Free Will - Compatibalism false?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I am about to go to University to study philosophy. I have done A-level, and the subject I found most interesting was Free Will and Determinism, because it turned out that the “intuitive” answer (ie we all have free will) was not accepted by most philosophers. So here is my question: why is Compatibalism accepted by some, if not most, of the academic philosophical community? Let me explain why I think Compatibalism is a cop out.

The basic, default, positon in the Free Will debate has to be determinism. ie

  1. Every action has a cause, all of which are subject to natural laws that apply equally everywhere

  2. This chain of causes means that every action, including human actions, cannot be affected or stopped

  3. Therefore, we do not have free will, because all of our actions and all of our moral decisions are determined by causes that we are unaffectable

The small matter of if there was a First Cause, a Big Bang, God, or an infinite regress is relatively trivial to this discussion. It follows from the determinist position that, with perfect knowledge of the present, we can predict the past and the future with perfect accuracy. OK, that all seems good.

One can, I suppose, accept indeterminism (maybe from Quantum research), ie

  1. The Universe is indeterminate, so there can be causeless effects

  2. Human actions can therefore be the result of forces outside of our control. Neither we nor the Universe is the cause

  3. Therefore we do not have free will, and so we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions (again)

Thus we have two basic positions, with the same conclusion:

  1. Either the Universe is determinist or indetermist, or both
  2. If it is determinist, we have no free will
  3. If it is indetermist, we have no free will
  4. If it is a bit of both, we have not free will
  5. Thus, we have no free will

OK, now here is where I get confused. Hume, Locke and so on say that we can have free will even if we are determined (Compatibalism). The two ‘classic’ thought experiments are as follows:

  1. You wake up in a room with a door. You decide not to leave. It turns out the door was locked, so you could not have left. But in deciding not to leave, you followed your own volitions, so you were determined (you could not do othewise) but you still have free will (you did what you wanted)

  2. Socrates wanted Plato to punch Kant. Unknown to Plato, Socrates had a device in Plato’s brain that he could trigger that would make Plato punch Kant. Socrates waited to see what Plato did. Plato punched Kant anyway. Again, Plato was determined - he could not have done anything else - but had free will (the device was not triggered, so Plato was doing what he wanted).

OK, now I think there is a crucial mistake in both. I think they misunderstand the depth and scale of determinism. Here is why:

If determinism is true, as Compatibalism claims, it means that everything about me, including how my brain is wired, what genes I have (hence what phenotypes I express), what experiences I will have, what things I hear or see will have an impact on me and what things will not, what I say, what I feel. In short, EVERYTHING, even my wants and desires, are determined by the - unaffectable - chain of causality (yeah I know sounds like the Matrix) stretching back ad infinitum. With this in mind, let us examine the two thought experiments again.

  1. The person who does not leave the room has no free will. This is because, at the moment he wakes up and thinks “shall I leave?”, everything is predestined. He will not want to leave - leaving aside the fact that he cannot - because that is the result his brain is determined to give him. Unless this is free will, which is a very weak definition, he does not have free will.

  2. Again, Plato has no free will (and thus maybe no moral complicity). The device, again, is irrelevant. Plato would have punched Kant anyway, because he was determined to from before he existed. There is no way Plato can affect his feelings and wants - they are all determined - so THE ONLY thing he can do is punch Kant, EVEN IF the device were not in his brain.

There must be a flaw in my reasoning somewhere, because this seems a very basic objection to Compatibalism. Can someone enlighten me?[/i]

2

I think you are right the thought experiments are unsound. The underlying assumption is that by choosing not to open the door/punching Kant they are acting out of freewill. However, if one believe in determinism then that choice was already determined to happen.

Not much help I suppose. :slight_smile:

EDIT:
Maybe the definition of freewill is different within Compatibilism.

3

Why was the choice (to not open the door) determined?

4

The choice was a function of neurons firing in the brain. The firing of those neurons was caused by previous events, which were again caused by previous events, ad nauseum.

5

Hmm, well I think compatibilism goes deeper- at least in Hume’s version.

The point is not that you can be free if you are determined, but to be responsible you must be determined.

Let’s take an example.

Bob loves Margret. Bob has lots of money, wants a family, and genreally has ever reason in the world to get married to Margret.

If he suddenly decides not to marry Margret, for no reason at all. With think of him as insane. And insane people we think are not responsible for their actions- as indeed not free.

Therefore without being determined at least to a large degree by our reasons (wheather or not they are one-to-one with neurological events) is part of being responsible.

