Free Will makes the top 10 philosophy problems for the 21st century

Continuing its multi-century (perhaps multi-millenial) position in the top 10 of philosophical problems, free will keeps on trucking for another century. 

This time, the challenge is the onslaught from science. 

So sez PhilosophyTalk. 

For the record, free will beat out the mind-body problem. Which suggests to me that it is time for Rutgers and any other phil mind-heavy places to start hiring all the free will folks to replace all their phil mind folks, as this will surely increase their rankings in the Gourmet Report. Of course, if we followed the PhilTalk list, the sure-fire way to get to the top of the pile would be to hire lots of environmental ethicists and global justice-types. Something for you job marketeers to keep in mind for your interviews. 

(See how I subtly snuck in the annual implication of special job market woes for phil action peeps? You job marketeers are most welcome. Really though, to all Gardeners on the market, may you have incredibly good luck over the next week and months.) 

Comments

[Neil]

If it is so important, why are there no free will papers or books mentioned in Leiter's discussion of the best books/papers of the past decade (except for The Significance of Free Will , which is too old to make the cut). What should be there but isn't?

[Joshua Shepherd]

As a graduate student not as steeped in the lore of FW debates as many here, I would enjoy seeing an end-of-the-decade-style list of the best papers and books on FW and moral responsibility. Of course there is the garden reading list, there to the left. But I wonder what everyone thinks?

[Alan]

I posted my recommendations before I saw your post Neil; I thought Kane's Handbook (even though an anthology) deserved mention--it certainly has had a big influence on me. And I had to suggest PvI's "Mystery" article as well--I've reread that sucker about a half dozen times and it still impresses me, even though I agree with very little of it.

[Sofia Jeppsson]

I was thinking about the "onslaught of science", and when scientific findings are relevant for the free will issue.

1. For an event-libertarian like Robert Kane, with definite ideas of how the brain must work if we're going to have the right kind of freedom, neuroscientific findings can prove or disprove that freedom of this kind is possible.
Then it still remains to settle the philosophical question of whether this kind of freedom is the morally relevant one, worth wanting, etc.

2. Honderich believes that science in general and physics in particular points in a determinist direction. This could be relevant for the free will issue if one is certain that free will is incompatible with determinism, but less certain about its incompatibility with indeterminism.
I think it's pretty controversial though, to say that science in general points towards determinism. I'm no expert in physics or anything, but are we really approaching a point where we can say that there are laws of nature ruling everything (not just most things, but everything) with a 100% certainty rather than a 95% probability?

3. Both Honderich, Pereboom, Kane and others have also argued that it's hard to see where to fit anything but events causing other events into a scientific world view. This is relevant if one thinks agent causation is important to free will, not otherwise.
But this claim is really independent of new scientific findings and developments... it just depends on the current scientific paradigm.

That's pretty much it I guess... I argued in the "secret politics of compatibilists"-thread that all sociological, psychological and criminological findings one can come up with are still perfectly compatible with there being agent causation or whatever. If 70% of all people growing up in condition A turn criminal and 30% of people growing up in condition A become honest citizens, a believer in agent causation could just say this: Conditions A pushes you in a criminal direction. It takes a lot of effort to resist that push. Not everybody puts as much effort into resisting as they ought to do, and that's why as many as 70% turn criminal. While people growing up in condition B might have smooth sailing towards an honest life, and that's why 90% of those who grew up in B become honest.
I don't even think that would be ad hoc, it would be a rather commonsensical view...

And oh, right, I almost forgot:
4. Findings in x-phi are relevant for all free will debates that employs arguments of the kind "when considering this example WE feel that X couldn't be responsible" or "when most people think about free will they think this or that" or "that's a really hard bullet to bite, MOST people would totally disagree with what you just said"...

[Cihan]

Hello Alan,

"I've reread that sucker about a half dozen times and it still impresses me, even though I agree with very little of it."

This is a puzzling remark. Many people make such remarks -i.e. praising the arguments they disagree with.

This is what I want to ask.

(1) Why are the arguments so impressive if you disagree with them?
(2) If they were to be even more impressive, would you agree with them?

Or maybe, it is the case that the arguments accept some premise P that you disagree with and ingeniously infer the conclusion Q - now, this inference may be quite ingenious and impressive though not necessarily convincing.

More generally, I find it puzzling that people can regard the persuasive powers of arguments and their quality as two very distinct entities. What am I missing?

[Neil]

This isn't a response to your question, Cihan, in that it doesn't purport to say how it is that power and quality of argument can dissociate. I just want to say that pretty much everyone is committed to thinking that they do dissociate. Few people are sceptical about all a posteriori knowledge claims, but most philosophers recognize that there are powerful arguments (say arguments turning on the closure of knowledge under entailment) which have sceptical conclusions. There are (what are widely taken to be) powerful sceptical arguments for many different conclusions (some in free will of course) but almost no one is a sceptic about pretty much anything. So we all recognize that power can come apart from the ability to convince us.

