Freewill vs Determinism

My Positions

1. I do not believe that free will, understood as the capacity for non-determined choice, exists.
2. I accept determinism: every event, including every human decision, is the consequence of prior causes.
3. I do not find the compatibilist redefinition of free will useful. If "free will" simply means "acting in accordance with one's own desires and reasons", then the term no longer describes the thing most people believe they have.

Notes

• Clarifying the term "free will"
  • In the context of determinism, free will is typically understood to mean the capacity for non-determined choice, accompanied by a sense of agency or control. This is sometimes called libertarian free will (a term unrelated to the political position).
  • In a practical sense, I do not understand what free will is supposed to be free from. I would not wish my choices to be free from:
    • Prior memory.
    • Prior and present awareness.
    • Reason.
    • Prior and present context.
    • My own character and preferences.
  • A choice "free" of all these things would not be mine. It would be random.
• On non-determinism
  • I am not aware of any compelling reason to believe that true non-determinism exists in nature.
  • To demonstrate non-determinism, we would have to observe an effect without any antecedent cause. We have never done so.
  • Quantum indeterminism does not map clearly onto macroscopic events and is not sufficiently understood to constitute a rebuttal of determinism at the level of human decision-making or behaviour.
    • Quantum effects are typically negligible at the macroscopic scale due to decoherence, which rapidly suppresses quantum behaviour in large, warm, wet systems such as brains.
    • Indeterminism ≠ agency. Even if quantum events are truly random, randomness alone does not imply conscious control. A decision made by a dice roll is no freer than one made by a clockwork mechanism.
    • Scientific uncertainty. The interpretation of quantum mechanics remains unsettled, and there is no consensus that quantum indeterminacy plays any functional role in cognition.
• The experience of choosing
  • The feeling of agency is real, but it is a feature of the model the brain builds of its own processes, not evidence that those processes are uncaused. Libet-style experiments, whatever their limitations, at least show that the feeling of deciding is not a reliable report of when or how a decision is made.
• Moral responsibility
  • Determinism does not dissolve responsibility; it reframes it. Praise, blame, reward, and punishment are themselves causes that shape future behaviour. They remain justified insofar as they work, which is a consequentialist justification rather than a retributive one. This informs my view of the Death Penalty.
• Relevant thinkers
  • Robert Sapolsky argues for hard determinism in Determined (2023). Daniel C. Dennett defended compatibilism in Elbow Room (1984) and Freedom Evolves (2003). See Do We Have Freewill - Daniel Dennett vs Robert Sapolsky.
  • Sam Harris, Free Will (2012), makes the case concisely from the first-person perspective.
  • Benedict de Spinoza: "Men believe themselves free because they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined." (Ethics, Part II, Prop. 35, Scholium)

Also see

• Consciousness
• Dualism
• Morality