Hume's Enquiry, sections VIII

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Hume, Section VIII
In this section, Hume grapples with the question of free will.

• Hume notes that all we can mean by "necessity" now (or, think of this as acting according to natural laws) is that something appears to follow a commonly observed correlation. "[This] fire necessarily causes heat" just means that in the past we have seen that things similar to this fire and were accompanied in our experience by heat.
• We tend to believe that such necessary correlations exist, and often mean something more than this by "necessary." Are human actions an exception? Are they different than other kinds of actions?
• Hume argues no
  • We understand the actions of people from distant places
  • We understand the actions of others in the distant past
  • We must assume others are consistently acting in certain ways in order to work together
• From this, it is plausible that there is (some) universal human nature, or maybe just commonalities in human behavior, which allows us to say there are necessary human causes and effects.
• Why are we reluctant to admit this? It seems to deny free will or liberty.
• Hume defines liberty, however, as "a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will."
• Thus, we are free if we can say our will caused our actions.
• This is called "compatibilism."
• Note that what Hume has done is argue that this problem in part goes away if we get clear about our concepts. He defines or redefines liberty in such a way that we can be free and also our actions can be necessary.

Views of Free Will

• The view that all (relevant) events must happen as they do, given past events, is called "determinism."
• The view that we are free only if we can escape determinism is called "libertarianism" (not to be confused with the political views!).
• The view that we can be free and that determinism can be true of human actions is called compatibilism. Hume gives the first very clear and compelling version of compatibilism.
• Defining freedom is very hard. Generally, the idea is that we could have done differently. However, it is also generally agreed that randomness does not make you free.