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18 Democracy and Freedom

Jason Brennan is the Robert J and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Chair of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University.

Published: 01 September 2016
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There seems to be an intimate connection between democracy and freedom. But the nature of this connection is disputed. This chapter outlines possible connections between democracy and freedom. First, it is shown that there is indeed a robust positive correlation between democracy and various forms of liberal freedom. Second, the chapter examines and critiques an argument purporting to show that exercising equal political power in a democracy directly enhances citizens’ autonomy by making them authors of the laws. Third, it examines and critiques the argument that republican democracy is essential to enhancing freedom because it prevents citizens from being dominated. It is argued that we should be skeptical of these latter two positions. Empirically, democratic countries tend to be more free. But there is probably no essential connection between democracy and freedom.

Free countries tend to be democratic; democratic countries tend to be free. Unfree countries tend to be non-democratic, and non-democratic countries tend to be unfree. Why?

There seems to be an intimate connection between democracy and freedom. But the nature of this connection is disputed. Some hold it is merely a positive correlation: the background conditions that tend to cause liberal politics also tend to produce democratic political structures. Some think there is causation: perhaps liberalism causes democracy, democracy causes liberalism, or they are mutually reinforcing.

Many people—including most American laypeople—insist that democracy is not merely positively correlated with liberalism, and is indeed more than a useful instrument for promoting liberty. They believe that democratic politics itself is an important kind of freedom, that democracy is essential to freedom, or that the rights to vote, run for office, and participate are themselves constitutive of what it means to be free.

This chapter outlines possible connections between democracy and freedom. First, it will be shown that there is indeed a robust positive correlation between democracy and various forms of liberal freedom. Second, the chapter will examine and critique an argument purporting to show that exercising equal political power in a democracy directly enhances citizens’ autonomy by making them authors of the laws. Third, the chapter will examine and critique the argument that republican democracy is essential to enhancing freedom because it prevents citizens from being dominated. It is argued that we should be skeptical of these latter two positions.

1. Democracy and Liberalism Defined

At base, “democracy” refers to a range of ways of allocating political decision-making rights. Democracy is an answer to the question, who rules? As Thomas Christiano (2006) elaborates, the term democracy “refers very generally to a method of group decision making characterized by a kind of equality among the participants at an essential stage of the collective decision making.” David Estlund (2008 : 38) says democracy is the “actual collective authorization of laws and policies by the people subject to them.”

Democracy is defined here as a system of government in which fundamental political power is shared equally by all adult members of society. A regime will be called democratic to the extent it has regular, competitive elections, without electoral fraud or manipulation, and with universal adult suffrage ( Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012 ; Freedom House, 2013 ).

A country will be counted as liberal to the extent it recognizes and effectively protects basic civil and economic rights. Among civil liberties are included the right to free speech, free assembly, free association, freedom of conscience, right of bodily integrity and freedom from abuse and assault, freedom of lifestyle choice, rights to protest, the right to exit, and freedom of sexual choice. The definition also includes liberal procedural rights in the criminal justice system, including rights against unwarranted search and seizure, the right to a fair and expeditious trial, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right to hear and question one’s accusers, and habeas corpus. Among economic liberties are included the right to acquire, hold, use, give, and in many cases destroy personal property, to make and enter into contracts, to buy and sell goods and services on terms to which all parties consent, to choose one’s occupation, to negotiate the terms under which one will work, to manage one’s wealth, to create things for sale, to start, run, and stop businesses, to own private property in the means of production, to develop property for productive purposes, and to take risks with capital.

It is not claimed that by definition democracies recognize and protect citizens’ civil or economic liberties. Some might wish to say a country that severely curtails civil liberties should not qualify as democratic, even if it has regular contested elections. However, our goal here is to determine whether a particular way of allocating political decision-rights correlates with liberal freedom. For that purpose, we should avoid loading liberalism into the very definition of democracy.

2. How Free Are Citizens of Democracies?

Liberalism and democracy are not connected on a conceptual level. At least in principle, a non-democratic regime could fully realize liberal freedoms. Similarly, a democracy could run roughshod over its citizens’ civil and economic liberties. If there is a connection between liberalism and democracy, this will be an interesting empirical finding.

We cannot measure degrees of freedom or democracy as easily as we can measure GDP, life expectancy, or height. However, each year various institutes, think tanks, and foundations conduct extensive research on the political conditions around the world. For example, Canada’s Fraser Institute produces the widely cited annual “Economic Freedom of the World” index. The Wall Street Journal , in conjunction with the Heritage Institute, also produces an annual Index of Economic Freedom. Freedom House and The Economist each produce similar ratings of protection for civil liberties, as well as indices that score countries on how well they implement basic democratic electoral procedures. Using such indices, we can examine whether various liberal freedoms and democratic political procedures tend to be correlated.

Democracy and Economic Freedom Go Together

Freedom House’s “political rights” score and The Economist ’s “electoral process and pluralism” score are both meant to measure the degree to which countries have universal adult suffrage and free, open, competitive, and uncorrupt elections. Countries that fail to have these things—whether they are active monarchies, dictatorships, communist single party states, or whatnot—receive bad scores. Both indices try to avoid conflating political rights with other civil or economic liberties. Thus, if there turns out to be any correlation between, say, Freedom House’s “political rights” score and various measures of economic or civil liberty, this is an interesting rather than trivial result.

Many countries that Freedom House or The Economist describe as authoritarian are democracies on paper . They have constitutions that formally guarantee competitive elections, universal suffrage, and fair voting rights. But Freedom House and The Economist do not rate a country as democratic unless it actually uses democratic procedures. Similarly, the Fraser Institute and The Wall Street Journal do not rate countries as economically free merely because their constitutions “guarantee” the rule of law or substantive due process in protecting property rights. They score countries by what they do, not what their constitutions say they will do.

As figure 18.1 shows, there is a clear and strong positive correlation between democracy and economic freedom. Note that in figure 18.1 , a lower political rights score counts as more democratic. Freedom House scores the freest countries a 1 and the least free countries a 7. Thus, the negative slope of the regression line shows a positive correlation between political rights and economic freedom.

Using different measures gets similar results. If we substitute The Wall Street Journal ’s rankings for the Fraser Institute’s, the correlation increases slightly to 0.4994. If we substitute The Economist ’s electoral process and pluralism ratings for Freedom House’s political rights scores, the correlation drops slightly to 0.4669. Regardless, the correlations are similar and robust.

Democracy and Civil Liberties Go Together

As figure 18.2 shows, there is an even stronger positive relationship between democracy and civil liberties. Here, The Economist ’s measure of civil liberties is graphed against Freedom House’s Political Rights score. Once again, for Freedom House, a lower political rights score indicates a country is more democratic. Thus, the negative slope represents a positive correlation.

Once again, substituting different rating systems yields similar results. (The correlation holds steady at around 0.9.)

Figure 18.2 might be misleading because it provides a snapshot of conditions at any given year. Sometimes democratic countries elect bad leaders who seize power for themselves. When democracies collapse into authoritarianism, leaders tend to suppress democratic procedures and civil liberties at the same time. 1 Since the protection of political rights and of civil liberties tend to fall in tandem, the correlation seen above might overstate just how much protection democracy offers on behalf of liberal rights. Countries that currently have high political rights scores also have high civil liberties scores, but some such countries are vulnerable to collapse.

In common English, we use the words “liberty” and “freedom” not merely to refer to a range of civil and economic rights, but also to refer to the power or capacity to achieve one’s ends. We say that Superman is free to fly while I am not, not because no one stops him from flying, but because he has the power to fly. For this reason, G. A. Cohen (1995 : 58) claims that wealth and positive freedom are intimately connected. Cohen argues that “to have money is to have freedom.” The more wealth one has, the more one is able to do, and in that sense, the more freedom one has.

For the sake of argument, let us accept Cohen’s argument and ask, do people in democracies tend to have more positive liberty? As figure 18.3 shows, they do.

Once again, substituting different measures of freedom or different GDP/GNI estimates yields similar results.

As seen in figure 18.4 , which is reproduced from Gwartney, Lawson, and Hall, 2015 : 24, if we confine ourselves to looking at the absolute levels of income held by the bottom deciles in the most and least democratic countries, we get similar results. Note that the graph below shows absolute, purchasing price parity-adjusted levels of income before any welfare payments have been made. Since richer and freer countries tend to have more generous welfare systems, figure 18.4 understates the disparity in the standard between the bottom 10 percent in the economically freer and the less free countries.

Democratic Countries Tend to Be Richer

Economic Freedom and Pre-Transfer Income of the “Poor”

Of course, strong correlation does not imply causation. These correlations do not tell us whether democratic politics tends to lead to liberal results, whether liberal politics tends to lead to democracy, whether some third factor tends to produce both, or whether democracy and liberalism tend to be mutually reinforcing. There is an extensive literature debating this question. There are empirical papers supporting each position, as well as papers arguing that democracy and liberalism are in tension, despite their strong correlation.

For instance, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2013) recently argued that regimes fall into two broad types: extractive and inclusive. In extractive regimes, power is concentrated into the hands of the few, and these few in turn use their power to expropriate wealth and dominate the majority. In inclusive regimes, power is widely dispersed. Institutions and laws in inclusive regimes tend to be designed to benefit the majority of citizens. Inclusive regimes tend to enjoy the rule of law, respect for private property, and reduced economic rent seeking. In turn, this leads to greater economic prosperity and respect for civil rights.

Despite these correlations, we should not assume that democracies are liberal because most citizens in democracies are strong advocates of liberalism. As Scott Althaus, Bryan Caplan, and Martin Gilens each conclude (using different surveys and data sets), the modal and median citizens in the United States are much less supportive of economic or civil liberties than more elite, educated, and higher income citizens. For instance, Caplan ( 2001 ; 2007 : 51) shows that while educated or high IQ voters support free trade, the modal American advocates economic protectionism. Gilens (2012 : 106–111) similarly finds that educated, rich voters are more in favor of protecting civil liberties than typical voters, especially poor and uneducated voters. Elites tend to support same-sex marriage, oppose the Patriot Act, oppose torture, and advocate widespread access to birth control and abortion services, while modal and poor American voters tend to have the opposite preferences. Althaus (2003 : 11) obtains similar results: the typical and median voter is less in favor of economic or civil liberty than the more knowledgeable voter. The United States is significantly freer than we would expect it to be if politicians just gave the majority of voters exactly what they want. The policies that actually obtain are generally more liberal than what the model, mean, or median voter wants. Gilens (2012 : 80) argues this is because presidents and other leaders are much more responsive to the expressed policy preferences of the rich than the poor.

3. Democracy and Autonomy

Many people believe democracy is more than just a useful instrument for producing liberal freedom. In the United States, most laypeople regard the American War of Independence as a fight for freedom, not because victory was expected to produce any spectacular gains in liberal rights, but simply because it replaced a foreign constitutional monarchy with democratic self-rule. In their view, Americans became free because they became their own lawmakers.

This conception of freedom—that to be free is to be the author of the laws—has a long history. Benjamin Constant (1988 : 81) claims that the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed freedom not as a matter of liberal rights, but as authorship of the law:

the liberty . . . of the ancients . . . consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; . . . But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community. 2

Isaiah Berlin (1997 : 178) similarly noted that one prominent conception of liberty identifies liberty with autonomous self-control, and, in particular, with “self-government”: “[One] sense of the word liberty derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master.” On this conception of liberty, what makes a citizen free is not that his government leaves him alone, but that he is a part of that government.

In this vein, Justine Lacroix argues that exercising one’s equal political rights in a democracy enhances autonomy. She says (2007: 192), “Liberty . . . is rather akin to the concept of autonomy, that is to say that liberty does not mean the absence of law but rather the respect of the laws that men have made and accepted for themselves.” She thinks for citizens to be autonomous, it is not enough that one merely possess the right to vote, but must also actively vote. (Indeed, she thinks they should be forced to vote.)

Many democratic theorists—from Rousseau onward—believe democracy uniquely enables citizens to realize autonomous self-government. In an idealized democracy, the governed are themselves the authors of the laws that govern them; any constraints imposed by law are constraints they themselves imposed. Thus, the thought is, democracy enables citizens to be fully autonomous. In contrast, in a non-democratic system, citizens will always subject to laws that are not of their own making or choosing. The laws will in some way be imposed upon them.

One problem with trying to link democracy and autonomy on the conceptual level is that, in the real world, what democratic governments do is not entirely a matter of the will of the people. First, it is unclear whether we can attribute to a winning majority a collective will or point of view ( Arrow, 1950 ). Second, as Gilens (2012) has shown, in real-life democracies, some voters count more than others. In the United States, presidents are about six times more responsive to the policy preferences of the rich than the poor. Third, congresspeople, bureaucrats, and administrators do not merely implement the will of the people, but have agendas of their own ( Mueller, 2003 ). In response to worries like these, some democratic theorists claim the problem is just that real-life democracy falls short of the ideal; in an ideal, properly functioning democracy, citizens would be fully autonomous authors of the laws.

But this brings out a deeper problem, a problem that remains even in ideal conditions. Suppose every voter counted the same, and suppose government agents were mere technicians who scrupulously carried out the will of the democratic majority. Even here, while the democratic majority as a collective would have autonomy, it is unclear why this would enhance the autonomy of individual citizens. In an idealized democracy, the answer to the question of “Who rules?” is “ We —but not you or I.” Democracy empowers collectives, not individuals.

