Freedom, Determinism and Responsibility

1. Determinism
i. Initial conditions IC at play even before one's birth
ii. Laws DL which, given IC, always determine the same outcome
Example: law of falling body vs. probabilistic law.
NOTES:
(ii) says that events depend on and are determined by previous IC and  DL, not the converse, i.e. that if IC and/or DL had been different, the outcome would have been different.
Don't confuse Determinism with Fatalism
Although the laws of General Relativity are deterministic, those of quantum physics aren't.

2. Importance of issue of free will for ethics: praise and blame involve  responsibility, which involves free will.
Example: punishment as retribution presupposes responsibility, and hence free will.

3. Hard Determinism

  1.  Determinism true
  2.  Free will entails the ability to do otherwise
  3.  Ability to do otherwise incompatible with determinism.
  4.  Hence, determinism and free will incompatible.
  5.  Hence, no free will.

  6. NOTE: Lack of free will seems to lead to the denial of moral responsibility.  Hence, no retribution.  Incapacitation, deterrence and amelioration are the only components of punishment left.
4. Compatibilism (Soft Determinism)
There are two versions, a weak version and a strong version.

A. Weak version:  Free will and determinism are merely compatible

  1. determinism is true
  2. free will is acting as one wants

  3. NOTE: hence, real issue is not whether actions are caused, but whether they are caused by the agent's choice or by external causes.
  4. hence determinism and free will compatible.
  5. Objection: but if choice determined, then no free will.  Choice must be such that it could have been otherwise.
B. Strong Version: Responsibility presupposes determinism.
  1. if determinism false, then action not caused by one's choice, i.e. the result of the process of deliberation.
  2. hence, action uncaused, and consequently random.
  3. I'm not responsible for a random action (e.g., arm's jerk due to link with a geiger counter).
  4. hence, responsibility presupposes determinism.

  5. Objection to (1):
    determined deliberation is illusory.  It may have the phenomenology of deliberation, but it is not deliberation.
    Hence, if determinism, then no choice.
    Objection to transition from (1) to (2):
    it's true that if action uncaused, then random, and then lack of responsibility.  However, action not caused by choice may be caused by the agent, the substance which constitutes the person.
    NOTE.: link to substantial view of personal identity.
5. Libertarianism (Free Willism)

A. Attack on compatibilism and hard determinism:

  1.  free will involves being able to do otherwise
  2.  being able to do otherwise incompatible with determinism
  3.  hence determinism and free will incompatible
  4.  but we have free will because of evidence from introspection and our capacity to choose in cases of indifference of equilibrium
  5.  hence, determinism is false.
Objection to (1):
"could have done otherwise" irrelevant because of cases of over determination.   For example, I want an apple and so pick one; however I also have an implant that makes me want apples when I want fruit.  My wish did not come from the implant but from my substance (libertarian) or mental states (compatibilist). Hence, I picked the apple freely.  However, I could not have done otherwise because of the implant.
See also Dennett below.

Objection to (2):
Two senses of "could" in "could have done otherwise":

  1. "could" refers to a causal impossibility, e.g. the outcome being different even if all antecedent conditions be identical.  This sense incompatible with determinism.
  2. "could" refers to a causal possibility.  In this sense, "I could have done otherwise" must be understood as elliptic for "I would   have done otherwise if I had so chosen." This sense compatible with determinism.
Incompatibilism confuses (1) with (2) by taking (1) as the relevant sense of "could".
Reply: sense (2) irrelevant because if determinism true, then I could not have willed differently.

B. Positive account of libertarianism:
First Argument

  1. people are morally responsible for what they do
  2. if determinism, then no free will, and hence no responsibility.
  3. if indeterminism, then no responsibility.
  4. but either determinism, or indeterminism, or agent causation is true
  5. hence, agent causation is true

  6. NOTE: agent causation is neither determinism, because action caused not by previous mental events, but by the substance constituting the person, nor indeterminism because action is not random (uncaused), but caused by substance.
    Problem: If substance caused to cause action, then determinism; if substance   uncaused cause, then indeterminism and/or unintelligible.
    Reply: desires, fears, hopes, deliberations, etc. reasons but not causes (analogy of the absolute ruler who can always disregard the advice and influence of his ministers).
Second Argument
introspection shows that my choices, when taken after proper deliberation, are neither caused by my previous mental states, nor random.
Problem: little evidence that introspection is always reliable, as cases of hypnotism show.

