History

Alright, enough meta-blogging. Here's a controversial claim to get the argumentative juices flowing. In a recent Times Literary Supplement (not online, unfortunately), Saul Smilansky reviews Kane's Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. The free will debate, Saul writes, belies the widespread view that philosophy never progresses: in fact with regard to free will recent progress has been so great that it's not worth reading anything on the topic published earlier than 'about 1960' (I quote from memory).

I want Saul to be right. I want a justification for my own practice of rarely going to the library, and almost never reading anything published more than a few years ago. Of course I know that many of the positions defended today have historical precedents, in the work of Hume, Reid, and Kant. But the compatibilism, agent-causation and Kantianism defended by contemporary thinkers is much more careful and plausible than these original views (as I understand them). These greats deserve recognition but do I really need to read them?

Comments

[Kip Werking]

I'm dying to read that article!

I agree with Saul. As I wrote almost two years ago (http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/10/final_reconcili.html), I think there has been tremendous progress in this area. Indeed, Nagel seems too humble when he suggests, in The View from Nowhere, that nothing approaching the truth has been said on the free will problem---I would include his own work amongst the most accurate and important. I would even agree with Smilansky that one does not need to read the great philosophers on this subject.

Read Socrates' argument that the cause of all wrongdoing is ignorance. Read Nietzsche's error theory of free will or discussion of being causa sui. Read Spinoza's tracing argument against free will in Ethics, it is just a paragraph or two long. Compare Hume's sentiment-based compatibilism with his worry about divine prescient and defense of suicide (based upon determinism). They are more eloquent than precise or consistent.

Indeed, I'm even skeptical about the virtues of the early great works of Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument and Frankfurt's celebrated examples. In contrast, I think there has been great, and exponential, progress in just the last 20 or even 5 years. Given my own biases, I've seen the publication of The View from Nowhere in 1986 and Freedom and Belief in 1987 (the arguments are so similar; can this be just a coincidence?), The Non-Reality of Free Will in 1991 and Metaphilosophy and Free Will in 1996, and Living Without Free Will in 2001. I can't think of *any* comparable books defending skepticism about free will before 1986.

Furthermore, the introduction of psychology and cognitive science into this area is crucial. I think Nichols and Knobe's finding of an affect/compatibilism effect (forthcoming in Nous). The new work on revisionism and experimental philosophy looks very promising.

Of course, this optimistic view of recent work might be convenient, and perhaps I look at it through rose tinted spectacles. But it is consistent with the accelerating pace of technology. How much smarter are all of us because of modern universities, email, Google, Amazon and Google book search, planes that fly us to conferences, even blogs (like this one), online access to neverending and competitive journals, and so on. This optimistic view of recent work is also consistent with progress in other fields (see, for example, Mathematics: The New Golden Age by Devlin, or consider the progress in biology after Watson and Crick and psychology after Freud's influence declined).

[Andrew W.]

Uhuh.

And more generally, the canard about philosophy's stasis really ought to be put to rest. You don't hear cosmologists saying that the Big Bang theory is a series of footnotes to Genesis!

[Manuel]

Interesting question Neil.

I guess I am inclined to think that one can get away without reading the history of free will work, but that there are benefits to reading that history. I don't think this point is restricted to work on free will, either. It seems to me that while it is true that much of the historical work on free will depends on suppositions that we don't necessarily share or on distinctions we don't make (or the failure to make distinctions they should make), I think the history of philosophy can be mined for all sorts of insights. In some ways, it is like talking to someone who is really smart but doesn't necessarily know your own field. These conversations can be really rewarding and they sometimes provide useful alternatives to orthodox ways of framing issues. Can you get away without reading them? Yes. Can one's own work improve from having read them? Yes.

On a separate but related issue I'm inclined to think that it is really important to have people who study that history. As our own convictions and suppositions change, different historical figures can provide more (and less) insight to the issues at stake, and provide a resource for how smart, sophisticated thinkers have thought about these issues. There will be important divergences, of course, but it is always useful to have smart people to reflect with, even if they are dead.

