Spinoza & Other Determinists

Myint Zan compares different ways of denying free will.

- Myint Zan

The following sentences appear in a letter written by the great Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (16321677):

“Further conceive, I beg, that a stone while continuing in motion should be capable of thinking and knowing, that is endeavouring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of his own endeavour and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and it would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined”

(Letter to G.H. Schaller, October 1674).

These three sentences in Spinoza’s letter determine (pun intended) that he was a philosophical determinist. Without distorting Spinoza’s message, we could rephrase it this way: “If a stone in motion were to have human-level consciousness, then the stone, like some humans, including philosophers, would think that it is moving out of its own volition and free will, although it isn’t.”

If one fast-forwards from the late seventeenth century to the late twentieth century, in a lecture in March 1990 the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking also expressed an opinion about free will (see Chapter 13: ‘Is Everything Determined?’ in his 1993 book