This is in response to an inquiry from a student.
This is where I have a lot of problems with Nash's presentation. I actually think that Nash's use of the term uninfluenced will makes some assumptions that I would be inclined to deny. Nash is a Calvinist, and I'm not a Calvinist, so we don't see eye to eye on free will.
Let's go back to that Adam and Eve story for a minute, to help illustrate the issue. Whether we take this story literally or not does not affect its value to illustrate a point. Suppose God were to place Adam and Eve in the Garden, but he didn't allow the serpent to get anywhere near the place. In fact, he created Adam in such a way that he always wanted to obey God. Given the state of Adam's desires, it really wouldn't matter whether that nasty serpent showed up or not. Adam and Eve wouldn't want to do anything that was disobedient toward God, and would simply tell that snake to go to hell if he suggested that to them that they disobey and eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The way Adam and Eve are put together, on this scenario, they cannot so much as desire to violate the law that God has laid down. Hence, they decline the invitation to sin, and get to remain in the garden forever. All the ills of human history, the wars, the plagues, the massacres, and all the sins, from the Holocaust down to me losing my temper yesterday, don't take place. Nobody goes to hell. God makes sure that Adam and Eve always want to do what is right, and he makes sure that he always has the opportunity to do what is right. In fact, God could not only have done this for Adam and Eve, he could have done this for Lucifer as well, in which case Lucifer would never have fallen.
If you talk to atheists, particularly those who have studied the free will problem, they will often tell you that that is precisely what God should have done. God could have created the world in such a way that everyone does what is right, and if God were a loving God, he would have done exactly that. Not only would we have avoided sinning, it turns out that one of the major philosophical definitions of what it is to have a free will is satisfied. "The liberty of spontaneity (the kind of free will a compatibilist thinks we have)...explains human freedom as the ability to do what the person wants to do." (Nash, p.328). Many people are taught to think that the reason why God permitted Adam and Eve to fall is because he had to give them free will in order to make it possible for them to be truly obedient, but in order to open that possibility, he also had to open the possibility that Adam and Eve disobey. But if God were to give Adam and Eve compatibilist free will, he could have allowed them to be free while at the same time guaranteeing that they would never sin. He didn't have to risk the fall of Adam and Eve, or the fall of Lucifer. So, if all we have is compatibilist free will, then we are going to need some other explanation for why God permitted Adam to sin. And theological Calvinists think that there is some other explanation. There are two explanations that I have heard. One is that God receives more glory if he predestines some people to disobey him, so that he can exercise his righteous wrath against unrepentant sin, as well as providing the saved a sense of what they were saved from. What is more, we can't be expected to understand why God does what he does, so even if those explanations don't wash (and they certainly don't for me), there is perhaps some unknown reason why God permitted (in fact, caused), the Fall of Man.
But, some people would ask whether this is real free will. If an outside agent, in the last analysis, is pulling the strings, can we be really said to have a free will? Some people have argued that we can't have real free will unless, given the past, we could have done otherwise from what we did. This is the incompatibilist, or libertarian, conception of free will. Nash refers to this as the uninfluenced will, but it is actually the libertarian conception of free will. It does not seem uninfluenced to me, on the contrary; it seems perfectly possible to be influenced by something that does not ultimately determine the will. Thus, I can be influenced by someone who wants me to marry Joan, but I might marry Susan instead, ultimately making a choice that could have gone the other way. I don't think it fair to describe an undetermined will as an uninfluenced will. Nash makes the argument that we always act on our strongest desire, but as the philosopher William Hasker has pointed out, "strongest" turns out to just mean "the desire we acted upon," in which case "we always act on our strongest desire" just turns out to mean "We always act on the desire we act on," which is hardly news to anyone. Many people in science, based on quantum mechanics, believe that some events occur even though sufficient causes for them have not taken place (though, or course, there have to be necessary conditions), yet they nevertheless occur.
This is a massive debate in philosophy, and I am just scratching the surface of it here.
19 comments:
'Thus, I can be influenced by someone who wants me to marry Joan, but I might marry Susan instead, ultimately making a choice that could have gone the other way. '
Do Christians really marry people at random, not even letting themselves be influenced by their own brain?
Does gravity influence a feather to fall downwards when ultimately the feather might be blown upwards by the wind?
Does this mean gravity is an 'influence' , and not a 'cause'?
Or is it just that the c-word is theologically incorrect when applied to people, and you have to talk about 'influences' instead?
'Some people have argued that we can't have real free will unless, given the past, we could have done otherwise from what we did.'
