What is Determinism?

I don't mean to take this question away from Manuel -- after all, he does have a track record for not knowing what anything important in the free will debate means, so it's likely that this question would have come from him sooner or later. But I think it's an important question, and it's one that I'm not sure I know the answer to.

It's not that I don't have a general idea of what philosophers mean when they say things like, "Determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise". So, the general idea, I take it, is this: Determinism is the scientific doctrine that says that the past and the laws of nature together entail a unique future. But this is a rather informal statement of a thesis that is probably rather more complicated.

Add to the mix that some philosophers seem happy to use the phrase "causal determinism", while others do not. For instance, Carl Hoefer gave a talk here at UCR not too long ago, and during his talk I discovered that he thinks "causal determinism" is a misnomer. On his view (if I recall it correctly), determinism is merely a thesis about logical entailment -- causal considerations are not involved. Yet many philosophers still use this term -- should they? What could it mean?

A side question is this: Given that contemporary scientific research seems to pronounce it likely that we live in an indeterministic world -- how relevant is the traditional compatibility question anymore? Certainly indeterminism is not obviously congenial to freedom either, but why shouldn't our focus be more on that question?

Comments

[robert allen]

Neal:

The reason some philosophers give for eschewing the problem of free will and indeterminism is that it is not yet clear that indeterminism holds in the realm of nature germane to the debate on free will: human neurophysiology. Prof. Fischer, as I'm sure you know, is happily agnostic when it comes to this issue, as his position is supposed to be consistent with both determinism and indeterminism.

[Fritz]

The questions of whether there's anything "causal" about "causal determinism" and whether "causal" is redundant in that phrase reduce to the question of whether there is non-causal nomic necessity. [This is true when understanding determinism as it's normally understood in the compatibility debate: in the van Inwagen way of "Past conjoined with Laws metaphysically necessitates Future"]. This is because the normal understanding works like this: the past necessitates the future *via* the laws. The force of the necessitation here is nomic. This implies that the Past + Laws conjunction necessitates the future with metaphysical (strict) necessity. If it's true that, necessarily, all nomic necessitation is causal, then "causal" in "causal determinism" is redundant. If there's (possible) non-causal nomic necessitation then "causal" is not redundant and, indeed, seems to be inappropriate because some deterministic worlds will not be "causally deterministic" if by that one means "past causally necessitates future".

A small criticism: I don't think the van Inwagen style definition of determinism is a *scientific* thesis. I think it's a heavily modally loaded philosophical thesis.

On the issue of indeterminism: I don't think we should be especially confident that indeterminism is true, but assume that it is. The traditional question's "relevance" of course depends on what we think needs to be the case for a philosophical question to be "relevant". I take it your idea is something like "determinism is known to be false, so even if its truth would rule out freedom this is irrelevant because the thesis is false". But many people would still take the traditional compatibility question to be relevant because we want to understand the nature of freedom and part of understanding that nature is understanding conceptual and logical relations between freedom and theses like the thesis of determinism.

Lastly, I think lots of people do worry about, talk about and write about indeterminism and free will:
(1) The "Mind" argument discussions have been ongoing and (to some of us) quite interesting.
(2) High quality books such as Tim O'Connor's OUP collection and Randy Clarke's recent OUP book and Tim's slightly older OUP book have all significantly explored positive indeterministic approaches to the metaphysics of freedom. And there's plenty of journal literature to go along with this material.

[Manuel]

I agree with Fritz that the notion of determinism used by van Inwagen, which seems to have become standard currency in the literature, is a philosophical (as opposed to scientific) thesis. I would only add that van Inwagen seems to have intended it to reflect core features of existing scientific accounts of determinism (though to be honest, I'm not sure if I think this because of something he said or wrote or because I have a bad memory). What presumably makes it better than trotting out more complicated models of physics (e.g., John Earman's book) - at least for most philosophical purposes - is that it is not tied into one or another model or branch of physics, does not require exposition about light cones, reversability, etc., but it gets at features that would be (1) common to any plausible account of determinism in physics and (2) relevant to debates about free will.

