The film City of God portrays a boy, Lil Ze, growing up in the violent and amoral favelas of Rio de Janeiro. One day, seven-year-old Lil Ze acts as a watchdog for his older brother, Goose, when Goose and two friends (together called the “Tender Trio”) raid a motel to steal money. Though the Tender Trio were content on not killing anyone in the raid, youthful Lil Ze took it upon himself to murder everyone in the motel. With a newfound bloodlust and hunger for power in a city run by drug gangs, Lil Ze works his way up the social hierarchy and kills everyone in his way. Is Lil Ze responsible for his actions?

The term “free will” has no universal definition but is loosely defined as the absence of external causation in decision-making. This notion undergirds the ideals of moral responsibility upon which many justice systems are built. For example, when someone commits murder, that person will incur the punishment because they are responsible. But are they actually responsible? More fundamentally, does anyone actually have genuine agency over their actions?

Free will is an ontological (relating to the nature of reality) impossibility. While we feel as though we have genuine agency, this is an epistemological (our knowledge of the ontological) illusion. Thus, while we may be politically or emotionally responsible for our actions, we are not ultimately responsible. 

The argument will be divided into four sections: Metaphysical Groundwork covers our level of certainty about knowledge, types of knowledge, and causal determinism; Free Will argues that human thought and action are causally determined; Compatibilism underscores the inconsistencies in compatibilism; Responsibility answers how the absence of free will can be thought about in practice. 

Metaphysical Groundwork

How can we make ontological claims from an epistemological perspective? Firstly, a claim’s certainty varies depending on the type of claim being made. A claim about some object by means of sensory perception is not certain because of the fallibility of our sensory perceptions; a claim about some logical truth is certain because it is impossible for it to be otherwise. Thus, certainty varies based on possibility. 

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume says that if a billiard ball strikes another billiard ball, we observe one ball striking and moving another ball; however, all we know for certain is the matter of fact (description of the event) and not the relation of ideas (reason or cause for the event). This is because our understanding is based on empirical data, not logical reasoning. As a result, we are ignorant of what is truly causing the ball to move. Thus, there is no certainty that the next time a billiard ball strikes another, the other ball will move.

Relation of ideas, on the other hand, refers to abstract laws such as those of logic and mathematics, which are certain and a priori. It is true, by definition, that 2+2=4, and to deny that would be a contradiction. This places limits on possibility in the relation of ideas, but does it also place limits on possibility regarding matters of fact? 

How could the physical world possibly disobey the laws of logic? How could something be and not be at the same time? These are unanswerable questions because the answer would imply contradiction, which is unintelligible. Thus, the physical world must obey the laws of logic. If the physical world did not obey the laws of logic, then nothing would be coherent, yet the physical world is coherent.

Causal determinism implies that everything is caused by something prior, while indeterminism implies things can happen absent of prior causes. Causal determinism is rooted in the principle of sufficient reason (everything has an explanation for its being), which prohibits randomness. Randomness implies acting without a prior cause, which is not, at face value, a logical contradiction but is derivatively. When “nothing” is an object of thought, it is something, which is a contradiction. In order to avoid metaphysical contradictions, the principle of sufficient reason must be a logical truth. Therefore, causal determinism is the only logical metaphysical possibility. With this metaphysical groundwork, we can now explore how it carries over to human thought and action. 

Free Will

The criteria for the existence of free will are that the cause for an action originates exclusively in the agent himself and he has full control over whether or not to act on it. Our conscious experience superficially seems to meet these criteria. Thoughts arise randomly or in context, and we can choose to act on them or not. 

For example, if I deliberate on whether to work out or not, it seems like I am free to rationally choose either option because there is nothing external that is obviously restricting either course of action. Sometimes we think of our impulses as a predetermined reality and our ability to prudently resist impulses as proof of agency. So, if I strongly oppose working out but choose to anyway, is that proof I have agency over my actions? No, because passions are the subject of deliberation, and thus we cannot exercise rationality in service of itself. Rather, rationality is exercised in the service of passions, and passions are determined by external factors. 

It is challenging to understand the deterministic nature of ourselves when we are the subject of study. To understand why our intuitions about our own agencies are an illusion, we must treat ourselves as third-person subjects. This is what Sam Harris calls an objective truth about a subjective experience. So, if we make claims about things external to us, we can also be treated as an external object in an ontological sense. Though our experience is not the same as a description of experience, the description of experience explains the reasons for the experience itself. Science is one way of explaining experience.

In his book Determined, Dr. Robert Sapolsky lays out how neuroscience and biology explain the absence of free will. Essentially, human action is determined by neurobiology, which is the result of genetics as well as environment and evolutionary biology, none of which a person chooses. For Sapolsky, free will exists only if there is “a neuron whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past,” similar to our theory for the impossibility of randomness. For example, chronic elevated glucocorticoids (hormones released during stress) can impair the construction of the frontal cortex (part of the brain that regulates and restrains), causing poor impulse control in adulthood. 

Scientific explanation of human behavior certainly substantiates the notion of causal determinism, but only to a degree. Because scientific experiments cannot account for all variables, they offer an incomplete description of reality. However, we can be confident there is a cause, even if it is not knowable to us, given our metaphysical foundation.

Compatibilism

Compatibilism says free will and causal determinism can coexist if free will is defined by the ability to act according to one’s passions without external coercion or influence. Human actions are still causally determined by passions, but people have a degree of free will that depends on external circumstances, prohibiting one from acting on their desires. For example, physical restraint from something desirable or certain physical or mental disabilities are uncontrollable. By this definition, people have varying degrees of free will according to whether or not they can act as pleasurably as possible in a given context. 

The problem with this definition is that passions are also causally determined, but not all passions are equal. The person who eats healthy and exercises has more auspicious passions than someone who does not eat healthy or exercise. What good does the ability to act on one’s passions do if those passions are inauspicious? It only does any good if that person has the right pre-existing passions. Hard determinism, then, seems to leave us with no genuine choice, but that does not lead to a collapse of responsibility. 

Responsibility

If compatibilism does not offer genuine choice, the political implications of responsibility must shift. The distinction between ultimate causation and proximate causation is that the latter implies pragmatic and concrete responsibility.

Political systems are pragmatic, not metaphysical; therefore, they should be used to maintain order in society, not attribute moral blame. Punishment should be understood as practical, not deserved. This means incentivizing good behavior and eliminating imminent dangers to society. Punishment on moral grounds neglects the fact that people are controlled by things out of their control. 

Blame, resentment, and guilt are also causally determined responses by means of evolution. Feeling that murderers are deserving of moral contempt and should be punished is not always a bad thing because it is a part of incentivizing good behavior. But punishment should not be determined based on these immediate impulses and should instead be determined on pragmatic grounds that help prevent those things from happening in the future. This means addressing the ultimate causes for a person’s actions. 

Lil Ze was ultimately a product of an anarchic culture embodied by violence and desperation. Proper accountability is first understanding how biological dispositions mixed with cultural upbringing shaped his character and, second, rectifying the immediate causes of his behavior. In essence, accountability means grappling with real root causes for effective prevention, rather than disproportionate blame on an individual—a response that is reductionist and misguided.

Even though free will is a metaphysical impossibility, political responsibility does not disappear. If we abandon the illusion of ultimate free will, then we can shift from politics of blame to politics of prevention and understanding.