For many people, the idea of free will is bound up with the notion of “could have done otherwise”. By their lights, if only one future is possible for a person — that is, if the person cannot do otherwise — then free will is an illusion.
Philosopher Christian List — author of the recent book Why Free Will is Real — proposes an interesting species of free will based on the claim that while physics may be deterministic, behaviors at the agent level are not. Agents can do otherwise, according to List, and this is enough to ground free will even if physics is deterministic.
I think List is mistaken, but I’ll save my criticisms for the comment thread.
Readers can find List’s argument in this paper:
Free Will, Determinism, and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise
See you in the comment thread.
keiths:
Bruce:
Because you need a contradiction, and “unicorns exist” doesn’t contradict “determinism is true”.
I think he’s just doing it out of an abundance of caution. A limited premise 1 is easier to defend than a broader one.
keiths:
Bruce:
Yes, the latter is what I mean.
I’m just saying that his logic leads to this: “If determinism is true, then no one believes falsehoods”. Even as a counterfactual, that’s highly suspicious and questionable.
It’s because that one honest believer provides the necessary contradiction.
So Huemer’s argument boils down to:
1. If determinism is true, no one believes falsehoods.
2. At least one person believes MFT.
3. Therefore MFT is true, since no one believes falsehoods.
4. Therefore a contradiction, since MFT is a negation of determinism.
5. Therefore determinism must be false, since its assumption leads to a contradiction.
I think that implication is fine in context because Huemer has proved that the antecedent is false (and from below in my post false on all possible worlds). Or at least he thinks he has.
Sure, but the puzzle for me was why the argument only seems to apply to possible worlds where that one believer exists. But on thinking some more, I am no longer puzzled. I think Huemer would say that since one such person exists on the actual world, and since the argument is a deduction from premises that apply to all possible worlds, then determinism is false on all possible worlds.
What happened to the shoulds in your reduced version of his argument? Did I miss something in the posts from the last few days where I was taking a break and which I have not studied?
For me, the relevant point of Strawson’s ultimate responsibility claims are that they argue we cannot change our wants, hence relying on wants does not help your case. So if you think that is we can change our wants (and you can iterate that ‘want’ as much as you want), then I think you need to justify why you think we can change our wants in a way that is not falsified by Strawson’s arguments. In summary, I think your post is wanting.
Also, why hedge with the “probably”?
Dennett adds “complications” because he sees force of Strawson’s argument (as List sees the force of van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument).
It’s Strawson’s argument I am concerned with not Keith’s. Are you saying they both have the same concept of UR?
OK, thanks. It seems we are teetering on the precipice of another discussion of scientific realism, so I will stop.
BruceS,
I think most of Buddhist doctrine involves instruction in how one might change their wants. And I think if you ask former addicts you might get some info on this. It may require time, effort, etc. But I don’t one can take it as axiomatic that nobody has control over what they want. Maybe counting to ten sometimes is enough. That accounts for the probably.
I have a question for you. You make a robot and program it to kill Smith by shooting him. You buy the gun and the ammo, and arm your robot. The robot duly shoots Smith. Who/what is proximately responsible for the killing?
Hah. How did anybody “determine” this? You “ultimate responsibility” is a lot like “gobbledygook cucky” in that way. I’m going to go out on a limb and say nobody has that either! No need for a careful determination. I mean, what, exactly are the truth conditions for A to be the ‘ultimate deciding cause’ of B?
I think that all I’ve read of Galen Strawson on this issue is an interview someplace. I don’t think the concept makes much sense myself. However, I’m not likely to agree with Strawson about much on this issue since, as a libertarian, he won’t mean the same thing by “free” as I do.
His father wrote a classic paper on freedom and resentment. I remember thinking it was excellent.Maybe it would be a good medicine for some of the ultimate talk.
Using Buddhism to argue against Strawson is above my pay grade. Or at least incommensurable with it.
Appealing to what some addicts do does not help with Strawson’s argument; he would say (assuming determinism) that only shows that their genes and development differ some how from addicts who fail to change their wants/addiction, assuming determinism.
