Cognitive Biases and Free Will Part Two: The Dual Process Challenge Continued

In a wonderful interview with Galen Strawson, fellow Gardener Tamler Sommers asks:

“I don’t know. Take the case of Timothy McVeigh—his execution was shown to the families of the victims on Closed Circuit TV. Why? So that the families could experience “closure.” Don’t you think that kind of retributive impulse presupposes a belief in moral responsibility? If a malfunctioning computer, or a mouse, had caused the death of their loved ones, would they have had to watch the destruction of the mouse (or computer) in order to attain this closure?”

Tamler’s example of the malfunctioning computer, or mouse, is fascinating to me. In September 2006 I cited a similar example from Bertrand Russell:

“No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behaviour to sin; he does not say, ‘You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.’ He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right. An analogous way of treating human beings is, however, considered to be contrary to the truths of our holy religion.”

I forgot to mention a third example, where Richard Dawkins, another famous British atheist and intellectual, makes a strikingly similar statement (without giving any credit to Russell):

“He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist?”

These quotes (and others like them) summarize the essence of my view on free will. Here, I want to talk about a natural compatibilist response to them. Then I want to suggest that this compatibilist analysis is superficial, and that, if we dig deeper, and consider the dual process challenge, we discover that there is more going on in these scenarios than the compatibilist suggests.

First, the compatibilist analysis. The first thing I thought, when I read Tamler’s question, is:

“Of course not! A simple computer or mouse doesn’t satisfy any reasonable compatibilist criteria for free will/action/agency. It doesn’t satisfy any mesh theory, like Frankfurt’s hierarchy of desires and identification criteria, or Watson’s concern with values. It isn’t moderately reasons-responsive. No compatibilist will find this example compelling.”

And indeed, without more, I can readily understand why compatibilist wouldn’t find these sorts of examples compelling. Even if humans are machines, they are not simple machines. We have a few more bells and whistles. This distinction is crucial to the compatibilist, and may prevent hir from seeing any wisdom in such examples/quotations. And I think this is unfortunate.

To show why I think it’s unfortunate, I would ask the reader to consider a deeper analysis of what is going on here: consider the dual process challenge. Suppose that humans have different cognitive equipment for dealing with other minds/agents than for dealing with everything else.*

Now the anti-compatibilist can state hir challenge: sure, I agree that we naturally and instinctively treat other minds/agents differently, if they satisfy certain rules (whether that is satisfying a mesh theory or being reasons-responsive). But I am not recommending that we treat other people like malfunctioning cars and computers because I think that people are as simple as cars and computers. They are not. Instead, I am recommending that we engage the same slower, cooler, more comprehensive and methodical parts of our brain, the same ones that deal with cars and computers, with people too, because I think that part of our brain produces more accurate, humane, and sophisticated results than the part specifically designed to deal with other minds/agents.

In other words, the faster and dumber circuits we have for dealing with other agents, which may have served us so well throughout our evolutionary past, may be leading us astray in our modern world: even if these circuits do well, we can do better. And as we come closer and closer to a world with radical and painless forms of therapy and rehabilitation, these primitive responses, which make us hot under the collar, make us want to punch transgressors in the nose, which makes us turn a blind eye to mitigating circumstances… these primitive responses will grow more and more obsolete.

That is one way of explaining the dual process challenge. I’d be interested to hear what any other Gardeners have to say about it. Pereboom discusses similar ideas, about therapy and rehabilitation, at the end of Living Without Free Will. Here are some common objections:

1. The Clockword Orange objection: “Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.” The idea here is that the rehabilitation reduces the dignity or moral capacity of the agent. Note that future radical and painlesstherapy need not be as crude as the Ludovico Method depicted in that book/film.**
2. An empirical objection: the dual process theory, as a description of how the mind works, with respect to social/moral interactions, is in smaller or larger parts inaccurate. The mind doesn’t work that way.
3. A pragmatic objection (Nichols and Nadelhoffer make this point): the short, “dumber” circuits are actually quite wise, and produce beneficial results for society in the long run. For example, altruistic punishment inflicts a short term cost upon punishers, but lets society cooperate better in the long term.

