Daylight Atheism > On Free Will II: Overthrowing Dualism

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On Free Will II: Overthrowing Dualism

For most of human history, philosophers have believed that only the possession of an immaterial soul could confer free will on human beings. (There have been exceptions: the ancient Greek Stoics, for example.) This idea has fallen somewhat out of favor, but there are many theists who still hold to it. They are willing to concede that the universe we live in is an interwoven tapestry of cause and effect, but insist that we are special somehow, that we are an exemption.

If free will truly requires a magical power to exempt ourselves from the fabric of causality, the prospects of retaining it in a natural world seem dim indeed. But that consideration aside, this idea must still be considered on its own merits. The first and most important question is, how does this doctrine work? According to dualism, why do we make the decisions we do?

The classic theologian's answer is that the soul in some way inhabits our minds, directing the operation of our bodies. (Descartes, for example, thought that the interface point between soul and body was the pineal gland of the brain.) But on a closer look, this "answer" is really not an answer, because it does not explain anything at all. If there is a tiny homunculus inside each person's head, watching the input from the eyes on a screen and making the body move by pulling strings (the idea of the "ghost in the machine", or what Daniel Dennett disparagingly calls the "Cartesian theater"), then how does that homunculus' mind work? What makes it think and decide? If we cannot explain the operation of that complex organ called our mind in terms of less complex components, then there is a looming problem of infinite regression.

Furthermore, this idea leaves unanswered the question: If the soul controls all the important functions of consciousness, if all this information processing takes place elsewhere, then what is the brain for? If its only role were to control body functions, it would seem that we could do perfectly well with just a brainstem. Why do we have this massively enlarged cortex if it plays no role in our consciousness? (The proper rebuttal to the old saw that "we only use 10% of our brains" is this: Have you ever heard of someone who was shot in the head, but survived with no significant deficit because the bullet only damaged the 90% of his brain he wasn't using?)

Another dualist attempt to explain the source of free will is the doctrine of "agent causation". By this account, causes produce effects, which themselves can be causes in turn; but agents such as human beings also give rise to effects, and agents are not themselves caused by anything. As the philosopher Roderick Chisholm put it, "we have a prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us when we act is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain things to happen, and nothing - or no one - causes us to cause those events to happen."

Many kinds of metaphysics are obscure, but this kind seems to be intentionally obscure. Advocates of agent causation would have us believe that there simply is no cause for any of our actions - not even a reason. We just act, and the question of why has no answer. If this is the case, why are our actions so predictable? If there is no cause or reason why a person would, for example, go to work one day rather than steal a car and go on a multi-state crime spree, why do most of us so consistently do the former and not the latter? If there are no causes or reasons pushing us in one direction rather than another, every possible action should be equally probable, but this is clearly not the case.

These ideas are not solutions to the problem; they are a refusal to face the problem. And furthermore, they are not true. We know beyond any reasonable doubt that we are not unmoved movers, that we are not pure rational agents who make their decisions in a higher plane removed from earthly cause and effect.

Our thoughts and behavior demonstrably depend on the physical operation of our brains, and can be changed by physical causes that affect the way our brains work. Anesthetics shut off our consciousness, while stimulants accelerate it. Psychoactive drugs can cause or suppress hallucinations, provoke or quiet anxiety and paranoia, and affect mood, behavior and judgment. Certain genes are strongly implicated in the origin of mental disorders such as schizophrenia and OCD. Certain specific types of brain damage cause specific and predictable alterations in the way we believe, think, and decide. (For many strange and fascinating examples of this, see "A Ghost in the Machine".) Even the dualists' last redoubt, qualia, can be altered or eliminated by physical changes to the structure of the brain.

Dualism is a futile doctrine. It does not explain free will at all, rather seeks to avoid the problem by resorting to mystery; and it is contradicted by the facts. If we are to preserve the belief in free will, we need a better way to account for it - a naturalistic way, one that does not depend on a god of the gaps or on something remaining forever mysterious to us.

Some commentators, and not just dualists, would claim that this is impossible. These people believe that free will is an impossible fantasy, and now that science has revealed we live in a naturalistic universe, we should accept that we have no free will and be done with it. I do not agree.

True, I am not speaking of the mystical, dualist free will, where human beings can float free of causality and make decisions supernaturally exempt from external influence. We have every good reason to believe that that sort of free will is impossible. However, I believe it is possible to give a natural explanation of free will, one that preserves the qualities we value most - unpredictability, choice, and moral responsibility. The next three posts in this series will tackle each of these in turn.

Other posts in this series:

16 Comments

Your arguments against agent causation are what I would expect from a devotee of Dennett -- sweeping generalizations overlooking what those who actually espouse such a view have to say for themselves. Let me first observe that claiming that agent caustion is obscure isn't an argument, just a complaint. However, it ain't even much of a complaint because event causation is also obscure. We really have a very difficult time explaining how a cause brings about an effect even if we are dealing with plain old every day event causation -- and an even greater difficulty telling what the causes are for things like consciousness, free acts, and any psychological phenomena. In fact, simply saying that natural laws NL together with all prior events in the world E caused me to do act A simply begs the question and replaces the mystery of a free act with the big black box as to what these laws are and how we could specify any natural law that takes into consideration of past events in the history of the world. If it isn't a mystery how NL + E = A, nothing could possibly qualify.

