Free Will and Determinism (SACE Stage 2 Philosophy)

What this dot point is asking

You need to define determinism, explain the three main positions on free will, and assess which best preserves both science and responsibility.

The problem

Determinism is the view that the state of the world at any moment, together with the laws of nature, fixes every later state. Applied to human action, it implies that each choice is the inevitable product of prior causes reaching back before our birth. This seems to threaten free will, the capacity to have done otherwise, and with it moral responsibility, since we do not normally blame people for what they could not help.

Hard determinism

Hard determinism accepts determinism and concludes that free will is an illusion. Baron d'Holbach argued that humans are wholly part of nature and no more exempt from causal law than a falling stone. Modern hard determinists point to the way genes, upbringing and brain states shape decisions. The view is admirably consistent with a scientific picture of the world. Its cost is steep: it appears to abolish desert, praise and blame, and it clashes with the deep conviction that we sometimes genuinely choose.

Libertarianism

Metaphysical libertarianism, not to be confused with the political term, holds that we have genuine free will and that determinism is therefore false for human action. Some libertarians appeal to agent causation, the idea that a person, as a self, can originate a choice not fully fixed by prior events. Others point to indeterminacy in nature. The attraction is that it honours our experience of open deliberation and secures responsibility. The objection is that undetermined events look like random ones, and randomness seems no better than determinism for grounding genuine control, a worry sometimes called the luck objection.

Compatibilism

Compatibilism denies that freedom requires the absence of causal determination. David Hume defined freedom as the ability to act according to one's own desires without external constraint, which is fully consistent with those desires being caused. A prisoner is unfree; a person choosing dinner is free, even though both choices have causes. Harry Frankfurt deepened this by distinguishing first-order desires from second-order desires, desires about which desires to have. A person acts freely when they act on a desire they endorse at the higher level, which is why an addict who wishes not to want the drug is unfree in the relevant sense.

Compatibilism's strength is that it reconciles a scientific, causal worldview with everyday talk of responsibility. The standard objection is that it changes the subject: critics say it secures only freedom of action, not the deeper freedom to have ultimately willed otherwise, which is what genuine responsibility seems to require.

Evaluating

A strong answer notes that each position pays a price. Hard determinism keeps science but sacrifices responsibility. Libertarianism keeps responsibility but owes an account of how undetermined choices avoid being mere chance. Compatibilism keeps both but risks redefining freedom too thinly. Much depends on what concept of freedom genuine responsibility actually demands. The most defensible view is arguably a compatibilism enriched by Frankfurt's hierarchy, since it explains the difference between a free agent and a compelled one without denying that choices have causes.