Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible, Pt. 3

In previous installments, we noted that Saul Smilansky's arguments against the coherence of libertarian free will amount to question begging. In part two, I even quoted Smilansky anticipating that objection from those who disagree with him. At the end of pt. 2 I ended with the commitment to look into Smilanksy's attempts to answer objections based on indeterminacy.

1) David Wiggins

Wiggins' objection is hardly worth treating, riddled as he is with doubts as to whether it even works. Smilansky presents Wiggins as belonging to the camp that attributes free will to a type of occurrence along the lines of quantum particle formation. I would call that position entirely wrong-headed if it places a "random" occurrence as the cause, in turn, of a responsible decision. That understanding of Wiggins leaves the "self" in a determined state.

2) Richard Sorabji

Sorabji's position appears far more interesting than Wiggins', and may end up being close to the one I favor. As Smilansky puts it:

While this model succeeds in limiting the range of possible actions to those produced by the agent's will, the agent cannot determine which action out of a few alternatives he will in fact take, and the result will be thus morally unsatisfactory.

I think I've shown that Smilansky's conclusion does not follow. If a given action may turn out A or ~A on a 50/50 basis, we cannot fix the outcome on the probability, as with "A occurred because A had a 50 percent chance of happening." That explains nothing. And if we rule out a prior causal chain, we are left only with the action of choosing (along with the corresponding outcome). And without a prior cause the only cause we can reasonably posit is the acting agent (the "self") its own self.

So, contrary to Smilansky, the outcome is under the control of the acting entity in a morally satisfactory way. And as I have illustrated earlier, the character of the acting entity likewise may be modeled as under the substantial control of that entity.

3) Robert Kane

Smilansky allows that Kane's model manifests considerable complexity, but offers a simplified version to facilitate discussion. Smilansky paraphrases Kane thus:

In the paradigmatic case a person is inclined in two irreconcilable directions, say, to do her duty and to advance her career. She is tempted by self-interest but makes an effort to do her duty, and 'chaotically amplified indeterminacies' in her brain, surrounding her 'self-network', play a role in bringing about the outcome. Since it is her will that is divided, any outcome will be her own, but because of the indeterminism it will not be causally determined.

Smilansky responds by asserting that Kane's model does not give us what we need in terms of the PSA. And his explanation amplifies the indications that his PSA serves as an assumption of determinism: "When reviewed objectively, this amounts to a suggestion that effort is the source of (e.g. moral) value, but any non-compatibilist 'freedom' expressed by it derives from a source beyond the agent's control, i.e. indeterminism."

But isn't that patently obvious to the point of tautology? Of course if we rule out indeterminism we are left only with compatibilist options.

To understand Kane, I think, Smilanksy needs to refrain from positing indeterminism as itself the cause of indeterminstic outcomes. It is indeterminism that allows differing outcomes to fall under the agent's control in the first place, which is the very thing that compatibilism can never offer. Recall that under determinism, identical conditions x always lead to one outcome regardless of the number of trials. Indeterminism is the result of the actions of the libertarian agent. Not the cause of the agent's actions. Though of course we never reach the varied results unless we refrain from assuming the truth of determinism.

I hope I've treated Smilansky fairly. It always represents a challenge to accurately capture the other person's meaning when coming from an opposite paradigm of understanding, and the language we use in the free will debate lends itself to fallacies of ambiguity.

That said, it appears as though Smilansky has overstated his case and failed to account for ways in which the libertarian model can answer every challenge he offers except the challenge to explain indeterminism in terms of determinism. That last challenge is illegitimate.


Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible, Pt. 1
Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible, Pt. 2

Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible, Pt. 2

Shortly after posting my first critique of Smilansky's disproof of Libertarian Free Will, I ran across the book version of his argument. Google Books is awfully handy sometimes.

The argument in the book, as one might expect, provides more detail than the one he presents in the paper I critiqued. I should note that Smilansky emphasizes that his treatment of the issue in the book is also deliberately brief.

In this more developed account, Smilansky relies on the Principle of Sole Attribution, and he offers the following expression of the PSA:

Any feature F due to which a person deserves something S in the libertarian free will-dependent sense must, in the normatively relevant respects, be solely attributable to the person or to the pertinent aspect A of the person.

At first blush, the PSA seems like a human responsibility equivalent to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The latter, I think, qualifies as corollary of causal determinism. As for the PSA, Smilansky states that "solely attributable" constitutes the key.

