| 20192 | Aristotle assesses whether people are responsible, and if they are it was voluntary [Aristotle, by Zagzebski] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle makes the concept of moral responsibility more fundamental than the concept of the voluntary, the reverse of the typical contemporary approach. Given that we hold persons responsible, such acts must be voluntary. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1110-ish) by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski - Virtues of the Mind 4.2 | |
| A reaction: Good for Aristotle. Whether we hold people responsible or not is widely understood, but whether they are 'free' to act is obscure, and may even be incoherent. We should look at praise and blame, and (above all) excuses. |
| 20833 | A swerve in the atoms would be unnatural, like scales settling differently for no reason [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus argues against the 'swerve' of the Epicureans, on the grounds that they are doing violence to nature by positing something which is uncaused, and cites dice or scales, which can't settle differently without some cause or difference. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c | |
| A reaction: That is, the principle of sufficient reason (or of everything having a cause) is derived from observation, not a priori understanding. Pace Leibniz. As in modern discussion, free will or the swerve only occur in our minds, and not elsewhere. |
| 7672 | The free will problem was invented by the Stoics [Stoic school, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: The free-will problem was invented by the Stoics. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Compare Ideas 6018 and 7814. There is no sign of the problem in Book 3 of Aristotle's Ethics. This is crucial, since I consider the problem to be totally bogus. |
| 1854 | We must admit that when the will is not willing something, the first movement to will must come from outside the will [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: We are forced to admit that, in any will that is not always willing, the very first movement to will must come from outside, stimulating the will to start willing. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply) | |
| A reaction: cf Nietzsche |
| 6213 | A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The will is not voluntary: for a man can no more say he will will, than he will will will, and so make an infinite repetition of the word 'will', which is absurd and insignificant. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.XII.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice simple point, allied to Nietzsche's notion that thoughts are uncontrollable (Idea 2291). Even Aquinas, who is quite a fan of free will, spotted the problem (Idea 1854). Personally I agree with Hobbes. Free will is a shibboleth. |
| 2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If a man should talk to me of a 'free-will', or any 'free' but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say that he were in an error, but that his words were without a meaning, that is to say, absurd. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.05) |
| 2384 | Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Letters to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle [1652]) |
| 2385 | If a man suddenly develops an intention of doing something, the cause is out of his control, not in his will [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: When first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite or will, the cause of his will is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Letters to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle [1652]) |
| 21802 | An act of will can only occur if it has been caused, which implies a regress of causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each volition can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined by another cause, and this cause again by another, and so on, to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Acts of will are usually responses to situations, so it seems a bit simplistic to think that they are all spontaneous sui generis causal events. That argument won't work, of course, for a random volition that is out of context. |
| 4837 | 'Free will' is a misunderstanding arising from awareness of our actions, but ignorance of their causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I have recently come to totally agree with this. The whole concept of free will seems to me incoherent, and Spinoza pinpoints the error. We aren't equipped to know the origins of the thoughts that arrive in our consciousnesses. |
| 4843 | Would we die if we lacked free will, and were poised between equal foods? Yes! [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It may be objected, if a man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst. ..Personally I am ready to admit that he would die. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: A nicely defiant way of demonstrating his rejection of free will. I have to agree with him. Even if there were such a thing as 'free will', it is hard to see how it could act as a tie-breaker. Which way would it freely decide? |
| 4844 | The mind is not free to remember or forget anything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: An interesting little corrective if you were thinking that your total control over you mind proved that you had free will. Once you face up to your lack of control of the memory process, you begin to realise how little of your mind even feels controlled. |
| 4871 | A thing is free if it acts only by the necessity of its own nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that a thing is free, which exists and acts solely by the necessity of its own nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letter to G.H. Schaller [1674], 1674.10) | |
| A reaction: Of course, this isn't 'freedom' at all, but it seems to exactly right as an account of so-called freedom. In the case of a human being the 'necessity of our own nature' is character, and virtue and vice are the expressions of the necessities of character. |
| 12494 | Men are not free to will, because they cannot help willing [Locke] |
| Full Idea: A man is not at liberty to will or not to will, because he cannot forbear willing. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.24) | |
| A reaction: Not quite an answer to the big problem, but an interesting observation for those who have high hopes of a truly, deeply and extensively free will. |
