Indeterminism From the Point of View of Free Will

Before looking at the problem that indeterminism presents when looking at the idea of free will, one must take the time to define and explain determinism as well as indeterminism. Determinism is the idea that everything in life is determined to where if you perform a specific action the same thing will happen every time. An example of determinism would be the idea that it was determined that you will be calling your mother directly at 4:45PM. That being said it would be impossible for you to not call your mother at 4:45PM and that you might as well get your phone out right before because you will have to call your mother at 4:45PM no matter what because it has been determined.

Indeterminism is quite the opposite of determinism. Indeterminism is the idea that actions are due to chance and not determined due to prior events. While determinism provides a certainty to an event or action, indeterminism provides a level of uncertainty. Looking back at the example used for determinism, indeterminism would provide the idea of uncertainty in making the phone call. You may believe that you want to call your mother at 4:45PM but when 4:44PM comes along, a doorbell may ring and you may be too distracted to make that call at 4:45PM and may have a discussion with your neighbor instead. Indeterminism also works around the idea that the future is truly unpredictable and anything can happen which then may threaten the idea of free will.

Looking at free will, free will is the idea of having control over your actions and choices being made within your life. Indeterminism may be viewed as a threat over free will for multiple reasons. One of these reasons being that indeterminism takes away the idea of having control over the choices being made within your life- sometimes choices will be made on chance as well as others making choices for you whether they are your professors, parents, or others. Not only this but the idea of a simple decision having a drastically different outcome than expected. It is easiest to go into the idea of how indeterminism may affect free will over looking at an example.

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Recently I was watching the musical “The Sound of Music” where a young postulant named Maria lived at an Australian Abbey. Most Abbeys have a specific schedule to the day- when to pray, do chores, eat, as well as sleep. Although Maria would sometimes neglect these things out of free will, she was one day summoned to the office of the Reverend Mother where she was then told that she would become the new Governess for seven children. While one can argue that she had the free will to say no to the Reverend Mother, in which she did argue against, if she did she would have been taken out of the Abbey or punished to say the least. In this instance the idea of being able to make her own choices of staying or going are taken away from her and she is forced to end up going and not knowing what will happen in her days or months to come as her future was truly uncertain when she left the Abbey.

In Kane’s article, he goes to explain four reasons that he believes that “indeterministic developments in modern physics have not (p. 8) disposed of determinist threats to free will” (Kane, 2005, p. 3-4). In this essay, we will be looking at one of the four issues. The issue being looked at is that “while determinism has been in retreat in the physical sciences during the twentieth century, developments in sciences other than physics—in biology, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, social and behavior sciences—have been moving in the opposite direction” (Kane, 2005, p. 4). In looking at the idea of how indeterminism threatens free will, you have to think on the idea of chance rather than causation.

One of the examples used in the notes regarding free will looks at the idea of holding an apple in your hand and dropping it. Another similar example to this could be you relaxing under an apple tree and seeing an apple fall from the tree. Due to gravity, this seems plausible and definitely causation. Indeterminism looks at it as sitting under an apple tree with a 45% chance of an apple falling, a 25% chance of a banana dropping, and a 30% chance of pear falling out of the tree and floating away.

Although it seems like a silly example due to it being severely unlikely that a pear could fall out of an apple tree and float away, this example provides the idea of why indeterminism would cause an issue with free will. Hard Determinism shows how reality truly is not determined by small or even big actions and can argue the fact that free will is nonexistent because you could be expecting that apple to fall at any moment but when it doesn’t and you look up, all you see is that pear floating away in the distance. Coming back down to Earth, according to Gessell, hard determinism focuses in on the idea that the past doesn’t have a strong effect on the future.

Gessell’s research focused around whether or not the outcome of an experiment is deterministic or indeterministic. The way that it would be deterministic would be having the same outcome every single time. The way that it would be indeterministic would be having a different outcome or the same outcome only based on chance. What he focuses in on is whether or not the outcomes are the outcomes due to the same procedures being done or whether someone messes up or changes a small bit of the procedure. Indeterminism focuses on the idea that determinism and free will do not go hand in hand and thus determinism doesn’t exist in the world of indeterminism.

Although this example doesn’t happen inside of a lab, it definitely provides the idea of chance rather than causation. One of my best friends helped me get a bike at the end of last semester so that I could stop using gas as much. This semester, I would ride my bike to campus every day and lock it up in the same spot outside of the Thagard building and every day after class I would unlock it and take it back home with me. Seems like simple deterministic ideals and free will since I chose to lock it up there and unlock every day. The idea of determinism was taken away one fateful Tuesday when I took the same steps I did every day- arrive to campus, lock the bike up, go to class, come back, and when I went to unlock my bike it was gone with my bike lock broken on the ground.

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