Determinism and choice

At my recent public lecture, an audience member asked if determinism lets you make any choices. After all, determinism says that all your actions are necessitated by conditions that obtained long before your birth. If so, can you truly make a choice?

Yes, you can. If I hold out a single playing card and ask you to choose a card, I’m making a bad joke. But if I fan a bunch of cards and ask you to choose one, I’m offering you a choice of card, and if you end up choosing one you’ve made a choice. You selected one card from among more than one. Whether your choice was necessitated or not is a separate question from whether it was a choice in the first place.

Likewise, whether something is a choice is conceptually separate from whether it’s a free choice or not. You make a free choice when the conditions necessitating your choice include nonpathological beliefs and desires on your part. (Your choice is necessitated by not just long-ago conditions but also conditions that include your beliefs and desires when you choose.) By contrast, you make an unfree choice if, say, a conjurer tampers with your beliefs and manipulates you into choosing a particular card from the ones you’re shown.

Your choice is always necessitated, but of course that doesn’t mean it’s always manipulated or otherwise pathological.