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Home , Outline of philosophy

Does it involve crazy ?

1 Do they look crazy to you? … a little?

2 A war on two fronts

• Libertarians have to fight off two enemies, both the soft and hard determinists. I.e.

1. Libertarians need to show that the compatibilist’s definition of free is wrong (insufficient). 2. Then they need to show that there is some viable libertarian notion of .

3 1. Attacking compatibilism

• Attacking compatibilism is the easier part. For example: – Richard Taylor’s control box argument, where a person’s desires are under the control of an “ingenious physiologist”. – Peter van Inwagen’s consequence argument

• The basic point is that (if is true) we can be controlled through our own desires and choices just as effectively as through direct external forces.

4 2. Show that libertarianism is viable

• It needs to be shown that there is some coherent notion of freedom that involves: – Self-determination. (My action isn’t determined, or selected, by external causes, but only by me, the self, at the moment of decision.) – Authorship. We select our actions on the basis of intentionality (rational understanding), personal goals, and so on. Not “randomly”, “haphazardly”, “by chance”, etc.

5 What are free acts?

• Libertarians have pursued two approaches to free will. – Agent causation libertarians (ACL) have said that the person (i.e. agent) is the only cause of their free actions. Free acts are self-caused. – Event causation libertarians (ECL) deny that causes always determine their effects. Thus free actions have prior external causes, but are self- determined.

6 Can free choices have external causes? • A key feature of ACL is that one has to deny that free actions have any causes at all, outside of the agent making them. Even the agent’s own (prior) beliefs and desires cannot be causes of their actions.

• ECL on the other hand allows that our free choices have prior causes, just as long as those causes don’t also determine our choices.

7 E.g. Richard Taylor is ACL

“In the case of an action that is both free and rational, it must be that the agent who performed it did so for some , but this reason cannot have been the cause of it.” (p. 406)

N.B. Richard Taylor, like most (maybe all?) ACLs, thinks that determinism is the view that every event has a prior cause. (So, on his view, if our help to cause a choice, they will determine the choice as well.)

8 E.g. C. A. Campbell is an ACL

“The first condition [of a morally responsible act] is the universally recognised one that the act must be self- caused, self-determined. But it is important to accept this condition in its full rigour. The agent must be not merely a cause but the sole cause of that for which he is deemed morally responsible. If entities other than the self have also a causal influence upon an act, then that act is not one for which we can say without qualification that the self is morally responsible.”

“In Defence of Free Will”, Inaugural Address, Glasgow University, 1938.

9 E.g. Roderick Chisholm is ACL

• Speaking of a person’s actions caused by their prior beliefs and desires, Chisholm says:

… if these beliefs and desires in the particular situation in which he happened to have found himself caused him to do just what it was that we say he did do, then, since they caused it, he was unable to do anything other than just what it was that he did do.

‘… each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved’

10 • What do you think of ACL in this respect?

• N.B. At one point Chisholm says that our desires seem to “incline” us to actions without necessitating them. (This sounds like ECL.)

• But then he continues: ‘There is a temptation, certainly, to say that ‘to incline’ means to cause and that ‘not to necessitate’ means not to cause, but obviously we cannot have it both ways.’

(Roderick M Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the Self”, 1964.)

11 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886):

“[libertarianism] is a sort of rape and perversion of . But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for “freedom of the will” in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui [cause of oneself] and, with more than Baron Munchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness. . . .”

12 Taylor’s confession

“One can hardly affirm such a theory of with complete comfort, however, and wholly without embarrassment, for the conception of men and their powers which is involved in it is strange indeed, if not positively mysterious. In fact, one can hardly be blamed here for simply denying our data outright …” (p. 407)

13 A less crazy libertarian?

• Robert Kane (“Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem”)

“Defenders of an incompatibilist or libertarian free will have a dismal record of answering these familiar charges [that undetermined actions would be random, erratic, etc.]. Realizing that free will cannot merely be indeterminism or chance, they have appealed to various obscure or mysterious forms of agency or causation to make up the .”

