I must say I don't understand the fuss about Frankfurt's counterexamples, or why people are able to keep this argument alive. It really looks to me like a patient etherized on a table with feeding tubes, breathing equipment, artificial heart stimulators, etc. Look, don't these examples all founder on a failure to distinguish between choosing freely and carrying out the choice effectively. In the cases given, isn't it the case that you could have chosen otherwise. You have what is ex hypothesi a libertarian free choice. Of course, if you had chosen otherwise, unbeknownst to you, you would have been prevented from carrying out the choice. But the choice was free.
24 years ago I completed my master's thesis at Arizona State University. There, I argued that there conceptions of moral responsibility that were essentially utilitarian in nature, which indicated where one could supply a motive of deterrence or protection of society, could indeed be compatible with determinism. In other words, so long as we are asking "who is it practical to blame" as opposed to "who really deserves to be blamed," compatibilism seems to have some plausibility. When we get to the idea of a purely retributive punishment, an absolute just deserts for someone, compatibilism breaks down. It is in the last analysis unfair to punish (or reward) someone for the inevitable results of past causes.
7 comments:
CAN VICTOR REPPERT REHABILITATE RETRIBUTIONISM? (You can jail me for the pun, Vic, though I won't apologize for more heinous acts I might learn to commit while in prison.)
VICTOR REPPERT: When we get to the idea of a purely retributive punishment, an absolute just deserts for someone, compatibilism breaks down. It is in the last analysis unfair to punish (or reward) someone for the inevitable results of past causes.
ED'S RESPONSE: A compatibilist might respond that assigning blame or doling out "just desserts" is merely shorthand for an enormously complex series of natural reactions and feedback loops. Can we truly get outside that circle to judge whether it's a "God inspired" circle, or a "natural response?"
And would a "retributionist" also claim it was "unjust for society as a whole" if there were indeed ways to help alter, direct or guide the behaviors of formerly crime-prone individuals toward more sociable ends? In fact we already mix "retribution" with "rehabilitation" in prisons today.
I suspect that a lot of retributionists crave "revenge" in a primal way, as it appears akin to instinctual reactions I've noted in myself. And doesn't the wish to lock certain unsocial people in prisons arise out of an equally primal fear that such a person will "do it again" once they are in society? How much more of an advertisement for naturalism are such primal reactions?
Pretty natural I'd say (along perhaps with the fear that many theists can't shake that at the apex of the cosmos itself there lay an angry alpha-male primate).
Concerning the most annoying and the most deadly behaviors of others, can anyone help but express displeasure at people who behave in such a fashion? Isn't it natural to break down and scream, "You shouldn't be doing THAT! No one should," and also draw up laws against such behaviors, hire police to police against such behaviors, and punish its occurance, to try and make sure that no one ever does such things?
How "should" we deal with such behaviors? It's pragmatic so far as I can see.
We do what we can, and humanity will probably find new ways to lower crime rates in future with new brain scans that reveal whether a suspect or witness is lying or not, or that can tell if a person is on the verge of a breakdown in the sites of the brain that code for restraint rather than violence.
We might find ways to magnify the effects of a gene already found in the human genome that codes for a hormone(s) that makes us less aggressive or brainier perhaps, with a greater development of areas of the brain that involve emotional restraint mechanisms. Then some kinds of crime might diminish but other types increase due to brainier kinder criminals, maybe Robin Hood hackers, or simply people who don't love to see people suffer horrible physical pains but instead just want to get some message across, communicate and be heard, but without employing excessive violence. (Isn't the internet doing that today?)
It's all part of a pragmatic process.
But insisting on only a retributionist way of looking at matters, because "wrong is wrong" (nice circular authoritarian logic), or because people must be punished by causing them pain (which sounds like the plan of a depraved behaviorist with too great a faith in "pain" as the only motivating mechanism -- a plan than can also backfire, especially considering recidivism rates and how first time prisoners begin identifying themselves as BEING "crooks" after spending time in prison) all raise questions.
Are you arguying that we cross off all alternatives in favor of "retribution" alone? Maybe we'll even discover that retribution works best on some rather than others. And we can continue to keep a variety of forms of rehabilitation open as well.
As for the strictest and swiftest forms of retribution where do you suppose they are found? Places like Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, China today to a lesser extent (which still has one of the world's lowest crime rates), Iran (I think, if you don't count terrorists coming from that country), and also in Calvin's Geneva where at the height of his influence, everyone who was not a Calvinist Christian was either reproached by the Consistory, exiled, tortured, or executed. (A'' Jews had been exiled prior to Calvin's coming there, then Catholics, and finally Anabaptists, and in fact if you merely named your dog "Calvin" you could get punished.)