Third Argument

  1. We have a capacity to choose in cases of indifference of equilibrium.
  2. But if determinism were true, then such choices would be impossible
  3. Our choices are not random
  4. Hence, agent causation is true

  5. Problems:
6. Incoherence view:
The notion of free will is incoherent, because it involves both determinism and the lack of it.


Chisholm: Human Freedom and the Self

A) The metaphysical problem of human freedom is that it seems incompatible both with event-determinism and geiger-counter indeterminism because free will involves the capacity to do otherwise (COD).

B) Compatibilists attempt  the following reduction:

“he could have done otherwise” (P) is elliptical for “he would have done otherwise if he had so chosen.” (Q)

Problems:

C) There are two types of causation:
  1. Transeunt causation, i.e. event causation, in which events cause events
  2. Immanent causation , i.e. agent  causation, in which agents cause events
Agents cause immanently brain events which cause other body events by transeunt causation.
Hence, their actions are not brought about by change in the agent (an  event), but by the unchanged agent.  So, agents are, in theological jargon, unmoved movers.
 

D) A taxonomy of action:


Dennett: I could not have done otherwise: so what?

Three types of "could have done otherwise" CDO:
 i.  metaphysical (useless and unknowable)
 ii.  local fatality (a misnomer), e.g., he couldn't have done otherwise because he was locked in the room (useful and knowable)
 iii. character improvement, e.g., he misbehaved, and what's bad is that he could have done otherwise (useful and knowable)

Libertarians invoke CDO (metaphysical version) in context of responsibility, but without good reasons because:

1. The way we consider issues of responsibility in everyday life makes no appeal to CDO (metaphysical). The only form of CDO relevant to moral responsibility arises in the context of “local  fatalism”, as when we say: ”He could not have done otherwise no matter what he had tried or wanted to do because he was in chains."  But local fatalism is neutral with respect to determinism or lack of it (we don't ask physicists or neuroscientists to determine whether someone is morally responsible)
NOTE: This is the standard compatibilist position.
Objection: if determinism, then no chance or opportunity of doing otherwise.
Reply: Not so.  Chances of winning or losing at lottery are the same whether the extraction takes place before or after the sale of tickets.
Duplication:  Hard to see the relevance of the reply; determinism deprives me of CDO not because the cause is before the effect (retrocausation, if possible, would do the same), but because the cause is taken to be complete, i.e. sufficient to bring about the effect.

2. “Here I stand; I can do no other;”  “I could not possibly torture an innocent person for fun”
These are avowals, not disavowals, of responsibility; they indicate that given the person I am (my character), I couldn't do otherwise.
Objection: then you're like a zombie; people can act out of character, as it were.
Reply: Not so; I can see both sides, but the reasons for the course of action I choose are overwhelming. Flexibility requires only that I recognize that in different circumstances I could act otherwise (e.g. torture to save the world).
NOTE: here Dennett close to Hume: responsibility requires determinism

3. If metaphysical CDO were relevant to moral responsibility, we couldn't know whether I'm responsible or not because of ignorance  of whether my actions are macroscopic effects of quantum-level indeterminacy or determined effects because quantum indeterminacies cancel each other out.

4. The significance of knowing CDO (metaphysical) about a subject would be nil because:

5. Aside from cases of local fatalism (useful) and metaphysics (useless), what do we mean when we ask whether X could have done otherwise?  The example of the deterministic robot which destroys another shows that we ask whether there is a design flaw which should be corrected. Similarly, for people we ask whether there is a character flaw which should be  corrected.