[Joe Campbell]

I am certain that in 200 years philosophers will still be reading Hume, Reid, and Kant. Whether they will be reading any articles from 1960-2006 I am not so certain.

[Manuel]

Ah, but the relevant history vs. contemporary comparison is whether they will be reading articles (or whatever the principle format is then) from 2160-2206. A partisan of contemporary work can retain skepticism about the longevity of any work from any particular period, including our current period once it becomes thought of as "history." And actually, I'd be surprised if Hume, Reid, and Kant were as significant figures then as they are now, simply because the canon of philosophers tends to shift over time. For big parts of the Hellenistic period, Aristotle was not a major figure. Hume's enormous contemporary significance would have been surprising to someone writing in 1890. And, we no longer study Chrysippus, Rufus of Cornwall, Suarez, Vitoria, Comte, and so on in the way in which these figures were once studied (and, in some places, for a good long time).

[Neil]

I agree entirely with both of Manuel's claims (a) that it is important that someone reads, say, Hume and (b) that any free will specialist might gain from reading, say, Hume. On (a), knowledge is a distributed enterprise. My question was should I read, say, Hume. On (b) I agree that were I to read Hume, I might learn something relevant to free will. But that's not sufficient to motivate me to read Hume. The question concerns the all-things-considered benefits of reading Hume, where all things-considered-benefits are the benefits minus the costs - costs here are mainly opportunity costs. It's not like I read nothing other than the guys listed in the side-bar on the left. I read many things which feed into my work. It's just that the other things I read are also contemporary: contemporary philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of biology and Terry Pratchett.

In the sciences, there is absolutely no expectation that you will read work from earlier eras (and again this is reflected in my own practice: I've written a book on evolution, but I've never read Darwin), nor is there any expectation that anything published today will be read in a decade or so. Analytic philosophy is a lot like the sciences (I've argued, in a paper published too long ago for you to bother with).

[Alan]

I am old-school on this question in some respects. I regularly tell my students that they should not regard themselves educated if they have not read and thoroughly studied the Bible and The Origin of Species. What I mean of course is in part that they should be familiar with the ideas of these books. Much of modern culture and especially politics derives from traditions associated with these two influential books. But for scholars I would say that I mean the suggestion I put to my students much more literally--know the sources of your main interests. Derivative knowledge of original sources places great faith on interpreters of that knowledge. Either in religion or science that is dangerous. The works that form the basis of much of modern thought, even in our limited area of philosophy, are not so numerous that they cannot be read as background for further work. The history of philosophy is certainly not irrelevant to current work. If that were not true, then the tension between historical and topical approaches to introduction to philosophy would not be an issue at all--current topical thought would simply make the historical approach an old-fashioned curiosity. But, for example, Plato's Euthyphro is as fresh and relevant to our contemporary political landscape as it was 2300 years ago. Do you think that Cal Thomas or Karl Rove has parsed out the rational implications of that dialogue? Do you think that our current leaders have more than a Cliff Notes' summarized grasp of history or intellectual issues?

Case in point for us. What's the difference between van Inwagen and C. A. Campbell? I would argue just the consequence argument--Campbell in many ways was the first truly modern libertarian in his grasp of the significance of modern science's challenge to libertarianism. He was one of the first to suggest a minimalist indeterminism in response to creeping causal explanation of mind. I think in fact he has largely been ignored as a founder of the current resurgence of libertarianism, and that's a shame. For my own part, J. L. Austin's emphasis of freedom as ability and opportunity (or, as I add, perhaps opportunities) should be reintroduced as a central theme to discussion of what freedom is--because I think moral themes of responsibility have hijacked today's free will discussion to the exclusion of other metaphysical concerns.

It's been said by others better: ignore history, but in that case be ready to repeat it. Or was something like that said in Ecclesiastes? (Bonus question: when was that OT book probably actually written?)

[Joe Campbell]

Interesting thoughts!