The axiom point does not address Strawson’s argument. Strawson is not taking that as an axiom, he is arguing it is a necessary consequence of taking determinism as an axiom, which is what as compatibilists do.
For me, counting to ten is a deterministic process. YMMV. Especially if you are a subjectivist about probability, I guess.
Umm, don’t you mean to be asking Keith that? When have I brought up proximate responsibility? Or are you saying that Strawson’s argument includes proximate responsibility somehow?
I think Strawson is pertinent to your points because it deals with iterated wants; that is the UR connotation I am concerned with..
FWIW, Dennett too has a UR argument involving robots; it addresses vagueness of UR, IIRC.
On a related point: I have wondered what Keith would say about the moral responsibility of someone who hired a psychopath (sociopath?*) for murder. But I decided to leave that part of the discussion to you.
———————
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Sxz3RnRhc
I’m not sure you see that my differences with Strawson (fils) arise from our different understandings of “free.” You have to try to understand the compatibalist as understanding the term to mean no more and no less than having been done because one wanted to. That’s it. So, naturally I look at wants the same way: it’s strictly empirical whether somebody can change her wants if she wants to. If she can manage it with this or that want or motive, then she is, to that extent free. If Strawson says nobody can do so, he’s making an empirical claim that just seems false to me.
Of course, he, like phoodoo, obviously means something more (i.e., different) than what I do by “free”: hence the discussion of genes and whatnot. My mentions of Buddhism and addiction are not high-pay-grade questions as *I* understand free wants, only as Strawson does.
The “ultimate” biz is basically the same thing. Suppose one means by “responsible” roughly what judges and juries who are charged with determining crime and negligence are supposed to mean when they determine crime or liability. Or maybe being responsible has something to do with whether others are sensibly resentful of some action. Again, that’s it. For one group, that’s what the term means, and nothing more. On this view, if you stick an “ultimately” in front of it, you’re just making nonsense stew.
It’s the same sort of thing. One either takes an ordinary language position on these terms and gets one answer or some sort of quasi-scientific position and gets another. But those on my side will say that the quasi-scientific bunch are just making weird noises: their terms don’t mean anything.
If you don’t want to talk about “ultimate responsibility” just think of this matter with respect to “free.” Libertarians (and maybe mealy-mouthed compatibalists on occasion) want “free” to mean something like “utterly unconstrained”: but the compatibalist will simply say that that doesn’t compute: she doesn’t know what the hell an unconstrained action could be. The libertarian and hard determinist will say that that kind of “freedom” isn’t really what anybody sensible is talking about or what people actually WANT.
IMO, there isn’t much more to the debate than this, the rest is curlicues and epicycles. But, simple as it is, nobody can make a killer case for either side. So we just, you know, line up.
walto,
To be fair, I take it that that impasse is why people like List roll up their sleeves and try to dig deeper. But it seems futile to me and I’m really not that interested.
This is worth repeating:
Just as we can usefully talk about libertarian free will in order to refute it, we can usefully talk about ultimate responsibility in order to do the same.
To justify retributive punishment would, at a minimum, require that people be ultimately responsible for their actions. It’s therefore useful to know that people aren’t ultimately responsible.
Bruce,
The person arranging the hit is proximately responsible for doing so, and the person carrying out the hit is proximately responsible for doing that.
The question is not particular to my position. Walto, for example, accepts the concept of proximate moral responsibility; it’s just that he leaves off the word “proximate”. So you could just as well pose your question to him.
Bruce,
Right, and any such differences trace back to causes that are outside the person’s control.
Only a Prime Mover could be a candidate for ultimate moral responsibility. Indeed, if an omniGod exists, then he is morally responsible for everything that happens.
keiths:
Bruce:
I understand, but my point is that even the counterfactual is highly suspect. Any logic leading from an assumption of determinism to the conclusion that no one believes falsehoods is questionable.
No, because premise 4 doesn’t apply to all possible worlds:
Bruce:
They are implicit in my #1…
…which is a distillation of Huemer’s #1, #2, and #3 (with the qualifier removed):
OK, but the trick is why you think it is questionable (as do I) and why Huemer does not. That’s why I said it reminds me of ontological argument for God’s existence: clearly wrong, but why is tricky to put your finger on.
