and the size of the body representing
physical ability. (Thomas Nast)
Anti-intellectualism refers to a range of attitudes, characterized by skepticism, mistrust or criticism of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism. It is commonly expressed as questioning the value or relevance of intellectual pursuits, including education, philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human endeavours. Anti-intellectuals may present themselves and be perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people.
Anti-intellectualism manifests in various forms across cultures
and historical periods and is influenced by complex social dynamics. It
can stem from a distrust of elites or institutions perceived as
disconnected from everyday experiences, concerns about cultural
identity, or competition in valuing practical knowledge over theoretical
or academic expertise. As such, psychological research suggests that
certain individuals with anti-intellectual attitudes could sometimes
lean towards a display of confidence in their personal experiences
rather than trusting authorities, while others adopt their anti-intellectual positions as a reaction to
perceived threats to their social status or group identity.
The topic of anti-intellectualism has become a more widely
discussed phenomenon in recent years, particularly due to its role in
shaping public perception of expertise in science and education. This has led to widespread skepticism of scientific experts and
advancements, raising questions about the dangers of
anti-intellectualism in public health. The increasing use of
anti-intellectualism in politics can be seen in modern society, such as
the anti-vax movement.
Ideological anti-intellectualism
The new rulers of Cambodia call 1975 "Year Zero", the dawn of
an age in which there will be no families, no sentiment, no expressions
of love or grief, no medicines, no hospitals, no schools, no books, no
learning, no holidays, no music, no song, no post, no money – only work
and death.
In the 20th century, societies systematically removed intellectuals
from power to expediently end public political dissent. During the Cold War (1945–1991), the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1948–1990) ostracized the philosopher Václav Havel as a politically unreliable man unworthy of ordinary Czechs' trust; the post-communist Velvet Revolution (17 November – 29 December 1989) elected Havel president for ten years. Ideologically-extreme dictatorships who mean to recreate a society such as the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia (1975–1979) pre-emptively killed potential political opponents, especially the educated middle-class and the intelligentsia. To realize the Year Zero of Cambodian history, Khmer Rougesocial engineering
restructured the economy by de-industrialization and assassinated
non-communist Cambodians suspected of "involvement in free-market
activities" such as the urban professionals of society (physicians,
attorneys, engineers, et al.) and people with political connections to foreign governments. The doctrine of Pol Pot identified the farmers as the true proletariat of Cambodia and the true representatives of the working class entitled to hold government power, hence the anti-intellectual purges.
In the Night of the Long Batons
(29 July 1966), the federal police physically purged politically
incorrect academics who opposed the right-wing military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966–1970) in Argentina from five faculties of the University of Buenos Aires.
In 1966, the anti-communist Argentine military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966–1970) intervened at the University of Buenos Aires with the Night of the Long Batons to physically dislodge politically dangerous academics from five university faculties. That expulsion to the exile of the academic intelligentsia became a national brain drain upon the society and economy of Argentina. In opposition to the military repression of free speech, biochemist César Milstein
said ironically: "Our country would be put in order, as soon as all the
intellectuals who were meddling in the region were expelled."
Academic anti-intellectualism
In The Campus War (1971), the philosopher John Searle said,
[T]he two most salient traits of
the radical movement are its anti-intellectualism and its hostility to
the university as an institution. ... Intellectuals, by definition, are
people who take ideas seriously for their own sake. Whether or not a
theory is true or false is important to them, independently of any
practical applications it may have. [Intellectuals] have, as Richard
Hofstadter has pointed out, an attitude to ideas that is at once playful
and pious. But, in the radical movement, the intellectual ideal of
knowledge for its own sake is rejected. Knowledge is seen as valuable
only as a basis for action, and it is not even very valuable there. Far
more important than what one knows is how one feels.
In Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972), the sociologist Stanislav Andreski advised laymen to distrust the intellectuals' appeals to authority
when they make questionable claims about resolving the problems of
their society: "Do not be impressed by the imprint of a famous
publishing house, or the volume of an author's publications. ...
Remember that the publishers want to keep the printing presses busy, and
do not object to nonsense if it can be sold."
In Science and Relativism: Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science (1990), philosopher of science and epistemologist Larry Laudan said that the prevailing type of philosophy taught at universities in the U.S. (Postmodernism and Poststructuralism)
is anti-intellectual, because "the displacement of the idea that facts
and evidence matter, by the idea that everything boils down to
subjective interests and perspectives is—second only to American
political campaigns—the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of
anti-intellectualism in our time."
Distrust of intellectuals
In the U.S., the conservative American economist Thomas Sowell
argued for distinctions between unreasonable and reasonable wariness of
intellectuals in their influence upon the institutions of a society. In
defining intellectuals as "people whose occupations deal primarily with
ideas", Sowell conveys the view that they are different from people
whose work is the practical application of ideas. Under this framework,
the cause for layman's mistrust lies in the intellectuals' supposed
incompetence outside their fields of expertise. The portrayed view is
that, although having great working knowledge in their specialist fields
when compared to other professions and occupations, the intellectuals
of society could face little discouragement against speaking
authoritatively beyond their field of formal expertise and thus are
unlikely to face responsibility for the social and practical
consequences of their errors. Hence, a physician is judged competent by
the effective treatment of a patient's sickness, yet might face a
medical malpractice lawsuit should the treatment harm the patient. In contrast, a tenured
university professor is unlikely to be judged competent or incompetent
by the effectiveness of their intellectualism (ideas) and thus not face
responsibility for the social and practical consequences of the
implementation of the ideas.
In Britain, the anti-intellectualism of the writer Paul Johnson
derived from his close examination of twentieth-century history, which
brought him to the conclusion that intellectuals have continually
championed disastrous public policies for social welfare and public education,
and warned the layman public to "beware [the] intellectuals. Not merely
should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should
also be objects of suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice." In that vein, "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists" (2000), the American writer Tom Wolfe characterized the intellectual as "a person knowledgeable in one field, who speaks out only in others." In 2000, British publisher Imprint Academic published Dumbing Down, a compilation of essays edited by Ivo Mosley, grandson of the British fascist Oswald Mosley, which included essays on a perceived widespread anti-intellectualism by Jaron Lanier, Ravi Shankar, Robert Brustein, Michael Oakshott among others.
In The Powring Out of the Seven Vials (1642), the Puritan John Cotton demonized intellectual men and women by saying that "the more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee. ... Take off the fond doting ... upon the learning of the Jesuits,
and the glorie of the Episcopacy, and the brave estates of the
Prelates. I say bee not deceived by these pompes, empty shewes, and
faire representations of goodly condition before the eyes of flesh and
blood, bee not taken with the applause of these persons". Yet, not every Puritan concurred with Cotton's religious contempt for secular education, such as John Harvard, a major early benefactor of the university which now bears his name.
In The Quest for Cosmic Justice (2001), the economist
Thomas Sowell said that anti-intellectualism in the U.S. began in the
early Colonial era as an understandable wariness of the educated upper
classes because the country mostly was built by people who had fled
political and religious persecution by the social system of the educated
upper classes. Moreover, few intellectuals possessed the practical
hands-on skills required to survive in the New World of North America,
which absence from society led to a deep-rooted, populist suspicion of men and women who specialize in "verbal virtuosity", rather than tangible, measurable products and services:
From its colonial beginnings, American society was a
"decapitated" society—largely lacking the top-most social layers of
European society. The highest elites and the titled aristocracies had
little reason to risk their lives crossing the Atlantic, and then face
the perils of pioneering. Most of the white population of colonial
America arrived as indentured servants and the black population as slaves. Later waves of immigrants were disproportionately peasants and proletarians,
even when they came from Western Europe ... The rise of American
society to pre-eminence, as an economic, political, and military power,
was thus the triumph of the common man, and a slap across the face to
the presumptions of the arrogant, whether an elite of blood or books.
19th century
In
U.S. history, the advocacy and acceptability of anti-intellectualism
have varied, in part because the majority of Americans lived a rural life of arduous manual labor and agricultural work prior to the industrialization
of the late nineteenth century. Therefore, academic education in the
Greco–Roman classics was primarily perceived as having impractical
value, and the bookish scholar deemed an unprofitable occupation. Yet, Americans of the nineteenth century were generally literate people who read Shakespeare
for intellectual pleasure and the Christian Bible for emotional succor;
thus, the ideal American was a literate and technically skilled man who
was successful in his trade, ergo a productive member of society. Culturally, the ideal American was the self-made man
whose knowledge derived from life-experience, not an intellectual man
whose knowledge of the real world was derived from books, formal
education, and academic study; thus, the justified anti-intellectualism
reported in The New Purchase, or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West (1843), the Rev. Bayard R. Hall, A.M., said about frontier Indiana:
We always preferred an ignorant, bad man to a talented one, and, hence, attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since, unhappily, smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and [like-wise] incompetence and goodness.
Yet, the "real-life" redemption of the egghead American intellectual was possible if he embraced the mores and values of mainstream society; thus, in the fiction of O. Henry,
a character notes that once an East Coast university graduate "gets
over" his intellectual vanity, he no longer thinks himself better than
other men, realizing he makes just as good a cowboy as any other young man, despite his common-man counterpart being the slow-witted naïf of good heart, a pop culture stereotype from stage shows.
20th–21st centuries
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has
always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant
thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured
by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as
good as your knowledge'.
In 1912, New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson described the battle:
What I fear is a government of experts. God forbid that,
in a democratic country, we should resign the task and give the
government over to experts. What are we for if we are to be
scientifically taken care of by a small number of gentlemen who are the
only men who understand the job?
In Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), the historian Richard Hofstadter
said that anti-intellectualism is a social-class response by the
middle-class "mob", against the privileges of the political elites. As the middle class developed political power, they exercised their
belief that the ideal candidate to the office was the "self-made man",
not the well-educated man born to wealth. The self-made man from the
middle class could be trusted to act in the best interest of his fellow
citizens. As evidence of this view, Hofstadter cited the derision of Adlai Stevenson as an "egghead". In Americans and Chinese: Passages to Differences (1980), Francis Hsu said that American egalitarianism is stronger in the United States than in Europe, e.g. in England,
English individualism developed hand in hand with legal
equality. American self-reliance, on the other hand, has been
inseparable from an insistence upon economic and social as well as
political equality. The result is that a qualified individualism, with a
qualified equality, has prevailed in England, but what has been
considered the inalienable right of every American is unrestricted
self-reliance and, at least ideally, unrestricted equality. The English,
therefore, tend to respect class-based distinctions in birth, wealth,
status, manners, and speech, while Americans resent them.
Such social resentment characterises contemporary political
discussions about the socio-political functions of mass-communication
media and science; that is, scientific facts, generally accepted by
educated people throughout the world, are misrepresented as opinions in
the U.S., specifically about climate science and global warming.