In response to Neil's comments, I think that reading Hume is different than reading many of the other folks, since he is such a damn good writer in addition to being a good philosopher. I'd rather read Hume at any given time and on any given subject than almost anyone else. (I know that you just picked him as an example, Neil, but I had to mention this!)

There are some issues lying behind this debate that have a lot to do with whether folks are pro-contemporary or pro-history or some mix of the two, mainly questions about the nature of philosophy and what is important or interesting about philosophical research.

I tend to focus on philosophical problems, like the compatibility problem. This is likely not the place to admit this but I'm not much interested in the difference between various theories of libertarianism or compatibilism or denialism. I'm just interested in the arguments that motivate someone toward libertarianism or compatibilism or denialism in the first place.

There is no doubt that van Inwagen's presentation of the Consequence Argument is in many ways better than, say, the various versions of the argument for incompatibilism that you find in the Stoic fragments. But it is better from the point of view of formal presentation. The baseline intuitions lying behind the arguments are pretty much the same. So I find that reading the Stoics is helpful, for it gives me another angle on these intuitions. It also helps me to understand alternative ways of expressing the argument for incompatibilism, using van Inwagen's formal devices.

If I was interested in the details of, say, the libertarian agency view, I doubt that I would spend much time reading the history of philosophy. Here what O'Connor and Clarke have to say is much better than what Lucretius had to say. Lucretius, in fact, is no help at all -- unless your goal is to make libertarians look silly!

[Kevin Timpe]

And no one, Joe, should have "making libertarians look silly" as one's goal!

[Kip Werking]

I just want to say that agree with Joe about Hume's importance in general (if not specifically with respect to free will). Amongst the great philosophers of history, he is probably my favorite, and his skeptical writings are a pleasure to read. Of course, my hesitation about Hume on the free will problem might just reflect the tension between his compatibilism and my more skeptical view. But, in particular, what I find interesting about Hume is that he is perhaps the clearest example of a *soft* compatibilist. Hume defends compatibilism but at the end of 8:2 in the Enquiry, he worries that divine prescience would make God the "author of sin." Similarly, he argues that determinism and theism would exculpate suicides in his essay on suicide. So Hume's compatibilism seems to hinge upon the existence of God. Paul Russell has argued that this is just a minor inconsistency and that Hume would ultimately be a *hard* compatibilist (perhaps advocating the solution Russell suggested at Inland: other people can hold one responsible, but not God). But Hume's writings suggest to me that he was a *soft* compatibilist. In other words, he did not seem to agree with the following principle of Symmetry:

Symmetry: it does not matter, with respect to moral responsibility, whether one was designed to live a meticulously predetermined life, or whether one was created through "blind nature" and "mere determinism"

As best as I can tell, most prominent scholars, working on this problem today, agree with Symmetry: G. Strawson, Pereboom, Fischer, Dennett, Watson, Frankfurt, Mele. Probably many more would agree with it but have not explicitly said so. So, if Hume is a *soft* compatibilist in this sense, his view seems to be sharply in contrast to modern scholarship on the free will problem. Indeed, I suspect that, to the extent Hume rejected Symmetry, this just represents a fundamental inconsistency in his view. It would be wonderful if we could ask him to elaborate on the subject; unfortunately, of course, this is impossible.

[Joe Campbell]

Kip,

I don't think that the Enquiry comment is problematic, nor do I think that Hume's compatibilism hinges on the existence of God. The comments about suicide do seem worrisome but I'll have to look at the text again.

Can you explain Symmetry a bit more, and the distinction between soft and hard compatibilism? There is some interesting stuff here and I'd like to think about it some more. I suppose I should just get a copy of Paul's paper. (I missed it at the INPC -- there are too many good papers at that conference!)

Lastly, you write: "if Hume is a *soft* compatibilist in this sense, his view seems to be sharply in contrast to modern scholarship on the free will problem."