Yes, I realized I omitted to exclude that one after I posted, but I figured you would find it. So points for me on that bit of prognostication, but deductions for keeping it to myself. In any event, what you point out was the source of my puzzlement.
I agree that that premises as Huemer states them imply that there is exactly one “can” in the context of the argument and so that leads to the shoulds cancelling out, so to speak, giving him the contradiction. But I do think the shoulds are an important part of stating the argument completely.
Anyway, upthread I expressed concern with mixing physics (for determinism) and psychology (for shoulds). But upon re-reading Heumer’s flexible MFT definition at start, I think he would be quite happy to have the can’s apply to psychology, making the argument result in a conclusion of indeterminism for psychology (good for List, although List is too much of an empiricist I suspect to respect the argument).
So where am my concerns now? Unless Walt takes the time to and is able to demonstrate that 1 begs the question, and I am not convinced it does, I center my concerns on the “true” in premise 1, as does objection 3. I don’t find Heumer’s reply to objection 3 sufficient, but I have not tried to detail that concern (sharing Waltianism on that one, I guess).
I have not studied your posts while I as off, but from my skimming I got the impression you mix causal responsibility with moral responsibility. Is it fair to say you see them as related or even the same?
Is the psychopath morally responsible in your view?
I frankly am not sure what Walt’s position is on where moral responsibility lies in that case or the robot case, but again I have not studied what he posted during my vacation from TSZ.
Have you heard the one about the sheik, his wife, his mistress and the poisoned water in the punctured canteen?
And for those who don’t click YouTube links (see my previous post), perhaps fearing some kind of prank, the movie “The Guard” was hilarious.
Just to expand on my mystical (or maybe mystifying) reply to that:
I think our disagreement comes down to different philosophical intuitions about what is needed to argue for compatibilism in the light of Strawson and van Inwagen’s arguments (I believe you have also pointed to differing intuitions at the base of philosophical stalemates).
The interviewee in the latest Richard Marshall interview (link: https://316am.site123.me/articles/an-actual-sequence-view-of-freedom) makes a similar point during the interview.
In the interview, I like (ie intuitively agree with) her point that the arguments require the compatibilist’s consideration and rebuttal. On the other hand I dislike her reliance on weird Frankfurt-style philosophical thought experiments in order to justify her rebutting arguments.
I much prefer Ismael’s approach which combines philosophy and science on:
– the correct understanding of determinism as provided by bare physics,
– the nature of laws, necessity, and the unfolding of the future in a block universe metaphysics of time
– using stat mechanics and interventionist accounts of causation to explain how agents escape past “causes” and also have an essential causal role in selecting among the different possible futures
– what cognitive science tells us about the self, and using that to show how we can be self-constitutive and thereby gain ultimate responsibility for our choice in realizing our preferred possible future.
After counting to ten, I’ll say that is probably enough.
You like sciency and quasi-sciency. I can live without that stuff myself. I think philosophy should be kept separate where possible.
However, there seem to be a problem with the current model of the big bang where the model does fit the data regarding Cosmic Microwave Background…
I just don’t know how cosmologists can explain the special direction in the universe with “the axis of evil” all pointing to the Earth…
Was that predetermined at the very beginning of the big bag?
Or was it predetermined before the big bag?
I guess they may wonder if it is specially meaningful why only the dipole and quadrupole models of the CMB exhibit this effect and not the octupole.
Then some may think whole variation of temperature creating the poles is an artifact due to the movement of the Galaxy through space.
No? Says who? You?
Or NASA?
Really?! How does the movement of a galaxy create a TEMPERATURE PATTERN like that?
Stop fantasizing, newton!
keiths:
Bruce:
I think it’s because he doesn’t recognize just how sweeping the implications of his reasoning are, since he uses the qualifier “with respect to the free will issue”.
His analogue of my #1 would be…
…which is less of an eyebrow raiser than…
Bruce,
Yes. Proximately responsible, but not ultimately responsible.
