Chisholm and Free Will
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Before I begin it is pertinent to note the disparate positions on the problem of human freedom. In “Human Freedom and the Self”, Roderick M. Chisholm takes the libertarian stance which is contiguous with the doctrine of incompatibility. Libertarians believe in free will and recognize that freedom and determinism are incompatible. The determinist also follow the doctrine of incompatibility, and according to Chisholms formulation, their view is that every event involved in an act is caused by some other event. Since they adhere to this type of causality, they believe that all actions are consequential and that freedom of the will is illusory. Compatiblist deny the conflict between free will and determinism. A.J. Ayer makes a compatibilist argument in “Freedom and Necessity”.
In “Human Freedom and the Self” Chisholm rejects both determinism (every event that is involved in an act is caused by some other event) and indeterminism (the view that the act, or some event that is essential to the act , is not caused at all) on the basis that they are not contingent with the view that : human beings are responsbile agents. The main dilemma that he trys to resolve is as follows. If we adhere to strict determinism and indeterminism, then any act is either caused by a previous event or is not caused at all. Consider that we follow determinism and that we assume the act is caused by a previous event. If that is the case, and freedom conflicts with determinism, then the person who performed the act is not responsible for it. Also, if the act was not caused at all, the person cannot be responsible for it, that is, human responsibility and indeterminism conflict. So if either determinism or indeterminism were true, there would be no other alternate courses of action and people would not be morally responsible because they could not have done otherwise.
Weve already established that Chisholm feels that humans can be morally praiseworthy or blameworthy only if they have free will. His example is one man shooting another man. Although the man performed the act it was also in his power not to perform the act. I know Im starting to sound but bear with
me. Since the act which he did perform is an act that was in his power not to perform then could not have been caused or determined by any event that was not itself within his power either to bring about or not to bring about. Next, he gives another hypothetical situation in which under hypnosis a man was unable to do anything other than what it is that he did. Chisholm then asks us to use the same situation and replace hypnosis with the mans desires and beliefs with the same consequence that he could not have done otherwise. But, if a man is responsible for his own desires and beliefs then his is also responsible for the things that they lead him to do. So the question becomes, is he responsible for the desires and beliefs he happens to have? Chisholm uses this point to demonstrate a circumlocution in the determinists argument. If a man is responsible for his beliefs and desires then he could have refrained from the acquisition of that belief or desire. But if we assume that determinism is true then some other event must have caused him to acquire the belief. So since this caused him to acquire the belief he could not have done otherwise and is not responsible for his belief or desire. Later Chisholm says that if we are prime movers unmoved (a concept I will explain later) and our actions, or those for which we are responsible, are not causally determined, then they are not causally determined by our desires.
The next problem Chisholm has to tackle is the question; is determinism consistent with human responsibility? If the answer is yes then this implies that that the agent could have done otherwise even though he was caused to do what he did do (compatibilist argument). The standard objection to Chisholms position is to show that determinism (and Divine Providence) are consistent with human responsibility. They argue that the expression (A) He could have done otherwise is synonymous with (B) If he had chosen to do otherwise, then he would have done otherwise. Chisholm proceeds
to demonstrate that this is not a sound argument. He says that from the statement (B) we cannot make an inference to (A) unless we also assert