Excellent question or set of questions! The Ancient Greeks were especially vexed by this concern, some of them (like the Stoics) stressing happiness as something that is almost always an internal matter, but those influenced by Greek tragedy tended to take the opposite view (chance or fate can have a major impact). Probably the best book on this historically and as a substantial question on its own is The Fragility of Goodness; Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy by Martha Nussbaum (Cambridge University Press, 1986). I suspect that some kind of middle ground is the most reasonable: your flourishing or happiness cannot be entirely internal (it would be hard to be happy while being slowly tortured to death), but it cannot be entirely external (we can imagine a chap having the best conditions possible and yet responding with spiteful unhappiness).

As for your general question on happiness, the current debate is quite interesting! Some philosophers are impressed by some empirical evidence that suggests (to them) that a person is not the best judge of whether he or she is happy. There are studies to the effect that most people report being happy with their lives (see "Most People are Happy" in Psychological Science, vol. 7, 1996). There was a 1978 study that reports that accident victims who become paraplegic usually return to their original state of happiness within one year. And another study in 1996 which suggests that few of us (except in non-fatal conditions of course!) are badly effected after three months of a bad event. (There is an excellent paper on this by Jason Marsh entitled "Quality of Life Assessments, Cognitive Reliability and Procreative Responsibility.") Some philosophers think all this is pretty good news, but others conclude that the data must reveal that people are self-deceived and while they think they are happy, they are not. I personally have a hard time believing these studies (I think it would take me more than a year to recover from being paraplegic), but if these studies are accurate they perhaps support a middle ground position: a person's happiness is neither entirely internal nor entirely external.

I don't think Marsh's paper is published yet; I heard it presented to my department. But keep an eye out for his treatment of such cases!

Determinism is a thesis about the relations between states (or events) in the universe. A deterministic universe is one in which, holding fixed the past states (or events) and the laws of nature, there is only one possible future set of states (or events). So, it might appear that determinism means that nothing is contingent or could happen otherwise. But that appearance is misleading, because the past or the laws were not necessary and they could have been different. If they had been different than they actually are, then the future events would be different than they actually will be.

If determinism meant that everything is necessary, then it would mean that there is only one possible universe. Nothing could be or could have been different than it is. That doesn't fit with the way we think about possibility. There are lots of possible universes--lots of ways things might have been or might be. But if determinism is true, the only way the present or future could be different than they actually are is if the past or laws were different than they actually were. I think this actually accords with the way we think about most (or all) events in our universe. The tree fell in the forest at this time and in this way. Could it have fallen in a slightly different way (or time)? Sure, but only if something had been slightly different leading up to its falling--the speed or direction of the wind, the saturation of the ground, the strength of the roots, etc. But for those things to be different, earlier things would have had to be different. And so on.

Perhaps our decisions are no different (I'm assuming you had the issue of free will in mind when you asked this question). You consider various options about what to order for lunch (or what major to pick or career path to follow or whom to marry!) After deliberation, you decide on X. Could you have chosen Y? Well, if determinism is true, only if something had been slightly different, such as the considerations you thought about or the strength of certain desires you had. And for those to be different, something earlier would have had to be different. And so on. But determinism does not rule out those possibilities. And if determinism is false, then it seems your decisions could be different for no reason at all, which doesn't sound so great either.

Lots more to say, but I hope this gives you something to think about...

Or another mode of reply: First suppose that science DOES suggest determinism. How would anything be different in our lives? Wouldn't democratic processes work precisely the same way as they have been? (After all, our behavior has been deterministic all along, so why would discovering/proving/merely believing that it is deterministic change anything?) Or since 'freedom' seems to be the larger concern for you, again, what would be different? All the cases where we've held people responsible for their behaviors, we still would hold them, wouldn't we? we'd still lock up bad people, teach our children to be good, etc.... So it isn't clear to me why scientific results would threaten anything, really. Ditto for religion: if we think religions are in the business of generating true claims about the world, then, where they succeed, we should be happy to endorse their claims (assuming we want the truth). Whichever dogmatic religions you're thinking of ARE dogmatic because they believe they have the truth which, I suppose, isn't necessarily a bad thing. Of course, greater humility about knowledge is probably more appropriate -- but then very little stops most people from believing their religious beliefs along WITH the humility of recognizing they may be wrong -- so it isn't religion itself which 'suppresses freedom (of thought)', but dogmatic bossy people (some of whom are religious, but many of whom are not) ....

hope that's useful! ...

ap

Just because God knows what is going to happen does not mean it has to happen, in the sense that human beings have to do what they end up doing. For example, I always have sugar in my coffee, if sugar is available, but that does not mean that I am incapable of having coffee without sugar. I used to smoke after a cup of coffee, but no longer do so, and here again I did not have to give up smoking. God doubtless knew what I was going to do before I did it, but the decisions to use sugar, and discontinue smoking all belong to me.

