David Hume and The Problem of Free Will

I recommend you not to go through this shit, seriously!



The problem of free will is one that centers on the issue of whether we are subject or not to causal determinism, and, if we are, whether this determinism is compatible with having free will. In this essay I will conclude that Hume's contribution to the problem of free will is two-fold. Hume shows that causation and necessity defined as constant conjunction is the basis for a linguistic analysis of free will; in short we are free because decisions and actions, though determined, are determined by our motives. Secondly, he shows determinism is integral to the existence of free will; it is because our actions are causally determined by our motives or character that we have moral responsibility and free will. I will justify this conclusion by assessing the nature of the problem of free will, placing his views in context, before adopting a similar view to Hume.

In the course of this essay I will show that Hume's contribution to the problem of free will overcomes problems in earlier arguments, including dualism and indeterminism.

The strength of his argument is the compatibility thesis in which determinism and free will are compatible, and in fact causal determinism is actually a necessary condition for free will. Hume's arguments are in-line with modern materialist thinking; some form of the compatibility thesis is still widely held. A notable example being the philosopher and physicist Dawkins' who I'll discuss in more detail later.

Firstly, what is the problem of free will? Do we have free will or are we determined to do what we do? If we take a Dualist approach free will can be located in the soul and we could seem to avoid the problem, but the approach is fraught with other problems. How can a non-material, non-determined soul relate to or affect the physically determined body? How exactly can the mind or soul be free while the body is causally determined? Hume takes a monist materialist approach; namely that the mind and brain are one and the same and that there is no such thing as a metaphysical substance 'soul'. If we follow this approach, then the question is whether causal determinism excludes choice and responsibility, and this poses a problem for ethics. Why is it a person's fault if they break the rules of morality, if it was predestined to happen by a series of cause and effects? Worst still, if God predetermined that I go to hell, why should I live a moral life now?

Determinism, the philosophical view that everything is universally caused, is therefore very closely linked to the problem of free will. Determinism, it is worth noting, is not the same as predestinationism, which refers to the religious view that actions are caused not by empirical cause and effect, but by Divine will. If, as empirical philosophers argue, actions and will are entirely determined (caused), then does free will even have meaning? Is determinism incompatible with free will?

What should be remembered is that, determinism, unlike fatalism, does not insist that everything happens in spite of us, only that, everything is universally caused. John Hospers in An Introduction To Philosophical analysis suggests the term; "universal causality" would be preferable. Whilst at first glance determinism seems to eliminate the possibility for free will, it is possible to argue the reverse, as Hume does; namely that determinism is the only way freedom can be defended, since, even though determinism means everything is caused, what you do is caused by 'you'. If we argue the opposite taking the route of indeterminism, where all actions are meaningless, then the will is not free, since chance, and not yourself, is the 'cause' of your actions. For example, deciding to eat wheatabix for breakfast leads to eating wheatabix; deciding to eat porridge leads to eating porridge. Would we be freer if we decided to eat wheatabix, but ended up eating porridge? Can there be any more freedom then your acts being caused by your decisions? With predestinationism ruled out, then what is left except the Humean version of universal causality? We are the cause of our own actions.

It might be objected that if everything is caused, then our decisions themselves are caused. Hume's riposte, as we shall see developed, is that our motives and desires are the cause of our decisions. Determinism does not need to argue that we are all free, only that free will exists.

Hume's major contribution to the problem of free will is to say that while our actions are caused by our motives and desires, this does not mean we are not acting of our own free will because we are our will, our motives, and our desires. It is interesting to note that the physicist and commentator Richard Dawkins follows a similar line today. Although Dawkins is a biological determinist, he argues that in the realm of ideas we are free because we are our memes; memes being self-perpetuating ideas analogous to genes. Like Hume, Dawkins argues that it is not that we are controlled by our memes, not that we should accept predestination in another guise, but that we are our memes and this is in fact free will.