For the sake of argument, grant that by voting, a citizen can become the partial author of the laws that govern her. Grant that if she abstains, or if she is denied the right to vote, then she has no partial authorship over the laws, and thus the laws are in some way imposed upon her. Notice, however, that even on this charitable assumption, voting confers autonomy upon a voter only if her side wins. If her side loses, then she is not in part the author of the laws.

However, even if her side wins, and if she is thus a partial author of the law, it remains unclear why we should regard this as conferring upon her any morally significant degree of autonomy. In a properly functioning democracy, each citizen has an equal share of fundamental political power. But this is a small share indeed. There are 210 million eligible voters in the United States, so by law I hold 1/210 millionth of the fundamental political power in the United States. This does not empower me in any significant way. If I were to vote against a hawkish candidate, it is not as though the resulting wars will be fought a 210-millionth degree less aggressively. If I were to vote for open borders, it is not as though the borders would become a 210-millionth more open. Rather, for any one of us in a contemporary democracy, regardless of whether one votes or abstains, and regardless how one votes, the same political outcomes would happen anyway. We each have some power, but our individual power does not matter.

An individual’s vote has an effect on political outcomes only if she changes the outcome of the election. Casting a vote is like playing the lottery—there is some small chance that a single vote will break a tie. But the probability that a voter will break a tie is vanishingly small ( Brennan and Lomasky, 1993 : 56–57, 119). 3 Individual votes rarely matter. Thus, even if a voter in a winning coalition is in some way causally responsible for the laws, it seems extravagant to call her the autonomous author of the laws, or to claim that the laws that govern her are laws she herself imposed.

Robert Nozick (1974 : 290–292) gently mocks the theory that democracy grants individual citizens autonomy with a story called the “Tale of the Slave.” Suppose Hagar the Slave has a cruel master, who imposes arbitrary punishments. As the master ages, he becomes kinder. He only punishes Hagar for violating posted rules. When the master dies, he bequeaths all 10,001 of his slaves, including Hagar, to 10,000 of the slaves, excluding Hagar. As a result, 10,000 other slaves collectively own everyone, including Hagar. For Hagar, this just means she now has a 10,000-headed master rather than a one-headed master. Her new 10,000-headed master sometimes asks her for advice about what rules should be imposed upon all 10,001 slaves. As a reward for her advice, they grant her the right to make that decision herself whenever the 10,000 masters are evenly split—5,000 to 5,000—over what to do. Finally, since they have never been evenly split, they just include Hagar’s vote with theirs all the time.

At the end of the story, many readers think the slave never stopped being a slave. But by the end of the story, the situation resembles modern democracy. Being an equal member of a rule-making body, especially a large one, does not give one much control. Each slave in the Tale of the Slave can legitimately claim that everyone else makes all the decisions and that the decisions the collective makes would have occurred without her input. Individuals have no power.

In a democracy, the majority of voters, considered as a collective, in some sense rule themselves and everyone else. If majorities frequently change, every citizen might eventually have the opportunity to be part of a winning majority. But it is unclear why we should regard this as empowering individual citizens, or giving them greater real autonomy. Individual citizens have only a vanishingly small chance of making a difference. Even when an individual votes in favor of the winning side, had she reversed her vote, or refused to vote at all, the same political outcomes would have occurred anyway.

4. Democracy and Non-Domination

“ Neo-republican” political philosophers argue that there is a tight connection between democracy (of a sort) and freedom. Notably, they do so in part because they reject the traditional liberal conception of freedom. They can accept the points made above—that is, that while democracy and liberal freedom are strongly correlated, it is conceptually possible to have one without the other. But, they argue, liberals have a defective conception of freedom. Once we replace this defective conception with a superior one, we will see that freedom and democracy (of the right sort) are tightly bound, and not merely as a matter of empirical correlation.

Republican political theorist Philip Pettit asks, what is problematic about the master-slave relationship? It is not merely that the master might be cruel to the slave, or might interfere with the slave. To see why, imagine you are a slave with an unusually kind and liberal master. The master never issues any orders or interferes with you in any way. However, Pettit says, you remain in some important sense less free than non-slaves. While the master does not interfere with you or control you, he retains the right and ability to do so.

Isaiah Berlin, in his famous (1997) essay on different conceptions of liberty, claims that liberals tend to regard freedom as the absence of interference from others. Pettit maintains that this liberal conception of liberty cannot properly explain what is wrong with the master-slave relationship. After all, no one interferes with the slave, but the slave remains unfree. Pettit thinks we thus need a third conception of liberty: liberty as non-domination. Freedom is not the absence of interference; rather, freedom is the absence of domination .

One person (call him the dominator) is said to dominate another person (call him the victim) when the dominator has the capacity to interfere with the victim’s choices, and the dominator can exercise this capacity at will, with impunity ( Pettit, 1996 : 581). On this definition of freedom, a person is free only when she is not subject to the arbitrary will of another.

Republicans hold that a properly constituted democracy is essential to realizing freedom as non-domination. Though republicans have a different conception of liberty from liberals, they concur with liberals that unlimited direct democracy would undermine citizens’ freedom. Like liberals, they advocate due process of law, checks and balances, separation of powers, and constitutionally protected rights of free speech and assembly ( Lovett, 2014 ). Like liberals, they also recognize that these devices are imperfect. In any democratic government, government agents—from police officers to bureaucrats to senators—will always enjoy some degree of arbitrary power over others.

Republicans hold that to prevent domination and to reduce the degree to which government agents wield this arbitrary power, citizens must be actively engaged with politics. Frank Lovett (2014) says,

The standard republican remedy . . . is enhanced democracy. . . . Roughly speaking, the idea is that properly-designed democratic institutions should give citizens the effective opportunity to contest the decisions of their representatives. This possibility of contestation will make government agents wielding discretionary authority answerable to a public understanding of the goals or ends they are meant to serve and the means they are permitted to employ. In this way, discretionary power can be rendered non-arbitrary in the sense required for the secure enjoyment of republican liberty.

To “enhance” democracy in this way, republicans hold that we need two major sets of changes. First, there must be greater public deliberation . Political decision-makers, such as legislative bodies, courts, or bureaucracies, routinely should present the rationale behind their decisions in public fora, where the public may challenge and debate these reasons. Some republicans argue that some such fora should serve as “courts of appeals,” in which citizens can object to or even overturn decisions ( Pettit, 2012 ). Second, there should be greater inclusion and real political equality . All citizens must have an equal right to participate in such public contestation. Republicans hold that formal political equality is not enough. Some citizens (in virtue of wealth, family, or prestige) have more de facto influence and power than others. To ensure that all citizens can participate on an equitable basis, there should be limits on campaign financing, advertising, and lobbying. In summary, republicans think that regular, contested, competitive elections are not enough. They think we need deliberative democracy both before and after decisions are made. We need to protect the political sphere from being unduly influenced by money, fame, or other irrelevant factors.

Thus, republicans, unlike liberals, deny that citizens under a benevolent liberal dictator would be free. Republicans advocate what they regard as a distinct and superior conception of liberty, and hold that a robustly participatory and deliberative democratic regime of the right sort is essential to realizing this form of freedom.

Note that many republicans do not merely hold that freedom as non-interference needs to be supplemented with freedom as non-domination. They regard freedom as non-domination as an alternative. Thus, many republicans are skeptical of traditional liberal freedoms. They are committed to many traditional liberal rights only insofar as such rights are necessary to ensure equitable deliberative democracy. On this point, Brennan and Lomasky (2006 : 240) complain,

In a Pettit republic, the determinations of democratic majorities bring about far fewer restrictions of individual liberty than is the case in liberal democracies. That is not because political rule is exercised with a lighter hand; just the reverse. Rather, it is because republicans decline to classify most impositions on individual preferences as liberty restricting.

For instance, republicans are comfortable with a remarkable degree of paternalistic intervention into citizens’ private lives. The state must consider the interests of citizens, but not necessarily their preferences , and so, on the republican view, the state may continually impose upon citizens what it deems to be in citizens’ best interest ( Brennan and Lomasky, 2006 : 241). For many republicans, it does not matter if a state continuously and actively interferes with its citizens’ lives. So long as citizens are not dominated —because they enjoy regular opportunities to deliberate and contest the laws as equals—these citizens count as free.

The original theoretical motivation for republicanism was supposed to be a defect in the traditional liberal conception of freedom as non-interference. Supposedly, liberals cannot adequately explain just what makes slaves unfree. Recall Pettit’s point: even if a master never interferes with or controls the slave, the master could do so with impunity.

However, to liberals, this seems less like a deep challenge and more like a call for clarification. Perhaps Berlin’s essay is misleading—perhaps it is not really true, pace Berlin, that liberals traditionally hold that a person is free if and only if no one interferes with her. Liberals seem to have a ready explanation for why even slaves with kind, liberal masters are nevertheless unfree. The problem is that slaves lack adequately enforced rights against interference. A liberal could just say that a person is free to the extent that her rights against interference are adequately protected from threats. This formulation of the liberal conception of freedom might sound almost the same as freedom as non-domination, but, as Brennan and Lomasky complained above, republicans are happy to license frequent state interference in ways that liberals would count as rights violations. One way of stating Brennan and Lomasky’s worry about republicanism, then, is that republican “freedom as non-domination,” as far as liberals are concerned, is compatible with the state dominating individuals.

If slavery is legal, the law fails to recognize the slave as a rights-holder, and instead treats her as chattel. If slavery is illegal but the master still enslaves her, then the problem is that no government or agency successfully protects the slave’s liberal rights. So, perhaps Berlin’s definition of liberal freedom is indeed inadequate, but it remains unclear whether, to explain what makes slaves unfree, we must reject liberalism and accept republicanism.

A further problem with republicanism is that its institutional recommendations may be unrealistic. If so, then the institutional recommendations might protect republican freedom in ideal conditions, but not in realistic conditions. If so, then republicanism would do little to justify real-world democracy.

To see why the republican institutional recommendations might be unrealistic, consider the role of democratic deliberation in their theories. Republicans and deliberative democrats imagine deliberation as being like an idealized philosophical discussion. They imagine deliberators as sincere, open-minded, consistent, and rational speakers, who are committed to finding consensus and who avoid manipulating one another. ( Habermas, 2001 : 65). They thus expect deliberation to enlighten and ennoble participants, to lead to consensus, and to generate better political policy.

For instance, Hélène Landemore (2012 : 97) says, “Deliberation is supposed to . . . Enlarge the pools of ideas and information . . . . , Weed out the good arguments from the bad . . ., [and] Lead to a consensus on the ‘better’ or more ‘reasonable’ solution.” Bernard Manin, Elly Stein, and Jane Mansbridge (1987 : 354) say that democratic deliberation is a process of training and education. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (1996 : 9) claim that even when deliberation fails to produce consensus, it will generally cause citizens to respect one another more.

The problem, though, is that real-world deliberation rarely proceeds the way deliberative democrats want it to proceed, and it (thus?) rarely delivers the results they want it to deliver. Diana Mutz (2006 : 5) remarks, “It is one thing to claim that political conversation has the potential to produce beneficial outcomes if it meets a whole variety of unrealized criteria, and yet another to argue that political conversations, as they actually occur, produce meaningful benefits for citizens.” In a comprehensive survey of the empirical research on democratic deliberation, Tali Mendelberg (2002 : 154) concludes that the “empirical evidence for the benefits that deliberative theorists expect” is “thin or non-existent.” For instance, deliberation generally tends to exacerbate conflict rather then mediate it ( Mendelberg, 2002 : 158). Instead of debating the facts, people try to win positions of influence and power over others ( Mendelberg, 2002 : 159). High-status individuals talk more, are perceived as more accurate and credible, and have more influence, regardless of whether the high-status individuals actually know more ( Mendelberg, 2002 : 165–167). Deliberators use language in biased and manipulative ways ( Mendelberg, 2002 : 170–172). Deliberation tends to cause group polarization; it moves people toward more extreme versions of their ideologies rather than toward more moderate versions ( Sunstein, 2002 ). Deliberation often causes deliberators to choose positions inconsistent with their own views, positions which the deliberators “later regret” ( Ryfe, 2005 : 54). Rather than causing consensus, public deliberation might cause disagreement and the formation of in-groups and out-groups ( Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2002 ). It can even lead to violence ( Mutz, 2006 : 89). And so on.

Further, even if republicans are correct that checks and balances, deliberative fora, courts of appeals, and the like would help reduce domination, it is unclear why this requires universal adult suffrage. To illustrate with a simple case, suppose that everyone in the country were allowed to vote and deliberate, except for me . While this might make me a “second-class citizen” and might be objectionable on egalitarian grounds, it seems unlikely that this would cause me to be dominated or would reduce my freedom in any meaningful way. If, despite the rule of law, checks and balances, and widespread deliberation, politicians and others can still interfere arbitrarily with my life, granting me the right to vote or deliberate would not suddenly stop them dominating me. As we discussed above, individuals have vanishingly little effective political power.

Now, if were to disenfranchise an entire race or group of citizens with shared interests—for example, all blacks—this probably would expose them to the threat of domination. But it does not follow that widespread disenfranchisement necessarily exposes citizens to domination.

