On a forum on the Internets, I ill-advisedly plunged myself into one of those discussions that never ends until one side gets tired of arguing. This particular discussion happens to be on the subject of libertarian vs. compatibilistic free-will. If you're not familiar with this debate, here's the skinny. Compatibilists believe that the future is determined, but that this fact is compatible with the existence of free-will. Libertarians believe that determinism violates free-will, and the free-will can only exist in an indeterministic universe. The crux of the debate usually resides in the way the two sides define freedom. Both sides define freedom as the power to choose, though the libertarian would say that it includes the ability to alter future events, whereas the compatibilist would say it is the power to choose what one desires most. According to compatibilists, one will always choose what one most desires to choose. According to libertarians, there is an element of indeterminacy in our choices, and one presumably can choose something that is not one's greatest desire at a given moment.
The argument for libertarian freedom inevitably goes something like this. Let "A" represent an action that I will choose tomorrow.
1) In a deterministic universe, I do not have the power to refrain from choosing action A tomorrow.
2) Unless I have the power to refrain from choosing action A, action A is not a free choice.
3) Therefore, in a deterministic universe, action A is not a free choice. [Follows from 1 and 2]
The problem with this argument is that the very definition that compatibilists are contesting-- the libertarian definition of freedom-- is assumed in the second premise. Other, more complicated versions of this argument hide the circularity better, but they all boil down to basically the same fallacy.
I would like to present a counter-argument from the compatibilist perspective. Rather than proceeding from a particular definition of freedom, this one proceeds from what I think is a fairly conventional definition of "will". Unless advocates of libertarian freedom can propose an alternative definition of "will" that both is plausible and meaningful, I think my argument demonstrates that "libertarian free will" is an oxy-moron.
1) An action that I perform in in a given moment is "willed" by me only if it is determined by my state-of-mind or state-of-being in a previous moment.
2) An action in a given moment that is determined by a state in a previous moment cannot have been otherwise.
3) Therefore, an action that is "willed" by me in a given moment cannot have been otherwise. [Follows from 1 and 2.]
4) No action that cannot have been otherwise satisfies the conditions of libertarian freedom.
5) Therefore, no action that is "willed" by me in a given moment satisfies the conditions of libertarian freedom. [Follows from 3 and 4]
What this argument suggests, in short, is that if there is indeterminacy in my future actions it can only because they do not proceed from my state-of-being. And if they do not proceed from my state-of-being, then they cannot properly be described as "willed".
There are of course other arguments that can be brought against libertarian free-will, but I think this is a fairly easy one and one to which libertarians inevitably have some difficulty responding. I have not, to date, seen a cogent account of what it means to "will" an action under a libertarian model.
20 comments:
Man, I suck at these philosophical proofs. So I doubt I can concoct something logically rigorous for you.
That said, why can't there be an underlying identity that could truly go either way? Like the Mormon notion of "intelligences?"
At least in the realm of quantum physics, we see some particles behaving in a truly unpredictable fashion (see "Schrodinger's Cat"). Why cannot we analogize to human will?
The problem with your proof, as far as I can tell is that it equates "free will" with the product of the decision and not the force behind it. Free will is the force behind the decisions. You seem to be talking about the decisions, and not the force.
Of course the decisions are not free. They are derivative of the will. But that does not mean the will is not still free.
Am I missing your point?
Hi Seth,
I'm a little confused by your phrase "underlying identity that goes either way". Is this your way of asking whether the willing self cannot be a sort of roulette wheel? In other words, agreeing that the willed action is determined by the self, but denying that the self itself is determined?
If so, my answer would be twofold:
1) We do have an experience of being at least partly determined by factors in the past, so if our selves are undetermined it could only be partially. We could speak of "factors" that make up the self: past determining factors on the one hand, and truly random determining factors on the other. Of course, this still does not give us libertarian freedom. Under such a model the self is still "determined", albeit by a sort of divine dice-rolling rather than by exclusively past factors as in determinism. The self, under this model, still does not really have the power of self-determination. It has it even less so, in fact, because to the extent that it is determined by a random factor, it does not even have compatibilistic freedom anymore!
2) I already indicated in my post that I think an action, in order to be meaningfully willed, would have to be determined by one's being in the previous moment. I've not seen a convincing counter-proposal to this model of will. If my model of will is correct, then it applies just as clearly to actions that occur within the self as to actions external to the self. In other words, if we believe in true self-determination-- i.e. that you are in control of your own self and your own destiny rather than being controlled by something else-- then we have to believe that the past self determines the present self, just as the past self determines the present action.
>>At least in the realm of quantum physics, we see some particles behaving in a truly unpredictable fashion (see "Schrodinger's Cat"). Why cannot we analogize to human will?
Indeterminacy at the quantum level is weird, and I'm not sure how it really applies to the self. Basically, it says that a quantum particle exists as a mere probability distribution until it is "observed", at which time it randomly "picks" a state. The notion that particles "pick" a state, however, does not help the concept of free will, since this occurs randomly. The very fact of its being "undetermined" in fact requires that the state was not determined by a prior will or intelligence.
I'll leave it at that for now, and hope you will respond and elaborate on your thoughts a bit more.
Chris: The argument that you give has nothing to do with libertarian free will. What libertarian has given the argument you claim is commonly given for libertarian free will?
How about this argument:
(1) If I hold you morally accountable for failing to X at t2, then I imply that you should have done X at t2.
(2) If you should have done X at t2, then it was in your power to do X t2.
(3) If determinism is true, then the prior history of the world in conjunction with the natural laws that obtain up to t2 entail that it is not within your power to X.
