This page lists some of the all-time best Galen Strawson quotes on free will. Enjoy!
25+ Galen Strawson Quotes on Free Will
“Almost all human beings believe that they’re free to choose what to do in such a way that they can be truly, genuinely responsible for their actions in the strongest possible sense—responsible period, responsible without any qualification, responsible sans phrase, responsible tout court, absolutely, radically, buck-stoppingly responsible; ultimately responsible, in a word—and so ultimately morally responsible when moral matters are at issue. Free will is the thing you have to have if you’re going to be responsible in this all-or-nothing way. That’s what I mean by free will. That’s what I think we haven’t got and can’t have.”
“There’s a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, and it doesn’t make any difference whether the world is determined or not—it’s impossible either way.”
“Whether determinism is true or false, we cannot be ultimate originators of our actions in the way in which we ordinarily and unreflectively suppose that we can be—that is, in the true-desert, true-moral-responsibility entailing way … The image of true-desert-entailing, true-credit-creating origination has to be given up whether determinism is true or false.”
“True-desert-entailing freedom of will is provably impossible—impossible whether determinism is true or false.”
“There is a fundamental ‘strong’ sense of the word ‘free’ given which we neither are nor can be free agents in such a way as to be truly or ultimately responsible for what we do.”
“Strong free will … is incoherent, logically impossible … Nearly all of those who believe in strong free will do so without any conscious thought that it requires ultimate self-origination. But self-origination is the only thing that could actually ground the kind of strong free will that is regularly believed in.”
“In order for one to be truly or ultimately responsible for how one is in such a way that one can be truly responsible for what one does, something impossible has to be true: there has to be, and cannot be, a starting point in the series of acts of bringing it about that one has a certain nature; a starting point that constitutes an act of ultimate self-origination.”
“Human beings cannot be ultimately self-determining in such a way as to be ultimately morally responsible for how they are, and thus for how they decide and act.”
“To be absolutely responsible for what one does, one would have to be causa sui, the cause of oneself, and this is impossible … You can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are because you’d have to be there already to kind of set yourself up, and that would lead to an infinite regress … You can’t get ‘back behind yourself’ in such a way as to be responsible for the kind of person you are.”
“What we would need for true-desert-entailing freedom (this is one way of putting it, at least) is not just indeterminism but true self-determination on the part of free agents … But the attempt to describe how we could possibly be true originators of ourselves in this way leads self-defeatingly to infinite regress (quite apart from being quite fantastically unrealistic).”
“In the end, whatever we do, we do it either as a result of random influences for which we are not responsible, or as a result of non-random influences for which we are not responsible, or as a result of influences for which we are proximally responsible but not ultimately responsible. The point seems obvious. Nothing can be ultimately causa sui in any respect at all.”
“Nothing can be causa sui—nothing can be the cause of itself. In order to be truly or ultimately morally responsible for one’s actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental respects.”
“We are what we are, and we cannot be thought to have made ourselves in such a way that we can be held to be free in our actions in such a way that we can be held to be morally responsible for our actions in such a way that any punishment or reward for our actions is ultimately just or fair.”
“We cannot be free agents in the absolute way we sometimes suppose because we cannot be ultimately (morally) responsible for our actions.”
“One does what one does entirely because of the way one is, and one is in no way ultimately responsible for the way one is.”
“You’re not ultimately responsible for what you do because you didn’t make yourself the way you are … You are a thing made not ultimately by you … How might we be changed by dwelling intensely on the view that ultimate responsibility is impossible?”
“Whatever one actually does, one will do what one does because of the way one is, and the way one is is something for which one neither is nor can be responsible, however self-consciously aware of one’s situation one is.”
“We are born with a great many genetically determined predispositions for which we are not responsible. We are subject to many early influences for which we are not responsible. These decisively shape our characters, our motives, the general bent and strength of our capacity to make efforts of will.”
“In the end, luck swallows everything … In the final analysis the way you are is, in every last detail, a matter of luck—good or bad … Ultimately, it all comes down to luck: luck—good or bad—in being born the way we are, luck—good or bad—in what then happens to shape us. We can’t be ultimately responsible for how we are in such a way as to have absolutely, buck-stopping responsibility for what we do.”
“Those who take it, perhaps very unreflectively, that much or most of their thinking is a matter of action are I believe deluded.”
“If we consider things plainly, we find…that most of our thoughts—our thought contents—just happen. In this sense they are spontaneous…not actions at all. Contents occur, spring up—the process is largely automatic.”
“No ordinary thinking of a particular thought-content, conscious or otherwise, is ever an action … The coming to mind itself—the actual occurrence of thoughts, conscious or nonconscious—is not a matter of action.”
“Call what goes on mental spontaneity if you like, allow the arising of contents to be a matter of spontaneity; but admit, then, that spontaneity has nothing particularly to do with action or will, and nothing at all to do with freedom of choice.”
“All in all, it seems to me that most of deciding what to do is best seen as something that just happens.”
“The fundamental point: human minds are powerfully governed by deep, natural, non-agentive principles of operation.”
“One can live a good—amazing—human life without any significant experience of oneself as an agent in one’s mentation.”
“As a philosopher I think the impossibility of free will and ultimate moral responsibility can be proved with complete certainty. It’s just that I can’t really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really?”
“There’s a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, and it doesn’t make any difference whether the world is determined or not—it’s impossible either way. At the same time, I think we can’t help believing we’ve got it. So, it’s perhaps the most dramatic, irresoluble clash in the whole of philosophy.”
“The no-freedom theorists argument that we can’t possibly have strong free will keeps bumping into the fact that we can’t help believing that we do.”
“We can’t be ultimately responsible for how we are in such a way as to have absolute, buck-stopping responsibility for what we do. At the same time, it seems we can’t help believing that we do have absolute buck-stopping responsibility.”
“My claim is that even if you believe the argument that shows ultimate moral responsibility is impossible, you cannot help living that moment as a moment of radical freedom. In the lived moment, you must experience yourself as free.”
“You’re not free not to choose (that’s how it feels). You’re ‘condemned to freedom,’ in Jean-Paul Sartre’s phrase. You’re fully and explicitly conscious of what the options are and you can’t escape that consciousness. You can’t somehow slip out of it.”
“We are not free to choose whether or not to be free to choose (referencing Sartre).”
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