Do We Have Free Will? Does it Matter?
What makes us morally responsible? The answer most people would give is that we have free will. We are free to choose what we do, and that is why we can rightly be praised or blamed. Our actions are up to us. But are they? Some philosophers have argued that we are not in control of what we do, that we do not have free will.
In this lecture, we will look at the problem of free will and determinism. This is the problem that we cannot make sense of free will in a natural universe, because a natural universe must work in a deterministic way. Everything in it, including us, must be determined. I will start by explaining what determinism is and why many philosophers are convinced that we live in a deterministic world, and how it implies that we could not possibly have free will in the sense that we ordinarily think we do. We will then look at various philosophical responses to the puzzle. According to one philosophical camp, ‘libertarianism’, we do have free will after all. A second approach, compatibilism, argues that although we do not have free will, it does not affect whether we should hold people responsible for their actions. Compatibilists (so called because they think that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism) argue that we can make sense of moral responsibility without free will. The last group argues that we do not have free will, and we do not have moral responsibility either. These philosophers call themselves ‘hard incompatibilists’, or ‘hard determinists’.
Additional Resources
Introductory
Beebee, Helen (2013) Free Will: An Introduction, Palgrave. (Opinionated Introduction to both compatibilism and incompatibilism).
Mason, Elinor (2005) ‘Recent work on Moral Responsibility’, Philosophical Books 46, 343-353. (Introductory survey of recent work on moral responsibility).
Talbert, Matthew (2016). Moral Responsibility: An Introduction. Polity. (Opinionated introduction, focussed mainly on compatibilist views).
Advanced
Pereboom, Derk, (2001) Living Without Free Will, Cambridge University Press. (A very clear defense of a hard determinist view).
Watson, Gary (ed.) (2003) Free Will, Oxford University Press. (Collection of essential readings on the topic, including the articles mentioned above by Strawson and Frankfurt).
Wolf, Susan (1990) Freedom Within Reason, Oxford University Press. (Influential defence of a compatibilist view).
Internet Resources
The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website, edited by Ted Honderich.
(Many useful articles, including the relevant sections from Hobbes, Hume and Kant can be found here).
In the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (edited by Tim Crane):
In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (edited by Ed Zalta):