Miami University anthropology professor Homayun Sidky has argued
that 21st-century anti-scientific and pseudoscientific approaches to
knowledge, particularly in the United States, are rooted in a
postmodernist "decades-long academic assault on science": "Many of those
indoctrinated in postmodern anti-science went on to become conservative
political and religious leaders, policymakers, journalists, journal
editors, judges, lawyers, and members of city councils and school
boards. Sadly, they forgot the lofty ideals of their teachers, except
that science is bogus."
In 2017, a Pew Research Center
poll revealed that a majority of American Republicans thought colleges
and universities had a negative impact on the United States. In 2019,
academics Adam Waters and E.J. Dionne stated that U.S. President Donald Trump "campaigned for the presidency and continues to govern as a man who is anti-intellectual, as well as anti-fact and anti-truth." In 2020, Trump signed an executive order banning anti-racism bias trainings from offices of federal agencies, grant programs, and federal contractors as part of a larger strategy to combat a perceived progressive academic bias, like emphases on the political legacy of American slavery, with "patriotic education" instead.
Education and knowledge
The
U.S. ranks at a middling quality of education compared to other
countries, and Americans often lack basic knowledge and skills. John Traphagan of the University of Texas attributes this to a culture of anti-intellectualism, noting that nerds and other intellectuals are often stigmatized in American schools and popular culture. At universities, student anti-intellectualism has resulted in the
social acceptability of cheating on schoolwork, especially in the
business schools, a manifestation of ethically expedient cognitive dissonance rather than of academic critical thinking.
The American Council on Science and Health said that denialism of the facts of climate science and of climate change misrepresents verifiable data and information as political opinion. Anti-intellectualism puts scientists in the public view and forces them
to align with either a liberal or a conservative political stance.
Moreover, 53% of Republican U.S. Representatives and 74% of Republican
senators deny the scientific facts of the causes of climate change.
In the rural U.S., anti-intellectualism is an essential feature of the religious culture of Christian fundamentalism. Mainline Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church have directly published their collective support for political action to counter climate change, whereas Southern Baptists and Evangelicals have denounced belief in both evolution and climate change as a sin, and have dismissed scientists as intellectuals attempting to create "Neo-nature paganism". People of fundamentalist religious belief tend to report not seeing evidence of global warming.
Corporate mass media
The
reportage of corporate mass-communications media appealed to societal
anti-intellectualism by misrepresenting university life in the U.S.,
where the students' pursuit of book learning (intellectualism) was
secondary to the after-school social life. That the reactionary
ideology communicated in mass-media reportage misrepresented the
liberal political activism and social protest of students as frivolous,
social activities thematically unrelated to the academic curriculum,
which is the purpose of attending university. In Anti-intellectualism in American Media (2004), Dane Claussen identified the contemporary anti-intellectualist bent of manufactured consent that is inherent to commodified information:
The effects of mass media on attitudes toward intellect
are certainly multiple and ambiguous. On the one hand, mass
communications greatly expand the sheer volume of information available
for public consumption. On the other hand, much of this information
comes pre-interpreted for easy digestion and laden with hidden
assumption, saving consumers the work of having to interpret it
for themselves. Commodified information naturally tends to reflect the
assumptions and interests of those who produce it, and its producers are
not driven entirely by a passion to promote critical reflection.
The editorial perspective of the corporate mass media misrepresented
intellectualism as a separate profession from the jobs and occupations
of regular folk. In presenting academically successful students as
social failures, an undesirable social status for the average young man
and young woman, corporate media established to the U.S. mainstream
their opinion that the intellectualism of book learning is a form of
mental deviancy; thus, most people would shun intellectuals as friends,
lest they risk social ridicule and ostracism. Hence, the popular acceptance of anti-intellectualism led to populist rejection of the intelligentsia for resolving the problems of society. Moreover, in the book Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture (2013), Aaron Lecklider indicated that the contemporary ideological dismissal of the intelligentsia
derived from the corporate media's reactionary misrepresentations of
intellectual men and women as lacking the common-sense of regular folk.
In the first decade after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks suspected the Tsaristintelligentsia as having the potential to betray the proletariat. Thus, the initial Soviet government consisted of men and women without much formal education. Moreover, the deposed propertied classes were termed Lishentsy
("the disenfranchised"), whose children were excluded from education.
Eventually, some 200 Tsarist intellectuals such as writers,
philosophers, scientists and engineers were deported to Germany on philosophers' ships in 1922 while others were deported to Latvia and Turkey in 1923.
During the revolutionary
period, the pragmatic Bolsheviks employed "bourgeois experts" to manage
the economy, industry, and agriculture and so learn from them. After
the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), to achieve socialism the Soviet Union (1922–91) emphasized literacy and education in service to modernizing the country via an educated working classintelligentsia rather than an Ivory Tower intelligentsia. During the 1930s and 1950s, Joseph Stalin replaced Vladimir Lenin's
intelligentsia with an intelligentsia that was loyal to him and
believed in a specifically Soviet world view, thereby producing the pseudoscientific theories of Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory.
At the beginning of World War II, the Soviet secret police carried out mass executions of the Polish intelligentsia and military leadership in the 1940 Katyn massacre.
Qin Shi Huang (246–210 BC), the first Emperor of unified China, consolidated political thought, and power, by suppressing freedom of speech at the suggestion of Chancellor Li Si, who justified such anti-intellectualism by accusing the intelligentsia of falsely praising the emperor, and dissenting through libel. From 213 to 206 BC, it was generally thought that the works of the Hundred Schools of Thought were incinerated, especially the Shi Jing (Classic of Poetry, c. 1000 BC) and the Shujing (Classic of History, c. 6th century BC). The exceptions were books by Qin historians, and books of Legalism, an early type of totalitarianism—and the Chancellor's philosophic school (see the Burning of books and burying of scholars).
However, upon further inspection of Chinese historical annals such as
the Shi Ji and the Han Shu, this was found not to be the case. The Qin
Empire privately kept one copy of each of these books in the Imperial
Library but it publicly ordered that the books should be banned. Those
who owned copies were ordered to surrender the books to be burned; those
who refused were executed. This eventually led to the loss of most
ancient works of literature and philosophy when Xiang Yu burned down the Qin palace in 208 BC.
The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was a politically violent decade which saw wide-ranging social engineering throughout the People's Republic of China by its leader Chairman Mao Zedong. After several national policy crises during which he was motivated by his desire to regain public prestige and control of the Chinese government, Mao announced on 16 May 1966 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese society were permeated with liberal bourgeois elements who meant to restore capitalism to China and he also announced that people could only be removed after a post–revolutionary class struggle was waged against them. To that effect, China's youth nationally organized themselves into Red Guards
and hunted the "liberal bourgeois" elements who were supposedly
subverting the CCP and Chinese society. The Red Guards acted nationally,
purging the country, the military, urban workers and the leaders of the
CCP. The Red Guards were particularly aggressive when they attacked
their teachers and professors, causing most schools and universities to
be shut down once the Cultural Revolution began. Three years later in
1969, Mao declared that the Cultural Revolution was ended, yet the
political intrigues continued until 1976, concluding with the arrest of
the Gang of Four, the de facto end of the Cultural Revolution.
Some of the Armenian intellectuals who were detained, deported, and killed in the Armenian genocide of 1915
In the early stages of the Armenian genocide of 1915, around 2,300 Armenian intellectuals were deported from Constantinople (Istanbul) and most of them were subsequently murdered by the Ottoman government. The event has been described by historians as a decapitation strike, the purpose of which was intended to deprive the Armenian population of an intellectual leadership and a chance to resist.
Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choose between different possible courses of action, (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral responsibility, or (c) be the ultimate source or originator of their actions. There are different theories as to its nature, and these aspects are
often emphasized differently depending on philosophical tradition, with
debates focusing on whether and how such freedom can coexist with physical determinism, divine foreknowledge, and other constraints.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility and moral desert, praise, culpability,
and other judgements that can logically apply only to actions that are
freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed
are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists and the
implications of whether it exists or not constitute some of the longest
running debates of philosophy.
Some philosophers and thinkers conceive free will to be the
capacity to make choices undetermined by past events. However,
determinism suggests that the natural world is governed by
cause-and-effect relationships, and only one course of events is
possible - which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will. Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue, which remains a major focus of philosophical debate to this day. The
view that posits free will as incompatible with determinism is called incompatibilism and encompasses both metaphysical libertarianism (the claim that determinism is false and thus free will is at least possible) and hard determinism
or hard incompatibilism (the claim that determinism is true and thus
free will is not possible). Another incompatibilist position is illusionism or hard incompatibilism, which holds not only determinism but also indeterminism
(randomness) to be incompatible with free will and thus free will to be
impossible regardless of the metaphysical truth of determinism.
In contrast, compatibilists hold that free will is
compatible with determinism. Some compatibilist philosophers (i.e.,
hard compatibilists) even hold that determinism is actually necessary
for the existence of free will and agency, on the grounds that choice
involves preference for one course of action over another, requiring a
sense of how choices will turn out. In modern philosophy, compatibilists make up the majority of thinkers
and generally consider the debate between libertarians and hard
determinists over free will vs. determinism a false dilemma. Different compatibilists offer very different definitions of what "free
will" means and consequently find different types of constraints to be
relevant to the issue. Classical compatibilists considered free will
nothing more than freedom of action, considering one free of will simply
if, had one counterfactually wanted to do otherwise, one could
have done otherwise without physical impediment. Many contemporary
compatibilists instead identify free will as a psychological capacity,
such as to direct one's behavior in a way that is responsive to reason
or potentially sanctionable. There are still further different
conceptions of free will, each with their own concerns, sharing only the
common feature of not finding the possibility of physical determinism a
threat to the possibility of free will.
History of free will
The problem of free will has been identified in ancient Greek philosophical literature. The notion of compatibilist free will has been attributed to both Aristotle (4th century BCE) and Epictetus
(1st century CE): "it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing
or choosing something that made us have control over them". According to Susanne Bobzien, the notion of incompatibilist free will is perhaps first identified in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias
(3rd century CE): "what makes us have control over things is the fact
that we are causally undetermined in our decision and thus can freely
decide between doing/choosing or not doing/choosing them".
The term "free will" (liberum arbitrium) was introduced by Christian philosophy (4th century CE). It has traditionally meant (until the Enlightenment proposed its own meanings) lack of necessity in human will, so that "the will is free" meant "the will does not have to be such as
it is". This requirement was universally embraced by both
incompatibilists and compatibilists.
The underlying questions are whether we possess the control over our
actions we feel we have, and if so, what sort or amount of control do we
exercise over our voluntary behavior. These ancient philosophical
problems predate the early Greek stoics (for example, Chrysippus), and some modern philosophers still lament the lack of progress over all these centuries.
On one hand, humans have a strong sense of freedom, agency, and
self-determination, which leads to a natural belief in free will and a
sense of self. On the other hand, an intuitive feeling of free will could be mistaken.
