Ayer’s “Freedom and Necessity”

What is Ayer’s view? Is he a determinist or indeterminist, is he a compatibilist or incompatibilist, and does he think we do or do not have free will?

Campbell thinks someone does some act freely iff they could have done something other than that act. Ayer disagrees. What are all the reasons why Ayer thinks Campbell’s requirement is wrong? What account does Ayer give instead? And why does he think his account is true?

You might also think about what Campbell and Ayer say as it applies to things we think are not free, or things we might wonder about. Are animals free? Severely retarded people? Robots? What is required for such things to be able to act freely?

Here is an excerpt from John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ch. XXI, §5) in which he provides a thought experiment in support of the sort of view Ayer has:

Again: suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where is a person he longs to see and speak with; and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out: he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in, i. e. prefers his stay to going away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody will doubt it: and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident he is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that liberty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring; but to the person having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall choose or direct. Our idea of liberty reaches as far as that power, and no farther. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or compulsion takes away that indifferency of ability to act, or to forbear acting, there liberty, and our notion of it, presently ceases.