“In a sense we are determinists and in another sense we can’t let ourselves be,” says Milton Friedman in a Matt Miller piece in the Boston Globe. “But you can’t really justify free will.” (Thanks to margrev for the pointer.) Here is Mises on the subject of free will:
The determinists are right in asserting that everything that happens is the necessary sequel of the preceding state of things. What a man does at any instant of his life is entirely dependent on his past, that is, on his physiological inheritance as well as of all he went through in his previous days. Yet the significance of this thesis is considerably weakened by the fact that nothing is known about the way in which ideas arise. Determinism is untenable if based upon or connected with the materialist dogma. If advanced without the support of materialism, it says little indeed and certainly does not sustain the determinists’ rejection of the methods of history.
The free-will doctrine is correct in pointing out the fundamental difference between human action and animal behavior. While the animal cannot help yielding to the physiological impulse which prevails at the moment, man chooses between alternative modes of conduct. Man has the power elvehoose even between yielding to the most imperative instinct, that of self-preservation, and the aiming at other ends. All the sarcasms and sneers of the positivists cannot annul the fact that ideas have a real existence and are genuine factors in shaping the course of events....
This cognition is the grain of truth in the free-will doctrine. However, the passionate attempts to refute determinism and to salvage the notion of free will did not concern the problem of individuality. They were prompted by the practical consequences to which, as people believed, determinism inevitably leads: fatalist quietism and absolution from moral responsibility.