To some extent, I think it is unfortunate that the subject matter is frequently introduced to undegraduates as "the problem of free will and determinism." A more accurate description of the problem would be something like "the problem of making sense of free agency given our being part of a physical, causal order." It is way less sexy, but it more accurately reflects the literature and the broad range of problems with which we grapple.

[Joe Campbell]

I agree with everything noted above by Robert, Fritz, and Manuel and I thank them for their contributions. Thanks, too, to Neil for raising the topic.

It is important to note that most arguments in favor of free will nihilism (the view that no one has free will), or some related view like van Inwagen's restrictivism, include some claim about the incompatibility of free will and determinism. (As I use the term, free will is just the freedom-relevant condition necessary for moral responsibility. But I would say the same thing given any of the more standard definitions of 'free will' that appear in the literature.)

The clearest illustration of this point is the Dilemma of Determinism:

1. Determinism is either true or false.
2. If determinism is true, then no one has free will.
3. If indeterminism is true, then no one has free will.
4. Thus, no one has free will.

Van Inwagen's argument for restrictivism works in a similar fashion, coupling an argument for incompatibilism--e.g. the Consequence Argument--with the 'Mind' Argument (noted above by Fritz). Even recent arguments for moral nihilism (the view that no one is morally responsible for anything) given by Strawson and Pereboom first argue for the claim that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism and then proceed from there.

This is the primary reason why I choose to adopt the compatibilist stance: If one could develop a compelling and correct theory of compatibilism, then there would be little reason to deny that persons have free will (or moral responsibility).

Manuel is correct that the label 'the problem of free will and determinism' is not one which "accurately reflects the literature and the broad range of problems with which we grapple." Fair enough. But it does seem that among the various problems that we deal with the particular problem of free will and determinism has a rather central location.

[Tamler]

As Strawson's Bulldog I feel compelled to point out that G Strawson does not "first argue for the claim that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism and then proceed from there." The "basic argument" is designed to go through no matter what metaphysical system one subscribes to (including those with souls, Gods, Forms, agent causes, Red Sox winning the World Series, noumenal selves..)

Pereboom employs the strategy you're talking about because he doesn't buy Strawson's a priori argument against moral responsibility. He thinks there is a possible world that contains deep moral responsibility, it's just not ours.

I agree that the whole free will determinism compatibility debate is at least a bit of a red herring. (Does anyone disagree with that these days?) But I've always thought that it made life easier for compatibilists. Because once they undermined the arguments of incompatibilist libertarians (e.g. Frankfurt 1969), they could claim to have pretty well established their position. And the poor lonely free will and moral responsibility deniers were left out in the cold, with no one paying much attention to arguments that those concepts are incompatible with ANY sort of naturalistic (and in Strawson's case supernaturalistic) worldview.

It seems like that has changed though, thanks to the efforts of Pereboom, Strawson, Double, Waller etc...

[Neal]

Thanks to everyone for your responses -- you all make some very good points.

To continue discussion, I have a related question. In his comment above, Joe says,

"This is the primary reason why I choose to adopt the compatibilist stance: If one could develop a compelling and correct theory of compatibilism, then there would be little reason to deny that persons have free will (or moral responsibility)."

Though I'm inclined to agree that this is a prima facie good reason to adopt a compatibilist stance, I'm wondering how solid it is.

For example, I've heard it said before that one of the vices of incompatibilism is that it makes our having free will (or moral responsibility) dependent on contingent empirical considerations which may or may not turn out to be true. But sometimes I wonder: Why shouldn't something as important as free will and moral responsibility nevertheless be dependent on empirical facts? What's so bad about that?

Even compatibilism, it seems, is in some way dependent on contingent empirical considerations about whether each and every one of us is actually being systematically manipulated by aliens, isn't it?

