I want to outline my view of these topics. First, I’ll address some major mainstream positions. Most people believe in free will; within academic philosophy, the modern free will debate is characterized as compatibilism vs. incompatibilism. The “compatibility” in question is between free will and determinism. Technically, neither of these views necessitates certain beliefs about the existence of free will or whether determinism is true, they are only about the nature of free will as it relates to determinism. The central question is, essentially, whether a person could ever have made a different choice than they actually did.

Incompatibilism answers in the affirmative. In this view, if a person freely chooses to do something, that means they themselves (or their “will”) caused that choice. The choice could not be causally explained without referring to the person making the choice (in other words, it could not possibly be reduced to electrochemical reactions in the brain). Such an individual(‘s will) is often referred to as a “causal agent.” This lines up with how most ordinary people understand free will.

Some have suggested that the inherent unpredictability of quantum phenomena leaves room for a causal agent to be influencing brain activity. After all, it does appear to be the case that determinism is in fact false in light of quantum mechanics. If determinism is false, then it is possible that both incompatibilism is true and free will exists. There are a few (closely related) problems with this argument. First, a causal agent is essentially just a hidden variable, and all investigations of quantum physics suggest that there are no hidden variables responsible for quantum unpredictability. Second, quantum phenomena are generally predictable at a statistical scale, which is why for example Newtonian mechanics are extremely accurate for describing “medium-sized” objects. What appears to be the case is that the quantum effects are genuinely random, such that the law of large numbers applies and the statistical behavior is predictable. If choices are being made randomly, then they are more or less uncaused. That doesn’t leave room for a causal agent. Third, the outcomes of individual quantum events rarely have macroscopic consequences. This is like Schrödinger’s Cat: the point of the cat in the box thought experiment is that it’s not actually the case that the cat is both alive and dead. That’s the absurd conclusion that Schrödinger was using to refute the Copenhagen interpretation. It’s not possible to devise such a system, and in fact this principle has been a major barrier to the development of quantum computing. The larger effect you want a system to have, the less quantum randomness it will tend to exhibit. There is no known physical mechanism for how quantum events in the brain could control human behavior.

I find that ordinary people rarely make such “scientific” arguments. Incompatibilist free will, or rather the existence of a free agent, is usually justified through something like Cartesian dualism. This is the stance usually taken by theists, especially (in my experience) Christians and Muslims. The idea is that the free agent is one’s soul, which potentially persists after death. The hardest hard line I have seen someone take on the issue of free will and personal responsibility came from fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. Free will is theologically essential to these religious beliefs. Setting aside any potential objections to incompatibilist free will in light of an omnipotent god, this view is problematic in a few ways.

Let’s take a look at how free will relates to personal responsibility under this kind of religious fundamentalism. A person is regarded as personally responsible for any free choices they make. Additionally, free will is absolute: with the exception of physical force and possibly some forms of coercion, choices are regarded as free. In other words, exceptions are generally not made for choices made under altered states of consciousness, choices made under duress, and so on. One of the central tenets of evangelical Christianity is the ability to freely choose sin, as well as the ability to freely choose salvation through Christ. Such Christians believe that God will judge, punish, and reward humans for these choices. This is important because, for example, a person born and raised under Christianity who goes through the motions without thinking too hard about it is not saved according to evangelicals. It is crucial that each individual makes that decision freely.

This cannot be used to let non-believers off the hook for ignorance. Many Christians (and others) believe that the existence of God is so apparent that atheists must be willfully rejecting God. Furthermore, they believe that an honest investigation into the nature of this God will lead inevitably to their particular brand of religion. This means that anyone who disagrees with them (which is at least 70% of the world population and probably closer to 95%) deserves eternal divine punishment. This is a rather adversarial position to be in relative to other people and to society. For groups like Christian nationalists, it’s a way of casting the out-group as enemies and justifying violence against them. In particular, this sort of religious fundamentalist believes that LGBTQ+ identities are freely chosen, sinful, and must be stopped by any means necessary. Attitudes towards mental illness and neurodivergence are similar. A YouTube preacher I recently saw described ADHD, “if it exists,” as God tempting certain individuals with sloth or defiance or other sins more than he tempts the average person with these sins. Such temptation is supposedly spiritually edifying for reasons known only to God.