What the point of the examples you listed above are is to divorce conceptually the concepts.

Reconsider your locked room example, but replace a normal man, with someone who has freewill. Take it, as part of the example.

So a man (who somehow has free will) is locked in a room, but never tries to leave- stays in there by his own will.

The point is determinism doesn’t nessiarily impact upon free will at the conceptual level.

6

One can have a will without it needing to be free. Riding the crest of the wave is often more fun than choosing whether or not to dive off the surfboard

7

Well, compatibilists think that it is not true that a person’s actions are not free just because they are caused, but rather, they are not free when they are caused in a certain way. According to the complatibilist, actions are free as long as they are no compelled or forced on the agent, and it is that kind of causation that is the contrary of freedom. So, if an agent can do as he chooses (pleases, wants) or if the agent need not do as he does not choose (please, want) then the agent has acted freely. So, the compatibilist would say that it is not a general question whether people have free will or not, but whether people act freely sometimes (when they are not under compulsion, and so are not being forced to act contrary to how they want to act) and sometimes do not act freely (when they are under compulsion, and are forced to act “against their will”) So that the issue of free will is independent of that of whether the action is caused or not, but only dependent on whether the action was caused in a particular kind of way.

8

Yes, but my point is that under hard determinism - which Compatabists accept remember - our wants, desires, volitions etc are surely determined themselves, thus saying “I did what I wanted to do, so I am free” is equivalent to saying “I did what I was determined to want to do, so I am not free”.

9

First of all, “Hard Determinism” is the very opposite of compatibilism. Hard Determinists say that determinism is incompatible with free will. In other words, Hard Determinists are determinists, but maintain that determinism implies that free will is false. Soft Determinism holds that determinism is NOT incompatible with free-will, so that soft determinists are also determinists. The issue is whether determinism and free will are or are not compatible. So, compatibilists do accept determinism, but they say that Hard determinism is false, because Hard determinism is the same as incompatibilism. You have to get the vocabulary straight. So, to summarize:
Hard Determinism = Incompatibilism (Determinism and Free will are incompatible)
Soft Determinism= Compatibilism (Determinism and Free Will are compatible)

Both Soft Determinists (compatibilists) and Hard Determinists (Incompatibilism) say that Determinism is true. “Libertarians” say that determinism is false. Libertarians and Hard Determinists are Incompatibilists, because they both hold that Determinism and Free Will are incompatible.

Second: As you can see, you must be mistaken when you say that Compatibilists say “I did what I was determined to want to do, so I am not free” Compatibilists say: “I did what I wanted to do, so I am free (even if I was determined)” Remember, Compatibilism says that freedom and determinism are compatible. That is why they are called “compatibilists”.

10

  1. Apologies -yep you are right. I meant to asy “determinists” when I said “Hard determinists”. Will get vocabulary correct in future.

  2. I think you miss my point. What I am saying is that compatabilists have not thought through what “determinism” means. If you accept determinism, you surely have to accept that everything about us, including our wants, is determined. Thus the compatibalist claim that “free will is doing what you want to do” is a nonsense, because what you want to do is itself determined.

11

But, that’s exactly the issue. What compatibilists claim is that it isn’t that actions are caused (“determined” is just a metaphor and prejudices the issue which is why incompatibilists like to use it) that is incompatible with acting freely, but that they are compelled, which is a particular kind of causation. Suppose it is true that what I want to do is caused. Why does that mean that my action is not free? Would I be freer if I had to do what I did not want to do? That’s not how we think or talk outside of the philosophy classroom, or outside of the philosophy board. If I were attending the wedding of someone, and a friend of mine told me that the groom did not marry the bride “of his own free will” I would think that my friend meant (perhaps) that the bride was pregnant, and that the groom had to marry her. I certainly wouldn’t think he meant that the groom wanted to marry the girl, and that his wish to do so was caused by his upbringing (he happened to like blondes, and the bride is a blonde), or that he was intelligent, and so was the bride, so that he found intelligent women attractive. What difference does it make that his falling in love with the girls had causes? Of course it did. But, so what? He married her because he loved her. That’s the sort of thing we mean when we say that he married her of his own free will. We are just denying that he had to marry her. Not that he fell in love with her as the result of certain causes.

12

the combatiblist thinks that metaphisical freedom- the ability to do things without cause, is not required for freedom in an ethical sense- the type of freedom required to be punished.

