Free Will and Determinism: Resolving the Tension

Abstract

Progress may be made in resolving the tension between free will and deter-minism by analysis of the necessary conditions of freedom. It is of the essence that these conditions include causal and deterministic regularities. Further-more, the human expression of free will is informed by understanding some of those regularities, and increments in that understanding have served to enhance freedom. When the possible character of a deterministic system based on physical theory is considered, it is judged that, far from implying the elimination of human freedom, such a theory might simply set parameters for it; indeed knowledge of that system could again prove to be in some respects liberating. On the other hand, it is of the essence that the overarching biolog-ical framework is not a deterministic system and it foregrounds the beha-vioural flexibility of humans in being able to choose within a range of options and react to chance occurrences. Furthermore, an issue for determinism flows from the way in which randomness (e.g. using a true random number gene-rator) and chance events could and do enter human life. Once the implica-tions of that issue are fully understood, other elements fit comfortably to-gether in our understanding of freely undertaken action: the contribution of reasons and causes; the fact that reasons are never sufficient to account for outcomes; the rationale for the attribution of praise and blame.