One of the major debates in contemporary democratic theory is whether we should prefer democracy to epistocracy. An epistocracy is a political system in which, as a matter of law, citizens receive political power in proportion to their political knowledge ( Estlund, 2008 ). The primary motivation behind epistocracy is a concern that most citizens in contemporary democracies are ignorant or misinformed about the relevant facts and social scientific theory needed to form sound political preferences ( Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996 ; Somin, 2013 ). Epistocrats believe that limiting the political power of the ignorant or misinformed might produce better political outcomes for all; it might better serve the common good. For instance, an epistocrat might advocate that the rights to vote or run for office should be conditional upon passing a test of basic political knowledge ( Brennan, 2011 ), or that the highly educated should have extra votes ( Mill, 1861 ).

While there are many important objections against epistocracy, epistocracy appears to be compatible with republican liberty, if not republican concerns for equality. Consider a form of epistocracy in which suffrage is restricted only to citizens who can pass a test of basic political knowledge. Suppose only the top 50 percent of citizens pass the exam. Will this top half of voters thus dominate the other half? It seems unlikely. An epistocracy could retain the other “enhancements” republicans favor—deliberative fora, citizens’ courts of appeal, limits on campaign spending, and so on. If these procedural checks and balances would prevent government officials or special interest groups from dominating citizens when everyone is allowed to participate, it is not clear why they would suddenly fail if ignorant or misinformed citizens were not allowed to vote.

Further, ignorant and misinformed citizens are only contingently excluded. They can acquire rights to vote and participate; they just have not. In both a democracy and an epistocracy, “Elected officials serve, if not at the pleasure of citizens, at least in the absence of gross displeasure.” ( Brennan and Lomasky, 2006 : 234). If an epistocracy starts to mistreat ignorant citizens, they could acquire voting rights by studying harder. And if they are not able to study hard enough to acquire such rights, it is unclear why giving them voting rights would protect them. They are, by hypothesis, badly informed. Even if they could vote, they mostly likely do not have the background social scientific knowledge needed to cast their votes in ways that would protect them.

5. Conclusion

Constitutional democracy is strongly correlated with liberal freedom. Democracies generally have a high degree of respect for civil liberties, and a moderate degree of respect for economic freedom. Democracy might also be valuable for other reasons—for example, perhaps it is essential or useful for realizing the right kinds of equality, or perhaps democracies tend to make good political decisions.

But most people tend to equate freedom with democracy and democracy with freedom. Here, we should be more skeptical. While democracy empowers or grants law-making autonomy to collectives, it does not follow that it empowers or grants autonomy to the individuals who form part of those collectives. Widespread democratic participation might be a good thing, but describing it as constitutive or essential to personal liberty is a stretch.

E.g., Bolivia and Venezuela’s political rights and civil rights scores have been declining gradually at the same rate for the past ten years.

Raaflaub (2003 : 222–223) disagrees—he argues that the ancient Greeks were in fact concerned with modern civil rights as well.

One might object that individual voters can “change the mandate.” But political scientists are almost uniformly skeptical that mandates exist. See, for instance, Dahl, 1990 ; Noel, 2010 ; Grossback, Peterson, and Stimson, 2006 ; Grossback, Peterson, and Stimson, 2007 .

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Freedom — My Understanding of the Freedom of Choice

My Understanding of The Freedom of Choice

Categories: Freedom

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Published: Sep 12, 2018

Words: 392 | Page: 1 | 2 min read

Freedom of Choice Essay: Hook Examples

Startling Statistic: Did you know that in some parts of the world, expressing your opinion can lead to imprisonment or worse? The stark contrast in the exercise of freedom of speech worldwide highlights the value and significance of this fundamental right.
Historical Parallels: Throughout history, champions of free speech have fought against censorship and oppression. From Voltaire’s battle against censorship in 18th-century France to modern-day whistleblowers, the struggle for free expression remains a beacon of hope for change.
Personal Connection: Growing up, I always took the freedom to speak my mind for granted. It wasn’t until I encountered a situation where my voice was stifled that I truly appreciated the power and importance of free speech. Join me as I recount this eye-opening experience.
Contemporary Relevance: In today’s interconnected world, the battle for freedom of speech is more complex than ever. With the rise of social media and online platforms, issues of censorship, hate speech, and misinformation challenge our understanding of this cherished right.
The Power of Unpopular Speech: Freedom of speech isn’t just about protecting popular opinions; it’s about safeguarding the right to dissent and challenge prevailing norms. Explore with me how society’s progress often depends on those willing to voice unpopular truths.

Works Cited

Berlin, I. (1969). Four essays on liberty. Oxford University Press.
Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. John W. Parker and Son.
Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. Hackett Publishing.
Pettit, P. (2012). On the people’s terms: A republican theory and model of democracy. Cambridge University Press.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1971). Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of Philosophy, 68(1), 5-20.
Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice (rev. ed.). Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. (1992). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press.
Berlin, I. (1969). Two concepts of liberty. In I. Berlin (Ed.), Four essays on liberty (pp. 118-172). Oxford University Press.
Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere. Oxford University Press.
Oshana, M. (2006). Personal autonomy in society. Ashgate Publishing.

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Locke On Freedom

John Locke’s views on the nature of freedom of action and freedom of will have played an influential role in the philosophy of action and in moral psychology. Locke offers distinctive accounts of action and forbearance, of will and willing, of voluntary (as opposed to involuntary) actions and forbearances, and of freedom (as opposed to necessity). These positions lead him to dismiss the traditional question of free will as absurd, but also raise new questions, such as whether we are (or can be) free in respect of willing and whether we are free to will what we will, questions to which he gives divergent answers. Locke also discusses the (much misunderstood) question of what determines the will, providing one answer to it at one time, and then changing his mind upon consideration of some constructive criticism proposed by his friend, William Molyneux. In conjunction with this change of mind, Locke introduces a new doctrine (concerning the ability to suspend the fulfillment of one’s desires) that has caused much consternation among his interpreters, in part because it threatens incoherence. As we will see, Locke’s initial views do suffer from clear difficulties that are remedied by his later change of mind, all without introducing incoherence.

Note on the text: Locke’s theory of freedom is contained in Book II, Chapter xxi of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . The chapter underwent five revisions in Locke’s lifetime [E1 (1689), E2 (1694), E3 (1695), E4 (1700), and E5 (1706)], with the last edition published posthumously. Significant changes, including a considerable lengthening of the chapter, occur in E2; and important changes appear in E5.

1. Actions and Forbearances

2. will and willing, 3. voluntary vs. involuntary action/forbearance, 4. freedom and necessity, 5. free will, 6. freedom in respect of willing, 7. freedom to will, 8. determination of the will, 9. the doctrine of suspension, 10. compatibilism or incompatibilism, select primary sources, select secondary sources, additional secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries.

For Locke, the question of whether human beings are free is the question of whether human beings are free with respect to their actions and forbearances . As he puts it:

[T]he Idea of Liberty , is the Idea of a Power in any Agent to do or forbear any Action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferr’d to the other. (E1–4 II.xxi.8: 237)

In order to understand Locke’s conception of freedom, then, we need to understand his conception of action and forbearance.

There are three main accounts of Locke’s theory of action. According to what we might call the “Doing” theory of action, actions are things that we do (actively), as contrasted to things that merely happen to us (passively). If someone pushes my arm up, then my arm rises, but, one might say, I did not raise it. That my arm rose is something that happened to me, not something I did . By contrast, when I signal to a friend who has been looking for me, I do something inasmuch as I am not a mere passive recipient of a stimulus over which I have no control. According to some interpreters (e.g., Stuart 2013: 405, 451), Locke’s actions are doings in this sense. According to the “Composite” or “Millian” theory of action, an action is “[n]ot one thing, but a series of two things; the state of mind called a volition, followed by an effect” (Mill 1974 [1843]: 55). On this view, for example, the action of raising my hand is composed of (i) willing to produce the effect of my hand’s rising and (ii) the effect itself, where (ii) results from (i). According to some interpreters (arguably, Lowe 1986: 120–121; Lowe 1995: 141—though it is possible that Lowe’s theory applies only to voluntary actions), Locke’s actions are composite in this sense. Finally, according to what we might call the “Deflationary” conception of action, actions are simply motions of bodies or operations of minds.

Some of what Locke says suggests that he holds the “Doing” theory of action: “when [a Body] is set in motion it self, that Motion is rather a Passion, than an Action in it”, for “when the Ball obeys the stroke of a Billiard-stick, it is not any action of the Ball, but bare passion” (E1–5 II.xxi.4: 235—see also E4–5 II.xxi.72: 285–286). Here Locke is clearly working with a sense of “action” according to which actions are opposed to passions. But, on reflection, it is unlikely that this is what Locke means by “action” when he writes about voluntary/involuntary actions and freedom of action. For Locke describes “a Man striking himself, or his Friend, by a Convulsive motion of his Arm, which it is not in his Power…to…forbear” as “acting” (E1–5 II.xxi.9: 238), and describes the convulsive leg motion caused by “that odd Disease called Chorea Sancti Viti [St. Vitus’s Dance]” as an “Action” (E1–5 II.xxi.11: 239). It would be a mistake to think of these convulsive motions as “doings”, for they are clearly things that “happen” to us in just the way that it happens to me that my arm rises when someone else raises it. Examples of convulsive actions also suggest that the Millian account of Locke’s theory of action is mistaken. For in the case of convulsive motion, there is no volition that one’s limbs move; indeed, if there is volition in such cases, it is usually a volition that one’s limbs not move. Such actions, then, cannot be composed of a volition and the motion that is willed, for the relevant volition is absent (more on volition below).

We are therefore left with the Deflationary conception of action, which is well supported by the text. There are, Locke says, “but two sorts of Action, whereof we have any Idea , viz. Thinking and Motion” (E1–5 II.xxi.4: 235—see also E1–5 II.xxi.8: 237 and E4–5 II.xxi.72: 285); “Thinking, and Motion…are the two Ideas which comprehend in them all Action” (E1–5 II.xxii.10: 293). It may be that, in the sense in which “action” is opposed to “passion”, some corporeal motions and mental operations, being produced by external causes rather than self-initiated, are not actions. But that is not the sense in which all motions and thoughts are “called and counted Actions ” in Locke’s theory of action (E4–5 II.xxi.72: 285). As seems clear, convulsive motions are actions inasmuch as they are motions, and thoughts that occur in the mind unbidden are actions inasmuch as they are mental operations.

What, then, according to Locke, are forbearances? On some interpretations (close counterparts to the Millian conception of action), Locke takes forbearances to be voluntary not-doings (e.g., Stuart 2013: 407) or voluntary omissions to act (e.g., Lowe 1995: 123). There are texts that suggest as much:

sitting still , or holding one’s peace , when walking or speaking are propos’d, [are] mere forbearances, requiring…the determination of the Will . (E2–5 II.xxi.28: 248)

However, Locke distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary forbearances (E2–5 II.xxi.5: 236), and it makes no sense to characterize an involuntary forbearance as an involuntary voluntary not-doing. So it is unlikely that Locke thinks of forbearances as voluntary not-doings. This leaves the Deflationary conception of forbearance, according to which a forbearance is the opposite of an action, namely an episode of rest or absence of thought. On this conception, to say that someone forbore running is to say that she did not run, not that she voluntarily failed to run. Every forbearance would be an instance of inaction, not a refraining.

In E2–5, Locke stipulates that he uses the word “action” to “comprehend the forbearance too of any Action proposed”, in order to “avoid the multiplying of words” (E2–5 II.xxi.28: 248). The reason he so stipulates is not that he literally takes forbearances to be actions (as he puts it, they “pass for” actions), but that most everything that he wants to say about actions (in particular, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions, and the account of freedom of action) applies pari passu to forbearances (see below).

Within the category of actions, Locke distinguishes between those that are voluntary and those that are involuntary. To understand this distinction, we need to understand Locke’s account of the will and his account of willing (or volition). For Locke, the will is a power (ability, faculty—see E1–5 II.xxi.20: 244) possessed by a person (or by that person’s mind). Locke explains how we come by the idea of power (in Humean vein, as the result of observation of constant conjunctions—“like Changes [being] made, in the same things, by like Agents, and by the like ways” (E1–5 II.xxi.1: 233)), but does not offer a theory of the nature of power. What we are told is that “ Powers are Relations” (E1–5 II.xxi.19: 243), relations “to Action or Change” (E1–5 II.xxi.3: 234), and that powers are either active (powers to make changes) or passive (powers to receive changes) (E1–5 II.xxi.2: 234). In this sense, the will is an active relation to actions.