I want to make a general point here that relates to my comments above. Even if there is a disagreement between Hume and most contemporary philosophers on a particular issue, it is unclear what conclusion we should draw. I certainly don't think that the conclusion to draw is "Read contemporary philosophers only and ignore Hume, for he was wrong," which is the conclusion suggested by the Smilansky quote at the beginning of the thread. (I haven't read the Smilansky article yet either!)

Suppose that you were alive in the early 1900s and someone pointed out that Kant's views were in contrast with the verification principle, which was accepted by most philosophers of that period. Certainly it would have been unwise to conclude that Kant would be the eventual loser of that debate.

I'm not suggesting, by the way, that Kant was the "winner" of that debate. The point is rather that there may be ways of explaining the contemporary consensus on certain issues in the free will debate other than by saying that philosophers have finally gotten it right.

Throughout the history of philosophy the consensus view in the free will debate was that of compatibilism. In the last 30 or so years, that has not been the case. Is it because we've figured something out that the Stoics, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Moore have missed? Or is it just a blip on the screen, like the verification principle? One thing for sure is that, from our contemporary perspective, it is difficult to tell.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Alan writes, "Campbell in many ways was the first truly modern libertarian in his grasp of the significance of modern science's challenge to libertarianism."

Joe writes, "Throughout the history of philosophy the consensus view in the free will debate was that of compatibilism. In the last 30 or so years, that has not been the case." (Joe also writes that Kant was a compatibilist? Is there a consensus on how to fit Kant into the free will debate's (problematic) categories?)

Now, I'm interested in these two historical claims, both of which I'm inclined to accept (I think Campbell's paper is one of the best works to introduce the modern free will discussion), and how they intersect.

Here's my oversimplistic thesis (in support of my own views!): Causal determinism was used as a stand-in thesis for complete explanation (in principle) by the natural sciences. That view is threatening to any conception of human nature as somehow distinct from and transcendending the natural world (e.g., Christianity). Many philosophers were compatibilists (especially the naturalistic ones) because they thought (for various reasons) that humans should not be considered distinct from the natural world--but they want to hold onto idea that we are free and morally responsible in significant ways (indeed, ways that are different than other animals--so we are distinct to some degree!).

Now, when quantum physics came along, it became clear that determinism is not equivalent to scientific explanation (or governed by natural laws) since the laws of physics looked to be indeterministic. Meanwhile, psychology (esp. behaviorism at the time), supplemented by Darwin, was starting to view humans as more mechanistic and understandable (even in practice) in terms of natural laws. So things got messy, with incompatibilists having to find arguments that don't equate determinism with science (since scientific laws can be indeterministic)--and the Mind argument made that hard to do--while libertarians also recognize that simple indeterminism is unlikely to help much (except for a few who think quantum physics will save the day), and everyone recognizing what was really the threat all along (explanation by natural science) becoming more salient.

The upshot: we've spend 30 years making progress in many ways but also (in my humble opinion) stagnating on the Consequence argument and Frankfurt cases, when these two arguments, each in their own way, really point us back to the pre-quantum question, not are FW/MR compatible with *determinism* but are FW/MR compatible with "modern science" (or a naturalistic worldview).

Perhaps this simplified sketch of history just demonstrated why we need to read the history?

(Manuel, weren't we gonna write a paper on something like this once upon a time?)

[Kip Werking]

Joe,

I apologize if I was too unkind to Hume! First let me explain Symmetry and then I'll try to explain my comment about Hume's inconsistency.

1. Many times on this blog, I've raised the notion of a life designer. I think Mark suggested the helpful adjective "Meticulous" because such a designer designs a person such that *every* aspect of their life will unfold in a way predetermined by the life designer. This Meticulous designer can be God but it need not be. Another way to think of the Meticulous designer is as extrapolation from more local/immediate CNC control. The controller can immediately CNC control with (for example) a radio controlled device in your brain---but if s/he was smart and powerful enough, s/he could just start before your were born and set your life up like so many dominoes (even if setting up a person's life is much more complicated than setting up dominoes; given determinism, it can still be done in principle). Pereboom's four case argument extrapolates, or generalizes, in just this way from immediate CNC control to more distant Meticulous design.