For now, it suffices to define it negatively, in that no one or nothing beyond the person's authorship and control can be allowed, in the normatively relevant way, to have brought forth F, if the latter is to be a source for desert in the libertarian sense.

As there may be hidden assumptions in the above, I would decline to agree pending additional information. If I naturally like the taste of salt and cannot help liking salt, I do not see why that would take away my responsibility for eating salty foodstuffs so long as other conditions for libertarian free will were met.

It turns out, at least apparently, that Smilansky obtains his view from libertarian advocates such as C. A. Campbell:

Campbell manifestly attempts to meet something like the criteria laid down by the PSA. He takes a limited aspect of a person, focused on a narrow concept of desire, and calls it 'character.' He then invokes the 'self' as a latent power, which in certain situations can cause us to act contrary to our 'character' (i.e. contrary to our strongest desire).

I call it a mistake to suppose that the self does not cause outcomes corresponding to the strongest desire. The point should be that the self acts as the cause significantly regardless of the strongest desire, as illustrated by modeling LFW for a single act such as consuming potato chips.

Suppose "Homer" is repeatedly put through a trial under conditions x where he may eat potato chips or not eat potato chips. It isn't that Homer eats the potato chips unless the self intervenes. It is that either option is caused by the self without in turn being absolutely caused by something other than the self. So if Homer eats the potato chips 99 times out of 100 it still does not follow that the outcome was caused by the desire to eat potato chips as opposed to the self.

My illustration points up the difficulty of separating the character from the particular leaning of the will (the self) in making the actual decision. I think Smilansky tends to view the character in terms of causal determinism, hence the conclusion that the self would have overruled the character in order to avoid eating potato chips. That is, eating potato chips would have been causally determined. Doing other than eating potato chips would be the indeterministic self. I think Smilansky fails to keep to indeterminism in forming his critique. If an event happens only 99 times out of 100 under identical conditions then all 100 trials are indeterministic, not just one of them. Determinism by definition requires all 100 trials to reach the same outcome. Claiming any number short of that as deterministic creates a contradiction.

The problem comes out clearly in Smilansky's book when he turns to E. Walter for explanation:

"Even if it were plausible to introduce a 'self' to explain behaviour, we would say (a) that the self's decisions are determined by the self's attributes and (b) the character of the substance 'self' is (at least partially) determined at the moment of its inception in accord with whatever laws relate to the nativity of such recondite beings ... We would have no reasonable explanation for how the self gets to be the way it is unless it derives its character potential at birth."
(ellipsis reflects my edit)

Beyond the fact that Walter looks inclined to impose determinism as the explanation for indeterminism, he apparently waves off probabilistic explanations, such as the one I offered above, with no consideration at all.

From there, Smilansky invokes the whole of a Galen Strawson argument that I have tried and found wanting.

Smilansky subsequently summarizes the argument in two parts and surprises me with his follow up:

At this stage it might be said that my argument for the incoherence of a worthwhile sense of self is begging the question; I introduce the requirement of determinism and then am "surprised" to find that libertarian free will cannot meet it.

Bingo! But Smilansky tries to argue that the requirement of determinism is in turn required by the argument of the LFW advocate: "(W)e have not required from the libertarian more than she must require from herself: an account must be given, as to which non-arbitrary factor brought about the decision or action, and why."

Not surprisingly, that argument is circular in its turn.

Smilansky seems to overlook the fact that the LFW paradigm explicitly and intentionally fixes the self as the type of arbiter that he apparently finds unsuitable. The decisions of an arbiter are, in fact, unavoidably arbitrary in an essential sense. Arbiters arbitrate.

Consider an example. Parson Brown realizes that it would be wrong to trample his neighbor's petunias. Yet he feels as though he would enjoy trampling the petunias just the same. Given that Brown knows it is wrong to trample the Petunias, how can he be morally responsible if he tramples them? That is the question Smilanksy seems to offer. Yes, it seems arbitrary for Brown to trample the Petunias when he knows better. But it is precisely his knowledge that stepping on the flowers is wrong that gives him his moral responsibility for his behavior should he trample them in fact.

Doubtless it may be argued that the desire to trample the petunias was too great to resist--but once we take that route we're right back begging the question of libertarian action. Where indeterminism applies in this specific instance, a temptation too great to resist is an impossibility.

