Junbing Chen Word Count 2012
100247094
Oct 18 2014
The Contradiction between Determinism and Free Will:
To What Extent Are Humans Free?
Recently, the issue of free will is much concerned to a point where a wide discussion has been sparked. Free will, on any layer, has been considered as the ability of agents to make choices unimpeded by certain factors. It is obvious that humans have a strong sense of freedom, which leads people to believe that they have free will (Caruso 8). On the other hand, there is a scientific view assumes that physical world can be predicted by physical law including human consciousness, which is also known as determinism. Following those debates there comes a moral dilemma: How are we to assign responsibility for our actions if they are caused totally by external environment and passed events (Baer 128)?
The underlying problem is, do humans actually have free will? If so, to what extent are humans able to control themselves? The fundamental controversy of free will and determinism, which represents the question of whether freedom of human mind exists, has been debated by numerous scientists and philosophers. This essay will firstly have a brief review on the arguments and viewpoints of free will and determinism of several philosophers, including Blatchford, Hospers and Taylor. Following this, it will compare those assumptions to each other. Finally, the essay will give the author’s own thoughts and debates on this issue. 1. Blatchford’s Arguments Against Free Will
Blatchford claims that human will is not free, and is something inside the man. He is opposed to the free will party’s assumption, which argues that human is responsible for his acts because he is free to act as he choose to act. He first raises a question: if the man’s will is totally free, then who is eventually responsible for the acts, the will, or the man? If people blame a man with “free will” as the party defines, it is just like people blame a horse that is controlled by its rider, which is fairly unacceptable. Thus, He draws a conclusion” The will is not free, and it is ruled by heredity and environment” (102). To be specific, Blatchford assumes that humans are influenced and shaped by training which they receive in external environment and temperament which they get by nature. People may think that they make decisions as they wish to, however, it is the two factors mentioned above that cause them to wish. He names a hunter’s case as example. The hunter decides whether or not he should fire the gun when he meets a rabbit by his inner instincts and external training. That is to say, if he is merciful by nature and is taught to follow the laws, he may not kill the rabbit; and if he is cruel and trained as a hunter, the consequence should be different. Some people may raise a question: how does this theory explain the occasions on which people do things they do not wish to do? The answer is people will not do such things. If there are two wishes, then the stronger one beats the weaker one.
And to further support his claims, Blatchford demonstrates his points in the field of determinism. People can sometimes tell the actions which will be taken by the person he knows, in another word, people’s actions under certain circumstances are predictable, because they are well molded by the environment and heredity, and their will actions are determined, their will is controlled. All in all, Blatchford holds the view that “free will” is only a kind of delusion. It is environment and heredity that operate fundamentally. 2. Hospers’s Assumptions of Superego and Unconsciousness
Hospers’s assumptions are to some extent similar to Blatchford’s, or it should be rather considered that Hospers’s ideas are based on those of Blatchford’s. Hospers also claims that humans’ will is not free, and he further discusses his altitudes towards responsibility. Hospers argues that humans always live with two parts of them: the consciousness and the unconsciousness. A prevailing notion is that people act in accordance with their conscious will, however, it is not the truth. He assumes that there is a “Big Three” behind the scene: the id, which represents humans’ greediness and desires; the superego, which rejects id upon presentation; and the unconscious ego, which serves as a balance between id and superego. People may know what they want and what they are supposed to do consciously, but what they don’t know is that they are controlled by determinism, which means they are driven by their unconsciousness, namely, by nature and by the environment they are raised in. For neurotics, they may be aware of their behaviors are harmful and hurtful, but they just don’t have the ability to stop themselves, because they are born defectively. It is cold and unfair to blame them for their “free will”. Some people may object, except for those abnormal people, people who are well educated and born with average personalities at least are free. Hospers casts doubts on this claim. He illustrates his argument by describing normal phenomenon in human society: A man’s supporting his wife and the whole family. It seems that he chooses to do so consciously, however, according to Hospers, his choice is “unconsciously motivated”. What drives him to act is his face-saving which functions as a device to protect his autarchic fiction from being destroyed by his mother and the external world. Generally, a man is born with autarchic fiction, which makes him think that he is the center of the universe and he depends on nothing. As time goes by, the delusion will be gradually exterminated, mainly by his mother, because he realizes that his life depends on his mother who feeds and takes care of him. Thus, this kind of embarrassment grows into a tendency to belittle his wife’s duty, for instance, doing housework and cooking. Therefore, he concludes “Conscious will is only an instrument, a slave, in the hands of a deep unconscious motivation which determines actions” (149). In the aspect of responsibility, Hospers brings up an interesting point of view. People all know that machines produces good products most of time, but sometimes it will also turn out bad ones, and the products are not responsible for this. And the cases of defective humans are analogous. People will not blame others for their physical flaws, however, they may possibly blame others for their mental flaws, which seems to be unfair. Neurotic people should pay the price for their harmful acts, but it doesn’t mean that they are responsible for those acts, because they are born with abnormal personalities. 