Are We Master of Our Fate?

LECTURE NO. 10

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 Free Will and Good Life
 Determinism a Challenge to Morality
 Determinism VS. Indeterminism
 Compatibilism

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Fate

 The development of events outside a person's

control, regarded as predetermined by a
supernatural power.

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Will

 The human ability to desire something, to

choose and decide courses of action and to
initiate actions according to one’s choice or
decision.
 The will is a wish that we believe we are
capable of realizing through effort. The act of
will, or volition, contains both cognitive and
conative elements.

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Free Will

 Freedom of humans to make choices that are

not determined by prior causes or by divine
intervention.
 It is the ability to choose between different
possible courses of action unimpeded.

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Good

 Very roughly, the property or characterization of a thing giving rise

to commendation.
 For Plato the object of the Good is the highest form of knowledge,
which can be achieved only after a long and arduous process of
education in mathematics, metaphysics and so on.
 Aristotle rejects Plato’s metaphysical structure, including the Forms,
and rejects the notion that a knowledge of mathematics or science is
necessary for virtue or goodness, which are for him autonomous.
 Reason, experience and practice enable us to understand what the
right way to act in particular circumstances is.
 Aristotle suggested that the good is that to which everything
aspires, but argued that the word is used in many ways and belongs
to each category.

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Life

 The characteristic property of living

substances or things; it is associated with
either a capacity for mental activities such as
perception and thought (mental life) or
physical activities such as absorption,
excretion, metabolism, synthesis, and
reproduction (physical life).

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LINK FREE WILL AND GOOD
LIFE

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Determinism

 The theory that every event has a cause, and

that all things in the universe, including
human beings, are governed by causal laws
and operate in accordance with them.
 There are many versions of determinism in
addition to causal determinism.

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 Ethical determinism, which can be found in Plato, Aquinas, and
Leibniz, claims that human voluntary actions are determined by
the true end or good.
 Logical determinism claims that a given future event must
either occur or not occur. The prediction before the event that
whatever happens would happen will turn out to have been
correct, as can be shown purely by logical considerations of
future contingents.
 Theological determinism, which can be found in Augustine,
Spinoza, and Leibniz, infers from God’s will that the existing
world is the only possible world, so we have to accept it and find
our own places in it. It also infers from God’s omniscience and
omnipotence that everything that happens is inevitable.
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 Physical determinism, advocated by the Epicureans and
especially by Hobbes, holds that all things, including
human actions, are determined by eternal and inviolable
laws of nature.
 Psychological determinism, which is elaborated by Hume
and others, considers that human behavior is caused by
psychological events within the mind of the agent.
 Fatalism, the view that there are forces (e.g., the stars or
the fates) that determine all outcomes independently of
human efforts or wishes, is claimed by some to be a
version of determinism.

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Morality & Ethics

 Both morality and ethics loosely have to do

with distinguishing the difference between
“good and bad” or “right and wrong.” 
 Many people think of morality as something
that’s personal and normative, whereas ethics
is the standards of “good and bad”
distinguished by a certain community or
social setting. 

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Determinism a Challenge to Morality

LINK DETERMINISM & MORALITY

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Indeterminism

 A theory which claims, in opposition to determinism,

that some events just happen without determining
causes and that no prior conditions account for them.
Such events can be characterized in terms of chance,
randomness, or uncertainty.
 According to quantum mechanics, quantum events at
the most fundamental level of reality are of this kind.
 The contrast between indeterminism and
determinism reflects a difference in the world views
held by quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics.

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 Some philosophers apply indeterminism to
ethics and suggest that human beings have
uncaused free actions, with no antecedent
events explaining their choices.
 It is difficult on this view to explain in what
sense we can ascribe an uncaused action to an
agent. Answers to this question will help to
decide whether freedom is more compatible
with random or chance actions or with causally
determined ones.
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Incompatibilism (Hard Determinism)

 Incompatibilism, also called hard determinism,

holds that determinism and free will are not
compatible and that the truth of determinism will
destroy the grounds of moral responsibility.
 Hard determinism (associated with eighteenth
century thinkers like d’Holbach and, recently,
certain behaviorists), according to which freedom
is an illusion since behavior is brought about by
environmental and genetic factors.

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Compatibilism (Soft
Determinism)
 Also called soft determinism, a position that holds that
determinism and free will are compatible.
 Soft determinism, Its supporters include some who identify
freedom with autonomy (the Stoics, Spinoza) and others who
champion freedom of spontaneity (Hobbes, Locke, Hume &
Mill). The latter speak of liberty as the power of doing or
refraining from an action according to what one wills, so that
by choosing otherwise one would have done otherwise.
 Hence human actions can be caused, but still be free. Free
actions are not uncaused actions, but are actions that are
closely linked with an agent’s inner causation through one’s
own beliefs and desires.

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 On this view, I did X freely means that if I had wanted to I
could have done otherwise and that I did X as a result of
my own desire and deliberation rather than as a result of
being compelled and coerced.
 Accordingly, the study of human beings can yield some
predictability within the terms of an inexact science,
although complete accuracy is not possible.
 Freedom is in contrast with coercion or constraint, rather
than with having a cause.
 My action is causally determined does not entail that I am
constrained to do it and does not entail that I am not free.

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THE END

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