How many battalions does incompatibilism have?

I want to gauge people's assessment of the current state of play in the free will debates. In the 60s and 70s, incompatibilism was very much a minority view (right?) Today, incompatibilism is much better represented. Is it still a minority view, or is as often (or more widely) held as compatibilism? Van Inwagen reports Slote's comments that incompatibilism is now the standard view, as well as Warfield's comments that most philosophers who worked on the problem were incompatibilists, while most analytic philosophers more generally were compatibilists. Is that right?

Comments

[Fritz Warfield]

I am confident that Warfield was right about this back when he and van Inwagen had the conversation that van Inwagen reports in his article. But perhaps I'm not a neutral judge of this issue....

That conversation was, oh, 8 or more years ago and since that time my sense is that more metaphysical compatibilists of various sorts have taken up serious work on the metaphysics of freedom (especially if by this we include work on the metaphysics of freedom that isn't work directly on the compatibility question).
So it may be that things have evened out a bit more recently on the question of those who work professionally on the topic.

What Warfield said about philosophers as a whole was surely right back then and remains correct today.

[Tamler Sommers]

It seems to me that incompatibilism has become more popular with the rise of event-causal libertarianism (Kane, Ekstrom...)and free will skepticism (G. Strawson, Pereboom, Double, Waller, and some up-and- comers...) Of course, there were free will skeptics in the 60's too--Edwards,Hospers, and Smart come to mind--but none to my knowledge who fleshed out their theories in book-length works.

That said, I've always found it odd that free will skeptics and libertarians are lumped together in a major category. Skeptics have far more in common with compatibilists than with agent-causal or mysterian libertarians And an event-causal libertarian like Kane has more in common with a compatibilist like Frankfurt than he does with a free will skeptic. (In fact, skeptics may employ almost identical arguments in their attempt to undermine Kane's libertarianism and Frankfurt's compatibilism.)

So, yes, it seems to me that incompatibilism is gaining ground. But is it still a meaningful category? (Well, it's meaningful, but is it the best way to divy up the field?)

[Manuel Vargas]

I think we should get the experimental types to run a survey and settle the question. Eddy, what are you up to these days?

I'd guess that the field is probably pretty close to evenly divided these days, but along with Tamler I'm inclined to think that the more interesting news is the proliferation of lots of "non-standard" (i.e., not traditional compatibilist or libertarian) views. A number of people have noted that compatibilism and various eliminativist and revisionist views about free will have more in common than the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction suggests (e.g., John Fischer made a remark about a affinities between his own view and Derk's view in a piece in Journal of Ethics a few years back, see Tamler's remarks above, and I talk a bit about it in my forthcoming article "The Revisionist's Guide to Responsibility"). Maybe what we are seeing is a bit of a shift in the terrain, away from worries about compatibility arguments to worries about whether or not certain pictures of agency are more and less plausible? Maybe the shifting language is the wrong way to put the point- perhaps I should say "the terrain is expanding in a way that raises different questions." I doubt compatibility arguments will disappear any time soon, but I do think they are increasingly having to share the stage with worries about the metaphysical plausibility of libertarianism, an issue that often unites compatibilists, eliminativists (or skeptics), and revisionists.

Fritz is surely right that the profession at large is compatibilist. I wouldn't be surprised if, for any subject matter in philosophy, the part of the profession that doesn't work on these things tends to default to any view that has the least implications for their own work. (Ergo, compatibilism.) If the issue is such that it necessarily has implication for their work, then the default view is one that is most compatible with the dominant view in the field they work in.

PS-There must be something about Notre Dame that brings out the third person. First, it was "Van Inwagen on van Inwagen" at the INPC, and now, "Warfield on Warfield" at the GFP. Vargas gets a kick out of it. But Vargas went to Notre Dame for a bit, so maybe that's why.

[Kevin Timpe]

Two quicks comments:

1. In a recent paper on Augustine and free will, Katherin Rogers writes that "That argument is driven by libertarian intuitions which Augustine apparently does not share, and in this he is in the company of many, perhaps most, contemporary philosophers who work on the metaphysics of free will" ("Augustine's Compatibilism," Religious Studies 2004, p. 426). Though over simplistic in that she only discusses libertarianism and compatibilism, this quotation seems to imply that she thinks if any one 'side' has more battalions among those working in this area, it's the compatibilists.

