Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy by Bob Doyle. I found this source recently available from the informationphilosopher website, and I particularly like this for its use of long quotes from original sources. You can download and print out a copy for yourself, and then get to grips with this fascinating question. PB

Ted Honderich
(1933-)
Ted Honderich is Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London and past chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, founded by Bertrand Russell in the 1920’s.
Honderich is the principal spokesman for strict causality and “hard determinism.”
He has written more widely (with excursions into quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and consciousness), more deeply, and certainly more extensively than most of his colleagues on the problem of free will.

Unlike most of his colleagues specializing in free will, Honderich has not succumbed to the easy path of Compatibilism by simply declaring that the free will we have (and should want, say some) is completely consistent with determinism, namely a “voluntarism” in which our will is completely caused by prior events.

Nor does he go down the path of Incompatibilism, looking for non-physical substances, dualist forms of agency, or simply identifying freedom with Epicurean chance, as have many scientists with ideas of brain mechanisms amplifying quantum mechanical indeterminism to help with the uncaused “origination” of actions and decisions.

Honderich does not claim to have found a solution to the problem of free will or determinism, but he does claim to have confronted the problem of the consequences of determinism. He is “dismayed” because the truth of determinism requires that we give up “origination” with its promise of an open future, restricting – though not eliminating – our “life hopes.”

Unlike many of his hard determinist colleagues, who appear to welcome determinism and enjoy describing belief in free will as an illusion, Honderich is unique in his passionate sense of real loss. We might have been the author of our own actions, we could have done otherwise, and thus be held accountable and morally responsible in a way more acceptable to common sense. He describes the life hope that is lost – a future we can make for ourselves.

We have a kind of life-hope which is incompatible with a belief in determinism. An open future, a future we can make for ourselves, is one of which determinism isn’t true.
Suppose you become convinced of the truth of our theory of determinism. Becoming really convinced will not be easy, for several reasons. But try now to imagine a day when you do come to believe determinism fully. What would the upshot be? It would almost certainly be dismay. Your response to determinism in connection with the hope would be dismay. If you really were persuaded of determinism, the hope would collapse.

This is so because such a hope has a necessary part or condition on which the rest of it depends. This is is the image of origination. There can be no such hope if all the future is just effects of effects. It is for this reason, I think, that many people have found determinism to be a black thing. John Stuart Mill felt it as an incubus, and, to speak for myself, it has certainly got me down in the past.
(How Free Are You?, p.94)

Though he is its foremost champion, Honderich characterizes determinism as a black thing and an incubus which gives him dismay.

Honderich faults the Compatibilists and Incompatibilists on three counts. First, he says that moral responsibility is not all that is at stake, there are personal feelings, reactive attitudes, problems of knowledge, and rationalizing punishment with ideas of limited responsibility. Second, these problems can not be resolved by logical “proofs” nor by linguistic analyses of propositions designed to show “free” and “determined” are logically compatible. And third, he faults their simplistic idea that one or the other of them must be right.

And unlike some of his colleagues, Honderich does not competely dismiss indeterminism and considers the suggestion of “near-determinism.” He says, “Maybe it should have been called determinism-where-it-matters. It allows that there is or may be some indeterminism but only at what is called the micro-level of our existence, the level of the small particles of our bodies.”

In his recent book On Determinism, Honderich has an extensive discussion of Quantum Theory. On pp.120-127, he says

