Unit 3
Free Will and Determinism
Monday, November 21, 11
I. Introduction
A. What is the problem?
Sci
enc
e!
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Why?
1. The universe is governed by physical laws
2. People are part of the universe
Therefore: People are governed by physical laws
3. Events governed by physical laws are necessary (they
must logically happen)
4. Necessity negates choice
Therefore: People have no freedom of choice
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Three approaches to the problem
(a preview)
1. Hard determinism - All events are caused
(necessary); caused (necessary) events are never
free
2. Soft determinism/Compatibilism - All events are
caused (necessary); caused events are not
necessarily inconsistent with freedom.
3. Libertarianism - Not all events are caused, so even
though caused events are not free, the fact that
not all events are caused means some events are
free.
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B. Why does it matter?
•
From a practical perspective - we want to believe we have choice regarding
our actions
•
•
•
•
•
If we do have choice, how does this choice occur?
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Are people morally responsible for their actions?
Is it fair to punish people for actions which they did not choose?
If we have no free will, do words like good and evil still have meaning?
Without free will, does existence have meaning?
II. Non- philosophical approaches to the
question
A. Fatalism
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II. Non- philosophical approaches to the
question
A. Fatalism
B. Karma
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II. Non- philosophical approaches to the
question
A. Fatalism
B. Karma
C. Predestination/Divine
foreknowledge
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Predestination
•
God determines, before the beginning of time,
everything that will happen
•
Free will is impossible
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Divine Foreknowledge
• God knows everything that will happen
• This may or may not threaten free will
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Nelson Pike - Foreknowledge means no
free will
• God is everlasting
• God knew before I was born that I would
give this lecture
• I have no power to do other than what
God knows will happen
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Boethius, 480-524
• God is Eternal (outside of time)
• God possesses his existence “completely
and simultaneously”
• Thus God knows what will happen “as it
happens”
• Thus Divine knowledge does not threaten
free will, because it is not “foreknowledge”
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III. Hard Determinism
Ancient roots
• Democritus (460-370 BCE) - Everything is
composed of atoms in motion
• Leucippus (460-?BCE) - “Naught happens for nothing
but everything from a ground of necessity”
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III. Hard Determinism
Development during the
Scientific Revolution and
the Enlightenment
• Isaac Newton
(1642-1727) Described and defined
what at the time were
considered to be
universal laws of
motion
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III. Hard Determinism
Paul-Henri Thiri - Baron
d’Holbach (1723-1789)
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III. Hard Determinism
d’ Holbach’s Argument
1.The universe is made up of only matter and motion
(materialism)
2.The behavior of all matter and motion are
determined by the laws of nature
3.Man is a part of nature
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“In what ever Manner man is considered, he is
connected to universal nature, and submitted to the
necessary and immutable laws that she imposes on all
the beings she contains . . . “
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III. Hard Determinism
d’ Holbach’s Argument
1.The universe is made up of only matter and motion
(materialism)
2.The behavior of all matter and motion are
determined by the laws of nature (Pink 1)
3.Man is a part of nature (Pink 1)
Therefore: Man and his actions are determined by
the laws of nature
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“Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to
describe upon the surface of the Earth, without him
ever being able to swerve from it, even for an
instant . . . “ (1)
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All human actions are beyond their
choice
• “His ideas come to him involuntarily” (1)
• “He is good, or bad, happy or miserable,
wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational
without his will being for anything in these
various states.” (1)
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What we consider to be our will is
determined by outside factors
•
D’ Holbach uses the example of the thirsty man
and the poisoned fountain (3)
•
“Nevertheless, in either case, whether he partakes
of the water, or whether he does not, the two
actions will be equally necessary; they will be the
effect of that motive which finds itself most
puissant (powerful, influential); which consequently
acts in the most coercive manner on his will.” (3
end)
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D’ Holbach’s Rejection of his Critics
centers on one fundamental observation
“It is, then . . . for want of being able to analyze,
for not being competent to decompose the
complicated motion of his machine, that man
believes himself a free agent; it is only upon his
own ignorance the he founds the profound yet
deceitful notion he has of his free
agency . . .“ (17)
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D’ Holbach and modern hard
determinists
•
In paragraph 8, d’ Holbach argues that the
statement “he (man) appears to be the master of
choosing (in this case whether or not to move his
arm); from which it is concluded that evidence has
been offered of free agency.” (8)
•
With a partner, explain d’Holbach’s objection to
this statement and then connect this objection to
ideas (a quote) from the first part of Kane. be
prepared to discuss
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D’Holbach’s response
•
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“. . . he is not the master of the thought presented
to his mind, which determines his will; this thought
is excited by some cause independent of
himself.” (10)
Kane’s two types of freedom
1. Surface freedom - the freedom to choose what we
want - Kane, like d’Holbach, denies that this is true
freedom:
“ . . .suppose we had the maximal freedom to make
such choices to satisfy our desires and yet the
choices we actually made were manipulated by
others, by the powers-that-be. In such a world we
would have a great deal of everyday freedom to do
whatever we wanted, yet our free will would be
severely limited. We would be free to act and
choose as we will, but would not have the ultimate
say about what it is that we will.” (Kane page 2,
column 1, bottom)
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Kane’s two types of freedom
2. True freedom would be to have control over what
it is we will, not simply the ability to choose to
satisfy what we want
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B.F Skinner on Free Will
Re- read the section in which Kane describes
Walden Two (Bottom page two through 1.5 columns
of page 3), then be prepared to answer the
following:
1. According to Skinner, what level of freedom is
possible and why?
