You raise an excellent issue here! It's true that it is often claimed that if determinism is true, and every event--including choices or decisions--is determined by preceding events, then choices will not be free, and hence agents will not be responsible for their choices or decisions, and so the agent cannot be responsible for the actions that follow upon choices or decisions, and consequently, there is no basis for sanctioning the agent for those actions that break the law. It seems to me that the reason that this belief is as common as it is is because philosophers with incompatibilist intuitions think that agents are not free, and, hence, not responsible for their choices/decisions unless either the agent is able to do otherwise or the agent is the ultimate source of her choices. (It seems to me that these conditions are distinct: one might hold that it is a condition on freedom that agents be able to do or choose otherwise than they did without also holding that the agent is the ultimate...

You raise multiple questions, all very important and interesting, which intersect in various ways, but which, I think, can be distinguished. (1) Are reasons causes? (2) Is an agent constrained if s/he acts for reasons? (3) Can one freely act against one's own better judgment? (4) Even if one could freely act against one's own better judgment, would the ability to do so be valuable in the way that freedom is valuable? (Now (4) gives rise to a further question: In what respect is freedom valuable?) Now it seems to me that the question that's driving you here is whether agents can be determined--"governed"--by reasons and nevertheless free, and so I'll treat it. (Note that I've subtly shifted the question from whether agents can act for reasons and still be free to whether agents determined by reasons can still be free. I do so in order to focus the question on choice, which I take to be the locus of freedom, and away from action, which requires a different sort of analysis.) In...

This is a very interesting question indeed. It does seem that today, the words are often used interchangeably. However, there are etymological differences between the words which suggest that at least originally, they were used in different senses. Very roughly, liberty seems to have been originally used to characterize an absence of external constraint, what, following Isaiah Berlin's seminal essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty," one might call 'negative', whereas freedom seems to have been originally used to characterize a capacity for self-control or self-government, what, following Berlin again, one might might 'positive'. The latter, then, seems to have an individual, moral sense, whereas the former has more of a political connotation. There is considerable discussion of this topic in the blogosophere: one helpful discussion that I found may be accessed by clicking on the following link . There is also a relatively recent book, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas ...

This is a fascinating nest of issues!! It has been claimed that reasons are fundamentally different from causes, but it has also been claimed that reasons are causes--maybe a different kind of cause from the cause that makes it the case that putting a weight on a balance moves its arm downwards, but maybe not. (Even if reason is a indeed a cause of one's choice, it may not be the case that acting for reasons is therefore involuntary.) Regardless of whether reasons are or aren't causes, however, the question of whether reason alone can motivate action (or choice or decision), is a distinct, albeit related, matter. If reasons were causes, then it would seem that the mere recognition of a reason would be sufficient to move an agent to action. But of course it is often the case that one recognizes reasons and nevertheless does not act on them. Even knowing that smoking is bad for one's health, one may nevertheless continue to smoke. So, one might conclude, reasons aren't causes. However, perhaps...

The significance of options, or, as they are sometimes called in contemporary philosophical work on freedom, alternative possibilities, has received considerable attention. However, most of the attention has focused on the question of whether an agent needs to have options in order to be free. The reason for this focus is due to the fact that, intuitively, it seems that an agent must have options in order to be free, yet if determinism--the view that every event, including choices, is caused by some preceding event--is true, then it might seem that agents do not have options available to them. In the context of this debate, philosophers have sought to determine whether alternative possibilities are indeed necessary for freedom, and, if so, whether the commitment to alternative possibilities may be reconciled with determinism. This sort of attention to alternatives derives from their relation to the metaphysical question of free will; the question, however, in which you are interested, is distinct from...

The donkey in question is usually referred to as 'Buridan's ass' (although there is some question as to whether the example is properly attributed to the medieval philosopher John Buridan .) The early modern philosopher G. W. Leibniz was quite fond of this example, and appealed to Buridan's ass in order to elucidate his view that there was no such thing as a completely indifferent decision, that is, a decision made on the basis of no reason whatsoever. According to Leibniz, if the ass were in the hypothesized position and were indeed indifferent to the two piles of hay, then the ass would not be able to decide between them, and would consequently starve. Of course, the ass doesn't starve. Leibniz drew the conclusion that the reason that the ass wouldn't starve was because the ass wasn't actually indifferent to the bales of hay: according to Leibniz, there must be some difference between the two bales of hay, or in the ass's relation to the bales of hay--that is, some difference in the ass's...

The question of whether homosexuality is a choice may be morally relevant. If, as is commonly--although not necessarily correctly--assumed, agents are only responsible for what they choose or do, then only if homosexuality is a choice can one be responsible for being a homosexual, and consequently, subject to moral or religious sanction for being a homosexual. The question of whether homosexuality is a choice, while a vexed one, remains unsettled, although it does appear that the balance of evidence currently seems to favor the view that homosexuality is not a choice. Although the question of whether homosexuality is a choice may thus well be taken to have moral significance, and although it has been linked to the issue of the legality of gay marriage, it is not clear to me that the issues are indeed related. The issues might be taken to be related in the following way. If marriage is supposed to reflect the 'natural' suitability of the partners in question, then, if homosexuality were indeed a...

Just to add a little to Eddy's fine response, which neatly limns both what position is taken on free will by most philosophers and the general state of play of the debates around free will. I just want to comment briefly on the status of the debate on free will for moral prescriptions--which I take to mean the justifiability of ascriptions of praise, blame, etc. (however they are understood--and there is debate, especially, on how to understand the nature of blame: for a sophisticated, but accessible and very clear treatment of this topic, see T. M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame ). Both compatibilists and incompatibilists agree that ascriptions of praise and blame are justified just in case agents are free, but they differ--as Eddy pointed out--with respect to how they define free will, which definitions reflect differing views on metaphysical and scientific views about the nature of human beings and of the world. Very roughly, incompatibilists believe that in order to be...

In Book II, Chapter 21, Section 8 of the New Essays on Human Understanding , Leibniz draws some distinctions that are relevant to your question. Responding to Locke's discussion of freedom, Leibniz writes: The term 'freedom' is highly ambiguous. There is freedom in law, and freedom in fact. In law, a slave is not free, and a subject is not entirely free; but a poor man is as free as a rich one. Freedom in fact, on the other hand, consists either in a power to do what one wills or in the power to will as one should. Your topic...is freedom to do , and there are different degrees and varieties of this. Speaking generally , a man is free to do what he wills in proportion as he has the means to do so....The freedom to will is also understood in two different senses: one of them stands in contrast with the imperfection or bondage of the mind, which is an imposition or constraint...; and the other sense is employed when freedom is contrasted with necessity....It is in that way that...

Spinoza seems to be committed to the view that true freedom liberates one from hope and fear. The basis for this conclusion is difficult to follow and is not stated explicitly in the Ethics , but I'll try to reconstruct the position as much as possible. According to Spinoza, "hope is nothing but an inconstant joy which has arisen from the image of a future or past thing whose outcome we doubt; fear, on the other hand, is an inconstant sadness, which has also arisen from a doubtful thing" (_Ethics_ III p18s2). Now according to Spinoza, the idea that anything in nature would be doubtful reflects a lack of understanding, because, he claims, nothing in nature is contingent (_Ethics_ Ip29). Hence in the Scholium to Ethics IVp47 ("Affects of hope and fear cannot be good of themselves"), Spinoza explains that "these affects show a defect of knowledge and a lack of power in the mind....Therefore, the more we strive to live according to the guidance of reason, the more we strive to depend less...