Even in Medieval and Reformation Europe, prisons weren't employed as often as the death penalty for crimes ranging from theft to disobeying or angering the king. Talk about retribution.
Pragmatically speaking, humanity can safeguard against future deadly behaviors via promoting better brain health via prenatal and post natal nutritional supplements (b-vitamins, omega 3's, lecithin, you name it), and getting children addicted to less aggressive things, more mental and verbal games and means of expressing themselves rather than via physical coercion of others, and finding ways to channel one's agressions into creativity.
There are also telltale signs in youth like noticing kids who are cruel to animals at an early age, or who mistake slaps for caresses.
And there's a host of things humanity will probably attempt in future to lower crime rates.
(Peronally, I think it's "criminal" that humanity is still addicted to watching other humans play with balls, such that your average outfielders on a major league team is admired so much that they earn far more money than the most excellent high school teachers.)
I've even read that some criminials have brain lesions that distort their emotional reactions making them react more violently than most other people do to the same stimuli (if we have a drug that grows more brain cells in that region healing it, what then? Or conversely, knowing such a thing and lacking the drug, shouldn't that person be KEPT in prison longer? But not out of retribution, but to ensure the public's safety?)
One person I read about had a brain tumor that made him curse and even sexually attack his young daughter, but after the tumor was removed he reverted to his calm normal family man demeanor which was what he was before the tumor existed.
Even without obvious lesions or tumors, psychological abuse and past traumas get encoded in the brain. The study of where and how memories are encoded continues to march on. (Fascinating subject, fascinating experimental data as well.)
And what about making ethical judgments in general? Aren't they driven by a variety of factors in the life of the individual doing the judging? "Should" you never kill another human being? "Self defence" bends the rule there. That's certainly a pragmatic recognition.
And if you're in a position where entire groups of people will live or die based on a choice, on what basis should you choose?
Do you choose based on sheer numbers of people who will live or die? Trying to save the most? Or do you choose to save the ones who are able to bear healthy children to secure the future? Or pick the smartest ones with necessary scientific knowledge to secure the future? Or chose to save the elders on the basis of "honor thy father and mother? Or choose to save impressive priest/clergy, Evangelists, because "God is going to need them to save souls?" Or choose based on based instincts like simply being unconsciously attracted to attractive people, while letting the ugly or sickly ones die, or vice versa?
Fortunately I suspect there's ENOUGH of an overlap of basic recognitions among human beings to allow for some basic rules we all "should" follow including a recognition of the value of striving to get along and not cause undue harm to one another.
That agreement appears based on previous experiences like learning to recognize the value of an education -- which allows one to develop one's brain in a wider variety of ways and allows alternate outlets for one's aggressive impulses.
Values also lay along a spectrum starting with the basics like food, health, a roof over people's heads, but if some of those basics vanish and people's health fails, or they lose interest in anything the least bit intellectual, then all bets are off, because our species is probably about three missed meals and one broken air-conditioner away from an increase in barbaric behavior.
On the other hand if technology continues to supply most of us enough food, homes, education and intellectual stimulation, then I suppose we could continue to live relatively peacefully and productively even in cities containing millions of us.
No group of apes packed tightly into a city in the millions could live as peaceably as we do. Apes lack emotional control, advanced foresight, and the ability to speak as we do. Who know, part of their lack of emotional control might even be due to the frustration of not being able to express themselves in speech to one another. Throwing poop (or in the case of Bonobos, bending over) just may not be enough, though the Bonobos do get along better with one another than do Pan chimpanzees.
At least we humans have language...
But deny a human baby the sound of language from birth onwards and they'd only be grunting and probably acting and reacting in physical/emotionally charged ways.
One young boy in Russia was discovered who only speaks in chirps because he was raised among birds rather than humans.
Ed
Edward T. Babinski
“I must say I don't understand the fuss about Frankfurt's counterexamples, or why people are able to keep this argument alive.”
It gives some determinists hope that they can simultaneously argue that someone should be held responsible even if they could not do otherwise. If you have an agenda to believe that people can be held responsible even though they can never do otherwise, then they give you hope. If you have an agenda hoping that Frankfurt cases will help you argue for the nonexistence of free will, they may give you hope. If you have an agenda hoping that LFW stands or falls on whether or not a person can be held responsible even when they could not do otherwise, thinking that LFW is held in order to hold people responsible, they may give you hope. The calvinist for example wants to believe that God predetermines everything and yet we can still be held responsible. So looking for any shred or sliver of support, they grasp onto FC’s. “Grasping at straws” as a friend puts it.
