Why Should Compatibilists Care About Being Causa Sui?

Why Should Compatibilists Care About Being Causa-Sui?

In The Transfer of Non-Responsibility, John Fischer criticizes a principle that may be essential to incompatibilism. One can find something like this principle, which Fischer calls the Transfer of Non-Responsibility (TNR), in Van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument, Manuel Vargas’s work on “tracing,” Derk Pereboom’s four-step argument (which traces antecedent factors back to those beyond an agent’s control), and Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument.  Fischer notes that Thomas Nagel’s view in Moral Luck relies upon something like the Transfer of Non-Responsibility.  Likewise, Robert Kane built something like TNR into his definition of Ultimate Responsibility—although I think he altered it sufficiently so that it does not defeat his libertarian project.

Most of this work involves the compatibility question.  But there are exceptions.  Strawson’s Basic Argument, for example, is silent about determinism.  This is so because it includes the notion, not that moral responsibility requires determinism (Hume’s argument), but rather that indeterminism cannot help.  One can combine this notion with the Consequence Argument or the four-step argument (while denying that agent-causation can help or denying that it is actual) to see that TNR lies at the heart of this ancient dispute about free will.

I’m not sure I entirely understand Fischer’s paper, but he seems content to show that TNR fails in at least some cases, such as Erosion (does he also agree that TNR succeeds in other cases, such as Snake Bite?).  This allows him to show that the proponents of TNR have failed to established incompatibilism—and that the world remains safe for semi-compatibilism.

To keep this post short, I will not paste the Snake Bite and Erosion examples here (one can find them in Fischer’s paper).  Suffice it to say that Erosion attacks TNR in the same way that Frankfurt Examples attack the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: by considering cases of overdetermination and appealing to folk or unexamined notions of moral responsibility.

While grappling with these issues, Fischer suggests that Saul Smilansky’s view may provide some insight: “One possibility is that there are significant problems for both compatibilism and incompatibilism, as Saul Smilansky has recently contended.”  As one whose sympathies lie more with free will skeptics and hard compatibilists such as Honderich, Strawson, and Smilansky, I want to argue that Fischer’s intuition here is correct and suggest why.

My reaction to Erosion is not unlike Kane’s reaction to Frankfurt examples: Erosion seems to me to rely upon intuitions that the skeptic does not have and cannot be expected to have.  Fischer’s argument relies upon the claim that Betty is “(intuitively) morally responsible for bringing it about that there is an avalanche that crushes the enemy base.”  But neither Pereboom, Strawson, nor myself (and, in at least one sense, neither Honderich nor Smilansky) would say that Betty is morally responsible here.  Our point is not so much that Betty, the agent in Erosion, must not be morally responsible for her actions—skeptics do not have a monopoly on the definition of moral responsibility—but rather that if TNR does not establish her innocence in Erosion, it does no work in Snake Bite either (or in the other examples cited to support TNR).

The problem is that concerns about (what Honderich calls) origination and (what Strawson and Smilansky call) being-causa-sui are as problematic in cases which involve overdetermination as they are in those which do not (“single-path” cases).  Betty is just as much not-causa-sui in Erosion as she would be without overdetermination.  The same is true of Frankfurt Examples, and this helps explain why they have failed to persuade incompatibilists.

Furthermore, it is not the case that concerns about origination or being-causa-sui are unrelated to concerns about TNR.  Rather, these worries about “ultimacy” are intimately related to that principle.  For example, TNR is built into Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of free will.  By applying TNR, one traces back antecedent factors until one reaches what Saul Smilansky calls “the given.”  It is this discovery of the given that forces one to realize that people cannot be causa-sui.  So, to ignore concerns about origination or being-causa-sui is to ignore at least one reason for the importance of TNR. 

At this point, however, we are in danger of reaching what Fischer calls a “Dialectical Stalemate.”  The problem seems to be, not that one side is mistakenly applying the definition of moral responsibility but rather, that there is no such one definition.  Some potential definitions demand origination while others do not.  If skeptics can consider Erosion and declare Betty innocent while semi-compatibilists declare her guilty, how can one side persuade the other to use their definition?  More precisely, why should compatibilists care about being-causa-sui?

Gardeners: What is your reaction to Erosion?  And why should being-causa-sui be relevant to morally responsibility?  Or, if being-causa-sui is irrelevant to moral responsibility, why is it irrelevant?

Comments

[Robert Allen]

It is utterly foolish to base free will skepticism on the the fact that we did not create ourselves. A person cannot create, only develop, himself. There is God, who is eternal, and the rest of us, who were created by Him. Philosophers such as Ted Honderich and Galen Strawson are rejecting the idea of free will because they (and others) did not do the impossible. Surely this is setting the bar way too high. What really matters here is the role played by one's Creator in the development of one's character. Is He its orchestrator? Or is one capable of subverting His will in forming values and beliefs?

[Rob]

It's not so foolish, Robert, if you accept -- along the general lines of Wegner, Galen Strawson (particularly, in his essay "The Bounds of Freedom" and in his first book "Freedom and Belief," Spinoza, and Nietzsche (particularly, BGE 19) -- that self-causation is powerfully implicated in the phenomenology of agency. It seems to me that the only way for compatibilists to counter this form of incompatibilism is to somehow refute the claim that self-causation is powerfully implicated in the phenomenology of agency by undermining the explanations -- such as Wegner's theory of apparent mental causation -- offered for it. Thus, I would very much like to see some sort of mediation attempted between this sort of scientific-psychology-supported incompatibilism and the (compatibilism-inspired?) folk-intuition-researches of Nahmias and Company.

[Saul Smilansky]

I think that we all should care about being Causa Sui. I also think that it is impossible. So, this means that I think that we should care about being the impossible. That sounds rediculous, but is crucial, in my view, in understanding the free will problem.

A clarification, and then an attempt at a quick defense - the slow defense can be found in my book FREE WILL AND ILLUSION (OUP 2000) and various papers. First, those (like Galen Strawson and myself) who care about being Causa Sui (CS) actually care about our not being CS. If you believe that being CS is impossible, than you don't want that in one sense, but you do (it makes sense to) in another sense. That's the sense of being sorry that you cannot have all the good things that the fantasy of being CS (the more refined idea of libertarian free will) was supposed to give us. In other words, the world without the possibility of being CS turns out to be a MUCH worse place than we thought it is, when we thought we had libertarian free will. That's one of the reasons why I think that we need illusion, but that's a different story.

What would being CS give us, if we could have it (had it made sense and been the case)? For example, there are millions of people in prison because of bad things they did. There is room for improvement, but we shall keep putting people in prison. If we had LFW, there is a deep sense in which the world would be a much fairer and more just place, for those people in prison would deserve to be there in a deep sense. In a deterministic world, or in a world without LFW even if it isn't fully deterministic, the person's doing the bad thing that landed him or her in prison was ultimately not up to him or her, but was merely an unfoldong of the given.

(BTW, I do believe that we can still make sense of a limited sense of compatibilist desert, unlike Galen Strawson and other hard determinisits, but that sense is still much shallower then what LFW would give us, if it could and did exist. That's why I am a "dualist" on the compatibility question, trying to combine the insights of both compatibilism and hard determinism. So, making a case for the great importance of Causa Sui does not mean that it is the ONLY thing that matters in the free will problem.)

A simialr sort of argument applies to a sense of deep acheivement. If you do what you do - however heroic - because of who you are, and you are ultimately not responsible for who you are, then any self-respect and pride you gain is necessarily shallower than the LFW fantasy promised. Likewise for the appreciation of others, and the good things like a certain sense of love that depend on it.

Many such examples can be given. Speaking about being a "demi-God" like CS sounds silly, and the idea of being sorry about it once we recognize that it is an impossible ideal seems even more silly. But if we know anything in philosophy, it is that we shouldn't be too quick to jump to conclusions. The absence of LFW, which (this requires a separate argument) amounts to having local CS capacities, makes morality, justice, self-respect, appreciation of others, and so on, necessarily much shallower. And that matters a great deal.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Rob, a clarification and a call for clarification:
First, the investigation my colleagues, Jason Turner, Steven Morris, and Thomas Nadelhoffer, and I carried out on folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility and on the phenomenology of free will were not "compatibilist inspired." Two members of the team are incompatibilist "skeptics" and two are compatibilists (myself included--though I don't like the term for reasons outlined in earlier posts). Rather, we were simply trying to motivate (and do) some research on what ordinary people think and feel about these issues, in order to prevent philosophers from making unsubstantiated claims about what ordinary people think and feel and to motivate discussion about whether (and if so, how) such issues impact the philosophical debate.

