Determinism FREEDOM OF THE WILL AND DETERMINISM

Contra: Chapter 39. Baron D'Holbach: "We Are Completely Determined"

Pro: Chapter 40. "Corliss Lamont: Freedom of the Will and Human Responsibility" (334-337)

The nature of the freedom of the human will remains one of the most debated questions between philosophers. The durability of the debate is evidenced in the introductory philosophy anthology The Quest for Truth, when the Enlightenment era defender of determinism, Baron D'Holbach is pitted against the 20th century philosopher of Humanism Corliss Lamont. Despite the centuries that divide them, the two men engage in a dialogue that continues to have profound policy implications. The freedom of the will debate touches upon everything from the Christian religion's conception of the soul and salvation, to political science's conceptualizations of human rights, and to the current legal debate over retributive punishment, most specifically capital punishment.

Corliss Lamont, in his essay "Freedom of the Will and Human Responsibility," suggests that because most human beings possess a sensation or feeling that, at moments of what he terms significant choice, human beings thus may be said to have free will. Lamont thus argues from an affective, or sensory perspective of experience in the empiricist tradition. For instance, in an example also discussed in the introduction to this section by the editor of the anthology, Louis P. Pojman, a human being apparently, in his or her own mind, can decide to act against very strong desires. For instance, a human being seems to choose not to

Even if an individual is very thirsty, the individual has the strong affective sensation that he or she is making a choice because he or she is rejecting, physically and intellectually, the water before him or her. In other words, something must be controlling the animal, biological impetus to drink -- the free, human will.
However, Baron D'Holbach would say that whether the thirsty person might drink or not, the motive and cause of the drinking is the same, namely, human animal's unwilled instinct of self-preservation. The choice to drink or not to drink is determined by the motivation of self-preservation, depending upon which course of action the thirsty individual believes will prolong the course of his or her own life. The sensation of free will, D'Holbach would argue, is really based in an unwilled, animal drive, to stay alive. Although it may feel, deceptively, like a sensation, the decision to take one path in the road, to use Lamont's poetic description of the affective perception of human choice, the reasons a human being chooses one path over another is not conscious, but really rooted in areas of the subconscious, cognitive areas of the brain, beyond the conscious, intellectual or emotional will. Is it evidence of the lion's free will that he follows an antelope down one path vs. another, D'Holbach might say?

For D'Holbach, the human intellect merely provides later rationalizations for what is 'chosen' with the emotions and animal instincts at a preconscious level. Although the justification may come only a split second later, as in 'I decided not to drink because the water was poisoned,' really the 'decision' took place on a level beyond that of will. D'Holbach would no doubt add that Lamont's perception of human nature prioritizes the human over the animal, suggesting that human beings are special cases in the natural…