Free Will and Compatibilism
An analysis of Jürgen Habermas’ position in the free will debate.
Paul Klaassen
Student ID: S891472 Supervisor: prof. dr. R.H.A. Corbey Second reader: dr. B.W. van de Ven Master thesis Philosophy February 18, 2014 Tilburg University
But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science… —David Hume
Abstract. In this thesis I will discuss Jürgen Habermas’ position in the free will debate as presented in his article ‘The Language Game of Responsible Agency’. Focusing on his rejection of compatibilism between free will and determinism, my main argument is that non-compatibilist solutions, that is to say positions that do not present us with a definition of free will which is compatible with determinism, will necessarily fall within three categories: dualism, (greedy) reductionism, and obscurantism, none of them acceptable to Habermas. My core argument is that Habermas insufficiently demarcates the various questions relevant to the issue. The first question, whether there exists an irreconcilability between the moral and the scientific language game; and the second question, whether mind is ultimately part of natural reality. These are not equivalent questions, it nevertheless sometimes seems that Habermas treats them that way. Doing this enables him to pursue a weak form of dualism. In my view he notably uses the first question as an intuition pump in order to argue for a negative answer to the second question. I will argue that this does not follow. A language game that utilizes an intentional overlay will per definition not be reducible to a mechanical description of the same ‘object’. You will always be left with some sort of intentional ‘residue’. This, however, does not imply that our ability to project such an intentional overlay (the intentional stance) cannot be mechanically or scientifically explained. Habermas, on the other hand, means exactly that: that science cannot explain the phenomenon of free will.
Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1
1.1 Situating the debate ...... 3
1.2 Outline ...... 4
Chapter 2: The free will problem ...... 5
2.1 The space of reasons ...... 6
2.2 Compatibilism ...... 8
2.3 Incompatibilism ...... 9
2.4 Dualism, greedy reductionism and obscurantism ...... 10
Chapter 3: Habermas ...... 12
3.1 Theory of knowledge ...... 12
3.2 Irreducibility and interdependence of participant and observer perspective ...... 13
3.3 The limited scope of science ...... 15
3.4 A natural history approach ...... 16
Chapter 4: Habermas contra compatibilism ...... 18
4.1 Switching between perspectives ...... 18
4.2 Reasons are not bodily states ...... 20
4.3 Context ...... 21
4.4 Evitability ...... 22
Chapter 5: Differentiating the issue ...... 24
5.1 Subjective (reflexive) free will and moral free will ...... 25
5.2 Mind as part of nature ...... 26
5.3 Responsible agency as a language game ...... 27
5.4 Different descriptions of the same system at different levels ...... 29
5.5 Habermas’ intuition pump ...... 30
Chapter 6: Conclusion ...... 33
List of references ...... 35
Chapter 1: Introduction In this thesis I will discuss Jürgen Habermas’ position in the free will debate as presented in his article ‘The Language Game of Responsible Agency’1. Habermas was prompted to write this article by what he considers the resurgent scientism dominating the public debate. One of the things driving this scientism is the progress being made in neuroscientific research. This progress presumably leads to the replacement of the standard moral language game with a more scientific one. Moral concepts such as guilt, reasoning and punishment are to be replaced by such utilitarian notions as optimization, efficiency and conditioning. Presumable this new language game is more functional and better equipped for its purpose of social regulation. Subsequently, this replacement would lead to increases in the health and wealth of society, it may also lead to more solidarity and an overall more just society. Habermas is skeptical. His opposition to these kinds of scientistic trends constitutes a recurring theme in his philosophy. This is characterized by his turning against societal processes and philosophical ideas which produce or warrant an increase in systemization, or lead to a growth in technocracy. It is easy to make this issue into one of black and white, where either you accept the neuroscientific paradigm, including the subsequent change in our self-understanding, or you reject it, and adopt a dualistic stance on mind and brain. It is in this regard that Habermas’ integrative approach cannot be overvalued. He is opposed to neuroscientific claims that call for a replacement of our moral language game, but at the same time he also expresses an unbending devotion towards solidifying the status of free will. His valuation of free will is not compatible with the deterministic causality of science. Additionally, he also admits that dualist positions are no longer plausible in today’s world. This constitutes the central theme of Habermas’ article and also of this thesis: how can we understand ourselves as both natural beings operating along the strict causal laws of science, and at the same time as free beings possessing moral responsibility? Habermas’ offers one such solution. In actual fact however, an entire range of positions can be held on this issue, ranging from the extremes of hard-line dualism, to positions of greedy reductionism.2 I believe it is these latter positions of greedy reductionism, that derive their intuitive appeal from the successes of modern science, and that try to do away with our everyday concepts and intuitions, that drive people toward convoluted dualist systems which have no basis in reality. These greedy reductionist positions in effect lower the plausibility of common sense scientific explanations. Habermas’ position can be characterized as one such place where people turn because they are disillusioned with what they believe to be the scientific worldview. Among other things, Habermas’ article provides us with a refutation of several compatibilist positions. Compatibilism encompasses positions in which freedom and determinism are ultimately not opposed to each other by redefining the ideas concerned in a more reconciliatory manner. My goal in the present thesis is to elaborate on Habermas’ position in the compatibilist debate and, conversely, use this debate as a starting point to give a more in- depth assessment of the solution forwarded by Habermas. I will argue that non-compatibilist solutions, which do not result in a definition of free will compatible with determinism, will fall into one of the following three categories: dualism, (greedy) reductionism, or obscurantism. Dualism assigns the opposition between free will and determinism
1 Habermas (2007) “The Language Game of Responsible Agency and the Problem of Free Will: How can epistemic dualism be reconciled with ontological monism?”, Henceforth abbreviated: LRA. 2 Greedy reductionism is a label developed by Daniel Dennett; but might not inconceivably be applied to his philosophy also. See: Dennett, Daniel (1995) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, pp. 81-82.
Page 1 of 36 to a fundamental opposition in reality itself. Greedy reductionism denies the existence of free will entirely. And obscurantism seeks to somehow reconcile determinism and free will, as absolute concepts, by making use of language or arguments that try to hide away or overcome the fundamental difference that exists between these concepts. The central question now rises: in which category does Habermas fit best, if any? If Habermas is indeed correct he would not fall into any of above-mentioned categories. We therefore must also indicate where his arguments are incorrect. My argument against Habermas will revolve around his applying that which I believe to be an intuition pump.3 It should be noted here that my use of the term intuition pump is not an attack on the application of intuition in philosophy in general. Instead, I mainly use the term in its restricted sense, namely as a rhetorical tool, which channels intuition in such a way as to lead to false conclusions. This requires a larger degree of specification. I will split up the issue into several distinct questions: (1) whether science can provide a mechanical explanation of human behavior, and can successfully predict it? (2) whether the intentional language game of the lifeworld is translatable to a mechanical language game? and (3) whether there is a logical or normative constraint related to the origination story of the observer perspective, that makes it impossible or impermissible, as Habermas would have it, to adopt the observer perspective when it comes to certain lifeworld practices, such as in the matter of responsible agency, or in the research projects of science itself? Another way to put this last question is to ask whether it is morally permissible to put instrumental reason (i.e. neuroscience) to use in manipulating our moral nature. I will argue that Habermas obscures the issue by not establishing a clear boundary between these questions. He does so in order to argue for a weak form of dualism. In it he restricts the domain of scientific interpretation by positing a different more primary part of the human experience that is totally incompatible with determinism. In my view he especially uses the second question as an intuition pump of sorts, to argue for a negative answer to the first question. Just because you cannot translate directly from an intentional (moral) language game to a mechanical (scientific) one, does not mean that the origination of intentionality cannot be mechanically explained. This would imply that a scientific description of the participant language game is ultimately possible, though indirect and complicated. In other words, if we can explain the brain, we can also explain intentionality. However, we have not yet explained the brain. Also, a point to remember is that many intentional concepts, such as the concept of freedom under discussion here, have important social components to them; this is a fact that should be taken into consideration in any scientific explanation of these phenomena. Another issue requiring attention is the possibility of moral issues that may accompany this subject matter. A scientific conception of human beings, including their social and moral spheres, leaves open the possibility of manipulation by both ‘evil scientists’ and government. This relates to more everyday phenomena such as marketing and advertising as well. Moreover, one could think of the correction of ‘deviant’ behavior by way of medical means. I think it can be argued that part of Habermas’ apprehension stems from these prospects. Also of importance to him is safeguarding the ‘absoluteness’ of reason and consequently of human dignity, which is related to his larger project of anti-technocratic, but also anti-relativistic, philosophy.
3 A concept also developed by Daniel Dennett: Dennett (1984) Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, p. 12.
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1.1 Situating the debate Habermas’ article is a response to a manifesto written by eleven of Germany’s leading neuroscientists.4 In it they profess a naturalistic view of human nature and human social institutions such as law. In their opinion, numerous traditional concepts and ways of thinking prevalent in our present culture will in time, as neuroscience progresses, be reformulated into more scientific terms. In addition, an improved understanding of the human brain will enable us to take an instrumental-scientific (and thus more efficient) approach toward certain social problems. They foresee a radical revision of the image of man, and lay emphasis on the benefits that this new conception will bring us. This implies displacing cherished notions of morality, free will and justice in favor of neurologically inspired notions of social conditioning. Habermas rejects this revision on both moral and theoretical grounds. Morally, the revision of the neuroscientists cannot support the unique dignity that humans are endowed with. Man becomes just another natural entity to be manipulated. Theoretically, Habermas is opposed to the revision because it leads to contradictions, mainly regarding human agency and morality; in his article the particular topic of free will is highlighted. To understand Habermas’ motivation it is necessary to view his philosophy in a broader perspective. In his writings Habermas offers a novel conception of human rationality which enables him to (re-)analyze a broad range of philosophical issues. His philosophical enterprise is characterized by a strong emphasis on the linguistic and social aspects of human reason, which he calls ‘communicative rationality’. This stands in contrast with classical views which stress the distinction between objective reality and human subjectivity. These views have difficulties interpreting situations in which objectivity and subjectivity intersect, as is the case with our present problem. The neuroscientists can rightly be considered to operate within this classical paradigm. For them it is a zero-sum game: by accepting the scientific paradigm, they necessarily have to discard numerous concepts originating from our subjective experience. Habermas does not accept this. In saying this, it should be noted that Habermas would consider himself a naturalist. He accepts the validity of the research that neuroscientists perform. He is, however, opposed to the philosophical background assumptions on which the neuroscientists operate. It is these background assumptions that lead them to their ‘controversial’ conclusions, not the research in itself. The afore-mentioned paradigm of communicative rationality offers an alternative to the dichotomy between subjective and objective reality. Central in this paradigm is the human ability to reach a mutual understanding about facts, norms and goals. Language is the medium through which this understanding is mediated. Communicative rationality also implies that a lot (if not most) of our activities are guided by pragmatic considerations evolved out of the shared goals we have formulated; and are given shape by commonly accepted norms and facts. An example of this is the definition of science as a complex of research projects which have shared background assumptions about research methodology and the nature of the world. In his article Habermas proceeds from this paradigm in analyzing the statements of the neuroscientists. Habermas is also a noted social critic. His criticism revolves (to a large extent) around the opposition between lifeworld and system. Lifeworld can be conceived of as a consensual set of knowledge that provides
4 Elgar et al. (2004) “Das Manifest: Elf führende Neurowissenschaftler über Gegenwart und Zukunft der Hirnforschung”, Gehirn und Geist.
