Ontology

Ontology is a sub-branch of metaphysics that deals with what kinds of things exist. At first pass, it might seem like scientists would be better authorities to consult than philosophers on what exists, but that would be to misunderstand the project of metaphysicians.  Unlike science, which refers to specific classes of physical objects (e.g. electrons, hydrogen, enzymes), metaphysics refers to the most general or abstract categories of things that exist: substances, properties, and kinds.*

To paraphrase the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, metaphysics deals with how things, in the broadest possible sense of the word ‘things’, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of ‘hang together’. Metaphysicians who specialize in ontology, work on determining what the things. Put more simply, they ask 'what kinds of things are there?' Taking a step back from level of analysis provided by physics, metaphysicians try to determine specifically what (if any) kinds of substances, properties, and kinds exist. To make things more concrete, let’s look closely at these concepts and see how views about them lead to interesting philosophical conclusions.

Substances

Substances are understood as the entities in which properties inhere. While controversial, there are those who believe there are two types of substances: physical and mental. Mental substances would include things like immaterial human minds and God. Physical substances would include all of the objects of scientific study (e.g. tables, bears, helium, etc.), as well as all of the other physical objects we encounter in everyday life (e.g. tables, chairs, Ipads). The view which states there are two types of substance is called substance dualism. An alternative view would be that there is only type of substance (substance monism). On physicalism, the view which states the one type of substance is physical, minds are considered to have a physical basis in the brain, and the existence of other kinds of immaterial substances, like God, are denied. 

Properties

Properties are understood as the entities that inhere in things (e.g. redness, circularity, positive charge). So, all of the red objects are thought to share the property of ‘redness’ in common, all of the circular objects have the property of ‘circularity’ in common, and so on. Just like for substances, there are property dualists who think there are two types of properties (i.e. mental and physical properties). Property dualists argue that mental properties cannot be fully explained by the physical properties of the brain. Mental properties are sometimes characterized as (strongly) emergent properties of the brain. Mental properties are thought to be dependent upon the brain, but something over and above brain processes. If we were to know everything about how the brain works, property dualists think there would still be the question of ‘why is conscious experience paired with brain activity of a certain kind?’ This is known as the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1996). Physicalists see consciousness and other mental properties to be analogous to other biological properties, like digestion or photosynthesis. Photosynthesis may be an emergent phenomenon of biochemistry, but it is nothing over and above its underlying chemical properties. There are some physicalists who simply deny that there is hard problem. If one accepts that minds are identical to brains (c.f. mind-brain identity theory), then the question ‘why is A paired with B’ turns into the incoherent question of ‘why is A paired with itself?’

Kinds

Kinds are groupings of objects (or substances) that share essential properties. For instance, gold is a chemical kind. All instances of gold will share certain chemical properties that are not shared by other chemical kinds (e.g. silver, potassium). Most of the kinds discussed by scientists are considered to be natural kinds, in that, the categories are taken to be individuated on an objective basis. It was not up to the scientists whether or not the whale was a mammal, the whale simply is a mammal, regardless of what humans believe. To better understand what a natural kind is, let’s contrast them with a clear case of an artificial kind: ‘pets’. The kind ‘pets’ include cats, dogs, parrots, and any of the other animals humans have adopted for companionship. Human interests determine which animals get selected as pets and which do not, and those interests vary depending on time and place. While there is some usefulness, for us, in using the category of ‘pets’, there is no property or cluster of properties that all of the pet animals have in common (other than certain groups of humans liking them). Thus, the kind ‘pets’ is not a natural kind.

There are also instances of categories in science where it looks as if scientists have to rely upon rather arbitrary categorization methods. In the case of counting the number of planets in our solar system, it used to be that there were 9, but after the discovery of additional Pluto-sized objects, Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet. Instead, scientists could have kept Pluto as a planet but just increase the number of planets from 9 to 13. 

To move to a particularly controversial example, take ‘race’. Should ‘race’ be considered a natural kind, or a category more like ‘planets’ or even ‘pets’? One consideration is that we know that humans are grouped differently around the world. The way we individuate races in the United States is different from how they distinguish races in other countries (e.g. Brazil). In the US, there are, roughly, five races (Black, white, American Indian/Alaskan native, Asian, and mixed). In Brazil, there are nine (see below). Anthropologists, who are the experts on human biodiversity, widely disagree about how to group humans, and come to widely different answers depending on their criteria of race individuation. Should we conclude that any single one of these groupings of humans is objectively correct? Or is it more plausible to assume that human interests primarily shape how we categorize human beings.