The Christian god could have put angels with flaming swords to physically prevent Adam and Eve accessing the tree. (Just like the story says the Christian god did with another tree)
This would not have interfered with free will, because, of course, the Christian god never inteferes with free will.
'Some people have argued that we can't have real free will unless, given the past, we could have done otherwise from what we did.'
The past starts a nanosecond ago.
It seems Christians can make a decision to do something, and one millisecond later do something entirely different, without having changed their mind about their decision.
'Given the past' says Victor.
Ok, so given a past that up to the very last nanosecond did not include any changing of mind, then why do Christians value the ability to do something differently from what they decided to do?
How do they control themselves?
They literally cannot make a decision that they are committed to as they claim they are able, at any moment, to do something they never wanted to do.
I agree that "influence" does not necessitate an action.
I disagree with the idea that freedom is best thought of as "being able to do what one wants", which Nash denotes as "liberty of spontaneity", because--as every adult and child knows--we often do things that we don't want to do (i.e. grudgingly cleaning our room at our parents behest, going to the drudgery of work, remaining faithful in a relationship even when the '7 year itch' is over, etc.).
But a good Biblical illustration of this is the case of Jonah. Here is a person who refused to preach to the Ninevites after God had asked him to do so!! Since God does not alter the human will from within or from without, we see that He sends Jonah to Nineveh via a whale. But even after having sent him thusly, Jonah was still not willing that God should spare them. After much reasoning with him, God convinces him to preach to them....yet, even having done so, Jonah still did not "want" to.
However, let's set this aside and assume that the "liberty of spontaneity" point of view were true...that everyone does what they want, but that each person's desires are caused by antecedent conditions that, ipso facto, lay beyond the control of all softly-determined agents.
If a "belief" is the sort of thing that can be determinant of an agent's acting in a certain way, then, according to compatibilism, it's the "belief" which must determine the agent and not the other way around. This holds true even if compatibilists want to say that "desires" are the more primitive causes of action (i.e. causation that looks like this: desire---> belief---> action). If an agent can determine his/her beliefs, then we must hearken back to libertarian freedom. If an agent cannot determine his/her beliefs because his/her desires are the actual causal source of said beliefs, then all "rational" argumentation is superfluous and illusory. In accusing another of "falsehood", the compatibilist is either a hypocrite (i.e. Greek term for "stage actor") of the highest order or else deeply confused as to "why" he/she is even bothering to make such accusations; or even why he/she have bothered to make a philosophical case for compatilbilism to begin with.
Compatibilism cannot be "true", at least in the usual sense that we take that word to mean, because it was not wrought by rational apprehension; but, rather, wrought by some "desire".
If that is so, then logical arguments are nothing more than a result of agent wish-fulfillment.
Remember this: when compatibilist teachers hand out "grades" after each semester, they are only grading, or degrading, themselves....after all, all such "grades" were antecedently determined by desires of which these teachers had no control.
I take the old Greek notion of "reason" vs. "passion" as illustrative of my point; and an example of an unconsciously held, and as yet not fully fleshed out, "libertarian" ontology of action.
If we are to be devotees of objective morality and of the Christian faith (Gal. 5:24, Titus 2:12), then we must learn to restrain the "passions", rather than simply giving in to them. But our philosophy cannot permit us to do so if it insists on the supremacy of "desires".
Compatibilism is a heresy that, unfortunately, has crept into Latin Christendom (Col. 2:8).
"Heresy?" you ask. "That's a bit strong don't you think."
No, I don't think so. Non-Christians can go on believing whatever they like. If they don't like the concept of "freewill", then so be it. But as God is witness of the true faith, you won't find any Church Father of the first 1000 years of Church history who would endorse compatibilism....save for Augustine.
But I would like to ask the Calvinist this:
Do all sinful men and women still retain within themselves the "Imago Dei" (i.e. image of God)? It is folly to say "no" because God's image cannot be destroyed.
But if we do retain God's image, then I would inquire further: does the image of God, though stained by sin, still possess freewill as an essential aspect of that image? If you answer "no", then perhaps it's fitting that pious talk of God's "sovereignty" must come to an end. For, how can God be "sovereign" while His own "image"---the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ being the exactness of that "image" (Col. 1:15)---remains impotent? And is it not foolish to say that mankind cannot thwart God's will but that he can destroy God's own "image"...or to nullify the freedom inherent within His own "image" and, therefore, nullify God's own freedom?