“Does Quantum Theory as interpreted have some clause, hitherto unheard of, that its random events occur only in such places as to make us morally responsible in a certain sense? This objection of inconsistency, perhaps, is less effective with some uncommitted philosophers because they do not really take the philosophers of origination seriously. If it really were accepted as true that a random event could get in between the question and the intention, with great effect, then it would have to be accepted that one could get in between the intention and the lie, with as much effect. Any attempt to exclude the possibility is bound to be fatally ad hoc.”
There is no inconsistency in quantum mechanics. Quantum noise is ever present. It just normally averages out in macroscopic situations. Microscopic situations, like the storage and retrieval of information in the neurons of the mind/brain, are much more susceptible to noise. Information structures in computers, and in modern digital media devices like CDs and DVDs, are also susceptible to random noise. Both media devices and the brain have elaborate error detection and suppression capabilities.
Honderich maintains a website on Determinism and Freedom, with a selection of important pieces by various thinkers, and a companion guide to the terminology.
Honderich has long defended what he calls the “truth” of determinism. We agree that there must be “adequate determinism” in our choices and actions for us to take moral responsibility. All that we lose with an “adequate determinism” is the truly grand, but unsupportable, idea of pre-determinism, namely that every event and all prior events form a causal chain back to the origin of the universe. Indeed, in On Determinism (p.6), Honderich calls for “the truth of a conceptually adequate determinism.”
In his early thoughts, Honderich wrote in 1973, in his essay “One Determinism,” that determinism may actually preclude responsibility…
States of the brain are, in the first place, effects, the effects of other physical states. Many states of the brain, secondly, are correlates. A particular state accompanied my experience the other moment of thinking about having walked a lot on Hampstead Heath, and a like state accompanies each like experience: each of my experiences of thinking of having walked a lot on Hampstead Heath. Given our present concern, it is traditional that the most important experiences are decidings and choosings. Some states of the brain, thirdly, are causes, both of other states of the brain and also of certain movements of one’s body. The latter are actions. Some are relatively simple while others, such as speech acts and bits of ritual, depend on settings of convention and have complex histories. Simple or complex, however, all actions are movements, or of course stillnesses, caused by states of the brain. It follows from these three premisses, about states of the brain as effects, as correlates and as causes, that on every occasion when we act, we can only act as in fact we do. It follows too that we are not responsible for our actions, and, what is most fundamental, that we do not possess selves of a certain character.
Essays on Freedom of Action, ed. Ted Honderich, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, p.187
The Consequences of Determinism
Honderich’s great work is the 750-page The Theory of Determinism, Oxford, 1988, later broken into two volumes, of which one is The Consequences of Determinism. Honderich claims to have solved the “problem of the consequences of determinism.”
Note that this is not the problem of free will and determinism. Honderich believes determinism is true.

Rather than discuss the problem of free will directly, or even indirectly via the familiar though muddled terms determinism, compatibilism, incompatibilism, and libertarianism, Honderich introduces new concepts and still more terminology.

In the style of Peter Strawson, Honderich’s interest is in our feelings and attitudes toward the truth of determinism, as what he calls our “life-hopes” are altered by belief in determinsm.

One hope is that we can originate actions affecting our future life. The truth of determinism, which denies the freedom to originate actions, might give rise to a “sad” attitude of “dismay.” In this respect, Honderich regards determinism as a “black thing.” He calls dismay the sad attitude toward determinism.

But we can have another “tough” attitude, that of intransigence, in that our hope involving belief in “voluntariness” is consistent with determinism. With his term intransigence, Honderich wants us to resist compromise with ideas like origination. But he seems to imply that moral responsibility can be reconciled with determinism.

Finally, Honderich argues that we can choose the attitude of affirmation rather than intransigence or dismay.

It might appear that Honderich’s terms dismay and intransigence roughly correlate with the ideas of

incompatibilist libertarian free will (involving randomness), which is denied by determinism, leading to his attitude of dismay
compatibilism which is reconciled to determinism, leading to the attitude of intransigence, (irreconcilable with the “fiction” of origination)
But Honderich says he avoids the mistakes of Incompatibilism and Compatibilism. His point of their mistakes is subtle. It depends on his introduction of the two kinds of “life hopes,” the one voluntariness alone, the other voluntariness plus origination. He says:

Let us finish here by having clear the relation of affirmation to Compatibilism and Incompatibilism. Affirmation differs wholly from both in that it recognizes the existence of two attitudes where Compatibilism and Incompatibilism assert a single conception and a single connection with moral responsibility and the like. Affirmation does involve reliance on a single attitude, having to do only with voluntariness, which of course is related to the single conception of initiation which Compatibilists assign to us. Affirmation also has to do with the other attitude, pertaining also to origination, related to the single conception which Incompatibilists assign to us. It is not much more like Compatibilism than Incompatibilism. (p.149)
The mistake of Incompatibilism appears to be that it assumes that determinism destroys moral approval and disapproval. This, Honderich says, ignores the tough attitude of intransigence.

