Determinism

The main philosophical dispute about determinism has been presented. It began at least as early as the seventeenth century, when the great Thomas Hobbes propounded the compatibilist case and was roundly attacked by Bishop John Bramhall. In the twentieth century the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore said that if one says "he could have decided otherwise," one roughly means "he would have decided otherwise if he had seen the other reasons," which is perfectly consistent with determinism. The Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin said in reply, as a cautious incompatibilist, that if is a tricky word and to say X if Y is not always to say that Y is a cause or a different cause or anything like that. Think of "there's a beer in the fridge if you want one."

One will find new arguments, or anyway new versions of old arguments, in good new textbooks on determinism and freedom. Most philosophers and others who write about the subject are either compatibilists or incompatibilists. It may seem a person has to be one or the other. Either determinism is compatible with freedom or it is not. Many compatibilists are of a scientific outlook, many incompatibilists more traditional and maybe inclined to religious belief or an elevated kind of humanism.

Still, one does not actually have to join either of those regiments. A few philosophers think the idea of freedom as origination is so vague or confused that determinism can be true without there being any consequence that a serious person has to worry about. This can be distinguished, maybe, from compatibilism.

Go back to that question that was asked twice, "Who do you think is not free?" The reader may have liked both answers, the compatibilist one and the incompatibilist one. In fact if one spent some time thinking, one might have come up with both answers oneself. After all, they are not surprising or novel answers, are they? People in jail are not free, and people who do not really have two choices are not free.

Now think of what compatibilism and incompatibilism have in common. They have in common the proposition that people have one idea of freedom or maybe one important idea. Compatibilists say it is voluntariness, and incompatibilists say it is origination. But surely it is just a mistake that people—the reader and the present author and the rest of the human race, or anyway those in Western culture—have only the one idea.

The truth of the matter is that people have both and that both are important. So compatibilism and incompatibilism are both mistaken. One does not have to be either a compatibilist or an incompatibilist if it just is not true that a person has only one idea of freedom.

That gets rid of one problem but certainly not all the problems about determinism and freedom. It does not get rid of what seems the real problem. It is a kind of practical problem. If one thinks determinism is true, how is he or she to deal with the fact that he or she also wants one of his or her ideas of freedom to be true—and it can not be if determinism is true?

There is something else too, not the same. A person can believe, and not just want, that his or her life has been up to him or her in some important sense even if that person is convinced of determinism, even if he or she believes his or her life was all just effects. One can still blame himself or herself for things in something like the way that involves what he or she does not accept, freedom as origination.

Could it be that what people need to do is really go back to the beginning and think about the nature of a conscious life, think about consciousness itself? Subjectivity? Was your life up to you, and do you have to have certain feelings about it, because it involves a kind of unique world in a way dependent on you?