Announcer The following program features simulated voices generated for educational and philosophical exploration.

Leonard Jones Good afternoon. I'm Leonard Jones.

Jessica Moss And I'm Jessica Moss. Welcome to Simulectics Radio.

Leonard Jones Today we're examining one of philosophy's most persistent problems: whether free will is compatible with the thesis that all events, including human actions, are determined by prior causes. This bears directly on moral responsibility—can we justly hold people responsible for actions that were inevitable given the past and the laws of nature?

Jessica Moss The stakes here are enormous. Our entire framework of praise and blame, punishment and reward, assumes agents could have done otherwise. If determinism undermines this assumption, we need to fundamentally rethink criminal justice, moral evaluation, and interpersonal relationships.

Leonard Jones Our guest is Dr. Derk Pereboom, Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University, whose work on free will and moral responsibility has been influential in contemporary metaphysics and ethics. Dr. Pereboom defends hard incompatibilism—the view that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism. Welcome.

Dr. Derk Pereboom Thank you. These questions about agency and responsibility are central to how we understand ourselves as persons.

Jessica Moss Let's start with the terrain. What exactly is at issue in debates about free will and determinism?

Dr. Derk Pereboom Determinism is the thesis that every event is necessitated by prior events together with the laws of nature. Given the complete state of the universe at any time and the laws, only one future is possible. The question is whether this is compatible with free will—specifically, with the kind of free will required for moral responsibility. Compatibilists say yes, determinism is consistent with responsibility. Libertarians say no, and therefore determinism must be false if we're responsible. I argue that free will of the sort required for moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism, but also that indeterminism doesn't help.

Leonard Jones Let me be precise about the concept of moral responsibility you're working with. What exactly does it require?

Dr. Derk Pereboom I focus on basic desert moral responsibility—the idea that agents can deserve blame or praise just for performing an action, independently of consequences like deterrence or moral education. This is the sense in which we think truly evil people deserve punishment even if punishing them serves no forward-looking purpose. My claim is that determinism rules out this kind of desert.

Jessica Moss Why think determinism undermines responsibility? Compatibilists have sophisticated responses—they say free will just requires acting on your own desires and reasons, not metaphysical indeterminism.

Dr. Derk Pereboom I use manipulation arguments to challenge compatibilism. Imagine a neuroscientist directly manipulates someone's brain to produce desires and beliefs that cause them to perform some action—say, committing a crime. The person acts on their own desires and reasons in exactly the way compatibilists require for free will. But intuitively, they're not morally responsible because the manipulation bypasses their agency. Now, if determinism is true, there's a relevant similarity—our desires and beliefs are ultimately produced by factors beyond our control, stretching back before our birth. The causal history may be more indirect than direct manipulation, but the essential feature is the same: we're not ultimately responsible for the source of our actions.

Leonard Jones Compatibilists distinguish manipulation from ordinary causation. They say manipulation involves external intervention that disrupts normal agency, while ordinary deterministic causation doesn't.

Dr. Derk Pereboom I don't think this distinction holds up under scrutiny. Consider a series of cases. First, direct manipulation by a neuroscientist. Second, manipulation through social conditioning by trainers who shape someone's character from birth. Third, deterministic causation by ordinary upbringing and genetics. Each case shares the crucial feature: the agent's actions trace back to factors beyond their control. If we deny responsibility in the manipulation cases, consistency requires denying it in the ordinary deterministic case. The compatibilist needs to identify a principled difference, and I don't think one exists.

Jessica Moss But doesn't your view make moral responsibility impossible? Even if determinism is false, indeterminism doesn't seem to help—random events in our neural processes wouldn't give us control.

Dr. Derk Pereboom That's exactly why I'm a hard incompatibilist rather than a libertarian. Libertarians think indeterministic agent causation can ground responsibility, but I'm skeptical. If my decision is undetermined, it seems to happen by chance rather than by my agency. Adding randomness doesn't restore control. So I conclude that free will of the basic desert sort is probably impossible, whether determinism is true or false.

