Freedom

I have not posted anything about free will recently, so here I intend to sketch an account of freedom which is compatible with determinism. Before I get into that, however, let me explain the point of compatibilism with respect to free will and determinism. The point is not that I think the world is determined, though it may be, nor that I am afraid that it might be. I would be a compatibilist with respect to free will and determinism even if I were convinced that the world was indeterministic. The point is to articulate what free will depends on, what the concept of free will amounts to, or what kinds of free will are possible. A compatibilist, such as myself, holds that whether or not the universe is deterministic should not make a difference to whether or not we are free.

Free will is a vague term, and can be used in different ways. Ordinarily, I understand it as whatever choice-relevant factor is required for moral responsibility. One can also understand it to refer to the prerequisite for a being determining its own choices. I will need to do some work in a moment to clarify this second type.

Take freedom as prerequisite for moral responsibility first. If this is all freedom is, then an account of moral responsibility which makes clear whether any of its elements presuppose indeterminacy will answer the question of whether free will is compatible with determinism. My account has it that moral responsibility arises from the ability to consider other points of view on a decision. The only element here that seems likely to require indeterminacy is that it is an ability. So the next step here would be to provide an analysis of (particularly unexercised) ability which is compatible with determinism.

Now take freedom as self-determination. If freedom is self-determination, then when a being performs an action freely in this sense, the freedom of that being has the final say on whether the being performs that action. This need not mean that no other factors are involved, and clearly must be compatible with the being doing things for reasons. Hegel's account of freedom lies in this kind, where he suggests that a being is free if it does all it does from itself, not determined by anything outside itself. The notion of "outside itself" at work here is not, however, a physical one. It is a matter of appropriating or incorporating things into oneself. Thus, one can be free in this sense in a deterministic world so long as one finds oneself--sees one's own values and so on--in what determines one. To put it another way, one would be free so long as one can say "Amen" to all that determines one in its manner of determining one--if one is glad to be determined in the way one is.