The Free Will Problem 35picture of ordinary interpersonal life. We would have to see most persons
very differently than we do. The value that we attach to free will and moral
responsibility would appear to be a value that accords to persons a kind of
dignity and place of worth in the order of things. Most people wish to preserve
the view that certain efforts are to a person’s credit because it was within the
scope of her control. Most people also wish to retain the rational basis for
holding some accountable for their misdeeds, and as warranting blame and
punishment.
According to a widespread conception, free will, moral responsibility,
strength and weakness of will, interpersonal concern, and the meaningfulness of
life, their plausibility and value, are essential features of a broader picture of
human life, a picture that incorporates many elements beyond those specifically
concerned with the topic of free will. These elements include the very idea of
value, including moral, aesthetic, epistemological, or any other kind. They
include the possibility of creativity, the possibility of rational conduct, the pre-
sumption that persons have beliefs and desires, and the presumption that persons
mark a distinct and significant ontological category. This broader picture is a key
part of what Wilfred Sellars has called the manifest image of the human con-
dition.^5 The manifest image concerns the human worldview in which persons
have worth and their lives can be imbued with meaning. It includes the point of
view of persons as practical agents. It acknowledges the legitimacy of common
sense, and of “folk psychological” explanations involving the reasons, goals,
values, principles, wishes, and desires of persons engaged in ordinary interper-
sonal life.
But is determinism in fact true, and are we forced to accept compatibilism to
preserve all of this? Suppose first that our best physics is deterministic. Even
then, whether determinism is generally true would depend on whether every-
thing that exists is wholly made up of what is in the purview of physics. That is
controversial—many hold that conscious minds cannot be wholly physical in
this sense. But even on the supposition that everything is wholly physical, note
that some have argued that our best theory of the microphysical, quantum
mechanics, has a correct indeterministic account. The Copenhagen interpretation
of quantum mechanics supports this view. At the same time, it is very controver-
sial, and on the contemporary scene it is typically rejected by theoretical physi-
cists and philosophers of physics. An influential interpretation advanced in the
1950s and 1960s by David Bohm is consistent with determinism’s being true,
and it enjoys widespread popularity. However, one might reasonably believe that
current physics is still quite far from the truth, as Carl Hoefer argues:
Figuring out whether well- established theories are deterministic or not (or to
what extent, if they fall only a bit short) does not do much to help us know
whether our world is really governed by deterministic laws; all our current
best theories, including General Relativity and the Standard Model of parti-
cle physics, are too flawed and ill- understood to be mistaken for anything
close to a Final Theory. (Hoefer, 2010)