History of FW Skepticism

First, a stipulated definition (with apologies in advance to PvI for not following his terminological guidelines):  let free will be the control condition on moral responsibility.

Now, the historical question.  What, if any, philosophers denied the existence of free will prior to, say, 1900?  (This is an arbitrary time; I'm actually most interested in whether any ancient, medieval, or modern philosophers denied the existense of free will.)

Bonus question for those who answer the historical question: What reasons were given to support FW skepticism?

Comments

[Kip]

Nichols lists these Hard Determinists in his "Rise of Compatibilism" paper:

"Spinoza, D’Holbach, Diderot, Lessing, Voltaire"

(Hard Indeterminists or Hard Incompatibilists don't seem to have any historical representatives.)

The major free will non-realists seem to me to be Spinoza, Russell and Einstein (I like to throw in the great American trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, too). Note that Russell and Einstein were good friends, too, and both gushed over Spinoza. So these three represent a real philosophical lineage, and not a mere coincidence.

Note also that some interpret Spinoza as a compatibilist. I also think that there is an argument to be made that Hobbes was a non-realist (about freedom of the will, not "liberty").

But I am not an expert.

It is truly remarkable how few historical figures defended free will non-realism.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Nietzsche famously scoffs at the causa sui conception of free will and heaven-and-hell retributive responsibility, but whether he rejects the "control condition on MR" is perhaps more complicated.

Baron d'Holbach is a noted hard determinist. And Spinoza, Diderot, and Voltaire are also labeled hard determinists. But at least with the only one whose work I know (Spinoza), I also think it is unclear whether we should say he thinks that we lack the "control condition on MR" or that we lack MR, though I'm not sure what he says about retributivism.

[George Ortega]

The first implicit historical assertion that, and explanation as to why, human beings do not have a free will was advanced by Leucippus (5th century B.C.E) with the phrase "Nothing happens at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity."

Interestingly this statement is yet to fall to a logical refutation that does not rely on supernatural agency.

[Fritz Warfield]

Hi Kevin,

you write:
"First, a stipulated definition (with apologies in advance to PvI for not following his terminological guidelines): let free will be the control condition on moral responsibility."

Choosing not to follow Peter's suggestions is up to you. But whether you do that or not, what you've given here isn't a definition! Unless you're working with a stipulated definition of "definition"...

But let that pass since I guess most of us sort of know what you mean. Two other questions:

1. Are you wanting to know who historically denied the existence of free will? Or are you wanting to know who historically denied the existence of "the control condition on moral responsibility"? I take it that these may or may not be the same questions. Which leads to my second question:

2. How will you classify a libertarian about freedom who denies that there is any "control condition" on moral resonsibility? As a free will skeptic?! That would seem odd.

[Kevin Timpe]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Eddy, regarding d'Holbach, if hard determinism is just the conjunction of the truth of determinism and incompatibilism about determinism and free will (and if free will is the control condition on moral responsibliity), then he'd seem to be an example. But I realize that's a few ifs that I need to look into.

Georoge, can you say a bit more about how we are to understand 'reason' in the quotation from Leucippus ?

Fritz, fair enough. I should have wrote, "First, a stipulation: let free will be the control condition on moral responsibility." I was simply trying to avoid raising the debate about whether free will just is or requires the ability to do otherwise.

Let me address your second question first. I'm having a hard time understanding the position you raise. Given the stipulation, it looks like a contradictory positions. But perhaps you want to distinguish freedom from free will? Or perhaps you just don't like the stipulation. In general, I'd be intersted in those who historically have denied the existence of free will (even if they wouldn't take free will to be the control condition on moral responsibility).

[Fabio Fang]

Hi. Rather than answering to Timpe, I'd like to know who historically embraced indeterminism, understanding it not as "lack of causes" but as "presence of causes that don't necessitate their effects”, i.e., as “presence of causes with more than one causally/physically/metaphysically—but not logically or epistemologically— possible effect". It seems to me that, historically, the denial of determinism has been the lack of causes (what I think we would rather call the denial of the universality of causation) and not the presence of causes that don’t necessitate their effects (what I think we understand as indeterminism properly), but I’m not sure. Thank you.

[Bob Doyle]

Hi Kevin,

It's a bit long, but you might want to run through my web page on the History of the Free Will Problem.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/history/

Here is the part of the page where determinism and indeterminism originate:

The materialist philosophers Democritus and Leucippus, again with extraordinary prescience, claimed that all things, including humans, were made of atoms in a void, with individual atomic motions strictly controlled by causal laws.

Democritus wanted to wrest control of man's fate from arbitrary gods and make us more responsible for our actions. But ironically, he and Leucippus originated two of the great dogmas of determinism, physical determinism and logical necessity, which lead directly to the modern problem of free will and determinism.

Leucippus stated the first dogma, an absolute necessity which left no room in the cosmos for chance.

"Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity."

(οὐδὲν χρῆμα μάτηω γίνεται, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἐκ λόγου τε καὶ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης)

The consequence is a world with but one possible future, completely determined by its past. Some even argued for a great cycle of events (an idea borrowed from Middle Eastern sources) repeating themselves over thousands of years.