2. Is Walden Two a good society? Why or why not?
3. How does Walden Two related to our own modern
society? Is Modern America a “good society” based
on the standards you used to answer 2 above? Be
prepared to explain and provide examples
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B.F. Skinner
•
All human action is the result of behavioral
conditioning
•
Surface freedom - the ability to satisfy one’s desires is the only freedom we can hope for because to
have anything more:
“we would have to be the original creators of our
own wills - causes of ourselves.” (Kane p. 3 bottom
column 1)
•
Ultimate freedom (for Skinner) is the freedom to
only want what one can have, thus behavioral
conditioning can facilitate more freedom rather than
less, since one can be conditioned to have only those
desires that can be satisfied.
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Sigmund Freud’s argument against free
will
1. Free decisions are those that are consciously made
2. None of a person’s decisions are consciously made
but rather the product of subconscious conflicts of
which we are only dimly (if at all) aware.
Therefore: None of our decisions are free
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John Hospers on the implications of
Freud’s argument
We may . . . say that a man is free only to the extent
that his behavior is not unconsciously motivated at all.
If this be our criterion, most of our behavior could not
be called free: everything, including both impulses and
volitions, having to do with our basic attitudes toward
life, the general tenor of our tastes, whether we
become philosophers, artists or business men . . . has its
inevitable basis in the subconscious.” (Hospers in
Palmer)
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Strengths of the hard determinist position
• Hard determinism accords with the materialistic/
scientific tendencies of modern philosophy behavior and its causes can be investigated
empirically
• Much of science is based on the idea that all
phenomena are determined. Things don’t just
happen. Why should we be any different?
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Weaknesses of the hard determinist
position
•
•
•
•
•
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It rejects common sense (not much of a
weakness)
It rejects the possibility of the existence of the
non-physical in the universe (no God, no soul, no
mind etc. - again, this might not be much of a
philosophical weakness
It rejects the idea of moral responsibility
In the twentieth century through advances in
physics we now understand that not all events are
determined - the behavior of very small particles
has been shown not to be deterministic - this is
quantum theory
It rejects our experience of life in favor of a
methodological analysis of life
IV. Compatibilism/Soft determinism
Theory that maintains:
1. Determinism is true
2. Free will is still possible (hence the name)
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A. Classical/Traditional compatibilism
•
Developed and refined by
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke,
and David Hume
•
Hume’s argument - actions
are free if:
1. They are caused by the
will of the agent
2. They are not forced
•
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Hume claims that freedom is
possessed by “everyone who
is not a prisoner and in
chains.”
Walter T. Stace
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•
•
1886-1967
•
Stace’s compatibilism:
A native of Britain, he worked
as a British civil servant and
later as professor of
philosophy at Princeton
The problem of free will can be reduced
to a problem with the definition of
“freedom”
•
“The problem is not a real one . . . The dispute is
merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion
about the meaning of words” (3 bottom)
•
This error stems from the erroneous belief that
“determinism (the idea that all events are caused) is
inconsistent with free will” and that free will is
defined as “indeterminism”(5)
•
The mistake here is similar to defining man as a “five
legged animal”. With such a definition, man would not
exist.
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Freedom must be defined such that the
definition has meaning in the real world
•
“Common usage is the criterion for deciding
whether a definition is correct or not” (6)
•
Stace’s examples in 7-8 help to illustrate the
importance of definitions based on common usage
and the absurdity of metaphysical definitions of
freedom
•
What distinguishes the free acts from those that are
not free is that the free acts were chosen, therefore
“being uncaused or being undetermined by causes
must be an incorrect definition of free will” (12
bottom)
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This brings Stace back to Hume”s
definition
“ Acts freely done are those whose immediate causes are
psychological states in the agent. Acts not freely done are
those whose immediate causes are states of affairs
external to the agent” (13 bottom).
