Laplace states that “we may regard the present state of the universe as effect of its past and the cause of its future.(Leon text)” In another word, if all information could be obtained about everything in the universe at some point in time, all future and past events would be revealed. This is a form of casual determinism, and Laplace has used it to argue that no free will truly exists and that we should not be held morally responsible for our actions as a result of that.
Lapalce’s argument goes like this:
(1) Objects obey determinist laws
(2) We can know that objects obey determinist laws
(3) There are determinist facts about all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it
(4) And we can know them
(5) If (2) &(4), and we have sufficient time, then we can predict what will happen
(6) If we can predict what one is going to do, then one doesn’t have the freedom to do otherwise
Thus, there is no free will.
There have been many objections to this argument. To refute it, one can either demonstrate that it is invalid or untrue.
One natural reaction to this argument is that many claimed having free will seems to be consistent with our day-to-day experiences, and thus, from an empiricist point of view, we obviously do have free will.
Some have attacked the first premise of the argument, saying that objects do not obey determinist laws; rather, determinist laws merely describe what happens to objects. Such laws do not govern the universe or “force the world to be some particular way rather than another” (Swartz). Therefore, if one decides to do an action, there can be an always true des ...