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8 - Of puppies and polyps

Mathew Iredale
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Summary

With respect to free will, [anyone] seeing a puppy playing cannot doubt that they have free will, if so all animals, then an oyster has & a polype … Now free will of oyster, one can fancy to be direct effect of organization, by the capacities its senses give it of pain or pleasure. If so free will is to mind, what chance is to matter.

Charles Darwin

The evolution of free will is a subject that has received very little coverage in the free will literature, with a few notable exceptions (Swinburne 1986; Waller 1998; Maxwell 2001; Dennett 2003). It may be felt by libertarians and compatibilists that there is little to explain. The libertarian John Lemos (2002: 476) certainly appears to be of this view: “To maintain that humans possess libertarian autonomy and moral responsibility, whereas other animals do not, does not violate any Darwinian principles.” Lemos points out that there are certain features of our biology, such as our large brains, that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom:

While the difference in the size of the human brain as compared to that of other primates is a difference in degree, this is a difference in degree that has enormous implications for the types or kinds of things that humans are capable of doing in contrast to other animals. Thus, there is a biological basis for believing that humans may possess a capacity for libertarian autonomy that no other animals possess. […]

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The Problem of Free Will
A Contemporary Introduction
 , pp. 109 - 126
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2012

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