[Been studying a bit of philosophy, again, hence the topic…]

Man is (not!) free, and (so, naturally) everywhere he is in chains.
In the land of illusion we can be free.

A really, really, really good way to upset someone is to tell them they have no free will, that they are not free, that they have no freedom.

But, really, why all the fuss?

Consider this:

1. The notion of free will is incoherent with what we know to be the current state of affairs in the world (physical laws, both Newtonian and quantum) and what we know to be our physical and chemical make-up.

2. Therefore, the only thing we possess when we say we have free will is the illusion of free will.

But:

1. We are reluctant to renounce our freedom despite the logical incompatibility of freedom and determinism because: Historically, the notion of freedom is what allows our code of moral responsibility to function justly. Also, freedom allows us to claim desert and distribute justice (Smilansky, Saul, “Free Will: From Nature to Illusion”, 2001). And it is freedom that allows us to live as active agents in the world, allows us to be creative, to form significant and valuable relationships with others, to fall in love, to live with dignity, and to be the rational and civilised beings we believe we are.

2. Also, despite the looming threat of determinism, we still feel free. When it comes to acting on our desires, we have a clear sense of choosing between two or more alternative courses of action and tend to deliberate between them, we consider reasons for and against, and when we come to make a decision to act, we feel that we have done so with cause, that it was up to us, and that had we chosen to, we could have done otherwise.

A brief history of thought on free will:

Plato and Aristotle defined free will as an attribute of any agent that also exhibits a capacity for intellect. Aquinas said the same. Hume stressed the ability to act or to not act based on one’s determination and will and Hobbes maintained that free will is a the ability to act without external impediments.
Compatibilists are the cool philosophers who admirably aim to reconcile free will with determinism by claiming, for example, a difference between being coerced or manipulated to act or will, and being constrained to do so. Our actions and choices and desires very often feel unconstrained even if they might be caused.

Other interesting and persuasive theories are Harry Frankfurt’s* hierarchical model of desires, where humans have the capacity to develop second-order desires, those desires which concern wanting the sort of will we want to have, and John Martin Fischer’s* reasons-responsive model where humans have the capacity to respond to and act according to certain reasons and rational considerations. These theories show that humans exhibit free will, albeit at a limited level.

Smilansky’s ‘accusation’ of shallowness!

Smilansky calls any view that seeks to make free will compatible with determinism “shallow” because, while perfectly valid at a functional and practical level, compatibilist theories always ignore the ultimate reality of our existence, that things simply are the way they are and our level of control over our actions and choices, while real and significant at the social and practical level, is actually very limited.
Why? Because determinism rules.

A brief word about determinism:

Determinism is the thesis that given the past and the laws of physics or nature, the present could not have been otherwise. Determinism is a fact of reality, as Newtonian mechanics show, and even when determinism is not a fact, as quantum mechanics often imply, the alternative, indeterminism, provides no relief, since this demands that things happen without cause and that they are therefore based on random chance. If our actions are random or based on chance then we no more choose them than when they are determined.

In a world where Newtonian mechanics prevail, libertarian free will is impossible. And where quantum mechanics prevail, libertarian free will is still not guaranteed, because as Barry Loewer* shows us, Bohm’s theory actually supports causality and Wignerian mechanics support chance. Both cause and chance deny agent libertarian free will, where an agent’s free choices must originate in the agent, and therefore offer “little prospect for gaining libertarian freedom from physics.”

Conclusion: It’s all an illusion.

Shallow compatibilism is cool in so far as it offers the “illusion” of free will, which is positive, practical and preserves the “moral and personal reality” in our lives.

But, we need to simply accept the fact that ultimately the only thing we possess when we say we have free will, is the illusion of free will.

This doesn’t mean that we are creating happy illusions, or that we prefer ignorance to truth. The point is that the illusion is already in place, and it is real enough in so far as it allows us to function as rational and dignified beings, who forge valuable relationships and perform creative activities, who may claim desert for their successes and talents, and distribute justice to those who do bad things. In Smilansky’s “land of illusion” we are able to lead the “free” and, therefore, civilised lives we cherish.
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*Papers by Frankfurt and Loewer can be found in Crane, T. and Farkas, K. (eds.), 2004 Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Summaries and references to their views, including Martin Fischer’s are excellently dealt with in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy’s entry on compatibilism.