Real world applicability

While scientists are typically unaware of philosophical jargon, they draw conclusions and make statements that can be accurately characterized as rejecting or accepting controversial categories, like race, as instances of natural kinds. You also see among laypeople that certain assumptions are made about controversial categories. For example, take the kind ‘gender’. A widespread view is that ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are closely connected and that both are grounded in biology. One interpretation of the "common sense" view is that ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are natural kinds in biology. An alternative view, held by both scientists and laypeople alike, is that ‘sex’ is a natural kind whereas ‘gender’ is an artificial social kind, one that varies according to human interests relative to time and place. Many proponents of this alternative view consider gender to be, what's referred to as, a social construction. 

People have pretty strong views about race and gender, views which are amenable to philosophical analysis. There are also those who are skeptical about the prospects of ever settling these areas of controversy. But if there is a fact of the matter with respect to the ontological status of these categories, one is going to have to do the philosophical work to sort out the answers. Empirical evidence alone will not tell you what ‘race’ or ‘gender’ is. After all, there are experts who are aware of all of the relevant evidence but yet disagree about the more philosophical issues. Even if a consensus among scientists were to form, one may still reasonably ask whether or not the scientists drew the right conclusions.

*Metaphysicians disagree about just about everything. My breakdown of the world's ontology is hardly original, and is just one way to do it among many. 

Works cited

Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press.

Part IV: Threats to free will from social psychology

Why do some people perform acts of evil? A standard answer is that there exists a subset of people that are just evil by nature. Having an evil nature could be the result of bad genes or a series of bad life experiences and decisions that led to the person having a morally defective character. There are just some bad apples out there that are rotten to the core. Many social psychologists argue that this picture of human psychology is wrong. Instead of thinking of people in terms of good and bad apples, psychologist Philip Zimbardo (2004) argues that people should be thought of as cucumbers. While cucumbers may have different qualities (e.g. genes, shape, size, color), they are all capable of being turned into sour pickles. But cucumbers will not just become pickles on their own. They need to be stored in vinegar for some time. To understand why some people perform acts of evil, we have to look at all of their exposures to vinegar. To extend Zimbardo’s metaphor in the other direction, in order to understand why some people perform acts of good, we have to look at all of their exposures to sugar. If the cucumber metaphor is right, we might not have free will. (At least not as much as we think we do.) In this post, I will argue that while I think cucumbers are a much better metaphor than apples, it would be a mistake to think that the metaphor captures everything about human behavior or that it poses a significant threat to free will.

Both psychologists and philosophers make a distinction between internal and external causes of behavior (see chart below). Examples of internal causes would be character traits, psychological states (e.g. addiction, strong desires), genetics, the brain (e.g. reflexes, automatic processes), and free will. Examples of external causes would be environmental factors (e.g. lead), third party sources (e.g. bribery, coercion and brainwashing), socioeconomic conditions, and 

situational factors. 

Social psychologists believe that role of situational factors are often underestimated in our explanations of human behavior. Some go as far as suggesting that situational factors are the sole drivers of our behavior, and others who argue that our moral character are weak drivers of behavior, easily overpowered by factors beyond our control (Doris 2002). There are even those who suggest that moral character traits (e.g. benevolence, malevolence) may not exist (Harman 1999). I will now give a brief summary of the social psychology literature on situational factors (c.f. Doris 2002, Zimbardo, 2004; 2007, and SEP for thorough reviews). 

It has been found that psychologically normal people are significantly less likely to engage in helping behaviors if they are in a hurry, surrounded by others (look up "the bystander effect"), or subjected to loud noises (e.g. a lawnmower). People are significantly more likely to engage in harming behaviors if they are a position of authority (look up "The Stanford prison experiment"), given orders by a person of authority (look up "The Milgram experiment"), or if their identity is concealed in some way (e.g. wearing a mask, cyberbullying). On the flipside, people are more likely to engage in helping behaviors if they themselves had been helped or rewarded beforehand (e.g. finding a coin in a phone booth).

Zimbardo and others suggest that situational factors can explain the occurrence of events such as the Holocaust, 9/11, and the Rwandan genocide. The idea is that many of the perpetrators of such atrocities were mostly psychologically normal people like you or I. The reason why they engaged in such acts is because of various situational factors that you or I were not subjected to. If we had been subjected to the same situational factors, then we would have participated in such atrocities. 

If the social psychologists are largely right about these matters, then both free will and moral responsibility are posed with a genuine threat. If it's situational factors that are determining most of our behavior, and we are not responsible for being subjected to such factors, then we cannot be responsible for most of our behavior. 

In a previous post, I discussed how brain scan studies were misinterpreted to provide grounds for casting doubt upon the existence of free will. I think that the situationist challenge to free will makes the very same mistake as the neuroscientific one. In order for the challenge to be devastating, you would have to assume that the findings in these psychological studies generalize to all of human behavior and to all humans. I see no reason to think that they generalize in this way. The findings are consistent with other, I think, more likely possibilities. For instance, it may be that we a majority of people are moral sheep, but that some of us are not really affected by situational factors. Another possibility is that situational factors really do affect us all in the ways social psychologists say they do, but that we are not subjected to them on a regular basis. The idea is that our conscious will regularly drives our behavior but that in certain situations, our agency diminishes. I think that social psychologists have identified a possible threat to free will, but that there is, at the moment, insufficient evidence to say that it is a genuine threat. 

