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Psychological Arguments for Free Will DISSERTATION Presented In Psychological Arguments for Free Will DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Andrew Kissel Graduate Program in Philosophy The Ohio State University 2017 Dissertation Committee: Richard Samuels, Advisor Declan Smithies Abraham Roth Copyrighted by Andrew Kissel 2017 Abstract It is a widespread platitude among many philosophers that, regardless of whether we actually have free will, it certainly appears to us that we are free. Among libertarian philosophers, this platitude is sometimes deployed in the context of psychological arguments for free will. These arguments are united under the idea that widespread claims of the form, “It appears to me that I am free,” on some understanding of appears, justify thinking that we are probably free in the libertarian sense. According to these kinds of arguments, the existence of free will is supposed to, in some sense, “fall out” of widely accessible psychological states. While there is a long history of thinking that widespread psychological states support libertarianism, the arguments are often lurking in the background rather than presented at face value. This dissertation consists of three free-standing papers, each of which is motivated by taking seriously psychological arguments for free will. The dissertation opens with an introduction that presents a framework for mapping extant psychological arguments for free will. In the first paper, I argue that psychological arguments relying on widespread belief in free will, combined with doxastic conservative principles, are likely to fail. In the second paper, I argue that psychological arguments involving an inference to the best explanation of widespread appearances of freedom put pressure on non-libertarians to provide an adequate alternative explanation. In the third paper, I argue that the best non-libertarian explanations of a related phenomenon, the apparently widespread belief in ii indeterministic choice, fail to meet their own conditions of adequacy. The appendix explores an alternative non-libertarian line of explanation of the apparently widespread belief that choice is indeterministic. iii Dedication To my beloved wife, Teresa. iv Acknowledgments I owe too much to too many people in the course of writing this dissertation to properly thank all of them adequately in this short space. Nevertheless; thank you to my advisor, Professor Richard Samuels, whose philosophical and personal guidance shaped me into the philosopher that I am today as much as it shaped this dissertation. Thank you to my committee members, Professors Declan Smithies and Abraham Roth, for their invaluable feedback and support. Thank you to Professor Timothy Schroeder, without whom this project would never even have begun. Thank you also to the numerous philosophers, including Professor Julia Jorati, Professor Robert Kraut, Professor Tristram McPherson, Professor Chris Pincock, and Professor Tumar Rudavsky, who have devoted time and energy to reading drafts, discussing my work, and guiding me in the philosophical arts. Without all of these people, and many unnamed others, this project would have fallen apart long ago. Thank you also to my graduate student colleagues at Ohio State, both for their philosophical input as well as their valuable support and friendship. My time working on this dissertation in Columbus, while arduous at times, has also been an extreme pleasure thanks to all of you. Finally, thank you to my families in the U.S. and in Canada. My parents, John and Peggy, my sister, Emily, and brother-in-law, Paul, my brother, Jimmie, and sister-in- v law Jackie, have all listened patiently and provided advice over drinks when needed, and told me to stop thinking so much when needed as well. My parents-in-law, Brian and Vikki Kouri, and my brother-in-law Brad, have provided an oasis in Montreal to visit and decompress from philosophical work. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. And of course, thank you to my wife, Teresa, to whom this work is dedicated. She has been my engine, pushing me forward when I was ready to give up, and a constant source of love and support. Teresa, I love you, and look forward to many more years of happiness and philosophy with you. vi Vita June 2006 .......................................................Worthington Kilbourne High School 2010................................................................B.A. Philosophy, Georgetown University 2010 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Philosophy, The Ohio State University Publications Review of A. Mele’s Free: Why science hasn’t disproved free will. (2015). Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 38 No. 3 Fields of Study Major Field: Philosophy vii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita .................................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xi Introduction- A Framework for Dealing with Psychological Arguments for Free Will..... 1 1. What is represented? ................................................................................................ 5 2. What are the psychological states? .......................................................................... 9 3. How do these states support libertarianism? .......................................................... 10 4. Looking Backward and Forward ........................................................................... 12 Chapter 1: The Cartesian Doxastic Argument ................................................................. 15 1. Doxastic Conservatism .......................................................................................... 18 2. The Principle of Credulity & the Cartesian Doxastic Argument ........................... 21 3. The PoC and the Bootstrapping Problem............................................................... 26 4. Reformulating the Principle of Credulity .............................................................. 31 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 39 viii Chapter 2: On Libertarianism as an Explanatory Hypothesis ........................................... 43 1. Appearances of Freedom ....................................................................................... 46 2. Four Readings of Appearance Claims ................................................................... 51 2.1 The Subjunctive Reading..................................................................................... 51 2.2 The Epistemic Reading ........................................................................................ 54 2.3 The Comparative Reading ................................................................................... 55 2.4 The Phenomenological Reading .......................................................................... 56 3. The Prima Facie Case for Libertarianism ............................................................. 61 3.1 Premise 1 ............................................................................................................. 63 3.2 Premise 2 ............................................................................................................. 63 3.3 Premise 3- Assessing Libertarian Alternatives .................................................... 68 4. Assessing Non-Libertarian Alternatives ................................................................ 76 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 81 Chapter 3: Indeterministic Intuitions and the Spinozan Strategy ..................................... 82 1. Setting the Stage .................................................................................................... 84 2. How Possibly Story 1: The Deductivist Account .................................................. 93 2.1 The Account ........................................................................................................ 93 2.2 Concerning the Folk Acceptance of (D2) ............................................................ 98 2.3 Objections to the use of IOEDs in the Deductivist Account ............................. 103 ix 3. How Possibly Story 2: The Probabilistic Account .............................................. 107 3.1 The Account ...................................................................................................... 107 3.2 Objections to the Probabilistic Account ............................................................ 110 4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 115 References ....................................................................................................................... 120 Appendix A: Thinking Reasonably about Indeterministic Choice Beliefs ..................... 132 1. The Spinozan Strategy and its Problems ............................................................
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