Further, your rant overlooks the possibility of a process view of agent causation. Process thinkers argue that agents have a power to creatively organize the data of experience into a coherent or unified experience. The phrase “creatively organize the data of the prior moments of experience into a novel choice or act of willing” explains a lot about how free acts can be agent caused. First, this phrase must be imbedded within a usage—and the usage I have in mind is the process metaphysic and particular theory of Charles Hartshorne. Second, what it explains is a basic human causal power that we know we in fact have, i.e., the power to creatively organize the disparate and chaotic data that goes into our experience into a whole and unified experience that we sometimes bring to consciousness. In the act of perception, we actually organize data according to schema and add a unity to our experience that is not present within the data themselves. So there is an irreducible element of creativity and novelty in this act of organizing prior data into our experience. What we add to the data of the causal past is a creative organization that shematizes our experiences (perhaps along the lines of Kant’s categories).

Further, we also have the basic power to organize the chaotic activity of populations of neurons in the cereberal cortex into an ordered process of neural activity. In fact in tests PET scans show that the chaotic neural activity shifts into a self-organizing neural patterns in the act of perception (somewhat like the way chaotic water molecules in a tub drain self-organizes itself into an orderly process of a spout or funnel that is much more efficent at emptying the tub).
In the experience of choosing, what we do is take the data of prior experiences and add to these data something not in the data—and in this activity of ordering the data we create experience, consciousness, choices, thoughts and so forth. The new level of mind is emergent and not fully or deterministically explainable by the lower level causal data. Thus, the break with determinism occurs at the very place we expect it—the act of creating our consciousness and thoughts and (dare I say it) our acts of willing and choosing among alternatives. The prior data do not explain fully or determine the causal powers of the mind that emerges from the lower level of neural activity. (Such a causal break with levels of explanation is simply what occurs in ontological emergence).

The control comes in the fact that we control the orderly emergence of our mental activities. We organize the data as we learn that we can given the past data available to us—so it isn’t ex nihilo and it is related to but not determined by prior character and prior physical states. So the act of willing is: (1) within our control; (2) a basic power that we have; (3) not determined by the prior causal data; and (4) not fully explainable by reference to lower levels of organization due to its emergent properties. Further, in the act of choosing we both act partly out of our character and also partly reform our character – which is what is required if we have any responsibility for what our character is.

The newly emergent unified consciousness then has powers of downward causation because it acts as an organism and not merely a collection of independent cells. We act as a unified person or agent, not as a collection of disparate and chaotic neural cells. What emerges is a self, a person. What acts is a person with a history and memory that unifies our acts into a coherent character. So the character is formed and itself partially re-formed in the act of choosing.

This view explains fully how our past character is related to our acts -- contrary to your argument that agent causal views cannot explain such a relationship. It also explains how an agent acts for reasons -- also contrary to your caricature of agent causal views. It also explains how our acts are related to and dependent on underlying brain states -- also contrary to your claim that agent causal views simply deny such a relation.

Comment by: AC | March 31, 2006, 2:26 pm

Now, I haven't read into this as much as you or Adam has, so excuse me if this is something I shouldn't need to ask, but I am confused as to how exactly this is disproving what Adam has stated? What you have argued appears to me to be nothing more than a naturalistic explanation; data goes in, is organized, and comes out. This may or may not be what Adam will forward in the next post, but it appears to be in agreement with him in that the cause is not a magic force. That is, unless you are attempting to say that this "thing" that takes the data and processes it and gives us a new answer is something supernatural, aka, a soul, but this seems to be nothing but an argument from ignorance, and similar to Behe's irreducible complexity, in that it's a biological process we simply can't understand. And as Adam has pointed out (I do not recall if this was something he told me personally over an email however; it might be), it's ultimately impossible to ever really determine the outcome, simply because the energy it takes to determine it can change the outcome, if that was your problem.. Regardless of the exact process, it's clear that this data intake, processing, and usage is all purely naturalistic, and therefore must behave in accordance with laws, and perhaps there is a very fundamental randomness factor stemming from quantum principles. And this is, from what I can tell, all Adam was trying to say.

Either of you can feel free to correct me on any errors.

Comment by: BlackWizardMagus | March 31, 2006, 3:52 pm

Hello AC,

I've read your post several times, and I have to say, I'm still confused about your position. Are you or are you not advocating a supernatural view of free will? If not, I really don't see where we differ.

First: I really find it quite silly to say that event causation is obscure. Event causation is perfectly clear; even a child can understand it. The first rock fell because the second rock hit it. The bathtub filled up because the drain was clogged. The man died because he was shot with a bullet. What about these simple, everyday examples of causality is so difficult to understand?