Second, what do you mean by the claim that "self-causation is powerfully implicated in the phenomenology of agency"? Do our ordinary experiences of deliberating, making choices, and making "efforts of will" suggest something as robust as a *theory* (or proto-theory) of self-causation (or agent causation), or is there an experience of self-causation, or what? Though I think our experiences are theory-neutral on this question, I find these issues to be quite obscure and would like to hear more about what incompatibilists have in mind.

Finally, I don't see how Wegner has offered any scientific support for incompatibilism (a philosophical position!) or for, presumably what you had in mind, the phenomenology of self-causation. I think his views are problematic for lots of reasons, one of which is that he never really discusses the phenomenology of agency nor does phenomenological investigations of the relevant experiences. (People may want to look at his ad hominem against me--and Fodor, whose quotation I use somewhat jokingly in concluding my review of Wegner--in his responses to the commentaries in the latest BBS.)

[Rob]

Eddy,

I'm frankly not sure how to clearly flesh out my assertion that self-causation is powerfully implicated in the phenomenology of agency since any attempt I can think of to do so admittedly seems to engage ideas drawn from our intellectual and moral tradition, and thus could be readily dismissed as an artefact of those ideas instead of being a manifestation (or some kind of elaboration) of intuitions. I don't think that our ordinary "efforts of will" suggest a *theory*, but rather provide a deep fund of support more or less constantly available for recruitment into even quite rudimentary stages of responsibility assessment.
As for Wegner, it seems to me that his work on the function (and malfunction) of authorship self-attribution provides support for the libertarian sense of agency as well as evidence for the illusoriness of this sense as a portrait of our actual agentic nature.

It also might be worth observing that Wegner's ad hominem against you (on page 680) appears as the beginning of a section in which he entertains an error theory for some of his critics.

[Neil]

This is probably not the place to post on Wegner - but I'm going to do it anyway. I've been wrestling with his book for ages. It's worth doing - it's entertaining and it brings together a great deal of valuable experimental evidence on action and volition. But Wegner does not have a coherent thesis. There is no interpretation of his claim that the 'experience of conscious will' is an illusion under which he provides evidence for the claim. He might mean (1) we think that the intentions of which we are conscious are the same intentions which actually cause our actions. He provides evidence that (a) sometimes we have intentions which don't cause our actions and (b) sometimes we are not aware of any intention at all. But as Eddy (among others) has argued, that doesn't show that (1) isn't generally, or even almost always, true. The inference is no more compelling than the parallel inference from 'sometimes we experience visual illusions' to 'our belief that our visual perception accurately represents the world is false' (or from 'sometimes people reason badly' to 'reasoning never gets to the truth').

Sometimes I think that Wegner thinks that the phenomenology of agency itself is non-veridical: we experience conscious will, he says, and that might mean the experience itself is reflexive (Searle's thesis: the experience of volition is the experience of an experience causing action). But if that's what he means, then he simply provides no evidence that the phenomenology is like this (and those people who have investigated the phenomenology - Horgan, et al. not to mention Bayne and Levy - have argued that the phenomenology is nothing like this). Or he might mean we experience agent-causation - that our experience is of our conscious intention causing our action. Once again, though, he provides no evidence for this claim (and once again those people who have investigated the phenomenology disagree). If he means one of the latter claims, then his experimental evidence simply doesn't address his claims. So under no interpretation does Wegner's evidence establish, or even provide support for, his thesis.

I was also somewhat shocked by his attack on Eddy, which is an example of a move I call Freudian blackmail. In its Freudian form, it goes like this: the objector to the Freudian challenges the Freudian's claim, and the Freudian says "you are resisting because you're not comfortable with your sexuality". In Wegner's hands, the argument goes like this:

Eddy: Your evidence doesn't support your claims.
Wegner: Yes, the claim is disturbing and I don't blame you for not being able to face it.

It's intellectually dishonest and insulting. If Wegner wants to have a go at Eddy, he should line up like the rest of us, and attack his arguments.

[Tamler Sommers]

I think we need to be careful not to let the Wegner/Nahmias rivalry overshadow the more important issue--namely, that the Red Sox just received their World Series rings in front of the Yankees after being down 3-0 to them in the ALCS. And how about the standing ovation for Mariano Rivera--now that's ad hominem at its very best.

[Neil]

Um, Tamler - *world* series?

[Tamler Sommers]

Hey, if you want to call your best Rugby team "world champions" I have no problem with that.

[Robert Allen]

Having never entertained the notion that I am the sole cause of myself, I can't say what it would feel like to discover it's false. But why would this discovery have made me feel "sorry" for myself? The "unfolding of the given" goes through me: my decisions are amongst the causes of what I do. Were my Creator (or someone else) in control of me, I would not be responsible for my doings. But He is not. And the realization of the fact that they were entailed by events predating my birth does not make me unwilling to take responsibility for them, as I choose to focus instead on the role I played in bringing them about.

[Kip Werking]

Like Rob, I suspect that our subjective experience inclines us to believe that we are causa-sui. I do, however, feel that the claim “I have free will” is fundamentally a negative claim: it is the denial that a person is *just* a program or a machine. The claim has no positive content and cannot have such content because, as the younger Strawson argues, being causa-sui is an impossible and incoherent notion. Nevertheless, I do suspect that something about our psychology inclines to believe that we are more than machines or programs, that we transcend the purely mechanical.

The primary way I suspect that this illusion comes about (besides the possible explanation that such an illusion may evolve because it is adaptive) is this: once a person discovers that they are just a program or machine, a desire naturally arises in them to be that program or machine’s author, creator, designer, or inventor. The contemplation of this designer (or, if the person was created in a distributed, non-teleological fashion by nature, the designer*) suggests immediately two things:

1. The amount of control that the designer or designer* has is more, and therefore more desirable, than the amount of control we have. This superior amount of control is, I believe, the “fantasy” and “promise” that Smilansky refers to.
2. The amount of control we have seems trivial to the point of being worthless, in comparison to the control that the designer or designer* has. We would seem to have no control, but rather just be puppets, if we could not have this greater control over our lives.

These two considerations naturally arise, I suspect, in the minds of most people when they consider the free will controversy. Strawson made crucial progress (just two decades ago!) by noting a third point which I think most people fail to notice, when considering this issue: having the superior amount of control over our lives that a designer or designer* would have is impossible, not just in this universe, but in every universe. Not only do compatibilist theories fail to provide this, but libertarian theories do as well.

This point is also important because it indicates that free will is not as desirable as our pre-philosophical attitudes suggested. The free will skeptic’s victory seems like less of a victory, and more of what we value in this world seems preserved, if we were mistaken to desire free will. Wouldn’t it be foolish to long for something impossible to have? Perhaps considerations such as these inclined Pereboom to entertain the possibility, but not the existence, of agent-causation (in a recent conversation, however, Pereboom has hinted that he is growing more sympathetic to the claim that agent-causation is impossible).

Hard compatabilists and others will take issue with how I define free will and moral responsibility. I sympathize with the claim that free will’s impossibility, as I define it, suggests that the definition is somehow improper. In defense of my position, however, I would make two points:

1. If my sketch of how people think about free will is correct, then this definition is correct because it refers to common usage.
2. More importantly, any compatibilist definition must define certain manipulated agents as having free will and moral responsibility. This definition, I think, is more counter-intuitive than Galen Strawson’s definition. His definition would seem to be, in a sense, the lesser of two evils. But I think at this point compatibilists and skeptics are just arguing semantics (unlike libertarians, who actually disagree with both of us about how the world works and not just about how we should labels states of affairs). Compatibilists are forced to use this definition (becoming “hard compatibilists”) unless they are willing to make an arbitrary distinction between manipulated and “ordinary” agents, thus breaking what we might call the “symmetry thesis.” Hard compatibilists, to their credit, share skeptics’ endorsement of the “symmetry thesis”, and the two positions are, in my opinion, substantially similar (even if the conclusions they reach appear to diametrically opposed).

I would feel more confident that the view I’ve sketched here is correct, if results from empirical philosophy verify and support it. If I remember correctly, Galen Strawson noted that, amongst the many students he has taught over the years, only one or two did not find his Basic Argument cogent. This is a remarkable and counter-intuitive claim. It would be interesting to see if the same holds true for the general population.

[Robert Allen]

"The amount of control we have seems trivial to the point of being worthless, in comparison to the control that the designer or designer* has. We would seem to have no control, but rather just be puppets, if we could not have this greater control over our lives."

A non sequitur if ever I saw one: our Creator is not necessarily in control of us.

"More importantly, any compatibilist definition must define certain manipulated agents as having free will and moral responsibility."

This is simply not so, as I have explained at length here several times: a manipulated "agent" cannot subvert the will of those who have influenced him; those with free will can.

"The amount of control that the designer or designer* has is more, and therefore more desirable, than the amount of control we have. This superior amount of control is, I believe, the “fantasy” and “promise” that Smilansky refers to."