Page 3 of 36 meaning and context to human communication and action. Also, the meaning of lifeworld is usually extended to those parts of society in which reasonable and consensual communication serve as the primary control mechanism for human interaction (e.g. church, family, sports club). In contrast, system refers to those parts of society in which instrumental rationality or excessive legalism guide human interaction. Capitalism and the rise of bureaucracy is what propels the expansion of system. Habermas’ criticism is that “in the course of the last few centuries, systematic aspects of society have come to threaten the reasonableness of human interactions in local cultural lifeworlds.”5 He adopts the metaphor of system colonizing lifeworld, of which technocratization represents one aspect, viz. the systemization of government, meaning the displacement of democratic decision making processes by economic and bureaucratic ones which derive their authority from scientific and utilitarian analysis. If not placed into proper philosophical perspective, neuroscientific research could furnish technocrats with new tools for economic and bureaucratic social manipulation, leading to an undesirable surge in the systemization of society.
1.2 Outline As to the structure of this thesis. Chapter 2 begins with a detailed discussion of the free will problem in general. How do free will and morality relate? And what does Habermas mean with the space of reasons and with the language game of responsible agency? We will then proceed with an introduction to the compatibilism debate and describe the range of positions that can be held within that debate. Next, a first step will be taken in resolving our main question when we discuss the categories of dualism, greedy reductionism and obscurantism, and how these three relate to compatibilism. In Chapter 3 we continue with a description of Habermas’ position and general philosophy. Introducing (1) his theory of knowledge; (2) his conception of science, which is characterized by a limitation in scope to instrumental purposes only; (3) the irreducibility and interdependence of participant and observer perspective; and (4) his newly developed proposal which enables humans to understand themselves as products of evolution and a part of nature without sacrificing the participant perspective. As a conclusion we will position Habermas in light of the compatibilist debate. Habermas’ arguments against compatibilism are analyzed in Chapter 4. Central here is the apparent switching between participant and observer perspective which the compatibilists are guilty of according to Habermas. A short section will be devoted to his statement on the view that reasons cannot (and should not) be understood as bodily states. Here we will also involve Johns Searle’s take on the issue. Following that we will discuss Habermas’ arguments regarding what can be referred to as ‘context-compatibilism’. Finally, the position which equates freedom with ‘evitabilism’ is dealt with; the main proponent of which is Daniel Dennett. In Chapter 5 I hope to find somewhat of a definite answer to the debate and Habermas’ position in it. Here I will also elaborate on the two questions which in my opinion should structure the debate: (1) whether mind can be conceived of as part of nature; and (2) whether a naturalistic-mechanical account of the lifeworld is possible. We will also touch on some propositions that seem to give plausible answers to the problem. Chapter 6 will consist of a general overview and my final conclusion.
5 Raymond Corbey, SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Anthropology, “Habermas, Jürgen”, in press.
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Chapter 2: The free will problem This thesis focuses on the question of free will and how it relates to morality and the moral language game. We will discuss how new insights originating from modern science threaten to undermine this moral side of free will. In this chapter we will focus on giving an outline of this question. We will also elaborate on Habermas’ own estimation as to how free will and morality are linked using his concepts of the space of reasons and the language game of responsible agency. Next, we will make a short excursion into the compatibilism debate. As a conclusion I will forward a number of arguments as to why non-compatibilist solutions concerning the free will problem will necessarily lead to dualism, greedy reductionism, or obscurantism. Morality and free will are closely linked. Acting with free will is a “metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action.”6 The requirement of free choice is an intuitive matter, but can also be explained logically. A moral action should be traceable back to the person who is held morally responsible. The concept of personhood in this situation serves as a demarcation point on the causal chain leading to the action, as to prevent us from tracing the source of the action back further on the causal chain, namely to chemistry and physics, or even further, to the beginnings of the universe. This function that demarcates the human will from its natural causes requires some sort of special quality. This quality in many philosophical theories is related to some kind of conception related to free will. Whereby the agent is presented with a range of alternative actions, of which it is too choose one. The person in this conception functions as the nexus of choice. This is called the possibility of acting otherwise by Habermas.7 Intentionally choosing how to act is what makes the agent susceptible to moral praise or blame. This description of morality and free will runs into problems when we consider that free will operates on a different causal structure than the nature of science does. In scientific causation there is no nexus of choice, nor is there any notion of (moral) personhood. There can be no real choice because everything is regulated by natural laws. We generally assume that we are part of nature and that natural causation is the ultimate form of causation. From this perspective it is not clear how we can conceive of ourselves as free persons, possessing a true ability of alternative action. This is the problem this thesis is concerned with, and which lies at the heart of Habermas’ article too. A note has to be made about quantum indeterminacy however. Being determined by the structure of the universe does not have to mean that this structure does not leave room for ambiguous outcomes. This is what quantum indeterminacy is about. The question is: how does this ambiguity of outcomes relate to free will? The first issue is: how might quantum phenomena translate to the macro level, cf. Schrödinger’s cat? Secondly, it is not clear how the absence of regularity might lead to free will. A dependency on the underlying structure of the world, continues to exist except now this underlying structure is characterized by chance instead of regularity. One could still avert moral (or judicial) criticism by appealing to the underlying physical structure, except this time it is not neural activity but quantum structure.8
6 Timothy O'Connor (2010) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Free will”, accessed on August 1, 2013: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/. 7 LRA, p. 15. 8 We briefly consider this in sections 4.1 and 4.2.
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There exist other conceptions of moral responsibility which do not hold that other options have to be open (in a strict sense) for the agent to be held responsible. The majority of these solutions state that responsibility is acquired when an action can be traced back to an agent, regardless whether this agent had actual free choice or not. Habermas refers to this as self-determination. 9 A problem with this view is that moral responsibility intuitively is considered to depend heavily on whether someone was free to act or not. If someone forces you to do something, you cannot reasonably be held responsible. A solution to this problem is stating that you are responsible for the action that you take out of your own individual volition. This defines moral responsibility as associated with those actions taken without the constraint of other persons. Another problem is that of demarcation. What defines a person? And what counts as his or her volition? In other words what is the starting point of the causal chain leading to the action? Without free will there is no such set point. You can always go further back down the causal chain. There is no easy way around this problem, though there are plausible answers available. One of the solutions we will discuss is that the concepts of freedom and personhood are ultimately dependent on social convention. What counts as a person, and how far back we need to go on the causal chain becomes a matter of consensus. Before going any further we need to elaborate on Habermas’ own position in this matter, mainly his notions of the space of reasons and of the language game of responsible agency. According to him, free will is “an ineliminable component of our practices of attributing responsibility and holding one another accountable.”10 So there is no question as to his position, either we find a way to justify our notion of free will, or else the language game of responsible agency collapses. Let us begin by examining his concept of the space of reasons in order to obtain a clear impression as to what is exactly at stake according for him.
2.1 The space of reasons During a child’s development and upbringing it internalizes the norms, values and conventions of society, also called lifeworld. These will acquire motivating power in the form of reasons. Whenever someone does not steal because he or she thinks it is wrong, this individual has a reason that is reducible to these norms, values and conventions. Of course, people might also not steal because they are afraid to be punished. This is true, but people do not structure their behavior solely along the lines of subjective fears and desires. We can also follow reasons, which seem to have some form of objectivity, this is called the space of reasons. Sometimes people may be required to account for their actions, and relate the reasons for acting in such and such a way and not otherwise. Again, most of the time these reasons constitute more than just an expression of subjective fears and desires. The presupposition of free will is essential in understanding these reasons. For Habermas the possibility of choice cannot be purely hypothetical: “In contexts of justification, reasons cannot operate in the strict mode of natural causes, as is already clear from a certain indeterminacy that attends them.”11 There must exist a discontinuity between natural laws and the space of reasons for moral responsibility to be real. It is part of Habermas’ project to show how this discontinuity can be conceptualized, and how we should understand these parts of reality that are not fundamentally determined by natural laws. This will be discussed below.
9 LRA, p. 15. 10 ibid., Abstract, p. 13. 11 ibid., p. 16.
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Having clarified the concept of a reason, namely an articulation with motivating force derived from the lifeworld, and also having shown how reasons presuppose free will, let us now proceed to elaborate somewhat on the concept of the space of reasons, and subsequently on the language game of responsible agency. The space of reasons is the culturally circumscribed space where the agent is expected to be responsive to reasons pro and contra.12 The relevant reasons should be constitutive for the agent in making a practical judgment. The agent also is expected to adopt this judgment and act accordingly. This description entails an intersubjective domain where people’s behavior is not counted as purely physical action but is always accompanied by the reasons that set in motion that action. Another topic to be dealt with concerns the way reasons acquire their normative powers. In other words: through which process do we arrive at valid normative rules? In order to answer this question we first need to describe a concept that is central to Habermas’ philosophy, namely that of a validity claim. An important aspect of giving reasons (and any other speech act) is that you are always implicitly making a claim as to the validity of what you have said. This involves multiple aspects. Habermas generally subdivides validity claims into three basic categories: truth, rightness and sincerity.13 The validity claim of rightness concerns morality and normativity, and is most related to our topic of reasons. The validity claim of truth involves knowledge of the objective world. The validity claim of sincerity involves subjective experience. A validity claim entails, in this case with regard to reason- giving, that your interlocutor has to be able to rely on the honesty of what you say. The honesty manifests itself in stating your true motives, and also in the validity of the norms and values that you rely upon in order to justify your actions. If the interlocutor were not to hold the same moral convictions as you do, one needs to take a step back towards a meta-perspective, the so-called ‘discourse’, in which normative claims are developed according to a consensus mechanism. This discourse requires several necessary preconditions for it to lead to valid conclusions, most importantly: that all affected parties should be present, and that only the unforced force of the argument counts. This means that the normative powers of reasons are derived from the fact that they are understood to be accepted by all persons involved. A pragmatic foundation may underlie this type of arrangement, namely that it provides the best way to interact and live together. Additionally, arguments can be given that this type of arrangement is a logical consequence of the structure of our linguistic and moral capabilities. A characteristic of Habermas’ philosophy is that the subject takes a less central role, and that the larger part of what we would call reasonable behavior and knowledge is arrived at through the mediation of an intersubjective communicative sphere. Compare this to much of classical and modern philosophy where reason is situated in the human subject. If we have a look at the process of reason forming and giving we see that the subject basically is just a physical outlet for the norms, values and convention which are formed in and by society as a whole. This is of course a simplification. In Chapter 3 I go into more detail about Habermas’ notions on the human subject as a person. Habermas’ focus on language and communication naturally leads us to the question of language games, more specifically to the language game of responsible agency. It is this language game which is at stake here, due to
12 LRA, p. 16. 13 Bohman & Rehg (2011) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Jürgen Habermas”, accessed on August 1, 2013; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/. Also: Habermas (1984) Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Chapter 1, Section 3.
Page 7 of 36 the scientistic claims of the neuroscientists that seek to undermine it. The phenomenon of free will has a role to play as well. It is the question of free will that forms the locus of conflict between science and the language game of responsible agency. Questions that may be asked are: Why we would assume the existence of various language games? Is there not a single overarching language game in which all phenomena can be described and explained? The modern consensus is that we do indeed have such a perspective, namely science. Habermas opposes that. The justification Habermas offers for his epistemic dualism depends on the presence of two powerful intuitions: (1) we are aware of the “causal effectiveness of our minds”, meaning that we as individuals determine our actions, and (2) we as knowing subjects “take for granted the epistemic authority of the natural sciences,” which attribute causal effectiveness solely to our bodily states, more specifically to neural activity in the brain. All attempts at reconciling these intuitions have failed thus far. Habermas explains the underlying reasons for this failure and how, in fact, this dichotomy is a fundamental feature of human existence.
