Flickers of Freedom

What can we do in a deterministic universe?

One of the most striking results coming out of experimental work on people's intuitions about determinism is that people think that a deterministic universe would be really, really, really different from the one we inhabit now. It's not just that it would be different in some subtle metaphysical or moral sense; it's that the whole relationship between people's minds and their actions would be deeply different. 

Adam Bear and I wanted to see if we could take research on this topic just one step further, so we tried asking whether people thought there were certain kinds of actions that just couldn't be performed at all if the universe were deterministic. For example, we all know of cases in which an agent was tempted to perform a particular action but then resisted that temptation and did something else instead. We wanted to know whether people thought it was even possible at all for an agent to behave in that way if the universe were deterministic. 

To explore this issue, we conducted a study in which each participant was given a description of a deterministic universe and then given a description of one behavior. The participant was then asked whether it would be possible to perform that one behavior in the deterministic universe. Since different participants received different behaviors, we could get a sense of whether the different behaviors led to different judgments. 

For each behavior, participants indicated their agreement with the claim that it was possible in a deterministic universe on a scale from 1 to 7. (In other words, the lower the number, the more people thought the behavior was impossible in a deterministic universe.)

Here are the results for a few of the behaviors: 

6.06 — Fall in love
5.81 — Have cravings for ice cream that cause them to buy this food
5.13 — Construct complex legal arguments
4.00 — Perform actions that go against the values that their parents taught them
3.69 — Think twice about doing something immoral
2.93 — Suddenly change their mind about what they were planning to do
2.86 — Have the willpower to resist an urge to eat a steak in front of them

In other words, people do think that many of the things we do in our ordinary lives would also be possible in a deterministic universe (constructing arguments, falling in love), but they also think that some of the things we do actually would not be possible if the universe were deterministic (resisting urges, changing our minds). 

Clearly, this result is open to a number of possible interpretations, but my sense is that it provides evidence that people regard indeterminism as an absolutely fundamental aspect of ordinary human action. Indeed, it is so fundamental that people think certain ordinary human actions would not even be possible at all if the universe were deterministic.

[If you'd like, you can take a look at our full paper, but please do feel free to comment even if you haven't read it.] 

Have a Slice of Determinism

"All philosophical problems are the result of ordinary words being wrenched out of their everyday contexts. For example, the word “determinism.” In everyday life, we frequently use the word: “have some determinism-flavored ice-cream”; “your necktie looks very determinism”; “have a slice of determinism.” These cases form a family. The word has no meaning beyond its uses."

A terrific bit of Wittgenstein satire by Joshua Landy over at Arcades. 

What Is Determinism?

I'm extremely honoured and pleased to be this month's Featured Author - thanks to Thomas for setting this up. I'm in the somewhat embarrassing position, though, of having to conduct my stint as Featured Author at a time at which I am not really thinking a great deal about free will or philosophy of action at all! - I'm currently embarked on an AHRC-funded project entitled 'Persons as Animals' which aims to look at ways in which various aspects of the philosophy of mind might be transformed if we were to take a bit more seriously the fact that we human beings are animals of a certain kind (rather than, say, computers, or brains, or souls). Agency is one of the strands of the project; the other two are cognition and perception. I'm currently working mainly on the perceptual strand and thinking about the sense of touch. But I know this won't be central to the interests of those on this blog - so for present purposes, I'm going to return to the free-will related questions I have been interested in most recently - which is the question how determinism should be defined for the purposes of those interested in the free will debate.

I am interested in the fact that the most frequently offered, currently accepted definitions of determinism are expressed by way of the concept of *entailment*. Here, for example, is a representative definition from John Fischer (I call it 'ED' for 'entailment definition'):

(ED) For any given time, a complete statement of the [nonrelational] facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time.

My question is: is this the right way to define determinism? I have begun to think that perhaps it is not. Entailment is essentially a relationship between propositions - whereas it seems to me that the expression of determinism might require a more properly metaphysical notion at its heart. AS an alternative to (ED), for example, we might consider:

(MD) The past (causally or physically) necessitates the future.

(ED) does not, I think, entail (MD). The quickest way to see why not is to consider what one would say about each thesis given a Ramsey-Lewis ('non-governing') conception of laws. Consider a world in which (ED) is true, but in which the laws are non-governing (where they are simply the things that figure as theorems or axioms in the deductive system that achieves the best combination of simplicity and strength). MD is not true in such a world. The laws are effectively mere descriptions of what generally happens in the 'just one little thing and then another' series of events that constitutes reality. There is no sense in which the past metaphysically necessitates the future - though (ED) remains true. This point is recognised, in effect, I think, by some prominent compatibilist thinkers - and indeed forms the basis of some of their compatibilist arguments. Beebee and Vihvelin, for instance, have both recognised this point rather clearly and have both suggested that this gives us a ready route to compatibilism about free will and determinism. Vihvelin, indeed, makes it clear at the outset of her recent book that she regards any embrace of a metaphysical style definition of determinism as confusing and misleading, insisting that “determinism should not be confused with the view of laws that has been called “the governing conception of laws”, “the pushy explainer view” and most commonly “the necessitarian view” (Vihvelin, p. 4).” It is easy, she says, to get confused, “because determinism is often formulated in a loose and misleading way, e.g. as the thesis that the facts about the past ‘metaphysically determine’ or ‘necessitate’ or ‘fix’ all future facts”. She recommends that these “loose ways of talking” be avoided. But my question is whether another response to the recognition might be preferable. For having recognised that the entailment definition can be satisfied when the metaphysical definition is not, ought we not to question whether the entailment definition really and truly captures what it was we thought we were worried about when we were worried, originally, about determinism? Does not the coming apart of the two definitions reveal, in fact, that the entailment definition is inadequate to capture the doctrine of determinism? That, in brief, is the line of thought on which I'd welcome your comments.

