It's true, it seems defining free will causes some people to think one is going against the laws of nature. As if we knew that much about them to rule out that determinism must always follow, or that the idea of tyechism, or absolute chance, as Peirce said, is not something that could be considered as part of nature.

But why make it so difficult? Freedom is the ability to do so and so. It's situation-dependent and rarely as radical as someone ignoring all morality and killing people for fun.

Either we can do so and so in X circumstance, or we choose not to. We can be prevented from doing something by force or by moral reasoning.

Freedom is about being (as Descartes and Leibniz phrase it) "inclined and suggested" to act appropriately given a situation, but not forced to do so. I could speak about the colour of my shirt at length, but it's not relevant to the discussion. And so on.

Which of these do we take into account? The ones you and I are talking about are the medical and social forces I discussed. On the other hand, some people understand our lack of free will to be dependent on a materialistic interpretation of basic ontology. — T Clark

I agree with them. Phenomenonologically, or maybe less controversially, experentially we do experience freedom of choice. We only do not experience it when under certain meical and social influences. The question is whether this first person experience of free will is illusory, or somehow contrary to the metaphyscial assumptions we accept. Criminal law takes the first person perspective, I experience free will, so assume you do too. Neurology for instance, takes a third person perspective, and accepting basic materialist metaphysics, tells us it does not exist. Criminal law though takes the circumstances that we also accept in our every day eistence into account. It will tell you it does not go into metaphysical assumptions about the nature of free will. I argue though it tacitly accepts the existence of free will as an absolute presupposition.

@SophistiCat I took a very straightforward interpretation of free will as my point of departure. There are others of course. The most sophisticated I have seen is the compatibiism of P.F. Strawson. I do feel they dodge the existential question though: do 'I' influence my life, or is all my choice in fact an illusion.

So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark

Are you asking whether, assuming there is no free will, no real choice, it makes sense to hold people accountable from a pragmatic or a moral standpoint? I'd say from a pragmatic standpoint, any society must hold its members accountable for their actions; that's the pragmatic perspective. On the other hand from the point of view of moral judgement, if people could never have done otherwise than what they have done, then I can't see how they could be morally accountable anymore than animals, lightning or volcanoes are.

This is a very small part of what constitutes holding someone accountable. It applies in all sorts of situations where there may be no specific rules - in employment, in personal relationships, in business relationships, basically in every aspect of human interaction. — T Clark

If it is such a small part, how then does it concern all those things you listed?

The subject matter has to do with accountability, which is to say, in this case, the way in which people account for the activities of others. The subject wished to be held in abeyance, has to do with the account one person takes for himself.

The difference is in the kinds of judgement related to the two different accounts. The one I speak about, and the one with which the topic concerns itself, is judicial judgement alone, whereas the judgement concerned with the will of the individual in relation to himself, is aesthetic. The two cannot mix, and still maintain the differences in accounts, for the interests of the individual determine the judgement under which he is to subsume himself.

From a practical perspective, which is one I am partial to, I see several important questions - Should I hold myself accountable for my actions? Or maybe - Should I be held accountable for my actions? To turn that around - Should I hold other people accountable for their actions? — T Clark

From a Guardian discussion of this question:

according to a growing chorus of philosophers and scientists, who have a variety of different reasons for their view, [free will] also can’t possibly be the case. “This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Leading psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as apparently did the late Stephen Hawking, along with numerous prominent neuroscientists, including VS Ramachandran, who called free will “an inherently flawed and incoherent concept” in his endorsement of Sam Harris’s bestselling 2012 book Free Will, which also makes that argument. According to the public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, free will is an anachronistic myth – useful in the past, perhaps, as a way of motivating people to fight against tyrants or oppressive ideologies, but rendered obsolete by the power of modern data science to know us better than we know ourselves, and thus to predict and manipulate our choices.

The issue of free will is really one of agency - whether persons are responsible agents, or they are acting on the basis of causes into which they have no insight and so no control.

I think the rejection of the idea of free will is a consequence of the abandonment of the (Christian) principle that humans are free agents able to choose good or evil and reap the consequences. In a purported 'clockwork universe' driven by mechanistic principles, humans are essentially automata who merely act out programs such as those embedded in the 'selfish gene' to ensure propogation and survival. Any perception of freedom is really an artifact of those programs that are executed in the background of consciousness without any oversight by human agency.

