Reference Material:
Freedom
and Belief by Galen Strawson (2010)
An
Essay on Free Will by Peter van Inwagen (1983)
This
post picks up right where its predecessor left off, exploring in more depth
what it means to have free will, or to claim to. We’ll start again with the
conditional version of the freedom to-do-otherwise conception: you are free to
do otherwise if, were you to choose to do otherwise, you would in fact do
otherwise. Upon first reading this formulation, it somehow seems too simple.
I’m playing chess. It’s my turn. Let’s suppose I have the choice to move either
my knight or my bishop. I choose to move my bishop, and go on to in fact move
my bishop. Does this make my action free? In one sense, yes. My action is free
in the sense that it is preceded by (caused by?) conscious mental activity – my
choice. My moving my bishop is not an unconscious, autonomic process like my
breathing or heartbeat, nor is it a reflex like coughing or sneezing. It’s much
more deliberate and intentional. But is this all we mean by free will? I don’t
think so. I don’t think we are only concerned that our actions are free in that
they depend on our choices. We, particularly free will skeptics, want to go
deeper. At the very least, we want to know whether our choices are free.
As
introduced in the previous post, the conditional to-do-otherwise conception of
free will can be restated to try to focus on choice: you are free to choose
otherwise if, were you to desire to choose otherwise, you would in fact choose
otherwise. The SEP article spells out two objections to this new definition: it
struggles to deal with dilemmas where more than one desire is present, and it
seems to attribute a kind of freedom to extreme phobics that clearly don’t
possess it. My initial reaction is that these objections stick (there are, of
course, common replies and counterarguments), but even brushing them aside, I
feel there is a deeper issue here. The concern arising with the previous
formulation still lingers. I want some fruit. Several options, a peach, an
apple, a pear, etc., present themselves. I desire a peach, and then choose the
peach. Is my choice free? The response mirrors that above. Yes, the choice is
free in the sense that it is motivated by my desire and made in the absence of
external constraints. But again, is this what we mean by free will? My answer
is the same – it seems not. It seems reasonable to argue that if our choices
are made free based on their originating in desires, the conception of free
will that we are after, that we want to have, demands that we can also choose our desires. After all, ‘will’ is
often synonymous with ‘desire’. A free will would, one assumes, require free
desires, and not just desires freely satisfied, but desires freely chosen by
their possessor.
My
sense is that this is one point where the conversation starts to diverge,
split, and fray. Classical compatibilists (think Locke, Hobbes, etc.) argued
that the suggestion above, that having free will requires that we choose our
desires, is basically nonsensical (see the SEP article for an elaboration of
this point). I take their argument to be something like the following. Our
actions are free because they are dependent on our choices (as in the first
conditional to-do-otherwise formulation). Our choices are free because they
stem from our desires (the second formulation). To analyze further, to require
a conception of free will that accounts for the origin of the will itself, is
to start down a path of infinite regress: if desires originate in some other
mental states, call them x’s, and
this fact suffices to make desires free, does free will require an account of
how x’s are free? And so on. The
force behind this argument seems to come from the intuition that, because
further analysis (can we choose our desires? If not, where do they come from?)
leads to a kind of absurdity in infinite regress, that analysis must be
wrongheaded or, in some sense, unnecessary. Therefore, the analysis should
terminate at something like the second conditional formulation, which suffices
as a conception of free will. My intuitions pull me in exactly the opposite
direction. To me, the fact that a conceptual analysis of free will has led to
an explanatory infinite regress is an indication that the concept at the heart
of the analysis, free will, is somehow problematic. I’m not alone in this
reaction. Galen Strawson’s argument for the impossibility of free will makes
use of this same idea – an explanatory search for the locus of control at the
heart of the concept of free will (e.g., from action to choice to desire, etc.)
ultimately extends beyond anything we have control over, anything we would call
us.
This
brings me to a concept that I’ve come to view as central to the free will
quagmire, the self. When I reject the second formulation of the conditional
analysis, part of what I’m reacting to is something like the following. If my
free will consists in my choices being based on my desires, then there is a
sense in which the agent doing the willing, me, becomes identified with my
desires. I am free because my desires (I) determine my choices. This
identification seems to imply a somewhat crude sense of self, that I am my
desires. I believe a dislike of this conception of the self partly motivates my
rejection of the second conditional formulation as adequately describing free
will. I am not coincident with my desires, therefore to be truly free, I must
in some sense choose my desires. This issue certainly won’t be settled here, if
ever. The philosophy of the self is itself a branch of inquiry. However, as I continue
to explore freedom, I will return to the connection between the self and free
will, and the central role the concept of the self plays in the free will
debate. My tentative conclusion here will be the following. The conditional
to-do-otherwise conception of free will has some serious problems (see the
reference material). Even ignoring many of these issues, however, the
conditional analysis seems to commit to a conception of the self that, in my
limited reading, appears objectionable and underexplored.
An
alternative definition of the freedom to do otherwise is the so-called
categorical form: you are free to do or choose otherwise at some time if it is
possible, holding everything fixed up until that time, for you to do or choose
otherwise. At first reading, this definition rings true to me. It seems to
capture the ability people claim to have when they say they have free will. In
my chess example, what I mean when I say I’m free to move either the bishop or
knight is something like the following. Given that everything in the world is
the way it is – the positions of pieces on the board, my posture, my current
mental state, everything – it is possible that I will move either piece. Said
another way, both futures, with either the bishop or the knight having moved,
remain open to me in the current moment. I won’t attempt to defend this
conception in more detail here – it will be challenged in the next post.
