Flickers of Freedom: The Middle Ground in the Free Will Debate
Introduction
The question of whether we possess free will has haunted philosophers for millennia. Do we genuinely make choices, or are our decisions merely the inevitable output of prior causes stretching back to the beginning of time? In recent decades, a fascinating middle position has emerged in this debate: the concept of "flickers of freedom." This view suggests that even if determinism is true—even if every event is caused by prior events—we might still retain small but meaningful pockets of genuine agency. It's a subtle, nuanced position that attempts to salvage what matters most about free will without denying the causal structure of our universe.
What Are Flickers of Freedom?
The term "flickers of freedom" comes from the free will literature, particularly from discussions surrounding Frankfurt-style cases and moral responsibility. The basic idea is that even in scenarios where our actions seem fully determined or manipulated, there might remain tiny moments of genuine choice—brief flickers where we could have done otherwise or where our agency genuinely operates.
Think of it this way: imagine you're standing at a crossroads, and unknown to you, a neuroscientist has implanted a device in your brain that will force you to turn left if you show any inclination to turn right. You deliberate and freely choose to turn left. The device never activates. In this scenario, some philosophers argue you weren't truly free because you couldn't have done otherwise—the device ensured you'd go left no matter what. But others suggest there's still a "flicker" of freedom in your actual deliberation and choice, even if the alternative was blocked.
This concept challenges our intuitions about what freedom requires. Must we have the ability to do otherwise in every possible scenario, or is there something valuable about the quality of our actual decision-making process, even when backdoor constraints exist?
Historical Context: Frankfurt's Cases
The flickers of freedom debate gained prominence through philosopher Harry Frankfurt's groundbreaking 1969 paper "Alternate Possibilities and the Principle of Moral Responsibility." Frankfurt challenged the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), which states that a person is morally responsible for an action only if they could have done otherwise.
Frankfurt constructed thought experiments where agents act on their own motivations, but a counterfactual intervener stands ready to ensure the same outcome if the agent were to choose differently. Since the agent acts on their own, the intervener does nothing. Frankfurt argued that in such cases, the agent is morally responsible despite lacking alternate possibilities.
Critics quickly pointed out that Frankfurt's original cases might leave room for "flickers"—small moments where the agent could have done otherwise, such as showing a different initial inclination or beginning a different deliberative process. These flickers, though tiny, might be sufficient for moral responsibility or freedom. The debate then became: are these flickers enough to ground genuine free will, or are they philosophically insignificant?
Proponents: Why Flickers Matter
Several philosophers have defended the significance of flickers of freedom, arguing that even small pockets of genuine agency are philosophically and practically important.
John Martin Fischer is perhaps the most prominent defender of a position related to flickers, though his "semicompatibilism" takes a unique approach. Fischer argues that moral responsibility doesn't require the freedom to do otherwise (libertarian free will) but does require "guidance control"—that our actions flow from our own reasons-responsive mechanism. While Fischer doesn't emphasize flickers per se, his work acknowledges that the quality of our actual deliberative process matters more than the presence of robust alternate possibilities.
David Widerker and other critics of Frankfurt have argued that flickers are unavoidable in Frankfurt-style cases and that these flickers are sufficient for moral responsibility. If there's any moment where genuine agency operates—even if it's just the initial formation of an intention—that's enough to satisfy our intuitions about freedom and responsibility. We don't need sweeping, cosmic freedom to make meaningful choices; we just need these small but real moments of self-determination.
Kane's "Self-Forming Actions": Robert Kane, while more of a libertarian about free will, has developed a theory of "self-forming actions" (SFAs) that resonates with the flickers concept. Kane suggests that throughout our lives, we face certain undetermined decisions where we genuinely shape our own characters and values. These crucial moments—these significant flickers—create the framework for our future choices. Even if many of our subsequent decisions are determined by character, those character-forming moments contained genuine freedom.
The strength of the pro-flickers position is that it aligns with our experience. We don't feel cosmically free at every moment, but we do experience meaningful choice during deliberation. Perhaps that's all the freedom worth wanting.
Detractors: Why Flickers Aren't Enough
Critics of the flickers view come from both sides of the free will debate—from libertarians who think flickers are too weak to constitute real freedom, and from hard determinists who think flickers don't actually exist.
