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Wikipedia

Free will

Free will is the notional capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.[1]

A biker performing a dirt jump that, according to some interpretations, is the result of free will.

Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which 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, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion. Some conceive of free will as the ability to act beyond the limits of external influences or wishes.

Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events. Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will.[2] Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue,[3] which remains a major focus of philosophical debate. The view that conceives 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 (the claim that determinism is true and thus free will is not possible). Incompatibilism also encompasses hard incompatibilism, which holds not only determinism but also indeterminism to be incompatible with free will and thus free will to be impossible whatever the case may be regarding determinism.

In contrast, compatibilists hold that free will is compatible with determinism. Some compatibilists even hold that determinism is necessary for free will, arguing that choice involves preference for one course of action over another, requiring a sense of how choices will turn out.[4][5] Compatibilists thus consider the debate between libertarians and hard determinists over free will vs. determinism a false dilemma.[6] 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. Contemporary compatibilists instead identify free will as a psychological capacity, such as to direct one's behavior in a way responsive to reason, and 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 determinism a threat to the possibility of free will.[7]

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 (fourth 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".[3][8] According to Susanne Bobzien, the notion of incompatibilist free will is perhaps first identified in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias (third 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,[9] 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.[10]

Western philosophy

The underlying questions are whether we have control over our actions, and if so, what sort of control, and to what extent. These questions predate the early Greek stoics (for example, Chrysippus), and some modern philosophers lament the lack of progress over all these centuries.[11][12]

On one hand, humans have a strong sense of freedom, which leads them to believe that they have free will.[13][14] On the other hand, an intuitive feeling of free will could be mistaken.[15][16]

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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19][20]

Compatibilists maintain that mental reality is not of itself causally effective.[21][22] 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.[23] 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.[24] Given that humans all experience a sense of free will, some modern compatibilists think it is necessary to accommodate this intuition.[25][26] 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).[27] This view is associated with non-materialist constructions,[15] including both traditional dualism, as well as models supporting more minimal criteria; such as the ability to consciously veto an action or competing desire.[28][29] 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.[30] 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.[31]

Below are the classic arguments bearing upon the dilemma and its underpinnings.

Incompatibilism

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.[32] Another view is that of hard incompatibilists, which state that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism.[33]

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.[32][34] 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.[35]

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.[36][37][38] This argument has also been challenged by various compatibilist philosophers.[39][40]

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.[41][42] Peter van Inwagen remarks that C.D. Broad had a version of the consequence argument as early as the 1930s.[43]

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".[42] David Lewis suggests that compatibilists are only committed to the ability to do something otherwise if different circumstances had actually obtained in the past.[44]

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:[45]

Galen Strawson's table[45]
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).[46]

 
A domino's movement is determined completely by laws of physics.

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."[47] 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.[48] The relevance of such prospective indeterminate activity to free will is, however, contested,[49] even when chaos theory is introduced to magnify the effects of such microscopic events.[29][50]

Below these positions are examined in more detail.[45]

Hard determinism

 
A simplified taxonomy of philosophical positions regarding free will and determinism

Determinism can be divided into causal, logical and theological determinism.[51] Corresponding to each of these different meanings, there arises a different problem for free will.[52] 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.[53] Relevant forms of determinism include:

Causal determinism
The idea that everything is caused by prior conditions, making it impossible for anything else to happen.[54] 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.[55][56]
Logical determinism
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.[52]
Theological determinism
The idea that the future is already determined, either by a creator deity decreeing or knowing its outcome in advance.[57][58] 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.[52] 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.[30] 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.[27]

Metaphysical libertarianism

 
Various definitions of free will that have been proposed for Metaphysical Libertarianism (agent/substance causal,[59] centered accounts,[60] and efforts of will theory[29]), along with examples of other common free will positions (Compatibilism,[17] Hard Determinism,[61] and Hard Incompatibilism[33]). Red circles represent mental states; blue circles represent physical states; arrows describe causal interaction.

Metaphysical libertarianism is one philosophical view point under that of incompatibilism. 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.[62]

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.[59]

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).[63][64] 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".[59] 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.[59] 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.[65][66] 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[67] and John Martin Fischer.[68] 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.[60][69][70][71][72][73][74] 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."[29] According to Robert Kane such "ultimate responsibility" is a required condition for free will.[75] 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.[76] 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,[77] 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.[48] 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.[49]

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.[78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85] Agent (substance)-causal accounts have been suggested by both George Berkeley[86] and Thomas Reid.[87] 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:

  1. Determinism (D) is true, D does not imply we lack free will (F), but in fact we do lack F.
  2. D is true, D does not imply we lack F, but in fact we don't know if we have F.
  3. D is true, and we do have F.
  4. D is true, we have F, and F implies D.
  5. D is unproven, but we have F.
  6. D isn't true, we do have F, and would have F even if D were true.
  7. D isn't true, we don't have F, but F is compatible with D.
Derk Pereboom, Living without Free Will,[33] 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".[88]

The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the problem.[89] 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.[89]

Causal determinism

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.

Fundamental debate continues over whether the physical universe is likely to be deterministic. Although the scientific method cannot be used to rule out indeterminism with respect to violations of causal closure, it can be used to identify indeterminism in natural law. Interpretations of quantum mechanics at present are both deterministic and indeterministic, and are being constrained by ongoing experimentation.[90]

Destiny and fate

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).[91]

Logical determinism

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

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

Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance.[92][93] 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.[92][94] It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism – in the context of its capacity to determine future events.[92][95] Despite this, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism.[96][97] The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism.[98]

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.[99] Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future.

Theological determinism

Theological determinism is a form of determinism stating that all events that happen are pre-ordained, or predestined to happen, by a monotheistic deity, or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience. Two forms of theological determinism exist, here referenced as strong and weak theological determinism.[100]

  • 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."[101]
  • 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."[102]

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.[53] Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God.[54] 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.[30]

 
A simplified taxonomy of philosophical positions regarding free will and theological determinism[31]

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.[31] 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.[31]

The basic argument for theological fatalism in the case of weak theological determinism is as follows:

  1. Assume divine foreknowledge or omniscience
  2. Infallible foreknowledge implies destiny (it is known for certain what one will do)
  3. Destiny eliminates alternate possibility (one cannot do otherwise)
  4. 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,[103] Thomas Aquinas,[104] and C.S. Lewis.[105]
  • 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.[106]

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).[53]

Mind–body problem

The idea of free will is one aspect of the mind–body problem, that is, consideration of the relation between mind (for example, consciousness, memory, and judgment) and body (for example, the human brain and nervous system). Philosophical models of mind are divided into physical and non-physical expositions.

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).[107] 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.[108] 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:[109] "Solving the hard problem of consciousness involves determining how physiological processes such as ions flowing across the nerve membrane cause us to have experiences."[110] 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?"[15] Others however argue that "consciousness plays a far smaller role in human life than Western culture has tended to believe."[111]

Compatibilism

 
Thomas Hobbes was a classical compatibilist.

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.[citation needed] 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,[112] and the Stoic Chrysippus.[113] 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.[114]

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.[24] 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.[35][115]

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]."[116] 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."[117] 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."

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.[118] Likewise, some modern compatibilists in psychology have tried to revive traditionally accepted struggles of free will with the formation of character.[119] 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.[120][121]

The notion of levels of decision is presented in a different manner by Frankfurt.[115] 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.[122] Others argue that Frankfurt offers no adequate explanation of how the various levels in the hierarchy mesh together.[123]

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.[124] 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.[124] 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.[125] More sophisticated analyses of compatibilist free will have been offered, as have other critiques.[114]

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.

The physical mind

Compatibilist models of free will often consider deterministic relationships as discoverable in the physical world (including the brain). Cognitive naturalism[126] 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).[107][127] 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.[118] 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.[128] 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.[15] 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."[15]

Recently,[when?] 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.[129]

Non-naturalism

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.[130] Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism,[131] they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics.[132] While less popular among 21st-century philosophers, non-naturalist compatibilism is present in most if not almost all religions.[133]

Other views

Some philosophers' views are difficult to categorize as either compatibilist or incompatibilist, hard determinist or libertarian. For example, 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.[134]

Free will as an illusion

 
Spinoza thought that there is no free will.
"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[135]

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.[136]

 
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.[137]

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."[138]

In his book Free Will, philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion, stating that "thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control."[139]

Free will as "moral imagination"

Rudolf Steiner, who collaborated in a complete edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's work,[140] 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.[141]

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.[142]

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.[143] 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.[144] 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.[144]

Free will and views of causality

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).[145] 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."[146]

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)[147]
  • 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)[148]

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.[149] "There is a sharp difference between moral judgments and judgments of fact… Moral judgments… must be a priori judgments."[150]

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".[151] 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.[152][153]

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."[154] 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.[155] 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").[156] 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]."[157]

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."[158][159]

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.[160] In response, others point out the complexity of decision making and the importance of nuances in the terminology.[citation needed]

Eastern philosophy

Buddhist philosophy

Buddhism accepts both freedom and determinism (or something similar to it), but in spite of its focus towards the human agency, rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources.[161] 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."[161] 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.[161]

Hindu philosophy

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.[162] 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.[163]

A quotation from Swami Vivekananda, a Vedantist, offers a good example of the worry about free will in the Hindu tradition.

Therefore we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by conditions of time, space and causality. ... To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here.[164]

However, the preceding quote has often been misinterpreted as Vivekananda implying that everything is predetermined. What Vivekananda actually meant by lack of free will was that the will was not "free" because it was heavily influenced by the law of cause and effect – "The will is not free, it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect, but there is something behind the will which is free."[164] Vivekananda never said things were absolutely determined and placed emphasis on the power of conscious choice to alter one's past karma: "It is the coward and the fool who says this is his fate. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate."[164]

Scientific approaches

Science has contributed to the free will problem in at least three ways. First, physics has addressed the question of whether nature is deterministic, which is viewed as crucial by incompatibilists (compatibilists, however, view it as irrelevant). Second, although free will can be defined in various ways, all of them involve aspects of the way people make decisions and initiate actions, which have been studied extensively by neuroscientists. Some of the experimental observations are widely viewed as implying that free will does not exist or is an illusion (but many philosophers see this as a misunderstanding). Third, psychologists have studied the beliefs that the majority of ordinary people hold about free will and its role in assigning moral responsibility.

From an anthropological perspective, free will can be regarded as an explanation for human behavior that justifies a socially sanctioned system of rewards and punishments. Under this definition, free will may be described as a political ideology. In a society where people are taught to believe that humans have free will, free will may be described as a political doctrine.

Quantum physics

Early scientific thought often portrayed the universe as deterministic – for example in the thought of Democritus or the Cārvākans – and some thinkers claimed that the simple process of gathering sufficient information would allow them to predict future events with perfect accuracy. Modern science, on the other hand, is a mixture of deterministic and stochastic theories.[165] Quantum mechanics predicts events only in terms of probabilities, casting doubt on whether the universe is deterministic at all, although evolution of the universal state vector is completely deterministic. 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.[166][167]

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.[168] This is not always the case: many macroscopic phenomena are based on quantum effects. For instance, some hardware random number generators work by amplifying quantum effects into practically usable signals. 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).[29] According to many interpretations, non-determinism enables free will to exist,[169] while others assert the opposite (because the action was not controllable by the physical being who claims to possess the free will).[170]

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.[171] The view of many researchers is that many human behaviors can be explained in terms of humans' brains, genes, and evolutionary histories.[172][173][174] 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.[175] Moreover, it is not certain that environmental determination is any less threatening to free will than genetic determination.[176]

Neuroscience and neurophilosophy

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.[177]). 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.[178]

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.[178][179]

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.[180] 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.[181][182]

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…"[183] 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[184] 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.[185]

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".[186]

Adrian G. Guggisberg and Annaïs Mottaz have also challenged those findings.[187]

A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences[188] 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[178] and Fried's.[189]

A study that compared deliberate and arbitrary decisions, found that the early signs of decision are absent for the deliberate ones.[190]

It has been shown that in several brain-related conditions, individuals cannot entirely control their own actions, though the existence of such conditions does not directly refute the existence of free will. Neuroscientific studies are valuable tools in developing models of how humans experience free will.

