Two Conceptions of Free Will
The concept of free will is subtle and is easily misunderstood. One major cause of the confusion is that people often conflate two different conceptions of free will: compatibilist free will and libertarian free will. One of these, libertarian free will, is truly free will, while the other, compatibilist free will, can be thought of as either a misunderstanding or an excuse. But either way, it is not actually free will.
In order to understand the distinction between the two, one must first understand the concept of determinism. Since antiquity, people have been wondering whether or not the course of history is pre-determined. Determinism says yes, it is. According to a determinist, once the initial conditions of the world were set up, it was pre-determined that everything would happen exactly as it did. It was pre-determined that the Roman Empire would fall in 476 AD. It was pre-determined that the Spanish Armada would sink in 1588. It was pre-determined that the coronavirus pandemic would happen in 2020. You get the idea. There was only ever one possibility for the history of the world. And likewise, there’s only one possibility for the future.
After reading the above paragraph, you would probably conclude that a determinist could not possibly believe in free will. And you would be correct. However, there are some philosophers who make excuses and who argue that determinism and free will can both be true at the same time. This is where the idea of compatibilist free will (also called compatibilism) comes from.
The word “compatibilist” in compatibilist free will comes from this argument that the idea of free will is compatible with determinism. According to compatibilism, free will can be defined as a situation in which there is no external force that prevents you from doing what you want. (By “external”, they mean outside your own body, outside your own brain.) For example, there is no external force that is preventing me from going outside right now. So according to a compatibilist, I am free to go outside right now …… even though, in the philosophical sense, my future behavior has already been determined.
This also goes for situations where someone chooses between multiple options. For example, let’s say you ask a little child whether they would rather go to Wendy’s or Dunkin Donuts. There is no external force preventing the kid from choosing either of those options. So according to a compatibilist, that child has free will and is making a free choice ……… even though a compatibilist would also say that the child’s choice has already been determined (we just don’t know what it is yet).
Thus, compatibilists claim that we are free to do what we want, even though our future behaviors have already been determined. They think of freedom as simply the absence of obstacles.
The other conception of free will is libertarian free will (libertarianism). Libertarianism is the idea that there is a “ghost in the machine” inside our brains that makes decisions independently of all science and all circumstances. To be sure, the science and the circumstances matter, but the “ghost” has the final say. A compatibilist would hold that science — specifically neuroscience — could fully explain the process by which a person makes a decision and does something. But libertarianism says no: science isn’t everything. There is a ghost in the machine, and the ghost has the power to make decisions, and there is no scientific process that could explain what the ghost is going to do or how the ghost works.
(By the way, this “ghost in the machine” is often associated with some of the more traditional terms for a person’s source of identity, such as a soul, a self, an Atman, or a spirit.)
Instead of proposing that free will is somehow compatible with determinism, libertarianism posits that determinism is false: the future is not pre-determined, not even by neuroscience, because the ghost in the machine has the freedom to decide our course of action.
Thus, there are three major positions that a philosopher could take with regard to free will and determinism:
1. Compatibilism: Determinism and free will are compatible with each other. Determinism is true and free will exists [but in my opinion, that’s not true free will].
2. Libertarianism: Determinism and free will are incompatible. Determinism is false and free will exists. The ghost in the machine makes free choices.
3. Hard determinism: Determinism and free will are incompatible. Determinism is true, and there is no free will.
There are philosophers who have promoted each of these three positions. One notable compatibilist philosopher is Daniel Dennett. He has written a book promoting compatibilism. In past ages, renowned philosophers such as David Hume and John Stuart Mill were also compatibilists. And Thomas Aquinas was essentially a compatibilist, even though he was living in a pre-scientific era. Meanwhile, George Berkeley (the namesake of UC Berkeley) promoted libertarian free will, and Immanuel Kant and William James both criticized compatibilism, although they did not necessarily endorse libertarian free will. And a philosopher named Gregg Caruso has promoted hard determinism. (How Gregg Caruso feels motivated to get up in the morning is beyond me.)
