I’m as Free as a Bird Now
Over at Liberty and Power, Sheldon Richman complains about Ron Bailey’s compatibilism:
Free will does not mean actions are uncaused. It means they are caused by persons. The popular notion that persons can be reduced to mechanistic neurological processes is self-refuting—if true, its advocates are uttering not words but meaningless sounds. The “causes” of actions, Thomas Szasz reminds us, are called reasons. But those cannot be reduced to brain activity, however much they may depend on it.
I don’t want to get into get questions of reductionism. I just want to get into Richman’s unmotivated question-begging assumption:
There is simply no reason whatsoever to accept this proposition unless one has already accepted that determinism (or the thesis of mechanistic causation) is false.
We have just about as much reason to believe this:
But what do we know to be true? Words mean things. Yes, they do! I’m meaning things right now, if you know what I’m saying. And you do! So, words, not just sounds (or pixels, or whatever.) Great.
And this is even relevant to questions of causation HOW?
What don’t we know? Whether or not determinism is true.
But we know that it is possible to meaningfully communicate. So, if determinism is true, we know that determinism is compatible with meaningful communication. If indetermism is true, then we know that indeterminism is compatible with meaningful communication. We cannot, however, know a priori that either is incompatible with meaningful communication.
Richman is right. Persons cause actions. But he is wrong to assert that persons are not some deterministically governed physical fact about the world under a different description. Because he just doesn’t know that. And he is wrong to think that it matters. Questions about personhood, agency and responsibility have nothing much to do with questions about reductionism or the ultimate nature of causation.
We know that our words mean things, and we know that under the right conditions we cause our own behavior and are responsible for what we do. However, though we cause our own behavior when a gun is to our head, we are not fully responsible for it. And if a drug is messing with the neurological conditions necessary for normal deliberation and choice, then responsibility is mitigated, whether or not behavior is fully reducible to neurological events. Similarly, if certain kinds of brain disorders undercut the neurological underpinnings of normal deliberation and choice, then responsibility may be mitigated.
The question of whether I am responsible when coerced does not turn on deeper metaphysical questions. And neither does the question of whether I am responsible if I have a brain lesion that short-circuits that conditions for normal agency.
I agree with Richman that free-will is self-evident. I deny that the self-evidence or experience of excercising free-will carries with it any information about the truth of reductionism or determinism, or that it tells us very much about the conditions for ascribing responsibility.
April 30th, 2005 02:10
Hi - I’m brand new to reading your blog, and delighted to see a subject like determinism and free will right off the bat. So pardon me for asking, but…
Exactly why is free will self-evident? It doesn’t seem to me that Richman sufficiently covers the point.
The feeling of it is quite subjective, and not necessarily extant. For example, I don’t *feel* as though I have free will. My intellectual position (hard determinism) has creeped into my perception.
“The fact is, the free-will proposition is a self-evident axiom. One must tacitly acknowledge it even in trying to refute it.”
Why?
Do we start describing the events leading to the barking of a dog by tacitly acknowledging that the dog was free to do otherwise at that precise time?
It seems to me that the introduction of the nebulous idea of a “person” to establish a free will axiom like “persons cause events” is anything but self-evident. It strays quite a bit from providing as simple an explanation as possible.
May 1st, 2005 04:02
Quantum Electro Dynamics presupposes indeterminacy. In experiment after experiment after experiment, QED has reliably produced accurate prediction after accurate prediction after accurate prediction. The proof is in the pudding and QED tastes good.
Who says physics and free will are incompatible?
The question of free will is premature. There are no facts that can be explained by free will that can not also be explained without it. Show me an experiment with results that could only be explained by the existence of free will and I will tell you whether the question of free will is meaningful.
May 1st, 2005 10:36
Dunno what happened to my previous comment but –
For a good paper arguing that determinism is self-refuting, see: http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/fwill.htm
May 1st, 2005 15:15
asg, Mike’s argument doesn’t go through without his question-begging construction of “can.”
http://www.niu.edu/phil/~kapitan/power.shtml
May 1st, 2005 22:11
I don’t have time to read the whole paper you linked, although I see that it is about different senses of ability (”can”). What about Mike’s argument is question-begging? In particular, does commitment to ought-implies-can commit one also to rejecting determinism, in your view?
May 2nd, 2005 09:05
JFEFFERSON’S CARTESIAN RATIONALITY
Lynne Kiesling Will Wilkinson has all sorts of good stuff going on right now, including an interesting post about free will and determinism. But I, like Tyler Cowen, will pick up on his mention of his increasing dislike of Thomas…