As culturally complex and social beings, humans value a variety of things, such as friendship, love, and freedom. Furthermore, a high intellectual capacity for abstract reasoning, logical thinking, and critical analysis opens up a universe of diverse ideas and views on the same concepts and topics. This diversity gives rise to controversy, dispute, and debates that further human understanding of living and existence. One of the widely disputable topics in philosophy is the free will problem. Free will, the ability to act and think unimpeded by natural or social factors, contradicts determinism, the idea that everything has a cause. Determinism threatens free will because of the opinion that human actions are predictable.
To understand the controversy, one must examine determinism and solutions to the free will problem. Determinism means that each event is determined by previous events which have been predetermined, implying the existence of “the chain of causes leading back into the indefinite past” (Vaughn, 2021, p. 251). For example, a person is binge-drinking because their girlfriend has left them. The girlfriend left them because they had been snoring. They have been snoring because they have a congenital nasal defect predetermined by the genes, and so on. As such, “every cause does seem to regularly and lawfully produce an effect, and every effect seems to have a cause,” interlinking endlessly in a clockwork manner (Vaughn, 2021, p. 252). There appears to be no place for free will in that configuration of the world, which is, basically, a definition of the free will problem.
Philosophers allocate three different solutions to the free will problem. Hard determinism is a concept of a universe where “no one has free will” (Vaughn, 2021, p. 253). This solution is simple: free will does not exist as determinism is scientifically proven. Hard determinism stipulates that the concepts are incompatible, known as incompatibilism (Vaughn, 2021). It means that two diametrically opposite doctrines exclude each other, with only one of them being true. Determinists appeal to science and cause-effect research to prove that free will is false, highlighting connections uncovered in scientific matters like the heredity of traits and conditions, biochemistry, and evolution (Vaughn, 2021). However, the problem with the approach is that it does not take into account scientific matters that are viewed as uncaused.
The second solution, compatibilism, is not as single-valued as hard determinism. Compatibilism assumes that although everything has a cause-effect relation, it does not contradict free will. Freedom is perceived as the ability to do what one desires and intends to do, even if the desire has been predetermined (Vaughn, 2021). Finally, the third solution, libertarianism, embraces indeterminism, the concept that some events and actions are uncaused, marking determinism as false and incompatible with free will (Vaughn, 2021). Uncaused means that humans can control their actions and thoughts without external influences.
Still, all three solutions are debatable and have inconsistencies. Determinism enables people to predict other people’s actions by investigating biological and socio-cultural factors, making free will virtually non-existent in the first and second solutions. Conversely, if human behavior is unstable and largely unpredictable, the world should be an extremely chaotic place. Moreover, the third solution ignores the evident influence of various cause-effect factors on human behavior, making it “incoherent, mysterious, or both” (Vaughn, 2021, p. 255). Nevertheless, it is evident that the extent to which determinism threatens the predictability of one’s actions can measure free will.
The ability to predict behavior can be summarized in the following opposite opinions:
- People who know you well “can predict everything you will do in any given time period”; this predictability means “that your whole life is determined by forces beyond your control” (Vaughn, 2021, p. 268).
- “He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing” (McCarthy, as cited in Vaughn, 2021, p. 265).
The first is hard determinism, which expresses the possibility of studying humans to indicate their behavior. The opinion seems partly true as close friends or spouses often predict actions or words of each other or even have similar thoughts as they influence each other. However, it ignores the cases when a person acts out of character and upbringing or external circumstances that are humanly impossible to predict.
In that matter, the second opinion, which represents compatibilism, is more realistic and, personally, correct. McCarthy’s hero could predict little of his life because people’s behavior depends not only on personal characteristics, innate or gained. Other people’s actions shape a person’s behavior and responses, and accidents with unpredictable causes may happen. Depending on the inner and outer factors, people’s intent to do something is a manifestation of their free will. Consequently, it is possible to predict behavior to the extent that does not exclude free will. For example, fear is a strong emotion that compels a person to fly from danger, but one can fight the fear of their own accord to achieve desired results.
In conclusion, as both concepts are, to some extent, inconceivable, I believe the controversy presents a dilemma: one cannot ignore cause-effect factors and reject the possibility of free will to solve them. Therefore, the concepts exist but threaten each other proportionately depending on the ratio of the predictability and unpredictability of human actions. It is especially true for situations that present difficult choices with moral responsibility when a person may be compelled to do some actions but act completely differently.
Reference
Vaughn, L. (2021). The philosophy here and now: Powerful ideas in everyday life (4th ed.). Oxford University Press