Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 17important: Suppose that at Wi, the only events in it that are actions and that are
candidates for being free occur after e3, and suppose in this respect, Wi is just
like Wd. The world Wi would be a world in which determinism is not true but
all human actions are causally determined. As we shall see, one of the major
controversies regarding the freedom of the will concerns the prospects for free
action if determinism is true. For those who contend that free action is not pos-
sible if determinism is true, it would be equally problematic if indeterminism
were true but that nevertheless all human actions were causally determined, as is
the case in Wi. One lesson to learn here is that for those who believe determin-
ism undermines free will, it is not enough that indeterminism is true. It must be
that the way indeterminism is true leaves indeterministic breaks in the relation
between events in just the right places—in particular, just where free actions
occur. A further lesson is that the real worry is not about whether determinism
per se is true, but whether all candidates for free actions are determined, and in
particular, are causally determined by factors beyond the agent’s control (Pere-
boom, 1995, 2001) or beyond her causal reach (Sartorio, 2013).
Now let’s consider that hidden complexity, starting with the grounds for its
being true (if it is) that only one future is physically possible. As we have defined
it, determinism is a very general thesis. Different versions of it are a function of
what would render it true that only one future is physically possible. One version
of determinism is theological determinism. On this view, God causally deter-
mines everything that happens by willing it to happen. God’s causal determina-
tion of anything that happens at any time renders it physically impossible that
anything happens other than what does in fact happen. Why? God’s will is unim-
pedable, and necessarily so. This is one of the divine perfections. So, necessarily,
if God wills what I will eat for breakfast tomorrow, then that is what I will eat,
and it is not possible, given what God wills, that I eat anything else.
A version of determinism more commonly discussed in the contemporary free
will debate is the thesis of physical causal determinism. Consider this formula-
tion of it: Every event has a physical cause, and it is physically impossible that
the physical cause occur and the event does not. This way of understanding
causal determinism is no longer accepted. When it was, it was assumed that cau-
sation was essentially a necessitating or determining relation, one that absolutely
ensures its effect. This conception of causation was prevalent into the early
twentieth century, but also retained its influence in analytic philosophy into the
1960s. The problem with the thesis is that, especially since the development of
quantum mechanics, philosophers and scientists have been open to fundament-
ally indeterministic causal relations, those that increase the probability that an
effect will occur but do not ensure it. That is, they are open to the idea that some
cause c brings about an effect e, but, given the occurrence of c and the very same
conditions in which c occurred, e might not have been brought about. To address
this concern for defining physical causal determinism, what is needed is the fol-
lowing reformulation: Every event is causally necessitated by a physical cause.^12
While some philosophers work with such a formulation of determinism, others
worry about building the notion of causation into a definition of determinism