The Bad Argument in the Great Debate about Free Will (Updated)

YouTube is great. Some weeks ago I found an excellent video (produced by an atheist) that nicely brought low the argument that foreknowledge is incompatible with free will.

That video spawned the usual sprawling debate thread, though YouTube's character limits on commentary kept that debate at minimal depth. A recent set of comments from "dbes02" confidently makes claims like the following:

But that's the whole point - if someone's behaviour is PREDICTABLE then they don't have free will.

If dbes02 was just talking about predictability in principle--a concept entailed by determinism--then that would be fine.  But this character's arguments look like they'll boil down to a consistent assumption of determinism.

Hoping to obtain a view of his argument unconstrained by character limits, I went hunting for uploaded videos and found the following:




Somebody posts an entire YouTube video to refute free will and this is the entire argument? Unbelievable.

• If I had free will it would be just as easy to choose to strangle my 8 year old daughter as to choose to hug her.
• But it isn't, so I don't have free will.

I posted a response showing how an indeterministic model (thought experiment) provides a fatal counterexample to his argument. He soon replied, hilariously asserting that I was begging the question by assuming that indeterminate outcomes are possible. Apparently dbes02 does not realize that if his criticism of me was legitimate then it is just as fatal to his own argument:  "If I had free will ..."  If he can't have free will then the argument is superfluous.  If he can (at least for the sake of argument) then we can have indeterminate outcomes unless we beg the question.

Update:

I tried to lure "dbes02" into engaging in a formal debate where he would defend his assertion that "Epistemic determinism is incompatible with free will."

Having every confidence in my ability to quash whatever argument he might present, I suggested a formal debate, perhaps hosted by infidels.org.  Dbes02 responded with some hilarious evasions, and the debate challenge remains hanging.  I made the initial challenge via (YouTube) private messaging, but before this posting reiterated it in the public commentary.  And dbes02 has already sniffed around the bait (those interested can find the details here).

As it turns out, the Internet Infidels no longer host a discussion board.  But the discussion from there migrated to the Freethought & Rationalism Discussion Board.

Two cents for Mr. Hawking

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

So goes the quotation of Stephen Hawking in the Guardian (U.K.) in a story about the impending release of "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

The statement from Hawking as it stands is self-contradictory, though certainly Hawking might end up explaining it away in his book as only an apparent contradiction.

Why is the already oft-quoted blurb self-contradictory?

It's a bit obvious.  The statement "Because there is a law such as gravity" implies that gravity is something.  The subsequent statement, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing" implies (very directly and in so many words) that the universe can create itself from nothing.  But the second statement appears contingent on the first.  So, pending Hawking's explanation, we're being asked to either believe that gravity is the nothing (or at least the contingently necessary nothing, to wax philosophical) out of which the universe is created or else we are to believe in gravity was created along with the rest of the universe yet explains how the universe came from nothing.

Gravity cannot be both something and ~(not)something at the same time and in the same sense.  That is contradictory.

Hawking deserves every chance to explain himself.  But don't give him the benefit of the doubt just because he's a genius.  Even the brightest among us are prone to errors of thought.

A thread on probabilistic causation

I think I have a workable model of libertarian free will, though I haven't made much progress on a planned graphic illustration.  I stumbled across a thread at "The Garden of Forking Paths" that focuses on one of the critical issues facing libertarian theories of free will.

The list of contributors is intimidating with respect to the number of letters per contributor.

For what it's worth, Fritz Warfield's response to the original post resonates for me.

In part:

"It's then a matter of pure chance whether or not that subsequent event occurs. If it does, then, in a plain sense, nothing causes it."

What does "pure chance" mean so that the first claim in the quote is true? And what is the "plain sense" in the second sentence of the quote?

"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.

Richard Double pans libertarian free will

Philosopher Richard Double has some unkind words for libertarian free will:

(W)hy bother to deliberate if you are just as likely to opt for either of two contradictory alternatives?

One wonders how Double determined that either of two contradictory alternatives were just as likely. But I will offer an answer anyway. So that whichever one you pick, it will be a reasonable and considered decision.