Locke’s predecessors had thought of the will as intimately related to the faculty of desire or appetite. For the Scholastics (whose works Locke read as a student at Oxford), the will is the power of rational appetite. For Thomas Hobbes (by whom Locke was deeply influenced even though this was not something he could advertise, because Hobbes was a pariah in Locke’s intellectual and political circles), the will is simply the power of desire itself. Remnants of this desiderative conception of the will remain in Locke’s theory, particularly in the first edition of the Essay . Here, for example, is Locke’s official E1 account of the will:

This Power the Mind has to prefer the consideration of any Idea to the not considering it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest. (E1 II.xxi.5: 236)

And here is Locke’s official E1 account of preferring:

Well, but what is this Preferring ? It is nothing but the being pleased more with the one , than the other . (E1 II.xxi.28: 248)

So, in E1, the will is the mind’s power to be more pleased with the consideration of an idea than with the not considering it, or to be more pleased with the motion of a part of one’s body than with its remaining at rest. When we lack something that would deliver more pleasure than we currently experience, we become uneasy at its absence. And this kind of uneasiness (or pain: E1–5 II.vii.1: 128), is what Locke describes as desire (E1–5 II.xx.6: 230; E2–5 II.xxi.31–32: 251) (though also as “joined with”, “scarce distinguishable from”, and a “cause” of desire—see Section 8 below). So, in E1, the will is the mind’s power to desire or want the consideration of an idea more than the not considering it, or to desire or want the motion of a part of one’s body more than its remaining at rest. (At E2–5 II.xxi.5: 236, Locke adds “and vice versâ ”, to clarify that it can also happen, even according to the E1 account, that one prefers not considering an idea to considering it, or not moving to moving.) [ 1 ]

In keeping with this conception of the will as desire, Locke in E1 then defines an exercise of the will, which he calls “willing” or “volition”, as an “actual preferring” of one thing to another (E1 II.xxi.5: 236). For example, I have the power to prefer the upward motion of my arm to its remaining at rest by my side. This power, in E1, is one aspect of my will. When I exercise this power, I actually prefer the upward motion of my arm to its remaining at rest, i.e., I am more pleased with my arm’s upward motion than I am with its continuing to rest. This is what Locke, in E1, thinks of as my willing the upward motion of my arm (or, as he sometimes puts it, my willing or volition to move my arm upward ).

In E2–5, Locke explicitly gives up this conception of the will and willing, explaining why he does so, making corresponding changes in the text of the Essay , even while leaving passages that continue to suggest the desiderative conception. He writes: “[T]hough a Man would preferr flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it?” (E2–5 II.xxi.15: 241). The thought here is that, as Locke (rightly) recognizes, my being more pleased with flying than walking does not consist in (or even entail) my willing to fly. This is in large part because it is necessarily implied in willing motion of a certain sort that one exert dominion that one takes oneself to have (E2–5 II.xxi.15: 241), that “the mind [endeavor] to give rise…to [the motion], which it takes to be in its power” (E2–5 II.xxi.30: 250). So if I do not believe that it is in my power to fly, then it is impossible for me to will the motion of flying, even though I might be more pleased with flying than I am with any alternative. Locke concludes (with the understatement) that “ Preferring which seems perhaps best to express the Act of Volition , does it not precisely” (E2–5 II.xxi.15: 240–241).

In addition, Locke points out that it is possible for “the Will and Desire [to] run counter”. For example, as a result of being coerced or threatened, I might will to persuade someone of something, even though I desire that I not succeed in persuading her. Or, suffering from gout, I might desire to be eased of the pain in my feet, and yet at the same time, recognizing that the translation of such pain would affect my health for the worse, will that I not be eased of my foot pain. In concluding that “ desiring and willing are two distinct Acts of the mind”, Locke must be assuming (reasonably) that it is not possible to will an action and its contrary at the same time (E2–5 II.xxi.30: 250). [ 2 ]

With what conception of the will and willing does Locke replace the abandoned desiderative conception? The answer is that in E2–5 Locke describes the will as a kind of directive or commanding faculty, the power to direct (or issue commands to) one’s body or mind: it is, he writes,

a Power to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our minds, and motions of our Bodies, barely by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or as it were commanding the doing or not doing such or such particular action. (E2–5 II.xxi.5: 236)

Consonant with this non-desiderative, directive conception of the will, Locke claims that

Volition , or Willing , is an act of the Mind directing its thought to the production of any Action, and thereby exerting its power to produce it, (E2–5 II.xxi.28: 248)

Volition is nothing, but that particular determination of the mind, whereby, barely by a thought, the mind endeavours to give rise, continuation, or stop to any Action, which it takes to be in its power. (E2–5 II.xxi.30: 250)

Every volition, then, is a volition to act or to forbear , where willing to act is a matter of commanding one’s body to move or one’s mind to think, and willing to forbear is a matter of commanding one’s body to rest or one’s mind not to think. Unlike a desiderative power, which is essentially passive (as involving the ability to be more pleased with one thing than another), the will in E2–5 is an intrinsically active power, the exercise of which involves the issuing of mental commands directed at one’s own body and mind.

Within the category of actions/forbearances, Locke distinguishes between those that are voluntary and those that are involuntary. Locke does not define voluntariness and involuntariness in E1, but he does in E2–5:

The forbearance or performance of [an] action, consequent to such order or command of the mind is called Voluntary . And whatsoever action is performed without such a thought of the mind is called Involuntary . (E2–4 II.xxi.5: 236—in E5, “or performance” is omitted from the first sentence)

Locke is telling us that what makes an action/forbearance voluntary is that it is consequent to a volition, and that what makes an action/forbearance involuntary is that it is performed without a volition. The operative words here are “consequent to” and “without”. What do they mean? (Henceforth, following Locke’s lead, I will not distinguish between actions and forbearances unless the context calls for it.)

We can begin with something Locke says only in E1:

Volition, or the Act of Willing, signifies nothing properly, but the actual producing of something that is voluntary. (E1 II.xxi.33: 259)

On reflection, this is mistaken, but it does provide a clue to Locke’s conception of voluntariness. The mistake (of which Locke likely became aware, given that the statement clashes with the rest of his views and was removed from E2–5) is that not every instance of willing an action is followed by the action itself. To use one of Locke’s own examples, if I am locked in a room and will to leave, my volition will not result in my leaving (E1–5 II.xxi.10: 238). So willing cannot signify the “actual producing” of a voluntary action. However, it is reasonable to assume that, for Locke, willing will “produce” a voluntary action if nothing hinders the willed episode of motion or thought. And this makes it likely that Locke takes a voluntary action to be not merely temporally consequent to, but actually caused by, the right kind of volition (Yaffe 2000; for a contrary view, see Hoffman 2005).

Understandably, some commentators have worried about the problem of deviant causation, and whether Locke has an answer to it (e.g., Lowe 1995: 122–123; Yaffe 2000: 104; Lowe 2005: 141–147). The problem is that if I let go of a climbing rope, not as a direct result of willing to let it go, but as a result of being discomfited/paralyzed/shaken by the volition itself, then my letting go of the rope would not count as voluntary even though it was caused by a volition to let go of the rope. The solution to this problem, if there is one, is to claim that, in order for an action to count as voluntary, it is not sufficient for it to be caused by the right kind of volition: in addition, it is necessary that the action be caused in the right way (or non-deviantly) by the right kind of volition. Spelling out the necessary and sufficient conditions for non-deviant causation is a steep climb. Chances are that Locke was no more aware of this problem, and was in no better position to answer it, than anyone else was before Chisholm (1966), Taylor (1966) and Davidson (1980) brought it to the attention of the philosophical community.

Locke’s view, then, is that an action is voluntary inasmuch as its performance is caused by a volition. The volition, as we have so far presumed, must be of the right kind. For example, Locke would not count the motion of my left arm as voluntary if it were caused by a volition that my right arm move (or a volition that my left arm remain at rest). Locke assumes (reasonably) that in order for an action A to be voluntary, it must be caused (in the right way) by a volition that A occur (or, as Locke sometimes puts it, by a volition to do A ).

What, then, on Locke’s view, is it for an action to be involuntary ? Locke says that an involuntary action is performed “without” a volition. This might suggest that an action of mine is involuntary only when I have no volition that the action occur. Perhaps this is what Locke believes. But it is more reasonable to suppose that Locke would also count as involuntary an action that, though preceded by the right kind of volition, is either not caused by the volition or caused by the volition but not in the right way. [ 3 ]

Some commentators have worried that Locke’s “locked room” example is a problematic illustration of his theory of voluntariness, at least as applied to forbearances (e.g., Lowe 1986: 154–157; Stuart 2013: 420). Locke imagines a man who is “carried, while fast asleep, into a Room, where is a Person he longs to see and speak with”, but who is “there locked fast in, beyond his Power to get out: he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable Company” and “stays willingly” in the room. Locke makes clear that, on his view, the man’s remaining in the room is a voluntary forbearance to leave (E1–5 II.xxi.10: 238). But one might worry that if the man is unable to leave the room, then it is false to say that his volition not to leave causes his not leaving. At best, it might be argued, the man’s not leaving is overdetermined (Stuart 2013: 420). But, as some authors have recently argued, cases of overdetermination are rightly described as involving two (or more) causes, not a single joint cause or no cause at all (see, e.g., Schaffer 2003). On such a view of overdetermination, it is unproblematic for Locke to describe the man in the locked room as caused to remain both by his volition to remain and by the door’s being locked. [ 4 ]

Another problem that has been raised for Locke stems from his example of a man who falls into a river when a bridge breaks under him. Locke describes the man as willing not to fall, even as he is falling (E1–5 II.xxi.9: 238). The worry here is that Locke holds that the objects of volition are actions or forbearances, so the man would need to be described as willing to forbear from falling. But, it might be argued, falling is not an action, for it is something that merely happens to the man, and not an exercise of his agency; so his willingly forbearing from falling would be willingly forbearing from something that is not an action, and this is impossible (Stuart 2013: 405). The answer to this worry is that falling is an action, according to Locke’s Deflationary conception of action, which counts the motion of one’s body in any direction as a bona fide action (see Section 1 above).

Some commentators think that Lockean freedom (or, as Locke also calls it, “liberty”) is a single power, the power to do what one wills (Yolton 1970: 144; D. Locke 1975: 96; O’Higgins 1976: 119—see Chappell 1994: 103). However, as Locke describes it, freedom is a “two-way” power, really a combination of two conditional powers belonging to an agent, that is, to someone endowed with a will (see Chappell 2007: 142). (A tennis ball, for example, “has not Liberty , is not a free Agent”, because it is incapable of volition (E1–5 II.xxi.9: 238).) In E1, Locke’s definition reflects his conception of the will as a power of preferring X to Y , or being more pleased with X than with Y . But in E2–5, Locke’s definition reflects his modified conception of the will as a power to issue commands to one’s body or mind (see Section 2 above):

[S]o far as a Man has a power to think, or not to think; to move, or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a Man Free . (E2–5 II.xxi.8: 237) So that the Idea of Liberty , is the Idea of a Power in any Agent to do or forbear any particular Action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferr’d to the other. (E2–5 II.xxi.8: 237) Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition , or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct. (E2–5 II.xxi.10: 238) Liberty …is the power a Man has to do or forbear doing any particular Action, according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in the Mind, which is the same thing as to say, according as he himself wills it. (E1–5 II.xxi.15: 241)

The central claim here is that a human being (person, agent) is free with respect to a particular action A (or forbearance to perform A ) inasmuch as (i) if she wills to do A then she has the power to do A and (ii) if she wills to forbear doing A then she has the power to forbear doing A (see, e.g., Chappell 1994: 103). [ 5 ] So, for example, a woman in a locked room is not free with respect to the act of leaving (or with respect to the forbearance to leave) because she does not have the power to leave if and when she wills to leave, and a woman who is falling (the bridge under her having crumbled) is not free with respect to the forbearance to fall (or with respect to the act of falling) because she does not have the power to forbear falling if she wills not to fall (E1–5 II.xxi.9–10: 238). (Locke describes agents who are unfree with respect to some action as acting under, or by, necessity—E1–5 II.xxi.8: 238; E1–5 II.xxi.9: 238.) But if the door of the room is unlocked, then the woman in the room is able to stay if she wills to stay, and is able to leave if she wills to leave: she is therefore both free with respect to staying and free with respect to leaving.

Notice that freedom, on Locke’s conception of it, is a property of substances (persons, human beings, agents). This simply follows from the fact that freedom is a dual power and from the fact that “ Powers belong only to Agents , and are Attributes only of Substances ” (E1–5 II.xxi.16: 241). At no point does Locke offer an account of performing actions or forbearances freely , as if freedom were a way of performing an action or a way of forbearing to perform an action. (For a contrary view, see LoLordo 2012: 27.)

Locke does write that

[w]here-ever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a Man’s power; where-ever doing or not doing, will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not Free . (E2–5 II.xxi.8: 237)

The “follow upon” language might suggest a counterfactual analysis of the claim that an agent has the power to do A if she wills to do A , namely, that if she were to will to do A then she would do A (e.g., Lowe 1995: 129; Stuart 2013: 407—for a similar account that trades the subjunctive conditionals for indicative conditionals, see Yaffe 2000: 15). The counterfactual analysis is tempting, but also unlikely to capture Locke’s meaning, especially if he has a Deflationary conception of action/forbearance (see Section 1 above). It might happen, for example, that I am prevented (by chains or a force field) from raising my arm, but that if I were to will that my arm rise, you would immediately (break the chains or disable the force field and) raise my arm. Under these conditions, I would not be free with respect to my arm’s rising, but it would be true that if I were to will that my arm rise, then my arm would rise. So Locke’s dual power conception of freedom of action is not captured by any counterfactual conditional or pair of counterfactual conditionals.