Thus an act is free when it is chosen (resulting from an
internal state) and not forced (by external factors).
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Stace rejects the idea that determinism
destroys the concept of responsibility (this was
one of the weaknesses of Hard determinism)
•
Punishment is a part of the the chain of cause and effect
relationships
•
“The punishment of a man for doing a wrong act is justified,
either on the ground that it will correct his own character,
or that it will deter other people from doing similar
acts”(22).
•
•
Thus punishment is the cause of a desired effect
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In this sense, “moral responsibility is not only consistent with
determinism, but requires it. The assumption on which
punishment is based is that human behavior is causally
determined” (24).
Strengths and problems of classical
compatibilism
Stregnths
Problems
• Traditional compatibilism only
• It accords with common
sense, or as Stace would have
it, common usage (weak?)
• Its principles are consistent
with the logic underlying our
legal system
• It doesn’t require “magic”
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deals with “surface freedom”
• Soft determinism fails to
answer the following question
affirmatively: “Given any
situation is it possible that I
could have chosen to act
differently than I did?”
• It does not address the
question of compulsion.
B. Deep Self Compatibilism
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•
•
Harry Frankfurt. 1929
•
Wrote the book On
Bullshit in 2005
Taught at Yale and
Princeton
Frankfurt’s Compatibilism
•
People not only have desires, but desires about
their desires
•
•
Frankfurt calls these “second order desires”
•
Inauthentic desires are desires that we do not
actually identify with or endorse (with our second
order desires).
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This idea of second order desires allows us to
evaluate what our true or authentic desires
actually are
T1
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T1.1
T2 - The
higher order thought - I
want my desire to prepare
the philosophy lecture to
win
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•
Frankfurt argues that, for an act to be free (and for
a person to be responsible for it) a person must
identify with and endorse the motives behind an
action.
•
Free actions are those that accord with our
second order desires.
•
Thus actions which result from psychological
compulsion are not free, because they do not
reflect our true (second order) desires.
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Strengths and problems of deep self
compatibilism
Problems
Strengths
•
Frankfurt is closer to deeper freedom - free
will.
•
•
Deep self compatibilism takes into account
internal constraints on behavior not just
external ones.
Are people who fail to follow their second
order desires “of the hook” in terms of
responsibility?
•
A hard determinist would likely say that our
second order desires (just like our first
order desires) are shaped by forces over
which we have not control. In this case
aren’t we back at hard determinism?
•
Frankfurt demonstrates that actions can be
forced and free at the same time
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IV. Libertarianism
People who use indeterminism to justify free will
adopt a perspective known as libertarianism. This is
the view that traditional determinism is false and
that freedom exists.
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Indeterminism is the position that not all events are
caused. This leads to several possibilities:
1. All events are random
2. Some events are random and some are caused
3. Some events are uncaused and some are caused
4. Some caused events are not necessary events
(adapted from Palmer’s section on indeterminism)
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Two varieties of libertarian thought
A. Roderick Chisholm
Chisholm claims the “metaphysical problem of free
will”, which is the conflict that arises from the idea
that “Human Beings are responsible agents” and that
human actions are determined, can solved only by
looking at human beings as very special cases:
“if we are responsible . . . then we have a prerogative
which some would attribute only to God: each of
us , when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In
doing what we do, we cause certain things to
happen, and nothing - and no one - causes us to
cause those events to happen” (Chisholm 1).
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“No set of statements about a man’s desires beliefs,
and stimulus situation at any time implies any
statement telling us what the man will try, set out or
undertake to do at that time . . . This means . . . there
can be no science of man” (Chisholm 12).
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This concept is called agent causation. The problem
is, how can agents cause effects without their actions
themselves being caused and thus determined.
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B. Robert Kane
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•
•
b. 1938
•
Specializes in
questions of free will
and moral
responsibility
Professor of
philosophy at the
university of Texas at
Austin
Kane argues defenders of agent causation
typically make one of two errors:
When trying to explain free will, these . . .
libertarian defenders tend to fall either into
“confusion” or “emptiness” - the confusion of
identifying free will with indeterminism or the
emptiness of mysterious accounts of agency” such as
that suggested by Chisholm (Kane - paragraph just
above the beginning of pt. 2)
Why is identifying free will with indeterminism a
problem?
Kane’s effort then, is to provide an explanation for
agent causation that is neither mysterious or
confused.
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Kane’s Argument for Free will
Basic assumption (and one that is soundly supported
in the sciences)
Quantum uncertainty exists at the atomic level. We
know that the behavior of certain sub atomic
particles is not deterministic but probabilistic. In
short this means that some sub atomic events occur
without a cause or indeterministicly.