2.2 Compatibilism Compatibilism is a position in the free will debate which is characterized by the conviction that free will and a conception of reality as causally closed are compatible.14 The basic strategy used in this position is a redefinition of free will that is less absolute, steering clear of definitions that involve the negation of determinism. The authority and scope of science is usually left intact. The possibility of alternative causal chains, outside the scope of the determinism of science, is resolutely rejected. Thus compatibilists are merely concerned with (re-)defining free will, not with redefining epistemology, as Habermas is. Compatibilism has a close affinity with hard determinist positions. Some would even argue that compatibilist positions represent a “quagmire of evasion”15 and that in effect they only enable the compatibility between determinacy and freedom by means of an obscurantist use of language. We can roughly subdivide compatibilism into (1) classical compatibilism (called ‘standard’ compatibilism by Habermas)16 and (2) ‘Strawsonian’ compatibilism.17 The first category is more interested in free will as conceptually opposed to determinism. The second category is more interested in the moral implications of free will. Classical compatibilism often resorts to a conception of free will that lays emphasis on the source of the action, namely the will, and that this will is unconstrained in the execution of its wants. According to Thomas Hobbes, free will implies “no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to doe”.18 This seems like a common sense conception of free will, but it has its flaws. The first objection is of a metaphysical nature, how do you define someone’s will? It seems to be presupposing the concept of a person, which is in fact difficult to explain, because this concept carries moral implications, and it is these implications that we try to explain. The second objection is
14 Michael McKenna (2009) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Compatibilism”, accessed on August 1, 2013; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. 15 William James (1884) “The Dilemma of Determinism”, reprinted in The Will to Believe, Dover, p. 149. 16 LRA, Abstract, p13. 17 Michael McKenna, op. cit. 18 Hobbes (1651) Leviathan, Chapter 21: Of the Liberty of Subjects, §2, accessed on January 7, 2014, http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/.
Page 8 of 36 that it does not seem to do a good job at explaining the normative and moral presuppositions that always accompany the possession of free will. A third objection: why would unrestrained usage of your will lead to moral responsibility, if the will itself is determined by neuronal causal events? Hobbes’ conceptions seems only concerned with an external manifestation of freedom of the will, not internal freedom in the determinacy of the will itself. Another solution classical compatibilists sometimes resort to is that of hypothetical freedom, that we are free because we can conceive of acting otherwise. The problem with this kind of conception is its very subjective orientation, which makes it difficult to derive any practical consequences from it. Another problem is caused by the fact that we can also conceive of ourselves as determined by the laws of science, and therefore not capable of having acted otherwise. Positions in the above-mentioned second category, which we called Strawsonian, but could just as well be called Humean (after David Hume) are mainly concerned with the moral implications of free will. Strawsonians usually take a step back and ask themselves not how to prove that free will exists together with determinacy, but what the purpose of the presupposition of free will is.19 In other words, what pragmatic consequences does the realization or the elimination of free will have? This is where they arrive at moral responsibility. It is counter to our intuition to posit moral responsibility without also positing that this agent would need to have had a choice. What they then proceed to do is to analyze the nature of this intuition, which is usually traced back to some psychological faculty for morality. The intuition of free will becomes a matter of human psychology, related to a conception of morality as proposed by David Hume. Free will and determinism can then be concluded to be different epistemological stances. Here, as we shall see, they agree with Habermas and they also share the latter’s opinion that these two epistemological stances are not immediately reconcilable. However, they break their agreement with Habermas by arguing that the moral faculty which is the origin of our awareness of free will is itself ultimately explainable in mechanical terms. On a side note, the same argument holds for the topic of qualia, taken from the discussion on consciousness. Qualia themselves are not directly translatable to empiricist terms, but the faculty that generates them most likely is. The fact that the origin of our experience of free will ultimately can be explained in empiricist terms does not mean that this experience is of no value, or that the associated language games should be eliminated. On the contrary, our moral instincts and perception of social reality is just as much part of human nature and the human experience as the objectivating scientific perspective is. This entails a similar kind of epistemic dualism strived for by Habermas, although possessing less absolute normative constraint. Psychological conceptions of morality, as discussed in this section, find a nice addition in theories which conceive of morality as social institutions.
2.3 Incompatibilism Incompatibilist positions hold that free will and determinism cannot be reconciled. These positions can also be laid out on a spectrum. On the one end the so-called libertarian positions are placed: they advocate strong (absolute) conceptions of free will. On the other end are located the hard determinist positions: they advocate weak conceptions of free will or eliminate it altogether.
19 Strawson (1962) “Freedom and Resentment”. See also: Wolf (1981) “The Importance of Free Will”.
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I will first discuss libertarianism. Positions in this category can only adhere to strong conceptions of free will by somehow limiting (or eliminating) the domain in which determinism has authority. They can do so, for example, by stating that the scientific conception of the world is heavily biased by our own perception. On this account the structure and determinacy we observe in nature is something our own mind superimposes on reality. The reality we know and perceive is not true reality, this leaves open the possibility of free will. The most renowned proponent of this view is Immanuel Kant, who makes a difference between noumenal and phenomenal reality. The former is the domain of freedom, and the latter the domain of our knowledge of the external world, prestructured by our own minds. Another position on the libertarian side of the above spectrum is dualism. This position holds that the seeming incompatibility of freedom and determinism is because of a radical opposition in reality itself. This often boils down to a spiritual and a material realm. These two can never be reconciled, nor can one have primacy over the other. Habermas asserts the implausibility of this position in the introduction of his article. The positions at the other end of the spectrum state that determinism has primacy and that free will as a consequence cannot be truly real. The experience we have subjectively must be some kind of illusion. The point where hard determinists start to differ from (Strawsonian) compatibilists is in their treatment of the moral implications that the impossibility of an absolute conception of free will has. For them an elimination of free will leads to the elimination of the classical moral language game: only scientific knowledge has a place in public discourse. These reductionists often come up with some sort of utilitarian conception of morality, in which the end- value is assumed to be ‘happiness’ or maybe even increased economic production, or the realization of some arbitrary notion of political freedom or equality. An instrumental scientific view of people will help in doing that. This is the kind of technocratization to which Habermas is opposed. However, some hard determinists might leave the moral language game intact, if only for pragmatic considerations, while keeping in mind that it is not in line with the ultimate description of reality, namely science. The ultimate decider in important issues, such as legal cases, will be scientific knowledge. The moral language game is demoted to ‘folk psychology’: an unscientific superstition.
2.4 Dualism, greedy reductionism and obscurantism I agree with Habermas’ diagnosis of the problem, in which he observes that scientistic claims that attempt to eliminate our moral language game in favor of a purely neuronal description are both false and undesirable, maybe even dangerous. Habermas states that he can find a convincing solution without resorting to a compatibilist position. In fact he seems to be rather hostile to these latter positions.20 As I stated at the beginning of this thesis, my goal is to research whether Habermas is not really a compatibilist after all, or whether he falls into one of the following categories: dualism, obscurantism or greedy reductionism. While elaborating on these categories I will show how non-compatibilism or compatibilism-avoidance necessarily leads to one of these three. We have already briefly discussed dualism, the position that there is a fundamental opposition in reality or the way we know reality, which causes the emergence of two different ways of seeing things: one which presupposes freedom, and another which excludes it, by determinism. This position needs to be elaborated upon further. Habermas proposes a dualism, but only epistemologically, regarding the way we approach reality, without a
20 LRA, pp. 27-31.
Page 10 of 36 fundamental opposition in reality itself. He calls this ontological monism. This still constitutes a compatbilist position, since language games do not necessarily have to be a reflection of reality itself. The conflict can exist in the structuralizing element (the rules) of the language game, not the object matter; meaning that the conflicts between them exist solely in our perception of the world. A problem does arise when he states that one of these perspectives is epistemically primary and should have priority when the two are in conflict. As we shall see in Chapter 3, Habermas bases this epistemical priority on the practical and historical priority of the participant perspective. I believe that this does not follow: giving epistemical priority, meaning giving priority to a certain view as to the nature of the world, necessarily implies that the language games are not purely formal structures but assimilate some part of reality itself. It implies that the determinism of science, or the freedom of the participant perspective, has a counterpart in ontological reality. Epistemic dualism in which freedom and determinism are not part of the rules of the language games, would necessarily imply some sort of dualism in reality itself. One part of reality fits the determistic paradigm, and the other part that fits the paradigm of freedom. Epistemic dualism in which a primacy can exist will inevitably lead to the kind of dualism that Habermas wishes to avoid. This is something that needs closer inspection, which we will provide in further chapters. Moving on to the category of greedy reductionism, it by and large overlaps that of the incompatibilist solution of hard determinism, in which free will and the accompanying language game are either entirely eliminated or reduced to folk psychology. This position is also referred to as scientism. Habermas does not fall within this category and is clearly opposed to it. Scientism entails that the view of science is somehow superior to other modes of knowing and dealing with the world. It holds that concepts such as reasons, free will, moral responsibility do not have any scientific meaning and are therefore useless. Obviously, it does not wish to eliminate morality or justice entirely. What it does often set in place is a utilitarian and instrumental form of morality, politics and justice, which is guided mainly by scientific knowledge and insights. The problem with most scientistic philosophies, especially when they move into the moral-political realm, is that they make all sorts of implicit metaphysical assumptions, as to, for example, what the goal of politics or of human life should be: happiness, wealth, etc. The contrast between scientific and more ‘humanistic’ conceptions of human behavior and society is a central concern in Habermas’ philosophy, as indicated by the opposition between lifeworld and system, as well as his strong stance against technocracy.21 Lastly, there is the category of obscurantism. Positions within this category try to somehow reconcile determinism and free will, as absolute concepts, by making use of language or arguments that try to conceal or overcome the fundamental difference that exists between these concepts. It might be easy to pigeonhole Habermas in this category on account of the difficulty of his writing style. This would be unfair. Nonetheless, we will illustrate the definite presence of certain obscurantist tendencies in his arguments, these may or may not be intentional, and mainly revolve around the use of the intuition pump which is described in section 5.5.
21 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Habermas”.
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Chapter 3: Habermas We now need to delve into Habermas’ theory on the manner in which we obtain (scientific) knowledge. This is essential to arrive at his explanation regarding the existence of two epistemological perspectives. His theory of knowledge leads to an irreducibility and interdependence between participant and observer perspective. Next, we will discuss Habermas’ “possible alternative to the prevailing physicalist image of the world”22 by way of a natural history approach using the intersubjective concepts we have acquired in the lifeworld. This approach aims to demonstrate how mind can understand itself as a product from evolution.