[Fritz]

I'm surprised anyone would cite Frankfurt as having refuted the arguments of incompatibilist/libertarians. Did he address such arguments? Tamlers cites Frankfurt 1969? Is that Frankfurt arguing that the "principle of alternative possibilities" is false? Many libertarians agree but point out that this doesn't commit anyone one way or the other on the main compatibility issue (the question of whether determinism is compatible with freedom). And Tamler also says that this latter debate is a "red herring" -- I'm not sure I get what that means. It's certainly an open and lively debate that many of us who work on the metaphysics of freedom still care about. There are *of course* many other issues worth caring about in this area (the flank issues discussed earlier, positive accounts of freedom and/or responsibility, many many others) but I sure don't see how the existence of these other interesting debates and the fact that Frankfurt criticized a principle about the connection between moral responsibility and alternative possibilities is supposed to suggest that the compatibility question is dead.

[Tamler]

Fritz

You took my posting the wrong way. First, my point was not that Frankfurt undermined the libertarian argument. My point was that with the debate framed in this manner (primarily over the compatibility question), compatibilists were able to avoid many of the tough arguments of the free will/MR skeptic. (As were the libertarians for that matter.) Frankfurt 1969 was merely an example (hence the e.g.) After claiming to have shown that one can be morally responsible even if one couldn't have done otherwise, Frankfurt felt like they could stop right there--without addressing the arguments of the MR skeptic.

As for the "red herring" comment, if you scroll up, you'll see that what I actually said was "at least a bit of a red herring." Meaning that almost every intro to philosophy student studies (or used to study) the compatibility question and that's it. Look at Perry/Bratman. But again, as I said, that's starting to change.

I'm confused as to how you could interpret my posting as claiming that "the compatibility question is dead."

But that's the problem with late night postings I guess.

[Fritz]

Thanks for the clarification Tamler. It was the line "does anyone disagree" these days that I misinterpreted. Thanks for the clarification.

And on the Frankfurt, I see now that you were really talking about the moral responsibility debate more than the freedom/determinism debate. (Or perhaps you are a "lumper" as Manuel described that position in his earlier post and strongly lump together the debate about determinism and freedom and the debate about determinism and moral responsibility -- for reasons I gave in Manuel's thread I don't lump).

So I take your main point to be that if we focus primarily on the debate over whether determinism and moral responsibility are compatible, we risk ignoring or paying insufficient attention to the arguments of the responsibility deniers. (of course the compatability debate cross cuts the issue of whether there is moral responsibilty -- one can mix and match positions here, though those who argue for the *full* impossibility of responsibility are thereby committed to incompatibilism). Surely both issues deserve attention.

I assume that we agree that how and whether these issues connect with the debate about freedom and determinism depends on the (disputed) relation between freedom and responsibility.

Thanks for the clarifications. sorry for my confusion in the earlier post.

[Rob]

If, as Strawson argues, self-causation is essential to ultimate responsiblity, ultimate responsibility is essential to whatever other sorts of candidates for responsiblity on offer, and self-causation is humanly impossible, then the issue of determinism/indeterminism is irrelevant, and what needs to be shown is how either self-causation is not essential to ultimate responsiblity, or how ultimate responsibility is not essential to (some kind of) responsibility, or how our reactive attitudes and their associated practices can be immunized from the Basic Argument.

[Tamler]

Fritz, no problem. You phrased my point perfectly that time (better than I did). And you're right that I'm a bit of a lumper, but only because I think that the kind of freedom that most of us disagree about is one that could justify moral responsibility. But I need to be clearer about that issue in my own mind.

Rob, another bulldog? Good points, but as I'm sure you know, a lot of philosophers don't buy the claim that self-causation is necessary for robust moral responsibility. And they think the burden of proof falls on those who do.(But that's philosophers--an empirical study concerning the "man in the street"'s intuition on this point would be great... Eddy?)

[Tamler]

Speaking of which: (sorry for the multiple postings, last one and I'll be quiet). Does anyone remember the column by David Brooks on one of the Columbine killers? His conclusion:

"My instinct is that Dylan Klebold was a self-initiating moral agent who made his choices and should be condemned for them. Neither his school nor his parents determined his behavior."

Note the "self-initiating moral agent" phrase. The idea seems to be that self-initiation is necessary for someone to deserve condemnation.

