Tuesday night I observed a debate on subjectivism and Objectivism (as in Randianism) in ethics. Ed Hudgins of the Objectivist Center defended the party line. Max Borders of the Institute for Humane Studies argued for a sort of anti-realist subjectivist contractarianism. I found a great deal to disagree with in both arguments. But I think I was a little surprised to find myself almost completely exasperated by Hudgins’s fairly orthodox summation of Objectivist ethics. It’s been years now that I’ve felt little affinity to Objectivism. However, that’s where I started out in philosophy, that’s how I was inducted into the tradition of classical liberal thought, and Objectivism provided my first sense of serious intellectual community. I feel an intellectual debt to people like David Kelley, my friends and teachers from TOC seminars, and folks on the Objectivist mailing lists (the ones that didn’t try to kick me off, that is). And I feel a bond with a good number of self-described Objectivists, and I have no desire to have them think of me as, you know, “the other.”
I remember when in the middle nineties how Mike Huemer’s set of essays on “Why I am not an Objectivist” had me up in arms. I don’t intend to write my own version of Huemer’s explanation (which, for what its worth, I still think differs with Objectivism for mostly the wrong reasons.) That said, I do want to set down some of my differences with Objectivism in the hope that it might prove helpful to someone much like me about a decade ago. In fact, I’ll address my arguments to Will Wilkinson circa 1996, taking for granted what I know he knew, and aiming for what I know to be his soft intellectual underbelly. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, then it’s probably because I’m not talking to you. I’ll do one of these every few weeks or so, as the spirit moves me.
So, let’s start with free-will.
I consider the argument for libertarian/indeterminstic/incompatibilist free-will to be among the most embarrassing in the Objectivist corpus. Actually, I’ll frame the argument as one against determinism, which isn’t the same as establishing the truth of libertarian free-will. The argument as I understand it goes like this:
(1) If we have direct, first-person, introspective experience of self-initiated action, then determinism is false.
(2) We do have this kind of experience.
So,
(3) Determinism is false.
It really is as bad as it looks. The first premise is the sort of obnoxious false alternative that Rand was generally good at sniffing out. If we flip the conditional we get: If determinism is true, then we don’t have direct, introspective experience of self-initiative action. Why not BOTH determinism and experience exactly as we know it? Why not think a deterministic world can produce any first-person experience you can think of, even the experience of deliberation, choice, and intentional control?
If pressed to defend (check) the first premise, Objectivists like to say something to the effect that free-will is axiomatic. Why? Because the experience of agency (or “volition” if you like) is direct and self-evident, and implicit in every act, including the denial of free will. But, of course, that argument addresses only the antecedent. I want to know why I should accept the whole conditional. What is supposed to be the connection between the antecedent and the consequent? The question is: Why think introspection provides any evidence whatsoever about the nature of causation, as opposed to evidence for the existence of an instance of causation, or conveys any information at all about the relative merits of determinism or indeterminism?
Given the wealth of evidence from the cognitive and brain sciences, there is ample reason to doubt that introspection is in general a reliable means of correctly identifying the goings on in one’s own brain, or even of correctly identifying the mental state one is actually in at the moment of introspection. So it’s really rather fantastic that the introspective experience of intentionally focusing or paying attention to something (the Objectivist’s favorite example of volition) is, at the same time, a direct experience of indeterministic causation. But that seems to be the Objectivist claim.
I’m willing to buy the unpopular claim that one may directly experience causation. If I’m pushing a book across a table, I think I am indeed directly experiencing my effort as a cause of my hand’s and the book’s movement. But I am not therefore also experiencing the fact that my effort was not caused by antecedent events — the fact that I am an unmoved mover. There is nothing in my experience that tells me whether the event initiated by my intentional application of effort was or was not itself initiated by some other event outside of my control. If my experience of volition was caused by something external to my experience, then, obviously, I didn’t experience my volition as having an external cause. But, obviously, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. If I don’t experience the cat under my bed, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
The Objectivist may often be heard to argue that one cannot deny free-will without assuming it. But this begs the question. My argument is that our experience of our own agency is what it is, and that one of the things it is not is a source of information about the general nature of cause and effect. Unless the Objectivist can adduce some independent and compelling reasons to believe (and not simply assert again and again) that the experience of our own agency carries information about the fundamental, metaphysical nature of causation, we have exactly zero reason to believe premise (1) and thus to reject determinism. On the basis of our experience of volition, we are licensed to the conclusion that we can make things happen and that we have a certain kind of contol over ourselves. We are not licensed to any beliefs about the ultimate character of causation. I cannot open my mouth and with my measured breath intentionally deny that I can make things happen and have a kind of control over myself without assuming what I have denied. I can, however, consistently deny indeterminism because no information about indeterminism is made available to me in my experience of my denial.
