# A Defense of Free Will for Logical Determinists **URL:** \ **Category:** Metaphysics & Epistemology\ **Created:** [August 24, 2026, 1:29pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/a-defense-of-free-will-for-logical-determinists/2704 "2026-08-24T13:29:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![noAxioms](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/noaxioms/32/658_2.png) [@noAxioms](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/noAxioms)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2026, 3:32am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/a-defense-of-free-will-for-logical-determinists/2704/21 "2026-09-10T03:32:21Z")
Let me echo the welcome to this forum. I took 2.5 weeks to reply, but I wanted to comment on several portions of the OP, especially the definitions. For the record, when it comes to free will, I probably don’t identify as either compatibilist or libertarian, but rather a sort of pragmatic stance. Look at what is needed for somebody to be held responsible for prior actions. It isn’t any of the things being discussed here. The way I see it, one is responsible if one has: 1. Awareness of alternatives 2. Lack of external compulsion, and 3. Capacity to understand the consequences None of the three points is dependent on determinism or lack of it, or one’s stance on philosophy of mind, choice of interpretations of science, or labels of ‘genuine’ which boil down to ‘agrees with my opinion’. > [@TheUnfallacious](#): > > 1. Causal determinism: A kind of determinism in which the future is entirely determined by past causes. It’s a nit, but I wanted to comment on this anyway. The typical wording is that states evolve from prior states, but that’s pretty hard to do. For one, to say a system has a state at time X is a counterfactual statement, one of scientific realism. To say it evolved from prior states is one of locality. Without locality, retrocausality comes into play, which destroys the nice neat time evolution. They’ve proved that our universe is not locally real, meaning these two points (locality, scientific realism) cannot both be true. Just saying… It matters not too much to FW discussion. Regardless of the nature of physics, our choices are a function of physics or they’re not. If LFW is the case, quantum theory is necessarily wrong. We both seem to agree on that. The theory does not allow for external (non-physical) input of intent. > I redefine free will to argue that people can still be held accountable despite a caused world. Good. You’re in line with the definition I give above then, and it probably gets us both labeled as compatibilists, even if I don’t identity as one. > [@TheUnfallacious](#): > > 1. Logical determinism: Similar to this is theological determinism, where God knows the future, but that’s enough of a nuance that put that under the “logical determinism” umbrella. I want to say that lacking any evidence to the contrary, there does not seem to be a preferred moment in time, so mentions of ‘the future’ lack meaning in any non-subjective sense. Logical determinism is not only functionally similar to omniscience, but similar to the block view, the standard scientific interpretation of spacetime and such that comes from relativity theory. It is also pretty similar to hindsight. So consider if Hitler should be held responsible for the holocaust. The example is chosen for it’s lack of ‘now’, so us looking at the situation in hindsight is pretty identical to the onmniscient view and/or the block view. Whether or not the universe is determined or stochastic, his actions meet all three points listed in my definition. What does that mean? How does one hold responsible a person at a time when the person doesn’t exist? Well, we can write, and leave the negative legacy, and hope (apparently in vain) to not let it happen again. How about outside of time altogether? That seems pretty meaningless to me. Something outside the block cannot meaningfully assign responsibility. > [@Materialist](#): > > The Molinist: God’s knowledge of your future choices is passive; it does not cause the choice that you are freely making. Precisely. Ditto with block and hindsight. It’s passive. My knowing past history does not cause that history. > [@TheUnfallacious](#): > > In Molinism, God chooses the world in which you freely choose what he wants. I don’t know Molinism. I was agreeing with the assessment of it being passive. You are describing more of the omniscient entity choosing for you, which doesn’t sound very free at all. > [@TheUnfallacious](#): > > 1. Libertarian Free Will (LFW): A kind of free will that serves as the pinnacle of those who believe in free will. I define it to be the condition of which a person genuinely has the freedom to choose. There’s that word ‘genuine’, which seems contradictory when you examine closely since LFW punts choices to something other than one’s self. Hardly a pinnacle. LFW seems to want choice to be free of the mechanism by which rational choice is made. I cannot think of a single example of a choice better made utilizing LFW. > This means that if I chose chocolate yesterday, I still very well could have chosen vanilla, because I was deciding of my own free will, uncaused. I balk at ‘uncaused’ because it implies that external input is not part of the decision. One wouldn’t even know that ice cream flavors are the options if causes are ignored. Try crossing the street uncaused. It will get you quickly killed. Evolution would never select for this kind of bad mechanism of choice. If you can ‘genuinely’ choose otherwise, you’re declining to make the choice yourself and instead letting a die choose for you. That is attempted denial of responsibility, but failing since none of my 3 points is violated. Ice cream choice isn’t a moral one, but pondering cheating on your spouse or not isn’t a choice best left to stochastic methods, however genuine it might be designated. > Now, imagine this [tea/coffee] scenario tomorrow. Different initial conditions. @Patterner noticed this in post 6. It isn’t an example really illustrative of the concept IMO. > A classic objection to this is that this would mean that whatever you do, you don’t have any real control over what you do because it was always true that you were going to choose tea. If you are part of the cause of the choice, then you have control. I don’t understand arguments that assert otherwise. They make no sense. Brains would not have evolved to make better choices if they don’t have any control. Fatalism is something else, meaning that X will occur no matter what you choose. Humans going extinct is fate. Exactly when that happens is not. You seem to describe a different meaning to ‘fatalism’. > Therefore, LFW is absolutely compatible with non-causal determinism, … Only because LFW seems to be defining dice rolling as genuine choice instead of the yielding of choice that it really is. There doesn’t seem to be a third option: determinism or randomness. There is no intent from external sources possible in either case. I hope that you don’t consider my post to be a ‘repeat of the original objection’. Not sure which objection that even was. > [@Michael](#): > > But if determinism is true then it’s not at all clear what “should” (or “shouldn’t”) [be held accountable] would mean; Society would collapse in the absence of accountability in a deterministic world. Fitness would collapse. Any species lacking accountability would quickly go extinct. ---
**Author:** ![Friend0fDiotima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/46a35a/32.png) [@Friend0fDiotima](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Friend0fDiotima)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2026, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/a-defense-of-free-will-for-logical-determinists/2704/22 "2026-09-25T17:48:28Z")
Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it" Christopher Hitchens [Previous page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/a-defense-of-free-will-for-logical-determinists/2704.md?page=1)