tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody) (07/26/85)
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Hard determinism is not a single claim; it is a pair of claims. They are:
(1) Determinism is true. (Causal necessity determines all events.)
(2) Free will and determinism are incompatible. (That is, "free will"
means "choice that is exempt from causal necessity.)
Based on these two claims, the hard determinist bows to logic and concludes
that free will is impossible.
The libertarian assents to claim (2) -- and so is also an "incompatibilist"--
but rejects claim (1) in favor of an acausal will, or something of the sort.
An "acausal will" would be a faculty of initiating causal chains that are
not the (completely determined) effect of other causal chains.
The third standard position is dubbed "soft determinism." The soft
determinist accepts claim (1) but rejects (2). The soft determinist's
rejection is based on an analysis of the concept of freedom. The idea
that freedom (an ancient, if vague, notion) entails a suspension of
causal necessity (which is really a post-Newtonian idea) is held to be
a mistake. Freedom, says the soft determinist, is opposed to constraint
and compulsion, not causation. The dispute between the hard determinist
and libertarian cannot be resolved, owing to their incompatibilism, so the
soft determinist pursues the more subtle course of trying to arrive at a
new understanding of freedom.
All three positions, I believe, have been capably argued on the net.
According to our best understanding of quantum mechanics, determinism is
false. That is, there are events (quantum events) whose precise character
is not completely determined by antecedent conditions. If this is so, then
causal determinism itself is something of an "emergent" phenomenon in
nature, not a "basic" fact.
If determinism is false, then hard and soft determinism are also false. But
it is not clear that this gives the libertarian what he wants. After all,
the fact that causal necessity is an emergent phenomenon does not make it
less real. But wait! says the soft determinist. If causal necessity can
be a phenomenon emergent from statistical quantum interactions, then there
is no principled objection to free will being a phenomenon emergent from
emergently causal neural interactions. If the hard determinist rejects
"emergent" phenomena, then he must relinquish his hard determinism. If
he accepts the authenticity of emergent phenomena, then he has lost his
main criticism of soft determinism, since the soft determinist has been
saying right along that freedom needs to be understood as an emergent
property of certain systems, and not others.
Saying *which* systems is considerably more difficult, and considerably
more important. What I have tried to show is that quantum mechanics
can be interpreted in favor of soft determinism.