Anyway, denying indeterminism has nothing to do with denying free will. I don’t know whether determinism or indeterminism is true. Although I’d be interested to find out, I doubt that it matters to anyone not a physicist or metaphysician. The metaphysical question simply has nothing to do with the questions of whether I can make choices, intentionally control my own actions, or be responsible for the effects of which my actions are a cause. I can make choices, be in control, and be responsible. This is, I believe, darn near to self-evident. And that’s all having free will amounts to.
The world is either deterministic or it isn’t, and very little hangs in the balance. The ultimate nature of causation impinges on questions of choice, control, and responsibility in about the same way it impinges on the outcome of the exciting Joe Gibbs comeback. Go ‘Skins!
[Addendum: By the way, Huemer's "Why I am not an Objectivist" essay on free-will is very good. If I remember correctly the conversation I had with Mike a few years back, he's not so comfortable with my kind of compatibilism. I'm willing to interpret "could have done otherwise" in the sort of way he mentions at the end of his essay. Mike, however, is impressed with van Inwagen's consequence argument, while I am not.]
I can’t wait to here your take on Objectivist ethics.
Oops, that should be “hear”, not “here”. Stupid homophones!
Micha, Coming soon!
great entry! i LOVE the idea of this series. i think i’m going to really enjoy it.
i agree with everything except the claim about what free will amounts to. i think that’s questionable. but i’ve already commented on that here before, i think. so i’ll shut up!
Damon told me about this blog, today. I was pleased and surprised to find the Free Will thing.
In fact, it was great till the end until you just gave up and said something like: ‘it doesn’t matter whether or not the universe is or isn’t deterministic, we still have Free Will (no pun).’ If you are not going to have a relapse of Randianism, you should carry on thinking about this. Your Will circa 1996 will be disappointed that you didn’t give him a reason to think he has choice outside of so-called “common sense.” Just a thought.
Max, How did I just “give up?” It’s true that I didn’t offer an argument for compatibilism, but I don’t see how I am at risk of backsliding. My point was that determinism and indeterminism are theories about the ultimate nature of causation, and that the ultimate nature of causation is largely irrelevant to the questions of personhood and agency that people have in mind when they are worrying about having free will.
Yikes! Causation irrelevant to personhood? Either you are alluding to something Rortyesque, or we have thoroughly different understandings of the connection between the mental and the physical. (This conversation might require beer, sometime.)
That said, I wonder about any theory of agency that doesn’t refer to determinism. Wouldn’t such a theory assume that we somehow stand outside of the causal-physical universe?
Maybe you are referring to the ‘I could have done otherwise’ stuff. Dunno.
Max, I said “ultimate nature” of causation, not causation, period. Being an agent is by and large being the sort of thing that can make things happen, and I take it that a causal-physical universe is needed to make things happen in the right sort of way. That said, I think that the evidence for both determinism and indeterminism is not extremely convincing. It’s once or the other, but we don’t have very strong grounds for picking one. And my point is that we needn’t wait on the answer to know what we need to know about agency. We can evidently control ourselves and make things happen in the relvant ways. So what’s the problem?
It is an illusion, I’m afraid.
Hey, I’ve got an article coming out on this subject… maybe you’ll dig it even though you won’t agree with it.
BTW, this is a good blog. I have put it in my favorites. When we get libertarian.org going, we’re going to have a metablog that should include some of your posts.
“I can make choices, be in control, and be responsible. This is, I believe, darn near to self-evident.”
Why have you suddenly stopped doubting that introspection is “a reliable means of correctly identifying the goings on in one’s own brain”?
I would say that all reasoning entails introspection – that to reason one must observe private mental events, one’s own thoughts. Anything you verify by reason you’ve verified by introspection. Which means all of science is verified by introspection.
will,
in your last comment, why do you say that the ultimate nature of causation is *largely* irrelevant to the questions of personhood and agency…?
don’t you want to say *completely* irrelevant, given your position?