Judging from what he’s written, I think he’d agree that the psychopath is proximately responsible, since he or she willingly carried out the murder.
And although he’d rather flay himself than use the phrase, “ultimate responsibility” is clearly what he was getting at in this statement (since withdrawn):
The psychopath is not the ultimate cause of his or her psychopathy and therefore cannot be the locus of ultimate responsibility.
keiths,
You mean like the “system” becomes unsystemized, so can no longer choose itself?
How can it ever been shown empirically if one can manage their wants?
If one does something they say they don’t want to, or likewise doesn’t do something that they actually want to do-can’t one just claim that in the end they did want they really want to? Or in fact, they had no choice, they were always going to do exactly only the one thing they did?
How could we ever show, empirically, that someone has made a choice, ever?
phoodoo,
No. A psychopath is still a system, and none of us can choose ourselves in the ultimate sense.
phoodoo,
Offer them a choice between chocolate and vanilla. When they select one, they have made a choice.
If that’s a problem, it’s one whatever your position on free will. I personally think testimony is sufficient, in conjunction with introspective experience. You seem to be suggesting that people must have some incentive to lie about this. But i can tell when i want something and when i’m able to do what i want. I assume that’s true of others. I am also aware of desires of mine i’d like to change and to what extent i’m successful. Again, i suppose that’s true of others.
When i said it’s empirical, i meant only that it shouldn’t be taken as a matter of faith–one way or the other. I’d think that surveys might be useful for example. (I’d even ask you!) But, as with any matter involving intentions, science is limited in what it can tell us.
Bruce,
The following quote confirms that I am interpreting List correctly re supervenience:
By determinism, h is a fixed sequence of physical states. Via the supervenience mapping, therefore, h is a fixed sequence of agential states. Alternative futures are not available at either level, so List’s paper fails.
Bruce,
I think they’re related but not the same.
Yes, and I think both the wife and the mistress are proximately responsible for their intentions and actions in attempting murder. It was just a matter of moral luck that the mistress actually caused the death while the wife failed. As discussed in my recent thread on moral luck, I don’t think luck should increase or decrease proximate moral responsibility.
“In 1965, it was discovered that the Universe is permeated by microwave radiation left over from the period of recombination (which occured about 300,000 years after after the Big Bang). This radiation, now called the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB, has an extremely uniform temperature of 2.725 Kelvin if one accounts for the smooth gradient in its temperature (from 0.0035 Kelvin below average in the direction of the constellation Aquarius, to 0.0035 Kelvin above average in the direction of the constellation Leo) across the sky. It was quickly realised that this dipole was the result of our Galaxy moving at 600 km/sec with respect to the CMB radiation, and it is now known that this reflects the motion of the Local Group of galaxies towards the Great Attractor.”
OK, thanks.
All my replies address causal roles only. Moral and legal blameworthiness/praiseworthiness and their relation to causal role are another matter.
Yes .
So much talent. And beautiful. Most of CSN were groupies when it came to her.
These questions prompt me to ask a question. What is the closest match between an actual known gene combination and the behaviour of individuals that share the combination. I believe there have been studies on identical twins that seem to point to the match not being as close as would be expected.
As for the questions. Many people in the world believe in karma. From this perspective it could be that the gene combination came about as a result of their actions in a previous life and so they do have some sort of responsibility for their present characterological make up.
So even in the scenarios you posit there are possibilities other than everything being controlled by the genes, even with 100% match.
I agree that you choose the flavour you prefer. And this can be classed as having free will, but it is a limited free will. I find it more interesting to think about free actions or free deeds. And I don’t regard choosing either flavour to be a free action because whichever one is chosen is the source which caused the action. You were led to act by your desire for an external object. The compulsion to act comes from without. Even if you were to abstain from eating either product that is not necessarily a free decision. You might be doing it to impress those around you, or you are on a diet because you are unhappy about the way you look, or you grudge paying the price that they charge.
Know yourself and know your underlying motives. This is the path to freedom.
I’d like to get your views on what is required for someone to store up treasures in heaven for herself or himself?