On a Freedom Requirement for Forgiveness

We have all forgiven someone before.  In fact, forgiveness can often serve as a key ingredient in our most cherished interpersonal relationships. Many of us who work on free will related topics have thought long and hard about questions concerning blame. Questions like: When is it appropriate to blame? Who should we blame? And, how much overt blame would be justified in any given scenario (among others)? What many have rarely analyzed are questions that arise after we move on from the blame game. For instance, when should we give up the attitudes that constitute blame (resentment, anger, etc.) for more favorable sentiments toward those who have wronged us? When should we forgive?

Forgiveness is confusing. How are we to understand the nature of forgiveness and how do we distinguish it from other related concepts? Peter Strawson once said, referring to forgiveness, that it was “a rather unfashionable subject in moral philosophy at present” (1962/2003 pp. 75). Whether or not this statement was true at that time is unclear. However, the statement, if written today would be false. Over the past 10 or 15 years the literature on the subject has been expanding. A quick glance at the bibliography of the SEP entry on forgiveness suggests that it is a topic at the head of much philosophical debate[1]. Given that there is so much controversy surrounding what the nature of forgiveness is I’ll try not to make sweeping claims about all understandings of the concept.  In this post I’d like to talk a bit about what forgiveness is and what many accounts seem to assume. My goal in discussing forgiveness here is to think about how we can differentiate it from similar concepts without invoking some sort of free will requirement. This may be harder than you think, but first a bit of background.

I started thinking about forgiveness a few years back while attending a ‘Social Psychology Research Group’ at the University of Calgary (2012). One of the graduate students in the Psych dept. was discussing her research about 3^rd party forgiveness. 3^rd party forgiveness comes about when someone wrongs someone you care about. So, let’s say your best friend is in a monogamous relationship and he gets cheated on by his spouse. 3^rd party forgiveness in this case would be when *you* cease to hold the transgression of your friends spouse against them. 2nd person forgiveness would be when your friend forgives his spouse for the cheating, and first person forgiveness is when your friend’s spouse forgives themselves for their wrongdoing. Notice though that just discussing forgiveness in this way already assumes a lot. First, consider how I describe 3^rd party forgiveness: “3^rd party forgiveness in this case would be when you cease to hold the transgression of your friends spouse against them”.  This is very contentious! Why? Well, if I was to simply forget about the cheating, then I would cease to hold the transgression against my friend’s spouse.  But forgetting is not proper forgiving . Forgiveness seems to require more than just forgetting. So, to distinguish forgetting from forgiving is crucial and this has been recognized in the literature.[2]  

So let’s think about some of the  best attempts to separate forgetting from forgiving and see if there is an underlying freedom requirement  that appropriates forgiveness(in one form or another).  Hopefully some of you will see the relevance to your own work on blame and moral responsibility. Let me summarize a couple of views and show how they may connect to free will. I’ll be following Nelkin here in her summary of some general positions.

Forgiveness seems to come about when a person thinks that another has done them wrong[3]. This seems to be a good starting place. So, if one fails to do what they should have, like stay faithful, it seems that we have a negative reaction to the wrongdoing.  Now that the wrong has been done we are left to figure out when we should forgive if ever. Here are 3 ways of thinking about it.

1.  The Overcoming of Resentment on Moral Grounds (see Bishop Butler and Jeffrie Murphy)

After we acknowledge the wrong that was done to us this account suggests that you appropriately forgive when you do so for moral reasons. Jeffry Murphy has suggested a couple: (i) When the offender has apologized; (ii) when the offender has suffered enough for their transgression;. So, and as Dana Nelkin has noted, the essential feature for this account boils down to “forgiveness is the forswearing of resentment for moral reasons”. Notice that a moral reason to forgive would help us distinguish it from simply forgetting. One of the ideas behind this view is to separate the act the agent performed from the current state of agent. Thus, if the agent sincerely apologizes for what they did it may be appropriate to forgive. I can think of a bunch of counterexamples to this view but I don’t want to focus on problems with these different views. Remember, my goal is to analyze these conceptions of forgiveness to see if there as underlying freedom requirement.

