what is free will?
Our interest in free will begins with our own image. we are aware of being agents in the world, capable of doing things and being active. we believe that we can intervene and order our own destiny. we are in control of the trajectory of our own life. that self-image immediately tracks something that is deeply important to us, which is our sense that we too are moral agents. we are responsible to each other for the quality of our actions and what derives from them. Therefore, the problem of free will begins at a very general level with the question “Are we really in control?” In particular, it is our view of ourselves as responsible, moral and ethical agents, which is intimately connected with that question. image of ourselves. really accurate?
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Most people feel, to some degree, in control of how they behave. there may be times when you become irrational and other forces take over, or outside people force you to do things, but if I want to raise my hand or say “stop!” those things seem to be easily under my conscious control. we also firmly believe that people, including ourselves, deserve praise and blame for the actions they take because we are the ones doing them. it’s not someone else doing those things. and if we knowingly do something wrong, it’s okay to blame ourselves for it.
That’s right. The common sense view, though we may articulate it in different ways in different cultures, is that there is a relevant sense in which we are in control and morally responsible. what makes philosophy interesting is that skeptical arguments can be advanced that seem to undermine or discredit our confidence in this common sense position. a famous version of this difficulty has theological roots. If, as everyone once assumed, there is a god who creates the world and has the power to decide everything that happens in it, then our common sense view of ourselves as free agents seems to be threatened, since god controls and guides everything that happens in it. happens – including all of our actions. Similar or related problems seem to arise with modern science.
The scientific challenge is that everything we do, we can explain causally. there is some prior cause that made us do that: you can go back to childhood, to genetics, to early conditioning, to environmental factors. when you give the whole picture, there seems to be no room for freedom.
exactly. As in many other familiar philosophical problems, critical reflection and shyness about our commitments erodes our natural easy confidence or, if you like, our complacency.
It’s a paradox, isn’t it? we believe that we are free, but most of us also believe in a scientific picture of the world and a naturalistic description of human beings that says that we are simply material beings and that there are physical causes for our behavior, whether these are ultimately genetic. , neurophysiological or whatever. those two beliefs seem to be inconsistent, but we still cling to them.
yes, because even if, on reflection, we head in the direction of skepticism, it seems incredible that we can actually adopt that, because the skeptical view seems unbearable. then there is a deeper problem about the practical implications of skepticism itself.
we could be under the control of powers outside of ourselves and completely under the illusion that we are making things happen. wittgenstein has that example of two leaves moving in the wind: one says to the other “let’s go this way now”, and the wind blows them that way, and then they say “let’s go that way now”, thinking they have control, but it’s actually the wind that makes them behave the way they do…
That’s right. Such examples go back to Hobbes, perhaps even further back. their point is that we are actually ignorant of the causes of our behavior. our ignorance of these causes naturally leads us to suppose that we have divine powers to make things happen. Some people think there’s a problem with trying to live without any such belief in free will: not only would it be depressing, it’s practically impossible. The interesting thing about our belief in free will, from this point of view, is that, as you said at the beginning, we seem to experience ourselves as agents that control the world and this makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to simply abandon our belief that we are free, regardless of skeptical arguments that might suggest otherwise.
Are you suggesting that it might be an unsolvable paradox?
yes. There is a very important philosopher in this area, Thomas Nagel, who wrote a very influential article on moral luck. he describes the problem as involving not only the skeptical threat, but also the fact that the skeptical threat arises from one side of the fence, where we have a view of ourselves as an objective part of nature. there is, however, an inner, subjective view that is resistant to the intrusion of objective, scientific, naturalistic self-interpretation. that’s a very interesting problem, and I think it’s a very deep problem when it comes to free will.
It is usually expressed in terms of determinism versus free will. what is determinism?
previously came pretty close to giving at least an intuitive understanding of it, which is the view that the natural order is a causal order and everything that happens is conditioned by antecedent events. there are laws that manifest strict regularities, such that given the initial conditions, certain other events will necessarily follow, or will follow in some reliable uniform and regular way. now there are significant problems here about how to interpret causality. In particular, the problem of free will, as understood in relation to determinism, operates on the assumption that whatever is caused is necessary. that is an assumption that has been widely held in certain kinds of empiricist or positivist views about the nature of science and the nature of causal explanation. but can be questioned. there is a very famous article by elizabeth anscombe that challenges it, and it has become quite influential in some efforts to reclaim a more naturalistic conception of libertarian free will.