For the libertarian, free agents not only have the ability to choose in two directions, but they must be in control of either choice. This consequence could be deduced from the demands of moral responsibility. If an agent is to be truly responsible for either choice, A or not A, then both outcomes are under the agent's control. The case is likewise with rationality, although a predictable amount of strain is likely to arise. Libertarians, at the very least, need to show how indeterministic choices can be rational whichever way they turn out. Ideally, libertarians will show us how such a dual ability might be, contrary to appearances, a desirable or even necessary element of rational choices.

I frankly don't understand what is so tough about it. Any number of examples might do, but I can stick with the one I fashioned for my series on free will skeptic Saul Smilansky: Mr. Brown can either trample his neighbor's petunias out of dislike for his neighbor, or refrain from doing so out of the belief that doing so would be morally wrong.

It seems to me that objections like Double's must spring from the notion that the deliberative process is the same while the eventual decision varies. People tend not to deliberate so much where the choice is clear.

Bob Doyle, the writer at "the Information Philosopher" answered in much the same way:

The simple answer to Kane's point and Double's is that we are not "just as likely" to opt for something different from "rational self control", but as human beings we can and do choose occasionally to be irrational.

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

God and Science according to Laurence M. Krauss

Genuine scientist Laurence M. Krauss had a little op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day. Krauss offered up his expert opinion that God and science ultimately do not mix.

I have nothing against expert opinions. Unless they don't make sense. And Krauss' take on the relationship between science and religion is off base.

Allow me to grant at the outset that Krauss is doubtless more lettered than little ol' me. But I will make the better case.

He and I agree on at least one thing. Belief in evolution, at least defined as "variation in frequency of alleles over time" or even in terms of "common descent" is compatible with belief in God, though our reasoning differs as to why.

Let's have a look at Krauss' reasoning:

J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and a founder of population genetics, understood that science is by necessity an atheistic discipline. As Haldane so aptly described it, one cannot proceed with the process of scientific discovery if one assumes a "god, angel, or devil" will interfere with one's experiments. God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science.

Interpreted charitably, Krauss is almost right in one sense. If a "supernatural" entity reliably interfered with experiments, then science as we ordinarily understand it would be pretty much impossible. But theists--not even Young Earth Creationists, so far as I'm aware--would see it as any sort of obligation for those entities to alter the outcomes of scientific experiments.

But Krauss is broadly wrong in the entire way he tries to frame the issue.

1) Science is by no means a necessarily atheistic endeavor. For example, one can follow the scientific method in evaluating theological claims. Suppose Krauss encounters LDS founder Joseph Smith at the foot of his bed one morning. Smith loans Krauss some golden plates inscribed in Egyptian script and a runic union suit for protection. Krauss could, in principle, examine the various evidences presented to him via traditional scientific means and develop testable and falsifiable theories regarding that evidence. On the basis of science, he could in principle reasonably conclude that Mormonism is the true religion. Mormonism is not an atheistic system, therefore Krauss is wrong to claim that science is necessarily atheistic.

2) As noted above, the notion of God "interfering" with experiments resembles a straw man. Scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton did science based on an expectation of an orderly divinely created universe. Does Newton get his scientific credentials revoked on Krauss' say-so? Newton's world view led him to expect a coherent order established by God. And he expected that humans were equipped to appreciate and evaluate that order.

It is at the second point that Krauss goes particularly awry. He almost treats science as though it is a world view. Science is not a world view. It is a way of looking at the world, right enough, but the difference is significant.

Philosopher Norman Swartz has made the argument that the natural laws described by science are descriptive laws. If that appears self-evident to the point of being a tautology, then let me explain.

Natural law could manifest itself either one of two ways. Laws could be prescriptive, where natural objects behave as they do because it is the law. Or, laws could be descriptive. Objects simply do what they do, and the observed patterns make up the descriptive law.

This is an important difference.

If a molecule fails to obey a prescriptive law, such as "molecule X will always bond to molecule Y under conditions F," then a miracle or a scientific impossibility has occurred.

If, on the other hand, the molecule fails to obey a descriptive law, then the descriptive law simply gets a rewrite to bring it into accord with observations.

Scientific laws have been getting continuously rewritten for decades on end.