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,[191] 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.[191] 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.[192]

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.[193] 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.[194] 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).[195] 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.[196][197]

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.[198] 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.[199]

Experimental psychology

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,[200] 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:

  1. The first event immediately precedes the second event, and
  2. 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.[200][201] 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.[202] 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[203][204] and philosophers[205][206] 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.[207]

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.[208]

Regardless of the validity of belief in free will, it may be beneficial to understand where the idea comes from. One contribution is randomness.[209] 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.[210] 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.

Other experiments

Other experiments have also been proposed to test free will. Ender Tosun argues for the reality of free will, based on combined experiments consisting of empirical and thought experiments. In the empirical part of these experiments, experimenter 2 is expected to predict which object experimenter 1 will touch. Experimenter 1 is always able to negate the prediction of experimenter 2. In the thought experiment part, Laplace's demon makes the predictions and experimenter 1 is never able to negate his predictions. Based on the non-correspondence of the predictions of experimenter 2 in the empirical experiment with the predictions of Laplace's demon, and contradictions in the possible layers of causality, Tosun concludes that free will is real. He also extends these experiments to indeterministic processes and real-time brain observations while willing, assuming that an agent has every technological means to probe and rewire his brain. In this thought experiment, experimenter 1 notices the "circuit" of his brain which disables him from willing one of the alternatives, then he probes other circuits to see if he can have the will to rewire that circuit. Experimenter 1 notices that all circuits of his brain being so as to prevent him from rewiring or bypassing the circuits which prevent him from willing to touch one of the objects is impossible.[citation needed]

Believing in free will

Since at least 1959,[211] 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, or more specifically, the libertarian, that is freedom from determinism.

What people believe

Whether people naturally adhere to an incompatibilist model of free will has been questioned in the 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).[212] 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.[213] 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.[214] 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.[215]

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.[216]

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.[217]

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".[218][219]

The researchers also found that people consider acts more "free" when they involve a person opposing external forces, planning, or making random actions.[220] 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.[221][222]

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%.[223]

Among evolutionary biologists

79 percent of evolutionary biologists said that they believe in free will according to a survey conducted in 2007, only 14 percent chose no free will, and 7 percent did not answer the question.[224]

Effects of the belief itself

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.[218] Kathleen Vohs has found that those whose belief in free will had been eroded were more likely to cheat.[225] 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.[226] Provoking a rejection of free will has also been associated with increased aggression and less helpful behaviour.[226] 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.[227][228][229][230][231]

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.

Richard Holton[232]

Moreover, whether or not these experimental findings are a result of actual manipulations in belief in free will is a matter of debate.[232] 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.[232] 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.[232][233] 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.[232][234]

Baumeister and colleagues also note that volunteers disbelieving in free will are less capable of counterfactual thinking.[218] 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.[235] 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.[232]

Along similar lines, Tyler Stillman has found that belief in free will predicts better job performance.[236]

In theology

Christianity

 
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 hold 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.[237] 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)."[238]

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.

Judaism

In Jewish thought the concept of "Free will" (Hebrew: bechirah chofshit בחירה חפשית, bechirah בחירה) 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:

  1. Maimonides's reasoned [239] 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.
  2. At the same time, Maimonides - and other thinkers - recognizes [240] the paradox that will arise given (i) that Judaism simultaneously recognizes God's omniscience, and further (ii) the nature of Divine providence as understood in Judaism. (In fact the problem may be seen to overlap several others in Jewish Philosophy.)

Islam

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.[241][242] In Shia Islam, Ash'aris understanding of a higher balance toward predestination is challenged by most theologians.[243] 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.[244]

Others

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard claimed that divine omnipotence cannot be separated from divine goodness.[245] 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."[246] Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a contemporary expansion of this theme, adding how God, free will, and evil are consistent.[247]

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.[248] Some philosophers follow Philo of Alexandria, a philosopher known for his homocentrism, in holding that free will is a feature of a human's soul, and thus that non-human animals lack free will.[249]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Carus, Paul (1910). "Person and personality". In Hegeler, Edward C. (ed.). The Monist. Vol. 20. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. p. 369. To state it briefly, we define "free will" as a will unimpeded by any compulsion.
  2. ^ Baumeister, Roy F.; Monroe, Andrew E. (2014). Recent Research on Free Will. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 50. pp. 1–52. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-800284-1.00001-1. ISBN 9780128002841.
  3. ^ a b Bobzien, Susanne (1998). Determinism and freedom in Stoic philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-823794-5. Retrieved 2015-12-09. ...Aristotle and Epictetus: In the latter authors it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them. In Alexander's account, the terms are understood differently: 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.
  4. ^ An argument by Rudolf Carnap described by: C. James Goodwin (2009). Research In Psychology: Methods and Design (6th ed.). Wiley. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-470-52278-3.
  5. ^ Robert C Bishop (2010). "§28.2: Compatibilism and incompatibilism". In Raymond Y. Chiao; Marvin L. Cohen; Anthony J. Leggett; William D. Phillips; Charles L. Harper, Jr. (eds.). Visions of Discovery: New Light on Physics, Cosmology, and Consciousness. Cambridge University Press. p. 603. ISBN 978-0-521-88239-2.
  6. ^ See, for example, Janet Richards (2001). "The root of the free will problem: kinds of non-existence". Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. Routledge. pp. 142 ff. ISBN 978-0-415-21243-4.
  7. ^ McKenna, Michael; Coates, D. Justin (2015). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  8. ^ Bobzien, Susanne (2000). "Did Epicurus discover the free-will problem?". Retrieved 2015-12-09. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ Schopenhauer, A. "What is freedom?". On the Freedom of the Will.
  10. ^ Hence the notion of contingency appeared as the very opposition of necessity, so that wherever a thing is considered dependent or relies upon another thing, it is contingent and thus not necessary.
  11. ^ Thomas Nagel (1989). "Freedom". The View From Nowhere. Oxford University Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-19-505644-0. Nothing that might be a solution has yet been described. This is not a case where there are several possible candidate solutions and we don't know which is correct. It is a case where nothing believable has (to my knowledge) been proposed.
  12. ^ John R Searle (2013). "The problem of free will". Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power. Columbia University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-231-51055-4. The persistence of the traditional free will problem in philosophy seems to me something of a scandal. After all these centuries...it does not seem to me that we have made very much progress.
  13. ^ Gregg D Caruso (2012). Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will. Lexington Books. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-7391-7136-3. One of the strongest supports for the free choice thesis is the unmistakable intuition of virtually every human being that he is free to make the choices he does and that the deliberations leading to those choices are also free flowing..
  14. ^ Corliss Lamont (1969). Freedom of choice affirmed. Beacon Press. p. 38. ISBN 9780826404763.
  15. ^ a b c d e Azim F Shariff; Jonathan Schooler; Kathleen D Vohs (2008). "The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will". In John Baer; James C. Kaufman; Roy F. Baumeister (eds.). Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will. Oxford University Press. pp. 183, 190–93. ISBN 978-0-19-518963-6.
  16. ^ TW Clark (1999). "Fear of mechanism: A compatibilist critique of The Volitional Brain". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 6 (8–9): 279–93. Feelings or intuitions per se never count as self-evident proof of anything. Quoted by Shariff, Schooler & Vohs: The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will For full text on line see this 2013-05-05 at the Wayback Machine.
  17. ^ a b Max Velmans (2002). "How Could Conscious Experiences Affect Brains?". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 9 (11): 2–29.
  18. ^ William James (1896). "The dilemma of determinism". The Will to believe, and other essays in popular philosophy. Longmans, Green. pp. 145 ff.
  19. ^ John A Bargh (2007-11-16). (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-09-03. Retrieved 2012-08-21. Are behaviors, judgments, and other higher mental processes the product of free conscious choices, as influenced by internal psychological states (motives, preferences, etc.), or are those higher mental processes determined by those states? Also found in John A Bargh (2008). "Chapter 7: Free will is un-natural". In John Baer; James C. Kaufman; Roy F. Baumeister (eds.). Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will. Oxford University Press. pp. 128 ff. ISBN 978-0-19-518963-6.
  20. ^ Paul Russell (2002). "Chapter 1: Logic, "liberty", and the metaphysics of responsibility". Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. Oxford University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-19-515290-6. ...the well-known dilemma of determinism. One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it.... Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility.
  21. ^ Azim F Shariff; Jonathan Schooler; Kathleen D Vohs (2008). "Chapter 9: The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will". In John Baer; James C. Kaufman; Roy F. Baumeister (eds.). Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will. Oxford University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-19-518963-6.
  22. ^ Max Velmans (2009). Understanding Consciousness (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-415-42515-5.
  23. ^ Strawson, Galen (2011) [1998]. . Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy. London: Routledge. Archived from the original on 26 August 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
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  26. ^ Walter J. Freeman (2000). How Brains Make Up Their Minds. Columbia University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-231-12008-1. Instead of postulating a universal law of causality and then having to deny the possibility of choice, we start with the premise that freedom of choice exists, and then we seek to explain causality as a property of brains.
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Bibliography

  • Hawking, Stephen, and Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design, New York, Bantam Books, 2010.
  • Horst, Steven (2011), (MIT Press) ISBN 0-262-01525-0
  • (PDF)
  • Cave, Stephen (June 2016). "There's No Such Thing as Free Will". The Atlantic.

Further reading

  • Dennett, Daniel C. (2003). Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking Press ISBN 0-670-03186-0
  • Epstein J.M. (1999). Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science. Complexity, IV (5).
  • Gazzaniga, M. & Steven, M.S. (2004) Free Will in the 21st Century: A Discussion of Neuroscience and Law, in Garland, B. (ed.) Neuroscience and the Law: Brain, Mind and the Scales of Justice, New York: Dana Press, ISBN 1-932594-04-3, pp. 51–70.
  • Goodenough, O.R. (2004). "Responsibility and punishment". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 359 (1451): 1805–09. doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1548. PMC 1693460. PMID 15590621.
  • Harnad, Stevan (1982). "Consciousness: An Afterthought". Cognition and Brain Theory. 5: 29–47.
  • Harnad, Stevan (2001). "No Easy Way Out". The Sciences. 41 (2): 36–42. doi:10.1002/j.2326-1951.2001.tb03561.x.
  • Harnad, Stevan (2009) The Explanatory Gap #PhilPapers
  • Harris, Sam. 2012. Free Will. Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4516-8340-0
  • Hofstadter, Douglas. (2007) I Am A Strange Loop. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03078-1
  • Kane, Robert (1998). The Significance of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-512656-4
  • Lawhead, William F. (2005). The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages ISBN 0-07-296355-7.
  • Libet, Benjamin; Anthony Freeman; and Keith Sutherland, eds. (1999). The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic. Collected essays by scientists and philosophers.
  • Muhm, Myriam (2004). Abolito il libero arbitrio – Colloquio con Wolf Singer. L'Espresso 19.08.2004
  • Nowak A., Vallacher R.R., Tesser A., Borkowski W. (2000). Society of Self: The emergence of collective properties in self-structure. Psychological Review. 107
  • Schopenhauer, Arthur (1839). On the Freedom of the Will., Oxford: Basil Blackwell ISBN 0-631-14552-4.
  • Stapp, Henry P. (2017). Quantum theory and free will : how mental intentions translate into bodily actions. Cham, Switzerland. ISBN 978-3-319-58301-3. OCLC 991595874.
  • Tosun, Ender (2020). Free Will Under the Light of the Quran, ISBN 978-605-63198-2-2
  • Van Inwagen, Peter (1986). An Essay on Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-824924-1.
  • Velmans, Max (2003) How Could Conscious Experiences Affect Brains? Exeter: Imprint Academic ISBN 0-907845-39-8.
  • Dick Swaab, Wij Zijn Ons Brein, Publishing Centre, 2010. ISBN 978-90-254-3522-6
  • Wegener, Daniel Merton (2002). (PDF). MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-23222-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-12. Retrieved 2018-12-12.
  • Williams, Clifford (1980). Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company
  • John Baer, James C. Kaufman, Roy F. Baumeister (2008). Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will. Oxford University Press, New York ISBN 0-19-518963-9
  • George Musser, "Is the Cosmos Random? (Einstein's assertion that God does not play dice with the universe has been misinterpreted)", Scientific American, vol. 313, no. 3 (September 2015), pp. 88–93.

