Q&A: Which Comes First — Morality or Free Will?
Which Comes First — Morality or Free Will?
Question
As best as I understand it, you can’t believe in valid, objective morality without assuming that a person has free will (and therefore believing in dualism), which allows him the freedom to choose and to bear moral responsibility for his actions.
But one of the major reasons to assume that we have free will (and a soul) is to allow us to keep holding on to the view that a person has moral responsibility for his actions (at least that’s how I remember you presenting it in your book on free will). That sounds a bit circular (even though it isn’t), but it does make the evidence for the existence of valid morality or free will much weaker.
In any case—which assumption comes first? Is it because you believe in dualism / that there is free will (mainly because of intuition) that you can then move more easily to the next assumption—that morality exists—or is it because you want to keep using the language of valid morality that you are forced to assume dualism / free will as well?
Answer
It is intuitively clear to me that I have free will. I have no proof of it. It is a basic intuition.
It is also clear to me that I have a soul. Here too, there is no need for proof. It is a basic intuition.
These two come in parallel. There is no earlier and later here. Someone who has only the first intuition can of course use it as evidence for the second (the second is not evidence for the first, so your question here is simply not logically correct. A deterministic soul without choice is possible).
Since these are my basic intuitions, the burden of proof is on anyone who argues otherwise. So he is the one who needs to bring proof, not me.
Discussion on Answer
You were completely clear, and I already answered all of that in my previous reply. You’re just repeating the same thing, and I don’t see any point in repeating myself.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. The question was about *morality* and free will. The question is whether the reason to believe in free will is so that it fits with your moral view—or the other way around: whether the reason to believe in valid morality is my intuition of free will.
(Of course deterministic dualism is possible. I only mentioned dualism in order to emphasize that there is another conclusion here—that free will requires dualism, and therefore this is one more necessary conclusion from belief in binding objective morality.)