3.1 Theory of knowledge According to Habermas “[t]he two epistemic perspectives of observer and participant can be traced to ‘world perspectives’ that originate simultaneously from our form of linguistic communication.”23 What does he mean by this? The important thing to remember is that Habermas starts out from a very socialized account of human knowledge processes. The relation between a subject that comes to know an objective reality is a secondary one for him. What is central in his account is coming to an understanding with other people about objects and events in the objective world. Both the participant and the observer perspective are present here. The observer perspective, obviously, as we come to know objective reality, the participant perspective when we communicate our findings to other human beings. An important thing to notice in this account is that the observer perspective as well is made to be linguistic. You might argue that you do not need language to observe natural phenomena; animals observe nature, even perceive cause-effect relations. Habermas indirectly answers this question when he states: “It is not the subjectivity of our conscious life that distinguishes humans from other creatures but the intentional stance and the interlocking of the intersubjective relations between persons with an objectivating attitude to something in the world.”24 What this entails is that we need to separate our kind of knowledge from any kind of experience or cognitive contents pre- linguistic organisms might have. Our knowledge about the objective world is formulated in language, has intentionality, and can be communicated to other human beings. Any kind of pre-linguistic subjective experience cannot be called knowledge as such. A consequence of Habermas’ definition of knowledge is that the “linguistically articulated horizon of the lifeworld”25 has epistemic priority. This means that the prerequisite language and concepts that constitute and structure our knowledge about the objective world are a product of communicative interaction relating to shared lifeworld practices. When approaching objective reality we always proceed from a project that has been conceived in the lifeworld. This implies a pragmatic approach toward knowledge formation. This is also reflected in the role Habermas assigns to ontological reality in the process of obtaining objective knowledge. Ontological reality only makes itself known to us indirectly.26 It does this by way of “steering us via the interplay of construction and
22 Habermas (2007) “Reply to Schoeder, Clarke, Searle, and Quante.” 23 LRA, p. 35. 24 ibid. 25 ibid., p. 39. 26 ibid.
Page 12 of 36 experience.”27 This means that there is no passive reception of knowledge where reality somehow transmits information to us. Knowledge formation always proceeds from some form of activity. In this activity we are bound to discover that we are in many ways constrained in our possibilities by the workings of nature. It is from these encounters that we can proceed to formulate natural laws. In effect, this is a refutation of representationalism. How does this theory of knowledge which we have described thus far fits in with Habermas' position in the compatibilist debate? It already contains the core of Habermas’ argument: his conception of epistemic dualism and ontological monism. This might be taken as a dualistic position, not just in the way we know reality, i.e. epistemically, but in a broader sense as well, a dualism between ontological reality, and epistemic reality. But this characterization ultimately does not do justice to Habermas’ position in the free will debate. He does not, as Kant does, ground his conception of free will in an opposition between (1) a world we know directly, viz. phenomenological reality, which is ruled by determinacy, because of the way we structure and perceive the world; and (2) a world which we do not know directly, viz. noumenal reality, in which free will is supposedly realized. For Habermas the solution to the problem of determinism and free will is to be found in the way we structure and experience the world, our epistemological stance. Epistemic ‘reality’ is characterized by the intentional form of its contents, and the dualism between participant and observer perspective. This dualistic character will be the main theme of section 3.2. It will be discovered that the two perspectives of participant and observer are ultimately not reconcilable, even if they are mutually influential. We will also observe what this epistemic dualism means with regard to Habermas’ position in the compatibilist debate.
3.2 Irreducibility and interdependence of participant and observer perspective As stated before: lifeworld practices have epistemic priority over knowledge formation about the objective world. This priority, however, is very limited. In fact, intersubjective communication itself cannot exist without some kind of reference to the outside world. It is in this regard that Habermas states: “The linguistic socialization of consciousness and the intentional relation to the world are mutually constitutive in the circular sense that each presupposes the other conceptually.”28 We also need to keep in mind that Habermas wants to avoid positing a direct opposition between subject and objective reality. Past philosophical enterprises have shown that this sort of opposition will lead to a gap that is hard to reconcile. Moreover, it makes a logically consistent foundation of knowledge difficult, if not impossible. This is why he wants to incorporate objective reality into the intentional language game from the start. Habermas puts forward Wilfrid Sellars’ account of the shared evolution of observer and participant perspective. In it we read that in the beginning of our species “it seems to have been common to include nature (that is, what occurs in the objective world) within the social relations of the intersubjectively shared lifeworld”.29 Nature was personified. A language of objects and events only emerged later on, in effect as a tool with which to improve the interaction with nature: “To the extent that humans had to deal with the risks of an unpredictable nature the
27 LRA, p. 39. 28 ibid., p. 35. 29 ibid.
Page 13 of 36 internal logic of such problems required increasingly de-socialized accounts.”30 This rationalization and objectification of reality, according to Sellars, caused the split between observer and participant epistemic perspectives, “which have been interlocking from the outset.”31 Habermas seems to agree with this diagnosis. Another observation made by Sellars which is repeated by Habermas is that both epistemic perspectives are not reducible to one another, we cannot get around this epistemic dualism. Both are equal parts of our human self- understanding. This irreducibility is restated by Habermas multiple times in his article, he also refers to other authoritative philosophers who make the same argument. He invokes Nagel’s description of qualia—‘what it feels like’ to be in a certain state—which exposes an “irritating incompleteness in objectivating descriptions of the world.”32 Though Habermas is quick to add that this uniqueness of subjective experience, which he calls mentalism, does not go far enough, a subjective ‘stream of experience’ does not encompass the whole of personhood. He also repeats Husserl and Frege, “it is just as impossible to redescribe the intentional attitudes of persons in behaviorist terms as it is to translate the semantic contents of propositions and thoughts into the extensional language of neurology”.33 He then proceeds to give several options for getting around this epistemic dualism, and shows that they all fail in their purpose. First, the success that the reductionist stance has had in other areas does not necessarily transfer to the relation between mind and matter. He is referring to past successes of science in explaining seemingly incompatible notions. An oft-cited one is the case of vitalism, which holds that life has a unique quality that cannot be explained by purely materialistic processes; eventually this position was proven false. He also points to the apparent hierarchy in complexity that exists in science: at the base is physics which leads to more complex sciences that build upon the basic notions that physics has formulated, to ever greater levels of complexity. But the statement that science therefore is also likely to explain the path from neurons to consciousness and culture is approached by Habermas as a wager, not as a certainty. Also, the importance of the matter should restrain us in ‘putting too much on the table’. There are two factors we need to consider. On the one hand, “there is a lack of a unified terminology for both mental operations and brain states.”34 This argument basically restates the premise, there is no unified terminology because the language games are incompatible. On the other hand, there are ‘huge explanatory gaps’ within the sciences and in the relation between various sciences. In other words, the scientific description of the world is not as complete as the proponents of scientism would want us to believe. A strategy toward reductionism is therefore not as obvious as might seem at first glance. Habermas concludes that it is therefore unlikely that a scientific language game of neurons and synapses would ever completely encompass the participant language game of responsibility, reasons and personhood. In my view the latter argument where he turns the issue into a game of chance or statistics (a wager) might easily be turned against him. The previous successes of the sciences are immense, even if the stakes are high.
30 LRA, p. 35. 31 ibid. 32 ibid. 33 ibid. 34 ibid., p. 38.
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Secondly, according to Habermas this problem cannot be resolved by making the transcendental turn we see with Kant: limiting the subject domain of scientific knowledge and redefining it as only touching the surface of reality and being heavily ‘processed’ by the human ‘knowledge apparatus’. The Kantian positions leads to a subjectivist notion of reason which cannot but lead to dualism, an unacceptable conclusion for Habermas: “[A] transcendental idealism that removes from the natural sciences the spur of a realist claim to knowledge has little plausibility today.”35 In 3.3 we will see how he tries to safeguard a kind of realism in the scientific worldview: Ontological reality finds the means to directly affect the way we form knowledge by imposing constraints on the activities we can perform in pragmatic lifeworld projects (if there were no lifeworld projects, no knowledge ‘in the Habermasian sense’ would be required or even possible). This leads to a “realism without representation”.
3.3 The limited scope of science We will now turn to Habermas’ view on how scientific knowledge is created. We already saw that the lifeworld has a major influence and is a prerequisite for knowledge formation. Scientific knowledge is linguistically formulated, communicable and therefore heavily influenced by concepts from the lifeworld. The very concept of causality itself, according to Habermas, is derived from the lifeworld, namely that of intentionally producing effects in the world by an agent or person.36 The objective cause in a scientific description is thus partly personified, even though we might not realize it. Another way in which the lifeworld influences the formation of scientific knowledge is by constituting a motivating force for the scientific enterprise. Without lifeworld projects to serve, scientific or instrumental knowledge is inconceivable. Habermas has an instrumentalist view of science. Because laws of science “are conceptually dependent on the idea of instrumental action”, the domain of science can only cover those things which “can be objectivated under the aspect of potential technical control—but only that”. The question here is: what demarcates that which falls under potential technical control? And are not the boundaries of what is technically possible constantly expanding? And also, in what sense do human beings as persons fall outside this demarcation? The threat was, and is, that science (more specifically neuroscience) is crossing this boundary. This would imply that everything falls under potential technical control. According to Habermas this leads to a performative contradiction because we need to be free in order to engage in scientific practices, it would be inconsistent if science then leads to a negation of this freedom. “This restriction would explain why research practices cannot, without remainder, be brought over to the object side and described completely as causally determined processes.”37 I agree with the direction Habermas takes the argument: we must assume freedom in order to engage in lifeworld practices, of which science is one. There is no way that science can negate this freedom without inconsistencies. However, we shouldn’t forget about the possibility that freedom of the lifeworld and determinism of science are compatible, and that the opposition rests on a misunderstanding of the concepts involved. Other intuitions seem to point in this direction as well. This issue will be further discussed in Chapter 5.
35 LRA, p. 37. 36 ibid., p. 38. 37 ibid.
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Another argument that Habermas puts forward which also leads to a limitation in the scope of science has to do with his concept of the ‘objective mind’. This objective mind can be taken as the aggregation of culture, language, and other intersubjective aspects, by which humans are connected. According to Habermas “the ‘subjective’ mind of intentions and experiences cannot be separated from the symbolic forms of the ‘objective’ mind.”38 The participant perspective itself is closely linked to this concept of objective mind, also the concept of the ‘self’ is not wholly subjective but exists within a wider intersubjective sphere of culture, society and language. This makes it all the more difficult for giving a neuronal description of the phenomena in question. In clearer terms this means that what we understand as our own personhood and moral status is dependent on the collective acceptance of society. Without other people to accept them these qualities have no meaning. In my opinion this last argument by itself is not sufficient for reducing the scope of science. What basically happens here is that personhood, morality, and consequently free will, are made to be social institutions. It is possible to conceive of these social institutions as somehow separate from the natural world, but this is not necessary. John Searle’s account of social reality is one example of a naturalized account of social institutions.39
3.4 A natural history approach Habermas has shown how the gap between freedom and determinism came into existence, and how determinism should be understood as a result of the instrumental approach humans can take towards reality, guided by pragmatic considerations. Habermasian science is realist: reality provides a direct constraint on potential knowledge. Nonetheless, at the same time science, in his description, is not a representation of reality; there is a large degree of linguistic and lifeworld overlay. Science is heavily indebted to lifeworld concepts. Vice versa, the lifeworld as well cannot regulate itself without some form of observer perspective (not necessarily in the form of modern science). The perspectives are mutually intertwined. One of the ways in which the observer perspective influences the participant perspective is that it can inform us about our state as natural beings. A state of alcohol intoxication is one way in which observer perspective knowledge is incorporated into the participant perspective, in this case legal discourse. Habermas rightly states that this incorporation of new scientific knowledge operates along the strict rules set by the participant perspective. Knowledge about our natural history, meaning evolution, also has to find a way into the participant perspective. This issue is made all the more pertinent for him because of his notion of the primacy of the participant perspective, rendering natural knowledge more difficult to interpret. He quotes himself: “Today, Kant needs to be reconciled not with Newton but with Darwin.”40 Habermas offers a tentative approach. We need to keep in mind that in his view most scientific tools and concepts find their origin in the lifeworld. The same holds true for evolution. “The synthetic theory of evolution already has to operate with non-physicalistic key concepts such as ‘self-preservation,’ ‘fitness,’ and ‘adaptation.’”41 He proceeds with his explanatory attempt by starting out from the ‘meta-theoretical assumption’ that our cultural
38 LRA, p. 17. 39 John Searle (2010) Making the Social World: The structure of human civilization. 40 As quoted in: Habermas (2004) “Freiheit und Determinismus”. 41 LRA, p. 42.