My meta-philosophical analysis is that the world-view associated with this outlook is actually driven by the fear of freedom. That fear, according to Eric Fromm, arises from the historical process of becoming freed from authority which is associated with the development of liberal individualism. This leaves feelings of hopelessness or anomie that will not abate until we develop a form of replacement of the superseded social order. However, a common substitute for exercising "freedom to" or authenticity is to submit to an authoritarian system that purportedly replaces the old order with another of different external appearance but identical function for the individual: to eliminate uncertainty by prescribing what to think and how to act. This is exactly what the thinkers quoted above are proposing: that we submit to the 'scientific' judgement that free will (or agency) is an illusion, that we are simply cogs in a system which only science has knowledge of. This poses as 'freedom' but really it is an abandonment of the possibility of freedom by making the very idea of freedom meaningless. It is precisely a manifestation of the fear of freedom, which provides a kind of illusory freedom as the promise of technological mastery. So it's really the bleeding edge of a new form of tyranny, posing as liberation.

Hi there! I won't focus too much on accountability, because I think the answer is obvious: yes, we should keep holding each other accountable. Practically speaking, the answer to the question of free will doesn't drastically change our behaviour regarding accountability.

Now, here are my thoughts about why the question of FW still matters. This question highlights the contradiction between the following observations:

1. The universe has laws that it abides. It seems to be deterministic.
2. The human beings have the ability to make choices and control their behaviour. At least that's how we experience our existence.

So the question is how can free will exist in a seemingly deterministic universe. Although we can argue that the universe must not be deterministic or that free will must not exist, I tend to think that there is an answer which allows both statements to hold true. Knowing the answer would help us better understand how the nature of human existence connects to the nature of the universe.

Perhaps that's not the discussion you were trying to have. The discussion about accountability seems boring because you're right: it doesn't matter, practically speaking.

I wrote a comment about what makes the question of free will matter and how we should be looking at it to avoid going in circles. I also agreed that we should hold ourselves and others accountable regardless of the answer to the question of free will. While my comment is going through moderation, here are a few more thoughts to bring this discussion closer to the premise of the OP.

I brought up the question of determinism vs FW because I think it partially addresses the premise of the OP. The OP asks us to assume that there is no free will. I take it as we should assume that the universe is fully deterministic. But here is a thought: what if free will can still exist in a deterministic universe? This would make the whole premise contradictory, as long as it's talking about our universe and not a different, imaginary universe.

Finally, I've read about some criminal cases. With some of the worst criminals, it does seem like they don't have free will: they choose to commit crimes again and again, oftentimes against common sense. The criminal system works well with the absence of will: this person is a criminal, they don't seem to control their own actions and therefore we need to send them into prison for the benefit of society.

Another example: this person has committed a crime. We see their regret and perhaps if they could go back in time they would not commit it again. But it doesn't matter, because the crime has been committed, and we have no choice by to put them in jail. In other words, it doesn't matter how this person will exercise their free will in the future, we will still hold them accountable now.

Great linked article. Clear and thorough in discussing the basics of the question along with its history and implications.

I don't think I buy your "meta-philosophical analysis."

Are you asking whether, assuming there is no free will, no real choice, it makes sense to hold people accountable from a pragmatic or a moral standpoint? I'd say from a pragmatic standpoint, any society must hold its members accountable for their actions; that's the pragmatic perspective. On the other hand from the point of view of moral judgement, if people could never have done otherwise than what they have done, then I can't see how they could be morally accountable anymore than animals, lightning or volcanoes are. — Janus

Agreed.

The one I speak about, and the one with which the topic concerns itself, is judicial judgement alone, whereas the judgement concerned with the will of the individual in relation to himself, is aesthetic. — Mww

I don't understand.

I agree with them. — Tobias

I find pure materialist physics very unconvincing, worse than unconvincing - meaningless. But this is not the place to go into that.

Aristotle started this discussion; but what the old philosopher meant to say (and would have said had we been there to help him) is that the forces of the deterministic universe are too subtle, too pervasive, and too complex for us to follow. What looks like choosing broccoli over asparagus is the deterministic effect of child rearing practices which caused you to loathe asparagus--it was a spoiled jar of Gerber Asparagus baby food. it made you intensely sick for several days. You didn't know what was happening at the time. Thereafter the idea of eating asparagus never did--and never will--occur to you. Determinism at work.

Conversely, the smell of hot cinnamon rolls was hard-wired into your brain by the many times you enjoyed the delicious spicy bread. The fragrance of cinnamon rolls (or just cinnamon) will always make you feel a twinge of happiness. More determinism.

Do people choose their favorite sexual fetish? No, they do not. It emerges. Do people become Engineers or English teachers on the basis of freely made choices? They do not. Social factors, personal idiosyncrasies, brain build, earlier experiences (of which we were recipients, not designers), and so on. NEXT POST

Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark

Outside of the context of the compulsion to comply, the practice of holding other people accountable is closely bound by how much responsibility is accepted by said individuals. Such acceptance may be necessary from a point of view of causes we do not understand. But as a matter of practical decisions about people, agents who bind themselves to obligation are the only one's worth arranging anything with. That is the mark of voluntary action well beyond the apportionment of blame. Are such willing agents free?