Second: I'm wary of all this talk of "emergence". I see no reason to believe that any higher-order property of our minds is inexplicable by reference to lower-order organization; there are no other examples of such a thing anywhere else in the world. There are certainly behaviors in complex systems that cannot be explained by reference to only some of the lower-order components, but all of them? I'm skeptical of that; it seems to me like an attempt to smuggle supernaturalism in under another name.

Finally: I find your complaint that my depiction of agent causation is a "caricature" to be unfounded. I quoted Roderick Chisholm expressing the exact view that you deny advocates of agent causation hold: "In doing what we do, we cause certain things to happen, and nothing - or no one - causes us to cause those events to happen." See also, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

A number of incompatibilists have maintained that such a view must hold that a free decision or other free action (or some component of it), while not causally determined by events, is caused by the agent, and that this causation by the agent is itself not causally determined.... On these agent-causal accounts, then, an agent is in a strict and literal sense an originator of her free actions, an uncaused cause of her behavior.

...An early advocate of this type of view was Reid ([1788] 1969). In recent years, agent-causal accounts have been advanced by Chisholm (1966, 1971, 1976a, 1976b, and 1978), Clarke (1993 and 1996), Donagan (1987), O'Connor (1995, 1996, 2000a, 2000b, and 2002), Rowe (1991 and 2000), Taylor (1966 and 1992), Thorp (1980), and Zimmerman (1984).

It would seem, then, that agent causation does necessarily entail the idea that human actions are not caused and are not performed for reasons. The view that human actions are not necessarily deterministic but are shaped by character, reasons, and physical brain states is not agent causation - it is compatibilism, which is precisely the position I am defending.

As I said, I think agent causation is a deliberately obscure and confusing branch of metaphysics. Ironically, it seems to have confused you as well.

Comment by: Ebonmuse | March 31, 2006, 7:11 pm

Ebo: Agent causation can be supernatural, but it need not be. There are naturalistic versions of agent causation as well. The process version of agent causation is naturalistic but can also be panentheistic. Further, emergence is not such a mystery -- the zoological taxonomy demonstrates it. The greater the neural complexity, the greater the emergence of properties of mind. So, humans have greater creativity and mental powers than dogs, and dogs have greater mental powers and creativity than slugs. The reason for emergence is that life, mind, consciousness, and higher-order properties cannot be reduced to lower order event-causal properties.

For example, rational processes cannot be reduced to event causation for a very simple reason: To show that one type of thing cannot be reduced to another type it is sufficient to show that necessarily or essentially one of them involves features ad extra or not explainable by the other so that they are incommensurable. Purposive reasons cannot be reduced to events because purposive acts are done to accomplish some further result that is not yet in existence. For example, I make a sandwich so that I can eat it. Mere events don’t cause something for the reason of causing something else. They merely cause what they do. So the two concepts cannot be reduced to each other and any assertion that reasons can be reduced to events fails to capture this additional meaning in rational action or reasoning.

Let me give an example. It may be asserted that birds build nests so that they can lay eggs in them. However, birds don't make nests so that they can lay eggs in them. They make nests because their DNA programs them to do so. So this activity is an example of event-caused activity that is explained by the a-rational instincts programmed into the bird's DNA. Birds don't show any ability to reason. Their conduct programmed into the DNA is not explained by reasoning. In contrast, Monkeys get boxes to stand on so that they can get bananas, and in this we have the emergence of reasoning or rational thought. However, such conduct is not explained by DNA or instinct. There is an essential difference between conduct done based on instinct (or programmed into DNA) and conduct based on a process of reasoning -- and it is in part this very difference that shows that event causal determinism cannot explain such purposive thought.

Further, it is just not accurate to say that there are no causes of an agent's free choices given agent causality. In the process view, as I already explained, there are causes but they are not deterministic causes. To explain why an agent does the act it does, it is necessary to refer not merely to the data that act upon an agent, but also the basic agent causal power of the agent to organize that data into meaningful patterns and schema. So there are causes, but they are non-deterministic and the full explantion cannot be given without referring to basic powers had by a person or agent in relation to the causal data. That is Hartshorne's position.

You are correct that agent causation does not necessarily entail that agents act for reasons; they may also act because they failed to consider reasons, or failed to be conscious of reasons available to them when they could have been. However, there is nothing about agent causation that makes it necessarily the case that agents don't act for reasons.

Finally, Chisholm's view is only one type of agent causal view. So quoting him hardly shows that you are familiar with agent causal theories -- and in fact it is quite clear that you are not. However, the causal break between levels of explanation, between underlying brain states and emergent consciousness and power to make choices and think, explains why agent causal views don't imply causal determinism.

The notion that agent causation is a form of compatibilism is false. The notion that all causes must be deterministic in the sense that only one possible world follows from the natural laws and past events of the world is false. Compatibilism is the view that determinism as I just defined it is true and yet we have free will. You are not a compatibilist because you believe that human actions are not necessarily deterministic. As it turns out, you are a libertarian after all.