2. In a recent article in Faith and Philosophy, Lynne Baker writes that libertarianism is "the prevailing view of Christian philosophers today" (460). So a related question to the original one is to what degree the ratio shifts among those with religious commitments. I'm guessing here that Baker may be right, but I'd second Manuel's suggestion for a survey.

[Neil]

Thanks for the responses. If Vargas and Sommers believe that the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction is no longer one of the most important to be made, Levy couldn't disagree more. First, he notes that we are in the midst of a renaissance of libertarianism, with both event-causal and agent-causal theorists motivating their work by reference to the alleged incompatibility of free will with determinism. Second, he notes that many free will sceptics believe that if determinism were false, we would have free will. He recognises that the distinction is not the only perspicuous way of dividing up the field, but believes that it remains probably the single most useful.

[Tamler Sommers]

Sommers would like to know who those free will skeptics are who believe that if determinism were false we would have free will. Seriously, he (Sommers)does not of know of a single free will skeptic who believes this. (Which is not to say that they don't exist.)

[Neil]

Tamler,

It may be that the determinism therefore no free will view is relatively rare among free will specialists, but it is alive and well among people working in cognitive science, including philosophically sophisticated people like Josh Greene. If you want a specialist, Randolph Clarke, in some of his moods, would be an example (Clarke believe that if broad incompatibilism is true, only agent-causation can be sufficient for free will. But he doubts that agent-causation is actual).

[Tamler Sommers]

Neil,

In your first comment, you referred to the position that "if determinism were false, we would have free will." This is not equivalent to "determinism therefore no free will." According to the first view, the falsity of determinism is sufficient for us to have free will. According to the second, the falsity of determinism is necessary but not sufficient.

You may be right that this latter view, the determinism therefore no free will view, is out there among cognitive scientists. But the question is whether these cognitive scientists think that indeterminism would be of any help. (I'd be very surprised if Josh Greene, to use your example, believed that it was.) If they don't believe that indeterminism would help for free will, then the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction becomes less useful--at least from their perspective.

Finally, you mentioned Clark and the view that agent-causation is sufficient for free will. For those who believe that, it seems that the key question is not whether determinism is true, but whether there are agent causes. (It is very possible that determinism is false and that there are no agent causes. In which case the falsity of determinism would not entail that we have free will.)

[mv]

Neil-
I didn't mean to suggest that the compatibilism/incompatibilism distinction "is no longer one of the most important to be made" or that it wasn't useful in lots of ways. I was just making a claim about what I take to be the most interesting, or maybe in some sense, the more remarkable change in the numbers and alliances of the battalions, something that doesn't really show up if what you are primarily counting is the proportion of compatibilists and incompatibilists.

Kevin-
Yep, I think Baker (and you?) are right that libertarianism is the most common view among Christian philosophers. Moreover, I suspect that if you were to take out the folks with religious inclinations the number of incompatibilists would drop a great deal (Nahmias? Nadelhoffer? Here's another issue you guys can settle!). As you probably know, I think this is an interesting and under-discussed issue in these debates.

[clark]

I'm curious to the claim that Libertarianism is the most common view among Christian philosophers. Doesn't Libertarianism entail Open Theism, a view that is very controversial at the moment?

[John Fischer]

In his recent book, Randy Clarke argues not just that it is doubtful that agent causation is actual, but, as I understand him, he finds it doubtful that it is coherent at all. So this is some pretty strong skepticism!

For what it is worth, I don't think a Christian (or in general religious) philosopher needs to be, or even should be, an incompatibilist. After all, that does make it somewhat difficult, if it turns out that causal determinism is true! I have always thought it would be preferable for a religious philosopher to develop some sort of compatibilism, and also a compatibilist theodicy. Perhaps such a philosopher could have a
compatibilist theodicy waiting in the wings, should causal determinism turn out to be true. After all, shouldn't a belief in God be resilient with respect to the possible discover of the truth of causal determinism. Surely a religious philosopher would not want to insist from her or his archair that physicists must be wrong, if they were to claim that causal determinism is true!!

Have I been controversial enough?

[John Fischer]

To add a point. Although it is interesting to speculate about this sort of thing, I don't think it really matters how many proponents of the various views there are. What is important is the strength of the arguments and the plausibility of the positions.

[jon kvanvig]

On the point about whether libertarianism entails open theism: it doesn't, at least not if Molinism is in the picture.