This argument follows from the simple intuitively compelling observation that it makes little sense to blame you for failing to do something unless it was in your power to do it. Of course premise (3) also needs some support. However, the argument is fairly straightforward:
1. If determinism is true, then all our actions and thoughts are consequences of events and laws of nature in the remote past before we were born.
2. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the remote past before we were born, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature.
3. If A causes B, and we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B.
Therefore
4. If determinism is true, then we have no control over our own actions and thoughts.
Therefore, assuming that responsibility requires control,
5. If determinism is true, then we are not responsible for anything we do or think.
Therefore, assuming that freedom entails responsibility,
6. If determinism is true, then we are not free, which is to say that every form of compatibilism is false.
So giving arguments like the one you gave doesn't get far because such an argument indeed begs the question. I just don't know any libertarian who has ever given such an argument.
Further, it seems to me that the notion of an agent as an agent cause solves your concerns with mere indeterminism rather easily.
Hey Blake,
The argument I summarized for libertarian free-will is one that I have encountered repeatedly over the course of online discussions with advocates of libertarian free-will. I'm glad to see you acknowledge that the argument is circular. I am not convinced, however, that the alternative you propose is fundamentally different. Rather than assuming a libertarian account of freedom, as did the the argument I summarized, your argument assumes a libertarian account of moral responsibility. Both moral responsibility and freedom are described by libertarians in terms of a definition of "power" that compatibilists would not accept. I can affirm the first two premises of both your argument and of the argument in the original post, so long as power is conceived in terms of external potentialities rather than potentialities internal to the self-conscious agent. But if power is so defined, the third premise of both your argument and of the argument summarized in my original post turns out not to be true.
The remainder of your comment appears to be a version of what is commonly called the "Consequence Argument". The Consequence Argument runs basically as follows:
1) If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws and events in the remote past.
2) It is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are.
3)Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us.
4) If things are not up to us (cannot be controlled) then we are not responsible for our actions.
5) Therefore if determinism is true men have no responsibility.
I am convinced that the consequence argument is invalid because the kind of inference used to get from #1 and #2 to #3 (an inference philosophers commonly refer to as beta) is not valid in this case. You, thankfully, stated the assumption behind beta quite explicitly as your third premise (which is why your argument has six points rather than the more conventional five). You wrote, "If A causes B, and we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B." In most cases, this would be true. In the present case, however, it is not.
The reason that beta is invalid in the present case is that my self intervenes between A and B as part of the causal chain that links them. My self is a consequence of A, and B is a consequence of my self. Thus in the present case, while I have no control over A, I do have control over B.
Thanks for reading,
-Chris
By the way Blake, I forgot to respond to your note about agent causation. On an Internet forum I frequent, I wrote the following about agent causation:
Notice that Blake did not posit that the agent exists equally in past and present, but rather that at the present s/he creatively recombines past factors into a new identity. I'm guessing that the agent-causal model draws heavily on the Heraclitan/Whiteheadian proposal that Becoming, rather than Being, is the fundamental principle of reality. According to this view, only the present has any real ontological validity; the past exists only as memory, and the future only as potentiality. I don't think thinkers of this sort would view the present as a state so much as a sort of fluid process engaging in the continual generation of memories. If this is what Blake is getting at, then it is sufficiently alien to my perspective that I can't really even wrap my mind around it, let alone know how (or care) to respond. That could just be my narrow-mindedness at work. Or it could be my impatience with radically-revisionist accounts of reality that in my opinion are based more on intuition and rhetorical flourish than on any kind of rationale. Take your pick.
Was I correct? When you talk about agent causation, are you drawing on the Heraclitan Whiteheadian tradition? Or do you think there is some way to reconcile simultaneous/present/agent causation with the Parmenidean account of reality to which most of us adhere?
Thanks,
-Chris
Chris: Your suggestion that rule Beta is invalid misses the fact that this rule is not Beta but the revised Beta*. The fact is that if the past laws and circumstances (including your "self") are causally sufficient for the occurrence of or entail an action A, then you don't have any control over A either. Your response is unsound because you don't have control over your "past self" or what you did in the past. You can't change what you did an hour ago which now results in your present act. Thus, your response is invalid. You appear to smuggle in the fallacious notion that at some point in the past your acts were not determined by the past and thus you are responsible for what follows from those past acts now. That is clearly false if determinism always obtains and not merely at some times (as the notion of causal determinism clearly implies). So you have to deal with Beta* and not Beta simpliciter. As you know there has been a good deal of discussion in the philosophical journals over these rules of inference. However, the consensus is that Beta* is a sound rule of inference because no one yet has been able to devise a counterexample. It is not merely intuitively true -- it seems to be universally valid.
You are quite correct that my view of agent causation is a process view. My view of consciousness (and thus the free self) is one of a self that emerges from processes in the act of synthesizing the past in a new moment of exercise of a basic power of creation and resulting creative synthesis. What we add to the data of the past is a unifying power of consciousness into a choice. The data of experience are not so unified without an agent organizing the data into a unified consciousness and from that consciousness the power of rational thought and power of alternative choice emerges. We very clearly have such basic powers given the phenomenal quality of our unified consciousness of data.
Blake,
My understanding of freedom does not require that I have control of my past actions. Nor, I suspect, does your own. My understanding of freedom also does not require that I have control over the present configuration of my identity. (Here, perhaps, we part ways?) In a temporally uni-directional universe, the present-tense verb "to have control" can only apply to future states. I think that in order to "have control" over something in any meaningful sense, there must be a prior givenness of the self that is doing the choosing. That this prior givenness is beyond my control does not entail that what I do in the next moment is beyond the control of my given self.
