Free will and moral responsibility

The debate and key terms#

FoundationAQA 7062/1 Section B: Free will and moral responsibilityDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

The spectrum of positions on free will

Fig. 1Positions range from hard determinism (no free will) through compatibilism to libertarianism (genuine free will).

The debate turns on three key terms that must be defined precisely. Free will is the capacity to make genuine choices that are 'up to us' — the power to have done otherwise than we did. Determinism is the thesis that every event, including every human choice and action, is the necessary result of prior causes according to the laws of nature (or of God), so that given the past and the laws, only one future is possible. Moral responsibility is the condition of being a fit subject of praise or blame, reward or punishment, for one's actions — which appears to presuppose that one could have acted otherwise and that the action flowed from oneself. The central problem is that determinism seems to threaten both free will and moral responsibility: if my choice was necessitated by causes reaching back before my birth, in what sense was it free, and how can I deserve blame for it?

The positions on the debate are best mapped on a spectrum. At one end is hard determinism: determinism is true, free will is therefore an illusion, and no one is ultimately morally responsible (praise and blame, in their desert-based sense, are unjustified). At the other end is libertarianism: we do have genuine free will — some of our choices are not fully determined by prior causes — so moral responsibility is real; libertarians accept that free will and determinism are incompatible and reject determinism (at least for human choice). In the middle is compatibilism (soft determinism): determinism is true, but free will and moral responsibility are compatible with it, because 'free' does not mean 'uncaused' but 'unconstrained' — acting according to one's own desires without external compulsion.

A crucial logical point organises the whole debate: the disagreement is partly about the meaning of 'free'. Incompatibilists (both hard determinists and libertarians) agree that free will and determinism cannot both be true — they define freedom as requiring that one could genuinely have done otherwise, which determinism rules out; they differ only on which to keep (libertarians keep freedom and reject determinism; hard determinists keep determinism and reject freedom). Compatibilists reject this shared assumption: they define freedom differently (as acting from one's own uncoerced desires), so that a determined action can still be free. Much of the debate is therefore about whether the compatibilist redefinition of 'free' is legitimate or an evasion.

The stakes are high and specifically religious. Moral responsibility underpins the practices of praise and blame, the justice of reward and punishment, and — in a religious frame — the coherence of divine judgement, heaven and hell, sin and merit. If hard determinism is true, it is hard to see how God could justly judge people for actions they were caused to perform, or how the concepts of sin and desert survive. Conversely, theological determinism (predestination) itself presses the problem from within religion: if God foreordains and foreknows all, are human beings free and responsible? The topic thus connects directly to conscience, to the problem of evil (which relies on the free-will defence), and to the concept of God, and a strong candidate keeps these connections in view.

Worked example

Determinism versus fatalism

Explain why determinism is not the same as fatalism, and why the difference matters.

Define fatalism
Fatalism holds that a certain outcome will occur no matter what you do — your choices make no difference to the result.
Define determinism
Determinism holds that your choices are themselves caused, but they are genuine causes in the chain — deliberating and choosing do make a difference to what happens.
The difference
Under determinism, if you had deliberated differently the outcome would differ; the choice is caused but not bypassed. Fatalism bypasses the choice entirely.
Why it matters
Objections that 'determinism makes effort pointless' confuse it with fatalism; a determinist can consistently urge effort, since effort is a cause of outcomes.

Result: Determinism, unlike fatalism, makes our choices genuine (though caused) links in the causal chain, so it does not render deliberation and effort pointless — a distinction essential to assessing the debate fairly.

Typical mistakes

Treating 'determinism' as fatalism (that the future is fixed no matter what we do) — determinism says our choices are caused, and are themselves links in the causal chain, not bypassed by it.
Assuming compatibilism denies determinism; it accepts determinism but redefines freedom as the absence of constraint.

Active revision

Explain the difference between hard determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism. (Structured AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Hard determinism#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section B: Free will and moral responsibilityDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Forms of hard determinism

Fig. 2Determinist causation is located in physical law, in psychological conditioning, or in God's sovereignty.