The Pythagoreans, Socrates, and Plato attempted to reconcile an element of human freedom with material determinism and causal law, in order to hold man responsible for his actions.

The first major philosopher to argue convincingly for some indeterminism was probably Aristotle. First he described a causal chain back to a prime mover or first cause, and he elaborated the four possible causes (material, efficient, formal, and final).

Then, in his Physics and Metaphysics, Aristotle also said there were "accidents" caused by "chance (τυχή)." 2 In his Physics, he clearly reckoned chance among the causes.

Aristotle might have added chance as a fifth cause - an uncaused or self-caused cause - one he thought happens when two causal chains come together by accident (συμβεβεκός). He noted that the early physicists had found no place for chance among the causes.

Aristotle opposed his accidental chance to necessity:

Nor is there any definite cause for an accident, but only chance (τυχόν), namely an indefinite (ἀόριστον) cause.
(Metaphysics, Book V, 1025a25)2a

It is obvious that there are principles and causes which are generable and destructible apart from the actual processes of generation and destruction; for if this is not true, everything will be of necessity: that is, if there must necessarily be some cause, other than accidental, of that which is generated and destroyed. Will this be, or not? Yes, if this happens; otherwise not.
(Metaphysics, Book VI, 1027a29)

For Aristotle, a break in the causal chain allowed us to feel our actions "depend on us" (ἐφ' ἡμῖν). He knew that many of our decisions are quite predictable based on habit and character, but they are no less free nor we less responsible if our character itself and predictable habits were developed freely in the past and are changeable in the future.

This is the view of some Eastern philosophies and religions. Our Karma (etymologically one's character) has been determined by past actions (even from past lives), and strongly influences our current actions, but we are free to improve our Karma by good actions.

One generation after Aristotle, Epicurus argued that as atoms moved through the void, there were occasions when they would "swerve" from their otherwise determined paths, thus initiating new causal chains. Epicurus argued that these swerves would allow us to be responsible for our actions, something impossible if every action was deterministically caused.

[Bob Doyle]

Eddy,

Nietzsche is both an enemy of free will (which he sees as a scheme for justifying punishment) and a strong supporter of our (especially his) free creative powers.

I have quotes from Nietzsche supporting both views on his web page at Information Philosopher.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/nietzsche/

Since you also mention Spinoza, you might like this quote from Nietzsche when he first read Spinoza (from his Letter to Overbeck, 1881)

"I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted. I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his over-all tendency like mine — making knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and made my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness. Strange.

[Justin A. Capes]

I'm having difficulty seeing how the quote from Leucippus commits him to free will skepticism. The quotation is consistent with his being a compatibilist. As for it never having been refuted, libertarians (incompatibilists who believe in free will and thus reject determinism) will claim either (1) their arguments in favor of libertarianism refute the statement or (2) though the statement hasn't been refuted, neither has it been proven.

[Bob Doyle]

Hi Justin,

You are quite right that Leucippus' statement, being determinist, is consistent with calling him compatibilist. But that would be an anachronism. The first compatibilist was Chryssipus (280-207).

Chryssipus' compatibilism was a rejection of the free will proposed by Aristotle and Epicurus, which depended on chance.

It's ironic, perhaps, that Leucippus and Epicurus both proposed ideas to give humans more responsibility for their actions.

Leucuppipus wanted humans to be determined by causal law and logical necessity - in order to liberate them from the arbitrary interventions of the gods.

Epicurus wanted a "swerve" of the atoms occasionally to free man from Leucuppus' (and Democritus') determinism.

Parenthetically, we now know that atoms do not occasionally swerve, they move unpredictably whenever they are in close contact with other atoms. Everything in the material universe is made of atoms in unstoppable perpetual motion. Deterministic paths are only the case for very large objects, where the statistical laws of atomic physics average to become nearly certain dynamical laws for billiard balls and planets.

So Epicurus' intuition of a fundamental microscopic randomness was correct and an amazing anticipation of modern physics.

We know Epicurus' work largely from the Roman Lucretius and his friend Cicero.

Lucretius saw the randomness as enabling free will, even if he could not explain how.

"If all motion is always one long chain, and new motion arises out of the old in order invariable, and if first-beginnings do not make by swerving a beginning of motion so as to break the decrees of fate, whence comes this free will?"

Cicero unequivocally denies fate, strict causal determinism, and God's foreknowledge.

"If there is free will, all things do not happen according to fate; if all things do not happen according to fate, there is not a certain order of causes; and if there is not a certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things foreknown by God."

It was the Stoic school of philosophy that solidified the idea of natural laws controlling all things, including the mind. Their influence persists to this day, in philosophy and religion. Most of the extensive Stoic writings are lost, probably because their doctrine of fate, which identified God with Nature, was considered anathema to the Christian church. The church agreed that the laws of God were the laws of Nature, but that God and Nature were two different entities. In either case strict determinism follows by universal Reason (logos) from an omnipotent God. Stoic virtue called for men to resist futile passions like anger and envy. The fine Stoic morality that all men (including slaves and women) were equal children of God coincided with (or was adopted by) the church. Stoic logic and physics freed those fields from ancient superstitions, but strengthened the dogmas of determinism that dominate modern science and philosophy, especially when they explicitly denied Aristotle's chance as a cause.