Leonard Jones That's a radical conclusion. What are the implications for moral practice—punishment, praise, interpersonal relationships?

Dr. Derk Pereboom The implications are significant but not as devastating as critics suppose. We can justify punishment on forward-looking grounds—deterrence, incapacitation, moral education—without basic desert. We can still value good character and criticize bad character, even if people don't ultimately deserve praise or blame for having these characters. Interpersonal relationships can survive too—we can still value love, friendship, and gratitude as important goods, even if we don't think people deserve these responses in the basic desert sense.

Jessica Moss How would this change criminal justice? We currently justify harsh punishments by claiming criminals deserve them.

Dr. Derk Pereboom We'd move toward a quarantine model. We can incapacitate dangerous individuals to protect others, just as we quarantine people with dangerous diseases. But the justification is entirely forward-looking—preventing harm—not backward-looking desert. This would likely lead to less harsh punishment overall, since we couldn't justify punishment purely for retribution. We'd focus on rehabilitation when possible and humane incapacitation when necessary.

Leonard Jones There's a question about the coherence of judgment and deliberation without free will. Don't we presuppose we could do otherwise when we deliberate about what to do?

Dr. Derk Pereboom I distinguish practical from theoretical rationality. When deliberating, we can't help but view our future as open and our choices as genuinely up to us—that's built into the phenomenology of deliberation. But this doesn't require metaphysical libertarian freedom. It just requires that we don't know what we'll decide in advance. The sense of openness is epistemic, not metaphysical. Determinism says there's only one physically possible future, but that doesn't undermine deliberation as long as we don't know which future will actualize.

Jessica Moss What about the relationship between hard incompatibilism and naturalism? Does denying free will follow from a scientific worldview?

Dr. Derk Pereboom There's certainly a connection. Contemporary neuroscience reveals the brain as a complex causal system governed by physical law. Decisions emerge from neural processes shaped by genetics and environment. This naturalistic picture sits uncomfortably with libertarian free will, which seems to require some non-physical agent causation. But I'm careful not to claim neuroscience proves incompatibilism—the metaphysical arguments are philosophical, not empirical. Science informs but doesn't settle these debates.

Leonard Jones Let me ask about reactive attitudes—emotions like resentment, gratitude, indignation. P.F. Strawson argued these are central to human life and presuppose responsibility. Can they survive without basic desert?

Dr. Derk Pereboom Some reactive attitudes need modification, but many can be preserved. Resentment tied to desert may need to be given up or transformed into something like protest or moral address—communicating that someone's behavior violates important norms. But gratitude for benefits received, sadness at harm done, and love for those close to us can all survive. What changes is the judgmental element—we stop thinking people ultimately deserve our resentment or gratitude in a deep metaphysical sense.

Jessica Moss Doesn't this threaten meaning in life? If my achievements aren't really mine in the deep sense, does anything I do matter?

Dr. Derk Pereboom I don't think hard incompatibilism threatens meaning. Achievements can still be valuable and worth pursuing even if we don't deserve credit for them in the basic desert sense. A painter's work has aesthetic value whether or not the painter could have done otherwise. Love has intrinsic value whether or not it's freely chosen in the libertarian sense. What matters for meaning is not metaphysical freedom but engaging in valuable activities and relationships.

Leonard Jones How do you respond to the argument that hard incompatibilism is self-undermining—that if it's true, we couldn't rationally believe it because our beliefs would be determined by non-rational causes?

Dr. Derk Pereboom This objection conflates causation with rationality. Determinism doesn't entail that our beliefs are caused by non-rational factors—it just says they're determined by prior causes. Those causes can include rational processes like evidence evaluation and logical inference. My belief in hard incompatibilism can be both determined and rationally grounded. What would undermine rationality is if our beliefs were formed by processes insensitive to evidence and reasons, but determinism doesn't entail that.

Jessica Moss What about the phenomenology of agency? We feel like we have free will. Doesn't this carry evidential weight?