Works cited

Doris, J. M. (2002). Lack of character: Personality and moral behavior. Cambridge University Press.

Harman, G. (1999, January). Moral philosophy meets social psychology: Virtue ethics and the fundamental attribution error. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian society (pp. 315-331). Aristotelian Society.

Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. The social psychology of good and evil.

Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). Lucifer Effect. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

*This post is part of a series on free will. 

Where did everything come from?

If the universe had a beginning, it was either created ex nihilo (i.e. out of nothing) or it was created out of something. But a creation out of something just pushes the origins question a step back further, for we now need to know where that something came from. Hence, to say that the universe came from something does not give a satisfactory answer the origins question. Either that something was created or it has always existed. On the assumption that the universe was created, there are two possibilities: either the universe was created by a supernatural being (e.g. God), or it was created by natural forces. 

There are then exactly three possibilities when it comes to the creation of the world. It was either created by natural forces out of nothing, created by supernatural forces out of nothing (e.g. God), or it has just always existed and there was no such creation event. In this post, I will make two contentions. First, I will argue that while all of these possibilities are deeply counterintuitive, the eternal universe hypothesis is the most satisfying option. Second,  I will argue that creation ex nihilo by God is not any more plausible that a naturalistic creation ex nihilo. 

Why creation out of something inevitably leads to an eternal universe

In his book "A universe from nothing', theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss claims to show how the universe came from nothing, but he doesn't really manage to show this (Krauss 2012). He cheats by stipulating that 'nothing' refers to the quantum vacuum state that is found in "empty" space. Such states are teemed with energy in the form of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence. In this universe, empty space turns out contain something. However, the question that philosophers and theologians have asked for millenia has been 'why is there anything at all?' Thus, Krauss employs the old bait and switch by answering a different question altogether. 

Before our universe existed, it is assumed that there was something (i.e. quantum vacuum states) that already existed. From the brewing of quantum energy comes the big bang, the evolution of matter (i.e. fermions and bosons), and eventually complex life. But what created the quantum energy? Or the laws of nature that govern the behavior and interactions of such energy? To say that energy had a beginning would be to push the question back one step further, as we now need a creation story for energy. Why would Krauss go through the trouble of explaining how the universe was created out of something when he still has to explain the origins of that something? One way out of this problem would be to say that quantum energy has just always existed, and that there never was a state of absolute nothing. If the quantum energy has always been there, then we now have an eternal universe model. If the energy was not always there, then physicists have some more explaining to do. 

Naturalistic creation ex nihilo

Naturalistic ex nihilo means that the universe came into existence out of nothing without any cause. Here I use "nothing" in its strongest sense; the absence of anything. To illustrate ex nihilo creation with a culinary metaphor, there were no ingredients in the recipe for creating the universe. That is to say, there wasn't any matter or energy (0r even protomatter and protoenergy) that came together to create the universe. As theist philosopher William Lane Craig sometimes mockingly describes this view, "The universe just pops into existence." This view does seem to be rather implausible. But if a eternal universe model is rejected, one must accept this radical conclusion, regardless of one's views about God. The Universe either popped into existence without a cause or popped into existence with the help of God. Religious believers seem to think that claims of creation ex nihilo can be rendered plausible with the addition of an all powerful timeless agent that exists outside the universe. I will now show why this is not the case.

Divine creation ex nihilo

Before the universe, there was God; an immaterial, timeless agent that is omniscient, omnipotent and, perhaps, omnibenevolent. Additionally, God is a mind, but quite different than the minds familiar to modern science. Not only is the mind of God immaterial--lacking a physical substrate, such as a brain--God also has the capacity for telekinesis. That is to say, God can alter or even create matter and energy by mere thought. In creating the universe, there were certain thoughts in the mind of God that triggered the big bang. One could accurately describe this as magic. The creation event resulted in somethingness (e.g. a primordial cosmic stew of particles) that presumably evolved over time into the present state of the universe. What are we to make of this creation story? 

It may be argued that this account is incomplete. Perhaps God did had some basic "ingredients" to cook up the universe. What kinds of ingredients would they be? There seem to be only two options: physical or nonphysical. If there were physical ingredients (e.g. protomatter and energy) then there existed something before God's telekinetic creation of the universe. But this would mean that he God didn't create the universe ex nihilo. If the ingredients of creation were purely nonphysical (e.g. thoughts), then there are certain thoughts which have the power to create universes, presumably the kinds of thoughts only a God could have. This means that the universe was created by God by thinking it into existence out of nothing. The conclusion is inescapable. Since God is immaterial and nonspatial, there would be no other means for such a creation to take place. Thoughts were the only tools at God's disposal for creating the universe.