[Joe]

Great discussion above! I'd like to add a few more comments in order to clarify my original contribution.

First, whether or not Strawson "first argue[s] for the claim that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism and then proceed[s] from there" depends on which version of his Basic Argument that you attend to. For instance, in his article "Free Will" (which is accessible from this blog) he starts with a long version of the Basic Argument--one that is 8 numbered sets of sentences in length. (This version is very similar to the version given in his book, _Freedom and Belief_, which is 9 numbered sets of sentences in length.) Later on in "Free Will" he writes that "essentially the same argument can be given in a more natural form," and then proceeds to present an argument that is 7 numbered sentences in length. In the beginning of this version of the Basic Argument he clearly starts out arguing for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility and ends up writing: "(7) it is foolish to suppose that indeterministic or random factors . . . can in themselves contribute to one's being truly or ultimately responsible for how one is." I think that my characterization is pretty accurate with regard to this version of the Basic Argument.

Second, in response to Rob's contribution: By Strawson's own admission the version of the Basic Argument from "Free Will" which is 7 numbered sentences in length is "a more natural form" of the lengthy version that you summarize. If one can show that the first part of the 7 sentence version--the part where Strawson argues for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility--is faulty, then one can show that the whole argument is faulty and, since it is just another version of the Basic Argument, that the Basic Argument is faulty. So it is far from clear that the "issue of determinism/indeterminism is irrelevant."

Third, in response to Neil's comments, I agree that "compatibilism [about free will and determinism] . . . is in some way dependent on contingent empirical considerations," though not of the sort noted above. If it turns out to be a contingent empirical fact that (1) determinism is true and (2) some persons have free will, then compatibilism is true. But I don't see how any contingent facts can falsify compatibilism since it is a modal thesis about the compatibility of free will and determinism.

Thanks to all for helping me to work some of this out!

[robert allen]

Neal,

Compatibilism is not "dependent on contingent empirical considerations about whether each and every one of us is actually being systematically manipulated by aliens." The question is not does free will actually exist, but could it exist in either a deterministic or indeterministic world. All parties to the debate agree that if we are being systematically manipulated, then free will does not exist. The question that compatibilists must answer is: why should naturally determined agents be considered any better off when it comes to the possession of free will than systematically manipulated ones?

[Gustavo]

Just a brief comment on Neal’s second question regarding the truth or falsity of determinism. (What follows will probably be known by most of you, but hopefully it will trigger some discussion). Some people think that there is a common threat that both determinism and indeterminism pose to the notion of agency, i.e., the threat of mechanism. If this is true, the falsity of either determinism or indeterminism does not affect the general threat --though I grant that the form the problem would take in either case would be different in some respects. Gary Watson puts it nicely when he says that, although determinism is far from being a presupposition of rational thought, what is ultimately threatening about it is something that is perhaps shared by indeterminism as well. Determinism, Watson thinks, “is a version of a generic explanatory scheme according to which our behaviour is an output (deterministic or not) of a complex of internal states together with environmental inputs. The intuitive worry here is that this form of explanation –which Bok calls mechanism—treats people as loci at which the forces of nature (deterministic or not) play themselves out, rather than as authors or originators of their behaviour.” (Intro to the 2nd ed. of Watson’s Free Will compilation, OUP, 2003, p. 9).

As a side note that follows from this last sentence, I like to think that the compatibilism/incompatibilism debate involves not only discussions about whether PAP is true or not, for instance, but also about whether it makes sense at all to think of ourselves as agents. Needless to say, both issues will affect the way we think about morality in general and moral responsibility in particular. (By the way, for the lumpers –that is, for all of us, for isn’t philosophy a never ending struggle to cease to be lumpers?—in the first couple chapters of Susan Hurley’s last book there’s a neat distinction between the ability to do otherwise requirement, on the one hand, and, on the other, what she calls the regression requirement, which has to do with authorship in Watson’s terms. Hurley recommends, unsurprisingly, that we do not lump them together…)

[Eddy Nahmias]

Since I write from the hospital room a day after my son (Sam) was born, I'll make it brief, but I hope we keep this issue alive, since I think it is very important to the free will debate--namely, to clarify what the threats to free will are and how they are related (and not).