It will be interesting to see your arguments as to how we can be morally responsible and free if causal determinism is true. One thing is for sure, if you follow Dennett closely, there will be major problems with your view. The greatest irony of the post is that you claim that I have been confused by agent causation when it is fairly evident that you are simply confused about agent causation.

Finally, your assertion that event causation is clear and straightforward only suggests to me that you haven't thought or read much about it. Do you adopt the counter-factual, essential, efficient, realist, quasi-realist, conventionalist, concrrentist, occasionalist, constant conjunction, singularist, transference etc. view of event causation? Indeed, no one really adopts the notion of event causation as a basis for explicating determinism because we don't have any laws of nature that explain or apply to free human conduct. If you believe you could come up with a single law of nature that explains an agent's conduct or choices, then I would invite you to identify it. In the absence of that, however, you claim to have a great grasp of event causation is just a big black hole of empty assertion

Comment by: AC | April 1, 2006, 1:17 am

AC:
As I said, this strikes me as an attempt to smuggle supernaturalism in under another name. I don't see how your view differs in any substantive way from someone who believes that there is a literal homunculus living inside each person's head and pulling their strings to make them act. The only difference seems to be that you're renaming the homunculus an "emergent property" of mind, while retaining the idea that its own inner workings are fundamentally mysterious and inexplicable. This doesn't explain anything at all, as far as I can see.

As much as you seem to dislike Dennett, his criticism of this type of view is dead on target: Too many explanations of how the mind works simply postulate a Central Boss that "tells the rest of the brain" what to think and believe, and whose own internal workings are inscrutable or non-existent. This is a hopeless tactic. It's like the theistic cosmological argument: trying to explain the existence of a complex thing by postulating the existence of another, exactly as complex thing. (One could call it the "turtles all the way down" view of how the mind works.) The only way to genuinely explain this complex thing called the mind is to show how its functions can be performed by an aggregate of less complex things.

Further, emergence is not such a mystery — the zoological taxonomy demonstrates it. The greater the neural complexity, the greater the emergence of properties of mind. So, humans have greater creativity and mental powers than dogs, and dogs have greater mental powers and creativity than slugs. The reason for emergence is that life, mind, consciousness, and higher-order properties cannot be reduced to lower order event-causal properties.

Now this is a genuinely circular argument. Your evidence that emergence exists appears to consist solely of your assertion that emergence exists. We're agreed that humans have greater neural complexity than dogs or slugs; why can't that fact alone be the reason for our superior mental powers, without throwing in this mysterious idea of an extra, emergent layer of mind? I repeat my argument that the type of emergence you describe has never been observed to occur anywhere. Can you provide a counterexample that does not beg the question?

There is an essential difference between conduct done based on instinct (or programmed into DNA) and conduct based on a process of reasoning — and it is in part this very difference that shows that event causal determinism cannot explain such purposive thought.

Again, this is a circular argument. You're assuming what is in question - that there is an "essential difference" between instinctive and reasoned conduct. I don't agree that there is any such thing. There is a difference, but not an essential difference; it is a difference of degree, rather than of kind, and arises from the steadily greater ability of various lineages of living things to create internal mental representations of their environment. You may be familiar with Dennett's concept of the "Tower of Generate-and-Test", which I would put forward here.

The notion that all causes must be deterministic in the sense that only one possible world follows from the natural laws and past events of the world is false. Compatibilism is the view that determinism as I just defined it is true and yet we have free will.

I don't accept that definition. If your definition was correct, all versions of compatibilism would be false for the trivial reason that our world is not deterministic; there is fundamental indeterminism at the atomic level. I prefer to define compatibilism as the view that we have free will in spite of the fact that all events that occur follow definite physical laws, which can be either deterministic or probabilistic.

Finally, Chisholm's view is only one type of agent causal view.

If that is the case, then you should have said clearly at the outset that you hold a different view of agent causation than the one envisioned by Chisholm and others. You should not have accused me of attacking a "caricature" of agent causation, since that charge is inaccurate.

Comment by: Ebonmuse | April 1, 2006, 12:03 pm

I haven't read enough to continue much, though I am following this exchange with great interest. I'm just going to ask AC how this is any different than irreducible complexity; that there is some step where we can't see how it's broken down any simpler, so you conclude that that is the simplest step and that it's merely something mystical. As Adam points out, if there is a clear line of more and more rational, less pre-programmed thought as you move up the evolutionary ladder to humans, why is that not merely showing that greater capacity and neural activity is itself the cause of higher thought? It could be a correlation, sure, but I am not seeing any evidence that actually shows that that is the case.

And, I have to ask also; are you arguing that if you saw a person react to stimuli in a certain way that, if you were somehow able to "reset" the mind back to that point and inputed the SAME stimuli, that you would get a different result? Clearly, there is definately SOME deterministic actions at play; the entire branch of psychology proves that, as it operates off of general assumptions (such as Freud generally attached problems today to sexual problems or anger problems as a child; theories on that same cause-and-effect principle dominate psychology). I'm afraid that over your second post, you have seemed to add much info to your first that actually cleared up questions.