Let’s focus on your first book. you chose daniel dennett’s free space. what is it about?
the elbow room was written in 1984, so maybe it’s getting a bit long. however, I have selected it because it is a very good place for readers to start if they want to make their way in contemporary debate. in terms of style, it’s very approachable and personable. dennett is a sharp philosopher with a captivating style. The main goal of this book is to debunk or dismantle the sentiment that determinism presents an ominous skeptical threat to freedom and moral responsibility. dennett sees the problem of free will as a problem generated by philosophy. philosophers abuse what he calls “intuition bombs” and employ misleading philosophical analogies. by these means they raise unfounded concerns about the implications and consequences of determinism. an example would be “if determinism is true, it would be like being in prison” or “if determinism is true, we are like a robot, a mere mechanism”. he wants this, as he says, to claim a modestly optimistic self-image. in other words, he wants to bring us back to the original common sense vision that we were talking about at the beginning. In many ways, Dennett, who was a student of Gilbert Ryle and in some ways belongs to the Wittgensteinian tradition, simply wants to “show the fly out of the fly bottle” on this subject.
what does that mean?
the idea is that we are getting confused and panicking with skeptical puzzles that make us feel worried and anxious. but when we properly and fully expose these false and misleading analogies and intuitions, we see that there is no real problem or threat here.
we’re like a fly buzzing in a bottle, and wittgenstein, ryle or dennett pulls the cork and the fly flies out.
yes. it’s a good philosophical psychotherapy, that’s what free space pretends to be.
The book presents the view that the kind of determinism we have been talking about, in terms of the scientific causal explanation of behavior, is entirely compatible with having free will worth desiring.
yes, that’s all in a nutshell. the negative part of the book is to debunk the skepticism and anxiety generated by illusory philosophical ghosts and bogeymen. The positive agenda is that Dennett wants to show that there is a perfectly coherent, naturalistic account of freedom and moral responsibility that is fully consistent with the idea that we are part of the natural fabric of the world. any freedom that requires more than this is not worth wishing for, is actually neither desirable nor intelligible.
so this radical freedom… I’m lost. common sense seems to suggest that you can’t have it both ways, you can’t be causally determined and at the same time be free.
dennett has a quite interesting and important chapter on what it is to be a self-creator or self-controller. this has influenced a whole generation of compatibilists, people who believe that determinism, or more broadly naturalism, is not a threat to our own image as free and responsible beings. The idea is that radical freedom, or what Dennett calls absolute unconditional freedom, to create ourselves ex-nihilo (out of nothing), is absurd. it is not even intelligible to god, or at least it is very problematic. for human beings, however, it is obviously absurd. we can’t have that, it’s not clear that we would want it. more importantly, it’s not even clear what it would mean. what we want is to be able to reflect on our situation, to be able to consider what our interests are and how we can secure them. Giving ourselves “elbow room,” as dennett understands it, is being able to anticipate things and give ourselves room to maneuver, where there may be variables that are unpredictable or unknown to us. this is what we really want in order to be able to operate in the world as intelligent and rational creatures that control our future. does not imply a radical creation, 100% own. it implies that we develop, as we mature and evolve as a species, certain capacities and dispositions for rational self-control. all of this can be explained naturalistically and help us understand the basic distinctions between us that really matter. if, for example, I am dealing with a small child or an animal, or a person with severe brain damage, it is precisely those capacities that they lack. Dennett’s common sense view is that what we are looking for is something perfectly common and intelligible that we can easily identify and recognize.
I can understand that, but it seems that that capacity, those dispositions, can be explained entirely in causal terms: there is only an illusion of free will. it’s not as if the self-creator is really self-creator, he’s just going through the motions of something he’s been programmed to do.
This is an important point and dennett’s critics would certainly press this concern. So while Dennett is a good place to start, you should also read the other books I’ve recommended. It may be a bit unfair or too harsh to say that Dennett is accommodating, since he offers substantial and interesting arguments for his position. but I think his critics would say, and I sympathize considerably with this, that his optimism comes too easily. dennett simply wants to dismiss such concerns as unfounded. however, while it may be true that there is something problematic about articulating what it would be like to have absolute freedom, there may still be something that we care about that is missing or that we aspire to but lack. Perhaps the aspiration to immortality is impossible and doesn’t even make sense, but the awareness of our mortality can still puzzle or worry us.
let’s move on to the second book, four views on free will, because that’s mapping the land, in a way.
I guess I’m cheating here because I’m compressing four books into one. However, I would particularly recommend this book to readers, as the four authors of this book (Robert Kane, John Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas) are significant figures in the contemporary field and have charted distinct and influential positions. the reader can quickly get an idea of the general layout of the land and some of the basic options available. just to quickly outline them:
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kane is a libertarian, that is, an incompatibilist who thinks that for us to be free and responsible, determinism cannot be true. for this we need an alternative metaphysical framework that accounts for the kind of freedom required for responsibility, which implies more than mere indeterminism.
fischer is a semi-compatibilist. he thinks that determinism does not threaten responsibility, but it does threaten free will understood in terms of open alternatives. Fischer argues that we have rational self-control that involves what he calls “reason responsiveness.” that capacity serves as a basis for moral responsibility, but falls short of full metaphysical freedom. Although we do not have genuinely open alternative possibilities, we do not need them, Fischer argues, for moral responsibility. In several respects, this view resembles Dennett’s general strategy, except that Fischer does not accept the freedom part. rational self-control enables us to recognize reasons and respond to them more or less reliably and consistently, and that is all that responsibility requires.
