This is a curated selection of Galen Strawson quotes on free will (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Galen Strawson’s books (Amazon).
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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“True-desert-entailing freedom of will is provably impossible—impossible whether determinism is true or false.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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).” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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?” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“All in all, it seems to me that most of deciding what to do is best seen as something that just happens.” — Galen Strawson
“The fundamental point: human minds are powerfully governed by deep, natural, non-agentive principles of operation.” — Galen Strawson
“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?” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
“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.” — Galen Strawson
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