Free Will, Science, and the Media

Hi Gardeners,
There has been, as the intell people put it, a lot of "chatter" recently about the relationship between free will and the neurosciences, here at the Garden with posts about the Financial Times review (which I found problematic, to put it mildly) to Searle's book to the NYTimes article "The Brain on the Stand," not to mention several recent NYT articles on morality and neuroscience, Time's recent issue on the Brain, and this recent article printed in my local rag, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which discusses the experiment described in the previous post here. 

Those of you who know me and my Neurotic Compatibilist (TM by Manuel) position know that I think neuroscience (and the other sciences of the mind) have the potential to threaten free will and responsibility in ways that are more significant than any potential threat posed by the thesis of determinism.  But I do not think it poses a threat in the way most of the scientists suggest, or the way the media presents their research.

I hope to get a book done on this before, say, the end of the decade, but since we all know how that is, I thought some people might be interested in looking at this powerpoint (link below) of a talk I recently presented to the Neurophilosophy reading group here at Georgia State.  (I was trying to explain to the neuroscientists here what I take the problems to be).  It also includes some recent survey results--the actual survey scenarios and questions are the last three slides of the powerpoint, because my audience had already taken a written version.  (It would be interesting to consider my results in light of Luke's.)

Keep in mind that I had to jam a lot into 30 minutes and simplify certain extremely complex issues, but let me know if you have any comments.  Thanks, Eddy

Download free_will_for_neurophilosophy_version_3.ppt

Brain scan can read your intentions

Article here.

Financial Times on Free Will

Financial Times has a short review of three new books on free will: Freedom & Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power by John Searle; Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think About the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to be Human by Susan Blackmore; and Four Views on Free Will by John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom and Manuel Vargas.  You can read the review here.

Fischer Heads South

On 26 April, GFP's very own John Fischer will depart the beauty and serenity of Riverside and head south to the dingy Tijuana suburb of San Diego to give a talk entitled "Source Incompatibilism."  Word on the street is that he's going to publically acknowledge his newfound support for SI and his repudiation of semi-compatibilism.  OK, so I just made that up—but one can hope.  (It's not too late to convert, John!)  Any Gardeners in the area wanting to come join the festivities are welcome.  The talk is scheduled for 12:30 on USD's campus.

Brain Damage and the Trolley Problem

A recent study in Nature finds that damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (#3 on pic below) affects moral judgments in life-and-death situations.  And the test they used to figure this out is none other than the beloved Trolley Problem.  Read about it in this New York Times article as well as on this Nature website.

(Thanks to Stephen Schmid via Alan White for the NY Times link.)

Causation vs. Prediction: An Experimental Study

Luke Misenheimer, a student at UNC, sent the following contribution.  Thanks Luke!

I recently became interested in experimental contributions to the free will debate, and I decided to run a study to investigate a possible difference between the results of some earlier studies. Using questionnaires, I told subjects about an imaginary (more or less) deterministic universe, and then I asked whether a particular action in that universe could have been performed with a free will.

My questionnaires were based on those used in earlier studies, and in constructing them I wanted to make sure that I really drove home the determinism to subjects. In addition to describing the imaginary deterministic universe, my questionnaires did several things to make sure that subjects really got the deterministic message: - they italicized key deterministic phrases; - they reiterated points about the determinism of the universe both generally and with reference to a particular action; - they asked subjects whether an example action in the universe was determined, and I ignored the other responses of subjects who answered in the negative; and - they had subjects compare the imaginary universe to our own universe, which most subjects took to be indeterministic.

My study had two kinds of questionnaires, both of which did all these things. Both questionnaires described a universe in which things that happen around the time an agent is born determine all of that agent's actions. The only intended difference between the questionnaires was this: according to one questionnaire, these things completely cause the actions; according to the other questionnaire, these things can be used to perfectly prediction the actions. The full questionnaires can be found here.

I was worried that all the mechanisms designed to hammer determinism into subjects' heads would cause subjects given both questionnaires to give equally incompatibilist responses (or to give slightly different but still incompatibilist responses). Instead, subjects given the causation questionnaires tended to give *incompatibilist* responses, and subjects given the predictability questionnaires tended to give *compatibilist* responses! So: what, if anything, do you GFPers think this difference between causation and predictability means about the prephilosophical concept of free will?