To borrow from St. Paul, no rational person "deems equality with God as something to be grasped at"

[Kip Werking]

Robert Allen: I'm not too familiar with your own position. I would be interested in carrying on this discussion over email, if you like. My email address is kip.werking |at| gmail.com.

I would raise these points: presuming that God exists (a controversial proposition for each of the various definitions of God), isn't there a strong case that God does control our lives? This seems to naturally follow from these facts (we can assume for the sake of convenience that the universe is deterministic, if we agree that indeterminism cannot help one have free will):

1. God knew how we would live before he decided how she or he would set up the universe
2. God knew that how we would live is a result of how she or he sets up the universe
3. God set up the universe as she or he did, determining, in the process, how we would live our entire lives

A second important point to make is that the skeptic's position does not rely upon the claim that our lives are controlled, in the narrow sense, by a controller. Free will, on my view, is not just freedom from controllers, but rather the ability, in some sense, to be more than a program or a machine. So even if the above argument fails to convince you, that should not be fatal to the skeptic's claim which is that we are not causa-sui. I specifically referred to a designer', which would be nature or natural selection. The thrust of what I call the symmetry thesis (which both skeptics such as Pereboom and hard compatibilists such as Dennett adopt) states that whether a designer or designer' does the control or controlling', the conclusion is the same (Pereboom says we don't have free will, Dennett says we do provided that certain conditions are satisfied).

Finally: you make the bold claim that "This is simply not so, as I have explained at length here several times: a manipulated 'agent' cannot subvert the will of those who have influenced him; those with free will can." But there is an obvious sense in which no agent can subvert the will of those who have influenced her or him: given that her or his entire life is a product of their design, even her or his attempts, so to speak, to defy their will must themselves have been part of their greater plan (it may be essential to my view that the agent does not know the Creator's plan or else we may run into Newcomb's paradox). She or he would only attempt to defy their will if they had willed for her or him to do so. Such efforts would not represent genuine autonomy but rather the false pretense of freedom. Galen Strawson makes the same point within his Basic Argument and I have noted earlier that "self-modifying programs are still programs." I would be interested to know how, on your account, agents can defy the intentions of (for example) a Creator God?

[Robert Allen]

"God knew how we would live before he decided how she or he would set up the universe"

Knowing is not the same as causing/determining. Cf. Keith Yandell's Wheaton lecture.

"God set up the universe as she or he did, determining, in the process, how we would live our entire lives"

But not necessarily willing that we live our lives as we do. God is willing to allow us to do evil; He is not willing that we do evil.

"But there is an obvious sense in which no agent can subvert the will of those who have influenced her or him: given that her or his entire life is a product of their design, even her or his attempts, so to speak, to defy their will must themselves have been part of their greater plan .... She or he would only attempt to defy their will if they had willed for her or him to do so."

And this is supposed to show that my will is not free- that my Creator is willing to allow me to defy Him? Seems that I should find this incredibly gratifying instead: I could have been a puppet, but I'm not. You folks want to be God. I just want to be autonomous, that is, not under his (or anyone else's) control.

"I have noted earlier that 'self-modifying programs are still programs.'"

I believe that it was in response to this very claim that I stated my view, which is based on the above described difference between being a program and being controlled by a programmer.

"Finally: you make the bold claim ...."

This is the pot calling the kettle black. From where I'm sitting, FWS and atheism are very bold claims indeed- to the point of being irrational. Nietzsche was not only not a philosopher, he was a fool.

[Rob]

I know this isn't precisely apropos, but denizens of The Garden might be interested in Todd Solonz's latest film -- "Palindromes" -- in which one of the characters (the Wiener brother from Solondz's earlier provocation "Welcome to the Dollhouse") espouses fatalism. Here's a typical recent Solondz interview comment:

"Of course it's indisputable we change, but there is a part of ourselves that is immutable. There can be a kind of struggle. Some people are troubled by the age-old philosophical question presented here. Certainly, if you are religious you must believe in free will, otherwise you cannot make a leap of faith. Those of the atheistic turn of mind will look at things differently."
http://www.indiewire.com/people/people_050415solondz.html

For more on the film (including Solondz's interesting comments in the press book and show place/dates), which has just begun to open in theaters:

http://palindromes-movie.com/

[Eddy Nahmias]

Just a quick point about Kip's definition of free will above: Without a substantial argument to connect the concepts, the truth or falsity of *determinism* is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the sort of *mechanism* Kip has in mind. That is, the universe may be deterministic without that suggesting that we are machines/programs. This is just to make a point I tend to harp on here, that the real issue regarding freedom is not determinism but, as Kip suggests, certain reductionistic/mechanistic claims about human nature.

And I might add in support of this claim: it would surprise me if ordinary people think determinism, in its non-question begging forms (which may not be understandable by them, I worry), is a threat to free will. (Our results suggest this is the case, and I worry Nichols and Knobe's description of determinism is problematic.) But it would also surprise me if ordinary people did *not* think mechanistic/reductionistic descriptions of human behavior (e.g., ones that make reasons-explanations appear to be preempted) threaten free will and moral responsibility.

Here's just one way I think the investigation of ordinary intuitions *is* relevant to the debate (though I agree with much of what Fritz says above): i.e., to indicate what conceptions of free will and what potential threats to it are relevant to prephilosophical debates and practices regarding moral responsibility. What psychologists and neurobiologists and geneticists, etc. tell ordinary people about the degree to which they are machine-like or programmed will be relevant and influential (e.g., on our legal practices). What physicists tell us about whether or not the universe is deterministic will be irrelevant.

[Rob]

I wonder, Eddy, if you consider Galen Strawson's definition of determinism below (from "The Bounds of Freedom") non-question-begging; and, if so, whether you think ordinary people would think it is a threat to free will:

"...determinism is the view that the history of the universe is fixed in such a way that everything that happens is necessitated to happen by what has already gone before in such a way that nothing can happen otherwise than it does. It can also be expressed, more simply, as the view that every event has a cause."

[Eddy Nahmias]

Rob, well, it's a pretty good definition but it has some problematic features. Using the word 'fixed' may beg some questions (though he qualifies in what way it is fixed). Also, the long phrase ending '...nothing can happen otherwise than it does' is not quite right. Technically, it should read (I think), 'it is impossible that, given what has happened in the past (and the laws of nature), anything happens other than what actually happens.' That won't go over well with the folk. The more readable "given the past and laws, nothing can happen otherwise than it does" (or Nichols/Knobe's "if everything was exactly the same, it [the decision] *had to* happen"), are not right given that they technically commit a modal confusion of saying, "if Past & Laws, then necessarily Present" rather than "Necessarily, if Past and Laws, then Present." (Jason Turner and I raise this problem in a response, under review, to Nichols' Mind and Language article).

Anyway, all of this is to say that the definition of determinism is tricky. (My view is that how determinism is conceived has at least as much to do with the compatibility question as how free will is conceived--especially whether determinism is conceived to suggest mechanism or reductionism (see my post above).) Presenting determinism to the folk is even trickier. We like the three ways we tried it in our paper, but we raise the problem that those ways may not be salient enough. Of course, we think it is too salient (misleadingly so) in the Nichols prompts. And it would be similar with Strawson case I think. But it would be interesting to see how people responded to it.

[Paul Torek]

Regardless of the success or failure of Fischer's critique of the Transfer of Non-Responsibility principle, he is to be commended for raising the issue. The principle's indefensibility will become clear enough in time, if only through the failure to support it. At which point it will sink under the weight of its needless complicating effects on our legal and moral systems.

Eddy's distinction between determinism and mechanism is welcome. One of the reasons, I think, why folk incompatibilist intuitions abound, is that many people either fail to grasp the distinction or have the intuition that determinism implies mechanism.

[Jonathan Farrell]

It seems to me that determinism (or at least causal determinism) entails mechanism. Eddy Nahmias (and perhaps others) thinks it does not (see above, and here: http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/07/what_is_determi.html) Am I confused because I have misunderstood what mechanism is? I'd be grateful if someone could explain away my confusion, or point me in the direction of literature that might help.

Here's how I think mechanism and determinism are connected. In the introduction to the second edition of the UOP ‘Free Will’ collection, Watson says that mechanism (or rather, what Bok calls mechanism) is, “a generic explanatory scheme according to which our behaviour is an output (deterministic or not) of a complex of internal states together with environmental inputs” (p9). If a causally deterministic universe contains agents, and the behaviour of those agents depends (i.e. is caused) in part on the agent's internal states, then it seems to me that this universe is mechanistic in the sense given above.

Am I mistaken about the connection between mechanism and determinism, or are the remarks above about this issue concerned with a different understanding of mechanism? Or have I missed something else?