It is difficult to reconcile the intuitive evidence that
conscious decisions are causally effective with the view that the
physical world can be explained entirely by physical law. The conflict between intuitively felt freedom and natural law arises when either causal closure or physical determinism (nomological determinism)
is asserted. With causal closure, no physical event has a cause outside
the physical domain, and with physical determinism, the future is
determined entirely by preceding events (cause and effect).
The puzzle of reconciling 'free will' with a deterministic universe is known as the problem of free will or sometimes referred to as the dilemma of determinism. This dilemma leads to a moral dilemma as well: the question of how to assign responsibility for actions if they are caused entirely by past events.
Compatibilists maintain that mental reality is not of itself causally effective. Classical compatibilists
have addressed the dilemma of free will by arguing that free will holds
as long as humans are not externally constrained or coerced. Modern compatibilists make a distinction between freedom of will and freedom of action, that is, separating freedom of choice from the freedom to enact it. Given that humans all experience a sense of free will, some modern
compatibilists think it is necessary to accommodate this intuition.Compatibilists often associate freedom of will with the ability to make rational decisions.
A different approach to the dilemma is that of incompatibilists, namely, that if the world is deterministic, then our feeling that we are free to choose an action is simply an illusion. Metaphysical libertarianism is the form of incompatibilism which posits that determinism is false and free will is possible (at least some people have free will). This view is associated with non-materialist constructions, including both traditional dualism, as well as models supporting more minimal criteria; such as the ability to consciously veto an action or competing desire. Yet even with physical indeterminism, arguments have been made against libertarianism in that it is difficult to assign Origination (responsibility for "free" indeterministic choices).
Free will here is predominantly treated with respect to physical determinism in the strict sense of nomological determinism, although other forms of determinism are also relevant to free will. For example, logical and theological determinism challenge metaphysical libertarianism with ideas of destiny and fate, and biological, cultural and psychological
determinism feed the development of compatibilist models. Separate
classes of compatibilism and incompatibilism may even be formed to
represent these.
Below are the classic arguments bearing upon the dilemma and its underpinnings.
Incompatibilism is the position that free will and determinism are
logically incompatible, and that the major question regarding whether or
not people have free will is thus whether or not their actions are
determined. "Hard determinists", such as d'Holbach, are those incompatibilists who accept determinism and reject free will. In contrast, "metaphysical libertarians", such as Thomas Reid, Peter van Inwagen, and Robert Kane,
are those incompatibilists who accept free will and deny determinism,
holding the view that some form of indeterminism is true. Another view is that of hard incompatibilists, which state that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism.
Traditional arguments for incompatibilism are based on an "intuition pump":
if a person is like other mechanical things that are determined in
their behavior such as a wind-up toy, a billiard ball, a puppet, or a
robot, then people must not have free will. This argument has been rejected by compatibilists such as Daniel Dennett
on the grounds that, even if humans have something in common with these
things, it remains possible and plausible that we are different from
such objects in important ways.
Another argument for incompatibilism is that of the "causal
chain". Incompatibilism is key to the idealist theory of free will. Most
incompatibilists reject the idea that freedom of action consists simply
in "voluntary" behavior. They insist, rather, that free will means that
someone must be the "ultimate" or "originating" cause of his actions.
They must be causa sui,
in the traditional phrase. Being responsible for one's choices is the
first cause of those choices, where first cause means that there is no
antecedent cause of that cause. The argument, then, is that if a person
has free will, then they are the ultimate cause of their actions. If
determinism is true, then all of a person's choices are caused by events
and facts outside their control. So, if everything someone does is
caused by events and facts outside their control, then they cannot be
the ultimate cause of their actions. Therefore, they cannot have free
will. This argument has also been challenged by various compatibilist philosophers.
A third argument for incompatibilism was formulated by Carl Ginet
in the 1960s and has received much attention in the modern literature.
The simplified argument runs along these lines: if determinism is true,
then we have no control over the events of the past that determined our
present state and no control over the laws of nature. Since we can have
no control over these matters, we also can have no control over the consequences
of them. Since our present choices and acts, under determinism, are the
necessary consequences of the past and the laws of nature, then we have
no control over them and, hence, no free will. This is called the consequence argument. Peter van Inwagen remarks that C.D. Broad had a version of the consequence argument as early as the 1930s.
The difficulty of this argument for some compatibilists lies in
the fact that it entails the impossibility that one could have chosen
other than one has. For example, if Jane is a compatibilist and she has
just sat down on the sofa, then she is committed to the claim that she
could have remained standing, if she had so desired. But it follows from
the consequence argument that, if Jane had remained standing, she would
have either generated a contradiction, violated the laws of nature or
changed the past. Hence, compatibilists are committed to the existence
of "incredible abilities", according to Ginet and van Inwagen. One
response to this argument is that it equivocates on the notions of
abilities and necessities, or that the free will evoked to make any
given choice is really an illusion and the choice had been made all
along, oblivious to its "decider". David Lewis suggests that compatibilists are only committed to the ability to do something otherwise if different circumstances had actually obtained in the past.
Using T, F for "true" and "false" and ? for
undecided, there are exactly nine positions regarding determinism/free
will that consist of any two of these three possibilities:
Galen Strawson's table
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Determinism D
T
F
T
F
T
F
?
?
?
Free will FW
F
T
T
F
?
?
F
T
?
Incompatibilism may occupy any of the nine positions except (5), (8) or (3), which last corresponds to soft determinism. Position (1) is hard determinism, and position (2) is libertarianism. The position (1) of hard determinism adds to the table the contention that D implies FW is untrue, and the position (2) of libertarianism adds the contention that FW implies D is untrue. Position (9) may be called hard incompatibilism if one interprets ? as meaning both concepts are of dubious value. Compatibilism
itself may occupy any of the nine positions, that is, there is no
logical contradiction between determinism and free will, and either or
both may be true or false in principle. However, the most common meaning
attached to compatibilism is that some form of determinism is true and yet we have some form of free will, position (3).
Alex Rosenberg
makes an extrapolation of physical determinism as inferred on the
macroscopic scale by the behaviour of a set of dominoes to neural
activity in the brain where; "If the brain is nothing but a complex
physical object whose states are as much governed by physical laws as
any other physical object, then what goes on in our heads is as fixed
and determined by prior events as what goes on when one domino topples
another in a long row of them."[50]Physical determinism is currently disputed by prominent interpretations of quantum mechanics, and while not necessarily representative of intrinsic indeterminism in nature, fundamental limits of precision in measurement are inherent in the uncertainty principle. The relevance of such prospective indeterminate activity to free will is, however, contested, even when chaos theory is introduced to magnify the effects of such microscopic events.
Below these positions are examined in more detail.
A simplified taxonomy of philosophical positions regarding free will and determinism
Determinism can be divided into causal, logical and theological determinism. Corresponding to each of these different meanings, there arises a different problem for free will. Hard determinism is the claim that determinism is true, and that it is incompatible with free will, so free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomological determinism (see causal determinism below), it can include all forms of determinism that necessitate the future in its entirety. Relevant forms of determinism include:
The idea that everything is caused by prior conditions, making it impossible for anything else to happen. In its most common form, nomological (or scientific) determinism,
future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with
the laws of nature. Such determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace's demon.
Imagine an entity that knows all facts about the past and the present,
and knows all natural laws that govern the universe. If the laws of
nature were determinate, then such an entity would be able to use this
knowledge to foresee the future, down to the smallest detail.A good way to conceptualize this is to think about how scientists know
the speed and position of planets. Using known laws of orbital dynamics,
scientists know where the planet will be in the future at any given
time. This concept is then extrapolated to include everything in the
universe.
The notion that all propositions,
whether about the past, present or future, are either true or false.
The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how choices
can be free, given that what one does in the future is already
determined as true or false in the present.
The idea that the future is already determined, either by a creator deity decreeing or knowing its outcome in advance. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how our
actions can be free if there is a being who has determined them for us
in advance, or if they are already set in time.
Other forms of determinism are more relevant to compatibilism, such as biological determinism,
the idea that all behaviors, beliefs, and desires are fixed by our
genetic endowment and our biochemical makeup, the latter of which is
affected by both genes and environment, cultural determinism and psychological determinism. Combinations and syntheses of determinist theses, such as bio-environmental determinism, are even more common.
Suggestions have been made that hard determinism need not
maintain strict determinism, where something near to, like that
informally known as adequate determinism, is perhaps more relevant. Despite this, hard determinism has grown less popular in present times,
given scientific suggestions that determinism is false – yet the
intention of their position is sustained by hard incompatibilism.
Various definitions of free will that have been proposed for Metaphysical Libertarianism (agent/substance causal, centered accounts, and efforts of will theory), along with examples of other common free will positions (Compatibilism, Hard Determinism, and Hard Incompatibilism). Red circles represent mental states; blue circles represent physical states; arrows describe causal interaction.
One kind of incompatibilism, metaphysical libertarianism holds onto a concept of free will that requires that the agent be able to take more than one possible course of action under a given set of circumstances.[65]
Accounts of libertarianism subdivide into non-physical theories
and physical or naturalistic theories. Non-physical theories hold that
the events in the brain that lead to the performance of actions do not
have an entirely physical explanation, which requires that the world is
not closed under physics. This includes interactionist dualism, which claims that some non-physical mind, will, or soul overrides physical causality.
Physical determinism implies there is only one possible future and is
therefore not compatible with libertarian free will. As consequent of
incompatibilism, metaphysical libertarian explanations that do not
involve dispensing with physicalism
require physical indeterminism, such as probabilistic subatomic
particle behavior – theory unknown to many of the early writers on free
will. Incompatibilist theories can be categorised based on the type of
indeterminism they require; uncaused events, non-deterministically
caused events, and agent/substance-caused events.
Non-causal theories
Non-causal
accounts of incompatibilist free will do not require a free action to
be caused by either an agent or a physical event. They either rely upon a
world that is not causally closed, or physical indeterminism.
Non-causal accounts often claim that each intentional action requires a
choice or volition – a willing, trying, or endeavoring on behalf of the
agent (such as the cognitive component of lifting one's arm).Such intentional actions are interpreted as free actions. It has been
suggested, however, that such acting cannot be said to exercise control
over anything in particular. According to non-causal accounts, the
causation by the agent cannot be analysed in terms of causation by
mental states or events, including desire, belief, intention of
something in particular, but rather is considered a matter of
spontaneity and creativity. The exercise of intent in such intentional
actions is not that which determines their freedom – intentional actions
are rather self-generating. The "actish feel" of some intentional
actions do not "constitute that event's activeness, or the agent's
exercise of active control", rather they "might be brought about by
direct stimulation of someone's brain, in the absence of any relevant
desire or intention on the part of that person". Another question raised by such non-causal theory, is how an agent acts
upon reason, if the said intentional actions are spontaneous.
Some non-causal explanations involve invoking panpsychism, the theory that a quality of mind is associated with all particles, and pervades the entire universe, in both animate and inanimate entities.
