Announcements

1
Announcements

• On Thursday we will be covering Frankfurts
  Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person
  and Nagels Moral Luck
• Tutorial discussion questions will be posted
  tomorrow night

2
Richard Taylor, A Defense of Libertarian Freedom
of the Will
3
Incontrovertible Facts

• (1) that my behavior is sometimes the outcome of
  my deliberation (342)
• (2) that in these and other cases it s
  sometimes up to me what I do (342)
• Thesis The debate over determinism verses
  freedom, and what model of causality we adopt
  MUST accommodate these facts. It will not do for
  Taylor to state that they are fictions or
  illusions in the name of a philosophical theory.

4
Incontrovertible Facts

• For Taylor such facts are more real than any
  metaphysical theory could be. They are the data
  that a theory is to explicate the theory is to
  fit this data and not vice-versa.
• Point of Debate if our philosophical theories
  conflicts with common sense or our experience
  what goes? For example, did the problem of the
  external world really trouble or disturb
  peoples robust realism?

5
A Look at Deliberation

• Since this is the data, the truths, that our
  theories must respect, lets take a little closer
  look at deliberation.
• 4 Characteristics
• (1) I deliberate only about my own behaviour,
  not others (342) We may try to control another
  person or speculate on what they will do but we
  can never deliberate for them.

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A Look at Deliberation

• (2) I can deliberate only about future actions
  (343) the past is no longer, the present is
  just what we are actually doing now. Its the
  future that we deliberate about.
• (3) Deliberation involves decision and decision
  involves that I dont already know what I am
  going to do (343) no point deliberating about
  the inevitable. Interesting aside can we
  imagine an advanced science that will make
  deliberation redundant if we believe in
  determinism?

7
A Look at Deliberation

• (3) Presumably such a science would also make
  science redundant since it will be able to
  predict all future theories.
• (4) To deliberate implies it is up to me it
  is under my control (342)
• Now that we have our theoretical constraints in
  place lets take a look at some theories

8
A Reconciliation soft determinism

• Three Theses
• (1) that the thesis of determinism is true, and
  that accordingly all human behavior, voluntary or
  notarises from antecedent conditions, given
  which no other behavior is possible - that all
  human behavior is caused and determined (339)
• (2) that voluntary behavior is nonetheless free
  to the extent that it is not externally
  constrained or impeded (339)

9
A reconciliation soft determinism

• Three Theses continued
• (3) that, in the absence of such obstacles and
  constraints, the causes of voluntary behavior are
  certain states, events, or conditions within the
  agent himself namely, his own acts of will or
  volitions, choices, decisions, desires and so on
  (339-340)

10
A reconciliation soft determinism

• Thus, we are causally determined to act
  respecting the causal laws of nature and also
  free and morally responsible for what we do a
  compatibility
• Some Background the version of compatibilism
  that Taylor considers is one made famous in this
  century by G.E. Moore

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The Compatibilist Argument

• For to say that I could have done otherwise, he
  says, means, only that I would have done
  otherwise if those inner states that determined
  my action had been different if that is, I had
  decided or chosen differently(340)
• The argument
• (1) She could have done otherwise.
• Just means
• (2) If she had chose to do otherwise then she
  would have done otherwise.

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The Compatibilist Argument

• As Moore states from his Ethics
• There are certainly good reasons for thinking
  that we very often mean by could merely would,
  if so and so had chosen. And if so, then we have
  a sense of the word could in which the fact
  that we often could have done what we did not do,
  is perfectly compatible with the principle that
  everything has a cause for to say that, if I
  had performed a certain act of will, I should
  have done something which I did not do, in no way
  contradicts this principle

13
The Compatibilist Argument

• For Moore, this view differentiates freewill from
  fatalism for fatalism states that no matter what
  we have chosen the same end results which is what
  (2) denies.
• (2) is consistent with determinism even if all
  of a persons actions were causally determined
  the person could still be such that IF she had
  chosen otherwise, then she would have done
  otherwise

14
The Compatibilist Argument

• (1) (2)
• (2) is compatible with the determinist thesis
• Therefore, (1) is compatible with determinism
• Since the cause of ones actions comes from ones
  own internal motives, beliefs and desires she is
  responsible. They are YOUR inner states
  therefore, YOU must be responsible for them

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A Refutation of This

• The problem inner states volitions, desires
  and beliefs are themselves caused on the soft
  determinist position given just these states
  this action MUST have happened. We can logically
  deduce given the complete data of such inner
  states what will happen. However, we want to be
  in control think of our primary data - of
  these inner states. What we want for freedom is
  for (1) to read
• (3) She COULD HAVE done otherwise

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A Refutation of This

• If (3) is false, then so is (1) above. However,
  (2) in the soft determinist argument could be
  true while (1) is false it could still be the
  case that she could not have done otherwise and
  it would yet still be true that if she had chosen
  to do otherwise then she would have done
  otherwise. The hypothetical if in (2)
  represents logical possibility IF
  beliefs/desires were different then action would
  be but that is little comfort when we wish to
  consider ontological possibility.