Eliezer Yudkowsky had a good comment that seems pertinent, in a wiki discussion at http://sl4.org/bin/wiki.pl?NewHumaneRights:
“I think there’s a kind of confusion here akin to the idea of being “constrained” by physics, i.e., since physics is deterministic (*cough*Everett-Wheeler-DeWitt*cough*) and your actions are determined by physics, your actions must be determined by physics instead of you, so you have no free will, etc. The essential flaw is modeling physics as a foreign, external force outside you, rather than modeling yourself as a continuously flowing part of physics. You are physics, so if something is determined by you, it must be determined by physics. If it were not determined by physics it could not be determined by you. But “physics” is presented as a strange abstract thing in school, so that’s how people think of it – if you have not crossed over to visualizing yourself as a continuous part of physics, then to know the abstract fact that something is being determined by the internal mental object, “physics”, will apparently conflict with the possibility that something is being determined by you.”
Max, I think you’re confused about what ‘illusion’ means. If implicit in our experience of choice was the experience of being isolated from the rest of the causal order, then we would be victim of an illusion. But our experience of choice contains nothing but the experience that our deliberation can lead to our choices, our choices can lead to our actions, our actions make things happen, and that we could have chosen otherwise, all of which is quite true and consistent with determinism (and indeterminism).
John, I think your view of introspection if doubtful. I don’t think that “reason” and the processes thereof require occurent, conscious mental states. Reason can work under the surface of awareness. Introspection is just a little window that is sometimes thrown open upon the operations of thought.
Luka, if it something is ‘completely’ x it is also ‘largely’ x. Let me hedge in piece.
Willi, Love the quote about physics. Thanks!
“But our experience of choice contains nothing but the experience that our deliberation can lead to our choices, our choices can lead to our actions, our actions make things happen, and that we could have chosen otherwise, all of which is quite true and consistent with determinism (and indeterminism).”
Given determinism and prior events, how could you have chosen to blog otherwise?
If you could have blogged otherwise then in what sense are you determined?
John, It depends on how you interpet ‘can’ or ‘able’ in claims that one is can or is able to do other than what one has in fact done. The philosophical literature on this score is pretty complex, but I think the compatibilist clearly wins the day.
Here is a very good, but very technical, essay by one of my former professors, Tomis Kapitan, whose seminar on free will had a deep effect on my thinking, both in terms of substance and in terms of philosophical clarity and rigor:
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Kapitan/power.htm
Here is a less technical but also extremely good paper by Kapitan that appears in The Free Will Handbook fro Oxford.
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Kapitan/MasterArgument2.pdf
I like this paper by Bill Lycan arguing that compatibilism is the default position, and those who wish to argue for incompatibilist views carry the burden of proof.
http://www.unc.edu/~ujanel/FreeBurden.htm
will,
okay. i’ll let you hedge in peace…in a second!
in my defense, there’s an implication that comes along with your use of “largely”. It seems to commit you to something like “largely but not completely”.
ok. your peace starts now.
“John, It depends on how you interpet ‘can’ or ‘able’ in claims that one is can or is able to do other than what one has in fact done. The philosophical literature on this score is pretty complex, but I think the compatibilist clearly wins the day.”
Can’t say fairer than that now, can we?
From the second article:
“First, as it stands, it operates
with an undefined notion of an “ability to do,” one that allows that agents are able to do other
than what they are caused to do. Those who wonder about the viability of compatibilism are
correct in demanding a fuller account.”
They’re correct in dismissing the argument at this point.
And:
Incompatibilists might shake their heads in exasperation, even scorn, about the
prospects for success in this endeavor, and insist that the compatibilist misuses the term “able.”
No might about it.
Oh John. Do try.
Will,
You said
“But our experience of choice contains nothing but the experience that our deliberation can lead to our choices, our choices can lead to our actions, our actions make things happen, and that we could have chosen otherwise…”
I’m assuming you meant to include “we could have chosen otherwise,” and that you didn’t mean to claim that this aspect of our experience is illustory.
If so, do you think that every philosopher who claims to be a compatibilist actually meets your requirements for compatibilism? Or are some of them just incompatibilist deniers of free will pretending to be something else?
I’m thinking of well known figures like Dennett and Flanagan here.
Robert
Robert, I don’t think the experience of being able to choose otherwise is at all illusory if one is operating on the right notion of ‘able’.
Objectivists, as you note, believe that free will is axiomatic. That being the case, what you present as being an Objectivist argument for free will really isn’t, since there are no arguments per se for axiomatic claims. Rather, Objectivists believe something similar to what you said later: “I can make choices, be in control, and be responsible. This is, I believe, darn near to self-evident.”
What you actually present, and object to, is an argument against determinism. However, presenting it as a syllogism makes it sound like a deduction, when really it is an evidentiary argument: we have particular introspective experiences, and this is evidence that our actions are not deterministic. It is all well and good if you want to question the strength of this type of evidence. But questioning the reliability of introspection does not serve to establish any sort of positive argument for determinism. What is the positive evidence or argument for determinism? If the choice is between a belief with no evidence in its favor vs. a belief with some evidence in its favor, then the latter is preferable.
