Philosophy, Et Cetera: Choosing Freedom - Choosing Determinism

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Philosophy, et cetera

Providing the questions for all of life's answers.


Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Choosing Freedom - Choosing Determinism


Continuing on from my previous post about Free Will, I want to
more closely
examine the different conceptions of freedom which are on offer:
l (F1) X's action was not deterministically caused.
i.e. Holding everything constant (including X's mental states), X
could
nevertheless have done differently. Even if his beliefs, desires,
and reasoning
were exactly the same, a different decision may have resulted.
l (F2) X's action was caused by X's own desires, values,
etc.
i.e. X could have done differently if he had wanted to.
Let's examine these alternatives by way of an example:
Suppose I'm driving along the motorway, when the thought
crosses my mind
that I could swerve across the road and crash into the oncoming
traffic. I have
no reason to do such a thing (for I believe that doing so would
cause injury or
death, and I have a very strong desire to avoid injury or death).
But suppose
that, after going through the reasoning which surely should result
in my decision
not to swerve... suppose instead that I (inexplicably) decide to
swerve... I die
moments later.
Does that sound like a free action to you? I really don't think it is.
I would
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Philosophy, et cetera: Choosing Freedom - Choosing Determinism

actually feel much more free if I knew for sure that my actions
were reliably
caused by my beliefs and desires. I would feel much more free if,
in that given

scenario (i.e. given my current beliefs & desires) , it were truly


impossible for me
to kill myself (and possibly others) like that. The possibility that I
could go
through all the reasoning necessary to reach a good decision,
and yet have the
opposite decision spontaneously result... it sounds more like
some kind of mental
malfunction, than 'freedom'.
I think that sort of example demonstrates quite nicely the
advantage of F2 over
F1. I am free (according to F2) because I could have swerved if I
had wanted to.
But I didn't want to! Given the fact that I didn't want to, surely I
can only be
said to be free if my actions conform to my desires in a rational
manner. Surely I
am only free to the degree that my desires deterministically
influence my
behaviour. That is to say, surely I am truly free only if (given my
beliefs &
desires) it is ensured that I would not have swerved at that
moment.
Freedom requires that our actions be caused by our mental
states (beliefs,
desires, etc). Yet F1 seems to require that our actions be
uncaused (or, rather,
caused in some unpredictable, or "random" manner). The
indeterminate
causation required by F1 thus strikes me as being not freedom at
all, but rather,
an obstacle to freedom's realisation.
I think what the libertarian needs to do (if he wants to hold onto
a coherent
notion of freedom) is modify F1 to allow actions to result
determinately from our
mental states, whilst simply insisting that our mental states not
be externally
determined.
To clarify: the compatibalist (F2) merely requires that our desires
(etc) be the

proximate cause of our actions - but it's okay that our desires
were themselves
caused by preceding events that were outside of our control. In
contrast, the
libertarian (F1) would require that our mind be the ultimate
cause of our actions.
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Philosophy, et cetera: Choosing Freedom - Choosing Determinism

The mind itself - according to this view - must be somehow


uncaused
("transcendent", perhaps), and "free" from external influence.
Put like this, the libertarian view at least makes a bit more sense.
But it asks the
impossible. Our personalities don't come from nowhere... we are
hugely
influenced by both nature and nurture - our genes and
upbringing - both of which
are external to us, i.e. outside our control. If that makes us
unfree, then freedom
is an impossible ideal, which has never been attained.
Alternatively, we could choose F2 - a concept of freedom which is
fully consistent
with determinism, yet nevertheless provides a useful and
plausible account of
free action (i.e. action as a result of our mental states and
reasoning).
Update: see also Jason's excellent post, Evil Robots, which
shows how a
machine could have free will.
Posted by Richard Chappell at 12:07 AM
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Philosophy, et cetera
Providing the questions for all of life's answers.
Saturday, May 01, 2004

Free Will - mere semantic quibble?

