ŏ Ŕ ō Ŝ Š ő Ş ȘȜFree Will and Ethics*
ō ŜőŞşŕşŠőŚŠ śŘŐ ŕşşšő
Ļe very topic of ethics requires dipping into metaphysics. Although I
cannot settle an old issue, I must recognize it. Are individuals’ actions
and even their decisions, desires, and characters fully determined by cir-
cumstances ultimately outside their own control? If that were true—if
people lack free will and true choice—then personal responsibility would
lack meaning. Praise and blame, reward and punishment, would have no
application; and ethics as a field of study would lack any genuine subject
matter.
Ļis position, right or wrong, seems to have been the position of
Immanuel Kant. Ļroughout hisGroundwork(ȀȆȇȄ/ȀȈȅȃ), Kant acknowl-
edges an antinomy between freedom of the will and the prevalence of
causal laws of nature. He maintains, however, that freedom of the will
is a necessary presupposition of morality. He suggests that the antinomy
might somehow be resolved through his distinction between the intelligi-
ble and sensible worlds (noumenal and phenomenal worlds, in his tech-
nical terminology). Experience, filtered through the Kantian “categories”
of perception and understanding, imposes the idea of tight causality; but
unknowable characteristics of the noumenal world of things in themselves
might make freedom of the human will genuine. Confessedly, all this is
quite mysterious to me.
Ļe terms “free will” (or “free choice”) and “determinism” have no
agreed precise meanings, so I cannot begin by defining them. Exploring
what these terms and concepts might mean and how they interrelate is a
main task of this appendix.
We must, however, avoid “essentialism.” As criticized by Karl Popper
(e.g.,ȀȈȇȄ, pp.ȇȇ–Ȉȃ), essentialism means focusing on one or more pieces
*Appendix to Chapterȁ, pp.ȃǿ–Ȅȇand endnotes, in myEthics as Social Science(Chel-
tenham, U.K., and Northampton, Mass.: Elgar,ȁǿǿȀ).
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