To believe that all individuals have free will, believe thoroughly that one is fully in control of their own decisions and choices, and that those around us have full responsibility for their actions against us and in support of us is liberating and therefore could seem rather attractive. Comparatively, just as comforting to others may be their idealism that we don’t have free will and cannot be held accountable for our actions: thus, blame being at the cornerstone of the debate on free will. Neither preference however, impacts on whether or not as human beings we are in the control we may or may not hope to be. Throughout this essay I will be exploring the spectrum of free will, to analyse in depth whether we can truly be free, from the depths of indeterminism to the shackles of determinism; and be pulling it apart to look at the moral dilemmas that it leaves society with when we ultimately apply justice and search for responsibility.
If for the purposes of this essay I am to present free will as a spectrum, instead of simply being present or not, then whether we make choices or not becomes a question of how much influence we have over the choices we make. The very concept of making a choice brings up its own first dilemma for free will because if we are to believe that there is more to a person’s ‘mind’ than electrical impulses and synapses then at some point the decisions that we choose to make must transcend our mind and become an action completed by our body within the physical world. This on the surface can seem uncomplicated, and can be illustrated with a continuum extending from decision to action: but Ryle poses that if this continuum is a representation of how we enable our free will when we create actions, then it cannot be known where on the continuum the idea or even the will to do something becomes a physical and real reaction.
The issues raised by Ryle caused by this paradox mirrors that in “Zino’s paradox” , which emphasises there is an infinite number of times that one point along a timescale can be halved before it reaches the final point of the scale, in this case the timeline between making the choice to complete an action and instigating the action in the physical world. Thus, however, concluding with the same ultimatum as Zino, in that we may not be able to quantify the infinite separation between the two but it is still nevertheless a quantifiable amount as there are two points on a timeline that have a specific length of time. Ryle elaborates and concludes that we cannot know when nor how the choices individuals make become the actions they take. Ryle’s paradox presents us with the first complication as to whether or not we can have free will if there is no logistical way for us to exert it.
At the far polar of free will is indeterminism, which rejects all pre-disposition that the world is determined as a structural path that all individuals and events in nature are inseparably attached to. Karl Popper , however, presents an interesting insight into the support of indeterminism by not by rejecting determinism, but supposing that “it is characteristic of all forms of the determinist doctrine that every event in the world is determined: if at least one (future) event is not pre-determined, determinism is rejected and indeterminism must be true” Popper’s input here to the debate of free will opens one door to the question of whether determinism and free will are compatible or incompatible with each other. If one small element of spontaneity is out of synchrony with the rest of the pre-determined world, then the very essence of determinism and its solid foundations are flawed, even though marginally, the small flaw can grow with a ripple effect changing all that was supposedly structured. This incompatibalist outline highlights the fragility of determinism according to Popper, as if something delicate and unsupported – ironic, as a system of structure and stability; though, on the comparison it also presents free will as liberating – a breaker of chains so to speak. Considerably thereafter, freedom bears many chains of its own in the form of responsibility; and the unravelled truth that when heinous atrocities are committed they are, in fact, intentionally malicious. Blame is often at the cornerstone of justice, though this calls for a more thorough analysis into how intertwined justice and responsibility are with free will, and why so. I find a very evaluative development of this in Daniel C. Dennett’s work, where he investigates the impact of Free Will on legal responsibility from an angle of the individual’s ability to be deterred. It is postulated that if blame was not laid and therefore justice not upheld, then “sanctions on the deliberations of (somewhat) rational citizens would be dissipated, and the undesirable harms of the state of nature would return” The nature of Dennett’s accusation is that if individuals have free reign and make their own choices, then for justice to be upheld it is up to other individuals who themselves are making choices to decide what punishment fits the crime. The representation of the “state of nature” being a natural evil that must be avoided exposes a fear of unstructured society in which all individuals choose to do as they please without governance. This, although within a text that features elements of incompatibalism, reveals the similarity and consistency between both ends of the free will spectrum – from indeterminism to determinism – in that we cannot be absolutely certain what true justice is. Whether this be because the surrounding world is predetermined and therefore we cannot lay blame; or on the contrary that if we all have free choice, individuals are all left with their own choice of how to uphold justice when there is blame.
To attempt to definitively define whether or not free will is important, I will also need to explore the fundamental principles of compatibilism to be able to fully understand whether determinism can be undermined by free will, or in fact vice-versa. One of the premises of compatibilism is that in order to exert one’s free will and make a choice, there must have been other choices available to act in a way that has a different outcome – this, we can either reject or agree with to allow a place for compatibilism. Having multiple options to make a decision between enforces the freedom that individuals have to choose between them, denying completely that determinism has the ability to undermine the innateness of free will.
A ground-breaking case study that revolutionised the legal implications of whether free will matters is the kidnapping and murder case of Leopold and Loeb, where their defence attorney Mr Clarence Darrow, who’s defence was grounded in “a mechanistic philosophy: that a man was formed and his actions determined by his birth and environment, that he had no free will, thus could not be held responsible for what he did”. To use a philosophical debate as a firm legal defence and to succeed in the sought after intention, Darrow needed a very strong, consistent, and structured case to present to the jury to make them suspend their own beliefs of free will and choice, to believe that the atrocity which was never denied by defence to have taken place, was committed without choice or option. On the surface, the choice available to them seems very literally to be that they could have not kidnapped the boy, and following that they could then not have murdered the boy. Exceeding all indeterminism arguments, all logical notions of conscience, the legal defence convinced the jury that the genetics and circumstances throughout their lives meant the two murderers were conditioned to be so. As heinous as a conclusion the conditioning lead to, Darrow has paved a path of structured and decisive arguments that people are determined to be, through no fault or intention of their own, good or bad.
Although Popper’s presentation of fragility and weakness within determinism, allowing for it to be undermined with even the slightest fraction in consistency, I find myself won over by Ryle’s paradox, having no conceivable understanding as to how the choices individuals may believe that they are making become the physical reality of their actions. Darrow, albeit in the defence of two extremely violent criminals, opened the door in modern day legal consideration that circumstances and conditioning form people into the ultimate product that they become; and in that product the individual is in a state of pre-programme of which they cannot release themselves.