Watson also discusses this possibility in Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism (an article I love), and he uses the term "hard compatibilist" to refer to compatibilism that allows some Meticulously designed agents to nevertheless be free and morally responsible. (I apologize if often use the term hard compatibilist without defining it; I realize the term is not popular and not everyone has read Watson's article). And the basic idea goes all the way back to the Hobbes and Bramhall debate, and so to the extent compatibilists haven't adequately addressed and alleviated the concern about Meticulous design (and I don't think they have), then this is one area in which there has *not* been progress.

In summary, a hard compatibilist (by definition) agrees with Symmetry:

Symmetry: it does not matter, for the purposes of attributing moral responsibility, whether: (A) a Meticulous designer designed an agent such that every aspect of the agent's life would unfold according to the designer's predetermined plan or (B) nobody and nothing ever designed the agent such that every aspect of the agent's life would unfold according to a predetermined plan. In (B), the agent merely evolved or emerged from (for example) the primordial soup.

So that is Symmetry. At the risk of belaboring the point, let me illustrate with an example. Suppose that I commit a murder in World A and World B (satisfying the compatibilist conditions of your choice). In A, I was designed by God (or whoever) to commit this murder. In B, there is no God and humans just emerged from the primordial soup (or whatever). According to Symmetry, I am *equally* morally responsible for these murders. Deniers like Pereboom and Strawson will say that it doesn't matter whether someone designed my life; I don't have free will in either case. And in saying this, they will *agree* with Fischer, Watson, Dennett, Frankfurt, and Mele: it doesn't matter whether someone designed my life, because I have free will in both worlds.

Now in your post, you write:

"Even if there is a disagreement between Hume and most contemporary philosophers on a particular issue, it is unclear what conclusion we should draw. I certainly don't think that the conclusion to draw is 'Read contemporary philosophers only and ignore Hume, for he was wrong,' which is the conclusion suggested by the Smilansky quote at the beginning of the thread."

But I would (dare to) suggest, without using such absolute terms, that this is the conclusion we should draw! I would not say "definitely, 100%, Hume was wrong and we should not read him." But I would say "these facts give strong reasons for thinking Hume was wrong and therefore placing less importance on his work." Of course, if I am right when I say that Hume rejected Symmetry and Watson, Fischer, Mele, Pereboom, G. Strawson, and Dennett accept Symmetry (and I may very well be wrong about that; there are many subtleties in these views), then it remains technically possible that Hume was right and all of these contemporary philosophers are just wrong.

But I would ask, Joe, do you agree with Symmetry? And I suspect that you would, as I do, and as Watson, Fischer, Mele, Pereboom, G. Strawson, and Dennett seem to. And then I would examine Hume's remarks in Enquiry 8:2 and On Suicide and determine whether Hume agreed with Symmetry. At the very least, as Paul Russell agrees, there seems to be *some* tension those remarks and Hume being a hard compatibilist.

Finally, you write:

"Throughout the history of philosophy the consensus view in the free will debate was that of compatibilism. In the last 30 or so years, that has not been the case."

Is that really true? If we consider Epicurus and Lucretius, the libertarian tradition in Catholicism, and the hostility with which Hobbes' and Hume's compatibilism was met, as well as a skeptical tradition including the protestants Luther, Calvin, and Edwards, philosophers Spinoza, Nietzsche, d'Holbach, Priestley, and Russell, and quasi-philosophers including Skinner, Einstein, Freud, and (arguably) Darwin... it is at least not obvious to me that either compatibilism or incompatibilism has been dominant throughout history.

"Is it because we've figured something out that the Stoics, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Moore have missed?"

First, I think it is difficult to categorize either Kant or Schopenhauer as a compatibilist/incompatibilist. Honderich summarizes Kant's view as follows:

"So he is a determinist of a kind, opposed to the tradition of Compatibilism, not really in the Incompatibilist tradition, but tries to make his determinism and freedom-as-origination consistent by his own private means. You may well wonder if he can succeed in all this -- and suspect too, at the beginning of the 21st Century, that something so radical as his view is actually needed."