The major founder of Stoicism, Chrysippus, took the edge off strict logical (necessitated) determinism. Like Democritus, Aristotle, and Epicurus before him, he wanted to strengthen the argument for moral responsibility, in particular defending it from Aristotle's and Epicurus's indeterminate chance causes. Whereas the past is unchangeable, Chrysippus argued that some future events that are possible do not occur by necessity from past external factors alone, but might depend on us. We have a choice to assent or not to assent to an action.

Chrysippus said our actions are determined (in part by ourselves as causes) and fated (because of God's foreknowledge), but he also said correctly that they are not necessitated. Chrysippus can be seen today as a compatibilist, as was the Stoic Epictetus.

[Tim O'Keefe]

Short dogmatic answer: there were no free will skeptics in antiquity, or at least no philosophers we have good reason to think were free will skeptics. The closest we can come is Diodorus Cronus, but even that highly dubious (for reasons I spell out below).

Longer, pedantic answer: the historical question is rather difficult to answer. That's because, while lots of people in antiquity wrestled with various problems of freedom and determinism, we shouldn't assume right away that the sort of freedom at issue is the control necessary for moral responsibility (much less some sort of ability to do otherwise than one does), nor should we assume that the determinism at issue is causal determinism (as e.g., formulated by PvI)--otherwise we risk anachronism.

So, for instance, I don't think that Aristotle's discussion of the 'coincidental' (the sumbebekos) in the Physics and in Metaphysics epsilon commits him to a denial of causal determinism--although actually arguing for that. as opposed to simply asserting it, would take a long time.

Likewise, in his discussion of tomorrow's sea battle in De Int. 9, Aristotle considers and rebuts a 'determinist' argument, but the argument there asserts that there is an incompatibility between the Principle of Bivalence and the contingency of the future, so it doesn't exactly map onto somebody denying that there is free will.

Anyway, to get to your question, after all of that throat-clearing:

Diodorus Cronus denied that there are any future contingents, via the Master Argument. We have no record that he explicitly drew further 'skeptical/determinist' consequences about human agency from the denial of future contingents, but others did, e.g., Aristotle presents such an argument in De Int. 9, and Cicero's De fato (among other places) gives us a variant of the apraxia (the 'lazy' or 'inaction') argument. But the 'skeptical/determinist' conclusion drawn by these arguments is that there is no point in acting or in deliberating about what to do, as oppsoed to talking about moral responsibility in particular. (Susanne Bobzien's book Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford 1998) is excellent for the details on these sorts of arguments and how they relate to one another.)

Epicurus thought that Democritus' atomism had unacceptable consequences for our agency. But he says that Democritus himself didn't draw these conclusions. (Epicurus denied that Leucippus even existed, but my own view on Leucippus is that we have no idea what position, if any, he held on questions of our freedom. So we should say neither that he's a compatibilist nor that he's a hard determinist.)

I recommend Bobzien's article, "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free–Will Problem", Phronesis 43, 1998, 133–75 if you want to get into the details. She pegs the 'birth' of the free will problem at the 2nd century AD, among the Aristotelian commentators, esp. Alexander of Aphrodisias. I'd put it a little earlier myself--I think that we can find an argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility, and a libertarian position about free will, in Cicero's De fato (in his report of Carneades).

[Bob Doyle]

Hi Tim,

I agree that the free will problem is already clear in Cicero's De Fato. I find it also in De Natura Deorum.

Cicero defended human freedom against the determinism of the Stoics and Democritus (perhaps also the little-known Leucippus?). He also attacked the randomness implicit in the Epicurean swerve of the atoms. He put the attack into the mouth of his Academic philosopher Cotta, criticizing the Epicurean Velleius, in Book I, section XXV, paragraphs 69 and 70 of De Natura Deorum.

(69) XXV. "This is a very common practice with your school. You advance a paradox, and then, when you want to escape censure, you adduce in support of it some absolute impossibility; so that you would have done better to abandon the point in dispute rather than to offer so shameless a defence. For instance, Epicurus saw that if the atoms travelled downwards by their own weight; we should have no freedom of the will, since the motion of the atoms would be determined by necessity. He therefore invented a device to escape from determinism (the point had apparently escaped the notice of Democritus): he said that the atom while travelling vertically downward by the force of gravity makes a very slight swerve to one side. (70) This defence discredits him more than if he had had to abandon his original position.
(Loeb Classical Library translation, v.40, p.67)

The Loeb translation as "freedom of the will" is a bit loose (nihil fore in nostra potestate).

This appears to be the first appearance of the standard argument against free will that I reviewed in my recent post to the Garden. Notice that it already appears in the form of a logical proposition like Jack Smart in 1961. One or the other of determinism or randomness must be true.

