Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

of interconnected concepts, and Nature, the spatio-temporal system of concrete objects. The Idea might be called the abstract form of Nature, Nature the concrete embodiment of the Idea. From the opposition of these two, which are on the face of it completely different, but really different forms of the same thing, there arises consciousness (spirit or Geist), in which the Idea is gradually coming to understand itself, coming to full self-knowledge. We, our minds, are the vehicles of Geist; it comes to self-knowledge in us. So when Hegel does what he calls his Logic he is looking, according to his system, not just at the workings of his own mind but also at the Idea itself and hence at the developmental force of all reality.

Everything that happens, then, is the expression of the Idea, or of Reason as Hegel sometimes calls it, and it therefore happens of necessity. But he still holds that we are free, even perhaps that this is the most important thing about us. We are free not because we can evade the necessity—we can’t—but because we are the source of the necessity: our minds are the Idea, or Reason, gradually coming to full awareness of its own nature. In the simpler and more readily comprehensible case of Kant’s view of moral obligation the idea was that we identify with the source of the obligation, and so are not being externally commanded. In Hegel’s account of freedom we identify with the source of the necessity and so are not being externally manipulated.

Of course, only those who are happy with Hegel’s doctrine of the Idea and Geist, or Reason and Spirit, will find this account of freedom satisfactory. But there is something that all of us can take away, if only in the form of a question. Even if determinism reigns, and everything that happens is necessitated, might there be some way in which we can identify with, or embrace, the source of the necessitation—without having to commit ourselves to anything like the metaphysical apparatus of Hegelianism? We’ll see that thought again soon.Determinism

Not many of us, I suspect, will want to deal with this problem in the manner of Descartes, still fewer in the manner of Hegel. But there is a route into the problem of the freedom of the will which seems to force itself on anyone prepared to think about it. It begins with the idea mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, that of causal determinism.

An attentive reader may hesitate. ‘As I understand it,’ they say, ‘this determinism is the thesis that everything that happens, everything, is caused to happen, down to its tiniest detail, by the state of affairs leading up to it. Shouldn’t we pause before accepting such a grand and all-embracing thesis? At least ask a physicist? Haven’t I heard somewhere that quantum physics rejects this principle and deals in the probabilities of consequences rather than certainties?’ Yes, indeed. So I must explain straight away that the discussion we are about to enter into does not involve accepting determinism. The strategy will be first to consider how things stand if determinism is true, and then how they stand if it is not.

One more preliminary. When we hear talk of causality and determinism most of us will think of the material world, the world of physics, and take it that the conversation is, broadly speaking, about matter. Since we are here thinking about the freedom of the will, we will be thinking—obviously—about situations in which human beings are involved. And human beings have minds as well as bodies. Earlier (p. 63 and subsequently) we met the view that mind and matter are two quite different kinds of ‘stuff’—for want of a better word. I mention this just to point out that we do not need to resolve this controversy here. If the materialist is right, then ‘things that happen’ and ‘states of affairs’ are physical only. If the dualist is right then some are physical, some mental, and some a combination of the two; but the definition of determinism stays the same and covers the whole system in either case.

Now imagine performing some simple action, call it A. That you would do A, determinism being assumed, followed from the state you and your environment were in at the time. You are not a robot, but that you would do A under those exact circumstances followed by causal necessity just as certainly as if you had been. So what allows us to say that you, but not the robot, did A freely? Or that it might be sensible (depending on what A is) for us to blame you, or praise you, for doing it?

Perhaps you did A only after some reflection—‘Should I do A, or should I do B?’—then chose A and did it. It may well be that if you had chosen B, then B is what you would have done, so the event of your choosing A was an essential link in the causal chain that led to your doing A; without it, A wouldn’t have happened. So it surely isn’t wrong to say that you did A because that was what you chose to do. And isn’t that freedom, when you do something because you choose to do it? But how far does that really get us? Because the same old argument comes round again: given the total state of affairs at the time, it just followed that you would choose A. The idea that there was something there that you call ‘myself’, which was in charge and controlling events, seems illusory.

16. Determinism: all laid down in advance?

That may not be the end of the matter, but I hope it is enough to make it understandable that many have felt that we can only rescue freedom by denying determinism. We have to suppose that human beings have the power to initiate causal chains—to intervene in the causal goings-on of the natural world (including our own minds) and give things