Religious people and especially evangelical Christians tend to view individuals with severe disabilities as vehicles for mercy and charity rather than considering the individual’s own experience and beliefs. This is perhaps one of the few situations where responsibility might not be ascribed to a person, but in this case it comes from a place of dehumanization rather than a recognition of how material circumstances limit possible choices. As a result, there is no desire to adapt or modify society to facilitate people with disabilities living normally. Instead, disability is addressed ad-hoc as a personal issue, and people who are not “normal” simply cannot be part of society. We have seen this implemented, as historically people with disabilities have been beggars, outsiders, isolated in sanitariums, and so on. Even now, in the education system for example, ordinary schools can’t accommodate any student with any disability. Students who are blind typically have to go to specialized schools for blind students, and so on. In my opinion this is getting better over time, maybe partially due to the lessening influence of religion. If it is not obvious, it’s empirically better for all students to include students with disabilities in the same class as students without disabilities (as long as all students can be adequately accommodated). Our current issue is an inability to accommodate certain disabilities adequately in a “mainstream” context.

That’s all a bit of a tangent. The point is that, at one extreme, there exist dualist, incompatibilist, free will absolutists who believe all choices are the responsibility of the individual. In addition to the features described above, this view meshes well with the prototypical American hyper-individualism. The opposite extreme would be a purely mechanistic view of human behavior in which free will does not exist, as well as the assertion that this makes humans never responsible for their actions. This is usually set up as a strawman by aforementioned incompatibilists, as if this were the only other possibility (a false dichotomy), and the attack levied against this strawman is the question of how we justify prosecuting criminals in the absence of personal responsibility.

Most people, in my impression, are somewhere in between, in that they believe in free will and associate personal responsibility with free choice, but acknowledge that many circumstances can prevent people from making genuinely free choices. More specifically, people are increasingly likely to describe some behavioral symptoms of mental illness or neurodivergence as not the fault of the individual. This quickly becomes fuzzy and vague. At what point or to what extent is a mentally ill person responsible for their actions? It can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis and requires a judgment call. People are likely to disagree when it comes down to very situation-specific details, even if they broadly agree about free will and mental illness.

Such “middle ground” people may be compatibilist. Compatibilist free will is characterized by the internal subjective experience of making choices rather than positing a causal agent. This is the view adopted by, for example, phenomenology and existentialism. In this view, the metaphysical reality of biological processes or a soul is irrelevant, because either way our experience of free will just is what it is. A common argument for compatibilism is that the incompatibilist version of free will is just incoherent. How can a causal agent be affecting the course of events in a way that is totally indiscernible by science? If the agent’s actions are caused by something else, they are ostensibly not free, but can the agent’s actions truly be uncaused but nonrandom?

There is a criticism of compatibilism that says it is redefining the term “free will” in order to preserve its existence. In my experience, this criticism usually comes from members of the “new atheist” movement (now decades old). These individuals are not only atheists, but also naturalists and physicalists (aka materialists). This entails the rejection of the existence of a soul, and of substance dualism of any kind. The new atheist movement is positioned in opposition to religion and superstition, and many members are former religious fundamentalists. As a result, I see the prevailing new atheist worldview as constructed as a rejection of very particular ideas. This contains, in my opinion, the acceptance of various fundamentalist concepts that make up those ideas. So this kind of atheist would agree with an evangelical Christian about what free will is, but deny its existence. In other words, the view is that: free will must involve a causal agent, we have no evidence causal agents exist, and so free will does not exist as far as we can tell.

This used to be my position, and I am still sympathetic towards it, but notice that it is strikingly similar to the incompatibilist’s strawman. The difference has to do with responsibility. There is a second relevant belief here, which is the nature of morality and moral justification. Christians and other religious people usually believe in objective morality as dictated by their god. We are justified in prosecuting criminals because God deems it so; without such a metaphysical foundation for morality, everything and nothing would be morally justified. Some atheists, such as Sam Harris (one of the “four horsemen” of new atheism), subscribe to an objective morality that is based in “human flourishing,” which is allegedly something that can be measured scientifically. Many other atheists, myself included, are happy to simply do away with objective morality. (See noncognitivism.) Prosecuting criminals, from my perspective, requires a totally different kind of justification than what (for example) Christians are looking for. The specific justification depends on political, social, and ethical beliefs and goals.