As to Susanne Bobzien's claim of a later date, I think her analysis of Chrysippus is terrific. But she may be biased toward her favorite centuries? I have written her work up here:
informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/bobzien

Her analysis in the Phronesis article and in her book is as good as the best modern debates on free will.

She identified several variations on the theme of human freedom that were important in antiquity. Three of them are indeterminist freedoms, by which she means the decision is partly or wholly a matter of chance, and does not involve the character and values of the agent:

1) freedom to do otherwise: I am free to do otherwise if, being the same agent, with the same desires and beliefs, and being in the same circumstances, it is possible for me to do or not to do something in the sense that it is not fully causally determined whether or not I do it.

2) freedom of decision: a subtype of freedom to do otherwise. I am free in my decision, if being the same agent, with the same desires and beliefs, and being in the same circumstances, it is possible for me to decide between altemative courses of action in the sense that it is not fully causally determined which way I decide. 1) differs from 2) in that it leaves it undecided in which way it is possible for the agent to do or not to do something.

3) freedom of the will: a subtype of freedom of decision. I act from free will, if I am in the possession of a will, i.e. a specific part or faculty of the soul by means of which I can decide between alternative courses of actions independently of my desires and beliefs, in the sense that it is not fully causally determined in which way I decide. 2) differs from 3) in that the latter postulates a specific causally independent faculty or part of the soul which functions as a "decision making faculty."
(Phronesis, p.133)

One is what she calls "un-predeterminist" freedom:

4) un-predeterminist freedom: I have un-predeterminist freedom of action/choice if there are no causes prior to my action/choice which determine whether or not I perform/choose a certain course of action, but in the same circumstances, if I have the same desires and beliefs, I would always do/choose the same thing. Un-predeterminist freedom guarantees the agents' autonomy in the sense that nothing except the agents themselves is causally responsible for whether they act, or for which way they decide. Un-predeterminist freedom requires a theory of causation that is not (just) a theory of event-causation (i.e. a theory which considers both causes and effects as events). For instance, un-predeterminist freedom would work with a concept of causality which considers things or objects (material or immaterial) as causes, and events, movements or changes as effects. Such a conception of causation is common in antiquity.
(Phronesis, p.133)

In Bobzien's "un-predeterminist" freedom, there is nothing that causally determines the agent's action, but the agent will always make the same decision in exactly the same circumstances, because the decision is completely consistent with the agent's desires and beliefs (and character and values).

This is very close to my Cogito Model, except that exactly the same circumstances are impossible, and prior deliberations can generate alternative possibilities up to the 'moment of decision.'

Finally, Bobzien lists three compatibilist freedoms, negative "freedoms from" rather than positive "freedoms to..."

5) freedom from force and compulsion: I am free in my actions/choices in this sense, if I am not externally or internally forced or compelled when I act/choose. This does not preclude that my actions/choices may be fully causally determined by extemal and internal factors.

6) freedom from determination by external causal factors: agents are free from external causal factors in their actions/choices if the same external situation or circumstances will not necessarily always elicit the same (re-)action or choice of different agents, or of the same agent but with different desires or beliefs.

7) freedom from determination by (external and) certain internal causal factors: I am in my actions/choices free from certain intemal factors (e.g. my desires), if having the same such internal factors will not necessarily always elicit in me the same action/choice.
(Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, p.278)

Finally, as to Alexander of Aphrodisias, the most famous commentator on Aristotle (he wrote 500 years after Aristotle's death, at a time when Aristotle and Plato were rather forgotten minor philosophers in the age of Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics).

I believe that Alexander defended a view of moral responsibility we would call libertarianism today. Greek philosophy had no precise term for "free will" as did Latin (liberum arbitrium or libera voluntas). The discussion was in terms of responsibility, what "depends on us" (in Greek ἐφ ἡμῖν).

Alexander believed that Aristotle was not a strict determinist like the Stoics, and Alexander himself argued that some events do not have predetermined causes. In particular, man is responsible for self-caused decisions, and can choose to do or not to do something. Alexander also denied the foreknowledge of events that was part of the Stoic identification of God and Nature.

For more, please check out my History of the Free Will Problem

[Fritz Warfield]

Kevin,

The view I had in mind (libertarian but denies that there is a control condition on moral responsibility) could come in either of two varieties. What the two varieties share is a commitment to the existence of free will. Also, as libertarian views, both views think that freedom is incompatible with causal determinism. Variant one holds that there is no moral responsibility. Variant two holds that there is moral responsibility but that freedom is not a necessary condition for it. In a way, yes, this is further complaining about the stipulation. Is that more clear?

[George Ortega]

Justin,

Regarding your statements;

"I'm having difficulty seeing how the quote from Leucippus commits him to free will skepticism. The quotation is consistent with his being a compatibilist."