The mistake of Compatibilism, is to assert that nothing changes as a consequence of determinism, when clearly we have lost the life-hope of origination. This ignores the sad attitude of dismay.

Honderich summarizes his lengthy argument (p.169).

The argument about the consequences of determinism has been a long one, and can usefully be brought into a succinct form.
1.2 All our life-hopes involve thoughts to the effect that we somehow initiate our future actions. Some involve not only beliefs as to voluntariness or willingness but also an idea, or what is more an image, of our originating our future actions. To think of life-hopes of this kind, and their manifest inconsistency with determinism, and to accept the likely truth of determinism, is to fall into dismay. We are deprived of the hopes.

1.3 We also have life-hopes involving only beliefs as to voluntariness — that we will act not from reluctant desires and intentions, but from embraced desires and intentions, that we will act in enabling circumstances rather than frustrating ones. These circumstances have to do with at least the way of my world, the absence of self-frustration, independence of others, and absence of bodily constraint. Thinking of hopes of this kind, and noting the clear consistency of a determinism with them, may issue in intransigence. These life-hopes are not at all significantly threatened by determinism.

1.4 We have appreciative and also resentful feelings about others, owed to their actions deriving from good or bad feelings and judgements about us. Both sorts of personal feelings involve assumptions somehow to the effect that others could do otherwise than they do. It is natural in one way of thinking and feeling to take the assumptions to amount to this: others act with knowledge, without internal constraint, in character, and in line with personality, not out of abnormality, not because of constraint by others. This second one of a set of fundamentally like conceptions of voluntary action, wholly consistent with determinism, may lead us to make the response of intransigence with respect to personal feelings. However, we also have other personal feelings, having a certain person-directed character and including an assumption as to a power or control of their actions by others. The assumption is inconsistent with determinism and may lead to dismay.

1.5 We accept that our claims to knowledge derive in part from beliefs and assumptions to our mental acts and our ordinary actions, by which we come to have evidence and the like. We may take it that originated acts and actions are necessary, and, taking them as ruled out by a determinism, suffer a want of confidence in our beliefs, a dismay having to do with the possibility of a further reality. Inevitably, however, we can have a different kind of confidence, owed only to an assumption as to voluntariness, the possibility of our satisfying our desires for information. Hence intransigence about knowledge. These are facts which the Epicurean tradition of objection to determinism has greatly misconstrued.

1.6 One fundamental question in morality is that of how the world ought to be in so far as we can affect it. However, it allows us to concentrate either on the nature of good men and women, or the nature of right actions. The other fundamental question is that of moral approval and disapproval of agents for particular actions, the responsibility they must have for their actions. An action’s being right, and a person’s having a good moral standing, presuppose that we do somehow have responsibility for our actions. Hence determinism’s effect on all of morality can be considered by way of its effect on moral responsibility.

1.7 What feelings enter into our moral disapproval of the vicious husband and father anticipating his divorce? We may have tendencies to act against him, retributive desires for at least his discomfiture. These desires, by a kind of direct reflection can be seen to be vulnerable to a determinism. The result may be dismay. However, reflection on the purpose of morality brings into view a kind of moral disapproval, and approval, which rest not on an image of origination but only certain beliefs as to voluntariness. There is no conflict between them and determinism. Intransigence with respect to determinism and morality is as possible and natural as dismay.

2.1 There are two traditional views of the challenge of determinism, Compatibilism and Incompatibilism. Considering them throws into greater definition the fact that each of us has two families of attitudes, including two sorts of life-hopes and so on, and may respond to determinism with at least dismay and intransigence. The two traditional views also demand consideration as the principal alternatives to the correct resolution of the problem of the consequences of determinism.