Event-causal theories
Event-causal
accounts of incompatibilist free will typically rely upon physicalist
models of mind (like those of the compatibilist), yet they presuppose
physical indeterminism, in which certain indeterministic events are said
to be caused by the agent. A number of event-causal accounts of free
will have been created, referenced here as deliberative indeterminism, centred accounts, and efforts of will theory. The first two accounts do not require free will to be a fundamental
constituent of the universe. Ordinary randomness is appealed to as
supplying the "elbow room" that libertarians believe necessary. A first
common objection to event-causal accounts is that the indeterminism
could be destructive and could therefore diminish control by the agent
rather than provide it (related to the problem of origination). A second
common objection to these models is that it is questionable whether
such indeterminism could add any value to deliberation over that which
is already present in a deterministic world.
Deliberative indeterminism asserts that the indeterminism is confined to an earlier stage in the decision process. This is intended to provide an indeterminate set of possibilities to choose from, while not risking the introduction of luck
(random decision making). The selection process is deterministic,
although it may be based on earlier preferences established by the same
process. Deliberative indeterminism has been referenced by Daniel Dennett and John Martin Fischer. An obvious objection to such a view is that an agent cannot be assigned
ownership over their decisions (or preferences used to make those
decisions) to any greater degree than that of a compatibilist model.
Centred accounts propose that for any given decision
between two possibilities, the strength of reason will be considered for
each option, yet there is still a probability the weaker candidate will
be chosen.An obvious objection to such a view is that decisions are explicitly
left up to chance, and origination or responsibility cannot be assigned
for any given decision.
Efforts of will theory is related to the role of will
power in decision making. It suggests that the indeterminacy of agent
volition processes could map to the indeterminacy of certain physical
events – and the outcomes of these events could therefore be considered
caused by the agent. Models of volition
have been constructed in which it is seen as a particular kind of
complex, high-level process with an element of physical indeterminism.
An example of this approach is that of Robert Kane,
where he hypothesizes that "in each case, the indeterminism is
functioning as a hindrance or obstacle to her realizing one of her
purposes – a hindrance or obstacle in the form of resistance within her
will which must be overcome by effort." According to Robert Kane such "ultimate responsibility" is a required condition for free will. An important factor in such a theory is that the agent cannot be
reduced to physical neuronal events, but rather mental processes are
said to provide an equally valid account of the determination of outcome
as their physical processes (see non-reductive physicalism).
Although at the time quantum mechanics (and physical indeterminism) was only in the initial stages of acceptance, in his book Miracles: A preliminary study
C.S. Lewis stated the logical possibility that if the physical world
were proved indeterministic this would provide an entry point to
describe an action of a non-physical entity on physical reality. Indeterministic physical models (particularly those involving quantum indeterminacy)
introduce random occurrences at an atomic or subatomic level. These
events might affect brain activity, and could seemingly allow incompatibilist free will if the apparent indeterminacy of some mental processes (for instance, subjective perceptions of control in conscious volition)
map to the underlying indeterminacy of the physical construct. This
relationship, however, requires a causative role over probabilities that
is questionable, and it is far from established that brain activity responsible for
human action can be affected by such events. Secondarily, these
incompatibilist models are dependent upon the relationship between
action and conscious volition, as studied in the neuroscience of free will.
It is evident that observation may disturb the outcome of the
observation itself, rendering limited our ability to identify causality. Niels Bohr,
one of the main architects of quantum theory, suggested, however, that
no connection could be made between indeterminism of nature and freedom
of will.
Agent/substance-causal theories
Agent/substance-causal
accounts of incompatibilist free will rely upon substance dualism in
their description of mind. The agent is assumed power to intervene in
the physical world. Agent (substance)-causal accounts have been suggested by both George Berkeley and Thomas Reid. It is required that what the agent causes is not causally determined by
prior events. It is also required that the agent's causing of that
event is not causally determined by prior events. A number of problems
have been identified with this view. Firstly, it is difficult to
establish the reason for any given choice by the agent, which suggests
they may be random or determined by luck (without an underlying
basis for the free will decision). Secondly, it has been questioned
whether physical events can be caused by an external substance or mind –
a common problem associated with interactionalist dualism.
Hard incompatibilism
Hard incompatibilism is the idea that free will cannot exist, whether the world is deterministic or not. Derk Pereboom
has defended hard incompatibilism, identifying a variety of positions
where free will is irrelevant to indeterminism/determinism, among them
the following:
Determinism (D) is true, D does not imply we lack free will (F), but in fact we do lack F.
D is true, D does not imply we lack F, but in fact we don't know if we have F.
D is true, and we do have F.
D is true, we have F, and F implies D.
D is unproven, but we have F.
D isn't true, we do have F, and would have F even if D were true.
D isn't true, we don't have F, but F is compatible with D.
Derk Pereboom, Living without Free Will, p. xvi.
Pereboom calls positions 3 and 4 soft determinism, position 1 a form of hard determinism, position 6 a form of classical libertarianism, and any position that includes having F as compatibilism.
John Locke denied that the phrase "free will" made any sense (compare with theological noncognitivism, a similar stance on the existence of God).
He also took the view that the truth of determinism was irrelevant. He
believed that the defining feature of voluntary behavior was that
individuals have the ability to postpone a decision long enough
to reflect or deliberate upon the consequences of a choice: "...the will
in truth, signifies nothing but a power, or ability, to prefer or
choose".
The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the problem. He argues that the notion of free will leads to an infinite regress and
is therefore senseless.
According to Strawson, if one is responsible for what one does in a
given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in
certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible
for the way one is in any respect. This is because to be responsible in
some situation S, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S−1. To be responsible for the way one was at S−1, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S−2,
and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of
origination of a new causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot
create himself or his mental states ex nihilo.
This argument entails that free will itself is absurd, but not that it
is incompatible with determinism. Strawson calls his own view
"pessimism" but it can be classified as hard incompatibilism.
Causal determinism is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality
in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely
determined by prior states. Causal determinism proposes that there is an
unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of
the universe. Causal determinists believe that there is nothing uncaused
or self-caused.
The most common form of causal determinism is nomological determinism
(or scientific determinism), the notion that the past and the present
dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws, that
every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. Quantum mechanics poses a serious challenge to this view.
Destiny or fate is a predetermined course of events. It may be
conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an
individual. It is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed
natural order to the cosmos.
Although often used interchangeably, the words "fate" and "destiny" have distinct connotations.
Fate generally implies there is a set course that cannot be deviated from, and over which one has no control. Fate is related to determinism,
but makes no specific claim of physical determinism. Even with physical
indeterminism an event could still be fated externally (see for
instance theological determinism).
Destiny likewise is related to determinism, but makes no specific claim
of physical determinism. Even with physical indeterminism an event
could still be destined to occur.
Destiny
implies there is a set course that cannot be deviated from, but does
not of itself make any claim with respect to the setting of that course
(i.e., it does not necessarily conflict with incompatibilist
free will). Free will if existent could be the mechanism by which that
destined outcome is chosen (determined to represent destiny).
Discussion regarding destiny does not necessitate the existence of supernatural powers. Logical determinism
or determinateness is the notion that all propositions, whether about
the past, present, or future, are either true or false. This creates a
unique problem for free will given that propositions about the future
already have a truth value in the present (that is it is already
determined as either true or false), and is referred to as the problem of future contingents.
Omniscience
is the capacity to know everything that there is to know (included in
which are all future events), and is a property often attributed to a
creator deity. Omniscience implies the existence of destiny. Some
authors have claimed that free will cannot coexist with omniscience. One
argument asserts that an omniscient creator not only implies destiny
but a form of high level predeterminism such as hard theological determinism or predestination –
that they have independently fixed all events and outcomes in the
universe in advance. In such a case, even if an individual could have
influence over their lower level physical system, their choices in
regard to this cannot be their own, as is the case with libertarian free
will. Omniscience features as an incompatible-properties argument for the existence of God, known as the argument from free will, and is closely related to other such arguments, for example the incompatibility of omnipotence
with a good creator deity (i.e. if a deity knew what they were going to
choose, then they are responsible for letting them choose it).
Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance. Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been decided or are known (by God, fate,
or some other force), including human actions. Predeterminism is
frequently taken to mean that human actions cannot interfere with (or
have no bearing on) the outcomes of a pre-determined course of events,
and that one's destiny was established externally (for example,
exclusively by a creator deity). The concept of predeterminism is often
argued by invoking causal determinism, implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences
stretching back to the origin of the universe. In the case of
predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, and human
actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established
chain. Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre-established causal
determinism, in which case it is categorised as a specific type of determinism. It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism – in the context of its capacity to determine future events. Despite this, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism.The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism.
The term predeterminism suggests not just a determining of all
events, but the prior and deliberately conscious determining of all
events (therefore done, presumably, by a conscious being). While
determinism usually refers to a naturalistically explainable causality
of events, predeterminism seems by definition to suggest a person or a
"someone" who is controlling or planning the causality of events before
they occur and who then perhaps resides beyond the natural, causal
universe. Predestination
asserts that a supremely powerful being has indeed fixed all events and
outcomes in the universe in advance, and is a famous doctrine of the Calvinists in Christian theology. Predestination is often considered a form of hard theological determinism.
Predeterminism has therefore been compared to fatalism. Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future.
Theological determinism is a form of determinism stating that all events that happen are pre-ordained, or predestined to happen, by a monotheisticdeity, or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience. Two forms of theological determinism exist, here referenced as strong and weak theological determinism.
The first one, strong theological determinism, is based on the concept of a creator deity
dictating all events in history: "everything that happens has been
predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity."
The second form, weak theological determinism, is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge – "because God's
omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably
happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed."
There exist slight variations on the above categorisation. Some claim that theological determinism requires predestination
of all events and outcomes by the divinity (that is, they do not
classify the weaker version as 'theological determinism' unless
libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence), or that
the weaker version does not constitute 'theological determinism' at
all. Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God. With respect to free will and the classification of theological
compatibilism/incompatibilism below, "theological determinism is the
thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true
propositions including propositions about our future actions," more
minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological
determinism.
A simplified taxonomy of philosophical positions regarding free will and theological determinism
There are various implications for metaphysical libertarian free will as consequent of theological determinism and its philosophical interpretation.
Strong theological determinism is not compatible with metaphysical libertarian free will, and is a form of hard theological determinism (equivalent to theological fatalism below). It claims that free will does not exist, and God has absolute control over a person's actions. Hard theological determinism is similar in implication to hard determinism, although it does not invalidate compatibilist free will. Hard theological determinism is a form of theological incompatibilism (see figure, top left).
Weak theological determinism is either compatible or incompatible
with metaphysical libertarian free will depending upon one's
philosophical interpretation of omniscience – and as such is interpreted as either a form of hard theological determinism (known as theological fatalism), or as soft theological determinism
(terminology used for clarity only). Soft theological determinism
claims that humans have free will to choose their actions, holding that
God, while knowing their actions before they happen,
does not affect the outcome. God's providence is "compatible" with
voluntary choice. Soft theological determinism is known as theological
compatibilism (see figure, top right). A rejection of theological
determinism (or divine foreknowledge)
is classified as theological incompatibilism also (see figure, bottom),
and is relevant to a more general discussion of free will.
