The “Earnestly Contending” apologetics conference is coming up very soon. I’ve been each of the last two years (in Washington, D.C. and San Diego) and highly recommend this meeting. This years meeting takes place November 20-22 in Providence, Rhode Island. Speakers include William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, Gary Habermas, Craig Evans, Darrell Bock, Michael Murry, Michael Rea, Charles Quarles, Greg Koukl, and others.
This is the ninth post in a series of summarizing and adding commentary to Philosopher Shaun Nichols’ Teaching Company lecture series Free Will and Determinism.
In the last couple of posts, we’ve looked at combatibilism. Incompatibilisim is the view that free will and determinism are inconsistent and incompatible. An incompatibilist who is a determinist is known as a “hard determinist.” William James (1842-1910) coined this term to be contrasted with “soft determinists,” or compatibilists. He despised compatibilism, calling it a “quagmire of evasion.”
Nowadays we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating… necessity… says that its real name is “freedom.”
Hard determinism concludes that free will does not exist. They believe that free will requires indeterminism and therefore is false. They are free will “skeptics.”
Nichols idetifies Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron D’Holbach (1723-1789) as the best example of a hard determinist from early modern philosophy. He was a naturalist and a self-described athiest. He argued that every action and every thought is determined by prior psychological or physical events. Humans are part of nature and mental activities are activities of the material brain. Since the mind is part of nature and determinism is true of nature, then determinism holds for the mind as well. Actions are caused by our motives which are weighed against each other. The chosen action is the one which best serves what we want. In turn, those wants or desires are products of the external world - free will is not a factor.
This hard determinism flows from D’Holbach’s atheistic, materialistic worldview. While I disagree with his worldview and his hard determinism, I appreciate the consistency with which he holds his views. I, too, find much of compatibilism to be a “quagmire of evasion.” There is at least some similarity in the Christianit Theism/Darwinism debate. I applaud those like Daniel Dennett who at least realize and make explicit the consequences of their physicalist views. If the physical and the material is all that there is, then determinism seems to be the only legitimate view of free will. Attempts at salvaging free will in a materialistic world are unconvincing. I highly recommend Angus Menuge’s excellent examination of this topic in his book Agents Under Fire.
This is the eighth post is a series summarizing and commenting on Shaun Nichols’ Teaching Company lecture series Free Will and Determinism.
In the last lecture, we discusses one objection to classical compatibilism, that is, that it does not distinguish between humans and hippos, or any other mammal. Princeton University philosopher, Harry Frankfurt (known for, among other things, his “Frankfurt Counterexamples”), argued that one important difference between humans and other mammals is the fact that humans can have desires about their desires. These “second-order desires” are complex mental states. Cats and dogs have first-order desires, but they probably can’t have anything like desires about their desires. I can have a desire not to have a desire for butter pecan ice cream. I can have a desire to acquire a desire for daily exercise. Or I can have a desire that my desire for exercise beat out my desire for ice cream. These second-order desires allow me to reflect on myself.
Frankfurt uses this concept to provide a novel account of free will. A person has free will if the first-order desire he wants to have is effective. Nichols uses as an example two drug addicts. One desires to continue to use the drug, but the other wants to stop using the drug. So, the first desires the drug and desires the desire for the drug. If he continues using the drug he is exercising free will. The second desires the drug, but he also desires to quit taking the drug. He exercises free will if he quits taking the drug. However, if his desire for the drug wins, his actions are not free. Therefore, to Frankfurt, a critical component of moral responsibility is whether one identifies with his action and the motives behind it.
Frankfurt’s account is compatible with determinism while avoiding some problems associated with classical compatibilism. Instead of seeing freedom as the ability to do what one wants (Frankfurt calls this freedom of action), freedom is the ability to do what one desires (free will). Still, this account is consistent with determinism since the reason you desire something may be determined.
So, hippos may have freedom of action, but not freedom of will since they cannot reflect on their desires. Frankfurt’s account escapes the problem of the locked-door mentioned in the previous post. The person in the room may not have had freedom of action, but he did have freedom of will (desire).
While Frankfurt’s compatibilism bypasses certain problem of classical compatibilism, it still has problems. For one thing, a person only has free will when he gets to have the will he wants. Whenever one acts on the basis of desires that he doesn’t want to have, he does not have free will. For example, suppose a man cheats on his wife despite his desire that he doesn’t cheat on his wife. Is he then not morally responsible, because he didn’t have free will. According to Frankfurt, he was not free in this action.
University of North Carolina philosopher, Susan Wolf, brings up the case of the brainwashed individual who gets manipulated into having the second-order desires they have. It seems that they are not free in those cases even though they are acting in accord with those desires.
Next, a look at “hard” determinism.
This is the seventh in a series of posts commenting on and summarizing Shaun Nichols’ Teaching Company lecture series, Free Will and Determinism.
