FREE WILL

Suppose someone pushes you over. It’s likely that you will be angry with them and blame
them. But suppose they say that they were themselves pushed and couldn’t help pushing
you over (and you have good reason to believe this, witnesses support them, etc.)- if X
couldn’t help doing A, X is not to blame- if you cannot helo doing something you should
not be praised or blamed- it is this intuition and certain metaphysical views that gives us
free will. It seems that you will then cease to blame them and to be angry with them (or at
least that you ought to do these things) because they couldn’t help it, and so were not to
blame.

There is a problem of free will because intuitions like these can be coupled with some
metaphysical views that many people find persuasive to yield the result that no one is ever
to blame for anything, since none of us can ever help but act the way that we do.

Different theories:

Divine Foreknowledge- for centuries was main way of looking at free will

- One way of motivating the view that no one is responsible for what they do rests on
the claim that God knows all true facts from a point of view outside time- G is
omniscient and timeless- not bound by time.
- God knows whether you will eat breakfast tomorrow, and what you will eat if you
do. But if it’s already a fact that you will eat toast tomorrow, then it is not possible
for you to do anything other than eat toast. You can’t help but eat toast, and so (it
seems) you’re eating toast tomorrow is not something that you do freely, and hence
not something that you are responsible for. Other possibilities seem real, but they
don’t exist- cant not have breakfast, cant not eat toast
- Could say G knows what I am going to freely decide- we have free will in our
actions he knows which one- problem with this= if G knows I will choose toast it’s a
fact and if it’s a fact then I can’t choose not to have toast and if I cant choose not to
then we are not meaningfully true.
- Most people believed this as a challenge to free will- what’s point of doing good if
G knows everything- already determined who is going to heaven and hell.

Determinism

- A secular way of creating the same problem can be started by assuming the truth of
determinism. Determinism can be a difficult claim to express precisely. Here’s a
rough approximation of the determinist claim:
- Rough approximation:
- All of the physical events that take place in the world are determined by the earlier
physical events. That is, the events that take place had to take place given the
previous states (and the laws of nature).
 - Take an event (E) happening now (T1)- this event is causally determined by some
prior set of events and the laws of nature. Dominoes are good example- one event
is the last domino falls over- given the way the dominoes were set up (the prior
event) and the laws of physics, once the first domino fell the last domino was
bound to fall.
- Determinism says this is true for any physical event- anything that happens in the
world is the product of prior events and laws of nature.
- So, your action of eating toast is a physical event that takes place in the world. That
this event takes place is, according to Determinism, causally determined by earlier
physical events and states. Given the way the world was, say, 24 hours beforehand
and given the laws of nature, the event of you eating toast had to happen. It could
not possibly have happened any other way. So you could not help but eat the toast:
it was literally physically impossible for you to do anything else. So your action of
eating toast was (it seems) not a free action or one for which you are responsible.
- This offends against many of our intuitions. We feel that our choices (some of them,
at least) are free: you could have come to class or not, you could have chosen a
different university, a different breakfast, a different degree, etc. We also feel that
other people should be held responsible for their actions: that someone who pushes
you over without themselves having been pushed is a fitting object of blame. So it
seems that most of us have a strong intuition that free will exists and that we and
other people have it. How can this be?
- Compatibles argue determinism is true and we still have free will

Libertarianism

- Libertarians in this context are philosophers who believe that free will exists.
- They typically also believe that human beings possess it.
- Denies that determinism is true- But libertarians accept that if determinism were
true, free will would be impossible. If human actions are causally determined by
preceding events and states, then those actions are not performed freely. To
perform an action freely, therefore, requires that the action not be causally
determined by preceding events and states. At the moment before you act, the
universe could go either way: you could eat the toast or not; accept the offer of a
place or not; choose the MOMD or not. Because they think that free will and
determinism are incompatible, libertarians are one kind of ‘Incompatibilist’. They
think that free will exists, and that it would not exist if determinism were true, so
they think that determinism is false. The other kind of incompatibilist accepts that
determinism is true, and that if determinism is true free will does not exist and so
they conclude that free will does not exist. This position is often called ‘hard
determinism’. (Note that determinism is not in itself the denial that we have free
will. This is a common mistake, but it is a mistake. Don’t make it.)
 - Returning to libertarianism, we might think that they are in the stronger position,
because modern physics suggests that the universe is not deterministic in the way
that philosophers and scientists thought that it was in the 17th, 18th and 19th
centuries. Quantum physics shows, so we are told, that certain events do not have
preceding causes. That one particle undergoes radioactive decay while another one
does not is genuinely undetermined: no prior event or state caused the event of it
undergoing radioactive decay to occur. So determinism is false: not every event is
causally determined by preceding events and states. But does this help us to assert
that free will is possible?
- It seems not. The events which are not caused seem – in virtue of the very fact of
their being undetermined – to be genuinely random happenings. It looks like there
is a dilemma for free will.
- Dilemma: take any action you like. Either it was causally determined or it wasn’t. If
it was, the person who performed it could not help but perform it, and so the act
was not free. If it wasn’t, then the action was undetermined, not caused by any
prior state of the world, including the agent. That makes the action random – hardly
a free action over which the agent had control! It seems as though either way we
can’t find room for the agent acting freely. Even if we look at world from
determinist or libertarian view- we don’t seem to be free- dilemema
- (not sure where this goes) Physics made discoveries to show that the world is not
determined- shows there is no cause- in atom there is protons, neutrons and
electrons- electrons can be in certain states around the nucleus- can represent the
planets orbiting the sun (not really view but using it)- also events such as
radioactive decay where particle from nucleus shoots off. We can say over certain
period, half-life, half of the radioactive e material will go. Any particular event are
uncaused and are genuinely random- not because of prior events or laws of nature.

