The following extended deduction allows us to draw out various alternatives to the problem of free‑will. Each view will respond differently to these premises.
1. The thesis of universal determinism is true.
2. Universal determinism is not compatible with free‑will.
3. Hence, there is no free‑will.
4. If there are no free wills, then humans are not responsible for their actions.
5. If humans are not responsible for their actions, then there is no reason to blame or praise them.
Hard determinism accepts all premises as true and therefore accepts all the conclusions. As there is no rational foundation for praise or blame, hard determinists usually propose a behavioristic approach to human problems. All punishment would then be practical, future‑oriented rehabilitation. In practice, the “soft” determinist and hard determinist would use the same methods. Theoretically, the soft determinist believes that a revised concept of moral responsibility is intelligible within the confines of universal determinism.
The following is a syllogism that attempts to prove hard determinism.
1. All events in nature are determined by physical forces.
2. All human actions are events in nature.
3. Therefore, all human actions are determined by physical force.
It would be quite difficult to deny the truth of the second premise, but there is no reason for a non‑materialist to accept the first premise as true. If Karl Popper and John Eccles are correct in assuming there is such a thing as “downward” causation from the mind to physical events, then this represents a plausible alternative to the view expressed in the first premise. Determinists cannot force us to accept the first premise until they have convinced us of the validity of the materialist arguments.
Martin Buber poetically expresses this position: “The unlimited sway of causality in the it‑world, which is of fundamental importance for the scientific ordering of nature, is not felt to be oppressive by the man who is not confined to the it‑world, but free to step out of it again and again into the world of relation. Here I and Thou confront each other freely in a reciprocity that is not involved in or tainted by any causality; here man finds guaranteed the freedom of this being and of being.”1 Some authors (such as Halverson) call this view “libertarianism,” but I prefer to reserve this term for political philosophy. I use the adjective “radical” to qualify “free‑will theory,” because “teleological compatiblist” still assumes a self‑determining will.
Radical free‑will theorists accept the second premise, but reject the first; therefore, none of the conclusions follow. For the sophisticated free‑will theorist determinism is true, but it is not universal. It would be foolish to insist that the events in the natural world on which we rely for our normal activities are exempt from cause and effect. The free‑will theorist need only have some indeterminism, so that voluntary events for which we can be praised or blamed can have an acausal or contra‑causal basis.
Some free‑will theorists have used Heisenberg's “indeterminancy principle” as support for the indeterminism they need for the will to operate. There are at least two grave problems with this view. First, some believe that the indeterminism of particle physics is epistemological only; that is, it involves an uncertainty in our knowledge about atomic particles. (After all, if an electron had consciousness, it would certainly “know” where and what it was.) Second, even if there is true metaphysical indeterminism at the subatomic level, this would actually be the worst possible basis for a self‑determining will. There is a world of difference between chaotic subatomic events and the deliberate actions of the human will. Hick phrases the point well: “It is very difficult to see how such concepts as responsibility and obligation could have any application if human volitions occurred at random instead of flowing from the individual nature of the agent. From the point of view of ethics the cost of equating freedom with volitional randomness would thus be so great as to be prohibitive.”2
A common line of argument for radical free‑will theory is the appeal to the fact that we deliberate. If hard determinism is true, decisions ought to come as soon as the right causes and conditions are in place. According to universal determinism, effects ought to spring immediately and unhesitatingly from their antecedent causes. The behaviorist, however, has a quite plausible counter‑ argument to this. The reason why we deliberate is that there exists certain sets of conditioning which are of equal “strength.” One could visualize this as a sort of tug‑of‑war in the mind of a college student who is caught between “doing his duty” (making up an exam) or “having a good time” (going to the Phi Delt's Turtle Race). In Leviathan Thomas Hobbes gives a similar argument: “When in the mind of man, appetite, and aversions, hopes, and fears, concerning one and the same thing, arise alternately; and diverse good and evil consequences of the doing, or omitting the thing propounded, come successively into our thoughts, so that sometimes we have an appetite to it; sometimes an aversion from it; sometimes hope to be able to do it; sometimes despair, or fear to attempt it; the whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes and fears continued will the thing be either done, or thought impossible, is that we call deliberation.” As a determinist and proto‑behaviorist, Hobbes defines the will as the “last act” of deliberation.
