A self-assessment across the free will spectrum
Answer the five questions below using a 1–5 scale. 1 = strongly agree with the determinist side; 5 = strongly agree with the libertarian free will side. Your marker will update as you respond.
"Every decision I've ever made was ultimately the result of prior causes — genes, upbringing, brain chemistry — that I did not choose."
"When I praise or blame someone for their actions, I'm responding to their real agency — not just the causes behind their behavior."
P.F. Strawson argues that our "reactive attitudes" — like gratitude, resentment, and love — just are what it means to treat someone as a moral agent. Even if determinism is true, we could never fully abandon these attitudes.
Rate your agreement with Strawson's view:
"If neuroscience showed definitively that every 'choice' was determined by brain activity milliseconds before I became conscious of it, I would conclude that free will is an illusion."
"Holding people morally responsible for their actions makes sense only if they could have done otherwise in an absolute, uncaused sense — not just in the sense that different inputs would have produced different outputs."
After seeing your position on the spectrum, does it match how you think of yourself? What's the strongest argument against your position? Use this space to draft a discussion post response or reflection.