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.
But that is not the phenomenon I was addressing.
I was discussing people who support punishment as policy.
Striking out at someone who has hurt you is an impulse, and most people don’t carry out revenge fantasies.
I’m thinking of people who design punishment policies for schools, churches and governments. And who have devised elaborate rationalizations to hide the fact that such policies aren’t very good at deterring.
For example, I had two teachers who spent an inordinate amount of time paddling children. Much of it paddling kids who went back to the end of the line without committing an infraction. I’m sure Freud would have something to say.
Eve when England executed people for theft, there were lots of people undeterred.
keiths,
I want to know what you mean by responsible (accountable) since it appears in both “proximately responsible” and “ultimately responsible”
I mean, does it mean, e.g., “predominont cause” maybe? Major (but not necessarily predominant) cause? Someone or something that deserves punishment/blame if it’s a bad thing or praise if it’s a good thing?
You tell me. You’re using in both of your key phrases, so I assume you have a sense. We know at any rate that it must be something that can be either proximate or ultimate.
To be responsible/accountable for something is to be its deciding cause.
Smith has it in his power to murder Jones. He willingly decides to murder Jones and he carries out the deed. He is the deciding proximate cause — the agent who willingly made the decision and the closest agent in the causal chain who could have prevented Jones’s death by making a different decision.
He’s not the ultimate cause of Jones’s death, however, because (under determinism) the factors that shaped him into a murderer trace back to causes before his birth and outside his control.
Given determinism, the ultimate responsibility rests with no one (or with God if you posit an omniscient, omnipotent Creator who could foresee the inevitable unfolding of events culminating in Jones’s death).
petrushka,
I still think you’re being unfair. While I’m sure there are people whose sadism is behind their support for punishment, I also think there are non-sadistic people who genuinely believe that justice demands it.
keiths,
Do you mean “wretched subterfuge” and “word jugglery”? That compatibilism?
And remember you also introduced pure materialism, so once you do that, you have no free will left I am afraid.
Its not an alternative when there is only one choice.
If instead you are talking about a determined future, whereas a God knows the outcome, but does nothing to cause it, fine. But that’s not materialism. And thus any such discussions of morality within your materialistic framework are all just conveniences-just an ignoring of the reality of your position really.
Also, I would add, that part of the problem with talking about determinism, is that its a bad term. Because knowing an outcome is not the same as determining an outcome. And yet those meanings become conflated when one talks about a God knowing all things, and thus if there is a God, he has determined the outcome.
But if that equated to determining the outcome, then if we ever found out time travel was possible, then by this (poor) definition, all of life would be determined, simply because it could be possible to know an outcome.
So then we would have to call quantum physics wrong, because, we could know the position of an atom, before the atom existed. So its position must be called determined.
Forseeing is NOT determining.
phoodoo,
The problem is not with the term “determinism”. It’s with your confusion, which you are projecting onto others.
Obviously. I can foresee more confusion on your part, but that does not mean I’m determining it.
phoodoo,
A hypothetical creator God would not predetermine things by virtue of knowing about them. He would predetermine them by predetermining them — that is, by setting up the initial conditions and the deterministic laws by which the universe evolves.
Moral responsibility is where God’s omniscience comes into play, because an omniscient God can foresee the future whether or not the world is deterministic. If he’s also omnipotent, then he has the power to change that future. Such a God is morally responsible for everything that happens.
So Smith murdering Jones, or Trump getting elected, or any other such vile result can be laid at the metaphorical feet of your Creator Omni-God. He could foresee it, yet still he let it happen.
phoodoo,
Who said there was only one alternative?
If someone offers you a choice between chocolate and vanilla, you’re being given two alternatives. If you wanted chocolate, you could choose chocolate. If you wanted vanilla, you could choose vanilla. The alternatives are real, even if your choice is predetermined.
You get the flavor you prefer, because you make the choice.