 

2. Nelkin’s Debt-Release Model

On this very intriguing model, Nelkin says “forgiveness is constituted (at least in part) by a special kind of release from a special kind obligation the offender has to the victim.  In typical cases, the obligation might be fulfilled by apology, sincere remorse, penance or related phenomena.  In forgiving, one ceases to hold the offense against the offender, and this in turn means releasing them from a special kind of personal obligation incurred as the result of committing the wrong against one.” (2013; pg. 175)

3. Hieronymi’s Uncompromising Model

Pamela Hieronymi has forwarded a rich account of forgiveness (2001). First, like Murphy, Hieronymi claims that resentment must fade away. And, like Murphy, this fading must be due to a change in judgment due to reasons stemming from an understanding of the forgiver. Thus, forgiveness is the overcoming of resentment. Second, unlike Murphy, Hieronymi claims that the forgiveness must be “uncompromising” in acknowledging that one should not be treated in the way one was. She posits this condition  Hieronymi’s view is different in that  she understands resentment as “a protest against a past action that persists as a present threat” (ibid, p. 546). For Hieronymi, the past action poses a  present threat if forgiven without this uncompromising feature because a past action that wronged you in a significant way that has not been atoned for, apologized for, or repudiated in some way makes a continuing claim that you can be treated in this way again and/or that such treatment is acceptable. This is why Hieronymi understands resentment as such. But, when a genuine apology has been given and one forgives the transgressor then and only then can the forgiveness be uncompromising. Now, she admits that there are cases where one who has not repent can be forgiven but such cases are not the norm. Thus, a genuine apology by the transgressor seems central to Hieronymi’s view.


Freedom and Forgivness

Admittedly, I have gone very, very fast here, but I assume this is okay in a blog format. So, let’s discuss why I think these accounts require freedom. I’ll discuss two separate but related worries:

First,  on Nelkin’s account, obligations play a key role. But, if we were to understand these obligations as agent-specific or related to OIC then we already have a worry (see here for the worry re: OIC). If one believes that OIC and also that determinism is true it seems that skeptics would have a hard time adopting this account. Tying forgiveness to obligations to others seems to implicitly tie forgiveness to a species of control that might be rejected by FW skeptics. Put differently, people are forgiven only if they either have done wrong, or, have done something that one thinks is wrong. But as I have suggested in earlier posts, there would be no basic-desert blameworthiness nor could there be wrongdoing (in the relevant sense) in a world void of free will. It would follow then that forgiveness would also be imperiled since forgiveness presupposes basic-desert blameworthiness and wrongdoing. That point aside, a related point arises concerning apologies, a central notion in accounts 1 and 3.  

Even if forgiveness proper must go there may be features of forgiveness that remain, for instance a genuine apology (Pereboom mentions this as well, see his 2014). If  we believed that the agent who wronged us^[4] couldn’t refrain from wronging us, then it would be hard to take his apology seriously, the apology could not be authentic. An apology consists in recognizing what one *should have done* but if one was determined to do the act, then it will not be true that one should not have done it. So, a genuine apology, an apology that results from the recognition of what one morally ought to have done, would not be tenable in a deterministic universe. Now, we could suppose that one might still see an act as bad regardless of the control that one had.And, one could apologize for this. However, it is not clear that such an apology would have the same meaning as a genuine apology, an apology that stems from the recognition that one should have done something else and one believed that one was capable of doing that other thing. This is so because the meaning behind a genuine apology is derived from the relation between the two parties involved. However, if one is forced to adopt the objective stance, then this reciprocal relationship might not be sustained.^[5] Also, from the point of view of the person forgiving, since all that remains would be these non-genuine or generic apologies, it would follow that such an apology would lose its force to hold relationships together. Consider what it would mean to receive a generic apology when compared to a genuine apology. It seems reasonable to understand an apology as entailing a belief or acknowledgement by the transgressor that oneshould not have done what one did, then we would have no reason to accept the apology. If one believes in hard incompatibilism and one is rational, then one cannot also have a true belief that what one did was wrong, or that one was obligated to refrain from performing the action. I don’t see how generic apologies could influence one to hold onto a relationship. ANyway, I pick on the fw skeptic only to show that they might not be able to accept certain understanding of forgivness because of their views re: control. This suggests that there is a control requirement for forgivness.

So there are 2 important questions to consider: 1^st,  what is forgivness? And, 2^nd when is it appropriate to forgive? The free will requirement might be implied in either question so thinking about forgiveness and it’s connection to freedom is complicated. A further wrinkle: are there different kinds of forgiveness? In a post a few years back (see here) I suggested two distinct kinds of forgiveness. Maybe one kind requires some implicit freedom requirement and the other does not?

Anyway, I’d like to hear what you all think.

---

[1] For an excellent (!) resource I suggest Brandon Warmke’s chronological bibliography on forgiveness. Here.

[2] In “Freedom and Forgiveness” (2013) Dana Nelkin points out a few flaws with some well-respected views on forgiveness, she also puts begins to lay the groundwork for her own view as well. She also discusses the importance of distinguishing forgetting from forgiving. Anyone interested in forgiveness should give her essay a read. Disclaimer: this piece is in the volume I edited in late 2013.