By no means do I "smuggle in the fallacious notion that at some point in the past your acts were not determined by the past and thus you are responsible for what follows from those past acts now." The say that my past acts were not determined by my more remotely past self would, in my opinion, be to deny that those acts were freely willed. Obviously my initial configuration at the beginning of my life as a self-conscious entity was not freely willed; I do not deny that. But my actions thereafter were freely willed, to varying degrees.
Beta* fails to be universally valid precisely because it is not valid in the present case. The difficulty compatibilists have experienced in thinking of valid counterexamples is irrelevant if the present case is the only valid counter-example. The specificity of the inference ensures that it probably is (though there have been some worthy attempts to identify others that of course still deserve consideration).
As an aside, I am pleased that you explicitly stated Beta* rather than merely leaving it implicit. I am of the school that only syllogistic inferences should remain implicit in logical demonstration; all other forms of inference should be stated as premises. This leads, in my opinion, to more transparent and productive discussion.
With respect to your agent-causal view, it seems to me that it requires a disjunction between the self and the agent. The agent somehow brings the self into existence by re-combining the data of past experience in the present. If the agent is in some sense the same as or a product of the self, then we have a highly counter-intuitive circularity in which A is the cause of B, which is the cause of A.
>>We very clearly have such basic powers given the phenomenal quality of our unified consciousness of data.
I disagree. There is nothing in my experience of consciousness that seems even remotely consistent with the view you describe.
Best,
-Chris
"I disagree. There is nothing in my experience of consciousness that seems even remotely consistent with the view you describe."
Your consciousness isn't unified? You don't have categories of judgment under which you bring your experience of sensible experience? That is the strangest position in the world for one who adopts Hick's Kantian approach to religious experience. Indeed, it is well-nigh to misunderstand Hick, Kant and what one contributes to one's own experience!
Yes, you do smuggle in the notion that you were free at prior times -- indeed, your account logically requires it. In fact, you admit it by saying that your actions after your initial moment were "free willed"! Moreover, your assertion that your acts were free is just as visciously circular as the libertarian argument you attacked earlier in this blog.
Moreover, your mere assertion that you are fee if you act more from your immediately past self than from your "remote self" (whatever the heck that could mean) is not a counterinstance to Beta*. You can't simply declare that your acts are free and therefore if your assertion conflicts with Beta* it shows that Beta* is false. Look, if determinism is true, then the past is the total explanation of why the one unique present occurs. Your immediately past self is just as much a part of this past as your remote self. You can't change or presently control either of them. I have no idea what it could possibly mean to act more from an immediately past self than a remote past self since they both entail each other if determinism is true. In any event, your view doesn't provide a counterexample to Beta* but merely a refusal to see its logical entailments.
Further, the notion of a self distinct from the agent isn't entailed at all by my process view of free will. The self just is the self alive as acting agent in the present moment of creative synthesis of the past data. The self just is a creative act of synthesis of the past in the present. You can't make the self a thing on my view -- the self is an acting and dynamic reality that creatively synthesizes the past in the act of becoming present.
>>Your consciousness isn't unified? You don't have categories of judgment under which you bring your experience of sensible experience?
I suppose my consciousness is fairly unified most of the time (except when dissociating while driving or eating or the like). But how could that possibly imply a process account of reality? Moreover, I have no experience of existing as a mere process, of scrambling my past experience data anew at every moment, of being able to act or think in anything but a causal sequence. I have no experience of being able to choose other than what I want to choose.
>>it is well-nigh to misunderstand Hick, Kant and what one contributes to one's own experience
I have already indicated that I am not a robot blindly following in Hick's metaphysical footsteps, however much certain aspects of his program may have been formative for my thinking. That is even truer of Kant, a number of whose ideas I find highly unsatisfactory. That does not mean I don't understand these thinkers.
>>Yes, you do smuggle in the notion that you were free at prior times -- indeed, your account logically requires it.
Only if we assume a libertarian definition of freedom.
Moreover, your assertion that your acts were free is just as visciously circular as the libertarian argument you attacked earlier in this blog.
Sure. But I'm not trying to use my assertion that my acts are free to demonstrate that compatibilism is the only coherent position. I'm merely using it to show that it is a coherent position (and one, I might add, that takes advantage of a sober, down-to-earth definition of freedom rather than relying on an eternal perspective to which we really have no access except by means of abstraction).
As far as the argument from "will" that I presented in the original post, I readily acknowledge that there is circularity to the argument if libertarians have a coherent alternative account of what it means to "will". I do not believe that such an account exists.
>>Moreover, your mere assertion that you are free if you act more from your immediately past self than from your "remote self" (whatever the heck that could mean) is not a counterinstance to Beta*.
You have misunderstood me rather badly, I think. Obviously my actions proceed equally from my immediately past self, from my self two years ago, and from the ancient configuration of the universe. I am not setting up a gradation among them. Rather, I am pointing out that if A causes B which causes C, the fact that A causes C does not negate the fact that B causes C. B does not need to control A to control C. Yes, A controls B. But B still controls C. The fact that B is "given" because of A does not imply that B cannot control C. In fact, if B were not "given", there would be no B to do the choosing.
>>The self just is a creative act of synthesis of the past in the present. You can't make the self a thing on my view -- the self is an acting and dynamic reality that creatively synthesizes the past in the act of becoming present.
If the self is merely a verb-- merely the process of becoming-- then there is never a time at which the self has become. The self never becomes something other than what it is and/or was. Am I wrong?
