Flickers of Freedom

The Holmes Trial: Some Concluding Remarks

So the curtain is drawn on the James Holmes theater massacre trial, and the final call on punishment is life without parole.  With the death penalty off the table, appeals won't be in the offing, so there can be no higher court ruling on the death penalty as applied to someone mentally ill, and I bet lawyers on both sides of the aisle (and the probably 4-5er Supreme Court on this) are relieved.

Let's recall how we got here.

 

Springing Forward!

As this cold month as guest author comes to a close, I wish to thank Thomas once again for the privilege of posting my thoughts about free will and responsibility on Flickers. I know I didn't exactly set the comment threads on fire, but I felt that examining basic questions about the shape of the concept of free will, the vexed present place (or lack of it) for free will in the law, the boundaries of possible free will positions, and whether free will zombies should be treated as a matter of practicality the same or differently in a libertarian world (as best established by present epistemic means) might urge people to reframe their perspectives in some new big picture ways. I thank those that did take the time to read my longish posts and at least hear me out (and for the various shares and tweets of some posts), and especially to those who did comment. That meant a lot, and bless your hearts for that, whether you think you deserve that or not.

If you wish to provide some more feedback--especially on my zombies paper--please post after my stint or send me an email. But above all please support the impressive queue of scholars in forthcoming months, beginning with Gregg. I'll see you in comments!

Free Will Zombies

Here're the first couple pages of a paper I presented at Manuel Vargas' excellent USF-hosted conference a year and a half ago; the rest may be found here.  But this is enough with a little exposition to make my case.

Back to Basics III--How Do I Love "Free"? Let Me Count The Ways

Here's a straightforward question:  how many positions are currently held on the nature of free will and moral responsibility?  Most would not (I'd think) reply with an actual number, but some variation on the metaphor of a cart of animal waste.  And what if I press further how many logically possible positions there are on this issue?  I think the clear answer to that is that they are not easily denumerable, especially given that in the future new positions will no doubt be carved out of the then-existing block of literature.  But aren't there conceptual limits on the types or kinds of positions available, so that while we can't answer the question about logical possibility with numbers of specific positions, we can with respect to the conceivable number of types or kinds of positions?  Well, anyway, I'm going to suggest that we take a very familiar framing of the free will problem--the dilemma of determinism--to achieve just that answer, by using it as a sort of conceptual management tool involving bivalent logic.

Back to Basics II--Free Will and the Law

Whatever the metaphysical status of free will, it has indisputably been the case that questions about free will have been taken seriously by western canons of law.  The English case of M'Naghten (variously spelled) in the mid-19th century solidified the traditional emphasis on mens rea (the guilty mind as sole determination of guilt) in terms of case precedent.  The ultimate influence of that case was on the axiological nature of intent (and in FW literature, the chief heirs to this are the quality of will/psychologically structural  views).  In the early 20th century many case precedents involving "irresistible impulse" (think Darrow's defense of Leopold and Loeb) began to introduce specific free will concerns that had at least implicit incompatibilist grounds.  Those latter concerns, along with M'Naghten, were ensconced in the American Law Institute's (ALI) comprehensive recommendations about statutory law (~1960) with respect to claims about exculpation from insanity, which were quickly and widely adopted in federal and many state jurisdictions, and each of which were usually asserted as necessary conditions for being held responsible.  M'Naghten was enshrined in one question to be put to judges or juries:  (1) Did the accused (who is already determined to have committed the act) have the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the act?  Irresistible impulse was also enshrined in a second question:  (2) Did the accused have the substantial capacity to conform to the requirements of the law?   (Please note that how these questions are rationally assessed is a further function of standards of evidence, ranging from preponderance to clear and convincing to proof beyond reasonable doubt, and there were/are jurisdictional differences here.)

Then came the case of John Hinckley in 1981-2.  He shot President Reagan and mortally wounded his press secretary James Brady (as just assessed in 2014 by his eventual death ruled as homicide), and was found via the ALI standards to be not guilty.

It did not take the country very long to react to the ALI influence in Hinckley's case.

Back to Basics 1--Freedom and Free will

Does freedom exist at all? (Note:  I will not address questions of responsibility.)   I think it would be near impossible to answer anything other than yes.  Circumstances of people possessing  what seem to be prima facie huge differences of political freedom, economic freedom, social freedom, and physical freedom (among others) attest to some basis for placing the semantic onus of the differential claims about these things on the overt common term "freedom" rather than some disguised alternative.  This result is metaphysically significant if true, for it says that the term "freedom" might underwrite some type of conceptual play with disparate personalities crowding the one metaphysical stage.  (I certainly stand to be corrected on that bold claim; maybe I'm naive and need more a more subtle account such as Ruth Millikan's "unicept".) This post will try to establish what entity freedom might be thus understood as a type of existing thing.

Since about 1990 I have subjected my intro students to an extended thought experiment whereby freedoms are stripped or diminished one-by-one, and which is re-run with different parameters  to expose what factors are involved in the destruction of  a particular type of freedom.  I will only sketch a backbone of the narrative to indicate how it works to support my overall metaphysical thesis.

