Chapter dzǷ: Free Will and Ethics ȁȇȆHazlitt warns against confusing determinism with materialism, inter-
preted as the dogma that all causation, even in human affairs, operates
ultimately through physical and chemical processes alone. He especially
warns against confusing determinism with fatalism, which he interprets
as the dogma that events will unfold as they are bound to do, regardless
of how people try to promote or prevent them. Fatalism in this peculiar
sense is obviously false. Human decisions, choices, wishes, reflection, and
will clearlydoinfluence the course of events. If, contrary to fact, they did
not do so, or if they operated only stochastically, outside of causal chains,
then notions of responsibility and ethics would have no application.
Hazlitt accepts universal causation, then, but distinguishes sharply
between its supposed operation solely in material ways and its operation
in ways leaving scope for human decision and will. But can this distinction
carry all the weight Hazlitt places on it?
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Michael Slote (ȀȈȈǿ) explains how making and implementing ethical
judgments could be sensibleeven if determinism prevailed, a question
he does not tackle. Here I interpret Slote’s argument together with a com-
mentary by Peter van Inwagen (ȀȈȈǿ) and forgo trying to paraphrase each
separately.
We may label a person or a dog and certain actions as “vicious” and
guard against and “punish” them. Yet we may recognize that the person’s
or dog’s disposition and actions trace to unfortunate genes or mental ill-
ness or previous maltreatment, which attenuates or dispels moral culpa-
bility. We are not necessarily inconsistent in both recognizing the disposi-
tions and actions as determined yet judging and punishing them as vicious.
Our judging and punishing can themselves be links in the chain of deter-
ministic causation and may make the dispositions and actions less vicious
than they would otherwise be.
Similarly, we tend to judge actual murder “more wrong” than a failed
attempt; we revile and punish an actual murderer more severely than an
attempted murderer. Both culprits may have had the same intentions, and
only sheer luck may have frustrated one attempt. Still it may make sense to
condemn and punish the successful murderer more severely. How a person
is judged and punished may thus reasonably depend on more than what he
freely willed. Several considerations may warrant distinguishing between
actual and attempted murder. Evil intentions may be harder to prove in