Chris:
If A causes or entails B, and you have no control over that fact, and if B causes or entails C, and you have no control over that fact, then you cannot have control over C. Think of it this way: if it will rain tomorrow, and you have no control over that fact, and if it rains then the streets will get wet, and you have no control over that fact, then you have no control over the fact that it will rain and streets will get wet. That is exactly like: if you are born, and you have no control over that fact, and if you are born causally entails that you will A, and you have no control over that fact, then you have no control over whether you will A -- precisely because you have no control over the past causes that now entail your act. Thus, B* is vindicated against your argument.
"If the self is merely a verb-- merely the process of becoming-- then there is never a time at which the self has become. The self never becomes something other than what it is and/or was. Am I wrong?"
The self is not a mere verb but a process. A process is a series of relations dynamically interacting with one another. The self is thus always partially formed and always in the process of reforming. That which changes has certain properties, is in the process of ceasing to exemplify some of its (accidental) properties and also in the process of exemplifying new (accidental) properties while always exemplifying its essential properties in the changing relation.
In this way our character is formed and also partially reformed with every choice we make. Thus, character development thru making choices in concrete situations requires something like this view of a self in process.
I agree with you that a Kantian view of the self doesn't necessarily entail that the process view is correct. However, it does entail that we have a basic power to unify the sensible data of experience into a synthetic unity that is not present in the data themselves. The unity of data under a conceptual schema or as a unified phenomenal experience is thus something we creatively contribute. It also entails, it seems to me, that this unity emerges as something more than the sum of the parts, or more than mere data. We add to the data by our basic acts and what we add is a first-person consciousness perspective and the basic power to organize the data in various different ways. I contend that this basic power is the power to think one thought rather than another and to choose this or that also entailed in the very basic power. That is essentially an agent causal view of the self in process.
Blake,
Your example does not demonstrate the truth of Beta*, since it does not involve a case in which the agent is part of the causal chain leading from A to B. Only if Beta* can be shown to apply to such a case will the Consequence Argument be shown to be valid. Since you seem to have basically conceded this point in the other thread, that's all I'll say about that.
With respect to the unity of the consciousness, I don't see how "basic power to unify the sensible data of experience into a synthetic unity" implies that we contribute this "unified phenomenal experience" by means of libertarian creativity. In fact, I'm not sure how anything other than deterministic creativity escapes the Problem of Luck.
With respect to the process view of the self, you wrote,
>>The self is thus always partially formed and always in the process of reforming.
You appear, then to be mixing the categories of Being and Becoming. The self is partly Being and partly Becoming. Yet you are lodging action in Becoming, rather than in Being; Becoming acts, whereas Being is merely acted upon (by the reorganization of its phenomenal data). This brings me back to my question of whether the process view implies a bifurcation of the self. If my free will is lodged in something other than my Being-- something that comes from outside, if you will, and acts upon and recreates my Being-- then that raises the question of where "I" am located. Am I the principle of Becoming that acts upon the phenomenal data? Am I the phenomenal data that is acted upon? Am I merely the product that is created at the confluence of Being and Becoming?
If we try to say that I am located in both Being and Becoming, then we have divided the acting self into two hermetically-sealed components that only merge when they create a new synthesis. If we attempt to re-establish the unity of the self by positing that Becoming proceeds from Being (i.e. as a "basic power" of that Being), however, then we are back to a deterministic, Parmenidian, event-causal account of reality.
Best,
-Chris
Chris: "Only if Beta* can be shown to apply to such a case will the Consequence Argument be shown to be valid. Since you seem to have basically conceded this point in the other thread, that's all I'll say about that."
Conceded what where? It is always better to point out what I have said than to claim some concession and thus some victory. In fact, I'm not interested in victory but in learning from each other. Nevertheless, my entire point was that because there is never an act that is free of causal determinism if causal determinism is true, that it simply is mistaken to point to some prior act by an agent to show that B* doesn't hold -- precisely since Beta* will also be a valid inference for that prior act as well. Far from being a concession, what I said was a demonstration of why your example is not a counter-example to Beta*.
If I have read you correctly, you assume that your prior act was free in some sense so that you freely bring about the results of that act in the present. Can't you see that you haven't presented any counter-example to Beta*?
Look, if it is true that if I pour water on the plants, then they will get wet and there is nothing that I can do to prevent that fact of causal entailment, and I have poured water on the plants, then there is nothing that I can now do to make it so that the plants won't get wet. It is the fact that I don't have power over such causal entailment that the Beta* rule of inference is valid. It doesn't matter if the prior act was brought about by my causal powers or not since I don't now have power to change such causal entailments.
Chris: "With respect to the unity of the consciousness, I don't see how "basic power to unify the sensible data of experience into a synthetic unity" implies that we contribute this "unified phenomenal experience" by means of libertarian creativity. In fact, I'm not sure how anything other than deterministic creativity escapes the Problem of Luck."
First -- how does the basic power to unify our consciousness require libertarian free will? In this basic act I choose what I will be conscious of, whether I will be conscious and what my thoughts are. I choose what my thoughts are by this basic act. I can think about this or that, or nothing at all in meditation (tho not thinking of anything at all is harder than you may imagine -- at least it is a challenge for me). Thus, this basic act just is the power to will (or choose) this or that and to think of this or that. To the extent I can control my thoughts, I must be free in a libertarian sense. Indeed, rationality assumes libertarian free will because if I cannot control my thoughts in this sense then my thoughts just happen to me as a causal result of a-rational neural relations and I am therefore neither free nor rational.
