The instinctive answer to this question for most people would be yes; we feel free so we are. If you wanted to turn off your lamp you could, so what’s the question here?

Libertarianism is the belief that we can act freely. In the contrary hard determinism is the belief that all events are caused by past events, and only the event that does occur would in fact have occurred. The problem is it is impossible to hold both views, due to the principle of alternate possibilities.

The principle of alternate possibilities states that an action is only free if the agent could have done otherwise. However Harry Frankfurt, an American philosopher, had an objection to this. A typical case is that a person has always been in favour of the Democratic Party, and is likely to vote for them in the upcoming election. However, the leader of the Democratic Party has implanted devices in the brains of some voters. If that voter goes to vote for the Republicans instead, the device will activate, making them vote for the Democrats. This means that either way, if the voter had chosen Democrats or not, they would have voted for the Democratic Party.

According to the principle of alternate possibilities, the voter was not morally responsible as they could not have done otherwise. Frankfurt argues that the voter was “still clearly responsible” for their vote as they did what they “wanted to do”, even though they could not had done otherwise.

Returning to libertarianism, a key flaw is that mental states and opinions are tied to your thinking process and therefore your brain. Our brain states are biological states, which are physical states. We already know that the physical world is deterministic, so even if we think that we are free, we’re not really.

Compatibilism however can be seen as a midway point between libertarianism and determinism. It is a belief that the universe operates in an order and that past actions and events will determine to future. However it is also the belief that humans are unique in some way and some of the actions we take are free. This can also be referred to as soft determinism.

Frankfurt believes that we are only responsible for the actions we have chosen ourselves rather than from external factors. Consider this case; a group of friends is pressuring you into getting your ears pierced. This is considered an external factor. However your desire to conform or maybe your desire to disregard their opinion comes from you and is therefore an internal factor. Nevertheless when considering this argument as well, we must consider that our personality and the way with think are affected by our parents, childhood and our past experiences.

Patricia Churchland argued that as social animals, we cannot help but hold people accountable and present them with either praise or blame for their actions. She also says that if we are unable to separate internal and external causes then perhaps we should be referring to actions as “more or less free”. How free our actions really are is dependent on how many external factors and internal factors are influencing us, and how much control we have over what we actually do.

Churchland says that questioning our freedom is the incorrect approach to this and we should instead be asking how much control we have. The more control we have, the more responsibility we also have.

Libertarians however will disagree with Churchland’s answer, as being caused to do something by an internal factor prevents an action from truly being free.

To finish off I will leave you with this question - If I am not free to make my own decisions, should I be held accountable for them?

Saniya Chughtai, Newstead Wood School