Before anyone responds, let me note in advance that I do not find any of the following to be very convincing methods of arguing for determinism: 1) assuming determinism; 2) assuming reductionism; 3) the argument from repeated assertion; or 4) claiming that modern science is based on determinism. I mention this because I see these a lot when this issue is dicussed.
Thanks Richard. I know that Objectivists claim free-will has axiomatic status, and I agree that it is pretty near self-evident. What I dispute is that the falsity of determinsm could be axiomatic. I think that’s just incredible, and I think the implicit objectivist argument against determinism is just the one I stated.
Now, I’m not assuming determinism. I’ve said I don’t know whether or not it is true, but that I don’t think it has much to do with free will.
Will, the problem is you’ve not defined any of the relevant terms. What specifically do you mean by “free will” and what specifically do you mean by “determinism”?
Will,
You said:
I don’t think the experience of being able to choose otherwise is at all illusory if one is operating on the right notion of ‘able’.
My reply:
Ahh, but how do you pick the right notion of “able,” without getting into metaphysics?
Robert
Don,
I’m going to bet that you and Will can agree on a definition of “determinism” but not on one for “free will”. His definitions of both terms are going to be consistent with eachoter. Yours are not. I’m guessing.
The most important issue here, in my opinion, is whether or not we need an Objectivist or libertarian type of free will in order for us to make choices or be responsible for our choices. Will seems to think that we don’t.
Another important issue here is whether or not the Objectivist argument against determinism is sound. Now, I don’t think that it matters which sense of “free will” you plug into the Objectivist argument. It doesn’t defeat determinism.
I claim
1.) The freedom of the will is not axiomatic, but rather proved from the indetermination of univerals, and
2.) If “detrminism” is taken to mean that a person is determined to something more particular than the good as such, it confuses sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge.
the rough proof is at my blog:
http://www.waitingforelijah.blogspot.com
p.s. I agree that “the first hand experience proof” gets one nowhere with refuting determinism.
I have looked at your argument many times, and I can’t see how it is anything other than you saying “determinism may or may not be true, but I know I am not determined”, which is the same thing as saying “everything may be determined, but my actions are not determined”. But again this is like saying “everything might be de., but everything cannot be de.”
One way out of this is to make a distiction between “a undetermined will” and “a free will”. Nobody can believe there is any such distinction.
Another way to get out of this is to claim that even if there is something determining the will, we are ignorant of what it is, and so we must assume, by default, the common opinion that the will is free. This is mere mysticism. It is like saying that because are ignorant of what causes the corn to grow, we can assume, by default, that it is a god (or, optionally, we can assume there is no reason). Either way is the death of science.
So again, you’re saying “the human will is free, but everything might be determined”?
shulamite,
I believe that Will IS saying that the human will is free but everything might be determined. His point (or one of his points) is that freedom doesn’t require indeterminism. There’s nothing about our notion of free will that requires indeterminsm.
I think that a big part of the argument here is going to be sort of superficial (but not unimportant). What do we mean by “free will”? What do we mean by “free choice”? Will seems to want to argue that what we mean by these things is consistent with determinism.
If you disagree with his general position, then you probably disagree with him about the semantics of the relevant terms.
“Nobody can believe there is any such distinction. ”
Actually, my impression is that precisely that is the dominant position among philosophers working on this right now.
I’m not sure the precise argument you make is really in the Objectivist corpus. But you are certainly right that one thing “little Will” needs to know is that the directly-experienced nature of agency may well be compatible with determinism. Is the directly-experienced could-have-done-otherwise-ness of choice and agency and incompatible with the activity in question being deterministic (and hence with universal determinism)? I think it is, but there are certainly reasonable arguments made by reasonable, honest, and smart people to the contrary. And you are right that we certainly do not directly observe the sort of general facts about causation that determinism and indeterminism are.
I’m surprised you don’t tackle the Objectivist idea that the choice to think — to focus one’s mind or not — is in some way the essence of free will. Somewhat mysteriously, acts of pushing pieces of paper across a table are not, on the Objectivist position as I understand it, paradigmatic cases of free will (if anything, the volitional character of such acts is supposed to depend in some way on the choice to think or not). Yet the Objectivist view is not that voluntary acts of thought make sophisticated knowledge and hence *autonomy* possible and that being autonomous is the root of voluntary actions which are free in the kind of sense that attaches to moral responsibility (a sort of Harry-Frankfurt-meet-Ayn-Rand position that I am inclined toward). As a young Objectivist, I did not ask hard questions about seating free will in the choice to focus one’s mind or not. How could the locus of free will or choice be in some particular choice? This does not make sense and cries out for hard questions, further interpretation, etc.