[3] It’s worth mentioning here that those of us who think that one cannot do morally wrong (or have a moral obligation given OIC) in a determined world (as I suggested that in the post and comment thread here) the concept of forgiveness already seems doomed.

[4] Again, I’m not sure we could hold this initial belief in the first place since we could not take ourselves to be “wronged” as this evaluation could not be true given hard incompatibilism.

[5] A discussion of Stephen Darwall’s second-personal reasons and how they are given up when the objective stance is adopted would be beneficial to help my case here (Darwall 2003).

Free Will Skepticism and 'Ought' Judgments

It appears that deontic judgments—judgments of moral obligation, moral right, and moral wrong—presuppose control; specifically, they presuppose one’s having free will. To see this consider an example:

Consider Leroy, a man paralyzed from the waist down, seemingly all alone, enjoying some sun at the edge of the lake in his wheelchair. He notices a young man drowning in the lake. Because of his condition it seems plausible to say that he is not obligated to jump in and save the drowning man. He is not obligated to do so because he cannot do so, he lacks the requisite control. If he had the ability and the opportunity to save him (he miraculously regained feeling in his legs minutes before the accident and he was in a position to save) we would say that he was obligated to save him. Therefore, it seems plausible to link obligations to abilities and opportunities^[1]. Thus we can follow Ish Haji in adopting a central principle OIC, as our control principle for moral obligation:

OIC: S ought to do A only if S can do A.

In this post I'd like to discuss issues surrounding the incompatibility of determinism and ought judgments[2], particularly from the free will skeptic's point of view. Free will skeptics claim that free will is incompatible with determinism. Many also conclude that moral responsibility, at least in the basic-desert sense, is incompatible with determinism because the control required to be morally responsible is imperiled by the truth of their skeptical position. But, one variety of skeptic (optimistic skeptics) claim that a robust sense of morality (among other things) remains intact. Thus, even a hard incompatibilist like Derk Pereboom becomes a compatibilist with regards to determinism (and indeterminism) and a robust moral system. Here’s a quote from Pereboom: “Morality, meaning, and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible....” (2001) Thus, judgments like "S ought not to have done A" can be endorsed by the skeptic while consistently embracing their FW and MR skepticism. So I ask you all, are you buying this? Can such judgments be true in the wake of free will skepticism? I’m not convinced. Given that Pereboom has taken this question on (again) in his new book (2014 OUP) I thought I'd focus on his response. But first, to get the conversation going consider this claim derived from the ought-implies-can principle (OIC):

If  S ought not do have done A, then S could have refrained from doing A.

Pereboom himself gets the sense that free will skeptics will have a difficult time denying this claim (see here). As Pereboom points out, compatibilists like Ish Haji (1998; 2012) and Dana Nelkin (2011) seem to have a similar sense. Thus, given that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise (for many at least) it also seems to threaten ‘ought’ judgments given that such judgments seem to entail an ability to do otherwise as well.

So, to save ‘ought’ judgments from determinism (and indeterminism) Pereboom (2014) follows C.D. Broad (1952) in separating different senses of ‘ought’. Pereboom focuses on a distinction between deliberative ‘ought’ claims which he calls the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand such as “Eduardo ought not hit his mother” on the one hand, and another sense of ‘ought’ which he dubs the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation such as “Lebron ought to win the lottery” on the other. This latter sense of ‘ought’ is not at odds with determinism because according to Pereboom it does not imply ‘can’ whereas the former ‘ought’, the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand does imply can. Pereboom concludes that if we had to settle for the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation our system of morality would still be robust, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. We could still endorse OIC if we understood the ‘ought’ invoked in OIC as the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation. Do you agree? Would it be a big deal to lose the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand? Is it legitimate to understand the ‘ought’ in OIC as the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation? I look forward to hearing what you all think. I have reservations about Pereboom’s attempt to save ‘ought’ claims, I’ll discuss a few.

First, it wouldn’t be fair to hold one to a standard of moral behavior that one could not satisfy; the ‘ought’ contained in the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation then seems to be the variety of ‘ought’ that is more akin to a hope or suggestion. If this is true then we have moved from agent demands to agent suggestions. Suggestions are rarely forceful from a second-person standpoint and are much less motivational than moral obligations (‘oughts’ of specific agent demands) because they do not carry an emotionally laden expectation. Consider the axiological recommendation that you donate 5 dollars upon entering the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. If you give 4 dollars (or nothing at all) you do nothing morally wrong, though you do something against the axiological recommendation. Whereas if you are morally obligated, (if you had a specific agential demand), to pay an entrance fee there seems to be a requirement that you pay the fee. These requirements generate and sustain expectations that you pay the fee. Failure to do so causes cries of foul play, or unfairness, and these cries seem warranted. Thus, to think that the axiological recommendation is more closely aligned with the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand rather than a hope, wish, or suggestion that one act a particular way seems misguided and thus we are not “saving” ‘ought’ claims at all we are replacing them with something very different. Axiological recommendations seem to have much less motivational force than ‘oughts’ of specific agent demand because these moral ‘oughts’ carry the burden of agential expectations. Such expectations tend to motivate at least some agents and to lose this expectation such agents would be morally justified in acting any way they choose in much the same way the museum goers at the Van Gough museum are justified in giving nothing at all if that’s what they decide.