My views have become more pragmatist over time. While I used to reject free will, and I still do reject incompatibilist free will, I now consider myself a compatibilist. For me, the crucial question was, “What do people actually mean when they say ‘free will?'” Logically, all words must refer to objects of experience (phenomena or “appearances”). We don’t have any direct access to the “outside world” (noumena or “things in themselves”). An object of experience may or may not correspond, more or less, to an object in the physical world. If a trick of the light makes you think you saw a ghost, then the ghost does exist insofar as it is a feature of your conscious experience. Technically, we could never verify whether any of our perceptions correspond to the physical world in any meaningful way. However, it appears to be the case that something many people can directly observe does exist in external reality. This “reality by consensus” is the basis of all society and culture.

So if we take a look at free will, it clearly exists in that people have the experience of making unconstrained choices. Scientifically, there is no reason to think free will goes beyond that. The nonexistence of “objective” free will is largely irrelevant to my position, in part because I don’t believe in objective morality. This does mean that I have radically different views on responsibility, reward, and punishment as compared to someone like an evangelical Christian. I don’t believe reward or punishment is inherently justified under any circumstances. I am comfortable stating that “nothing is justified” according to their understanding of moral justification. However, from my perspective, it is a bit of a nonsense question. Nothing requires justification and it would be impossible to justify anything; that’s simply not how the world works according to my position. Social norms and laws and so on all have to be negotiated between people with differing goals and values. The fact that some of those people believe their values were handed to them by God is immaterial. Different people believe that different values were handed to them by different (or the same) gods. Our collective decision as a society to deal with criminals in a specific way is something that has to be negotiated regardless. (I say “collective decision,” but of course this is not a democratic decision.)

The point is that, when I am in a position to influence something like how we prosecute criminals (e.g. voting), I am going to make decisions based on my personal values and goals. I have heard Christians decry this as egoism, but it is important to note that in my view this is what everyone is doing when they make such decisions, and in fact there is no other way a person could make a decision. So despite the fact that many theists believe they have access to an eternal, immutable, objective morality, my stance is that they are not “following” any morality at all, not even one codified in text. If Christianity (for example) clearly and consistently pointed to a certain set of moral guidelines, then Christians would not have had wildly different views on morality across history and in different places. A religious text may offer specific moral guidelines, but the decision to follow those guidelines is up to the individual (not to mention the fact that it will always be possible to interpret the guidelines differently). I would speculate that scripture is used as a rationalization for existing moral beliefs at least as often as it is used to answer genuine moral questions. Christians find it problematic for atheists that they do not attempt to “ground” their moral belief in this way, but this just comes from an inability to understand the other person’s perspective. To the atheist, the Christian’s morality is equally ungrounded.

So, then, how do we deal with criminals? As I said before, I don’t believe punishment is justified as an end in itself. To put more of a point on it, I don’t believe punishment is just as an end in itself. Nor is retribution. The only possible value in punishment is in its consequences for people/sentient beings. The positive effects are, potentially, a disincentivization of antisocial behavior and emotional gratification for victims or those whose sense of justice is thus satisfied. I’m skeptical of the effectiveness of punishment as a disincentive, and also whether retributive satisfaction is beneficial to victims or society in the long term. As a result, I’m open to the possibility that punishment has some empirical benefits, but I don’t believe there is any indication the benefits outweigh the downsides. There are many cases where it’s clearly best to detain a person for public safety, but that’s not a punishment.

The political philosophy is beside the point, however. The real issue at stake is not the criminal justice system per se, but more generally how we can blame people for things. This has much more significance for daily life. If your spouse forgets something, is that their fault? Are there any circumstances in which it could be their fault (or in which it could not be their fault)? Assignment of responsibility seems to be rather central to interpersonal interaction. Is it even hypothetically possible to live your life without ever doing this?

Yes and no. I genuinely do believe that people are not responsible for their actions in the way incompatibilists talk about responsibility. To me there is no gray area where people with mental illness (for example) could be only partially or only sometimes responsible for their choices. To the specific marital question above, my answer is negative: while there are ways to avoid forgetting things, there’s nothing the person could have done differently to not forget. This is a forward-looking philosophy. The only thing we can do (that is beneficial) when we make a mistake or a bad choice is to repair damage and attempt to avoid similar missteps in the future.

This is not to deny the emotional reality of being wronged, criminally or otherwise. However, I think it’s a mistake to solve a desire for retribution with retribution. Like many other intense emotional states, it is not always good to act on. While I am skeptical of much of evolutionary psychology as practiced, I think the evolutionary picture of something like anger at being wronged is pretty clear. We see very similar things in other animals, and its functional role is evident. Violence and threats of violence can be used to dissuade, prevent, or stop another’s undesirable behavior. Given this, it seems to me that a sense of justice that promotes retribution probably follows from this emotional response, and not vice-versa.

