Freedom and Determinism

We plan, deliberate, choose, and hold one another responsible as though our actions were genuinely up to us. Yet we also believe that every event has a cause, and that our choices arise from prior states of our brains, our upbringing, and our circumstances. Can both be true? The question of whether human beings have free will, and what freedom would even require, is central to being human because so much—morality, praise and blame, dignity, law—seems to hang on it.

Determinism and the threat to freedom

Determinism is the thesis that every event, including every human decision, is the necessary consequence of prior events together with the laws of nature. Given the state of the universe long before you were born, and the laws, only one future was ever possible—including this very choice you