pereboom is a hard-core incompatibilist, or what he sometimes calls an “optimistic skeptic”. According to this view, although we are not free and morally responsible, this is not so depressing. we can salvage most of what really matters to us, including our interpersonal relationships, through some form of moral evaluation that is not based on strong moral responsibility. we can also live lives that remain meaningful and personally satisfying. The assumption that skepticism does not imply pessimism is the main axis of Pereboom’s line.
vargas calls his position ‘revisionism’. More or less what he is saying is that we must make a basic distinction between what he calls a ‘diagnostic’ understanding of freedom and responsibility (what we normally think of as freedom and responsibility) and a ‘prescription’ understanding. in our ordinary lives, we may have incompatibilistic natural intuitions, and even if we can’t salvage them, we can revise our conceptions of freedom and responsibility so that we still have a suitably solid account for all the things we normally care about. on. although this is revisionary it is not radical skepticism. Vargas wants to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water and refrains from displaying extreme and unqualified skepticism.
The position we should go back to for a moment is kane. there is a standard objection to classical libertarianism that is based on “spooky metaphysics”, positing ghostly agents that somehow intervene in the natural order. What makes Kane’s libertarianism interesting is that he argues that libertarians can avoid this and give a naturalistic account of the possibility of moral freedom. the idea here is that what is caused does not have to be necessary. Agents can be free as long as there are crucial points in their lives when they are capable of taking what Kane calls “self-forming” decisions or actions. what that requires is that free and responsible agents have more than one reason why they might act in the same circumstances, and that in those same circumstances, either of the two reasons could move them to act. However they act, however, they act for a reason. as long as it is not determined, it is not capricious either. Under these circumstances, Kane asserts, free agents have genuine alternatives and are the ultimate sources of their behavior and character.
this makes me think of kant…
lurking behind kane’s model is something like kant’s image of duty struggling with desire at crucial moments of choice. Kane gives an example of a businesswoman running into a meeting. someone needs help, but has to get to the meeting. more or less, duty = to help, wish = to be on time for the meeting. under the exact same conditions, at that particular moment, either of the two reasons could move her to act. Kane builds the model of it and makes it more complex by suggesting that there are additional things going on, mental elements called “efforts,” and suggesting that we can simultaneously exert effort in both directions. she could, on this account, play the tape multiple times and get different results.
despite your interest, the model seems somewhat suspicious to me. What is crucial for Kane is that we have a plurality of reasons available to us, what he calls “plural voluntary control.” but there are often times when you may not have any alternative. there may be no other reason that arises, but still you fully accept the reason why you acted. it appears to be one that is genuinely yours, and you respond to the reason that is available to you when it moves you. But for Kane, when it comes to self-forming actions that are central to the possibility of moral responsibility and genuine free will, there must be times when we have, as he puts it, 50-50 options. this model can become very strange. what if you had a 99 to 1 option? suppose you have a reason which is a very weak reason, but under the same circumstances there is a chance that you will act on it. It seems to me that kane and those who take a similar line are committed to the view that this would be enough to give you genuine alternative possibilities, even if the odds are not 50-50.
I think it’s a rejection of the notion that causal explanation exists at all. he is opting for free will at the expense of the scientific picture. it is usually an insufficient knowledge of the causes that leads us to think that we are behaving differently in similar circumstances. the point is that they are not exactly the same: if they were exactly the same, we would have acted in the same way.
as you know, that opinion can be rejected as a kind of metaphysical and necessary prejudice. the claim is that, in fact, when we look at what science tells us about quantum phenomena and the indeterministic order of things, especially now in the 21st century, we should not endorse that picture. what we need is a probabilistic rather than a necessary conception of causality. It is exactly this wedge that Kane uses as the metaphysical or ontological foundation of this alternative image. it also uses computer analogies and suggests that you can have parallel processing systems where the result is not always the same. the system may be in an apparently identical state, but different results will emerge from it. same inputs, different outputs.
The question of whether physics, and specifically quantum mechanics, illuminates free will or just muddies the water is a difficult one.
yes and in relation to kane’s model, the big question is, has he really got rid of the problem of luck or chance? this is sometimes presented in terms of the contrastive question. If you have an agent who in certain circumstances does his duty, let’s say help, but on another occasion, in identical circumstances, does not, the obvious question you want to ask yourself is, why did he help in the first case but not in the second? other? according to this model, however, there is no further answer or explanation to be given for this variation. but then it seems like it’s just luck and the agent lacks proper control over what he actually does in these specific circumstances. although you may be in control in the sense that you act for one reason or another, and what you do is intentional and for a reason, the crucial problem remains that you are not in control of why you act for an available reason rather than do it. other. I don’t want to be unfair to kane, because he tries to deal with this concern, but in my opinion, it’s still a serious problem for his theory. the kind of problem you’re facing here is just another version of the same problem compatibilists face, that there are limits to control.
let’s move on to the next book, rj wallace, responsibility and moral sentiments. questions of moral responsibility are intimately linked to questions of free will. Part of what makes metaphysical questions about free will interesting is that they have real-life applications, because we live in a world of praise, blame, punishment, and responsibility of a kind that is moral. It’s not just an arbitrary armchair discussion. it feels like it’s part of what holds us together as human beings. this is something about us.
