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The Problem of Free Will

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... Hobbes, Hume, Mill Modern ... PROBLEMS Libertarians believe Free will is not compatible with determinism Free will exists Determinism is therefore false Support? – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Problem of Free Will


1
Metaphysics
  • The Problem of Free Will

2
What is freedom?
  • surface freedom
  • Being able to do what you want
  • Being free to act, and choose, as you will
  • BUT what if what you will is not under your
    control?
  • free will
  • Being an agent capable of influencing the world
  • Source of ones own actions
  • Actions and choices are up-to-us

3
Why is freedom important?
  • We feel that we are free that we are the
    originators of our own actions
  • We need to be free in order to be responsible for
    our actions our practices of praise and blame
    presuppose that we are free
  • Greene Paper neuroscience, moral and legal
    responsibility, theories of punishment
  • Roper v. Simmons, 2005, US Supreme Court,
    unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for
    crimes committed under age 18
  • Recent scientific advances in brain research
    indicate that the adolescent brain has not yet
    fully developed, the decision-making capacity and
    risk-taking behavior of adolescents are far
    different from those of adults thus adolescent
    offenders are less culpable. Roper v. Simmons
    The Role of the Science Brief

4
Society and free will
  • psychological capacities to control our own
    lives, change our habits and traits, overcome
    addictions, exercise willpower, and consciously
    consider the sort of life we want to lead (and to
    control our behavior accordingly).
  • If people interpret free will to include these
    sorts of capacities, then telling them that they
    dont have free will could have detrimental
    effects on their self-conception, interpersonal
    relations, and moral behavior, as well as our
    political debates and legal practices. It may
    make them more fatalistic, less likely to exert
    those powers of rational deliberation and
    willpower they do have, and less motivated to
    improve themselves and their lives Eddy Nahmias

5
Principle of alternative possibilities
  • In 1969 Harry Frankfurt defined what he called
    "The Principle of Alternate Possibilities" or
    PAP.
  • "a person is morally responsible for what he has
    done only if he could have done otherwise.
  • Although I came to class today, I could have
    decided not to
  • What does the world have to be like for this
    counterfactual to be true?

6
Causal determinism
  • (Roughly) the view that the state of the world
    at a given time determines the state of the world
    at the next moment
  • Every event that occurs, including human action,
    is entirely the result of earlier causes event
    causation

7
Laplaces demon
  • We may regard the present state of the universe
    as the effect of its past and the cause of its
    future. An intellect which at a certain moment
    would know all forces that set nature in motion,
    and all positions of all items of which nature is
    composed, if this intellect were also vast enough
    to submit these data to analysis, it would
    embrace in a single formula the movements of the
    greatest bodies of the universe and those of the
    tiniest atom for such an intellect nothing would
    be uncertain and the future just like the past
    would be present before its eyes.
  • Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on
    Probabilities3

8
Laplacian Determinism
  • O set of physical magnitudes, each of which takes
    a determinate value at every moment of time
  • A history H is a map from R to tuples of values
    of the basic magnitudes, where for any t in R the
    state H(t) gives a snapshot of behavior of the
    basic magnitudes at time t.
  • The world is Laplacian deterministic with respect
    to O just in case for any pair of histories H1,
    H2 satisfying the laws of physics, if H1(t)
    H2(t) for some t, then H1(t) H2(t) for all t.
  • John Earman, Aspects of Determinism in Modern
    Physics

9
Neuroscientists Complete Fully Mechanistic
Explanation of Human Behavior
  • These neuroscientists have shown that once
    specific chemical reactions and neural processes
    occur in a persons brain, they will inevitably
    cause the person to make the specific decision he
    or she makes.
  • As noted scholar Francis Crick says, Your sense
    of personal identity and free will are in fact no
    more than the behavior of a vast assembly of
    nerve cells and their associated molecules.
    Youre nothing but a pack of neurons. Said Paul
    Katz, one of the lead researchers, There is
    certainly no room left for a soul now. There is
    nothing left for a soul to explain.

February 20, 2049 By Eddy Nahmias Neuroscientists
at the University of Chicago and Georgia State
University have found evidence that explains
exactly how all human decisions and actions are
entirely caused by neurobiological activity. They
report that whenever we are trying to decide what
to do, the decision we end up making is
completely caused by the specific chemical
reactions and neural processes occurring in our
brains.
10
Determinism types
  • Causal determinism
  • Theological determinism
  • Psychological determinism
  • Sociological determinism
  • Biological determinism
  • Environmental determinism

11
Compatibility?
  • This raises two big questions
  • The determinist question - is determinism true or
    false?
  • The compatibility question - is free will
    compatible with determinism?
  • The combination of answers that can be given form
    the standard positions in the debate

12
Positions in the Free Will DebateDiagram taken
from http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
13
Incompatibilism
  • Incompatibilists believe freedom is not
    compatible with determinism if determinism is
    true, then one cannot be held truly free and
    responsible for ones actions
  • Incompatibilists may be divided into two groups

14
Incompatibilism Hard Determinism
  • Free will is not compatible with determinism
  • Determinism is true
  • So, we do not have free will
  • HARD DETERMINISTS are incompatibilists who hold
    that determinism is true

15
Incompatibilism libertarianism
  • Libertarians believe
  • We do have free will
  • Free will is not compatible with determinism
  • Determinism is therefore false

16
Compatibilism
  • COMPATIBILISTS believe that freedom and
    responsibility are in every significant sense
    compatible with determinism thus there is no
    conflict between determinism and free will
  • SOFT DETERMINISTS are compatibilists who believe
    determinism is true
  • Classical Compatibilists Hobbes, Hume, Mill
  • Modern Compatibilists Ayer, Dennett, Frankfurt

17
Hard Determinism
  • Free will is not compatible with determinism
  • Determinism is true
  • Therefore, free will is an illusion
  • Support?