The accounts compared

Naturalistic creation ex nihilo amounts to the universe popping into existence out of nothing without a cause. Divine creation ex nihilo amounts to God thinking the universe into existence out of nothing. In order for the latter to be possible, one must accept that minds can just exist on their own (without brains), and further, that certain minds can have the capacity for telekinesis. Lastly, the eternal universe model would entail that there is an infinite number of past events.

Evidence for the big bang is taken to be strong support for a beginning to the universe. While there is a consensus among cosmologists that a big bang occurred (roughly 14 billion years ago), few are in agreement that it was the beginning of everything. There are some physicists that think that the big bang sparked the existence of our own observable universe, but that another universe may have existed before it. For instance, physicists have proposed cyclical universe model where universes, 0ver long stretches of time, decay and collapse into a big bang singularity, giving rise to a new universe. An alternative view would be Andre Lindei's eternal inflation model which involves an infinite number of parallel worlds created from an ever-flowing stream of energy. 

It may be argued that both the cyclical and eternal inflation theories are highly speculative and not supported by rigorous mathematical models. However, as cosmologist Sean Carroll points out, there are eternal universe theories that are supported by rigorous models (e.g. Aguirre and Gratton 2003). That doesn't mean that those models are true, but only, that eternal universe models do not violate known laws of physics. Since cosmology is still a fairly premature science, we expect there to be conclusive answers to these questions, nor should we give much weight to the available evidence.

Comparably, I find the eternal universe account to be the least crazy. First, it is consistent with cosmological evidence, such as the big bang. Second, an infinite number of past events does not appeal to anything unfamiliar or mysterious. It involves just a succession of physical states, extending backwards in time infinitely.

On the other hand, the creation ex nihilo hypotheses involve either a supreme nonphysical agent with psychic powers or a universe just popping into existence without any cause. I think there are good reasons to be skeptical of the God creation story, mainly due to my skepticism about the existence of God, and that the naturalistic creation story is deeply unattractive because there could be no explanation for why the universe popped into existence. The origins of our universe would be just a brute fact. Since it is stipulated that there was no cause, what other kind of story could be told about the origins of the universe? 

An eternal universe entails that something has always existed in one form or another. The existence of matter, as well as the present state of our universe might just be a temporary and rare phenomenon that has fluctuated in and out of existence an infinite number of times. As crazy as that may sound, look at what the only other alternatives are. 

Works cited

Aguirre, A., & Gratton, S. (2003). Inflation without a beginning: a null boundary proposal. Physical Review D, 67(8), 083515.

Krauss, L. M. (2012). A universe from nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing. Simon and Schuster.

Part III: Threats to free will from neuroscience

Compatibilists think that we are morally responsible for our actions even if we inhabit a deterministic universe. They argue that moral responsibility does not require magic powers (i.e. the unconditional ability to do otherwise), but instead, requires that an agent possesses certain psychological capacities C (e.g. rational deliberation, self-control, mental time travel) and that those capacities are not constrained by any excessive internal (e.g. strong addictive desires) or external forces (e.g. being held at gunpoint). If we are to understand ‘free will’ as a placeholder for whatever gives us moral responsibility, compatibilists would argue that the unconstrained exercise of our psychological capacities is an exercise of free will.

On this view, free will is not just an all-or-nothing feature, it also comes in degrees. Worms don’t have free will, children have some, and psychologically normal adult humans have quite a bit of free will, at least some of the time. Very young children (1-2 years old) don't have free will because their psychological capacities aren't sufficiently developed. Psychopathic adults don't have as much free will as normal adults because their psychological capacities are impaired. The extent to which normal adult humans have free will—in this compatibilist sense—is a matter of controversy. There are many scientists who think that recent findings undermine our belief in free will. That is to say, they believe that the real causes of our actions are something other than what we think they are (e.g. unconscious processes, environmental factors, brain chemistry). Before reviewing those findings, it might be useful to consider a range of hypotheses one could formulate regarding the extent to which we have free will:

1) Streams of freedom: C regularly causes our behavior.
2) Flickers of freedom: C rarely causes our behavior.
3) Zero freedom: C never causes our behavior.

I do not take these three hypotheses to be exhaustive, by any means, but only useful in illustrating the debate among philosophers and scientists. I suspect most of the population would endorse something pretty close to 1. Free will skeptics hold that 3 is true and will often cite brain imaging studies for support (e.g. Libet 1983, Soon et al. 2008). These studies are taken to show that unconscious processes—processes for which we are not, and cannot be aware of—drives our behavior. If unconscious processes are the sole causes of our behavior, then our conscious processes don’t cause our actions, even if we may think that they do. I will now briefly summarize the basic methodology of such experiments.