* Indeed, there is evidence supporting this dual process theory, and you can read about it in the post “Computers Are People Too, And Must Be Punished For Their Indiscretions” at the blog Mixing Memory. For example, people tend to engage in altruistic punishment more with other humans than with computers.

** Here are some great quotes from A Clockwork Orange on this subject:

PRIEST

Choice! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self interest, fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

MINISTER

Padre, these are subtleties. We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics; we are concerned only with cutting down crime. And with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons... He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek. Ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly. Reclamation, joy before the angels of God. The point is that it works!

Comments

[John Fischer]

Kip,

Where is that interview of Galen Strawson by Tammler Summers? Can we post it?

Thanks for your presentations. I am learning a lot from them.

[Tom Clark]

John,

Here you go:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200303/?read=interview_strawson

and Joshua Greene's recent talk at Harvard, relevant to dual process, is linked at http://www.naturalism.org/av_files.htm#Greene

[Tamler Sommers]

Kip,

Thanks for drawing attention to the interview. I do want to point out that the compatibilist should have no quarrel with what I'm saying in that section. My point there (which I'm no longer sure I still believe) is that retributive emotions presuppose that the objects of those emotions are blameworthy. In broad terms I'm simply claiming that there exists a widespread belief in moral responsibility that is deeply connected to attitudes like resentment. Most compatibilists, I think, would agree.

Also, for anyone interested, I did one of those 'Believer' interviews with Jon Haidt (whom Kip mentions in his first post) as well. You can find it here:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200508/?read=interview_haidt

It's a pretty accessible introduction to the social intuitionist model.

--Tamler 'one m' Sommers

["Q" the Enchanter]

Worse than the absurd motor car example is an actual bit of behavior we've all (at least I hope I'm not the only one) been guilty of--angrily and resentfully kicking the door (or rock or whatever object) we'd just stubbed our toe on. Not only is this tack misbegotten on the standard reason-nonresponsivity grounds; it amounts to blaming the door for our own dumb deed. Truly indefensible!

[Mike R. from MI]

"Humane" results? That suggests certain values, and possibly even the belief that such values are objective. Is a determinist entitled to such presuppositions? Does determinism not destroy the distinction between the normative and descriptive perspectives? (Logically, that is where it leads; psychologically, sheer complacency seems to keep many from examining the basis of their values too closely. Is complacency fast and dumb or slow and smart?)

[Kip Werking]

Tamler,

I did not mean to misrepresent your view, if I did. That example, like the others, was intended to illustrate the different ways we tend to treat machines, on the one hand, and other minds/agents, on the other hand.

Thanks for the great interviews with Strawson and Haidt. I enjoyed them both.

[Tamler Sommers]

Kip,

No problem. As you know I tend to agree with that line of thinking. I just wanted to clarify what I was going for in that particular portion of the interview.

[Rob]

Kip,

Your simplistic reduction of retributive interests to a matter of mere "impulse" relegated to a supposed unfortunately primitive portion of brain functioning cries out for challenge from, as Nietzsche puts it (in the Preface to the Genealogy), "that which can be documented, which can really be ascertained, which has really existed, in short, the very long, difficult-to-decipher hieroglyphic writing of the human moral past," because I think you would find that retributive interests are far more sophisticated and nuanced than dual process theory (at least as you've presented it) seems to allow, and thus far less deserving of the negative valence ascribed to it by such theory.

(I wish the salutary trend toward more empirically-informed philosophizing, as refreshingly exemplified by Gardeners, was merged with a similarly energetic interest in getting a fix on the actual moral past -- particularly as it pertains to punitive practices. No contemporary scholar to my knowledge has done a better job of heeding the call of this Nietzschean agenda than William Ian Miller in his books "Humiliation," "Anatomy of Disgust," and "Eye for an Eye," in addition to his earlier work on Icelandic honor culture.)

[Cihan Baran]

Hello,

This isn't really relevant to this post but I thought I would ask it anyway. I am really curious about Galen Strawson's Basic Argument and am frustrated to see so little mention of it in literature since I find it really interesting. Al Mele in his paper "Agnostic Autonomism" mentions that:

"There are, of course, philosophers who contend that moral responsibility and autonomy are illusions and that we lack these properties whether our world is deterministic or indeterministic (see, e.g., Double 1991 and Strawson 1986). Elsewhere, I have argued that the impossible demands this position places on moral responsibility and autonomy are unwarranted demands (1995, chs. 12-13)."