I’m interested in what you have to say to “little Will” at a more personal level. If “little Will” is like “little Michael,” the important personal question is what *nonepistemic* reasons he had for believing lots of questionable things. Was he angry and alienated from others as Rand often came across as in her writings? Why? Was he escaping into an set of ideas that conveniently tells him that these feelings are justified because he is just fine and *everyone else* is a schmuck and the *whole world* is corrupt? I expect you have some kind, big-brotherly words along these lines for “little Will” coming up…
(I know, I know. Get my own blog.)
To Julian Sanchez and Luka Yovetich,
I wholeheartedly agree that Mr. Wilkinson is trying to say that the human will is free, and everything might be determined. I would futher grant that this conflict might be resolved by a delicate parsing of terms, and I will also grant that Mr. Wilkinson has the authority of certain modern philosophers behind him.
What I don’t grant is that Mr. Wilkinson has proved his case, either by citing the arguments of his contemporaries or by giving a proof of his own. Certainly we shouldn’t give the benefit of the doubt to someone who claims what Mr. Wilkinson claims, because in common experience if you tell someone “everything might be determined” they will quite reasonably assume that “the will might be determined” and it might therefore not be free. If this is merely a dispute about terms, isn’t it imparative to distinguish terms? And even after we have distinguished our terms, if we still hold what Mr. Wilkenson claims, we will a least have to grant one sense in which the will is not free.
The responses given to my post are not definitive, but conditional on an account being given. This is fine as a first response, and I deeply value the responses, but I am reasonably confident that Mr. Wilkinson’s claim should not get the benefit of the doubt, and should not be accepted in the absence of an explanation. What is the precise difference beteween “an undetermined will” and “a free will”? I see no relevant distinction, and have never heard anyone who could give one. I therefore wholly stand by my first comment, and I wait for a plausible answer.
Shulamite, The Lycan piece I link to in a comment above is an argument to the effect that it is incompatibilists who bear the burden of proof. I wonder what you think of his argument.
shulamite,
Here’s a possible difference between undetermined will and free will. If some has undetermined will, then their choices were not determined at the time of the Big Bang.
If someone has a free will (on the compatibilist reading) they are able to make choices based on their desires and what they take to be their reasons for action (or something like that).
Notice that, in this sense, a free will does not have to be undetermined. It might be or it might not be. What makes the will free, in this sense of “free”, is that it is free to choose based upon its desires or perceived reasons for action (or whatever).
Now, you might not think that this is an interesting sense of “free will”. Or you might think that this is not a relevant sense of “free will”. Or you might think that it isn’t a sense of “free will” at all.
Which is it for you, if any?
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I can’t wait to here your take on Objectivist ethics.
Oops, that should be “hear”, not “here”. Stupid homophones!
Micha, Coming soon!
great entry! i LOVE the idea of this series. i think i’m going to really enjoy it.
i agree with everything except the claim about what free will amounts to. i think that’s questionable. but i’ve already commented on that here before, i think. so i’ll shut up!
Damon told me about this blog, today. I was pleased and surprised to find the Free Will thing.
In fact, it was great till the end until you just gave up and said something like: ‘it doesn’t matter whether or not the universe is or isn’t deterministic, we still have Free Will (no pun).’ If you are not going to have a relapse of Randianism, you should carry on thinking about this. Your Will circa 1996 will be disappointed that you didn’t give him a reason to think he has choice outside of so-called “common sense.” Just a thought.
Max, How did I just “give up?” It’s true that I didn’t offer an argument for compatibilism, but I don’t see how I am at risk of backsliding. My point was that determinism and indeterminism are theories about the ultimate nature of causation, and that the ultimate nature of causation is largely irrelevant to the questions of personhood and agency that people have in mind when they are worrying about having free will.
Yikes! Causation irrelevant to personhood? Either you are alluding to something Rortyesque, or we have thoroughly different understandings of the connection between the mental and the physical. (This conversation might require beer, sometime.)
That said, I wonder about any theory of agency that doesn’t refer to determinism. Wouldn’t such a theory assume that we somehow stand outside of the causal-physical universe?
Maybe you are referring to the ‘I could have done otherwise’ stuff. Dunno.