LECTURE 2
If you’re an incompatibilist (both determinism and free will cannot be true) you have two
choices- can say determinism is true and therefore believe there is no such thing as free
will (hard determinist) or you can reject determinism and that makes you a libertarian.
(SUMMARISING LAST LECTURE)

Why might incompatibilism be true?

- An argument for incompatibilism (the view that if determinism is true, free will is not
possible):
- P1: If a person’s act is causally determined, she could not have done otherwise
- P2: A person is free/morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have
done otherwise.
- C: If a person’s act is causally determined, she is not free/morally responsible for it.
Compatibilism:

- Thomas Hobbes asserts that someone’s freedom consists ‘in this, that he finds no
stop in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do’ (Hobbes, Leviathan,
Ch. 21). In other words, being free is being able to do what you want- your free if
nothing prevents you from doing what you want to do- I’m free to do A, if, should
ii want to, I can. If that’s right, P2 is still true, but in the sense that someone is free
only if they could have done something else had they wanted to. If freedom is about
dong what you want P2 needs to change to say the agent is free f they are able to
do something else, had they wanted to.
- The incompatibilist insists on a different interpretation of P2. They claim that an
agent is free only if they could have done otherwise even though the state of the
universe immediately prior to the choice was exactly the same. E.g when choosing
between salad and burrito you should always desire the burrito. As long as your
wants play a big enough role in the causal explanation of what you do we have
free will

Two diff readings of premise 2- compatibilist and incompatibilist

The Principle of Alternate Possibilities:

- A further way of challenging incompatibilism comes from denying that P2 is true

even if it’s interpreted the way that the incompatibilists prefer.
- P2 is a near-quotation from Harry Frankfurt’s 1969 paper “Alternate Possibilities and
Moral Responsibility”. He calls P2 the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP).- he
argues it is false
- Frankfurt offers a story intended to make us reconsider whether PAP is true.
Suppose that I decide that Nikk Effingham must die. I don’t want to be witnessed
killing Nikk, so I look out for students so disgruntled with Nikk’s essay-marking that
they want to kill him. You are such a student: you have decided for yourself, without
any influence from me, that Nikk must die. We agree on how you will kill him, but I
am concerned that you may change your mind. To deal with this possibility, I use a
magic mind-reading-and-control device on you. I monitor your brain patterns as you
go to kill Nikk, looking for any indication that you are about to change your mind. If
you were to show any such indication, I would take over your mind and use your
body to kill Nikk remotely. But you don’t change your mind, and kill Nikk without my
having to control you in any way.
- In a case like this, according to Frankfurt, you are morally responsible for the murder
even though you could not have done otherwise. So PAP/premise 2 is false.
- Frankfurt borrowing whole argument from John Locke- Locke gives example of
man sittiing in room who cant leave but man does not know he cannot leave- are
they remaining there freely? YES because they want to sit there NO because they
cant leave. Locke says just because they cant leave doesn’t mean they aren’t sitting
 there out of their own free will- up until they try to leave they are freely sitting in
room

Freedom of the Will?

- Compatibilists say that an action is free if it is the one that the agent wanted to
perform. But is freedom of action the same as freedom of the will?
- In his 1971 paper “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” Frankfurt
suggests that it is not. He suggests that just as freedom of action is being able to do
what you want to do, so freedom of the will is being free to have the will that you
want to have. By ‘will’ he means the desire that actually moves you to act.
- (summarising above) To have freedom of action is having the ability to do what
you want. Freedom of will is a freedom to will what you want—what is the will?
Frankfurt says that the will is the desire that gets acted on. Is the desire you act on
always the desire you want to get acted on? E.g trying to stop smoking- you want
to want to stop smoking but you don’t end up quitting because you desire you
wanted to want isn’t the desire that gets acted on- this is called weakness of will-
therefore being able to act on the desire you want to desire is called strength of
will.
- F observes we can have attitudes to our own desires- Frankfurt uses a distinction
between first and second-order desires. A first-order desire is a desire that some
state of affairs in the world come about. A second-order desire is one which has a
first-order desire as its object.
- If the first-order desire which produces action is one which I oppose at the second
level, then I do not have the will that I want to have: in this case I do not have free
will.
- Cases in which there is, by contrast, agreement between the orders of desire are said
to be cases of freedom of the will. I have the will that I want to have, so my will is
free.
- Problem: what if my desires concerning what I want to be my will have been altered?
Do I have free will then?
- Might there be third order desires? Do we want to want to want to act on our
desires? You want to not want to eat the chocolate cake as society said its bad but
now thinking you don’t want to have these negative desires towards your own
desires. Can talk about fourth order desires- never going to end- this problem is
called the infinite regress problem- this is the problem Frankfurt has been trying to
solve- admits he was wrong