The problem of free will is one of the most intractable metaphysical questions about human existence. The scientific account of human behaviour seems to deny any freedom to human agents: despite our subjective experience of choice, we are determined in our actions by material causes beyond our control. If this is the case, then there appears to be no room for moral responsibility and it makes no sense to praise a person for their goodness or to blame them for their crimes. Clearly, a solution to these issues must be at the heart of any account of what it means to be human.
The doctrine of universal causation states that everything has a cause. This theory is a fundamental premise of modern science. Imagine a triangle of billiard balls struck by a cue ball: the direction, speed and spin of the balls as they break up after the impact are all determined by fundamental physical laws. The effect is predictable, and there is no room in this picture for alternatives. But does such a description apply also to humans and their decisions? The more we come to understand heredity and the influence of our environment, the more obvious it seems that we are also subject to the same causal laws. Modern thinking in evolutionary psychology in particular suggests that there is no room for freedom in an account of our decisions and actions. The compelling sense of freedom that we experience whenever faced with a choice is, in fact, only an illusion.
This position is known as ‘hard determinism’. If the hard determinist account is correct, then it seems to follow that we cannot be held responsible for our actions. If every choice we make is the inevitable effect of a preceding cause, then our actions are not freely chosen. Moral praise, blame and responsibility are notions that have no application to human behaviour.
In 1924 two highly gifted and privileged young men were arrested in Chicago for the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Nathan Leopold (19) and Richard Loeb (18) considered themselves Nietzschean supermen and above the law: accordingly, they planned to commit a ‘perfect crime’ without remorse. They were arrested shortly after the murder (Leopold had dropped his spectacles near the body) and Loeb’s family hired the lawyer Clarence Darrow to defend them. In arguing against the death penalty, Darrow threw into question their responsibility for the crime, claiming that it was the inevitable consequence of their biological and cultural circumstances:
If there is a responsibility anywhere, it is back of him; somewhere in the infinite number of his ancestors, or in his surroundings, or in both. And I submit, Your Honor, that under every principle of conscience, or right, and of law, he should not be made responsible for the acts of someone else.
Darrow’s argument was successful and the pair were sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death.
Clearly, the implications of the determinist position as presented by Darrow are far-reaching, but it is important to note that such a position does not rule out the possibility of punishment. Legal sanctions under these circumstances only appear unjustifiable if they are understood as retribution (that is, as payback for a crime): if a criminal is not responsible for his actions, he does not deserve to be punished. But there are other, more plausible ways of explaining punishment under the law. In this case, imprisonment can be understood as prevention or deterrence, or even rehabilitation – and by each of these theories it makes sense to punish the murderers regardless of whether they are ultimately held responsible for their actions. Even if the hard determinist thesis is correct, there is still an important role for legal sanctions.
Nevertheless, the law does recognise a difference between free actions and actions committed under duress or coercion, or in self-defence or due to insanity. There appear to be different degrees and different types of freedom. This accords with our common-sense view that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between a kleptomaniac and a thief. With this in mind, some philosophers have sought to defend the view that we are free to choose our actions – and can therefore be held fully responsible for what we do.
‘Libertarian’ philosophers accept that the universe is subject to mechanistic and deterministic laws, but deny that human action is also subject to these laws. Strong support for this position comes from our everyday experience of choice. The process of decision-making requires that the options we consider are, in fact, available to us (ought implies can) and that we are free to choose between them. After all, we make hundreds of decisions every day of our lives. This strong intuition is also at the heart of existentialist phenomenology: we experience freedom as part of our conscious awareness of possibilities that we have not (yet) chosen. Of course, an intuition can be mistaken, but for many people this experience of choice is enough to convince them, regardless of the scientific arguments against such a conviction.
One way to defend this view is to distinguish between our character and our moral self. Although our character may be determined by heredity, upbringing and circumstances, our moral self retains the freedom to resist these character traits. This is commonly seen in conflicts of duty and inclination. A person may have an aggressive or violent character, but they are nevertheless able to resist that disposition and behave in a non-violent way. The moral self is able to counteract the tendencies of character.
But to the determinist, this position is somewhat arbitrary. If it is agreed that our characters are subject to the principle of universal causation, why not our moral selves? Why are we free to make ethical choices, but not other choices? The experience of choice may be good evidence for believing that we are free, but it does not follow that we are free.
Galen Strawson has strongly argued against any libertarian thesis. His position starts from what he calls the Basic Argument:
When one acts, one acts in the way one does because of the way one is. So to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions, one would have to be truly responsible for the way one is: one would have to be causa sui, or the cause of oneself, at least in certain crucial mental respects. But nothing can be causa sui – nothing can be the ultimate cause of itself in any respect. So nothing can be truly morally responsible. Free Will
This seems sound. In order to choose a moral self, we must already exist and possess some criteria for choice; but that earlier self must also have been chosen, which requires an even earlier self; and so on. The only way this infinite chain can be broken, is by allowing an earlier self to be causa sui – but nothing can be the cause of itself.
