Harry Potter on Compatibilism and Self-fulfilling Prophecies

You won’t read it in the NYT Review of Books or the Journal of Philosophy, but… Harry Potter is a compatibilist! I don’t think there are any significant spoilers in the passage I’ll quote, but if you are too worried about spoilers and haven’t read the latest Harry Potter book yet, then Do Not

Here’s the relevant passage –a dialogue between Dumbledore and Harry:

“But Harry, never forget that what the prophecy says is only significant because Voldemort made it so. I told you this at the end of last year. Voldemort singled you out as the person who would be most dangerous to him –and in doing so, he made you the person who would be most dangerous to him!”

            “But it comes to the same— ”

            “No, it doesn’t!” said Dumbledore, sounding impatient now. (…) “If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been fulfilled? Would it have meant anything? Of course not! Do you think every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy has been fulfilled?”

            “But,” said Harry, bewildered, “but last year, you said one of us would have to kill the other –”

            “Harry, Harry, only because Voldemort made a grave error, and acted on Professor Trelawney’s words [i.e., the prophecy]! If Voldemort had never murdered your father, would he have imparted in you a furious desire for revenge? Of course not! (…) Voldemort himself created his worst enemy… (…) He heard the prophecy and he leapt into action, with the result that he (…) handpicked the man most likely to finish him…” (…)

           “But, sir,” said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, “it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or—”

            “Got to?” said Dumbledore. “Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!” (…)

            “I’d want him finished,” said Harry quietly. “And I’d want to do it.”

            “Of course you would!” cried Dumbledore. “You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! (…) In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you… which makes it certain, really, that –”

            “That one of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.”

            But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew –and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents –that there was all the difference in the world.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 23, p. 512

It sounds like J. K. Rowling has been reading John M. Fischer’s “Frankfurt-style Compatibilism”, right? (Along with, perhaps, R. Moran’s and D. Velleman’s work on self-fulfilling beliefs). Incidentally, I think the prophecy in the Potter book can be construed both as the counterfactual intervener in a Frankfurt counterexample and as a standard self-fulfilling belief.

Comments

[Neil]

Finally, a topic regarding which I don't feel over-awed. I'm not sure that HP is a compatibilist. There is a difference, he thinks, between going into the arena with his head held high and being dragged in. There are forces outside of us which determine our fate *but not how we respond to it*. In other words, we have libertarian freedom to respond to our destinies, even though we cannot alter them. The view here is macrolevel determinism coupled with microlevel indeterminism and freedom.

[Casey]

Isn't macrolevel determinism coupled with microlevel freedom to respond, etc. really compatibilism? HP isn't constrained here, he will act on his own desires (he wants to kill Voldemort). The prophecy just means that unlike most of us, he knows what is going to happen to some extent. I'm new to this debate, so someone set me straight.

[Kevin Timpe]

I agree with Neil. One can give a consistent incompatibilist reading of this passage (and the other relevant passages from the HP corpus) along the general lines of Kane's idea of SFAs. I don't see the macro-level determinism involved (but if someone can enlighten me, I'll change my tune). Both Voldemort and Harry have so formed there moral character that one must kill the other. Voldemort won't stop trying until he succeeds in either killing or converting Harry (or, in what is more certain to happen, dies trying). And Harry is so motivated by the Good (or what passes as the Good in the story) that he won't even join Voldemort.

And in what way is the prophecy a Frankfurt-type intervener?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Since Rowling leaves the larger question of metaphysical determinism unanswered, both compatibilist and incompatibilist interpretations have credibility.

But, the incompatibilists have to go beyond Rowling's silence on this question and assert that determinism is false in order to make their interpretation fit. I think that bit is interesting nonetheless.

[Gustavo]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you!

Neil, Kevin, and Mark: Re Prophecy as a counterfactual intervener: Roughly, if Harry decided not to face Voldemort, the (content of the) prophecy --via Voldemort’s actions-- would force him to do so. Put differently, what the prophecy predicts would “intervene” were Harry to decide not to face Voldemort, thus making him face Voldemort, after all. By the same token, in the classic Frankfurt example, if Jones decided not to perform the action (the action Black wants him to perform, that is) Jones would be forced to perform it via some counterfactual intervener (e.g. brain manipulation) put in place by Black. Two qualifications: Neil and Kevin’s observations make me see that both the Potter example and my construal or it are ambiguous: if we assume that the “forces” refer to (or involve) determinism, the example becomes more similar to “Jones 4” in the classic 1971 Frankfurt paper, i.e. the scenario in which Jones could not have done otherwise because of brain manipulation. But if we take these “forces” to mean something like coercion (because, say, Voldemort would have hunted Harry down, thus “forcing” him to fight) we’d be in something like Frankfurt’s “Jones 3” instance.

I grant, then, that at most, the Potter example (even in the stronger construal) would only prove (with suitable qualifications) that PAP is false, not that compatibilism is true. But remember that that is all that Frankfurt-type examples are supposed to prove. However, that seems to be sufficient to shift the burden of proof. If determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility, it’s not because we would lack the ability to do otherwise, and therefore it remains to be shown why --which is, I take it, a move toward compatibilism.

Now, someone may protest: What is all this talk of responsibility when the issue in the Potter passage is not responsibility but something like dignity or worth? Well, although these are all different notions, some incompatibilists claim that they are interdependent, at least in the sense that we can’t get one if we don’t get the other/s (e.g. some incompatibilists like Kane would certainly say that if we don’t have freedom in the strong sense our lives wouldn’t have the kind of value and/or meaning we think they have). But then another source of the compatibilist flavor of the Harry Potter passage comes from the assumption (if my “strong” interpretation of the passage is plausible) that these notions can be pulled apart. Potter cannot do otherwise --he will have to face Voldemort--, and yet, unlike what an incompatibilist would say, his life can still have value, be meaningful, and so on. Again, his “walking into the arena with his head held high” despite the fact that he couldn’t help walking into the arena, makes “all the difference in the world.” Something like this view (without the rhetorical emphasis) is defended by J. M. Fischer (contra Kane) in the article I referred to in my original post.

You guys are also right when you remind me that Rowling doesn’t say much about the truth or falsity of determinism –but aren’t there some passages in which she seems to be inclined to assent to determinism? We’ll have to check. Be that as it may, I particularly like Mark’s suggestion to the effect that the incompatibilist would have to do extra work to make his interpretation fit. (OK, I say this facetiously, but I do think Mark’s got a point here).

Casey: I like your suggestion, but depending on how we cash out “microlevel freedom”, we might find that your definition is grist for either the incompatibilist or the compatibilist mill. (I take it, for instance, that Neil makes the incompatibilist reading). If pressed hard, a compatibilist would have to grant that determinism holds even at the microlevel. But this doesn’t change the fact that, as you say, the agent (Harry, in this case) will act on his own desires –determined or not. Some compatibilists will say that this is so because the causal chains that determine us are not all equal. Some causal chains are responsibility-undermining (e.g., manipulation) while others are not (e.g., those constituting a “normal”, reason-responsive mechanism). Something analogous can be said about sourcehood and ownership. Determinism wouldn’t change either the fact that we have epistemic freedom. Maybe this is what you meant by “microlevel freedom”?