"Chance cannot directly cause our actions"

So states astronomer/philosopher Bob Doyle, the creator of the "Information Philosophy" Web site.

With context added:

Chance cannot directly cause our actions. We cannot be responsible for random actions.

Doyle appears to adhere to a type of compatibilist free will, though he may well consider his view libertarian. Doyle calls his free will model "The Cogito Model" and attempts to explain the chance aspects of indeterminism without damaging the attractive aspects of libertarian free will.

Important elements of the model have been proposed by many philosophers since Aristotle, the first indeterminist. A number of modern philosophers and scientists, starting with William James, have proposed similar two-stage models of free will. But none of them has been able to locate the randomness so as to make free will "intelligible," as libertarian Robert Kane puts it.

My take on that later. Back to Doyle:

The Cogito solution is not single random events, one per decision, but many random events in the brain as a result of ever-present noise, both quantum and thermal noise, that is inherent in any information storage and communication system.

Doyle's solution, I believe, comes very close to fulfilling its billing. But what is this "noise"? Doyle avoids the traditional antecedent problem by locating the noise within the deliberation process. However, if the noise is not under the control of the self, then his solution appears vulnerable to criticisms such as Galen Strawson might offer. Where the causes of indeterminism are outside the control of the self, the connection to deep moral responsibility appears tenuous at best.

Doyle expends considerable energy promoting a particular feature of his model, that decisions are always "adequately determined," meaning that the results are functionally deterministic even if not strictly deterministic.

The results of the model, therefore, give us something akin to divine interference with the human will, except it is impersonally deterministic--though Doyle credits the will with an ability to selectively ignore the indeterministic noise sufficiently to develop an evolutionary advantage. That mechanism awaits explanation.

Though I think Doyle is on the right track in many respects, I judge that he makes an error in attributing the indeterminacy of the will to a set of causes ("noise"). By positing, in effect, a functionally deterministic proximal cause of indeterminacy, he simply pushes the perceived problem back a step and ends up offending Occam's razor in the process.

If we accept indeterminacy, it is simpler to just suppose that the will produces a different deliberative process for each hypothetical situation x. Doyle may object that the problem of randomness threatens the intelligibility of this simpler model. But on the other hand, it is not clear that Doyle's model provides satisfactory solution. And, more pointedly, I believe philosophers have largely handled chance incorrectly with respect to the indeterminate will.

How have philsophers mishandled chance with respect to the will? I will invoke Doyle's statement "Chance cannot directly cause our actions" and imbue it with a slightly different meaning. I think it is exactly right that chance cannot directly cause our actions, with that being true regardless any consideration of consequences for free will. "Chance" is not an ontological entity. We identify "chance" from the results, not by careful examination of the cause. And "chance" results are exactly what we should expect when we use an indeterministic model to represent libertarian free will. Chance is not a bug. It is a feature.

Chance has traditionally been regarded as a bug largely due to the nature of the attacks on libertarian free will, which sometime suppose absurd events for the sake of illustration or, as Doyle notes, place chance causes in a problematic section of the decision making process.

Our intuitions about free will serve as a reliable guide in responding to the suggestion of absurd results. We intuitively do not regard such absurd results as examples of morally responsible decisions. We never have. Instead, we intuitively assert a type of "reasonable person" standard in assessing whether a choice qualifies as rational.

Yes, a person who tramples the petunias of a hated neighbor is acting rationally. And the same person under the same conditions also acts rationally if he does not trample the petunias because it is a moral wrong. There is no need to try to make absurd scenarios appear rational.


Dec. 2, 2009:  Tweaked grammar on a few minor points and added italics for emphasis to assist clarity.