Ahsas

 Sharma  
The  Free  Will  Problem:  A  Solution  
 
The Free Will Problem: A Solution

"Man is free to do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills"

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Over the past millennium, many great philosophers have argued over what David Hume,

a Scottish philosopher, stated as “the most contentious question of metaphysics”.

The Free Will debate, at its roots, inquires into our ability as humans to choose our actions and

discusses the conflict and the compatibility between free will and determinism. It poses questions

that have profound implications on not just the society, but even on life as we know it.

Imagine a murder trial proceeding in a courtroom where the defendant attempts to plead

innocent on the grounds that his/her “behavior was the inevitable result of forces over which

he/she had no control.”(qtd. in Atterton 312) Such a determinist point of view relieves the

murderer from any sort of moral accountability for his actions. The determinists hold the belief

that the course of future is necessarily and inevitably dependent upon the past events and

provided that “an action is caused by prior events then, given those events, it could not have been

otherwise.”( qtd. in Atterton 313) By stating the last condition, hard-determinists rule out the

existence of free will, regarding ‘choice’ as an illusion.

One of the arguments in favor of hard-determinism comes from randomness. If we

suppose that all choices are free and do not have a casually determined cause, then all our

choices are random. But if our choices are free then they cannot be random and this leads to an

impossibility as our choices cannot be random and not random at the same time. Therefore, we

can say that our choices are not free. But if our choices are not based on free will, then we cannot

be morally responsible for them and as we are morally accountable for our choices, advocates of

free will argue that free will does exist.

 Ahsas  Sharma  
The  Free  Will  Problem:  A  Solution  
 
According to the proponents of free will, we as human beings are free agents capable of

making independent choices out of several possible outcomes in any given situation. In short, it

adds the possibility of ‘could have been otherwise’. This school of thought grants us our ‘moral

liberty’ – “our capability of acting well or ill, wisely or foolishly.”( qtd. in Atterton 324) In

addition to that, Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid states in favor of the existence of our moral

liberty that as humans we have the power to systematically execute our actions towards a

specific goal. His argument on moral liberty further supports the existence of free will. But

philosophers such as Baron d’Holbach and Thomas Hobbes argue that free will cannot exist.

D’Holbach held that everything in the universe is only matter and as matter is controlled by

physical laws and these laws determine what happens, everything in the universe is determined

by these physical laws. (http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu) So as we have seen so far, both of these

incompatibilist viewpoints, individually, fail to give a complete workable explanation for what

we perceive when we make a choice and how we make it. This leads us to a different school of

thought, led by philosophers like David Hume, that aims to provide a more plausible explanation

combining free will and determinism.

Compatiblism is the school of thought that free will and determinism are compatible with

each other. As noted earlier, humans are considered to be responsible for their actions but on

account of determinism, we cannot be morally accountable for the choices that we make. But

compatiblilism offers a solution that covers that role of freedom, moral liberty, responsibility and

determinism in our choices. According to Hume, “if we define freedom in terms of acting in

accordance with one’s will, then freedom and determinism are compatible.”(p312) Therefore,

provided that one is free from any physical restraint free will can exist, even though our will

could be casually determined by the antecedent events.

 Ahsas  Sharma  
The  Free  Will  Problem:  A  Solution  
 
On the contrary, the incompatibilists – libertarians and hard-determinists – hold that free

will and determinism cannot exist together. While libertarians believe in the existence of free

will and therefore rule out determinism, hard-determinists eliminate the role of free will,

crediting future occurrences to the past events and laws of nature. According to incompatibilists,

the definition of ‘free will’ that is used by the compatibilists is insufficient and does not account

for the moral responsibility that comes along with the freedom of choice. But determinism

completely eliminates one from being responsible for his/her action as there is no way there

could have been otherwise. So if at any point of time an agent’s desire to do something is

casually determined by the past events in his/her life and s/he makes a choice on the basis of

those wants, then we can infer that s/he is not in control in the first place. This argument by the

incompatibilists rules out the possibility of free will.

In my opinion, we as humans have the ability to go against our will a posteriori. So even

if our will is casually determined at any point, we are still morally held accountable for our

decisions as our final choice rests in our own hands. For example, lets say a person who had a

bad childhood encounters a choice between two actions – to steal or not to steal. Also, presume

that his/her will is casually determined to go for the former option even though at that moment

s/he is aware that stealing is a crime and therefore a wrong thing to do. As humans have the

ability to go against their natural will, one can argue that this person has the freedom to choose to

not steal considering the consequences of his act. But if this person decides to go ahead with his

will and steals, it can be said that it is not determinism or absence of free will but the weakness

of his moral character that leads him to that decision. And as this person is still morally

accountable for his actions, it can be said that free will does exist.
 Ahsas  Sharma  
The  Free  Will  Problem:  A  Solution  
 
In conclusion, the free will debate has been one of the most fundamental problems in

metaphysics and its solution has deep implications on all aspects of reality and human life. While

philosophers have long debated over various possibilities, a combination of modern philosophy

and advanced science can further aid in revealing these mysterious truths about our existence.

Work Cited:

Atterton, Peter. Introducing Philosophy: Questions of Knowledge and Reality. San Diego:
Cognella, 2011. Print.

Determinism  and  Indeterminism."  Pegasus  Web  Server  Home  Page.  N.p.,  n.d.  Web.  22  Nov.  
2010.  <http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/holbachjames.html>.  
 
Free  Will  Arguments  -­‐-­‐  Arnold  vander  Nat."  Loyola  University  Chicago:  Personal  Pages.  N.p.,  
n.d.  Web.  22  Nov.  2010.  <http://homepages.luc.edu/~avande1/free-­‐will-­‐args.htm>.