Smilansky is correct that the self must have some sort of nature or character. However, he appears to err in the assumption that said nature is necessarily deterministic (at least to achieve personal responsibility), and in the assumption that the self could not control decisions that alter said nature.

*****


Smilansky takes up objections based on indeterminism in the next section of his book, so I will have reason to post a third part to this series.

Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible, Pt 1
Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible, Pt. 3

Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible

On a lark, I went hunting for a claim that libertarian free will is impossible. And not just any claim. I am after the best arguments I can find. I found the claim readily enough from Saul Smilansky. Unfortunately, his argument owes a huge debt to that of Galen Stawson, which I have already addressed.

Still, there is no great harm in repeating the exercise. It always remains possible that some element in the explanation will either add to the earlier argument or add to my perception of that earlier argument.

So without further ado, Smilansky's brief presentation of the Strawsonesque argument:

The reason why libertarian free will is impossible, in a nutshell, is that the conditions required by an ethically satisfying sense of libertarian free will, which would give us anything beyond sophisticated formulations of compatibilism, are self-contradictory, hence cannot be met.

That sets forth Smilanksy's position, so he continues with the rationale:

This is so irrespective of determinism or causality. Attributing moral worth to a person for her action requires that it follow from what she is, morally. The action cannot be produced by a random occurrence and count morally. We might think that two different things can follow equally from a person, but which one does, say, a decision to steal or not to steal, again cannot be random but needs to follow from what she is, morally. But what a person is, morally, cannot be under her control. We might think that such control is possible if she creates herself, but then it is the early self that creates a later self, leading to vicious infinite regress.

The first key point:

"Attributing moral worth to a person for her action requires that it follow from what she is, morally."

I believe the LFW advocate should agree with this proposition, with the caveat that what a person "is" need not be the result of causal determinism. Smilanksy suggests that the argument hold regardless of "determinism or causality"--an odd thing to mention since the LFW position is an incompatibilist one. After all, if determinism is true, then we have reason to expect that LFW is impossible.

The second key point:

"The action cannot be produced by a random occurrence and count morally."

As with Strawson's argument, I detect a concept that requires some explanation. What is a "random" occurrence? A LFW model would (ironically) predict unpredictable outcomes except perhaps in terms of probabilities.

For example, suppose we were to model the decision to steal or not to steal according to LFW. LFW would suggest that an infinite number of trials under identical conditions would produce at least one trial unlike the others. If we have 999,999 trials where the subject steals and a single trial where the subject refrains from stealing, we can claim some element of "chance" in the outcome. But is the outcome random any more than the other 999,999?

On this point, I attempt to clarify the issue by distinguishing between random/chance cause and random/chance outcome. If Smilansky does not detect randomness by mapping outcomes then he appears to have it tucked into his assumptions--or else I should expect an explanation as to how he determined its presence.

Developed further, this idea turns into the notion that who the subject is may well amount to "an individual who steals under conditions x 999,999 times out of a million." This appears to satisfy the qualification that the cause of the outcomes was not random as well as the stipulation that the individual acted according to "what she is."

On to the third key point:

"But what a person is, morally, cannot be under her control."

We might well ask how that follows, and Smilansky obliges, albeit in brief:

We might think that such control is possible if she creates herself, but then it is the early self that creates a later self, leading to vicious infinite regress.

I think that both Strawson and Smilansky overlook the fairly elegant libertarian solution to the problem. Libertarians do not regard individuals as responsible for their own ultimate existence. However, libertarian models appear to allow an individual to create what a person is, morally, subsequent to being created.

For example, suppose we have "Alex," a newly created entity with a non-deterministic will. Alex has a 50/50 chance of stealing/not stealing under conditions x by default. That is how Alex was created, and we do not hold Alex responsible for that state. In addition, Alex has a 50/50 chance of choosing a morally superior lifestyle. If Alex chooses moral improvement, it increases the not stealing probability by one percentage point. The result? Alex is in at least partial control of having a 49/51 chance of stealing/not stealing, and in full control of having the 49/51 figure instead of 50/50. If this decision does not reflect personal responsibility, then at least the subsequent decision not to steal under conditions x does reflect personal responsibility.

If I'm correct, then Smilansky's third statement is simply false, and his argument fails.

I imagine that figures like Smilansky and Strawson do not view things this way because they have a tendency to model things in terms of determinism. There is a determined outcome and anything else has to be random and therefore beyond individual responsibility.


Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible Pt. 2
Saul Smilansky: Libertarian free will is impossible Pt. 3