Anyway, I have much more to say about this but I’d like to hear from you all first. To reiterate some of the questions I asked: How bad would it be if we had to give up ‘oughts’ of specific agent demand? Would an ethical system grounded on axiological recommendations diminish one’s sense of morality? Can one be obligated (fairly) to perform an action if one cannot perform that very act? Likewise, can one be obligated to refrain from doing act A, if one cannot refrain from doing act A?

Disclaimer: I raise these questions in chapter 2 of my diss, which I have not looked at in some time. I blogged about them in 2013 prior to the release of Pereboom's new book (see here). Admittedly, I moved pretty quickly (and a bit sloppy) in this post so if you need to ask clarificatory questions please do so. 

 

---

[1] Ish Haji (2002) and Chris Franklin (2012) have suggested that the ‘can’ in the ‘ought’ implies can principle refers to one’s abilities and one’s opportunities. This seems right to me.

[2] See Ish Haji’s 2012 for a carefully reasoned argument for a requirement of alternative possibilities for central moral concepts. 

Causation via criterial resetting

Interventionist/Manipulationist models of causation (e.g. Pearl, 2000; Woodward, 2003) are rooted in the intuition that if some event A causes some event B, then one should be able to manipulate A in some way and see corresponding changes in B after changing A. If A is modeled as causing B, then there should be an intervention on A (in at least some state of the model) that results in B changing its value. These kinds of models of causation basically describe what scientists already do to determine causal relationships among variables. Scientists have for centuries tried to control for all independent variables (Woodward calls this “screening off” the other variables besides A that likely partially cause B, by holding their values constant) save one, A, which they vary, in order to see the consequences or changes expressed by some outcome or dependent variable B. If B changes with an intervention on A, it is concluded that A causes B.

A counterfactual formulation of interventionism would be: "If A had not occurred, with all screened off variables that may cause B held constant, then B would not have occurred." A core point of criterial causation is that we need to enhance the interventionist account by saying : "If A had not occurred, with all screened off variables that may cause B held constant, **and with the parameters by which B evaluates its inputs also held constant**, then B would not have occurred."  

To sum up, standard interventionist models of causation carry out some intervention on A to determine what effects, if any, there might be on B (and other variables). If instead of manipulating A, or A’s output to B, however, we instead manipulate the criteria, parameters or conditions that B places its input (including on input from A), which must be satisfied before B changes or acts, then changes in B do not follow passively from changes in A as they would if A and B were, say, billiard balls. Inputs from A can be identical, but in one case B changes in response to A, and in another case it does not, depending on B's criteria for responding. This reparameterization of B is what neurons do when they change each other's synaptic weights, such that a neuron now responds optimally to different inputs than prior to the act of reparameterization or criterial resetting. Criterial causation emphasizes that what can vary is either outputs from A to other nodes (the traditional and I would say incomplete view of causation), or how inputs are decoded by receiving nodes B, B’, B’’ and so on. On this view, standard interventionist (hearkening all the way back to ‘Newtonian’ models of causation that emphasize energy transfer and conservation; e.g. P. Dowe’s views (1992)) are a special case where B places no particular conditions on input from A that have to be met before B changes state. But the brain, if anything, emphasizes causation via reparameterization of B, by, for example, rapidly changing synaptic weights on post-synaptic neurons. Let me emphasize that I do not think that Woodward or Pearl are wrong. But they also make no mention, as far as I can tell, that causation might partly depend on reparameterizations of B.

Changing the code or parameters or criteria that B uses to decode, interpret or respond to input is a manipulation that might make no apparent changes to A or any other variable in the system for long and uncertain spans of time, until just the right pattern of inputs comes along. For example, the Mossad might program a cellphone to explode only when a particular phone number, known 'only' to their target, is dialed. Manipulating ‘A’ here appears to have no effect on any dependent variable ‘B’ and might not, in principle, for as long as you like (think of a booby trap in a king's tomb set by the pharaoh’s builders that only kills archaeologists millennia later). It might take years to get this phone into the hands of their targeted Hamas leader. But when the bombmaker dials his ‘secret’ number to call his uncle in Paris, his head is blown off. This kind of reparameterization of B need not have immediate noticeable or measurable effects within the system, so seems to violate the assumption on the traditional view that causation is transferred at some fast speed (say the speed of light). But reparameterization of B is a causal intervention nonetheless, even though this subclass of causation has been relatively ignored so far.

I believe, however, that it was the ‘discovery’ of this class of causation by evolution that really led to the explosion of physical systems that we now call biological systems. Once causation by reparameterization came not only to involve conditions placed on physical parameters (e.g. molecular shape of a neurotransmitter before an ion channel would open in a cell membrane), but also conditions placed on informational parameters (fire iff the criteria for a face are met in the input) that were realized in physical parameters (fire iff the criteria on the simultaneity of spike inputs are met), we witnessed a further revolution in natural causation. This was the revolutionary emergence of mind and informational causation in the universe, as far as we know, uniquely on Earth, and perhaps for the first time in the history of the universe.