Further, this view solves what you term the problem of luck (tho I have no idea what you mean by "luck" in this context). If my acts are within my control because my acts result from the exercise of basic powers over which I have control, then my acts are within my control and not the result of luck. The power to unify the data of sensible experience into a unified whole is such a basic power. If the fact that I bring about an act A as a result of a choice C, and the choice was the exercise of a basic power of causal self-determination by organizing the data of my sensible experience, then A is within my control to the extent it is entailed by my basic choice C.
Basic bodily movements aren't such basic acts BTW. For example, if I am paralyzed and I choose to move my arm, I have control over my choice but not whether my choice results in my arm being moved. However, to the extent that an act follows as a result of my basic power of choice, then I control the act as well. So the fact that I have a basic power to organize data into a conscious choice means that I have control over what my choice is -- so no luck is involved there. I am lucky, however, that I am not paralyzed. However, to the extent I control my choice and my choice causally results in my arm being raised, I can raise my arm and it isn't mere luck that my arm is raised.
Further, what the heck to do you mean by "deterministic creativity"? If everything is determined by prior events, such that a single unique possible world is determined at all past times, then there is no creativity whatsoever. There is merely the entailment of what was already fully contained in the prior moment. Thus, there is no creativity in the sense I speak of it as bringing about something novel if determinism is true because everything is contained in the prior moment.
Further, determinism is the prime example of luck -- in fact it just is the problem of luck. That my present thoughts were causally determined by the states of the universe prior to this moment wasn't up to me and it is a mere matter of luck that it turns out that I have these thoughts now. In fact, I think it is fairly obvious that if my thoughts now are causally determined long before I thought about this thread, then my thoughts cannot possibly be rational either since I couldn't respond creatively to the arguments in a rational manner. Certainly you are aware of Al Mele's zygote argument and how determinism entails luck?
Further, your characterization of my view as some mixture of becoming issuing from more basic being, just misses the entire point of the process perspective. The self is a dynamic reality that is always in flux and the essence is the basic power of creativity; not some thing that has creative powers. So the "I" or "self" just is the memory of my past as it is embodied in each new moment of creative synthesis. This memory is a dominant contributor to what I am at any moment -- but by memory I don't mean a cognitive faculty but the trace of the past as it becomes embodied momentarily in the process that is creatively organized in each new moment. The past thus contributes to what I am and do now, but it doesn't determine what I am fully since there is also the additional basic power of creativity in each new moment that is added to what I am. Given causal determinism, on the other hand, there is no such character development because what I am is merely the unfolding of what was already causally determined and therefore present in the causes. There is nothing novel or creative, just the unfolding of what was already there according to a-rational causal relations.
Blake,
I apologize if I misunderstood you. The statement I took to be a concession was when you agreed "that not controlling myself in this moment doesn't logically entail that I don't control myself in the next moment."
I am not interested in victory, either. I am, however, interested in engaging in actual communication. With respect to the Consequence Argument, I don't think actual communication is occurring. I am having a very hard time understanding why you can't see that the fact that A determines both me (B) and an event (C) does not entail that I cannot determine C. Take the case of three pool balls. Pool ball A collides with pool ball B, which collides with pool ball C. The final destination of C was already determined by the initial motion of A. Applying Beta*, we might say that if A determines and is sufficient for C, B cannot determine C. And yet that just isn't the case. C ends up at its final destination precisely because B struck it at a particular velocity. How B got its velocity is irrelevant; what is relevant is that B determined C. Of course, this determination cannot be termed "control" because as a pool ball B has no self-awareness and therefore no intentionality. But a human being does have these characteristics, so that if we take our pool ball analogy to the human level we find that B can be said to have control over C even though both B and C were totally determined by A. I am trying to understand why you reject this conclusion, but it seems to be that you are simply reiterating Beta* over and over again in different words. Yet the validity of Beta* is precisely what I'm disputing. Unless you have something else to add, I don't know that our discussion of the Consequence Argument has anywhere to go from here. Perhaps the problem is that you're assuming a libertarian definition of control?
With respect to luck: I don't deny that determinism basically amounts to luck. But for the compatibilist determinist luck is not a problem, because the compatibilist definition of freedom already takes into account the brute givenness of everything. The libertarian definition of freedom tries to posit a power within the self that involves no givenness (and therefore no luck). But I have not seen any convincing account of how that's possible. There is, instead, the mere assertion that it is possible. Put another way, we might ask the question of how you come to indeterministically choose what you choose. To the extent that your answer is that "I just do", you fall prey to the problem of luck: there is a givenness to your choice that does not result from any rational process. To the extent that you answer is something other than "I just do," your choice is not truly indeterministic. It is determined by your rationalty, your emotion, etc. (There's a reason they call it "self-determination".)
>>there is no creativity in the sense I speak of it as bringing about something novel if determinism is true because everything is contained in the prior moment.
I would suggest that something "novel" is created in a given moment if it is a new combination with new properties that were not present in prior moments. That the novelty was determined by the past does not diminish its status as a novelty. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to speak of "deterministic creativity". Only an unrealistic commitment to a libertarian understanding of novelty would lead one to deny this. This is one of my biggest objections to libertarianism: instead of trying to come to grips with the real world and the perspective from which our language is actually used, it tries to establish definitions from some kind of imagined, timeless, ideal perspective that in my opinion just doesn't exist.
>>the "I" or "self" just is the memory of my past as it is embodied in each new moment of creative synthesis.
Does this not imply that the self has propositional, but not ontological, validity? That the only thing that has ontological validity is the process that produces memories of me? And what do you mean when you speak of the "basic power of creativity in each new moment that is added to what I am"? Does this creativity come from outside? From somewhere other than myself?