And this is the only mention I have ever seen. (Not that I read many free will papers.)

Can anyone recommend a discussion of or reply to Galen Strawson's argument?

Thanks...

[John Fischer]

Cithan,

You are "frustrated to see so little mention of it [Galen Strawson's Basic Argument] in the literature", but then you go on to say "Not that I read many free will papers". Argh! So you get frutrated to see so little mention of something in a literature you don't really read! You must not be a happy camper!

Anyway, you might take a look at my paper, "The Cards That Are Dealt You," in Journal of Ethics--the recent special issue in honor of Joel Feinberg. Merry (belated) Christmas.

[John Fischer]

I should have added that Kip Werking has an interesting reply to my critique of Strawson; I think it is available on Kip's homepage.

So, consider this kind of like Chanukkah, with a sequence of gifts...

[Kevin Timpe]

In addition to John's paper that he mentions, there are two papers in the 2005 Midwest Studies volume dealing with the Basic Argument that you might want to look at by Bernstein and Clarke. Unless I'm mistaken, both can be accessed for free here.

[John Fischer]

Right, Kevin, and and I'm sorry I spelled "Cihan" incorrectly.

[Cihan Baran]

Hello,
"Argh! So you get frutrated to see so little mention of something in a literature you don't really read! You must not be a happy camper!"

I intended my little parenthetical note as an indication of modesty and perhaps ignorance, not to downplay the importance of the free will debate. (If it came across that way, I apologize.) What I meant was "maybe I don't see much mention of it because I haven't read/don't read that many papers."

One advantage I thought of commenting publicly in a blog populated by so many skeptics/incompatibilists was that I wouldn't be "blamed" for my comments, no matter how daft/inappropriate they are. Guess I forgot about the (semi)compatibilists! :-)

Thanks for the "sequence of gifts" and thank you too Kevin Timpe

[Eddy Nahmias]

There is also Randy Clarke's response to Strawson in the Midwest Studies Volume (Sept. 2005).

My diagnosis (which follows Clarke's points) for the relative paucity of responses to the Basic Argument (relative to say, the profusion of work on the Consequence argument or Frankfurt cases) is that:
(1) the argument relies crucially on a transfer of non-responsibility principle something like van Inwagen's principle Beta (or analogous principles used in the Direct argument), so people likely feel like the large literature on these principles is applicable to the Basic argument (e.g., compatibilists who feel Beta is invalid don't worry too much about Strawson's argument).
(2) the argument relies on a conception of moral responsibility that many people in the debate seem to think is more than what is required for genuine (but not impossibly absolute) moral attributibility, even of the retributive sort. Put simply: Strawson is clearly right that what he calls "true moral responsibility" is impossible, but perhaps it is not the sort of moral responsibility at issue (perhaps it is a philosophical fiction). Of course, if it is the sort of MR that undergirds most of our beliefs and practices (at least in some cultures), then its impossibility may be very significant. It'd be nice if we could figure out (experimentally and theoretically, and through examination of our moral past, as Rob suggests) whether our beliefs and practices do rely on anything as robust as the sort of MR Strawson discusses.

Two analogies: (1) arguments for skepticism about knowledge may work only by using a standard of knowledge (certainty) that is unnecessary given our epistemological practices and beliefs.
(2) religious considerations may get people to think of their selves as inhabiting an immaterial soul, but that's a theoretical belief that may not reflect the way people really think about mental states or personal identity. Most people may hold (at least in certain contexts) a *theory* of souls (or a theory of MR) that is incoherent, but we may nonetheless live and (in most non-philosophical contexts) speak as materialists (and compatibilists).

[Rob]

Cihan,

For an even more finely-tuned presentation of the Basic Argument you should definitely read Strawson's more recent 2002 article "The Bounds of Freedom" in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF FREE WILL (ISBN: 0195133366). Compatibilists are, I think, letting themselves off the hook by ignoring this essay which, as far as I can tell, holds up quite well in face of the ambiguous variety of experimental results of the past few years concerning folk intuitions about free will and responsibility.