18
Hard Determinism
  • CONSEQUENCE ARGUMENT (informal)
  • If determinism is true, then our acts are the
    consequences of the laws of nature and events in
    the remote past. But it is not up to us what went
    on before we were born, and neither is it up to
    us what the laws of nature are. Therefore the
    consequences of these things (including our
    present acts) are not up to us.
  • Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (p. 56)

19
Hard Determinism
  • Problems
  • How can the HD explain our behaviour of praising
    and blaming agents for their actions, and
    ascribing responsibility?
  • What happens to morality? If nobody can ever do
    otherwise than they in fact do, then notions of
    responsibility, desert, praise, and blame are
    redundant.

20
Soft Determinism (compatibilism)
  • Determinism is true
  • Free will exists
  • There is no tension between these claims
  • If some people see a tension here, it is because
    they are misunderstanding the notions of freedom
    and determinism, of free-choice and causal
    necessity

21
Challenge for the compatibilist
  • Incompatibilists say
  • For our actions to be free, it must be the case
    that, when we act, we could do otherwise than we
    actually do
  • This insistence on the ability to do otherwise is
    often referred to as the principle of alternate
    possibilities

22
Compatibilist responses
  • Interpret the CDO-condition of freedom as having
    a hypothetical or conditional meaning, i.e.
  • To say one could have done otherwise is to say
    that one would have done otherwise had things
    been different (given a different set of beliefs,
    desires, etc.)
  • classical compatibilist response

23
Compatibilist responses
  • So what if I couldnt do otherwise?
  • The ability to do otherwise is not in fact
    required for moral responsibility, and so
    determinism is no threat to free will
  • The proper contrast to freedom is not
    determinism, but constraint/coercion
  • As long as we are not constrained, coerced or
    forced in our actions then we do what we will,
    and it doesnt matter whether our wills are
    determined or not

24
Frankfurt
  • Donald is a Democrat and is likely to vote for
    the Democrats in fact, only in one particular
    circumstance will he not that is, if he thinks
    about the prospects of immediate American defeat
    in Iraq just prior to voting. Ms White, a
    representative of the Democratic Party, wants to
    ensure that Donald votes Democratic, so she
    secretly plants a device in Donald's head that,
    if activated, will force him to vote Democratic.
    Not wishing to reveal her presence unnecessarily,
    Ms White plans to activate the device only if
    Donald thinks about the Iraq War prior to voting.
    As things happen, Donald does not think about
    Iraq prior to voting, so Ms White thus sees no
    reason to activate the device, and Donald votes
    Democratic of his own accord. Apparently, Donald
    is responsible for voting Democratic although,
    owing to Ms. White's device, he lacks freedom to
    do otherwise.

25
Compatibilism problems
  • compatibilist freedom is only surface freedom -
    it is not free will in the full, proper sense
  • Compatibilism is a wretched subterfuge (Kant),
    a quagmire of evasion (William James)

26
Libertarian (free will) position
  • Libertarians believe
  • Free will is not compatible with determinism
  • Free will exists
  • Determinism is therefore false
  • Support?
  • Criticism?

27
Does indeterminism help?
  • Would you be willing to spend a day letting
    randomness govern your actions?

28
Libertarian (free will) position
  • More serious problem
  • If determinism is false, then events are not
    subject to chain of cause-and-effect
  • So events occur randomly, by chance
    (indeterminism)
  • If events occur by chance, then they are not
    under our control
  • So, how can we be free and responsible?

29
Libertarian (free will) position
  • This is known as the Intelligibility Question -
    how do we make sense of a non-determined free
    will?
  • 3 common responses
  • Agent-causal theory (self-determination)
  • Simple indeterminism
  • Causal indeterminism

30
Agent causation
  • Not only events can be causes agents themselves
    can be causes too (distinction between
    event-causation and agent-causation)
  • Agent-causation is not reducible to causation by
    events (agent-causes are not explainable by
    reference to other events)
  • A STAFF MOVES A STONE, AND IS MOVED BY A HAND,
    WHICH IS MOVED BY A MAN - Aristotle, Physics 256a

31
Agent causation
  • Problems
  • Many people, including many libertarians, find
    the notion of agent-causation far too
    mysterious and problematic
  • Requires agents to be the uncaused cause of their
    actions, to be prime movers unmoved
  • Problem of economy - positing a second,
    additional, category of causation

32
1. Is Determinism true? 2. Can there be Free
Will?
  • Determinists
  • 1. YES
  • 2. Depends
  • Compatibilists (Soft Determinists)
  • 2. YES
  • Hard Determinists
  • 2. NO
  • Libertarians
  • 1. NO (since FW exists)
  • 2. YES
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