Peter van Inwagen's Consequence Argument is an attack on one horn of the two-part standard argument against free will.
informationphilosopher.com/freedom/standard_argument.html
This horn is the Determinism Objection. If all our actions are determined by a causal chain of prior events which goes back to long before our birth, we cannot be responsible for our actions.
The other horn of the two-part argument is the Randomness Objection. If our actions are caused by random events, or if some events in the causal chain were uncaused, we also cannot be responsible for our actions.
In either case, and many philosophers have claimed that these two horns of the dilemma exhaust the possible cases, there is no responsibility.
For many incompatibilist libertarians, van Inwagen's Consequence Argument was a success, with the result that many more thinkers today call themselves incompatibilist or at least agnostic on determinism.
I propose an attack on the other horn of the dilemma - the Randomness Objection.
The Creative Possibilities Argument
In order to dramatize the situation, it might be helpful to use what Daniel Dennett calls an "intuition pump." Let us imagine an "anti-Frankfurt demon."
Where Frankfurt's intervening demon blocks alternative possibilities so that the agent can still freely choose an alternative that the demon allows, our anti-Frankfurt demon introduces new alternative possibilities into the agent's mind. And some of these alternatives are generated randomly, for example by using amplified quantum events, to make them irreducibly random.
Let's call the anti-Frankfurt demon Doyle's demon.
Where Frankfurt examples subtract alternative possibilities, Doyle examples add alternative possibilities, some of them irreducibly random.
I would like to emphasize that these new possibilities may lead the agent to create new information in the world, like Mozart composing another piano concerto. That's why we call it the Creative Possibilities Argument.
The problem before us now is this. Can we be responsible for actions which had their origins in randomly generated creative possibilities?
My answer is yes, but only if the agent's Will is adequately determined to de-liberate among these creative possibilities and choose one by making a determination that the chosen action is consistent with the agent's character and values, and in the Mozart example, good enough music to be added to Mozart's body of work.
What is "adequate determinism?" It is the determinism we have in the real world, which exhibits quantum uncertainty at the microscopic level but enough certainty or accuracy at the macroscopic level to send men to the moon and back. The brain is a macroscopic object, large enough to average out or suppress quantum indeterminism - when it needs to.
informationphilosopher.com/freedom/adequate_determinism.html
The brain also has access to single atom or photon events and can access the implicit randomness or uncertainty - when it wants to. If you doubt this, consider that the eye can detect a single photon. The nose can smell a single molecule.
In our Cogito model for free will, we unpack "free will" into "free" and "will," a temporal sequence between microscopic randomness in our thoughts and macroscopic adequate determinism in our actions, a sequence that generates new information in the world.
informationphilosopher.com/freedom/cogito/
Libertarians will not find the "metaphysical" freedom in the willed decision that they think they need.
Compatibilists and Determinists will be bothered by the injection of randomness into the generation of alternative creative possibilities.
Some libertarians want the agent to be able to act differently in exactly the same circumstances. Apart from the impossibility of "exactly the same circumstances," what is wrong with the agent making the same decision and acting the same way in essentially similar circumstances? It displays the agent"s character and values, a simple requirement for moral responsibility, right?
Some determinists deny the existence of uncaused causes (causa sui), but they fly in the face of modern physics and simply show what William James called "antipathy to chance." Their position is similar to those who favor intelligent design and creationist evolution. They abhor the idea of something truly random happening in the world, perhaps a hangover from the time when chance was regarded as atheistic.
So what do you think? If a Doyle demon planted several random alternative creative possibilities in your mind, if you then de-liberated about the pros and cons of each, comparing them to your past actions and past work, if you then made the determination that one of these was your best alternative, and if your will that chose that action was adequately determined (involved negligible uncertainty), could you feel responsible for such an action?
I assert that if the agent in the Frankfurt example can be held morally responsible, can feel guilty or proud of the result, surely the agent in the Doyle example can also feel good that this is his or her work and can accept praise or blame?
Please note that chance was not the direct cause of the agent's action. It is just the case that there was a random event earlier in the causal chain. Unless you believe that any random event earlier in a causal chain contaminates that chain forever, you should find that the chosen action was "up to us."
John Locke liked the idea of Freedom and Liberty. But he thought it was inappropriate to describe the Will itself as Free. He agreed with Hobbes and called Free Will unintelligible, setting a precedent for today's philosophers.
For Locke the Will is a Determination. It is the Man who is Free. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXI, Of Power, section 14, he said "I think the question is not proper, whether the will be free, but whether a man be free." "This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and, as I guess, produced great confusion."
Surely some rigorous analytic thinker or ordinary language philosopher should have sorted this confusion out since 1936 when Moritz Schlick, following Wittgenstein, called free will a pseudo-problem?
We must limit determinism
but not eliminate it as Libertarians mistakenly think necessary.
We must admit indeterminism
but not permit it to produce random actions as Determinists mistakenly fear.
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