[Kip Werking]

I use the term "mechanism" in the perhaps less rigorous way of meaning: everything. The idea is that indeterminism doesn't help one have free will (the certain strong conception of free will that skeptics favor) and is just as threatening.

For convenience, let's work with a 3D cellular automata as Dennett does (Freedom Evolves) because it is simple. Suppose that all of the cells are deterministic. That would be determinism. Suppose you built a robot inside of that universe. It is a deterministic robot. Now suppose that you made one of the cells in the robot indeterministic. Now the deterministic robot is a "mechanism", as I use the term. The idea is that this robot is just as un-free whether or not micro-indeterminism holds, or whether a largely deterministic world is sprinkled with indeterministic parts. By analogy with the real world, suppose that (i) Geiger counters actually involve indeterminism in the metaphysical sense (as opposed to deterministic chaotic systems that appear random) and (ii) we add a Geiger counter to a complex robot that we otherwise regard as fully deterministic. The point is: the Geiger counter doesn't help. There is no way in which (contra event-causal libertarians) one could place the Geiger counter within the robot to enhance its freedom. Free will is threated by mechanism, not just determinism (even though the debate has been framed in these terms for centuries and prominent philosophers, even if they agree that micro-indeterminism would not help, continue to frame the debate that way today; it is difficult to resist the inertia of tradition).

So mechanisms, as I loosely use the term refer to deterministic systems mixed with indeterministic systems: everything. The word derives from "movement" but mechanisms, as I use the term, may also be still (stillness doesn't help anything have free will). The term is helpful, I think, to the extent it fits with Galen Strawson's view according to which everything, a priori, cannot have free will, and to the extent it draws attention to the mechanical, as opposed to supernatural, nature of human beings.

[Paul Torek]

Jonathan, thanks to the reference to the earlier discussion where "mechanism" was defined. I had taken the wrong idea from Eddy's remark

"But it would also surprise me if ordinary people did *not* think mechanistic/reductionistic descriptions of human behavior (e.g., ones that make reasons-explanations appear to be preempted) threaten free will and moral responsibility."

I guess I read Eddy's "e.g." as an "i.e.". Color my face red.

Whether reasons-explanations are preempted, or whether determinism or mechanism are taken to imply that they are preempted, is crucial. It would be interesting to see what ordinary people intuit about those relations. That is, give them the theses of determinism and mechanism (ideally, without the labels, just call them thesis 1 and thesis 2), and ask whether, in their estimation, it follows from either thesis that reasons-explanations are preempted.

[John Fischer]

Neal has been kind enough to post a paper on the "Papers on Agency" section of this blog on why I think that the demand to be "causa sui" or "the ultimate source" (interpreted in a certain way) is unreasonable: "The Cards that are Dealt You".
I'd be interested in any comments. It is forthcoming in a special issue of JOET for Joel Feinberg, 2005.

[John Fischer]

Neal has been kind enough to post a paper on the "Papers on Agency" section of this blog on why I think that the demand to be "causa sui" or "the ultimate source" (interpreted in a certain way) is unreasonable: "The Cards that are Dealt You".
I'd be interested in any comments. It is forthcoming in a special issue of JOET for Joel Feinberg, 2005.

[Kip Werking]

I am in the midst of law school finals. This is unfortunate because Fischer's The Cards That Are Dealt You is a brilliant paper that deserves a huge amount of attention. It's brilliant to the extent it honestly engages the dialogue between skeptics and hard compatibilists (the cutting edge, in opinion, of this debate). But it also (and I think Fischer would agree) relies upon arguments/metaphors that are not quite rigorous and perhaps too quick.

Some quick points:
1. I've found about ten typos.
2. It doesn't seem to me that GS's view of fw would require one to have control over the sun, as JF repeatedly claims. He seems to support this claim later in the paper with the necessary/sufficient axis argument (a diagram would have been nice!), but I think skeptics can challenge this argument and need not accept its conclusion.
3. Similarly, skeptics can challenge the rocketship argument. It seems to only address concerns about social policy and not personal authorship. Ultimately, it seems that hard compatibilist positions are motivated by and can only answer these concerns about social policy (but skeptics have offered alternative accounts of social policy, as Pereboom sketches in LWFW in his discussion of quarantines). The rocket pilots did not help create the rocket and are not its author, although from a social policy perspective, it might be better to hold them accountable (as well as the rocket's engineerings and builders) for what happens. The analogy also seems misleading to the extent that it places a homunculus inside of the "agent" (rocket), perhaps even isolated in an "Inner Citade" which Fischer claims his view does not need.
4. Fischer makes a great point on page 13, when he says that, if pressed, he will retreat to the claim that one need not be a skeptic because hard compatibilism is a valid alternative, but more work needs to be done. I would only wish to add: Fischer focuses upon the disadvantages of GS-skepticism (the disadvantage being that it at least *seems* unreasonable to demand that agents be causa sui) but without highlighting the disadvantages of hard compatibilism. On Fischer's view (if I am not mistaken, and as he seems to admit), an agent might nevertheless be morally responsible and possess freedom of will even if their entire life was designed by a superintelligent Designer. The requirement that the agent take ownership of her or his life and build her or his own character doesn't defeat this objection either (as Pereboom shows), because they Designer may have designed for them to take ownership is just this way. This, in my estimation (and in the estimation of the folk?) is more scandalous than any consequence of Strawson's view. I would consider skepticism to be, in that case, the lesser of two evils.

[Robert Allen]

"On Fischer's view (if I am not mistaken, and as he seems to admit), an agent might nevertheless be morally responsible and possess freedom of will even if their entire life was designed by a superintelligent Designer. The requirement that the agent take ownership of her or his life and build her or his own character doesn't defeat this objection either (as Pereboom shows), because they Designer may have designed for them to take ownership is (sic) just this way. This, in my estimation (and in the estimation of the folk?) is more scandalous than any consequence of Strawson's view. I would consider skepticism to be, in that case, the lesser of two evils."

Mr. Werking,

This is ludicrous and something to which I responded above: "(and) this is supposed to show that my will is not free- that my Creator is willing to allow me to defy Him? Seems that I should find this incredibly gratifying instead: I could have been a puppet, but I'm not. You folks want to be God. I just want to be autonomous, that is, not under his (or anyone else's) control."

And don't e-mail me a response. Let's have it out right here, so that the readers of this blog can see the untenability of your position. As my teacher Lawrence Powers used to say, it's an "idea intrinsically worth stamping out."

[Tamler Sommers]

Ki--remember, this is the guy who once wrote "the Red Sox will regret trading Nomar."

Now that's an untenable position.

[Kip Werking]

Robert Allen:

I emailed you a response because I didn't want our discussion to stray from the original topic of this thread. But I'm happy to address some of your concerns now (although I am quite busy). By the way, please excuse the typos and sloppiness of my previous post. I wrote it hurriedly and there is no edit function for these comments.

Robert, you argue that my claim about hard compatibilists positions is "ludicrous" and untenable. But I don't see how this follows. I don't think I've made any claims that the defenders of such positions would themselves not admit (that is why they are called "hard" compatibilists: they are willing to admit that agents whose lives are the products of design may nevertheless have free will).

Perhaps you take issue with my use of the word "control." On my view, if a Designer designs an agents entire life, then that Designer "controls" the agent. But I don't need to rely upon the use of the word "control." Hard compatibilist positions are scandalous whether one says that the Designer "controls" the agent, or whether we simply note that the Designer designed their entire lives.

But your comment suggest another objection, too:

"that my Creator is willing to allow me to defy Him? Seems that I should find this incredibly gratifying instead: I could have been a puppet, but I'm not"

But if the Designer (or, if you prefer the religious context, "Creator") designed the agent's entire life, then there is a strong sense in which the agent *cannot* defy the Creator. I already argued this point on April 14th when I wrote:

"But there is an obvious sense in which no agent can subvert the will of those who have influenced her or him: given that her or his entire life is a product of their design, even her or his attempts, so to speak, to defy their will must themselves have been part of their greater plan (it may be essential to my view that the agent does not know the Creator's plan or else we may run into Newcomb's paradox). She or he would only attempt to defy their will if they had willed for her or him to do so. Such efforts would not represent genuine autonomy but rather the false pretense of freedom."

I have yet to see any reason to think that my objection is invalid. How, on your view, can the agent have this miraculous ability to defy the Designer's intentions, if the agent's entire life--including any attempts to defy the Designer's will--was designed by the Designer?

[Robert Allen]

"I emailed you a response because I didn't want our discussion to stray from the original topic of this thread."

What are you talking about? My post was certainly apropos the original topic. You just didn't want the readers of this blog to see you getting refuted.

"But I'm happy to address some of your concerns now (although I am quite busy)."

