Free will

Free will is the philosophical doctrine that holds that our choices are ultimately up to ourselves. The phrase "up to ourselves" is vague, and, just like free will itself, admits of a variety of interpretations. Because of this ambiguity, the utility of the concept of free will is questioned by some. Several logically independent questions can be asked about free will.

Moral responsibility

We generally hold people responsible for their actions, and will say that they deserve praise or blame for what they do. However, many believe moral responsibility to require free will. Thus, another important issue is whether we are ever morally responsible, and if so, in what sense.

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Incompatibilists tend to think that determinism is at odds with moral responsibility. After all, how can one hold someone responsible for an action that could be predicted from the beginning of time? Hard determinists say "So much the worse for moral responsibility!" and discard the concept — Clarence Darrow famously used this argument to defend the murderers Leopold and Loeb — while, conversely, libertarians say "So much the worse for determinism!" This issue appears to be the heart of the dispute between hard determinists and compatibilists; hard determinists are forced to accept that we often have "free will" in the compatibilist sense, but they deny that this sense of free will truly matters — that it can ground moral responsibility. Just because an agent's choices are uncoerced, hard determinists claim, does not change the fact that determinism robs the agent of responsibility.

Related Topics:
Clarence Darrow - Leopold and Loeb

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Compatibilists often argue that, on the contrary, determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility — you can't hold someone responsible unless his actions were determined by something (this argument can be traced to Hume and was also used by the anarchist William Godwin). After all, if indeterminism is true, then those events that are not determined are random. How can one blame or praise someone for performing an action that just spontaneously popped into his nervous system? Instead, they argue, one needs to show how the action stemmed from the person's desires and preferences — the person's character — before one starts holding the person morally responsible. Libertarians sometimes reply that undetermined actions are not random at all, and that they result from a substantive will whose decisions are undetermined. This argument is widely considered unsatisfactory, for it just pushes the problem back a step, and further, it involves some very mysterious metaphysics. See Ex nihilo nihil fit

Related Topics:
Hume - William Godwin - Will - Metaphysics - Ex nihilo nihil fit

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St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans addresses the question of moral responsibility as follows: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" (Romans 9:21). In this view, we can still be dishonoured for our acts even though they were ultimately completely determined by God.

Related Topics:
St. Paul - Epistle to the Romans

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A similar view has it that our moral culpability lies in our character. That is, a person with the character of a murderer has no choice other than murder, but can still be punsihed because it is right to punish those of bad character.

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