14 • Kane proposes to do without such mysterious “extra factors”. His more modest view is called event- causation libertarianism. (ECL) • It relies on the claim that causes need not determine their effects, so that free actions are caused, but not determined by those causes. • Free actions are undetermined until some point in the process of deliberation that leads to them. • Laura Ekstrom and Robert Nozick have (slightly different) views along the same lines. Ekstrom: Free Will: A Philosophical Study, 2000. Nozick: Philosophical Explanations, 1981. 15 Kane on causation and determination

If we are ever going to understand free will, I think we will have to … question the intuitive connection in most people’s minds between “indeterminism’s being involved in something” and “its happening merely as a matter of chance or luck”. “Chance” and “luck” are terms of ordinary language that carry the connotation of “its being out of my control.” So using them already begs certain questions, whereas “indeterminism” is a technical term that merely precludes deterministic causation, thought not causation altogether. … It is therefore a mistake (alas, one of the most common in debates about free will) to assume that “undetermined” means “uncaused”. ‘There is something to observe here, that lies under our noses. It is little attended to, and yet still so obvious as to seem trite. It is this: consists in the derivativeness of an effect from its causes. This is the core, the common feature, of causality in its various kinds. Effects derive from, arise out of, come of, their causes. For example, everyone will grant that physical parenthood is a causal relation. Here the derivation is material, by fission. Now analysis in terms of necessity or universality does not tell us of this derivedness of the effect; rather it forgets about that. For the necessity will be that of laws of nature; through it we shall be able to derive of the effect from knowledge of the cause, or vice versa, but that does not show us the cause as source of the effect. Causation, then, is not to be identified with necessitation.’

• Elizabeth Anscombe, “Causality and Determination”, 1971 Flying and gliding

• Agent-causation libertarians see free will as something like flying, where your on-board engine provides all your power needs, and can overcome any external air currents. • Event-causation libertarians see free will as more like gliding. Your motion is powered almost entirely by external forces like air currents (and the initial boost), but you still have flaps and rudder that provide (some) control over your own path. You could have gone elsewhere.

18 ECL and

• A key feature of physicalism is its claim that the world is conceptually clear, or “transparent” to the , in the way that (for example) geometrical figures are fully intelligible.

19 • Determinism requires transparency, since it claims that the future is a logical consequence of past causes. • Laplace’s demon needs a complete conceptual understanding of the past, in order to infer the future.

20 Is determinism compatible with intentionality?

• Compatibilists say that a deterministic system can “obviously” make choices, yet we now see that determinism requires conceptual transparency. • Many argue that physicalism is incompatible with and intentionality – and those arguments are based on the conceptual transparency of physical states. (See BonJour chapter) • Consciousness and intentionality are of course requirements for making choices, so it’s at least unclear whether it’s possible for a deterministic system to make rational choices. 21 Free will = choice, after all?

• Libertarians are likely to reject physicalism, for the usual reasons. Thus they can also reject the claim that mental states are transparent. • In that case, an ECL libertarian might simply identify free choices with outcomes of conscious deliberation, on the grounds that conscious processes cannot be deterministic!

22 Is compatibilism possible?

• Compatibilists like Stace define free will as choice, and then state that making choices is compatible with determinism. – It does not seem necessary to argue that making choices is compatible with determinism.

• But if determinism requires physicalism, and physicalism is incompatible with intentionality, then a deterministic rational choice is impossible.

23 Free events are indeterministic?

• But if conscious processes are not deterministic, then what about the argument that they must be indeterministic, and hence a matter of chance or luck? E.g. as J. J. C. Smart said:

• “Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug.”

24 • N.B. This example of eating a slug seems to assume that the “quantum mechanical trigger in my brain” is an event I have no control over, and is quite separate from any conscious, rational choice I make.

• But that’s not what the ECL libertarian is talking about. They’re saying that ordinary voluntary acts are indeterministic by their very nature.

25 What are indeterministic events?

• Let’s examine this in more detail though. Remember that causation and determination are distinct relations, so that non-determined events are not necessarily uncaused as well. – In fact, a simple argument shows that chancy events must be caused.

26 Chancy events must be caused

• Consider repeating a chancy experiment (e.g. a coin toss) thousands or even millions of times, generating a large set (or ensemble) of separate events. • Typically the outcome of a single trial (heads perhaps) cannot be predicted, but only has a certain probability, such as 0.31. • However, in a huge set of trials, one can predict that the proportion of heads outcomes will be about 31%. The behaviour of such a statistic in a large ensemble is very predictable, so that it’s virtually deterministic. Chancy events must be caused

1. Suppose that the individual events are uncaused. (They appear from nowhere, from no source.) But then the ensemble, which is just the collection of these events, is also uncaused.

2. But this is impossible, since the ensemble has some property (e.g. proportion of heads outcomes) that is determined. What is this property determined by, if not by the cause? Thus the ensemble is caused. But if the ensemble is caused, then so are the individual events. Those events are caused, but not determined. • Conclusion:

Since chancy events (i.e. events that occur with a certain probability) generate predictable statistics in large ensembles, they must be caused. • Now, if chancy events always have causes, then why think that chancy events must be out of our control?