Spare me; we're all swamped (because of the greedy, philistinic capitalists).

"Robert, you argue that my claim about hard compatibilists positions is 'ludicrous' and untenable. But I don't see how this follows."

What I said is ludicrous is the idea that a being lacks a free will simply because he was created by someone else.

"I have yet to see any reason to think that my objection is invalid. How, on your view, can the agent have this miraculous ability to defy the Designer's intentions, if the agent's entire life--including any attempts to defy the Designer's will--was designed by the Designer?"

My Creator intends that I be able to defy Him, not that I defy Him. (Moreover, He has made it abundantly clear what I must do to please Him.) He is willing to let me sin, not that I sin. The antecedent of your conditional is simply false.

[Clark]

Robert, isn't the problem the traditional debate about the meaning of "can" or in your case, the meaning of "be able to defy Him." It seems that theists think of this in different fashions. It does seem logically acceptable though to assert that a being could fashion a new being such that it could defy the creator in a rather robust fashion. Whether this sense of creation is compatible with all Christian theologies in an other matter entirely. I have a hard time seeing how it can be reconciled with some.

This seems to be the point Kip is getting at but I wonder if he doesn't err by assuming that all our life is designed in the sense that God consciously picked every particular state of affairs for our life.

[Robert Allen]

Clark,

Kip, following Prof. Pereboom, is maintaining that we are not free of God, even if we are capable of doing things to displease Him, since, after all, He was the one who made us capable of doing such things- which is ridiculous. (Once the officer takes off the handcuffs, the suspect is free of the officer, even though she's the one who took off the handcuffs.) Yes, there have been plenty of SOAs the obtaining of which God did not will. Free will exists, however, because He was willing to allow us to make them obtain. (When I give my daughter permission to go out at night with her friends, I am willing to allow her to come home past her curfew. I certainly do not intend her to, though.)

[Kip Werking]

Robert Allen,

Let's distinguish between:

1. A person doesn't have free will because someone else created them.
2. A person doesn't have free will because a Designer designed every moment of their lives.

Your examples suggest that I am arguing 1. For example, my parents "created" me but I am not arguing that such examples show (intuitively) that we lack free will. I am *just* arguing 2.

You write that the antecedent of this conditional is false:

"How, on your view, can the agent have this miraculous ability to defy the Designer's intentions, if the agent's entire life--including any attempts to defy the Designer's will--was designed by the Designer?"

But I never claimed that the antecedent (that a Designer designed an agent's entire life) was true. This is a thought experiment not necessarily having any relationship to reality. It is a hypo! I never claimed that the conclusion would still follow if the antecedent was false. I am asking: if the antecedent is true (the Designer designs every aspect of an agent's life), then how could the consequent be true (the agent can defy the Designer's will)? Or do you agree with me that such agents cannot defy their Designer's will? If you refuse to entertain the antecedent, then you have not disproven any my claims, you have just insisted on talking about something irrelevant to my thought experiment.

Clark seems to make this same mistake when he says that I assume that our entire lives are designed by a Designer. So perhaps my sloppy writing has suggested so.

[Paul Torek]

Kip, I hereby embrace the conclusion of your reductio ad absurdum. A superintelligent Designer who, unlike Robert Allen's understanding of God, plans and endores every event in my life, regretting none, but who successfully intends me to take ownership of my life and build my own character, makes me free and responsible.

As far as my life is concerned, the Designer's role simply adds another free and responsible party. For example, if I kill someone, then I and the Designer are both responsible, just as the mob boss who orders a hit and the wiseguy who pulls the trigger are both responsible. Responsibility multiplies. It does not divide or subtract. Obviously a mob boss has much less influence on his charge than this hypothetical Designer, but I see no reason to stop multiplying and start subtracting responsibility.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

If determinism is true, then it follows that every moment of every person's life is indirectly determined by the Designer’s design. However, that does not entail that there is no room for agents to exist and/or act within the Designer’s design.

What is at issue is the distinction between direct and indirect responsibility. While the Designer is directly responsible for His design and His creative acts, the Designer bears only indirect responsibility for the consequences of those actions. Your second scenario is analogous to a depiction of a painter and his painting: the people in the painter’s painting bear no responsibility for what they are doing primarily because the “people” in the painting are not agents!

In order for your criticism to go through, you would have to convince us that the existence of a Designer entails that the things He creates are nothing more than elaborate paintings.

Moreover, I believe your previous statement, which sparked the debate between Robert and yourself, is very contentious: “On Fischer's view (if I am not mistaken, and as he seems to admit), an agent might nevertheless be morally responsible and possess freedom of will even if their entire life was designed by a superintelligent Designer. The requirement that the agent take ownership of her or his life and build her or his own character doesn't defeat this objection either (as Pereboom shows), because they Designer may have designed for them to take ownership is just this way.”

On the semi-compatibilist view reasons-responsiveness is the metaphysical way of assigning direct responsibility. “Taking responsibility” functions on a more practical level, as that which enables us to hold other agents responsible for their actions (AFAIK Fischer has not said this himself, but I posit that this is due to the indirect epistemic access we have to other agents).

In the case of the Meticulous Grand Designer (a meticulous designer is a designer who designs each sequential moment within a certain context, and a meticulous grand designer is one who meticulously designs on a cosmic scale), the agents’ reasons-responsive mechanisms do not causally determine the event outcomes (the Meticulous Grand Designer does). Thus, the semi-compatibilist has sufficient grounds to reject the compatibility of responsibility and a Meticulous Grand Designer. If you take out the “grand” in this designer’s title, the designer becomes equitable to the evil scientists we are accustomed to hearing about in Frankfurt cases, and no semi-compatibilist would entertain the idea that responsibility is compatible with the evil scientist’s intervention that over-determines the agent’s choice.

If you respond by saying that a Meticulous Grand Designer does not override the agents’ reasons-responsive mechanisms, then you still have to show us what the problem is because most of us would be happy to discover that robust responsibility is compatible with non-meticulous design and is incompatible with meticulous design.

[Robert Allen]

"Kip, I hereby embrace the conclusion of your reductio ad absurdum. A superintelligent Designer who, unlike Robert Allen's understanding of God, plans and endores every event in my life, regretting none, but who successfully intends me to take ownership of my life and build my own character, makes me free and responsible."

Not unless you could subvert his will in the way that I outlined above. Otherwise, your will is not your own; you are under his control. (In fact, you would not even be able to to take ownership of (your) life and build (your) own character.) The hitman can do what you cannot: defy the person whose plan he is executing.

[Robert Allen]

Mr. Werking,

I'm not interested in entertaining blasphemous "hypos." Our debate, as Mark notes, is over Pereboom's thesis, which you cited to butress your critique of Prof. Fischer and which I refuted.

[Rob]

The stalemate here between Kip and Robert seems like a translation of the compatibilism/incompatibilism stalemate into the hopelessly incoherent domain of theology.

[Paul Torek]

For each act X that the Meticulous Grand Designer (MGD for short) intends that I perform, I could do not-X. This does not entail that I have a nonzero objective probability of doing not-X. "Could" in the context of moral responsibility does not mean "might". Instead, this just restates my reason-responsiveness: if there were a sufficient reason not to do X, I would not do X.

Given the relation between me and MGD, if I had a sufficient reason not to do X, then MGD had a sufficient reason not to intend that I do X. It is not the case that I could "defy MGD's will", de dicto, as opposed to specific individual acts. So don't blame or credit me for "fulfilling MGD's will", in so many words. But do blame or credit me for most of the things I do - the very things we were worrying about my responsibility for in the first place.

I realize I have asserted many things that cry out for argument. However, I am merely exploring a path; I invite you to try it and see if it doesn't lead out of the wilderness.

[Joe]

I’ve been away from the Garden for a while and I just wanted to post a few comments. Some of these comments are in response to things written a long time ago but they keep coming up so a response is in order.

1) For instance, in his original post, Kip writes: “Strawson’s Basic Argument, for example, is silent about determinism. This is so because it includes the notion, not that moral responsibility requires determinism (Hume’s argument), but rather that indeterminism cannot help. One can combine this notion with the Consequence Argument or the four-step argument (while denying that agent-causation can help or denying that it is actual) to see that TNR lies at the heart of this ancient dispute about free will.” (Kip, 4/5)

I’ve asked this before but I’ll ask it again. Strawson’s Basic Argument (SBA) is not “silent about determinism,” at least when it is understood as having this form (as Kip seems to understand it):

If determinism is true, then no one has free will or moral responsibility (see the Consequence Argument).
Indeterminism cannot help.
Thus, pessimism is true (no one has free will or moral responsibility).

Clearly, the Consequence Argument is not “silent about determinism,” so neither is SBA. (I’ve made this point a few times before.)

