The Problem of Free Will

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Metaphysics

• The Problem of Free Will

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What is freedom?

• surface freedom
• Being able to do what you want
• Being free to act, and choose, as you will
• BUT what if what you will is not under your
  control?

• free will
• Being an agent capable of influencing the world
• Source of ones own actions
• Actions and choices are up-to-us

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Why is freedom important?

• We feel that we are free that we are the
  originators of our own actions
• We need to be free in order to be responsible for
  our actions our practices of praise and blame
  presuppose that we are free
• Greene Paper neuroscience, moral and legal
  responsibility, theories of punishment
• Roper v. Simmons, 2005, US Supreme Court,
  unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for
  crimes committed under age 18
• Recent scientific advances in brain research
  indicate that the adolescent brain has not yet
  fully developed, the decision-making capacity and
  risk-taking behavior of adolescents are far
  different from those of adults thus adolescent
  offenders are less culpable. Roper v. Simmons
  The Role of the Science Brief

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Society and free will

• psychological capacities to control our own
  lives, change our habits and traits, overcome
  addictions, exercise willpower, and consciously
  consider the sort of life we want to lead (and to
  control our behavior accordingly).
• If people interpret free will to include these
  sorts of capacities, then telling them that they
  dont have free will could have detrimental
  effects on their self-conception, interpersonal
  relations, and moral behavior, as well as our
  political debates and legal practices. It may
  make them more fatalistic, less likely to exert
  those powers of rational deliberation and
  willpower they do have, and less motivated to
  improve themselves and their lives Eddy Nahmias

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Principle of alternative possibilities

• In 1969 Harry Frankfurt defined what he called
  "The Principle of Alternate Possibilities" or
  PAP.
• "a person is morally responsible for what he has
  done only if he could have done otherwise.
• Although I came to class today, I could have
  decided not to
• What does the world have to be like for this
  counterfactual to be true?

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Causal determinism

• (Roughly) the view that the state of the world
  at a given time determines the state of the world
  at the next moment
• Every event that occurs, including human action,
  is entirely the result of earlier causes event
  causation

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Laplaces demon

• We may regard the present state of the universe
  as the effect of its past and the cause of its
  future. An intellect which at a certain moment
  would know all forces that set nature in motion,
  and all positions of all items of which nature is
  composed, if this intellect were also vast enough
  to submit these data to analysis, it would
  embrace in a single formula the movements of the
  greatest bodies of the universe and those of the
  tiniest atom for such an intellect nothing would
  be uncertain and the future just like the past
  would be present before its eyes.
• Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on
  Probabilities3

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Laplacian Determinism

• O set of physical magnitudes, each of which takes
  a determinate value at every moment of time
• A history H is a map from R to tuples of values
  of the basic magnitudes, where for any t in R the
  state H(t) gives a snapshot of behavior of the
  basic magnitudes at time t.
• The world is Laplacian deterministic with respect
  to O just in case for any pair of histories H1,
  H2 satisfying the laws of physics, if H1(t)
  H2(t) for some t, then H1(t) H2(t) for all t.
• John Earman, Aspects of Determinism in Modern
  Physics

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Neuroscientists Complete Fully Mechanistic
Explanation of Human Behavior

• These neuroscientists have shown that once
  specific chemical reactions and neural processes
  occur in a persons brain, they will inevitably
  cause the person to make the specific decision he
  or she makes.
• As noted scholar Francis Crick says, Your sense
  of personal identity and free will are in fact no
  more than the behavior of a vast assembly of
  nerve cells and their associated molecules.
  Youre nothing but a pack of neurons. Said Paul
  Katz, one of the lead researchers, There is
  certainly no room left for a soul now. There is
  nothing left for a soul to explain.

February 20, 2049 By Eddy Nahmias Neuroscientists
at the University of Chicago and Georgia State
University have found evidence that explains
exactly how all human decisions and actions are
entirely caused by neurobiological activity. They
report that whenever we are trying to decide what
to do, the decision we end up making is
completely caused by the specific chemical
reactions and neural processes occurring in our
brains.
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Determinism types

• Causal determinism
• Theological determinism
• Psychological determinism
• Sociological determinism
• Biological determinism
• Environmental determinism

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Compatibility?

• This raises two big questions
• The determinist question - is determinism true or
  false?
• The compatibility question - is free will
  compatible with determinism?
• The combination of answers that can be given form
  the standard positions in the debate

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Positions in the Free Will DebateDiagram taken
from http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
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Incompatibilism

• Incompatibilists believe freedom is not
  compatible with determinism if determinism is
  true, then one cannot be held truly free and
  responsible for ones actions
• Incompatibilists may be divided into two groups

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Incompatibilism Hard Determinism

• Free will is not compatible with determinism
• Determinism is true
• So, we do not have free will
• HARD DETERMINISTS are incompatibilists who hold
  that determinism is true

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Incompatibilism libertarianism

• Libertarians believe
• We do have free will
• Free will is not compatible with determinism
• Determinism is therefore false

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Compatibilism

• COMPATIBILISTS believe that freedom and
  responsibility are in every significant sense
  compatible with determinism thus there is no
  conflict between determinism and free will
• SOFT DETERMINISTS are compatibilists who believe
  determinism is true
• Classical Compatibilists Hobbes, Hume, Mill
• Modern Compatibilists Ayer, Dennett, Frankfurt

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Hard Determinism

• Free will is not compatible with determinism
• Determinism is true
• Therefore, free will is an illusion
• Support?