• Is this just a verbal confusion, as Kane says?

“Chance” and “luck” are terms of ordinary language that carry the connotation of “its being out of my control.”

After all, chancy events are controlled by their causes, to the extent that the cause fixes the chance of the event.

30 • Also, there’s no logical reason why an indeterministic (i.e. non-determined) event must have a chance.

• An indeterministic event is, by definition, one that cannot be predicted with by Laplace’s demon. • The chance of an indeterministic event equals the probability (degree of ) that Laplace’s demon has for that event. • In general, however, not every event has a precise probability. So some events (e.g. free choices) may not have precise chances.

31 Chancy events in physical systems?

• As stated above, a key feature of physical systems is that they are conceptually transparent. Can there be chancy events in such systems?

• Quantum mechanical systems are physical systems in which many events are chancy.

32 E.g. the Stern-Gerlach apparatus

• In this experiment there are two possible outcomes, up and down, each of which has a certain chance or propensity.

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33 • How does quantum theory describe the evolution of the system from its initial state to one of these outcomes? • It doesn’t describe this evolution at all! The initial state simply “jumps” discontinuously into up the up state or the down state. • Indeed, it seems impossible for any theory to describe this process. If there were a clear mechanical model of it, then it would be deterministic.

34 • This is perhaps another reason why Smart (and others) view indeterministic events as haphazard, arbitrary, uncontrolled, etc. • Contrary to this, an ECL libertarian should conclude, from the absence (in quantum theory) of any causal process leading to the outcome, that the theory is incomplete. • A non-physicalist is bound to say that QM is incomplete in any case. (Since physicalism is the claim that “all information is physical information”.)

35 (e.g. neutral monists say this)

“Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the ‘physical world’ but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative ... The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure ...” , An Outline of Philosophy, pp. 125-6.

36 “Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. … He arrives at two generalisations: (1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long. (2) All sea-creatures have gills. … In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it.” “Not only is the stranger than Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of we imagine, it is Physical Science (1939) stranger than we can imagine.”

37 • Physicalism, on this view. is a bit like cartographers demanding that the world be flat, in order that their (flat) paper maps will correspond precisely to the world.

• From such 2D (‘flatland’) perspective, a car that drops into a tunnel, and emerges elsewhere, will seem to undergo an inexplicable ‘jump’, i.e. a gap in the causal chain.

• But of course this “jump” isn’t real. It exists only in the theory, or model, not in . It’s arguably the same with quantum jumps. 38 Are random events hollow?

• Random events are usually conceived of as hollow, or empty. They have no content, beyond the chance that is attached. They are inexplicable jumps, with nothing going on between the start of the process and its outcome.

• This is a misconception, ECL libertarians say. Random events are not hollow, but rather just unintelligible, or ‘opaque’ to the mind.

39 Free acts can be pre-determined?

• Recall that both Stace and Dennett argued that, in many cases of free choice, someone who knew the agent well could predict their choice in advance, with 100% certainty. • According to libertarians such a choice couldn’t be free, it seems, which sounds odd.

40 Self-Forming Actions (SFAs)

• Kane (a libertarian) suggests a solution to this. • Kane, following Aristotle, stresses the feedback between actions and character. By making free choices, we form ourselves. These actions are called “self-forming actions”, or “self-forming choices”.

• The person is not just a product of nature and nurture, but also their own free choices.

41 Nature vs. Nurture?

• This point should be stressed. We often hear about the debate of “nature vs. nurture”, in (e.g.) discussions of why people become criminals.

• From a libertarian perspective, both a person’s nature and their nurture are outside their control. So if (e.g.) criminality is caused by those factors alone, then one has no control over whether one becomes a criminal, and cannot be blamed for it.

42 • In the cases raised by Stace and Dennett, where a person’s choice is determined by their character, Stace says that their character is the result of previous indeterministic choices they made. • Kane says that the person helped to form their own character, and so is ultimately responsible for the (deterministic) choices made later in life. • Is this a reasonable response to the problem?

43 The dilemma of free will

• The dilemma of free will, that forces us to choose between deterministic causal processes and inexplicable random jumps, seems to be a consequence of physicalism.

• To escape between the horns, we just need to deny physicalism?

44 Free will and strong emergence

• Libertarianism might sound a lot like . Why would that be? • Both involve the central claim that even the best possible physical description of the human brain is incomplete. I.e. – Not all true information is physical information – Some properties do not logically reduce to physical properties

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