2) I also have a slight issue with something that Robert said earlier (which is surprising since I rarely disagree with anything that Robert says). “Were my Creator (or someone else) in control of me, I would not be responsible for my doings.” (Robert, 4/13)

I don’t think that this is so clear. I pay you $100 to wave your hand. Suppose that my payment is the very reason that you perform the action. In that sense, I am in control of you: I get you to do something that you would not have otherwise done by paying you to do it. Does it follow that the hand waving was not in your control? If I pay you to kill someone -- and thereby control you to do so -- does it follow that you are not in control of the killing?

The point is that even though sometimes control completely passes through the controlled agent -- in cases of hypnosis or brainwashing, perhaps -- contol does not always pass through. We hold Manson responsible for killing Tate even though he didn’t actually perform the murder and we do so because he controlled the folks who did perform the murder. But we hold the direct killers responsible, too.

Actually, this last set of comments is directed more at Kip than Robert, for in much of the more recent discussions I think that Robert is on the right side of this debate.

3) Why would a world without causa sui (CA) be a “MUCH worse place than we thought it is” (Saul, 4/12)? If it is truly impossible for anyone (but God?) to be a causa sui, then it is unclear how the world would be a much better place with CA than without it.

This is related to a comment of Kip’s: “Strawson made crucial progress (just two decades ago!) by noting a third point which I think most people fail to notice, when considering this issue: having the superior amount of control over our lives that a designer or designer* would have is impossible, not just in this universe, but in every universe. Not only do compatibilist theories fail to provide this, but libertarian theories do as well.” (Kip, 4/14)

Compatibilists have failed to notice that CA is impossible? Give me a break! Most compatibilists believe that CA is impossible, which is why many of them have tried to build theories of free will and moral responsibility on something else -- something that is possible.

4) Of course, not all compatibilists believe that CA is impossible. This is a point that is rarely noted in the literature and has yet to be noted on this thread.

Many compatibilists have contended that CA is possible and essential to human agency even if determinism is true. The clearest example of this is a neo-Kantian theory endorsed by my colleague Harry Silverstein: All events (including human actions) are part of the natural order and as such may be given deterministic, causal explanations in terms of prior events and the laws of nature. Human actions may also be given non-causal, agent-based, reasons explanations. Whether an action is free or not depends on the reasons explanation, not the causal explanation. Thus, determinism -- and SBA – are simply beside the point.

Another interesting view is the compatibilist agency theory endorsed by Ned Markosian. There are also some interesting comments made by Lehrer in “‘Can’ in Theory and Practice: A Possible Worlds Analysis,” reprinted in his book Metamind. Lehrer suggests that it is possible for causal chains to begin a particular moments of time, even if determinism is true. I’ve never seen Lehrer’s point refuted; in fact, I’ve never seen it addressed. (Perhaps Fischer has addressed it and I’ve just forgotten, though!)

5) Why do pessimists often start out by saying that the issue is origination but often end up saying that the issue is alternative possibilities of action? For instance, above Kip asks Robert: “I would be interested to know how, on your account, agents can defy the intentions of (for example) a Creator God?” (Kip, 4/14) Does one need to “defy the intentions of … God” in order to be a causa sui?

6) Lastly, it is unfortunate that Jonathan Farrell’s question about mechanism (4/23) did not really get answered. I’ll raise it again: If determinism is true, does it follow that mechanism (in the Watson/Bok sense) is also true?

[Kip Werking]

There are almost too many high-quality comments here for me to adequately respond. But I do want to mention:

Paul Torek, your comment (April 28), strikes me as a very sensible position. Not only do you embrace the hard compatabilist position, but you also suggest that meta-controllers and controllers (so to speak) have the same amount of responsibility for the controller’s actions. This is something that hard compatibilists, I think, do not always call to attention. In their rush to emphasize that the controlled person can nevertheless be morally responsible, they emphasize less that the controller would be equally responsible.

This strange fact (that two different agents might be equally morally responsible for the same choice) seems to conflict with the concerns about sourcehood and origination that (some) people associate with free will. I suspect that free will, as people traditionally use the term, implies that choices originate within the agent and cannot be “implanted” in them by a controller. Furthermore, to the extent that the controller’s control precedes and determines the controllee’s control (the controller determines how the controllee exercises her control), there seems to be (at least superficially) a sense in which the controller’s freedom and responsibility is superior to that of the controllee or “puppet.” The skeptic can challenge the equality of these two freedom and moral responsibilities. This objection is as old as Bishop Bramhall’s debate with Hobbes. Nevertheless, the hard compatibilist position that you sketch is, in my opinion, the best and most respectable view competing with free will denial.

Joe: I think the thrust of your argument about Strawson’s BA is correct. The BA does reference determinism, to the extent that it deals with indeterminism separately. In this sense, Strawson’s BA *incorporates* into it the “indeterminism doesn’t help” thesis. So the difference between the BA and, for example, Pereboom’s position seems to be one more of form and not substance (although Pereboom has entertained the possibility of agent causation).

You also write:

“Compatibilists have failed to notice that CA is impossible? Give me a break! Most compatibilists believe that CA is impossible, which is why many of them have tried to build theories of free will and moral responsibility on something else -- something that is possible.”

But I did not say that compatibilists have failed to notice that CA is impossible. They surely have (especially those in academia). Instead, I wrote that I think (this was mere speculation) “most people” fail to notice that it is impossible. Specialists may note, upon reflection, what the folk miss. Something about CA seems to give an illusory appearance of both possibility and desirability. People forget that, in order to determine everything about one’s character, one must first have a character from which these choices can originate. This is a question which empirical philosophy can help answer. Although there are some results suggesting we are natural incompatibilists, other results conflict and so more work needs to be done.

You also ask:

“Why do pessimists often start out by saying that the issue is origination but often end up saying that the issue is alternative possibilities of action? For instance, above Kip asks Robert: “I would be interested to know how, on your account, agents can defy the intentions of (for example) a Creator God?” (Kip, 4/14) Does one need to “defy the intentions of … God” in order to be a causa sui?”

The issue of God-defiance was raised by Robert Allen, not myself. I’m not sure that such a miraculous ability necessarily has anything to do with being causa-sui, although both concepts seem to be similar because they both involve seemingly paradoxical powers.

You also ask:

“I’ll raise it again: If determinism is true, does it follow that mechanism (in the Watson/Bok sense) is also true?”

My comment on April 23 gave a sketch of how I use the term “mechanism.” In the absence of critical feedback, I remain uncertain of how correct this use is. Other definitions are more technical, and perhaps there is a relevant difference between them and mine. But I think the spirit or thrust of this definition is the same as that used by Bok. As far as my definition goes: determinism surely implies mechanism, because everything implies mechanism (so to speak). As I have used the term, everything is a mechanism and lacks free will (in Galen Strawson’s sense), whether determinism is true or not.

[Robert Allen]

Mr Werking,

"Paul Torek, your comment (April 28), strikes me as a very sensible position. Not only do you embrace the hard compatabilist position, but you also suggest that meta-controllers and controllers (so to speak) have the same amount of responsibility for the controller’s actions. This is something that hard compatibilists, I think, do not always call to attention. In their rush to emphasize that the controlled person can nevertheless be morally responsible, they emphasize less that the controller would be equally responsible."

Did you fail to notice my objection to this position or do you have some reason for thinking that it is not cogent?

"The issue of God-defiance was raised by Robert Allen, not myself. I’m not sure that such a miraculous ability necessarily has anything to do with being causa-sui, although both concepts seem to be similar because they both involve seemingly paradoxical powers."

Where do you get off applying such a label to my position? I have defined the ability in question and given clear-cut examples of its exercise. Derision should come only after you have developed a few sound arguments, which is something you won't learn reading Nietzsche, the master of bluster.

[Kip Werking]

Robert Allen:

You write:

"Did you fail to notice my objection to this position or do you have some reason for thinking that it is not cogent?"

I suspect that you object to how I characterize hard compatibilism because you refuse to entertain the "blasphemous" idea of non-divine controllers controlling agents, and furthermore you insist (without argument) that God does not determine every aspect of a human's life (you denied the antecedent of my conditional 4/27). I tried to explain earlier, this is not an objection to hard compatibilism because that view does not posit the existence of any God or controllers. So your insistence that God exists and doesn't control every aspect of our lives is just irrelevant. Furthermore you seem to agree that if a controller did determine every aspect of our lives, then we could not be free (i.e. your response to Paul Torek on April 28).

If I've mischaracterized your view, please don't retort "Where do you get off?" as if I did so on purpose. Your messages are typically short and it is not always clear what exactly you mean. As Rob said (4/29) "The stalemate here between Kip and Robert seems like a translation of the compatibilism/incompatibilism stalemate into the hopelessly incoherent domain of theology."

