Free Will vs. Determinism: A Philosophical Debate
Nature of Free Will
1) Free will is a property of voluntary acts. Free will is not a “thing”, not a separate faculty, but a property of the will, or more precisely, voluntary actions, namely that they do not originate outside the subject who performs them. It is there because of the subject, and nothing else. Thus, the subject is an author, and not just an actor of such acts.
2) Free will is said of the whole human being. While freedom is a property of voluntary acts, it is also of the will itself, which is the faculty from which they come, so also the soul, which is the individual who has that power, and ultimately of the person, the last subject of attribution of accidents and properties, tangible or intangible. So, it is as true that John weighs 70 kilos, as that Jordan is open and accountable.
3) The free event is supported by reasons. The free act is not an act done for no reason, “because”, for free. Those who think this, as the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, imagine that the reason cancels the freedom to act, but that does not match the reality of human freedom, which is no lack of reasons, but to choose between the reasons that are, under the power of attention to notice one or the other.
4) Free will is the domain of their own actions. It is sometimes said that the will is indifferent to the reasons. Point out:
a) Indifference does not mean that a reason leaves you cold, then it really would not move.
b) In reality, indifference means that the will is not needed for the reasons, namely that they are the ones that determine the action.
c) But even so, this indifference is not the essence of freedom, but only the condition for that freedom to exist. The true essence of freedom consists in the domain that will have on their own actions. Indifference is the “freedom from” and the domain, “freedom to” (v. & 3.1.).
5) Freedom is given in a situation. Human freedom is never absolute. It is the freedom of a man who is in given circumstances, which, while making possible his behavior, limits and conditions it.
Usually, we express this by saying that human freedom is a situated freedom or freedom located in a state.
6) Freedom is an effort to be free. The human being, from their freedom to decide, constantly aspires to get other forms of freedom that will open new areas of choice and allow you to make decisions. And so, always with a view to achieving the ultimate freedom, personal fulfillment, but it can be understood in different ways.
Determinism
The main problem about free will is whether or not man actually has this way of freedom.
1) Determinism: They argue that human behavior is determined by various factors, and deny that man is free.
2) The theory that freedom, argues that despite their many constraints, the human being has a margin of free will.
The problem is most serious in philosophy. If man has no free will, he is not responsible for his actions, and if he is not responsible for his actions, morality and law do not mean anything.
- Soft Determinism: Its proponents want to make determinism compatible with moral and legal responsibility. Usually, they believe that human behavior is governed by likes and dislikes, rewards and punishments.
This is the classical determinism of the Stoics, as well as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Stuart Mill.
- Hard Determinism: Its proponents, most consistent with his previous theory, deny that it is possible to reconcile determinism with responsibility. Accordingly, a hero would be better than a criminal, but only a being subject to different conditions.
Lamettrie and D’Holbach, Schopenhauer, John Hospers.
Physical and Biological Determinism
Physical determinism is a theory consistent with materialism, which considers that all reality, including man, is only matter. Laws governing are absolutely necessary, therefore there is no freedom.
Laplace.
Proponents of this approach generally consider that the belief in freedom comes from the ignorance of the forces acting upon us, fueled by the pride of believing ourselves something different from the rest of nature.
Biological determinism, also called physiological determinism is the realization of the physical to the biological field. It states that human behavior is always the answer to a stimulus that occurs with total need, according to the very complex laws governing the nervous system and endocrine system and all human physiology.
Julien Huxley, Ivan Pavlov.
Psychological Determinism
Intellectualist determinism says that man always acts in the direction of the strongest motive. Will is a faculty driven well, so before an election, it necessarily tilts the alternative that shows understanding and better.
Leibniz, Schopenhauer.
Psychoanalytic determinism, defended by Freud, says that part of the human psyche is unconscious, and that all our conscious life is completely determined by unconscious motivations.
Sociological and Educational Determinism
According to sociological determinism, the social group forcefully coerces a person who lives in him by imposing rules of conduct, to the point that what it does is merely the result of that pressure.
Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl.
Educational determinism, Skinner. All of our behavior is determined by the education we received as children.
Theological Determinism
They claim that man is given one way or another by something divine.
Fatalistic determinism asserts that all events are subject to fate, a blind and impersonal force that governs everything, and against which neither men nor gods can do anything. His only freedom is to submit to fate, acknowledging that everything is determined, i.e. there is no freedom.
Pantheistic determinism teaches that all things are one reality of the divine nature, and God is nothing else that the whole universe. Therefore, we are all God, and so when we think we are deciding something, actually it is God who decides for us.
Spinoza, Hegel
Determinism, predestination what some thinkers argue that affirm the existence of God, especially Protestants. But this theory of predestination should be distinguishable from the general doctrine of theistic philosophers,
In fact, theistic philosophers claim that God, infinite in wisdom, knows all, past, present, and future. The problem arises when added predestination: if God already knows what I’ll do, then I do not have no choice but to do so, then I am not free.
The Affirmation of Freedom
Those who argue that human beings have free will rely, in turn, on the following reasons:
1) The evidence. Although it may seem too simple, it is the main reason. I see quite clearly that I am free because I experience that my voluntary acts, but are supported by reasons, torn from me. I can start an action, interrupt and resume at will. And that got it directly without any intermediary, since nothing comes between me and my own action.
In this intimate and immediate clarity with which the subject is surely something is true is called evidence. The evidence is the decisive criterion of truth and certainty.
2) The moral and legal order. It is argued now for what in logic is called “reductio ad absurdum.” If we had no freedom, then we would not be responsible for anything, and no sense of the ideas of right and duty of good and evil, right and wrong, or prohibitions, or advice.
3) The structure of the voluntary act. The will is the ability to tend to what the understanding us as well. Is thus oriented towards the good, but that does not mean necessarily choose the greater good, but you can choose something if it recognizes some form of good.
Response to Determinism
What do determinists then respond to those who claim to freedom? Here in outline some of his thoughts:
In general, the first three major forms of certain considerations (physical, psychological, and social), respond:
- One thing to be strongly influenced by something, and quite another to be completely determined by it. Determinists have failed to prove the former but not the latter.
- To claim that freedom is an illusion equivalent in substance to recognize that it can only refuse to deny the very basis of evidence.
In particular:
a) To physical and biological determinism: 1) Science, by its own method of external objectivity, can neither confirm nor deny freedom, which is something that people grasp at all in the depths of himself. 2) It should give turn the argument of materialism and say, if the matter is always determined, and yet I know I’m free, could it be that what happens is that I am something more than mere matter?
b) To intellectualist psychological determinism: I decided for the sake, not for the greater good. And we must bear in mind the crucial mediating role of attention.
c) To social and educational determinism: How is that with the same education as children sometimes go completely different? And how is that sometimes there are people, from criminals to great social reformers, who are opposed outright to the education received and the rules of your environment?
d) To pantheistic determinism: What is missing here is the very idea of God being made, which can in no way be confused with the whole of nature. Well understood in the background is equivalent to saying that there is no God.
c) To determinism predestination: Okay, God knows what I will do, but this does not determine my action, because God is outside time, and encompasses all of reality and the whole story at a glance. Therefore, not that I do such an act because He knows, but He knows it because I will.