Galen Strawson out of luck

Galen Strawson, philosophy professor at Oxford, wrote an essay on free will and determinism in 1998 titled “Luck Swallows Everything.” The essay offers a skeptical account of libertarian free will, including a semi-formal critique. For that critique, Strawson channels LFW skeptics, calling them “Pessimists” and sets forth a nine-part objection to LFW.

The first of the nine consists of the proposition that people act because of who they are at any given moment of decision. This first would-be premise immediately reveals a nagging problem for Strawson’s essay: His writing carries a bit too much ambiguity. If “who they are” consists of the person prior to the decision, which seems likely given the words used, then Strawson may be guilty of assuming causal determinism from the outset with respect to human decisions. If “who they are” consists of the person and their decision then the statement is acceptable, but not particularly useful on its face since it does not distinguish between differing models of decision making.

The second of the nine relates the supposed LFW claim that “ultimate responsibility” is required for moral responsibility. Again, Strawson writes somewhat ambiguously, referring to “at least in certain respects” but those certain respects are not specified. That may be the fault of LFW advocates, though philosopher Robert Kane does offer a fairly detailed description.

The idea is this: to be ultimately responsible for an action, an agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause, or motive) for the occurrence of the action.
(Kane, “The Oxford Handbook of Free Will,” p. 407)

The third of the nine is set as a response to the second. The Pessimist asserts that one “can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all” and therefore not ultimately responsible for what one does. Note that the Pessimist has drifted from Kane’s description by requiring the agent to be ultimately responsible for anything of sufficient reason for the occurrence of the action instead of simply responsible.

The fourth of the nine attempts to justify the third. Rather than justifying any difference between Kane’s version and the Pessimist version of the requirement, however, number four simply expands on what may be a straw man: “To be ultimately responsible for the way you are, you must have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are.” Kane’s position differs from this statement, saying that the agent must be merely "responsible" at least in part. Who is right? If Kane is correct then Strawson’s Pessimists have set upon a straw man, in effect.

With the fifth of the nine steps, Strawson’s Pessimists launch into an example. We are to suppose the existence of an agent which has brought about a mental state Z for which it is ultimately responsible.

With six of nine they object to the aforementioned agent. To be ultimately responsible for state Z, “You must already have had a certain mental nature Y, in the light of which you brought it about that you now have Z,” adding that the lack of a Y leading to Z indicates no mental state and thus no means of having responsibility for Z. Proposition six is unobjectionable on its face. With step seven, though, the Pessimists again differ with Kane’s model.

Step seven claims that in order have ultimate responsibility for state Z, the agent must also have ultimate responsibility for Y. The Pessimists obviously intend to suggest the problem of an infinite regress.

Steps eight and nine confirm the prediction:
So
(8) You must have brought it about that you had Y.
But then
(9) you must have existed already with a prior nature, X, in the light of which you brought it about that you had Y, in the light of which you brought it about that you now have Z.

Step eight as it stands is inoffensive, since it makes no questionable presumption about “ultimate responsibility.”Step nine, however, implicitly refers back to step six. Whereas in Kane’s scenario having prior nature X may be based on causal determinism, Strawson’s framework has stipulated that one must be somehow responsible for prior nature X.

Note how Scott Hall’s paraphrase of Kane’s model contrasts with Strawson’s modeling of LFW:

One way to understand the notion of UR is to think of it in terms of control. In order to be ultimately responsible for our actions, we must be in ultimate control of our actions. To have ultimate control over our actions means that we must have at least some control over the causes that are sufficient to move us to action, or must have had control over some action in the past that is now sufficient to move us to action. We need not have control over every action in order to be responsible. Suppose, for example, someone makes a decision and she is responsible for that decision. Assume that she had at least some control over the sufficient causes that moved her to action. Suppose further that making that decision is sufficient to cause the person to make some future decision. She would still be responsible for the future decision because she was responsible for the sufficient causes of that future decision.
("Kane, Alternate Possibilities, and Ultimate Responsibility")

Hall points out that no causally determined conditions prior to the conscious action of a given actor can manifest a state of control on the part of that actor. Thus, a causally determined universe CDUa will be sufficient to cause later state CDUz. The later state is predictable based on CDUa regardless of control. Kane’s model opens up the possibility of a Ua leading to a Uz where agents possessing control provide the reasons sufficient to lead to Uz where otherwise Uz would not occur. In the latter model, contrary to the first, the initial state never provides the ability to predict the later state.