If God truly became man in Christ, then would it not be fair to say that Christ came into this world freely...that Christ died freely for the world...that Christ freely offers Himself to us at this present hour? If Christ does so freely and not out of some antecedent "desires" within Him, then why deny freedom to the same "Christ within us" whose image, if anything, must possess true freedom?
Or does the Calvinist say that Christ, necessarily, offered Himself for the world? That God had no choice in redeeming mankind from it's ancestral curse?
So, what sort of "sovereignty" does a Calvinist ask us to support? It seems to be one which would deny God the very freedom, and therefore "sovereignty", that the Calvinist wants us to believe.
Can this be split up into paragraphs?
Nash makes the argument that we always act on our strongest desire, but as the philosopher William Hasker has pointed out, "strongest" turns out to just mean "the desire we acted upon," in which case "we always act on our strongest desire" just turns out to mean "We always act on the desire we act on," which is hardly news to anyone.
I think this confuses the notion of an ontological status of "which desire is strongest" (of coure, there can be multiple contributing desires) with an means of identification. We identify the choicen that had the strongest desire(s) by the action(s) taken, but the actions taken don't make that desire(s) the strongest.
Gregory said...
we often do things that we don't want to do (i.e. grudgingly cleaning our room at our parents behest, going to the drudgery of work, remaining faithful in a relationship even when the '7 year itch' is over, etc.).
Choosing between two (or more) outcomes we dislike, and picking one we dislike less, is still choosing what we want.
Do a search: First the scandal.
'...William Hasker has pointed out, "strongest" turns out to just mean "the desire we acted upon," in which case "we always act on our strongest desire" just turns out to mean "We always act on the desire we act on," which is hardly news to anyone.'
It is news to quite a few people.
Is Hasker complaining that compatibilism is so obviously true that it must be false?
How do libertarians stop themselves murdering people, as , as soon as they decide that they do not want to kill people, that decision is in the past, and we know that what happened in the past does not stop them doing anything?
'Many people in science, based on quantum mechanics, believe that some events occur even though sufficient causes for them have not taken place (though, or course, there have to be necessary conditions), yet they nevertheless occur.'
So according to libertarians, a decision by them to go to the bathroom after the meeting is not a sufficient cause to stop themselves urinating during that all-important boardroom meeting?
'....it seems perfectly possible to be influenced by something that does not ultimately determine the will.'
So a decision to postpone going to the bathroom until after the meeting does not ultimately determine the time of urination?
How do libertarians control themselves?
Steven asked:
So according to libertarians, a decision by them to go to the bathroom after the meeting is not a sufficient cause to stop themselves urinating during that all-important boardroom meeting?
Libertarians can say several things here. (1) Not all (and perhaps only few) actions are done freely; perhaps "refraining from urinating during the meeting" was an action done unfreely.
(2) It is typical to identify the primary and fundamental locus of freedom in decisions, rather than in (say) overt bodily movement, like moving a hand or relaxing or clenching bladder muscles. So libertarians could consistently maintain that the decision (during the meeting) to wait until later was free, and the actual act (of continuing to "clench") was only "derivatively" free - i.e. it was determined by a prior free choice. But discussions of freedom usually focus on so-called "basic" actions (i.e. decisions, volitions), not non-basic actions of the sort you're discussing.
So a decision to postpone going to the bathroom until after the meeting does not ultimately determine the time of urination?
(3) Libertarians could answer "no, it doesn't determine it. But it does cause it." Indeterministic causation is still causation.
(4) Or they could say "yes, it determines it. My decisions determine my actions. But the decision about when to pee was not determined - it was free."
(5) Or they could say "yes, it determines it. And that shows that this particular action was not free - which is hardly news, since many of our actions aren't done freely."
None of those options strike me as incoherent. You agree?
One Brow said:
"Choosing between two (or more) outcomes we dislike, and picking one we dislike less, is still choosing what we want."
This is a questionable bifurcation between "want" and "like". I think most people use these terms synonymously.
Secondly, you have illustrated a point that a libertarian would make...namely, that agents have competing "wants", but that freedom involves the personal determination to execute a particular "want".
Thirdly, this mistakenly reduces all choice to "wants". However, as I had mentioned above, human beings are not simply a complex of desires, but also of "reasons". Take a drug addict who quits using. Certainly, the desire to use persists well after the time an addict quits. And if a user can only avail themselves of "wants", then it would be true that there was never such a thing as a reformed drug addict. It seems to me that a person who wants to quit an addiction must resort to something/s outside the matrix of desires/wants in order to successfully quit. For instance, an addict may begin to reason about the consequences "using" has for family, friends, work and themselves and decide, based upon the negative outcomes of their behavior, that they should quit. They may also need additional buffers to mitigate their own desires to use again. In which case, they may need to put roadblocks in the way of their own "wants", so to speak; which may include a 12 Step Program, Church, Family interventions, psychotherapy, psychiatric intervention, alternate coping mechanisms, fervent prayer, etc. In other words, some means of accountability to act as an antidote to the poison of "want".