“It really looks to me like a patient etherized on a table with feeding tubes, breathing equipment, artificial heart stimulators, etc.”
I guess FC’s do not function as your “hopeful monsters” to keep your deterministic theory alive, since you are not a determinist! :-) FC’s function in a similar way in deterministic theories as do “missing links” function in evolutionary theory, it gives hope to the faithful, something to claim hey that “proves” what I want to believe.
“Look, don't these examples all founder on a failure to distinguish between choosing freely and carrying out the choice effectively.”
My problem is that the same folks who want so desperately to believe in predeterminism of all events will grant that if we are coerced into an action then we are not acting freely (so you are caused to do something against your will) and yet under FC’s you are constrained or prevented from carrying out your will and is that also not acting freely? If one is not acting freely, so is the other. And if in neither case is one acting freely, then why do these same determinists want to claim that we have free will, that free will and determinism are compatible, when we are victims of CNC type control? Furthermore, these same folks have no problem seeing that if someone puts a gun to your head they are coercing you to do something so you are not acting freely. And if someone ties you up, and you are prevented from going where you want to go, you are also not acting freely. But if God is controlling your will (i.e., CNC type control) you are acting freely?
I believe it was Wittgenstein who observed, if you want to see if people have free will or not, do not look at the unusual cases where they are coerced or constrained, rather, look at ordinary situations where they are not being coerced or constrained, not under CNC control, do they have free will in those situations? Or put another way, if there is no intervener, no one coercing us, no one controlling us by means of CNC control, do we then have libertarian free will in the doing of our actions?
“In the cases given, isn't it the case that you could have chosen otherwise.”
Actually the Frankfurt intervener stands ready to prevent you from actualizing a certain outcome. So he allows you to actualize one outcome which he wants you to do, but prevents you from actualizing another outcome (which absent the intervener you could actualize if you chose to do so). Another way to see this is to make a distinction between the capacity to make choices and having access to those choices. The capacity to have and make choices refers to our capacity for freely chosen actions. Whether or not you have access to a particular possibility speaks to your range of choices. Having your range of choices affected by another person, including an intervener, is not the same as not ever having a choice.
Recall Locke’s man in the locked room. He thinks he can leave the room when in reality he cannot as the door is locked from the outside. So his range of choices is curtailed by the locked door. But within the room with respect to other possibilities he may have lots of other choices (e.g. should he sit or stand? Should he remain in one place or pace back and forth? Should he think about and plan his next vacation or think about something else?). Just because the possibility of leaving the room is eliminated or taken away, does that amount to him having no other choices in that room or no longer having the capacity to make choices? His **range of choices** is affected, but having a particular possibility eliminated does not mean you no longer have free will and the ability to do otherwise with respect to other actions.
“You have what is ex hypothesi a libertarian free choice. Of course, if you had chosen otherwise, unbeknownst to you, you would have been prevented from carrying out the choice. But the choice was free.”
Actually with respect to the particular action that the intervener stands ready to prevent, he does not have a choice (the man in Locke’s room with regards to leaving the room or choosing to remain in the room did not have that choice, in order to have that choice he would have needed to have been able to both choose to remain in the room or choose to leave the room). And this is again my point, while the intervener may stand ready to prevent a particular alternative from being actualized, so the poor guy does not have access to that possibility, that is not the same as him not having any choices available (nor does the elimination of one possibility equate with not having free will, rather it means his range of choices is lessened not that he no longer has free will).
A term I use for having a choice is a “binary contrary pair” (binary because at least two possibilities are involved, contrary because by the nature of the two possibilities you can actualize one or the other but not both, and whichever possibility you actualize will automatically exclude the other possibility from being actualized, example, in making an oath by raising my right hand signifying commitment to, or keeping my hand down signifying not taking the oath, I cannot both raise my right arm and keep it down simultaneously, similarly, if you can both do and action or refrain from doing an action you are dealing with a binary contrary pair). I believe we have a choice, have free will, when we face a binary contrary pair, have access to both possibilities of the binary contrary pair. With either possibility being one which we have access to and can actualize. Frankfurt cases involve interveners who stand ready to prevent us from actualizing one possibility that makes up a binary contrary pair. But eliminating us having that particular choice does not mean that all other choices, all other binary pairs have been or are eliminated. Of course if all events are predetermined by God then we never have a choice, we never face a binary contrary pair, and hence we never have free will.