This is an important point. while I think it would be too much to say that the problem of free will is just the problem of moral responsibility, they are intimately connected. free will extends beyond the problem of responsibility, since it touches on our conception of ourselves as creators, individuals, etc., but the issue that really matters to us is the problem of our agency in relation to our moral responsibility. This is why Wallace’s book is particularly interesting. As the title suggests, Wallace draws from a tradition that emphasizes the importance of moral sentiments in understanding this subject. The approach he takes follows that of an influential article by Peter Strawson, an Oxford philosopher, called “Freedom and Resentment.” the focus here is to start with an understanding of what it is to hold someone accountable, where holding someone accountable is understood as a matter of harboring certain distinctive kinds of emotions toward them. those emotions presuppose certain kinds of beliefs about them, and then we try to understand what it is for them to be responsible, properly understanding the emotions involved in holding people accountable. so we gain a better understanding of the conditions of liability by examining their foundation in these attitudes and practices.
What kind of emotions are we talking about here?
the philosophical jargon is “reactive attitudes”. we have a certain set of expectations, standards or norms, regarding what we expect from each other in terms of our interpersonal relationships. these have an ethical or normative meaning for us. when people violate these norms, we respond negatively to them. we hold them to those standards. what is crucial here is that these are not just intellectual judgments. We must not, in Strawson’s language, over-intellectualize our answers here. It’s not like failing a test or doing a math problem incorrectly: it’s deeper than that. our responses in these circumstances are embedded in our moral psychology. we respond emotionally and have hostile responses in cases where these moral norms are violated.
so if someone insults you, is that the kind of thing that produces a reactive attitude? Did they break some kind of moral taboo?
yes, strawson does not start with the impersonal moral case, but with the personal reactive attitudes, where it is about an injury or damage that is done to us. if you accidentally step on my toes, it might hurt me and I might think: “please be more careful”. however, if I think you’re jumping on my toes and aiming to hurt me, then obviously I’ll get even more angry.
what does this show us about responsibility and blame?
what it shows us, and this is strawson’s side, going back to philosophers like david hume and adam smith, is that we need to start, not from a high-level moral principle or philosophical theory, but from a simple truth about human moral psychology. The relevant starting point of these investigations is that we actually care about certain kinds of attitudes and intentions that other human beings show us, just as we naturally care about our appearance, intelligence, abilities, physical prowess, etc. Moral reactive attitudes deal with a particular dimension of our attributes or qualities, namely the set of attitudes and intentions and values that we manifest in dealing with one another. What is interesting about this general approach is that it moves away from simple conceptual analysis (what the concepts mean, what is their logic and how do they relate to each other) and tries to provide a better informed and more realistic moral psychology.
how does wallace use that in relation to free will?
His model goes something like this: reactive attitudes should be understood in terms of expectations. expectations are simply standards or norms about what we can or cannot do. These expectations establish our obligations. where those obligations are backed by moral reasons, which refer to our mutual relations in social life, so that we can cooperate and trust each other, they ground our reactive attitudes when violations occur. In several respects, Wallace espouses a fundamentally Kantian view of morality. when moral obligations are intentionally violated, we blame people, and the blame is naturally connected to our retributive willingness to punish or penalize them in some way.
This understanding of our moral psychology has to do with the interconnections between expectations, obligations, and guilt. Perhaps it is a weakness of this view that it relies entirely on reactive attitudes that are essentially negative or hostile responses to violations of moral expectations. Wallace goes on to explain that to understand our position of taking responsibility we need a theory of excuses and exemptions. As in family law cases, there are certain circumstances where people appear to violate our expectations, but then we realize that they were ignorant of the situation, or did so accidentally, or there was some other relevant consideration indicating that although an injury occurred, the damage caused was unintentional and therefore the expectation was not strictly violated. voluntariness and intention are essential here to trigger or cause our reactive attitudes. there is another important consideration that we should also take note of. Clearly, there are individuals who we see as appropriate targets for reactive attitudes or moral sentiments and others who do not. how do we draw that limit? How do I decide if a person I’m dealing with is someone who should be included or excluded? What if, for example, he is a madman or a child? This is where Wallace, again, like Dennett and Fischer, brings his own particular model of rational self-control. he tries to give a naturalistic account of rational self-control that can serve as a plausible exception theory for reactive attitudes.