Subjects are hooked up to electrodes are asked to make a simple decision without thinking about their reasons for doing so. For example, deciding between flexing their left or right wrist. The subjects are also told to carefully monitor a fast moving clock to determine when exactly they came to their random decision. Afterwards, the experiments compare the time to which the subjects reported their intention to act, to the electrical activity in their brain.

Across a number of experiments, EEG data show increased brain activity in the motor cortex 300ms before the subjects report their intentions. The brain activity that precedes the conscious decision is taken to demonstrate that the subjects’ decision making is carried out by unconscious or random brain processes, rather than by the subjects themselves. Scientists then make the following inference. These findings generalize to all of our decisions. Thus, these experiments demonstrate that we don’t ever actually have free will.

I believe that the scientists and philosophers who cite these kinds of studies in support of free will skepticism make a hasty generalization. The conclusions of the experimenters may be good explanations for what’s going on in these specific experiments, but how much application do they have in the real world? After all, there is at least some reason to think that a subset of our decisions and actions aren’t based on random or unknown processes for which we are unaware. Surely they sometimes involve conscious reasoning, carefully weighing the pros and cons of a tough decision. For example, whether or not we should have kids, which career to pursue, and which conclusions we ought to draw from neuroscientific studies. Free will skeptics would of course deny these claims, but the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate that their generalizations hold true. 

One might argue that our decision making processes still interact with brain processes for which we are unaware. Surely unconscious processes are going to interact with our conscious ones, but it doesn’t follow that our conscious processes never cause us to do anything. If an unconscious process can cause behavior, why couldn’t a conscious one as well? Many of the claims regarding causation involve implicit assumptions about the nature of causality. Thus, scientists and philosophers are not only making claims about the details of the experiments, they are also making claims about metaphysics. There is much more to say about causation and its relation to mental phenomena, but it would be more suited for a post of its own.

In conclusion, compatibilist free will would be threatened only if the findings in these experiments really did generalize to all of our actions. If our conscious thoughts never gave rise to action, then we would not have free will. At this point, such a conclusion is unwarranted, to say the least. In the next post, I will discuss another possible threat to compatibilist free will. Namely, findings in the field of social psychology that are taken to show that our behavior is determined by situational factors that we are unaware of.

Works cited

Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., & Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). Brain, 106(3), 623-642.

Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H. J., & Haynes, J. D. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature neuroscience, 11(5), 543-545.


*This post is part of a series on free will. 

Part II: What compatibilism ought to look like

In the previous post, I argued that the truth of determinism threatens certain conceptions of free will, but not others. That is to say, if determinism were found to be true, there would be some sense in which we don’t have free will. In this post, I will motivate a compatibilist conception of free will that is not threatened by determinism, and argue that it is a legitimate position to hold in the free will debate.

‘Free will’ and ‘moral responsibility’ are closely related concepts. It is often thought that moral responsibility requires the presence of a certain kind of agency. For example, it is thought that young children and non-human animals lack the kind of agency required for moral responsibility but that normal adult humans possess it under certain conditions. Thus, ‘free will’ can be understood as a placeholder for the kind of agency that is required for moral responsibility. There have been at least four proposed features to take its place.

1)      the ability to do otherwise (Kant)

2)    a power that makes us the ultimate source of actions and decisions (Kane)

3)     the ability to do what you want (Hume, Hobbes)

4)    the exercise of a set of psychological capacities (e.g. conscious decision making and self-control) without any internal or external constraints (Frankfurt, Dennett, Nahmias)

The first two candidates are considered to be incompatibilist, in that we cannot have those abilities or powers if determinism is true. The latter two candidates are compatibilist, in that the truth of determinism does not entail that we lack them.

Compatibilists have been accused of changing the subject. It is argued that 1 & 2 satisfy the conditions for the everyday notion of ‘free will’ that most people share. 3 & 4 do not satisfy those conditions and are thus, are not suitable for filling the ‘free will’ placeholder. Thus, compatibilists are changing the subject and talking about something else.  

It is often thought that folk intuitions should carry some weight in our philosophical theorizing, but many agree that they don’t settle the free will/moral responsibility debate. If most people think of ‘free will’ and ‘moral responsibility’’ in terms of 1 and 2, and do not think 3 and 4 are relevant to these concepts, then compatibilists would be in trouble. However, the empirical findings do not indicate that we’re in such a situation (Nahmias et al. 2006, Knobe and Nichols 2009, Nahmias et al. 2014).

If we continue in treating ‘free will’ as a neutral placeholder then the question shifts from ‘is X in accord with what everyday people think?’ to ‘is X the kind of agency that makes us morally responsible?’ The answer to the first question may constrain our theorizing about ‘free will’, but it is the answer to the second question that will make or break compatibilism.