Max, I said “ultimate nature” of causation, not causation, period. Being an agent is by and large being the sort of thing that can make things happen, and I take it that a causal-physical universe is needed to make things happen in the right sort of way. That said, I think that the evidence for both determinism and indeterminism is not extremely convincing. It’s once or the other, but we don’t have very strong grounds for picking one. And my point is that we needn’t wait on the answer to know what we need to know about agency. We can evidently control ourselves and make things happen in the relvant ways. So what’s the problem?
It is an illusion, I’m afraid.
Hey, I’ve got an article coming out on this subject… maybe you’ll dig it even though you won’t agree with it.
BTW, this is a good blog. I have put it in my favorites. When we get libertarian.org going, we’re going to have a metablog that should include some of your posts.
“I can make choices, be in control, and be responsible. This is, I believe, darn near to self-evident.”
Why have you suddenly stopped doubting that introspection is “a reliable means of correctly identifying the goings on in one’s own brain”?
I would say that all reasoning entails introspection – that to reason one must observe private mental events, one’s own thoughts. Anything you verify by reason you’ve verified by introspection. Which means all of science is verified by introspection.
will,
in your last comment, why do you say that the ultimate nature of causation is *largely* irrelevant to the questions of personhood and agency…?
don’t you want to say *completely* irrelevant, given your position?
Eliezer Yudkowsky had a good comment that seems pertinent, in a wiki discussion at http://sl4.org/bin/wiki.pl?NewHumaneRights:
“I think there’s a kind of confusion here akin to the idea of being “constrained” by physics, i.e., since physics is deterministic (*cough*Everett-Wheeler-DeWitt*cough*) and your actions are determined by physics, your actions must be determined by physics instead of you, so you have no free will, etc. The essential flaw is modeling physics as a foreign, external force outside you, rather than modeling yourself as a continuously flowing part of physics. You are physics, so if something is determined by you, it must be determined by physics. If it were not determined by physics it could not be determined by you. But “physics” is presented as a strange abstract thing in school, so that’s how people think of it – if you have not crossed over to visualizing yourself as a continuous part of physics, then to know the abstract fact that something is being determined by the internal mental object, “physics”, will apparently conflict with the possibility that something is being determined by you.”
Max, I think you’re confused about what ‘illusion’ means. If implicit in our experience of choice was the experience of being isolated from the rest of the causal order, then we would be victim of an illusion. But our experience of choice contains nothing but the experience that our deliberation can lead to our choices, our choices can lead to our actions, our actions make things happen, and that we could have chosen otherwise, all of which is quite true and consistent with determinism (and indeterminism).
John, I think your view of introspection if doubtful. I don’t think that “reason” and the processes thereof require occurent, conscious mental states. Reason can work under the surface of awareness. Introspection is just a little window that is sometimes thrown open upon the operations of thought.
Luka, if it something is ‘completely’ x it is also ‘largely’ x. Let me hedge in piece.
Willi, Love the quote about physics. Thanks!
“But our experience of choice contains nothing but the experience that our deliberation can lead to our choices, our choices can lead to our actions, our actions make things happen, and that we could have chosen otherwise, all of which is quite true and consistent with determinism (and indeterminism).”
Given determinism and prior events, how could you have chosen to blog otherwise?
If you could have blogged otherwise then in what sense are you determined?
John, It depends on how you interpet ‘can’ or ‘able’ in claims that one is can or is able to do other than what one has in fact done. The philosophical literature on this score is pretty complex, but I think the compatibilist clearly wins the day.
Here is a very good, but very technical, essay by one of my former professors, Tomis Kapitan, whose seminar on free will had a deep effect on my thinking, both in terms of substance and in terms of philosophical clarity and rigor:
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Kapitan/power.htm
Here is a less technical but also extremely good paper by Kapitan that appears in The Free Will Handbook fro Oxford.
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Kapitan/MasterArgument2.pdf
I like this paper by Bill Lycan arguing that compatibilism is the default position, and those who wish to argue for incompatibilist views carry the burden of proof.
http://www.unc.edu/~ujanel/FreeBurden.htm
will,
okay. i’ll let you hedge in peace…in a second!
in my defense, there’s an implication that comes along with your use of “largely”. It seems to commit you to something like “largely but not completely”.
ok. your peace starts now.
“John, It depends on how you interpet ‘can’ or ‘able’ in claims that one is can or is able to do other than what one has in fact done. The philosophical literature on this score is pretty complex, but I think the compatibilist clearly wins the day.”
Can’t say fairer than that now, can we?