Lastly, the "want" argument must itself be a product of "want". So it would be fair to say that argumentation is not a matter of "truth", but, instead, is a matter of individual compulsion; that in the final analysis, "rational inference" amounts to nothing more than bits and pieces of descriptive, personal psychology.
Steven asks:
Is Hasker complaining that compatibilism is so obviously true that it must be false?
No. He is pointing out that the claim:
"we always act on our strongest desire"
must be given an interpretation. If it means:
"we always act on the desire that we act on"
then it is an obvious, albeit trivial, truth, but it goes no distance toward supporting compatibilism. (Obviously, libertarians can consistently accept it.)
To support compatibilism, "strongest desire" must instead be given a certain kind of non-trivial interpretation. But such an interpretation will no longer be obvious. So, Hasker was not saying that compatibilism is obvious. He was saying that the claim given as support for compatibilism is either obvious, but does not actually support compatibilism; or that it would support compatibilism, but requires evidential support, because it is far from obvious.
'Libertarians can say several things here. (1) Not all (and perhaps only few) actions are done freely; perhaps "refraining from urinating during the meeting" was an action done unfreely.'
So libertarians define themselves by their incontinence?
'But the decision about when to pee was not determined - it was free.'
And Victor will immediately respond that that decision was in the past. One millisecond after that decision, urinating can begin, as libertarians scoff at the idea that past events determine what they do.
Have you been paying attention? Didn't you read the original post which said 'Some people have argued that we can't have real free will unless, given the past, we could have done otherwise from what we did. '
Libertarians claim that . given that they have decided not to urinate, they are then perfectly free to urinate at any moment. Their decisions do not cause them to do anything. They literally cannot control themselves ,as they deny that past events control future actions.
GREGORY
but that freedom involves the personal determination to execute a particular "want".
CARR
And libertarians deny that if their greatest desire is to do good, then they will do good, no matter how much they detest the alternative action that they plump for.
You can hear libertarians all around the USA saying 'I never wanted to do that. I wanted to do something else', as they are certain that if they want to do X, they will find themselves doing Y.
It must be an awful life for them.
No matter how much they want to avoid urinating in the middle of that job interview, they will find themselves literally unable to act on that desire.
GREGORY
we often do things that we don't want to do (i.e. grudgingly cleaning our room at our parents behest, going to the drudgery of work, remaining faithful in a relationship even when the '7 year itch' is over,
CARR
Good to say Christians claim they don't even want to be faithful in a marriage.
And if they did want to be faithful, they then claim that that desire to be faithful will not cause them to be faithful.
Libertarians scoff at the very idea that vows taken in the past will cause them to behave in a certain way.
Steven said:
One millisecond after that decision [to not urinate], urinating can begin, as libertarians scoff at the idea that past events determine what they do.
Have you been paying attention? Didn't you read the original post which said 'Some people have argued that we can't have real free will unless, given the past, we could have done otherwise from what we did.'
This is incorrect. (I wonder which libertarians you have in mind - I recognize the position you describe in no libertarian author I'm familiar with.) Most libertarians say this:
FREE: S does an act A at time t freely only if, given the past (relative to t) and the laws of nature, S could have refrained (at t) from doing A at t.
But, first, notice that FREE does not entail that, for all of S's acts A, S does A freely. That is, libertarianism is neutral on the question of how many of a free agent's acts are done freely. Most libertarians are "restrictivists" to some degree: they hold that we perform many (perhaps most) acts unfreely, so that our exercise of free will is "restricted." Peter van Inwagen and Robert Kane (among a host of others) are good examples.
Second, Kane explicitly allows for an act to be free even when it is determined, provided that it is determined by a freely formed character. We might call this "derivative freedom." So at least some libertarians expressly deny your claim that "given that they have decided not to urinate, they are then perfectly free to urinate at any moment. Their decisions do not cause them to do anything."
But, third, even if one thought such acts are not free (derivatively or otherwise), libertarians can and do accept the claim that our (free) decisions can determine our actions. There is no tension between FREE, on the one hand, and the following claim:
FREE2: For some A, if S (freely) decides at t1 to do A at t2, then, at t2, S is unable to refrain from doing A.