We’ve taken a brief overview of various determinist and libertarian views, now we look at compatibilism. Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are perfectly consistent. One who holds that they conflict (such as myself) is an “incompatibilist.” According to Nichols, the first knwon compatibilist philosopher is the Stoic Chrysippus (c. 280-c. 206 B.C.). The Stoics embraced a deterministic picture of the universe, but still maintained personal responsibility. Our actions, although generated out of necessity, flow from our character or nature. Someone with a bad character may respond to a given situation in a bad way, while someone with a good character might respond to that same situation in a good way. The response, though, is determined by the character. There is no separate “self” which chooses an action. The action is deterministically generated from the totality of a person’s character, beliefs, and desires.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), David Hume (1711-1776), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), and other modern philsophers have embraced and elaborated on a view known as classical compatibilism. They argue two points, the first of which is that attempts to show that free will is inconsistent with determinism are confused or mistaken. I find the arguments for this point quite unconvincing. For example, Hume attempts to show that people at times speak as though they accept free will and at other times speak as though they believe in determinism. He argued that since everyone accepts both determinism and free will, then they must be consistent. This conclusion certainly does not follow from the premises. A somewhat stronger argument is that the incompatibilist view is backwards. We should not hold people responsible for something unless it flowed from their character. Hume states that if an action doesn’t come…
from some cause in the character and disposition of the person… [that action can't]
redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil.
This principle is at least partially illustrated in the fact that we punish someone more severely for a premeditated harmful act (one which flows from one’s character) than for an act which is out of character for that person. I’m not especially convinced by this argument since it seems perfectly reasonable to hold someone responsible for that which freely comes from their will, whether in or out of character. As a matter of fact, we still punish those who commit crimes of passion.
The second point offered by classical compatibilists is that free will doesn’t conflict with determinism when we really understand what free will is. Hobbes thought of choosing like placing weights on a scale. The reasons for and against choosing an action are weighed. When the scale tips, the decision is made. This weighing process, so it is said, is perfectly compatible with determinism.
Free will, according to classical compatibilists, has nothing to do with indeterminism, but with the absence of external restraints on one’s behavior. An action is free if a person could have done otherwise if he had so desired. I’m free if I get to do what I want. It doesn’t matter that my desires were causally determined by factors outside my control. Hume said that this freedom was possessed by…
… everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains.
There are a number of objections to classical compatibilism. First, some claim it doesn’t distinguish between human persons and any other animals. Dogs, for example, are able to carry out desires without constraint. Does this bring with it moral responsibility. What is it that brings out moral responsibility, if not?
On the classical compatibilist account, there appear to be actions that weren’t free when, in fact, it really was. For compatibilist an action counts as free if the person could have done something else if he had so desired. What about the person who decides to stay in a room, not knowing that it was locked from the outside. He could not have acted otherwise even if he had so desired.
Similarly, what if a person is forced to act in a certain way which he also desires to do. He acted in accord with his desires, so how is it that we view his freedom as compromised and therefore subject to lessened freedom and responsibility?
Next, a continued look at compatibilism.
This is the sixth post in a series of commentary on and summary of Shaun Nichols’ Teaching Company course, Free Will and Determinism.
Even if determinism were false, free will is still not established. Something more is required. The most common response to this problem is the theory of agent causation. Agent causation was implicit in the views of the libertarians of ancient and medieval philosophy, but becomes explicit later on. Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), was one who made it explicit by recognizing that a person, not some set of character traits or convictions, causes the decision.
Reid viewed the self as a soul, an immaterial substance. Against those who suggested that the self was simply a collection of one’s thoughts, memories, and feelings, Reid replied:
I am not thought, I am not action, I am not feeling; I am something that thinks, and acts, and suffers.
He is not identical to his psychological states, rather, they belong to him. Although the soul can be difficult to characterize, Reid argued that the soul is the seat of our consciousness and it totally different from the physical substances studied by science. I am a non-physical soul, the agent that causes the choice. Hence… agent causation. One strong indication that this view is correct, according to Reid, is that this view is not some technical notion devised by a philosopher, but is universal and early emerging. He states that we acquire this belief so early that we have no memory of when or how we acquired it.
Charles Arthur Campbell (1897-1974) defended this view in his book On Selfhood and Godhood. “Free will” can be understood in a number of different ways. Campbell identified it as the kind of freedom that is required for moral responsibility. For this kind of free will, he argued that the notion of free will applies only to internal acts or choices and not to external consequences. The person must be the “sole cause” of the choice. Some people may be born with certain propensities. They are not responsible for those propensities, only for how they respond to that propensity. For Campbell, a person only exercises free will if he could have chosen otherwise, a principle known as the Principle of Alternative Possibilities.
Campbell further asserts that we do actually have free will. We know this, first of all, because we experience our decisions as internal. He states:
When we decide to exert moral effort to resist a temptation, we feel quite certain that we could withhold the effort.
