Most arguments over free will today take one of three basic approaches:
- All is predetermined. Free will is an illusion and humans aren’t responsible for their actions.
- All is predetermined. Free will is part of that and humans are responsible for their actions.
- All is not predetermined. Free will changes reality from moment to moment.
The first is called incompatibilism to distinguish it from the second, compatibilism. The third is a more common understanding of free will in that our intuition is correct, and we really do make choices.
Most philosophers are either incompatibilist or compatibilist. The third option is widely recognized as being ill-defined because human beings make decisions with their brains. Brains obey the laws of physics which are either deterministic or random. It is impossible to hold to the 3rd option without appealing to some non-physical source for will.
An incompatibilist belief system means that I believe that I have no power to choose otherwise. The universe or God has chosen for me.
The Calvinist or Reformed theology is an incompatibilist point of view in which God preordains people for salvation or damnation. We have no control.
Why God would hold us responsible for actions that were His and not ours doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Even worse, why would God choose for us to do evil instead of good?! The Bible clearly suggests that humans choose to do evil and are morally responsible, so I don’t know how this ever became a popular idea.
Most philosophers, unlike the Calvinists, believe that incompatiblism implies we are not responsible for our moral decision making and that the justice system should focus on rehabilitation of criminals, as if they were malfunctioning automata. Scandinavian nations take this approach with their prison system, while the United States takes a retributive attitude.
A compatibilist belief system means reconciling determinism with free will. It attempts to attack the “consequence” argument of incompatibilists:
- No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
- No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
- Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.
The classical argument for compatibilism says that we can control our actions but not our desires, so even though we have the power to do otherwise, we do not have the desire. If the past were different than it is, we might have desired something else and done something else. This is all the freedom we get.
Luis de Molina, a 16th century Jesuit theologian, took this point of view and today adherents are called Molinists. In this case, God has preconditioned the past knowing what decisions we will make under any conditions (this is called “middle knowledge”); so he has arranged the universe so we will freely choose what he ordains. In this case, we are responsible for our actions and our own salvation or damnation, but we will choose one or the other based on the preconditions God has set for us. It is hard to guess why God would arrange the universe this way. It does away with God having responsibility for evil, unlike the Calvinist view, but it suggests that God could not or would not create a universe where people are not evil, despite determining all the conditions for its creation and knowing all the choices people would make under any circumstances.
The best way to think of the compatibilist viewpoint is to imagine a multiplicity of worlds in which you exist but have different pasts. In each world you make different choices and have different outcomes. Thus, you have the ability to freely choose in each one, yet each one is uniquely and precisely determined.
You only get to live one world but this is an illusion.
by Tim Andersen, Ph.D.
Research in statistical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum field theory. Principal Research Scientist at Georgia Tech. Book: The Infinite Universe (2020)
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