External links

  •   Quotations related to Free will at Wikiquote
  •   Media related to Free will at Wikimedia Commons
  • – a debate on whether free will is an illusion and pre-determined by the Institute of Art and Ideas, featuring Oxford neuroscientist Nayef Al Rodhan, psychiatrist and broadcaster Mark Salter, and LSE philosopher Kristina Musholt.

This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article "Free will", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under the GFDL.

free, will, other, uses, disambiguation, freewill, redirects, here, software, company, freewill, confused, with, self, agency, notional, capacity, ability, choose, between, different, possible, courses, action, unimpeded, biker, performing, dirt, jump, that, a. For other uses see Free will disambiguation Freewill redirects here For the software company see FreeWill Not to be confused with Self agency Free will is the notional capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded 1 A biker performing a dirt jump that according to some interpretations is the result of free will Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility praise culpability sin and other judgements which 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 what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion Some conceive of free will as the ability to act beyond the limits of external influences or wishes Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible which is inconsistent with a libertarian model of free will 2 Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue 3 which remains a major focus of philosophical debate The view that conceives 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 the claim that determinism is true and thus free will is not possible Incompatibilism also encompasses hard incompatibilism which holds not only determinism but also indeterminism to be incompatible with free will and thus free will to be impossible whatever the case may be regarding determinism In contrast compatibilists hold that free will is compatible with determinism Some compatibilists even hold that determinism is necessary for free will arguing that choice involves preference for one course of action over another requiring a sense of how choices will turn out 4 5 Compatibilists thus consider the debate between libertarians and hard determinists over free will vs determinism a false dilemma 6 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 Contemporary compatibilists instead identify free will as a psychological capacity such as to direct one s behavior in a way responsive to reason and 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 determinism a threat to the possibility of free will 7 Contents 1 History of free will 2 Western philosophy 2 1 Incompatibilism 2 1 1 Hard determinism 2 1 2 Metaphysical libertarianism 2 1 3 Non causal theories 2 1 4 Event causal theories 2 1 5 Agent substance causal theories 2 1 6 Hard incompatibilism 2 1 6 1 Causal determinism 2 1 6 2 Destiny and fate 2 1 6 3 Logical determinism 2 1 6 4 Omniscience 2 1 6 5 Predeterminism 2 1 7 Theological determinism 2 1 8 Mind body problem 2 2 Compatibilism 2 2 1 Free will as lack of physical restraint 2 2 2 Free will as a psychological state 2 2 3 Free will as unpredictability 2 2 4 The physical mind 2 2 5 Non naturalism 2 3 Other views 2 3 1 Free will as an illusion 2 3 2 Free will as moral imagination 2 3 3 Free will as a pragmatically useful concept 2 3 4 Free will and views of causality 2 3 5 Free will according to Thomas Aquinas 2 3 6 Free will as a pseudo problem 3 Eastern philosophy 3 1 Buddhist philosophy 3 2 Hindu philosophy 4 Scientific approaches 4 1 Quantum physics 4 2 Genetics 4 3 Neuroscience and neurophilosophy 4 4 Experimental psychology 4 5 Other experiments 4 6 Believing in free will 4 6 1 What people believe 4 6 2 Among philosophers 4 6 3 Among evolutionary biologists 4 6 4 Effects of the belief itself 5 In theology 5 1 Christianity 5 2 Judaism 5 3 Islam 5 4 Others 6 See also 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Bibliography 8 Further reading 9 External linksHistory of free will EditThe problem of free will has been identified in ancient Greek philosophical literature The notion of compatibilist free will has been attributed to both Aristotle fourth 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 3 8 According to Susanne Bobzien the notion of incompatibilist free will is perhaps first identified in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias third 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 9 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 10 Western philosophy EditSee also Free will in antiquity The underlying questions are whether we have control over our actions and if so what sort of control and to what extent These questions predate the early Greek stoics for example Chrysippus and some modern philosophers lament the lack of progress over all these centuries 11 12 On one hand humans have a strong sense of freedom which leads them to believe that they have free will 13 14 On the other hand an intuitive feeling of free will could be mistaken 15 16 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 17 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 18 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 19 20 Compatibilists maintain that mental reality is not of itself causally effective 21 22 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 23 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 24 Given that humans all experience a sense of free will some modern compatibilists think it is necessary to accommodate this intuition 25 26 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 27 This view is associated with non materialist constructions 15 including both traditional dualism as well as models supporting more minimal criteria such as the ability to consciously veto an action or competing desire 28 29 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 30 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 31 Below are the classic arguments bearing upon the dilemma and its underpinnings Incompatibilism Edit Main article Incompatibilism 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 32 Another view is that of hard incompatibilists which state that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism 33 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 32 34 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 35 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 36 37 38 This argument has also been challenged by various compatibilist philosophers 39 40 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 41 42 Peter van Inwagen remarks that C D Broad had a version of the consequence argument as early as the 1930s 43 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 42 David Lewis suggests that compatibilists are only committed to the ability to do something otherwise if different circumstances had actually obtained in the past 44 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 45 Galen Strawson s table 45 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Determinism 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 46 A domino s movement is determined completely by laws of physics 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 47 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 48 The relevance of such prospective indeterminate activity to free will is however contested 49 even when chaos theory is introduced to magnify the effects of such microscopic events 29 50 Below these positions are examined in more detail 45 Hard determinism Edit Main article Hard determinism A simplified taxonomy of philosophical positions regarding free will and determinism Determinism can be divided into causal logical and theological determinism 51 Corresponding to each of these different meanings there arises a different problem for free will 52 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 53 Relevant forms of determinism include Causal determinism The idea that everything is caused by prior conditions making it impossible for anything else to happen 54 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 55 56 Logical determinism 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 52 Theological determinism The idea that the future is already determined either by a creator deity decreeing or knowing its outcome in advance 57 58 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 52 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 30 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 27 Metaphysical libertarianism Edit Main article Libertarianism metaphysics Various definitions of free will that have been proposed for Metaphysical Libertarianism agent substance causal 59 centered accounts 60 and efforts of will theory 29 along with examples of other common free will positions Compatibilism 17 Hard Determinism 61 and Hard Incompatibilism 33 Red circles represent mental states blue circles represent physical states arrows describe causal interaction Metaphysical libertarianism is one philosophical view point under that of incompatibilism 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 62 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 59 Non causal theories Edit 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 63 64 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 59 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 Edit 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 59 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 65 66 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 67 and John Martin Fischer 68 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 60 69 70 71 72 73 74 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 29 According to Robert Kane such ultimate responsibility is a required condition for free will 75 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 76 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 77 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 48 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 49 Agent substance causal theories Edit 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 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 Agent substance causal accounts have been suggested by both George Berkeley 86 and Thomas Reid 87 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 Edit 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 33 p xvi dd dd dd dd dd 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 88 The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the problem 89 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 89 Causal determinism Edit Main article Determinism 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 Fundamental debate continues over whether the physical universe is likely to be deterministic Although the scientific method cannot be used to rule out indeterminism with respect to violations of causal closure it can be used to identify indeterminism in natural law Interpretations of quantum mechanics at present are both deterministic and indeterministic and are being constrained by ongoing experimentation 90 Destiny and fate Edit Main article Destiny 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 91 Logical determinism Edit See also B theory of time 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 Edit Main article Omniscience 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 Edit Main article Predeterminism See also Predestination Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance 92 93 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 92 94 It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism in the context of its capacity to determine future events 92 95 Despite this predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism 96 97 The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity in which case it represents a form of biological determinism 98 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 99 Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen so that humans have no control over their future Theological determinism Edit Main article Theological determinism Theological determinism is a form of determinism stating that all events that happen are pre ordained or predestined to happen by a monotheistic deity or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience Two forms of theological determinism exist here referenced as strong and weak theological determinism 100 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 101 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 102 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 53 Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God 54 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 30 A simplified taxonomy of philosophical positions regarding free will and theological determinism 31 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 31 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 31 The basic argument for theological fatalism in the case of weak theological determinism is as follows Assume divine foreknowledge or omniscience 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 willThis 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 103 Thomas Aquinas 104 and C S Lewis 105 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 106 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 53 Mind body problem Edit Main article Mind body problem See also Philosophy of mind Dualism philosophy of mind Monism and Physicalism Rene Descartes The idea of free will is one aspect of the mind body problem that is consideration of the relation between mind for example consciousness memory and judgment and body for example the human brain and nervous system Philosophical models of mind are divided into physical and non physical expositions 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 107 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 108 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 109 Solving the hard problem of consciousness involves determining how physiological processes such as ions flowing across the nerve membrane cause us to have experiences 110 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 15 Others however argue that consciousness plays a far smaller role in human life than Western culture has tended to believe 111 Compatibilism Edit Main article Compatibilism Thomas Hobbes was a classical compatibilist 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 citation