So what's the point?

If scientists assume that prescriptive laws exist, then they are trading the method of science for a world view. And a world view is, at its root, a type of religion. We call this type of religion "metaphysics."

Short of metaphysical commitment, the methods of science may be used by a person of any religion. The classic subject for science is the way things normally work. Throw a rock at a window and the window breaks. Break 99 out of 100 windows that way and you have a useful "law" despite the uncommon exceptions. You're doing science, even if also produce a theory that the archangel Michael protected the window occasionally.

So we see that Krauss is wrong to take science as an exclusively atheistic enterprise. His op-ed manifests another big problem:

Faced with the remarkable success of science to explain the workings of the physical world, many, indeed probably most, scientists understandably react as Haldane did. Namely, they extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism.

While such a leap may not be unimpeachable it is certainly rational, as Mr. McGinn pointed out at the World Science Festival.

Krauss is saying that science provides evidential support for an atheistic world view or world views. I would agree that science may provide evidential support for a world view, but Krauss has blithely skipped right past some tough philosophical problems as though he remains unaware of their existence.

Note how Krauss calls the conclusion of atheism based on the evidence of science "rational."

If Krauss' atheism is materialistic, then what does he mean by "rational"?

Suppose we have two children, one a genius and one an idiot. Under materialistic assumptions, the combination of heredity and enviroment will, in principle, explain all phenomena with respect to either child. If the genius memorizes pi to 50 digits, he simply followed the laws of physics. His action is "rational" in that sense. But that same sense applies to the idiot who adds two and two to equal five. What else could he have done in that situation but total "five"? It was "rational" for him to follow nature's laws and give the answer he gave.

That, of course, is not ordinarily what we mean by "rational." We tend to have an idea about the correspondence between thought and reality, expectation and actuality or inference and logic. Thinkers from C. S. Lewis to Victor Reppert have pointed to the problems for the atheistic conception of thought.

People like Krauss end up undercutting the foundation of their own epistemology. Krauss seems unconscious of the possibility that he stands on anything but the firmest ground.


***

Krauss mentioned via anecdote that he attended an event at which two Roman Catholic scientists failed to try to defend the virgin birth in terms of science.

When I confronted my two Catholic colleagues on the panel with the apparent miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with basic biology, I was ultimately told that perhaps this biblical claim merely meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was. Neither came to the explicit defense of what is undeniably one of the central tenets of Catholic theology.

Krauss' challenge is literally nonsense.

The narrative of the virgin birth was likely intended to show the uniqueness of Christ as well as to address a theological problem. Why should it be reconciled with basic biology? Was Jesus supposed to follow the prescriptive natural law for fetuses? If Krauss wants to have it assumed that prescriptive natural law makes the virgin birth an impossibility, he can certainly do that. But he is engaged in promoting his religion (metaphysics) rather than his science if he does so. If, on the other hand, we are dealing with descriptive law, then what exactly is it we are supposed to reconcile?

Dilemma true, dilemma false? A critical issue in the free will debate

One of the most common arguments against libertarian free will consists of the suggestion that a decision that was not causally determined must therefore be random and therefore not rationally decided. Carlos J. Moya expresses the gist of the argument well:

Ultimate control involves two aspects, namely ultimacy of source and rational cum volitional control. And it would seem that this condition is incompatible with either determinism or indeterminism. Determinism may allow for rational cum volitional control, but not for ultimacy of source, for, with the possible exception of a first, uncaused cause, there are no ultimate sources or origins in a deterministic world. Indeterminism, in turn, allows for events, such as choices, that, being undetermined, can play the role of fresh, ultimate origins or causes, but now it seems that these ultimate causes cannot be under the agent’s rational cum volitional control. If these events, say choices, are explained by previously existent reasons, they can be rational but hardly ultimate causes; and if they are not so explained, they can be ultimate but not rationally controlled causes.

("Belief and Moral Responsibility")

Frankly, I don't see the dilemma. I think it rests on false assumptions.