From the second article:
“First, as it stands, it operates
with an undefined notion of an “ability to do,” one that allows that agents are able to do other
than what they are caused to do. Those who wonder about the viability of compatibilism are
correct in demanding a fuller account.”
They’re correct in dismissing the argument at this point.
And:
Incompatibilists might shake their heads in exasperation, even scorn, about the
prospects for success in this endeavor, and insist that the compatibilist misuses the term “able.”
No might about it.
Oh John. Do try.
Will,
You said
“But our experience of choice contains nothing but the experience that our deliberation can lead to our choices, our choices can lead to our actions, our actions make things happen, and that we could have chosen otherwise…”
I’m assuming you meant to include “we could have chosen otherwise,” and that you didn’t mean to claim that this aspect of our experience is illustory.
If so, do you think that every philosopher who claims to be a compatibilist actually meets your requirements for compatibilism? Or are some of them just incompatibilist deniers of free will pretending to be something else?
I’m thinking of well known figures like Dennett and Flanagan here.
Robert
Robert, I don’t think the experience of being able to choose otherwise is at all illusory if one is operating on the right notion of ‘able’.
Objectivists, as you note, believe that free will is axiomatic. That being the case, what you present as being an Objectivist argument for free will really isn’t, since there are no arguments per se for axiomatic claims. Rather, Objectivists believe something similar to what you said later: “I can make choices, be in control, and be responsible. This is, I believe, darn near to self-evident.”
What you actually present, and object to, is an argument against determinism. However, presenting it as a syllogism makes it sound like a deduction, when really it is an evidentiary argument: we have particular introspective experiences, and this is evidence that our actions are not deterministic. It is all well and good if you want to question the strength of this type of evidence. But questioning the reliability of introspection does not serve to establish any sort of positive argument for determinism. What is the positive evidence or argument for determinism? If the choice is between a belief with no evidence in its favor vs. a belief with some evidence in its favor, then the latter is preferable.
Before anyone responds, let me note in advance that I do not find any of the following to be very convincing methods of arguing for determinism: 1) assuming determinism; 2) assuming reductionism; 3) the argument from repeated assertion; or 4) claiming that modern science is based on determinism. I mention this because I see these a lot when this issue is dicussed.
Thanks Richard. I know that Objectivists claim free-will has axiomatic status, and I agree that it is pretty near self-evident. What I dispute is that the falsity of determinsm could be axiomatic. I think that’s just incredible, and I think the implicit objectivist argument against determinism is just the one I stated.
Now, I’m not assuming determinism. I’ve said I don’t know whether or not it is true, but that I don’t think it has much to do with free will.
Will, the problem is you’ve not defined any of the relevant terms. What specifically do you mean by “free will” and what specifically do you mean by “determinism”?
Will,
You said:
I don’t think the experience of being able to choose otherwise is at all illusory if one is operating on the right notion of ‘able’.
My reply:
Ahh, but how do you pick the right notion of “able,” without getting into metaphysics?
Robert
Don,
I’m going to bet that you and Will can agree on a definition of “determinism” but not on one for “free will”. His definitions of both terms are going to be consistent with eachoter. Yours are not. I’m guessing.
The most important issue here, in my opinion, is whether or not we need an Objectivist or libertarian type of free will in order for us to make choices or be responsible for our choices. Will seems to think that we don’t.
Another important issue here is whether or not the Objectivist argument against determinism is sound. Now, I don’t think that it matters which sense of “free will” you plug into the Objectivist argument. It doesn’t defeat determinism.
I claim
1.) The freedom of the will is not axiomatic, but rather proved from the indetermination of univerals, and
2.) If “detrminism” is taken to mean that a person is determined to something more particular than the good as such, it confuses sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge.
the rough proof is at my blog:
http://www.waitingforelijah.blogspot.com
p.s. I agree that “the first hand experience proof” gets one nowhere with refuting determinism.
I have looked at your argument many times, and I can’t see how it is anything other than you saying “determinism may or may not be true, but I know I am not determined”, which is the same thing as saying “everything may be determined, but my actions are not determined”. But again this is like saying “everything might be de., but everything cannot be de.”
One way out of this is to make a distiction between “a undetermined will” and “a free will”. Nobody can believe there is any such distinction.
Another way to get out of this is to claim that even if there is something determining the will, we are ignorant of what it is, and so we must assume, by default, the common opinion that the will is free. This is mere mysticism. It is like saying that because are ignorant of what causes the corn to grow, we can assume, by default, that it is a god (or, optionally, we can assume there is no reason). Either way is the death of science.