[Kevin Timpe]

In addition to Molinism, I take it that libertarianism is compatible with divine Eternity. James Ross gave a paper at the SCP a few years ago entitled "Why Libertarianism entails Open Theism, and why that's OK." He may have it on his web-site. Though I can't remember the exact details now, I remember thinking that he hadn't shown the entailment the title refers to.

I think that evil is one reason Christian philosophers might lean toward libertarianism, though there is the worry about what the physicists discover. If we are free and yet we are determined by God (either through the laws and the past, or simply by His will), then the Christian philosopher must either give a story about why God doesn't save all when He could, or endorse universalism. Neither, from my perspective, is particularly attractive. I deal with some of these issues in a forthcoming paper, "Why the Christian Might be a Libertarian: A Reply to Lynne Baker."

[John Fischer]

Right, Kevin, about evil. But that is why I said that it seems to me that a religious philosopher should want a compatibilistic theodicy. Although I haven't worked this out, I do hope to develop this sort of view in the future. But there clearly are compatibilistic theodicies--I have always been puzzled as to why so many Christian philosophers have thought that compatibilism was "the bad guy". After all, if there is a compatibilistic theodicy, then one would not have to give up a belief in God, if one were convinced that causal determinism is true. So, as Peter Van Inwagen put it in conversation with me at the Wheaton Conference, it would be nice to have a compatibilistic theodicy in one's pocket, as it were, and one could take it out if determinism turned out to be true.

[Mark Smeltzer]

"So, as Peter Van Inwagen put it in conversation with me at the Wheaton Conference, it would be nice to have a compatibilistic theodicy in one's pocket, as it were, and one could take it out if determinism turned out to be true."

Of late that has been the focus of my work. It is my hope to get something, even if it is preliminary, published on this topic within the next year or two.

[Neil]

Tamler,

You're right: I wasn't careful enough in my initial statement. But you're reading me uncharitably; after all, no one believes that the falsity of determinism is sufficient for free will.

John,

I read Clarke as claiming that agent-causation is coherent, but unlikely to be actual. He writes: ‘there are good reasons to think that agent causation, although it can be made comprehensible, is not possible’ (186). But I recognise there is textual evidence supporting your interpretation as well (since the objections to agent-causation he considers are, after all, conceptual).

Finally, a couple of points on religious libertarianism. Many compatibilists, like myself, see the force of incompatibilist objections. Part of the reason we're not swayed to the dark side might be because less hangs on it for us than for believers: a no-free-will-either-way position is one that we can adopt with more equanimity than a traditional believer. Second, believers already have a richer ontology than non-believers, so it is easier for them to contemplate non-material causes.

[Tamler Sommers]

Neil,

You said:

"Second, he [you] notes that many free will sceptics believe that if determinism were false, we would have free will."

I didn't mean to be uncharitable, I just wanted to point out that I didn't know of any skeptics who believed what you said they believed. (Incidentally, what would a charitable interpretation of that initial claim look like? It seems pretty straightforward.)

Manuel,

Well I do mean to suggest that there are some serious problems with the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction IF it is used—-as it often is—-as the primary means of classifying the different positions in the free will debate. Any classification system that groups free will skeptics with agent-causal libertarians is one that needs some retooling!

That said, the distinction becomes a lot more valuable when free will skeptics are removed from the picture, i.e. when the debate is only between libertarians and compatibilists. If we assume that we have free will, then it is crucial to discover whether or not it is compatible with determinism. (If not, then determinism is necessarily false!) And, as Neil says, strong incompatibilist arguments may well have played an important role in motivating philosophers to develop more sophisticated libertarian theories.

But if we don't assume that we have free will (and I don't see why we should), then the "free-will-ist" (as Kane calls his view)/ no-free-will-ist distinction seems more important, more fundamental. And the compatibility question can be a distraction from the core of that debate. Of course, and now I’m officially babbling, one might say that before we can decide whether we have free will we need to know what free will is. And knowing what free will is involves trying to ascertain whether it is the type of thing that could be compatible with determinism. Which would again bring the compatibility question to the forefront. And so I know longer know where I stand on this issue so I'll go to sleep.

[Clark Goble]

Yes, I should have remembered Molinism. However Eternalism, as I understand it, doesn't avoid the problems of an interventionist God, which I suspect most Christian philosophers at least would embrace. Of course I suspect the way out is to seriously qualify how God intervenes as well as the nature of the incarnation. But that's way out of my knowledge range as to how these philosophers might do it.