The main false assumption involves mistaking outcomes with a probabilistic or even random distribution as owing to chance. But that does not appear to remotely follow. LFW models predict probabilistic mapping of outcomes regardless of the degree of rationality for a given decision. For example, "Cindy" might choose any of Bresler's 33 flavors in a LFW scenario. If she picks each one an equal number of times during an infinite number of trials, the random distribution does not necessarily indicate that her choices were randomly caused. There is, after all, no ontological Luck entity. It simply indicates that Cindy's desire for particular ice cream flavors at a given moment map to a random distribution. And if her decision was always for vanilla in a LFW scenario neither would it establish that her decisions were causally determined, since correlation does not establish causation.

The second false assumption involves the notion that causal determinism serves as sort of tell-tale for rationality. Certainly not that determinism equates with rationality--we see enough stupid acts every day that the determinism=rationality hypothesis would be immediately falsified. So what accounts for the view expressed by Moya and held by others that "(d)eterminism may allow for rational cum volitional control"? I believe they tend to look at outcomes judged as rational in retrospect and grade the decision as rational on that basis--but is that a legitimate method?

I don't think it is. Compatibilists tend not to see the will (that is, consciousness) as the driving force behind decisions. They describe the will as an emergent phenomenon that has its origin in some particular alignment of matter, and the emergent phenomenon is logically after the alignment of matter. Many if not most compatibilists would think it fair to say that the will is caused by matter, and on that basis I would assert that it is a step in the causal chain that might as well be absent. There is no real need for consciousness in a deterministic world made up of matter alone. Rationality, then, is judged arbitrarily after the fact rather than serving as a principled tool of the emergent consciousness. By analogy, the unconscious tree does not move the rock by employing a wedge or a lever. It simply put down a root and the rock happened to move as a result.

This tack by compatibilists and LFW skeptics tries to turn the very goal of LFW models into a liability. Once outcomes are not causally determined, the skeptic may automatically proclaim them "chance" and therefore non-rational. LFW skeptic (philosopher) Galen Strawson at least acknowledges that the consistency of causally determined outcomes serves as no escape, but that results in making "chance" irrelevant to the discussion. Once luck has swallowed everything it loses any explanatory value. We either work on dividing luck up into useful categories or discard it from a discussion in which it no longer serves a purpose. I would suggest that the sure outcomes of a given scenario repeated endless times is a useful category of luck, and equally so an indeterministic outcome of 80/20.

Moya's paper provides another handy exemplar of the skeptical argument while discussing an example of a decision according to philosopher Robert Kane's "ultimate responsibility" framework:

(I)f the agent confronts the choice with a meta-criterion, her will is not unsettled and the choice cannot be truly self-forming.

Moya's reasoning appears to dismiss the fact that there are often multiple rational ways to arrive at decisions. If the subject chooses meta-criterion A 75 percent of the time and meta-criterion B 15 percent of the time, it simply does not follow that her will is unsettled in any relevant sense. Nor does it follow that either A or B is a non-rational course of action. With that outcome distribution the decision is indeterministic by definition and the choices are appropriately judged as to rationality not according to the distribution of outcomes but based on the reasoning they represent.

The LFW skeptic is not entitled to the assumption that a probabilistic distribution of outcomes equates with a non-rational process. Let him prove the point if he requires it for his overall argument.

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.

Michael Martin and atheist ethics

The other day I spend considerable time in a bookstore. Atheist philosopher Michael Martin's "Atheism, Morality, and Meaning" was among the books I browsed, since as an amateur philosopher I'm quite interested in atheistic justifications for morality.

Martin's attempt to establish an objective system of morality made me laugh out loud. I was enthusiastic about writing my reaction to it, but it comes as little surprise that my thunder was stolen well in advance. Skeptic (I'm not sure if he currently counts himself strong/weak atheist or agnostic) Jeffrey Jay Lowder had a review posted at Internet Infidels that closely matched my impression.