In this case, given the past + laws relative to t1, S could have decided differently (e.g. to do B at t2, or to do A at t3, etc.). But given the past + laws relative to t2, S could not have done other than A. (Some libertarian authors call act A in such circumstances "proximately determined" but "remotely undetermined.")
As noted above, some libertarians would be inclined to regard the decision at t1 as free, and the action A at t2 as unfree. There is nothing inconsistent about that. Other libertarians (like Kane) would call both the decision at t1 and A at t2 free, the latter being free in virtue of being determined by the (free) former. There is nothing inconsistent about that either.
Now, accepting FREE2 does not tell us of any particular decision and action whether they are related like FREE2 says, or if instead S could refrain from doing A at t2 despite having decided at t1 to do so. There is nothing inconsistent in saying - indeed, it would be perfectly obvious to accept - that some actions are one way, and some actions are the other. It might be that, given my prior decision to be faithful to my wife, I am (now!) no longer able to be unfaithful. And it might be that, given my decision a year ago to exercise regularly, I am (now!) perfectly able to refrain from exercising more regularly. All of this is completely natural for a libertarian to affirm, without contradiction.
If you disagree, I'd love to see some textual evidence from a libertarian of your choice (e.g. Kane, van Inwagen, O'Connor, Ginet, Goetz, Hasker, McCann, Clarke, Campbell, etc.). As I said, your caricature of libertarianism puzzles me - I don't know which of the many libertarian theorists you could have read to give you the (mis)understandings of libertarianism that you appear to have.
' That is, libertarianism is neutral on the question of how many of a free agent's acts are done freely'
So you are unable to answer the question of how libertarians manage to control themselves.
'Second, Kane explicitly allows for an act to be free even when it is determined, provided that it is determined by a freely formed character. '
yes, all libertarians have to be determinists in disguise, because you cannot live your life as though libertarianism was true.
So all libertarians have to do is preach determinism, and live as determinists, but be careful never to use the 'cause' word, as that is theologically incorrect.
If they really believed in libertarian free will they are forced to say that they are free to break binding vows they took one second ago, which does not reflect well on their moral character.
Steven, your comments continue to betray fundamental misunderstandings of libertarianism - and of the general notions of freedom and control. Perhaps the following would help you see your mistake. Your purported "objection" to libertarianism is that, if true, it would mean that free agents "can't control themselves." This is supposed to follow, you say, because according to libertarianism (as you understand it), the fact that an agent makes a decision at t1 to do act A at t2 is compatible with its being the case that the agent fails to do A at t2. Is that your objection?
If so, then can you see that it cuts equally against compatibilism (and, indeed, against every view about freedom that I'm familiar with)? Every compatibilist will agree with the following claim:
It's possible that agent S decides, at t1, to perform act A at t2, and yet fails to perform A at t2.
And that means that, even on a compatibilist view, an agent's decision does not necessarily determine her future action. Consider an agent who decides on Monday to go to the store of Friday. Will a compatibilist say "it is determined that the agent goes to the store on Friday"? Of course not. A compatibilist (at least one who is also a determinist) will say that whatever happens on Friday was determined. And it's of course possible that the agent goes to the store on Friday. And it's of course possible that, if the agent goes to the store on Friday, that event was determined (in part) by the agent's decision on Monday.
But no compatibilist would say that the agent's decision on Monday must of necessity result in going to the store on Friday. After all, the agent could die before Friday. Or the agent could change her mind. Or she could forget about her decision on Monday.
The choice of temporal "gap" between decision and act is, of course, arbitrary. Every compatibilist will say the same thing about choices that occur (say) years before the relevant action, and about choices that occur immediately before the relevant action. Libertarians and compatibilists are completely on par with respect to that supposed objection.
If that's supposed to show that "compatibilists can't control themselves," well then your objection isn't again libertarians but against every theory of freedom. But hopefully this show you that, instead, your objection just doesn't even come close to showing what you seem to think it shows (about libertarianism).
By the way, your response to my description of Kane's view is confused. You seemed to conflate the thesis of determinism (which applies to entire worlds - and which is incompatible with freedom, according to Kane), with a particular event being determined (which, according to Kane, is compatible with that event being a free act, provided it is suitably related to prior acts which are themselves undetermined). So your rather bizarre comments about libertarians "preach[ing] determinism" is totallly off the mark.
And your suggestion that libertarians are "careful never to use the 'cause' word" is even more absurd. This makes me think you've never read anything by any of the major proponents of libertarianism. Have you never even heard of "agent-causation" for instance? (Notice the 'c' word?)
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