2.2 Compatibilist philosophers ascribe to us a single conception of the initiation of action, and a kind of belief as to the sufficiency of this initiation in so far as moral approval and disapproval are concerned. The conception is that of a voluntary action, and hence a determinism is taken to affect moral responsibility not at all. Incompatibilists also ascribe to us a single conception of the initiation of action, which includes origination, and a belief as to its role. They take it that the truth of determinism would destroy moral responsibility. Both philosophical parties take the problem of the consequences of determinism to be of an intellectual or theoretical kind, to which can be added that Compatibilists are in a way overwhelmed by the great fact of causation generally, and Incompatibilists are greatly desirous of our having a certain stature, of elevating us.

2.3 Our two families of attitudes, and the two responses, establish the falsehood of both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism. We do not have a single conception of the initiation of action, or a single belief as to the role of such a conception. Our circumstance is not either that a determinism leaves moral approval and disapproval untouched, or that it destroys it. To suppose that it destroys it, as Incompatibilists do, is to ignore our attitudes which may issue in intransigence. To suppose that a determinism leaves moral approval and disapproval untouched, as Compatibilists do, is to ignore our attitudes which issue in dismay. Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are as mistaken in other respects, not least in offering what are very nearly absurd explanations of the persistence of the problem of the consequences of determinism.

3.1 The true problem of the consequences of determinism is to escape the unsatisfactory situation in which we find ourselves, prone to two inconsistent families of attitudes, and two inconsistent responses. It is fundamentally a problem of dealing with desires. In trying to make this escape, we are not restrained by some fundamentality of origination as against voluntariness. Our endeavour must be to accept the defeat of certain desires, by reflecting, in part, on the satisfaction of others. It is an endeavour which enters into arriving at a philosophy of life.

3.2 In so far as origination is a fiction, life-hopes which we have are affected, and the damage cannot be assuaged by the reflections that ideas of origination are faint ones, or that a determinism saves us from chance. There is little solace in the fact that determinism gives us a particular membership in nature. There is more in the escape from failure which it allows. There is also the fact that our life-hopes in a deterministic world are no more bounded in their objects than life-hopes would be in a world of origination. If these hopes also have other recommendations, a final acceptance of our situation will depend on full belief in a determinism. We may respond to determinism, nevertheless, in so far as our life-hopes are concerned, with affirmation rather than dismay or intransigence. This includes the endeavour to accept what must be accepted, by several means, and also the recognition that our life-hopes can be life-sustaining things. They can enter into a celebratory philosophy of life.

3.3 A determinism conflicts with personal feelings of the kind that involve an image of origination, and an acceptance of this is included in the response of affirmation. The renunciation, particularly of the appreciative personal feelings of this kind, is made more tolerable by a related escape from the resentful ones. The response of affirmation also includes an assertion of the great value of the personal feelings as they can exist in a deterministic world. To make the response is to keep one’s balance, which balance allows for a recognition of the great worth of an existence enriched by facts of personal relationship.

3.4 We can be said to be barred by determinism from knowledge of a possible reality. Thus there is a truth distantly related to propositions of Plato, Spinoza, and others. That is not to say that our lot must be a kind of unhappy agnosticism. Affirmation, as elsewhere, gives a place to both considerations.

3.5 Moral approval and disapproval, since they may rest partly on origination, are affected by a determinism. Our specifically retributive desires are affected. There is more consolation here than with life-hopes, however, and perhaps more than with personal feelings. The moral responsibility untouched by determinism is of a large significance. For one thing, each of us has a moral standing. There are corollaries having to do with right action, and good men and women.

3.6 The response of affirmation enters importantly into a number of possible philosophies of life. It may be asked if it is possible for us really to make the response, since it involves a significant change in our lives. It may be asked if it would be rational to make the change. In fact the change is possible, and the question about whether it would be rational can be answered in the affirmative.

These answers effectively give the main ideas of a resolution of the problem of the consequences of determinism, the problem which has most exercised philosophers. What remains is a consideration, for which we now have some guiding principles, of certain fundamental social and political facts.