A representative excerpt:

One doesn't have to be a philosopher in order to recognize that when Martin describes the "Ideal Observer," many people will think "God." Indeed, this is precisely what we find in the secondary literature. Many commentators on the IOT in general--and Martin's acceptance of it in particular--have remarked that the Ideal Observer (IO) sounds like another name for God.[16] In reply to such worries, Martin states, "the Ideal Observer is hypothetical--it does not exist" (p. 86). While this may be the case,[17] there does seem to be a certain oddity about an atheist affirming a moral theory based upon the reactions of a nonexistent person who is omniscient with respect to nonethical facts. Moreover, it seems to me Martin's reply simply trades one problem for a group of other problems. If the IOT is properly understood as being founded on the feelings of a nonexistent being, then such a view seems dubious.

Lowder goes on to mention three objections to Martin's IOT. The first completely matches a criticism I have made of some would-be atheistic objective moral systems. For while it is perfectly possible for an objective morality to exist in a godless universe, the proponent of such a view is saddled with a huge epistemic problem. That is, how does one know what is moral and what isn't even if the objective morality exists? Why should the mindless universe bother sharing that information with anyone, and why should we expect sentient beings to have any accurate perception of it?

Jeffrey Jay Lowder impressed me by acknowledging these problems while offering a strong critique of Martin's book.

Has Daniel Dennett got a screw loose?

Many atheists appear to put great stock in the ideas of philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Though I've yet to read one of his books, I've read quite a few opinions regarding his ideas and I've sought out his own comments. And his comments make him look like a crackpot.

So, what am I talking about? Check out some comments Dennett made to Reason Magazine, for example.

Reason: A response might be that you're just positing a more complicated form of determinism. A bird may be more "determined" than we are, but we nevertheless are determined.

Dennett: So what? Determinism is not a problem. What you want is freedom, and freedom and determinism are entirely compatible. In fact, we have more freedom if determinism is true than if it isn't.

(Reason Magazine)

The interviewer seems to use "determined" to mean 100% causally determined. If Dennett takes the term the same way then his last statement requires a good amount of justification.

The next exchange:

Reason: Why?

Dennett: Because if determinism is true, then there's less randomness. There's less unpredictability. To have freedom, you need the capacity to make reliable judgments about what's going to happen next, so you can base your action on it.

If determinism is true in the way the interviewer meant it then there is effectively zero randomness. Dennett appears to have equivocated. When he goes on to talk about the "capacity" for reliable judgments he trades in a term loaded with indeterministic connotations. A causally determined thinker has only one accessible future (in a causally determined universe).

Dennett had gone on from that point to use an illustration about running across a field with the possibility of being struck by lightning. Without causal determinism, Dennett offers, the lightning is completely random so there's no planning for it. And that's true. In an indeterministic world you wouldn't be able to count on the field being there to run across, either. But that seems to be Dennett distracting from the issue, whether intentionally or otherwise. The issue, from what I could tell, was deterministic vs. indeterministic thought. So let's put a deterministic thinker before the lightning field. He is causally determined to choose either a good strategy to cross the field or a bad strategy. If preceding states of matter dictated that he would choose a bad strategy for crossing the field, did that field-crosser have the type of freedom Dennett talks about? Did he have the capacity to make a reliable judgment about what happens next?

If he had that capacity, then why the bad strategy?

What "capacity" did the field-crosser with the good strategy possess other than the same ability the poor-strategy field-crosser had (to do as preceding states of matter dictated)?

Dennett's own words make him look like he judges freedom based on outcomes.

It wouldn't surprise me if Dennett drew some withering criticism in the professional literature ...

In section 3 we discuss Dennett's resolution of this dilemma. The key to his current view, we suggest, is the illata-abstracta distinction. Dennett holds that both illata and abstracta are real and have causal powers, even though only illata are genuine scientific posits. He suggests that beliefs etc. are abstracta, and are the subject matter of what he calls intentional system theory. The subject matter of another theory, what Dennett calls subpersonal cognitive psychology, are illata, which are subpersonal intentional states. The important point is that this distinction lets Dennett have it both ways: (i) Since beliefs are mere abstracta, we need not commit ourselves to the thesis that beliefs will turn out to be posits of an adequate scientific psychology. (ii) Since beliefs have causal power, we are assured of moral and rational agency. We shall argue that Dennett's current view is untenable.
(Synthese)

Note: I went with a slightly less inflammatory title after a moment of reflection. Even in question form connecting Dennett with "crackpot" was a bit rude.

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