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03/07/2015

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Lots of very interesting claims in here, Gregg! Just a quick thought:

Suppose you think there is some agentive experience, but it is not libertarian in character. And suppose you think claims about libertarian phenomenology out to be understood in terms of mistaken beliefs about our phenomenology - an inference from the lack of any experience of deterministic causation to the thought that such agentive experience as there is in deciding or acting must be indeterministic. Then what we'd need to explain is the faulty inference, and phenomenology would not be illusory (I tell a similar story about the role of conscious vision in action in a recent paper in Nous, and I'm tempted by the same story here).

Then things change a bit, right? Because then you have to wonder about the background beliefs that make the inference seem plausible, rather than talking about illusory phenomenology. I, for one, am not tempted at all by the inference (perhaps because my background beliefs are so thoroughly non-incompatibilist).

Gregg -

Great post! You've clearly articulated some great ideas. I've had the first inklings of similar ideas (in response to Nichols and others), but I did not have the philosophical competence to complete them and articulate them clearly!

Here are some further thoughts:

1. I'm not sure that we should limit the initial baptism to first person agency. Free will also seems involved heavily in third person attributions of freedom and responsibility. Fortunately, for the eliminativist, we know from the psychology literature that these are also filled with errors (if only because of publication bias!).

2. I've mentioned a host of different errors that, prima facie, implicate free will beliefs: the positive illusions, the illusion of control, the fundamental attribution theory, reactance, the just world phenomenon, system justification theory, anthropomorphic bias, etc. I would hesitate to limit the initial baptism in a way that prevented the eliminativist from invoking these other errors to justify his/her view.

3. As I recall, Nichols defends his theory of ambiguity in part by invoking political considerations. For example, we eliminated witches for political reasons - it was more just to kill the concept than to keep burning innocent women at the stake. Nichols draws on research about the bad consequence of eliminativism (e.g., it causes people to cheat) to suggest that we should adopt a preservationist view of free will, at least sometimes. (I apologize in advance if I'm misreading Nichols here.) The problem here is that 1. political considerations can cut both ways (eliminating free will might create benefits in policy, mercy, and justice that offset the problems) and 2. with my epistemic rationalist hat on, I'm not sure that political considerations should play any role in deciding whether X is true.

4. One thing that seems missing to me in this entire discussion is a discussion of common usage. It seems to me that the biggest factor - maybe the only factor - in fixing the meaning of a term is common usage. When most people say X means Y, then the dictionary authors say that X means Y. When most people stop saying that, then the dictionary authors change the definition of X (or delete it). I have trouble understanding how a big debate about the definition of free will can proceed without asking how most people use the term, much less marshaling evidence (such as survey evidence) about how people use the term. I suspect that, if we do this thoroughly, we would find that the term "free will" has a lot of vagueness, and is probably too vague to settle the big philosophical questions, even though compatibilists and eliminativists both make great points and insights about human nature, psychology, and responsibility - and I have always found the eliminativist points more interesting and attractive.

Josh, thanks for the comments. Yeah, my argument is predicated on a number of controversial assumptions--one of them being that the phenomenology is illusory. If you give that assumption up the argument definitely changes. I was trying to create a dilemma for those who share the same starting points as Shaun Nichols (and myself)--i.e., that the folk notion of free will is significantly in error and that the phenomenology of free will is illusory as well. While I think a good case could be made for both of these claims, I do not argue for them here. If these assumptions are mistaken, then of course the dilemma I propose could be avoided.

Since my next post will be about the phenomenology of free agency, perhaps I can take up your alternative reading then. Sorry for kicking the can to next week. That said, you may actually like what I have to say next week and your interpretation may have some traction.

Kip, many thanks for your comments and your kind words! Much appreciated. I agree with most of what you have to say so you won't get much disagreement from me. To comment on your third point, yes Shaun at the end of his paper makes a pragmatic case for the practical benefits of preserving the concept of free will and points to some potential dangers of free will eliminativism (although I believe he also says the evidence cuts both ways w/regard to the practical considerations). Since I am an optimistic skeptic à la Derk Pereboom, Bruce Waller, Thomas Nadelhoffer, etc. I don't find the practical argument for preservationism compelling. (I'll be posting about this toward the end of the month.) So I very much agree with you about (3).