Humans are able to cooperate in a way no other animal can, in large part due to language and our ability to make complex plans. One result is that we are able to take a long view towards a situation, and often inhibit our emotional reaction’s immediate effect on our behavior. However, in cases such as retributive justice, it seems to me that the emotional gratification is just being delayed. It’s more civilized to have the town’s appointed face-puncher punch your enemy’s face than to punch them in the face yourself. This violence simply doesn’t seem necessary or justified to me.

I want to circle back to the issue of mental illness that I mentioned. This also applies to other forms of neurodivergence, but let’s take depression for example. There are some people who believe that depression can be solved by making a decision not to be depressed anymore. Such people may be free will absolutists or they may just have a very poor understanding of mental illness. In recent decades, stigma around mental illness has decreased, and support and understanding have increased. This has led to a widespread acknowledgment that it is absurd to suggest someone could simply choose not to be depressed. More generally, many people I have encountered are very willing to not ascribe fault to a person with mental illness for certain symptom-related behavior.

I think this is positive, but I still have some issues with this perspective. One is the portrayal of neurotypical people as being in control of their actions. I recently heard autistic meltdowns being described as fundamentally different from a neurotypical person throwing a tantrum because that person is choosing to throw a tantrum. That strikes me as untrue. However, upon hearing this I recognized that there is a real distinction this person was pointing to. “Control” of one’s behavior is usually conflated with free will, but there’s something different going on here. A neurodivergent person and a neurotypical person are totally equal with respect to free will; where they differ is executive functioning. This is a particular function of a particular part of the brain. While our understanding of human brains and behavior still has a long way to go, we do have a good understanding of many ways in which executive functioning can become impaired. It is impaired by certain neurological and psychological conditions, certain drugs, strong emotions, and so on.

I have seen people struggle to suss out whether someone’s decision was based on impaired executive functioning because it was essential to their framework of justice. This is the “gray area” I mentioned. Basically, if student A picked on student B with fully functioning executive faculties, then student A deserves to be punished, but if student A picked on student B with impaired executive functioning, then student A does not deserve to be punished. In many cases it’s not really “punished/not punished” but more accurately handled differently. The difficulty is that the two scenarios could be identical with respect to the outward behavior of all involved. The only way to make a determination is to infer based on past behavior. Even then, it’s impossible to know to what degree any specific action was made under impaired executive functioning.

In my opinion, there isn’t a strong philosophical basis for accepting or rejecting executive functioning as morally relevant. From a pragmatic perspective however, I don’t think it makes sense to attempt to distinguish “impaired” behavior. That is not to say that one should never try to understand intentions behind behavior. It’s also important not to take stated intentions at face value. What I’m suggesting is that no negative moral judgment be placed upon people for their actions. This doesn’t mean no judgment of any kind. Remember that my framework for conflict resolution and criminal justice relies on values but not on moral judgments of right and wrong.

Writing this, I get the feeling it might come across as absurd. Like, “You’re saying Hitler wasn’t a bad guy?” I’m saying there are no bad guys and good guys. Hitler’s actions are contrary to my values in the extreme, and if he were alive today I would support killing him to stop him, but that’s not the same as judging him to be an evil person. Hitler’s brain was doing the best it could with what it had, human brains are just prone to producing negative outcomes. It’s still up to us to take action and use force if necessary to stop harmful behavior. This also doesn’t mean that I don’t feel extreme horror and disgust towards Hitler’s actions. It means that I don’t regard my emotions and morality as being the same thing.

I mentioned that I do have a more positive view of free will now and consider myself a compatibilist. This mainly comes from existentialism. The most important point in existentialism regarding free will is that humans have no choice but to make choices. We are condemned to be free. It is impossible to abstain from choosing, as abstention is a choice. It’s also impossible to delegate decision making to someone else, as you still have to decide to follow what they say. No moral code can be of help, because you’d have to choose to adopt it. This is a kind of absolute freedom which has nothing to do with causal agents or metaphysics. Recognition of this freedom can cause anguish, and so according to existentialism some people deny their own freedom, lying to themselves that they have no choice when they do. This state of self-deception is “bad faith.” The ethical foundation of existentialism is the pursuit of good faith. An important difference between this philosophy and some of those described above is that this is an “internal” philosophy. From my perspective I am responsible for all my choices, but that idea of responsibility doesn’t extend to other people for me. They can only be responsible to themselves.