The examination of free will—a concept often contested as incoherent—requires rigorously defining the terms and scrutinizing the causal structures invoked by the primary positions: Hard Determinism, Libertarianism, and Compatibilism. One should resist the premature assumption that a choice among these theories necessarily exists.
I. Conceptual Incoherence and Causal Efficacy
The central difficulty in this discourse resides in the equivocal and sometimes incoherent application of causal language.
Question (I): Which premise of each theory appears more ineffective at explaining immanent/transient causation?
Hard Determinism (Ineffective Premise): The thesis that every event, including every human action, results as a direct consequence of the laws of nature acting on antecedent circumstances. This framework renders immanent causation (agent causation, where an agent initiates a new causal chain) wholly unintelligible. If only unbroken chains of transient causation (event-to-event causality) exist, the agent's "will" plays no originating role.
Libertarianism (Ineffective Premise): The claim that some actions appear free because they originate independently of motivational causes. This framework struggles to explain transient causation following an uncaused act. If a free act possesses no antecedent cause, its relation to the subsequent chain of physical events appears arbitrary—a random anomaly that lacks coherence with the observed laws of nature.
Compatibilism (Ineffective Premise): The contention that free will and determinism prove logically compatible. This view often struggles to define "can" without appealing to a counterfactual (i.e., The agent could have acted otherwise if the agent had desired otherwise). This conditional definition avoids the deterministic constraint but fails to address the foundational problem: If the agent's desires result from antecedent deterministic chains, the agent cannot fundamentally originate a different desire.
Question (II): Are the terms used equivocally, or do they appear obscure?
The primary challenge involves the term "can."
Libertarian "Can": Implies a categorical ability to act otherwise, even with all antecedent circumstances and motivational states held constant. This appears deeply inconsistent with the notion of a rational, identifiable agent.
Compatibilist "Can": Denotes a hypothetical ability, signifying the absence of external constraint or coercion (Hume/Ayer). This applies the term equivocally by shifting the focus from metaphysical causality to mere psychological or physical capacity.
The concept of "free will" itself appears incoherent if, as Peter Van Inwagen suggests, it cannot find a consistent logical space within a deterministic universe. To act freely while also having an action determined necessitates an appeal to two contradictory modes of explanation.
II. The Prison of Desire and Coercion
The incompatibility thesis gains strength when we observe actions driven by powerful internal or external forces.
A. External Coercion and Frankfurt's Analysis
Consider the pre-determined robbery scenario. Surrendering a wallet to a gunman constitutes an act coerced by the instinct for self-preservation. One performs the action, but one certainly did not will the entire event or its consequence.
Harry Frankfurt's framework sharpens this by focusing on volition: A free action proceeds from a desire that one wants to have (second-order volition). In the robbery, the victim desires to surrender the wallet to save one's life. Even though the external circumstance coerces the situation, the victim identifies with the desire for survival. The action thus seems "free" in a compatibilist sense, yet remains determined by the desire-hierarchy and the external threat.
B. Internal Coercion and the Addict
The case of the addict presents a scenario of internal coercion that resembles Locke's locked room: The individual desires to stop using a substance but cannot act on this desire because a deeper, self-organized compulsion (the addiction) controls the will.
The addict's remains unfree because the fails to organize itself toward the desired outcome.
The action of taking the substance, though stemming from an internal desire, appears unfree because the agent does not identify with that desire at a higher volitional level. The substance, not the self, dictates the action. The addict cannot perform the action they to perform; the will appears bound by an irresistible cause.
III. The Limits of Responsibility and Hypothesis
The implications for moral responsibility loom large. If Hard Determinism obtains, one's actions proceed as a result of pre-programmed events, thus diminishing or eliminating responsibility.
Consider the student (J) and the threatening professor (TP) scenario. Assume determinism holds.
The statement "J could have done better" must mean: "J would have performed the action differently had J wanted to perform the action differently."
The statement "TP could have helped J" must mean: "TP would have helped J had TP wanted to help J."
In both cases, the action was determined by the antecedent desires. If the universe possesses a deterministic nature, and time re-starts ( number of times), J and TP will perform the exact same actions because all prior events, including their desires and their interpretation of the term "can," will re-occur identically.
The belief that J choose otherwise only holds if the underlying causal mechanism that generates J's desires can somehow produce an uncaused variation. Indeterministic absurdity—the notion that an action results from pure randomness—provides no better basis for moral responsibility than determinism. An action that happens randomly lacks an identifiable link to the agent's character or moral code; it thus constitutes an event, not a choice.
Therefore, the choice among the theories appears pre-set, not free. If determinism true, no sufficient space exists for a coherent definition of free will. Freedom, if it exists, must reside within the deterministic chains, finding expression in the self's capacity to identify with its desires and actions, even while recognizing that those desires themselves result from a fixed causal universe.
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