Notes for Video 8: Do We Have Free Will?

•  We feel we have free will; it seems to be required for morality

• Libertarianism: we are free
• We can be moved by reasons
• Plato: our sense of conflict between reason and passion indicates we can choose
• Existentialism: we are ultimately responsible for our actions
• Determinism: all of our actions are caused; moral responsibility is unjustified
• Human behavior is like other natural behavior
• Freud: there are unconscious causes of our actions
• Indeterminism: sub-atomic particles are random
• Objection: but randomness is hardly freedom
• Compatibilism: necessity is compatible with freedom
• Hobbes: we are free as long as we can do what we want
• Contemporary compatibilists: we are free when we do what we truly desire (that is, what we want if we are properly informed)
• Response: Incompatibilism: free will is incompatible with determinism

• Kant: moral action presupposes freedom (so we can be said to be free in a "noumenal" sense), even though in the natural "phenomenal" sense we are determined

• Implications for punishment:
• retributive theory of punishment (giving someone his/her due) assumes that people could have done otherwise
• deterrence theory of punishment (to deter a person and others from acting in certain ways in the future) assumes that people are not necessarily free to do otherwise: the punishment can be a cause of how people subsequently act
• reform theory of punishment (to get a person to change how he/she chooses to act) assumes that people are free when they can do what they want: the punishment aims to change a person's character or personality