I must confess that I find process metaphysics hopelessly confusing and irritatingly imprecise. I'm really not trying to be difficult; I want to understand. But it's not how my brain works, so I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it.
Speaking of brains, what's your opinion of the clearly observable ways in which brain damage affects the phenomenology of thought? How does a process view explain this?
Chris: the problem with your supposed counterexample is that it isn't a counterexample to B*. It isn't a counterexample because already takes into account all past causes, including dual causes and cases of overdetermination. Further, you continue to smuggle in some moment of free control that isn't causally determined as the basis of your supposed explanation of free acts, viz.,
"Of course, this determination cannot be termed "control" because as a pool ball B has no self-awareness and therefore no intentionality. But a human being does have these characteristics, so that if we take our pool ball analogy to the human level we find that B can be said to have control over C even though both B and C were totally determined by A."
What you refer to as "intentionality" and "self-awareness" these characteristics make no difference. The mere fact of multiple causes bringing about an effect (which is always the case with causal determinism) doesn't affect the validity of B* as your pool ball example shows. To be free, the agent must have a certain power in addition to the power to bring about results. You refer to these additional factors as "intentionality" and self-awareness. Yet how does intentionality make a difference unless it has the power to self-determine a result in addition to merely being a cause. Look, if determinism is true our intentionality amounts to nothing more than algorithmic processors of prior causes. We don't and cannot do anything that isn't causally necessitated by prior causes. Thus, your notion of intentionality won't do the work you want it to. What is it about intentionality that you think does the trick -- that it brings the causal results somehow within our control? The answer is that cannot be the explanation because our intentions are themselves causal results of causes beyond our control.
In any event, your example isn't a counter-example to B*. To constitute a counterexample you must show (and not assume) that there is a situation in which I a given set of causes SC obtains, where these causes are themselves due to causes beyond my control, and that SC obtains and entails that I do act A, and that entailment is also beyond my control, but where A isn't beyond my control. You haven't done that.
If the causes that existed before my birth entail that there will be a football game on Saturday, and I have no control over that fact, and if the fact that there is a football game on Saturday causally entails that I go to that game, and that entailment is beyond my control, it could hardly be the case that my going to the game on Saturday is somehow in my control. That is because in every possible world where there is a game is also a possible world I go to the game, then there are no possible worlds where I don't go to the game that are causally open to me. And that constitutes a rather mundane logical proof of B*.
I grant that given determinism there could be novelty in the sense that a configuration of data arises that has never existed in precisely that configuration. However, that is not the relevant sense of novelty at issue in process thought. What is at issue is the power to add something to the universe that is more than the sum of the part or of the prior causes.What is at issue is a distinction between mere weak emergence where nothing ever happens that isn't completely explained by the microlevel of basic physics. The notion of emergence at issue in agent causation is a true causal break in the sense that the prior data and the micro-causal powers of the atoms and sub-atomic particles don't explain everything. There is more than the sum of the parts in the sense that the parts cannot fully explain the sum. It is like saying that we are not merely the result of our neural connections -- persons have causal powers to transcend their microbiology such as the power of consciousness and free will and moral decision.
So what I propose is precisely the difference between mere weak emergence where we just have a new configuration of legos or building blocks that has never happened before and truly new causal powers that emerge on a new level with biological complexity. So your view entails that there is no ontological emergence -- my view entails ontological emergence.
Finally, my view is that the properties of mind in this sensible world emerge from physical and biological complexity so that there are new causal powers not fully explainable by lower levels of biological organization. Thus, if the brain is damaged, then the properties of mind cannot emerge or can emerge only partially. On your view, if I have understood, all of our choices are in principle fully explainable by the causal relations of our neural networks and these are in turn explained fully by the basic powers of sub-atomic particles. So I believe that your view, if I have understood it, ultimately reduces to absurdity in the reduction of mind to merely the properties of sub-atomic particles that have no properties of mind.
Here is how I see it. If everything I do is caused in the sense of being fully explained by the neurons in my brain, and because I have no control over the neurons and chemicals in my brain, it follows that I am a mere meat machine or mere algorithmic processor and I have no free will. I don't see how such a view could possibly explain either consciousness or free will. This is a concrete application of B*.
On my view of an ontologically emergent mind, so that my consciousness is precisely more than the sum of the parts because there is a unity to my consciousness that is not present in the mere data of consciousness, there are causal powers that are not fully explained at these micro-levels but which are nevertheless dependent on them as the base from which consciousness emerges.
How do you see it?
Blake,
>>What you refer to as "intentionality" and "self-awareness" these characteristics make no difference.
They make a phenomenological difference, which is the only kind of difference that matters since we cannot transcend the phenomenological.
>>Look, if determinism is true our intentionality amounts to nothing more than algorithmic processors of prior causes.
Call of Duty 4 is nothing more than algorithmic processors of prior causes. Yet it constructs for me a three-dimensional world in which I can run around and shoot people. Knowing that it's a computer program doesn't cheapen the experience at all unless you're Amish. Advocates of libertarian free-will are the Amish of the real-world. :-P
>>What is it about intentionality that you think does the trick -- that it brings the causal results somehow within our control?
Control is a term we use to describe the experience of purposefully manipulating outcomes for a given end. We could describe pool ball B's determination of pool ball C as "control", but of course the pool ball does not have the experience of intentionality or purposefulness, so to apply the term "control" to the pool ball's actions would violate the way the word is normally used. I don't harbor any illusions that intentionality circumvents determinism or "smuggle[s] in some moment of free control" as you define it. In fact, I reject the very concept of libertarian "free control" as an oxymoron.