Are you just assuming that we have a choice, that we have genuine free will?
certainly offers a powerful compatibilist theory. the image it rejects is the one that is deep and still there, the view that responsible choice depends on genuine alternatives or open possibilities. Wallace turns him down. he thinks that someone makes a responsible choice as long as he has a general disposition or ability to recognize reasons and can be motivated by them. While it is true that in some circumstances an individual may not recognize reasons or be motivated by them, we must remember that someone who has the ability to speak a language can also make a grammatical slip. however, we still have the expectation that they will speak in an appropriate and literate manner and we hold them to these standards. when they make a slip we catch them and we respond and correct them. in the case of our reactive attitudes, the people we address are the people with the relevant ability or general disposition. they can make a slip that has an explanation, but if it was deliberate or intentional, then we can hold them to those standards and we will react accordingly. we’ll blame them.
okay, so what wallace has done is give an emotional account of our judgments of moral responsibility. he is a compatibilist, so he has outlined something that will help us better understand what it is to blame someone, to hold someone responsible. However, like Dennett, he is quite optimistic about the compatibility of determinism and free will. The next author, Bernard Williams, is much more pessimistic about free will and the human condition. i know you met bernard williams because he taught you, can you tell us why he chose this book, shame and need?
This is a highly respected book, although in terms of the standard free will literature, it is very different in its approach. Unlike some of the other books I’ve mentioned, it’s not an easy book to read. There is no single position or model that Williams is interested in articulating. is a book that focuses on ancient Greek conceptions of agency and responsibility. He is not only interested in the contrast between the ancient Greeks and us, but he is also interested in the difference between the tragic Greeks – Sophocles, Aeschylus and Homer – on the one hand, and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle on the other, thinkers who are really the founders of the Western philosophical tradition. what is interesting about this book is that it is not only about free will, but also about our views on the nature of philosophy. Williams argues that, methodologically, philosophers must be historically sensitive and informed, and that they generally are not. that’s a problem with many discussions of free will, there is a lack of historical self-awareness. One of the great merits of Williams’ book is that he is, among other things, a distinguished scholar of classical literature. he is not only open to the possibility of learning from history, he also thinks that we can learn from literature, and from tragedy in particular. so it’s a very interesting and challenging book. Williams has multiple agendas, including a very ambitious agenda that involves a critique of our entire modern conception of morality. there is a well-established opinion that the Greeks had no adequate conception of freedom and responsibility at all. they were, it is suggested, full of primitive views about fate and gods and the limits of agency and did not really appreciate the importance of intention and voluntariness. From this point of view, we moderns have managed to overcome all this and now, fortunately, we have a sophisticated and adequate conception! Williams argues that while the views of the ancient Greeks were certainly very different from our own, and it’s not about going back to the world they lived in, they nevertheless understood and appreciated things from which we can still learn much. part of williams project in the book is to suggest that there are very important ways in which the early greeks were much more realistic about the human situation as it relates to human agency itself, and in particular our vulnerability to fate and luck as it affects our own moral or ethical lives.
which connects to a topic that bernard williams wrote about, which is moral luck. certain images of what it is to be human seem to make all our moral choices immune to any particular circumstance of fortune. but really, imagine these two cases: you drive your car home a little drunk and nothing happens. nobody stops you, you are safe and sound. in the second scenario, you are just as drunk, but someone pulls up in front of the car. you take them down and kill them tragically. luck entered there, but in the second case we, perhaps irrationally, say that you have done something worse: you have killed someone while driving drunk. but whether or not you killed them is ultimately not up to you, it just came out someone you didn’t see. there is a lot of luck involved as to whether you are in that circumstance or not, and that determines your entire destiny as a human being.
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exactly. a common sense view is that you are only responsible for what you control. An absolutely vital vein of Williams’s book is to say that the Greeks did not have that point of view and that, in fact, the Greeks are more precise about it. there is a kind of dishonesty built into our moral system now, which seeps into the problem of free will. we try to evade or cover up this disturbing truth about the human situation as it relates to agency and morality.
and the truth is?
The really worrying truth is that, on the one hand, we are free and responsible, and it is an evasion to try to deny it. we ourselves are aware of this and, for all the reasons we have already discussed, we have the relevant skills necessary to see ourselves in these terms. on the other hand, it is also dishonest to suggest that the exercise and functioning of those capacities that make us free and responsible leave us somehow immune to fate and chance. Almost all the other authors I have mentioned so far are, in various ways, coy about this and want to be more optimistic. This is what Williams rejects. he uses the Greeks and a genealogical or historical self-understanding to argue this point. It is really a very powerful book. At first glance, these are problems related to free will, but it deeply affects our ethical self-image and our existential situation.
so the essence of your argument or exploration is that we could learn from the ancient greeks and perhaps recalibrate our sense of what it is to be human and free and construct in a greater sense the way fate or things are out of our control they affect who we are.
yes. my own inclination is to use the word ‘fate’ but you might have baggage that you want to avoid, so you might say our vulnerability to contingencies not of our own making in the exercise and practice of our own ethical lives. we can’t escape this. the Greeks spoke in the language of the gods, we could speak of something like “blind nature” that would lead us to certain predicaments where the consequences of what we do could be catastrophic. but we can’t evade responsibility in these circumstances by saying “oh, that was just bad luck or fate!”
because those same circumstances determine what we are. we cannot say, “what a bad thing that happened to me!” It’s part of who I am, what happened to me.
the story of oedipus is, for williams, very powerful. From the point of view of Western aspirations to be free agents, Oedipus could simply say, “Well, I don’t have any real moral problems here. It seems that I murdered my father and married my mother, but since the gods have arranged all this, I can wash my hands, I am not really responsible. but it’s not like that. even now we recognize that this is not true about our situation because otherwise the oedipus tragedy would not speak to us, and clearly it does.