OPC 2: The Sequel

As some of you may already know, last May we held the first Online Philosophy Conference (OPC)--which included over thirty papers and sixty invited participants and received 40,000 visits from the global philosophical community.  Well, we are now pleased to announce the sequel--OPC2--which will be hosted on this new blog.  This year's tentative program is as follows:

Week One--May 14th through 20th (2007):   

1. Juan Comesaña (University of Wisconsin--Madison), "Knowledge and Subjunctive Conditionals," w/ commentary by John Greco (St. Louis University).

2. John Martin Fischer (University of California--Riverside), "The Direct Argument," w/ commentary by Randolph Clarke (Florida State University) and David Widerker (Bar-Ilan Univesity).

3. Caspar Hare (MIT),"Morphing and Aggregation," w/ commentary by Peter Graham (UMass--Amherst).
   
4. Shaun Nichols (University of Arizona) “The Rise of Compatibilism: A Case Study in the Quantitative History of Philosophy," w/ commentary by Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California--Riverside), and Kelby Mason (Rutgers University--New Brunswick).
   
5. **Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University--New Brunswick) "Epistemic Normativity" w/ commentary by Ram Neta (University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill), and Duncan Pritchard (University of Stirling).   

6. Meredith Williams (Johns Hopkins University), "Wittgenstein and the Paradox of Thought," w/ commentary by Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zurich), and David Stern (University of Iowa).

Week Two--May 21st through 27th (2007):   

1. Jonathan Dancy (University of Texas--Austin), "Practical Reasoning and Inference," w/ commentary by Joseph Raz (Columbia/Oxford), and Candace Vogler (University of Chicago).
   
2. Delia Graff Fara (Princeton). TBA.
   
3. **Jeff McMahan (Rutgers University--New Brunswick), "The Pacifist Challenge."

4. Derk Pereboom (Cornell), "A Compatibilist Account of the Beliefs Required for Deliberation," w/ commentary by Joseph Campbell (Washington State University), and Dana Nelkin (University of California--San Diego).
   
5. Adina Roskies (Dartmouth). TBA.
   
6. Gillian Russell (Washington University - St. Louis), "One True Logic?" w/ commentary by JC Beall (University of Connecticut), and Jonathan McKeown-Green (University of Auckland)

**=keynote address

OPC 2 will officially last two weeks this year--although you are obviously welcome to continue commenting in the threads so long as others are willing! Some of the threads last year were very active--hopefully, even more people will take part this year.  After all, that is one of the primary benefits of the online format.  It enables the participants to get a lot of constructive feedback on their work in a short amount of time, while also allowing the online audience a chance to engage in interesting philosophical discussion.  Please do your part and play along.  As for us, we have tried to do our part to ensure that this year's OPC is as interesting and engaging as possible.  For instance, we have included far fewer papers--so that each paper gets the attention it deserves--but we have also invited more philosophers to comment on each one.

Another new development is that Blackwell Publishing has kindly offered to sponsor this year's OPC.  With their assistance, we are going to be able to include two keynote addresses this year--one to kick off each week of the conference.  The first will be given by Ernest Sosa at Georgia State University.  The second will be given by Jeff McMahan at Dickinson College.  Both talks (along with the ensuing discussions) will be recorded, video-taped, and posted for people to view on the OPC 2 blog!  We are particularly excited about this new feature and we thank Blackwell for making it possible.

Finally, we are very pleased to announce that Professors McMahan and Sosa have generously offered to donate their keynote honorariums to charity.  This year the charities selected by the OPC keynote speakers are Amnesty International, Oxfam, and The American Philosophical Association.  Please follow their generous lead and donate what you can.   Perhaps treat it as an inexpensive conference registration fee!  We have provided links in the sidebar to this year's official charities.  We hope that with your assistance we can start a charitable tradition here at the OPC, and we thank both Professors McMahan and Sosa for laying the groundwork!

For now, we just want to invite you once again to participate in this year's OPC.  We hope to "see" you in the comment threads come May!  Keep in mind that the more everyone in the broader philosophical community puts into the conference, the more everyone gets out of it. So, we hope you will watch and listen to a couple of interesting philosophy talks, download and read some engaging papers, peruse the invited commentary, and contribute to the unfolding philosophical dialogue that this conference is designed to facilitate.   