Does Locke think that there is a conceptual connection between freedom of action and voluntary action? It might be thought that freedom with respect to a particular action requires that the action be voluntary, so that if an action is not voluntary then one is not free with respect to it. In defense of this, one might point to Locke’s falling man, whose falling is not voluntary and who is also not free with respect to the act of falling (Stuart 2013: 408). But the falling man’s unfreedom with respect to the act of falling is not explained by the involuntariness of his falling. In general, it is possible for one’s action to be involuntary even as one is free with respect to it. Imagine that you let your four-year old daughter raise your arm (just for fun). According to Locke’s conception of voluntariness, the motion of your arm is not voluntary, because it is not caused by any volition of yours (indeed, we can even imagine that you do not even have a volition that your arm rise). But, according to Locke’s conception of freedom, you are most certainly free with respect to your arm’s rising: (i) if you will that your arm rise, you have the power to raise it, and (ii) if you will that your arm not rise, you have the power to forbear raising it.

Voluntariness, then, is not necessary for freedom; but it is also not sufficient for freedom, as Locke’s “locked room” and “paralytick” cases show. The man in the locked room wills to stay and talk to the other person in the room, and this volition is causally responsible for his staying in the room: on Locke’s theory, his remaining in the room is, therefore, voluntary. But the man in the locked room “is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone” (E1–5 II.xxi.10: 238). The reason is that even if the man wills to leave, he does not have the power to leave. Similarly, if the paralyzed person wills to remain at rest (thinking, mistakenly, that he could move if he willed to move) and his remaining at rest is caused (at least in part) by his volition not to move, then his “sitting still…is truly voluntary”. But in this case, says Locke, “there is want of Freedom ” because “a Palsie [hinders] his Legs from obeying the determination of his Mind, if it would thereby transferr his Body to another Place” (E2–5 II.xxi.11: 239): that is, the paralyzed person is unable to move even if he wills to move.

Thus far, we have been focusing on freedom with respect to motion or rest of one’s body . But, as we have seen, Locke thinks that actions encompass acts of mind (in addition to acts of body). So, in addition to thinking that some acts of mind are voluntary (e.g., the mental acts of combining and abstracting ideas involved in the production of abstract ideas of mixed modes—E2–5 II.xxxii.12: 387–388), Locke thinks that we are free with respect to some mental actions (and their forbearances). For example, if I am able to combine two ideas at will, and I am able to forbear combining two ideas if I will not to combine them, then I am free with respect to the mental action of combining two ideas. It can also happen that we are not free with respect to our mental acts:

A Man on the Rack, is not at liberty to lay by the Idea of pain, and divert himself with other Contemplations. (E4–5 II.xxi.12: 239)

In this case, even though the man on the rack might will to be rid of the pain, he does not have the power to avoid feeling it. [ 6 ]

Is the will free? This question made sense to Scholastic philosophers (including, e.g., Bramhall, who engaged in a protracted debate on the subject with Hobbes), who tended not to distinguish between the question of whether the will is free and the question of whether the mind or soul is free with respect to willing, and, indeed, some of whom thought that acts cannot themselves be free (or freely done) unless the will to do them is itself free. But, according to Locke, the question, if literally understood, “is altogether improper” (E1–5 II.xxi.14: 240). This follows directly from Locke’s account of the will and his account of freedom. The will is a power (in E2–5, the power to order the motion or rest of one’s body and the power to order the consideration or non-consideration of an idea—see Section 2 above), and freedom is a power, namely the power to do or not do as one wills (see Section 4 above). But, as Locke emphasizes, the question of whether one power has another power is “a Question at first sight too grosly absurd to make a Dispute, or need an Answer”. The reason is that it is absurd to suppose that powers are capable of having powers, for

Powers belong only to Agents , and are Attributes only of Substances , and not of Powers themselves. (E1–5 II.xxi.16: 241)

The question of whether the will is free, then, presupposes that the will is a substance, rather than a power, and therefore makes no more sense than the question of whether a man’s “Sleep be Swift, or his Vertue square” (E1–5 II.xxi.14: 240). To suppose that the will is free (or unfree!) is therefore to make a category mistake (see Ryle 1949: chapter 1).

The fact that it makes no sense to suppose that the will itself is free (or unfree) does not entail that there are no significant questions to be asked about the relation between freedom and the will. Indeed, Locke thinks that there are two such questions, and that these are the questions that capture “what is meant, when it is disputed, Whether the will be free” (E2–5 II.xxi.22: 245). The first (discussed at E1–5 II.xxi.23–24) is whether agents (human beings, persons) are free with respect to willing-one-way-or-another; more particularly, whether agents are able, if they so will, to avoid willing one way or the other with respect to a proposed action. The second (discussed at E1–5 II.xxi.25) is whether agents are free with respect to willing-a-particular-action. The majority of commentators think that Locke answers both of these questions negatively, at least in E1–4 (see Chappell 1994, Lowe 1995, Jolley 1999, Glauser 2003, Stuart 2013, and Leisinger 2017), and some think that Locke then qualifies his answer(s) in E2–5 in a way that potentially introduces inconsistency into his moral psychology (e.g., Chappell 1994). Other commentators think that Locke answers the first question negatively for most actions, but with one important qualification that is clarified and made more explicit in E5, and that he answers the second question positively, all without falling into inconsistency (Rickless 2000; Garrett 2015). What follows is a summary of the interpretive controversies. In the rest of this Section, we focus on the first question. In the next, we focus on the second question.

In E1–4, Locke states his answer to the first question thus:

[ A ] Man in respect of willing any Action in his power once proposed to his Thoughts cannot be free . (E1–4 II.xxi.23: 245)

His argument for the necessity of having either a volition that action A occur or a volition that action A not occur, once A has been proposed to one’s thoughts, is simple and clever: (1) Either A will occur or A will not occur; (2) If A occurs, this will be the result of the agent having willed A to occur; (3) If A does not occur, this will be the result of the agent having willed A not to occur; therefore, (4) The agent necessarily wills one way or the other with respect to A ’s occurrence (see Chappell 1994: 105–106). It follows directly that “in respect of the act of willing , a Man is not free” (E1–4 II.xxi.23: 245). For, first, “ Willing , or Volition [is] an Action” (E1–5 II.xxi.23: 245—this because actions comprise motions of the body and operations of mind, and volition is one of the most important mental operations—E1–5 II.vi.2: 128), and, second, freedom with respect to action A , as Locke defines it, consists in (i) the power to do A if one wills to do A and (ii) the power not to do A if one wills not to do A . Thus, if an agent does not have the power to avoid willing one way or the other with respect to A (even if the agent wills to avoid willing one way or the other with respect to A ), then the agent is not free with respect to willing one way or the other with respect to A .

In his New Essays on Human Understanding (ready for publication in 1704, but not published then because that was the year of Locke’s death) Gottfried Leibniz famously questions premise (3) of this argument:

I would have thought that one can suspend one’s choice, and that this happens quite often, especially when other thoughts interrupt one’s deliberation. Thus, although it is necessary that the action about which one is deliberating must exist or not exist, it doesn’t follow at all that one necessarily has to decide on its existence or non-existence. For its non-existence could well come about in the absence of any decision. (Leibniz 1704 [1981]: 181)

Leibniz’s worry is that, even if one is thinking about whether or not to do A , it is often possible to postpone willing whether to do A , and the non-occurrence of A might well result from such postponement. Under these conditions, it would be false to say that A ’s non-occurrence results from any sort of volition that A not occur. Leibniz illustrates the claim with an amusing reference to a case that the Areopagites (judges on the Areopagus, the highest court of appeals in Ancient Athens) were having trouble deciding, their solution (i.e., de facto , but not de jure , acquittal) being to adjourn it “to a date in the distant future, giving themselves a hundred years to think about it” (Leibniz 1704 [1981]: 181).

It is something of a concern, then, that Locke himself appears committed to agreeing with Leibniz’s criticism of his own argument, at least in E2–5. For in E2–5 (but not in E1) Locke emphasizes his acceptance of the doctrine of suspension, according to which any agent has the “power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires”, during which time the will is not yet “determined to action” (E2–5 II.xxi.47: 263). That is, Locke acknowledges in E2–5, even as he does not remove or alter the argument of II.xxi.23 in E2–4, that it is possible to postpone willing with respect to whether to will one way or the other with respect to some proposed action (see Chappell 1994: 106–107).

However, Locke makes changes in E5 that have suggested to some commentators how he would avoid Leibniz’s criticism without giving up the doctrine of suspension. Recall Locke’s answer to the first question:

[A] Man in respect of willing any Action in his power once proposed to his Thoughts cannot be free. (E1–4 II.xxi.23: 245)

Here, now, is Locke’s restatement of his answer in E5:

[A] Man in respect of willing , or the Act of Volition, when any Action in his power is once proposed to his Thoughts , as presently to be done, cannot be free. (E5 II.xxi.23: 245—added material italicized)

The crucial addition here is the phrase “as presently to be done”. In E5, Locke is not saying that it is with respect to willing one way or the other with respect to any proposed action that an agent is not free: what he is saying is that it is with respect to willing one way or the other with respect to any proposed action as presently to be done that an agent is not free. Some actions that are proposed to us are to occur at the time of proposal : as I am singing, a friend might propose that I stop singing right now . Other actions that are proposed to us are to occur at a time later than the time of proposal : at the beginning of a long bicycle trip, a friend might propose that we take a rest once we have reached our destination. Locke is telling us in E5 that premise (3) is supposed to apply to the former, not to the latter, sort of actions. If this is right, then it is no accident that Locke’s own illustration of the argument of II.xxi.23 involves “a Man that is walking, to whom it is proposed to give off walking” (E1–5 II.xxi.24: 246).

So, as Locke incipiently recognizes as early as E1 but explicitly underlines in E5, his initial answer to the first question is an overgeneralization, and needs to be restricted to those actions that are proposed to us as presently to be done (see Rickless 2000: 49–55; Glauser 2003: 710; Garrett 2015: 274–277). But it is also possible that Locke comes to recognize, and eventually underline, a second restriction. At the moment, I am sitting in a chair. In a few minutes, my children will walk in and propose that I get up and make dinner. I am busy, my mind is occupied, so I will likely postpone (perhaps only for a few minutes) making a decision about whether to get up. The result of such postponement is that I will not get up right away, but this will not be because I have willed not to get up right away. Again, it seems that premise (3) is false, for reasons similar to the ones described by Leibniz. But this time, the relevant action (getting up) is proposed as presently to be done. Locke’s E5 emendations do not explicitly address this sort of example.

However, in E2–5, but not in E1, Locke emphasizes the fact that in his “walking man” example, the man either “continues the Action [of walking], or puts an end to it” (E2–5 II.xxi.24: 246). This suggests a different restriction, on top of the “as presently to be done” restriction. It may be that Locke is thinking that premise (3) applies, not to actions of all kinds, but only to processes in which one is currently engaged. The walking man is already in motion, constantly putting one leg in front of the other. When it is proposed to him that he give off walking, he has no option but to will one way or the other with respect to whether to give off walking: if he stops walking, this will be because he willed that his walking cease; and if he continues to walk, this will be because he willed that his walking continue. Either way, he must will one way or the other with respect to whether to stop walking. By contrast, when I am sitting in my chair, I am not engaged in a process: I am (or, at least, my body is) simply at rest. It is for this reason that it is possible for me to avoid willing with respect to whether to get up right now: processes require volition to secure their continuation, but mere states (non-processes) do not (see Rickless 2000: 49–55; for a contrary view, see Glauser 2003: 710).

Locke’s considered answer to the first question, then, is this: (i) when an action that is a process in which the agent is currently engaged is proposed as presently to be continued or stopped, the agent is not free with respect to willing one way or the other with respect to its continuing, but (ii) when an action is not a process in which the agent is currently engaged or is proposed as to be done sometime in the future, then it is possible for the agent to be free with respect to willing one way or the other with respect to its performance or non-performance. Given that, as Locke puts it in E5, the vast majority of voluntary actions “that succeed one another every moment that we are awake” (E5 II.xxi.24: 246) are (i)-actions rather than (ii)-actions, it makes sense for him to summarize his answer to the first question as that it is “in most cases [that] a Man is not at Liberty to forbear the act of volition” (E5 II.xxi.56: 270). But, as Locke also emphasizes, one has the ability, at least with respect to (ii)-actions, to suspend willing. So there is no inconsistency at the heart of Locke’s theory of freedom in respect of willing.

The second question regarding the relation between freedom and the will that Locke takes to be significant is “ Whether a Man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases , Motion or Rest ” (E1–5 II.xxi.25: 247). Consider a particular action A . What Locke is asking is whether an agent is free with respect to the action of willing that A occur . For example, suppose that I am sitting in a chair and that A is the action of walking to the fridge. Locke wants to know whether I am free with respect to willing the action of walking to the fridge.

Most commentators think that Locke’s answer to this question is NO. The main evidence for this interpretation is what Locke says about the question immediately after raising it:

This Question carries the absurdity of it so manifestly in it self, that one might thereby sufficiently be convinced, that Liberty concerns not the Will. (E5 II.xxi.25: 247)

It is tempting to suppose that the thought that “Liberty concerns not the Will” is the thought that agents are not free to will, and that Locke is saying that we are driven to this thought because the second question is absurd, in the sense of demanding a negative answer.

