Free Will
Free Will
Freewill
Freedom of action, as distinct from effective action, is a capacity (a power, a disposition). It is the
ability to act without being forced to do so and without obstacles that prevent us from doing so. This
ability may or may not be had. And if you have it, it may or may not be exercised. To exercise that
capacity is to act freely.
Unlike the term “freedom” and related terms, the expression “free will” is less commonly used. It is a
relatively technical expression, but the concept it expresses is not alien to everyday life and our
dealings with other living beings. Perhaps more common is the expression “free will” or “free will,”
whose meaning is very close to that of the expression “free will.” Thus, although we attribute freedom
to non-human animals, as we have indicated, we do not say of them that they possess free will or free
will. Free will is a quality that distinguishes members of the human species from those of other animal
species. It constitutes, speaking with scholasticism, a specific difference. She is not the only one.
Rationality and self-awareness are too.
Like freedom of action, free will is also a capacity. But there are differences between the two. First of
all, with regard to their respective objects. While freedom of action is the ability to act, free will is
primarily an ability to decide or choose that eventually results in the corresponding action. Secondly,
there are differences in complexity. Free will is a more complex ability than freedom of movement or
action. We can say that it constitutes a higher-order capacity, in the sense that it presupposes and
requires other capacities, such as imagining or representing possibilities, deliberating about them
taking into account reasons for and against each of them, which in turn presupposes mastery of
language and the conceptual framework it incorporates, etc.
Free will, we have said, is the ability to decide and, eventually, to carry out the decision by acting. But
this characterization is incomplete. Not every decision or action constitutes an exercise of free will. An
agent has a particularly close relationship of authorship with those decisions and actions that he or she
freely carries out. In fact, the importance of free will derives, among other things, from its relationship
with moral responsibility. Thus, for a decision or action to be free, certain conditions must be met,
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which include, in particular, certain types of control that the agent must have over it. The question we
now face is, then, what are these conditions or types of control?
First of all, we do not judge an involuntary or unintentional action to be free, one that the agent did not
want to carry out or of which he was not aware. Thus, voluntariness would be a necessary positive
condition of a free action. Secondly, we do not consider an action to be free for which we have no
alternatives. Breathing, for example, is something we do, but as such it is not a free action because we
cannot avoid carrying it out. We can say, then, that having alternative possibilities is also a necessary
condition for a free decision or action. Thirdly, we do not consider a decision or action to be free that is
totally arbitrary and absolutely lacking in reason. Thus, a free decision and action requires a certain
degree of rationality. Fourthly, we do not consider a decision or action to be free if it is the result of
forces outside the subject, such as neurological manipulation or severe psychological conditioning.
Therefore, a free action must have its origin or genuine authorship in the agent himself. Thus,
voluntariness, alternative possibilities, rationality and authorship would plausibly be necessary
conditions of free action. Expressed in terms of agent control over his action, free action requires
voluntary control, plural control, rational control, and control of authorship or origin. However,
whether these necessary conditions are jointly sufficient would constitute an additional thesis.
Considerations of this nature give rise to a classical position on the relationship between free will and
determinism, namely, incompatibilism, according to which free will and determinism are incompatible.
If determinism is true, we do not have free will, and if we do have free will, determinism is false. There
are two main arguments in favor of incompatibilism, which are actually somewhat more formal
versions of the above considerations. The first, which we can call the “plural control argument,” is
based on the need for alternative possibilities (plural control) for free will. The premises would be two:
1) having free will requires having alternative possibilities of decision and action; and 2) if
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determinism is true, no one has alternative possibilities of decision and action. The conclusion is: 3) if
determinism is true, no one has free will. The second argument, which we can call the “authorship
control argument,” is based on the need for genuine authorship of one's own decisions and actions
(authorship or origin control) for free will. The premises would be parallel to those of the previous
argument: 1) having free will requires being the author or genuine origin of one's own decisions and
actions; and 2) if determinism is true, no one is the author or genuine origin of their own decisions and
actions. The conclusion is: 3) if determinism is true, no one has free will.
Incompatibilism has two basic versions. Those who defend the truth of determinism, and therefore
deny free will, are strict determinists. Using the conclusion of the previous arguments as a premise,
strict determinists continue to argue thus: 4) determinism is true, therefore: 5) no one has free will. And
those who hold that we possess free will, and therefore deny determinism, are libertarians. These, in
turn, also using as a premise the conclusion of the previous arguments, continue arguing thus: 4) some
agents possess free will, therefore 5) determinism is false.