Similarly, some have categorized Leibniz as an incompatibilist or identified incompatibilist sympathies in Leibniz. See, for example:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=5442

But to answer your question: did they miss something? Perhaps. Or maybe they identified the threat but rationalized it away. For example, Voltaire famously parodied Leibniz' "best of all possible worlds" theodicy for being such a rationalization; perhaps such fallacious reasoning infected Leibniz' (and others) thinking on free will too. More generally, I think it is crucial for scholars in this area to appreciate the emotional commitment we have to certain beliefs, and the resistance this emotional commitment would create to revising or abandoning them.

[Saul Smilansky]

I wonder if it is not too idiotic to be responding a week or so after discussion has died, but due to the war (my family and I have stayed in daily-targeted Haifa; we are fine) my access to the internet was patchy, and while I did check e-mail almost daily I didn't check our Garden for a while (never again, I promise). Anyway, I don't have any deep insights about the proper role of the history of philosophy in philosophy, but thought I'd just give the exact TLS translation, for the sake of historical accuracy, and let posterity be the judge.

What I said on the free will debate was "The progress has been so great that it might be claimed that here (unlike with most philosophical problems) there is not much worth reading that was written before, say, 1960".

My statement was partly a build up to the claim that Bob Kane's (excellent) book will give the lay reader all the familiarity s/he needs with the FW problem, and partly this just struck me as surprisingly plausible. I actually used to read quite a lot of the historical writing on FW, and doing so presumably cannot hurt, but not much of the stuff is terribly sophisticated.

[Joe Campbell]

Talk about idiotic, this comes yet another two weeks after the last post on this topic. But I've been traveling -- and no one else is writing anything anyway!

1. Eddy: I like the historical thesis. Here is a related challenge to Gardeners. List the following theses in order of their degree of threat to our moral freedom (list them from most to least threatening): naturalism, mechanism, complete explanationism, materialism, bypassism, fatalism, and determinism. Feel free to add your own items to the list or to offer some better names for 'complete explanationism' and 'bypassism.'

2. Eddy & Kip: Kant is a compatibilist. He believed that determinism was true, thought that people had free will nonetheless, and took pains to try to explain how these two claims were consistent. What else would one need to do in order to be a compatibilist?

3. Saul wrote: "The progress has been so great that it might be claimed that here (unlike with most philosophical problems) there is not much worth reading that was written before, say, 1960." (Thanks for the clarification, Saul!) Kip defends this thesis, too.

I admit that most of my top ten desert island picks would be contemporary readings, so I can agree with at least one interpretation of Saul's comment. However, I also think it is a bit dicey to think that we've solved some important philosophical secrets about the nature of free will that our ancestors missed, or even to think that we understand all that they had to say on some particular matter, enough at least to dismiss them.

Suppose you were suddenly thrust into some 10-year span during the heyday of logical positivism. Were you alive during that time it would have been naïve to say that you had "strong reasons for thinking Hume was wrong" about induction, say, and that logical positivism was true, just because it was accepted by the majority of good philosophers from that era. (The joke I make to my students is that the logical positivists erred in reading only the first three sections of Hume's Enquiry.) Saul notes that his views on the merits of contemporary philosophers over historians do not pertain to all areas of philosophy. But my point is that I'm skeptical about whether we are the best judges about the relative value of recent work. Of course, the stuff that we read and write seems significant to us, but how will it seem to future philosophers? What will they read?

Moreover, Hume is a good example of a philosopher who, I think, has a lot to offer to contemporary philosophers. But it is problematic giving a precise statement of Hume's views on this topic. I'm not at all sure, for instance, whether or not he accepts the Symmetry Thesis. Keep in mind, however, that both P.F. Strawson's views and Paul Russell's views have been very influenced by Hume's work. I read Hume fairly often and feel like I get as much out of him as I do reading anyone else, dead or alive.