[Manuel]

I offer a reply to G. Strawson's argument in my paper ("Libertarianism and skepticism about free will: some arguments against both") in the recent Phil Topics issue on agency.

[Joe]

I like, and agree with, Eddy's response to G. Strawson's argument.

I don't like to call it the 'Basic Argument' since (I believe) this is Fischer's name for his version of the Consequence Argument. (Isn't that right, John?) I prefer the name 'Ulimacy Argument,' which I got from Derk Pereboom and Seth Shabo. Also, Nagel gave virtually the same argument in his paper on moral luck, as Clarke notes.

At the INPC, Seth presented a wonderful paper discussing the Ultimacy Argument. I've also learned a lot about the argument in correspondence with Derk, though I'm not sure whether Derk has written on it specifically. So there is some serious work being done on the argument independent of the references noted above.

The questions that interest me are, How does the Ultimacy Argument differ from the Consequence Argument? How are they similar? Do they, for instance, depend on similar transfer principles? Actually, I'm on sabbatical leave this semester in hopes of writing, in part, on this very topic. My answers, so far, are, respectively: 'Not much,' 'in many important respects,' and 'certainly.' But Seth and Derk have at least convinced me that I need to look at the issue more closely.

Briefly, G. Strawson's argument depends on the following premise: If one is morally responsible for anything, then one must be ultimately responsible for something. This conditional strikes me as clearly false. It is no more persuasive than the suggestion that genuine knowledge requires infallibility, which very few contemporary philosophers accept.

I admit that I am not infallible, nor I am the ultimate cause of anything. But do I have to be God in order for knowledge, free will, and moral responsibility to be possible? I say 'No.' This is pretty much a summary of my book project.

[John Fischer]

Rob--Well, I DO address that version of Galen Strawson's argument in "The Cards that are Dealt You". Actually, I focus on precisely that version of the argument.

Cihan--I was just making a joke, perhaps not a good one, in pointing out that it is odd to say you feel frustrated by not finding something in a literature that you then say you don't read anyway! I certainly appreciate the modesty, and I did not take it in any way as denegrating the literature! I didn't mean seriously to bash or "blame" you; but isn't it fair to poke a little fun at the conjunction of things you said?

[Kip Werking]

It is great to see this thread, and the Basic Argument, getting so much attention. Here are some points:

1. My post were intended to present the dual process challenge as an interesting hypothesis and not one with robust empirical support, requiring assent. I don't think much evidence exists yet, but I suspect it will be coming in, the more we learn about brain. Yet it may very well turn out the theory is just wrong.

2. I think anyone who wants to deny the Basic Argument needs to confront the Zygote Argument (and similar design scenario arguments). I wish someone had written on this, but it is apparent that there is an intimate relationship between these arguments. The Zygote Argument works, if it does work, because Ernie fails to be ultimately responsible for the way he is, and this seems to prevent him from being morally responsible for what he does. This is, in essence, the same controversial premise at issue in the Basic Argument or The Consequence Argument (I don't want to split hairs between TNR, Beta, and similar principles). Indeed, I consider the Basic Argument and The Zygote Argument to be the a priori and a posteriori arguments to the same effect: the Basic Argument says "to be morally responsible, you must also satisfy some transfer principle", and the compatibilist will reply "but why should I believe in such a transfer principle" and the answer is "or else you will have to deny the Zygote Argument, which seems so intuitive (at least more intuitive than the Basic Argument alone)." I think even people who want to deny the Basic Argument find something hard or disturbing or vertiginous (Watson's phrase) about the Zygote Argument. But if I am right about the essential symmetry between these two arguments, then a willingness to deny one without denying the other betrays a sort of inconsistency.

3. I'm a big fan of empirical approaches to philosophy, and I find historical evidence about morality to be just as important as contemporary, cross-cultural evidence (that is, very important). I just read After Virtue (a book that otherwise disappointed me), which provides a wonderful discussion of how the notion of virtue evolved throughout the ages. But I am not sure, even just speculating, how a focus on historical practices might show the retributive impulse to be terribly sophisticated? What did you have in mind, Joe?

