Are We Master of Our Fate?
✔ Problem of Freedom of Will
✔ Libertarianism
✔ Determinism
✔ Hard Determinism vs Soft Determinism
✔ Determinism and problem of Moral Responsibility
Session 9
Hajra Ali Gohar
2
Learning objectives
► Examine the relationship between free will & morality
► Explain & critically evaluate indeterminism.
► Explain & critically evaluate the deterministic view of human nature.
► Explain Compatibilism as an attempt to reconcile determinism & indeterminism.
Who controls your life?
The puppet, created for the Tbilisi
Marionette Theatre, is controlled by
forces hidden from public view.
Is this metaphor applicable to your life
and the choices you make?
Problem of Freedom of will
✔ Whether human beings are fundamentally free
to choose their actions and mold their lives or
they are hard determined (controlled/ caused)
by forces beyond their control, be they fate,
biology, social structure, unconscious mind
etc.
✔ Difference between Freedom of action and
freedom of will
Freedom of action equates with external
freedom
Freedom of will/choice equates with internal
freedom
Determinism
Human actions are determined/ decided/ controlled by external factor not by their
control.
▪ Theological Determinism (Fatalism) : Destiny determines our life
● Causal Determinism : All events in the world are result of previous events.
● Every event in the present has been caused by a past event.
● Physical-world is deterministic.
● Human and their actions are part of the physical world.
● We are bound to physical laws.
Determinism
A cause is an earlier event that makes
a later effect happen.
Cause and effect have necessary Can we blame Hitler?
relationship.
... C1 C2 C3 the decision the invasion
C (cause) E(effect)
The final few events in this sequence look like
Determinism implies that c must have an
ones under Hitler’s control. But the earlier ones
earlier cause C1 do not, for as we move back in time, we
eventually reach events before Hitler’s birth.
…..C2 C1 C E(effect)
Causal Determinism—we are Puppets of Nature
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end,
by forces over which we have no control. It is determined
for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings,
vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious
tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Hard Determinism
• The rejection of free will in the face of determinism is called
hard determinism.
• Free will is just an illusion.
• Science has disproved the existence of freedom and morality.
• Our physical states leads our mental states
CRITICISM:
Hard determinists must deny that criminals deserve punishment,
since the crimes were not committed freely.
Moral Responsibility
• All traditional moralist have presupposed belief in free will.
• Without freewill what is meaning of good and bad, right and wrong
action?
• Without free will how can we be creative and personally responsible?
Libertarianism
► Libertarians resolve the conflict between free will and determinism
by rejecting determinism.
► Their guiding thought is that people are special.
► The march of science, subjugating observed phenomena to
exceptionless law, is limited to the non-human realm.
► science is good as far as it goes, but it will never succeed in
completely predicting human behavior. Humans, and humans
alone, transcend the laws of nature: they are free.
Libertarianism
What makes people so special?
1. we have souls, non physical sources of consciousness and choice
that are not controlled by laws of nature.
2. humans are indeed purely physical systems, but that they are not
subject to the natural laws that govern other physical systems.
Either way, laws of nature do not wholly determine human
behavior.
Libertarianism
► CRITICISM:
Libertarians must somehow distinguish between free undetermined action
and randomness.
e.g Mother Teressa thought experiment
Ans: Some libertarians postulate a special kind of causation that only
humans wield, called agent causation.
Ordinary mechanistic causation vs agent causation
obeys laws does not obey laws
Libertarianism …...(cont)
The very same person in exactly similar circumstances
might agent-cause different things.
According to the theory of agent causation, you act freely when
(i) your action is not caused in the ordinary, mechanistic way, but
(ii) your action is caused by you—by agent causation.
It is unclear whether agent causation really solves the problem
of randomness.
There are two important factors in decision-making: what you desire, and
what you believe is the best means to achieve that desire which agent
causation ignores.
Compatibilism/ Soft Determinism
Many philosophers believe that there is a way out of this dilemma. in
the form of soft determinism.
• Attempts to find a common ground between "hard" determinism
and indeterminism
• we can retain both freedom and determinism. That way we can
preserve both our science and our humanity.
• a free action is one that is caused by the person’s beliefs and
desires, provided that those beliefs and desires how from ‘who
the person is’.
e.g hypnoticism
Free will vs Determinism
Free will Determinism
• We (agent) choose one over the other • We (agent) don’t have choices
alternative choices, freely.
• Every event in the present has been
• In our subjective reality, we are living in caused by a past event.
a free world.
• Physical-world is
• A person (agent) can affect the causal deterministic.
chain in the world.
Compatibilism/ Soft Determinism
▪ Though every event in the present has been caused by a past event still
some human actions are free.
▪ Example: I am feeling hungry (Physical-world is deterministic
Either I eat an apple Or I am forced to eat an apple
▪ In both cases, I may get rid of my hunger that is determined, but if an agent
self-determined or internal causes determined his/her action then this action
should be treated as free.
Theories on the Problem of free will
Readings:
1. Morris, T. (1999). Philosophy for dummies
Chapters 10 & 11
2. Free Will and Determinism, Theodore Sider
3. THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM
Matthew Van Cleave
