The Free Will Thread: Survey Says...
Free. It wasn't unanimous, but it was still heavily in favor of "free".
The question, recall, was whether someone who decided to stay in a room did so freely if it turned out that he (or she) was locked inside. In other words, is it enough for an act to be free if one did it of one's own volition, or does it require the ability to do otherwise?
In fact, things can get much more complicated than this, in a hurry. For instance, suppose that the person stays in the room of his own volition, but this time he was hypnotized to do so. Do we think the person is free in this case? Probably not, but when decision time came around he was doing what he wanted to do, without any coercion at that moment. I suspect that most people would agree that this time, the action wasn't free. But what was missing?
One obvious answer is that the person couldn't have done otherwise - but then we're back to the original problem. A possible fix: maybe the person wasn't free to act, but was free to will. He could will to leave the room, and maybe that is enough for freedom, even if being able to carry out the intention to leave was not. Another approach is to say that someone's action, or at least act of willing, is free if nothing about the state of the world at the moment of the person's decision determined that act of will. These approaches have been challenged as well (and defended), but are far more resilient than the original definition where we worry about whether the person's action was free.
Note that the foregoing is not an attempt to show either that we do or do not have free will, in any of the broad senses considered above. That is of course the most interesting question, and there are standard arguments pro and con. First, we must define some terms, however, because free will can be affirmed in a way that is compatible with determinism, or in a way that is not. The first version is, understandably, called compatibilism or compatibilist freedom, and the latter is often referred to as libertarian freedom. (These are gross generalizations, but good enough for a first pass.)
Thus the compatibilist wants to say that a person could not have done otherwise. They could have done otherwise IF they had wanted to do otherwise, but that "if" isn't satisfied, and the person's action is determined. How? Various options have been offered: by the laws of physics (at least probabilistically), by one's strongest desire, by God's providence or even just God's knowledge, or by the existence of facts about the future. (E.g. if it's true now that I'm going to the store tomorrow, then, the thought goes, I cannot not go to the store tomorrow, given that it's already a fact now and I don't have the power to change the past.) At any rate, it is determined, one way or another, but that doesn't undermine one's freedom, provided one acts of one's own volition and not under some sort of coercion. If I eat an offered slice of cheesecake, it's a free action - I'm doing what I want to do, and no one is twisting my arm, literally or figuratively. It may be that my preferences are such that it was guaranteed at that moment that I would say yes, but so what? I did what I wanted to, and that's good enough, according to the compatibilst.
Libertarians, by contrast, will often find this a specious sense of "freedom". It is good that I'm acting consistently with my preferences, and not under coercion. That's good - no argument there. But if I couldn't have done otherwise, or willed otherwise, or willed without being determined to will as I did, then how am I any more free than someone who has been hypnotized to do what he does? It seems obvious that people merit praise and blame for at least some of their actions, to at least some extent. But if compatibilist freedom is the correct model, it is hard to see how this could be so. We might not like what Hitler did, but if his actions were ultimately determined by causal chains that began outside of him and that guaranteed their result, how can we blame him? But it seems as obvious as anything we believe that he is blameworthy, and therefore a theory that says that he is innocent must be false.
So, both sides have plausible-sounding arguments on behalf of their views, and need to address the positive contentions made by their opponents. (And of course, they have done so, endlessly - there is a huge literature on the topic of free will.) We can go deeper with this, but it's late here and it's time for me to call it a night. Thank you for your responses, and I may do this again soon.