[Alan]

Well said Neil. May I add (more to Cihan)--as I hinted at briefly in my Leiter post--that one chief reason I admire the PvI piece is that it is not just a frank admission of error about Beta--in a discipline where admissions of error are about as common as unicorns--but includes a pretty sophisticated logical analysis of the nature of the error and proposes a fix for it. I even believe the fix in fact works--but at the cost of considerably weakening the force of the CA as it was originally conceived. And the fact that he then goes on to concede apparent trouble for FW from both determinism and indeterminism (and so now what does he mean by FW?) certainly gives just about anyone working in the area some challenge or other, and raises further questions about motivation that would justify the separation of mysterianism from FW illusionism or nihilism.

[Kip]

Is the Van Inwagen article available online any where? I really want to read it.

[Alan]

I've looked Kip--it's safely behind the protective shield of copyright, apparently. Could you try your university library? If you could find the Kane Handbook (Amazon used?) that would be even better.

[Kip]

Oh, I already own the Kane handbook!

[johnt]

On science and determinism, the most polite thing that can and should be said is that the jury ought to be out. The increasing emphasis on probability, stochastic action, as well types of events either non-deterministic or untraceable as to particular & known causation offers both consideration and caution as to conclusions.
Perhaps we're looking at a mixed bag, like most of science, philosophy, and nature.

[Bob Doyle]

As Neil says, if free will is so important, why aren't there more books on it?

The latest book on Free Will is just out from MIT Press. The title reinforces Manuel's observation and many of the comments here - "Free Will is an Open Scientific Question," by Mark Balaguer.

Gardeners had a chance last spring to review an advance copy of chapter 2, posted by Neil Levy himself.

But the meat of the book is in chapter 3, Mark's reworking of his Noûs article, where he describes his variations on Robert Kane's idea of a "torn decision."

On my Information Philosopher website, gardeners can find summaries of the free will positions of over 100 philosophers, a third or so of them still alive. There is also an extensive history of the free will problem and a special page on free will in antiquity, so you can find how the arguments went in most of the last 25 centuries. The oldest arguments are still some of the best!

http://informationphilosopher.com/freedom/history
http://informationphilosopher.com/freedom/free_will_in_antiquity.html

I bought a copy of Mark's book for the I-Phi library and will submit a review to the Garden shortly.

[Max Weismann]

The Center will shortly publish a two-part weekly journal entitled, "Freedom of The Will" by my late colleague, Mortimer Adler.

Max Weismann
Center for the Study of The Great Ideas
Founded in 1990 by Mortimer J. Adler and Max Weismann

[Max Weismann]

The Time of Our Lives by Max Weismann

The book of Genesis tells us that we are made in God's image and the Garden of Eden was a paradise where all needs were met in abundance. There was no need for toil of any kind, in fact it could hardly be considered a paradise if toil was necessary.

Yet for most of us, work or toil occupies a considerable portion of our time. All of us who work for a living contrast that with our free time for leisure. Most of us have to work or toil (8± hours a day) for subsistence compensation, we need to sleep and take care of our biological needs also consuming approximately 8 hours a day. This leaves about 8± hours a day left for what?

And Plato's Socrates at his trial in the Apology tells the court, ...you will not believe that I am serious if I say that daily to discourse about virtue, and the other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living...

And Aristotle in his great book on Ethics says, ...It is not unreasonable that what men regard the good or happiness to be seems to come from their ways of living. The mass of people regard it as being pleasure, ...they appear to be quite slavish in choosing deliberately a life suitable to beasts, but their view has some support because many of those in high places share their tastes.

Perhaps to say that happiness is the highest good is something which appears to be agreed upon; what we miss, however, is a more explicit statement as to what it is. Perhaps this might be given if the function of man is taken into consideration. For just as anyone who has a function or an "action" to perform the goodness or excellence lies in that function, so it would seem to be the case in a man, if indeed he has a function. But should we hold that, while a carpenter and a shoemaker have certain functions or "actions" to perform, a man has none at all but is by nature without a function? Is it not more reasonable to posit that, just as an eye and a hand and a foot and any part of the body in general appear to have certain functions, so a man has some function other than these? What then would this function be?

Now living appears to be common to plants as well as to men; but what we seek is proper to men alone. So let us leave aside the life of nutrition and of growth. Next there would be the life of sensation; but this, too, appears to be common also to a horse and an ox and all animals…

Then comes Mortimer Adler, who defines toil as work that no one would do if they were not compelled to do so. He goes on to say, There is nothing intrinsically good about toil, neither in itself nor as a means to a good human life. However, this is mitigated by two extrinsic considerations, which cast some measure of favorable light upon toil. Toiling is a more honorable way of obtaining a needed livelihood than stealing. It is also a more dignified way to take care of one's economic needs or the needs of one's family than receiving a welfare handout. To this extent the person compelled to engage in toil preserves his self-respect by doing so.

We all aspire to live a good life or become happy. But unless we think that the money we earn is the sufficient means for living a good life, Aristotle reminds us that the life of a money-maker, is one of tension; and clearly the good sought is not wealth, for wealth is instrumental and is sought for the sake of something else.

How are we to answer Aristotle's question: Does man have a function, and if so, what would this function be? Can we state it at least in a general way or outline as to what it is that we ought to do with the time of our lives?