Of course once you get into the question of ontic realism one can then return to the question of freedom in that sense. I tent to think of a kind of freedom in the ontic arena as well. (Thus I adopt the view of QM that rejects hidden variables and treats quantum indeterminacy as an ontic feature of the universe)

As to the Nietzschean question, isn’t Nietzsche’s position the dominant one in the free will debate? That is if we take our intuitive sense of free will seriously then we simply don’t have it.

I tend to classify that as an epistemological issue, not an ontological one.

I tend to view (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) the fact that there are conscious beings in this universe to be contingent, and not necessary. Clearly there was a time when only non-sentient beings existed, so I don’t see how sentience (or freedom, which presupposes sentience) can have a bearing on ontology, properly speaking.

Now, this is not to dispute that for Heidegger, freedom is what exposes the human being to Being, or that for Heidegger, freedom is “that unique capacity of human being that allows a reaching beyond calculation”.

My question is: how can we know, rigorously, what is “free” and what is a calculation that impersonates freedom?

Tom Stoppard raises this issue nicely in “Arcadia”, where a character suggests that if every particle in the universe could be suspended, and the position and direction and velocity of every particle understood, and if one were really, really good at maths, one could write the formula for the future.

And, naturally, Nietzsche got there before Stoppard, with the comsological version of Eternal Return.

So the question is: how could a being within a Nietzschean/Stoppardian universe know that the free will they think they have is illusory?

It is misguided to think one understands freedom most purely in its essence if one isolates it as a free-floating arbitrariness. Moreover, the task is precisely the reverse, to conceive freedom in its finitude and to see that, by proving boundedness, one has neither impaired freedom nor curtailed its essence. (The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 196)

One more quote from the article.

Now fundamentally to interrogate this world demands a forgoing of pervasive efforts at its mastery; for fundamental questioning ceases the moment the presumptions and prejudices that necessarily precede such attempts at domination or control arise. To be sure, the disclosure of Being ensues from all human activities and experiences, including human efforts at attaining mastery. But herein Being, as well as the nature of human freedom, becomes obscrued. It is revealed only as forgotten. To reveal something as forgotten is to reveal something as no longer in question, as no longer fundamentally questionable. That we are, as Heidegger states, called upon to be the shepherds of Being indicates that we find our freedom not in a forgetful mastery but in a mindful, interrogative caretaking, in concernfully and questioningly letting the Being of beings be. Freedom is therefore most primordially manifest in our care-full being-in-the-world-with-others.

Disclosive freedom, Heidegger insists, is not merely one value among others. Nor either, is freedom a metavalue, the “value of all values” that allows one to choose between and secure other values (Cranston, 1967, 42). “Freedom,” Heidegger writes,

is not a particular thing among others, not something lined up as part of a row, but rather it prescribes and permeates the totality of beings as a whole. If we are to investigate freedom as the ground of possibilit of human being, then its essence is more primordial than man. Man, is only a guardian of freedom, . . . human freedom signifies now no longer: freedom as a property of man, but the reverse: man as a possibility of freedom. Human freedom is the freedom which invades and sustains man, thereby rendering man possible. (1976-89, 31:134-5; see also 1985a, 9)

Traditional Western thinking posits freedom as the autonomous subject’s most valued asset, as its capacity to define and control what it confronts. Heidegger, contrariwise, understands freedom as that which exposes human being to the undefinable and unmasterable, to Being. But what is beyond one’s power to master or define is also beyond one’s power to calculate and assess. Freedom, therefore, is that unique capacity of human being that allows a reaching beyond calculation and valuation.

One quote:

Negative liberty, simply put, is freedom from constraint. It signifies the (political) space accorded the individual to pursue desires unhindered by teh impositions of others. … Positive liberty in contrast is not a freedom from but a freedom to. It denotes a freedom to do. But positive liberty entails doing not only what one desires, unhindered by external constraints, but what one should desire, unhindered by internal constraints such as irrational drives, weakness of character, false consciousness, or even shortsighted judgement. Free will is only truly free, in other words, when it actualizes the indvidual’s “objective” interests.

She then quotes from Heidegger’s rector address with respect to Heidegger’s view.

This will is a true will in that the German student body, through the new Student Law, places itself under the law of its own essence and in this way for the first time determines that essence. To give the law to oneself is the highest freedom.”

Now I think this is also a place where Heidegger is most troubling since the individual will grows out of the volk they are a part of. Heidegger of course then moves away from this.

Heidegger develops a new concept of freedom that effectively extends and reworks his prerectorial approach. By the early forties, he would write: “Freedom is not what common sense is content to let pass under that name: the random ability to do as we please, to go this way or that in our choice. Freedom is not license in what we do or do not do. Nor, on the other hand, is freedom a mere readiness to do something requisite and necessary and thus in a sense ‘actual.’ Over and above all this (‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedom) freedom is a participation in the revealment of what-is-as-such.”

…Heidegger’s development of this disclosive freedom presents us with more than just another philosophical profile of a concept already overburdened with meanings. Heidegger’s mature understanding of freedom is radically distinct from its modern, metaphysical forerunners and their postmodern derivations; for it offers dignity in a freedom that celebrates guardianship rather than mastery.

Now I’d say that what she calls this latter view is pretty much his earlier view as well. (The view of the late 1920’s) You can see in his Niezsche lectures that he moves to this weird relationship between art and freedom that is somewhat disturbing and culminates in his rector speech. But I think after WWII he moves back to the view from the era of Being and Time.

Heidegger discusses this in a few places although my favorite place is in the class notes published as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. The context is a kind of deconstructive reading of Leibniz so the freedom might be see in terms of how each monad is a kind of unveiling of things by God in harmony with what is outside of the monad. (The way Heidegger reads him makes it a tad more complex)

Back and the old blog I had two posts with quotes on this. Heidegger on Freedom and Heidegger’s Freedom.

As for whether we could tell a determined universe from an undetermined universe– if you think it is something we could indeed tell, the obvious follow-up question is “How could we tell?”

With regards to whether we could tell a determined universe from an undetermined universe. I think that is something we could tell. The question that I think Mele is asking is whether we could tell an indeterministic universe from a Libertarian one given that they have all the same possible worlds.

I’m curious to hear what you find to be the ontological concerns– what bearing does the presence/absence of free will have on the question of being?

I think your schematism of the various positions is quite useful: that we have “determinism” on the one side, and on the other hand “free will”, where “free will” can be further broken down into “compatibilists” and “libertarians” (which can then be further refined, etc.)

Personally, my questions are at the first level– determinism vs “something other than determinism” (regardless of whether we define this as LFW or Compatabilism, etc.) I’m not committed to determinism; rather, I’m still trying to understand how we could tell a determined universe from a non-determined universe, and what (possible) difference that would make.