Hard determinism holds that determinism is true and free will is therefore an illusion, so that ultimate moral responsibility does not exist. It comes in three forms relevant to the specification. Philosophical/scientific (causal) determinism argues from the universal reign of cause and effect: every physical event, including the neural processes that constitute our choices, is the necessary effect of prior causes governed by the laws of nature; since our brains are physical systems, our decisions are as fully determined as any other physical event. Ted Honderich is a leading modern defender, arguing that the truth of near-universal causation leaves no room for an uncaused 'free' choice and that we must give up the 'life-hope' that we are the originators of our actions.

Psychological determinism argues that our choices are determined by psychological causes — our genetic inheritance, upbringing, conditioning, unconscious drives and environment. Behaviourism (Watson, Skinner) is the strong form: Skinner argued that behaviour is entirely shaped by conditioning through reinforcement, so that the sense of an autonomous inner chooser is an illusion, and concepts of 'freedom and dignity' should be replaced by the scientific control of behaviour. Freudian psychology likewise traces choices to unconscious forces formed in childhood. On this view the feeling of choosing freely masks the psychological causes that actually determine what we do, much as Freud held that reasons we give are often rationalisations.

Theological determinism argues that God's sovereignty determines all things. In its predestinarian form (Augustine's later theology, and especially John Calvin), God, being omnipotent and omniscient, foreordains from eternity everything that comes to pass, including who will be saved (the elect) and who damned (the reprobate); salvation is by God's grace and election, not by free human merit. Even the milder claim that God's infallible foreknowledge fixes the future threatens freedom: if God knew before I was born exactly what I would choose, it seems I could not do otherwise, so my choice was not free. Theological determinism thus generates the problem of divine judgement from within religion: how can God justly punish the reprobate for what he foreordained?

The strengths of hard determinism are its consilience with science (the physical world is law-governed, and the brain is part of it), its explanatory power (much behaviour is demonstrably shaped by genes, upbringing and circumstance), and its humane implications for how we treat wrongdoers (if no one is ultimately to blame, retributive punishment is unjust, and we should focus on rehabilitation and prevention — Clarence Darrow used determinism to plead against the death penalty). Its difficulties are severe, however: it collides violently with our overwhelming experience of deliberating and choosing; it seems to make moral responsibility, and hence praise, blame, guilt, gratitude and justice, illusory (which many find a reductio); and it faces the self-referential worry that if all belief is caused, the hard determinist's own belief in determinism is caused too, not held because it is true (though determinists reply that causes can track truth). Whether we should follow the science to its conclusion or trust the experience of freedom is the evaluative crux.

Worked example

Theological determinism and divine justice

Assess whether theological determinism (predestination) is compatible with God's justice.

State the position
Calvin: God foreordains from eternity the elect and the reprobate; salvation is by grace, not free merit.
The problem
If God determines who sins and who is damned, punishing the reprobate for foreordained sins seems unjust — they could not have done otherwise.
The Calvinist reply
God's justice is not measurable by human standards; all deserve condemnation for sin, and grace to the elect is unmerited mercy, not injustice to the rest.
The critic's rejoinder
This makes 'justice' and 'goodness' as applied to God empty (the Euthyphro worry), and conflicts with the free-will defence used against the problem of evil.
Judgement
Theological determinism strains divine justice and sits awkwardly with the free-will defence; a libertarian or compatibilist theology fits God's justice better, though at a cost to divine sovereignty.

Result: Theological determinism makes divine judgement hard to reconcile with justice and clashes with the free-will defence against evil, so it purchases God's sovereignty at a heavy cost to God's justice — a tension internal to religious belief itself.

Typical mistakes

Confusing hard determinism with compatibilism — hard determinism denies free will and ultimate responsibility, compatibilism preserves them.
Ignoring theological determinism (predestination/foreknowledge), which is an explicit part of the religious-studies specification.

Active revision

'If hard determinism is true, no one is morally responsible.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Libertarianism#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: Free will and moral responsibilityDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Libertarian agent causation

Fig. 3Libertarians place the self as an originating cause, so the choice is neither determined by prior events nor merely random.

Libertarianism holds that human beings have genuine free will — that at least some of our choices are not fully determined by prior causes, so that we could truly have done otherwise — and it accepts that this is incompatible with determinism, which it therefore rejects for the domain of human choice. Libertarians take the datum of freedom, our vivid and universal experience of open deliberation and genuine choice, to be more certain than the metaphysical thesis of universal determinism, and argue that any adequate account of moral responsibility, deliberation, and the difference between what we do and what merely happens to us requires real, undetermined agency.

