Moral responsibility and free will Flashcards
Outline Libertarianism
Libertarianism is the philosophical position that humans possess free will.
Libertarians recognise that we are not “totally” free as our bodies are constrained by certain limitations, causal laws and that nature/nurture do exert a strong influence over us. However, these are not necessarily determinant.
Sartre is using an a posteriori approach. All that we experience is ‘radical freedom’ – a sense that every choice we make is completely up to us because there is nothing in our experience like God or telos which could influence or guide that choice. Free will is not something that can be empirically proven, but our “sense” of freedom can provide a credible assumption that we do have freedom. Therefore, free will can be seen as a contingent truth.
Most libertarians are mind body dualists. This means they believe that the mind and body are seperate substances, which allows the mind to be free from scientific, deterministic laws which govern the physical world.
Outline scholarly support for libertarianism.
Satre was an existentialist. Existentialism is a branch of philosophy which believes “existence proceeds essence”, this means humans have no intrinsic purpose and therefore we have to discover and create these purposes for ourselves. This notion reflects a radical view of freedom and the belief we possess individual autonomy to discover these purposes for ourselves.
Satre: “man is condemned to be free” - when we become aware of our freedom as an inescapable given of human nature this may result in a sense of anxiety because we realise we alone our morally responsible for the actions we make.
“no excuses behind us nor justifications before us” - Satre argues there is no moral absolute, divine will or natural law that can provide us guidance or justify our actions.
Outline a critique of Satre’s view
As Sartre’s argument is psychological, he does not provide metaphysical grounds for rejecting determinism and so is arguably committing the genetic fallacy.
The genetic fallacy is the act of rejecting or accepting an argument on the basis of its origin rather than its content. Just because people have a psychological need to believe in objective purpose, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
What does the libertarian stance mean for moral responsibility?
Libertarians argue that so long as we know the difference between right and wrong, we should be held accountable for our actions. Punishments and rewards are therefore meaningful as they reflect the notion we choose our actions freely.
The UK legal system reflects the understanding that a choice could have been made otherwise.
Evaluate the libertarian view of free will
Outline Determinism and the various forms
Reductionist approach: all human behaviour can be reduced to the laws of physics. Universal causation: nothing is random, nor free.
Psychological determinism:
behaviour is conditioned by our genetics and environment, and all our actions are predetermined by the consequences of our previous actions.
Theological determinism:
rooted in God’s omniscience and foreknowledge being causal.
Give scholar views to support the determinist view:
D’Holbach was one of the first Atheists and observed that if we are not created by God and don’t have a soul, we are just physical things like any other and therefore follow the same laws of cause and effect.
Locke uses the idea of a man who is unaware he is in a locked room and believes he is choosing to stay in the room to reflect how this could be the case for every human action. We simply are unable to directly perceive all the causes and effects that determined our action, which leaves us with the illusion that we were not determined, when really we were.
Spinoza believed everything was predetermined and therefore free will is merely an illusion resulting from our ignorance of the causes which operate on us.
Spinoza - “moral choices are necessary consequences”
Give critiques and responses to the determinist view of free will
Science is based on causal laws, but the laws of nature are probabilistic and we don’t know everything about them. However, every aspect of science we do understand is based on cause affect so we have no reason to assume humans are an exception.
Kant’s “ought implies can” points to freedom of choice over our actions. This relies on agreeing with Kant’s views. Similarly, there are certain things we “ought” to do which we physically cannot. (eg: end world poverty)
Hard determinism renders moral responsibility meaningless. This arguably would make society fall apart as we cannot punish criminals who cannot be blamed for their actions. The Supreme Court argue determinism is “inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system”. However, determinists such as Sam Harris argue that punishment can still be justified but on different grounds than retribution, such as protecting wider society. Harris uses the example of a bear wandering into an area that humans are living in and attacking them to show this; we don’t need to view the bear to have free will before tranquilizing it. Criminals can be viewed the same way and putting them in prison can be justified as a necessary defence for society.
Outline Compatibilism
Also known as soft determinism, compatibilism is a midway between hard determinism and libertarianism and proposes that free will is not only compatible with determinism, it requires it.
For a compatibilist, not having freedom is the inability to do what they desire due to physical restraint, coercive interference or through being forced to do something else.
Outline Hume’s compatibilist view
Hume argues actions we do may be caused but this doesn’t mean they are compelled. We are influenced by external and internal causes, we have the freedom to reject actions that result from internal causes . Eg: what to eat.
Our personalities are determined and are the sum of causal situations which have created us. Our freedom is our ability to act according to our desires by expressing our personality without the interference or restriction from others. Hume denotes this as a “liberty of spontaneity.”
Hume distinguishes liberty of spontaneity from liberty of indifference. Liberty of indifference means being free from all causal necessity - he viewed this as a delusion.
How does a compatibilist view moral responsibility?
For Hume, he believed a person has moral responsibility for actions which are determined by their internal causes, such as their intentions, personality, desires, knowledge, beliefs, etc.
Reward and punishment are good for cultivating good character.