Does that connect back to this notion of reactive emotions? Is that a reactive emotion to the oedipus circumstances themselves?
I think so. Williams spends a lot of time talking about this situation and other examples from ancient literature, where agents can’t live with themselves. even though, in a sense, they have been caught up in fate or bad luck, nevertheless, they have performed acts that they cannot live with. This may include things they did not intend or did voluntarily, which is an issue Williams draws our attention to.
It seems to me that some of the things you talk about resonate with themes from the thomas hardy novels. the persistence of the unforeseen in how events unfold and the configuration of lives beyond the control of the participants.
This is, without a doubt, where philosophy meets temperament. these are not just theoretical problems, they resonate with our own metaphysical attitudes, our hopes, fears, etc. I find hardy very powerful in these aspects. I was quite interested in these old paradigms, like being stuck in a bad fate, in circumstances where you have a cloud of doom hanging over you. but you are not like a leaf that is blown by the wind, because a crucial aspect of your destiny is the way it functions in the exercise of your own will and character. that is what makes our destiny and our human situation ethically interesting and powerful.
Let’s move from the ancient Greeks to a more recent phenomenon, the effects of neuroscience on understanding choice. Some people have suggested that various neuroscientific experiments undermine this notion that we have free will. they are providing empirical evidence that free will is actually an illusion. something as simple as moving my hand, the neurophysiological impulse that causes that movement occurs before I have the intention of moving it, even if it feels backwards. that’s what benjamin libet claims, and it’s a pretty radical claim. There may be flaws in the experiment, but a lot of neuroscience is piling up to suggest that the picture of ourselves sitting in the driver’s seat may be wrong.
In the fifth book I’ve selected, Waller Versus Moral Responsibility, one of the sources he draws on to support his skepticism about moral responsibility is data from neuroscience. this reflects a broader trend in philosophy to become better informed and more deeply integrated with advances in empirical science and to use these resources to help us understand philosophical problems. To some extent, this approach runs in the opposite direction of Williams, who employs a more humanistic understanding of philosophy, informed by history and literature. however, neuroscience is very influential in the philosophy of free will at the moment, as are certain types of psychological experiments that aim to discredit our confidence that we are agents who make conscious decisions and are in control of ourselves. The essence of Waller’s book is that we are not really responsible at all, because the kind of control that we consider essential to responsibility is illusory. his main argument in support of this conclusion is that we are vulnerable to luck, but another layer of his skepticism is based on data from neuroscience and, as you say, libet is really the main figure here. while we may conceive of ourselves as conscious decision-makers, the empirical data libet has provided purports to show that it is not the conscious self that decides, but prior events in the brain. it can be shown experimentally that the brain has already decided how we will act several hundred milliseconds before we are aware of making a conscious choice. this supports an apparently skeptical position about the role of conscious choice, on which responsibility seems to rest, since how we will act is already established before conscious choice itself occurs. the conscious agent, it seems, is not really in charge of the behavior. A related but distinct strategy that we should mention here is what is called the “situationist objection.” this is based not so much on neuroscience as on advances in social psychology. here again are some apparently embarrassing experiments. for example, in one, a coin is left in a phone booth and some people stay behind to find it. shortly after this, a person drops a book in front of them. Will they come to help pick up the book or not? experimental data suggests that people who just found a coin in the phone booth are much more likely to help than those who didn’t. The conclusion drawn from this is that what we do does not depend so much on our particular character -if we are friendly, helpful, etc.- but on the particular situation or circumstances in which we find ourselves. irrelevant background conditions, like finding a coin, can greatly influence what we actually do. what matters for behavior is primarily a function of the details of our situation and not of our character.
There’s another great example like that, that people are more generous outside a store that smells of freshly baked bread than outside a hardware store. his entire moral stance in terms of generosity has been transformed by a pleasant smell.
Exactly, and I suppose you could put people in a bad mood by smelling unpleasant and then they will behave in less pleasant ways due to factors they may not even be aware of. Again, the bottom line here is that we lack the kind of control that we generally think is necessary for moral responsibility. One answer to this, which Waller does not endorse, but which philosophers like John Doris do suggest, is that, for purposes of responsibility, we should try to control our situation. For example, if I know that when I go to parties I drink too much, and when I drink too much I behave in a way that I later regret, I should avoid going to parties where there is a lot of drinking. this is a better strategy than trying to abstain or limit how much I drink at the party. In general, if I am more aware of these situational factors, I will have better control of my behavior.