You are a US college student walking to your car you are kidnapped by a helicopter which takes you on an extended trip.  In the copter you are of course trapped, and your freedoms (if any) are restricted only to movements inside its belly, and so your freedom (if any) is automatically reduced to a small physical freedom of movement within what free will you may have to determine that.  Any other potential freedoms are suspended until you are out of that situation.

Finally you are unceremoniously dumped out into Tiananmen Square.  Reflectively you realize that your political freedoms are nullified.  You are here illegally, and have neither a legitimate relationship to the Chinese government nor your own, since you have been placed here illegally and thus lack any effective status for citizenship with respect to any country.   Your law-determined relationship to any government has been severed, and so you are a person without a country and subject to the whims of treatment of any country you have been cast into.  And this is the People's Republic, with minimal regard for illegals.

 

Back to the Basics--Except for the Zombies

My deep gratitude to Thomas for his gracious invitation to blog for a month on Flickers.  I'm something of an oddity here--a senior but reputationally obscure philosopher whose free will publications are minor and few: one in Analysis back in 1990 and two in the presently dormant (though in its heyday in many ways ahead of its times) e-journal Sorites.  My most recent free will-related stuff is a series of reviews, most recently of Manuel Vargas's Building Better Beings and the late David Hodgson's Consciousness + Rationality = Free Will.  Much of my published work has been in the philosophy of time, and tends toward the empirical side of that issue.  (The forthcoming issue of Erkenntnis has one on special relativity and presentism, to blow what few horns are at my disposal.)

On the other hand I have many publications/presentations in pedagogy that refer to the free will debate.  That is because since the late 80s I have developed an introduction to philosophy that is entirely based on that issue.  That's right--an intro that starts on the first day about free will, and on the last day is still about free will.  My strategy as an intro is that introductory students need not just exposure to some hodgepodge of philosophical content, but real sustained work in the patient analysis of concepts that interconnect in grasping a very complex problem area, and all in an attempt to challenge their thinking skills.  I suppose lots of problems might be suitable for this approach, but free will had its hooks in me from the first time I tried it.  (I used identity in the first experimental iterations of the class; too dry for me and the students too.)

 

Passing the Torch!

It's once again that time of the month where I have to pass the torch from one Featured Author to the next. But before I do, I first want to thank Justin Caouette for doing a great job during January stirring the philosophical pot here at Flickers of Freedom.  Given that he was the first graduate student to do a stint as a Featured Author, I thought he did an outstanding job highlighting some of the issues that loom on the horizon for the next generation of philosophers working on free will, moral responsibility, and related issues. As someone with research interests in several of the issues Justin discussed, I especially enjoyed his posts.  So, please join me in thanking him for his time and energy. Also, join me in wishing him luck on the job market! If his time blogging here at Flickers is any indication, he'd be a delightful colleague to have around!

That said, I would now like to introduce this month's Featured Author--Professor V. Alan White. It's an honor having Alan as the Featured Author this month as he has been an active discussant over the years both here at Flickers and at Garden of Forking Paths before that. Because Alan has an especially good sense of humor, I will simply quote from the bio he has posted on his homepage:

I'm a full professor in the University of Wisconsin Colleges Philosophy Department. As such I teach freshman and sophomore level courses almost exclusively – the UWC, composed of 13 campuses across the state, is mainly a transfer-feeder institution for the other 13 baccalaureate campuses.  My department colleagues are among the very best I've ever met, anywhere, anytime. No, we won't ever do the Carus or Gifford lectures. Our teaching loads prohibit putting out many landmark books (though we've outpublished many of our baccalaureate sibling departments). When it comes to teaching at the more introductory levels, however, I would put us up against anyone.

As for me – I'm a pretty basic analytic philosopher, nontheist, (card-carrying) skeptic, materialist (of some sort– just a non-Cartesian most aptly), though also enchanted by poetry, music, and silliness of all varieties (particularly British, being an unremitting Anglophile). I have a somewhat unusual background in that I come from shall we say underprivileged Southern stock, was for a time an evangelical Christian (trained for the ministry in fact, and have an undergraduate degree in religion as well as philosophy), and received my philosophical training from a "jock school" (as someone at an APA put it).  My interests are mostly in the areas of analytical metaphysics and philosophy of science, but I suppose I intellectually (and attitudinally) align quite nicely with the "Canberra planners".

Given how fruitful and illuminating I have found Alan's contributions over the years in the discussion threads, it's a honor to finally have him posting some things of his own for us to mull over and discuss!  So, please join me in welcoming him to the show!

p.s. Here is the lineup that I have put together thus far for the remainder of 2015.  As always, there is more in the works!

2015:

March:             Gregg Caruso
April:                Susan Dwyer
May:                 Katrina Sifferd
June:                Thomas Nadelhoffer 
July:                 Helen Steward
August:             Sarah Paul
September:       Heidi Maibom
October:           Natalia Washington 

2016:

June/July:    Patricia Greenspan

As always, if you, or someone you know, might be interested in doing a stint as a Featured Author here at Flickers of Freedom, please let me know!