(I should add that there is actually a fourth possible position, which is that there is some sort of inherent randomness in the universe which has nothing to do with a person’s choices. So under that view, determinism is false, but free will doesn’t exist either. There’s just randomness. However, that is not relevant here.)
One curious aspect of libertarianism is that you can’t define what freedom (free will) means. A compatibilist defines freedom as the absence of obstacles. But under libertarianism, there’s no way to define it. There’s no way to put it into words. You have to just understand the concept. At first, I would say that libertarianism understands freedom to be a choice made by the ghost in the machine ………… but then you would still have to define the word “choice”, so that definition didn’t really accomplish anything. This is analogous to a point I was making in a previous blog post about how under the propensity theory of probability, the word “probability” cannot be defined; you have to just intuitively understand what it is.
Having explained these two conceptions of free will, my next task is to explain why I consider the concept of compatibilist free will to be either a misunderstanding or an excuse.
I sometimes ask people if they believe in free will. Most of the time, the people in question are not familiar with philosophy. They almost always say that they believe in free will, and they justify this by saying something like, “I mean, I make choices every day …… yesterday, I had a choice about whether I wanted grilled cheese or a hamburger, and I chose grilled cheese. That was a free choice.” My response to them is: yes, but that’s only compatibilist free will. For all you know, it might have been pre-determined that you were going to select grilled cheese. Therefore, you have not demonstrated that true free will — libertarian free will — exists.
Thus, for people who aren’t familiar with philosophy, the concept of compatibilist free will is just a misunderstanding. They just don’t understand the subtle distinction between compatibilist free will and libertarian free will. However, I think that for people who do understand philosophy, the concept of compatibilist free will is not merely a misunderstanding; it is an excuse.
For example, Daniel Dennett has written a book promoting compatibilism. In his view, even though our actions have been pre-determined by science, we don’t know what they are yet, and there’s no external force that stops us from doing what we want to do, so that means we have free will. Now, Daniel Dennett is a talented thinker, and he certainly understands the distinction between the two conceptions of free will. And I’m sure that within himself, he knows that compatibilist free will isn’t really free will. But he knows that it is very bleak to say, “There is no free will,” and he doesn’t want to sound like a total pessimist, so he makes an excuse and claims that compatibilist free will is still free will ……… even though within himself, he knows it isn’t.
Compatibilist free will is like decaf coffee. Decaf coffee looks like coffee, tastes like coffee, smells like coffee, and has the word “coffee” in its name. But it won’t wake you up, because it has no caffeine. So in the end, it isn’t really coffee. In the same way, compatibilist free will has the phrase “free will” in its name, and it is presented as if it were free will. But under compatibilism, your choices have been pre-determined, so compatibilist free will is not really free will. It’s like decaf coffee. It’s like fool’s gold. It’s like an artificial Christmas tree. It’s just not the real thing.
One further difference between compatibilism and libertarianism is that only compatibilist free will can be proven to exist. If you define free will as simply the absence of obstacles, then no one can doubt that free will exists. Since people make choices every day (recall my above made-up conversation about the grilled cheese and the hamburger), then the existence of compatibilist free will is obvious. However, no one will ever prove or disprove the existence of libertarian free will. Does this “ghost in the machine” really make free choices? Does it really have the power to decide our course of action? We will never know. It can’t be proven either way.
I conclude this essay with two disclaimers:
1. The philosophical concept of libertarianism has no relation to the political concept of libertarianism. I might promote philosophical libertarianism, but I will never promote political libertarianism. In fact, libertarianism is my least favorite political theory. Anyway, the philosophical concept of libertarianism has nothing to do with politics.
2. I realize that the phrase “ghost in the machine” sounds rather silly, but I like it anyway. It was coined by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. I think it’s a great way of putting it.