As always, if you have any suggestions with respect to how to improve OPC 2 (as well as future installments of OPC), please don't hesitate to let us know.  In the meantime, if you could help us spread the word about the upcoming conference we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks, Thomas Nadelhoffer and Eddy Nahmias

As some of you may already know, last May we held the first Online Philosophy Conference (OPC)--which included over thirty papers and sixty invited participants and received 40,000 visits from the global philosophical community.  Well, we are now pleased to announce the sequel--OPC2--which will be hosted on this new blog.  This year's tentative program is as follows:

Week One--May 14th through 20th (2007):   

1. Juan Comesaña (University of Wisconsin--Madison), "Knowledge and Subjunctive Conditionals," w/ commentary by John Greco (St. Louis University).

2. John Martin Fischer (University of California--Riverside), "The Direct Argument," w/ commentary by Randolph Clarke (Florida State University) and David Widerker (Bar-Ilan Univesity).

3. Caspar Hare (MIT),"Morphing and Aggregation," w/ commentary by Peter Graham (UMass--Amherst).
   
4. Shaun Nichols (University of Arizona) “The Rise of Compatibilism: A Case Study in the Quantitative History of Philosophy," w/ commentary by Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California--Riverside), and Kelby Mason (Rutgers University--New Brunswick).
   
5. **Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University--New Brunswick) "Epistemic Normativity" w/ commentary by Ram Neta (University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill), and Duncan Pritchard (University of Stirling).   

6. Meredith Williams (Johns Hopkins University), "Wittgenstein and the Paradox of Thought," w/ commentary by Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zurich), and David Stern (University of Iowa).

Week Two--May 21st through 27th (2007):   

1. Jonathan Dancy (University of Texas--Austin), "Practical Reasoning and Inference," w/ commentary by Joseph Raz (Columbia/Oxford), and Candace Vogler (University of Chicago).
   
2. Delia Graff Fara (Princeton). TBA.
   
3. **Jeff McMahan (Rutgers University--New Brunswick), "The Pacifist Challenge."

4. Derk Pereboom (Cornell), "A Compatibilist Account of the Beliefs Required for Deliberation," w/ commentary by Joseph Campbell (Washington State University), and Dana Nelkin (University of California--San Diego).
   
5. Adina Roskies (Dartmouth). TBA.
   
6. Gillian Russell (Washington University - St. Louis), "One True Logic?" w/ commentary by JC Beall (University of Connecticut), and Jonathan McKeown-Green (University of Auckland)

**=keynote address

OPC 2 will officially last two weeks this year--although you are obviously welcome to continue commenting in the threads so long as others are willing! Some of the threads last year were very active--hopefully, even more people will take part this year.  After all, that is one of the primary benefits of the online format.  It enables the participants to get a lot of constructive feedback on their work in a short amount of time, while also allowing the online audience a chance to engage in interesting philosophical discussion.  Please do your part and play along.  As for us, we have tried to do our part to ensure that this year's OPC is as interesting and engaging as possible.  For instance, we have included far fewer papers--so that each paper gets the attention it deserves--but we have also invited more philosophers to comment on each one.

Another new development is that Blackwell Publishing has kindly offered to sponsor this year's OPC.  With their assistance, we are going to be able to include two keynote addresses this year--one to kick off each week of the conference.  The first will be given by Ernest Sosa at Georgia State University.  The second will be given by Jeff McMahan at Dickinson College.  Both talks (along with the ensuing discussions) will be recorded, video-taped, and posted for people to view on the OPC 2 blog!  We are particularly excited about this new feature and we thank Blackwell for making it possible.

Finally, we are very pleased to announce that Professors McMahan and Sosa have generously offered to donate their keynote honorariums to charity.  This year the charities selected by the OPC keynote speakers are Amnesty International, Oxfam, and The American Philosophical Association.  Please follow their generous lead and donate what you can.   Perhaps treat it as an inexpensive conference registration fee!  We have provided links in the sidebar to this year's official charities.  We hope that with your assistance we can start a charitable tradition here at the OPC, and we thank both Professors McMahan and Sosa for laying the groundwork!

For now, we just want to invite you once again to participate in this year's OPC.  We hope to "see" you in the comment threads come May!  Keep in mind that the more everyone in the broader philosophical community puts into the conference, the more everyone gets out of it. So, we hope you will watch and listen to a couple of interesting philosophy talks, download and read some engaging papers, peruse the invited commentary, and contribute to the unfolding philosophical dialogue that this conference is designed to facilitate.   

