Subject: remarks on free will

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 15:14:53 -0500

From: Thomas w Clark <[email-masked]>

        Free will (the libertarian variety) to me seems drastically
implausible, given my naturalistic, materialist bias.  The compatibilist
alternatives seek to save some residual notion of free will but these
don't give people what they most want from it, namely the sense that we
are originative (and hence either deserving or culpable) agents.  We would
all be far better off, I think, if we abandoned the notion that there is
something special about human beings which sets them apart from nature and
endows them with the astonishing capacity to cause things without in turn being
caused.  There have been some good rebuttals to many points in Brian
Caplan's essay, and I offer the following remarks which I believe are 
relevant to the discussion thus far: 

1) Alan Eaton, whose comments I agree with, suggests that in evaluating
the plausibility of free will we might attempt to "rationalize" it with
science.  I don't think this is possible, and science wins: 

        As a follower of our social discourse related to free will,
especially in legal and criminal contexts, I've noticed that there is an
increasing tension between the scientist, who is interested in the genetic
and environmental determinants of an agent's choice, and the lay person
(e.g. a jury member or judge) who is interested in assigning moral
responsibility for an action.  There are two sets of motives and two
cognitive domains which support different views of the same phenomenon. 
The scientist explains the agent, his motives, and his acts as part of
the larger picture of environment and heredity, while the lay person
"explains" the acts by pointing to the agent.  As my scare quotes
indicate, what the lay person does isn't really explanation at all, but
simply a pointing out of where the acts arose. 
        For the purposes of assigning criminal responsibility, the
question of why the agent acted as he did is irrelevant as long as it can
be shown that he was sane, could "conform his conduct to the requirements
of the law," knew right from wrong, etc.  The lay person is rarely
interested in the genesis of the character and motive behind the crime. 
Why?  Because thorough explanations would tend to show that these, like
the crime itself, were a function of prior and current circumstances, in
which case they cannot be thought of as _originated_ by the agent. 
Although the lay person uses the language of explanation, so that it
_seems_ as if an explanation were being offered when responsibility is
assigned, this involves a highly selective (and hence highly dubious) use
of the concept of cause: the agent had the causal power to originate his
acts, but the antecedents to his character and motives are not credited
with the causal power to have produced the agent.  Amazing!  On this
rather common view, persons, unique in our universe, are somehow
self-created, are in some essential sense free from prior causal
influences. 
        The basic point, then, is that there are competing agendas in our
approach to human behavior (especially criminal behavior), one motivated
by developing an understanding of it, the other motivated by the natural
desire to assign credit and blame, praise and punishment.  They compete in
the sense that true (scientific) explanations undercut the ordinary
justification for retributive sanctions; and the successful assignment of
moral responsibility, at least in the traditional, libertarian sense of a
contra-causal capacity to have done otherwise, blocks scientific
explanation by separating the agent from his or her causal antecedents. 
        The question which fascinates me is whether these two agendas can
continue to coexist in our increasingly scientific age, or whether, as I
suspect, science will eventually expose the "explanatory" claim of
originative, moral responsibility to be the sham that it is.  If this
happens we will be forced to recognize that the retributive impulse cannot
be justified by holding the agent originatively responsible, in which case
how _do_ we justify it, if at all?  As a natural desire, I suppose, whose
expression we permit to the extent (a rather limited extent, I would
hope) that we deem wise or necessary.  I think that dropping the belief in
free will will reduce both the inclination to seek retribution and the
punitive excesses associated with it (capital punishment, for instance). 
Keep in mind that there are other perfectly sound rationales for imposing
sanctions for criminal wrongdoing: incapacitation, deterrence, and
rehabilitation.  The law will not lose its teeth.  For a current,
mainstream defense of this highly controversial position, see Robert
Wright's latest book "The Moral Animal," chapter 17. 