A little Spinoza might help here. He noted that we select what draws us closer to what is desired or takes us further away from what is feared. But the degree of our knowledge and understanding is an influence of outcomes, despite the role of necessity. Consider Proposition 6 of Ethics 5:

Insofar as the mind understands all things as necessary, to that extent it has greater power over the emotions or is less acted on by ​them.

Proof The mind understands that all things are necessary (by 1p29) and are determined to exist and operate by an infinite nexus of causes (by 1p28); and therefore (by the previous proposition) it ensures to that extent that it is less acted on by the emotions arising from them and (by 3p48) it is less affected toward them. Q. E. D.

Scholium

The more this cognition that things are necessary is concerned with particular things that we imagine quite distinctly and vividly, the greater the power of the mind over the emotions. Experience itself also testifies to this. For we see that sadness for the loss of some good thing that has perished is mitigated as soon as the person who lost it considers that that good thing could not have been saved in any case. Thus we also see ​that no one pities an infant ​because it does not know how to speak or walk or reason and because it lives for so many years as it were unconscious of itself. But if most people were born as adults and only one or two as infants, then everyone would pity every one of the infants, because then they would consider infancy itself not as a natural and necessary thing but as a fault or something sinful in nature; and we could give several other instances of this sort. — Spinoza: Ethics: Cambridge University Press

Another aspect to consider is that being compelled to do what you were designed to do is much different than becoming bound to others or dire circumstance.

That’s ok. If you understand why you agree with then you’ll be closer to understanding me.

Aristotle started this discussion; but what the old philosopher meant to say (and would have said had we been there to help him) is that the forces of the deterministic universe are too subtle, too pervasive, and too complex for us to follow. — Bitter Crank

This is close to my take on the matter, although I can't speak for Aristotle as you seemingly can.

it was a spoiled jar of Gerber Asparagus baby food. it made you intensely sick for several days. You didn't know what was happening at the time. — Bitter Crank

No, no. It was the fact that my mother, true to her New York upper crust upbringing, always served hollandaise sauce on asparagus. How could you not love anything that has hollandaise sauce on it.

I have my doubts about free will. Many decisions seem to pop into consciousness from hidden areas of the brain. However, we do have agency - the ability to act on these decisions. A potential criminal may have a strong desire to commit a crime due to circumstances affecting his mental state, but he has the agency to act or not act on that impulse. If the former, off to prison.

Good topic, and I don't want to derail it. Sorry for whatever extent deraileurment has occurred. However, the reason for our resort to FW drives our search for accountability.

In a better world, we would strive to intervene in the lives of those for whom numerous factors (beyond their control) have made life difficult (for themselves or others). Benign intervention requires acceptance of determinism--otherwise it is likely to be more punitive than corrective.

The concept of FW is the result of determinism being too complex for us to countenance. We big-brained apes can grasp and understand only so much--and a full understanding of determinism is more than we can manage.

Therefore, we do hold ourselves and others accountable. There is no conceivable way to track all the factors that led Joan to murder Sam, so we are forced to settle for personal guilt and prison. The opposite is true too. "I am a successful businessman because I am very smart, and I chose to do everything just exactly right." The fact that your grandparents started the business and trained your parents and later you in its intricacies might have had some deterministic influence, no? Or, the fact that an earthquake and category 5 hurricane created a tremendous need for new and repaired housing was a windfall your business when it would other wise have been a period of no growth?

My guess is that a significant share of drug addicts and alcoholics are gifted with a genetic heritage which facilitates addiction. Compulsive gamblers, compulsively promiscuous dicks, compulsive eaters, and so forth probably have genetic or circumstantial predispositions. Self-intervention in unhealthy behaviors will not occur to many of the addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, dicks, over-eaters, etc.

It isn't sterling virtue that keeps most of us out of the gutter. It's the innate (not virtuous) ability to engage in self-monitoring and self-intervention which prevents disaster. Successful people are born being better at operating in this world. We tend to attribute our successes to our own virtues, and others' failures to their personal degeneracy and degradation.

The other side of the argument that the causal forces and conditions that determine our behavior are too complex for our simian brains to comprehend and hence we believe we must be free, is that the freedom we feel cannot be explained in third person causal terms and so we might be mistakenly led to dismiss it, and lose faith in it.

There is an inevitable cognitive disjuncture or dissonance between acceptance that our behavior is entirely determined by forces and conditions over which we have no control, and the idea of moral responsibility.

Is "having agency" determined or is it an individual virtue?

There are several things I wanted to accomplish but I found that I did not have agency to carry them out. Put in the vernacular, "I just couldn't get my head around the problem."

In other instances I found I had agency to spare to complete tasks. Whether or not I was going to have agency or not was determined.