Hard determinism and radical free‑will theory are sometimes called “incompatiblist” theories, because they both believe that the second premise of our deduction above is true – that universal determinism is incompatible with free‑will. Hard determinism chooses determinism over free‑will and the radical free‑will theorist does just the opposite. “Soft” determinism believes that the premise is false. The proponents of this view contend that our dilemma is a false one, primarily because we have insisted on too strict a definition of free‑will. The soft determinists redefine free‑will as the free action we discussed in here. They reject the notion of an inner power or faculty called the will as a metaphysical fiction. All that is necessary for a person to be morally responsible is for that person to be unrestrained in what they truly want to do. Halverson calls the free‑will of the soft determinist a “circumstantial freedom of self‑ realization” as opposed to the “natural freedom of self‑ determination” of the radical free‑will theorist.
This view and soft determinism are called “compatiblist” theories because they reject the second premise in the extended deduction above. In their respect their respective ways, they believe that universal determinism and free‑will are compatible. Soft determinism differs significantly from teleological compatiblism in that it rejects any teleology and accepts only one type of causation, the “upward” causation of mechanistic views. This is sometimes called “efficient” causation, the causation of pushing and pulling. Teleological compatiblism is based on Whitehead's metaphysics, in which every actual occasion (AO) is a self‑determining agent that seeks its own end. (Click here for more on Whitehead's views.) In one speculative blow, Whitehead solves the dilemma of free‑will and determinism by declaring a universal self‑determinism. Most AOs seek ends which are very trivial: like the end of simple conformation to the past or simple alternation, physical behavior which shows up, e.g., as a sine wave on an oscilloscope. But some AOs, those which make up the mind, seek and achieve true novelty and therefore are the basis of human creativity and moral responsibility.
TYPICAL “LIVES” OF ACTUAL OCCASIONS
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
Conformation: A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 A11 A12
Alternation: A1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 A4 B4 A5 B5 A6 B6 A7
Novelty: C E P P E C D ? ? ? ? ? ?
(Note: The novel events are not completely arbitrary or chaotic.)
While the final causation of each AO may truly be called a natural freedom of self‑determination, this teleology does not happen in a vacuum. Human freedom in process philosophy is not as radical as that which we find, e.g., in existentialism. It is not ex nihilo and not hostile to the past nor to natural or social limits. Just as in Popper's interactionistic view, Whitehead accepts the role of the “upward” causation of efficient cause, but an efficient cause is interpreted as an incarnation of the cause in an effect that is a self‑determining agent. Each concrescing AO is inescapably a product of its past and surroundings, but it is also able to synthesize this data according to a telos of its own. Final causes stem directly from a causally efficacious environment, but the difference is that the environment does not dictate the particular effects but only conditions a personal agent who is the locus of the final cause. The actions of personal agents are their own unique unification of the past according to their own desires.
Whitehead has actually resurrected all four of Aristotle's causes. In addition to the final cause inherent in each AO and the efficient cause of the past, there is “creativity” as the “material” cause and God as the “formal” cause offering the divine initial aim. Whitehead's solution to the problem of free‑will is without doubt ingenious, but the speculative metaphysics which support it can be subjected to the criticisms formulated in the article. It is instructive to compare this Whiteheadian proposal with Hick's idea of humans having “limited creativity.” Hick explains: “...Whilst a free action arises out of the agent's character, it does not arise in a fully determined and predictable way. It is largely but not fully prefigured in the previous state of the agent. For the character is itself partially formed and sometimes partially reformed in the very moment of decision.”3 This is also a rejection of freedom ex nihilo and a process view.
Endnotes
1. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Scribner's, 1970), p. 100.
2. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, p. 312.
3. Ibid., p. 313.