Freedom practice questions.

A neuroscientist secretly implants a device that would force Ana to vote for a proposal if she showed any sign of voting against it. Ana decides on her own reasons to vote for it, and the device never operates. Frankfurt uses cases of this shape to argue that

• determinism must be false if anyone is ever responsible for what they do
• responsibility requires an uncaused act of will at the moment at which the decision is made
• Ana is responsible only because the device happened never to operate
• moral responsibility does not require that the agent could have done otherwise

Answer: moral responsibility does not require that the agent could have done otherwise

The case is built to remove the alternative while leaving the actual route to the decision untouched, so it targets the principle of alternate possibilities rather than determinism itself. Libertarians reply that the alternatives have merely been relocated into Ana's deliberation, where a flicker of freedom remains.

A judge holds that a cashier who handed over money at gunpoint did not act freely, while a cashier who handed it over because she had been bribed did. Which account of freedom fits this pair of verdicts?

• Libertarian: an action is free only when the agent's will is itself uncaused
• Compatibilist: an action is free when it flows from the agent's own desires without external constraint
• Hard determinist: neither cashier acted freely, since both actions had sufficient prior causes
• Fatalist: neither verdict matters, since the money would have changed hands whatever either cashier chose

Answer: Compatibilist: an action is free when it flows from the agent's own desires without external constraint

The compatibilist locates freedom in the kind of cause: coercion narrows the cashier's options to one she would not otherwise endorse, whereas a bribe leaves her ordinary deliberation intact. Classical compatibilism struggles here, since Hobbes counts actions done from fear as free, which is why later compatibilists add a condition about responsiveness to reasons.

An argument runs: nobody has power over the laws of nature or over the distant past, and whatever follows necessarily from things nobody has power over is itself outside our power; so if determinism is true, our actions are outside our power. This argument is directed against

• fatalism, by showing that outcomes are not fixed independently of what any agent does
• compatibilism, by arguing that determinism leaves no alternative open to the agent
• libertarianism, by showing that an undetermined choice would be a merely random event
• hard determinism, by showing that responsibility survives the truth of determinism

Answer: compatibilism, by arguing that determinism leaves no alternative open to the agent

The consequence argument is incompatibilist: it grants that we act on our own desires and denies that this is enough, because those desires and everything else were settled before we existed. The reply that defines compatibilism reads 'could have done otherwise' conditionally, as 'would have acted otherwise had she chosen otherwise'.

A critic tells the libertarian that if a decision is not settled by the agent's character, reasons or history, then which way it goes is a matter of chance, and chance is no better for responsibility than causation. This objection is usually called

• the manipulation argument, which compares ordinary agents with covertly programmed ones
• the regress objection, which asks who chose the standards by which the agent chooses
• the luck objection, which asks how an undetermined choice can be the agent's own
• the consequence argument, which traces the causes of an action back beyond the agent

Answer: the luck objection, which asks how an undetermined choice can be the agent's own

The objection is aimed at indeterminism rather than at determinism, which is why libertarians answer it by adding something positive, such as agent causation or a role for the agent's reasons in settling the choice. It is the mirror image of the incompatibilist complaint against compatibilism.

A libertarian about free will is told that if a decision is not determined by the agent's prior states, then whichever way it falls is a matter of chance, and chance secures no more responsibility than determinism does. The reply that appeals to agent causation answers this by claiming that

• the decision is caused by the agent as a substance, not by a prior event, so it is neither determined nor random
• quantum indeterminacy in the brain is sufficient for freedom, since undetermined events are by definition free
• the objection is unanswerable, which is why libertarians must accept that free actions are uncaused
• the agent's character determines the decision after all, so the libertarian and the compatibilist are in fact making the same claim

Answer: the decision is caused by the agent as a substance, not by a prior event, so it is neither determined nor random

Agent causation introduces a distinct kind of causing, by a persisting subject rather than by an event, precisely to occupy the space between determination and chance. Its standard difficulty is to say what such causing consists in, which is why critics regard the manoeuvre as naming the problem rather than solving it.

Hume defines liberty as the power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will. What does this definition treat as the opposite of freedom?

• Causation, rather than constraint
• Ignorance, rather than compulsion
• Indeterminism, rather than necessity
• Constraint, rather than causation

Answer: Constraint, rather than causation

By locating the contrast at constraint, Hume makes room for actions that are both caused and free, which is the compatibilist move; an incompatibilist rejects the definition precisely because it changes the subject from whether the will itself was up to the agent.