Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

dubious conclusion, at best. Quantum indeterminacy and human agency are likely not linked up in this way. Indeterminism should not be confused with freedom. Choice may be indeterminate, but still not what we really mean when we say we have ‘free’ choice. To seek free will at the level of particles is probably a mistake.

There’s a further variation. Liberty, according to Rousseau, is acting in accordance with a law that we make for ourselves. Hence, we must decide who we are in order to act freely. But who we are — it might be argued — is necessarily determined by our genes and our upbringing (nature and nurture). So it is difficult for us to change. We end up with an infinite regress of trying to change ourselves in order to make choices, but unable to change ourselves because who we are is itself determined.

In summary then, we are either determined by the nature of God, the nature of the physical universe or by the nature of our genetic inheritance.

From simple determinism there are two further branches that follow — compatibalism and incompatibalism. Compatibalism is the view that free will and determinism are not at odds with each other — both can be true at the same time, without contradiction. (An easy way to describe the usual compatibalist approach is to say that we do things uncoerced. This view is sometimes known as ‘soft determinism’. We will, however, be looking at a further type of compatibalism below.) Incompatibalism is the

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