Here are some of my thoughts on this:
Imagine a man is going about his everyday life doing the things Jesus says will come to nothing in the end. He develops an illness and is told that he only has a short time to live. His attitude towards his former life will probably change and he will probably realise how precious is is his final time with his loved ones. He will probably want to put his affairs in order to make it easier for them when he has gone. By preparing for his departure he is storing up for himself treasures in heaven.
Jesus taught how one is to act in order to store up these treasures. Act as if your death is immanent and you are preparing for it. It may be your last chance to tell those around you how much you love and appreciate them.
I’m sure you know what Jesus is reported to have said on sowing and reaping. This is the equivalent to what is taught as the law of karma. Jesus taught not to burden ourselves with the consequences of our past deeds. We gain heavenly treasures in proportion to the giving up of earthly treasures. To choose heavenly treasures over earthly treasures is to free ourselves from the ties of earthly possessions. This is real freedom. Before Christ we had mythos, since the arrival of Christ we have the logos. This is reflected in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments. The real treasures are not physical objects they are what we receive from the Word. But it has to be a free choice of each individual which he or she chooses. There can be no compulsion.
What if a person has an addictive nature, he or she desires the substance of the addiction and deliberates before imbibing, would you say that they have made a free choice?
No no no, I don’t think you are getting what I am saying.
There is NO argument that can be made, that one can go against one’s wishes. Becuase ultimately, if one makes a choice, that must be their wish.
Furthermore, you can never know if one could have made a different choice, in anything. Because they made a choice, so that’s all you know. You will never know if one could have chosen differently.
It is quite possible that it is literally impossible to do anything against your wishes.
phoodoo,
And this includes for yourself. You can never know if you could have made a choice different from that which you made.
All assumptions about making a choice or just based on the faith that you believe it to be possible. There never can be evidence that you could have done otherwise.
For instance, you can say, you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream You love chocolate, but you are going to chose vanilla instead to prove that you can chose something against your wishes. Well, all that proves is that you wish to prove you can chose something against your wishes, which is what you really wish to do. So you still have only done what you wish. There was never really an alternative as far as you know.
Unless you believe in a God given free will that is. But that’s faith of course.
You have here both that it’s impossible that one can act in opposition to one’s wishes (because if they did it, it must have been their wish) and that we don’t–and can’t know if it’s possible to act against our wishes. Let’s stick with the first view.
I can tell when i went forward because you pushed me or the wind blew me or there was an earthquake. And i recognize the difference between those and me going forward because I wanted to. I (generally) call the latter group free acts of mine.
The question is whether my wants are like my moving forward in that I can distinguish between those wants that I change because I want to and those I am compelled to change because of external stuff–like being pushed, windblown, etc. It seems to me that some of those can also be freely altered by me. And i could see how a survey might be useful.
I’m well aware, of course, that you mean something different by ‘free’ than what I mean. I’ve stressed this in numerous posts. But you don’t seem to want to accept that. You take my meaning to be narrow and insufficient; i take yours to be mysterious and perhaps incoherent.
I generally agree with you about this, as you understand “could have done otherwise.” But I really don’t care about it. My understanding of freedom doesn’t require that. I’m interested in whether i could have done otherwise if i’d wanted to. And it seems to me that have a ton of available historical information relevant to that question.
walto,
No, it has nothing to do with what is meant by free. It is far simpler than that.
There can never be evidence that life had alternatives (unless you believe in a higher power that grants these). What evidence can there be for free will? Because you think you chose something? How do you know?
phoodoo,
I think you should think further about how the second paragraph could be true but it not matter at all what is meant by ‘free.’
Give me one example of evidence for free will? Even the kind of free will you claim to believe.
walto,
Do you mean the fact that you walked somewhere? Is that an example of free will, because you believe you could have decided not to walk?
Is that evidence, the belief that you could have chosen not to?
walto,
Is it the part that you believe it to be true, is that the evidence?
What if they choose neither? Or both? Or refuse to choose? Which of these outcomes is evidence that they didn’t have a choice?