17
A Refutation of This

• Therefore, contra Moore and soft determinism, (2)
  is not a proper analysis of (1). Given the
  determinist position with respect to such inner
  states we are led to Indeed, if determinism is
  true, as the theory of soft determinism holds it
  to be, all those inner states which cause my body
  to behave in whatever ways it behaves must arise
  from circumstances that existed before I was
  born for the chain of causes and effects is
  infinite, and none could have been the least
  different, given those that preceded. (341)

18
A Refutation of This

• According to soft determinism I have been born
  into a chain of causes and effects, without my
  permission or any choice/say on my part. Such a
  chain includes what I take to be my volitions
  and inner states again without any control or
  say on my part.
• Is this freedom? Taylor No
• The supporting thought experiment the
  ingenious physiologist doesnt the exact same
  point apply to an impersonal causal chain?

19
Simple Indeterminism

• We can be brief here
• Indeterminism randomness
• This wont due random acts are not up to me
  either
• They just happen a scary thought with respect
  to ourselves

20
A Question Concerning Deliberation

• Taylor argues (343) that if determinism were true
  we could not deliberate for there is nothing
  left to decideI can wait and see but I cannot
  deliberate. I deliberate in order to decide what
  to do, not to discover what it is that I am going
  to do. (343)
• Is this true? What if determinism were true but
  yet with as it will have to be an
  ineliminable epistemic gap making all such
  discovering impossible? Are we not forced to
  deliberate?

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Taylors solution Agent Causation

• I the agent am the cause of my action. There
  are some events that are not caused by other
  events or states of affairs which would place us
  back into the infinite causal chain, but by the
  agent who is not himself an event or state of
  affairs an immanent cause.
• We are in Aristotles terms defining God the
  prime mover unmoved. Nothing causes us to cause
  those acts.

22
Agent Causation

• But here is the strange position we cause the
  event via activating brain states say but
  there was nothing that we did to cause the event
  an agent is sometimes a cause without being
  an antecedent sufficient condition (344)
• Why?
• If there was something we did to cause the event
  then that thing would be an event and therefore
  we can ask what caused it as well that event
  would be part of the infinite causal chain

23
Agent Causation

• However, this chain stops with the agent himself
  in fact, he inaugurates a new causal chain with
  his act. He was not caused to make this chain
  happen. We just perform the event without being
  able to specify antecedent causal conditions
  other than to say that we did it.

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Two metaphysical corollaries

• (1) A substantial view of the self, the agent.
• The self is a substance that causes events. Only
  so, can the event/event causal chain be escaped
• (2) An extraordinary conception of causation
  some philosophers would say absurd

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Extraordinary Conception of Causation

• How so? What is meant by the statement that
  being a cause just means being an antecedent
  sufficient condition or set of conditions (344)?
• Some Examples on board
• The accusation of mysteriousness an
  explanatory gap with agent causation that we do
  not have with the traditional account of cause.
  Can we accept such an explanatory gap? How is
  such an explanatory gap fundamentally different
  from indeterminism?

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Taylor Concedes

• Taylor concedes the mysteriousness here No one
  seems able, as we have noted, to describe
  deliberation without metaphors, and the
  conception of a things being withins ones
  power or up to him seems to defy analysis or
  definition altogether, if taken in a sense which
  the theory of agency appears to require (345)

27
Substance view of Self

• I am causing my action
• I as a substance and a self-moving being (344)
• As self-moving, I initiate a new causal chain
• Once again, unusual model of causation substance
  causation
• Unusual think of the explanatory gap and the
  mysteriousness this involves

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Unusual

• To refresh Cant I say definitively what
  reasons, beliefs and desires caused my action?
• Taylor NO! That would appeal to inner states
  that again immerses us in determinism and the
  causal chain. Such inner states becomes
  antecedent conditions that are caused.
• Our reasons, beliefs and desires can partially
  explain why we did the action by telling us what
  led us to the action but it does not take us all
  the way. It is still up to me my DECISION

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Unusual

• Ultimately, all I can say is I did it with the
  partial explanation mentioned earlier.
• Can we accept this?
• Taylors concessions
• 1. This conception of ourselves and how we act
  is strange indeed, if not positively mysterious
  (345)
• 2. Our theoretical constraints, our data could
  be doubted we may not be free or really
  deliberate these data might simply be
  illusions

30
Taylors Concessions

• We may only think that we are deliberating.
• However, for Taylor such data is more secure
  than any metaphysical theory and/or doubt. Thus,
  if agent causation is the only theory that can
  accommodate and explain such data, then no matter
  how strange some of its tenets may be, it is
  still to be preferred.
• Do we agree?