As the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the subject defines it, causal determinism "is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature".

This is a much stronger claim that is made at (2). To say that "everything can be determined", in the sense in which that phrase is used at (1), seems to mean just that every current fact can be known, i.e., can be determined to be true by some sort of ideal observer. That is itself a very strong claim, and not one that is obviously true. (Can it now be known what the temperature is inside some star millions of light years from here? What about facts in the past?) But even if it is true, that does not show that, to use your example, your raking the leaves now was causally necessitated by past events.

How about neither?

Let's start with religion, about which only a few words. Some forms of religion are dogmatic and deeply invested in doubtful beliefs, but it's a mistake to think all religion is like that, contrary to the persistent insistence of some apologists for atheism.

And "science" writ large hasn't settled whether everything is a product of deterministic forces, let alone about what that would imply if it were true. On the first point: it's open to serious doubt whether quantum processes are deterministic. And it's simply not true that the macro-world would be sealed off from all quantum indeterminism. More important, it's simply not settled that determinism has the dire implications you suppose it has. Most philosophers, I'd guess, accept some version of compatibilism, according to which physical determinism and human freedom can coexist. A bit of searching around this website will find various discussions. Here's one that might be helpful.

Of course, it might be that the compatibilists are wrong. It might also be (many have argued this) that indeterminism doesn't help either. (The fact that a bit of behavior isn't caused hardly shows that it's the sort of thing we want to count as an action for which someone could be held responsible.) The issues here are a blend of philosophical and scientific. But science isn't the enemy. It's our best way of trying to sort out the factual background to our philosophical puzzles. What we make of those facts isn't something we should blame "science" for.

We tend to regard the will as something that is marked off from the rest of the person, because, somehow, it is a direct manifestation of the person's being. So an ADHD drug could not be described as "strengthening people's will", because it if were described in this way it could not then be said to be be their own will that was being strengthened; they would be having it down for them.

Similarly, one might think, you can do my work for me, but not my thinking, because then it would not be my thinking that was being done. (Still, in that sense you would not be doing my work - my working - and it is just as impossible for you to do my work as it is for you to think my thoughts or even perhaps to wear my boots, taken to be the ones I am wearing ("Look, his boots (borrowed boots) have mud on them")).

One might on the other hand regard the will as the energy or strength to carry something through. Or one might regard it as determination, though here too the paradox shows through. If my determination is bolstered by a drug, is it really determination? But one can surely lack psychic energy or strength for just the sort of reason (anaemia, say) that one lacks physical energy. In such a case, one could well speak of "strengthening a person's will" or ability to carry through.

It seems to me possible by the way that one could learn from a drug, as Peter Kramer seems to imply can happen with Prozac, in his 1993 book Listening to Prozac. So the possibility seems to exist that the drug can actually teach someone who lacks it what strength of will is, and perhaps then they could do more easily "on their own" later.

Your problem is very interesting and difficult.

You raise an excellent issue here! It's true that it is often claimed that if determinism is true, and every event--including choices or decisions--is determined by preceding events, then choices will not be free, and hence agents will not be responsible for their choices or decisions, and so the agent cannot be responsible for the actions that follow upon choices or decisions, and consequently, there is no basis for sanctioning the agent for those actions that break the law.

It seems to me that the reason that this belief is as common as it is is because philosophers with incompatibilist intuitions think that agents are not free, and, hence, not responsible for their choices/decisions unless either the agent is able to do otherwise or the agent is the ultimate source of her choices. (It seems to me that these conditions are distinct: one might hold that it is a condition on freedom that agents be able to do or choose otherwise than they did without also holding that the agent is the ultimate source of her choices; however, if one holds that an agent must be the ultimate source of her choices in order to be free, it generally also is the case that it is maintained that agents have alternative possibilities. One reason that I think that this distinction needs to be drawn is because certain compatibilists--who think that determinism does not undermine human freedom--can accept the principle of alternative possibilities, although of course they will give it a compatibilistic interpretation, but no compatibilist can hold that agents are the ultimate sources of their choices, in light of the fact that compatibilists believe that determinism is no threat to freedom, and the truth of determinism would imply that agents are not the ultimate sources of their choices.) But if laws are taken to govern the acts committed by agents who are not free, this might seem to be an instance of what Thomas Nagel, in his wonderful paper, "Moral Luck" (collected in his volume, Mortal Questions, which includes many other wonderful papers as well and which I highly recommend), calls 'moral luck', and any legal judgment made about those actions would be unfair. The basic idea here is that laws can only apply to agents who are capable of obeying or disobeying laws, but if determinism is true, agents do not have that ability--at least, they do not have the ability, at the moment that they choose, of choosing otherwise than they actually do--and consequently, only if determinism is false can laws hold for agents.