Monday, November 21, 11
Pool Table Physics
In Newtonian mechanics the universe is deterministic.
If we know the variables of the event (force, friction,
direction of impact), we can predict with certainty the
location and trajectory of the ball at all possible times
(T1, T2 etc)
T1
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T2
T3
T4
T5
Pool Table Physics
But Quantum Physics has demonstrated that at a micro level (think atomic level and below) that
such certainty is not possible, even if all the variables are known. If our pool ball was an electron,
even if all the variables were known, we could not predict with 100% accuracy whether the ball
would be at point A or point B at T6.
A
T1
T2
T3
T4
T5
B
T6
As Palmer points out, this uncertainty is not due problems with our ability to know, but rather
with the “nature of the subatomic world.”
This means that there are some events that occur that are either uncaused or that did not happen
of necessity.
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Kane’s Argument for Free Will
1. Many of our actions (in ordinary circumstances) are determined by our character
(we have no choice). (Kane pt. 2 B top)
2.But our character is formed by previous decisions we have made - some of these
decisions were undetermined. These decisions are called self forming actions, or
SFAs.
“Not all choices or acts done “of our own free wills” have to be undetermined,
but only those choices or acts in our lifetimes by which we made ourselves into
the kinds of persons we are. Let us call these “self forming actions” or
SFAs” (Kane pt.2B paragraph 1).
3.A self forming action occurs “when we are torn between competing visions of
what we should do or become” (Kane pt.2B paragraph 2).
Kane use the example of the business woman in pt. 2B paragraph 3
Monday, November 21, 11
Kane’s Argument for Free Will
4.At these moments, “regions of our brains” are moved out of their
“thermodynamic equilibrium . . . a kind of stirring up of chaos in the brain (Kane
pt. 2B paragraph 2)
5.This chaos creates a window in which the deterministic factors are muted
allowing for indeterminate factors to be causal
Recall the basic assumption:
Quantum uncertainty exists at the atomic level. We know that the behavior of
certain sub atomic particles is not deterministic but probabilistic. In short this
means that some sub atomic events occur without a cause or indeterministicly.
6.Ordinarily, these indeterministic forces are so small as to be of no consequence,
but in moments of great stress, the balance of a decision can be tipped by the
smallest of factors.
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• Think of this analogy.
In a typical election the behavior of one voter does not
determine the outcome of the election - their voice (or signal) is simply to small
and is overwhelmed.
• But in an election where the electorate is sharply divided - one vote could make a
difference.
• In ordinary times, the indeterminism in our brains is like the one voter in a
normal election - overwhelmed.
• In times of great stress where the individual is torn between two possible courses
of action- indeterministic forces (like the single voter) can actually control the
outcome.
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But isn’t a window of indeterminism simply a window of randomness? Kane says
no.
7.
Each competing desire represents a neural network inside the brain. Each
network has an activation threshold, that, if reached, would result in either
that act of helping or the act of going to the meeting (pt 2 C, column 2 top).
8.
These two networks are connected so that the indeterminacies causing the
chaos at stage 4 above are caused by the competing network. (pt 2 C,
column 2 top paragraph 2)
9.
Thus the indeterminacy is caused by a “tension creating conflict in the
will.” (pt 2 C, column 2 middle)
10. Thus whichever network “wins” (reaches the activation threshold) will win
because it has overcome the indeterministic noise generated by the other
network. (pt 2 C, column 2 middle)
11. Overcoming in this case represents an act of will, a choice, the result is not
random. (pt 2 C, column 2 bottom)
12. So, according to Kane, there are two aspects of our free will: the choices we
will at times of stress (SFAs) and the way these choices shape later decisions
that are the product of our character - choices that are determined by prior
events in our lives (SFAs) in which we were free to will a decision.
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Strengths and problems of Kane’s theory
Strengths
•
•
•
•
His explanation is grounded in modern
scientific understandings of both physics and
the brain
It makes an effort to explain where free will
arises and doesn’t rely (so much) on “magic”
It deals with deeper free will rather than
surface freedom
It offers a clearer (more satisfying) definition
of freedom than compatiblism. Freedom
requires both real alternative possibilities and
that we be ultimately responsible for causing
those outcomes
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Problems
• Kane’s assertion that during
SFAs deterministic forces are
muted is speculative rather
than empirical
• At its heart, critics argue that
Kane’s theory still equates
freedom with indeterminism
and thus freedom with
randomness, which Kane
himself sees as a problem
A video of Robert Kane explaining his
own theory can be found here:
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/
philosophers/kane/
I will put a link to this on the website. The page it
is associated with, the Information Philosopher is a
very interesting site as well.
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