2) On self-regulation and the self:  

         Most people outside the philosophical community (and some within
it) suppose that they exist as mental agents independent of their
character, desires, habits, motives and dispositions, and that they can
choose these attributes "at will."  I suggest that there is no evidence,
empirical or introspective, that a person is something over and above, or
independent from, his or her attributes, character, capacities, etc.  If
we exist _as_ our motives and dispositions, then we need not posit an
internal agent who regulates behavior _in terms of_ those motives and
dispositions.  That is, behavior is regulated _by the motives and
dispositions themselves_, not by a separate supervisory agent.  And after
all, to posit such an agent is to invite an infinite regress .  At some
point, (and why not sooner than later?) the processes underlying
intelligent behavior must be self-regulating, which means there is
ultimately no free, monitoring agent "in charge." 
        I think the really crucial issue behind the free will debate is
the question of the self: what are we essentially?  Eventually we will
come to see (as did Hume, B. F. Skinner, Dennett, Derek Parfit, among many
others) that there is no internal regulator independent of desires and
behavior, nor, for that matter, any internal, mental witness to our
experience.  Such a realization, of course, is yet another demotion from
our once privileged status, and will complete the Copernican and Darwinian
revolutions by putting us securely within the natural realm. 

3) On "could have done otherwise":      

        In most situations the ability and opportunity for someone to do
otherwise are usually present, and it is just this (and only this) which
justifies our saying that a person could have done other than what he did. 
If someone had wanted to act in a different way, and had the capacity and
the opportunity to do so, he would have acted differently.  In crimes of
commission, this means the offender had the capacity and the opportunity
_not_ to commit the crime.  The crucial question then becomes, could the
offender have wanted or desired something other than what he did?  If
there is no self above character, motive and disposition, the question
might also be phrased "could the self have been other than what it was at
the time?"  In the case of _behaving_ otherwise we see that if the desire
had been other than it was, then certainly other sorts of behavior (e.g.,
refraining from a criminal act) were possible in most situations. 
        The case of _desiring_ otherwise is similar: if (and only if)
other conditions had been different, then a different desire may well have
arisen, i.e. the self would have been different.  We must assent to this,
unless we take the position that the self is independent of circumstances
and is alone responsible for its character, motives and dispositions.
(This position, I think, is where some feel forced to retreat in the
rather harsh light of what follows.) So yes, the person might have desired
otherwise, and therefore would have acted otherwise, _had conditions not
been what they were_.  But the converse is also true, that _given_ the
existing conditions, the self could not have been other than it was, and
so, even though he _could_ have done otherwise in the sense of having the
capacity to act otherwise, he never _does_ act otherwise.  Behavior, in
this analysis, is always linked to prior and existing conditions (which is
how the scientist sees it) and the "could have done otherwise" defense of
free will amounts simply to a point about what we mean by possibility;
its not a substantive rebuff to the reality of the causal embeddedness of
human desire and action. 
        I think the reason the "could have done otherwise" defense has
appeal is that many people _do_ suppose that motives are under the
contra-causal control of a separate regulating agent.  If we believe the
agent has originative responsibility for motive, then all we have to show
is that he could have done otherwise in the sense of ability and
opportunity.  This is usually not difficult, given that most situations
could be exploited differently by persons with different desires.  But
once we see that motives can't be chalked up to originative agents, then
this strategy for showing free will becomes useless.  The person is 
_embodied by_ desires and capacities, he creates neither.  (This shows, I 
think, why the question of the self is prior to the question of free will.)

4) On determinism and knowledge (adding a bit to what Brock Sides and 
William Adlam have posted):  

        We don't, as a matter of fact, freely _choose_ whether to believe
an argument or not, or choose to believe (or not) the evidence of our
senses.  Arguments and evidence are _compelling_, or they are not, and
indeed free will is not commonly thought to pla y a role in our evaluation
of empirical claims or matters of logic.  If it did then we'd be in bad
shape, since our assent would be a matter of uncaused whim, not the result
of argument or evidence.  All that matters in forming true and effective
beliefs is that we have our normal wits and senses about us, that the
causal effects of the world and the logical force of arguments impinge
upon us through normal channels and be processed by the standard,
pragmatically useful algorithms of our neural networks. 
 
        That we might, according to determinism, be _compelled_ via these
channels to believe in determinism doesn't undermine its truth or the
truth of other factual claims we come to believe.  Determinism is
self-consistent in that it can explain its appearance in our cognitive
economy as a fundamental and essential component.  It is the expectation
of causal regularity of the world (including ourselves in all respects)
which allows us to get by in it.  On the other hand, those who try to
account for their belief in free will would presumably say that they
freely chose it, not that they were persuaded by evidence and argument. 
This seems to me a dubious basis for any belief.

                                                        Tom Clark