Criterial causation overcomes the luck argument against MR

In the previous post I considered an alternative to the Kane-Balaguer strategy of trying to ground  Libertarian free will (LFW) on undetermined torn decisions. Balaguer thinks that it is an open empirical question whether torn decisions are made in the brain in a way that is undetermined. I think my account of neural criterial causation, if correct about how the brain works, would give his theory just the sort of empirical account it needs to say that we are libertarian-free.

The Kane-Balaguer strategy of grounding LFW in undetermined torn decisions is vulnerable to the criticism that it fails to overcome the argument from luck according to which, if a critical moral choice goes one way versus another due to randomness (say amplification of quantum fluctuations to neural spike timing variability), then we cannot hold people responsible for the consequences that follow from that choice.

[Aside: For those who want a more precise understanding, the argument from luck runs as follows: “If decisions or actions occur indeterministically, such that two or more alternative decisions might be made at t, each with a non-zero probability, and everything is exactly the same in a world history until t, then there is nothing about the world or the decider prior to t that accounts for one decision being made over the other. Which gets chosen is just a matter of (perhaps weighted) chance, not a matter of agentic influence on specific outcomes. If one decision should turn out better or worse than another, well, that is just a matter of luck and not a matter of agentic choice. But if decisions and consequences are just a matter of luck, then the decider cannot be responsible for the decision made or for its consequences.” Note that if the argument from luck works at all, it works not only against libertarians, but against everyone, including compatibilists].

Note that for Kane and Balaguer the important indeterminacy happens at the moment of choice, not before it. This means that people cannot bias the chance outcome toward the morally superior choice with their wills because even if they could, their decision to bias one way versus the other would itself be subject to the argument from luck.

Neil Levy in ‘Hard Luck’ argues that FW is ruled out or precluded by luck, regardless of the truth of determinism or indeterminism, making him a hard incompatibilist like Pereboom, and a denier of FW. This entails a denial that anyone bears any MR whatsoever. According to Levy's theory, even though Hitler chose to systematically annihilate all Jews, he did so just by luck, whether because of inherited wicked character (constitutive luck, so not his fault), or because of present luck when deciding between options (so again, not his fault). As such, I find Levy’s denial of MR a profoundly nihilistic view of human beings, their choices and life.

[Aside: Actually, since Levy denies that information can be causal at all, because he accepts Kim’s exclusion argument, informational mental events such as willings cannot be causal either; FW and MR vanish along with the disappearance of mental causation. So FW and MR for Levy vanish in at least two ways, via luck and via the idea that all causation seeps down to lowest level of physical causation, leaving no room for mental events like willings to make any difference to physical outcomes. (Levy and I duked it out here in October last year, regarding mental causation and the exclusion argument: http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/2013/10/tse-and-levy-on-criterial-causation-and-the-exclusion-argument.html)]

Levy’s attack on LFW is rooted in the traditional failure, he says, of Libertarians to offer a contrastive account of choices (‘Hard Luck’, p. 43, p. 90). Consider van Inwagen’s (1983) potential thief pondering whether to steal from the church’s poor box. He is in a classic torn state before the decision is made. He is torn between the motive to have money, and the motive to honor a deathbed promise he made to his mother to live morally. Levy points out that Libertarians fail to offer any explanation why the thief decides to steal rather than not steal. It just happens. And had the decision, by chance, gone the other way, Libertarians could not explain why he refrained from stealing rather than stole. This allows Levy to say that (1) the character we start off with is a matter of (constitutive) luck, so we are not responsible for it or the choices, acts and consequences that follow because of the character that was ‘foisted’ on us, and (2) any so-called ‘self-forming act’ or choice comes down to (present) luck, so we are also not responsible for it or its consequences either. He calls this his ‘luck pincer.’ It is really just a variant of the logical regress against the possibility of ultimate responsibility summarized in my previous post. This was of course the regress that drove Kane and Balaguer and other proponents of LFW to rely on torn decisions in the first place. Because of luck, Levy says that torn decisions fail to afford MR, because all choices come down to constitutive luck, present luck, or both.

Note that in Kane's and Balaguers groundings of LFW in undetermined torn decisions, there is no higher governing basis for making a choice in a torn decision like van Inwagen’s thief’s; deciding to steal and then stealing the cash just happen. Had he decided not to steal, then not-stealing would have just happened. Levy’s point is that if things just happen--and this is almost a Buddhist perspective--there can be no blame.

