Philosophy Challenging Naturalist Critiques of

Philosophy Challenging Naturalist Critiques of Free Will Naturalists have long held that we cannot demonstrate the existence of free will. They suggest, in the spirit of the Enlightenment philosopher Baron D'Holbach, that the "will [...] is a modification of the brain" (D'Holbach 333). In other words, free will is at best simply a manifestation of natural mechanisms and, at worst, a complete illusion in a deterministic world. This is how the naturalists conceive of free will.

But the opposing position would have that free will does exist independent of a priori causes and is additionally a unique feature of the human condition. A careful, if brief, analysis of the available information reveals that free will does exist, though it would be erroneous to suggest that it somehow exists outside of the normal chain of causation. Human beings have the ability to choose, but those choices are influenced and affected, and do not exist in a moral vacuum.

From an ethics standpoint, this is an important point to assert because it means that individual human beings have a moral responsibility to make ethical choices, and that their actions are not fatalistically predetermined. Traditionally, at the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum from free will is fatalism, or sometimes determinism. Generally championed by naturalists, who can find no mechanism for free will, fatalism argues, "man is a marionette whose every action is controlled and determined" (Frost 128).

Though the world often seems as if it is completely outside the control of individuals, fatalism runs contrary to the everyday, lived experiences of most people. Most people do make choices on a regular basis, and these choices determine the course of one's day and one's life. The fatalists would have us believe that such actions are pre-determined or, at least, removed from the realm of free choice and influenced by forces outside the control of the individual.

But this assertion doesn't leave much room for free will, reason, or even individual thought. Reason and thinking is, after all, a chosen act by which individuals consider and respond to the world (Rand 22). But if there is no free will, if the traditional naturalist claims are correct, then it would be impossible for an individual to make such a choice. Behaviors and thoughts would simply be a process of natural mechanisms and designs outside the control of the individual. Free will would be moot.

One distinct problem that emerges from this naturalist assertion is how to deal with moral responsibility. How can we hold anyone accountable for his or her actions if said individual doesn't really have any control over his thoughts and behaviors? Some naturalists have gone so far as to argue that while free will doesn't exist in any physical, meaningful way, it plays an important role in social interaction and should be preserved as an abstract concept (Clark par. 3).

In other words, even the naturalists recognize the dilemma of assigning moral responsibility in a world without free will. Without the concept of free will, no one person could ever be really responsible for his or her actions, because the choice to behave in one way or another would simply be the effect of other causes outside of the individual's control.

As Rand characterizes the matter: Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man's survival -- not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life. (Rand 24). If this were not the case, hen one's behavior would be nothing more than a deterministic response to external stimuli.

In this situation, it would be hypocritical at best to assign moral responsibility to anyone for any specific behaviors, since the cause of that behavior could always be removed to factors beyond the individual's control. What is needed, then, is a concept of free will that can effectively counter the claims of naturalists that there is no physical basis for free will.

It requires a different kind of free will that permits moral responsibility to be leveled squarely at the individual without ignoring the reality that sometimes there are external causes to internal decisions. In fact, some philosophers have even used the conceptual tools of the naturalists to make the argument that free will can exist in a deterministic world. Daniel Dennet argues that the deterministic universe provides the reliable framework of reality by which informed, individual choices can be made (Bailey par. 14-17).

Without some determinism in the universe, it would be impossible for free will to functionally exist, because no one would ever be able to make a rational choice in a purely chaotic world. So free will requires some level of determinism. But determinism is not the same thing as fatalism. The latter states that an event will happen no matter what one does, while the former posits that one's actions are dependent on what happens.

Human beings, Dennet explains, are choice machines instead of situation machines like other creatures in the universe. We consider the options available and consequences of actions, and then act accordingly, our actions influenced by outside factors but not controlled by them. This is in opposition to situation machines, such as animals, that can only respond in particular ways to particular stimuli: if X, then Y (Bailey par. 27-29). True free will and volition requires this kind of conceptual knowledge of the world, instead of simple, automatic responses (Rand 21).

In fact, this is not so dissimilar from the position of some naturalists such as Baron D'Holbach, who take the position that man cannot be a free agent because he is moved by causes, not by a will that is independent of those causes (D'Holbach 333). In fact, the will must be independent of exterior causes, at least insomuch as the individual is independent of the world around him. True, that individual can be.