[Cihan Baran]

I also think that it's great that there is more interest in the Basic Argument than I had thought.

Eddy - I don't know how the analogy to Descartes works. Here is why. At least in Descartes case, I can conceive of a situation where I have absolute and certain knowledge of the world around me. If there are no evil geniuses, if I am not a handless brain in a vat, if my life is not a CIA experiment (pick your favorite skeptical scenario), then when I touch the table in front of me, I really touch the table in front of me and I have absolute, certain knowledge. True, I can never "know" whether I am in this situation in reality but at least I can conceive of a situation where Descartesian rigor is satisfied.

On the other hand, I think it's dubious whether there is a paradigmatic case for responsibility. I can not conceive of a paradigmatic case in which I am certain that I am responsible. This (sometimes) leads me to doubt that the very idea of moral responsibility is intelligible.

I'd really be glad if someone could explain how the analogy to Descartes' case of certainty works.

Hell, Heaven Responsibility - I agree with many that Strawson's analogy to hell and heaven is a confusing one but not for the reasons most people give. People who object to this think that there are varieties of moral responsibility and even if we lack the hell, heaven sort, we may have another, less strong but still meaningful one.

I don't know how there can be degrees or kinds of moral responsibility. To me, it seems as if you are either morally responsible or not. The reason why I think heaven and hell analogy doesn't work is that I think it appeals to folk (or perhaps my) consequentialist intuitions. I might be absolutely, ultimately, meaningfully responsible for stealing bread but it still wouldn't make sense to send me to hell for that. So I don't think true, ultimate responsibility necessarily requires heaven/hell sort of deservingness. (Maybe it would make sense to send Hitler to hell.)

Joe - Right but to disagree with the ultimacy premise, as Kip says, you would have to confront the Zygote Argument, which seems more convincing to me now.

John Fischer - I think the reason why I had had an expectation that the Basic Argument would be more widely discussed in the literature is that before I read anything else about the free will debate, I had read Strawson's entry at online Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And it is written in such a way as to give the impression to the reader that the Basic Argument, pretty much, concludes the free will debate. Feeling convinced and that the piece was really bold, I had the intuition that it would incite more responses. (Or maybe because it's failed the cause responses, the Routledge entry is so boldly written.)

Randolph Clark's paper - Finally, I have read that paper which so many people recommend because it was available online. I am not all that convinced by it. Clark suggests that Strawson doesn't argue for the following premise:

"(P) When you do what you do because of the way you are,it is not possible
for it to be up to you whether if you are that way, in certain crucial mental
respects,then you perform that action."

My point is that I think it is simply a mental fact about you that "if you are that way in certain crucial mental respects, then you perform that action". It's just a part of my mental constitution that if I get the desire to read online philosophy papers, I really do read online philosophy papers. Someone else may have a mental constitution such that if she gets the urge to read online philosophy papers, she simply goes out dancing in the streets. I don't see why Strawson needs to argue for this and I am quite happy with its "implicit rejection".

Here is why I used to reject the Basic Argument. I think the argument had two parts: (1)ultimacy (2)some sort of a "mental" determinism. What I mean by "mental determinism" is that the argument implicitly assumed the following model of agency: You would start with a mental make-up M_0 such that it would lead to choice C_0. Choice C_0 would alter your mental make-up such that it would become M_1. M_1 would lead to C_1 and C_1 would lead to M_2, M_2 to C_2 and so on. The whole course of your choices would be determined by M_0. I think this sort of determinism can be dealt with Frankfurt-style cases.

I used to think that the worry about ultimacy was also unwarranted as well because all you needed was a detailed hierarchy of values, detailed enough to grant you agency - the sort Frankfurt describes and Gary Watson and Susan Wolf elaborate on. However, after reading the Zygote Argument, I no longer think that the worry about ultimacy can be so easily assuaged.

Again thanks to everyone for their responses! I don't think I'll get around to reading all the papers suggested but I'll sure check some when the winter quarter starts.