But it is difficult to make sense of what Locke goes on to say in II.xxi.25 if he is interpreted as answering the second question negatively. Section 25 continues:

For to ask, whether a Man be at liberty to will either Motion, or Rest; Speaking, or Silence; which he pleases, is to ask, whether a Man can will , what he wills ; or be pleased with what he is pleased with. (E1–5 II.xxi.25: 247)

Locke says that the second question reduces to another that can be put in two different ways: whether a man can will what he wills, and whether a man can be pleased with what pleases him. (The reason it can be put in these two different ways, at least in E1, is that Locke there adopts a desiderative theory of willing, according to which willing an action is a matter of being more pleased with the action than with its forbearance.) But asking whether a man can will what he wills, or whether a man can be pleased with what he is pleased with, is similar to asking whether a man can steal what he steals. And the answer to all of these questions is: “OF COURSE!”

It is obvious that whatever it is that a man actually steals he can steal. Similarly, it is obvious that whatever it is that a man actually wills (or is actually pleased with) is something that he can will (or can be pleased with). The reason is that it is a self-evident maxim (just as self-evident as the maxim that whatever is, is—see E1–5 IV.vii.4: 592–594) that whatever is actual is possible. Locke, it seems, wishes to answer the second question in the affirmative!

This raises the issue of what Locke could possibly mean, then, when he describes the second question as “absurd”. One possibility is that, for Locke, a question counts as absurd not only when the answer to it is obviously in the negative (think: “Is the will free?”), but also when the answer to it is obviously in the affirmative (think: “Is it possible for you to do what you are actually doing?”). But it also raises the issue of why Locke would think that the second question actually reduces to an absurd question of the latter sort. One possible solution derives from Locke’s theory of freedom of action. As we have seen, Locke thinks that one is free with respect to action A if and only if (i) if one (actually) wills to do A , then one can do A , and (ii) if one (actually) wills not to do A , then one can avoid doing A . Applying this theory directly to the case in which A is the action of willing to do B , we arrive at the following: one is free with respect to willing to do B if and only if (i) if one (actually) wills to will to do B , then one can will to do B , and (ii) if one (actually) wills to avoid willing to do B , then one can avoid willing to do B . Suppose, then, that willing to will to do an action is just willing to do that action, and willing to avoid willing to do an action is just not willing to do that action. In that case, one is free with respect to willing to do B if and only if (i) if one (actually) wills to do B , then one can will to do B , and (ii) if one (actually) avoids willing to do B , then one can avoid willing to do B . Given that actuality obviously entails possibility, it follows that (i) and (ii) are both obviously true. This is one explanation for why Locke might think that the question of whether one is free with respect to willing to do B reduces to an absurd question, the answer to which is obviously in the affirmative. It may be for this reason that Locke says that the question is one that “needs no answer” (E1–5 II.xxi.25: 247).

Locke goes on to say, at the end of II.xxi.25, that

they, who can make a Question of it [i.e., of the second question], must suppose one Will to determine the Acts of another, and another to determinate that; and so on in infinitum . (E1–5 II.xxi.25: 247)

It is unclear what Locke means by this. One possibility, consistent with the majority interpretation that Locke provides a negative answer to the second question, is that Locke is providing an argument here for the claim that the proposition that it is possible to be free with respect to willing to do an action leads to a vicious infinite regress of wills. The thought here is that being free with respect to willing to do an action, on Locke’s theory, requires being able to will to do an action if one wills to will to do it; that being free with respect to willing to will to do an action then requires being able to will to will to do it if one wills to will to will to do it; and so on, ad infinitum . But another possible interpretation, consistent with the minority interpretation that Locke provides an affirmative answer to the second question, is that Locke’s argument here is not meant to target those who answer the question affirmatively, but is rather designed to target those who would “make a question” of the second question, i.e., those who think that the answer to the second question is un obvious, and worth disputing. These people are the ones who think that willing to will to do A does not reduce to willing to do A , and that willing to avoid willing to do A does not reduce to avoiding willing to do A . These are the people who are committed to the existence of an infinite regress of wills, each determining the volitions of its successor. According to Locke, who accepts the reductions, the infinite regress of wills can’t get started (see Rickless 2000: 56–65; Garrett 2015: 269–274).

The next important question for Locke is “what is it determines the Will” (E2–5 II.xxi.29: 249—the question is also raised in the same Section in E1). Locke gives one answer to this question in E1, and a completely different answer in E2–5. The E1 answer is that the will is always determined by “ the greater Good ” (E1 II.xxi.29: 251), though, when he is writing more carefully, Locke says that it is only “the appearance of Good, greater Good” that determines the will (E1 II.xxi.33: 256, E1 II.xxi.38: 270). Regarding the good, Locke is a hedonist:

Good and Evil…are nothing but Pleasure and Pain, or that which occasions, or procures Pleasure or Pain to us. (E1–5 II.xxviii.5: 351—see also E1–5 II.xx.2: 229 and E2–5 II.xxi.42: 259)

So Locke’s E1 view is that the will is determined by what appears to us to promise pleasure and avoid pain.

When in 1692 Locke asks his friend, William Molyneux, to comment on the first (1690) edition of the Essay , Molyneux expressly worries that Locke’s E1 account of freedom appears to “make all Sins to proceed from our Understandings, or to be against Conscience; and not at all from the Depravity of our Wills”, and that “it seems harsh to say, that a Man shall be Damn’d, because he understands no better than he does” (de Beer 1979: 601). Molyneux’s point is well taken, and Locke acknowledges as much in his reply (de Beer 1979: 625). The source of the problem for the E1 account is that, with respect to the good (at least in the future), appearance does not always correspond with reality: it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is apt to produce the greatest pleasure and the least pain. Sometimes this is because we underestimate how pleasurable future pleasures will be (relative to present pleasures) or overestimate how painful present pains are (relative to future pains); and sometimes this is because we just make simple mistakes of fact, thinking, for example, that bloodletting will ease the pain of gout. As Molyneux sees it, we are not responsible for many of these mistakes, and yet it seems clear that we deserve (divine) punishment for making the wrong choices in our lives (e.g., when we choose the present pleasures of debauchery and villainy over the pleasures of heaven). Our sins, in other words, should be understood to proceed from the defective exercise of our wills, rather than from the defective state of our knowledge.

Part of Locke’s answer in E2–5 is that what determines the will is not the appearance of greater good, but rather “always some uneasiness” (E2–4 II.xxi.29: 249—the word “uneasiness” is italicized in E5). “Uneasiness” is Locke’s word for “[a]ll pain of the body of what sort soever, and disquiet of the mind” (E2–5 II.xxi.31: 251). On this view, then, our wills are determined by pains (of the mind or of the body). How this answer is supposed to address Molyneux’s concern is not, as yet, entirely clear.

What, to begin, does Locke mean by “determination”? On a “causal” reading, for a will W to be determined by X is for X to cause W to be exercised in a particular way. One might say, for example, that fear of the tiger caused Bill to choose to run away from it, and, in one sense, that Bill’s volition to run away from the tiger was determined by his fear of it. On a “teleological” reading, for a will W to be determined by X is for the agent to will the achievement or avoidance of X as a goal. One might say, for example, that the pleasure of eating the cake determined my will in the sense of fixing the content of my volition (as the volition to acquire the pleasure of eating the cake) (see Stuart 2013: 439; LoLordo 2012: 55–56).

It would be anachronistic to suppose that Locke is using the word “determine” as we do today when we discuss causal determinism (see the entry on causal determinism ). And the desire to avoid anachronism might lead us to adopt the teleological interpretation of determination. But there are many indications in E2–5 II.xxi that Locke has something approaching the causal interpretation in mind. Locke’s picture of bodies, both large and small, is largely a mechanistic one (though he allows for phenomena that can’t be explained mechanistically, such as gravitation, cohesion of body parts, and magnetism): bodies, he writes, “knock, impell, and resist one another,…and that is all they can do” (E1–5 IV.x.10: 624). And there are indications that this mechanistic model of corporeal behavior affects Locke’s model of mental phenomena. Throughout the Sections of II.xxi added in E2–5, Locke talks of uneasiness moving the mind (E2–5 II.xxi.29: 249; E2–5 II.xxi.43–44: 260), setting us upon a change of state or action or work (E2–5 II.xxi.29: 249; E2–5 II.xxi.31: 251; E2–5 II.xxi.37: 255; E2–5 II.xxi.44: 260), working on the mind (E2–5 II.xxi.29: 249; E2–5 II.xxi.33: 252), exerting pressure (E2–5 II.xxi.32: 251; E2–5 II.xxi.45: 262), driving us (E2–5 II.xxi.34: 252; E2–5 II.xxi.35: 253), pushing us (E2–5 II.xxi.34: 252), operating on the will, sometimes forcibly (E2–5 II.xxi.36: 254; E2–5 II.xxi.37: 255; E2–5 II.xxi.57: 271), laying hold on the will (E2–5 II.xxi.38: 256), influencing the will (E2–5 II.xxi.38: 256; E2–5 II.xxi.39: 257), taking the will (E2–5 II.xxi.45: 262), spurring to action (E2–5 II.xxi.40: 258), carrying us into action (E2–5 II.xxi.53: 268), and being counterbalanced by other mental states (E2–5 II.xxi.57: 272; E2–5 II.xxi.65: 277). It is difficult to read all of these statements without thinking that Locke thinks of uneasiness as exerting not merely a pull, but also a push, on the mind.

Locke’s view, then, seems to be that our volitions are caused (though not, perhaps, deterministically, i.e., in a way that is fixed by initial conditions and the laws of nature) by uneasinesses. How is this supposed to work? As Locke sees it, either “all pain causes desire equal to it self” (E2–5 II.xxi.31: 251) or desire is simply identified with “ uneasiness in the want [i.e., lack] of an absent good” (E2–5 II.xxi.31: 251). So the desire that either is or is caused by uneasiness is a desire for the removal of that uneasiness, and this is what proximately spurs us to take means to secure that removal.

Locke provides evidence from observation and from “the reason of the thing” for the claim that it is uneasiness, rather than perceived good, that determines the will. Empirically, Locke notes that agents generally do not seek a change of state unless they experience some sort of pain that leads them to will its extinction. A poor, indolent man who is content with his lot, even one who recognizes that he would be happier if he worked his way to greater wealth, is not ipso facto motivated to work. A drunkard who recognizes that his health will suffer and wealth will dissipate if he continues to drink does not, merely as a result of this recognition, stop drinking: but if he finds himself thirsty for drink and uneasy at the thought of missing his drinking companions, then he will go to the tavern. That is, Locke recognizes the possibility of akratic action, i.e., pursuing the worse in full knowledge that it is worse (E II.xxi.35: 253–254). (For more on Locke on akrasia, see Vailati 1990, Glauser 2014, and Moauro and Rickless 2019.)

Regarding “the reason of the thing”, Locke claims that “we constantly desire happiness” (E2–5 II.xxi.39: 257), where happiness is “the utmost Pleasure we are capable of” (E2–5 II.xxi.42: 258). Moreover, he says, any amount of uneasiness is inconsistent with happiness, “a little pain serving to marr all the pleasure” we experience. Locke concludes from this that we are always motivated to get rid of pain before securing any particular pleasure (E2–5 II.xxi.36: 254). Locke also argues that absent goods cannot move the will, because they don’t exist yet; by contrast, on his theory, the will is determined by something that already exists in the mind, namely uneasiness (E2–5 II.xxi.37: 254–255). Finally, Locke argues that if the will were determined by the perceived greater good, every agent would be consistently focused on the attainment of “the infinite eternal Joys of Heaven”. But, as is evidently the case, many agents are far more concerned about other matters than they are about getting into heaven. And this entails that the will must be determined by something other than the perceived greater good, namely, uneasiness (E2–5 II.xxi.38: 255–256). (For interesting criticisms of these arguments, see Stuart 2013: 453–456.)

So far, Locke has argued that the wrong turns we make in life do not usually proceed from defects in our understandings. What spurs us to act or forbear acting is not perception of the greater good, but some uneasiness instead. This answers part, but not the whole, of Molyneux’s worry. What Locke still needs to explain is why agents can be justly held responsible for choices that are motivated by uneasinesses. After all, what level of pain we feel and when we feel it is oftentimes not within our control. Locke’s answer relies on what has come to be known as the “doctrine of suspension”.

Having argued that uneasiness, rather than perception of the greater good, is what determines the will, Locke turns to the question of which of all the uneasinesses that beset us “has the precedency in determining the will to the next action”. His answer:

that ordinarily, which is the most pressing of those [uneasinesses], that are judged capable of being then removed. (E2–5 II.xxi.40: 257)

Locke therefore assumes that uneasinesses can be ranked in order of intensity or strength, and that among all the uneasinesses importuning an agent, the one that ordinarily determines her will is the one that exerts the greatest pressure on her mind. The picture with which Locke appears to be working is of a mind that is the playground of various forces of varying strengths exerting different degrees of influence on the will, where the will is determined by the strongest of those forces.