Hall’s expression of Kane’s concept helps explain where Strawson goes awry, for Strawson never indicates an awareness of the link between control and sufficient reason. For Strawson, the LFW model must account for the actor’s initial state where the actor controls the initial state. Strawson does not justify his implicit stipulation with respect to a model like Kane’s.

Strawson goes on to assert the impossibility of a “self-origination” capable of supporting LFW, then goes on to present his preceding argument in “more natural” terms.

(A) One is the way one is, initially, as a result of heredity and early experience.

Indeed, and we can even discount experience if it implies mental states.

(B) These are clearly things for which one cannot be held to be in any way responsible (this might not be true if there were reincarnation, but this would just shift the problem backwards).

Again correct, though of course Kane’s model implies nothing different if understood without the intervention of straw men.

(C) One cannot at any later stage of one’s life hope to accede to ultimate responsibility for the way one is by trying to change the way one already is as a result of heredity and experience. For one may well try to change oneself,

Strawson’s (C) relies on a change in the definition of “ultimate responsibility” as described by Kane. As a result, Strawson can hardly be taken to refute Kane. For Kane, the non-determined decisions of an agent with control may provide sufficient reason for later mental states.

but (D) both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one’s success in one’s attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and experience.

Much more so than Strawson’s earlier expression of his argument, (D) implies causal determinism.

Consider again Hall’s expression of the Kane model in terms of control. If we make indeterminism a part of the scenario—and given that Kane is an explicit indeterminist we can hardly do otherwise without begging the question—it does not follow that the particular way one tries to change oneself nor the degree of success for the attempt to change oneself follow (causally) from the initial mental state based on heredity and experience. If they merely follow (indeterministically) in conjunction with the control of the acting agent then Kane appears to have produced something akin to the “certain mental respects” that Strawson has declared impossible.

And (E) any further changes that one can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by heredity and previous experience.

With (E), Strawson just makes more explicit his assumption of causal determinism. One simply doesn’t get from Ua to Uz based on Ua without the assumption of causal determinism. Even taking “previous experience” to refer to past mental states of the LFW agent (in an attempt to read Strawson charitably) fails to rehabilitate his claims, since wherever the past mental states were under the free control of the agent we again have a manifestation of a self-caused mental state “at least in certain respects.” With the introduction of indeterminism, it simply doesn’t follow that the subsequent mental states are sufficiently caused by the prior causally determined (as implied by Strawson) mental states. Strawson acknowledges this in (F) and (G).

(F) This may not be the whole story, for it may be that some changes in the way one is are traceable to the influence of indeterministic or random factors.

But (G) it is absurd to suppose that indeterministic or random factors, for which one is ex hypothesi in no way responsible, can in themselves contribute to one’s being truly or ultimately responsible for how one is.

Note what Strawson attempts with (G): He takes the traditional assertion of LFW, that being able to do otherwise is a key to personal responsibility, and in effect asserts exactly the reverse. Let us cheerfully admit that a “random” influence would be counter to personal responsibility. We need to remember that a “random” outcome is exactly what LFW would predict, since it is simply the converse of a causally determined outcome. It appears that Strawson commits a fallacy of ambiguity, here, for he is not entitled—at least not on the basis of his explicit argumentation—to categorize intentioned “random” outcomes along with those “influenced by random factors” where the latter cannot be the responsibility of a conscious actor by definition. In short, Strawson needs to explain that particular hypothesis in a way that justifies his assertion.

With his two arguments complete, Strawson moves to summarize:

The claim, then, is not that people cannot change the way they are. They can, in certain respects (which tend to be exaggerated by North Americans and underestimated, perhaps, by members of other cultures). The claim is only that people cannot be supposed to change themselves in such a way as to be or become ultimately responsible for the way they are, and hence for their actions. One can put the point by saying that in the final analysis the way you are is, in every last detail, a matter of luck - good or bad.

As Strawson has constructed an argument filled with loopholes born of dubious assumptions, it seems to fair to suppose that he has run out of luck.

By way of explanation, if we can simply be lucky enough that our indeterministic desires consistently correlate to desired outcomes, then luck has ceased to have meaning. "Luck" transforms into a tautology explaining nothing if it supposedly explains anything and everything.