[Kevin Winters]

As a graduate student who is working on his Masters Thesis on the question of free will, I have a question and this thread seems just as good as any to ask it. Do must discussions of free will that have reference to the "body" always refer to it from a neurological and/or physiological perspective or are there alternative works that find this reductive perspective on the body ultimately inadequate for dealing with the free will issue? I'm trying to work out an alternative perspective and want to get a good grasp of the various approaches that free will thinkers take as it relates to the "body" in their discussions.

[Joe]

Two quick notes.

First, what I dislike about a shift from discussion of the consequence argument to a discussion of the ultimacy argument (or basic argument) is that all the work on the former seems to have gotten lost. What is needed -- in each case, I would argue, and in the zygote argument as well -- is a closure or transfer principle of some kind. Something that takes the lack of choice or responsibility at some time in the past, prior to the birth of the agent, and transfers it to all other times. Questions then arise as to how similar or different these closure principles are. I think that they are more similar than different, which is why I don't think that the ultimacy/basic argument is anything new.

I promise to talk about this all at length in the future.

Second, a message to Kip: I posted twice -- once on the zygote argument thread and once on the Cognitive Biases and Free Will Part I thread. Tell me what you think about those posts and I'll answer your question above.

I haven't had a chance to read Cihan's posts carefully but I'll try to do so later on today.

[Joe]

Cihan,

Let me try to explain the analogy between the argument for skepticism and the ultimacy/basic argument -- "the analogy to Descartes' case of certainty," as you call it -- a bit further. (This is just one way to tell the story. Eddy might tell the story differently.)

Consider the following argument for Cartesian skepticism: If you knew that you had a hand, then you could deduce that you were not a brain in a vat, for brains in vats do not have hands! But you can’t rule out that you are a brain in a vat. This hypothesis is consistent with all of your available evidence. Thus, you don’t know that you have a hand. And there is nothing special about this belief. For any ordinary belief there is a skeptical hypothesis that undermines your knowledge of the belief yet no available evidence will rule that hypothesis out. Thus, no one knows anything.

One response is to say that the standards for knowledge in this argument are set too high. I can admit that IF I must rule out ALL alternative hypotheses in order to know that I have a hand (or anything else), then I don’t know anything. But I can still reject the skeptical conclusion, for I may reject the claim that I must rule out ALL alternative hypotheses in order have knowledge. Perhaps I just need to rule out the relevant alternatives.

There is a similar response to Strawson’s ultimacy/basic argument. I can admit that IF moral responsibility requires ultimate responsibility, then no one is morally responsible for anything. But I can still reject Strawson’s conclusion, for I may reject the claim that I must have ULTIMATE responsibility in order to have moral responsibility. Perhaps I just need to be partially responsible for some of the things that I do.

The point of similarity is that just as the skeptic tries to convince us of skepticism by appealing to unusually high standards of evidence for our knowledge claims, Strawson tries to convince us of his conclusion by appealing to unusually high standards, e.g. ultimacy, in order to ground our moral responsibility claims. In each case, I can avoid the radical conclusion by rejecting the claim that such high standards are required.

Note that I need not show that I am certain about anything in order to respond to Strawson’s argument. Strawson is not making an epistemic claim, e.g., no one knows that we are morally responsible. He is making a metaphysical claim: no one is morally responsible. In response, I’m merely claiming that the standard that grounds our moral responsibility is something less than ultimate responsibility.

[Cihan Baran]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your clarification. I think there is an important distinction between the two cases though.

Descartesian skepticism requires that you rule out ALL ALTERNATIVE hypotheses as you said. This is an assumption of infallibility. It suggests that for me to know p, p can't possibly be false. However, this is an extravagant assumption - for we don't have to require that it is impossible that p is false but merely that p isn't false. (You probably know all this already but anyway.)

Here is the point that worries me: I can see why Descartes' standards are high because I don't think the mere possibility that I might not have hands is enough to rule out the knowledge that I have hands. (It is possible that even though it is possible that I don't have hands, I still have hands.) However, is it possible for me to be morally responsible for my actions even though it is not possible for me to be the ULTIMATE originator of my actions? I keep vacillating on the answer and I think this is where the analogy to Descartes' case breaks down. In Descartes' case, it's merely a possibility that I don't have hands. Here it's an impossibility that I am the ULTIMATE originator of my actions.