Notice, however, Locke’s use of the word “ordinarily”. Sometimes, as Locke emphasizes, the will is not determined by the most pressing uneasiness:

For the mind having in most cases, as is evident in Experience, a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires, and so all, one after another, is at liberty to consider the objects of them; examine them on all sides, and weigh them with others. (E2–5 II.xxi.47: 263)

This is the doctrine of suspension. On this view, we agents have the “power to suspend any particular desire, and keep it from determining the will , and engaging us in action” (E2–5 II.xxi.50: 266). As Locke makes clear, this power to prevent the will’s determination, that is, this power to avoid willing, is absent when the action proposed is to be done presently and involves the continuation or stopping of a process in which one is currently engaged (see Section 6 above). But when it comes to “chusing a remote [i.e., future] Good as an end to be pursued”, agents are “at Liberty in respect of willing ” (E5 II.xxi.56: 270). [ 7 ]

Some commentators (e.g., Chappell 1994: 118) think that, at least in E5, Locke comes to see that the doctrine of suspension conflicts with his answer to the question of whether we are free to will what we will (raised in II.xxi.25). This is because they take Locke’s answer to the latter question to be negative, and take the doctrine of suspension to entail a positive answer to the same question, at least with respect to some actions. But there are good reasons to think that there is no inconsistency here: for Locke’s answer to the II.xxi.25 question is arguably in the affirmative (see Section 7 above). [ 8 ]

Commentators also wonder whether the doctrine of suspension introduces an account of freedom that differs from Locke’s official account, both in E1 and in E2–5. The problem is that Locke says that “in [the power to suspend the prosecution of one’s desires] lies the liberty Man has”, that the power to suspend is “the source of all liberty” (E2–5 II.xxi.47: 263), that it is “the hinge on which turns the liberty of intellectual Beings” (E2–5 II.xxi.52: 266), and that it is “the great inlet, and exercise of all the liberty Men have, are capable of, or can be useful to them” (E2–5 II.xxi.52: 267). These passages suggest that Locke takes freedom to be (something intimately related to) the power to suspend our desires, a power that cannot simply be identified with the two-way power that Locke identifies with freedom of action at II.xxi.8 ff. (see Yaffe 2000: 12–74).

But there is a simple interpretation of these passages that does not require us to read Locke as offering a different account of freedom as the ability to suspend. The power to suspend is the power to keep one’s will from being determined, that is, the power to forbear willing to do A if one wills to forbear willing to do A . This is just one part of the freedom to will to do A , according to Locke’s definition of freedom of action applied to the action of willing to do A . (The other part is the power to will to do A if one wills to will to do A .) Thus if, as Locke seems to argue in II.xxi.23–24, we are (except under very unusual circumstances) free with respect to the act of willing with respect to a future course of action, then it follows immediately that we have the power to suspend. Locke’s claims about the power to suspend being the source of all liberty and the hinge on which liberty turns can be understood as claims that the power to suspend is a particularly important aspect of freedom of action as applied to the action of willing. What makes it important is the fact that it is the misuse of this freedom that accounts for our responsibility for actions that conduce to our own unhappiness or misery.

How so? Locke claims that the power of suspension was given to us (by God) for a reason, so that we might “examine, view, and judge, of the good or evil of what we are going to do” (E2–5 II.xxi.47: 263) in order to discover

whether that particular thing, which is then proposed, or desired, lie in the way to [our] main end, and make a real part of that which is [our] greatest good. (E2–5 II.xxi.52: 267)

When we make the kinds of mistakes for which we deserve punishment, such as falling into gluttony or envy or selfishness, it is not because we have, after deliberation and investigation, perhaps through no fault of our own, acquired a mistaken view of the facts; it is because we engage in “a too hasty compliance with our desires” (E2–5 II.xxi.53: 268) and fail to “hinder blind Precipitancy” (E2–5 II.xxi.67: 279). What matters is not that we have failed to will the forbearing to will to go to the movies or clean the fridge. What matters is that we have failed to will the forbearing to prosecute our most pressing desires, allowing ourselves to be guided by uneasinesses that might, for all we know, lead us to evil. If we have the power to suspend the prosecution of our desires (including our most pressing desire), then we misuse it when we do not exercise it (or when we fail to exercise it when its exercise is called for). So, not only is Locke’s doctrine of suspension consistent with his account of the freedom to will, it also provides part of the answer to Molyneux’s worry:

And here we may see how it comes to pass, that a Man may justly incur punishment…: Because, by a too hasty choice of his own making, he has imposed on himself wrong measures of good and evil…He has vitiated his own Palate, and must be answerable to himself for the sickness and death that follows from it. (E2–5 II.xxi.56: 270–271) [ 9 ]

Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with causal determinism, and incompatibilism is the thesis that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Is Locke a compatibilist or an incompatibilist?

The fact that Locke thinks that freedom of action is compatible with the will’s being determined by uneasiness might immediately suggest that Locke is a compatibilist. But, as we have seen ( Section 8 above), it is illegitimate to infer compatibility with causal determinism from compatibility with determination of the will by uneasiness. Still, the evidence strongly suggests that Locke would have embraced compatibilism, if the issue had been put to him directly. Freedom of action, on Locke’s account, is a matter of being able to do what one wills and being able to forbear what one wills to forbear. Although we sometimes act under necessity (compulsion or restraint—E1–5 II.xxi.13: 240), the mere fact (if it is a fact) that our actions are determined by the laws of nature and antecedent events does not threaten our freedom with respect to their performance. As Locke makes clear, if the door to my room is unlocked, I am free with respect to the act of leaving the room, because I have the ability to stay or leave as I will. It is only when the door is locked, or when I am chained, or when my path is blocked, or something else deprives me of the ability to stay or leave, that I am unfree with respect to the act of leaving. Determinism by itself represents no threat to our freedom of action. In this respect, Locke is a forerunner of many other compatibilist theories of freedom, including, for example, those of G.E. Moore (1912) and A.J. Ayer (1954). (For a contrary view, see Schouls 1992: 121. And for a response to Schouls 1992, see Davidson 2003: 213 ff.)

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There’s No Such Thing as Free Will

But we’re better off believing in it anyway.

F or centuries , philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness.

Today, the assumption of free will runs through every aspect of American politics, from welfare provision to criminal law. It permeates the popular culture and underpins the American dream—the belief that anyone can make something of themselves no matter what their start in life. As Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope , American “values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will.”

So what happens if this faith erodes?

The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species . Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance.

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Galton launched a debate that raged throughout the 20th century over nature versus nurture. Are our actions the unfolding effect of our genetics? Or the outcome of what has been imprinted on us by the environment? Impressive evidence accumulated for the importance of each factor. Whether scientists supported one, the other, or a mix of both, they increasingly assumed that our deeds must be determined by something .

In recent decades, research on the inner workings of the brain has helped to resolve the nature-nurture debate—and has dealt a further blow to the idea of free will. Brain scanners have enabled us to peer inside a living person’s skull, revealing intricate networks of neurons and allowing scientists to reach broad agreement that these networks are shaped by both genes and environment. But there is also agreement in the scientific community that the firing of neurons determines not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams.

We know that changes to brain chemistry can alter behavior—otherwise neither alcohol nor antipsychotics would have their desired effects. The same holds true for brain structure: Cases of ordinary adults becoming murderers or pedophiles after developing a brain tumor demonstrate how dependent we are on the physical properties of our gray stuff.

Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.

The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. But it left some room, at least in the popular imagination, for the possibility that we could overcome our circumstances or our genes to become the author of our own destiny. The challenge posed by neuroscience is more radical: It describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.

This research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.

This development raises uncomfortable—and increasingly nontheoretical—questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

In 2002, two psychologists had a simple but brilliant idea: Instead of speculating about what might happen if people lost belief in their capacity to choose, they could run an experiment to find out. Kathleen Vohs, then at the University of Utah, and Jonathan Schooler, of the University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of participants to read a passage arguing that free will was an illusion, and another group to read a passage that was neutral on the topic. Then they subjected the members of each group to a variety of temptations and observed their behavior. Would differences in abstract philosophical beliefs influence people’s decisions?

Yes, indeed. When asked to take a math test, with cheating made easy, the group primed to see free will as illusory proved more likely to take an illicit peek at the answers. When given an opportunity to steal—to take more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins—those whose belief in free will had been undermined pilfered more. On a range of measures, Vohs told me, she and Schooler found that “people who are induced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave immorally.”

It seems that when people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions. Consequently, they act less responsibly and give in to their baser instincts. Vohs emphasized that this result is not limited to the contrived conditions of a lab experiment. “You see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will,” she said.

In another study, for instance, Vohs and colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believed in free will, then examined their performance on the job by looking at their supervisor’s ratings. Those who believed more strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable. In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better predictor of job performance than established measures such as self-professed work ethic.

Another pioneer of research into the psychology of free will, Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, has extended these findings. For example, he and colleagues found that students with a weaker belief in free will were less likely to volunteer their time to help a classmate than were those whose belief in free will was stronger. Likewise, those primed to hold a deterministic view by reading statements like “Science has demonstrated that free will is an illusion” were less likely to give money to a homeless person or lend someone a cellphone.

Further studies by Baumeister and colleagues have linked a diminished belief in free will to stress, unhappiness, and a lesser commitment to relationships. They found that when subjects were induced to believe that “all human actions follow from prior events and ultimately can be understood in terms of the movement of molecules,” those subjects came away with a lower sense of life’s meaningfulness. Early this year, other researchers published a study showing that a weaker belief in free will correlates with poor academic performance.

The list goes on: Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

Few scholars are comfortable suggesting that people ought to believe an outright lie. Advocating the perpetuation of untruths would breach their integrity and violate a principle that philosophers have long held dear: the Platonic hope that the true and the good go hand in hand. Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has wrestled with this dilemma throughout his career and come to a painful conclusion: “We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth” about free will.

Smilansky is convinced that free will does not exist in the traditional sense—and that it would be very bad if most people realized this. “Imagine,” he told me, “that I’m deliberating whether to do my duty, such as to parachute into enemy territory, or something more mundane like to risk my job by reporting on some wrongdoing. If everyone accepts that there is no free will, then I’ll know that people will say, ‘Whatever he did, he had no choice—we can’t blame him.’ So I know I’m not going to be condemned for taking the selfish option.” This, he believes, is very dangerous for society, and “the more people accept the determinist picture, the worse things will get.”

Determinism not only undermines blame, Smilansky argues; it also undermines praise. Imagine I do risk my life by jumping into enemy territory to perform a daring mission. Afterward, people will say that I had no choice, that my feats were merely, in Smilansky’s phrase, “an unfolding of the given,” and therefore hardly praiseworthy. And just as undermining blame would remove an obstacle to acting wickedly, so undermining praise would remove an incentive to do good. Our heroes would seem less inspiring, he argues, our achievements less noteworthy, and soon we would sink into decadence and despondency.

Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. The idea of determinism, and the facts supporting it, must be kept confined within the ivory tower. Only the initiated, behind those walls, should dare to, as he put it to me, “look the dark truth in the face.” Smilansky says he realizes that there is something drastic, even terrible, about this idea—but if the choice is between the true and the good, then for the sake of society, the true must go.

Smilansky’s arguments may sound odd at first, given his contention that the world is devoid of free will: If we are not really deciding anything, who cares what information is let loose? But new information, of course, is a sensory input like any other; it can change our behavior, even if we are not the conscious agents of that change. In the language of cause and effect, a belief in free will may not inspire us to make the best of ourselves, but it does stimulate us to do so.

Illusionism is a minority position among academic philosophers, most of whom still hope that the good and the true can be reconciled. But it represents an ancient strand of thought among intellectual elites. Nietzsche called free will “a theologians’ artifice” that permits us to “judge and punish.” And many thinkers have believed, as Smilansky does, that institutions of judgment and punishment are necessary if we are to avoid a fall into barbarism.

Smilansky is not advocating policies of Orwellian thought control . Luckily, he argues, we don’t need them. Belief in free will comes naturally to us. Scientists and commentators merely need to exercise some self-restraint, instead of gleefully disabusing people of the illusions that undergird all they hold dear. Most scientists “don’t realize what effect these ideas can have,” Smilansky told me. “Promoting determinism is complacent and dangerous.”

Yet not all scholars who argue publicly against free will are blind to the social and psychological consequences. Some simply don’t agree that these consequences might include the collapse of civilization. One of the most prominent is the neuroscientist and writer Sam Harris, who, in his 2012 book, Free Will , set out to bring down the fantasy of conscious choice. Like Smilansky, he believes that there is no such thing as free will. But Harris thinks we are better off without the whole notion of it.

“We need our beliefs to track what is true,” Harris told me. Illusions, no matter how well intentioned, will always hold us back. For example, we currently use the threat of imprisonment as a crude tool to persuade people not to do bad things. But if we instead accept that “human behavior arises from neurophysiology,” he argued, then we can better understand what is really causing people to do bad things despite this threat of punishment—and how to stop them. “We need,” Harris told me, “to know what are the levers we can pull as a society to encourage people to be the best version of themselves they can be.”

According to Harris, we should acknowledge that even the worst criminals—murderous psychopaths, for example—are in a sense unlucky. “They didn’t pick their genes. They didn’t pick their parents. They didn’t make their brains, yet their brains are the source of their intentions and actions.” In a deep sense, their crimes are not their fault. Recognizing this, we can dispassionately consider how to manage offenders in order to rehabilitate them, protect society, and reduce future offending. Harris thinks that, in time, “it might be possible to cure something like psychopathy,” but only if we accept that the brain, and not some airy-fairy free will, is the source of the deviancy.