needed 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 112 and the Stoic Chrysippus 113 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 114 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 24 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 35 115 Free will as lack of physical restraint Edit 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 116 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 117 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 Free will as a psychological state Edit 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 118 Likewise some modern compatibilists in psychology have tried to revive traditionally accepted struggles of free will with the formation of character 119 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 120 121 The notion of levels of decision is presented in a different manner by Frankfurt 115 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 122 Others argue that Frankfurt offers no adequate explanation of how the various levels in the hierarchy mesh together 123 Free will as unpredictability Edit In Elbow Room Dennett presents an argument for a compatibilist theory of free will which he further elaborated in the book Freedom Evolves 124 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 124 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 125 More sophisticated analyses of compatibilist free will have been offered as have other critiques 114 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 The physical mind Edit See also Neuroscience of free will Compatibilist models of free will often consider deterministic relationships as discoverable in the physical world including the brain Cognitive naturalism 126 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 107 127 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 118 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 128 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 15 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 15 Recently when 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 129 Non naturalism Edit Not to be confused with Religious naturalism 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 130 Also consistent with both autonomy and Darwinism 131 they allow for free personal agency based on practical reasons within the laws of physics 132 While less popular among 21st century philosophers non naturalist compatibilism is present in most if not almost all religions 133 Other views Edit Some philosophers views are difficult to categorize as either compatibilist or incompatibilist hard determinist or libertarian For example 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 134 Free will as an illusion Edit Spinoza thought that there is no free will 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 135 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 136 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 137 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 138 In his book Free Will philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion stating that thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control 139 Free will as moral imagination Edit Rudolf Steiner who collaborated in a complete edition of Arthur Schopenhauer s work 140 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 141 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 142 Free will as a pragmatically useful concept Edit 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 143 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 144 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 144 Free will and views of causality Edit See also Principle of sufficient reason 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 145 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 146 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 147 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 148 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 149 There is a sharp difference between moral judgments and judgments of fact Moral judgments must be a priori judgments 150 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 151 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 Edit 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 152 153 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 154 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 155 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 156 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 157 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 158 159 Free will as a pseudo problem Edit 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 160 In response others point out the complexity of decision making and the importance of nuances in the terminology citation needed Eastern philosophy EditBuddhist philosophy Edit Buddhism accepts both freedom and determinism or something similar to it but in spite of its focus towards the human agency rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources 161 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 161 Buddhists believe in neither absolute free will nor determinism It preaches a middle doctrine named pratityasamutpada 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 Carvakans and Buddhists all taking slightly different lines In many ways the Buddhist position is closer to a theory of conditionality idappaccayata than a theory of causality especially as it is expounded by Nagarjuna in the Mulamadhyamakakarika 161 Hindu philosophy Edit See also Free will in theology Hinduism 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 162 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 163 A quotation from Swami Vivekananda a Vedantist offers a good example of the worry about free will in the Hindu tradition Therefore we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free will the very words are a contradiction because will is what we know and everything that we know is within our universe and everything within our universe is moulded by conditions of time space and causality To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe it cannot be found here 164 However the preceding quote has often been misinterpreted as Vivekananda implying that everything is predetermined What Vivekananda actually meant by lack of free will was that the will was not free because it was heavily influenced by the law of cause and effect The will is not free it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect but there is something behind the will which is free 164 Vivekananda never said things were absolutely determined and placed emphasis on the power of conscious choice to alter one s past karma It is the coward and the fool who says this is his fate But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate 164 Scientific approaches EditScience has contributed to the free will problem in at least three ways First physics has addressed the question of whether nature is deterministic which is viewed as crucial by incompatibilists compatibilists however view it as irrelevant Second although free will can be defined in various ways all of them involve aspects of the way people make decisions and initiate actions which have been studied extensively by neuroscientists Some of the experimental observations are widely viewed as implying that free will does not exist or is an illusion but many philosophers see this as a misunderstanding Third psychologists have studied the beliefs that the majority of ordinary people hold about free will and its role in assigning moral responsibility From an anthropological perspective free will can be regarded as an explanation for human behavior that justifies a socially sanctioned system of rewards and punishments Under this definition free will may be described as a political ideology In a society where people are taught to believe that humans have free will free will may be described as a political doctrine Quantum physics Edit Early scientific thought often portrayed the universe as deterministic for example in the thought of Democritus or the Carvakans and some thinkers claimed that the simple process of gathering sufficient information would allow them to predict future events with perfect accuracy Modern science on the other hand is a mixture of deterministic and stochastic theories 165 Quantum mechanics predicts events only in terms of probabilities casting doubt on whether the universe is deterministic at all although evolution of the universal state vector is completely deterministic 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 166 167 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 168 This is not always the case many macroscopic phenomena are based on quantum effects For instance some hardware random number generators work by amplifying quantum effects into practically usable signals 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 29 According to many interpretations non determinism enables free will to exist 169 while others assert the opposite because the action was not controllable by the physical being who claims to possess the free will 170 Genetics Edit 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 171 The view of many researchers is that many human behaviors can be explained in terms of humans brains genes and evolutionary histories 172 173 174 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 175 Moreover it is not certain that environmental determination is any less threatening to free will than genetic determination 176 Neuroscience and neurophilosophy Edit Main articles Neurophilosophy and Neuroscience of free will See also Neurostimulation 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 amp Deecke in 1965 177 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 178 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 178 179 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 180 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 181 182 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 183 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 actionBenjamin Libet s results are quoted 184 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 185 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 186 Adrian G Guggisberg and Annais Mottaz have also challenged those findings 187 A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 188 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 178 and Fried s 189 A study that compared deliberate and arbitrary decisions found that the early signs of decision are absent for the deliberate ones 190 It has been shown that in several brain related conditions individuals cannot entirely control their own actions though the existence of such conditions does not directly refute the existence of free will Neuroscientific studies are valuable tools in developing models of how humans experience free will 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 191 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 191 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 192 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 193 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 194 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 195 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 196 197 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 198 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 199 Experimental psychology Edit See also Cognitive science Cognitive psychology and Neuroscience 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 200 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 200 201 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 202 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 203 204 and philosophers 205 206 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 207 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 208 Regardless of the validity of belief in free will it may be beneficial to understand where the idea comes from One contribution is randomness 209 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 210 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 Other experiments Edit Other experiments have also been proposed to test free will Ender Tosun argues for the reality of free will based on combined experiments consisting of empirical and thought experiments In the empirical part of these experiments experimenter 2 is expected to predict which object experimenter 1 will touch Experimenter 1 is always able to negate the prediction of experimenter 2 In the thought experiment part Laplace s demon makes the predictions and experimenter 1 is never able to negate his predictions Based on the non correspondence of the predictions of experimenter 2 in the empirical experiment with the predictions of Laplace s demon and contradictions in the possible layers of causality Tosun concludes that free will is real He also extends these experiments to indeterministic processes and real time brain observations while willing assuming that an agent has every technological means to probe and rewire his brain In this thought experiment experimenter 1 notices the circuit of his brain which disables him from willing one of the alternatives then he probes other circuits to see if he can have the will to rewire that circuit Experimenter 1 notices that all circuits of his brain being so as to prevent him from rewiring or bypassing the circuits which prevent him from willing to touch one of the objects is impossible citation needed Believing in free will Edit Since at least 1959 211 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 or more specifically the libertarian that is freedom from determinism What people believe Edit Whether people naturally adhere to an incompatibilist model of free will has been questioned in the 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 212 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 213 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 214 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 215 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 216 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 217 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 218 219 The researchers also found that people consider acts more free when they involve a person opposing external forces planning or making random actions 220 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 221 222 Among philosophers Edit 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 2 223 Among evolutionary biologists Edit 79 percent of evolutionary