Figuring out whether we have the kind of agency required for moral responsibility may seem straightforward, but philosophers also disagree as to how to understand ‘moral responsibility’. Understanding these differences will further clarify why many compatibilists get accused of cheating. Moral responsibility is typically characterized in one of two ways:

1)      Consequentialist MR- An agent deserves blame or praise because of consequentialist or contractualist considerations (e.g. to protect society from future harm).

2)    Basic desert MR- An agent deserves blame or praise just because they had performed the action.

In defending compatibilism, one has to state what, exactly, is compatible with determinism. Is it the kind of free will that gives us (1) or the kind that gives us (2)?

With two conceptions of moral responsibility on the table, there are now two kinds of compatibilism one could defend:

C1. Determinism is compatible with consequentialist MR
C2. Determinism is compatible with Basic desert MR

While most philosophers identify as compatibilists, it isn’t clear how many subscribe to C1 or C2. But as Derk Pereboom (2014) points out, C1 is not a philosophically interesting position to hold, as virtually everyone would be a compatibilist under that characterization. If no one disagrees with the thesis, then there isn’t an interesting philosophical debate to be had. The adoption of C1 in response to claims of incompatibilism is a lot like the following scenario.

Imagine the following conversation between two subjects, S1 and S2:

S1: I think Tom and Sarah are incompatible with one another.

S2: I think Tom and Sarah are compatible with one another.

S1: I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.  

Problem: They’re actually talking about two different individuals named ‘Tom’.

Some philosophers seem to be in the same boat as S1 and S2. Here’s an illustration with philosophical content:

Incompatibilist: I think that determinism is incompatible with being morally responsible.

Compatibilist: I think that determinism is compatible with being morally responsible.

Incompatibilist: We have a substantive philosophical disagreement.

Problem: There’s an equivocation over the use of the term ‘moral responsible’. The two speakers mean different things.

Dan Dennett, a prominent compatibilist, seems to defend C1. He argues that holding people responsible can be justified for instrumental reasons. It’s useful to hold people accountable for their actions because it encourages good behavior and discourages bad behavior. Furthermore, Dennett points out that our social practices of blaming and praising others for their actions is one that is good, and possibly necessary for a functional society. But if that’s the only justification for holding someone responsible, then Dennett is clearly not defending C2. Dennett’s case effectively translates to saying that we ought to hold people as if they are responsible in order to achieve good end (AKA, a defense of C1). Following Pereboom, I think the compatibilist needs to defend C2 in order for there to be a substantive philosophical debate. Compatibilists who defend C1 can rightfully be accused of changing the subject, but there are plenty of compatibilists who do defend C2 (e.g. Nahmias). 

If the compatibilist conceptions of free will are enough to give us moral responsibility—in the basic desert sense—then there is no bait and switch, and compatibilism is a legitimate position to hold. In the following post, I will provide a defense of compatibilism against a number of empirically informed objections. It is said that certain findings in neuroscience and social psychology undermine our sense of agency. I will argue that these findings do not convincingly demonstrate that we lack responsibility for all of our actions. 

Works cited

Björnsson, G., & Pereboom, D. (2014). Free will skepticism and bypassing. Moral psychology, 4, 27-35.
       

Murray, D., & Nahmias, E. (2014). Explaining away incompatibilist intuitions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(2), 434-467.

Nahmias, E., Morris, S. G., Nadelhoffer, T., & Turner, J. (2006). Is incompatibilism intuitive?. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 73(1), 28-53.

Nichols, S., & Knobe, J. (2007). Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions. Nous, 41(4), 663-685.

*This post is part of a series on free will. 

Part I: Free will and determinism

Could advanced robots ever make decisions of their own free will? I suspect there will be many skeptical that robots ever could attain such powers. Robots are programmed. Human beings are not. Nonetheless, certain philosophers argue that the actions of human beings, just like robots, are determined or fixed by the laws of nature and distant past events.

Determinism is a metaphysical thesis about how events unfold over time. To put it crudely, things happen because of how things were in the distant past guided by the laws of nature. Imagine a mile long chain of dominoes. Once the first domino collides with and knocks over the second, the chain will continue to move until it knocks over the very last one. The reason why the last domino fell was because of the chain of falling dominos that led up to it. The falling of the dominos was neither random nor inexplicable. Once there was a sufficient amount of motion imparted to the first domino, the remaining were knocked over because of the laws of physics (i.e. gravity). If determinism holds true in our universe, it is thought that the actions of human beings are just like the dominoes; a necessary result of past chains of events and the laws of nature. And if our actions happened necessarily, then we couldn’t have done other that what we in fact did.

A thought experiment, devised by the 19^th century astronomer Pierre Simon-Laplace, further illustrates why determinism raises doubts about our sense of free will. Imagine a demon that knows everything about the initial state of the universe. It knows the location and all of the properties of every particle in the universe. Additionally, the demon knows exactly how all of the laws of nature operate. If determinism were true, the demon would be able to know the outcome of any future event, as every future event would be the eventual unfolding of the initial conditions evolving in accord with the laws of nature.