The basic argument for theological fatalism in the case of weak theological determinism is as follows:
Infallible foreknowledge implies destiny (it is known for certain what one will do)
Destiny eliminates alternate possibility (one cannot do otherwise)
Assert incompatibility with metaphysical libertarian free will
This argument is very often accepted as a basis for theological
incompatibilism: denying either libertarian free will or divine
foreknowledge (omniscience) and therefore theological determinism. On
the other hand, theological compatibilism must attempt to find problems
with it. The formal version of the argument rests on a number of
premises, many of which have received some degree of contention.
Theological compatibilist responses have included:
Deny the truth value of future contingents, although this denies foreknowledge and therefore theological determinism.
Assert differences in non-temporal knowledge (space-time independence), an approach taken for example by Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis.
Deny the Principle of Alternate Possibilities:
"If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely."
For example, a human observer could in principle have a machine that
could detect what will happen in the future, but the existence of this
machine or their use of it has no influence on the outcomes of events.
In the definition of compatibilism and incompatibilism,
the literature often fails to distinguish between physical determinism
and higher level forms of determinism (predeterminism, theological
determinism, etc.) As such, hard determinism with respect to theological
determinism (or "Hard Theological Determinism" above) might be
classified as hard incompatibilism with respect to physical determinism
(if no claim was made regarding the internal causality or determinism of
the universe), or even compatibilism (if freedom from the constraint of
determinism was not considered necessary for free will), if not hard
determinism itself. By the same principle, metaphysical libertarianism
(a form of incompatibilism with respect to physical determinism) might
be classified as compatibilism with respect to theological determinism
(if it was assumed such free will events were pre-ordained and therefore
were destined to occur, but of which whose outcomes were not
"predestined" or determined by God). If hard theological determinism is
accepted (if it was assumed instead that such outcomes were predestined
by God), then metaphysical libertarianism is not, however, possible, and
would require reclassification (as hard incompatibilism for example,
given that the universe is still assumed to be indeterministic –
although the classification of hard determinism is technically valid
also).
Cartesian dualism
holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance, the seat of
consciousness and intelligence, and is not identical with physical
states of the brain or body. It is suggested that although the two
worlds do interact, each retains some measure of autonomy. Under
cartesian dualism external mind is responsible for bodily action,
although unconscious brain activity is often caused by external events
(for example, the instantaneous reaction to being burned). Cartesian dualism implies that the physical world is not
deterministic – and in which external mind controls (at least some)
physical events, providing an interpretation of incompatibilist free will. Stemming from Cartesian dualism, a formulation sometimes called interactionalist dualism
suggests a two-way interaction, that some physical events cause some
mental acts and some mental acts cause some physical events. One modern
vision of the possible separation of mind and body is the "three-world" formulation of Popper. Cartesian dualism and Popper's three worlds are two forms of what is called epistemological pluralism,
that is the notion that different epistemological methodologies are
necessary to attain a full description of the world. Other forms of
epistemological pluralist dualism include psychophysical parallelism and epiphenomenalism. Epistemological pluralism is one view in which the mind-body problem is not reducible to the concepts of the natural sciences.
A contrasting approach is called physicalism. Physicalism is a philosophical theory holding that everything that exists is no more extensive than its physical properties;
that is, that there are no non-physical substances (for example
physically independent minds). Physicalism can be reductive or
non-reductive. Reductive physicalism
is grounded in the idea that everything in the world can actually be
reduced analytically to its fundamental physical, or material, basis.
Alternatively, non-reductive physicalism asserts that mental properties form a separate ontological class to physical properties: that mental states (such as qualia)
are not ontologically reducible to physical states. Although one might
suppose that mental states and neurological states are different in
kind, that does not rule out the possibility that mental states are
correlated with neurological states. In one such construction, anomalous monism, mental events supervene on physical events, describing the emergence
of mental properties correlated with physical properties – implying
causal reducibility. Non-reductive physicalism is therefore often
categorised as property dualism rather than monism, yet other types of property dualism do not adhere to the causal reducibility of mental states (see epiphenomenalism).
Incompatibilism
requires a distinction between the mental and the physical, being a
commentary on the incompatibility of (determined) physical reality and
one's presumably distinct experience of will. Secondarily, metaphysical libertarian
free will must assert influence on physical reality, and where mind is
responsible for such influence (as opposed to ordinary system
randomness), it must be distinct from body to accomplish this. Both
substance and property dualism offer such a distinction, and those
particular models thereof that are not causally inert with respect to
the physical world provide a basis for illustrating incompatibilist free
will (i.e. interactionalist dualism and non-reductive physicalism).
It has been noted that the laws of physics have yet to resolve the hard problem of consciousness: "Solving the hard problem of consciousness involves determining how
physiological processes such as ions flowing across the nerve membrane cause us to have experiences." According to some, "Intricately related to the hard problem of consciousness, the hard problem of free will represents the core problem of conscious free will: Does conscious volition impact the material world?" Others however argue that "consciousness plays a far smaller role in human life than Western culture has tended to believe."
Compatibilists maintain that determinism is compatible with free
will. They believe freedom can be present or absent in a situation for
reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics. For instance, courts of law
make judgments about whether individuals are acting under their own
free will under certain circumstances without bringing in metaphysics.
Similarly, political liberty is a non-metaphysical concept. Likewise, some compatibilists define free will as freedom to act
according to one's determined motives without hindrance from other
individuals. So for example Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, and the Stoic Chrysippus. In contrast, the incompatibilist
positions are concerned with a sort of "metaphysically free will",
which compatibilists claim has never been coherently defined.
Compatibilists argue that determinism does not matter; though they
disagree among themselves about what, in turn, does matter. To be
a compatibilist, one need not endorse any particular conception of free
will, but only deny that determinism is at odds with free will.
Although there are various impediments to exercising one's
choices, free will does not imply freedom of action. Freedom of choice
(freedom to select one's will) is logically separate from freedom to implement that choice (freedom to enact one's will), although not all writers observe this distinction. Nonetheless, some philosophers have defined free will as the absence of
various impediments. Some "modern compatibilists", such as Harry Frankfurt and Daniel Dennett,
argue free will is simply freely choosing to do what constraints allow
one to do. In other words, a coerced agent's choices can still be free
if such coercion coincides with the agent's personal intentions and
desires.
Free will as lack of physical restraint
Most "classical compatibilists", such as Thomas Hobbes,
claim that a person is acting on the person's own will only when it is
the desire of that person to do the act, and also possible for the
person to be able to do otherwise, if the person had decided to. Hobbes sometimes attributes such compatibilist freedom to each individual and not to some abstract notion of will,
asserting, for example, that "no liberty can be inferred to the will,
desire, or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consisteth in
this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or
inclination to doe [sic]." In articulating this crucial proviso, David Hume writes, "this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains." Similarly, Voltaire, in his Dictionnaire philosophique,
claimed that "Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what
one will." He asked, "would you have everything at the pleasure of a
million blind caprices?" For him, free will or liberty is "only the
power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the
constitution and present state of our organs."
Compatibilism has also been defended by Christian List.
List makes a distinction between "physical possibility" and "agential
possibility", and argues that free will is a higher-level phenomenon on
par with agency and intentionality, rather than a physical one.
Free will as a psychological state
Compatibilism
often regards the agent free as virtue of their reason. Some
explanations of free will focus on the internal causality of the mind
with respect to higher-order brain processing – the interaction between
conscious and unconscious brain activity. Likewise, some modern compatibilists in psychology have tried to revive traditionally accepted struggles of free will with the formation of character. Compatibilist free will has also been attributed to our natural sense of agency, where one must believe they are an agent in order to function and develop a theory of mind.
The notion of levels of decision is presented in a different manner by Frankfurt. Frankfurt argues for a version of compatibilism called the
"hierarchical mesh". The idea is that an individual can have conflicting
desires at a first-order level and also have a desire about the various
first-order desires (a second-order desire) to the effect that one of
the desires prevails over the others. A person's will is identified with
their effective first-order desire, that is, the one they act on, and
this will is free if it was the desire the person wanted to act upon,
that is, the person's second-order desire was effective. So, for
example, there are "wanton addicts", "unwilling addicts" and "willing
addicts". All three groups may have the conflicting first-order desires
to want to take the drug they are addicted to and to not want to take
it.
The first group, wanton addicts, have no second-order
desire not to take the drug. The second group, "unwilling addicts", have
a second-order desire not to take the drug, while the third group,
"willing addicts", have a second-order desire to take it. According to
Frankfurt, the members of the first group are devoid of will and
therefore are no longer persons. The members of the second group freely
desire not to take the drug, but their will is overcome by the
addiction. Finally, the members of the third group willingly take the
drug they are addicted to. Frankfurt's theory can ramify to any number
of levels. Critics of the theory point out that there is no certainty
that conflicts will not arise even at the higher-order levels of desire
and preference. Others argue that Frankfurt offers no adequate explanation of how the various levels in the hierarchy mesh together.
Free will as unpredictability
In Elbow Room, Dennett presents an argument for a compatibilist theory of free will, which he further elaborated in the book Freedom Evolves. The basic reasoning is that, if one excludes God, an infinitely powerful demon, and other such possibilities, then because of chaos
and epistemic limits on the precision of our knowledge of the current
state of the world, the future is ill-defined for all finite beings. The
only well-defined things are "expectations". The ability to do
"otherwise" only makes sense when dealing with these expectations, and
not with some unknown and unknowable future.
According to Dennett, because individuals have the ability to act differently from what anyone expects, free will can exist. Incompatibilists claim the problem with this idea is that we may be
mere "automata responding in predictable ways to stimuli in our
environment". Therefore, all of our actions are controlled by forces
outside ourselves, or by random chance. More sophisticated analyses of compatibilist free will have been offered, as have other critiques.
In the philosophy of decision theory,
a fundamental question is: From the standpoint of statistical outcomes,
to what extent do the choices of a conscious being have the ability to
influence the future? Newcomb's paradox and other philosophical problems pose questions about free will and predictable outcomes of choices.
Compatibilist
models of free will often consider deterministic relationships as
discoverable in the physical world (including the brain). Cognitive naturalism is a physicalist approach to studying human cognition and consciousness
in which the mind is simply part of nature, perhaps merely a feature of
many very complex self-programming feedback systems (for example, neural networks and cognitive robots), and so must be studied by the methods of empirical science, such as the behavioral and cognitive sciences (i.e.neuroscience and cognitive psychology). Cognitive naturalism stresses the role of neurological sciences. Overall brain health, substance dependence, depression, and various personality disorders clearly influence mental activity, and their impact upon volition is also important. For example, an addict
may experience a conscious desire to escape addiction, but be unable to
do so. The "will" is disconnected from the freedom to act. This
situation is related to an abnormal production and distribution of dopamine in the brain. The neuroscience of free will places restrictions on both compatibilist and incompatibilist free will conceptions.