The kind of Self-forming New Year’s resolution I considered in my last post would not be solely a matter of luck, because it would have to meet the integrity-enhancing criteria set in place by the agent. In contrast with Kane and Balaguer’s accounts of LFW, in the case of criterial decision-making, there is a higher, but non-determinative governing basis for making a choice. Yes, that the resolution ended up being ‘to be more honest this year’ rather than ‘to be less greedy this year’ was a matter of luck in the sense that the first proposal passed the threshold for adequate satisfaction of integrity-enhancing criteria first. But it is not an utterly random outcome, like choosing to steal the money or not, as in the thief’s torn decision, or choosing to help someone in need or go to the meeting, as in Kane’s businesswoman example of a torn decision. Under criterial causation the choice is not utterly random because it had to be an integrity-enhancing resolution. It is also not determined, breaking the chain of sufficient causes that underlies the ultimate responsibility-destroying regress, because a different integrity-enhancing resolution might have won out. The regress is broken by adding indeterminism. But the luck argument is broken by forcing any choice or action to meet criteria set by the agent. Kane's and Balaguer's accounts are vulnerable to the luck argument because there is no basis for choosing one way or another. And so one set of motives is randomly favored over the other. On my account, the integrity-enhancing criteria specified by the agent imply that whatever resolution ends up being chosen was willed and not simply a matter of luck because the decision or choice had to meet the agent's criteria. Yes there is randomness in terms of which resolution will win, but there is not randomness at the level of the basis for choosing one option over another, as in Kane and Balaguer's undetermined torn decisions.

Concerning type 1 LFW, we are *in part* responsible for our actions because we set these criteria versus others that we did not set. And we set these versus others because of the kind of agent who we are. We are not completely responsible, because we are not responsible for the particular way those criteria were met (say we chose this escape route versus another), because this was a matter of chance or luck. So we are responsible for choosing an escape route, though not fully responsible for the particularities of choosing this escape route versus others that we might have picked had it not proven adequate first.

Similarly, concerning type 2 LFW, we are in part responsible for our characters because we set these criteria for self-forming resolutions versus others that we did not set. And we set these versus others because of the kind of agent who we are. But we are not completely responsible for our characters, because the initial characters or capacities we inherited were a matter of constitutive luck, and the particular way in which criteria we set were met (say we chose to be more honest in 2015, rather than less greedy), was a matter of present luck. So we are responsible for choosing to make a New Year's resolution to improve our character, though not fully responsible for the particularities of choosing this character-forming resolution versus others that we might have picked had it not proven adequate first.

But even if we are only in part responsible for our actions and characters, criterial causation offers both a grounding for LFW and a degree of MR.

Possibility Arguments

Some compatibilists, when addressing the Consequence argument, whether van Inwagen’s original version or its later 'boxy' variants, have tried to counter this argument by claiming or implying that an agent could change the past, or the laws. Charles Hermes wrote in a comment yesterday that compatibilists do not mean that agents really could do so, but that they merely mean that alternatives could be entertained theoretically or hypothetically. I am glad to learn that, since I find the idea that I or anyone could actually change the laws or past preposterous. But to counter such arguments more decisively, let me post a few simple but rough ‘arguments from possibility’ and see how the community of logicians and philosophers here shoots holes in them, just for fun.

Possibility argument 1, that the past cannot be changed:

(1) The future at t1 includes all outcomes that are physically possible after t1 (and I don’t mean here, ‘imaginable’ as some possible worlds theorists seem to mean, I mean really physically possible in the sense that they might really happen). If determinism is the case, then there is only one real possibility, and if indeterminism is the case then there are more than one real possibilities.

(2) If we could change the past of t1, then such changes would have to be possible. Obviously, if changing the past were not possible, it would be impossible to do so.

(3) But if we could change the past of t1, then this possibility would have to be included among the possibilities that define the future of t1 because the future includes the set of all physical possibilities. So the possibility of changing the past of t1, and the changed past have to lie in the future of t1.

(4) But the (changed) past is not part of the future because it is in the past (unless we posit bizarre universes that repeat, where the past also lies in the future).

(5) Therefore no agent can change the past.

(6) Moreover the past cannot be changed and is fixed, unless we are willing to place the past in the future. This holds whether determinism or indeterminism is the case.

----------

Possibility argument 2, that the laws governing the future cannot be changed

(1) The laws govern everything that can happen, and therefore they govern everything that is possible now, which then specifies what is next possible and so on. This effectively fixes all possibilities given the initial conditions and the laws. If an agent could change the laws of Nature, then it would have to be possible to do so under the current laws of Nature.

(2) Consider the set of all possibilities P1 open at time T1 under the current laws L1. At some later time T2 let the laws change to the set L2. Consider the possibilities P2 now open at T2.

(3) P2 must be a subset of P1 because T2 is later than T1 in the same universe, and P1 included all possibilities open at T1 for all time after T1. Therefore P2 includes possibilities that are allowed under both L1 and L2. If L1 and L2 entailed different physical outcomes, the possibilities open to events would not be the same, and P2 could not be a subset of P1.

(4) But P2 must be a subset of P1, therefore L1 and L2 entail the same or at least consistent possibilities. But since natural laws that entail the same or consistent possible physical outcomes are equivalent, L1 and L2 are equivalent natural laws (e.g. they might be different formulations of quantum mechanics that make the same predictions).

(5) This has a deeper implication: Not only can an agent not change the laws, the laws for a given universe cannot change. This is because all possible futures are completely specified at the beginning of the universe by the initial conditions and the laws extant at the beginning of the universe.

