Determinism versus libertarianism in philosophy

Free Will Views of Chisholm and Ayer

Determinism vs. Libertarianism

Contrasting the Free Will Views of Chisholm and Ayer

Contrasting the Free Will Views of Chisholm and Ayer

The philosophical dissection of the concept of 'free will' necessarily requires defining causality and the criteria that can influence causation. Towards this goal, the views of two philosophers who take opposing deterministic and libertarianism views will be presented and analyzed.

The possibility that a person's internal state of mind doesn't play an influential role in events is inconsistent with what I believe.

Chisholm and Ayers on Free Will

The concept of free will or freedom necessarily invokes a consideration of causation. Chisholm's view on causation, as interpreted by Feldman and Feldman (2008), requires an explanation of the criteria surrounding causality that Chisholm termed 'conceptual primatives' (Section 6). The first primitive concept introduces causal contribution. For example if a train is late (event A) it seems reasonable to infer that commuters will be late getting home for dinner (event B). In contrast, an agent (human) may decide to take the next train in order to finish a discussion with a coworker in the office. Free will can therefore only be attributed to the causal contribution from an agent.

If the commuter needs to hurry home they may choose to make excuses to their coworker, in order to leave the office in time to catch the train. The choice to leave is independent of whether the train is on time or not and therefore is a reflection of the agent's intent. This is the nature of the second conceptual primitive of 'endeavoring'. If the conditions surrounding an agent's decision do not favor one choice over another then the agent is in a state of indeterminism (third conceptual primitive). Any decision made while in this state can therefore be seen as an exercise of free will. The fourth conceptual primitive is agent power, or the agent's ability to bring about a specific outcome either directly or indirectly. These four conceptual primitives contain elements of volition or free will and are therefore viewed as libertarianism.

Ayer's approach to causality is divorced from the concepts of agent, agent power, or indeterminism, which together could be defined as 'necessity' by Ayers (MacDonald, 2010, Section 6). Ayer rejected the concept of causal necessity, as interpreted by Wand (1959, p. 493), because according to Ayer necessity arises out of a primitive form of animism that confers feelings, volitions, or even supernatural forces to causality. According to Ayer then, necessity plays no role in determining an outcome and the only forces at work are the laws of nature.

Ayer did try to argue that determinism and freedom can coexist if constraint and compulsion are absent. MacDonald (2010, Section 6) didn't buy this argument though, because events are still interpreted by Ayer as occurring in the absence of volition. Ayer therefore defined free will as the absence of coercion, which I agree does not make sense.