He also suggests that experience shows me that I am the sole cause of my decisions. It seems that many times I have successfully overcome my strongest impulses. Thomas Reid maintains that without the experience we have of causing our decisions we could not even have the idea of causation. The very notion of the causation on which determinism rests is itself grounded in our experience of libertarian free will.
The major objection to this type of free will is that it is mysterious from a scientific point of view. Consideration of this objection is related to a consideration of physicalism vs. dualism, which is far too complex to address here (although I have in other posts). Because many have embraced scientism (the belief that only science can give us true knowledge about the world), an immaterial self which is beyond the reach of science is unintelligible.
I think the common sense arguments of Campbell and Reid are strong. By simply reflecting on our own choices, we become aware of a “self,” and agent which causes our particular actions.
This is part 5 of a series of commentary on and summary of Shaun Nichols’ Teaching Company course, Free Will and Determinism. Dr. Nichols received a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers. He is now at the University of Arizona.
In the last three posts, we’ve looked at various forms of determinism. Today, we look at the earliest manifestations of libertarianism (again, not to be confused with the similarly named political philosophy) in ancient and medieval philosophy. Libertarianism holds that we do actually have free will and that this requires that determinism is false. Indeterminism is required.
The Epicureans were the earliest philosophers to react against determinism. Epicurus (c. 341-270 B.C.) was a naturalist and accepted much of the atomistic view of the universe. He stated:
We rebuke, oppose, and reform one another on the assumption that we have the cause in ourselves also, not merely in our initial constitution and in the random necessity of things that surround… us.
Lucretius (c. 94-55 B.C.) was a later Epicurean who argued that determinism must be false because it precludes free will. He argued that free will is possible because the atoms don’t all do the same thing all the time:
The mind itself has no internal necessity in all it does (because of) the tiny swerve of the elements, at no fixed place and at no fixed time.
The atoms just inexplicably swerve at certain times. The problem with this explanation is that if it is just a swerve in atoms which affects our decisions, it doesn’t seem to be free will proceeding from a person’s character, but simply randomness.
Alexander of Aphrodisias (late 2nd century A.D.) rejected determinism:
We have this power in actions, that we can choose the opposite.
He argues for indeterminism by noting that if determinism is true, deliberation is futile. It is absurd to deliberate about a decision when that decision is already determined beforehand. Similarly, we do not deliberate about what we have done in the past. His argument is similar to the Lazy Argument we have already mentioned. Alexander also argued that it is only because we could have acted otherwise that we ever fell regret for our actions.
Medieval philosophers developed other arguments against determinism. Jean Buridan (1300-1358) suggested a thought experiment (known as Buridan’s ass) in which a hungry donkey is equally far from two equally appealing piles of hay. With no basis for choosing, the donkey would starve to death. Other medieval philosophers such as Peter Olivi (1248-1298) and Duns Scotus (1266-1308) used this thought experiment to offer an argument based on the Liberty of Indifference. Nichols sums up the argument this way:
They argue that we need free will to break these ties. If we were faced with two equally appealing apples, we wouldn’t be frozen in indecision. The free will to decide between equally attractive alternatives is the Liberty of Indifference.
Many have objected to this argument by claiming that few if any free choices are like this example. Some argue that free will is not needed in such a case. A coin flip will do. David Hume (1711-1776) argued that the Liberty of Indifference is absurd since it is equivalent to chance or randomness. Determinists also maintained that a perfectly balanced option is impossible.
Next, we’ll continue to look at indeterminism through an examination of agent causation.
Mark Hemingway offers a review of Bill Maher’s Religulous. Maher openly admits to a distate for all things religous (especially organized religion).
Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher offers this humorous approach to exploring the rights and wrongs of tax cuts across the board. Someone else brought this to his attention. I simply reproduce it in its entirety here:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all
ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.’ Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six! is $3. 33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I got’ ‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Richard John Neuhaus, of First Things, has a piece called At Long Last: Obama, Abortion, and the Courts. He rightly notes that one of the most significant ramifications of this election may involve the Supreme Court. The following is an excerpt from his commentary on the abortion stance of presidential candidate Barack Obama:
As abortion extremists put it, the woman has a right to a dead baby. Obama apparently agrees, even saying that it is a constitutional right. In this he goes farther than almost any reputable constitutional scholar, claiming that the abortion license is covered by a right to “privacy” that is found not only in the “penumbra and emanations” of the Constitution but in the Constitution itself.
This, together with his adamant support for the government funding of abortion and for the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate all state regulation of abortion–including waiting periods, parental notification, and other very modest measures–leaves no doubt that Senator Obama is on the farthest edge of abortion extremism. And it highlights what is arguably the most important single issue in this election: Who, as president, will get to nominate the next one, or two, or three, justices to the Supreme Court.
