Debate: Are freedom and determinism compatible?

Classical compatibilism

You are free when you can do what you want: when nothing external stops you from acting on your will.

Best argument

This is how the word works in ordinary life. A prisoner is not free; a person walking home is. David Hume called it 'liberty of spontaneity' as opposed to 'liberty of indifference', and argued that only the first is worth having, since an act that came from nowhere would not reflect the agent at all.

Strongest objection

It is too permissive. A drug addict who wants the drug and takes it does what he wants, yet many think he is not fully free. Neither is someone whose wants were installed by brainwashing.

The reply

Later compatibilists refined the view to deal with exactly these cases, by looking at the structure of the will rather than just the absence of chains.

Defended by

David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke

Hierarchical compatibilism

You are free when the desire that moves you is one you endorse on reflection: when you want to want it.

Best argument

Harry Frankfurt pointed out that persons, unlike animals, can have desires about their desires. The unwilling addict wants the drug but wishes he did not; the willing addict endorses his craving. Freedom of the will is the match between the desires that move you and the ones you identify with.

Strongest objection

Why should the higher-order desire be the real you? It too was caused, perhaps by manipulation. And an infinite regress threatens: do you need a third-order desire to endorse the second?

The reply

Frankfurt answered that identification can be decisive without further endorsement: at some point you simply stand behind a desire, wholeheartedly.

Defended by

Harry Frankfurt

Reasons-responsiveness

You are free when the process that produced your action would have responded to good reasons to act differently.

Best argument

John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza argue that what matters is the mechanism behind the act. If you would have changed course had you seen a strong reason to, the act is under your guidance control. This view is fully compatible with determinism and handles addiction and brainwashing well.

Strongest objection

Incompatibilists say this is still not enough for ultimate responsibility: you did not create the mechanism, and so cannot be the true origin of what it produces.

Defended by

John Martin Fischer, Mark Ravizza, Daniel Dennett

Incompatibilism

Freedom and determinism cannot both be true. If your act was fixed before your birth, you are not its source.

Best argument

The consequence argument: you have no control over the past or the laws of nature; if determinism is true they entail what you do; so you have no control over what you do. And the manipulation argument: there seems to be no principled difference between being designed by a manipulator and being shaped by genes and environment.

Strongest objection

Compatibilists answer that the argument equivocates on 'control', and that if incompatibilism is true, freedom becomes impossible under determinism and indeterminism alike, which is a reason to doubt it.

Defended by

Peter van Inwagen, Derk Pereboom, Galen Strawson

Where you stand

Can you be free in a determined universe?

Choose one to see how people answer.

For the full background, variations and open questions, read the entry: Can you be free in a determined universe?.