This to me seem to be entirely reasonable. The phrase I like to use it ‘bad robot’. Ok I’m a determinist so I will admit that everything we do is set out in advance by our various programers (society, genetrics, god what-have-you). However, if we are programed to be manicial muderous SoBs then we ARE bad and can be punsihed for our freely chosen actions. That is the actions that are not forced upon us by extreem circumstances.

Acually let me say that agian, I think I’m getting to the heart of this thing.

Metaphysical Freedom ~= Freely Chosen

All one requires to be freely chosen is removal of EXTERNAL cohersion. (Interal cohersion is fine and normal.)

13

I think you mean by “ethical sense of ‘freedom’” the kind of freedom that allows for moral responsibility. And I think that is right. But, I don’t see any reason to concede that “freedom” does have another sense which is “causeless action”. That is just something that has been invented by philosophers, and has nothing to do with what we mean when we say that a person acted of his own free will. I think what bothers people is that they think that if a person was caused to do something, that he could not have done anything different. And so, he did not act freely. But is that true? If I had oatmeal this morning for breakfast, is it true that I could not have had Froot Loups? I don’t think so. I could have had Foot Loups if I had chosen to have Froot Loops. (There they were, on the shelf!) I just didn’t choose to have FL.

14

if you were determined to be a talking toucan, you would have had the froot loops…

but since you may or may not be a talking toucan you believe that you have the choice of oatmeal…

but you were determined not to be a talking toucan, so it was determined that you would not have froot loops…

if only that butterfly in antartica 1,000,000,000,000 years ago hadn’t flicked his wings…

to say nothing about going coocoo for cocoa puffs…

-Imp

15

Well there is a sense of the word freedom, such as a free variable, that seems to have something to do with having no cause- or maybe more acurately a cause outside the system. But in any case there are two concepts that for some reason or another have become confounded, I see know harm in teasing them out as I did.

16

L.G.,

“…or maybe more acurately a cause outside the system.”

This is key. The illusion of “freedom”, is the ignorance of the system of its determinants. Ignorance does not constitute freedom, but for the ignorant.

Dunamis

17

First there are some assumptions that need demolition.

  1. Every action has a cause, all of which are subject to natural laws that apply equally everywhere.
    How do you know? What was the cause of the Big Bang for example? We believe that every action has a cause, but that is it. It is a belief, poetry, faith. Lovely in it’s simplicity but leading to absurdity.

  2. This chain of causes means that every action, including human actions, cannot be affected or stopped
    The Chain of Causes is stronger towards it’s past than to the future. Every thing that I have done so far has been fully explained as caused, but I can only infer that such uniformity will continue. Or can you know what you will do in the future? This is key. The problem I have with determinism is the implication that the universe sits still. That these laws are constant into the distant past or future. These are myths. The universe is probably determined but we cannot string together that Chain of Being, if you will.
    The humans you speak of are strange to me. Personally, I am determined by various circumstances but I decide from possible options. That “I” is not yet generated; not yet here. That “I” will be changed by age, informed by it’s enviroment and the quality of it’s memory. To put it this way:The I is not determined. Innate and exterior forces combine in varying ways to inform the character of each.

  3. Therefore, we do not have free will, because all of our actions and all of our moral decisions are determined by causes that we are unaffectable
    Wrong. Our moral decisions are determined by an undetermined self that does not, as of yet, exist.

The small matter of if there was a First Cause, a Big Bang, God, or an infinite regress is relatively trivial to this discussion.
Why is it trivial? Perhaps to advance your position, but as I presented above, for me, it is at the heart of the counter-argument. Perfect knoeledge is a myth asociated with the Minds of Gods. Logically speaking, unless time stops, no law, or perfect knowledge is without, or beyond exception.

O- The thought experiments miss the point for me. It is not how the door or a brain is rigged but the potentials yet developed. Psychologically we stand as a blob of ink. Any two scientist see it differently. Until that decision has been made, as to what to make of that ink blot, it stands indeterminate. It is determined by the minds of these two men.
When considering a rock, we have an object that stands well to the test of time and has no consciousness–it does not think, nor does it need to, for it cannot, need not, move. A brain is determinate. The mind it generates is not. It will react similarly to similarly input, but that input is not observed, it is infered. When the sun comes out tomorrow, I am determined to see the sun…if it comes out tomorrow.
Freewill is the feeling before the action-- Yet, IT IS NOT PRESENT AT ALL TIMES. Freewill is a feeling; we must be aware of it. He that is unaware of this feeling is determined, that is, insane. Two cases might help:
You by the train tracks. Train is coming. Five workers in it’s path are unaware of it and will surely die withing seconds unless you act. Next to you is a lever to switch the tracks, but on the other track is another single worker. He would die, but you save five others.
Second case. Still at the station, over a bridge, train coming, five workers in it’s path, you are over the tracks and there are no levers to help, but there is one man by you-- if you grab him and throw him off the bridge and into the tracks of the incoming train you will save the five workers. Sure, one will die but the other five live, just as in our first scenario.