| 19367 | Saying we must will whatever we decide to will leads to an infinite regress [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: As for volition itself, to say that it is the object of free will is incorrect. We will to act, strictly speaking, and we do not will to will, else we should still say we will to have the will to will, and that would go on to infinity. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Theodicy [1710], p.151), quoted by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 4.IV | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an elementary difficulty which most fans of free will appear to evade. Thoughts just arise in us, and some of them are volitions. We can say there is then a 'gap' (Searle) where we choose, but what happens in the gap? |
| 19413 | If we know what is good or rational, our knowledge is extended, and our free will restricted [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The more perfect one is, the more one is determined to the good, and so is more free at the same time. ...Our power and knowledge are more extended, and our will much the more limited within the bounds of perfect reason. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Pierre Bayle [1702], 1702) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea, which seems to me to derive from Aquinas. When I choose to eat and drink each day, or agree that 7+5 is 12, I don't complain about my lack of freedom in the choices. Goodness and reason are constraints I welcome. |
| 2222 | The doctrine of free will arises from a false sensation we have of freedom in many actions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for from a false sensation or seeming experience which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference, in many of our actions. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.72) |
| 5296 | Kant made the political will into a pure self-determined "free" will [Kant, by Marx/Engels] |
| Full Idea: Kant made the materially motivated determinations of the will of the French bourgeois into pure self-determinations of the "free will", of the will in and for itself. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by K Marx / F Engels - The German Ideology §II | |
| A reaction: This is the social determinism of Marx and Engels. Most commentators would say that Kant was taking the idea of "free will" from religion rather than politics, but presumably Marx would merely reply "same thing!" |
| 4176 | We all regard ourselves a priori as free, but see from experience that character and motive compel us [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Everyone regards himself a priori as free in his individual actions, and only a posteriori sees that necessarily his actions follow from the coincidence of character with motives. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Idea [1819], IV.55) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what experience shows. Necessity seems more obvious when observing other people. Samuel Johnson said experience showed freedom, not necessity. |
| 2291 | A thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §017) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful remark (which I have since found in Schopenhauer). I don't see how the most enthusiastic free will libertarian can deny it. |
| 2871 | Wanting 'freedom of will' is wanting to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The desire for 'freedom of will' is nothing less than the desire to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §021) |
| 4414 | Philosophers invented "free will" so that our virtues would be permanently interesting to the gods [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The philosophers invented "free will" - absolute human spontaneity in good and evil - to furnish a right to the idea that the interest of the gods in man, in human virtue, could never be exhausted. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§07) | |
| A reaction: Wonderfully outrageous suggestion! If we had true metaphysical 'absolute' free will, we would be much more interesting, and have a much higher status in the cosmos. Nietzsche is probably right. |
| 7135 | 'Freedom of will' is the feeling of having a dominating force [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is our feeling of having more force that we call 'freedom of will', the consciousness of our force compelling in relation to a force that is compelled. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[250]) | |
| A reaction: I don't agree. That describes well how we experience the will, and develop the concept of a will, but the idea that the will is 'free' seems to me to be totally theoretical (and false), and doesn't derive from experience at all. |
| 2624 | I cannot prepare myself for the next thought I am going to think [Ryle] |
| Full Idea: One thing that I cannot prepare myself for is the next thought that I am going to think. | |
| From: Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind [1949], VI (7)) |
| 23076 | If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is because of speech that men give the illusion of being free. If they did - without a word - what they do, we would take them for robots. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
| A reaction: Love this one. Though it might be said that the power of speech does add an extra dimension of freedom to an action, beyond what any animal could attain. I take the absolute idea of 'being free' to be nonsense. |
| 9268 | If free will miraculously interrupts causation, animals might do that; why would we want to do it? [Frankfurt on Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm holds the quaint doctrine that human freedom entails an absence of causal determination; a free action is a miracle. This gives no basis for doubting that animals have such freedom; and why would we care whether we can interrupt the causal order? | |
| From: comment on Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964]) by Harry G. Frankfurt - Freedom of the Will and concept of a person §IV | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Chisholm is the spokesman for 'agent causation', Frankfurt for freedom as second-level volitions. I'm with Frankfurt. The belief in 'agents' and 'free will' may sound plausible, until the proposal is spelled out in causal terms. |
| 3446 | For Hobbes (but not for Kant) a person's actions can be deduced from their desires and beliefs [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: According to Hobbes, if we fully know what a man desires and believes, and we know the state of his physical stimuli, we may logically deduce what he will try to do. But Kant says no such statements can ever imply what a man will do. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Human Freedom and the Self [1964], p.32) |
