GFP Reading Group: Haji's "The Manipulation Argument"

Two weeks have come and gone since the posting of Haji's article, "The Manipulation Argument".   It's a wonderful piece and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to present some of my own reactions to it. 

In broad strokes, Haji tackles three of the most central issues currently surrounding such arguments:

(A)      The proper interpretation of the Manipulation Argument (i.e. the formal structure shared by all manipulation arguments), and the relation between it and particular manipulation arguments.

(B)       Michael McKenna’s recent distinction between ‘hard-line’ and ‘soft-line’ response strategies, and the soundness of his argument that every ‘credible’ manipulation argument (including Pereboom’s Four-Case Argument) requires a hard-line reply. 

                                 

(C)       The dialectical role of “ultimate origination” principles in the success of manipulation arguments, especially that of Pereboom’s Principle O in the Four-Case Argument.

My comments are a bit long (sorry), but I hope that they will help kick off a great reading group discussion:

Download GFP_HAJI_demetriou.pdf

Return of GFP Reading Group

After a long absence, the GFP reading group  return to your screens. You have two weeks to read the following paper by Ish Haji,on Derk Pereboom's manipulation argument against compatibilism:

Download the_manipulation_argument.doc

Two weeks from now, Kristin Demetriou, a grad student at the University of Colorado (whose - so far unpublished - work Pereboom's 4 case argument is already getting citations) will post her comments on the paper. And then it will be your turn, dear reader.

Is Reactivity all of a Piece?

Things have been might quite around the garden for a while. In an attempt to see if can’t stir up a few of the ghosts of threads past, I will engage in my favorite activity: attacking semi-compatibilism, by way of my other favorite activity, mangling science.

More Free Willish Goodness from Science

The Libet studies, which have caused such a stir, apparently demonstrated that conscious choice lags behind by neural activity by around one third of a second. One of my favorite responses to these studies  - Dennett's - argues that the notion we can perform simultaneity judgments as to neural events and volitions depends upon the idea of the Cartesian Theatre, a place in the brain where everything comes together. But while that response looks plausible for a lag of one third of a second, it doesn't look quite so plausible when the gap is an enormous 7 seconds. That's the claim of a new study just published in Nature Neuroscience.

In the study, subjects engaged in a free choice task, choosing between pressing a button with their left or their right hands. The researchers found that they could predict with 60% accuracy which hand they would choose, a full 7 (and up to 10) seconds before the subject reported that the decision was made, by analysing activity in the PFC. The popular presentations of this study have not failed to draw the conclusion that this study threatens free will. 

One comment: I don't see why we shouldn't interpret the PFC activity as representing a disposition and not a choice (though PFC is involved in high level planning).

Galen Strawson’s Modest Requirement for Moral Responsibility.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a non-Smilansky related discussion (I wish I’d thought of Illusionism!), so I thought I’d post some thoughts I’ve expressed in comment threads but never really put out there for public criticism and ridicule. So here goes:

John noted that in his upcoming Hourani lectures he will accuse Strawson of having an unreasonably demanding requirement for moral responsibility, what he calls “total control.” Others have attacked Strawson for arguing that we need to be ‘wholly responsible’ for our characters in order to be morally responsibility for our actions, claiming that this is asking for too much. Now ‘total control’ and “wholly responsible” can mean a lot of things, but I believe that they are often interpreted in ways that do not do justice Strawson’s theory.

The source of the misconception, I believe, lies in Strawson’s use of the causa sui concept. The problem with the causa sui language (along the entertaining Nietzsche quote that inevitably accompanies it) is that there is rarely a discussion of how much of our character we would have to ultimately responsible for in order to be causa sui.