As the above thread attests, there is no simple, agreed-upon definition (or conception) of determinism, nor for that matter, of mechanism. But it is important to remember that:
Determinism does not entail mechanism (nor I think should it be understood to suggest mechanism);
Mechanism does not entail determinism (nor suggest it);
Mechanism does not require determinism to be true.

[Tom Clark]

Tamler, re Brook’s column on Columbine, I wrote a brief letter in response published in the Times on the point you raise. A longer version, “The Moral Levitation of David Brooks,” is at http://www.naturalism.org/currents.htm#Levitation, using Dennett’s apt metaphor for libertarian freedom. Brian Leiter also gives Brooks a sound drubbing at http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001307.html. Although Brooks might not be the typical man on the street, his intuition that desert requires some degree of self-causation is not uncommon, at least in the limited informal research I’ve done on this. I too look forward to Eddy’s (congratulations!) findings on real world beliefs about free will.

[Joe]

Above I was not arguing for the exclusivity of the Compatibility Problem (as van Inwagen calls it) but only for the centrality of the problem. I agree that introductory texts on the subject should include more than just discussions of the Compatibility Problem. And we cannot prove that persons have free will (or moral responsibility) merely by showing that determinism is false. And one may argue for free will nihilism (or nihilism about moral responsibility) without assuming the truth of either determinism or indeterminism. I agree with everything that Fritz has said above and a lot of what other people have said. But none of this diminishes the point that I was trying to make.

Above I wrote that “most arguments in favor of free will nihilism . . . include some claim about the incompatibility of free will and determinism.” I stand by these words since they allow for exceptions, such as arguments for free will nihilism that stem from considerations about mechanism (following Eddy’s points above—congratulations on the new arrival, by the way!). But even here it is not at all clear that such an argument would be logically independent of the truth of incompatibilism. Here’s a conjecture that best expresses the point that I am trying to make.

Campbell’s Conjecture: If there are no sound arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and free will (or moral responsibility), then there are no sound arguments for free will nihilism (or nihilism about moral responsibility).

Suppose that someone offers the following general argument.

1. Mechanism is true.
2. Mechanism is incompatible with free will.
3. Therefore, free will nihilism is true.

This argument makes no explicit claims about determinism, indeterminism, compatibilism, or incompatibilism. But in terms of Campbell’s Conjecture, what matters is the sub-argument that one would offer in favor of premise (2). For instance, if the argument for (2) parallels, say, van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument in the sense that the former is valid only if the latter is valid, then Campbell’s Conjecture stands. (By saying that Campbell’s Conjecture stands I simply mean that it has not been proven to be false. I do not pretend that this or anything else that I have said proves that Campbell’s Conjecture is true.)

[Rob]

In his essay "The Bounds of Freedom" (pages 441-460, THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF FREE WILL, 2002), Strawson adds the following footnote to his observation that the view that "questions about [self-causation] are profoundly relevant to issues of responsibility... lies deep in ordinary moral thought and feeling, constantly ready to precipitate out into consciousness..." (page 453):

It takes the distortions that arise from a philosophical training to doubt this obvious fact. It also takes a philosophical training to be confused enough -- as some compatibilists have been -- to suppose that it takes a philosophical training to think that this fact is obvious. (Note 28, page 459)

[Eddy Nahmias]

I'm not sure what Rob is suggesting (in relation to the thread about determinism) with the Strawson quotation, but I'd like to know what evidence he or Strawson (or numerous other incompatibilists) have for the claim that it is an obvious fact that ordinary thought and feeling about moral responsibility assume self-causation.

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by self-causation. If it means we humans have an ability likely unique in the animal world to consciously deliberate about our future goals and actions (including their moral ramifications) and act in light of such deliberations without being controlled or manipulated by other agents, then compatibilists think such self-causation (i.e. actions caused by what is essential to our self) is essential for freedom and responsibility (and probably part of our ordinary conceptions).

