Card 1.7 · Root I — Metaphysics · △ contested Contested
Free Will and Determinism
Could you have done otherwise?
Free will and determinism asks whether human choices are genuinely open, or whether every choice was already fixed by what came before it. Determinism is the claim that every event, including every decision, is necessitated by prior events together with the laws of nature. The branch studies whether the two can both be true, and whether we have free will at all.
On this card
Where it sits
Root I Metaphysics. Depends on 1.4.2 Causation. Borders 1.3.1 The mind–body problem, 1.3.2 Personal identity, 1.6 Modality. Feeds 3.4 Moral psychology and 6.2 Philosophy of law.
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The rival answers
| Position | Is determinism true? | Is there free will? | The move it makes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard determinism | Yes | No | Accepts causal determination, denies alternative possibilities |
| Compatibilism | Not required either way | Yes | Holds that free will is compatible with determinism; it does not by itself assert that determinism is true |
| Libertarian free will | No | Yes | Holds that some choices are not causally determined |
| Hard incompatibilism | Undecided | No | Argues free will fails either way, determined or random |
△ contested This question is genuinely unsettled. In the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, a majority of respondents answering the free-will question accepted or leaned toward compatibilism, and the position has a serious unresolved problem. Presenting it as the answer would be dishonest.
Where do you stand?
Could you have done otherwise?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chrysippus | c. 280–207 BCE | Greek Stoic | A Stoic view modern commentators call compatibilism; the cylinder analogy |
| Al-Ash'ari | 874–936 | Islamic | Kasb — God creates the act, the human acquires it |
| Thomas Aquinas | 1225–1274 | Scholastic | Free will real, operating within divine providence |
| Baruch Spinoza | 1632–1677 | European modern | Denies free will; calls free what acts from the necessity of its own nature alone |
| David Hume | 1711–1776 | European modern | A classic compatibilist account: liberty as acting according to the will |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724–1804 | European modern | Determined as appearance, free as moral agent |
| Peter Strawson | 1919–2006 | Analytic | Shifts the ground to our practices of blame and gratitude |
| Derk Pereboom | b. 1957 | Analytic | Hard incompatibilism; living without free will |
| Boethius | c. 480–524 | Late antique | Divine foreknowledge is timeless knowing, so it does not necessitate free choice |
| Jean-Paul Sartre | 1905–1980 | Continental | Radical freedom: we are condemned to be free and cannot shelter behind nature |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Free will:
- Compatibilism answers a question nobody was asking 6 replies
- If there is no self, who has free will? Is there a Buddhist position at all? 6 replies
- The tumour cases: why does a cause we can see on a scan excuse, when one we can’t see doesn’t? 6 replies
- Reading group: P. F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment” (1962) 6 replies
- The lazy argument fails against tawakkul just as it failed against the Stoics 5 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Free will
Connections
→ 1.4.2 · ↔ 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.6, 3.1.4, 3.4, 6.2, 6.1 · ◇ hard determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will, hard incompatibilism, fatalism, kasb (Ash'ari) ◈ · ○ Classical; Islamic golden age; Early modern; Table 6
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 70.