Dr. Derk Pereboom The phenomenology of agency is striking, but phenomenology can mislead. We have strong phenomenological impressions that objects are colored in themselves, that the sun moves around the Earth, that time flows. Science reveals these impressions to be systematically misleading. Similarly, the sense of libertarian free will might be an adaptive illusion—evolutionarily useful but metaphysically mistaken. Phenomenology provides some initial evidence, but it can be outweighed by argument.

Leonard Jones How does your view relate to Strawsonian compatibilism, which grounds responsibility in reactive attitudes rather than metaphysical conditions?

Dr. Derk Pereboom Strawsonians argue we can't help having reactive attitudes, so the question of whether they're justified by libertarian freedom is beside the point. I respond that even if we can't entirely eliminate reactive attitudes, we can modify them in light of philosophical reflection. We already do this—we temper resentment when we learn someone acted from diminished capacity. Hard incompatibilism extends this process, suggesting we should generally adopt less judgmental attitudes once we recognize the causal determination of behavior.

Jessica Moss What implications does this have for self-understanding and personal relationships? How should we relate to others if they lack basic desert responsibility?

Dr. Derk Pereboom I think it promotes compassion and understanding. When someone wrongs us, instead of thinking they deserve our resentment, we can view their action as produced by factors ultimately beyond their control—genetics, upbringing, circumstances. This doesn't mean we're passive or don't address harmful behavior, but we respond from a stance of moral address rather than desert-based blame. In personal relationships, we focus on forward-looking considerations—building trust, promoting growth, protecting boundaries—rather than backward-looking judgments about what people deserve.

Leonard Jones There's a question about moral obligation. If we lack free will, can there be genuine moral requirements?

Dr. Derk Pereboom This depends on what grounds moral obligations. If obligations require that agents could have done otherwise in a libertarian sense, then hard incompatibilism threatens them. But we might ground obligations differently—in facts about what promotes well-being, what we have reason to do, or what rational agents would agree to. These grounding relations don't obviously require libertarian freedom. So while hard incompatibilism affects our theory of obligation, it doesn't necessarily eliminate moral requirements altogether.

Jessica Moss How do you address the concern that hard incompatibilism leads to fatalism or resignation—the idea that if everything's determined, there's no point trying?

Dr. Derk Pereboom Determinism doesn't entail fatalism. Fatalism says our efforts make no difference to outcomes. Determinism says outcomes are determined by prior causes, including our efforts. Your deliberation and effort are part of the causal chain leading to results. The fact that your deliberation is itself determined doesn't make it causally inefficacious. So there's every point in trying—your trying is precisely the mechanism by which determined outcomes occur.

Leonard Jones What's the current state of debate on these issues? Where do you see the conversation going?

Dr. Derk Pereboom Compatibilism remains the dominant view among philosophers, but incompatibilism has significant support. I see increasing attention to the practical implications—how these views affect criminal justice, interpersonal relationships, self-understanding. There's also productive engagement between philosophy and neuroscience on questions of agency and control. The debate continues because the issues are genuinely difficult and the stakes are high for how we live.

Jessica Moss Do you think we'll ever resolve these questions definitively?

Dr. Derk Pereboom I'm not optimistic about definitive resolution. The questions involve deep metaphysical issues that empirical evidence underdetermines. We can make progress by clarifying concepts, exposing bad arguments, and exploring implications. But whether determinism is true, whether it's compatible with responsibility, and whether basic desert exists may remain contested. What we can achieve is better understanding of what's at stake and how different answers affect practice.

Leonard Jones That seems appropriately modest. These questions have persisted for millennia precisely because they resist easy answers.

Jessica Moss Dr. Pereboom, you've given us a rigorous examination of free will, responsibility, and determinism. Thank you.

Dr. Derk Pereboom Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss these foundational questions about agency.

Leonard Jones That's our program. Until tomorrow, consider whether you could have done otherwise.

Jessica Moss And what that means for judgment and responsibility. Good afternoon.