But if self-causation means libertarian agent causation of a sort that entails incompatibilism, then it is not obvious that ordinary folk have such a conception in their thinking about freedom and responsibility. If someone thinks it is, then let's hear why.

[tnadelhoffer]

In response to Eddy (he has heard this from me before I am sure): If we can safely assume that ordinary American (I cannot speak for other countries, cultures, etc.) folks are predominately Christian, then it seems easy enough to justify the assumption that the majority of ordinary folks believe in something like agent causation. After all, it would be a stretch--at least by my lights--to conclude that the type of free will that the majority of Christians believe that God gave us (thereby distinguishing us from the lowly beasts) is of the compatibilist variety. This is something that Nietzsche picked up on in his discussion of causa sui (and something Galen Strawson correctly points out as well). The sort of God-given freedom that most Americans believe they have is a type of metaphycial freedom that moral skeptics deny we have and libertarians suggest is incompatible with determinism. Of course, Eddy's rejoinder will be to suggest that he has the "facts" on his side (an ironic response given that I, too, am part of the project that generated the data). But he already knows my own reservations about some of our data. Indeed, I think that our project generated data that support the claim that a majority of the people we surveyed answered in a way that is consistent with belief in libertarian style free will (once ALL of the subject's responses are factored in--including those who missed the manipulation check). But this is another story for another time. For now, let it suffice to say that given that a) a majority of ordinary (American) folks are Christian, and b) the most natural understanding of God-given freedom is libertarian and not compatibilist (if you have doubts about this, ask a Christian--especially a Southern Baptist--who is not also a philosopher), I suggest that Eddy has the burden of justifying his claim that the God-given free will I have been discussing (the type of free will that I am suggesting most Americans believe they have), is best understood in compatibilist terms. But only if he is not too busy spending time with his beautiful new boy (not to mention his dogs per Tamler's suggestion!).

[tnadelhoffer]

In my last post, I should have specified that my own reservations about how best to interpret the data from our experiments on folk judgments concerning free will and determinism are not shared by the other three philosophers who have participated in the project (which obviously places me in the minority). I was simply trying to point out that--as with any study--there are a number of ways to interpret the results. My remarks were mainly about the difficulty we had in getting subjects to understand the scenarios in a way that enabled them to get the manipulation check (a problem that consumed an awful lot of our time). In any event, if I did not agree--in general--with the way we have interpreted our data, I would not have signed on. But this is not to suggest that Eddy and I don't still have serious disagreements not only about free will and responsibility (he is a compatibilist and I have skeptical tendencies after all) but also about how to get at folk intuitions in a way that does not beg any questions. At least in my opinion (which may not mean much given that I am a biased), I am confident that we took the greatest care possible to insure that the cases we used in the surveys were fair to all parties to the debate. I am also confident that when other philosophers/psychologists begin conducting similar experiments, they, too, will find out just how difficult the sort of impariality we tried to uphold can be to maintain (having philosophers in the group who are on different sides of the debate helped us in this regard). Having said all this, I am looking forward to seeing how others interpret our data--if nothing else, I hope to see that others take it seriously enough to question it and try to improve upon it. Minimally, I would like to see some skeptics join the fray--only then will some of my own concerns be allayed.

[tnadelhoffer]

Sorry to post three comments in a row--but I want to get back to my earlier point about Christians and free will.

Here is the introduction to the entry on free will from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"The question of free will, moral liberty, or the liberum arbitrium of the Schoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics, and psychology. The view adopted in response to it will determine a man's position in regard to the most momentous issues that present themselves to the human mind. On the one hand, does man possess genuine moral freedom, power of real choice, true ability to determine the course of his thoughts and volitions, to decide which motives shall prevail within his mind, to modify and mould his own character? Or, on the other, are man's thoughts and volitions, his character and external actions, all merely the inevitable outcome of his circumstances? Are they all inexorably predetermined in every detail along rigid lines by events of the past, over which he himself has had no sort of control? This is the real import of the free-will problem."