As for your first point, I agree that turning to third part attributions of moral responsibility would not necessarily help the preservationist--in part, for the reasons you mention but also because of the great work Tamler Sommers has done on the cultural relativity of our moral responsibility practices.

Very interesting post--great overview of lots of issues here.

Isn't there one phenomenon of consciousness that is universal among self-conscious people across the cultural spectrum? That is, people can imagine logical possibilities. They imagine non-actual ones in the past in counterfactual thinking, but perhaps more relevantly they imagine contrasting and even contradictory logical possibilities in the local future that seem often relevant to their decisions and actions. Conceivability is a stock-in-trade for such propositions that appear to be somehow accessible to us as alternatives. But of course the metaphysical conclusion that alternative conceivable propositions are in fact accessible to us isn't warranted. The near-universal but erroneous conclusion that conceivability entails at least real dual-ability access to such alternatives certainly must be one strong route to the baptism of "free will", and independently of any questions about morality, responsibility, etc.

Alan, interesting proposal. So you're suggesting that the initial baptism was to our ability to conceive of alternative logical possibilities, is that correct? Is this a phenomenological feature of experience or are you conceiving of it as something different? For example, are you proposing that we experience ourselves as being capable of counterfactual thinking as well as conceiving of logically open possibilities, and it is this experience we have of such thinking that sets the reference of free will? It also sounds like you are saying that this "near-universal" phenomenon on consciousness is "erroneous." Would this, then, be helpful to the preservationist? (Remember we are also assuming that the indeterminist intuition is erroneous for the sake of this conversation.)

I agree with your arguments about what follows from the assumptions you share with Nichols, but as you know I don't share all of those assumptions. I think our ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning in our deliberations, coupled with our decisions following from our overall assessment of those considerations, coupled with our actions following consistently with and from those decisions, together with our sense that of the voluntary nature of the bulk of these processes, together with tacit knowledge based on induction from previous episodes of the same, and a host of related phenomenological aspects of agentive experience, form the phenomenological basis of our folk conception of agency and I agree with your argument that the phenomenological base here is the most intuitive referent in the original baptism of the concept. As you probably know, I don't think the mere putative fact of determinism is enough to justify illusionism, nor that there is enough error in this reference base to justify illusionism.

Rick, thanks for the comments. I agree that if the phenomenology of free agency included only the features you mentioned, which all sound very compaibilist-friendly, the assumption of determinism alone would not be enough to justify illusionism. But I think there is more to the phenomenology than you do. I also think there are aspects of our first-person experience of agency that are undermined, not by determinism, but by a proper understand of consciousness along with recent developments in the behavior, cognitive, and neurosciences. To go into detail here, however, we take me too far afield. As you pointed out, I'm running the argument on a set of shared assumptions with Nichols. I know from our conversations that you don't share these with me ;)

Hi Gregg--only a moment to respond. But my point is that anybody who concludes from the conceivability of something like future subjunctives of action that this entails an actual ability to engage in more than one possible course of action is mistaken. But most people of course will not realize that, and think such an entailment supports their belief in free will.

Ok Gregg I'm back, after watching Eddy Redmayne's doppelganger portrayal of Hawking on BlueRay tonight.