This is probably the crux of the matter. Charlie is stuck on this point as well:
There seems to be a strong feeling that, because your preference (or desire/aspiration/ whatever) is outside of your control, this invalidates any choice as an act of free will. Those who think along those lines will not accept your explanation.
ETA: @phoodoo and Charlie: let me know if I misunderstood your position
Well, apparently you didn’t get my objection, so there’s that
And neither do I see why that would be so. But we can discriminate between various aspirations and various desires depending on what is being desired or aspired to.
And what is this “I” that posed the question? And why is it so curious?
Thank you. And thank you for being here to allow me to bounce my ideas off you.
As long as we have physical bodies we will always have, of necessity, selfish desires. But just as we cannot be independent free thinking adults without first passing through the stage of being totally dependent babies, so we cannot achieve selflessness without first the preparation of being self-interested beings. You have got to possess something before you can give it up.
Here is how a Kabbalist puts it.
What Jesus is saying in the pasage you quote is that we should not worry about amassing perishable worldly goods but we should act here and now in a way that your deeds, done out of love, are eternally relevant and you carry these into the higher spheres. Everything else that you accumulate in this life will not be carried over, it will be left behind when you die.
If we did not store up treasures in heaven then we would have nothing to give. And what is it we give from the heart?
keiths,
If responsibility means being something’s deciding cause, then I don’t understand “ultimate responsibility” or–as you say–nothing ever has it. And “proximate responsibiity” just means responsibility.
In other words, the modifiers do nothing. That’s my point. Jones is responsible or not. Period.
I don’t like the term “pre-determined” (it sounds so fatalistic) but yes. We have choices when there’s more than one thng we can do if we want to (because we want to).
Everytime you accuse me of being confused, it makes me realize you know you are losing the argument. Its a tell. You wouldn’t be good at poker.
If materialism is real, then there is no such thing as a choice. if chemicals do what they do, they can decide what they want to do, they just do whatever forces them to do. You are trying to insert magic into chemical reactions (maybe you want to play the even greater obfuscation game and call it emergence-magic) so that chemicals can somehow choose their own positions and states.
What is it that you think is making the choice-you? What do you think you are-an independent entity, separate from the chemicals that are you? How quickly you want to abandon your materialist roots keiths. Can’t say I blame you.
Chemicals don’t choose, thus if they make what appears to be a choice of several options, it is you being fooled. They were always only going to choose the one they chose. There were never options.
If it is chemicals, materials, then there is no wizard behind the curtain, just chemicals at the mercy of their make-up.
Oy. Gotta admit I prefer Jesus’ take here.
Buddha was best though. Lke a man among boys.
Depends on what you are calling the “we”. Are you willing to assign magical properties to the “we”, to the “you”. Because that is the only way “we” can make choices.
Otherwise “we” are just bound by what we are, each a different state of chemicals in a different place and different field. We can’t choose that field.
Unless you believe in magic. Or God of course.
phoodoo,
It’s simpler than you’re making it. The chemicals aren’t important.
The compatibalist says that somebody’s act is free whenever it’s done because the person wanted to do it. You and other free will libertarians say. “No, that’s not enough. That’s not enough to get a free act as I understand those words. The wanting can’t have been determined for the act to be free.” Then the compatibalist says that your notion of freedom is either nonsense or never happens.
That’s the whole argument in a nutshell.
phoodoo,
See my last post. I just don’t require as much for free acts a you do. We’re using the term differently. It’s an ancient (likely unsovable problem). What ‘free’ means won’t be resolved by keiths’ arguments or yours or mine.
walto,
Or Dennett’s.
List has a different approach. Like you, he doesn’t accept the compatibalist’s understanding of “free”– but he tries to show that and how we can be free anyhow. I doubt I’ll read his suggestions on this in the near future myself. But you may find it useful if you’re interested in fleshing out what YOU might be meaning by the term. Because if compatibalists are wrong, as you contend, there’s a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
walto,
Because compatibilism isn’t talking about materialism.
As soon as you do, you are then bound by the implications.
