Subject: Re: On Free Will 1/2

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 11:04:36 -0500

From: "Brock 'Not (P and not-P)' Sides" <[email-masked]>

Bryan Caplan <[email-masked]> writes >

>1. Free will, what

>At the outset, it is necessary to gt a clear understanding of what
>exactly "free will" is. A being has free will if given all other
>causal factors in the universe (genetic and environmental, physical and
>chemical are two popular current pairings) it nevertheless possesses the
>ability to choose more than one thing.

How about the following as a simplified version of the defintion of 'free will':
S has free will if and only if S has the ability to choose more than one thing.
I'm not sure what the significance of the phrase "given all other causal factors
in the universe" is in your definition, especially the word "other": other than
what? The agents own actions?

>It is
>the freedom of the mind from causal determination, not the freedom from
>physical constraints or threats of violence.

Here I think you have surreptitiously changed your definition, and also are 
going against standard philosophical usage. I believe that I, 
and most other human beings and 
probably many of the "higher" animals, have free will. But I remain agnostic on 
the question of universal causation, the doctrine that every event has a cause.
(The most popular interpretations of QM deny this, but I don't think that 
physics has come to an end any more than philosophy or history has.)

I do have the ability to choose between alternatives. I could have chosen to 
have a glass of water or milk, but instead I chose to have a nice cold beer.
But I do not think that this entails that this choice was not determined
by the laws of physics. I am what is known as a compatibilist: I hold that 
causal determination is compatible with the existence of beings with free will.

What you are arguing for is known as libertarian free will. (Not to be confused
with the political doctrine of libertarianism.) You, the libertarian, hold that 
there are certain mental events, choices, which are neither caused in the way 
that the movement of a billiard ball is caused (caused by previous events), but 
neither are they stochastic, in the way that the most popular interpretations of
contemporary physical theory hold that certain microphysical events, e.g. the 
decay of radioactive atoms, are. One might say that they are caused in a special
way, "agent causation", which differs from the ordinary sort of event causation.

We compatibilists see no conflict between universal causation and free will, 
or "the ability to do otherwise". Why not? Because attributions of ability,
such as "could have done otherwise", are context-dependent modal attributions:
to say that S could have done otherwise is to say that S's doing otherwise is 
compossible with certain givens. Which givens depends on the context. 

Let me illustrate with an example of David Lewis's. "Monkeys cannot speak
Finnish, for they lack the developed vocal cords human beings have, nor do 
they have sort of brain humans have, with a specific area devoted to
linguistic ability. But I'm a human, so I *can* speak Finnish. But don't 
take me to Helsinki to be your interpreter, because I can't speak Finnish!"

How can both these statements be true: "I can speak Finnish" and "I can't 
speak Finnish"? They are both true because they are uttered in different 
contexts. In the first context, the relevant givens are the fact that I have 
human vocal cords and a human brain. In the second context, the relevant 
givens are my education, which does not include any training in Finnish.

The same thing goes for the attribution of being able to do otherwise (free
will). When we take as given all a determinstic physics, we say that a person
could not have done otherwise. In a more loose context, we say that the 
person could have done otherwise. I, as a compatibilist, hold that 
attributions of free will presuppose a looser context than one which 
considers all the laws of physics.

What are the relevant givens for the attribution of free will? I'm not sure 
about that, and I'm not even sure that they can be specified. I do think
that, in general, whenever an action is brought about "in the appropriate
way" by ones beliefs and pro-attitudes (desires, feelings of obligation),
the action is free. Thus anything which has beliefs and desires, and whose 
actions are brought about by these beliefs and desires in the appropriate way,
has free will. (Specifying what "the appropriate way" is, I 
think, equivalent to specifying the relevant givens in attributing free will.)

[More on one of your objections to determinism in another post.]

Brock Sides
University of Rochester

---

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 11:05:12 -0500

Brian Caplan's arguments A, C, and D, do not support the existence
of libertarian free will (see my previous post, and please do not 
confuse this with libertarian political philosophy) any better than
they do the existence of compatibilist free will (my position).
So I can accept these arguments. Argument B, however, purports to 
establish that the non-existence of libertarian free will entails 
skepticism. I agree that entailing skepticism constitutes a 
reductio of a thesis, so this is an argument I must contend with.