>>To constitute a counterexample you must show (and not assume) that there is a situation in which a given set of causes SC obtains, where these causes are themselves due to causes beyond my control, and that SC obtains and entails that I do act A, and that entailment is also beyond my control, but where A isn't beyond my control.
How about this:
1. In order to have control over B, I must intend and cause B.
2. If A causes me to intend and cause B, I cannot do otherwise than to intend and cause B.
3. Ergo, if A causes me to intend and cause B, I cannot do otherwise than to have control over B.
While this brief proof obviously relies on a compatibilist definition of control, and thus will not convince the libertarian, I think it should suffice in any case to illustrate for the libertarian why the Consequence Argument is unacceptable to the compatibilist. Just as the libertarian will not accept this argument because of its special definition of "control", the compatibilist will not accept Beta* because of its special definition of "control".
>>So your view entails that there is no ontological emergence -- my view entails ontological emergence.
Fair enough. I agree. I would only argue for phenomenological emergence.
>>Finally, my view is that the properties of mind in this sensible world emerge from physical and biological complexity so that there are new causal powers not fully explainable by lower levels of biological organization.
So our libertarian choosing-power is actually an emergent function of biological complexity? Doesn't that imply that Becoming flows from Being?
>>So I believe that your view, if I have understood it, ultimately reduces to absurdity in the reduction of mind to merely the properties of sub-atomic particles that have no properties of mind.
At an ontological level, you are correct that I see mind as reducible to subatomic particles. But I don't see how this entails that my defense of compatibilism is absurd. Freedom of the will is not ontological. It is phenomenological.
>>a mere meat machine or mere algorithmic processor and I have no free will.
I would suggest that there is nothing about being a meat machine or algorithmic processor that necessarily entails a lack of free will in the compatibilistic sense.
Chris: we finally have something that we agree on. For you the world of free will is a mere appearance and in reality we just as much in control as the characters in a computer game if determinism is true. But do you hold the characters in your computer games morally responsible? Of course not. Such a world is merely a facade and doesn't have the value of real love and meaningful relationships. Do you mourn and hold funerals for your Call of Duty 4 soldiers?
Chris: "Control is a term we use to describe the experience of purposefully manipulating outcomes for a given end." Here is the problem -- you must say that control is the merely apparent "phenomenal and misleading experience of the appearance of controlling outcomes," where the appearance is not reality.
Chris: "1. In order to have control over B, I must intend and cause B.
2. If A causes me to intend and cause B, I cannot do otherwise than to intend and cause B.
3. Ergo, if A causes me to intend and cause B, I cannot do otherwise than to have control over B."
This example is multiply flawed. First, you must show that having an intention is sufficient for having control. It clearly is not -- I can intend to move my arm, but if I am paralyzed I don't have control over whether my arm moves. So 1 assumes an insufficient condition for control. Further, 3 doesn't follow from 1 and 2. If A's cause of me is necessary but not sufficient for me to B, then it follows that I don't B even though A causes me to B. So the argument is both invalid and unsound.
Finally, if I understand you, you now claim that free will is merely phenomenological and not ontological, or merely an appearance and not a reality if determinism is true. On that we can agree. However, it then follows that we are not really free at all and the appearance of freedom is false. How is that a defense of compatibilism?
Blake,
>>For you the world of free will is a mere appearance and in reality we just as much in control as the characters in a computer game if determinism is true.
I would not go this far. The characters in a computer game have no experience of self-consciousness and therefore no experience of intentionality. They also are not capable of loving or of forming meaningful relationships, so in answer to your question of whether I "mourn and hold funerals" for them the answer is obviously no. In response to your question of whether I "hold the characters in [my] computer games morally responsible," the answer is also no. But if those characters were complex enough to have the experiences of self-consciousness and intentionality and were capable of carrying out actions with real moral conquences, I would change my answer to "yes".
>>Here is the problem -- you must say that control is the merely apparent "phenomenal and misleading experience of the appearance of controlling outcomes," where the appearance is not reality.
I'm not sure why you think I would need to use the word "misleading". We do, in fact, control the outcomes. That is not negated by the fact that we are not final causes. That "control" only exists and has meaning at the phenomenological level does not make it less significant or real. Indeed, the phenomenological level is the only level at which we can access reality, so that which can never reach or affect phenomenology is not actually relevant to human experience. It can never be "real" to us.
>>This example is multiply flawed. First, you must show that having an intention is sufficient for having control. It clearly is not -- I can intend to move my arm, but if I am paralyzed I don't have control over whether my arm moves.
When I say B, I mean a particular fixed event. So when I say that in order to have control over B I must intend and cause it, I am excluding a case like your paralyzed arm in which I do not actually cause what I intend.
>>Further, 3 doesn't follow from 1 and 2. If A's cause of me is necessary but not sufficient for me to B, then it follows that I don't B even though A causes me to B.
When in my second premise I used the conditional clause "If A causes me to intend and cause B," I meant the word "causes" to denote actual causation-- i.e. a case in which the consequence actually does follow from the cause-- not merely a suggestive causation or a pointing-in-the-direction-of.
>Finally, if I understand you, you now claim that free will is merely phenomenological and not ontological, or merely an appearance and not a reality if determinism is true. On that we can agree. However, it then follows that we are not really free at all and the appearance of freedom is false. How is that a defense of compatibilism?
The referents of the terms "freedom" and "will" simply are phenomenological. To say they are vacuous because they have no ontological referent is to say that all language is vacuous. All language refers to experienced phenomena (or to other language). Compatibilism therefore allows for "freedom" and "will" to really mean what we use them to mean in every day speech. It is libertarianism that, in my opinion, engages in vacuous abstraction and speculation in order to give these terms an ideal meaning that they cannot really have.
