So let's talk about the possibility that we really are free. First of all, it's worth clearing up another possible confusion, so it feels as if we're free, it certainly feels as if we're free. I don't feel as if my decisions are being caused by something outside myself. And we can experiment with ourselves, we can try to wait and see what we're going to decide to do, but of course that doesn't work. We can't wait and see what we're going to decide to do, we have to do it. And that feeling, that consciousness that we have to make the decision, we have to work at it, we have to actively do something is what determinists call the illusion of free will. It's certainly something we experience, but of course we could be wrong. So it could be that it feels as though we're free, but we're not. And so the fact that we feel as if we're free isn't a good argument that we are free. We're going to need something else. We're going to need something more. Here's another attempt that doesn't work. So an obvious point to make about determinism is that it's not true. Not everything is determined, there is indeterminacy at the quantum level. So sometimes a particle goes off in one direction or another without there being any cause at all. In other words, where it goes one way or the other is not explained by the cause. And yet, I said earlier, determinism is the view that everything about the effect is explained by the cause. So, there we go, determinism's false. Unfortunately, this is not a good solution to our problem. So first of all, it's true that determinism isn't quite accurate as I've described it. And this is why philosophers sometimes like to call it mechanism instead of determinism. So the name mechanism captures better the idea that the real point isn't that everything's determined, the real point is that everything's mechanistic, everything is happening according to blind forces. So here's why that's not a helpful answer in the current situation. What we're worried about here is our decisions. It's whether we are free as agents, and what we're looking for is autonomy. We're looking for us being autonomous agents, making our own decisions. We're not looking for quantum indeterminacy. So if our acts are, in the end, random, if it's just random body movements, random thoughts, random decisions, then we're not autonomous, we're not proper agents. We're not controlling our behavior the way we think we are when we feel like we have free will. So the question of quantum indeterminacy is really a red herring here. So here's what philosophers do say, libertarians argue that we really are free, that we really do have free will. What they say is that we are causes outside of the usual causal chain. They say that although we cause things in the usual way, the way in which we are caused, is very different. Agents, libertarians, say, are capable of agent causation. A special kind of causation that's free, that originates in the agent. Here's one way that that idea has been presented. It's presented in a religious context. And you might think that that solves the problem. That if you say, we were made by deity, and that deity gave us free will, gave us this special kind of causation, then that's all we need to say. Here's two problems from a philosophical point of view about that way of looking at things. First, it's not explanatory. So philosophers like answers that give an explanation, but this answer doesn't give an explanation. It just says the deity gave us free will. It doesn't explain how that might work or how it's compatible with the natural world. So even philosophers who are religious avoid appealing directly to a deity in defending Libertarianism. The second problem is that it leads into a version of what's known as the problem of evil. So if a deity who's omniscient and omnipotent gave us free will, then that deity knew what we were going to do, and had control over it. And so, in the end, the deity's responsible for everything that we do, including the bad things. So it creates another problem, a different problem, but another serious philosophical problem. So philosophical libertarians particularly contemporary ones, but stretching back in history too, tend to avoid appealing to religion when they argue for libertarianism. Instead they try to give an explanation of the way in which we are a special cause. Here are two problems with the libertarian attempt to explain agent causation. First of all, whatever they say it's going to be very hard to reconcile with the natural world. So, if we're part of the natural world, then surely we operate as causes in it just like anything else, and if we're not operating like natural causes then what are we? It begins to seem that we're something else,something supernatural. So,take for example, Kant's version of this story. Kant says,we are in the natural world, and in so far as we are physical beings insofar as we are our phenomenal selves, as Kant calls it, we are subject to cause and effect in the ordinary way. But,Kant says, we also have noumenal selves, and that is the thinking part of our self, the part is really free. Kant says that when we are thinking we really are originating our own thoughts.They come from us,they're not determined So that's a very ambitious metaphysics. That's a way of saying, that there are two different parts of us, a physical part and a non-physical part. The second problem with libertarianism, is that it turns out that it's quite hard to make sense of acting for reasons on this picture. So, here's how the problem arises. Think about what happens when we act. When I do something I do it for a reason. I have an explanation for what I do in my own mind. So my acts are not random, I have reasons. So if we take away the background cause, if we say, no, my act just originates in me and it isn't determined, then we have to ask, well what was the reason you did it? What was the reason for the act? And as soon as we bring back the reason, we seem to be back to saying that there is a cause for the act after all. So, for example, the philosopher Robert Kane, runs into trouble here. He says that, at moments where the reasons aren't clear, we're capable of totally free action. He calls these self-forming actions, and these actions, he says, don't come from prior causes. But the problem is, if they don't come from prior causes, i.e, reasons Where do they come from? It seems that they must be random, it seems that the decision you make is just a matter of luck. And now we're back to the problem that applies the quantum indeterminacy, which is just, this isn't what we wanted, what we wanted here was autonomy, we didn't want randomness. I'll summarize what I've said about libertarianism. Libertarians argue that we are a special sort of cause, that we're in some way outside of the causal chain. The problems with this, in brief, are If we're outside of the causal chain it seems we're not part of the natural world and if we're outside of the causal chain, it's hard to make sense of acting for reasons.
