The Groundings of Liberty

Abstract

Three conditions for human freedom are to be distinguished: (1) The reality of the activity of living individuals; (2) the causal relevance of mental states; and, (3) an irreducibly subjective aspect in living things. These conditions provide a way of describing the relation between body and soul, such that the conditions are fulfilled: first, the reality of activity implicitly assumes the substantial identity of body and soul in every active individual that exists as a body. Second, there are however fundamental formal differences between the mental and physical states of such bodies, so that a duality of the states possessed by a living individual has to be recognized along with the substantial identity of its body and soul. Hence the causal relevance of mental states for the occurrence of certain actions may act as the peculiar mark of freedom. Finally, the distinction between the objectively recognized existence of states and the subjective possession of them is the reason why certain actions cannot be deduced from objective knowledge of reality, regardless how complete the latter may be. This argument shows that actions cannot be seen as the logical consequence of preceding states of the world, even if the actions in question were causally completely determined. Such a view of actions is, however, the standard justification that freedom is incompatible with determinism.