The free will debate is a very old debate on what is the true cause of human actions and do humans actually have the freedom to determine their destiny or is everything predetermined? There are essentially three very different approaches to this debate. One side of the debate includes Libertarianism. Libertarians believe that human beings have moral responsibility and are capable of "spontaneous free will" and are able to alter their lives and can make decisions without any pre-determined responsibility to commit a certain action. According to the view of libertarians, essentially what makes actions free is them being constituted of in-deterministic natural events. Another side of the debate includes Hard-Determinism. Hard-determinists argue that human beings lack free will because all of our actions are produced from early psychological and or physical events. These form of determinists disregard free-will and moral responsibility and argue that every human action and decision is inevitable and follows a sense of antecedent sequence of events. The other side of the free will debate is another form of determinism known as compatibilism or "soft-determinism". Soft-determinists essentially redefine our standard idea of "free will" which is basically "spontaneous actions" and include the idea of moral responsibility which hard-determinists leave out of their argument. According to soft-determinists we have free will with the deterministic view still in place, the re-defined definition of free will according to soft-determinists is that as long as someone is able to commit an action on their own without any external causes forcing them to commit that action, it is free will. This concept of free will allows moral responsibility still able to be in place but also the idea that our actions are pre-determined due to previous psychological or physical events.
In my opinion, I believe soft-determinism is the most plausible side of the free-will debate. Soft-determinists agree with the deterministic view which I find most viable in today's society but also don't forget to include moral responsibility which I believe is an important aspect of the free will debate. What is key to soft-determinism is re-defining the idea of "free will" and dissecting the idea of what free will truly means. According to the soft-determinists free will is a concept that means the person committing the "free act" knows he is committing the act and is not being forced by something external that would otherwise make the person commit a different act. The deterministic side of soft-determinists agrees with the fact that we are essentially "pre-programmed" to make certain decisions/actions due to previous psychological or physical events. Spontaneous actions just does not seem like a plausible cause of our actions which libertarians argue is what free will is but soft-determinists disagree and provide the deterministic view to challenge that argument. The moral responsibility part of soft-determinism comes along with the re-defining of free will; because free will is no longer "spontaneous actions"...people still have moral responsibility because even though they don't really have control over their decisions/actions...they are still the one's committing the action and are able to take moral responsibility for their committed action.
Explanatory Breadth - Soft-determinism explains more types of human behavior than libertarianism but equal in explaining different types of human behavior as hard-determinism. Libertarianism basically just says that some human actions are spontaneous and we have control over what actions we commit and what we don't, but the idea of spontaneous actions with no cause is a bit murky and doesn't really explain all other actions that we commit. Soft-determinism and the general deterministic view explains that all human actions have causes, whether it be previous psychological events or previous physical events.
Explanatory Depth - Soft-determinism explains more in-depth on human behavior than both libertarianism and hard-determinism. Libertarianism addresses the natural reaction behavior like reflexes and stuff like that but when it comes to other actions it explains the actions as "spontaneous free will actions." which is very vague and doesn't really dig down into why the actions occur, they just say that the actions do occur due to some form of "free will". Hard-determinists agree with soft-determinists in the fact that all human behaviors(actions, decisions) are pre-determined but disregards the idea of free will and argues that there is no moral responsibility involved with actions. On the contrary, soft-determinists go indepth enough to redefine the concept of free will to fit the deterministic view as well as being able to tie in moral responsibility to actions because of the redefining of free will.
Simplicity - Libertarianism has less parts or assumptions than hard-determinism and soft-determinism due to the fact that libertarians argue that human beings have free-will but the explanation of free-will includes the idea of "spontaneous actions" and doesn't really go much farther in explaining human decisions and actions. Hard-determinism is a bit more complex because it goes on to say that all human actions are pre-determined by previous physical or psychological events and is more clear in explaining the why our behaviors and actions occur rather than a simple "random" action claim. Also, soft-determinism goes more in depth than that not only claiming that our actions are pre-determined, but it ties in the idea of moral responsibility as well as redefining free will and including free will in the argument.
Conservatism - Soft-determinism and Libertarianism are more consistent with our beliefs because the idea of having free will with our actions. Both of these sides of the free-will debate claim that free-will is present in our actions, even though they both have different definitions of free will. I believe people these days want to believe they have control over their actions and don't essentially want to believe that they have no control over their destiny. Soft-determinism I believe would be more consistent with every-day scientists and more logical thinking people because it does claim that actions are pre-determined but ties in the idea of free will and moral responsibility. Libertarianism would most likely be more consistent with your every day person due to the popular definition of "free will" which is essentially "spontaneous actions". Hard-determinism isn't likely to be as popular due to the lack of free will and moral responsibility aspect of the argument.
1. Soft-determinism, Libertarianism, and hard-determinism are the most plausible explanations of human actions.
2. Soft-determinism has much more explanatory depth where as Libertarianism has more simplicity, and soft-determinism and hard-determinism have equal amounts of explanatory breadth, and Soft-determinism and libertarianism are more conservative.
3. Therefore, Soft-determinism is the most plausible cause of human actions.
Cory,
ReplyDeleteVery effective piece of writing overall. I thought you offered a comprehensive picture of the debate, and even went as far as to include the more complex "soft-determinism." While your arguments did well to defend the legitimacy of the soft determinist view, You could have gone into greater depth regarding the core differences between soft and hard determinism. For example, while you state that we are burdened with moral responsibility although all decisions are beyond our control, you fell short in defending this controversial stance. How can we really be held responsible for the actions and decisions of a pre-programmed mind. It may have served you well to define the term "moral," and how it would look in the life of a man. Your argument is, however, very effective and evocative. Good writing, good points.
- W. R. Harper