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‘learning processes’ must be a continuation of prior ‘evolutionary learning processes’. Evolution itself therefore can be understood in analogy with a learning process. Undoubtedly other lifeworld experiences shape our conception of what evolution is. This is a natural consequence of his approach of tracing back scientific terms to intentional concepts from the lifeworld which are closely related to our experience of being human and our existence in a social world. In this short excursion we have seen a possible solution for incorporating evolutionary thought into the participant perspective. The validity or falsehood of this solution does not affect Habermas’ arguments against a reductionistic understanding of free will. In the present Chapter we have assessed how Habermas positions science as well as scientific knowledge with regard to other experiences of human existence, especially the social and linguistic element that pervades it. In Chapter 4 we will look into Habermas’ arguments against compatibilism. This is an important step in positioning him in the free will debate. He himself states that he is not a dualist, he also cannot be designated a hard determinist; that leaves open compatibilism or maybe obscurantism, hence the importance of looking at his arguments against compatibilism, and why we should not place him in this category.
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Chapter 4: Habermas contra compatibilism Habermas’ anti-compatibilist arguments revolve mainly around his assessment that compatibilists surreptitiously switch between participant and observer perspectives. In other words, he accuses them of so-called obscurantist reasoning. In section 4.1 we consider this generalized argument against compatibilism, central here is the Frankfurtian argument. Next, section 4.2 deals with Habermas’ argument that reasons cease to be reasons, in their essential meaning, when they are identified as causally operating neural processes. Habermas’ arguments are mainly directed at classical (or what he calls ‘standard’) compatibilist positions. These positions are not always convincing, but it is worthwhile to look at Habermas’ arguments against them. We will also compare Habermas’ position to that of John Searle, who is opposed to compatibilism as well; this helps situate Habermas on the (anti-)compatibilist playing field. Finally, we will go into more detail by discussing his arguments against: (1) context dependable compatibilism; and (2) an organism-oriented evolutionary view as proposed by Daniel Dennett. The latter sees free will as a consequence of limited information and risk weighing: as ‘evitability’.42 In each of these arguments Habermas’ main point is that compatibilists try to hide the switch they make between observer and participant perspective. The compatibility of determinism and a sense of freedom, in his view, is at best a compatibilist truth about agents; it cannot be a truth for them in their daily lives and practices. We will also consider compatibilist counter-arguments. They will argue that the impossibility of wholly adopting the observer perspective in our daily lives and practices, and in the consideration of the self, does not imply the incompatibility of observer and participant perspective at a more fundamental level. Here we see an epistemological turn similar to the one Habermas makes. Ontological monism is combined with epistemic dualism; except here the primacy is not awarded to the participant perspective but to the observer. Of relevance here is the nature of ontological reality: is reality itself structured according to laws or not? Another related question is which perspective should gain primacy: are there any decisive factors which state that either observer or participant perspective should have primacy in our thinking? And can an irreconcilability of perspectives be compatible with a fundamental (maybe even ontological) determinism?
4.1 Switching between perspectives Compatibilists try to explain the irreconcilable dualism in epistemic perspectives without falling into the trap of stating that the scientific perspective is somehow limited in its subject-domain. Concepts originating from the participant perspective can ultimately be thought of as part of the natural world. Even though a direct translation between language games is not possible. As a reference point Habermas has included a version of the famous Frankfurt compatibilist arguments, which show that an individual does not has to be free, in the absolute sense, for us to assign moral responsibility to him or her. For convenience we will replicate Susan Hurley’s version of the argument here, which is the one quoted by Habermas:
In a Frankfurt case, the agent is not able to do otherwise because in the alternate sequence a fail-safe mechanism kicks in. But the operative causes are such that this mechanism actually never intervenes. The intuition Frankfurt cases appeal to is that this feature of the alternate sequence is irrelevant. An actual-
42 Dennett (2003) Freedom Evolves, p. 62.
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sequence condition sufficient for blame can be met, even if the alternate-sequence ability-to-do-otherwise condition is not.43
These examples show that even though the agent has no real choice because of a fail-safe mechanism, which fixes the outcome of his or her actions in advance, this does not change our appropriation of blame or praise. If the outcome is morally reprehensible, we will blame her if the fail-safe mechanism was not used. If the outcome is morally praiseworthy, we will praise her if it was not used. Depending on whether the fail-safe mechanism is used or not, the moral worth of the agent’s actions is being determined. This implies that free will is not a prerequisite for moral judgments. Habermas states: “Examples of this sort have a certain plausibility, because they blur the transition from the participant perspective to the observer perspective.”44 What exactly does Habermas meanby this? First of all, there is the fact that the agent himself or herself has no knowledge of the fail-safe mechanism, which means that the observer has more knowledge of the situation than the participant has. If the agent were aware of this knowledge it would drastically affect his or her moral evaluation of the problem; in a sense the problem would become amoral. “For her, it would have made no sense to deliberate about options if she had to reckon with there being only one avenue open to her, she would have to take anyway, as the result of a predetermined evaluation process.”45 Additionally, our evaluation of the actions of someone who is aware of her predicament is different from our evaluation of the actions of someone who is not. So, according to Habermas, when the agent perceives that she will be restrained to one course of action she will lose all sense of self-determination. Compatibilists might raise the issue that it is still possible for the agent to try to resist her restraint (by attempting to do the most moral thing regardless), and that this resistance itself has moral worth, thereby overturning Habermas’ criticism. The problem with this solution is that the agent is now free again, free to resist or not to resist. I believe there is no getting around the fact that moral responsibility requires some form of free will, the Frankfurtian examples are therefore flawed. Someone restrained to only one avenue of action cannot rightly be said to be morally responsible. The question is whether free will required for morality has to be of the absolute kind that Habermas presupposes. Two other questions worth raising are: (1) is being restrained by another entity (or a person) in the world the same as being ‘restrained’ by the fundamental nature of the world itself? And (2) do they both lead to the same loss of freedom? If you assume a language game or paradigm of responsible agency or of morality, it would stand to reason that certain aspects of the world will be ignored while others will be emphasized. As is the nature of any language game. The issue I want to raise is whether the constitution of the world and how it is fundamentally organized is relevant to moral language game. Should it not focus on the action of moral persons and abstract away from the other things that are going on? What a moral persons is, is defined in the language game, the language game also determines that these moral persons are free. Again, what this freedom means is derived from the language game, not from reality itself. In other words, the moral language game is only concerned with normative and regulative ideas, not with the ‘brute’ physical facts as such.
43 Hurley (2003) Justice, luck and knowledge, pp.61f. As quoted in Habermas, LRA, p. 27. 44 LRA, p. 27. 45 ibid., p. 28.
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Another way of looking at this is comparing freedom to its conceptual opposite. This opposite is generally, in the everyday meaning of the word, not held to be determinism, it is restrainedness or bondage, which implies the presence of another moral actor, the one by whom you are restrained. If there is no such a person, than you are not restrained, you are just incapable of performing an action. This implies an amoral situation. Similarly, the opposite of determinism is chance. I would argue that neither determinism nor chance have any direct relation to the moral language game. As is stated by David Hume, there can be no moral responsibility without some form of regularity in the world.46 As an illustration, one can provide a theological example where free will and morality are indeed intrinsically linked to determinism; viz. the free will problem in relation to a divinity. It goes along the following lines: the divinity is the cause of the determinacy in the world and also the judge of our behavior; how than can we be morally culpable or praiseworthy in the divinity’s eyes, when he already predetermined our actions? This differs from the present day free will problem because here our action is constrained by another moral actor. This other actor therefore cannot rightly hold you responsible for what he himself caused you to do. I would state that the present-day problem of free will is different from this theological example. Determinacy today is the background assumption in which we need to situate the moral language game.
4.2 Reasons are not bodily states Another related argument advanced by Habermas is that reasons cannot be objectivated, or be identified with neural processes, without losing their essential nature, which is being amenable to critique. It appears to be incontestable that neural processes cannot be influenced by other reasons directly. Another matter Habermas puts forward is his agreement with Lutz Wingert in that “bodily states […] can’t contradict one another”47, while reasons can. The question is: to what extent does this ring true. John Searle draws a comparison to the semantic and physical aspects of speech acts:
To say that brain processes cannot be inconsistent with each other is as mistaken as saying that sounds produced out of people’s mouths cannot be inconsistent with each other. Speech acts, like conscious thoughts, have levels of description that do not identify their intentionality. But just as the speech act has a level of description where it is a sound, it also has a description where it has semantic properties; so the thought has a level of description where it consists of neurobiological processes, it also has another level of description where it has intentionalistic and indeed semantic properties.48
This description is analogous to Habermas’ proposition of a dualism in epistemic stances: we have various ways of approaching reality. At first glance Searle doesn’t seem to offer a solution on how to deal with the incompatibility between perspectives. How can we have freedom on one level of description, and determinism on the other? Again, there seems to be no way in which intentional concepts such as freedom, contradiction and non-contradiction can be transferred to a physical description of the relevant act or process. Searle offers an altogether different approach. He seems to be a compatibilist in the sense that he thinks the multiplicity of perspectives is not a barrier to a
46 Hume (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VIII: Of Liberty and Necessity, Part 1, §25. 47 LRA, p. 25. And: Lutz Wingert (2006) “Grenzen der naturalistischen Selbstobjektivierung”. 48 John Searle (2007) “Neuroscience, Intentionality and Free Will: Reply to Habermas”, Abstract, p. 71.
Page 20 of 36 fundamentally naturalistic understanding of reality.49 But there is one caveat in his conception: he is unconvinced as to whether the world is really deterministically structured or not. For Searle, for free will to exist, reality must allow for it, which implies being not deterministic. In this regard he is definitely not a compatibilist. This is what he has to say about Habermas’ ideas on physicalism:
“He seems to think that the physical world is deterministic. It is not. Quantum indeterminacy pervades the entire universe. We have the illusion of determinism because in some systems the quantum indeterminacies cancel out at the macro level. Is the brain a deterministic system? Right now we do not know.”50
If we were to place Searle on the compatibilist spectrum, we would qualify him as a libertarian incompatibilist, though one who is very naturalistically oriented, given his preference for a scientific conception of the world, even though it is not deterministic. The question relevant to Searle’s position is: can the quantum indeterminacy he speaks of mean anything for free will? Is chance or arbitrariness any better a foundation for free will than determinism is? Searle does provide additional arguments by explaining how indeterminacy at a micro level can lead to a special kind of regularity at a macro level, the level of the neurons or the brain. This new kind of regularity could be identified with the required freedom for morality. We will not go into further detail concerning these arguments.