The above characterization responds to the compatibilism that we can call classical, due to thinkers
such as Hobbes, Hume or Stuart Mill. But it faces some problems. In particular, as Harry Frankfurt
points out, this characterization captures the notion of freedom of action, but not that of freedom of will
or free will. When a drug addict who wishes he were not addicted takes his dose, he is doing something
he wants to do and, therefore, according to classical compatibilism, he is acting freely. But, intuitively,
there is a certain lack of freedom in his behavior that classical compatibilism cannot explain: since he
rejects his addiction, the desire to take the drug, which moves him to act and which we can call, with
Frankfurt, his will, is not the desire or will that he would like to move him to act. It moves him to act,
so to speak, despite himself. Thus, we can say that his will is not free: it is not the will that he would
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like to have. For Frankfurt, free will is the ability to act on a desire (a will) that one approves of or
identifies with, a desire (a will) by which the agent wishes to be moved to act. This last desire is a
reflexive or second-order desire: it is a desire, not about an action, but about the will, the desire that
moves the agent to act.
The conception of free will that we have just expounded, and which we owe originally to Frankfurt,
can be called adjustment compatibilism, since it conceives of free will in terms of the harmony or
adjustment between different psychological levels, in particular between the desires and motives that
lead us to act and our desires or reflective attitudes about them. The other major compatibilist position
currently in force can be called reasons-response compatibilism, initially proposed by John Fischer and
Mark Ravizza. Whereas adjustment compatibilism emphasizes above all volitional control over action,
reinforced by reflexive desires, reasons-responsiveness compatibilism emphasizes especially rational
control. According to this proposal, in order to have free will it is necessary that the agent's deliberation
and decision be sensitive to reasons, so that, when the agent decides and acts in a certain way, he would
decide and act differently if he had sufficient reasons to do so. Both versions consider that the ability to
decide or act otherwise, or plural control, is not necessary for moral responsibility, so that, although
determinism excludes alternative possibilities, it does not exclude moral responsibility and, therefore,
the form of free will that it may require and that does not include plural control.
Compatibilism, in its various versions, can counter the incompatibilist argument of plural control,
formulated in section 3, in different ways. Classical compatibilism has chosen to deny premise 2 of this
argument, maintaining that the sentence “S could have acted otherwise” is equivalent to a conditional
sentence, namely: “If S had decided (desired, attempted...) to act otherwise, he would have done so.” If
the equivalence is true, then since the truth of the conditional is compatible with determinism, so is the
truth of the initial sentence. Adjustment compatibilism and reasons-response compatibilism have rather
opted to deny premise 1, maintaining that in order to possess and exercise free will, at least as required
by moral responsibility, it is not necessary to have alternatives for decision and action (plural control).
The main line of argument in favor of this thesis rests on the so-called "Frankfurt cases", conceptually
possible situations in which an agent decides and acts freely and voluntarily and, apparently, is morally
responsible for what he does, even when, without his knowing it, he could not have decided and acted
otherwise.
As for the argument of authorship control, also formulated in section 3, the various versions of
compatibilism have attempted to respond to it by arguing that an agent is the author of his decisions
and actions to the extent that he carries them out of his own desires and not because of coercion or
external force (classical compatibilism), because of his reflexive or second-order desires (adjustment
compatibilism), or when his deliberative and decision-making capacities result from a normal process
of socialization (reason-responsiveness compatibilism). Understood in these senses, the condition of
authorship is compatible with determinism. Incompatibilists reply that these conceptions of authorship
are too superficial to adequately support free will and its important role in human life and in moral
responsibility for our actions.
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The Manipulation Argument starts from an example in which an agent, Professor Plum, decides to
carry out, and does carry out, voluntarily and rationally, a morally impermissible action, the murder of
a colleague of his, Mrs. White. This action is situated, imaginatively, in four different contexts, all of
them deterministic. In the first case, a group of neuroscientists remotely manipulate Plum's brain and
induce reasoning that inevitably culminates in his decision to kill Mrs. White. In this case, virtually
everyone, including compatibilists, would judge that Plum has not decided or acted freely, and the
reason seems to be that his decision was caused by factors beyond his control. In the second case,
scientists equip Plum, from birth, with a program that inevitably leads him, at a given moment, to
decide to kill Mrs. White. The intuitive judgment would be the same here as in the first case, and for
the same reasons, since the differences between both cases, in terms of the type of manipulation and
the moment in which it occurs, do not seem relevant to justify different judgments. In the third case,
the decision is causally determined by Plum's character traits and abilities, which are a necessary result
of his family and social environment. Since the decision here also results from factors beyond Plum's
control, the judgment must also be, for the sake of consistency, that it was not a free decision. Finally,
in the fourth case determinism is true, so Plum's decision is the inevitable result of the past and the
laws of nature. If in the previous cases the judgment contrary to the free nature of Plum's decision is
due to the fact that it is causally determined by factors beyond his control, the same happens in this last
case and, therefore, the judgment should be the same: Plum has not decided or acted freely. Therefore,
determinism is not compatible with free will, and compatibilism is false.