Comment by: BlackWizardMagus | April 1, 2006, 1:21 pm

Ebo: It is pretty clear that you don't grasp the most basic notions that you are discussing here. First, a libertarian can accept probablistic causation that leaves genuine options among which to choose. In fact, I am a libertarian and I accept the view of causation that you espouse -- so we are in agreement there! However, I am not a cmpatibilist precisely because I agree with you.

First let's get clear on what determinism is. Michael McKenna defines determinism and compatibilism the same way I do and as virtually every participant in the discussion does: "we shall define determinism as the metaphysical thesis that the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of nature, entail every truth about the future. According to this characterization, if determinism is true, then, given the actual past, and holding fixed the laws of nature, only one future is possible at any moment in time. Notice that an implication of determinism as it applies to a person's conduct is that, if determinism is true, there are (causal) conditions for that person's actions located in the remote past, prior to her birth, that are sufficient for each of her actions." So determinism is just as I defined it: past facts + natural laws = one possible future.

Such a view is not consistent with the probabilistic view of laws and causes that you espouse. On such a view, there are multiple possible futures given the past though some are more probable at the present moment than others. So I conclude that you just don't grasp this most basic feature of the determinist stance. Further, compatibilism is the position that free will and determinism are compossible. Again McKenna: "Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism." See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

Further, your complaint that I didn't make it clear that I was discussing a version of agent caustion different from Chisholm's just shows that you don't read carefully. Go back and look -- I stated expressly, twice, that I am adopting Hartshorne's view of agent causation.

Further, you simply don't grasp the basic distinctions in the discussion regarding event and agent causation. If I can show that purposeful action essentially has a feature or propterty that mere event causation does not, then I can show that purposeful or rational conduct cannot be reduced to mere event causation of the type you espouse. That is a simple matter of logic. So the feature of purposeful conduct that event causal determinism cannot account for is this: purposeful acts are done to bring about some event in order to accomplish some further purpose. Event causes essentially cause only what they do and are blind to any further event that could result from that event. You haven't responded to this argument. You have just rejected it without responding or giving a reason as to how it could be inaccurate.

As to emergence, I would suggest that you look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence This article gives several examples of emergence in the biological and physical world, contrary to your assertion that no one has ever observed emergence.

I also noted that you didn't tell me which theory of event causation you accept. I suspect it is because you thought the issue was easy and every just had a common idea on causation. They don't.

As for your charge that I am trying to sneak in the supernatural, you ought to know that I don't accept the categories of natural/supernatural as they are traditionally defined. But in terms of those categories, I reject the supernatural. So your charge is empty and uninformed. You really ought to read something beside Dennett.

Comment by: AC | April 1, 2006, 2:05 pm

Alright, I'm going to ask something rather short here; what's the problem, AC? What exactly are you critisizing? The way I see it, there are three positions on the free will issue overall;
1) Determinism
2) Dualism
3) Compatabilism
Adam is, if I am not mistaken, merely rejecting 1 and 2; he says that we are not robots, nor are we inhabited by a soul or magic force that controls our actions to any degree. Is he not, then, a compatabilist? If the definition thereof is that the state of the brain and natural laws do indeed lead to a decision, but that we are not slaves to circumstance and CAN still think, what's the problem? Where is this libertarian position here? Unless that is a stance that we are in no way affected by stimuli (which seems simply ridiculous to me, but I'll acquiesce if I am mistaken), why is AC arguing, and in such a mean-spirited manner? Is ti over semantics? Is it because Adam did not have some detailed assessment of every single sub-view around? I really hope someone will explain this to me, because I am quite simply lost as AC jumps around.

Comment by: BlackWizardMagus | April 1, 2006, 2:59 pm

Black: I am suggesting that Ebo is making arguments that hold no water. He doesn't grasp agent causal accounts that he critiques. He calls a position "determinism" that isn't deterministic. He adopts compatibilism which attempts to show that free will and causal determinism are compatible, but his own view is not compatibilism but libertarianism. I don't fault him, he is just following Dennett who also vastly oversimplified. However, your assertion that there are only 3 positions is also ununformed. At another blog, the Garden of Forking Paths, Neal Tognazzini gives a pretty good taxonomy of various views within this arena as follows:

The basic terminology will be 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism', but I think it's important to be clear about what thesis is supposedly compatible or incompatible with what other thesis. To that end, I think there should be three different compatibility questions -- 1) Is determinism compatible with the ability to do otherwise?, 2) Is determinism compatible with moral responsibility?, and 3) Is indeterminism compatible with moral responsibility? There's also a fourth question that's not about compatibility, but which seems equally important, namely: 4) Does moral responsibility require the ability to do otherwise?

