Sunday, 12 April 2009

• Currently Grechaninov: Passion Week [SACD] see related

  A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Twelfth

  Excursus on Free Will

  I have been trying to formulate my thoughts in an on and off manner, but yesterday our Senior Warden brought up the topic. It is a thing he is wont to do, no matter how tangential it seems to the original theological topic, but we haven't had many opportunities to stray into such things lately. So, it seemed a good time (perhaps even providential) to reflect on free will now.

  Had I thought things through, I might have brought this out earlier. After all, the basic line that William Hasker, Robert M. Hasker, and David Griffin have made is that libertarian free will is incompatible with middle knowledge (Peter van Inwagen also argues along these lines, but in fairness I haven't commented on his argument). On the other hand, the topic of free will can be a real mare's nest, one that I would have rather avoided. No such luck. I am about to offer my opinion on middle knowledge (rather than my opinion on the judgments of my betters), and I can almost hear someone say “But we have free will so . . .” or “You are not taking free will seriously.” Now, all I need to hear is “You're wrong about free will.” Wrong I can handle. Finally, if I started with freewill, I might not have had the chance to make hash of some of the other issues.

  Now for some terminology:

  1. Freedom of spontaneity
  2. Freedom of indifference

  While this division is not always accepted, I find it useful. (A) simply means that a person is free if she is acting on her own volition (that is without compulsion). The second notion (B) is that while causes may influence one's volitional attitudes, they do no determine those attitudes. Lets take it for granted that (b) is a stronger view of free will than (a). Here are some more terms:

  3. Incompatiblism
  4. Compatiblism
  5. Determinism

  Incompatiblism can be used for either determinism or libertarianism. That is, freewill and determinism are incompatible. Determinists would state that freewill and determinism are incompatible and since determinism is true freewill is illusionary. The libertarian would turn this on its head. However, since libertarianism is also a political philosophy and some political libertarians are either compatiblists or determinists regarding freewill, for purposes of this discussion, I will limit (c) to those who hold that freedom is real and that free will is not compatible with determinism. That leaves us with (d). Compatiblists hold that freewill and determinism are compatible with each other. (There are also “Hard” and “Soft” determinists, but these labels are either moving targets or the fixed definitions are just to subtle for me to grasp). One term:

  6. Causal Determinism

  Causal determinists would hold that causal explanations are sufficient for all phenomena. Not all determinist would hold that all determinist explanations are causal in nature. Part of this distinction depends on how far one is willing to extend the term “cause.”

  Now, at first (f) would seem to be redundant, but “cause” and “determine” are not synonymous. For instance, I am looking out the window and make the determination that the corkscrew willow is about 45 five feet away, while incorrect does not cause the willow to be any distance than what it was before I made my judgment. This sort of use of “determine” has more of an epistemic connotation. Of course, “determine” is also used as a shorthand for “causally determined,” and sometimes it mixed meaning. Governors can be said to determine that a state of emergency exists and that determination actually invokes a state of emergency.

  The notion of causality itself is not quite as straight forward as it might seem. Without going into more detail than I can dig myself out of, one might ask what line of causal explanation is there when I decide to write this line and my fingers move to write it (and for the most part, my fingers cooperated). There is a certainly a causal line that one could draw between muscles, ligaments, nerve impulses, synapses, etc. (not to mention the lines from the keyboard, the the computer the monitor) and another between my wish to write something, composing it, evaluating it (currently I think this could be going better), and editing it (or not editing it enough). The link between fingers, muscles, nerve endings (physical explanations) on one hand and intentions, plans, evaluations (mental explanations) is convoluted in itself known as the mind body problem (you can find a brief summary of it in an earlier rave). Lets just say that it is not at all clear that the connection is causal. Of course, if relation of mind to body can be seen as at causal, it might not be the same as the causal relationship between billiard balls or quarks. By extension, it is not entirely clear that a divine determination is either causal or causal in a sense that would imping on human freedom.

  I haven't yet tipped my hand on the matter of freewill and determinism (though you can find an approximation of my position elsewhere). I am not, however, convinced of the various arguments put up.

  An argument in favor an incompatiblist solution is that moral judgment requires it. The argument basically runs that one is not culpable for those things that are outside one's control, if determinism is true, no actions are within our control, therefore no one can be held morally responsible for one's actions. At first blush this argument would seem to be one par with concluding that one owns a clothes dryer because all one's clothes are dry. If someone were to prove that all actions are the result of physical causes, we would find some grounds for making moral judgments simply because moral judgments are necessary in a society where beings make a deliberate ordering of means to ends and take on or are born into social obligations. Moreover, it seems that while there are many things that under my control to actualize or not, not everything that is relevant to whether I take or decline some action is under my control. It would seem that I cannot change my essence without changing (and so terminating) identity. If an essence determines an action, one could argue that while one's actions may not be determined by any physical or mental cause (and so free) it is still in some sense determined.

  On the other hand, arguments that an agents actions are causally determined have a sort of post hoc feel to them. Either one has to not only reduce mental events to physical events or one has to argue that non-physical phenomena (one's character, inclinations, motives, etc.) are themselves determinative. It isn't clear to me that physical events cause mental events (or if they do whether such causes are determinative), nor is it all together clear that nonphysical conditions, such as inclinations, determine anything at all. Lets say that as a habit, I wear solid shirts but today I wear a plaid shirt. Habit would suggest that I am more strongly inclined to solids. Now, that I decide to where plaid may be an indication that I can act against inclination or at the moment some stronger inclination interposed itself that made me choose plaid. One can see how this will play out. If one's inclinations determine one's actions, one's actions are evidence of what's inclinations are but only if one already accepts that one acts in accordance with one's strongest inclination.

  Just looking at my own actions, it would appear that it least in some cases I could have acted otherwise. It just feels as if I could. On the other hand, I'm not sure which are cases where I could have acted differently and which are cases where it just seems so.

  Next time I would like to tip my hand and look at van Inwagen's argument against middle knowledge and why he right about Middle Knowledge but perhaps not about foreknowledge.

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