Compatibilists have at least two ways of responding to this argument: they can hold that, at least in the
second case, and therefore in the following ones, Plum has decided freely, or they must find relevant
differences between the various cases that justify the judgment that, at least in the fourth case, Plum's
decision was free.
The Zygote Argument presents us with a goddess, Diana, who, in a deterministic world, creates and
implants a zygote in a woman, combining its atoms in a certain way. The reason he combines them that
way is that he wants a certain event to take place, say, thirty years later. Diana has perfect knowledge
of the past and of the laws of nature, and from this knowledge, together with that of the structure of the
zygote, she logically deduces that the zygote will become a person, Ernesto, who will carry out thirty
years later an action whose result will be the event desired by Diana. And so it actually happens after
thirty years.
The intuitive judgment that the example is intended to elicit is that, because of the way the zygote was
produced in a deterministic world, Ernesto did not act freely. Now, as far as the free will of the agents
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generated by their respective zygotes is concerned, there are no relevant differences between the way
Ernesto's zygote came into existence and the way zygotes come into existence in a deterministic world.
Therefore, determinism is incompatible with free will and compatibilism is false.
As with the Manipulation Argument, the compatibilist also has two ways to respond to the Zygote
Argument. Either she can argue that, despite appearances, Ernest acts freely and is morally responsible
for his actions, or she can try to find relevant differences between Diana's planned production of
Ernest's zygote and the unplanned production of ordinary zygotes, provided that both take place in a
deterministic world.
It is fair to say that both the Manipulation Argument and the Zygote Argument are plausibility
arguments, not demonstrative ones, and that the discussion remains open.
The Luck Argument has taken various formulations. We will attend to one of them, represented by A.
Mele and N. Levy, which we can call the Explanation Argument. We can put it like this. Suppose that
an investigating judge, J, dealing with a criminal case, is hesitating between sending the accused to
pretrial detention or releasing him on bail. Finally, after deliberating calmly and appropriately, taking
into account pertinent reasons for both options, he decides to release him. This decision seems clearly
free. Now, since, according to the libertarian, J's decision, if free, is causally undetermined, then there
is a situation or possible world in which J, with exactly the same reasons, deliberation, character traits,
moral values, and mental states as obtain in the real world, decides to send the accused to prison. But
then if, prior to the decision, there are no relevant differences between both situations, the decision that
J actually makes is a matter of luck or chance. He could also have decided to send the accused to
prison. Thus, J lacks control, especially rational control, over his decision, and, although rational
control is necessary for a free decision, his decision is not. Generalizing the argument to all cases of
causally undetermined decisions, indeterminism excludes control, especially rational control, over
decisions and, with it, free will, so libertarianism is false.
In the same spirit, Neil Levy argues that for a choice between two alternatives to be free, there must be
a contrastive explanation of it, that is, an explanation of the fact that the agent opted for one of them
rather than the other. It is not enough to explain why the agent decided as he did. Since his decision
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was causally undetermined and another decision was possible, it is also necessary to explain why he
did not make that other decision. If there is no contrastive explanation, the decision the agent makes
turns out to be a matter of chance or luck. But the libertarian is apparently in no position to offer such
an explanation, since the same factors that preceded the decision the agent made would have preceded
the opposite decision if the agent had made it. The demand for a contrastive explanation, and the
libertarian's inability to provide it, is also implicit in Mele's argument.
The conclusion of the Explanation Argument, and of other versions of the Luck Argument, is thus the
equation between causally undetermined decisions and merely random events, beyond the rational
control of the agent.
The libertarian is not helpless in the face of this important argument and its conclusion. There are
several considerations you can offer to defend your position.
First, the libertarian can hold that a simple explanation of the decision the agent made, appealing to the
reasons that led him to it, is enough to support the rationality and rational control of the agent over said
decision. A contrastive explanation is not required.
Secondly, it may question the conception of deliberation and of the decision assumed in the argument,
according to which the reasons have for the agent a certain importance or weight prior to the decision.
Deliberation would consist of comparing the respective weight of the reasons and the decision would
reflect the result of that comparison. For a libertarian, we do not have to accept that conception. The
agent can intervene more actively in the deliberation, assigning weight to some or other reasons,
instead of passively recording that weight. As for the decision, it can be conceived as an act of
definitively assigning weight and importance to a reason or a set of reasons over others. In this way,
reasons and decision are closely connected and the agent's rational control over his deliberation and
decision is increased.
Third, the case most favorable to the defender of the Explanation Argument, and other versions of the
Luck Argument, is one in which an agent faces a choice between alternatives supported by reasons
equally important to him but incommensurable with each other, such as moral reasons and reasons of
self-interest. These are choices in which the agent is internally divided or split between two options.
