Twenty-six views of free will
Thinkers
Each page sets out one view, the argument that drives it, an interactive figure, and where it meets and parts from Dennett. The map shows roughly how far each stands from him. To see where you would stand, take the quiz.
The allies
Compatibilists who, like Dennett, think responsibility does not depend on a gap in nature's causes, and the philosopher who did most to show that neuroscience has not refuted free will.
- Harry Frankfurt1929–2023
A hidden device would have made Jones act, but never did. He could not have done otherwise, and he is still responsible.
- P. F. Strawson1919–2006
Resentment and gratitude are not theories determinism could refute. They are part of living among people.
- John Martin Fischerborn 1952
Responsibility needs guidance control, steering by reasons through a mechanism that is your own, not open alternatives.
- Alfred Meleborn 1951
Science has not disproved free will. Libet's readiness potential may be an urge, not a decision.
The long history
From the Greeks to the nineteenth century: the first compatibilists, the first defenders of an open future, and the images that still frame the debate, from the swerving atom to Laplace's demon.
- Aristotle384–322 BC
An act is voluntary when its origin is in you and you know what you are doing. Even your character is partly up to you.
- Epicurus and Lucretius341–270 BC; c. 99–55 BC
The atoms swerve, at no fixed time or place, to break the bonds of fate. The first appeal to chance in defence of freedom.
- The Stoicsc. 300 BC – AD 180
Everything is fated, yet our acts are fated to come about through us. Fate leads the willing dog and drags the unwilling one.
- Augustine354–430
Evil comes from the free choice of the will, and God's foreknowledge no more forces our acts than memory forces the past.
- Thomas Hobbes1588–1679
Liberty is the absence of external impediments. Water flows down its channel freely, and of necessity.
- Baruch Spinoza1632–1677
A thrown stone, if it could think, would believe it flew by choice. There is no free will, but understanding makes us freer.
- David Hume1711–1776
Liberty is the power to act as you will; it belongs to everyone not in chains. Responsibility needs necessity, not chance.
- Immanuel Kant1724–1804
As part of nature we are fully caused; as rational agents we must act under the idea of freedom. Compatibilism is a wretched subterfuge.
- Pierre-Simon Laplace1749–1827
An intellect that knew everything about the present would see the future as plainly as the past. Determinism's emblem.
- Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860
You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you will. Freedom lies in what you are, not in what you do.
- William James1842–1910
Determinism makes every regret a mistake. James chose to believe in an open universe, and called compatibilism a quagmire of evasion.
The scientists
Experiments on the timing of decisions and the feeling of will, and a biologist's case that there is no free will at all.
- Benjamin Libet1916–2007
The brain prepares a movement a third of a second before you know you have decided. But you may still be able to veto it.
- Daniel Wegner1948–2013
The feeling of willing an act is the mind's guess about its own causes, and the guess can be wrong.
- Robert Sapolskyborn 1957
Every act is the end of a chain of biological and social causes, from a second before to millions of years. No free will, not even a little.
The far side
Contemporary philosophers who reject Dennett's compatibilism, in two opposite directions: libertarians, who think we are free because the world is not determined, and sceptics, who think no one is free in the way that matters.
- Robert Kaneborn 1938
Self-forming actions, made in moments of inner conflict and undetermined by the past, make us ultimately responsible.
- Peter van Inwagenborn 1942
The consequence argument: neither the past nor the laws are up to us, so neither are their consequences. Free will is a mystery.
- Galen Strawsonborn 1952
To be truly responsible you would have to have made yourself, which is impossible. No one is ultimately responsible.
- Derk Pereboomborn 1957
Professor Plum, manipulated by neuroscientists, is not responsible, and ordinary determinism is no different. Life without free will is not so bad.
- Gregg Carusocontemporary
Nobody deserves to suffer. Justice should follow the public health-quarantine model. Dennett's debating partner in Just Deserts.
- Sam Harrisborn 1967
Watch your own mind and you will see thoughts simply arise. Free will does not even match our experience.
Between clocks and clouds
A philosopher of science who looked for freedom between perfect determinism and pure chance, and a physicist who found room for it in the multiverse.
- Karl Popper1902–1994
Neither clocks nor clouds: minds exercise plastic control, steered by their own ideas.
- David Deutschborn 1953
In one spacetime nothing could have been otherwise. In the multiverse it was, and your reasons decide how often.