So again, you’re saying “the human will is free, but everything might be determined”?
shulamite,
I believe that Will IS saying that the human will is free but everything might be determined. His point (or one of his points) is that freedom doesn’t require indeterminism. There’s nothing about our notion of free will that requires indeterminsm.
I think that a big part of the argument here is going to be sort of superficial (but not unimportant). What do we mean by “free will”? What do we mean by “free choice”? Will seems to want to argue that what we mean by these things is consistent with determinism.
If you disagree with his general position, then you probably disagree with him about the semantics of the relevant terms.
“Nobody can believe there is any such distinction. ”
Actually, my impression is that precisely that is the dominant position among philosophers working on this right now.
I’m not sure the precise argument you make is really in the Objectivist corpus. But you are certainly right that one thing “little Will” needs to know is that the directly-experienced nature of agency may well be compatible with determinism. Is the directly-experienced could-have-done-otherwise-ness of choice and agency and incompatible with the activity in question being deterministic (and hence with universal determinism)? I think it is, but there are certainly reasonable arguments made by reasonable, honest, and smart people to the contrary. And you are right that we certainly do not directly observe the sort of general facts about causation that determinism and indeterminism are.
I’m surprised you don’t tackle the Objectivist idea that the choice to think — to focus one’s mind or not — is in some way the essence of free will. Somewhat mysteriously, acts of pushing pieces of paper across a table are not, on the Objectivist position as I understand it, paradigmatic cases of free will (if anything, the volitional character of such acts is supposed to depend in some way on the choice to think or not). Yet the Objectivist view is not that voluntary acts of thought make sophisticated knowledge and hence *autonomy* possible and that being autonomous is the root of voluntary actions which are free in the kind of sense that attaches to moral responsibility (a sort of Harry-Frankfurt-meet-Ayn-Rand position that I am inclined toward). As a young Objectivist, I did not ask hard questions about seating free will in the choice to focus one’s mind or not. How could the locus of free will or choice be in some particular choice? This does not make sense and cries out for hard questions, further interpretation, etc.
I’m interested in what you have to say to “little Will” at a more personal level. If “little Will” is like “little Michael,” the important personal question is what *nonepistemic* reasons he had for believing lots of questionable things. Was he angry and alienated from others as Rand often came across as in her writings? Why? Was he escaping into an set of ideas that conveniently tells him that these feelings are justified because he is just fine and *everyone else* is a schmuck and the *whole world* is corrupt? I expect you have some kind, big-brotherly words along these lines for “little Will” coming up…
(I know, I know. Get my own blog.)
To Julian Sanchez and Luka Yovetich,
I wholeheartedly agree that Mr. Wilkinson is trying to say that the human will is free, and everything might be determined. I would futher grant that this conflict might be resolved by a delicate parsing of terms, and I will also grant that Mr. Wilkinson has the authority of certain modern philosophers behind him.
What I don’t grant is that Mr. Wilkinson has proved his case, either by citing the arguments of his contemporaries or by giving a proof of his own. Certainly we shouldn’t give the benefit of the doubt to someone who claims what Mr. Wilkinson claims, because in common experience if you tell someone “everything might be determined” they will quite reasonably assume that “the will might be determined” and it might therefore not be free. If this is merely a dispute about terms, isn’t it imparative to distinguish terms? And even after we have distinguished our terms, if we still hold what Mr. Wilkenson claims, we will a least have to grant one sense in which the will is not free.
The responses given to my post are not definitive, but conditional on an account being given. This is fine as a first response, and I deeply value the responses, but I am reasonably confident that Mr. Wilkinson’s claim should not get the benefit of the doubt, and should not be accepted in the absence of an explanation. What is the precise difference beteween “an undetermined will” and “a free will”? I see no relevant distinction, and have never heard anyone who could give one. I therefore wholly stand by my first comment, and I wait for a plausible answer.
Shulamite, The Lycan piece I link to in a comment above is an argument to the effect that it is incompatibilists who bear the burden of proof. I wonder what you think of his argument.
shulamite,
Here’s a possible difference between undetermined will and free will. If some has undetermined will, then their choices were not determined at the time of the Big Bang.
If someone has a free will (on the compatibilist reading) they are able to make choices based on their desires and what they take to be their reasons for action (or something like that).
Notice that, in this sense, a free will does not have to be undetermined. It might be or it might not be. What makes the will free, in this sense of “free”, is that it is free to choose based upon its desires or perceived reasons for action (or whatever).
Now, you might not think that this is an interesting sense of “free will”. Or you might think that this is not a relevant sense of “free will”. Or you might think that it isn’t a sense of “free will” at all.
Which is it for you, if any?