Best,
-Chris
Incidentally, I do not "now claim" something different than what I claimed originally. If it seems different to your eyes, it is because you did not understand my initial position. That is undoubtedly my fault, not yours. Such is the way of cross-paradigm communication. I am still interested in understanding your own position better, if you care to clarify.
Chris: "When I say B, I mean a particular fixed event. So when I say that in order to have control over B I must intend and cause it, I am excluding a case like your paralyzed arm in which I do not actually cause what I intend."
If you insist that we have power only when we actually cause or bring something about, then your notion of power is vacuous and clearly won't work as a counterexample to B*. Indeed, if I have power only when I actually do something, it begs the question in favor of an actual sequence account of what is within our power and thus begs the question against those who affirm B*. Worse, it is clearly false. I have the power to turn left on the road only if I in fact turn left entails that I am omnipotent and powerless at the same time since I can bring about everything that I bring about and only what I bring about in fact. You don't claim that what is within our power to cause is only what we in fact cause do you?
It is telling, don't you think, that for you being self-aware and complex is sufficient for being morally responsible even if we are mere puppets who have our strings pulled to do everything that we do -- so long as we are phenomenally unaware of the actual causes of our actions? I believe that it is extremely probative to show that your account just cannot be right. It makes sufficiently complex computer characters morally responsible and free. Surely something has gone terribly wrong here. Nevertheless, I agree that these computer characters who are merely algorithmic processors have just as much free will as we would have in a deterministic world.
That of course is a vast difference. For Kant (and for me) there is a noumenal reality to free will that we know because we exist in noumenal reality. When we act as concrete noumenal realities making choices in concrete situations we necessarily engage the world as noumena even though our language is merely phenomenal to discuss it.
What is it you believe could use clarification in my account of free will?
Blake,
In order for my argument to hold true, it is only necessary that "If I intend and cause concrete Event B, I have control over Event B." It is not necessary that this be the only situation in which I have control; only that it be true that I have control in this situation. Having said that, you are mixing the categories of power and control, which I would say have different nuances. Here is how I understand the connotations of these two terms:
Power refers to the ability to bring about the end I intend given a set of external potentialities. Since I am ultimately constrained by what I intend, I will actually only choose one of those potentialities. But the truth that the term "power" expresses is that I was presented with a set of external potentialities and, had my internal configuration and intentions been different, I might have chosen differently. It was within my "power" to choose differently, even if it was not within my actual future. The concept of power is helpful in the evaluation of real-world responsibility for the sake of criminal corrections and/or restorative justice. Did a person act a particular way because they really intended to do so? Or did they merely lack the power to do otherwise? In the former case, a person will require correction in order to become a harmonious member of society again. In the latter case, correction may not be necessary.
Unlike power, the concept of control only applies to actual outcomes. If one has control over a future event, what one intends will actually happen. One cannot have control over undetermined future potentialities. That would not be true control; it would, to use your favorite word, be "vacuous".
The difference, as I see it, is that the concept of control implies the active participation of intention and thought, whereas power is abstracted from intention and thought so as to better evaluate them.
>>For Kant (and for me) there is a noumenal reality to free will that we know because we exist in noumenal reality. When we act as concrete noumenal realities making choices in concrete situations we necessarily engage the world as noumena even though our language is merely phenomenal to discuss it.
I do not deny that we exist as both phenomenal and noumenal beings or that we affect and are affected by noumenal reality. Yet we are only capable of experiencing phenomena. Only at the level of phenomena are noumena imbued with meaning. Thus while noumena that never affect phenomenal experience may still be "real" in some sense, they can never have meaning and their existence is therefore ambivalent at best. Frankly, to attempt to assert the noumenal existence of free will strikes me as silly; it is to disregard its essentially phenomenal character.
>>It is telling, don't you think, that for you being self-aware and complex is sufficient for being morally responsible even if we are mere puppets who have our strings pulled to do everything that we do -- so long as we are phenomenally unaware of the actual causes of our actions?
Are we puppets who have our strings pulled? Or are we integrated beings whose existence and configuration happen to be a "brute fact" of the universe? I would say the latter. The fact that my rationality, emotion, choices, and relationships are basically highly complex computer software does not negate their phenomenal value as rationality, emotion, choices, and relationships. That I am a biological computer does not negate my existence as a self-conscious, acting agent in the world. I suspect that were you ever to conclude that libertarian free-will is untenable, you would find that you had not lost a whit of agency. You would still be a thinking, rational being with the same powers as before, and the fact that your mind just is and does not play dice would hardly cheapen the experience.
This will be my last post, at least until after my deadlines. I will read any response you wish to offer, however, as well as any further clarification you offer on the process view. With respect to the process view, I'm still interested in answers to the following questions that I asked in earlier comments:
>>Finally, my view is that the properties of mind in this sensible world emerge from physical and biological complexity so that there are new causal powers not fully explainable by lower levels of biological organization.
So our libertarian choosing-power is actually an emergent function of biological complexity? Doesn't that imply that Becoming flows from Being?
>>the "I" or "self" just is the memory of my past as it is embodied in each new moment of creative synthesis.
Does this not imply that the self has propositional, but not ontological, validity? That the only thing that has ontological validity is the process that produces memories of me? And what do you mean when you speak of the "basic power of creativity in each new moment that is added to what I am"? Does this creativity come from outside? From somewhere other than myself?
Best,
-Chris
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