As always, if you have any suggestions with respect to how to improve OPC 2 (as well as future installments of OPC), please don't hesitate to let us know.  In the meantime, if you could help us spread the word about the upcoming conference we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks, Thomas Nadelhoffer and Eddy Nahmias

Relativity and Responsibility

I'm reading Galen Strawson's recent article, "Free Agents", which appears in the same Philosophical Topics issue where Kadri Vihvelin's paper that we discussed a couple of weeks ago is found.  In it he makes this suggestive claim (where 'U-freedom' refers to the sort of freedom that we need to be ultimately morally responsible for our actions, in Strawson's sense):

"The basic argument that U-freedom is impossible is entirely a priori, but there are also extremely strong a posteriori reasons for thinking it impossible.  It seems unavoidable if Einstein's theory of special relativity is anything like correct, for example -- a point that has received surprisingly little discussion in recent debate about free will." (p. 392)

Two questions about this: (1) How might such an a posteriori argument against U-freedom from special relativity go?  And (2) How could such an argument show that U-freedom is impossible, given that the special theory of relativity is, at best, contingently true?

Neurolaw in The NY Times

I originally hoped that my first post here would be more substantive than this one, but apparently that was not in the cards!  Instead, I simply want to point the Gardeners to an article in yesterday's NYT about neurolaw in the event that some of you have not already seen it.  I thought the crew here might not only find the piece interesting, but it might even open the door to yet another discussion here concerning the thorny relationship between the gathering data in the sciences of the mind and our (shrinking?) autonomy and responsibility. 

How Universal (and/or objectivist) are Theories of Moral Responsibility Supposed to Be?

Describing their methodology, Fischer and Ravizza write:

..we shall be trying to articulate the inchoate, shared views about moral responsibility in (roughly speaking) a modern, Western democratic society.  We suppose that there is enough agreement on these matters—at some level of reflection—to justify engaging in the attempt to bring out and systematize these shared views….Here we shall be identifying and evaluating “considered judgments” about particular cases – actual and hypothetical – in which an agent’s moral responsibility is at issue.  We shall explore patterns in these judgments  (Responsibility and Control, pp. 10-11.)

(1)  Does this method of seeking reflective equilibrium restrict the application of Fischer and Ravizza’s theory to Western Democratic societies?  Or are the conditions for moral responsibility meant to apply universally, even in societies that may have different intuitions about these particular cases?  The methodology appears to limit the scope of application to cultures, and individuals, who accept their intuitive starting points.  Therefore it’s at least possible (if, say, people in non-democratic non-Western societies have different starting points) that someone might be morally responsible for an act is culture A, while another might not be morally responsible for that very same act, committed in the very same state of mind, under virtually identical circumstances, in culture B.

(2) Assume I’m right that Fischer and Ravizza’s theory can only be applied in cultures that accept their intuitive starting points.  How common is this feature?  Would Kane be comfortable saying that indeterministic self-forming actions are required for moral responsibility in some cultures, but perhaps not in others.  Would Chisholm concede that in certain Mediterranean societies, you may not have to be a prime-mover unmoved in order to be free and morally responsible?  Is beta (or TNR) not valid for Jibaro Indians?   Does anyone—compatibilist, libertarian, skeptic—think that the conditions for moral responsibility in their theory apply universally, whether or not a particular individual or culture accepts their intuitive starting points?  I imagine the answer to this last question would be “yes!  almost everyone believes this!”  Am I right about that?

(3) For the record, here’s my very non-exhaustive list of people with theories that appear to have ‘universalist’ aspirations.   (In other words, the necessary and sufficient conditions of each theory are meant to apply across cultures no matter what.  If a necessary condition is not met, no moral responsibility; if the sufficient conditions are met, the agent is morally responsible):

Universalist: van Inwagen, Galen Strawson, Pereboom, Wolf, Frankfurt, Watson, Kane, Ekstrom, Spinoza, Hurley, Waller, P.F. Strawson (I think). 

Non-Universalist: Fischer and Ravizza, Double, Smilansky (I think), Vargas, Nichols (to come).

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe very few theories are meant to apply universally.  But then isn’t this a pretty bizarre way to look at moral responsibility—as something that is relative across cultures, maybe even within cultures, entirely dependent on the intuitions of the individuals within them?