4.3 Context The next position Habermas describes is that of context compatibilism. Simply put this position entails that a presupposition of either freedom or determinism in our epistemic perspective is a matter of situational context. As Habermas puts it: we consider a different “set of causes from an action’s ‘causal ancestry’ to be relevant in context of justification as in contexts of explanation.”51 Contexts of justification would be similar to what Habermas calls the participant perspective, where reasons and freedom are central, and contexts of explanation are similar to the observer perspective, which is characterized by determinism. At first glance this position appears similar to Habermas’ position of epistemic dualism, both posit two different epistemic approaches toward the world. The major gripe Habermas has with context compatibilism is that it downplays the destructive influence a naturalistically conceived and causally determined understanding of the universe has on any understanding we have of free will and of ourselves as persons. Also, it fails to resolve how both epistemic perspectives are ultimately linked. They do offer a possible solution to this issue, but in doing so, according to Habermas, they adopt an “imprecise use of the concept of ‘causal explanation’”. 52 What he means by this is that they too quickly assume an analogy between so-called nomological natural causation, and etiological causation by reasons. They reinforce their argument by the fact that observer perspective causation is often used to influence decisions in participant perspective settings, such as a court of law. Intuitively this might lead to the acceptance of a similarity between the two different forms of causation. This is false, according to Habermas:
49 John Searle (2010) Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization, chapter 1, page 4. 50 John Searle (2007) “Neuroscience, Intentionality and Free Will: Reply to Habermas”, Abstract, p. 69. 51 LRA, p. 29. 52 ibid.
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“rational and naturalistic explanations take on different roles there”53. Only within the limits already defined in the justificatory context do natural explanations have any deciding powers. In another part of his article Habermas describes how our idea of natural (nomological) causation ultimately is derived from lifeworld experiences, namely by the agent intentionally producing effects in the natural world (instrumental causation). Reasons, however, are a natural part of our linguistic and social abilities, and have an entirely different force than natural causes; namely as motivating force in the subject. A very natural comparison to this position is the one proposed by John Searle in which the epistemic perspectives are seen as different descriptive levels of reality, but ultimately referencing the same ontological entities. Both Searle and contextual compatibilists have to draw a link between these two perspectives. Searle does this by tweaking our conventional understanding of ontological and ‘scientific’ reality (removing determinacy), while on the other hand, contextual compatibilist draw the link by somehow equating causality by reasons with causality by natural laws. Central in this thesis is the discussion of Habermas’ arguments against the position that participant and observer perspective are merely different levels of description of the same thing. A large number of these arguments will have relevance toward context compatibilism as well. I propose to further deal with these arguments in their proper place, mainly in Chapter 5.
4.4 Evitability Another compatibilist argument Habermas discusses is one he ascribes to Daniel Dennett. It takes a view of humans as organisms with limited information and choices to make. These choices are made by weighing the risks pro and con. The central tenet of this position is that the limited availability of information can provide the basis for what we mean and experience by free will. Contrasting the viewpoint of a “Laplacean Demon”, being the fictional ‘view from nowhere’54 of the observer, which is structured by determinacy and in which “only one possible course of future states of the world” exists, with the viewpoint of the “living being who has been equipped by evolution with bounded rationality and is thus fated to act intelligently under conditions of uncertainty,” for which or whom “it makes no difference in practice whether or not we conceive of the world materialistically and view it as causally closed.”55 These uncertain conditions and the bounded rationality of the organism give rise to the concept Dennett calls ‘evitability’. What is atypical of this conception of free will is that it does not directly create a link between free will and morality. It is more concerned with the experience of free will as such, as a subjective phenomenon. In relation to this Dennett states that “it follows that the truth or falsity of determinism should not affect our belief that certain unrealized events were nevertheless ‘possible,’ in an important everyday sense of the word.”56 This provides a touchstone for Habermas: he states that Dennett makes an tacit shift in perspective, because he restricts “the claim
53 LRA, p. 29. 54 Cf. Nagel (1986) The view from nowhere. 55 LRA, p. 30. 56 Dennett (2003) Freedom Evolves, p. 77.
Page 22 of 36 to the everyday sense of modal expressions.”57 The tacit shift in perspectives would entail that Dennett uses lifeworld concepts, or presupposes them, in order to ground a conception of free will (in the everyday sense) in determinism—as did the previous instances of compatibilism we discussed. I am not certain if Habermas is correct in this evaluation, and whether the “everyday sense of the word” as posited by Dennett is indeed related somehow to an intersubjective moral language game. It seems to me that Dennett focuses more on the subjective experience of free will, in this instance at least, isolated from any moral claims, notwithstanding any indirect relations. Habermas disambiguates this issue by decoupling free will from a purely normative or moral context58. Free will is now no longer just a moral problem. The (intelligent) organism that tries to avoid danger is ascribed a participant perspective. Habermas proceeds in applying the same sort of argumentation that he uses against other cases of compatibilism. Namely that the scientist, who perceives the determinism of an organism’s actions and environment, makes a switch to the participant perspective when he starts using such concepts as ‘options’ or ‘risk avoidance’. These concepts, according to Habermas, cannot be derived from an objective third person view, but have to originate from the scientist’s own lifeworld experience as a person, maybe even as a living organism. Habermas proceeds to argue that, from an evolutionary view, it is more natural to adopt the participant perspective than the artificial observer perspective of science, reinforcing the claim that we should take the participant perspective as a starting point. Habermas’ arguments are convincing because of the apparent impossibility of incorporating intentional concepts such as risk and options into a deterministic worldview, without somehow deriving them from the outside, most obviously from a participant or a subjective perspective. Nevertheless I wish to place certain question marks here. For instance, it seems to superficially imply the existence of a domain of knowledge outside the reach of scientific interpretation. This can imply nothing but dualism, or at the very least epistemic idealism, with a separate realm from where these terms derive this special quality. In this day and age dualism holds no plausibility, Habermas tells us so himself. It is his denial of dualism, while still being an incompatibilist, and also denying hard determinism, that leads me to believe that Habermas has obscurantist tendencies. In Chapter 5, we will explore the possibility of conceiving the above-mentioned intentionalistic concepts as part of a mechanical description of the world.
57 LRA, p. 30. 58 ibid.
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Chapter 5: Differentiating the issue Let us now aim at a definitive evaluation of Habermas’ position by dividing the matter into the following two questions: (1) is it conceivable that (neuro-)science might one day successfully explain all human behavior and the way humans think? This future state will be characterized by far-reaching knowledge of the connections between physical states and human behavior which in turn will lead to large predictive success rates in the field of the psychological, neurological and social sciences, and (2) how should we conceive of the fundamental incompatibility between the so-called participant language game, and the observer or scientific language game? Does this constitute a fundamental disunity in reality itself, or in our phenomenological or epistemological perception of it? Or, is there a way in which these language games can ultimately be brought together? I believe the first question can plausibly be answered in the positive, assuming you adopt a monistic ontology about the universe: mind not being a spiritual substance. This stance seems to resonate with contemporary opinions on the matter, which hold science in high regard and reject dualism. There is no immediate reason to believe that past successes in these sciences would somehow come to a halt in the future. What implications does this present to free will? It implies we either reject the existence of free will, or else redefine free will as to not be opposed to scientific determinism. Admittedly, this mostly seems to be a metaphysical problem, with hardly any influence on our daily lives. However, it is not contained entirely within the metaphysical, it extends itself to the public debate, promoting change in the way we organize society. This has practical consequences: our legal system, based on the idea of justice, may be replaced with a system of social conditioning, as is described in Habermas’ article. The main argument being that the old system was ‘unscientific’. The project of both Habermas and the compatibilists is to show how we can maintain a wholesome conception of free will (and related phenomena) in the midst of these scientific advances. The second question involved the seeming incompatibility of participant and observer language games. Can this incompatibility be solved by positing them as two different levels of description of what is ultimately the same system, as John Searle would have it?59 If it is merely a different level of description, one should be able to point out the objects and events which relate to the same reality. For example: a reason is this kind of neural activity, or pain is this kind of combination between chemical and neural activity. Searle would affirm this. This is also the reason why he theorizes about indeterminacy caused by quantum phenomena. Freedom in the one language game must have a counterpart in the other. I hold the view that Habermas is correct in stating that there is no such direct link between concepts from a lifeworld perspective and those from a scientific perspective. He emphasizes this when discussing downward causation. Reasons, because of their presupposition of freedom are unable to influence the deterministic causal processes in the brain (see also section 5.4). We should not too quickly identify moral events with neuronal processes. I believe, however, that this irreducibility can be explained in a way that is compatible with non- intentionalistic mechanical explanations by way of Dennett’s notion of the intentional stance. The intentionality of concepts from the participant perspective is in fact an overlay which we ourselves contrive, and not something that exists in reality. Our natural way of perceiving the world is by means of this overlay. In this conception, science
59 John Searle (2007) “Neuroscience, Intentionality and Free Will: Reply to Habermas”.
Page 24 of 36 offers a more precise representation of reality because it abstracts from this intentional overlay to a much larger degree than the participant perspective, though not entirely. But before we go deeper into these two issues, and how Habermas uses them to strengthen his position, we go on a short excursion in order to visit another pair of contrasting concepts, namely the subjective experience of free will, and free will as it is required for a moral language game. Habermas touches on this subject when he discusses the solution to the free will problem proposed by Wolfgang Prinz. As we will see, this contrast is essential to understanding Habermas’ position, and how he looks at the problem. In the discussion on the compatiblist solution of evitabilism (see 4.4) we also briefly mentioned this distinction.
5.1 Subjective (reflexive) free will and moral free will As mentioned above, we must look more closely at the relationship between free will as a subjective experience versus free will as a prerequisite for the moral language game. What we also need to look into is Wolfgang Prinz’ solution, which is briefly presented by Habermas. Prinz (a psychologist) states that free will is an artifact created by the interaction of individual (human) actors. An advantage of this conception is that it is not opposed to scientific determinism. I will offer a simplified account. First, humans are moral creatures that experience feelings of moral praise or blame. This ability is shared with other social animals. Secondly, humans are also linguistic creatures they are driven to somehow codify and make sense of this pre-linguistic moral behavior. In order to do this concepts such as free will and personhood are created to serve as backbones to a shared system of morality. Moral feelings can now be explained by the notion that individuals have a choice in the matter of their behavior. This system is a social institution and dependent upon collective acceptance and internalization. Our intuition of free will is a psychologically internalized component of the moral institution. Habermas also stresses that free will, together with our self-understanding as a person is heavily indebted to the acquisition of our native language.60 It is not something inherent in the subjective experience of our actions and decisions as such. Only afterwards or in deliberating and in relation to other people does the awareness of freedom arise. Habermas seems to agree to this extent, animals have subjective experience as well, yet they do not experience free will. This means it must be found elsewhere, outside the subjective domain. It seems obvious to both Habermas and Prinz that language and social interaction have important roles to play in the constitution of free will. Yet for Habermas free will has to have a deeper meaning than just a social construct. In part, this insistence on the real existence of freedom can be attributed to Habermas’ desire to provide an adequate foundation for the absoluteness of humanistic enterprises such as law and philosophy; an institutional artifact does not provide this. In some sense Habermas’ position seems obscurantist because to a large degree it agrees with Prinz’ position (which is compatibilist), whereby it gains credibility, but on the other hand he is continuously striving to somehow expand this compatibilist notion of free will by making use of intuitions which do not have the same credibility. The remainder of the present chapter will discuss how Habermas makes use of these intuitions. Freedom as a social construct, or social institution as Prinz calls it, lacks something: namely the intuition of free will, which we can perceive reflexively by deliberating on our actions. It is the freedom that underlies this
60 LRA, p. 33.
Page 25 of 36 intuition that is supposedly a requirement for moral responsibility. If this freedom is not real then our moral responsibility is not real in a sense as well. According to Habermas reflexivity is more than just a subjective experience. It is a uniquely human property and is a form of self-reference whereby people are aware of their own position as persons and can also engage in a form of self-commentary about cultural norms and practices. This concept of reflexivity also returns in Habermas’ description of communicative discourse wherein common assumptions (values, norms, and facts) are the subject of discussion and debate.61 This reflexivity is heavily indebted to language, and also presupposes a space of reason-giving. It is in deliberating the reasons pro and con that we experience the choice we have. I believe it is hard for Habermas to argue how this reflexivity is not itself a social, or maybe even a linguistic construct. How a social construct or social interaction leads to reflexive awareness is of course another question that needs to be answered, but is a question more suited to empirical science.62 Ultimately, however, none of Habermas’ arguments show how reflexivity or free will are not essentially social constructs (or social institutions in the words of Prinz) and constitute something more. And if freedom isn't a fundamental aspect of reality, and 'only' a social artifact, then the incompatibility between freedom and determinism dissolves. Most of Habermas’ arguments set out to show how these social constructs must be real in a deeper sense because of how the associated language game cannot be united with that of science. This constitutes an entirely different topic. The confusion of these two topics is something we will come back to later. First, we need to discuss the possibilities of a scientific explanation of mind, because Habermas chose to somewhat downplay that aspect of the issue. For a lot of people, however, there is no question that science will in the future give a complete descriptive account of the physical aspect of the human mind. Qualia and our ‘illusion’ of freedom, according to them, are only minor hindrances along the way. This is the theme of section 5.2.
