This is the final post in the freedom series. This week, I wanted to talk about free will vs. determinism. Libetarian Free Will states that every action we do while being able to do something else is a free action. This is the principle of alternate choices. So if I ate a sandwich for lunch while also having the alternate choice to eat a quesadilla, the action of eating a sandwich is a free action. So free will is just having the choice to do whatever you want. Hard determinism is the belief that all events are caused by past events and those past events transpired in such a way that you could only do the choices you made. A lot of people say they agree with both determinism and free will. But these two beliefs contradict each other in a way where you can’t believe both at the same time.

A hard determinist would say that my life has transpired in such a way that I would’ve chosen a sandwich for lunch no matter what. They might say that because I: 1. Believe that sandwiches are easy to make, 2. I want to make something simple for lunch, and 3. I have the temperament to eat cold and bready foods, I would’ve chosen sandwiches no matter what. There are other things that meet the criteria above but you can add in another factor to explain why I didn’t pick a cold piece of bread over a sandwich. This view makes hard determinists seem right, all events happen because of causes. Libertarians like to back their views by saying there are different types of causes. One of those causes are physical causes, and the other are agent causes. Physical causes correspond to the physical world, so a ball is flying through the air because a ball hit it. Libertarians believe that the physical world is deterministic from this view. But then there's the other type of cause, an agent cause. An agent cause is like randomly thinking of sandwiches, and the reaction is eating a sandwich. Agent causes happen within us and don’t necessarily rely on a physical action. Determinists say that those thoughts can’t come from nowhere. Thoughts come from the brain and the brain is made up of genes and genes correspond to the physical realm. So hard determinists say that no cause isn’t physical.

From this view it seems like libertarians are wrong because they don’t have anything to support their claims. The only thing they have going for them is that it really feels like humans are free. I can throw my phone right now, and the fact that I did would feel like a free choice. Hard determinism, also just feels wrong to me. Not because I can’t escape my fate, but because it seems to eliminate morality in a way. I watched a video that talked about Oedipus and his story. Basically he was adopted as a baby and when he was an adult, he didn’t know he was adopted. He found out it was his destiny to kill his father and marry his mother, so he moved away from his adopted family to avoid doing that. Then while on his journey, he wound up killing his real father and marrying his birth mother. The point of this story is that there’s no escaping fate, but does that mean it’s okay that Oedipus killed his father? It reminds me of Macbeth in the way that Macbeth fulfilled his prophecy but the people who gave it to him thought he was evil because of the way he fulfilled the prophecy. This lack of responsibility bothered me a lot. I thought of slavery specifically. Hard determinists would say that slavery would’ve happened no matter what and that implies that we can’t really blame the individual slave masters or people involved. But this seems wrong, there didn’t have to be slavery, and even if it was destined, we shouldn’t excuse these actions. It really felt like those slave owners had the free will to not own slaves. This theory also makes me think that people can’t change, that people are destined to be what they are. This also takes a lot of responsibility off of people, people don’t even have to try to change because they so called “can’t”.

This is where compatibilism comes in. Compatibilism is also called soft determinism. It does agree that all actions are determined by causes, but it goes back to the theory of different causes. Breaking my leg because I purposely fell vs if I broke my leg because someone tripped me have two different causes but end in the same result. Compatibilism says that as long as the cause of an action comes from within, it might as well be free. If an action is caused by external causes, it’s not free. This theory allows for moral responsibility because even if everything has a cause, there are still free actions. But then you think of people with mental disorders who do things that they can’t help but do, even if the cause comes from within them. Did they act with free will? Should we punish them harshly? It feels like the answer to these questions is no. There are things called Frankfurt cases which means that someone used free will but they didn’t have a choice to do something else. Like if I am forced to watch a movie with my family but I would’ve wanted to do it anyways. In this way, moral responsibility can still be had by those who don’t have a choice about their actions.

Some philosophers point out that it’s hard to separate internal factors and external factors. After all, a lot of internal factors are shaped by your past and the things that happened to you. So they think it’s better to just say that actions can pretty much be free. The judgement of how free an action is should be based on how many internal factors there are, how many external factors there are, and how much control we really have over our actions. Patricia Churchland took this view. She thought that instead of asking if we were free, we should be asking if we have control. Drunk people have less control of their actions than sober people do. So, maybe we should give drunk people less moral responsibility for their wrong deeds than sober people. Drunk actions, therefore, are more determined and less free than sober actions. She also said that humans are social animals and it just makes sense to have a society where people can be responsible for their actions. So feeling free is really just having control. Compatibilism also suggests that people can change. People are responsible for their own lives so all you need to do is make good choices in order to change.

I like compatibilism a lot. It annoys me when people say “Well, I would never have done that.” It annoys me because how would they know. If I had a completely different life, I’m sure I’d be a very different person, still Nina, but with a lot of different traits. So I believe that some actions are more likely to be done by some people over others, but I don’t think this excuses all bad actions. People still have control over what they do, and in a way this is comforting. I became the person I am today because of my past, but I can control my future. And so can you, dear reader.

I’ll see you next time.