I believe that FC’s are way overrated. When it comes to responsibility I believe the term is a “nested term” consisting of more than one element. When I think of responsibility then, I think of two distant elements. First, the grounding of responsibility, which involves whether or not we can **attribute** a specific action to a specific person (i.e., was it your action, did you do the action?). And second the **assessment** of a particular action with regard to praise and blame. In assessing a particular action, is the action blameworthy (meaning you did it, but should not have done it, you should have done otherwise) or praiseworthy (meaning you did it, but did not have to do it, but chose to do it). FC’s go to the issue of the grounding of responsibility (and as Fischer has shown, you can be held responsible for an action even if you could not have done otherwise, so Fischer’s work goes to the grounding of responsibility what is necessary for an action to be attributed to a person? He says they have guidance control of that action and so are responsible for it). And yet in ascribing praise or blame to an action, then we definitely consider whether or not you could do otherwise, what mitigating factors were involved, etc. etc. Holding someone responsible is only part of it, the first step in the concept of responsibility. The second step is assessing praise or blame of their action. FC’s at most show that someone can be held responsible for an action even when they could not do otherwise; an action can be attributed to a person, therefore grounding responsibility, even if they could not have done otherwise. But that is not saying that much, in my opinion, it only means that the action was your action, so the action can be attributed to you. Then comes the second step of ascribing praise or blame and that **always** involves looking at whether or not you could have done otherwise, whether or not your action was necessitated, coerced, constrained, etc. etc.
Robert
Robert: "Furthermore, these same folks have no problem seeing that if someone puts a gun to your head they are coercing you to do something so you are not acting freely."
But, even with a gun to your head, are there not at least two potential acts available to you to choose from ... to do as the gunman demands, or to refuse. That he's going to kill you if you refuse does not eliminate that you *can* choose to refuse to do whatever he's demanding. Right?
Does duress really swallow up or eliminate agency?
Robert: "And if someone ties you up, and you are prevented from going where you want to go, you are also not acting freely."
Does this sort of duress swallow up or eliminate one's agency any more than the gun scenario did?
Is "acting freely" or "exercising free will" *really* about physically moving in space (and making the movements one has chosen)? Does a person in an iron lung have no "free will?"
Does a person being acted upon (isn't that what's happening in both scenarios?) really have no "free will?"
Rather, isn't it the case that our freedom ... and our slavery ... is primarily of the mental/will and only secondarily of the physical?
Isn't this why Christ said (for instance) "if you lust after a woman [not you own], then you have committed adultery?"
Hello Ilion,
“But, even with a gun to your head, are there not at least two potential acts available to you to choose from ... to do as the gunman demands, or to refuse. That he's going to kill you if you refuse does not eliminate that you *can* choose to refuse to do whatever he's demanding. Right?”
You are correct Ilion. If someone puts a gun to your head you do have a choice: to refuse to do what they are demanding or to give in. Sadly some people who want to die, will intentionally fire at the police knowing they will be shot and killed (though most people when faced with guns will comply and not want to be shot at, it nevertheless is a choice that people can make either way).
“Does duress really swallow up or eliminate agency?”
No.
“Does this sort of duress swallow up or eliminate one's agency any more than the gun scenario did?”
No.
“Is "acting freely" or "exercising free will" *really* about physically moving in space (and making the movements one has chosen)? Does a person in an iron lung have no "free will?"”
No acting freely occurs primarily within your mind, though since we are a mind/body unity, whenever we act in the world that action will involve our body. That is why someone who is a physicalist, who believes there is no such thing as an immaterial mind or soul, usually does not endorse libertarian free will. Libertarian free will involves an immaterial soul so it cannot be completely explained physically.
“Does a person being acted upon (isn't that what's happening in both scenarios?) really have no "free will?"”
They have free will and they have choices, they just have strong influences upon them.
“Rather, isn't it the case that our freedom ... and our slavery ... is primarily of the mental/will and only secondarily of the physical?”
Right again, free will and intentional action involves consciousness, having a self that does its own actions. And you are correct it starts in the mind which is where the self or soul operates.
“Isn't this why Christ said (for instance) "if you lust after a woman [not you own], then you have committed adultery?"”
Right, the Pharisees emphasized external things, while Jesus spoke of what is happening in the heart (which is the way they referred to the mind, or soul, the internal and immaterial aspect of man). Real and lasting change from a Christian perspective is from the inside out. This is also why the bible talks about getting a new heart, a renewed mind.
As always thanks for the interaction Ilion,
Robert
'Of course, if you had chosen otherwise, unbeknownst to you, you would have been prevented from carrying out the choice. But the choice was free.'
Adam and Eve would have had a free choice , even if God had intervened?
That can't be right.
Or else God would have intervened to prevent the fall, and that would not have interfered with free will.
Hans, I believe it's part of Mr Reppert's that such a "free will" (i.e. "you "freely" choose 'A' ... and you have no *real* option of ever having chosen 'not-A'") does not make sense.
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