Baron d’Holbach
Hard Determinism
You are at the mercy of physical laws
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Baron d’Holbach
• D’Holbach is a hard determinist.
(Determinism is true, and so free will is an
illusion.)
• “Thus man is a being purely physical … he is
connected to universal nature, and submitted to
the necessary and immutable laws that she
imposes on all the beings she contains …”
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• N.B. d’Holbach doesn’t argue for determinism itself,
but just takes it for granted, as something that
science is telling us.
• Science isn’t nearly as deterministic today as it was
in d’Holbach’s time (1770).
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Contrast with Libertarianism
“human vanity accommodated itself to a hypothesis
which, unquestionably, appears to distinguish man
from all other physical beings, by assigning to him
the special privilege of a total independence of all
other causes …”
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“Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to
describe upon the surface of the earth, without his
ever being able to swerve from it, even from an
instant …”
(p. 397)
Similar to the rail yard metaphor, not at all like the
garden of forking paths.
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Theory of the Will
• The will (the part of us that makes choices, decisions)
is a physical system.
• Acts of will are determined by the “forces” that act
upon it, i.e. desires, impulses, to do different things.
• The rough idea seems to be that the will is like a
vertical pole, being pulled in different directions by
ropes attached to the top.
• The pole ends up falling toward the direction of the
greatest pull. (Falling = deciding)
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• Suppose, for example, you are trying to decide
whether to tell the truth, or tell a convenient lie.
You want to tell the truth, for its own sake, but also
you want to avoid the messy consequences of this.
• These are two competing desires, pulling in opposite
directions.
• The strongest desire, according to this model, will
determine your will. (So you have no control over
the outcome.)
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• Imagine a person “tormented with violent thirst”,
who “perceives a fountain, whose limpid streams
might cool his feverish want”.
• The man will, of necessity, drink from the stream.
He has no power to do otherwise.
• “What if,” someone might object, “he’s told that the
water is poisoned? Then he will abstain, showing
that he is yet a free agent.”
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• Not so, says d’Holbach. For in that case, the desire
to live is simply stronger than the desire to drink,
and overpowers it.
• “the second motive becomes stronger than the
preceding, that is, the fear of death, or the desire of
preserving himself, necessarily prevails over the
painful sensation caused by his eagerness to drink …”
(p. 397)
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• But people can be persuaded to change their
conduct! That shows they’re free agents.
• No. This only shows that a person’s will is
susceptible to pressure, even just verbal pressure, or
the pressure of social expectations.
• In every case, we see that a person is at the mercy of
external forces.
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The phenomenology of deliberation
(i.e. “what it feels like”)
• The struggle of the will between opposing desires
may take some time to resolve, as the forces may
initially be well balanced.
• The strength of each force may vary with time.
• “This mechanism … suffices to demonstrate why
uncertainty is painful, and why suspense is a violent
state for man” (p. 398) The brain gets fatigued. It
“suffers a kind of compression”.
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Effort of will?
• Does this really explain the apparent effort of will,
that exists in some cases?
• It feels like I am pushing, against external pressures,
in order to make some choice. (Like walking into a
strong headwind.)
• It doesn’t feel like being squeezed, or stretched, by
opposing external forces.
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Feeling of freedom
• It feels like it’s “up to me”.
• I feel like I could have done otherwise.
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choice ≠ free will
A person can make choices without having “free will”.
The outcome of each choice is fully determined by
the laws of physics, so that one has no power to
affect the outcome.
Even a voluntary act is therefore not free, says
d’Holbach.
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Political freedom ≠ free will
• Political freedoms, like freedom of speech, freedom
of religion, etc. aren’t the same as free will.
• Political freedom is just non-interference. (E.g. in
Canada you can say “Trudeau is an idiot” and not go
to jail.)
• Political freedom doesn’t create free will, any more
than the right to play a violin creates the power to
do so. (According to incompatibilists, anyway.)
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D’Holbach on libertarianism
• “It has been believed that man was a free agent
because he had a will with the power of choosing; but
attention has not been paid to the fact that even his
will is moved by causes independent of himself; is
owing to that which is inherent in his own
organization …” (p. 399)
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D’Holbach on libertarianism
• We humans have an illusion of free will, d’Holbach
thinks, because we are unaware of the causes which
move us. We are very complicated, with countless
simultaneous causes working together. Many of
these are unconscious.
• A typical human imagines that “he moves himself by
himself; that he determines himself without a cause”
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• “he moves himself by himself; that he determines
himself without a cause”
• This is d’Holbach’s (rather unfair) description of a
libertarian view. It makes libertarianism sound
impossible, like lifting yourself by your own
bootstraps.
• But libertarianism does seem very mysterious, even
‘magical’. How can you be self-determining? How
can you determine your own actions, which were
undetermined by previous causes?
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“That man should have free agency it were needful
that he should be able to will or choose without
motive, or that he could prevent motives coercing his
will.”
• If one acts from reasons, then they determine the
choice. If not from reasons, then one is choosing
arbitrarily. Either way then …
(Similar logic to the dilemma of free will.)
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Questions
• Does d’Holbach’s position undermine Christianity,
specifically the free will solution to the problem of
evil?
• Does d’Holbach’s position undermine the practice of
holding people accountable for their actions, and
punishing them in some cases? “But I couldn’t help
it!”
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