Ȃǿȁ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophydecisively influenced by his genetic makeup and by his past experiences.
Ļese influences include the arguments he has heard and the thoughts
that have been aroused in his mind, including the concept of responsibility
and prospects of praise and blame. Partial determinism does not maintain,
however, that absolutely everything is fully predetermined in the minutest
detail. It allows some scope for chance and possibly, also, some scope for
the autonomy (or whatever it might be called) that doctrines of free will
allude to.
Unlike full determinism, the doctrine of only partial determinism, rec-
ognizing scope for some sort of free will, doesnotenjoy built-in immu-
nity to adverse evidence and isnotdevoid of practical implications. If
people never experienced feelings of autonomy in making decisions—if
they never experienced situations in which they felt that they personally
were weighing conflicting considerations and themselves making deci-
sions, free oftotaloutside compulsion and constraint, and if, on the con-
trary, they always perceived themselves under identifiable tight compul-
sions and constraints—then the doctrine of free will would falter. Or
if people sometimes did experience feelings of autonomy but could be
shown in each case that the feelings were illusory and shown in detail just
how their supposed free choices were in fact externally predetermined in
full, again the free-will doctrine would be undermined. Most obviously,
the doctrine would be discredited if people were always keenly aware of
being mere links in a causal chain and if they recognized in detail just
what causes were operating on them, including recognizing just how vari-
ous facts and arguments came to their attention and what weight each of
these commanded.
Discrediting evidence of this sort is conceivable, and the free-will doc-
trine itself does not rule out its significance. Ļat very fact shows that the
doctrine is not empty. Ļe absence of such discrediting evidence suggests,
furthermore, that the doctrine may be correct. But it does not, of course,
prove that it is right; no doctrine about empirical reality can ever be proved
absolutely.
ŏśŚŏŘšşŕśŚ
Discussing free will versus determinism was necessary because many phi-
losophers consider the issue genuine and important, intertwining with the
question of moral responsibility and so with ethics in general. Ļe fatal-
ist doctrine of an unbroken chain of tight causal determination operating