Our metaphysics class is currently discussing 'free will'. There is


a sense in which
the entire controversy is about nothing more than what you
mean by the word
"could". Of course, any discussion depends on the meanings of
the words
involved. But in some cases, equivocation between two distinct
(but equally
valid) meanings of a word can cause confusion, leading people to
believe a deep
problem exists when this is not in fact the case. Rather like the
old (non-)puzzle
"does a tree falling in an empty forest make a sound?", discussed
in my Words &
Meanings post.
The basic incompatibalist argument can be expressed as follows:
1. X is free only if X could have done other than what he did
2. If determinism is true then X could not have done other than
what he did
3. Therefore, If determinism is true then X is not free.
Our lecturer then analysed Nielsen's compatibalist argument in
terms of a
counter-argument to the above, suggesting that Nielsen denies
premise 2. I
disagree - and what follows will explain why...
The idea of "could have done otherwise" is a crucial to our
concept of 'freedom',
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but the 'could' there can be interpreted in two different ways:


l Categorical 'could' - (F1) Holding everything constant (including
X's mental
states), X could nevertheless have done differently. Even if his
beliefs, desires,
and reasoning were exactly the same, a different decision may
have resulted.
l Hypothetical 'could' - (F2) If the circumstances had been
different, then X could
have done differently. The usual focus here is on X's mental
states, e.g. "X could

have done differently if he had wanted to".


Which version of 'could' does the incompatibalist intend?
Suppose we go with the 'categorical' version: then premise 2 of
the
incompatibalist's argument is trivially (tautologically) true.
Determinism simply
means that the state of the universe at time T precisely
determines its state at T
+1. There are no alternative possibilities to choose from, no
categorical 'coulds'.
This premise, a logical truth, cannot be attacked.
How about the 'hypothetical' option? Well, then premise 2 is
obviously false. If
the initial circumstances are different, then of course a different
situation can
deterministically result! This premise cannot be defended.
So either way, premise 2 is not worth arguing about. The real
disagreement is
about the meaning of 'free', about whether it requires a
categorical 'could', or
merely a hypothetical one. Clearly the incompatibalist intends his
use of 'could'
to be interpreted categorically (his assertion of premise 2 would
be idiotic
otherwise!). Given that premise 2 is thus a logical truth, any
counterargument
must instead attack the first premise. This is precisely what
compatibalists
(including Nielsen) do when they argue that freedom requires F2
rather than F1.
Put another way, it is a redefinition of freedom to mean "not
coerced", rather
than "not (deterministically) caused".
Note that F1 and F2 are both genuine concepts. The argument
seems to be
about little more than which concept should be called by the
word "freedom".
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Philosophy, et cetera: Free Will - mere semantic quibble?

That's all. Described like this, it's really no big deal. We could
always just make

up a second word to describe the other (say, "Shfreedom").


Words are arbitrary,
it's the concept that matters.
Is this whole debate really that trivial? Well, not exactly. After all,
we do use the
word 'freedom' a lot, so it's fairly important to be clear about
which concept we
are referring to. The really important question, then, is "which
concept (F1 or
F2) is most useful for our purposes (when using the word
'freedom')?"
That, I think, is what the free will debate is really all about.
Update: Kip Werking at The Garden of Forking Paths makes a
similar point.
Posted by Richard Chappell at 6:30 AM
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4 comments:

1.
AnonymousNov 3, 2004 05:10 PM
Wow. That's about the simplest breakdown I've read on all this
compatibilist vs incompatibilist nonsense. I like it.
I guess the question is whether hypothetical could (F2) is enough
to hold someone morally responsible for their actions... Well, at
least that's what I wonder coming from an incompatibilist bent.
I'd say societally yes, but that's really only from a pragmatic
standpoint. Ultimately? How can you blame someone for what
the
universe made them (do)?
Posted by Bob Eby
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Philosophy, et cetera: Free Will - mere semantic quibble?

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