Accepting this would also free us from hatred. Holding people responsible for their actions might sound like a keystone of civilized life, but we pay a high price for it: Blaming people makes us angry and vengeful, and that clouds our judgment.

“Compare the response to Hurricane Katrina,” Harris suggested, with “the response to the 9/11 act of terrorism.” For many Americans, the men who hijacked those planes are the embodiment of criminals who freely choose to do evil. But if we give up our notion of free will, then their behavior must be viewed like any other natural phenomenon—and this, Harris believes, would make us much more rational in our response.

Although the scale of the two catastrophes was similar, the reactions were wildly different. Nobody was striving to exact revenge on tropical storms or declare a War on Weather, so responses to Katrina could simply focus on rebuilding and preventing future disasters. The response to 9/11 , Harris argues, was clouded by outrage and the desire for vengeance, and has led to the unnecessary loss of countless more lives. Harris is not saying that we shouldn’t have reacted at all to 9/11, only that a coolheaded response would have looked very different and likely been much less wasteful. “Hatred is toxic,” he told me, “and can destabilize individual lives and whole societies. Losing belief in free will undercuts the rationale for ever hating anyone.”

Whereas the evidence from Kathleen Vohs and her colleagues suggests that social problems may arise from seeing our own actions as determined by forces beyond our control—weakening our morals, our motivation, and our sense of the meaningfulness of life—Harris thinks that social benefits will result from seeing other people’s behavior in the very same light. From that vantage point, the moral implications of determinism look very different, and quite a lot better.

What’s more, Harris argues, as ordinary people come to better understand how their brains work, many of the problems documented by Vohs and others will dissipate. Determinism, he writes in his book, does not mean “that conscious awareness and deliberative thinking serve no purpose.” Certain kinds of action require us to become conscious of a choice—to weigh arguments and appraise evidence. True, if we were put in exactly the same situation again, then 100 times out of 100 we would make the same decision, “just like rewinding a movie and playing it again.” But the act of deliberation—the wrestling with facts and emotions that we feel is essential to our nature—is nonetheless real.

The big problem, in Harris’s view, is that people often confuse determinism with fatalism. Determinism is the belief that our decisions are part of an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Fatalism, on the other hand, is the belief that our decisions don’t really matter, because whatever is destined to happen will happen—like Oedipus’s marriage to his mother, despite his efforts to avoid that fate.

When people hear there is no free will, they wrongly become fatalistic; they think their efforts will make no difference. But this is a mistake. People are not moving toward an inevitable destiny; given a different stimulus (like a different idea about free will), they will behave differently and so have different lives. If people better understood these fine distinctions, Harris believes, the consequences of losing faith in free will would be much less negative than Vohs’s and Baumeister’s experiments suggest.

Can one go further still? Is there a way forward that preserves both the inspiring power of belief in free will and the compassionate understanding that comes with determinism?

Philosophers and theologians are used to talking about free will as if it is either on or off; as if our consciousness floats, like a ghost, entirely above the causal chain, or as if we roll through life like a rock down a hill. But there might be another way of looking at human agency.

Some scholars argue that we should think about freedom of choice in terms of our very real and sophisticated abilities to map out multiple potential responses to a particular situation. One of these is Bruce Waller, a philosophy professor at Youngstown State University. In his new book, Restorative Free Will , he writes that we should focus on our ability, in any given setting, to generate a wide range of options for ourselves, and to decide among them without external constraint.

For Waller, it simply doesn’t matter that these processes are underpinned by a causal chain of firing neurons. In his view, free will and determinism are not the opposites they are often taken to be; they simply describe our behavior at different levels.

Waller believes his account fits with a scientific understanding of how we evolved: Foraging animals—humans, but also mice, or bears, or crows—need to be able to generate options for themselves and make decisions in a complex and changing environment. Humans, with our massive brains, are much better at thinking up and weighing options than other animals are. Our range of options is much wider, and we are, in a meaningful way, freer as a result.

Waller’s definition of free will is in keeping with how a lot of ordinary people see it. One 2010 study found that people mostly thought of free will in terms of following their desires, free of coercion (such as someone holding a gun to your head). As long as we continue to believe in this kind of practical free will, that should be enough to preserve the sorts of ideals and ethical standards examined by Vohs and Baumeister.

Yet Waller’s account of free will still leads to a very different view of justice and responsibility than most people hold today. No one has caused himself: No one chose his genes or the environment into which he was born. Therefore no one bears ultimate responsibility for who he is and what he does. Waller told me he supported the sentiment of Barack Obama’s 2012 “You didn’t build that” speech, in which the president called attention to the external factors that help bring about success. He was also not surprised that it drew such a sharp reaction from those who want to believe that they were the sole architects of their achievements. But he argues that we must accept that life outcomes are determined by disparities in nature and nurture, “so we can take practical measures to remedy misfortune and help everyone to fulfill their potential.”

Understanding how will be the work of decades, as we slowly unravel the nature of our own minds. In many areas, that work will likely yield more compassion: offering more (and more precise) help to those who find themselves in a bad place. And when the threat of punishment is necessary as a deterrent, it will in many cases be balanced with efforts to strengthen, rather than undermine, the capacities for autonomy that are essential for anyone to lead a decent life. The kind of will that leads to success—seeing positive options for oneself, making good decisions and sticking to them—can be cultivated, and those at the bottom of society are most in need of that cultivation.

To some people, this may sound like a gratuitous attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too. And in a way it is. It is an attempt to retain the best parts of the free-will belief system while ditching the worst. President Obama—who has both defended “a faith in free will” and argued that we are not the sole architects of our fortune—has had to learn what a fine line this is to tread. Yet it might be what we need to rescue the American dream—and indeed, many of our ideas about civilization, the world over—in the scientific age.

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Freedom of Choice in The Great Divorce: C. S. Lewis’ Rhetorical Vision of Afterlife

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Everything you need for every book you read.

In Jonas's community, no one makes choices. All choices about the community were made in the distant past when Sameness was created, and any additional changes involve painfully slow bureaucratic procedures. Without choice, no one suffers the consequences that come from making wrong choices, but they also don't experience the joys that come with making right ones. By sacrificing the freedom of choice, community members are guaranteed a stable, painless life. Consequently, the people lead pleasant—but robotic—lives.

When Jonas discovers memory, he realizes that choice is essential to human happiness. Choice, he learns, is power. He makes the first real choice in his life when he decides to escape from the community and take Gabriel with him. In making this significant and dangerous choice, he gives a windfall of pleasure and pain to the people he leaves behind, and gives the freedom of choice back to the community.

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Financial Freedom choice is yours #fact #motivation
Freedom!Choice is made by oneself. Never choose isolation as that’s where the enemy attacks. Love

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Freedom, democracy, and values: Perception of freedom of choice and readiness to protest
PDF | In so-called democracies, although several political measures have recently curbed citizens' personal freedom (e.g., 2001 US Patriot Act), no... | Find, read and cite all the research you ...
PDF INTRODUCTION: FREEDOM AND PHILOSOPHY
Hegel1. 1. The Significance of Freedom: From Politics to Philosophy. Hegel's remark is as true today as it was 170 years ago: freedom, one of our most common and powerful concepts, is used (and misused) with extraor-dinarily little appreciation of its significance. Worse, Hegel is wrong to say that freedom's openness to misconception is ...
PDF 1 Introduction: The Free Will Dilemma
of moral libertarianism in his 1792 essay On the Radical Evil of Human Nature (later incorporated into the Religion of 1793), according to which freedom is the capacity to choose for or against the moral law. In the third and nal phase, however, Kant appears to revert to his original stance, arguing that freedom of choice cannot be de ned
PDF Freedom of Choice: Concept and Content
Concluding Remarks 37. FREEDOM OF CHOICE: CONCEPT AND CONTENT Amartya Sen 1. Freedom and Economics The idea that freedom of choice is quite central to leading a good life is not a new one. It is, for example, very forcefully discussed by Aristotle. Given the importance of the quality of life of the members of the society in judging the success ...
PDF The Significance of Choice
of freedom is, and this question can be approached by asking what gives free choice and free action their special moral significance. Given an answer to this question, which is the one I am primarily concerned with, we can then ask how the lack of freedom would threaten this significance and what kinds of unfreedom would do so.
PDF Human Freedom and Free Will
free will and choice, and that they cause their own free action s. This perception is ingrained in the human experience − from mundane choices, such as what to wear or eat, to choices that influence the direction of one's life. The future appears to be open for free will and choice, and one can guide the events in life in the desired direction.
PDF Morality as Freedom
acting on the moral law. The third idea through which rationality and morality are linked is the positive. conception of freedom. By showing, first, that a free person as such follows the moral law, and, second, that a rational person has grounds for regarding herself as free, Kant tries to show that insofar as we are.
PDF How might free will be compatible with determinism
This matter is still unresolved amongst philosophers, but this essay will argue that, though a freedom of choice that is ultimately uncaused cannot be had by an agent in a deterministic world, a lesser freedom, that still allows moral responsibility, but is consistent with determinism, is possible. Determinism
Freedom of choice: John Stuart Mill and the tree of life
See Full PDFDownload PDF. Freedom is one of the central values in political and moral philosophy. A number of theorists hold that freedom (or, relatedly, opportunity) should either be the only or at least one of the central distribuenda in our theories of distributive justice. Moreover, many follow Mill and hold that a concern for personal ...
Democracy and Freedom
They believe that democratic politics itself is an important kind of freedom, that democracy is essential to freedom, or that the rights to vote, run for office, and participate are themselves constitutive of what it means to be free. This chapter outlines possible connections between democracy and freedom.
Choice, freedom, and freedom of choice
It is shown that an agent can enjoy freedom without enjoying freedom of choice, and that she can enjoy a increase in one of these without enjoying an increase in the other. Abstract.This paper argues in favour of a distinction between 'freedom' and 'freedom of choice' - a distinction that economists and political philosophers have so far either ignored or drawn wrongly. Drawing the ...
My Understanding of the Freedom of Choice: [Essay Example], 392 words
Overall, I am who I am because of freedom. If it was not for freedom in the world life would complete different than what it is now. Freedom let's you make your own decisions, and those decisions made makes you have your own consequences. Freedom is all up to what you want it to be."I am free because I know that I alone am morally ...
Locke On Freedom
Locke On Freedom. First published Mon Nov 16, 2015; substantive revision Tue Jan 21, 2020. John Locke's views on the nature of freedom of action and freedom of will have played an influential role in the philosophy of action and in moral psychology. Locke offers distinctive accounts of action and forbearance, of will and willing, of voluntary ...
PDF On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other
In On the Free Choice of the Will . . . - . . . , Augustine identifies three distinct penalties inflicted on human nature: (a) ignorance, (b) mortality, and (c) trouble. Now (a), ignorance, refers to our difficulty in discerning the principles of right and wrong, which before the Fall were transparently known to us.
(PDF) Understanding the Concept of Freedom in Political ...
Abstract. Freedom is a complex concept, so complex that it serves as good example of what philosophers call an 'essentially contested concept'. To be sure of that, Gallie (1956) in Adcock ...
There's No Such Thing as Free Will
Some scholars argue that we should think about freedom of choice in terms of our very real and sophisticated abilities to map out multiple potential responses to a particular situation. One of ...
Freedom of choice
Freedom of Choice Act - Declares that it is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to: (1) bear a child; (2) terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability; or (3) terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect her life or her health. ^ Susan Smalley (January 10, 2008).
(PDF) Freedom of Choice in The Great Divorce: C. S. Lewis' Rhetorical
CSL March / April 2017 Vol. 48, No. 2 The Bulletin of The New York C. S. Lewis Society Whole No. 478 Freedom of Choice in The Great Divorce: C. S. Lewis' Rhetorical Vision of Afterlife by Michael S. Jeffress and William J. Brown Horrific collective choices during the 1930s in Germany, Italy and Japan led the world into the colossal loss of life, more than a trillion dollars of economic loss ...
PDF Freedom of Speech, Power, and Democracy
The importance of freedom of speech in a democratic society is usually taken as a given. This essay explores the less intuitive insight that freedom . from . speech is also extremely valuable in advancing democratic goals. "Freedom from speech" as used in this essay roughly parallels the freedom from religion . pro-tected
Freedom and Choice Theme in The Giver
Freedom and Choice ThemeTracker. The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Freedom and Choice appears in each chapter of The Giver. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis. How often theme appears: chapter length: Chapter 1. Chapter 2.
(PDF) Existentialism: A philosophic stand point to ...
Existentialism is a 'philosophy of existence': According to a widely accepte d definition, 'Existentialism' may be defined as a. philosophic stand point which gives priority to existence ...
Kon Kim
Kim 4 explores the consequences of individuals abusing freedom through anonymous letters containing evil. Jackson's "The Yellow Wallpaper" highlights the gender roles of women and oppression in patriarchal societies, advocating for equal opportunities and promoting self-determination. The stories emphasize the importance of regulating freedom and recognizing the subtle differences between ...