You wrote earlier:

“I'm not interested in entertaining blasphemous "hypos." Our debate, as Mark notes, is over Pereboom's thesis, which you cited to butress your critique of Prof. Fischer and which I refuted.”

Pereboom’s thesis? Which one is that? I only mentioned Pereboom’s response to Fischer’s critique of Pereboom’s four-step argument (see his recent reply to critics), where he notes that agents might build their characters because a controller designed them to do so. I don’t see how you’ve “refuted” this critique at all.

You continue:

"Where do you get off applying such a label to my position? I have defined the ability in question and given clear-cut examples of its exercise. Derision should come only after you have developed a few sound arguments, which is something you won't learn reading Nietzsche, the master of bluster."

I only said that you raised the topic of God-defiance (which you did). The ability does seem paradoxical if God determines every aspect of our lives, but not if, as (I think) you maintain, he doesn't. I didn't mean to imply that you did assert such a thing. And why do you keep taking shots at Nietzsche? His position on free will happens to be the same as Strawson's (Strawson always quotes him), but Nietzsche’s worth as a philosopher seems to be irrelevant to this discussion.

Finally, I don't wish to carry on arguing with you. You may believe, if you wish, that this is because I don't want you to expose flaws in my argument. I will say that I've found most of what you've written to be vague, hostile, and irrelevant. The hostility is evinced by comments such as "[an idea I suggested] is utterly foolish" and "Where do you get off?" I would have appreciated a more civil tone: the adversarial nature of this conversation is not fun, nor is it conducive to good philosophy.

[Robert Allen]

I posed an objection to Torek’s suggestion (the one you declared without argument to be “sensible”) that both agents are responsible in your thought experiment, which you are still ignoring. And then you wonder why I’m ticked off.

“God does not determine every aspect of a human's life (you denied the antecedent of my conditional 4/27).”

Not only do I deny that God denies every aspect of a person’s life; I deny that God determines any aspect of a person’s life: only events are causes.

"If I've mischaracterized your view, please don't retort "Where do you get off?" as if I did so on purpose. Your messages are typically short and it is not always clear what exactly you mean. As Rob said (4/29) ‘The stalemate here between Kip and Robert seems like a translation of the compatibilism/incompatibilism stalemate into the hopelessly incoherent domain of theology.'"

I am not doing theology. My definition of fw applies not only to our relationship to our Creator, but to our relationships to each other as well. As for my claim that “God doesn't control every aspect of our lives,” our sinfulness entails it unless you think that God is into that sort of thing.

"Pereboom’s thesis? Which one is that? I only mentioned Pereboom’s response to Fischer’s critique of Pereboom’s four-step argument (see his recent reply to critics), where he notes that agents might build their characters because a controller designed them to do so. I don’t see how you’ve “refuted” this critique at all."

Don’t get cute. Why would I be discussing any other thesis but the one you mentioned? And, for the last time, I have refuted it. Pereboom claims that fw does not exist, since no distinction can be drawn between manipulated and naturally determined agents. I have drawn this distinction, both on this blog and in a paper I cited here and made available at my website, which you obviously didn’t even read before you shot your mouth off, irking me further. (But then why bother with my writings when can cull wisdom from the works of luminaries? I’ll tell you why- you want to talk about “good philosophy”: you challenged me, creating for yourself a philosophical obligation to engage my thinking.)

"I only said that you raised the topic of God-defiance (which you did). The ability does seem paradoxical if God determines every aspect of our lives, but not if, as (I think) you maintain, he doesn't. I didn't mean to imply that you did assert such a thing."

The adjective you used was 'miraculous', by which you meant to deride what I was saying, and without having carefully examined it to boot. You will get as much respect from me as you give.

“And why do you keep taking shots at Nietzsche? His position on free will happens to be the same as Strawson's (Strawson always quotes him), but Nietzsche’s worth as a philosopher seems to be irrelevant to this discussion.”

Because he was a fool who masqueraded as a philosopher, which is certainly relevant here. If Strawson is advancing the views of someone with such credentials, that should make us extra skeptical of what he is saying. Moreover, why should one attack the disciples if one can bring down their master?

“Finally, I don't wish to carry on arguing with you.”

Ah, but I’m not done with you. I’ll be attacking your morally repugnant view- FWS- whenever you advance it, which you really should not do anymore- again, you want to talk about good philosophy- since you have shown yourself to be incapable of defending it against my objections.

"I will say that I've found most of what you've written to be vague, hostile, and irrelevant."

Hostile, yes; vague and irrelevant, I don’t think so, nor do several other readers of this blog. Moreover, you are certainly not qualified to make such a charge stick. I dare you to try.

"I would have appreciated a more civil tone: the adversarial nature of this conversation is not fun, nor is it conducive to good philosophy."

I’m not here for fun and the sooner you learn that philosophy is a very serious matter the better off you will be.

[Robert Allen]

"Not only do I deny that God denies (sic) every aspect of a person’s life; I deny that God determines any aspect of a person’s life: only events are causes.

I meant to say 'Not only do I deny that God determines every aspect of a person’s life; I deny that God determines any aspect of a person’s life: only events are causes'.

[Neal Tognazzini]

Let me just take this opportunity to remind everyone that this blog is intended to be a place where all are free to share their ideas without fear of insult or hostility. Of course there will be disagreements, but there are respectful disagreements and there are disrespectful disagreements. Respect and civility are two expectations we at the Garden hold for anyone who chooses to participate in the discussion here.

By all means, be passionate. But let's not allow our passion to compromise our ability to interact respectfully.

[Robert Allen]

Let me just take this opportunity to remind everyone that this blog is intended to be a place where all are free to share their ideas without fear of insult or hostility. Of course there will be disagreements, but there are respectful disagreements and there are disrespectful disagreements. Respect and civility are two expectations we at the Garden hold for anyone who chooses to participate in the discussion here.

By all means, be passionate. But let's not allow our passion to compromise our ability to interact respectfully.

Neil,

May I ask why you are now issuing this warning? Has anyone been uncivil or disrespectful here?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Robert,

"I meant to say 'Not only do I deny that God determines every aspect of a person’s life; I deny that God determines any aspect of a person’s life: only events are causes'."

I think you still have to address the fact that in this scenario, God does indirectly determine every fact/aspect about every person's life since He controls the initial conditions of the universe. Does this pose a problem for freedom and/or responsibility? What about the possibility of God intentionally predestinating future events to occur by taking certain actions in the present and/or past?

[Rob]

Although I myself would of course readily savor it as a compliment, I suspect it might drive Robert nuts to know that the lacerating tone sometimes suggested to my mind by his derisive diction reminds me of none other than Nietzsche.

[Paul Torek]

Robert,
Kip may not have answered your objection to my hard compatibilism, but I attempted to (April 29). Joe (April 30) makes a similar point. The addition of multiple agents who all intend the same result never seems to absolve the responsibility of the directly acting agent, as long as that agent's rationality is not badly compromised in the process. This remains true even when the more remote agents exert fairly strong control over the direct agent. Admittedly, the degree of control a mob boss exerts over a mere wiseguy, while very strong, does not approach that of Kip's hypothetical Meticulous Grand Designer (MGD). But it's not clear why there should be any discontinuity.

As for defying the MGD's will, I view it as a moot point. Defying or fulfilling that will has no inherent moral significance as such - although if the MGD intends that I help or harm someone, obviously it is morally significant whether I help or harm. But then, whether I help or harm someone *is* under my control (and also under the MGD's control if there were one). Control, like responsibility, multiplies rather than dividing or subtracting, when all agents will the same result.

[Robert Allen]

“Admittedly, the degree of control a mob boss exerts over a mere wiseguy, while very strong, does not approach that of Kip's hypothetical Meticulous Grand Designer (MGD). But it's not clear why there should be any discontinuity.”

The cases are not analogous if the wiseguy could shed the values instilled by the mob boss and replace them with ones the mob boss does intend for him to have. If so, he is not under the boss’ control, but autonomous, at least in relation to him. That is, the wiseguy has the ability to subvert the will of the person whose will he is presently doing. An MGD, on the other hand, would insure that no creature will something he does not intend. The existence of evil shows that God is not like that: He is willing to allow us to develop values He does not share. (The mob boss is incapable of preventing the wiseguy from developing opposing values; but, unlike God, he is willing to do so.)

“As for defying the MGD's will, I view it as a moot point. Defying or fulfilling that will has no inherent moral significance as such - although if the MGD intends that I help or harm someone, obviously it is morally significant whether I help or harm. But then, whether I help or harm someone *is* under my control (and also under the MGD's control if there were one). Control, like responsibility, multiplies rather than dividing or subtracting, when all agents will the same result.”