[Neil]

Joe,

First you're of course right that our perspective can make fools of us, causing to overvalue certain things and undervalue others. But that points suggests a more general scepticism: we can be just as wrong about what past thinkers are worthwhile. Philosophers do go in and out of fashion. One of my first paid job as a philosopher was preparing an annotated bibliography of recent work on Proclus. Have you looked at that stuff? It's entirely crazy, but taken seriously by lots of people at lots of different times (well into the twentieth century on the continent).

Second, I (let's leave Saul out of it: he's more nuanced than me: I *am* a straw man) needn't think we've solved problems that our forebears struggled with: I think that we're doing a better job *formulating* the problems and laying out the options. They were confused; we're less confused.

Third, I don't think that future thinkers will (or should) read only the works of Levy and Campbell. I think that insofar as philosophy progresses, they *shouldn't* read us. With some luck, they will read contemporaries. They needn't think that their contemporaries are better philosophers than Hume (let alone Levy and Campbell), anymore than a contemporary physicist needs to think that her contemporaries are better physicists than Newton or Einstein. But the contemporary physicist doesn't and oughtn't to read Newton and Einstein. They played their role in advancing the debate, and the contemporary work builds on them.

[Joe Campbell]

Neil,

Good points, all the way around! I think I might have been reading things into Saul's comments that weren't really there. (Sorry, Saul!) The physics analogy is especially helpful. The point about being just as confused about historical as we are about contemporary philosophers/problems is a good one, too.

For the record, I'm not so sure that we are less confused, about free will at any rate, than our forebears. But I'm clearly in the minority here (at least among philosophers who are under 60).

[Kip Werking]

A couple of comments.

1. Hume is just one data point.
2. I worry that I've been too harsh on Hume. As I mentioned before, I love Hume---he's my favorite historical philosopher. I think I used this thread as just a means to introduce ideas about Symmetry and meticulous design that I find fascinating, and I hope others find fascinating, regardless of whether they suggest Hume was right or wrong.
3. The Logical Positivism analogy only goes so far. Consider the analogy with Symmetry. Logical positivism was a movement, complete with organized meetings, important texts, and persuasive authority figures. But "Symmetry-ism" is not a movement. As best as I can tell, Watson, Frankfurt, Fischer, Mele, Dennett, Pereboom, and Strawson all came to accept Symmetry independently of each other. It just does not have the same appearance of a philosophical fashion.
4. Joe wrote:

"2. Eddy & Kip: Kant is a compatibilist. He believed that determinism was true, thought that people had free will nonetheless, and took pains to try to explain how these two claims were consistent. What else would one need to do in order to be a compatibilist?"

But this does not explore *why* Kant thought these were compatible (to the extent they were). Sure, Kant thought this world was deterministic. But at least one prominent philosopher in this area interprets Kant as positing indeterminism in *another* world, and it is *in virtue* of this indeterminism/origination that we have free will (I don't pretend to fully understand Kant's notoriously complicated view myself):

"Kant did not respond in the Compatibilist Way of course, by giving up the proposition of indeterminism and and going on about freedom as being only voluntariness. Rather, he announced that he would have both of the determinism and the indeterminism. both of determinism and origination, by putting them in different places. Determinism in or for the phenomenal world, indeterminism in the noumenal world."

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/inpc/4th-2001/Papers/Honderich.htm

It is not the case, for example, that Kant believed in free will because humans own their moderately reasons reasonsive mechanisms, or have lower order desires in line with higher order desires (or values) or because of anything like the reasons that motivate contemporary compatibilists. And, of course, this interpretation fits perfectly with Kant's famous description of compatibilism as a "wretched subterfuge."
5. I would also that it would be, I think, quite sad, if philosophy was so vulnerable to fashion, and so powerless to make progress, as some people suggest. Of course, whether it would be sad has no bearing on whether it would be true. But it would still be sad.