Leucippus's statement does not reference, nor accept, the kind of supernatural agency required by compatibilism.

and;

"As for it never having been refuted, libertarians (incompatibilists who believe in free will and thus reject determinism) will claim either (1) their arguments in favor of libertarianism refute the statement or (2) though the statement hasn't been refuted, neither has it been proven"

I should better have stated that it has never been rationally or scientifically refuted. Regarding your point (2), all physical evidence very strongly suggests a determinism that prohibits free will, and while an interpretation of quantum mechanics as indeterministic opens the possibility of randomness at the quantum level, our neurobiology operates deterministically at the macro level. Also, indeterminacy, or randomness, does not allow for the kind of free will compatibilists assert.

[Kevin Timpe]

Fritz,

Yes, that's helpful. I'm actually quite sympathetic to an incompatibilist account which thinks we have the ability to do otherwise but are not morally responsible (for reasons dealing with the epistemic condition on moral responsiblity [thanks Manuel!]). Could you point me to an article defending your second varient?

Tim, thanks for the history. That's fascinating stuff that I'll have to take some time to unpack.

Bob, same thing. It will take me a bit to read your history info, but thanks for reminded me about it.

[Mark Smeltzer]

George,

Compatibilism requires "supernatural agency"? This is the first that I've heard ;)

[Tim O'Keefe]

Hi Bob. Yes, I think that Alexander puts forward a libertarian position, as does Carneades (via Cicero).

Re: libera voluntas. "Free will" is the obvious English translation of it, but I don't think that the phrase always means the same sort of "free will" we're talking about today. In the case of e.g., Augustine in On free choice of the will, I think it's fair to say he's talking about 'free will.' But when Lucretius describes the libera voluntas that the atomic swerve saves from fate, libera voluntas is what allows animals (both human and non-human, both responsible and not responsible) to go where they wish in pursuit of pleasure. So I don't think that libera voluntas in Lucretius is "free will" in the sense Kevin is asking about above.

To return to Kevin's original question: what's striking for me is that folks like Aristotle, Lucretius and Cicero (e.g., in the passage in DND you refer to above) raise interesting arguments against our agency, but it's always to refute those arguments, or they say that the positions of others have unwelcome consequences for our agency, but that's in order to construct some sort of reductio of the position. I don't see anybody actually endorsing a skeptical position regarding our freedom.

[Justin A. Capes]

George,

Like Mark I'm puzzled by your claim that compatibilism requires "supernatural agency". As for the physical evidence suggesting a determinism that precludes freedom, there are a couple of things to say. First, science could never show that there is a kind of determinism that precludes freedom; at best it could show that a kind of determinism is true. To show that this determinism precludes freedom you're going to need philosophical arguments, I should think. Also, I'm skeptical about whether there is such a determinism, as you say there is, but since Kevin's post is about other matters, I'll forbear entering into that discussion at present.

[Bob Doyle]

Hi Tim,

I agree that all the ancients were trying to defend our agency. Some philosophers then and now misuse the ancients "straw" arguments against free will.

Even Democritus and Leucippus, inventors of physical and logical determinism, were trying to liberate humans from the irrational gods.

And Epicurus and his best student, Lucretius, were trying to defend our agency against the new determinism.

Chrysippus too was very measured. He denied logical necessity - again to increase our agency - but retained fate out of Stoic respect for the rules laid down by God/Nature.

So who can we point Kevin to as the earliest free will skeptics?

Perhaps Augustine, who as you say was discussing our modern notion of free will?

Augustine maintained that God's foreknowledge was compatible with human freedom, an illogical position still held today by many theologians. His more sensible contemporary, the British monk Pelagius (Morgan) held, with Cicero, that human freedom prohibited divine foreknowledge. The success of Augustine's ideas led the church to judge Pelagius a heretic.

The Scholastics were medieval theologians who tried to use Reason to establish the Truth of Religion. Because they used Reason, instead of accepting traditional views based on faith and scripture alone, they were called moderns. Thomas Aquinas maintained that man was free but also held there was a divine necessity in God's omniscience, that God himself was ruled by laws of Reason.

John Dun Scotus took the opposite view, that God's own freedom demanded that God's actions not be necessitated, even by Reason. Both argued that human freedom was compatible with divine foreknowledge, using sophisticated arguments originally proposed by Augustine, that God's knowing was outside of time, arguments used again later in the Renaissance and by Immanuel Kant in the Enlightenment.

I like to see Dun Scotus as showing that God can not be simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent.

Great Jewish thinkers like Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed and Chapters on Ethics argued for human freedom, especially against the idea of omniscience in the Christian God, though in his more popular commentaries he embraced a natural law and divine foreknowledge that controlled much human action.

Islamic thinkers hotly debated God's will, with the Sunni generally determinist and the Shia inclined toward freedom.

Asian religions like Buddhism, which do not have the paradox of an omniscient God, embrace human freedom in Karma, which includes a person's character and values that tend to shape one's behavior, but can always be changed by acts of will.

Renaissance thinkers like Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno questioned the teachings of the church and asserted a perfectibility of man that required the freedom to improve as well as to fail.

Lorenzo Valla and Pietro Pomponazzi followed the Scholastics and argued that God's foreknowledge of human actions was outside of time.