[Joe]

Cihan,

I do think that the requirement of ultimacy (that I be the ULTIMATE originator of an action in order to be morally responsible for it) is excessive and for exactly the reason that you note at the end of your post: "it's an impossibility that I am the ULTIMATE originator of my actions." What use is it to specify a requirement for moral responsibility that no creature can possibly fulfill?

Here is another reason, though. Suppose the two of us rob a bank. Here no one is the ultimate origin of the bank robbery since we robbed the bank together. Intuitively, it seems that we're both responsible. Thus, it seems that something less than ultimate origination is required for moral responsibility.

Getting back to the analogy between the argument for skepticism and the ultimacy/basic argument, perhaps there is a disanalogy between the two cases, e.g., that ultimate origination is impossible while infallibility is not. But I'm not sure about that. If infallibility requires that I be able to rule out ALL of the alternative hypotheses to any knowledge claim it is not clear that it can ever be satisfied. How COULD I rule out that I am a brain in a vat, or in the Matrix world, or being deceived by an evil genius? And if I can’t, how can that be a helpful guideline when determining whether or not I know that I have a hand?

I admit that the two cases might not be perfectly analogous but they are still very similar. Or so it seems to me!

[Kevin Winters]

Do we have a reason to suppose that the "evil demon" or "Matrix" scenarios aren't actually different from the "real world"? It seems that it is our uncritical acceptance of the concepts of "sensation" and "representation" that make them "intuitively" appealing, including the quasi-atomistic/temporally linear metaphysic that sustains them: photons bounce off the object, hit my retina, send a 'signal' to my brain, creates a "sensation" that is related to other atomic sensations and "memory," creates a representation which is what I "see," and we have perception. Apart from that metaphysic the "intuitiveness" of the claim is far from obvious.

[Joe]

Kevin,

In your story, there are photons bouncing off objects. That is a different world than either the Matrix world or the evil demon world in important respects.

Also, the discussion has shifted from talk about knowledge (epistemology) to talk about the nature of reality (metaphysics). I'm not trying to gloss over your worries. It might be that what I've described as skeptical worries are really much deeper worries about the fundamental nature of reality. Maybe its rabbit holes all the way down, or something like that.

In any event, I didn't intend to give a response to the argument for skepticism. I was really just trying to make a relative claim: A certain type of response to the argument for skepticism is just as good as a similar response to the ultimacy argument.

One might conclude from this that there is no adequate response to the argument from skepticism; that skepticism is true. I'm fine with that. But I don't think that a true skeptic would then endorse the ultimacy argument in the way that, say, G. Strawson endorses it. A true skeptic might use the ultimacy argument in an effort to persuade us that no one really knows anything about the nature of free will but that is different. (This is one reason why I don’t like to use the term ‘skepticism’ to describe G. Strawson’s view.)

It seems that among contemporary epistemologists the argument for skepticism is generally regarded as flawed and the interesting debate is really about what is the best response to the argument, whereas among free will/action theorists the consequence argument, the ultimacy argument, etc. are generally regarded as, at the very least, persuasive if not sound. Here an attempt at response is often regarded as a psychotic reaction to the sudden awareness that free will is merely an illusion.

I'm interested in offering a kind of meta-metaphysical argument for compatibilism that suggests that this comination of attitudes is implausible. Unless you are a skeptic, you have an adequate response to the ultimacy argument; if you are a skeptic, then you shouldn’t believe that the ultimacy argument is sound anyway.

[bob Macintosh]

Hi, I'm struggling with all this, but my reading of Descartes' argument is that although I do not know the ultimate nature of reality, I still know that I have a hand. Whether a 'hand' is a piece of meat, a sub-routine, or a distinct impression cannot be known for certain, but still I know that 'I' have a 'hand'- I type, therefore I have a hand. It might work similarly to say something like:- 'I am ashamed, therefore I have free-will.' without being committed to either ultimate knowledge or ultimate responsibility. That's the way Genesis tells it. The problem with skepticism as a philosophy (as opposed to a useful tool) is that it is 'ultimately' parasitic and dependent on some non-skeptic to assert something - so I assert that I have a hand, and if a skeptic disputes it, they must have got the message that it typed. God (or Bill Gates) knows how!