Conceivability may have some substantive metaphysical results if that constrains what we may be able to think about possible scenarios--Chalmers has put that in play for sure. But no one has suggested that the mere fact that we can conceive of various possible scenarios in the future implies that we have actual powers to enact any such scenarios--logical possibility or conceivability cannot entail that we have any given powers or abilities in the actual world. But people largely think that they have the power to influence the future--an open future--because they can conceive of it as such. The root of incompatibilist FW is planted in our imaginations, and people world-wide have great powers of imagination. But that fact has zero rational force for thinking that we have incompatibilist-open-futured FW, and constitutes a near-universal error in thinking that we do.

s it really true that we eliminated 'witch' because we happened to use a descriptivist amount of reference? Isn't it more plausible that because a causal-historical account would fail to preserve the properties of witches that was central to our implicit theory of witches (doing magic; being in league worth the devil), it just wasn't an option? You can see where this is going: at least if moral responsibility is a property that it matters to preserve, the historical account just isn't available.

(alternatively, were we to sever the connection between free will and moral responsibility - as Bruce Waller recommends - we get elimination of what you and I care about in any case. So far as I can tell, it would be crazy to try to use the causal historical view to vindicate moral responsibility; not, at least, on a basic desert account of the latter. You can't punish someone on the grounds that thought they don't instantiate properties that justify punishment, they instantiate properties that are in the same general region).

Neil, excellent points! I'm curious to hear from some preservationists to see how they respond.

I especially like your point that: "it would be crazy to try to use the causal historical view to vindicate moral responsibility; not, at least, on a basic desert account of the latter. You can't punish someone on the grounds that thought they don't instantiate properties that justify punishment, they instantiate properties that are in the same general region." It reminds me of those in the marriage equality debate that want to focus on what the concept "marriage" originally meant rather than address questions of justice and fairness. Who cares about the causal-historical account of marriage!? Shouldn't the question be about what is right and just--i.e., is it just to deny a group of people equal rights based on their sexual orientation? Perhaps this is a poor analogy but I think you get my point!

Alan, I'm wondering if you see your comments as helping the preservationist or the eliminativist? I don't see how a "near-universal error in thinking" is helpful to the preservationist. Can you apply your proposal to the argument at hand so I can better understand which way you think it cuts? I like to know the traps that lay ahead before I commit to anything.

Sure Gregg, I'll have a go at it.

While I think that cultural and historical and religious factors have variously contributed to the prevalence of L-like FW intuitions, I think my "false consequence argument" (FCA) is a ground-level account for why such a view percolated into thought in the first place, and will likely and stubbornly continue to contribute to its prominence in everyday life. But once we see that the FCA cannot provide justification for the existence of L-like FW, that realization undercuts a lot of what people are referring to when they claim they have it.

On the other hand, people obviously do have at least some control--even if only causally--over the future, and at least some of that control can be tied to better or worse reasons. Whether that is a better referent for "free will" than L-like FW I can't commit to--but I think it's an anchoring point for some compatibilist account of moral responsibility, though it's going to need to deal with Neil's luck arguments even there as a part of holding people responsible.

So I'm a (pragmatic) moral responsibility preservationist at least, but for me the jury is still out on FW eliminativism.

There's a reason people love "I Believe I Can Fly":

. . .There are miracles in life I must achieve
But first I know it starts inside of me,
If I can see it, then I can be it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it
I believe I can fly. . .

Well, at least they can, by merely thinking about it beforehand, dual-ably choose, if not to fly, to go out a door to the right *and* to the left, and to have been able to have done otherwise even after the fact of doing either. And they ain't thinking in particularly compatibilist ways here.

Thanks Alan that helps a lot. I don't disagree then with your FCA since it's perfectly consistent with eliminativism. While I am not committing to it, there is also no reason for me to reject it. It provides a plausible account of how we came to believe in L-like FW.

I also don't disagree when you say: "On the other hand, people obviously do have at least some control--even if only causally--over the future, and at least some of that control can be tied to better or worse reasons." Most free will skeptics would agree, they would just add that this is not enough to ground desert-based moral responsibility (though I know we would disagree on that latter point).

Going back to free will eliminativism, I'm glad to hear that you are open to the idea! Perhaps if we just eliminated the term free will, we could focus on things you seem to care about--degrees of control, autonomy, reasons responsiveness, etc.