The Dutch humanist Erasmus and protestant reformer Martin Luther exchanged diatribes on free will.

Luther's essay was frankly called "The Bondage of the Will." Shall we argue that Luther and the Calvinist protestants were the real original FW skeptics that Kevin is looking for?

Or shall we jump a century later and give Hobbes the credit? He went back to a necessitarian position more determinist than the first compatibilist, Chrysippus.

"That which I say necessitates and determinates every action is the sum of all those things which, being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of the action hereafter, whereof if any one one thing were wanting, the effect could not be produced. This concourse of causes, whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes, may well be called the decree of God." (Of Liberty and Necessity, 1654, § 11)

For Hobbes, the idea that one could ever do otherwise was a contradiction and nonsense.

"I hold that ordinary definition of a free agent, namely that a free agent is that which, when all things are present which are needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies a contradiction and is nonsense; being as much as to say the cause may be sufficient, that is necessary, and yet the effect shall not follow." (§ 32)

[Tim O'Keefe]

Hi Bob. I wouldn't peg Augustine as a free will skeptic. If you want to argue that his position on foreknowledge is (as a matter of fact) incompatible with free will, you can, but as you note, Augustine thought they were compatible.

What about Luther and Calvin as free will skeptics, at least for fallen humans...? What I've read about Luther's "De Servo Arbitrio" makes it sound like it denies we have free will, but I don't know enough about either of them to have any confident opinion concerning them.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Bob,

Luther and Calvin's "free will" is very different than the skeptics' "free will". The Reformers argued that man in his natural state lacks the kind of freedom to merit God's favor. Another way to put is is that although man's will is free, man always chooses sin; likewise, man is "unfree" to choose virtue. Moreover, the Reformers sought to reconcile this idea with the idea that a just God can nevertheless hold men responsible for their sin. (This is essentially the same set of ideas that Augustine defended in his day.)

If anything, that sounds most like the Compatibilist story. Granted, I suppose some people who defend freedom are "optimistic" about what we can do with our freedom. Whereas the Reformed story is pessimistic about the freedom of a will still in bondage to sin.

[Tim O'Keefe]

OK Mark, that makes sense. If Luther & Calvin believe that God can rightly hold us responsible for our sins, then they shouldn't be skeptics about our responsibility for our actions.

[George Ortega]

Justin,

Regarding your comments;

"Like Mark I'm puzzled by your claim that compatibilism requires "supernatural agency."

If a compatibilist, by definition, accepts determinism, only a supernatural agency could break the causal chain of events that physically prohibits free will.

and

"First, science could never show that there is a kind of determinism that precludes freedom; at best it could show that a kind of determinism is true. To show that this determinism precludes freedom you're going to need philosophical arguments, I should think.

If you consider that the state of the universe at one moment completely determines the state of the universe at the subsequent moment, you need only simple logical deduction to scientifically conclude that such absolute universal determinism prohibits free will.

and

"Also, I'm skeptical about whether there is such a determinism, as you say there is, but since Kevin's post is about other matters, I'll forbear entering into that discussion at present."

Setting a more in-depth discussion of determinism aside, as you prefer, leaves us with an indeterminism against which only a supernatural agency could express itself freely.

[Mark Smeltzer]

George,

That's an absurd view of compatibilism. Compatibilists don't feel the need to "break the chain". Quite the opposite in fact, because they believe that the chain is no threat to freedom.

You could say that you find compatibilism to be false, misguided, hopeless, incoherent, or some such... but the charge of requiring supernatural agency to do something that compatibilists aren't concerned with is just absurd.

[Bob Doyle]

Mark and Tim,

Can't we maybe say that Luther and Calvin were indeed Free Will skeptics, but Moral Responsibility advocates, as in John Fischer's Semicompatibilism and Randolph Clarke's Narrow Incompatiblism?

I have argued that a clear conceptual analysis of the terms of the FW and MR debates would separate FW from MR.

I propose we first separate "free" from "will."

I would then go even farther and separate "moral" from "responsibility."

I think FW gives us an everyday "responsibility" in the sense of accountability ("I did that") that may or may not be moral.

Unlike Immanuel Kant, Bob Kane, and maybe even Aristotle, I don't hold that our free choices have to be moral choices and that we are slaves to ignorance ("virtue is knowledge") or our emotions and thus not free when we are immoral.

What do you think?

I have written about this conceptual analysis here:
informationphilosopher.com/freedom/conceptual_analysis.html

[Fritz Warfield]

Kevin -- I don't know of any article fully discussing the 2nd version of the view I mentioned before. I hinted at such a view in my paper in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics and suggested that some semi-compatibilists should like it: retain moral responsibility but take the cases to show that freedom isn't necessary for it.

