Free Will and Determinism: Hume, Chisholm, and Human Agency

Introduction: Constraints on Human Freedom

From a theological viewpoint, human free will may not exist at all. Since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, the destiny of each individual is determined from the beginning of time. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards all believed this, and before modern times it was the most common position in Christianity. Human life is also determined by certain physical and natural laws that exist in the material world — such as gravity, conservation of energy, and chemistry — and perhaps by genetics as well. In addition, unfavorable environments and family life in childhood may have a deterministic effect on individuals, producing, for example, a propensity to become involved in crime and drug abuse.

Some people are more obviously constrained than others, such as alcoholics, drug addicts, and those suffering from mental illness, or those locked up in prison or some other institution where their lives are largely determined by an external coercive authority. It is not difficult to find many such constraints on human beings, to which David Hume would have added culture, education, and socialization — the real causes of most behavior (Notes 1/10). On the whole, so many limits exist on the freedom of the human will that determinism of one variety or another seems to be the most valid explanation for the actions of individuals. For most of human history, when individual rights and political freedom did not exist, such determinism has indeed been quite blatant.

Hume on Predictability and Social Order

David Hume argued that human behavior was uniform and predictable, and that it necessarily had to be so in order for society to function at all. Without such order and predictability, the only result would be chaos and irrationality; therefore, political and social life depend on the belief that human behavior is constant (Hume, p. 59). When people act in an irrational or unpredictable manner, some explanation is called for as to why they deviated from expectations. Certainly in 18th-century Great Britain — the society with which Hume was most familiar — the legal system was based on the concept that each individual is responsible for their actions unless they were obviously insane. This is also the case in the United States today.

Hume gave an example of the prisoner in chains who is obviously lacking in free will because he cannot leave and his life is determined and controlled by the jailer. Yet the jailer also operates under certain constraints, such as his desire to obey the law and to perform his duties well, so he will not let the prisoners escape. Nor would it be in his self-interest to do so, since he might end up in jail himself, or at the very least lose his job and no longer be able to feed his family. Only if he had some secret reason to sympathize with the prisoner might he act in an unpredictable way and help him escape — but it would have to be a very compelling reason to inspire him to take such a risk against his own interest.

Conclusion: Patterns, Exceptions, and Limited Free Will

In my opinion, the overall situation is predictable and will follow certain normal patterns, but some individuals will always attempt to break out of the mold. To that extent, even prisoners have some limited degree of free will about how they will react to any given situation — at least if they choose to exercise it — and a minority will be more inclined to break the rules and refuse to conform to the general pattern than the majority. The debate between compatibilism and hard determinism ultimately shows that while deterministic forces shape the range of available choices, the question of how an individual responds within those constraints remains philosophically meaningful.

References

Chisholm, R. M. (1964). "Human Freedom and the Self." The Lindley Lectures, University of Kansas.

Hume, D. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Second Edition.