Call someone who answers (1) with a 'Yes' an APCompatibilist and someone who answers (1) with a 'No' an APIncompatibilist. Call someone who answers (2) with a 'Yes' a D-MRCompatibilist and someone who answers (2) with a 'No' a D-MRIncompatibilist. Call someone who answers (3) with a 'Yes' an I-MRCompatibilist and someone who answers (3) with a 'No' an I-MRIncompatibilist. Finally, call someone who answers (4) with a 'Yes' a PAPist and someone who answers (4) with a 'No' a PAP-denier. Now, with these positions staked out, we can start to see the different combinations and how they map onto the views people actually hold.

"Official" semi-compatibilism = D-MRCompatibilist + I-MRCompatibilist + PAP-denial

Fischer's version of semi-compatibilism = APIncompatibilist + D-MRCompatibilist + I-MRCompatibilist + PAP-denial

Pereboom's view = APIncompatibilist + D-MRIncompatibilist + I-MRIncompatibilist + PAPist

"Traditional" compatibilism (local-miracle, altered-past, conditional-analysis) = APCompatibilist

Galen Strawson's view = D-MRIncompatibilist + I-MRIncompatibilist (because MR is impossible!)

Kane's and van Inwagen's view = APincompatibilist + D-MRIncompatibilist + I-MRCompatibilist (event-causation) + PAPist.

O'Connor's and Clarke's (former) view = APIncompatibilist + D-MRIncompatibilist + I-MRCompatibilist (agent-causation) + PAPist

Ginet's and Goetz's view = APIncompatibilist + D-MRIncompatibilist + I-MRCompatibilist (no causation) + PAPist

Now, another interesting question is: What views should we associate with labels like 'Source Incompatibilism' and 'Leeway Incompatibilism' and 'Libertarianism' and 'Hard Determinism'? Here is what I'm inclined to do:

Source Incompatibilism = (AT LEAST) D-MRIncompatibilist (because of sourcehood concerns)

Leeway Incompatibilism = APIncompatibilist and PAPist, THEREFORE D-MRIncompatibilist.

Libertarianism = (AT LEAST) D-MRIncompatibilist, and I-MRCompatibilist (whether no cause, event-cause, or agent-cause) -- and by the way, we are morally responsible,so determinism is false.

Hard Determinism = D-MRIncompatibilist -- and by the way, determinism is true, so we're not MR.

Comment by: AC | April 1, 2006, 5:04 pm

But, then, if there are so many differing positions, then how is Adam necessarily wrong; wouldn't it be more correct to say that he is disproving merely one of many possibilities? And how is "all our actions are determined by input and physical laws" not determinism? It might be just me, because I am not a huge reader of this, but it seems to be more semantical than anything. Adam is attempting mostly to argue that we are not machines and that we not have a soul; little else. I can see your point, although I can't judge myself, that maybe his own position is a little shaky, but then again, he has yet to fully give us his exact position and it's rationale.

And the agent causation issue; what exactly is the complaint? What I THINK your point is is that Adam identifies agent causation as being the view that agents cause events, but are never caused to do that in the first place. From what I can tell from you, you agree, yet are angry at Adam for being incorrect. Your point was that what an agent does can't be determined from the input that goes in--so what's the problem? Adam is clearly in support of free will, which is what he has revealed so far, and so are you. Adam does argue that what goes in is important, but not in such a matter than we are machines. Are you saying that he is simply classifying himself in the wrong category? If so, isn't this conversation far longer than it needs to be? You could have merely said "Adam, I think you are more of a libertarian than a compatabalist for the follow reasons".

I suppose the reason I am in this debate at all is because I can't say who is right or wrong, but for me, Adam has been clearer, but your posts have been vague. I simply haven't been able to pin down your complaints with Adam's view in particular. Now, it just seems like you are critisizing how he labels himself, but I feel like you must have been saying more in these fairly long posts.

Comment by: BlackWizardMagus | April 1, 2006, 5:50 pm

First, a libertarian can accept probablistic causation that leaves genuine options among which to choose. In fact, I am a libertarian and I accept the view of causation that you espouse — so we are in agreement there!

No, we are not. I do not accept or advocate irreducibly probabilistic causation of all human decisions; that would rob us of free will, rather than grant it. As I argued in Part III, I believe that human decisions are, in general, wholly determined by causes, but due to the nature of the physical laws of our world they are in principle unpredictable.

Further, compatibilism is the position that free will and determinism are compossible.

And as I said, determinism is false (at the subatomic level), so if we accept that definition then all forms of compatibilism are trivially false. (One of my few complaints about Dennett's otherwise excellent books about free will is that he doesn't mention this rather important fact.) I'm fully aware that I'm parting with the majority here; I do so deliberately, since I believe that the commonly used definitions do not grant us insight into the nature of the debate. I cannot be a compatibilist by your definition, yet none of the libertarian views of free will accurately represent my position either. The mere fact of indeterminism does not grant us free will, since we could simply be random puppets rather than deterministic ones, which is no improvement. In fact, I believe that indeterministic decision-making would thoroughly destroy free will, even more so than if our decisions were fatalistically determined. Since none of the common terms describe my position, but compatibilism is closer, I am stipulating a new definition for the term.