If our minds are made up of physical stuff (e.g. neurons, biochemical processes in the brain), as most scientists and philosophers now believe, then even our mental states are determined by the laws of nature and past events. If our mental states are determined, then the demon’s knowledge would include every decision that you and I will ever make, and every action that you and I will ever take. The demon could have predicted, say, your choice of career, a billion years ago, and you had no power to change the outcome.

It may still be unclear why the truth of determinism would be such a big deal. Philosophers, such as Peter van Inwagen, forcefully argue that there is a deep incompatibility between determinism and our having free will/moral responsibility. 

“If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequence of laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it's 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.” (Van Inwagen 1983)

We think that we ought to hold people responsible for the actions that they were directly in control of. If none of our actions are not up to us, then how can we be held responsible for any of them? Assuming that determinism is true, one might be tempted to think we are in the same situation as the advanced robot. Instead of being determined by the programming and design of an intentional agent, human action would be determined by brain processes, the environment and situations we find ourselves in, and to some extent, our genes.

Why believe determinism is true? Many go to physicists to seek the answer, but even expert opinions vary. The answer is thought largely to depend on which interpretation of quantum mechanics turns out to be correct. One of the most plausible interpretations, in my view, results in a deterministic universe. With that said, the universe probably is deterministic but, as others have observed, I don’t think living in an indeterministic (or random) universe would suffice for having free will.

Determinism would seem to entail that we don’t have the ability to do otherwise. Our sense of choosing some other path for ourselves would be illusory. Some take the ability to do otherwise to be required for having free will. But many others, myself included, do not. Alternative conceptions of free will (e.g. compatibilist) make it possible to be morally responsible, whether or not determinism turns out to be true. The upshot is that determinism might not be a deal breaker after all. But it ultimately hinges on 1) whether alternative conceptions of free will are legitimate, 2) whether they give us moral responsibility, and 3) the extent to which they are supported by reason and evidence. 

In the next installment, I will give a rough sketch as to what a compatibilist view of free will ought to look like. I will contrast the view I propose with the compatibilist view that Dan Dennett defends, and argue that Dennett’s account amounts to a kind of pseudocompatibilism. 

References

Laplace, P. S. (2012). Pierre-Simon Laplace Philosophical Essay on Probabilities: Translated from the fifth French edition of 1825 With Notes by the Translator (Vol. 13). Springer Science & Business Media.

Van Inwagen, P. (1983). An essay on free will.

Free will and moral responsibility

On Halloween night, a man in a white mask goes door-to-door killing everyone in his sight with a large kitchen knife. He is arrested and brought in to trial. On a scale from 1 to 10 (1=not at all responsible, 5=somewhat responsible, 10=fully responsible), how responsible would you consider the man to be for his actions in light of the three following scenarios:

a)      The man was possessed by evil spirits

b)      The man was psychopathic with a severe self-control deficit

c)      The man planned everything and knew that his actions were immoral

If you think that the man wasn’t responsible in (a), but near fully responsible in (c), on what basis did you come to such judgments? Common sense says that the man who planned everything is responsible because he made the decision to kill all of those people whereas the man under possession did not. We consider ourselves to be responsible for those actions under our control. We do not blame small children or non-human animals for their actions because they are lack certain mental capacities (e.g reflective reasoning) and/or knowledge (e.g. moral norms) that allow for reason-guided action. It seems then that moral responsibility depends on whether or not we can freely act or make decisions, otherwise known as free will.

A view held by many scientists (and some prominent philosophers) rejects this common sense picture. Free will skepticism (FWS) entails that 1) no one has free will and that 2) no one is responsible for anything. If we are not morally responsible for our actions, then the correct answer for (a-c) should be a (1). The man who planned everything and knew his actions were immoral was no more responsible than the man who had all of his actions manipulated by evil spirits. 

FWS has radical implications for our moral, legal, and social practices. Unlike certain abstract philosophical questions (e.g. whether numbers exist), the free will debate is of real world significance. In this post, I will assess the plausibility of free will skepticism and defend compatibilist theories of free will—which I take to preserve many of our moral, legal, social practices—from recent attacks. Before I get into the details, I’d first like to state that the free will debate is deeply interconnected with many other philosophical topics (e.g. the nature of causation, philosophy of action, the mind-body problem, and laws of nature) for which there are no easy or obvious answers. In taking a side in the free will debate, one must tacitly accept views regarding all of these other topics. Likewise, the free will debate itself comprises a number of different questions:

·         What is free will?

·         Is free will compatible with determinism?

·         Is free will required for moral responsibility? 

·         What is moral responsibility? 

·         What follows if we don’t have free will and/or moral responsibility?