The central challenge for libertarianism is to explain how an undetermined choice can be free rather than merely random — for if my choice is not determined by my character and reasons, it seems to be a matter of chance, and a chance event is no more 'up to me' or responsible than a determined one (the 'luck' or 'randomness' objection). Libertarians respond with the notion of agent causation: the self, or agent, is itself an originating cause of the action — not a prior event causing it, but the person, as a substance, bringing about the choice. Thomas Reid and, in the twentieth century, Roderick Chisholm developed this: in free action the agent is a 'prime mover unmoved', initiating a new causal chain rather than being merely a link in an existing one. The choice is thus neither determined nor random, but caused by the agent.

Libertarianism has been articulated in several ways relevant to the specification. Some appeal to the distinction between the empirical self (the determined, habitual self shaped by causes) and the moral self (the rational self that can rise above inclination to do what is right) — the experience of moral struggle, of resisting a strong desire out of duty, is taken as evidence of a self not wholly determined by its strongest desire. Kant's ethics presupposes such freedom ('ought implies can': moral obligation makes sense only if we are free to obey it). Existentialists such as Sartre made freedom absolute: we are 'condemned to be free', and to deny our freedom is 'bad faith'. Religious libertarianism (Arminian, and much Catholic theology) affirms free will as necessary for genuine love of God, for the justice of divine judgement, and for the free-will defence against the problem of evil.

Libertarianism's strengths are that it honours the powerful experience of free choice and moral struggle, that it straightforwardly grounds moral responsibility (we really could have done otherwise, so praise and blame are just), and that it fits the requirements of religious ethics (genuine love, real desert, the free-will theodicy). Its weaknesses are the randomness objection (how is an undetermined choice mine rather than mere chance?), the obscurity of 'agent causation' (what is this non-event causation by a substance, and how does it fit the causal order studied by science?), and its apparent conflict with the deterministic success of the sciences, including neuroscience (e.g. Libet's experiments suggesting the brain initiates action before conscious awareness, though their interpretation is contested). Whether the reality of our experienced freedom outweighs its metaphysical obscurity is the evaluative question.

Worked example

The randomness objection

Reconstruct the randomness objection to libertarianism and assess the agent-causation reply.

State the objection
If a choice is not determined by my character and reasons, then nothing settles it — it happens by chance, and a chance event is no more 'up to me' than a determined one.
The dilemma
A choice is either determined (so not free, say incompatibilists) or undetermined (so random, not responsible) — either way libertarian responsibility seems lost.
The agent-causation reply
Reid/Chisholm: the choice is caused by the agent as a substance, not by a prior event and not by nothing, so it is neither determined nor random.
The critic's rejoinder
Agent causation is obscure — how does a substance cause an event without a prior event, and how does this fit the causal order? It may just relabel the mystery.
Judgement
Agent causation is the best available libertarian answer and blocks the crude 'random' charge, but its obscurity leaves libertarianism metaphysically costly.

Result: Agent causation answers the randomness objection by making the self the origin of choice rather than chance, but its unexplained nature is the price libertarianism pays to honour the experience of freedom and ground responsibility.

Typical mistakes

Treating libertarian free will as uncaused/random — libertarians hold the choice is caused by the agent, not by nothing, precisely to avoid the randomness objection.
Confusing metaphysical libertarianism (free will) with political libertarianism (minimal-state liberalism) — the specification means the former.

Active revision

'Libertarianism gives the best account of moral responsibility.' Discuss. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Compatibilism (soft determinism)#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: Free will and moral responsibilityDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Compatibilism: free means uncoerced

Fig. 4For compatibilism, an action is free when it flows from one's own desires without external constraint, even though it is fully caused.

Compatibilism (also called soft determinism) holds that determinism is true and yet free will and moral responsibility are real, because freedom and determinism are compatible. The key move is a redefinition of 'free': to be free is not to be uncaused but to be unconstrained — to act according to one's own desires and choices without external compulsion or coercion. On this view a person acts freely when their action flows from their own will (they do what they want to do), even though that will is itself causally determined; they act unfreely only when compelled by external force, coercion, or internal compulsion (addiction, madness). The difference between a free and an unfree act is thus not the presence or absence of causes but the type of cause — internal and one's own, versus external and constraining.