>B. The Reductio Ad Absurdum to Skepticism

>If the content of my mind is 
>determined entirely on the level of micro-particles, how 
>would I ever double-check my views?

First, I think there is a subtle distinction to be made here. One 
question, irrelevant here, is whether the mental is reducible to,
merely supervenes upon, or is independent of, the microphysical.
(I personally hold the second position, but that is irrelevant.)

The relevant question is whether our mental states are causally 
necessitated by previous states, or whether they come into being
randomly, or whether they are brought about some third way. 
One could be both a determinist and a dualist: one might hold 
that mental states are causally determined by previous 
mental states, and are yet independent of the physical. 
(I don't know anyone who holds this, but it is a consistent 
position.) The libertarian must hold that mental states 
come into being in some third way, neither deterministic 
nor random. (I confess that I find this idea of a third way
absurd, but I won't press this.)

In answer to your rhetorical question, "How, if I am determined to 
believe that P, would I double-check my views?": perhaps I am determined
to double-check, or even triple- or quadruple-check my views. If so, 
I am among the epistemically fortunate. (And I do often double-check my 
views, especially in doing philosophy.)

> I would be 
>determined to believe them; and if arguments convinced 
>me, then they would be determined to convince me.  The crucial
>point is that my views -- correct and incorrect alike --
>would be the result of inexorable causal forces.
>And these forces determine people to error just as inexorably as
>they determine them to truth.  Of course, I might be 
>correct by coincidence.  But knowledge is _justified_ true 
>belief; and when we are pre-determined to believe 
>whatever we happen to believe no matter what, it is hard 
>to see what the justification of our beliefs is.  

Here is where I must balk at your premise. If we are determined 
to believe that P, then it is hard to see what our justification
for believing that P consists in. But its hard to see what 
justification of our beliefs consists in *anyway*: if this were 
not the case, then epistemologists would be out of business!
I do not see how an assumption or denial of libertarian free
will makes epistemology any easier or more difficult to do.

Perhaps I am determined to believe that P; but, if I am 
epistemically fortunate, I will be determined to justifiably
believe that P. As far as I can tell, there is no 
contradiction in this.

>Put succinctly, if we have knowledge we must accept beliefs 
>only because we understand them to be true; but if 
>determinism is correct, then we automatically accept 
>whatever beliefs that our constituent micro-particles 
>impose on us, since as Searle says, scientific explanation 
>works from the bottom up.  

Again, I must reiterate that determinism does not preclude 
dualism. But that is a minor quibble. The major quibble is 
this again: why couldn't we be determined not only to believe
truely, but to believe justifiably? 

>It might be the case that those 
>micro-particles coincidentally make me believe true 
>things, but the truth would not be the ultimate causal agent 
>acting upon me.  

I'm not sure what you mean by "ultimate causal agent", but what you
say here seems to contradict your libertarianism. Suppose that my 
justified belief that P were *caused* by the truth of P. Then, 
according to your libertarianism, I could not have believed otherwise, 
and thus the belief is not freely chosen. I personally don't think that 
our beliefs are freely chosen, nor do I think this keeps them from being
knowledge; but you imply that a belief not freely chosen cannot be 
justified.

But it seems quite clear that being causally connected with "the facts"
(in the appropriate way) is a necessary condition of a belief's being knowledge.
(At least for "empirical" or "a posteriori" beliefs.) This seems to be 
the lesson of the Gettier examples: My justified, true, belief that there
is a sheep in the field is not knowledge, for it is not connected in the 
appropriate way with the fact that there is a sheep in the field: I would
believe (justifiably, although not truely) that there is a sheep in the 
field even if there weren't one there. So it cannot be the case that our
beliefs must be freely chosen (in the libertarian sense) in order to 
be knowledge. 

It is your thesis, not the thesis of determinism, that leads to skepticism.
You hold that being uncaused by previous states is necessary for a belief
to be justified; but a belief cannot satisfy the elusive "Gettier clause"
without being causally related to the facts. If your thesis were correct,
then no belief could be justified and satisfy the Gettier clause: therefore
we have no knowledge. (I take this to be a reductio of your thesis that
libertarian free will is required for epistemic justification.)

Brock Sides
University of Rochester

P.S. If I may, I'd like to report on some non-philosophical news, and 
announce that I have just gotten engaged to Janet Coleman. We are to be 
married on Aug. 19 this year.

[Congrats, Brock!  -- Larry]