Compatibilist models adhere to models of mind in which mental
activity (such as deliberation) can be reduced to physical activity
without any change in physical outcome. Although compatibilism is
generally aligned to (or is at least compatible with) physicalism, some
compatibilist models describe the natural occurrences of deterministic
deliberation in the brain in terms of the first person perspective of
the conscious agent performing the deliberation. Such an approach has been considered a form of identity dualism. A
description of "how conscious experience might affect brains" has been
provided in which "the experience of conscious free will is the
first-person perspective of the neural correlates of choosing."
Recently, Claudio Costa
developed a neocompatibilist theory based on the causal theory of
action that is complementary to classical compatibilism. According to
him, physical, psychological and rational restrictions can interfere at
different levels of the causal chain that would naturally lead to
action. Correspondingly, there can be physical restrictions to the body,
psychological restrictions to the decision, and rational restrictions
to the formation of reasons (desires plus beliefs) that should lead to
what we would call a reasonable action. The last two are usually called
"restrictions of free will". The restriction at the level of reasons is
particularly important since it can be motivated by external reasons
that are insufficiently conscious to the agent. One example was the
collective suicide led by Jim Jones. The suicidal agents were not conscious that their free will have been manipulated by external, even if ungrounded, reasons.
Alternatives to strictly naturalist physics, such as mind–body dualism
positing a mind or soul existing apart from one's body while
perceiving, thinking, choosing freely, and as a result acting
independently on the body, include both traditional religious
metaphysics and less common newer compatibilist concepts. Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism, they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics. While less popular among 21st-century philosophers, non-naturalist
compatibilism is present in most if not almost all religions.
Other views
Some
philosophers' views are difficult to categorize as either compatibilist
or incompatibilist, hard determinist or libertarian. For example, Nietzsche
criticized common conceptions of free will- arguing that effects of
destiny are inescapable- while at the same time criticizing determinism
and compatibilism. He wrote of "amor fati" - loving ones fate. Ted Honderich
holds the view that "determinism is true, compatibilism and
incompatibilism are both false" and the real problem lies elsewhere.
Honderich maintains that determinism is true because quantum phenomena
are not events or things that can be located in space and time, but are abstract
entities. Further, even if they were micro-level events, they do not
seem to have any relevance to how the world is at the macroscopic level.
He maintains that incompatibilism is false because, even if
indeterminism is true, incompatibilists have not provided, and cannot
provide, an adequate account of origination. He rejects compatibilism
because it, like incompatibilism, assumes a single, fundamental notion
of freedom. There are really two notions of freedom: voluntary action
and origination. Both notions are required to explain freedom of will
and responsibility. Both determinism and indeterminism are threats to
such freedom. To abandon these notions of freedom would be to abandon
moral responsibility. On the one side, we have our intuitions; on the
other, the scientific facts. The "new" problem is how to resolve this
conflict.
"Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men
believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their
actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are
determined." Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
David Hume
discussed the possibility that the entire debate about free will is
nothing more than a merely "verbal" issue. He suggested that it might be
accounted for by "a false sensation or seeming experience" (a velleity),
which is associated with many of our actions when we perform them. On
reflection, we realize that they were necessary and determined all
along.
Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that phenomena do not have freedom of the will, but the will as noumenon is not subordinate to the laws of necessity (causality) and is thus free.
According to Arthur Schopenhauer, the actions of humans, as phenomena, are subject to the principle of sufficient reason and thus liable to necessity. Thus, he argues, humans do not possess free will as conventionally understood. However, the will [urging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring], as the noumenon
underlying the phenomenal world, is in itself groundless: that is, not
subject to time, space, and causality (the forms that governs the world
of appearance). Thus, the will, in itself and outside of appearance, is
free. Schopenhauer discussed the puzzle of free will and moral
responsibility in The World as Will and Representation, Book 2, Sec. 23:
But the fact is overlooked that the individual, the person, is not will as thing-in-itself, but is phenomenon
of the will, is as such determined, and has entered the form of the
phenomenon, the principle of sufficient reason. Hence we get the strange
fact that everyone considers himself to be a priori quite free, even in his individual actions, and imagines he can at any moment enter upon a different way of life... But a posteriori
through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free,
but liable to necessity; that notwithstanding all his resolutions and
reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning
to the end of his life he must bear the same character that he himself
condemns, and, as it were, must play to the end the part he has taken
upon himself.
Schopenhauer elaborated on the topic in Book IV of the same work and in even greater depth in his later essay On the Freedom of the Will. In this work, he stated, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing."
Free will as "moral imagination"
Rudolf Steiner, who collaborated in a complete edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's work, wrote The Philosophy of Freedom, which focuses on the problem of free will. Steiner (1861–1925) initially divides this into the two aspects of freedom: freedom of thought and freedom of action.
The controllable and uncontrollable aspects of decision making thereby
are made logically separable, as pointed out in the introduction. This
separation of will from action has a very long history, going back at least as far as Stoicism and the teachings of Chrysippus (279–206 BCE), who separated external antecedent causes from the internal disposition receiving this cause.
Steiner then argues that inner freedom is achieved when we
integrate our sensory impressions, which reflect the outer appearance of
the world, with our thoughts, which lend coherence to these impressions
and thereby disclose to us an understandable world. Acknowledging the
many influences on our choices, he nevertheless points out that they do
not preclude freedom unless we fail to recognise them. Steiner argues
that outer freedom is attained by permeating our deeds with moral imagination.
"Moral" in this case refers to action that is willed, while
"imagination" refers to the mental capacity to envision conditions that
do not already hold. Both of these functions are necessarily conditions
for freedom. Steiner aims to show that these two aspects of inner and
outer freedom are integral to one another, and that true freedom is only
achieved when they are united.
Free will as a pragmatically useful concept
William James'
views were ambivalent. While he believed in free will on "ethical
grounds", he did not believe that there was evidence for it on
scientific grounds, nor did his own introspections support it. Ultimately he believed that the problem of free will was a metaphysical
issue and, therefore, could not be settled by science. Moreover, he did
not accept incompatibilism as formulated below; he did not believe that
the indeterminism of human actions was a prerequisite of moral
responsibility. In his work Pragmatism,
he wrote that "instinct and utility between them can safely be trusted
to carry on the social business of punishment and praise" regardless of
metaphysical theories. He did believe that indeterminism is important as a "doctrine of
relief" – it allows for the view that, although the world may be in many
respects a bad place, it may, through individuals' actions, become a
better one. Determinism, he argued, undermines meliorism – the idea that progress is a real concept leading to improvement in the world.
In 1739, David Hume in his A Treatise of Human Nature
approached free will via the notion of causality. It was his position
that causality was a mental construct used to explain the repeated
association of events, and that one must examine more closely the
relation between things regularly succeeding one another (descriptions of regularity in nature) and things that result in other things (things that cause or necessitate other things). According to Hume, 'causation' is on weak grounds: "Once we realise
that 'A must bring about B' is tantamount merely to 'Due to their
constant conjunction, we are psychologically certain that B will follow
A,' then we are left with a very weak notion of necessity."
This empiricist view was often denied by trying to prove the so-called apriority of causal law (i.e. that it precedes all experience and is rooted in the construction of the perceivable world):
Kant's proof in Critique of Pure Reason (which referenced time and time ordering of causes and effects)
Schopenhauer's proof from The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (which referenced the so-called intellectuality of representations, that is, in other words, objects and qualia perceived with senses)
In the 1780s Immanuel Kant
suggested at a minimum our decision processes with moral implications
lie outside the reach of everyday causality, and lie outside the rules
governing material objects. "There is a sharp difference between moral judgments and judgments of fact... Moral judgments... must be a priori judgments."
Freeman introduces what he calls "circular causality" to "allow
for the contribution of self-organizing dynamics", the "formation of
macroscopic population dynamics that shapes the patterns of activity of
the contributing individuals", applicable to "interactions between
neurons and neural masses... and between the behaving animal and its
environment". In this view, mind and neurological functions are tightly coupled in a
situation where feedback between collective actions (mind) and
individual subsystems (for example, neurons and their synapses) jointly decide upon the behaviour of both.
Free will according to Thomas Aquinas
Thirteenth century philosopher Thomas Aquinas
viewed humans as pre-programmed (by virtue of being human) to seek
certain goals, but able to choose between routes to achieve these goals
(our Aristotelian telos). His view has been associated with both compatibilism and libertarianism.
In facing choices, he argued that humans are governed by intellect, will, and passions. The will is "the primary mover of all the powers of the soul... and it is also the efficient cause of motion in the body." Choice falls into five stages: (i) intellectual consideration of
whether an objective is desirable, (ii) intellectual consideration of
means of attaining the objective, (iii) will arrives at an intent to
pursue the objective, (iv) will and intellect jointly decide upon choice
of means (v) will elects execution. Free will enters as follows: Free will is an "appetitive power", that
is, not a cognitive power of intellect (the term "appetite" from
Aquinas's definition "includes all forms of internal inclination"). He states that judgment "concludes and terminates counsel. Now counsel
is terminated, first, by the judgment of reason; secondly, by the
acceptation of the appetite [that is, the free-will]."
A compatibilist interpretation of Aquinas's view is defended
thus: "Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his
free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong
to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as
neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause.
God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and
voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent
their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not
deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of
this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its
own nature."
Free will as a pseudo-problem
Historically,
most of the philosophical effort invested in resolving the dilemma has
taken the form of close examination of definitions and ambiguities in
the concepts designated by "free", "freedom", "will", "choice" and so
forth. Defining 'free will' often revolves around the meaning of phrases
like "ability to do otherwise" or "alternative possibilities". This
emphasis upon words has led some philosophers to claim the problem is
merely verbal and thus a pseudo-problem. In response, others point out the complexity of decision making and the importance of nuances in the terminology.
Eastern philosophy
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhism accepts both freedom and determinism (or something similar to it), but despite its focus on human agency, it rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources. According to the Buddha,
"There is free action, there is retribution, but I see no agent that
passes out from one set of momentary elements into another one, except
the [connection] of those elements." Buddhists believe in neither absolute free will, nor determinism. It preaches a middle doctrine, named pratītyasamutpāda in Sanskrit,
often translated as "dependent origination", "dependent arising" or
"conditioned genesis". It teaches that every volition is a conditioned
action as a result of ignorance. In part, it states that free will is
inherently conditioned and not "free" to begin with. It is also part of
the theory of karma in Buddhism. The concept of karma in Buddhism is different from the notion of karma
in Hinduism. In Buddhism, the idea of karma is much less deterministic.
The Buddhist notion of karma is primarily focused on the cause and
effect of moral actions in this life, while in Hinduism the concept of
karma is more often connected with determining one's destiny in future lives.