I also noted that you didn't tell me which theory of event causation you accept.

Would it matter if I did? You'd simply say that there are other versions and therefore event causation is not as clear as I claimed it was. Regardless, I maintain that event causation is intuitively clear and understandable, inasmuch as we encounter it every day, and no one has encountered or experienced any unambiguous examples of agent causation.

So the feature of purposeful conduct that event causal determinism cannot account for is this: purposeful acts are done to bring about some event in order to accomplish some further purpose. Event causes essentially cause only what they do and are blind to any further event that could result from that event. You haven't responded to this argument.

Yes, I have. I pointed out that your argument is trivially circular: it assumes what is in question, namely that there is an essential difference of kind and not just of degree between purposeful and non-purposeful acts. I do not accept this premise. As I said, I follow Dennett in arguing that purposeful acts can emerge (there's that word again!) from non-purposeful causes via the evolution of living things that have a steadily greater ability to model the world in their own heads. There is nothing magical or mystical about this.

Evolution itself is a process that could, from a certain perspective, be viewed as purposeful: it causes some organisms to die because they are not suited to their environment, and causes others to prosper because they are so suited. These are reasons as good as any. The only difference is that they are what Dennett calls "free-floating rationales" - no one explicitly represents them in a mind, but they are reasons nonetheless. The achievement of evolution was to bring about creatures that did not merely unconsciously act according to free-floating rationales, but that could explicitly represent those rationales and others to themselves.

Finally, I have leveled a criticism that you have not answered. Where I part with you is this:

The new level of mind is emergent and not fully or deterministically explainable by the lower level causal data.

That is the definition of emergence I do not accept and that strikes me as ghost-in-the-machine dualism under another name. There is a world of difference between the behavior of a complex system being in practice unpredictable from the behavior of its individual components and the behavior of a complex system being in principle inexplicable from the behavior of its individual components. Call those two weak and strong emergence, respectively. I have no problem with weak emergence, but the kind you advocate, I maintain, has never been observed.

Wikipedia provides no reason whatsoever to think otherwise. The behavior of an anthill, or the shape of a galaxy, is not something in principle unpredictable from the behavior of its components. It arises from the interactions of its components in a straightforward, non-magical way, and only our limited predictive ability might have led us to miss this. But you are advocating something utterly different, and frankly magical in its import. I want to see the evidence for it.

Comment by: Ebonmuse | April 2, 2006, 12:31 pm

Ebo: I'll take your responses in reverse order. With respect to emergence, look at this article that gives as conrete examples of not merely strong emergence, but radical emergence, boundary differences in evolution, feedback sytems in neural processing, together with the emergence of live, consciousness and higher-order supervening proertties: http://arxiv.org/ftp/nlin/papers/0506/0506028.pdf So what you deny as magic is observed in self-organizng chaotic systems on a regular basis. So much for your claims of magic.

Your supposes response to the fact that purposeful conduct essentially has properties not present and not explicable in terms of mere event causation is just non-responsive. How does pointing to the supposed magic and black-box of an infinite gradation even begin to respond to what I have stated? In addition, you haven't evenn begun to point to what you have in mind as the coninuum of this supposed infinite gradation. So speaking of magic and begging the question ... your "response" simply ignore that purposeful conduct has essential features that are not at all present in event caustion. Organisms don't die for the purpose of furthering anything -- they just die. So it is Dennett's free floating rationales that magic here. That something occurs and that there is a cause for that occurrence hardly shows that it occurred so that it could bring about something aimed for or for some purpose.

With respec to event cauation, my point was that we don't understand it well. You respond that we must because we experience it all the time. Well, we experience agent causation all the time too. When you go to the store, don't you always experience the fact that you could have stayed home or done something else? Don't you experience thinking about what to do and then directing your actions toward that end? The simple fact is that either you must trust this type of experience of agent causation or your response simply begs the question and expresses a mere prejudice against one type of causation and in favor of another.

Finally, your notion of determinism that you have "stipulated" is just not something you can stipulate. If human conduct isn't determined in the sense that but one possible world is entailed by the past then you are not a determinist -- period. Yoy reject determinism. However, you reject agent caustion only because it is rather clear that you don't grasp it. It isn't mere indeterminism, it is self-determinism. It provides the kind of control and ultimate accountability that is necessary for any conduct for which we can hold another morally accountable. Frankly, I just cannot see any reason to accept your views.

Comment by: AC | April 4, 2006, 7:02 pm

Hello AC,

With respect to emergence, look at this article that gives as conrete examples of not merely strong emergence, but radical emergence, boundary differences in evolution, feedback sytems in neural processing, together with the emergence of live, consciousness and higher-order supervening proertties...

I've read this paper, and it lists only two examples of strong emergence, life and culture. Let's consider each in turn.

If, as this article claims and you seem to agree, life is an example of "strong emergence", then it must be the case that life cannot in principle be explained by laws of chemistry and physics, regardless of the computational power at one's disposal. There is only one word for this position: vitalism. (In fact, the paper describes vitalism as an idea that contains a "spark of truth"). I consider it a sign of just how infeasible your position is that you are attempting to defend it by resurrecting discredited 19th-century mysticism.