biologists said that they believe in free will according to a survey conducted in 2007 only 14 percent chose no free will and 7 percent did not answer the question 224 Effects of the belief itself Edit See also Self efficacy 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 218 Kathleen Vohs has found that those whose belief in free will had been eroded were more likely to cheat 225 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 226 Provoking a rejection of free will has also been associated with increased aggression and less helpful behaviour 226 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 227 228 229 230 231 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 Richard Holton 232 Moreover whether or not these experimental findings are a result of actual manipulations in belief in free will is a matter of debate 232 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 232 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 232 233 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 232 234 Baumeister and colleagues also note that volunteers disbelieving in free will are less capable of counterfactual thinking 218 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 235 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 232 Along similar lines Tyler Stillman has found that belief in free will predicts better job performance 236 In theology EditMain article Free will in theology Christianity Edit 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 hold 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 237 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 12 238 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 5There 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 NABREThe exact meaning of these verses has been debated by Christian theologians throughout history Judaism Edit Main article Free will in theology Judaism Bas relief of Maimonides in the U S House of Representatives In Jewish thought the concept of Free will Hebrew bechirah chofshit בחירה חפשית bechirah בחירה 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 239 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 At the same time Maimonides and other thinkers recognizes 240 the paradox that will arise given i that Judaism simultaneously recognizes God s omniscience and further ii the nature of Divine providence as understood in Judaism In fact the problem may be seen to overlap several others in Jewish Philosophy Islam Edit 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 241 242 In Shia Islam Ash aris understanding of a higher balance toward predestination is challenged by most theologians 243 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 244 Others Edit The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard claimed that divine omnipotence cannot be separated from divine goodness 245 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 246 Alvin Plantinga s free will defense is a contemporary expansion of this theme adding how God free will and evil are consistent 247 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 248 Some philosophers follow Philo of Alexandria a philosopher known for his homocentrism in holding that free will is a feature of a human s soul and thus that non human animals lack free will 249 See also Edit Philosophy portalAgency in Mormonism Angst Existentialist angst Argument from free will Buridan s ass De libero arbitrio early treatise about the freedom of will by Augustine of Hippo Free will theorem Locus of control Karma Prevenient grace Problem of mental causation Prospection Superdeterminism True Will Voluntarism philosophy References EditCitations Edit Carus Paul 1910 Person and personality In Hegeler Edward C ed The Monist Vol 20 Chicago Open Court Publishing Company p 369 To state it briefly we define free will as a will unimpeded by any compulsion Baumeister Roy F Monroe Andrew E 2014 Recent Research on Free Will Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Vol 50 pp 1 52 doi 10 1016 B978 0 12 800284 1 00001 1 ISBN 9780128002841 a b Bobzien Susanne 1998 Determinism and freedom in Stoic philosophy Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 823794 5 Retrieved 2015 12 09 Aristotle and Epictetus In the latter authors it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them In Alexander s account the terms are understood differently 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 An argument by Rudolf Carnap described by C James Goodwin 2009 Research In Psychology Methods and Design 6th ed Wiley p 11 ISBN 978 0 470 52278 3 Robert C Bishop 2010 28 2 Compatibilism and incompatibilism In Raymond Y Chiao Marvin L Cohen Anthony J Leggett William D Phillips Charles L Harper Jr eds Visions of Discovery New Light on Physics Cosmology and Consciousness Cambridge University Press p 603 ISBN 978 0 521 88239 2 See for example Janet Richards 2001 The root of the free will problem kinds of non existence Human Nature After Darwin A Philosophical Introduction Routledge pp 142 ff ISBN 978 0 415 21243 4 McKenna Michael Coates D Justin 2015 Zalta Edward N ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bobzien Susanne 2000 Did Epicurus discover the free will problem Retrieved 2015 12 09 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Schopenhauer A What is freedom On the Freedom of the Will Hence the notion of contingency appeared as the very opposition of necessity so that wherever a thing is considered dependent or relies upon another thing it is contingent and thus not necessary Thomas Nagel 1989 Freedom The View From Nowhere Oxford University Press p 112 ISBN 978 0 19 505644 0 Nothing that might be a solution has yet been described This is not a case where there are several possible candidate solutions and we don t know which is correct It is a case where nothing believable has to my knowledge been proposed John R Searle 2013 The problem of free will Freedom and Neurobiology Reflections on Free Will Language and Political Power Columbia University Press p 37 ISBN 978 0 231 51055 4 The persistence of the traditional free will problem in philosophy seems to me something of a scandal After all these centuries it does not seem to me that we have made very much progress Gregg D Caruso 2012 Free Will and Consciousness A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will Lexington Books p 8 ISBN 978 0 7391 7136 3 One of the strongest supports for the free choice thesis is the unmistakable intuition of virtually every human being that he is free to make the choices he does and that the deliberations leading to those choices are also free flowing Corliss Lamont 1969 Freedom of choice affirmed Beacon Press p 38 ISBN 9780826404763 a b c d e Azim F Shariff Jonathan Schooler Kathleen D Vohs 2008 The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will In John Baer James C Kaufman Roy F Baumeister eds Are We Free Psychology and Free Will Oxford University Press pp 183 190 93 ISBN 978 0 19 518963 6 TW Clark 1999 Fear of mechanism A compatibilist critique of The Volitional Brain Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 8 9 279 93 Feelings or intuitions per se never count as self evident proof of anything Quoted by Shariff Schooler amp Vohs The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will For full text on line see this Archived 2013 05 05 at the Wayback Machine a b Max Velmans 2002 How Could Conscious Experiences Affect Brains Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 11 2 29 William James 1896 The dilemma of determinism The Will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy Longmans Green pp 145 ff John A Bargh 2007 11 16 Free will is un natural PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2012 09 03 Retrieved 2012 08 21 Are behaviors judgments and other higher mental processes the product of free conscious choices as influenced by internal psychological states motives preferences etc or are those higher mental processes determined by those states Also found in John A Bargh 2008 Chapter 7 Free will is un natural In John Baer James C Kaufman Roy F Baumeister eds Are We Free Psychology and Free Will Oxford University Press pp 128 ff ISBN 978 0 19 518963 6 Paul Russell 2002 Chapter 1 Logic liberty and the metaphysics of responsibility Freedom and Moral Sentiment Hume s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility Oxford University Press p 14 ISBN 978 0 19 515290 6 the well known dilemma of determinism One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated then it could not have been done freely and hence the agent is not responsible for it The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused then it is inexplicable and random and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent and hence again the agent cannot be responsible for it Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility Azim F Shariff Jonathan Schooler Kathleen D Vohs 2008 Chapter 9 The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will In John Baer James C Kaufman Roy F Baumeister eds Are We Free Psychology and Free Will Oxford University Press p 193 ISBN 978 0 19 518963 6 Max Velmans 2009 Understanding Consciousness 2nd ed Taylor amp Francis p 11 ISBN 978 0 415 42515 5 Strawson Galen 2011 1998 Free will In E Craig Ed Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy London Routledge Archived from the original on 26 August 2012 Retrieved 12 December 2012 a b O Connor Timothy Oct 29 2010 Free Will In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2011 Edition Retrieved 2013 01 15 Joshua Greene Jonathan Cohen 2011 For the law neuroscience changes nothing and everything In Judy Illes Barbara J Sahakian eds Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 162091 1 Free will compatibilists argue is here to stay and the challenge for science is to figure out exactly how it works and not to peddle silly arguments that deny the undeniable Dennett 2003 referring to a critique of Libet s experiments by DC Dennett 2003 The self as a responding and responsible artifact PDF Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1001 1 39 50 Bibcode 2003NYASA1001 39D doi 10 1196 annals 1279 003 PMID 14625354 S2CID 46156580 Archived PDF from the original on 2009 11 09 Walter J Freeman 2000 How Brains Make Up Their Minds Columbia University Press p 5 ISBN 978 0 231 12008 1 Instead of postulating a universal law of causality and then having to deny the possibility of choice we start with the premise that freedom of choice exists and then we seek to explain causality as a property of brains a b McKenna Michael 2009 Compatibilism In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter ed Libet Benjamin 2003 Can Conscious Experience affect brain Activity Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 12 24 28 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 5 2852 a b c d e Kane Robert John Martin Fischer Derk Pereboom Manuel Vargas 2007 Four Views on Free Will Libertarianism Oxford Blackwell Publishing p 39 ISBN 978 1 4051 3486 6 a b c Vihvelin Kadri 2011 Arguments for Incompatibilism In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Spring 2011 ed a b c d Zagzebski Linda 2011 Foreknowledge and Free Will In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall 2011 ed See also McKenna Michael 2009 Compatibilism In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2009 ed a b van Invagen P 1983 An Essay on Free Will Oxford Clarendon Press ISBN 0 19 824924 1 a b c Pereboom D 2003 Living without Free Will Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 79198 4 Fischer J M 1983 Incompatibilism Philosophical Studies 43 121 37 doi 10 1007 BF01112527 a b Dennett D 1984 Elbow Room The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting Bradford Books ISBN 978 0 262 54042 1 Kane R 1996 The Significance of Free Will Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 512656 4 Campbell C A 1957 On Selfhood and Godhood London George Allen and Unwin ISBN 0 415 29624 2 Sartre J P 1943 Being and Nothingness reprint 1993 ed New York Washington Square Press Sartre also provides a psychological version of the argument by claiming that if man s actions are not his own he would be in bad faith Fischer R M 1994 The Metaphysics of Free Will Oxford Blackwell Bok H 1998 Freedom and Responsibility Princeton Princeton University Press ISBN 0 691 01566 X Ginet Carl 1966 Might We Have No Choice In Lehrer Keith ed Freedom and Determinisim Random House pp 87 104 a b van Inwagen P Zimmerman D 1998 Metaphysics The Big Questions Oxford Blackwell Inwagen P How to think about free will p 15 archived from the original on 2008 09 11 Lewis D 2008 Are We Free to Break the Laws Theoria 47 3 113 21 doi 10 1111 j 1755 2567 1981 tb00473 x S2CID 170811962 a b c Strawson Galen 2010 Freedom and belief Revised ed Oxford University Press p 6 ISBN 978 0 19 924750 9 Fischer John Martin 2009 Chapter 2 Compatibilism Four Views on Free Will Great Debates in Philosophy Wiley Blackwell pp 44 ff ISBN 978 1 4051 3486 6 Alex Rosenberg 2005 Philosophy Of Science A Contemporary Introduction 2nd ed Psychology Press p 8 ISBN 978 0 415 34317 6 a b Niels Bohr The Atomic Theory and the Fundamental Principles underlying the Description of Nature Based on a lecture to the Scandinavian Meeting of Natural Scientists and published in Danish in Fysisk Tidsskrift in 1929 First published in English in 1934 by Cambridge University Press The Information Philosopher dedicated to the new information philosophy Robert O Doyle publisher Retrieved 2012 09 14 any observation necessitates an interference with the course of the phenomena which is of such a nature that it deprives us of the foundation underlying the causal mode of description a b Niels Bohr April 1 1933 Light and Life Nature Vol 131 pp 457 459 Bibcode 1933Natur 131 457B doi 10 1038 131457a0 ISBN 978 0 444 89972 9 S2CID 4080545 For instance it is impossible from our standpoint to attach an unambiguous meaning to the view sometimes expressed that the probability of the occurrence of certain atomic processes in the body might be under the direct influence of the will In fact according to the generalized interpretation of the psycho physical parallelism the freedom of the will must be considered a feature of conscious life that corresponds to functions of the organism that not only evade a causal mechanical description but resist even a physical analysis carried to the extent required for an unambiguous application of the statistical laws of atomic mechanics Without entering into metaphysical speculations I may perhaps add that an analysis of