Free Will has been a topic debated back and forth by philosophers for centuries. It’s basically a discussion of two questions: 1) is determinism true, or 2) is a man or can man be a free agent who can choose a course of action, and does a person have moral responsibility for the choices that are made? An answer to those questions involves dealing with a position called determinism — a view that past and present events determine what the future events will be — and people who deny this view is relevant are generally called “compatiblists.”
The opposite position or “incompatiblism” pits metaphysical libertarianism, which holds that people are free and hold moral responsibility, against what are known as “hard determinists” who hold the people are free but do not have moral responsibility. Incompatibilism holds that all free will and determinism are both real, but basically are not compatible.
Two philosophers stand out in defining these differences are Thomas Hobbes (Compatibilism) and Baron d’Holbach (Incompatibilism). Hobbes argued that people will act on their own when they want to, or could act differently if they wanted to. Determinism does matter or is more real vis-à-vis free will, the latter of which can exist in the context of determinism if a subject wills it to. One way to explain this position is by creating a picture of victim of rape murder, theft or other offenses. In this situation the victim’s freedom to act has been limited not because the past is determining his future, but because the aggressor exercised free will, and excercised it for the victim. Hobbes held “no liberty can be inferred to the will, desire, or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do.”
Figures like d’Holbach, however, believed “hard” determinism to be true, and felt it required a rejection of the notion of free will. The impression people have that free will exists was explained to be part of an “intuition pump” where if a person is determined in their choices to carry out a course of action, it must be because he or she thinks in ways that are determined, no differently than a robot, a puppet or other artificial thing that may perceive it is acting freely. Incompatibilitists often also point out that there is a causal chain of events connecting one action to another, which strongly implies that the free actions of people are part of this chain, and therefore not only voluntary actions.
Both Hobbes and d’Holbach were mechanistic materialists, but d’Holbach did not share Hobbes’ belief that man’s exercise of his desire creates free will. He wrote “…We are born without our own consent; our likes and dislikes are produced from external sources. The will is nothing more than a “modification” of the brain. We always act according to our strongest desire and one desire may be replaced by another just so long as the one that is replaced is NOT the strongest of the two. The desire that “wins” is, by definition, the strongest one. The simple fact that we deliberate about things does not prove that we have free will. . . . ” In terms of materialism, d’Holbach’s position could be argued to be the more consistent, considering that matter( to a materialist) is all that exists—thus it would not make sense to posit something beyond matter constraining or directing material processes.
Of course, it could be argued that neither position is reliable or true, because if determinism is true and all actions are the result of a natural causal chain of past actions, there is no way to determine if a mind exercising logic is separate from this chain, or whether the ideas are merely the results of random zaps of electricity going on in the brain. Whatever the case, proponents of variations of these two positions have refined the positions over time, with most of the disputing going on within the incompatibilism camp. Most thinkers believe free will and determinism are both relevant factors (that determinism is true, and free will does exist), thus the metaphysical argument continues between the hard Determinists and the Libertarians.