Their second example is culture, and this is something which I am even more baffled about. Culture is the pool of memes that exist within a given society, and that is all it is. I really don't see where the emergence is even supposed to come into play here.

The idea in this paper seems to be that the combinatorial explosion of possibilities inherent in life or in culture renders feasible computational simulation of these phenomena impossible. This is true, and at the same time utterly irrelevant. Phenomena whose prediction is merely infeasible fall under the label of weak emergence, as even your reference agrees. The only phenomena that can be considered strongly emergent are those that could not be predicted or simulated even given infinite computing power. Life is not one of these; neither is culture; and nor, I argue, is consciousness.

The authors also say that life and culture can be implemented in other physical substrates. Again, this is quite true and also irrelevant. Just because these phenomena can arise from other substrates does not mean that any particular instantiation of them is not explicable by properties of the particular substrate on which it exists. Similarly, the Sieve of Eratosthenes can be programmed on a computer, written down with pen and paper, or carried out by scratching with a stick in the sand, but that does not mean that its operation on (say) the computer cannot be explained in terms of the functionality of the computer.

Organisms don't die for the purpose of furthering anything — they just die.

Again, organisms do not intentionally die for a reason, but they do die for a reason, even if there are no conscious agents around to appreciate that reason. Just because there is a cause for an organism's death does not mean there is not also a reason for it.

Similarly, male peacocks' tails are large and extravagant because they are a costly and hence unfakable sign of reproductive fitness preferred by females; certain strains of Staphylococcus aureus possess a D-alanyl-D-alanine ligase enzyme rather than a D-alanyl-D-lactate because that mutation confers resistance to the antibiotic vancomycin; Galapagos finches with large, strong beaks prosper in drought years because those beaks allow them to crack the large, tough seeds that become more prevalent in those conditions; spiders spin webs because that allows them to catch the insects which they eat. Evolution is full of free-floating rationales - traits and behaviors that organisms possess for a reason, even if those organisms do not themselves grasp that reason. To deny this is to deny that natural selection happens, which is the same as denying that evolution happens.

You respond that we must because we experience it all the time. Well, we experience agent causation all the time too. When you go to the store, don't you always experience the fact that you could have stayed home or done something else? Don't you experience thinking about what to do and then directing your actions toward that end?

Once again, you are arguing in a circle. I agree that we do experience these things; I do not agree that agent causation is the cause of them. As I have argued, there is more than sufficient reason to believe that consciousness, as wonderful as it is, is fundamentally a natural phenomenon that can be explained in terms of natural laws. We do not need supernatural homunculi living inside our heads to account for it. Nor do we need mysterious, irreducible "emergent properties", which is really just another name for those homunculi.

Comment by: Ebonmuse | April 6, 2006, 3:40 pm

AC, wouldn't the study of sociology not EXIST if you were correct? I mean, almost the entire focus of that discipline is to see behavior that is clearly affected by outside stimuli; that such-and-such a group doesn't attend college as much because of family input, or something. Why does this exist? If we really have this internal computing system in our head that doesn't obey outside trends and rules, why do we have so many millions of instances where we obey trends and rules? It's beyond our ability to positively determine, but that doesn't change the fact that there is an educational achievement gap. Your argument is basically saying that trends shouldn't exist (except trends that can be attributed to progress, perhaps), that people should be helter-skelter, than just as many rich kids fail as poor kids, even when all kids involved were mentally capable. No, there is definite indication of stimuli (and internal conditions in psychology) affecting outcome; so much so, and in so many different ways, that completely free will is simply impossible.

Comment by: BlackWizardMagus | April 6, 2006, 4:35 pm

First, saying something implies Infinite Regress does not disprove it: Infinite regress is a possible model of how part of the universe works. For example there could be an infinite chain of causes stretching back across eternity, or a sucession of ever smaller particles. Current science supports neither view, but they are not logically impossible.

Secondly, BlackWizardMagus, AC is (I think) aware that 'outside' factors play a role in what he calls emergence, as well as internal physiological factors. And this role can be studied. But he claims they are not the whole story. There's plenty of room for sociology here (and any sociologist will tell you that there is considerable individual variation within any given trend).

I think Adam is right, btw. Indeed I suspect he and AC agree on rather more than they realise...

Comment by: Philip Thomas | June 5, 2006, 8:24 am

I've just come to this discussion randomly and late. but it seems to me, as a total non-expert, that we are faced with a choice between (1) what we experience and how we practically live, even though we cannot understand (freewill and something like dualism) or (2) something we can understand (we think) but do not experience and cannot live by (determinism).

Faced with the choice, I would choice to trust our experience over our understanding, though I know others would choose the opposite. I can live without understanding but I can't understand without living. (Even using the word "choose" there sort of gives the game away!)

Thanks for the discussion.

Comment by: unkleE | May 22, 2008, 10:03 pm