the very concept of explanation would naturally begin and end with a renunciation as to explaining our own conscious activity Full text on line at us archive org Lewis E R MacGregor R J 2006 On Indeterminism Chaos and Small Number Particle Systems in the Brain PDF Journal of Integrative Neuroscience 5 2 223 47 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 361 7065 doi 10 1142 S0219635206001112 PMID 16783870 Archived PDF from the original on 2011 06 08 G H R Parkinson 2012 determinism Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Taylor amp Francis pp 891 92 ISBN 978 0 415 00323 0 Retrieved 26 December 2012 a b c Vihvelin Kadri Arguments for Incompatibilism In Zalta Edward N ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2003 ed a b c Raymond J VanArragon 2010 Key Terms in Philosophy of Religion Continuum International Publishing Group p 21 ISBN 978 1 4411 3867 5 Retrieved 22 December 2012 a b Eshleman Andrew 2009 Moral Responsibility In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2009 ed Suppes P 1993 The Transcendental Character of Determinism Midwest Studies in Philosophy 18 242 57 doi 10 1111 j 1475 4975 1993 tb00266 x S2CID 14586058 The view of scientific determinism goes back to Laplace We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state For further discussion see John T Roberts 2006 Determinism In Sahotra Sarkar Jessica Pfeifer Justin Garson eds The Philosophy of Science An Encyclopedia N Z Indeks Volume 1 Psychology Press pp 197 ff ISBN 978 0 415 93927 0 Fischer John Martin 1989 God Foreknowledge and Freedom Stanford CA Stanford University Press ISBN 1 55786 857 3 Watt Montgomery 1948 Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam London Luzac amp Co a b c d Randolph Clarke 2008 Incompatibilist Nondeterministic Theories of Free Will In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall 2008 ed a b Robert Kane 2005 Free Will Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 514970 8 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Paul Henri Thiry Baron d Holbach System of Nature or the Laws of the Moral and Physical World London 1797 Vol 1 p 92 Danko D Georgiev 2021 Quantum propensities in the brain cortex and free will Biosystems 208 104474 arXiv 2107 06572 doi 10 1016 j biosystems 2021 104474 ISSN 0303 2647 PMID 34242745 S2CID 235785726 Free will is the capacity of conscious agents to choose a future course of action among several available physical alternatives Christoph Lumer Sandro Nannini 2007 Intentionality Deliberation and Autonomy The Action Theoretic Basis of Practical Philosophy Ashgate Publishing Ltd ISBN 978 0 7546 6058 3 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Hugh McCann 1998 The Works of Agency On Human Action Will and Freedom Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 8583 1 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Laura Waddell Ekstrom 2000 Free Will A Philosophical Study Westview Press ISBN 978 0 8133 9093 2 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Alfred R Mele 2006 Free Will and Luck Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 530504 3 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Daniel Clement Dennett 1981 Brainstorms Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 54037 7 Retrieved 27 December 2012 L Peterson Michael Fischer John Martin 1995 Libertarianism and Avoidability A Reply to Widerker Faith and Philosophy 12 119 25 doi 10 5840 faithphil199512123 ISSN 0739 7046 Mark Balaguer 1999 Libertarianism as a Scientifically Reputable View Philosophical Studies 93 2 189 211 doi 10 1023 a 1004218827363 S2CID 169483672 Robert Nozick 1981 Philosophical Explanations Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 66479 1 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Richard Sorabji 1980 Necessity Cause and Blame Perspectives on Aristotle s Theory Duckworth ISBN 978 0 7156 1549 2 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Peter Van Inwagen 1983 An Essay on Free Will Clarendon Press ISBN 978 0 19 824924 5 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Ted Honderich 1973 Essays on Freedom of Action Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism Routledge amp Kegan Paul pp 33 61 ISBN 978 0 7100 7392 1 Retrieved 27 December 2012 John R Searle 2001 Rationality in Action MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 69282 3 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Robert Kane 1996 The Significance of Free Will Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 510550 6 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Lewis C S 1947 Miracles p 24 ISBN 978 0 688 17369 2 Kane Robert 2007 Libertarianism Four Views on Free Will Great Debates in Philosophy Wiley Blackwell p 9 ISBN 978 1 4051 3486 6 It would seem that undetermined events in the brain or body would occur spontaneously and would be more likely to undermine our freedom rather than enhance it Roderick M Chisholm 2004 Person And Object A Metaphysical Study Psychology Press ISBN 978 0 415 29593 2 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Randolph Clarke 1996 Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action Philosophical Topics 24 2 19 48 doi 10 5840 philtopics19962427 Alan Donagan 1987 Choice The Essential Element in Human Action Routledge amp Kegan Paul ISBN 978 0 7102 1168 2 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Timothy O Connor 2005 Robert Kane ed Oxford Hb Of Free Will Libertarian Views Dualist and Agent Causal Theories Oxford Handbooks Online pp 337 355 ISBN 978 0 19 517854 8 Retrieved 27 December 2012 William L Rowe 1991 Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 2557 8 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Richard Taylor 1966 Action and purpose Prentice Hall Retrieved 27 December 2012 John Thorp 1980 Free will a defence against neurophysiological determinism Routledge amp Kegan Paul ISBN 9780710005656 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Michael J Zimmerman 1984 An essay on human action P Lang ISBN 978 0 8204 0122 5 Retrieved 27 December 2012 George Berkeley Jonathan Dancy 1998 A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 875160 1 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Thomas Reid 2012 Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense And an Essay on Quantity HardPress ISBN 978 1 4077 2950 3 Retrieved 27 December 2012 Locke J 1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1998 ed Book II Chap XXI Sec 17 Penguin Classics Toronto a b Strawson G 1998 2004 Free will In E Craig ed Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy London Routledge Retrieved August 17 2006 online Archived 2007 08 25 at the Wayback Machine Groblacher Simon Paterek Tomasz Kaltenbaek Rainer Brukner Caslav Zukowski Marek Aspelmeyer Markus Zeilinger Anton 2007 An experimental test of non local realism Nature 446 7138 871 75 arXiv 0704 2529 Bibcode 2007Natur 446 871G doi 10 1038 nature05677 ISSN 0028 0836 PMID 17443179 S2CID 4412358 Ben C Blackwell 2011 Christosis Pauline Soteriology in Light of Deification in Irenaeus and Cyril of Alexandria Mohr Siebeck p 50 ISBN 978 3 16 151672 6 Retrieved 8 December 2012 a b c McKewan Jaclyn 2009 Evolution Chemical In H James Birx ed Predeterminism Encyclopedia of Time Science Philosophy Theology amp Culture SAGE Publications pp 1035 36 doi 10 4135 9781412963961 n191 ISBN 978 1 4129 4164 8 Predeterminism Oxford Dictionaries Oxford Dictionaries 2010 Archived from the original on September 4 2012 Retrieved 20 December 2012 See also Predeterminism Collins English Dictionary Collins Retrieved 20 December 2012 Some Varieties of Free Will and Determinism Philosophy 302 Ethics philosophy lander edu 10 September 2009 Retrieved 19 December 2012 Predeterminism the philosophical and theological view that combines God with determinism On this doctrine events throughout eternity have been foreordained by some supernatural power in a causal sequence See for example Hooft G 2001 How does god play dice Pre determinism at the Planck scale arXiv hep th 0104219 Bibcode 2001hep th 4219T Predeterminism is here defined by the assumption that the experimenter s free will in deciding what to measure such as his choice to measure the x or the y component of an electron s spin is in fact limited by deterministic laws hence not free at all a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help and Sukumar CV 1996 A new paradigm for science and architecture City 1 1 2 181 83 doi 10 1080 13604819608900044 Quantum Theory provided a beautiful description of the behaviour of isolated atoms and nuclei and small aggregates of elementary particles Modern science recognized that predisposition rather than predeterminism is what is widely prevalent in nature Borst C 1992 Leibniz and the compatibilist account of free will Studia Leibnitiana 24 1 49 58 JSTOR 40694201 Leibniz presents a clear case of a philosopher who does not think that predeterminism requires universal causal determinism Far Western Philosophy of Education Society 1971 Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Far Western Philosophy of Education Society Far Western Philosophy of Education Society p 12 Retrieved 20 December 2012 Determinism is in essence the position holding that all behavior is caused by prior behavior Predeterminism is the position holding that all behavior is caused by conditions predating behavior altogether such impersonal boundaries as the human conditions instincts the will of God inherent knowledge fate and such Predeterminism Merriam Webster Dictionary Merriam Webster Incorporated Retrieved 20 December 2012 See for example Ormond A T 1894 Freedom and psycho genesis Psychological Review 1 3 217 29 doi 10 1037 h0065249 The problem of predeterminism is one that involves the factors of heredity and environment and the point to be debated here is the relation of the present self that chooses to these predetermining agencies and Garris M D et al 1992 A Platform for Evolving Genetic Automata for Text Segmentation GNATS Science of Artificial Neural Networks 1710 714 24 Bibcode 1992SPIE 1710 714G doi 10 1117 12 140132 S2CID 62639035 However predeterminism is not completely avoided If the codes within the genotype are not designed properly then the organisms being evolved will be fundamentally handicapped Sherman H 1981 Marx and determinism Journal of Economic Issues 15 1 61 71 doi 10 1080 00213624 1981 11503814 JSTOR 4224996 Many religions of the world have considered that the path of history is predetermined by God or Fate On this basis many believe that what will happen will happen and they accept their destiny with fatalism Anne Lockyer Jordan Anne Lockyer Jordan Neil Lockyer Edwin Tate Neil Lockyer Edwin Tate 2004 Philosophy of Religion for A Level OCR Edition Nelson Thornes p 211 ISBN 978 0 7487 8078 5 Retrieved 22 December 2012 A Pabl Iannone 2001 determinism Dictionary of World Philosophy Taylor amp Francis p 194 ISBN 978 0 415 17995 9 Retrieved 22 December 2012 Wentzel Van Huyssteen 2003 theological determinism Encyclopedia of science and religion Vol 1 Macmillan Reference p 217 ISBN 978 0 02 865705 9 Retrieved 22 December 2012 Boethius Book V Prose vi The Consolation of Philosophy Aquinas St Thomas 1923 Ia q 14 art 13 Summa Theologica See Summa Theologica C S Lewis 1980 Mere Christianity Touchstone New York p 149 Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski 1996 chapter 6 section 2 1 The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 510763 0 Retrieved 22 December 2012 a b See for example Sandro Nannini 2004 Chapter 5 Mental causation and intentionality in a mind naturalizing theory In Alberto Peruzzi ed Mind and Causality John Benjamins Publishing pp 69 ff ISBN 978 1 58811 475 4 Karl Raimund Popper 1999 Notes of a realist on the body mind problem All Life is Problem Solving A lecture given in Mannheim 8 May 1972 ed Psychology Press pp 23 ff ISBN 978 0 415 17486 2 The body mind relationship includes the problem of man s position in the physical world World 1 The world of conscious human processes I shall call World 2 and the world of the objective creations of the human mind I shall call World 3 See Josh Weisberg The hard problem of consciousness Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or Robert Van Gulick Jan 14 2014 Consciousness In Edward N Zalta ed Consciousness 9 9 Non physical theories The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Spring 2014 Edition Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University E Bruce Goldstein 2010 Sensation and Perception 12th ed Cengage Learning p 39 ISBN 978 0 495 60149 4 Quote from Tor Norretranders 1998 Preface The user illusion Cutting consciousness down to size Jonathan Sydenham translation of Maerk verden 1991 ed Penguin Books p ix ISBN 978 0 14 023012 3 Meyer Susan Sauve 2012 Aristotle on Moral Responsibility Oxford Bobzien Susanne Freedom and Determinism in Stoic Philosophy Oxford 1998 Chapter 6 a b McKenna Michael Compatibilism In Zalta Edward N ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 200 ed a b Frankfurt H 1971 Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person Journal of Philosophy 68 1 5 20 doi 10 2307 2024717 JSTOR 2024717 Hobbes T 1651 Leviathan Chapter XXI Of the liberty of subjects 1968 edition London Penguin Books Hume D 1740 A Treatise of Human Nature Section VIII Of liberty and necessity 1967 edition Oxford University Press Oxford ISBN 0 87220 230 5 a b Roy F Baumeister Matthew T Galliot Dianne M Tice 2008 Chapter 23 Free Willpower A limited resource theory of volition choice and self regulation In Ezequiel Morsella John A Bargh Peter M Gollwitzer eds Oxford Handbook of Human Action Volume 2 of Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience ed Oxford University Press pp 487 ff ISBN 978 0 19 530998 0 The nonconscious forms of self regulation may follow different causal principles and do not rely on the same resources as the conscious and effortful ones Roy F Baumeister Matthew T Galliot Dianne M Tice 2008 Chapter 23 Free Willpower A limited resource theory of volition choice and self regulation In Ezequiel Morsella John A Bargh Peter M Gollwitzer eds Oxford Handbook of Human Action Volume 2 of Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience ed Oxford University Press pp 487 ff ISBN 978 0 19 530998 0 Yet perhaps not all conscious volition is an illusion Our findings suggest that the traditional folk notions of willpower and character strength have some legitimate basis in genuine phenomena Saul Smilansky 2000 Free Will and Illusion Oxford University Press p 96 ISBN 978 0 19 825018 0 