Just to clarify Bruce Waller’s book, are you arguing that we bear, despite appearances, no moral responsibility for the decisions we make?
correct. he admits that there are several weak or flimsy versions of moral responsibility that compatibilists can propose. they want to lower the bar, accommodate their naturalism by making responsibility less robust or less demanding. this is just kind of a verbal trick as waller sees it. what is in question is the genuine article of real and robust moral responsibility. this implies a commitment to moral merit, which underpins our retributive attitudes and practices, particularly punishment. according to waller, the crucial question is can we claim this stronger understanding of moral responsibility?
another aspect of waller’s book, and one of his main concerns, is that he thinks there is a view that this kind of skepticism implies a kind of pessimism that assumes that it would be terrible if we weren’t really, really responsible. Contrary to this view, Waller argues that, instead, these delusional beliefs about solid moral responsibility impel us into all manner of rather unpleasant and unnecessary social practices, almost all of which we are better off without. these views also encourage us to remain ignorant of the relevant causes that make people commit crimes. Instead of investigating and identifying these causes, the liability system simply punishes people or pretends to cause them pain, which does not solve anything. Skepticism offers us a way out of this mess, as Waller sees it. abandoning the liability system is a basis for optimism, not pessimism.
but if we don’t have moral responsibility, doesn’t that lead us to do what we want? because many people feel that the notion of moral responsibility carries limits on behavior. that’s the goal, in a way.
You have to believe, from this point of view, there is some sense in which we can live without the reactive attitudes we are considering. a direct question is, “is this even psychologically intelligible?” One way to appreciate the difficulties here, by analogy, is to imagine someone suggesting that “being afraid is an unpleasant state of mind, you’re much better off.” be purely rational when assessing a threat or harm and not allow yourself to get angry about it.” we must stop feeling afraid or being afraid. You can imagine, for example, that a soldier in a threatening situation might try this exercise. At least one problem we run into here is that it’s extremely implausible to suggest that people can simply walk away from responses of this sort, even when they have practical reasons to do so. the same seems to be true of our reactive attitudes. Suppose someone deliberately harmed her child in a very cruel way. Would you be able to live your skepticism? Waller says it’s an ideal we can aspire to, but I’m psychologically skeptical about it. and even if it were psychologically possible, there is the further question of whether or not it would be desirable, for precisely the reasons you are suggesting. there can be significant costs in terms of the kind of pressures we put on each other to behave in ethically desirable ways. However, in Waller’s view, these are costs that we must be willing to pay as our reactive attitudes and practices are unjust and unjust, regardless of the social benefits we may derive from them.
Let’s take a real example. ludwig wittgenstein when he was briefly a school teacher, and he wasn’t a very good school teacher, he hit a boy so hard his ear bled. he later he came to seriously regret it. he blamed himself and was very hard on himself morally. Is waller saying that wittgenstein blaming himself for his earlier action is absurd?
The strategy proposed here is not that we don’t care what we do or how we act. clearly, if a wild animal walked into a room and hurt a child, that would be terrible. what we do in cases like this is find out why this happened and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. we could do the same with crime or any other kind of unpleasant and unpleasant action. the correct approach, from this point of view, is to see misbehavior as a natural event and correct it, rather than simply hitting back. This is true even in first-person cases, such as the one you’ve described involving Wittgenstein. Suppose Wittgenstein reflects on his own character and conduct in this situation. According to Waller’s skeptical view, it makes no sense to say “My God, I really deserve to suffer and feel horrible guilt for this behavior.” some sort of explanation for his short temper and violent treatment of the boy. what is crucial is that the agent involved knows why he acted this way and changes accordingly. all of this is consistent with having standards that say ‘this is undesirable behavior, this is wrong’, but being wrong and being morally responsible are two different things. we want to prevent bad behavior in the same way that we want to prevent all sorts of other nasty things from happening: illnesses, hurricanes, fires. ethical behavior that does not meet our standards is not something to which we should emotionally respond in a retributive way. we must try to understand its roots, its causes and try to improve things in the future.
I recently heard a radio show about a shark expert. as part of his work he took sharks out of the sea and marked them. he took out this big shark and bit off a piece of his leg. He said, ‘I don’t blame the shark, that’s what sharks do,’ but if that had been a human being, who had attacked his leg with a machete, I don’t think he would have felt the same. he wouldn’t have let it go saying it was nothing. Isn’t there a danger in this kind of point of view, that you rationalize all the worst behavior? you find a causal explanation and there is no room left to judge people and then anything goes.
