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So we've looked quickly at some of Hume's contributions here at the end of this,

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and in the light of that argument that I've just described, you might well wonder whether freewill is a coherent notion at all.

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Because despite all the arguments of the compatibles,

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you might well think there is something odd about ascribing morally responsible moral responsibility to us.

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If everything that we do was inevitably determined a thousand years before we were born.

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Doesn't that really make freewill a dubious notion, despite all of the points that have been made?

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But now we see that there's a problem.

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If you deny determinism, suppose you deny determinism, suppose you think that a lot of what happens in the world is random.

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A lot of human actions are determined by the sorry are brought about by factors that are not causally determined in which,

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as it were, there's a there are dice being thrown in my head when I do whatever I do.

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How does that make me morally responsible? It's hard to see that randomness helps at all.

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So the libertarian has quite a difficult challenge here as well.

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The libertarian has to explain how something can be meaningfully free in a morally important way.

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And yet not determined. Well, one way round, all this sort of thing is taken by Hume again.

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He only hints at this in Section eight of the enquiry, which you'll be reading.

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But it's important to be aware of it. Hume is what's called a sentimentalists in morality.

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Very important trend both in his day and in hours. The idea basically is this.

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Morality is founded on our feelings, on our sentiments.

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On sympathy or what you'd call sympathy, what we might call empathy and fellow feeling towards other people.

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So the claim is that morality is not some sort of metaphysical speculation.

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When I judge something right or wrong, I'm not doing that on the basis of philosophical argument or very rarely.

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So I'm doing it on the basis of my feelings. I see somebody robbing an old lady.

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I feel resentment for the robber. I feel great sympathy for the person who's robbed.

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And it's that natural fellow feeling. Which gives rise to moral sentiments.

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At least that's the claim. Now, notice that if you are a sentimentalist, if you take this kind of view,

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if you think of morality as something like a projection of human attitudes, then there's no reason at all why determinism should under undermine it.

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So Hume gives this example a man who is robbed of a considerable sum.

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Does he find his vexation for the loss? Any wise diminished by these sublime reflections, thinking about determinism and so forth?

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Of course not. If I am robbed of a considerable sum, the fact that the villain was causally determined to do it makes no difference to my resentment.

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I feel extremely angry. Why then?

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Should his moral resentment against the crime be supposed incompatible with?

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So noticed that there are different ways out of this. We don't need to be trapped by the metaphysical debate,

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we might be able to stand back and change our account of morality or develop a proper

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account of morality that allows determinism and maybe allows randomness within it.

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So don't forget, when you're thinking about freewill and moral responsibility and determinism,

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don't forget that questions can be asked about the nature of morality.

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And it's entirely possible that your answer to those questions will influence your view on freewill and determinism.

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Well, you'll have gathered I'm quite sympathetic to a human approach on this, as on many other things.

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But there is a sense in which you might well think that it's rather too crude.

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Who wants to say that we're free if we act in accordance with our will?

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Freedom is simply power to act or not act according to the determinations of the will.

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But surely we want to say there is a significant difference between.

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Different actions are in accordance with one's will. Take a drug addict.

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Or an obsessive kleptomania. They seem to be slaves to their will.

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In a sense that the rest of us aren't. We want to see say that they lack freedom in a particular way.

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And it looks like Hume and many other compatibly are not going to be able to have a satisfactory answer to this if you make

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the conditions for freedom so easy to meet that all that's required for a free action is that you do what you want to do.

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How can you distinguish between the drug addict and the normal autonomous person?

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Well, here we get back to Harry Frankfurt and his second very important contribution to the debate.

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He suggests a distinction between first order desires, for example, maybe the desire to smoke a cigarette.

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And second order desires, for example, the desire to quit smoking.

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So the addicted smoker who realises that he's addicted and wishes he could give it up but can't, has a conflict in his desires.

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He's got a second order, desire to give it up. He's got a second order, the desire not to desire cigarettes.

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And he has the first ordered desire for the cigarette. He's not in control of himself at the higher level.

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And that gives us a way of saying that he is less free.

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So bringing this sort of consideration into a determinist compatible list account, I think helps a great deal.

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It enables one to distinguish between different degrees of freedom.

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Within a compatibles framework. I'm just going to end very quickly by drawing to your attention.

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What I think is a particularly interesting contribution on the indeterminacy side,

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most of the big philosophers who've discussed free will over the centuries have actually tended to be compatible ists.

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Compatible ism is by far the dominant trend.

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But Robert Kane has written a lot of stuff from the other side recently.

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He's written a number of books about free will. And when he describes the debates, he normally does so in a very evenhanded and perceptive way.

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So I do recommend what he writes.

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And there's an article on the web here which gives an indeterminate picture which tries to get around the standard problems with indeterminism.

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So he gives the following example, suppose I try to shoot somebody.

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But my aim's very unsteady. It's a chancy matter whether I actually hit them.

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But if I do hit them, I'm responsible. The randomness in no way undermines my responsibility.

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Well, now suppose that there are conflicting desires in my mind.

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I want to do a and I want to do B, but they're incompatible.

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But whichever one actually wins out, even if even if there's a random process in my mind that brings it about that one wins rather than the other.

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That doesn't prevent my being responsible. So he's saying randomness is compatible with responsibility.

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And he uses this to to attack the arguments against indeterminism, which claims that randomness undermines responsibility.

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I mean, he wants to go on to say that things like this, random episodes,

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random things in our mind that bring is about one thing dominates rather than another can over our lives

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end up building our character in such a way that later things that we do are determined by that character.

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But we are still responsible for them because they came about in this indeterminate way.

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And I think that's an interesting and imaginative contribution.

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The difficulty for him, I think, is explaining why even that element of randomness is valuable.

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One might agree with him that in those circumstances, randomness is compatible with responsibility.

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It's very hard to see how randomness makes you more responsible than something that straightforwardly caused.

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And at that point.

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I shall have to leave you to ponder the debate by yourselves, you can see it is a very complex issue with a lot of strands weaving together.