How do you think you will act? If you are determined then the actions in both will correlate as the outcomes were the same: 5-1.

18

I thought the issue was whether IF all our actions are caused, there is free will.

19

I thought the issue was whether IF all our actions are caused, there is free will.

1- our causes are fuzzy, because the “I” is fuzzy.
a) The self is not an absolute being streching over your entire existence. It is a series of selves. There is “You-A” that sucked on his mother’s teat. There is “You-B”, who learned to walk, so on and so forth, until we get to you, “You-P”. As you read this, can you tell me what you were thinking as you exited the uterus?
If you are an unbroken chain of causes, if you can remember your infancy day by day, then I will concede that you do not have freewill. If you remember each stage, then we can get to talking about each tree leave you saw and the thought each evoked. If your present state can be tracked by you to ALL previous causes, then you are indeed a slave.

2- causality is a way of viewing things.
a) Proceeding from the previous bit, causality is an illusion of our minds. We do not have causes but conjoined events. There is a phenomenon by which we can infer that we are moving an arrow in the computer screen, if the movements of our mouse coincide in time with the movement in the computer, even if it is another person really moving it. The more separate in time the “cause” comes from the “effect” the more we disbelieve our guilt. The opposite is true.
Causality is in your mind.
Existence is in excess of you. Even your own existence. In these holes that are lost to you, you infer, you imagine, you create and repair reality and give causality it’s final colors and beauty.

3- freewill is itself a cause.
a) That is why I consider the will a cause in itself. I do not deny that there are causes and effects but that it is because this is so that we can even speak of freewill. What use is it to speak otherwise of it? The true question is not so much: “IF all our actions are caused” for they are and in these causes we find quite a group of illusions, including that of the will. We have freewill because we must invent it, just the same we invent causes and chains of them. The fact is that the chain is missing quite a few links and these are filled by poetry.
A few years back there was a movie with Tom Cruise about this subject. He rolled a ball down his desk and had the guy questioning the determinist argument catch it. If he did not believe in the principle of causality–that the ball was determined to fall-- why did he catch it? Because he imagines what the ball will do and not because he is God and knows that it will inexorably fall.

Freewill is a feeling that occurs sometimes and sometimes not.

20

Firstly, my points all assumed that determinism was true - as compatabilists do - and then sought to try to show that the compatablist view, that if we do what we WANT to do we are free (eat cheerios instead of shreddies etc) - is a nonsense. This is because, I contend, determinism surely means that all our wants and desires are determined, and hence we have only a forced choice. And a forced choice is no choice at all. Hence, no free will.

However, I think the Minority Report example you cite is exactly my point. Let’s just review what happens:

Cruise is arguing with a Justice Department guy about the Pre-Crime system. Cruise is saying that, just because they stop the murders, that has no bearing on whether the murders would have happened had they not stopped them. To illustrate, he throws a ball, which is about to fall off a table. The Justice guy catches it. Cruise in triumph points out that catching it does not change whether or not it would have hit the floor.

OK now here’s the rub: of course it would have hit the flaw, because a ball falling is subject to Newtonian physics - gravity - and as such is perfectly determinate. Science is based (with the exception of Quantum Physics, but that really only applies to scales smaller than even our cells or the organelles in our cells) on things being predictable. Now, OK, Hume is right: this is an assumption with no real justification. However, given how much success science has had explaining so much that is seemingly unexpainable otherwise, lets us allow this to become a working assumption.

The question is: are humans, physically and mentally, subject to the same determinate laws? Physically, yes we are. If you dropped one of us out of a window, we would hit the ground. If you increase the air pressure, our ears hurt etc. Mentally? Again, it takes an assumption, and that is that physicalism is correct. If it is, then our minds are formed from our brains. This is a separate debate, but again it is not an unreasonable assumption, and I am sure that there are many Compatablists who would subscribe to it.

So, if we are physically and mentally subject to determinate laws of nature. Hence, determinism is correct. Hence, my point stands.