The tradition runs from Hobbes and Hume through Locke, Ayer and Stace. David Hume argued that liberty rightly understood is simply 'a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will' — the absence of constraint, not the absence of causation — and that far from being opposed to necessity, moral responsibility actually requires it: we hold people responsible precisely because their actions flow from their character, and we would not blame someone for an action that was random or out of character. John Locke's example of the locked room illustrates the point: a man who stays in a room, happy to be there and choosing to stay, acts freely even if, unknown to him, the door is locked so that he could not leave — because his action accords with his will. A. J. Ayer distinguished the free (uncompelled) from the constrained (compelled), and W. T. Stace argued that the whole free-will problem is a merely verbal dispute arising from a wrong definition of 'free', giving the example that a man who signs a confession freely differs from one who signs under torture not in being uncaused but in the kind of cause.

Compatibilism's strengths are considerable. It reconciles the deterministic worldview of science with our practices of holding people responsible, so we need neither deny determinism nor posit obscure agent causation. It matches ordinary usage: in daily life 'free' really does mean 'uncoerced' (we say a signature was 'free' if not made under duress, not that it was uncaused). And it grounds moral responsibility sensibly: we praise and blame to influence behaviour and because actions flowing from a person's character are properly attributable to them, which is exactly what responsibility requires. This makes compatibilism the majority view among contemporary philosophers.

Its weaknesses are pressed hard by incompatibilists. The deepest is that it seems to secure only a shallow, 'surface' freedom while leaving the real problem untouched: even if my action flows from my desires without external constraint, those desires were themselves determined by causes (genes, upbringing) I did not choose, reaching back before my birth — so in what sense could I ultimately have done otherwise, and how can I deserve blame for a character I was caused to have? Kant dismissed compatibilist freedom as a 'wretched subterfuge' and a 'freedom of a turnspit' (a clockwork roasting-jack that, once wound, turns 'freely' but is fully determined). The compatibilist replies that 'could have done otherwise' should be read hypothetically (I would have acted differently if I had wanted to), and that ultimate origination is an incoherent demand no account can meet; but the critic insists that desert-based responsibility requires exactly the ultimate control compatibilism cannot supply. Whether compatibilist freedom is 'real' freedom or a redefinition that changes the subject is the central evaluative question.

Worked example

The 'wretched subterfuge' objection

Assess Kant's objection that compatibilist freedom is a mere 'freedom of a turnspit'.

State compatibilism
An action is free if it flows from one's own uncoerced desires, even though those desires are determined.
Kant's objection
But the desires were themselves caused by factors (heredity, upbringing) the agent did not choose; so the 'freedom' is that of a wound-up clockwork jack that turns 'freely' yet is fully determined.
Why it bites
Desert-based responsibility seems to need ultimate origination — that the action traces to the agent as its first source — which compatibilism cannot provide.
Compatibilist reply
'Ultimate origination' is incoherent (nothing could satisfy it); responsibility only requires that the action express the agent's own will, and 'could have done otherwise' means 'would have, if they had wanted to'.
Judgement
Compatibilism secures a real and usable notion of responsibility for practice, but arguably not the deep desert the objection demands — so the verdict turns on which notion of responsibility we need.

Result: Kant's objection shows compatibilism cannot deliver ultimate, desert-grounding origination, but the compatibilist can reply that such origination is an incoherent demand; the debate therefore reduces to whether moral responsibility requires deep desert or only attributability to the agent's will.

Typical mistakes

Presenting compatibilism as a middle position that denies determinism; it fully accepts determinism and redefines freedom.
Ignoring the 'unchosen desires' objection, which is the strongest criticism (surface freedom without ultimate origination).

Active revision

'Compatibilism redefines freedom instead of defending it.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Implications for moral responsibility#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: Free will and moral responsibilityDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Hard determinism and compatibilism compared

Fig. 5Both accept universal causation, but divide on whether that leaves room for free will and moral responsibility.