It is important to note that in Hume's analysis of 'causation' causes 'necessitate' or 'determine their effects' and this is also true of human actions. For Hume 'necessitation' is defined in terms of constant conjunctions or regularities, rather then of compulsion. Hume's analysis of causation is a psychological one, namely that we become accustomed to perceiving constant conjunctions by seeing objects followed by one another, "and whose appearance always converge the thought of that other." Through habit we acquire the belief that A and B are causally related when what actually links events A and B is my idea that they are linked; because I imagine them to be causally related I can infer B, which is beyond sense experience, from A.

This is particularly significant as it leaves the door for freedom, and with it, responsibility, open. Hume defines freedom as whatever is determined by our motives, and not as the absence of external constraints. Hume not only argues that causal determinism allows for free will, but goes so far as to say that it is only because our actions are caused and originate from our character, that responsibility can be said to reside in us.

The importance of Hume's contribution and its place in the overall debate about free will can be partly understood if it is seen in context. In earlier philosophical thought, the problem of free will did not revolve so much around whether or not free will is compatible with determinism as with predestinationism. Predestinationism can best be described as the thesis that given that God created us our actions are not caused by us, but instead, caused by God. As Einstein said,

"...every occurrence including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling or aspiration is his work"

Aquinas makes a similar point in Summa Contra Gentiles by holding that God is the first cause and rejecting the view that we have free will, but Aquinas had a problem insofar as he wanted to hold people responsible for their sins; attempting to reconcile the doctrine of predestination with our undivided responsibility. This somewhat ironically led Hume to make a comment on the limits of human understanding,

"These are mysteries that mere natural and unassisted reason is very unfit to handle..."

Hume may very well be correct about the problems of reconciling predestination and free will, but is there a similar difficulty between this and reconciling deterministic free will? Clearly predestinationism and determinism are not the same. The first implies someone else must be party or wholly responsible, but the determinist can conclude that if we are not responsible, then no one is. The question that is posed is; are determinism and free will compatible? On the incompatibility thesis all conditions are totally inevitable; we necessarily do what we are determined to do. But if this premise is correct then we either have to say that we have no free will because we are determined (hard determinism) or we flee to indeterminism, which ultimately also fails to allow for free will.

The problem was met by Hume and solved to his own satisfaction by a compatibility thesis (soft determinism) and in this respect we can see that his thinking was somewhat in line with that of Leibniz. Leibniz, in his Theodicy, developed a compatibility thesis for predetermination and free will to show that God is not responsible for moral evil. He argued from the premise that the universe is created by a perfect God, and as such must be the best of all possible universes,

"The work most worthy of the wisdom of God involves... the eternal damnation of the majority of men"

He then went on to argue that predestination (or determinism by extension) does not imply what he calls "unconditional necessity." In other words we are not helpless because we are predestined. Anthony Flew in An Introduction to Western Philosophy comments that the argument for compatibility is sound, but that the weakness of Leibniz's thesis is that he presupposes a deity and then insists that God bears none of the responsibility.

Leibniz contributed a theory of compatibility to this area, an essential component in Hume's soft determinist solution to the problem of free will. However Hume did not follow Leibniz's fundamental premise, but instead used the compatibility thesis too much more fully develop other components of this argument that are not addressed by Leibniz; particularly necessity and causality.

Whilst Leibniz influence was passive it may be that the Scottish Hume, being out of the mainstream, generally developed his theories with great independence, though it can be noted that there are parallels in the work of other philosophers. Thomas Hobbes is one such whose work is linked approximately by chronology, if not by causation. Hobbes was a sceptical materialist; who rejected the view of humans as being supernatural, and favoured the opinion that humans are to be understood as complex machines. Even though Hobbes believed in a wholly scientific view of humans and endeavoured to explain all psychological activity in terms of modifications of matter in the brain, he still maintained the view that human actions are entirely voluntary, and that we should be held accountable for them. Hobbes, essentially a political philosopher, appears to only approach one side of the debate; he defines human liberty in a somewhat negative context as the absence of external constraint. Whilst he acknowledges that we are motivated by our inner "desires" or "aversions" we are ultimately responsible for our actions insofar as they are not obstructed or controlled by external forces.