Here is a definition of determinism from "Believe--Religious Information Source Web-Site":

"Determinism is the theory that all human action is caused entirely by preceding events, and not by the exercise of the Will. In philosophy, the theory is based on the metaphysical principle that an uncaused event is impossible. The success of scientists in discovering causes of certain behavior and in some cases effecting its control tends to support this principle."

Finally, another entry from an online Christian glossary:
"Free will -- Ascribing some autonomy to an agent such that the agent's actions can be described as self-generated or caused rather than determined."

What do you guys and gals think? It seems to me that the sort of free will that Christians usually take themselves to have is of the causa sui sort--otherwise, they have a hard time getting around the problem of evil. After all, if the buck doesn't start and stop with each free human choice, it eventually winds up getting passed off on God--which creates problems for the omnipotent, omniscient, yet wholly benevolent chap!

[tnadelhoffer]

Why not make it four in a row? My final two cents worth(less?). Here are some recent statistics about Christians in the USA and the world:

The most comprehensive survey done on the religious identifications of Americans--entitled "American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)"--was run by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The data from ARIS showed that the estimated number of Christian Americans in 2001 was down to 71% (159,000,000) from 86% in 1990.

Moreover, there are an estimated 2 billion Christians world-wide--making it far and away the largest religion in the world.

Not that this proves anything I said earlier of course--but since Eddy and I are both interested (and invested) in keeping an eye on the "facts," I figured I should at least look up some of the relevant numbers to support my earlier post(s).

OK. I promise no more posts for a while.

[Kip Werking]

Some comments upon the above:

1. Determinism comes in varieties of different strictness. Fischer, for example, is fairly strict about his determinism and remains (as I am) "happily agnostic" about whether or not this is true. Honderich, on the hand, claims to be a strict determinist but even seems contented with a "semi-determinism" and considers the Compatibilism question from that perspective too. This all shows the importance of Bok's move towards describing "mechanism" instead of "determinism" -- a move I like.
2. Vargas makes a similar move by saying that the free will question should be concerned with our sense of responsibility as agents in the natural order.
3. Considerations such as those above, motivated by the recognition that indeterminism can be just as threatening to moral responsibility as determinism (Hume and Pereboom, among others, make similar points) suggest to me that we move "Beyond Incompatibilism". G Strawson, in particular, makes an effort to do this. And while I do think Joe above was correct to note that Strawson's Basic Argument begins by showing how determinism (or mechanism) is incompatible with fw, I doubt that his point (later in the Basic Argument) that indeterminism is also incompatible with fw is *less* important just because it occupies a later, or smaller space in his writing. The spirit of Strawson's BA is to show that *both* are incompatible. So Tamler's point that the Compatibility question allows one to avoid the arguments of free will nihilists/skeptics/deniers resonates with me. To only focus upon the threat of mechanism is to ignore the threat of randomness/indeterminism and shows that the two camps (free will deniers and asserters) are talking about two different notions of freedom: one which conflicts with being part of the natural order and one that does not.
4. This brings me to a fourth point: given that, as I argue above, we should move beyond the language of "incompatibilists" and "compatibilists", what are the new labels for people-who-assert-that-free-will-exists and people-who-deny-that-free-will-exist? Some above have suggested free will nihilists -- this label is just ghastly. "Free will skeptic" is better but implies skepticism, as opposed to positive denial (just as theological agnosticism is distinct from positive atheism). The best term, which tamler uses, is "free will denier" or "denier", but unfortunately, this (like Vargas' earlier description of the free will problem) is quite unsexy.

[Rob]

As someone who believes (a) that the notion of self-causation is by now quite deeply bound up with extensive stretches of ordinary moral thought and (b) that large stretches of ordinary moral thought are constantly vulnerable to potential deflation through an irruption of the course of thought represented by the Basic Argument(s), I'm quite comfortable with being branded a "free will denier," but not a "free will nihilist," since I'm at this point quite non-committal on the question of what practical or political bearing such a view should have, and "nihilist" might have unhelpful historical resonances, or practical and political connotations.