According to the Basic Argument, it makes no difference whether determinism is true or false. We cannot be truly or ultimately morally responsible for our actions in either case. The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility I
Another way of approaching this is to start from the idea that we do what we want to do. But where does this want come from? We do not seem to be able to choose what we want: our desires are just there, like our preferences. You cannot, in a deep sense, make yourself like the taste of olives if, in fact, you don’t. And if our desires cause our actions, then we can only be responsible for our actions if we can also choose our desires – which we cannot. This is generally considered to be a secure and persuasive argument that undermines any attempt at a libertarian account of our responsibility.
Thomas Nagel adds another argument against ultimate moral responsibility with his notion of moral luck – and, like Strawson’s Basic Argument, Nagel’s point seems correct whether or not determinism is true. Nagel argues that in any situation, the circumstances that determine an action’s moral value are beyond our control:
... whether a reckless driver hits a pedestrian depends on the presence of the pedestrian at the point where he recklessly passes a red light... an officer in a concentration camp might have led a quiet and harmless life if the Nazis had never come to power in Germany. Mortal Questions p25f
There are four ways in which our moral actions are subject to luck. The first is how we are constituted; our inclinations, capacities and temperament. The second is in our circumstances, the kind of situations we find ourselves in. The third and fourth deal with cause and effect: the way our actions are determined by previous circumstances, and the way our actions turn out. Each of these factors seems to take responsibility away from us and reduce our moral agency to the luck (or misfortune) of external events and situations. We cannot fairly be held responsible for our intentions, our circumstances or the effects of our behaviour. We cannot be held responsible at all.
Such considerations suggest that our moral judgements should be less concerned with actions and consequences, and more with the agent. After all, we can hold a person morally culpable for driving drunk regardless of whether they cause an accident: it is their decision to drink and drive, not the outcome of that decision, that renders them guilty. But as Strawson pointed out, it does not seem possible that we can be responsible for our own characters. In this respect also, we are subject to fate – or what Nagel calls ‘constitutive luck’. And even if we are responsible for our bravery or generosity, it is hardly within our power to summon the circumstances in which these virtues can be displayed. It is easy to criticise those who fail to resist a tyrant if you have never been faced with that situation yourself.
Claims of human freedom raise another difficult question. What would genuine freedom actually be like? A desire, motive or action that was not determined or caused would be random and capricious. And if our actions are the consequence of random desires or impulses that do not derive from our character or circumstance, then how can we be held responsible for them? This objection requires the libertarian to give a much stricter account of what freedom actually means. Neither determined nor random are desirable descriptions but they seem to exhaust the possibilities – and neither allows for moral responsibility.
Some philosophers have tried to give an account of our freedom that acknowledges universal causation but also tries to retain the libertarian’s desire for ultimate responsibility. Such an account is called ‘compatibilism’ or sometimes ‘soft determinism’. Compatibilists recognise that all of our actions are determined, but point to the fact that there are different types of cause. Someone may steal a necklace because they are being forced to at gunpoint, or they may simply choose to. In both cases the action is determined, but in the second it is ‘voluntary’ – or, to use the compatibilist terminology, the first case has an external cause and the second an internal one.
It is this absence of external compulsion that constitutes freedom. Since internal causes proceed from the desires, beliefs and dispositions of the agent concerned, they belong to that agent: to say a person acted freely is just to say that they acted in accordance with their own wishes and were not coerced. Similarly, moral responsibility attends any action caused internally by a person’s own desires. You act the way you do precisely because you are you, and not someone else.
But this is unsatisfactory. There seems no reason to believe that internal causes are any less deterministic than external ones, or that they are under our own control in any important sense. As Strawson showed, we need to be responsible for who we are if we are to be held responsible for what we do. The compatibilist simply redefines terms like freedom and responsibility to remove the paradox, but not the problem. True freedom and ultimate responsibility are both absent in this account.
A recent response to determinism has focused on the notion of alternative actions. Traditionally, a person has been considered morally responsible for their actions only if they could have done otherwise. Determinism, of course, insists that when a person acts, there is no alternative and therefore they are not responsible. But Harry Frankfurt has argued that a person can be responsible for their behaviour even if they are not free to act otherwise. John Locke gave an interesting example of a man who wakes up in a locked room and freely decides not to leave the room (Essay II.xxi.10); Frankfurt has extended this by imagining a controlling agent who will change your mind for you if you don’t choose correctly. In both cases, one choice of action can be made freely even though alternatives do not exist. Frankfurt’s examples are controversial but suggest that moral responsibility may be compatible with determinism.
P F Strawson gave an interesting twist to compatibilism in his 1960 article Freedom and Resentment. Strawson claimed that our talk of freedom and responsibility should be understood not as statements of fact but as expressions of attitude. In our relations with other people, we react in one way if they appear to have acted freely (what Strawson called participant reactive attitudes); but we react differently if it seems they are not to blame (objective attitudes). For example, notions of guilt, gratitude, forgiveness and resentment are appropriate in the first case, but not in the second. Even if determinism is true, therefore, it is still meaningful to refer to certain actions as ‘free’ as this reflects our natural human commitment to interpersonal attitudes. A full-blown acceptance of determinism would reduce our participation in human relationships and limit the range of reactive attitudes available to us:
What is wrong is to forget that these practices, and their reception, the reactions to them, really are expressions of our moral attitudes... Our practices do not merely exploit our natures, they express them.