this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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I can agree with the first sentence to some extent, but I think the "in your environment" is unnecessary, whereas you seem to need the "in your environment" qualifier to arrive at the conclusion of the second sentence? Why would it be more intuitive to argue about free will not from my perspective, but rather from the perspective of my environment? I am me, and my ability defines me. My environment may influence me, but it would be backwards to make my ability determined by what the environment can predict about me.
I suppose you do believe in a deterministic universe? If so, that could at least explain why you think such a reasoning is more intuitive, but it doesn't align with my intuition at least.
The defining case where we unambiguously lack free will is when there’s another agent that actively constrains our actions. But for one agent to constrain another, it has to be able to anticipate the other’s potential actions—which depends on the abilities of the constraining agent, not the one constrained.
We have (I think) an instinctive sense of when our behavior is susceptible to that kind of directed constraint, and the idea of a deterministic universe raises the possibility that that susceptibility can’t be escaped—but only if there’s a constraining agent that can actually exploit the susceptibility.
Ah yes, I agree that's a fair way to look at it. I think if you combine that reasoning with the idea of a deterministic universe, then you also basically arrive at Spinoza's view where it is said that God is Nature, because effectively Nature then is the constraining agent.
But it does still lead me to question the sentence you posited at the start:
If such a constraining agent does not exist, doesn't that imply that the universe is not deterministic? Unless you also believe that free will can exist in our mind without the ability to act upon the universe. This too was argued by Spinoza, though personally I never found such an argument to be convincing.
I don’t think Spinoza’s God can be called an agent, exactly—at least not an active one. To be an agent, there have to be future states of the world you can’t (yet) predict, because those are the only states your current actions can have an effect on.
Yes, I was trying to draw the analogy, but I agree it wouldn't be an active agent at least.
But bringing back to where we came from: The problematic part to me is still whether a deterministic universe is compatible with free will. I mean, I don't think they're compatible, but you said it depends on whether an omniscient agent exists. I still don't see how that follows. If the omniscient agent exists, and it is indeed an active agent, then by definition the universe wouldn't be deterministic, no?
Sure... I was just addressing why determinism might make us feel like our free will was in jeopardy—I wasn’t implying that it was a logical possibility.
Like I said, I think it’s an instinctive feeling rather than a logical one. Like if you’re playing cards and you realize your cards are visible, you feel like the game is compromised—even if the other players can’t see them in practice.