Again, I realize why you and Keiths would prefer to cover your eyes and ears over that part.
Sure it is. Compatibalists are quite likely to be materialists as i’ve said above. The position comports with any sort of determinism. Again, what you don’t like about it (and you’re not alone) is that it seems to shortchange what is meant by ‘freedom.’
Fwiw, i was introduced to compatibalism by Mill (a non-materialist). I was very taken by it. Later, however, i saw that his “proof” of it was no good. That’s typical in philosophy. Somebody may come up with wonderful ideas. But there are no proofs.
Libertarians focus on “could have done otherwise.” Compatibalists focus on “what one wanted to do.” That’s it. The chemicals don’t matter because the compatibalists don’t care about the ‘could have done otherwise.’ They (We) remove that from what they (we) mean by ‘freedom.’
Does that help?
It must be wonderful to be a theist. None of the big problems of philosophy are problems at all. Free will? This magic immaterial woo-woo solves it, no worries. Moral grounding? An omnipotent being can do that without breaking a sweat, and so on and so forth. Can’t you see you’re doing it wrong, walto?
Old dog, old tricks.
What do you think materialists are doing, when they say chemicals can choose?
That’s not woo-woo?
Read again walto’s responses to you. Even I got it
All this reminds me of that thread where we discussed fatalism, foreknowledge and free will, sadly that’s about all I can remember 😂
I’ll see if I can find it to refresh my memory.
dazz,
Can chemicals choose Dazz?
Didn’t help [Sigh]
🙁
Chemicals can do free will just fine. Check this out
Thank you, walto, for the clarity of your exposition. Very much appreciated.
On a brighter note:
No, but they can chose Daz.
[cue Fairy joke]
It may be a radical view, but we’re definitely free radicals
Where are the non-chemicals that do the choosing in your brain? If you can’t say how do you know they are there at all?
Honestly, it’s not even worth the time to stick that together. To wit: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/what-is-a-decision-in-phoodoo-world/
2000+ comments and the same lines trotted out then by phoodoo and exactly the same ones trotted out in this thread. What’s the point of engaging with someone who refuses to bend in any direction, who merely exists to inform you you are incorrect and never ever says what is in fact correct.
That’s a nice helpful summary of the debate.
I take it that the real differences between compatibilism and incompatibilism lie in how seriously they want things to cash out in terms of ontology.
A compatibilist like Harry Frankfurt or Dan Dennett might carry on Hume’s tradition of saying, “hey, as long as you can understand yourself and others as practically free for all intents and purposes, that’s good enough.”
Whereas an incompatibilist — whether a libertarian or a determinist — is going to say that “OK, but am I really free?” is a legitimate question that needs an answer — whether positive or negative. (Or, as in Kant’s case, a demonstration of the impossibility of an answer.)
On this take, the question “compatibilism or incompatibilism?” turns on the much more difficult question as to how seriously one should take metaphysics. And that in turn is going to involve all sorts of rather difficult questions about how to do metaphysics, whether metaphysics is constrained by science or somehow transcends science, and how we can arrive at metaphysical knowledge (if we can).
OMagain,
Yeah, it does seem futile.
Kantian Naturalist,
Thx, kn. I was hoping you’d check in here at some point! What do you think about List’s approach?
dazz,
That’s pretty cool!
Thanks, but I’m not that smart
😄
I know, I know. Such fervent defenders of free will, yet so robotic
KN,
Both compatibilists and incompatibilists think the free will question is a legitimate one. It’s just that the kind of free will that libertarians seek is incoherent and thus impossible, while the kind that compatibilists seek is coherent and realistic.
I haven’t looked at it, and to be honest I doubt I will. This summer is taking me further into the history of cybernetics and the status of representations in cognitive science. But I’ll comment here every now and again.
Charlie,
You’re tap dancing around the fact that Jesus explicitly instructs people to look out for their future heavenly selves:
You’re trying to Steinerize Jesus, and it isn’t working.