That is why we can call this type of election “split election”. The choice of judge in the previous
example could be of this type. It is in these cases that the final decision may seem more like a random
event, a kind of blind and irrational bet. But the libertarian can respond that the problem posed by split
elections does not disappear with determinism and is therefore also a problem for the compatibilist.
There can certainly be split elections in a deterministic world. But since, for a compatibilist, the
decision is causally determined and the reasons in these cases cannot determine it causally, since by
hypothesis they have the same weight for the agent, there will then be non-rational and unconscious
factors, perhaps neurological, that determine it, with which the compatibilist also faces the problem of
the loss of rational control over the decision that he wields against the libertarians (Pérez de Calleja,
Moya).
Fourthly, and in general, the equation of free and causally undetermined decisions with chance events
is very unconvincing. In the case of the former, the agent maintains a control over them that he cannot
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exercise over the latter. Let us compare the toss of a coin with the situation of the judge in the example
described above. There seems to be a central difference between the two cases, since, while the result
of tossing an (unmarked) coin is not under the control of the tosser, the decision made by the judge is
in his hands and under his control.
First of all, it is possible to accept all the arguments set out above and consequently maintain that free
will is incompatible with determinism, but also with indeterminism. Since determinism and
indeterminism exhaust the options, the consequence is that free will does not exist. This position can be
called, after its main proponent (Pereboom), strict or hard incompatibilism.
Secondly, for some time now we have been witnessing a powerful offensive against the existence of
free will based on experiments developed in the field of empirical psychology and neuroscience. Some
of these experiments aim to show that we are not aware of the factors that really explain our behavior,
which means we lose rational control over it. Another set of experiments suggests that our decisions
and actions depend more on the external situations we find ourselves in than on our desires, values, and
beliefs. This group includes the important Stanford prison experiments (Zimbardo) and obedience to
authority experiments (S. Milgram). Finally, a set of neuroscientific experiments initiated by B. Libet,
whose conclusion would be that the real causes of our actions are not our conscious intentions and
decisions, but neurological events of which we are not aware, which means that we lack, in any of its
forms, the control over our behavior that free will requires.
Finally, a radical variety of skepticism about free will can be called impossibilism. According to this
position, free will is an internally incoherent concept, since it requires something impossible to satisfy,
namely, being the author, origin, or cause of oneself. It has been defended by F. Nietzsche, and
currently by G. Strawson and S. Smilansky.
8. Final Remark
All the lines of discussion about the possibility and existence of free will that we have examined
remain open. The arguments and counterarguments developed in them provide plausible, but not
demonstrative, considerations in favor of their conclusions. The debate over free will is still ongoing
and there is no end in sight.
Carlos J. Moya
(University of Valencia)
References
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Barcelona, GEDISA.
• Ekstrom, L. (2000), Free Will: a philosophical study, Boulder (Colorado), Westview.
• Fischer, J. M. (1994), The Metaphysics of Free Will, Oxford, Blackwell.
• Fromm, E. (2008), The Fear of Freedom (1st ed. 1941), Madrid, Paidós Iberia.
• Gazzaniga, M. S. (2012), Who's in charge here? Free Will and the Science of the Brain, tr. of M.
Moreno Pine. Barcelona, Paidos.
• Hobart, R. AND. (1934), “Free will as involving determinism and inconceivable without it”,
Mind43, pp. 1-27.
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• Kane, R. (1996), The Significance of Free Will, New York, Oxford University Press.
• Kane, R. (ed.) (2002), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 1st edition (2nd edition 2011), New
York, Oxford University Press.
• Mele, A. R. (2017), Free. Why science has not disproved the existence of free will, Avarigani
Editores.
• Patarroyo, C. (2010), A place for moral responsibility. A defense of semi-compatibilism. Doctoral
thesis. Bogotá. National University of Colombia
• Prades, J. L. (ed.), Questions of Metaphysics, Madrid, Tecnos.
• Rosell, S. (2009), Character, circumstances and action. The role of luck in determining moral
responsibility. Doctoral thesis. University of Valencia, Faculty of Philosophy and Economics.
• Blonde, F. J. (2009), The Phantom of Freedom. Data from the neuroscientific revolution,
Barcelona, Crítica.
• Searle, J. (2000), Reasons for Action. A theory of free will, Oviedo, Ed. Nobel.
• Van Inwagen, P. (1983), An Essay on Free Will, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
• Vihvelin, K. (2013), Causes, Laws, and Free Will, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Watson, G. (ed.) (1982), Free Will, 1st edition (2nd edition 2003), Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
• Watson, G. (2004), Agency and Answerability, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Wegner, D. (2002), The Illusion of Conscious Will, Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
• Widerker, D. and McKenna, M. (eds.) (2003), Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities,
Aldershot, Ashgate.
• Wolf, S. (1990), Freedom Within Reason, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
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