[George Ortega]

Mark,

There are various definitions of compatibilist free will. The one I am addressing holds humans morally accountable. I am not ascribing to such compatibilists the claim that supernatural agency defends such accountability; I am asserting that such accountability defies the deterministic prohibition of free will in a way that only a supernatural agency could explain. While supernatural agency is not an explicit claim of such compatibilists, it is, however, a necessarily implicit correlate to their belief in deterministic free will.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Bob,

I can't say for sure whether Luther and Calvin were semicompatibilists, but we can say for sure that their primary interest was in preserving moral responsibility in light of Theological Determinism (which does not imply either logical or physical determinism, but is nonetheless a kind of determinism). So, I would say with confidence that they are at least semicompatibilists.

George,

You can coherently believe that "supernatural agency" (whatever that is) would be required to break the strict causal chain of determinism in order to have free will, but you cannot coherently think that compatibilists believe that. That's crazy talk. Compatibilists, by definition, think that free will is compatible with a strict causal chain.

Thus, it may be more appropriate for you to say something like, "Since I believe that free will requires supernatural agency and indeterminism, I believe that Compatibilism is wrong." That would at least be a coherent statement (which is always laudable).

[George Ortega]

Mark,

As I said before, I am not ascribing supernatural agency to compatibilists, I am asserting that such a characteristic would be necessary to a deterministic and morally accountable compatibilist free will. Supernatural agency describes a will that is able to, presumably supernaturally, transgress the laws of nature so as to allow for moral accountability.

Perhaps you can advance the discussion by simply asserting how you believe a will can naturally transgress such laws, or simply state what characteristic you believe a will possesses that justifies the attribution of moral accountability within a deterministic or indeterministic universe.

[Mark Smeltzer]

George,

Consider the following premises:

1. There exists a set of conditions, (FW), such that whenever an agent's will satisfies (FW), the agent is willing freely.
2. (FW) does not entail that determinism is false.
3. There exist a set of conditions, (MR), such that whenever an agent freely wills and (MR) is satisfied, the agent is morally responsible for his willing.
4. (MR) does not entail that determinism is false.

Typically, the conjunction of these four premises is referred to as Compatibilism. Not every Compatibilist believes that morally responsibility is actual or even possible, but none of them are worried about a threat from determinism.

Of course, the big questions for the compatibilist are to define (FW) and (MR), but the conjunction presented here is at least coherent. What you are suggesting is that a fifth premise be added to the mix, which would give us the following set:

1. There exists a set of conditions, (FW), such that whenever an agent's will satisfies (FW), the agent is willing freely.
2. (FW) does not entail that determinism is false.
3. There exist a set of conditions, (MR), such that whenever an agent freely wills and (MR) is satisfied, the agent is morally responsible for his willing.
4. (MR) does not entail that determinism is false.
5. Moral responsibility requires that agents have supernatural powers to thwart physical determinism. (Or however you care to phrase it.)

This addition is incoherent because (4) and (5) contradict each other.

The only way to have a coherent belief set here is to eject either (4) or (5), but if we eject (4) then we're not talking about Compatibilism anymore. And if we eject (4) and insert (5), we cannot accuse Compatibilists of requiring (5).

The Compatibilist project may indeed fail to produce satisfying answers to the what-is-FW and what-is-MR questions... but making off the cuff accusations about Compatibilists needing to show that agents can thwart determinism to be responsible for their actions is question begging at best.

[George Ortega]

Mark,

The salient phrase within your premises is "there exists a set of conditions." The necessary condition to enable a compatibilist free will is that it transgress the prohibition against such a will by both determinism and indeterminism.

My point is not that compatibilists claim, or assert, supernatural agency, but that supernatural agency describes the condition necessary to enable compatibilist free will.

Perhaps we can advance the discussion by exploring your necessary set of conditions.

[Justin A. Capes]

George,

I'm not a compatibilist and have no interest in defending compatibilism, but compatibilism is not committed to any form of supernatural agency. Indeed, some compatibilists have rejected libertarianism precisely because they say it would require supernatural agency. As Mark pointed out, compatibilists believe that even if there is an unbroken causal chain, we can still be free and morally responsible, for, according to compatibilists, in order to have free will and moral responsibility, we needn't be capable of breaking this causal chain.

In fact, I believe there is a quote from Hobbes somewhere in the thread above in which he (a) explicitly affirms the truth of determinism, and (b) says it is absurd to think we could break the deterministic causal chain (he thereby rejects supernatural agency). Hobbes is a perfect example of a compatibilist who accepts the truth of determinism and rejects supernatural agency. I think Hobbes's compatibilism is false, but I don't see that in affirming (a), (b) and compatibilism that his views are inconsistent.

[Justin A. Capes]

Fritz,

I think the 2nd version of the view you describe is precisely what semicompatibilists should say. Any semicompatibilist who, say, accepts the Consequence Argument should then say that although determinism is incompatible with free will, it is not incompatible with moral responsibility.

I wonder why more semicompatibilists don't say this. I suspsect the answer is that they view the claim that FW is required for responsibility as a truism, not a substantive claim. Do you think that's right?

[George Ortega]

Justin,

I am asserting that supernatural agency is necessary for compatibilist free will, not that compatibilists themselves make this claim.