| 15821 | Determinism claims that every event has a sufficient causal pre-condition [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Determinism is the proposition that, for every event that occurs, there occurs a sufficient causal condition of that event. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: You need an ontology of events to put it precisely this way. Doesn't it also work the other way: that there is an event for every sufficient causal condition? The beginning and the end of reality pose problems. |
| 22352 | Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut] |
| Full Idea: I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will'. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will. | |
| From: Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five [1969], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Spoken by the ambassador from the planet Tralfamadore. Possibly the greatest put down of a philosophical idea since Diogenes responded to Plato's definition of a man. I think free will is a non-idea. It is non-sensical, and doesn't exist. |
| 2176 | There is only a problem of free will if you think the notion of 'voluntary' can be metaphysically deepened [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: There is a problem of free will only for those who think that the notion of voluntary can be metaphysically deepened. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], III - p.68) | |
| A reaction: Years later, I now see that his refers to a pet hate of mine in discussions of free will, which is the idea that a person can have something called 'ultimate' responsibility for an action (which is the 'deep' version of 'you did it'). |
| 2181 | It is an absurd Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom coincide [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: There is a deluded Kantian idea that at the limit rationality and freedom will totally coincide. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993], VI - p.158) |
| 7978 | There is no need to involve the idea of free will to make choices about one's life [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: There is no need to involve the idea of free will to make choices about one's life. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 57) | |
| A reaction: Someone who believed that free will was metaphysically possible, but that they themselves lacked it, might feel paralysed, defeated or fatalistic about their decision-making. But that would be like falsely believing you were fatally ill. |
| 3196 | Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey] |
| Full Idea: We don't need arguments to show that if there were free will then computational accounts of the mind would be inadequate; what is needed is good evidence that there actually exists such free will in the first place. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.6) |
| 3195 | If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If a computational account of reasoning processes could be given, then there is no need to settle the issue of "free will", as reason could get along without it. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.6) |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Most people believe we have free will, and that this consists in the ability to circumvent natural law. The trouble is that the only device ever philosophically invented that can do this sort of job is an incorporeal soul or mind. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right. We currently have a western world full of people who have rejected dualism, but still cling on to free will, because they think morality depends on it. I think morality depends on personal identity, but not on free will. |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is unimaginable to me that, despite the feeling that we control what we do, such a strong conception of ourselves as unmoved movers would have been added to our self-image unless we had first conceived of God along these lines. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.107) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right, though there are signs in fifth century Greece of contradictory evidence. The 'unmoved mover' seems unformulated before Plato's 'Laws' (idea 1423), but there is an implied belief in free will a hundred years earlier. |
| 7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: The roundworm only has 959 cells, and 302 neurons in a fixed wiring diagram; it eats, mates, approaches and avoids certain smells, and that's about it. This makes it obvious that human 'free' behaviour comes from our complex biological makeup. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I find this a persuasive example. Three hundred trillion neurons cannot possibly produce behaviour which is more than broadly predictable, and then it is the environment and culture that make it predictable, not the biology. |
| 4925 | Brains can initiate free actions before the person is aware of their own decision [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Libet concluded that the cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any recallable awareness that a decision to act has already been initiated cerebrally. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: We should accept this result. 'Free will' was always a bogus metaphysical concept (invented, I think, because God had to be above natural laws). A person is the source of responsibility, and is the controller of the brain, but not entirely conscious. |
| 9276 | The will hardly ever does anything; most of our life just happens to us [Gray] |
| Full Idea: We think our actions express our decisions, but in nearly all of our life, willing decides nothing. We cannot wake up or fall asleep, remember or forget our dreams, summon or banish our thoughts, by deciding to do so. | |
| From: John Gray (Straw Dogs [2002], 2.12) | |
| A reaction: Gray's point does not rule out occasional total control over mental life, but his point is important. The traditional picture is of a life controlled, so the will is seen as at the centre of a person, but it just isn't the case. |
| 23532 | The delusion of free will brings a sense of guilt [Berardi] |
| Full Idea: A sense of guilt is linked to the delusion of free will. | |
| From: Franco 'Bifo' Berardi (The Second Coming [2019], How to) | |
| A reaction: I agree that free will is a delusion, but I'm not sure about this. Clearly if you think you are 'ultimately' responsible for all of your actions this will increase guilt, but belief in free will is compatible with various excuses for actions. |