What would you do if you realized that everything you have ever accomplished and ever will has been determined by an outside force? Most people would probably forgo the socio-economic structure that we all know and live by today. Especially if there was nothing that anyone could do to improve their wellbeing.
On the other hand, if everyone can make their own decisions, then they can also be held accountable for their actions. The differences between determinism and libertarianism can be simplified down to whether someone has free will, while compatibilism is the middle ground of the two with both free acts and unfree acts.
When fighting against the idea of free will and for determinism Baron d’Holbach said “[man] is born without his consent…his ideas come to him involuntarily…he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control,” (Chaffee).
With d’Holbach’s thoughts about free will he was describing the ideas of determinism, which is generally based on the physical model of the universe which states that casual laws of the universe are responsible for your belief and understanding of how things react to outside forces.
One aspect of determinism that is used daily is its ability to predict future outcomes based on the knowledge of outside forces. For example, when you flip the light switch, hit the power button on your tv, or you set your alarm clock the outcome of each of those actions has been decided by your actions.
In no way did those objects have any control over their actions or the outcomes that were created. When you flip the light switch the light will turn on unless there is another force that acts on the light as well. In the same sense as you are exerting a force on objects, there are forces acting on you in the same way.
John Mill made a inference on this in regards to forces on humans, “if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event” (Chaffee).
Now if it was possible to know every force that was acting upon a person being able to tell the future of that person would be incredibly useful. On the other hand, if people knew that their actions were already determined by outside forces than the way society acted would be drastically changed.
People would no longer be responsible for their own actions. As d’Holback said “that if all actions of man were to be contemplated as necessary, the right of punishing those who injure their associates would no longer exist.” (Chaffee).
Therefore, if the teaching of determinism happens to be a reality then it is extremely fortunate that people are not able to recognize the causes on themselves simply because the human brain is too complex, which in turn allows the idea of free will to remain.
On the other aspect of the philosophical spectrum we have libertarianism. As stated by William James libertarianism, or indeterminism, is
“A universe of possibilities, in which no matter what events have occurred in the past, there are still multiple possibilities in the future. If the events of the universe were a story, the past has been written, but we will not be able to write the future until it occurs because we need to see which of the multitude of possibilities becomes actualities.” (Chaffee).
The difficult part of trying to prove one viewpoint over the other is finding facts that prove a viewpoint. You can look at the past and gather all the facts you want about why a certain thing happened or why another didn’t, but when you look to the future your data becomes nonexistent in terms of both possibilities.
This is how James decided to argue his case for indeterminism. He used an example of his driving home and taking one road home over another and stated that the only way to tell which route is necessary to arrive at his destination is to reflect on the scenario after the fact (Chaffee).
Since a major aspect of the determinist viewpoint is that by knowing all the acting forces you would be able to predict the future, and none of the theories are every very accurate in predicting the future they are essentially degrading their own theories with contradictions.
James goes on to state, “when we make theories about the world and discuss them with one another, we do so in order to attain conception of this which shall give us subjective satisfaction…if there [are] two conceptions, and the one seems to us, on the whole, more rational than the other, we are entitled to suppose that the more rational one is the truer of the two” (Chaffee).
And since determinism, in James’s viewpoint, theories tend to contradict with lived experiences then why should those theories be held over our own lived experiences and testimonies (Chaffee)?
Then James goes on to make, in my opinion, his most formidable argument for indeterminism with his passages about “Judgements of Regret”.
He goes on to define what describe scenarios in which mankind could uniformly be regretful of; the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, European Colonization, and quite possibly the United States handling of immigrants today.
And since we as a species can look back on our past mistakes and be disgusted with ourselves rather than accepting past realities as the only possible outcome coincides with our beliefs and lived experiences as a race.
“The great point is that the possibilities are really here. Whether is we who solve them or he working through us, at those soul-trying moments when fate’s scales seem to quiver, and good snatches the victory from evil or shrinks nevertheless from the fight, is of small account, so long as we admit that the issue is decided nowhere else than here and now” (Chaffee).
Now the middle ground of determinism and libertarianism just so happens to be compatibilism which brings most of the aspects of determinism along with the preservation of free will, to an extent, from libertarianism.
Most compatibilist believe that the misconception of determinism and freedom can be narrowed down to differences in language. With that difference in language comes the interpretation of free and unfree acts.
They believe that if you are acting freely you are acting as you wish, in accordance with your unconstrained natural desire, and unfree acts occurs when there is a constraint imposed that prohibits certain actions(Chaffee).
So unlike determinism you do have the ability to make a free choice, but just because the act was free does not mean that it was not influenced by outside actions or forces.
Like determinism, they acknowledge that if enough is known about a person and their upbringing that you could, with one hundred percent certainty, determine a free choice they would make.
They believe that as events are being carried out, having been affected by past events, there is only one possible scenario for those events because they are all related and interwoven by the forces of the universe. One of the examples given in our book trying to shed light on compatibilism was that of Gandhi and his hunger strike.
They presented the act of Gandhi performing his strike as a free act that Gandhi made of his own fruition with the option to choose another course of action if he so deemed.
But because of the past actions and forces acting upon Gandhi, compatibilists would state that even though he made the choice of his own fruition they can look back on his past and determine that the same outcome would have transpired regardless of if the choice was made freely.
David Hume summarized this phenomenon by stating, “we cannot surely mean that actions have so little [connections] with motives, inclinations and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other” (Chaffee).
It is in these assertions and beliefs that the heart of compatibilism lies, because even though there is the belief in only one outcome being possible, the illusion of freedom is detrimental for aspects of the civilized world to remain.
While formulating my own opinions and researching into the different aspects of freedom and the arguments for and against its existence I was certain that there had to be at least some illusion of freedom if not the actual thing since civilization has not fallen into turmoil.
Without the idea of being free what would be the point in bettering the world? Its fate and that of all those on it has been decided regardless of any action taken or not.
Why would we seek knowledge when if in the end we will learn nothing? How can we hold those whom do wrong in our eyes responsible for their actions if they themselves had no real influence over their own body? How do we even decide what is wrong if an outside force is acting upon us instead of being able to think for ourselves?
Then came along Daniel Dennett with an interesting aspect that brings the idea of freedom into the reality of an unfree universe. Dennett focused on the evolutionary aspect of mankind, with the idea that maybe freedom wasn’t a reality until humans evolved to a state like that of which we are in today.
If you look at the ways in which mankind drastically differs from any species that exists on earth it would make sense that freedom has not needed to exist before. A pack of lions on the African savannah does not contemplate a spiritual transformation.
Blue whales in the ocean are not improving their wellbeing and that of their offspring. Before humans every other species simply existed, with the sole purpose of reproducing so that their offspring could exist.
There was no need for anything else because nothing else could have been imagined and if it could have been would be the apex species we are today?
Dennett stated that “[Free will] is an evolved creation of human activity and beliefs, and it is just as real as such other human creations as music and money” (Chaffee).
And with our evolution of free will and what could be achieved the building blocks for societies were slowly formed and laid as the bedrock for the world we live in today.