Retrieved 6 February 2013 Gallagher S 2000 Philosophical conceptions of the self implications for cognitive science Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 1 14 21 doi 10 1016 s1364 6613 99 01417 5 PMID 10637618 S2CID 451912 Watson D 1982 Free Will New York Oxford University Press Fischer John Martin Ravizza Mark 1998 Responsibility and Control An Essay on Moral Responsibility Cambridge Cambridge University Press a b Dennett D 2003 Freedom Evolves Viking Books ISBN 0 670 03186 0 Kane R The Oxford Handbook to Free Will Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 513336 6 A key exponent of this view was Willard van Orman Quine See Hylton Peter Apr 30 2010 Willard van Orman Quine In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall 2010 Edition A thoughtful list of careful distinctions regarding the application of empirical science to these issues is found in Stoljar Daniel Sep 9 2009 Physicalism 12 Physicalism and the physicalist world picture In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall 2009 Edition Nora D Volkow Joanna S Fowler Gene Jack Wang 2007 The addicted human brain insights from imaging studies In Andrew R Marks Ushma S Neill eds Science In Medicine The JCI Textbook Of Molecular Medicine Jones amp Bartlett Learning pp 1061 ff ISBN 978 0 7637 5083 1 Claudio Costa Lines of Thought Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions CSP 2014 Ch 7 Ridge Michael 3 February 2014 Moral Non Naturalism The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University Retrieved 3 June 2019 Lemos John 2002 Evolution and Free Will A Defense of Darwinian Non naturalism Metaphilosophy 33 4 468 482 doi 10 1111 1467 9973 00240 ISSN 1467 9973 Nida Rumelin Julian 1 January 2019 The Reasons Account of Free Will A Libertarian Compatibilist Hybrid Archiv fur Rechts und Sozialphilosphie 105 1 3 10 doi 10 25162 arsp 2019 0001 S2CID 155641763 Stump Eleonore 1996 Libertarian Freedom and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities In Howard Snyder Daniel Jordan Jeff eds Faith Freedom and Rationality Lanham MD Rowman and Littlefield pp 73 88 Honderich T 2001 Determinism as True Compatibilism and Incompatibilism as Both False and the Real Problem In Kane Robert ed The Free Will Handbook Oxford University Press Benedict de Spinoza 2008 Part III On the origin and nature of the emotions Postulates Proposition II Note In R H M Elwes trans ed The Ethics Original work published 1677 ed Digireads com Publishing p 54 ISBN 978 1 4209 3114 3 Hume D 1765 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Indianapolis Hacket Publishing Co Second edition 1993 ISBN 0 87220 230 5 Schopenhauer Arthur The World as Will and Representation Vol 1 trans E F J Payne p 113 114 Schopenhauer Arthur On the Freedom of the Will Oxford Basil Blackwell ISBN 0 631 14552 4 Harris Sam 6 March 2012 Free Will Simon and Schuster p 5 ISBN 978 1451683400 Steiner Rudolf Arthur Schopenhauers samtliche Werke in zwolf Banden Mit Einleitung von Dr Rudolf Steiner Stuttgart Verlag der J G Cotta schen Buchhandlung Nachfolger o J 1894 96 in German Archived from the original on 2018 10 06 Retrieved 2007 08 02 Keimpe Algra 1999 Chapter VI The Chyrsippean notion of fate soft determinism The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy Cambridge University Press p 529 ISBN 978 0 521 25028 3 Steiner R 1964 Rudolf Steiner Press London 1964 1970 1972 1979 230 pp translated from the 12th German edition of 1962 by Michael Wilson online See Bricklin Jonathan A Variety of Religious Experience William James and the Non Reality of Free Will in Libet 1999 The Volitional Brain Toward a Neuroscience of Free Will Thorverton UK Imprint Academic a b James W 1907 Pragmatism 1979 edition Cambridge MA Harvard University Press Robert Kane 1998 Notes to pages 74 81 note 22 The significance of free will Paperback ed Oxford University Press p 226 ISBN 978 0 19 512656 3 CM Lorkowski November 7 2010 David Hume Causation Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Kant argued that in order that human life is not just a dream a random or projected by subjects juxtaposition of moments the temporality of event A as before or after B must submit to a rule An established order then implies the existence of some necessary conditions and causes that is sufficient bases a so called sufficient reason is the coincidence of all the necessary conditions Without established causality both in subject and in the external world the passing of time would be impossible because it is essentially directional See online text of his proof Schopenhauer who by the way continued and simplified Kant s system argued among others basing on optical illusions and the initial processing that it is the intellect or even the brain what generates the image of the world out of something else by concluding from effects e g optical about appropriate causes e g concrete physical objects Intellect in his works is strictly connected with recognizing causes and effects and associating them it is somewhat close to the contemporary view of cerebral cortex and formation of associations The intellectuality of all perception implied then of course that causality is rooted in the world precedes and enables experience See online text of his proof R Kevin Hill 2003 Chapter 7 The critique of morality The three pillars of Kantian ethics Nietzsche s Critiques The Kantian Foundations of His Thought Paperback ed pp 196 201 ISBN 978 0 19 928552 5 Herbert James Paton 1971 2 Moral judgements are a priori The Categorical Imperative A Study in Kant s Moral Philosophy University of Pennsylvania Press p 20 ISBN 978 0 8122 1023 1 Freeman Walter J 2009 Consciousness intentionality and causality In Susan Pockett WP Banks Shaun Gallagher eds Does Consciousness Cause Behavior MIT Press p 88 ISBN 978 0 262 51257 2 Circular causality departs so strongly from the classical tenets of necessity invariance and precise temporal order that the only reason to call it that is to satisfy the human habitual need for causes The very strong appeal of agency to explain events may come from the subjective experience of cause and effect that develops early in human life before the acquisition of language the question I raise here is whether brains share this property with other material objects in the world Staley Kevin M 2005 Aquinas Compatibilist or Libertarian PDF The Saint Anselm Journal 2 2 74 Archived from the original PDF on 2015 12 21 Retrieved 2015 12 09 Hartung Christopher May 2013 Thomas Aquinas on Free Will Thesis University of Delaware Retrieved 2015 12 09 A discussion of the roles of will intellect and passions in Aquinas teachings is found in Stump Eleonore 2003 Intellect and will Aquinas Arguments of the philosophers series Routledge Psychology Press pp 278 ff ISBN 978 0 415 02960 5 Timothy O Connor Oct 29 2010 Free Will In Edward N Zalta ed The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2011 Edition The Metaphysics Research Lab Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford University Philosophers who distinguish freedom of action and freedom of will do so because our success in carrying out our ends depends in part on factors wholly beyond our control Furthermore there are always external constraints on the range of options we can meaningfully try to undertake As the presence or absence of these conditions and constraints are not usually our responsibility it is plausible that the central loci of our responsibility are our choices or willings Catholic Encyclopedia Appetite Newadvent org 1907 Retrieved 2012 08 13 Summa Theologica Free will Prima Pars Q 83 Newadvent org Retrieved 2012 08 13 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae Q83 A1 Further discussion of this compatibilistic theory can be found in Thomas Summa contra gentiles Book III about Providence c 88 91 260 267 where it is postulated that everything has its cause and it is again and again in detail referred also to all individual choices of man etc even refuting opposite views Here the online text of the Summa Archived 2017 11 23 at the Wayback Machine In order to avoid at least in concept the absolution of man of any guilt he then notes the contingency of all that takes place i e lack of direct necessity from God strictly with regard to a concrete contingent act A typical choice was not separately ordained to be so and so by God St Thomas says the choice is not necessary but in fact that apparently means it was contingent with regard to God and the law of nature as a specific case that could have not existed in other circumstances and necessary with regard to its direct previous cause in will and intellect The contingency or fortuity is even intuitive under modern chaos theory where one can try to show that more and more developed products appearing in the evolution of a universe or simpler an automaton are chaotic with regard to its principles Paul Russell Oisin Deery 2013 I The free will problem real or illusory The Philosophy of Free Will Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates Oxford University Press p 5 ISBN 978 0 19 973339 2 a b c Gier Nicholas and Kjellberg Paul Buddhism and the Freedom of the Will Pali and Mahayanist Responses in Freedom and Determinism Campbell Joseph Keim O Rourke Michael and Shier David 2004 MIT Press Flood Gavin 2004 The ascetic self subjectivity memory and tradition Cambridge University Press p 73 ISBN 978 0 521 60401 7 Koller J 2007 Asian Philosophies 5th ed Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 092385 1 a b c Swami Vivekananda 1907 Sayings and utterances ramakrishnavivekananda info Boniolo G Vidali P 1999 Filosofia della Scienza Milan Mondadori ISBN 88 424 9359 7 Hoefer Carl 2008 Causal Determinism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved 2008 11 01 Vedral Vlatko 2006 11 18 Is the Universe Deterministic New Scientist 192 2578 52 55 doi 10 1016 S0262 4079 06 61122 6 Physics is simply unable to resolve the question of free will although if anything it probably leans towards determinism Honderich E Determinism as True Compatibilism and Incompatibilism as Both False and the Real Problem Ucl ac uk Retrieved 2010 11 21 The Quantum Physics of Free Will Scientific American Infidels Metaphysical Freedom Infidels org 25 August 2000 Retrieved 2010 11 21 Pinel P J 1990 Biopsychology Prentice Hall Inc ISBN 88 15 07174 1 DeFries J C McGuffin P McClearn G E Plomin R 2000 Behavioral Genetics 4th ed W H Freeman and Company Morris D 1967 The Naked Ape New York McGraw Hill ISBN 0 385 33430 3 Dawkins R 1976 The Selfish Gene Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 88 04 39318 1 Pinker S 2002 The Blank Slate The Modern Denial of Human Nature London Penguin p 179 ISBN 0 14 200334 4 Lewontin R 2000 It Ain t Necessarily So The Dream of the Human Genome and other Illusions New York NYREV Inc ISBN 88 420 6418 1 Kornhuber amp Deecke 1965 Hirnpotentialanderungen bei Willkurbewegungen und passiven Bewegungen des Menschen Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale Pflugers Arch 284 1 17 a b c Libet Benjamin Gleason Curtis A Wright Elwood W Pearl Dennis K 1983 Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity Readiness Potential Brain 106 3 623 42 doi 10 1093 brain 106 3 623 PMID 6640273 Libet B 1985 Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 4 529 66 doi 10 1017 S0140525X00044903 S2CID 6965339 Benjamin Libet et al 1983 Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity readiness potential PDF Brain 106 3 623 42 doi 10 1093 brain 106 3 623 PMID 6640273 Archived from the original PDF on 2013 05 26 Lars Strother Sukhvinder Singh Obhi 2009 The conscious experience of action and intention PDF Exp Brain Res 198 4 535 39 doi 10 1007 s00221 009 1946 7 PMID 19641911 S2CID 43567513 Archived from the original PDF on 2014 12 17 A brief discussion of possible interpretation of these results is found in David A Rosenbaum 2009 Human Motor Control 2nd ed Academic Press p 86 ISBN 978 0 12 374226 1 Gallagher Shaun 2009 Chapter 6 Where s the action Epiphenomenalism and the problem of free will In Susan Pockett William P Banks Shaun Gallagher eds Does Consciousness Cause Behavior MIT Press pp 119 21 ISBN 978 0 262 51257 2 Wegner D 2002 The Illusion of Conscious Will Cambridge MA MIT Press Kornhuber amp Deecke 2012 The will and its brain an appraisal of reasoned free will University Press of America Lanham MD ISBN 978 0 7618 5862 1 Flanagan O J 1992 Consciousness Reconsidered Bradford Books MIT Press p 131 ISBN 978 0 262 56077 1 LCCN lc92010057 Guggisberg AG Mottaz A 2013 Timing and awareness of movement decisions does consciousness really come too late Front Hum Neurosci 7 385 doi 10 3389 fnhum 2013 00385 PMC 3746176 PMID 23966921 Schurger Aaron Sitt Jacobo D Dehaene Stanislas 16 October 2012 An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self initiated movement PNAS 109 42 16776 77 Bibcode 2012PNAS 109E2904S doi 10 1073 pnas 1210467109 PMC 3479453 PMID 22869750 Fried Itzhak Mukamel Roy Kreiman Gabriel 2011 Internally Generated Preactivation of Single Neurons in Human Medial Frontal Cortex Predicts Volition Neuron 69 3 548 62 doi 10 1016 j neuron 2010 11 045 PMC 3052770 PMID 21315264 Maoz Uri Yaffe Gideon Koch Christof Mudrik Liad 2019 02 28 Neural precursors of decisions that matter an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice eLife 8 doi 10 7554 elife 39787 PMC 6809608 PMID 31642807 a b Tourette Syndrome Association Definitions and Classification of Tic Disorders Retrieved 19 August 2006 Zinner S H 2000 Tourette disorder Pediatrics in Review 21 11 372 83 doi 10 1542 pir 21 11 372 PMID 11077021 S2CID 7774922 Kayser A S Sun F T D Esposito M 2009 A comparison of Granger causality and coherency in fMRI based analysis of the motor system Human Brain Mapping 30 11 3475 94 doi 10 1002 hbm 20771 PMC 2767459 PMID 19387980 Assal F Schwartz S Vuilleumier P 2007 Moving with or without will Functional neural correlates of alien hand syndrome Annals of Neurology 62 3 301 06 doi 10 1002 ana 21173 PMID 17638304 S2CID 14180577 Doody RS Jankovic J 1992 The alien hand and related signs Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 55 9 806 10 doi 10 1136 jnnp 55 9 806 PMC 1015106 PMID 1402972 Scepkowski L A Cronin Golomb A 2003 The alien hand cases categorizations and anatomical correlates Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews 2 4 261 77 doi 10 1177 1534582303260119 PMID 15006289 Bundick T Spinella M 2000 Subjective experience involuntary movement and posterior alien hand syndrome Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 68 1 83 85 doi 10 1136 jnnp 68 1 83 PMC 