While this view may rest on questionable assumptions about the nature of human freedom and the nature of law, I don't think it's absurd: such a view only seems absurd if one has either deep-seated compatibilist intuitions or deep-seated intuitions about the nature of law that take it to be a practice that is not tied to incompatibilism about freedom, or perhaps not even tied to the ascription of freedom to the agent in question. (Indeed, both compatibilists and incompatibilists about human freedom--from Thomas Hobbes to Moritz Schlick to J. J. C. Smart to Derk Pereboom--have maintained that law is either compatible with compatibilism about freedom or that it can function even if human beings are not free.) After all, the discovery that the world does not allow a necessary condition of an ongoing practice to hold might well provide a reason--if not a cause--for not continuing that practice.

The deep question, however, is what relation there is--if any--between law and conceptions of human freedom. This is a deep and interesting question. that many philosophers--including all the philosophers that I have mentioned in this rresponse--have addressed; I think, however, that in addition to reading articles by philosophers, one might gain some purchase on this issue by considering the law of torts, which has to do with ascriptions of responsibility. By looking and seeing just how issues of responsibility are treated in the law, one might thereby be in a better position to determine just how relevant philosophical discussions of responsibility are to the practice of law.

You raise multiple questions, all very important and interesting, which intersect in various ways, but which, I think, can be distinguished. (1) Are reasons causes? (2) Is an agent constrained if s/he acts for reasons? (3) Can one freely act against one's own better judgment? (4) Even if one could freely act against one's own better judgment, would the ability to do so be valuable in the way that freedom is valuable? (Now (4) gives rise to a further question: In what respect is freedom valuable?)

Now it seems to me that the question that's driving you here is whether agents can be determined--"governed"--by reasons and nevertheless free, and so I'll treat it. (Note that I've subtly shifted the question from whether agents can act for reasons and still be free to whether agents determined by reasons can still be free. I do so in order to focus the question on choice, which I take to be the locus of freedom, and away from action, which requires a different sort of analysis.)

In order to answer this question, however, it would first need to be determined to what sort of determination a free agent can be subject and remain free. (Certain philosophers would accept that reasons can be deterministic causes of actions or choices, whereas other philosophers would not.) It seems to me that the vise tightens if one assumes, for the sake of argument, that reasons determine an agent just as physical causes determine effects, so I proceed from that assumption.

Now, suppose that reasons determine an agent. The worry is that then the agent is not free, because s/he is determined. But as both philosophers--such as Locke and Leibniz, to take two very different kinds of philosophers--and novelists (Dostoyevsky, in Notes from Underground) have argued or suggested that the freedom to be irrational isn't even worth the name of freedom. Indeed, Leibniz even claims that freedom varies directly with rationality. (He's got theological reasons for making this claim, but let's leave those aside.) Now Leibniz--and I'm inclined to agree with Leibniz on this--thinks that determination by reasons isn't any sort of constraint or compulsion, but a perfection, and so determination by reasons shouldn't be seen as a limitation or constraint--that's the wrong way to conceive of one's relation to reasons. Indeed, it seems to me that in order even to be capable of being an agent, one must be capable of acting for reasons; consequently, it would therefore seem to me to follow that determination by reasons does not--indeed, cannot--compromise freedom.

Now if one has a different conception of agency than the one just sketched, one might want to resist the idea that agency and determination by reasons are compatible. But what underwrites such a conception of agency? Why should one want a conception of agency that sees rational determination as a threat? This takes us back to question (5) above: What's valuable about agency? That is a question to which I wish I had an answer.

QM may give us reason for believing that determinism is false. (Actually, even this claim is problematic, but it at least has some plausibility. If we think the world behaves as QM says it does, and think that QM implies that some events are irredeemably chancy, then it seems to follow that that the state of the world at one time doesn't deterministically fix how things must be at later times.)

But even if QM gives us reason for believing that determinism is false, that doesn't establish that we do have free will. For the claim that there are irredeemably chancy events plainly doesn't show anything about whether we are in control of our destiny in any interesting sense. It could still be that "free will" is an illusion, that everything that happens to us is as the result of happenings quite out of our control, and our supposedly free decisions are like the froth on the wave, doing no serious causal work. It's just that that underlying causality is chancy.

Of course, compatabilists will also argue the other way about: even if determinism is true, that doesn't establish that we don't have free will either. But that's another story.