3. Taylor’s Theory of Agency Taylor, however, denies determinism in his work. He argues that if determinism is true, then what people are going to do is simply determined by the external environment, then there are nothing left for people to decide and deliberate, all they can do is to wait and see. And if determinism is true, he claims, everything that happens is already determined, then there is nothing to do with humans themselves, including their inner desires and characters. He also casts doubts on simple indeterminism. He raises an example of human body as metaphor. If an arm of one’s body is uncontrolled and moves randomly, then its actions are not decided by that poor man, despite it is a part of the human’s body. It is not determined by anything, neither by the human himself, because he has nothing to do with it. Taylor then brings up a substitute theory: The theory of agency. He believes that there are certain circumstances under which people determine what they do only by themselves, not the existing external environment. In another word, there are such behaviors that no antecedent condition is clearly enough to interpret them. These behaviors are performed by the agents, of course, for some reasons, but the reasons are not supposed to be considered as the cause of them, the agents themselves are the cause. To further explain this idea, he says “Speaking of agents as causing their own acts, it would perhaps be better to use another word entirely, and say, for instance, that they originate them, initiate them, or simply that they perform them” (52). 4. The Author’s views and arguments Obviously, Blatchford and Hospers tend to believe in determinism. They assert that people’s thoughts and behaviors are deeply influenced by external environment and heredity, that people’s will is not free. Hospers further brings up the conception of superego, and claims that conscious will is to large extent controlled by unconsciousness which is developed by nature and by various training. On the other hand, Taylor rejects to determinism. He raises the theory of agency, which assumes that certain acts are simply caused by people who perform them, not the existing conditions. All of those philosophers seem to hold an inclination between determinism and free will, considering them as relatively incompatible. However, people can hardly deny either side of freedom and deterministic universe, which is known as dilemma of determinism (James 145). As far as the author sees, an elemental problem is that how people define freedom. People are always shaped and influenced by laws, education and environment, is there actually existing a person who is totally free? At the same time, humans are able to control the movement of their body and have a plan for their daily lives, which represent that at certain degree people have the freedom to choose. In another word, it may be rather rational to assume that free will and determinism are compatible and able to strike a balance, which is also a point that most compatibilists maintain. Free will can therefore be defined as people performing certain acts according to their own motives without being forced by other people and external environment. A case of twins can be taken as an instance. Twins share extremely similar genes, and grow up in the same environment, for example, same parents and same school. Nevertheless, their characters can be totally different. They may like different kinds of people, have different habits, and take different jobs. This kind of case is able to evince that environment and heredity are not everything that determine people’s acts, as Blatchford suggests. And in Hospers’s case which describes a man’s supporting his family, though the man may be influenced his unconsciousness which developed from his childhood, it is also acceptable that his acts are performed according his own motives, for instance, his love to his family and his sense of responsibility. At least on this layer, the man is free. It may seem to some people to be rather dubious that determinism is not always able to explain everything. People may ask, what are psychologists and neurologists existing for? It is true that the theories which are brought up by those scholars are efficacious and essential, for they are instructive to comprehend and study human behaviors. However, even the best psychologist is not able to predict an individual’s acts perfectly, because most of their theories just represent common phenomenon, and are not supposed to apply to everyone. Although people can sometimes tell what another person is going to do next, but that is merely a kind of detection and conjecture, which may turn out wrong later. For humans have the ability to act differently from other people’s expectations, the existence of free will can be considered as reasonable. In conclusion, the author tends to believe that determinism and free will are compatible and are able to strike a balance. Humans are an essential part of nature, which implies that humans’ behaviors can be studied by common physical principles and the regular pattern of their acts can be concluded into a subject; on the other hand, though people are shaped by heredity and training, they get a chance to choose according to their motives and personalities to some extent. All in all, freedom is not unconstraint and escaping from laws, freedom exists on the basis of certain order.

Work Cited
Baer, John. Are We Free?: Psychology and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Blatchford, Robert. Not Guilty. St. Martin: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Caruso, Gregg D. Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2012. Print.
Hospers, John. “Meaning and Free Will”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: 307-323.
James, William. The Dilemma of Determinism. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2008. Print.
Taylor, Richard. Metaphysics. USA: Prentice-Hall, 1992.