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Hard Determinism

• CONSEQUENCE ARGUMENT (informal)
• If determinism is true, then our acts are the
  consequences of the laws of nature and events in
  the remote past. But it is not up to us what went
  on before we were born, and neither is it up to
  us what the laws of nature are. Therefore the
  consequences of these things (including our
  present acts) are not up to us.
• Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (p. 56)

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Hard Determinism

• Problems
• How can the HD explain our behaviour of praising
  and blaming agents for their actions, and
  ascribing responsibility?
• What happens to morality? If nobody can ever do
  otherwise than they in fact do, then notions of
  responsibility, desert, praise, and blame are
  redundant.

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Soft Determinism (compatibilism)

• Determinism is true
• Free will exists
• There is no tension between these claims
• If some people see a tension here, it is because
  they are misunderstanding the notions of freedom
  and determinism, of free-choice and causal
  necessity

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Challenge for the compatibilist

• Incompatibilists say
• For our actions to be free, it must be the case
  that, when we act, we could do otherwise than we
  actually do
• This insistence on the ability to do otherwise is
  often referred to as the principle of alternate
  possibilities

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Compatibilist responses

• Interpret the CDO-condition of freedom as having
  a hypothetical or conditional meaning, i.e.
• To say one could have done otherwise is to say
  that one would have done otherwise had things
  been different (given a different set of beliefs,
  desires, etc.)
• classical compatibilist response

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Compatibilist responses

• So what if I couldnt do otherwise?
• The ability to do otherwise is not in fact
  required for moral responsibility, and so
  determinism is no threat to free will
• The proper contrast to freedom is not
  determinism, but constraint/coercion
• As long as we are not constrained, coerced or
  forced in our actions then we do what we will,
  and it doesnt matter whether our wills are
  determined or not

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Frankfurt

• Donald is a Democrat and is likely to vote for
  the Democrats in fact, only in one particular
  circumstance will he not that is, if he thinks
  about the prospects of immediate American defeat
  in Iraq just prior to voting. Ms White, a
  representative of the Democratic Party, wants to
  ensure that Donald votes Democratic, so she
  secretly plants a device in Donald's head that,
  if activated, will force him to vote Democratic.
  Not wishing to reveal her presence unnecessarily,
  Ms White plans to activate the device only if
  Donald thinks about the Iraq War prior to voting.
  As things happen, Donald does not think about
  Iraq prior to voting, so Ms White thus sees no
  reason to activate the device, and Donald votes
  Democratic of his own accord. Apparently, Donald
  is responsible for voting Democratic although,
  owing to Ms. White's device, he lacks freedom to
  do otherwise.

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Compatibilism problems

• compatibilist freedom is only surface freedom -
  it is not free will in the full, proper sense
• Compatibilism is a wretched subterfuge (Kant),
  a quagmire of evasion (William James)

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Libertarian (free will) position

• Libertarians believe
• Free will is not compatible with determinism
• Free will exists
• Determinism is therefore false
• Support?
• Criticism?

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Does indeterminism help?

• Would you be willing to spend a day letting
  randomness govern your actions?

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Libertarian (free will) position

• More serious problem
• If determinism is false, then events are not
  subject to chain of cause-and-effect
• So events occur randomly, by chance
  (indeterminism)
• If events occur by chance, then they are not
  under our control
• So, how can we be free and responsible?

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Libertarian (free will) position

• This is known as the Intelligibility Question -
  how do we make sense of a non-determined free
  will?
• 3 common responses
• Agent-causal theory (self-determination)
• Simple indeterminism
• Causal indeterminism

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Agent causation

• Not only events can be causes agents themselves
  can be causes too (distinction between
  event-causation and agent-causation)
• Agent-causation is not reducible to causation by
  events (agent-causes are not explainable by
  reference to other events)
• A STAFF MOVES A STONE, AND IS MOVED BY A HAND,
  WHICH IS MOVED BY A MAN - Aristotle, Physics 256a

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Agent causation

• Problems
• Many people, including many libertarians, find
  the notion of agent-causation far too
  mysterious and problematic
• Requires agents to be the uncaused cause of their
  actions, to be prime movers unmoved
• Problem of economy - positing a second,
  additional, category of causation

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1. Is Determinism true? 2. Can there be Free
Will?

• Determinists
• 1. YES
• 2. Depends
• Compatibilists (Soft Determinists)
• 2. YES
• Hard Determinists
• 2. NO

• Libertarians
• 1. NO (since FW exists)
• 2. YES