Free Will is defined as the power/capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independent of natural/social/divine restraints. It is a largely contested notion as many believe that Free Will does not exist – many philosophers argue that it does not exist because our life is Determined. These Philosophers are known as Hard Determinists.
Hard Determinists state that Free will doesn't exist, it is simply an illusion. Hard Determinism is the belief that all events are caused by past events such that nothing other than what does occur could occur. The future is causally determined by the past. True freedom requires control over the future but as our future is determined by the past, Determinist thinking nullifies the concept of free will. It believes that there is a causal relationship between events in the past and the events in our future so the future is firmly fixed by the past. We are simply living in a chain of events that we have no influence over. All of our actions are caused by the past so we have no power to act other than we do indeed act (we are unable to perform Free Acts [Free Acts: actions that are deemed free as one was not constrained when performing it and one had the option to act otherwise]) and, therefore, we have no free will. To explain Determinism, I will introduce two examples:
1. The House Example: imagine that you are sleeping over at a friend's house and you hear some weird creaking in the middle of the night. You ask him what the noise is but he says that the noise just happens every night and there's no cause for it... would you accept this answer? Nearly everyone who answered this question stated that they would never accept this answer as there has to be a cause for the noise. This indicates the belief that all events have a cause, they are not randomly generated.
2. The Domino Analogy: there are a set of dominos lined up in a row. Once the first domino at T1 falls, the nth domino has to fall at Tn. This is because the fall of the previous domino causes the fall of the next, there is a causal relationship between the previous and next domino. Our life is like the domino set: the cause of the event happens before the event and once the cause occurs, it triggers the event.
I will now introduce two key thinkers of this theory:
John Hospers’ theory on the question of Free Will further explores this determinist view as he believes that our actions are simply just a result of our character (our character is defined as a coalition of our early upbringing and our genetics) so our past determines our future. There is a causal relationship between events in the past and the events in our future so the future is firmly fixed by the past. We are simply living in a chain of events that we have no influence over. Because we are not free nor do we have free will, we are not held morally responsible for our actions as it is impossible to change who we are (the driving force for our actions) because our character is comprised of fixed elements: our upbringing and genetics. But, as a society cannot function on the basis that there is no responsibility because one can never be morally responsible for their actions, Hospers has found a loophole declaring that if someone’s actions pose a threat to society, they are held legally responsible for their actions and the justice system acts upon the individual. This idea of moral responsibility versus legal responsibility is highlighted in the following example: if a criminal kills someone, they are not morally responsible for their actions as their act was predetermined by events in the past. Their character is a product of their upbringing and this caused their actions in the future: they had no control over what they were doing. However, they would be held legally responsible for their actions as they committed actions threatening the safety of society.
The physicalist Baron D’Holbach’s theory on Free Will also further explores determinism as his theory is focussed on free will simply being an illusion as our will comes from our brain. In D’Holbach’s theory, he states that everything that is happening right now is the inevitable result of an unbroken chain of events as humans and our actions are bound by the physical world. Mental states are brain states so our actions are determined (the physical world is determined). Our life is unilinear and "we are matter in motion" so we have no control over our actions. Our human actions come from brain impulses (eg. they come from temperament, hormones, beliefs, desires) and these biological factors are physical so they are determined. These biological factors narrow down our action choices to one so even if we feel free, we are not. "We are just cogs in a machine, doing what we were always meant to do with no actual volition", even if we believe that we are acting upon a self-determined character, we are not because the character we form is made up of already-determined factors about us so our actions are still predetermined. We have no personal responsibility as we are not responsible for our determined actions due to our biology.
Although one may impulsively subscribe to this theory because sometimes we can feel that we have no control over life, we can never really fully support this theory due to its incompatibility with human life. Although Hospers found a way to circumvent the issue of the lack of responsibility by introducing legal responsibility, this theory still has large flaws as it seems to negate the entirety of the legal system.
Firstly, Determinism rejects moral responsibility because how can we be held responsible for something that we had no control over? Determinism's notion of lacking moral responsibility is incompatible with the basic structures of society: we are social beings and we feel guilt/other emotions as repercussions of our actions. Any person who has basic levels of empathy would not fit determinism as they would feel remorse for an action that negatively impacted something and they would feel joy when something positive occurs as an outcome of their action. Unfortunately for determinists, people who have basic levels of empathy account for nearly 98% of the World’s population so this completely contradicts Determinism as we do feel morally accountable for our actions.
Secondly, if we cannot change ourselves and our future, this negates the entire concept of life as there has to be a meaning for our existence. The journey of life comprises of us changing due to external stimuli and learning, adapting and growing so Hospers’ theory contradicts the essence of the journey of life because it dictates that we cannot change. In addition to this, the notion of us not being able to change also negates the entire basis of the legal system as the system is put in place to rehabilitate people but if people cannot change their actions, this renders the legal system ineffective in pursuing justice for society. How can we teach someone what they did was morally wrong if they cannot change their character and their ways? How can we even instil ethical norms into society if people have no control over their actions and they are not responsible for what they do? This would completely nullify the entirety of the Justice system because we would not be able to create a social construct of morals and law within a society because no one is ever responsible for their actions, even if their actions harm society.
Lastly, the importance of the law is that it discerns various crimes and creates different extents of responsibility. For example, when someone is guilty of murder: they are then tried as to which degree of murder they are actually accountable for. Were they murdering in the spur of the moment, was it in self-defence or was it a calculated and pre-meditative strike? All these factors play into the Judge's ruling on how long the defendant has to be imprisoned for so there has to be a distinguishment between the various degrees of murder (first, second and third). However, the idea of Determinism completely eradicates the concept of different extents of a crime – if someone is determined to kill someone else, then the act of killing another person can only ever be classified as manslaughter as the act of murder was causally dependent on an event in the past. So, once your action in the past was committed, the act of murder in the future was set into stone and you became determined to murder someone else. You were not even aware of the fact that you were going to kill the other person so how can you be held responsible for it? Even if someone kills another person in self-defence, it is still the same as killing someone in a pre-meditated fashion as they were determined to murder the other person. This idea of every crime in the world being determined means that every crime should have equal weightage in the eyes of the law but that can obviously never be feasible! If one was trying Adolf Hitler for his mass genocide of the Jewish communities all over Europe during WW2, it would be unjust and immoral to dole out the same punishment to him as you would dole out to someone who accidentally hit another person with their car.
Determinism may be a theory which many people subscribe to but if everyone in the world began to believe in determinist thinking, chaos and havoc would break out all over as the entirety of the judicial system would fail for the reasons mentioned above.