Free will can be conceived of in more than one way. There is first, the libertarian conception of free will, which states that free will gives us ultimate control of our actions or the unconditional ability to do otherwise. Possession of libertarian free will entails that if we were to rewind the clock right before the moment of some action (e.g. eat cereal for breakfast)—*fixing all of the past conditions (e.g. mental states, prior events, etc.)*—we would be able to do otherwise (e.g. eat eggs for breakfast). This conception of free will often goes hand in hand with dualism—the view which states that the mind and body are independent—as well as theism (1). Under a theistic reading, free will can be thought of as a god given power, giving humans ultimate responsibility for their actions. Many scientists and philosophers doubt that we have this kind of free will. Without this kind of free will, it is thought that humans are just like billiard balls, with each action the result of a long chain reaction of past events constrained (or determined) by the laws of nature. But there is also the compatibilist conception of free will, an alternative that’s been around since Ancient Greece (2).

Compatibilism states that we can have free will even if the universe, and our actions, are the result of past events and the laws of nature. In a nutshell, compatibilism is the view that we can be morally responsible even if we lack immaterial souls or magical causal powers. Hume thought of free will as the ability to make decisions without any external constraints (e.g. having a gun up to your head) (3). Eddy Nahmias, a contemporary compatibilist, conceives of free will as a set of psychological capacities (4). Such capacities include: self-control, future planning, and rational deliberation. The extent to which an agent has free will depends on whether there are any internal (e.g. mental illness) or external (e.g. gun to head) pressures working against these capacities. On this view, free will is not an all-or-nothing feature, but rather, a matter of degree. 

Many have challenged compatibilist theories on the grounds that their proponents are changing the subject. Free will skeptics claim that most people (i.e. non-philosophers) have the libertarian conception in mind, and that therefore, it is then misleading to say that we have free will, but of a different kind. Sam Harris gives a nice way to illustrate this objection.

“Imagine that we live in a world where more or less everyone believes in the lost kingdom of Atlantis. You and your fellow compatibilists come along and offer comfort: Atlantis is real, you say. It is, in fact, the island of Sicily. You then go on to argue that Sicily answers to most of the claims people through the ages have made about Atlantis. Of course, not every popular notion survives this translation, because some beliefs about Atlantis are quite crazy, but those that really matter—or should matter, on your account—are easily mapped onto what is, in fact, the largest island in the Mediterranean. Your work is done, and now you insist that we spend the rest of our time and energy investigating the wonders of Sicily” (5).

For Harris’s analogy to work, one must assume that everyone more or less believes in the libertarian conception of free will. This is an empirical question, one that, at best, remains unsettled (6). But let’s assume for the sake of argument that most people do have the libertarian conception in mind. Does it follow that we should then conclude that free will does not exist? Another option would be to state that the folk are simply wrong about the nature of free will. We wouldn’t want to say that energy doesn’t exist simply because the folk conception of ‘energy’ is erroneous. What’s relevant is whether the concept maps onto something in the world, not how many people happen to misunderstand it. There are further, pragmatic, reasons for siding with the compatibilists. 

It would be absurd, if not impossible to give up talk of moral responsibility altogether. As human beings, we have emotional reactions to certain kinds of behavior (7). We feel indignation towards those who do us wrong and we feel gratitude towards those who help us. If no one is morally responsible, then no one deserves blame or praise. It would thus be irrational to experience such reactive emotions and we would be rationally compelled to try and eliminate them from the human experience. Unless we come to the point where drugs and genetic modification can rid us of such emotions, I think they are here to stay. 

In summary, there are roughly three positions one may take up in the free will debate. One can be a libertarian, a skeptic, or a compatibilist. I have argued that compatibilism is the most appealing option, on the grounds that it preserves our common sense intuitions about moral responsibility (which may be part of our human nature), but this is far from a knock-down case for the view. There is much more to say about all three of these views. In the future posts, I will dive much deeper into many of the questions raised here. I will focus mainly on the debate between free will skeptics and compatibilists and ultimately argue that compatibilism is the more plausible view to hold. 

Works cited:

(1)   Not all libertarian views are religiously motivated. For example, the philosopher Robert Kane defends a naturalistic theory of libertarian free will. See his 1998 book, “The significance of free will”, for an articulation and defense of his view. 

(2)   Scholars have argued that ancient Stoics, such as Chrysippus, advanced compatibilist theories. Sharples, R. W. (1983). Alexander of Aphrodisias on fate: Text, translation, and commentary. Duckworth.

(3)   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-freewill/

(4)   http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will/?_r=0

(5)   https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-marionettes-lament

(6)   Murray, D., & Nahmias, E. (2014). Explaining away incompatibilist intuitions.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(2), 434-467.

(7)   The philosopher Peter Strawson has written extensively about the relevance of emotions to the free will debate. See his classic text Freedom and resentment (1963).

Further reading:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

Recommended films with connections to the free will debate:

The Adjustment Bureau

Minority Report

A Clockwork Orange