I understand that you are not a compatibilist, but if you would like to present a specific argument asserting a determinist compatibilist free will, I will try to show how that free will must necessarily rely on a supernatural transgressing of the deterministic prohibition on free will.

[Mark Smeltzer]

George,

Let's start with Fischer's semicompatibilism. It isn't full blown compatibilism, but Fischer claims that moral responsibility is compatible with physical determinism, and Fischer does not assert any conditions that seem to require supernatural agency.

By the way, if your quibble has to do with specific Compatibilist accounts, then your gripe has nothing to do with Compatibilism. Compatibilism is just the conjunction of the four thesis I mentioned previously. As you noted, Compatibilism doesn't tell us anything about how Compatibilist free will or Compatibilist moral responsibility work. (We have to look to Compatibilist accounts to make progress on those questions.)

So, there are two possibilities: either (1) you have a criticism that can be leveled purely on the bases of the four theses alone or (2) you have set of criticisms that apply to a range of Compatibilist accounts. A criticism of the first kind counts as a criticism of Compatibilism (Van Inwagen intends to deny thesis #2 with the Consequence Argument), and criticisms of the second kind are just criticisms of specific compatibilist accounts.

Finally, I'm entirely unconvinced that the terms "supernaturalism" or "physicalism" means much of anything outside of folk usage. As technical terms, it is hard to imagine that the terms "naturalism" and "physicalism" are insufficient to describe the composition of seemingly "immaterial" things like angels, demons, ghosts, ghouls, or the soul could be composed of.

For instance, if the soul is understood simply as the immaterial component of a person, whatever that may be, then of course we have souls since we all have a measurable, immaterial electrical field that flows through and around our bodies. Does that mean that supernaturalism is true? *shrug* I'm not even sure what supernaturalism means ;)

[George Ortega]

Mark,

We need to first begin with your statement;

"By the way, if your quibble has to do with specific Compatibilist accounts, then your gripe has nothing to do with Compatibilism."

That statement is entirely wrong. The only way to address, or refute, compatibilism is through specific accounts. Because some, for example, attribute moral accountability and some do not, any attempt to address a generic compatibilism is of relatively limited value.

My assertion regarding supernatural agency applies to the entire set of compatibilist accounts, however, my critique of compatibilist constructions that attribute moral accountability is obviously limited to those constructions.

The term "supernatural agency," simply means that the will defies our known laws of nature. It is a term used by libertarians, and has the exact and accepted above meaning.

For advancing the discussion, my request was that you present your necessary "set of conditions" for compatibilism. If you wish to defend Fischer's compatibilism, please present his necessary conditions for attributing moral accountability so that I can show how and why they require supernatural agency.

[Justin A. Capes]

George,

Let me try again. Compatibilism is simply the thesis that free will and determinism are compatible. (Though there might be legitimate debate about what exactly free will is, I follow van Inwagen in depricating terms such as 'compatibilist free will' or 'libertarian free will'; there is just free will and the question is whether it is consistent with determinism.) Compatibilist largely reject supernatural agency, as you have defined it. They deny that we have a will (whatever that might be) that can defy the laws of nature. Now you might think that free will requires supernatural agency and that supernatural agency is inconsistent with determinism. But if you thought both of those things, your view shouldn't be that supernatural agency is necessary for compatibilist [sic] free will but that compatibilism is false.

Now, if your view is that free will itself requires supernatural agency, well, I think you're wrong about that, but that claim is much less outlandish than the claim that compatibilism requires supernatural agency.

[George Ortega]

Justin,

The compatibilist argument for free will professes to accept the truth of determinism, but cannot defend this position without implicitly, though presumably unwittingly, defending supernatural agency. That is not an outlandish claim, it is an assertion that supernatural agency is a necessary corollary to the argument for free will within a determinist universe.

I am confident that I can explain this point more clearly and completely, but in order for me to do so in a context you should be able to appreciate, I would need you to present an argument, rather than a mere assertion, describing how a will is able to act freely within a deterministic universe.

[Justin A. Capes]

George,

I don't believe a will (not sure what a will is, but let that pass) is able to act freely in a deterministic universe--that is to say, I'm not a compatibilist. Compatibilism, again, just is the thesis that we can have free will in a deterministic universe. Now, I'm not sure I understood the 1st paragraph of your last post, but it sounds a lot like what I said in my previous post. You may think that free will requires supernatural agency (SA, for short) and that SA is incompatible with determinism. If that is what you think, then your difficulty is indeed with the thesis of compatibilism (as Mark pointed out earlier). But notice, this is not to say that compatibilism (or, as you might prefer, compatibilist free will) requires supernatural agency. It is, rather, to simply say that compatibilism is false. These claims I can make perfect sense of. But I can't make any sense out of the claim that compatibilism (or compatibilist free will) requires supernatural agency.

I'll let you have the last word, as this is my final post on this subject.

[George Ortega]

Justin,

We can end our discussion with the following statement; I assert that any kind of free will, compatibilist or otherwise, must rely on a supernatural agency to empower it to transgress deterministic laws of nature that prohibit such a will.