Hume's contribution goes much further in arguing that we are internally free. Hobbes contribution is more limited because he did not have such a developed understanding of 'necessity' Hobbes uses necessity in two different ways; as a necessary proposition that would be logically impossible (self-contradictory) to deny and as a contingent proposition, which is logically possible, but can be denied. Hume, however, moves away from this dual usage to use necessity more consistently in his causal theory of constant conjunction, again demonstrating his contribution to the problem of free will, not only in defining liberty, but also in defining necessity.

The problem of determining the compatibility between free will and determinism was already an important debate in which some of the groundwork was laid, but Hume added a great deal of original thinking to extend the debate. In trying to justify the even harder position of the compatibility of predestinationism and free will, Leibniz had already contributed a sound compatibility thesis, but Hume made a distinctive application of the compatibility of determinism and liberty. Other philosophers such as Hobbes also considered that acting in accord with our internal motives is a necessity that is consistent with free will, but Hume developed this position more clearly with his more precise definitions of necessity and causality.

In order to develop his theory of how we have free will, Hume first had to demonstrate causality, since his theory relies on the compatibility of free will and determinism and not on random acts. Hume proposed that our understanding of cause and affect is basic to our understanding of the world, including our beliefs and motives, for if the word were totally random then we would surely be lost within a senseless void, which is why indeterminism fails.

According to Hume there are no sense impressions of cause itself, rather we have a series of sense impressions which are contiguous to one another, I push a button on a timer, my finger and button come close, there is an impression of contact and a subsequent impression of the timer buzzer going off, but I never have any impression of cause per se. We infer from this that the buzzer going off is not a random event, but we can't show that cause is a feature of the physical world so Hume concludes that cause is a feature of the human thought process, psychology.

I see constant conjunctions from pressing the timer to hearing the buzzing, and through habit acquire the belief that they're causally related, the appearance of the timer being set leads to thoughts contiguous to the buzzing. What links the timer to the buzzing is really my idea that they are linked because in my mind they are causally related I can infer that the buzzing is causally determined by the pressing.

Hume also theorised that our minds are a bundle of motivations, emotions, desires, etc... According to Hume if I made the choice of setting the timer to buzz in five minutes and then go back in time, making no differences to the causes of my action, I would have still set the timer to buzz in five minutes, because that is what my motivations determine me to do. However that doesn't mean I wasn't free to do otherwise. You might object that if my motives and desires are determined then I still don't have free will. But Hume makes the point that we are our motives and desires, that this is our will, and it is our will that determines what we are going to do.

Hume not only shows that causation and necessity, defined as constant conjunction, is the basis for a linguistic analysis of free will, but that determinism is integral to the existence of free will pre se. It is because our actions are causally determined by our motives or character that we have free will.

Many people object to this definition of free will and want to insist that true freedom must mean that I could actually have chosen otherwise even under the same conditions. This has some common sense appeal, but what does it really mean to say that the same person given identical conditions would act differently? Can we in fact suggest that it is possible to act independently of antecedent conditions? Even to act independently of such conditions as our own motive?

In reality, we cannot test either of these free will claims, even if we were to recreate the past in order to prove determinism wrong, creating a choice exact to a previous one we would still carry the knowledge of the choice as well as a reason (motive and cause) to act differently then before, and so it would not be exact; even to act against ones desires to prove Hume wrong would carry with it the desire and motivation of trying to prove Hume wrong.

The strengths of Hume's contribution are that it works within itself; each proposition Hume makes leads onto the next. Hume makes a strong linguistic argument for the compatibility of determinism and free will in line with the empiricist and materialist thinking of the eighteenth century. Hume's argument works because he has defined his terms in such a way that a free act repeated under the same conditions would necessarily result in the same free act, even if I believe I could have done otherwise, Hume sees liberty and motive as integral to one another.

"By liberty then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of free will" (David Hume's An Inquiry concerning Human understanding, page 159)



PS : \Dilbert/ :P