In Buddhism it is taught that the idea of absolute freedom of
choice (that is that any human being could be completely free to make
any choice) is unwise, because it denies the reality of one's physical
needs and circumstances. Equally incorrect is the idea that humans have
no choice in life or that their lives are pre-determined. To deny
freedom would be to deny the efforts of Buddhists to make moral progress
(through our capacity to freely choose compassionate action). Pubbekatahetuvada,
the belief that all happiness and suffering arise from previous
actions, is considered a wrong view according to Buddhist doctrines.
Because Buddhists also reject agenthood, the traditional compatibilist
strategies are closed to them as well. Instead, the Buddhist
philosophical strategy is to examine the metaphysics of causality.
Ancient India had many heated arguments about the nature of causality
with Jains, Nyayists, Samkhyists, Cārvākans,
and Buddhists all taking slightly different lines. In many ways, the
Buddhist position is closer to a theory of "conditionality" (idappaccayatā) than a theory of "causality", especially as it is expounded by Nagarjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
The six orthodox (astika) schools of thought in Hindu philosophy do not agree with each other entirely on the question of free will. For the Samkhya,
for instance, matter is without any freedom, and soul lacks any ability
to control the unfolding of matter. The only real freedom (kaivalya) consists in realizing the ultimate separateness of matter and self. For the Yoga school, only Ishvara
is truly free, and its freedom is also distinct from all feelings,
thoughts, actions, or wills, and is thus not at all a freedom of will.
The metaphysics of the Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools strongly suggest a belief in determinism, but do not seem to make explicit claims about determinism or free will.
Quotations from Swami Vivekananda, a Vedantist, offer a perspective on free will in the Hindu tradition:
"The will is not free, it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect, but there is something behind the will which is free."
"To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here."
Within Vedanta, Madhvacharya argues that souls do not have any free will as Lord Vishnu prescribes all their actions.
Scientific approaches
Quantum physics
Modern science is a mixture of deterministic and stochastic theories. Current physical theories cannot resolve the question of whether
determinism is true of the world, being very far from a potential theory of everything, and open to many different interpretations.
Assuming that an indeterministic interpretation of quantum
mechanics is correct, one may still object that such indeterminism is
for all practical purposes confined to microscopic phenomena. A more significant question is whether the indeterminism of quantum
mechanics allows for the traditional idea of free will (based on a
perception of free will). If a person's action is, however, only a
result of complete quantum randomness, mental processes as experienced
have no influence on the probabilistic outcomes (such as volition). According to many interpretations, indeterminism enables free will to exist, while others assert the opposite (because the action was not
controllable by the physical being who claims to possess the free will).
Genetics
Like physicists, biologists have frequently addressed questions related to free will. One of the most heated debates in biology is that of "nature versus nurture", concerning the relative importance of genetics and biology as compared to culture and environment in human behavior. The view of many researchers is that many human behaviors can be
explained in terms of humans' brains, genes, and evolutionary histories. This point of view raises the fear that such attribution makes it impossible to hold others responsible for their actions. Steven Pinker's view is that fear of determinism in the context of "genetics" and "evolution" is a mistake, that it is "a confusion of explanation with exculpation". Responsibility does not require that behavior be uncaused, as long as behavior responds to praise and blame. Moreover, it is not certain that environmental determination is any less threatening to free will than genetic determination.
It has become possible to study the living brain, and researchers can
now watch the brain's decision-making process at work. A seminal
experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet
in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment
to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their
brain; in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential (after German Bereitschaftspotential, which was discovered by Kornhuber & Deecke in 1965.).
Although it was well known that the readiness potential reliably
preceded the physical action, Libet asked whether it could be recorded
before the conscious intention to move. To determine when subjects felt
the intention to move, he asked them to watch the second hand of a
clock. After making a movement, the volunteer reported the time on the
clock when they first felt the conscious intention to move; this became
known as Libet's W time.
Libet found that the unconscious brain activity of the
readiness potential leading up to subjects' movements began
approximately half a second before the subject was aware of a conscious
intention to move.
These studies of the timing between actions and the conscious
decision bear upon the role of the brain in understanding free will. A
subject's declaration of intention to move a finger appears after the brain has begun to implement the action, suggesting to some that unconsciously the brain has made the decision before
the conscious mental act to do so. Some believe the implication is that
free will was not involved in the decision and is an illusion. The
first of these experiments reported the brain registered activity
related to the move about 0.2 s before movement onset. However, these authors also found that awareness of action was anticipatory to activity in the muscle underlying the movement; the entire process resulting in action involves more steps than just the onset of brain activity. The bearing of these results upon notions of free will appears complex.
Some argue that placing the question of free will in the context
of motor control is too narrow. The objection is that the time scales
involved in motor control are very short, and motor control involves a
great deal of unconscious action, with much physical movement entirely
unconscious. On that basis "...free will cannot be squeezed into time
frames of 150–350 ms;
free will is a longer term phenomenon" and free will is a higher level
activity that "cannot be captured in a description of neural activity or
of muscle activation..." The bearing of timing experiments upon free will is still under discussion.
More studies have since been conducted, including some that try to:
support Libet's original findings
suggest that the cancelling or "veto" of an action may first arise subconsciously as well
explain the underlying brain structures involved
suggest models that explain the relationship between conscious intention and action
Benjamin Libet's results are quoted in favor of epiphenomenalism, but he believes subjects still have a
"conscious veto", since the readiness potential does not invariably lead
to an action. In Freedom Evolves, Daniel Dennett
argues that a no-free-will conclusion is based on dubious assumptions
about the location of consciousness, as well as questioning the accuracy
and interpretation of Libet's results. Kornhuber and Deecke underlined
that absence of conscious will during the early Bereitschaftspotential
(termed BP1) is not a proof of the non-existence of free will, as also
unconscious agendas may be free and non-deterministic. According to
their suggestion, man has relative freedom, i.e. freedom in degrees,
that can be increased or decreased through deliberate choices that
involve both conscious and unconscious (panencephalic) processes.
Others have argued that data such as the Bereitschaftspotential
undermine epiphenomenalism for the same reason, that such experiments
rely on a subject reporting the point in time at which a conscious
experience occurs, thus relying on the subject to be able to consciously
perform an action. That ability would seem to be at odds with early
epiphenomenalism, which according to Huxley is the broad claim that
consciousness is "completely without any power... as the steam-whistle
which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence
upon its machinery".
Adrian G. Guggisberg and Annaïs Mottaz have also challenged those findings.
A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenged assumptions about the causal nature of the readiness
potential itself (and the "pre-movement buildup" of neural activity in
general), casting doubt on conclusions drawn from studies such as
Libet's and Fried's.
A study that compared deliberate and arbitrary decisions, found
that the early signs of decision are absent for the deliberate ones.
For example, people with Tourette syndrome and related tic disorders make involuntary movements and utterances (called tics)
despite the fact that they would prefer not to do so when it is
socially inappropriate. Tics are described as semi-voluntary or unvoluntary, because they are not strictly involuntary: they may be experienced as a voluntary response to an unwanted, premonitory urge. Tics are experienced as irresistible and must eventually be expressed. People with Tourette syndrome are sometimes able to suppress their tics
for limited periods, but doing so often results in an explosion of tics
afterward. The control exerted (from seconds to hours at a time) may
merely postpone and exacerbate the ultimate expression of the tic.
In alien hand syndrome,
the affected individual's limb will produce unintentional movements
without the will of the person. The affected limb effectively
demonstrates 'a will of its own.' The sense of agency
does not emerge in conjunction with the overt appearance of the
purposeful act even though the sense of ownership in relationship to the
body part is maintained. This phenomenon corresponds with an impairment
in the premotor mechanism manifested temporally by the appearance of
the readiness potential recordable on the scalp several hundred
milliseconds before the overt appearance of a spontaneous willed
movement. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging
with specialized multivariate analyses to study the temporal dimension
in the activation of the cortical network associated with voluntary
movement in human subjects, an anterior-to-posterior sequential
activation process beginning in the supplementary motor area on the
medial surface of the frontal lobe and progressing to the primary motor
cortex and then to parietal cortex has been observed. The sense of agency thus appears to normally emerge in conjunction with
this orderly sequential network activation incorporating premotor
association cortices together with primary motor cortex. In particular,
the supplementary motor complex on the medial surface of the frontal
lobe appears to activate prior to primary motor cortex presumably in
associated with a preparatory pre-movement process. In a recent study
using functional magnetic resonance imaging, alien movements were
characterized by a relatively isolated activation of the primary motor
cortex contralateral to the alien hand, while voluntary movements of the
same body part included the natural activation of motor association
cortex associated with the premotor process. The clinical definition requires "feeling that one limb is foreign or has a will of its own, together with observable involuntary motor activity" (emphasis in original). This syndrome is often a result of damage to the corpus callosum, either when it is severed to treat intractable epilepsy or due to a stroke.
The standard neurological explanation is that the felt will reported by
the speaking left hemisphere does not correspond with the actions
performed by the non-speaking right hemisphere, thus suggesting that the
two hemispheres may have independent senses of will.
In addition, one of the most important ("first rank") diagnostic symptoms of schizophrenia is the patient's delusion of being controlled by an external force. People with schizophrenia will sometimes report that, although they are
acting in the world, they do not recall initiating the particular
actions they performed. This is sometimes likened to being a robot
controlled by someone else. Although the neural mechanisms of
schizophrenia are not yet clear, one influential hypothesis is that
there is a breakdown in brain systems that compare motor commands with
the feedback received from the body (known as proprioception), leading to attendant hallucinations and delusions of control.
Experimental psychology's contributions to the free will debate have come primarily through social psychologist Daniel Wegner's work on conscious will. In his book, The Illusion of Conscious Will, Wegner summarizes what he believes is empirical evidence
supporting the view that human perception of conscious control is an
illusion. Wegner summarizes some empirical evidence that may suggest
that the perception of conscious control is open to modification (or
even manipulation). Wegner observes that one event is inferred to have
caused a second event when two requirements are met:
The first event immediately precedes the second event, and
The first event is consistent with having caused the second event.
For example, if a person hears an explosion and sees a tree fall down
that person is likely to infer that the explosion caused the tree to
fall over. However, if the explosion occurs after the tree falls down
(that is, the first requirement is not met), or rather than an
explosion, the person hears the ring of a telephone (that is, the second
requirement is not met), then that person is not likely to infer that
either noise caused the tree to fall down.
Wegner has applied this principle to the inferences people make
about their own conscious will. People typically experience a thought
that is consistent with a behavior, and then they observe themselves
performing this behavior. As a result, people infer that their thoughts
must have caused the observed behavior. However, Wegner has been able to
manipulate people's thoughts and behaviors so as to conform to or
violate the two requirements for causal inference. Through such work, Wegner has been able to show that people often
experience conscious will over behaviors that they have not, in fact,
caused – and conversely, that people can be led to experience a lack of
will over behaviors they did cause. For instance, priming subjects with information about an effect increases the probability that a person falsely believes is the cause. The implication for such work is that the perception of conscious will
(which he says might be more accurately labelled as 'the emotion of
authorship') is not tethered to the execution of actual behaviors, but
is inferred from various cues through an intricate mental process, authorship processing. Although many interpret this work as a blow against the argument for free will, both psychologists and philosophers have criticized Wegner's theories.
