We were considering the Compatibilist proposal:
(C2) You do X freely iff:
It was objected that this would count some people as free who, as they are, couldn’t have chosen any differently. (But if they had been different enough that they could choose differently, would have succeeded.) But the objector says, these people intuitively don’t seem to be free. So this proposal makes counter-intuitive claims.
It looks, then, like acting freely requires more than we laid down in (C2), before. It’s not enough that you’re merely such that if you had chosen to do otherwise you would have done otherwise. That might be true even in a case where, intuitively, it was not in your power to choose to do otherwise. You might be choosing the way you do because you have a psychological obsession or addiction; or perhaps an evil scientist is causing you to choose in the way you do. In such cases, we wouldn’t want to say that you’re acting freely.
A more sophisticated form of Compatibilism accepts that criticism. It proposes the following:
(C3) You do X freely iff:
This account does rule out people who are unable to choose otherwise. Such people don’t count as acting freely, because they do not satisfy condition (d) of the account. They are not sensitive to reasons in the right way. It doesn’t matter what reasons the obsessive-compulsive, or the addict, or the scientist’s victim have for not doing X. They would still choose to do X anyway. X is the only choice they are able to make.
We’ve already seen that being causally determined to do X does not prevent one from satisfying conditions (b) and (c) of this account. Is being causally determined to do X also compatible with satisfying condition (d)? It seems that it is. For it may be that one is causally determined to do X because one is causally determined to have good reasons to do X. If one had been causally determined to have good reasons to do something else, instead, then one may have gone ahead and done that other thing. All that’s important, according to this Compatibilist, is that your choices are sensitive to and track your reasons. The mechanisms that produce those choices have to be reasons-responsive mechanisms. They have to be such that, if you had had different reasons, they would have produced different choices. If your choices are produced by reasons-responsive mechanisms, and you also satisfy conditions (b) and (c), then you do act freely, on this account. It is not necessary that your choices or actions be causally undetermined.
This theory sounds pretty good. It’s very sophisticated, and it avoids most of the problems that we’ve discussed so far. However, there are difficulties for it, too.
One difficulty is this. Not just any reasons-responsive mechanism will do. Suppose my choices are being caused by the neural manipulation of a benevolent scientist. This scientist always causes me to choose and act in the way that accords with the reasons I have. If there is a good reason for me to X, the scientist causes me to choose to do X. If there is a good reason for me to Y, the scientist causes me to choose to do Y. And so on. In this case, my choices are produced by a reasons-responsive mechanism, but I do not seem to be choosing or acting freely. Perhaps we can get around this problem by requiring that the reasons-responsive mechanism be located entirely inside the agent.
A second difficulty is this. On the current view, it sounds like I can act freely only if I always choose to do what I have good reason to do. I have to always choose to do “the right thing.” But if I’m free, can’t I also choose to do the wrong thing? Can’t I choose to do something which I recognize I don’t have good reasons to do? Sure, maybe that would be foolish or evil. But it does seem like it ought to be in my power. The current view says that such a choice would not be free, because it would not have been produced by a mechanism that responds to my reasons in the right way. But it’s hard to see why choosing to do the wrong thing has to be less free than choosing to do the right thing.
There is an important argument that we have not looked at so far. This is an argument that the Incompatibilist uses. If this argument works, then we don’t have to bother with questions about how the Compatibilist analyzes words like “could have done otherwise.” This argument threatens to show that free will just can’t be compatible with Determinism, no matter how you analyze our words.
Some of our texts call this the Consequence Argument; others call it the Before You Were Born Argument.
The argument goes as follows:
If Determinism is true, then how we act today is the necessary consequence of the laws of nature and the way the world was before we were born. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born. And neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. We have no control over those things. And if it’s not up to us whether certain things happen, then neither is it up to us whether the consequences of those things happen.
If we have no control over the laws and the past, and they have the consequence that we will act a certain way, then we have no control over how we act. Hence, if Determinism is true, then it is not up to us how we act today.
This is called “the Consequence Argument,” because it appeals to the principle “If we have no control over certain things, then we don’t have control over the consequences of those things, either.” It is a very plausible argument.
There are things the Compatibilist can say in response, but those things are rather subtle and may not be convincing.
See pp. 515-16 of the Beebee reading, where she sketches a response to this argument. (Also Chapter 3 Section 3 of the longer reading selection from Kane.)
Here is how a Compatibilist might continue in the direction Beebee is suggesting.