It can be argued that this is a vulnerability to the skeptical position, although, as I have explained, Waller wants to resist this objection. however, we need to be able to distinguish between our relationships and responses to sharks and people, since people possess skills and abilities that sharks lack. obviously, for example, the shark does not have any reactive attitudes of the kind that people are prone to, much less any ability to see themselves in relation to relevant kinds of moral expectations or any ethical self-understanding. compatibilistic considerations in this regard certainly help explain why we don’t respond to sharks and people in the same way. I have a small puppy at the moment. sometimes I have strong reactive attitudes towards him, like “that damn dog ate my book!” I know this is unreasonable, but sometimes it’s hard to switch off. sometimes we have unreasonable reactive attitudes. what seems extreme about the radical skeptical view is that it claims to extend this reasoning to all cases, including all human actions and agents. in my opinion, there is a kind of dishonesty or bad faith involved in this perspective because it involves ignoring very relevant and important distinctions between people and animals, or even adults and children, and why it is important and necessary to respond differently to them. In those cases where the people you are dealing with understand ethical responses and their basis in moral concerns and norms, our emotional responses not only seem appropriate, but are essential in demonstrating that we take morality seriously and will appreciate it. we give the appropriate value and emphasis. in our practical life. the skeptic thinks we can get by without these answers, and that we’re even better off without them, but this doesn’t convince me.
It’s also almost impossible to do on a human level, to think of yourself as part of the causal order with no room for choice, and that every time you think you’re making a decision, you’re actually informing a choice that your brain has already made. done and has committed you to action. I really have a hard time seeing my own behavior in those terms. there are elements of that behavior, I can believe that when I’m driving a car, I start to turn left and then I think I’m going to turn left. I can believe that, because it is a semi-automatic behavior. but there are other things that feel like I’m doing them, rather than just happening…
One interpretation of the neuroscience data is that our experience of conscious choice is just an epiphenomenon, with no real causal pull on the world. Regardless of what is going on in our conscious states, the real causal forces at work are brain states that we are not even aware of. I must confess that these findings and interpretations do not excite me as much as many of my colleagues. however, these findings raise some really interesting and important questions about the nature of deliberation and choice. how we understand all this in relation to the data about what happens in the brain when these activities are carried out is scientifically and philosophically very interesting and challenging. Having said this, all too often scientists, and those who follow them closely, draw sound philosophical conclusions, with great confidence, to which they are not obviously entitled. the extreme skeptical conclusion, for example, which is now quite fashionable, strikes me as naive because it usually revolves around a particular model of what freedom and responsibility are supposed to entail, namely, a creepy metaphysical self that is taking conscious decisions and in doing so interrupts the course of nature. it may well be that the data provided discredits or discredits problematic models of this kind. however, for more sophisticated compatibilistic and, in particular, naturalistic models, it is not clear to me that these data are so problematic. for example, it will not surprise compatibilists, who are committed to naturalism, that our choices and actions have causal antecedents in physical processes that can be traced back to those choices and actions. that’s something compatibilists since hobbes, if not before him, have long been committed to and acknowledged.
I think there is a tendency, in the current spirit of our times, to think that science will provide us with a fundamental “epiphany moment”, that will suddenly clear the air and reveal our illusions on this subject. maybe people are looking for this because they find it both exciting and decisive: ‘here is an experiment that shows, proves, that there is no free will and that we are not responsible after all!’, in my opinion, this is too much. fast because it usually revolves around rather superficial and implausible conceptions of what we are really committed to regarding these matters. Waller’s response to these concerns is not without its own set of distinctions. he is careful to emphasize, for example, that we can have natural forms of freedom, while he insists that these do not serve to ground or justify what he takes to be the system of responsibility. even taking these qualifications into account, he remains skeptical about our existing commitments and practices. in regard to these he means, ‘of course there are many things which we once believed have turned out, on examination, to be wholly illusory and erroneous. we used to believe in ghosts, that the sun revolved around the earth, etc. this is just part of the process of scientific advancement.” In the same way, Waller suggests, our thinking and our attitudes regarding moral responsibility also need a Copernican revolution.
is it fair to say, then, that you’re much more in the bernard williams camp? that we need to understand free will historically, and what can we learn from the ancient Greeks about what are the options and where is our destiny?
generally speaking, that’s my opinion, maybe old fashioned. Williams is, of course, a very influential figure, but he does not represent the main trajectory of contemporary philosophy, which is now largely focused on the interpretation of science-based findings. Generally speaking, Williams is skeptical of the mainstream effort to make philosophy a handmaiden of science, except in those specific areas that require it. The general view that I find most plausible and truthful about our human situation is that, contrary to the skeptical view that we have just considered, we can defend a solid understanding of both freedom and responsibility, which can be provided in wholly naturalistic terms. However, what is interesting about the kind of vision that Williams describes, which goes back to the ancient Greeks, is that this does not serve to claim easy optimism about the human condition. on the contrary, understanding our situation in these terms grounds a pessimism that is rooted, not in the skeptical thought that we are not really free and responsible, but in a more difficult and subtle truth about our situation, which is that while we can Although we are free and responsible agents, we remain vulnerable to luck, contingency, and aspects of fate in the exercise of the moral life itself. it is our awareness of this that makes us uncomfortable and we tend to resist. Most theories available in the free will debate seek, in various ways, to evade this pessimistic conclusion. although this understanding of our situation as human agents may not be one that is comfortable for us, it is nonetheless the most truthful interpretation.
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