There is a cognitive disjuncture or dissonance between acceptance that our behavior is entirely determined by forces and conditions over which we have no control, and the idea of moral responsibility. — Janus

There sure as hell is. I felt heavy static in my brain while posting above.

:lol:

So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark

Does it make sense to hold a virus accountable for infecting our bodies? Perhaps not, but it still makes sense to take action against it.

What if the virus had free will? Perhaps we would take a different set actions to influence how it executes its free will. But if it executes its free will in a way that doesn't please us, that's when we can hold it accountable. Lesson: accountability starts after will is executed, but we don't call it accountability if we don't presuppose free will.

But as a matter of practical decisions about people, agents who bind themselves to obligation are the only one's worth arranging anything with. That is the mark of voluntary action well beyond the apportionment of blame. Are such willing agents free? — Paine

I don't understand. Are you saying that only people who agree to be judged should be held accountable? I'm pretty sure you're not saying that.

A little Spinoza might help here. — Paine

I really don't understand the point of the Spinoza quote or it's relevance to this discussion. When he says all things are necessary, does he mean that they are determined?

I have my doubts about free will. Many decisions seem to pop into consciousness from hidden areas of the brain. — jgill

I am very aware that my actions "pop into consciousness from hidden areas of the brain." Do you think that means they are somehow not as much part of us as our conscious decisions are? I think a distinction between my unconscious decisions and actions and conscious ones is artificial and pointless.

Since “The devil made me do it” doesn’t hold up in a court of law, we must be responsible for our own actions. The motivation to do a certain things may come from unknown sources, but we are still free to choose between what we like and dislike.

I think the answer is obvious: yes, we should keep holding each other accountable. Practically speaking, the answer to the question of free will doesn't drastically change our behaviour regarding accountability. — pfirefry

I agree.

Although we can argue that the universe must not be deterministic or that free will must not exist, I tend to think that there is an answer which allows both statements to hold true. — pfirefry

Ok. Or maybe neither statement is true. I think they are metaphysical statements. You're new here, so you haven't heard my never-ending refrain - metaphysical positions are neither true nor false. They have no truth value. They are more or less useful in a particular situation at a particular time.

The criminal system works well with the absence of will: this person is a criminal, they don't seem to control their own actions and therefore we need to send them into prison for the benefit of society. — pfirefry

As I've noted in a previous post, wouldn't we treat someone who has done something wrong but does not have free will differently that one who does have free will.

The concept of FW is the result of determinism being too complex for us to countenance. We big-brained apes can grasp and understand only so much--and a full understanding of determinism is more than we can manage. — Bitter Crank

Clearly, people's actions are controlled by factors outside their control to some extent. People who are abused as children tend to abuse others. People of very low intelligence may not be able to understand right from wrong. That seems different to me than a lack of free will associated with metaphysical materialistic understanding of reality.

Therefore, we do hold ourselves and others accountable. There is no conceivable way to track all the factors that led Joan to murder Sam, so we are forced to settle for personal guilt and prison. The opposite is true too. "I am a successful businessman because I am very smart, and I chose to do everything just exactly right." — Bitter Crank

There is a way of understanding that denies the need or validity of taking credit or accepting blame for our actions. The Tao Te Ching discusses it. That doesn't mean that you don't expect to have to face the consequences of your actions and decisions.

Lesson: accountability starts after will is executed, but we don't call it accountability if we don't presuppose free will. — pfirefry

Are our actions different if we assume no free will is involved than if we assume there is?

Starting with the latter, Spinoza argued against free will on the basis that everything that happens is caused to happen and that we don't understand these causes hardly at all. But he also strongly suggested that being less ignorant about why events happened improves our lives.

I don't understand. Are you saying that only people who agree to be judged should be held accountable? — T Clark

There are all kinds of reasons to hold people accountable, whether they agree or not. But the only people worthy of trust hold themselves accountable to something. The quality is not without its own uncertainties. But extending trust is more about this assumption of obligation than assuming the quality is 'free.'

Good point. I don't know if we can take an animal (dog) breeder's approach to tackle the issue of crime. How about if we allow only good folks to have children? Just as we can select for certain traits in animals, even moral uprightness could be. Crime would disappear from the face of the earth in (say) 10 or 20 generations, no?

Since everyone then would be good, the question of accountability & responsibility would become moot: why hold anyone accountable/responsible when nothing bad's happened? Even free will becomes a non-issue if you factor in those who believe that good/peace/harmony takes precedence over freedom.

This leads to the question: Why did God give us free will if He knew it meant so much suffering, suffering we inflict on each other?

Well, isn't it awesome that we can choose to breed only good people just as we do with animals? It's a choice after all, no? God has given us an option and I, for one, am grateful for it. What we do next is an altogether different story.

Speaking for myself, my family line isn't exactly pedigree material, if you know what I mean.