In the 18th century, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 84), travelling with his biographer Boswell, summed up the prevailing view on free will by saying 'All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it' [Bos - 15.4.1778]. He also forcibly expressed the common sense view 'Sir, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't' [Bos - 10.10.1769]. This expresses the point of view that regardless of any theory of free will, we need to conduct ourselves as if we have free will.
Thornton [Tho p. 114] explains that 'free will is not simply doing what one wants; it involves control over one's wants, the ability to make [any of one's] conflicting desires one's will; i.e. the desire on which one acts.' Therefore, in order to exercise free will, a person has to be free from external constraints or threats, and also to have a mind of their own, i.e. a mind which is functioning normally and has not been interfered with. Hopefully, this has sufficiently defined the conditions for the exercise of free will, and we are now in a position to attempt to answer the question: do we have free will or not?
The Christian view is well represented by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 74). He taught [Tho p. 10] that human beings have free will, and that our free will comes from our power of reason and capacity to choose. Free will is important from a Christian stand point because if we have free will then it follows that we are morally responsible for what we do. Which leads to the conclusion that if we sin we have freely chosen to sin and should be treated as sinners. It is difficult to argue for moral responsibility without free will, but if we have free will the argument that we are morally responsible is straightforward. (The question of which moral code we should follow however is not so easy to determine).
Free will and moral responsibility affect how we view the world, and therefore how our society operates. Our society takes free will for granted, so for example it is assumed that burglars choose to burgle and it is reasonable to punish them if they are caught. If we do not believe in free will and believe it is unfair to punish people for something outside their control, then it is difficult to justify the basis for punishment. If our society were to change, so that we did not believe in free will, the ramifications would be enormous. A small example is that wrongdoers would be given corrective treatment instead of being punished, as in 'A Clockwork Orange' [Bur]. This might not suit all wrongdoers, who might, like Johnson, have a clear intuition that they have a free will. From a burglar's point of view corrective treatment might be worse than punishment, since it implies that they are defective rather than having made up their own mind. Since people act as if they have free will, if free will were abolished it would necessary to introduce a concept equivalent to it; which is a weak but important argument for the existence of free will.
Thornton [Tho] shows that many of the arguments against free will (and the stronger arguments at that) reduce to one argument, namely: 'all our choices and actions are causally determined and because of this we do not have free will'. This argument is the basis of determinism.
A commonsense view of determinism is that there is a reason for everything we do, if only one could go back far enough to find it. The chain of events which led up to this moment uniquely determines the choice which is now made. A chain of causes and effects is assumed, with an effect following from a cause and determining the next cause in the chain. This commonsense view is perhaps derived from classical physics. Pierre de Laplace (1749 - 1827) famously summed up the assumption behind classical physics: 'if a being knew at one instant the positions and motions of all particles in the universe they would have all the information needed to compute the past and future of the universe' [Lap]. On this view wrongdoers cannot help themselves, and the explanation for why they burgle or do other stuff lies in their education, hereditary, environment, etc. Note that there is a subtle difference between predictability and determinism. Determinism means an omniscient being could predict everything, but, since we have incomplete knowledge, things may be unpredictable for us, even if the universe is deterministic (e.g. God might be able to predict the result of tossing a coin, but, assuming everything is fair, we cannot).
These commonsense views of free will and determinism are apparently contradictory. But for someone who believes in Christian teaching there is no inconsistency between these simple ideas of free will and determinism, as Christians believe in the existence of a soul, something which is outside the physical world. Thus the physical universe can be deterministic whilst our spirit has free will. N.B. clearly this assumes something outside of the physical universe can influence events in the physical universe.
However if we want to keep to a purely physical analysis, whether we are Christian or not, free will and determinism appear contradictory. Since they both seem reasonable, common sense is not much help in deciding between them. To go further we can put the contradiction in the form of an argument for determinism and against free will [Tho p. 40]:
Logically it is a valid argument, so if the conclusion is false one or both of the premises must be false. However, note that the conclusion can be true (but by a different argument) even if the premises are false. To argue for free will it is necessary to show that one at least of the premises is wrong, and present an argument for free will.
Determinism, at least in the form expressed by Pierre de Laplace, has been overtaken by the deeper understanding we now have of physics - e.g. as expressed in Quantum Electrodynamics (the theory of the interaction of light and matter, see e.g. [Fey]). There is no certain relationship between cause and effect, indeed an effect can occur without a cause - a particle can literally appear out of thin air, or even thinner vacuum [Dav p. 35]. Quantum theory teaches us that even a vacuum is seething with the possibilities of what could be, that thin air is anything but thin. Indeed, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle [Dav p. 102] states that you cannot simultaneously know the position and motion of any particle. The theory deals in probabilities, there is no longer any certainty - at least in the world of atomic and sub-atomic particles [Fey]. Since all physical effects are rooted in quantum effects there can never be 100% certainty that any effect is produced by a particular cause.
There is nothing in quantum theory to argue against free will being wholly physical, and the previous argument that free will is an attribute of the soul also still stands. And we should consider too our increased understanding of complexity, as for example in Chaos Theory which really started as a science in 1960 with work by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz on computer simulations of weather systems [Pau p. 32]. Even very simple systems (or equations) can generate outputs which appear to be random, and small changes in initial conditions can cause large changes in the output. The brain is a very complex system; and since quantum theory shows that there will be small random changes in the initial conditions then theoretically (never mind practically) it is impossible to duplicate or predict someone's decisions with certainty. Fundamentally, this means there is not a complete causal link between the state of a person's mind and their decision. There is also the unsolvability issue, which basically states that in a formal system there will always be statements which cannot be proved or disproved using the axioms that define the system. Determinism based on classical physics, is dead - and premise (1) of the argument against free will is therefore false. If two centuries of living in a society which believed in determinism did not destroy the belief in free will, we should accept free will now that we live in a society in which determinism is dead. Johnson is right: 'Sir, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't'.
The sea change in scientific outlook outlined above gives a clear warning that science should not be used to bolster or demolish peoples' fundamental beliefs. Uncomplicated logic and simple science can reasonably be used to show up absurdities, but significant philosophical or religious questions, such as whether we have free will or not, should not be decided on the basis of the current 'best' scientific theory.
See also the Mind-Body problem for a discussion on behaviourism, and how that is not a good argument for determinism. Indeed the argument could be taken further, in that we could set up an experiment in which we would try to predict the response of people given a situation which involved novelty and thinking. If we were unable to predict the outcome of even one person, or if there were different responses we could not justify a priori, it would tend to support free will over determinism.
In the discussion on proofs of God's existence I argue that there is no proof for God's existence and further that religious belief is actually incompatible with such proof. Indeed, if there were a strong proof of God's existence it would make free choice much harder, since you would have to choose to disobey God. In a discussion on relative moral codes I argue there is actually no a priori basis for a moral code (i.e. we must accept some principle on faith in order to derive a moral code). Hence you can choose to believe in God and accept an absolute moral code, or you may choose simply to accept such a principle as Kant's categorical imperative or Jesus' commandment and follow a relative moral code. On the other hand you may choose not to take either of these choices, and possibly choose no moral code. This is free choice.
And a last thought: human societies and institutions have overwhelmingly been based on the premise that we have free will; perhaps the continual practise of free will develops free will even if it was not there to begin with?
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