The Concept of Free Will in Ethics

Abstract

The subject of study and critical analysis in this article is the concept of ‘free will’ which is commonly used in the philosophical literature to designate self-determinancy of human consciousness that is a person’s ability to make decisions arbitrarily, regardless of any external factors. The belief that the above-noted ability is really peculiar to the man as a sentient being, is widely used in ethics, law, theology and folk views; at this the free will is considered as a necessary condition for responsibility of the agent for his decisions and actions. This paper presents a number of arguments in support of an alternative position recognizing the fictitiousness of the concept of free will and universality of the principle of determinism. It has been shown that the representation of the reality of free will is based on an incorrect understanding of the mental mechanisms of motivation, on the wrongful identification of the concepts of ‘free will’ and ‘freedom of action’ as well as the denial of determinism as a fundamental methodological principle, without which the human cognition is generally unthinkable. Moreover, the concept of free will is contradictory: protecting the social institution of responsibility, it is thus actually undermines its own methodological foundation, i.e. indeterminism, because the responsibility is a factor that determines the will. In general the recognition of the reality of free will is incompatible with the obvious fact of causal dependence of the moral and other values of people, their goals and actions of the social circumstances, in which their mentality is formed. Therefore moral philosophy does not need to use the concept of free will. The origin of morality, its social functions and psychological mechanisms, the content of its principles and norms and their historical changes can be adequately described and explained only within the deterministic picture of the world.