Still I think John Fischer is right regarding there being a prima facie reason for Christian philosophers to be compatibilists of some stripe, despite the advantages of Libertarianism for the problem of evil.

[Jonathan Farrell]

Neil said, "after all, no one believes that the falsity of determinism is sufficient for free will."

If only this were true. I saw a public lecture recently here in Auckland given by the mathematician John Conway (of 'Game of Life' fame) on 'The Free Will Theorem.' The maths/physics was beyond me, but the only free will-iness involved relied on the identification of free will and indeterminism. Despite being challenged about this, Prof Conway seemed to think it reasonable. (I suspect that Neil wasn't thinking about people who don't work on these issues. It is worrisome, though, that Conway - who is likely to be taken by many people to be an expert in what he gives public lectures on - holds such a bizarre view.)

While I'm here... I'm just finishing an MA thesis on free will, and I've found this blog to be extremely useful reading. Thanks to all involved.

[James Gibson]

"In addition to Molinism, I take it that libertarianism is compatible with divine Eternity. James Ross gave a paper at the SCP a few years ago entitled "Why Libertarianism entails Open Theism, and why that's OK." He may have it on his web-site. Though I can't remember the exact details now, I remember thinking that he hadn't shown the entailment the title refers to."

It was James Sennett.

http://www.lccs.edu/~jsennett/libertarianism%20and%20open%20theism.htm

[V. Alan White]

Van Inwagen’s innocent-sounding comment is, to me, at once breathtaking for its honesty and the overarching philosophical commitment it reveals. Since he says one must have a compatibilist response in-pocket should determinism be ultimately revealed as the case—then apparently FW and responsibility must be salvaged at all conceptual costs (though I would think only something like Kane’s ultimate variety can supply the requisite theological claims, unless one were a Hick fan, which I think is consistent as a theodicy with almost any account of human nature, though Hick seems to prefer libertarianism). But doesn’t that really reveal that all mundane metaphysical questions must be subservient to (supernatural?) global ones, even if the answers to those are based on pure faith, or are fundamentally beyond the pale of empirical metaphysics? But the facts of FW and MR are indisputably here, in us, at least granting the excluded middle of the relevant questions. Doesn’t it make sense thus to start here, with what we know or at least can evidentially construct, rather than constructing super-realist FW systems of dubious merit? (I speak also as one who once espoused a conservative Christian view, but abandoned it after reading SK’s Fear & Trembling, understanding the gaping lacunae of western religious tradition in its supposed historical foundations, and becoming enchanted with forms of naturalized epistemology and metaphysics.) Make no mistake—I thoroughly admire and respect the Van Inwagen of “FW is a Mystery”—therein telling it like it is. Beta fails. His revised Beta, however, seems only to be platitudinous (if not also duck-billed, as a colleague quipped when I mentioned the currency of this term, to which I replied that that was a low down-underhanded comment). And he there argues further that neither indeterministic agent nor event causation can be the foundation of intelligible moral-character assurance. We are hung out to dry thus far on what exactly free will and responsibility are, at least as far as traditional libertarians are concerned. But note his final perspective in that piece—we are thus so far incapable of describing the nature of the freedom that he nevertheless believes resides at the metaphysical source of our existence as irreducibly responsible creatures. Is that a defensible position from which to start or regulate the inquiry? Or should we start with an elementary question—what is it to be free in any real, here-and-now sense? And can any extension of that sense serve our empirical needs for responsibility? Even if our inquiries into these questions only hit the mark in the low level of entailment of what we need, at least we will have something to go on as necessary conditions.

[David Hunter]

Neil funnily enough I have investigated this in my department and come up with some interesting results:

1. Most lecturers seem to be compatibilists.

2. Most graduate students seem to be incompatibilists.

3. Most Metaphysicans seem to be compatibilists.

4. Most Ethicists are incompatibilists and libertarians of some kind.

I suspect compatibilism might be seen as the commonly accepted informed view (Most students new to the topic are some form of libertarians for a while) but there are a fair number of libertarians out there.

[John Fischer]

Just to clarify: I quoted Van Inwagen as saying it would be nice to have a compatibilist theodicy "in one's pocket" in case causal determinism were true. But I should hasten to say this was a very informal conversation, not during an official session, and Peter was basically responding to what I was "pushing", i.e. that it would be good to have a compatibilist theodicy. He did not say we must have one, nor did he agree (or disagree) with the compatibilist theodicy I was sketching (again, informally).