5.2 Mind as part of nature This section is about seeing mind as part of nature and the marked progress being made in this area by (neuro-)science. At the beginning of this chapter we wondered whether it was conceivable that neuroscience may one day provide a complete descriptive and predictive account of the way our brain operates and how this translates into our behavior, effectively begetting a model of human behavior that can predict our behavior with close to one- hundred percent accuracy. This question was answered affirmatively. It is very reasonable to extrapolate from previous successes of the sciences that it will one day also be able to describe our behavior as well. Already there are successes in instrumental approaches toward human behavior. Some of these will be given here.. For instance, the larger part of the marketing and advertisement industry. And, the legal system, whenever punishments are instituted as a deterrence, falls under this kind of instrumental approach. Another (random) example: the increasing ubiquity of security cameras. All three indicate that human beings can be manipulated, and can be approached instrumentally as objects subject to physical, neurological or psychological laws. It could be argued that these approaches to the conditioning of human behavior are detrimental to the dignity that humans have and deserve. Also, in more Habermasian terms: they lead away from the ideal speech situation which should be regulative of our
61 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Habermas”, section 3.2. 62 See, for example, publications by Wolfgang Prinz.
Page 26 of 36 social behavior. Conceived in this way, however, it is predominantly a moral problem. Even if we know it possible to manipulate the human mind, we might still regard it as morally impermissible. This is a different matter entirely. Neuroscience is merely a recent form, with new points of entry, of approaching humans instrumentally, an approach that has existed from the beginning of mankind. Even earlier perhaps, since animals too have been observed to engage in social manipulation.63 One might even argue that the participant perspective, manifesting itself in a space of reasons, is a form of manipulating humans, but not a form of manipulation originating from a single individual, but from evolution, or more precisely from the level of the genes. In this view human beings are constituted the way they are as a result of natural selection. Needless to say, being linguistic and cultural beings, humans can advance beyond purely biologically determined behavior, and allow their behavior to be regulated by ‘culture’ or so-called memes. But even memes require a biological foundation. It is doubtful whether cultural evolution can ever sever itself entirely from its biological foundation. Even if, it would still remain doubtful whether a meme-like conception of human (cultural) evolution could ever mean something for real personal freedom. By way of a conclusion I would like to state that, in the modern age, it is unrealistic to hold the view that science is limited in its subject-domain and will not be able to explain the human mind and human behavior fully. This, however, still leaves us to explain the apparent incompatibility between personal and scientific language games. This issue is the topic for the next section.
5.3 Responsible agency as a language game When we look at Habermas’ arguments in this debate we observe that the majority of them seem to depend on a conceptual opposition between language games. Moreover, we see how, intuitively, we cannot adopt both language games at the same time without it leading to inconsistent thought. The concept of freedom from the participant language game, cannot be reconciled with the concept of determinacy from the observer language game. Since freedom is omnipresent in the participant language game, and determinacy is omnipresent in the observer language game, it follows for Habermas that these language games cannot be talking about the same thing. His positing of an ontological monism (since dualism is inadmissible) leads him to conclude that both determinism and freedom are to some extent human artifacts, lending their existence from pragmatic considerations originating from the human condition. Freedom holds primacy, and is therefore more real, because it is a requirement in understanding these lifeworld projects, while determinacy and the observer perspective is something that originates later on, and more importantly is not an absolute requirement toward self-understanding. It is important to note that although determinism and freedom find their origin in pragmatic considerations, this in no way affects their reality. What typifies us as human beings, and what gives us our dignity, is the use of language and consequently the communicative (moral) sphere it makes possible. Human reason and morality evolve from this communicative sphere. Subjectivity and instinctual morality do not do justice to the higher type of existence of humans. It is linguistic pragmatism, the necessity to communicate with our fellow beings (about reality and social relations), that gives rise to the concepts of freedom and determinism. It is undesirable to trace these
63 De Waal (1982) Chimpanzee Politics: Power and sex among apes, passim. And: Richard Wrangham (1996) Demonic Males.
Page 27 of 36 concepts further back, e.g. to some foundation in subjectivity, because then we would run into all the problems of classical philosophy, viz. the antinomies of Kant, and this is what Habermas tries to avoid. The most striking part of these two language games is that concepts from the participant perspective, such as freedom, reasons, but also consciousness, seem to include an extra element that the observer perspective lacks and cannot grasp—they have a deeper meaning. For example, a reason cannot be entirely explained by or identified with neuronal causal activity. This would imply that the scientific paradigm does not encompass, nor can explain, the entire of reality. And that consequently there are parts of reality that are not subjected to determinism, but leave open the possibility of freedom. This is related to Habermas’ view on the epistemological scope of the scientific perspective which is limited to what we can instrumentally manipulate. Worth noting is that not only experiences and concepts from the participant perspective seem to defy the observer perspective, purely subjective experiences, which are pre-linguistic, like qualia, seem to do the same. This would give force to Habermas’ argument about the instrumental nature of science. Qualia, just as the reflective experience of freedom, do not serve an instrumental purpose. Also worth noting is that the participant perspective is usually conceived of as encompassing all of human experience, including scientific enterprises, because in one way or another all human activities are related to lifeworld projects. However, the purely subjective experience of qualia seems to fall outside the scope of participant perspective as well. This observation indicates that the free will problem is in nature conceptual. That we subjectively experience, and have intuitions about both freedom and determinism, is a fact of life. Only when thinking of the two together do we run into problems and do we realize they are in fact incompatible. In the modern age we are driven to universalize the successes of science which leads to the kinds of thoughts in which freedom is repressed. Freedom becomes an illusory experience (hard determinism). Because freedom is an essential building block in the communicative sphere this has important practical and moral consequences, some of which are given by Habermas: e.g. the technocratization of law. Searle gives an expanded list.64 The existence or non-existence of qualia, on the other hand, does not come with these same sort of consequences (viz. practical & moral), precisely because they are not part of our intersubjectively shared reality (objective mind). Another way of showing that the conflict is conceptual in nature is that a purely subjective experience of freedom is not incompatible with the purely subjective expectation of effect following cause, in the Humean sense. The absolute delimitation of cause and effect is lacking here. It is only when we codify and universalize these concepts that conflict emerges. This is closely related to Habermas’ statement on the fact that brain states cannot contradict themselves. Opposition and contradiction can only exist in language. Both freedom and determinism are concepts that can only exist in language. The fact that brain states cannot contradict themselves means that there has to be another source from where reasons, and to some extent scientific knowledge as well, derive their intentionality. Seemingly Habermas has discovered a way to safeguard some part of the human experience from all- pervasive scientific explanations.65 In other words he has found a place which can provide the foundation for human dignity. In the remainder of this thesis we will show that the reasoning that Habermas employs to arrive at this
64 Searle (2007) “Neuroscience, Intentionality and Free Will: Reply to Habermas”, p. 70. 65 “The universal acid” which Daniel Dennett discusses in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995).
Page 28 of 36 defense cannot valid. An incompatibility of language games does not intrinsically imply a dualism at a more fundamental level, and it does not lead to a reduction in the scope of science.
5.4 Different descriptions of the same system at different levels The first step in explaining the fallacy in Habermas’ reasoning would be to formulate the position against which his arguments do indeed hold validity. This position is best formulated by John Searle who argues that both language games are different levels of description of what is in fact the same system. This would imply that ultimately reasons can be identified and equated with certain forms of neural activity. In this view, freedom from the participant perspective can only exist if in some way or form it manifests itself in the observer perspective as well. In order to resolve this John Searle introduces the quantum structure of reality. His defense of free will consists of showing that quantum indeterminacy might lead to free will at a macro level, that is to say, at the level of the neurons. Habermas’ arguments against Searle’s position come in two flavors. First, the absence of downward causality (as mentioned above). If neurons determine our thinking and behavior via causal routes, this means there is no room for the force of the argument (reasons) to be the primary determinant. Reasons in this view become like qualia, a way in which we experience the neural work going on in our brains, but without efficacy. Elsewhere Habermas states: “For it is superfluous to postulate the existence of a special sort of property, if ‘it does no causal work’ in a materialistically conceived world.”66 This holds for qualia and quale-like conceptions of free will too. The second argument has to do with the fact that brain states cannot contradict each other. I believe this argument shows clearest the general trend in Habermas’ arguments. Reasons have as a property that they can be contradictory to one another. Brain states are just physical events, and therefore do not have this property. This again shows the linguistic properties of reasons: agreement and contradiction can only exist in language. Searle seems to think that brain states can be contradictory, whereby one cancels out the other,67 but I believe he forgets how much of this is observer-dependent. We already need to add a structuralizing element to physical events for them to be contradictory, or even to recognize them as events. The limited kind of intentionality that the observer perspective allows for is not sufficient to arrive at the properties which characterize reasons. These possess a further-reaching and more complex kind of intentionality. For Habermas this shows how reasons cannot be explained scientifically. He strengthens this argument, which in itself is not very credible—because it removes the universalistic claims of the scientific worldview, which is well accepted today—by giving a conception of science which is only concerned with that with what we can interact instrumentally, that what is under potential technical control (see section 3.3). This gives his claims somewhat more credibility, but he may well have conveniently ignored the possibility that everything, including the way we think and reason, is under potential technical control (see section 5.2). Past successes of the scientific project seem to confirm this. Looking more closely at the conflict between the language games, we can see how this might be resolved in favor of a more scientifically oriented solution by examining the concept of the intentional stance as described by
66 LRA, p. 32. 67 Searle (2007) “Neuroscience, Intentionality and Free Will: Reply to Habermas”, p.71.
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Daniel Dennett. This is what we will do now. “Something exhibits intentionality if its competence is in some way about something else.”68 This means that it is aimed toward something, is ‘about’ something. The word’s etymology reaffirms this meaning, medieval philosophers who coined the term noted “the similarity between such phenomena and the act of aiming an arrow at something (intendere arcum in).”69 The intentional stance is a way of perceiving reality by ascribing intentions to entities, even if those entities are not generally assumed to have the capacity to act intentionally. You might even suppose that all intentionality is observer-dependent; this issue leads to a separate debate. In this paper we will take intentionality to be something that we add to the world; I will call this an intentional overlay. In his article Habermas recapitulates Sellars’ line of reasoning stating that our natural approach toward the natural world is one of the intentional stance, where we approach natural entities as ‘persons’ with their own wills and desires.70 More ancient manifestations of science such as Aristotelian natural philosophy, wherein objects strive toward a goal or telos, provide us with an illustration of this natural tendency. “To the extent that humans had to deal with the risks of an unpredictable nature the internal logic of such problems required increasingly de-socialized accounts.”71 This is where the observer perspective comes into being. Modern science follows this trend to the extreme. Science is characterized by a process of abstraction in which nature is described according to impersonal events and laws. “[W]e gradually withdrew the intentional stance from what we now call inanimate nature.”72 However, even in describing the world in events, objects, and laws, we leave a large part of our natural intentional stance intact; since these structures are themselves intentional concepts (see section 3.3 and 3.4). Habermas is right in expressing the artificial nature of science, and the associated observer perspective, and that historically, and in everyday situations, a personal approach to nature was and is more common. However, the fact that science is a social artifact does not imply that the knowledge it produces should somehow lose its current authority. On transcendental idealism Habermas states that such a position “that removes from the natural sciences the spur of a realist claim to knowledge has little plausibility today.”73 Maybe we are correct in assuming that this also holds for the view of science as a pragmatically motivated lifeworld project?
