Free will

Free will is the notion that human beings are able to choose between different courses of action in any given circumstance, whereas its opposite, determinism, claims that all our mental states and actions are made necessary by preceding causes, and we are therefore not free at all, although we may have the illusion thereof. These diametric extremes, on the one hand we always are in complete control, and on the other that we never are in control, unnecessarily restrict our options, an example of false dichotomy. Reality lies somewhere else, as it is abundantly clear that our actions can be dictated by factors outside our control and outside our awareness, but it is unclear that such factors are decisive in every instance or in the long run.

All of us have subjectively experienced being torn between doing one thing or another –what we would like to do, what we think we should do, or what we think others would appreciate our doing, and so on. We might assume that the decision is up to us, that we are free to do one thing or another, and others may heap blame or praise on us assuming the same thing. This assumption is what is meant by free will –the belief that whatever we may have done in actual fact, could have been otherwise because we might have decided on another course of action, and that before taking the action we were free to choose between alternatives.

At the same time, we realize that some aspects of the world work in ways that can be understood because there are law-like processes that can be deciphered, and that allow us to predict some future events based upon observations of past events. The principle operating here is that future events are governed by physical laws rooted in past events, and the notion that this kind of explanation applies to everything that happens is known as determinism. Some have argued that the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics opens a door to a randomness in human behavior, which is foreign to human experience. Inasmuch as random atomic events are not under our control any more than predetermined events, determinism can be rewritten to include this randomness, for example, as follows: All our decisions are either implied by past events, or by random events, that in both cases do not involve us as agents, but which we simply witness.

If the world is deterministic, our feeling that we are free to choose an action is simply an illusion. However, it is an exaggeration (at least at the moment) to think that science supports determinism. We have trouble believing all our actions are determined, and that our sense of freedom is totally illusory, but we also have problems thinking that our actions are totally under our control.

This dilemma born of idealized positions is what in philosophy is known as the problem of free will (or sometimes referred to by its flip-side as the dilemma of determinism), and it is a problem because whichever road one chooses to go down seems to lead to conclusions that we would have trouble accepting.

Incompatibilism

One approach, of course, is simply to accept as a fact that human beings are not free, a position termed hard determinism or incompatibilism. To accept this position is to accept that our actions are caused by things other than our will –that actions do not originate in volition (willing), but rather in forces that determine its disposition in one way or another, a view often associated with stoicism. Hard determinism, however, insofar as it accepts a causal chain of events, means our present actions are determined in the past, and some consider that view to wholly destroy any notion of moral responsibility. From this stance, freedom is considered a necessary component of responsibility, for why should anyone be blamed or praised for actions that could not have been otherwise? Stoics, however, considered that an agent was responsible for thinking through their choices, even though the appearance of choice is illusory.

Libertarianism

Others have argued that determinism is false, or that at the very least, human actions are a special case and stand outside the requirements of a deterministic universe. Saint Augustine held this view, the capacity for metaphysical freedom. Kant also subscribed to this view: besides nature and empirical knowledge, there is the realm of things in themselves accessible to thought and governed by different rules; a distinction between phenomena and noumena. In a kind of inverse form of Kant's approach, Pierre Duhem suggested that scientific theory was simply a device to facilitate economy of thought, and could not be considered to encompass "reality". By separating the rules of thought, one might be free to choose between alternatives, one might have causal powers.

Compatibilism

An intermediate view has been to soften the requirements of what it means to be free. One accepts the fact that actions have causes, but argues that this does not mean we are not free.

In the approach known as soft determinism, I am still free even though my character, common sense and so forth, strongly support a course of action, because they do not compel me to act in this way, nor preclude alternatives. Of course freedom understood in this way is not an arbitrary freedom. It is freedom in the sense that nothing stops me from doing otherwise, even though it is unlikely. Put in an extreme form: "A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings".

Summary

The various notions of free will conflict, but involve many of the same elements. These matters have been argued for millenia, and their resolution may depend upon developing a better understanding of what actually goes on in the brain.