The conclusion here does not follow: a person is in control of himself only to the extent to which others are not in control of him: have made it possible for him to shed their values and replace them …. (This marks the difference between manipulating and influencing someone.) If this is how a person stands in relation to certain others then, should he be willing to carry out their plans, he alone is in control of his service. If not, then they are the only ones in control of what he does for them: he is their puppet.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Robert,

I would like to hear how you would respond to the questions I asked in my last post, but I also want to comment on your description of control. I agree that being able to subvert the will of others is important to the idea of robust control (though I don't think I would phrase it the way you do), I don't think it captures the whole idea of control.

How does your account of control deal with cases where an agent's actions are adversly affected by non-agents, such as a person who is suffering from a brain lesion and halucinating as a result, or a person who has Torret's and spouts out obscenities at inappropriate times, or a person who is homocidal due to a chemical imbalance in their brain.

All of these people are suffering from natural causes that inhibit their control, but these causes are not agents, so it seems like you might want to say that they are in full control, according to the tenets of your account.

You say that your account allows us to distinguish between agents that are being controlled and those that are merely being influenced, but I don't think that's "enough". Surely there are varying degrees of influence, some of which degrade the degree of control an agent has over his actions.

[Robert Allen]

"I think you still have to address the fact that in this scenario, God does indirectly determine every fact/aspect about every person's life since He controls the initial conditions of the universe. Does this pose a problem for freedom and/or responsibility? What about the possibility of God intentionally predestinating future events to occur by taking certain actions in the present and/or past?"

Mark,

Yes it poses a serious problem for responsibility. (Al Mele thinks so too.) It's the problem of moral luck. Both Jerry and Larry could have subverted God's will, making their wills free (at least in relation to Him and, let's suppose, everyone else). But circumstances arose in Larry's life that determined him to commit a mortal sin, nothing made Jerry do so. It's the Last Judgment and these facts emerge: fairness dictates that Larry be given the chance to attone for his sin. He cannot be kept out of the Kingdom while Jerry is allowed in, since but for the grace of God/"initial conditions" .... But this would apply to all sinners. And no would pass up a chance to enter the Kingdom- however difficult Purgatory is, Hell is infinitely worse. (Even loudmouth Nietzsche will fall down before the Throne.) Hence, the Really Good News or Universalism.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Robert,

Do you think its fair to say that the above statements entails that you are effectively a hard determinist?

Since you don't believe in ultimate responsibility (accountability before God), I think it does. In the end, I don't see much difference between your account and Smilansky's (aside from the religious overtones).

[Robert Allen]

Mark,

No, allowing an agent to atone for wrongdoing does not entail not holding him responsible for it. It's a question of fairness. I see my daughter playing in the garden and my son heading for it to join her. I've told both of them to stay out of it. I can't very well take him to the ballgame and leave her home as punishment, since but for my intervention .... So I tell her you can either miss the ballgame or give me 50 pushups. (Or, better yet, I tell both of them '50 pushups or no ballgame'.) Where do you get that I'm not holding her responsible? Because I concede that I shouldn't reward her brother if I'm not going to allow her to atone for her disobedience?

[Mark Smeltzer]

It seems your "fairness" principle is just hard determinism in disguise because it has the same net affect: it renders it such that agents are not ultimately culpable for their actions. If agents cannot be held ultimately responsible for their actions, then retributive justice is impossible. But, if agents *can* be held ultimately responsible, then the main reason supporting your argument for Universalism (your "fairness" principle) is falsified.

On your account, there is no ultimate moral desert. That's hard determinism. (Or it could be hard incompatibilism, but I think you fall into the sector of the hard determinism camp that Smilansky occupies.)

[Robert Allen]

"How does your account of control deal with cases where an agent's actions are adversly affected by non-agents, such as a person who is suffering from a brain lesion and halucinating as a result, or a person who has Torret's and spouts out obscenities at inappropriate times, or a person who is homocidal due to a chemical imbalance in their brain."

Mark,

My account is an addendum to Mele's response to the Manipulation Argument, necessitated by Kapitan's critique. The proponent of the MA assumes that the agent's in question have met the compatibilist's "healthy mind" condition of autonomy (and some others). The question is, what makes the naturally determined agent autonomous when the manipulated one is obviously not? Answer: the latter cannot subvert the will of his influences the former can (my amendment of Mele's sheddabilty condition). So, yes, "being able to subvert the will of others ...(does not)capture() the whole idea of control. (BTW, how WOULD you define this ability?)

[Robert Allen]

"You say that your account allows us to distinguish between agents that are being controlled and those that are merely being influenced, but I don't think that's "enough". Surely there are varying degrees of influence, some of which degrade the degree of control an agent has over his actions."

Mark,

I am uncomfortable with the idea of degrees of autonomy, so here's what I have to say re. the sort of case that I think you have in mind (in the paper I cited above):

"What if the possibility of an agent satisfying T2’s definiens (the subversion condition) is remote? What if it is highly unlikely that she will abdicate an attitude that someone has instilled in her in favor of one that he had not intended for her to adopt? Would she then still remain in his control-thus failing to be autonomous- despite being able to transcend his influence? An advocate of the manipulation argument would contend that if a naturally determined agent satisfies the definiens of T2 only because of what happens in a “distant” (physically) possible world, then her ability is not robust enough to distinguish her from a victim of CNC. T2, then, appears to be too narrow, as those satisfying its definiens would yet be limited.

But an unexercised instance of the ability entailed by T2 still affords its possessor freedom from others’ control.9 A good parent, even as she respects her child’s autonomy, may still wish to instill in him certain values- for his own well-being. She would want him, e.g., to abhor criminality. Valuing free will, however, she would forswear CNC to achieve this end. She would undoubtedly make it extremely difficult for him to become a criminal. Nevertheless, so long as she does not use CNC (or some other form of domination), he remains autonomous; she has not ‘crushed his will’. In the unlikely event that her influence puts him at a disadvantage, he could repudiate it in favor of an attitude that he would not be able to adopt but for her willingness to be overcome, so as to grant him a free will. Until such time, he should not be thought of as failing to be autonomous for maintaining an attitude that is serving him well."

[Robert Allen]

"It seems your "fairness" principle is just hard determinism in disguise because it has the same net affect: it renders it such that agents are not ultimately culpable for their actions. If agents cannot be held ultimately responsible for their actions, then retributive justice is impossible. But, if agents *can* be held ultimately responsible, then the main reason supporting your argument for Universalism (your "fairness" principle) is falsified.

On your account, there is no ultimate moral desert. That's hard determinism. (Or it could be hard incompatibilism, but I think you fall into the sector of the hard determinism camp that Smilansky occupies.)"

Mark,

I do not accept, as you apparently do, that providing a sinner with the opportunity to atone for his sins entails not holding him responsible for committing them. What would God have to do at the Last Judgment to convince you that He considers us blameworthy or praiseworthy? Consign each one of us to heaven or hell right then and there? The judgment that A was disadvantaged in comparison to B, which I suggested may be (at least part of) what’s behind the offer of purgatory, does not preclude judgments of desert. On the contrary, atonement would require the acceptance of such judgments. Further, unless we think of B as responsible for outdoing A according to some measure, being more praiseworthy than him, we have no reason to regard something- here, the “initial conditions”- as disadvantageous. You don’t seem to have any use for my analogies, but consider a beaten fighter who has been offered a rematch because (it turns out) that he fought most of the fight with a broken hand. The promoter might say, applying my fairness principle, ‘To be fair, there was no way Rocky was going to win the fight under those circumstances; he deserves a rematch’- while still believing that his opponent deserves the winner’s purse.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Robert,

What is at issue here is whether God is under moral obligation to provide Sinners a chance to atone for their sins. I reject the idea that the cards are ultimately stacked against Sinners and that they consequently deserve a second chance to atone for their sins. Accordingly, I believe that if God is going to judge people, then He will have sufficient warrant to do so the first time around without offering them a chance at reprieve.

Your account of fairness is subject to a regress argument that necessitates the conclusion that Universalism is essentially true: if the Sinner appears before God and is able to obtain a second chance at redemption by claiming that the cards were stacked against him, then that response will still be available the next time is he is before the judgment seat. If there is never a time when the cards are not stacked against him, then judgment can't ever be fair.

However, if there are *ever* times where the cards are not stacked against him in a way that undermines responsibility, there are occasions where judgment and retributive punishment are warranted. If this is the case, then Universalism is essentially false (though it could be accidentally true if God decides to extend mercy to all Sinners).

If Universalism is essentially true, then responsibility is asymmetrical in the way that people such as Susan Wolf have argument: people can deserve praise, but not blame. Your fairness principle presents the same kind asymmetry, and it results in the reject of the basis for retributive punishment. Hence, your view may not be Hard Determinism simpliciter, but it is a close cousin.