Thanks for the comments Gregg. Just to be clear let me outline what I currently believe:

(i) Libertarianism is false. What I have dubbed FCA doesn't support its supposed indeterminism, and no other evidence has moved me to believe that it is a clear and stable position that yields the right form of control it claims to have *pace* many who are much sharper than I that disagree (and all whom I respect).

(ii) Largely because of (i) but also because of metaphysical/constitutive luck (thanks Neil) I do not support backward-looking accounts of buck-stopping, basic-desert responsibility.

(iii) While I am open to being convinced about eliminating FW as any kind of stable concept whether compatibilist or not, I'm inclined to think that there are grounds, at least some pragmatic grounds, for linking "free will" to some appropriate, wide-ranging cluster of psychological states and behaviors as a plausible referent. (I think Vargas' BBB makes as careful and convincing case for that as I've ever encountered.)

(iv) Even if eliminativism is true, pragmatism more generally supports identifying appropriate psychological states and behaviors as proper markers of responsibility in both attributive and accountable ways (I'm a big fan of Wolf and Watson here).

(v) I'm (some sort of) a moderate realist about values, but think that the role of values is far too often neglected as what really, deeply drives arguments about FW/MR, and even those that seem far afield from such issues.

Well at least you've prompted me to come out clearly where I stand generally! Thanks.

Alan, thanks for laying out your position so clearly! Given that you accept (ii) we may not be that far apart. Perhaps later in the month when I discuss the practical consequences of free will skepticism--including my optimism about life without free will and desert-based MR--you may come to disagree. But it sounds like we both embrace forward-looking accounts of MR, even if we reject basic desert MR.

As for this post, your (iii) is obviously the most relevant. Personally, I do not see how pragmatic considerations can settle the reference question, but since you're open to FW eliminativism perhaps I should stop while I am ahead ;)

//It reminds me of those in the marriage equality debate that want to focus on what the concept "marriage" originally meant rather than address questions of justice and fairness.//

I once got into a big debate about marriage equality, and one of my opponents suggested "If they just didn't call it 'marriage' I'd be fine with it."

//Perhaps if we just eliminated the term free will, we could focus on things you seem to care about--degrees of control, autonomy, reasons responsiveness, etc.//

Ahem.

Gregg, great post and thanks for the kind words about my work. One thing I should emphasize though: my work on cultural diversity was solely concerned with moral responsibility. I don't know if there's anything close to that kind of diversity on the question of free will, free action, voluntary action etc. I mention this because you don't seem to be using 'free will' as a placeholder for morally responsible action.

On a different note: would deep cross-cultural (and cross-historical) differences on 'free will' necessarily lead to eliminativism? (I didn't think so in my book). It could also lead to relativism or pluralism, right?

Tamler, thanks for your comments! I know your work is concerned with moral responsibility and not free will per se. That said, I reference your work at a point in the argument when moral responsibility practices are in fact relevant. A preservationist, for example, may try to avoid my dilemma by shifting their focus to more external reference-fixing properties, such as the cultural practices associated with punishment, reward, praise, and blame. More specifically, the preservationism may suggest that the original baptism (on a causal-historical account) is to some external set of moral responsibility practices. It's at this point that I think they would need to confront your excellent work on the cultural diversity of such practices. I was only appealing to your work in this limited way (which I think is a fair application of your work?).

I think your other point, however, about eliminativism vs. relativism is a fair one. If the preservationist adopts a causal historical account where the reference-fixing properties were to such cultural practices, they may end up facing the challenge of relativism rather than eliminativism. That's a fair enough point. Most preservationists, however, would probably find that conclusion equally unsatisfying. Hence, if preservationists want to avoid relativism and/or eliminativism, they need to provide an alternative account of how the initial baptism took place. (They would also need to address Neil's concerns above about adopting a causal-historical approach in the first place.)

I see, that makes sense. Yeah, trying to locate the original baptism of free will in anything relating to blame, praise, and punishment is a non-starter (even for the relativist). The connection between freedom and blame/punishment is tenuous in many of the cultures I talked about in the book.

Agreed!

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