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Is Agentive Experience Compatible with Determinism?

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Is Agentive Experience Compatible with Determinism? This article was downloaded by: [Oisin Deery] On: 05 February 2014, At: 06:46 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpex20 Is agentive experience compatible with determinism? Oisín Deerya a Interuniversity Research Group on Normativity (GRIN)/Center for Research Ethics (CRÉUM), University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada Published online: 05 Feb 2014. To cite this article: Oisín Deery , Philosophical Explorations (2014): Is agentive experience compatible with determinism?, Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2013.874495 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Philosophical Explorations, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2013.874495 Is agentive experience compatible with determinism? ∗ Oisı´n Deery Interuniversity Research Group on Normativity (GRIN)/Center for Research Ethics (CRE´ UM), University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada (Received 7 January 2013; final version received 4 November 2013) Many philosophers think not only that we are free to act otherwise than we do, but also that we experience being free in this way. Terry Horgan argues that such experience is compatibilist: it is accurate even if determinism is true. According to Horgan, when people judge their experience as incompatibilist, they misinterpret it. While Horgan’s position is attractive, it incurs significant theoretical costs. I sketch an alternative way to be a compatibilist about experiences of free agency that avoids these costs. In brief, I assume that experiences of freedom have a sort of phenomenal content that is inaccurate if determinism is true, just as many incompatibilists claim. Still, I argue that these experiences also have another sort of phenomenal content that is normally accurate, even assuming determinism. Keywords: free will; moral responsibility; determinism; phenomenology; phenomenal content; agentive experience; Horgan; compatibilism; incompatibilism; libertarianism; cognitive penetration; Chalmers 1. Introduction The waiter offers you ice-cream. ‘Chocolate or vanilla?’ he asks. Each flavor is delicious, but you know you should only choose one. You hesitate. It feels like you are free to choose vanilla. Yet it also feels like you can refrain from choosing it – say, by choosing chocolate instead. It feels like you are free to do otherwise. Is this experience accurate, assuming determinism? Many incompatibilists, who think that being free to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism, have thought it is not. Downloaded by [Oisin Deery] at 06:46 05 February 2014 They think that we experience having a freedom that is inconsistent with determinism. According to John Searle, for instance, our experience amounts to the feeling that ‘we could be doing something else right here and now, that is, all other conditions remaining the same’ (1984, 95). Some incompatibilists – the libertarians – even go so far as to main- tain that our experience in this regard is evidence that we possess an incompatibilist freedom (cf. O’Connor 1995). Compatibilists think that the freedom to do otherwise is consistent with determinism (Moore 1912; Vihvelin 2004; Fara 2008). If the freedom we experience possessing is com- patibilist, then our experience of being free to do otherwise is accurate, assuming determin- ism. For instance, compatibilists sometimes suggest that we experience freedom conditionally: in the above example, as long as we are free from constraint, coercion, and an addiction to vanilla ice-cream (say), our experience is that we are free to choose cho- colate if we want (or try) to do so, and similarly regarding vanilla (cf. Mill 1865; Gru¨nbaum ∗Email: [email protected] # 2014 Taylor & Francis 2 Oisı´n Deery 1952; Nahmias et al. 2004). If that is right, then it undermines a key motivation for liber- tarianism – the view that being free to do otherwise is inconsistent with determinism, and we have such freedom. After all, if the nature of our experience is compatibilist, then lib- ertarians cannot argue from the incompatibilist nature of experience to our possessing an incompatibilist freedom. A somewhat different compatibilist strategy is to grant that introspection seems to reveal that experience is incompatibilist, yet insist that introspection is not reliable in this domain. Terry Horgan adopts this strategy (2007, 2011, 2012, forthcoming). Horgan agrees that people often think that their experience is incompatibilist. However, he argues that even when people judge their experience as incompatibilist, actually it is compatibilist: people misinterpret their experience. By spelling out how this happens, Horgan provides an error theory for incompatibilist judgments about experience. Horgan’s compatibilist strategy is attractive and has important theoretical advantages, but it also has disadvantages. After considering Horgan’s position, I sketch an alternative way to be a compatibilist about experiences of freedom that avoid these disadvantages. In my view, even if we take people’s incompatibilist reports about their experience at face value, and thus grant that such experience has genuinely incompatibilist content, there is still an important respect in which the experience is accurate, assuming determinism. 2. Agentive experience To forestall any confusion, let me begin by clarifying some terminology. Granting that we actually experience being free to do otherwise, experience-incompatibilists think that this experience is inaccurate if determinism is true. Call such experiences libertarian or incom- patibilist. Experience-compatibilists think the opposite: the experience might be accurate, even assuming determinism. Call such experiences compatibilist. Finally, call the question whether our experience of being free to do otherwise is compatible with determinism (in the way just outlined) the experience-compatibilism question. I take an experience to be any non-doxastic representational mental state with phenom- enal character,1 where phenomenal character is what-it’s-like (or what it feels like) to be in that mental state. An experience’s phenomenology is just its phenomenal character. The sat- isfaction conditions for an experience are its accuracy or veridicality conditions. For any experience, its content yields a veridicality condition: the content specifies how the Downloaded by [Oisin Deery] at 06:46 05 February 2014 world must be in order for the experience to be veridical. If a visual experience has the content squareness, where this property is attributed to a particular object, then that experi- ence is veridical only if the object in question is square. Moreover, I assume a close tie between content and phenomenology, so that an experience’s phenomenology shares a ver- idicality condition with its content. Call this phenomenal content. A visual experience of seeing a red apple will have the phenomenal character reddishness, and thus the content that a certain object that one sees – the apple – is red. Such content is constitutively deter- mined by the phenomenal character, and it is veridical only if the apple is actually red. The property of being able to act otherwise is the property of being free in a particular way: it is to possess a specific – not just a general – ability or freedom. General abilities are uncontroversially compatibilist. I might possess a general ability to raise my hand an hour from now, without having the specific ability to exercise it just then, perhaps because I will be asleep. Determinism is compatible with my retaining such unexercised abilities. Only specific abilities are at issue in the question whether freedom is compatible with determin- ism. Let us characterize this notion as follows. One has the specific ability to do something only if (i) one has a general ability to do it, (ii) one has an opportunity to do it, and (iii) Is Agentive Experience Compatible with Determinism 3 holding fixed one’s motivations at the time (including
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