Free Will: An Examination of Human Freedom

By Magnus Vinding

Do we have free will?
Not many questions can excite people more than this one, and for good reasons. Our ideas about our own freedom influence some of the most important things in our lives, from our political decisions and legal practices to our personal motivations, choices, and actions.

The goal of this short book is to address the problem of free will. This goal is not pursued by reciting the history of the problem of free will, nor by referring to the contemporary debate over it. Instead, it is pursued by approaching the problem directly and analytically — by defining a variety of freedoms that are often conflated. This lays the foundation for a clear discussion that arrives at unambiguous conclusions about human freedom.

This revised edition contains a new afterword that discusses the contemporary debate over free will. It exposes some of the most common points of confusion in this debate, and takes a look at the respective views of Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.

From the conclusion of the book:

Can we make choices?
Yes, we both can and do make choices. We can consider different possible actions and pick one among them, and this process is a complex physical process that takes place in our brain. It is true that we are caused to make the choices that we make by prior causes beyond our own control, but this does not mean that we do not make choices, nor that we have no good reason to make good choices, which we do, since our choices indeed do have an influence in the world.

Can we be said to be free in any way if our actions are caused by prior causes beyond our own control?
Yes. We can be said to be free in the sense that we, at least to some degree, can act freely, as in unconstrained within a certain range of possible actions, according to our own intentions. This is the freedom we by definition want to have, and it is a freedom that we can increase, since the range of actions we can perform can be expanded. Furthermore, we can also be said to have a certain freedom of intention, in that our intentions are not narrowly constrained by our genes. We are uniquely free in these ways, not because we are non-mechanistic and uncaused, but rather because of our mechanistic nature and the way in which we cause actions to happen.

Can we meaningfully reward and punish people for their actions?
Yes. Reward and punishment are practices that have an impact on the way we act, and it thus makes sense to reward and punish people. Punishment, reward, and other kinds of incentives are therefore not undermined by the knowledge that we are caused to act by prior unchosen causes. Indeed, a better understanding of how we are caused to act will likely enable us to improve our practice of punishment and reward.

Can there be any morality if we do not perceive ourselves and other people to be unmoved movers?
Yes. We need not delude ourselves about what we are, nor about the causal origins of our actions, in order to create a better world. Quite the contrary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Magnus Vinding
• Release date: Aug 5, 2014

Magnus Vinding

Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), and Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022).He is blogging at magnusvinding.com

Book preview

Free Will

An Examination of Human Freedom

Copyright © Magnus Vinding 2012

Revised edition with a new afterword 2013, 2014, 2023

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: What Is True About Human Freedom?

1. Defining Free Will

2. Determinism

3. Do We Have Free Will?

Part II: What Should We Believe About Human Freedom?

4. Benefits of Realizing the Truth

Conclusion

Afterword

Free Will: Emphasizing Possibilities

Ontological Possibilities and the Meaningfulness of Ethics

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Introduction

Our ideas about our own freedom influence some of the most important things in our lives, from our political decisions and legal practices to our personal motivations, choices, and actions. For example, if we see people as unmoved movers who can act independently of prior causes, we will likely reward and punish them in different ways than if we believe their actions to be entirely caused by prior causes beyond their own control. Likewise, if we perceive our own choices and actions to be independent of prior causes, our personal feelings of motivation will probably be rather different compared to if we perceived our choices to be bound to fall out in one particular way no matter what we try to do. A lot is clearly at stake here.

Because so much is at stake, human freedom has become a subject of heated debate. This debate centers around many important and rather different questions that all relate to the apparent conflict between (1) that all our actions are governed by natural laws, and (2) that we freely can do what we want. These are questions like:

Can we make choices?

Can we be said to be free in any way if our actions are caused by prior causes beyond our own control?

Can we meaningfully reward and punish people for their actions?

Can there be any morality if we do not perceive ourselves and other people to be unmoved movers?

The debate about human freedom, or free will, is not only heated but also confused, and in more than one way. First, people often fail to distinguish between what is true about human freedom and what we ought to believe about it. Second, the most used terms in the debate, such as 'free will' and 'responsibility', are rarely clearly defined, and as a result, people who discuss human freedom often mean different things by the same terms, apparently without being aware of it. Third, it is often overlooked that the debate about human freedom centers around many different questions relating to distinct levels — such as societal, neurobiological, and subatomic levels — which are often confused in meaningless ways.

The goal of this book, polemically expressed, is to step beyond this confusion and to answer some of the most important questions about human freedom. This goal is pursued in two parts. The first part, which consists of the first three chapters, seeks to clarify what is true about human freedom, while the second part, which is just the fourth chapter, is about what we ought to believe about human freedom. This helps us avoid the confusion that comes from failing to distinguish these two questions.

The first step taken toward clarifying what is true about human freedom is to clearly define