QuestionsAre we free?If everything is necessary, our regrets are absurd: determinism has only bad ways out
Are we free?Free will

If everything is necessary, our regrets are absurd: determinism has only bad ways out

The dilemma of determinism

William James 1842 · 1910Religious experiences are psychological facts to be studied seriously, and belief can be a legitimate venture.
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What it claims

It is more reasonable to believe that real possibilities exist: that, facing a choice, several futures are truly open. This is indeterminism, which James calls "chance".

Why

To regret a crime is to hold that something else could have happened; if all is fixed, we must give up regret or call the world flawed.

The same idea through history
Immanuel Kant1788For Kant, duty implies ability: if I ought to do something, I can. James starts from a neighbouring idea, but applies it to regret rather than duty: to regret an act is to say one ought to have done otherwise, hence could have.
William James1884Lecture given to Harvard divinity students in 1884 (published in the Unitarian Review, then in The Will to Believe, 1897). James renews the debate: he does not claim to prove free will but shows what determinism costs.
In short

"If everything is necessary, our regrets are absurd: determinism has only bad ways out" is an argument by William James ("The Dilemma of Determinism", 1884, 1884) on the question "Are we free?" (answer: free will). Its claim: It is more reasonable to believe that real possibilities exist: that, facing a choice, several futures are truly open. This is indeterminism, which James calls "chance". According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"The Dilemma of Determinism", 1884
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1884 William James declines to prove free will: he thinks no evidence drawn from the facts can decide, since facts tell what happened, not what could have happened. He asks another question: what becomes of our moral life if everything is necessary? He takes an example, a murder then in the news. Almost everyone judges: "That should not have happened." But if everything was fixed in advance, nothing else could have happened in its place. James shows that determinism then has only two exits: to regret the whole world (pessimism) or to declare our regrets useful errors (subjectivism). He refuses both and concludes that it is better to believe in real possibilities. He does not present this as a proof, but as a reasoned choice.

P1Determinism holds that the present is compatible with only one future: any other course is impossible. Possibilities that are not realised are pure illusions.
P2If we keep our regret before an atrocious crime, we say something else ought to be in its place. But if nothing else was possible, the world is a place where what ought to be is impossible: a flawed whole. That is pessimism.
P3If we give up regret, we must call it wrong. But that judgment of regret is itself necessary: nothing else could have taken its place. So the world remains a place where an error is unavoidable, or else evil is no longer evil and only the knowledge we draw from it matters. That is subjectivism.
P4Pessimism and subjectivism are each worse than a pluralist world where evil is possible but not fated. Pessimism makes the universe an accomplice of the crime; subjectivism turns the crime into a mere spectacle and corrupts our moral sense.
P5 · implicit premiseWhen a theory leaves only exits that are worse than its rival, and the facts cannot decide between them, it is more reasonable to prefer the rival.
Therefore it is more reasonable to believe that real possibilities exist: that, facing a choice, several futures are truly open. This is indeterminism, which James calls "chance".

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where determinism has only bad exits yet remains true: for instance if the world is as it is, whether or not we like it. A disagreeable world is not a false one.
With P5 the argument is valid. P1 to P3 show that, whatever one does with one's regret (keep it or give it up), determinism leads to pessimism or subjectivism; P4 judges both worse than indeterminism; P5 draws the preference for indeterminism. Without P5 it is not: from "determinism has only bad exits" it does not yet follow that "it is more reasonable to believe the opposite", since the truth may be unpleasant. James admits this himself: he does not claim to compel, he states his choice.
Analogy. An actor is handed a play in which every line is written in advance, including the cries of regret at the crime in the last act. If the play is truly written, it makes no sense to say the author ought to have written something else: the audience's regret is part of the script. Either we find the play bad from start to finish (pessimism), or we say the regret was only theatre (subjectivism). James prefers a play in which some roles are improvised.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

David Hume 1748 · attacks premise 2

The dispute is largely verbal. By "liberty" we mean only the power of acting or not acting according to the will: if I choose to remain at rest I may; if I choose to move I may also. This liberty, Hume says, belongs to everyone who is not in chains. So we may regret, blame and say "you could have" without denying that everything is caused.

James replies
William James 1884 · James's reply ("soft" determinism)
James aims at this "soft" determinism, which mixes good and bad with cause and effect. He puts it before his dilemma: if it wants to escape pessimism, it must stop looking at goods and ills as real facts and make them mere material for consciousness.
George Edward Moore 1912 · Counter-reply (the conditional "could")
Moore holds that "I could have done otherwise" very often means "I would have done otherwise if I had chosen", and that this is what we know when we regret. This sense is compatible with determinism and is enough to ground regret and "I ought to have". James could not have read it (the book dates from 1912, James died in 1910): it is not a reply to James, but it is one of the most cited compatibilist answers.
The debate goes on (our summary) A defender of James would ask: if the act was fixed in advance, the choice itself included, in what way is the world in which we regret anything other than one where what ought to be was impossible? That is the question of the "incurable taint" (P2). The disagreement is about what a sincere regret requires.
David Hume 1739 · attacks the conclusion

When necessity is removed, causes are removed too: liberty "is the very same thing with chance". And, Hume says, an action that does not proceed from the person's character can neither redound to his honour nor to his infamy. If our choices were chance, we would be no more accountable for a premeditated murder than for an accident: indeterminism destroys the very responsibility it wanted to save.

James replies
William James 1884 · James's reply (chance is a negative word)
James takes the word head on. "Chance" is a purely negative term: it says only that a thing is not fixed in advance by the rest. It tells nothing of what the thing is in itself, which may be perfectly clear. If my walk picks Divinity Avenue rather than Oxford Street, once chosen nothing in that choice looks like disorder. Only the fact that it was not decreed beforehand stays open.
Peter van Inwagen 2000 · Counter-reply (the problem of luck)
Van Inwagen, who himself defends free will, grants the force of the objection: if the same situation were "replayed" many times, and if, in identical circumstances, an act could happen or not happen and nothing in the agent decides which, the difference seems to be a matter of luck. He does not conclude that free will is false, but that it remains a mystery.
The debate goes on (our summary) James died in 1910 and could not reply to this refinement (2000). A defender of James could repeat that the agent's choice is exactly what, at the moment it is made, decides between two real possibles ("the idea of chance is the same thing as the idea of gift", §21), but the question remains much debated.
Baruch Spinoza 1677 · attacks premise 3

For Spinoza, repentance is not a virtue and does not arise from reason: whoever repents of an act is doubly wretched, first overcome by an evil desire, then by sadness. A determinist sage therefore has no need of regret: he understands the causes and acts better. This is the exit James himself describes as "abandoning the judgment of regret".

James replies
William James 1884 · James's reply (the see-saw)
James admits that one can give up regrets: history shows it is not impossible. But the judgment that calls regret wrong is itself necessitated, so the world remains a place where what ought to be seems impossible. When murder stops being a sin, regret becomes an error; one rises as the other falls. What remains is the subjectivist exit (evil is only knowledge), which James says leads to moral indifference.
The debate goes on (our summary) A Spinozist would answer that this indifference is not a necessary consequence: understanding why a cruel act occurs does not excuse us from preventing it. What James calls a "corruption of our moral sanity" is therefore disputed (James rests it on the history of romanticism, not on a proof).