[John Fischer]

To continue. What I was trying to say in the previous post: I think Peter was just being gracious and trying to "humor me". But remember: even Peter would be a compatibilist, if he were convinced that causal determinism were true. (I believe his position is that, if he were convinced of causal determinism, he would give up Principle Beta.)

[John Fischer]

To continue. What I was trying to say in the previous post: I think Peter was just being gracious and trying to "humor me". But remember: even Peter would be a compatibilist, if he were convinced that causal determinism were true. (I believe his position is that, if he were convinced of causal determinism, he would give up Principle Beta.)

[Fritz Warfield]

But John, as you know, Peter has already given up on *Beta*, so what he'd really have to do is give up on at least *all* "transfer principles" that take us from Determinism to incompatibilism. I say "at least" because not all arguments for incompatibilism depend upon a "beta-like" principle. So more precisely Peter would have to give up on the validity of all members of the relevant class of transfer principles and find problems in all non-transfer arguments for incompatibilism. I suppose he might also still accept some transfer principles but claim that the particular arguments employing them all contain at least one false additional premise.

Scheez! lots of work for libertarians to do if determinism "turns out" to be true, if we want to go the route Peter's remarks suggest he would (not giving up on freedom).

If determinism turns out to be true I think I'd take early retirement instead of doing all of this work....

***********

On a separate issue -- I don't really see what's at stake when some people complain about classifying libertarians and free will skeptics (by this I mean not those who deny the existence of free will, but those who claim it's incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism and therefore deny its existence for that reason) together as "incompatibilists". Both groups do accept the incompatibility thesis after all. It's true that free will skeptics differ in important ways from libertarians and so for other purposes we won't classify them together. But on this issue they are together. It's just like classifying, for some purposes, those compatibilists who believe in free will together with liberarians (= incompatibilism + free will) for some purposes but not for others.

In classifying these skeptics with libertarians on this issue we are usually pointing to the fact that members of both groups accept the soundness of at least one of the various arguments for incompatibilism.

[V. Alan White]

Please accept my deepest apologies Professors Fischer and Van Inwagen if my off-the-cuff remarks in any way were offensive--I didn't intend them that way. In such a public forum I must take greater care to say what I intend to without implying disparagement. I was using the occasion of the remark only as a springboard to argue that free will investigation is better served bottom-up from experience than from another starting place that might itself be more controversial. I certainly did not mean to impute motives or positions to Professor Van Inwagen of any such kind. I tried to highlight, in fact, the bold intellectual honesty of his "Mystery" piece as the kind of work seldom seen for combining deep insight with humility.

Again, if I've offended, forgive me. I'll shut up now.

[Tamler Sommers]

Fritz,

Though I am one of those "complainers," I agree with your last point...to a degree. It's like in metaethics where moral skeptics and moral realists are classified together under "cognitivism." But skeptics have no quarrel with that, nor do realists.

However, in the metaethical debate, the cognivism/non-cognitivism distinction is not the primary means of classifying competing views. The compatibilism/incompatibilism distinction is. Which means that as a skeptic one is immediately associated with incompatibilism and therefore libertarianism, which is the dominant incompatibilist view. Imagine if the situation was reversed and libertarianism was the minority incompatibilist view. And so by identifying yourself as an incompatibilist one naturally assumed you were a skeptic. Perhaps, libertarians might want to rework the system a bit too.

I fully admit, though, that I may be making too big a deal of this...especially with the Pats on the verge of acquring dynasty status.

[Fritz Warfield]

I do see your point Tamler and there is at least something to it. For better or for worse, some people hear "incompatibilist" as "libertarian" and that can be unfortunate for both hard determinists and free will skeptics of the sort we're talking about.

A similar thing happens all the time (sometimes in print in various unfortunate ways - ways that damage arguments...)regarding compatibilism. Many people (mis)-hear "compatibilist" as equivalent to "compatibilist who believes in free will" and this is a big mistake. This unfortunate blurring of positions is overlooked quite regularly in standard literature even. Not good. This one's importance isn't owing to the fact that very many philosophers get left out (there aren't *many* compatibilists who reject free will) but traces instead to the fact that arguments sometimes come out invalid because they presuppose that compatibilists must believe that there is free will.

[John Fischer]

Alan, no offense at all! I was just trying to be careful not to attribute something to Peter Van Inwagen that he said very informally.

Also, thanks for reminding me about Beta, Fritz!

Happy Super Sunday!!