1760620 PMID 10601408 Schneider K 1959 Clinical Psychopathology New York Grune and Stratton Frith CD Blakemore S Wolpert DM 2000 Explaining the symptoms of schizophrenia abnormalities in the awareness of action Brain Research Brain Research Reviews 31 2 3 357 63 doi 10 1016 S0165 0173 99 00052 1 PMID 10719163 S2CID 206021496 a b Wegener Daniel Merton 2002 The Illusion of Conscious Will PDF MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 23222 7 Archived from the original PDF on 2018 12 12 Retrieved 2018 12 12 Wegner D M Wheatley T 1999 Apparent mental causation sources of the experience of will American Psychologist 54 7 480 91 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 188 8271 doi 10 1037 0003 066X 54 7 480 PMID 10424155 Aarts H Custers R Wegner D 2005 On the inference of personal authorship enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information Consciousness and Cognition 14 3 439 58 doi 10 1016 j concog 2004 11 001 PMID 16091264 S2CID 13991023 Kihlstrom John 2004 An unwarrantable impertinence Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 5 666 67 doi 10 1017 S0140525X04300154 S2CID 144699878 John Baer James C Kaufman Roy F Baumeister 2008 Are We Free Psychology and Free Will New York Oxford University Press pp 155 80 ISBN 978 0 19 518963 6 Nahmias Eddy 2002 When consciousness matters a critical review of Daniel Wegner s The illusion of conscious will PDF Philosophical Psychology 15 4 527 41 doi 10 1080 0951508021000042049 S2CID 16949962 Archived from the original PDF on 2011 08 13 Mele Alfred R 2009 Effective Intentions The Power of Conscious Will US Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 538426 0 Archived from the original on 2011 11 13 Pronin Emily 2009 The Introspection Illusion In Mark P Zanna ed Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Vol 41 Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Vol 41 Academic Press pp 42 43 doi 10 1016 S0065 2601 08 00401 2 ISBN 978 0 12 374472 2 Susan Pockett 2009 The neuroscience of movement In Susan Pockett WP Banks Shaun Gallagher eds Does Consciousness Cause Behavior MIT Press p 19 ISBN 978 0 262 51257 2 it is important to be clear about exactly what experience one wants one s subjects to introspect Of course explaining to subjects exactly what the experimenter wants them to experience can bring its own problems instructions to attend to a particular internally generated experience can easily alter both the timing and the content of that experience and even whether or not it is consciously experienced at all Ebert J P Wegner D M 2011 March 1 Mistaking randomness for free will PDF Consciousness and Cognition 20 3 965 71 doi 10 1016 j concog 2010 12 012 PMID 21367624 S2CID 19502601 Feldman G Baumeister R F Wong K F 2014 July 30 Free will is about choosing The link between choice and the belief in free will Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 55 239 45 doi 10 1016 j jesp 2014 07 012 Nettler Gwynn June 1959 Cruelty Dignity and Determinism American Sociological Review 24 3 375 384 doi 10 2307 2089386 JSTOR 2089386 Nahmias Eddy Stephen G Morris Thomas Nadelhoffer Jason Turner 2006 07 01 Is Incompatibilism Intuitive Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 1 28 53 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 364 1083 doi 10 1111 j 1933 1592 2006 tb00603 x ISSN 1933 1592 Feltz Adam Edward T Cokely Thomas Nadelhoffer 2009 02 01 Natural Compatibilism versus Natural Incompatibilism Back to the Drawing Board Mind amp Language 24 1 1 23 doi 10 1111 j 1468 0017 2008 01351 x ISSN 1468 0017 Nichols Shaun Joshua Knobe 2007 12 01 Moral Responsibility and Determinism The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions Nous 41 4 663 85 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 175 1091 doi 10 1111 j 1468 0068 2007 00666 x Sarkissian HAGOP Amita Chatterjee Felipe de Brigard Joshua Knobe Shaun Nichols Smita Sirker 2010 06 01 Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal Mind amp Language 25 3 346 58 doi 10 1111 j 1468 0017 2010 01393 x ISSN 1468 0017 S2CID 18837686 Pronin Emily Matthew B Kugler 2010 12 28 People believe they have more free will than others Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 52 22469 74 Bibcode 2010PNAS 10722469P doi 10 1073 pnas 1012046108 PMC 3012523 PMID 21149703 Feltz Adam Edward T Cokely March 2009 Do judgments about freedom and responsibility depend on who you are Personality differences in intuitions about compatibilism and incompatibilism Consciousness and Cognition 18 1 342 50 doi 10 1016 j concog 2008 08 001 ISSN 1053 8100 PMID 18805023 S2CID 16953908 a b c Baumeister R Crescioni A W Alquist J 2009 Free will as advanced action control for human social life and culture Neuroethics 4 1 11 doi 10 1007 s12152 010 9058 4 S2CID 143223154 Paulhus D L and Margesson A 1994 Free Will and Determinism FAD scale Unpublished manuscript Vancouver British Columbia Canada University of British Columbia Stillman T F R F Baumeister F D Fincham T E Joiner N M Lambert A R Mele and D M Tice 2008 Guilty free and wise Belief in free will promotes learning from negative emotions Manuscript in preparation Bar Hillel M 2007 Randomness is too important to trust to chance Presented at the 2007 Summer Institute in Informed Patient Choice Dartmouth Medical School NH Wagenaar W A 1972 Generation of random sequences by human subjects A critical survey of literature Psychological Bulletin 77 65 72 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 211 9085 doi 10 1037 h0032060 What Philosophers Believe Results from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey November 2021 Gregory W Graffin and William B Provine Evolution Religion and Free Will American Scientist 95 July August 2007 294 97 results of Cornell Evolution Project survey http faculty bennington edu sherman Evolution 20in 20America evol 20religion 20free 20will pdf Vohs K D Schooler J W 2008 The value of believing in free will Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating Psychological Science 19 1 49 54 doi 10 1111 j 1467 9280 2008 02045 x PMID 18181791 S2CID 2643260 a b Baumeister R F Masicampo E J DeWall C N 2009 Prosocial benefits of feeling free Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35 2 260 68 doi 10 1177 0146167208327217 PMID 19141628 S2CID 16010829 Monroe Andrew E Brady Garrett L Malle Bertram F 21 September 2016 This Isn t the Free Will Worth Looking For Social Psychological and Personality Science 8 2 191 199 doi 10 1177 1948550616667616 S2CID 152011660 Crone Damien L Levy Neil L 28 June 2018 Are Free Will Believers Nicer People Four Studies Suggest Not Social Psychological and Personality Science 10 5 612 619 doi 10 1177 1948550618780732 PMC 6542011 PMID 31249653 Caspar Emilie A Vuillaume Laurene Magalhaes De Saldanha da Gama Pedro A Cleeremans Axel 17 January 2017 The Influence of Dis belief in Free Will on Immoral Behavior Frontiers in Psychology 8 20 doi 10 3389 FPSYG 2017 00020 PMC 5239816 PMID 28144228 Nadelhoffer Thomas Shepard Jason Crone Damien L Everett Jim A C Earp Brian D Levy Neil October 2020 Does encouraging a belief in determinism increase cheating Reconsidering the value of believing in free will Cognition 203 104342 doi 10 1016 j cognition 2020 104342 PMID 32593841 S2CID 220057834 Buttrick Nicholas R Aczel Balazs Aeschbach Lena F Bakos Bence E Bruhlmann Florian Claypool Heather M Huffmeier Joachim Kovacs Marton Schuepfer Kurt Szecsi Peter Szuts Attila Szoke Orsolya Thomae Manuela Torka Ann Kathrin Walker Ryan J Wood Michael J September 2020 Many Labs 5 Registered Replication of Vohs and Schooler 2008 Experiment 1 Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 3 3 429 438 doi 10 1177 2515245920917931 S2CID 227095775 a b c d e f Holton Richard 2011 Response to Free Will as Advanced Action Control for Human Social Life and Culture by Roy F Baumeister A William Crescioni and Jessica L Alquist PDF Neuroethics 4 13 16 doi 10 1007 s12152 009 9046 8 hdl 1721 1 71223 S2CID 143687015 Miles J B 2011 Irresponsible and a Disservice The integrity of social psychology turns on the free will dilemma British Journal of Social Psychology 52 2 205 18 doi 10 1111 j 2044 8309 2011 02077 x PMC 3757306 PMID 22074173 Some studies have been conducted indicating that people react strongly to the way in which mental determinism is described when reconciling it with moral responsibility Eddy Nahmias has noted that when people s actions are framed with respect to their beliefs and desires rather than their neurological underpinnings they are more likely to dissociate determinism from moral responsibility See Nahmias Eddy D Justin Coates Trevor Kvaran 2007 09 01 Free Will Moral Responsibility and Mechanism Experiments on Folk Intuitions Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 1 214 42 doi 10 1111 j 1475 4975 2007 00158 x ISSN 1475 4975 S2CID 15648622 Epstude K Roese N J 2008 The Functional Theory of Counterfactual Thinking Personality and Social Psychology Review 12 2 168 192 doi 10 1177 1088868308316091 PMC 2408534 PMID 18453477 Stillman Tyler F Roy F Baumeister Kathleen D Vohs Nathaniel M Lambert Frank D Fincham Lauren E Brewer 2010 01 01 Personal Philosophy and Personnel Achievement Belief in Free Will Predicts Better Job Performance Social Psychological and Personality Science 1 1 43 50 doi 10 1177 1948550609351600 S2CID 3023336 The Battle of the Will Part 4 John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards The Gospel Coalition Retrieved 6 August 2021 Discipline of the Immanuel Missionary Church Shoals Indiana Immanuel Missionary Church 1986 p 7 Rambam Teshuvah 5 4 Rambam Teshuvah 5 5 Watt Montgomery 1948 Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam London Luzac amp Co Wolfson Harry 1976 The Philosophy of Kalam Harvard University Press Man and His Destiny Al islam org Retrieved 2010 11 21 Tosun Ender 2012 Guide to Understanding Islam PDF Istanbul p 209 ISBN 978 605 63198 1 5 Archived PDF from the original on 2013 05 28 Jackson Timothy P 1998 Arminian edification Kierkegaard on grace and free will Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard Cambridge Cambridge University Press Kierkegaard Soren 1848 Journals and Papers vol III Reprinted in Indiana University Press Bloomington 1967 78 Mackie J L 1955 Evil and Omnipotence Mind new series vol 64 pp 200 12 Ockham William Predestination God s Knowledge and Future Contingents early 14th century trans Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann 1982 Hackett esp pp 46 47 H A Wolfson Philo 1947 Harvard University Press Religious Philosophy 1961 Harvard University Press and St Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy in Religious Philosophy Bibliography Edit Hawking Stephen and Mlodinow Leonard The Grand Design New York Bantam Books 2010 Horst Steven 2011 Laws Mind and Free Will MIT Press ISBN 0 262 01525 0 Sri Aurobindo about freedom and free will PDF Cave Stephen June 2016 There s No Such Thing as Free Will The Atlantic Further reading EditDennett Daniel C 2003 Freedom Evolves New York Viking Press ISBN 0 670 03186 0 Epstein J M 1999 Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science Complexity IV 5 Gazzaniga M amp Steven M S 2004 Free Will in the 21st Century A Discussion of Neuroscience and Law in Garland B ed Neuroscience and the Law Brain Mind and the Scales of Justice New York Dana Press ISBN 1 932594 04 3 pp 51 70 Goodenough O R 2004 Responsibility and punishment Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 359 1451 1805 09 doi 10 1098 rstb 2004 1548 PMC 1693460 PMID 15590621 Harnad Stevan 1982 Consciousness An Afterthought Cognition and Brain Theory 5 29 47 Harnad Stevan 2001 No Easy Way Out The Sciences 41 2 36 42 doi 10 1002 j 2326 1951 2001 tb03561 x Harnad Stevan 2009 The Explanatory Gap PhilPapers Harris Sam 2012 Free Will Free Press ISBN 978 1 4516 8340 0 Hofstadter Douglas 2007 I Am A Strange Loop Basic Books ISBN 978 0 465 03078 1 Kane Robert 1998 The Significance of Free Will New York Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 512656 4 Lawhead William F 2005 The Philosophical Journey An Interactive Approach McGraw Hill Humanities Social Sciences Languages ISBN 0 07 296355 7 Libet Benjamin Anthony Freeman and Keith Sutherland eds 1999 The Volitional Brain Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will Exeter UK Imprint Academic Collected essays by scientists and philosophers Muhm Myriam 2004 Abolito il libero arbitrio Colloquio con Wolf Singer L Espresso 19 08 2004 larchivio org Nowak A Vallacher R R Tesser A Borkowski W 2000 Society of Self The emergence of collective properties in self structure Psychological Review 107 Schopenhauer Arthur 1839 On the Freedom of the Will Oxford Basil Blackwell ISBN 0 631 14552 4 Stapp Henry P 2017 Quantum theory and free will how mental intentions translate into bodily actions Cham Switzerland ISBN 978 3 319 58301 3 OCLC 991595874 Tosun Ender 2020 Free Will Under the Light of the Quran ISBN 978 605 63198 2 2 Van Inwagen Peter 1986 An Essay on Free Will New York Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 824924 1 Velmans Max 2003 How Could Conscious Experiences Affect Brains Exeter Imprint Academic ISBN 0 907845 39 8 Dick Swaab Wij Zijn Ons Brein Publishing Centre 2010 ISBN 978 90 254 3522 6 Wegener Daniel Merton 2002 The Illusion of Conscious Will PDF MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 23222 7 Archived from the original PDF on 2018 12 12 Retrieved 2018 12 12 Williams Clifford 1980 Free Will and Determinism A Dialogue Indianapolis Hackett Publishing Company John Baer James C Kaufman Roy F Baumeister 2008 Are We Free Psychology and Free Will Oxford University Press New York ISBN 0 19 518963 9 George Musser Is the Cosmos Random Einstein s assertion that God does not play dice with the universe has been misinterpreted Scientific American vol 313 no 3 September 2015 pp 88 93 External links Edit Quotations related to Free will at Wikiquote Media related to Free will at Wikimedia Commons Fate Freedom and Neuroscience a debate on whether free will is an illusion and pre determined by the Institute of Art and Ideas featuring Oxford neuroscientist Nayef Al Rodhan psychiatrist and broadcaster Mark Salter and LSE philosopher Kristina Musholt This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article Free will which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3 0 Unported License but not under the GFDL Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Free will amp oldid 1152931588, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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