5.5 Habermas’ intuition pump I would now like to move toward the core of this thesis and analyze how in my opinion Habermas uses the incompatibility between the intentional concepts used in the participant and the mechanical concepts used in the observer language game to argue for a reduction in the scope of the science. Habermas claims that, because intentional ideas cannot be directly expressed in mechanical terms, these intentional ideas must somehow exist in a different realm. In this view science is a limited form of knowing the world. I believe the manner in which he reasons from intentionality of language games to a reduction in scope of one of these language games is in fact a kind of intuition pump. This last concept is one developed by Daniel Dennett:
68 Dennett (1997) Kinds of Minds, p. 35. 69 ibid., p. 36. 70 cf. ibid., p. 33. 71 LRA, p. 24. 72 Dennett, ibid., p. 33. 73 LRA, p. 37.
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A popular strategy in philosophy is to construct a certain sort of thought experiment I call an intuition pump [...]. Intuition pumps are cunningly designed to focus the reader's attention on "the important" features, and to deflect the reader from bogging down in hard-to-follow details. There is nothing wrong with this in principle. Indeed one of philosophy's highest callings is finding ways of helping people see the forest and not just the trees. But intuition pumps are often abused, though seldom deliberately.74
The argument proposed by Habermas can be said to be an intuition pump because it draws from the intuition of non- compatible language games in order to demarcate boundaries as to where each language game has authority. Most notably he limits the domain of science. The position against which Habermas’ attack is most relevant is the position that holds that language games are actually different levels of description of the same system. The conclusion Habermas draws from the refutation of this position is that different language games describe different parts of reality and that the domain of scientific knowledge cannot encompass the domain of the participant perspective. This implies that some parts of ontological reality can only be interacted with using intentional concepts presupposing freedom, and that others are interacted with by means of intentional concepts presupposing determinism. It should be noted that we do not truly know ontological reality, rather: we interact with it, it is a learning process, in which reality sets boundaries to what is possible in our lifeworld projects. As explained in section 3.3: science is the lifeworld project in which we explore that part of nature that can be instrumentally manipulated. Habermas uses his intuition pump to somehow make plausible his contention that there are parts of reality that are not accessible to the scientific research paradigm. This is counterintuitive to the position that is most commonly held today, namely that science is at least potentially capable of this. I believe that in this way he also weakens his own statement of ontological monism and starts moving towards a weak form of dualism. If science is not able to describe (and thereby predict) human behavior, and how that behavior is motivated by neural activity in the brain (which is a physical object), then a dualism within ontological reality is created. One part that conforms to scientific laws, and another that cannot conform to those scientific laws, because it has to conform to reasons and freedom. Habermas tries to move the dualism entirely to the side of the language game, which is impossible. Determinacy, as a rule of a language game, presupposes an ontological reality that is at least compatible with it (has regularity). The fact that there is some part of reality which is not able to conform to scientific laws is totally implausible today. Even if you maintain John Searle’s position of quantum indeterminacy you still do not have a solid basis for a Habermasian conception of freedom. We might mention David Hume’s insight that freedom and determinacy (called regularity by Hume) are not in opposition, because the opposite of freedom is restraint, and the opposite of determinacy is pure chance.75 Freedom, especially moral freedom, requires some form of regularity in the natural world. Quantum indeterminacy, if it were to have effects on the macro level, would rightly be a concern in the moral sphere. The fact that science cannot facilitate certain intentional terms (e.g. the concept of a person, or the concept of freedom) can be explained by other means, without resorting to the dualistic tendencies Habermas displays above.
74 Dennett (1984) Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, p. 12. 75 Hume (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VIII: Of Liberty and Necessity, Part 1, §25.
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The problem here is that a concept originating from a language game with a strong intentional overlay will not be reducible to a mechanical description of the same ‘object’. There will always be something left, the intention or function, however you choose to name it. Habermas refers to it as an “irritating incompleteness”.76 Therefore a reason is never entirely reducible to a brain state, because what we understand to be a reason is something that is heavily colored by our intentional stance, and the collective intentionality that can only exist within an intersubjective lifesphere of linguistic beings. But this does not mean that the experience of intentionality (as a phenomenon), in for example the intentional stance and in morality, does not have a scientific explanation, or cannot be seen as evolutionary adaptations.77 In short: an irreducibility in language games does not point toward a limitation in the scope of the scientific perspective. We must nevertheless always guard ourselves against equating intentional phenomena with mechanical processes too quickly, which is how greedy reductionists operate. For example, by too quickly equating cultural processes (e.g. marriage) to biological phenomena (resp. the mating behavior in animals). Several aspects of marriage are presumably influenced by this instinctual mating behavior, but it is also influenced by our linguistic and institutionalizing capabilities. This would explain the ‘irritating incompleteness’ in a naturalized account of lifeworld activities. I believe that ultimately our linguistic and social faculties are capable of being explained in evolutionary-scientific terms as well.
76 LRA, p. 26. 77 Dennett (1997) Kinds of Minds. And: Michael Ruse (1986) Taking Darwin seriously: a naturalistic approach to philosophy. See also (tentatively): Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man.
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Chapter 6: Conclusion Habermas saw in the neuroscientists’ attempt at reformulating our self-understanding an error in philosophical background assumptions. The neuroscientists held that, at the current rate of scientific advance, the replacement of the moral language game by a scientific one is imminent. For Habermas this is a meaningless proposition. Our moral language game is part of a much larger collective of epistemic approaches to the world gathered under the denominator of the participant perspective. Because humans are social beings, who possess language and morality, this participant perspective will necessarily pervade all our thinking and interaction with both the natural world and other people. This implies that we are not purely reactive-behavioristic machines, into which impulses from the external world enter, and from which a specified set of behavior appears. Our behavior has meaning. In growing up we are programmed with the values and norms of our society and culture, we learn that no action is without social implications. Moreover, that we are responsible for and potentially required to justify our actions. In time these values and norms gain motivating power in the form of reasons, a form of motivations separate from instinct or desire. Habermas calls this the space of reasons. A requirement of the concept of reasons, and of the participant perspective as a whole, is some form of free will, the existence of which is denied by the neuroscientists. Habermas’ discussion on this subject can be summarized as follows. First, let us deal with his diagnosis sociologically. The manner in which scientific knowledge is structured restricts it from constituting a fundamental part of our moral guidelines. In our daily practices this seems obvious, many people are aware of the so-called naturalistic fallacy.78 We know that the way things ‘are’ does not have a solid relationship to the way things ‘ought to be’. But when we extend this topic to institutional settings an equal number of people seem attracted to the idea that public institutions should be structured in such a way that is substantiated by scientific theory. It is in this regard that people might critique the prevalence of non-scientific concepts such as freedom in the juridical and political discourse. All the more when these concepts turn out not only to be unscientific, but wholly incompatible with scientific discourse, as is the case with freedom. Habermas is opposed to this conclusion. Secondly, the misrepresentation of science. Habermas tries to rescue us the kind of technocratic understanding of public institutions described above by repositioning and redefining science, namely as a project of the lifeworld. In this view scientific knowledge is not obtained by us as merely passive recipients of external knowledge. Nor does science operate purely by means of an innate knowledge apparatus, as it does with Kant (although this likely still plays an important role). Science is the lifeworld project concerned with the pragmatic objective of dealing with the natural world. Importantly, in this conception, science requires the existence of a space of reasons, and therefore of freedom; it is not created ex nihilo. Habermas goes on to argue that the primacy of the participant perspective for science as an origination story also has epistemic consequences. A philosophy of science that negates one of the principal requirements of the participant perspective, namely freedom, engages in a performative contradiction.
78 Curry (2006) “Who’s afraid of the naturalistic fallacy?” Evolutionary psychology, 4. pp. 234-247.
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Thirdly, Habermas’ evolutionary account of the manner in which to understand and rationalize scientific knowledge that may potentially affect our self-understanding. He recognizes that many concepts used in science, and evolutionary theory in particular, are heavily indebted to experiences from the lifeworld.79 To a large extent I agree with Habermas’ description of the topic and the conclusions with regard to the nature of science and morality. I disagree, however, with his strategy of limiting the scope of science in order to make way for an absolute conception of free will. In my view this move is too radical, nor is it necessary. Also, he fails to offer a clear and concise explanation as to how we should value scientific knowledge regarding human beings. If the lifeworld cannot be described scientifically, how do we explain those instances when scientific and participant explanations collide? I believe Habermas ultimately has not provided a solution to the problem because of his reluctance to do away with the absoluteness of certain lifeworld concepts; even though his analysis has provided him with all the necessary tools to formulate a sophisticated compatibilist solution. Eventually, a better definition of the phenomenon of free will is needed, one that is compatible with the determinacy of the natural world. I believe that Wolfgang Prinz proceeds in the right direction, when defining free will in part as a social institution. This reconception will undoubtedly create new research possibilities regarding the socio-biological and neurological conditions that make this possible. It is the project of philosophy to conceptualize lifeworld phenomena in such a way as to be scientifically plausible, and to enable scientific research of these phenomena.80 Translating these phenomena into common sense scientific conceptions may of course demand some concessions. It is unlikely that any sort of absolute philosophical system is able to survive this translation. Habermas attempts to show that these concessions are intuitively not credible. He does this by emphasizing the incompatibility of participant and scientific language games. This incompatibility does indeed exist: you cannot directly translate from intentional moral terms to mechanical terms which are devoid of intentionality. However, this doesn’t have the implications Habermas states it to have, viz. that science doesn’t possess the conceptual tools to deal with intentional concepts such as free will. I have argued that Habemas’ emphasis on the incompatibility between language games constitutes an intuition pump. This enables him to conclude that no concessions from the participant perspective are possible, thereby rendering his limitation of the scope of science more plausible. I hold that concessions from the participant perspective are possible, without leading to implausible reductionist conclusions, by way of solutions that are based on psychological views of morality, or those that conceive of morality in terms of a social institution, or both.
79 For example his description of causality, see section 3.3. 80 Cf. Searle (2010) Making the Social World: The structure of human civilization, pp. 3-6.
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