----------

Possibility argument 3, that the laws governing the past cannot be changed:

(1) If changing the laws that hold in the past were possible, doing so would have to lie among the set of all events that are physically possible, namely among the set of possibilities that define the future.

(2) But the laws that governed the past lie in the past, not in the future, so changing them would entail a change in the future that alters the past. This would require backwards causation in time.

(3) Even if we want to argue that there can be backward causation in time, we have already shown that the past cannot be changed. Since the laws that governed the past are also in the past, they cannot be changed. So no agent can change the laws that governed the past.

(4) Moreover, the laws that governed the past cannot be changed in any other way, unless the past lies in the future, as would be the case in temporally cyclical universes.

----------

Possibility argument 4, that the laws governing the universe are everywhere the same

(1) Imagine the universe containing two regions R1 and R2 governed by laws L1 and L2, respectively, and let a particle cross from R1 to R2 at time T.

(2) The possibilities open to the particle after T have to be a subset of the possibilities that were open to the particle before T, since the set of all possibilities is specified in the beginning by the initial conditions and the laws.

(3) Following the argument above, L1 and L2 must be the same laws or variant equivalent formulations of the same laws.

(4) It follows from this, that the laws in a given universe are everywhere the same.

I will stop here and look forward to the ways I hope that people poke holes in these arguments (they are really all the same argument in different guises). If what I am saying holds water, then the laws that held at the beginning of the universe hold for all time and everywhere in that universe. (This in no way entails that there cannot be other universes with different initial conditions and laws). I can imagine that people might say that there might be metalaws that govern how L1 changes into L2 in a given universe, but in that case, I will just call these metalaws the root laws of Nature and argue that these hold everywhere and for all time, and cannot be changed.

If some variants of these possibility arguments hold, however, and sorry that they are stated so roughly, no agent can change the laws or the past, and at least that way of attacking the Consequence argument fails. And if compatibilists retort that they are merely talking about hypothetical changes to the laws or the past, but such changes are impossible in principle for our universe, then hypothesizing about changing them in our universe is pointless. The situation is not the same as an engineer pondering various possible loads on a bridge that really could occur, because if these sorts of arguments from possibility are correct, various possible laws or pasts could not really occur for any given universe. As I mentioned to Charles, we might need to make a distinction between real and unreal possibilities in our modal thinking. The former could really happen whereas the latter could not. If we split the traditional modal expression 'it is possible that' into two subtypes corresponding to the two types of possibility, namely 'it is real-possible that' versus 'it is unreal-possible that' (which may be equivalent to 'it is imaginable that') then we can avoid confusion. We would not so easily make deductions that move from statements about real to unreal or unreal to real possibilities.

Perhaps we need to distinguish between real and unreal possibilities. Perhaps we need to make clear the difference between a modal expression 'it is real-possible that' and a different modal expression 'it is unreal-possible that.' If we make this distinction, we could not so easily make deductions that move between real and unreal possibilities. - See more at: http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/2014/12/since-this-internet-caf%C3%A9-here-in-auckland-is-open-24-hours-i-will-take-the-opportunity-to-post-a-bit-more-before-getting-o.html#comments

Perhaps we need to distinguish between real and unreal possibilities. Perhaps we need to make clear the difference between a modal expression 'it is real-possible that' and a different modal expression 'it is unreal-possible that.' If we make this distinction, we could not so easily make deductions that move between real and unreal possibilities. - See more at: http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/2014/12/since-this-internet-caf%C3%A9-here-in-auckland-is-open-24-hours-i-will-take-the-opportunity-to-post-a-bit-more-before-getting-o.html#comments

But then again, I am not worried about the Consequence argument, because I think both type 1 and type 2 incompatibilist definitions of free will, as discussed in last week's post, are satisfied to a reasonable degree by the neural circuits underlying volition in the human brain. In a sense, you might say we have won the existential lottery because our brains appear to satisfy the necessary conditions required to have a Libertarian free will. Certainly evolution did not have to come up with a physical causal system that harnesses chance to fulfill its ends. And we in no way played a role in the evolution of the human brain that we inherited. But as some sage once said "Sometimes you are lucky and you just have to learn to accept it!"


 

Pereboom @ Science, Religion, & Culture

Gregg Caruso has put together a really nice symposium on Derk Pereboom's recent book Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life in the latest issue of Science, Religion, and Culture. The individual articles can be found below.  Please take a look and post your comments here!

 

Here are the links to the individual PDFs.

1. "Precis of Derk Pereboom's Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life" by Gregg D. Caruso
2. "Review of Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life by Derk Pereboom" by John Martin Fisher
3.  "Free Will Skepticism and Obligation Skepticism: Comments on Derk Pereboom's Free Will. Agency, and Meaning in Life" by Dana Kay Nelkin
4. "Responses to John Martin Fischer and Dana Nelkin" by Derk Pereboom

Thanks again to Gregg for putting this together!

The Consequence Argument?

What is the consequence argument? When you hear the name, what argument comes to mind? What is the conclusion, and what are the key premises?