Derk Pereboom, a prominent hard incompatibilist, argues that flickers don't salvage free will in any meaningful sense. In his "four-case argument," Pereboom presents a series of scenarios with progressively less obvious manipulation, culminating in ordinary determinism. His point is that if manipulation undermines free will and moral responsibility, then so should determinism, regardless of any flickers. The flickers might create an illusion of difference, but they don't change the fundamental lack of ultimate control over our actions.
Galen Strawson's "Basic Argument" poses another challenge. Strawson argues that to be truly responsible for our actions, we'd need to be responsible for how we are—our character, desires, and beliefs. But this requires an impossible infinite regress: we'd need to have created ourselves ex nihilo. Flickers can't address this fundamental problem because they don't give us ultimate self-origination. A tiny moment of undetermined choice doesn't make us the ultimate source of ourselves.
Alfred Mele and other philosophers have also questioned whether genuine flickers can exist in Frankfurt-style cases. With sophisticated enough interveners (imagine a perfect predictor or a God-like being), there may be no moment at all where the agent could have done otherwise. Any apparent flicker might just be a limitation of our thought experiments rather than a real possibility. If the intervener monitors and controls all relevant neural processes, where could a flicker hide?
Saul Smilansky offers another critical perspective through his "illusionism" about free will. Smilansky argues that ultimate free will is impossible, but that believing in it is socially necessary. From this view, flickers might be part of the illusion—they make us feel free without actually providing meaningful freedom. They're philosophically insignificant but psychologically comforting.
The Practical Stakes
Why does this debate matter beyond academic philosophy? The answer touches on how we think about morality, justice, and human dignity.
If flickers are sufficient for moral responsibility, then our criminal justice system's basic framework might be justified. We hold people accountable not because they had unlimited cosmic freedom, but because their actions flowed from their own deliberative processes in those crucial moments. This is a more modest but potentially defensible foundation for responsibility.
Conversely, if flickers aren't enough—if we need robust libertarian free will for genuine responsibility—then we might need to radically rethink punishment, praise, blame, and desert. This is the conclusion that hard determinists like Pereboom draw, advocating for a "quarantine model" of criminal justice focused on protection rather than retribution.
The flickers debate also affects how we understand personal growth and change. If we have self-forming moments where we genuinely shape our characters, then self-improvement efforts are meaningful. But if even these moments are just deterministic outputs of our prior states, then "growth" becomes something that happens to us rather than something we do.
A Middle Way Forward?
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the flickers debate is that it highlights how the free will question might not have a clean yes-or-no answer. The universe might be more subtle than our binary categories allow.
Some contemporary philosophers suggest we should be "mysterian" about consciousness and free will—acknowledging that these phenomena might be real but beyond our cognitive capacity to fully understand. Flickers might represent the edge of what we can comprehend: something that feels real and matters practically, even if we can't give a completely satisfying metaphysical account of it.
Others propose that we should focus less on metaphysical freedom and more on practical freedom—the actual capacities that matter for living well. Can we deliberate rationally? Can we resist immediate impulses when we have good reason to? Can we learn from experience and adjust our behavior? These practical freedoms might be what flickers really represent: not cosmic origination, but functional agency.
Conclusion
The flickers of freedom debate reveals how even small philosophical distinctions can carry enormous weight. Whether tiny moments of genuine agency are sufficient for free will, or whether they're either impossible or insignificant, determines how we understand ourselves as moral agents.
This debate is far from settled. It sits at the intersection of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ethics, and increasingly, neuroscience. As we learn more about the brain's decision-making processes, we might discover evidence for or against the existence of genuine flickers. Or we might find that the question itself needs to be reframed.
What's certain is that the flickers debate has enriched our understanding of free will by forcing us to think carefully about what kind of freedom we actually want or need. Perhaps we don't need godlike powers of self-creation. Perhaps what matters is simply that, in crucial moments, our actions flow from our own authentic deliberation—those small but precious flickers where we are most truly ourselves. Whether that's enough to satisfy our deepest intuitions about freedom remains one of philosophy's most captivating open questions.
