The level after next: Clarke on Vihvelin

You've heard of taking it to the next level. Now witness the spectacle, nay, the earth-shattering event of Randy Clarke taking it to the level after next! As Beyonce taught us all to say, I don't think you can handle this. So, get your mama, get your copy of Kadri Vihvelin's paper, and get ready to join in the extraordinary experience of the latest edition of the GFP Online Reading Group.

Thanks to Ed Minar and Phil Topics for letting us post a copy of Kadri's paper.

Randy's comments begin below the line:
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Compatibilists have long argued that having an ability to act is having a causal power or disposition. Incompatibilists have long disagreed. The dispute was, for a long time, side-tracked by the mistaken assumption, on both sides, that causal powers or dispositions are analyzable in terms of simple conditionals: e.g., x is water soluble iff, if x is immersed in water, x dissolves.

Incompatibilists were right that having an ability to act is not analyzable in terms of any such conditional. But the core compatibilist claim, that having an ability to act is having a causal power (or a bundle of dispositions) is nevertheless correct. Seeing where the simple conditional analysis of dispositions goes wrong allows us to see where the simple conditional analysis of ability to act goes wrong, and we can then see that the latter mistake leaves untouched the thesis that an ability to act is a disposition (or a bundle of dispositions). With this correct view of ability to act, we can see that having free will–having the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons--is compatible with determinism, and, indeed, that even in Frankfurt scenarios, agents are able to choose and act otherwise.

So, in brief, argues Kadri Vihvelin in “Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account” (Philosophical Topics 32, nos. 1 & 2 [2004]: 427-50).

Review: John Searle's Freedom and Neurobiology.

John Searle, Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006       

                                                                                                                                           By Christopher Franklin   

                                                                                                                                       

      In this short book John R. Searle proves again why he is one of the most innovative and thoughtful philosophers of our time.  Known best for his work on consciousness, Searle has recently turned his philosophical gaze towards agency (see also his book Rationality in Action).  The book is composed of seemingly two unrelated chapters that both grew out lectures delivered in Europe. However, both chapters are attempts to move us closer to a solution to what Searle calls the single overriding question in contemporary philosophy: How do humans fit in? How do we square the fact that the world is wholly composed of “mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles” with our ordinary conception of ourselves as “conscious, intentionalistic, rational, social, institutional, speech-act performing, ethical and free will possessing agents”? (p. 5)

      Chapter 1 concerns the problem of free will and its attendant problems of rationality, consciousness, and the self.  Chapter 2 focuses on social ontology and political power.  Given the venue of this post, I found it appropriate to focus my discussion on Chapter 1.

New Garden Feature: Book Reviews

The Garden of Forking Paths hereby launches a new feature: book reviews. Gardeners or guest-reviewers will post on a semi-regular basis (not to be confused with a semi-compatibilist basis!) reviews of books germane to the topics of our blog. We hope the reviews will be a nice springboard for discussion in the comments section of each review post. If you are interested in reviewing a book, and/or you have suggestions regarding recent books that could be of interest, please contact the coordinators. Soon, our very own Chris Franklin will begin with Searle's new volume, Freedom and Neurobiology.

As a warm-up, you can check out Patrick Todd's review at Show Me The Argument.

More on van Inwagen on Philosophical Success

In the wake of the recent and robust discussion van Inwagen's paper on philosophical failure here, some of you may be interested in a number of papers being presented at the Baylor philosophy of religion conference this coming weekend dedicated to van Inwagen's work.  Among the other worthwile papers, there are at least three papers on this particular aspect of van Inwagen's corpus.

Infinitely Harry

I’m grading papers, and wanting distraction, I thought of this puzzle:

Jones voted for Bush. Black was ready to intervene and ensure, had the ensurance been necessary, that Jones so vote, but it wasn’t necessary. It may seem that Jones could not have refrained from voting for Bush.

But, in fact, White was ready to intervene and ensure, had the ensurance been necessary, that Black not intervene with Jones, but it wasn’t necessary. Now it may seem that Jones could have refrained from voting for Bush.

But, in fact, Gray was ready to intervene and ensure, had the ensurance been necessary, that White not intervene with Black, but it wasn’t necessary. Now it may seem that Jones could not have refrained from voting for Bush.

But, in fact, the sequence of would-be interveners is infinite. Could Jones have refrained from voting for Bush?

A Suggestion for Setting Up the Problem

What follows is a brief section taken from a draft of the first chapter of my dissertation -- it's basically a suggestion for how to set up the debate that we are all engaged in.  I'd be interested to see what people think.

At its heart, the problem of free will and determinism is about neither determinism nor free will. Or, rather, it’s only about determinism inasmuch as it is about a particularly troubling consequence of determinism – one that would still be troubling even if determinism were false. This troubling consequence is that what we do is ultimately a matter of luck. And it’s only about free will inasmuch as that particular term has been sufficiently disambiguated. Given the various ways the term ‘free will’ has been used, however, it’s almost better to just drop the term altogether in favor of whichever particular disambiguation one is interested in. The disambiguation I’m interested in is control. So, as I see it, the problem of free will and determinism is really a problem about luck and control. But what sort of luck am I talking about? And what sort of control?

Vihvelin, Clarke, and Your Mama (if she's a philosopher)

It's that time again- time for the sweet sound of the GFP Reading Group . . .  of DESTINY!!!

Sometime during the week of February 26th, Randy Clarke is going to bring some class to this barely-reputable joint. He'll be remarking on a recent paper by Kadri Vihvelin, available in a recent edition of Phil Topics (guest edited by John Fischer). For those who don't already own the volume, you can get a copy of the article here, thanks to the generosity of both Kadri and Ed Minar, editor of Phil Topics.

After Randy posts his thoughts, you (and your mama) are welcome, nay, encouraged to join in.

"We cannot escape the presupposition of free will"

At least, so says John Searle in a recent interview.  And science just makes it more mysterious.

But at least he doesn't think it's bad that we Gardeners disagree with each other:  "I don't worry too much about the fact that philosophers disagree."

(HT to Matthew Mullins)

New Dennett on Free Will

Online Papers in Philosophy alterted me to a new article on free will, by Daniel Dennett, which is forthcoming in Psychology and Free Will.  The article is called "Some observations on the psychology of thinking about free will" and you can find it here.

The article include some provocative quotes:

"More recently, the World Question Center on edge.org mounted its 2006 question: What is your dangerous idea? and my friend Richard Dawkins dashed off–and later regretted sending and tried unsuccessfully to retract–a piece inspired by his friend John Cleese’s hilarious scene in Fawlty Towers where he beats his automobile, “punishing” it for its poor performance. The image is unforgettable, but the conclusion Dawkins was tempted to draw was a non sequitur indeed…"

"What if the parallel, in free will, to keeping your head down (in golf), is believing in an afterlife? Or believing in the Old Testament God? Is that too steep a price to pay for free will? What if you’re simply unable to muster the conviction? Have we lost our virginity for free will?"

"A world without punishment is not a world any of us would want to live in."