One of the most important of all philosophical questions concerns what looks like a direct opposition between a deterministic conception of the world and the idea of human free will. Put briefly, determinism is the thesis that everything an individual does is determined by antecedent circumstances, for example causal conditions describable in terms of the laws of nature, while free will is the intentional power to make genuinely unconstrained choices about what to think and believe and how to act.
The problem was once framed as a puzzle over the inconsistency of attributing moral freedom to man and omniscience—including foreknowledge—to a deity. The scientific revolution recast the question as one about causality in nature, and mankind's place in nature. Since the 18th century, when the debate properly began in these terms, there have been increasingly sophisticated efforts to understand determination, volition and ways of construing them as compatible or, if incompatible, then as not rendering nugatory our view of human nature and the entire edifice of morality. Indeed, nothing less than a correct understanding of the world, humanity and morality turns on the question, which is why it is so profound and difficult.
The way our question is framed, specifying genetic and social conditions as determinants of behaviour, adds an interesting twist as regards the pointfulness of punishment, for whereas genetic determination of behaviour would count as causal necessitation, social determination is not necessitating but contingent, and if agents were metaphysically free they could resist the social pressures that would otherwise make them act under their influence. Genuine necessitation, which by definition is irresistible, renders pointless any reward or punishment of behaviour arising from it (so putting disruptive people behind bars is not punishment of them but protection of others), whereas since contingent social pressures can be resisted or accepted, punishment and reward for behaviour thus arising is pointful.
The key question is whether free will in any plausible sense exists, granting that humans are part of nature and that society is coercive. To answer "no" is to accept that we are systematically and comprehensively wrong to think that we are agents rather than patients—that we act instead of being acted upon—for moral thought is premised on the idea that individuals are in the final analysis metaphysically capable of agency.
To say that we have to assume that we are at least capable of freedom is therefore not a cop-out: if there is any possibility of making sense of ourselves as morally answerable beings, this is the premise we have to accept.
Sent in by David Simmonds, Epping, Essex. Send your philosophical queries and dilemmas to AC Graylinghere