[Rob]

As to the prospect of "moving beyond the language of 'incompatibilists' and 'compatibilists'" I'm very pessimistic because it seems to me that both views are both by turns encouraged and contradicted by our experience of ourselves as agents; therefore, it would seem that transcendence of such language would require or have to issue from a transformed phenomenology.

[Joe]

Look, Kip, I was just defending folks, like myself, who work on the Compatibility Problem. I did not say, nor do I believe, that other work was "*less* important." Anyone who knows me knows that I would never say such a thing. I like and read a whole bunch of other stuff related to the issues of free will and moral responsibility.

On a point related to the one that I've been trying (but failing) to make above, I'll give Kip or anyone else $100 if they can prove that indeterminism is incompatible with free will (without first giving a more general proof for free will nihilism). What would such a proof look like? Pick out a world in which (intuitively) there is at least one free act. Add an element of indeterminism that is not logically or causally related to the act itself. Is there any NEW reason to believe that the act is now unfree? No!

The best one can do in terms of expressing indeterminism's relation to free will or moral responsibility is to say, as Strawson does, that "it is foolish to suppose that indeterministic or random factors . . . can in themselves contribute to one's being truly or ultimately responsible for how one is." ("Free Will") But one would first need to argue for the incompatibility of free will and determinism in order to then make the case for free will nihilism. (Sorry for the gastly term but I can't think of a better one. I'm open to suggestions, though.)

[robert allen]

tnadelhoffer:

While I agree that agent causation is an attractive idea for a Christian, I believe that she can make do with the sort of compatibilism I described in my response to Al Mele’s post of 6/28. The idea is that God “divorces” himself from our activities by allowing us to subvert his will, thereby making us autonomous. God did not make our actions unavoidable, though he could have guaranteed that we act as we do. Our characters and circumstances do- if Determinism is true- but at least we are free from His control. Thus, he is no more responsible for our behavior than a parent is responsible for the actions of his/her adult children. The only difference being that the typical parent does not have the sort of opportunity for control that God ‘passed up’.

And speaking of parenting, I would like to pass on to Eddy and his wife my Rule #1 of infant care: if you go bed at sundown when the baby does- instead of trying to catch up on all the things that you could not do while he was awake- the 3 a.m. feeding will be somewhat easier to take.

[Kip Werking]

Joe,

My comment above was intended to argue against the following (sketch of a) position:

1. Look, most deniers focus upon the incompatibilism route.
2. If incompatibilism fails, then the efforts of most deniers will fail.

I was weakly associating this position with you, just from what I have read above about Strawson's Basic Argument, but now I feel that I misunderstood you entirely.

You now seem to be emphasizing this point:

1. Indeterminism (strictly defined) would not necessarily undermine an agent's fw at all.

On this last point, I agree wholeheartedly.

[Rob]

I don't see how Robert's quasi-compatibilist suggestion to a Christian can possibly be squared with the conception of God -- widely held among Christians -- as omnipotent and omniscient. Perhaps I read too much Nietzsche, but compatibilism, it seems to me, is of a piece with the contradiction in one way or another countenanced by most Christians between God's omnipotence and humans' supposed free will. In both cases, the corrosive implications of an element of the view held is being staved off at not inconsiderable intellectual cost.

[robert allen]

Rob,

You have been reading too much Nietzsche. As Sartre said, he's no philosopher. As an antidote, try St. Augustine.

[clark]

Actually I kind of like Nietzsche on the topic of free will.

But with respect to Rob's comments I think the answer is that an omnipotent being could withhold potential acts and still be omnipotent. This is a fairly common view, for instance, within Judaism wherein there is a whole doctrine about the constriction of God's light allowing creation. Whether this entails that God's foreknowledge in actuality as opposed to potential is limited is an interesting question. The open theism movement appears to accept such limits on God's omniscience. However many dislike open theism. So it probably all depends upon what you do or don't see as allowable theologically. I'm not sure Nietzsche is a good source for deciding what is acceptable Christianity though, given his polemetic status.