Free Will
The capacity of agents to choose among alternative possibilities — and the central question of whether this capacity is compatible with the causal order of nature.
The free will problem asks whether human agents have the capacity for genuine alternative choice and whether such a capacity is compatible with the causal structure of the natural world. The problem has both metaphysical and moral dimensions: free will appears to be a precondition of moral responsibility, and the threat that it might not exist threatens the practices of praise, blame, and punishment that organize human social life.
The principal positions are libertarianism (free will exists and is incompatible with determinism), hard determinism (determinism is true and free will does not exist), and compatibilism (free will exists and is compatible with determinism, properly understood). Augustine and Aquinas developed influential medieval Christian accounts; Hobbes, Hume, and Kant produced the canonical early-modern positions; contemporary debates in analytic philosophy run through Frankfurt, Strawson, van Inwagen, and Pereboom.
The compatibilist tradition — running from Hobbes through Hume, Mill, and contemporary analytic compatibilists like Frankfurt and Fischer — argues that the freedom required for moral responsibility is not the freedom to have done otherwise in identical circumstances but a more modest freedom of self-direction compatible with causal determination. Frankfurt's hierarchical account locates moral responsibility in the alignment of higher-order with first-order desires; Fischer's reasons-responsiveness account locates it in the agent's capacity to recognize and act on reasons.
Libertarian alternatives — Robert Kane, Timothy O'Connor, Helen Steward — defend the existence of genuine alternative possibilities, often through some form of agent-causation or non-determined event-causation in deliberation. Hard determinists and hard incompatibilists like Derk Pereboom argue that whether or not determinism is true, the kind of freedom required for desert-based moral responsibility does not exist. The contemporary literature has produced increasingly fine-grained accounts of what kinds of freedom are required for what kinds of normative practices.
How philosophers have framed free will
| Philosopher | Position |
|---|---|
| Augustine of Hippo | Free will is real but the will is divided against itself by sin and requires grace. |
| Thomas Aquinas | The will tends naturally toward the good as the intellect grasps it. |
| Thomas Hobbes | Compatibilist: freedom is the absence of external impediments; agency is determined. |
| David Hume | Compatibilist: liberty is the agent's acting from her own desires, fully compatible with causation. |
| Immanuel Kant | Two-perspective: phenomenally determined, noumenally free; freedom required for the moral law. |
Representative quotes
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Augustine of Hippo
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Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
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Thomas Aquinas
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“The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions.”
Vita enim in hoc maxime manifestatur quod aliquid movet se ipsum; quod autem non potest moveri nisi ab alio, quasi mortuum esse videtur.
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Thomas Hobbes
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“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 26
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David Hume
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“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”
Part 3, Section 3
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Immanuel Kant
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“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
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