Emily Pronin has argued that the subjective experience of free will is supported by the introspection illusion.
This is the tendency for people to trust the reliability of their own
introspections while distrusting the introspections of other people. The
theory implies that people will more readily attribute free will to
themselves rather than others. This prediction has been confirmed by
three of Pronin and Kugler's experiments. When college students were
asked about personal decisions in their own and their roommate's lives,
they regarded their own choices as less predictable. Staff at a
restaurant described their co-workers' lives as more determined (having
fewer future possibilities) than their own lives. When weighing up the
influence of different factors on behavior, students gave desires and
intentions the strongest weight for their own behavior, but rated
personality traits as most predictive of other people.
Caveats have, however, been identified in studying a subject's
awareness of mental events, in that the process of introspection itself
may alter the experience.
Regardless of the validity of belief in free will, it may be
beneficial to understand where the idea comes from. One contribution is
randomness. While it is established that randomness is not the only factor in the
perception of the free will, it has been shown that randomness can be
mistaken as free will due to its indeterminacy. This misconception
applies both when considering oneself and others. Another contribution
is choice. It has been demonstrated that people's belief in free will increases if
presented with a simple level of choice. The specificity of the amount
of choice is important, as too little or too great a degree of choice
may negatively influence belief. It is also likely that the associative
relationship between level of choice and perception of free will is
influentially bidirectional. It is also possible that one's desire for
control, or other basic motivational patterns, act as a third variable.
Believing in free will
Since at least 1959, free will belief in individuals has been analysed with respect to
traits in social behaviour. In general, the concept of free will
researched to date in this context has been that of the incompatibilist
form of free will, or more specifically, the libertarian form, that is
freedom from determinism.
What people believe
Whether
people naturally adhere to an incompatibilist model of free will has
been questioned in research. Eddy Nahmias has found that incompatibilism
is not intuitive – it was not adhered to, in that determinism does not
negate belief in moral responsibility (based on an empirical study of
people's responses to moral dilemmas under a deterministic model of
reality). Edward Cokely has found that incompatibilism is intuitive – it was
naturally adhered to, in that determinism does indeed negate belief in
moral responsibility in general. Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols have proposed that incompatibilism may
or may not be intuitive, and that it is dependent to some large degree
upon the circumstances; whether or not the crime incites an emotional
response – for example if it involves harming another human being. They found that belief in free will is a cultural universal, and that
the majority of participants said that (a) our universe is
indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with
determinism.
Studies indicate that peoples' belief in free will is
inconsistent. Emily Pronin and Matthew Kugler found that people believe
they have more free will than others.
Studies also reveal a correlation between the likelihood of
accepting a deterministic model of mind and personality type. For
example, Adam Feltz and Edward Cokely found that people of an extrovert
personality type are more likely to dissociate belief in determinism
from belief in moral responsibility.
Roy Baumeister
and colleagues reviewed literature on the psychological effects of a
belief (or disbelief) in free will and found that most people tend to
believe in a sort of "naive compatibilistic free will".
The researchers also found that people consider acts more "free"
when they involve a person opposing external forces, planning, or making
random actions. Notably, the last behaviour, "random" actions, may not be possible;
when participants attempt to perform tasks in a random manner (such as
generating random numbers), their behaviour betrays many patterns.
Among philosophers
A
recent 2020 survey has shown that compatibilism is quite a popular
stance among those who specialize in philosophy (59.2%). Belief in
libertarianism amounted to 18.8%, while a lack of belief in free will
equaled 11.2%.
Among evolutionary biologists
79
percent of evolutionary biologists said that they believe in free will
according to a survey conducted in 2007, 14 percent chose no free will,
and 7 percent did not answer the question.
Baumeister and colleagues found that provoking disbelief in free will
seems to cause various negative effects. The authors concluded, in
their paper, that it is belief in determinism that causes those negative effects. Kathleen Vohs has found that those whose belief in free will had been eroded were more likely to cheat. In a study conducted by Roy Baumeister, after participants read an
article arguing against free will, they were more likely to lie about
their performance on a test where they would be rewarded with cash. Provoking a rejection of free will has also been associated with increased aggression and less helpful behaviour. However, although these initial studies suggested that believing in
free will is associated with more morally praiseworthy behavior, more
recent studies (including direct, multi-site replications) with
substantially larger sample sizes have reported contradictory findings
(typically, no association between belief in free will and moral
behavior), casting doubt over the original findings.
An alternative explanation builds on the idea that subjects tend to
confuse determinism with fatalism... What happens then when agents'
self-efficacy is undermined? It is not that their basic desires and
drives are defeated. It is rather, I suggest, that they become skeptical
that they can control those desires; and in the face of that
skepticism, they fail to apply the effort that is needed even to try. If
they were tempted to behave badly, then coming to believe in fatalism
makes them less likely to resist that temptation.
Moreover, whether or not these experimental findings are a result of
actual manipulations in belief in free will is a matter of debate. First of all, free will can at least refer to either libertarian (indeterministic) free will or compatibilistic (deterministic) free will.
Having participants read articles that simply "disprove free will" is
unlikely to increase their understanding of determinism, or the
compatibilistic free will that it still permits. In other words, experimental manipulations purporting to "provoke disbelief in free will" may instead cause a belief in fatalism, which may provide an alternative explanation for previous experimental findings. To test the effects of belief in determinism, it has been argued that
future studies would need to provide articles that do not simply "attack
free will", but instead focus on explaining determinism and
compatibilism.
Baumeister and colleagues also note that volunteers disbelieving in free will are less capable of counterfactual thinking. This is worrying because counterfactual thinking ("If I had done
something different...") is an important part of learning from one's
choices, including those that harmed others. Again, this cannot be taken to mean that belief in determinism is to
blame; these are the results we would expect from increasing people's
belief in fatalism.
Along similar lines, Tyler Stillman has found that belief in free will predicts better job performance.
Augustine's view of free will and predestination would go on to have a profound impact on Christian theology.
The notions of free will and predestination are heavily debated among
Christians. Free will in the Christian sense is the ability to choose
between good or evil. Among Catholics, there are those holding to Thomism, adopted from what Thomas Aquinas put forth in the Summa Theologica. There are also some holding to Molinism which was put forth by Jesuit priest Luis de Molina. Among Protestants there is Arminianism, held primarily by the Methodist Churches, and formulated by Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius; and there is also Calvinism held by most in the Reformed tradition which was formulated by the French Reformed theologian, John Calvin. John Calvin was heavily influenced by Augustine of Hippo views on predestination put forth in his work On the Predestination of the Saints.Martin Luther seems to have held views on predestination similar to Calvinism in his On the Bondage of the Will, thus rejecting free will. In condemnation of Calvin and Luther views, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent
declared that "the free will of man, moved and excited by God, can by
its consent co-operate with God, Who excites and invites its action; and
that it can thereby dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of
justification. The will can resist grace if it chooses. It is not like a
lifeless thing, which remains purely passive. Weakened and diminished
by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race (Sess. VI,
cap. i and v)." John Wesley, the father of the Methodist tradition, taught that humans, enabled by prevenient grace, have free will through which they can choose God and to do good works, with the goal of Christian perfection. Upholding synergism
(the belief that God and man cooperate in salvation), Methodism teaches
that "Our Lord Jesus Christ did so die for all men as to make salvation
attainable by every man that cometh into the world. If men are not
saved that fault is entirely their own, lying solely in their own
unwillingness to obtain the salvation offered to them. (John 1:9; I
Thess. 5:9; Titus 2:11-12)."
Paul the Apostle discusses Predestination in some of his Epistles.
"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed
to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many
brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He
called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also
glorified." —Romans 8:29–30
"He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will." —Ephesians 1:5
There are also mentions of moral freedom in what are now termed
as 'Deuterocanonical' works which the Orthodox and Catholic Churches
use. In Sirach 15 the text states:
"Do not say: "It was God's doing that I fell away," for what he
hates he does not do. Do not say: "He himself has led me astray," for he
has no need of the wicked. Abominable wickedness the Lord hates and he
does not let it happen to those who fear him. God in the beginning
created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice. If
you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of
God. Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch
out your hand. Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose
will be given them. Immense is the wisdom of the Lord; mighty in power,
he sees all things. The eyes of God behold his works, and he
understands every human deed. He never commands anyone to sin, nor shows
leniency toward deceivers."
- Ben Sira 15:11-20 NABRE
The exact meaning of these verses has been debated by Christian theologians throughout history.
In Jewish thought the concept of "Free will" (Hebrew: בחירה חפשית, romanized: bechirah chofshit; בחירה, bechirah) is foundational.
The most succinct statement is by Maimonides, in a two part treatment, where human free will is specified as part of the universe's Godly design:
Maimonides's reasoned that human beings must have free will (at least in the context of
choosing to do good or evil), as without this, the demands of the prophets would have been meaningless, there would be no need for the Torah and Mitzvot ("commandments"), and justice could not be administered.
In Islam the theological issue is not usually how to reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge, but with God's jabr, or divine commanding power. al-Ash'ari developed an "acquisition" or "dual-agency" form of compatibilism, in which human free will and divine jabr were both asserted, and which became a cornerstone of the dominant Ash'ari position. In Shia Islam, Ash'aris understanding of a higher balance toward predestination is challenged by most theologians. Free will, according to Islamic doctrine is the main factor for man's
accountability in his/her actions throughout life. Actions taken by
people exercising free will are counted on the Day of Judgement because they are their own; however, the free will happens with the permission of God.
In contrast, the Mu'tazila,
known as the rationalist school of Islam, has a position that is
opposite to the Ash'arite and other Islamic theology in its view of free
will and divine justice. Because the Mu'tazila have a doctrine that emphasizes God's justice ('Adl).The Mu'tazila believe that humans themselves create their will and
actions, so human actions and movements are not destiny that are solely driven by God
and do not necessarily require God's permission. For the Mu'tazila,
humans themselves create their actions and behavior consciously through
free will which is formulated and carried out by the brain and nervous system. Thus, this condition guarantees God's justice when judging every human being in the Day of Judgement.
Others
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard claimed that divine omnipotence cannot be separated from divine goodness. As a truly omnipotent and good being, God could create beings with true
freedom over God. Furthermore, God would voluntarily do so because "the
greatest good... which can be done for a being, greater than anything
else that one can do for it, is to be truly free." Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a contemporary expansion of this theme, adding how God, free will, and evil are consistent.
Some philosophers follow William of Ockham
in holding that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a
given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and
so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one
observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient. Some philosophers follow Philo of Alexandria, a philosopher known for his anthropocentrism, in holding that free will is a feature of a human's soul, and thus that non-human animals lack free will.
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