A final judgement should be organised around what each position implies for moral responsibility, since that is where the debate has its bite. Hard determinism implies that no one is ultimately deserving of praise or blame: our practices of retributive punishment and moral desert rest on an illusion, and we should replace blame with understanding and retribution with rehabilitation and prevention (a humane implication, but one that seems to abolish justice, gratitude, guilt and the very moral seriousness it appeals to). Libertarianism implies robust responsibility — we really could have done otherwise, so desert is fully justified — but at the cost of the metaphysical obscurity of agent causation and tension with science. Compatibilism implies a workable responsibility grounded in attributability to the agent's will, preserving our practices, but arguably only a 'surface' responsibility that leaves the deep worry about unchosen character untouched.

The debate is especially sharp for religious belief, and a strong answer draws this out. Divine judgement, heaven and hell, sin and merit all seem to presuppose that human beings are genuinely responsible for their choices — which fits libertarianism (and its role in the free-will defence against evil) far better than hard determinism. Yet theological determinism (predestination, and the implications of divine foreknowledge and omnipotence) pushes from within religion towards determinism, generating the internal tension examined earlier: a God who foreordains all cannot justly judge, so most theologians who take moral responsibility seriously adopt either libertarian free will or a compatibilism of grace and freedom. The free-will debate is thus not an optional add-on to religious ethics but is entangled with the concept of God, the problem of evil, and the coherence of judgement.

The most defensible judgement weighs three things: the strength of the deterministic case (science shows the physical and psychological causation of much behaviour), the strength of the experience of freedom and moral struggle (which feels undeniable and underlies all our moral practices), and the demands of moral responsibility (which require at least that actions be genuinely ours). One defensible line is compatibilism: it honours the scientific causation of behaviour without denying the freedom-as-uncoerced that our responsibility practices actually track, treating the incompatibilist demand for ultimate origination as an incoherent overreach. An equally defensible line is a modest libertarianism: the experience of genuine choice and the requirements of desert-based responsibility and religious judgement are weighty enough to resist a complete determinism, especially since determinism about the mind is not established (quantum indeterminacy and the contested interpretation of neuroscience leave room).

What matters at A-Level is a sustained argument to a conclusion that states which value is being prioritised — scientific consilience, the experience of freedom, or the requirements of responsibility — and that acknowledges the cost of the choice. A candidate might conclude that compatibilism best reconciles science and responsibility for everyday moral practice, while conceding that it does not satisfy the demand for ultimate desert that retributive punishment and divine judgement seem to require; or that libertarian freedom, though metaphysically costly, is needed to make sense of moral struggle, genuine love, and the justice of judgement. Either way, the free-will debate should be connected to conscience (is our moral sense a free rational faculty or a determined product?), to the problem of evil (which relies on free will), and to the concept of God — the interconnections that the strongest answers make explicit.

Worked example

Model evaluation plan: free will and responsibility

Plan an essay judging whether moral responsibility requires libertarian free will.

Thesis
Everyday moral responsibility does not require libertarian free will (compatibilism suffices), but deep desert and divine judgement arguably do.
Case for libertarianism
The experience of choice and moral struggle, the justice of desert, and the free-will defence all seem to need genuine alternatives.
Case for compatibilism
Responsibility tracks attributability to one's uncoerced will; 'ultimate origination' is an incoherent demand; this fits science.
Weigh
For practical praise/blame, compatibilism is enough; for retributive desert and divine judgement, only libertarian freedom seems adequate.
Judgement
Conclude that the answer depends on the kind of responsibility required, favouring compatibilism for ethics and libertarianism where deep desert (or theology) is at stake.

Result: Whether moral responsibility requires libertarian free will depends on the kind of responsibility in view: compatibilism secures the attributability our practices need, but the deep desert presupposed by retribution and divine judgement seems to require the genuine alternatives only libertarianism provides.

Typical mistakes

Discussing free will abstractly without drawing out the implications for moral responsibility, which is the specification's focus.
Ignoring the religious stakes (divine judgement, the free-will defence, predestination), which are central to the RS treatment of the topic.

Active revision

'Moral responsibility requires libertarian free will.' Evaluate this claim. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for religious studies (Department for Education)

Key points

Determinism versus fatalism

Key points

Theological determinism and divine justice

Key points

The randomness objection

Key points

The 'wretched subterfuge' objection

Key points

Model evaluation plan: free will and responsibility

Sources

Free will and moral responsibility

Key points

Determinism versus fatalism

Key points

Theological determinism and divine justice

Key points

The randomness objection

Key points

The 'wretched subterfuge' objection

Key points

Model evaluation plan: free will and responsibility

Sources