Philosophers distinguish a number of different senses of “possibility.” One kind of possibility is “physical possibility.” We say that some event is physically possible (with no qualifications) iff it’s compatible with our laws of nature that that event take place. We can say that an event is physically possible at time t iff it’s compatible with our laws of nature, and the actual state of the universe at t, that the universe evolve in such a way from t so that that event comes about. (van Inwagen describes such a distinction on p. 188 of his reading. He expresses the second as “having a physically possible connection with time t.”)
Another kind of possibility philosophers discuss is “epistemic possibility.” Roughly, something is epistemically possible iff it might be true, for all we know.
Now, we also employ claims like “It’s possible for me to do A” when we’re talking about what it’s in our power to do. Say that an act A is volitionally possible for me at time t iff, at t, it’s in my power to do A. If doing A and refraining from doing A are both volitionally possible for me at t, then it is up to me at t whether to do A. (We may want to subdivide the notion of volitional possibility further, since as we saw earlier, “can” sometimes tracks facts just about your background abilities—what Beebee calls “narrow abilities”—but other times also facts about your opportunities to exercise those abilities. Other times, whether you “can” do something may mean yet other things.)
The relations between these different kinds of possibility are not very straightforward. An important issue in recent philosophy is that some things may be imaginable or conceivable, and so epistemically possible in some sense, even though they’re not possible in other ways, including being physically possible. So “it is epistemically possible that P” will not entail “it is physically possible that P.”
The Incompatibilist assumes that, if doing A is in your power right now, then it must be compatible with the laws of nature, and the present state of the universe, that you do A. That is, he assumes that: “It is volitionally possible for you at t to do A” does entail “It is physically possible at t that you do A.”
However, the Compatibilist thinks that the mere fact that you’re causally determined not to do A does not by itself settle the question whether you could do A. The Compatibilist thinks that, even if your doing A is ruled out by the laws of nature and the present state of the universe being as they are, doing A might nonetheless be something which is in your power. That is, according to the Compatibilist: “It is volitionally possible for you at t to do A” does not entail “It is physically possible at t that you do A.” Some things can be volitionally possible at t which are not physically possible at t.
Why would anyone believe this? How could it be in your power to violate the laws of nature, or to make the past be other than the way it is?
Well, forget about Determinism for a moment. Think about an oracle 500 years ago who could look in her crystal ball, and see everything you’re now going to do. This is controversial, but many philosophers will agree that it’s already being true that you won’t do A doesn’t, by itself, entail that you are unable to do A. The fact that you won’t do it doesn’t show that you can’t do it. Similarly, the fact that the oracle has already seen that you don’t do it does not show that you can’t do it. It only shows that, as a matter of fact, you won’t do it.
Now here you are, deciding whether or not to do A. We suppose that you could do A. What does that show about your relation to the oracle? If you had done A, then presumable the oracle would have seen you doing A, instead of what she actually sees. Does that mean that your doing A today would have caused the oracle to see something different, 500 years ago? That sounds strange. How can what you do now cause something different to happen 500 years in the past? Some philosophers will say that, if the oracle really saw you do it, and wasn’t just guessing, then yes, you’ll have needed to cause her vision in the past. But another thing we can say is this. You have the power to do A, and if you had done A, and the oracle had retained her fortune-telling powers, then she would have seen you doing A. This is not the same as your having the power to cause the oracle to see anything.
Regardless of whether you think any such fortune-telling oracles are possible, this is a helpful distinction to make when we’re thinking about free will and the consequence argument.
Could you have prevented the laws of nature and the past from being as they are? The Compatibilist will say: there’s nothing you can do which would cause the laws and the past to be different. Just as there’s nothing you can do now to cause the oracle to see something different 500 years ago. But that doesn’t settle the question we’re interested in. There may be things you can do (but won’t do), such that, if you were to do them, the laws and the past would have been different. In the same way that there may be something you can do (but won’t do), such that if you had done it, and the oracle had retained her powers, she would have seen something different in her crystal ball.
That is the core move in the Compatibilist’s response to the Consequence Argument. According to the Compatibilist, there are things you can do, even though the laws and the past have the consequence that you don’t do those things. The Compatibilist accepts that you can’t make the laws and the past be different. It’s just that there are certain things you can make happen, such that, in a counterfactual situation where you do make those things happen, the laws and the past would have been different. (For example, they might have been different in such a way that they had the consequence that you would do those things.)
That is how the Compatibilist will argue that things can be volitionally possible for you, or in your power to do, even though it is not now physically possible for you to do those things.
As I said, it is a subtle response to the Consequence Argument. Personally, I do think it’s an effective response; but not everyone finds it convincing. Some philosophers feel that it’s a kind of “trick.” I don’t think it is a trick. But it would take a lot more discussion to settle that.