Dear list,
Terry’s and Jerry’s comments about mind and choice, in my opinion,
represent different views of the old problem of free will and moral
responsibility. In contemporary philosophy the debate concerning the nature
of free will is commonly concerned with the compatibility or
incompatibility of free will and determinism. Determinism is the doctrine
that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by
causes external to the will such as the laws of nature and events of the
remote past. Compatibilism is the view that there is no conflict between
free will and determinism. However, our everyday experience of freedom
appears in many ways to resist the concept of determinism. Our intuitive
experience that our actions and choices are “up to us” seems incompatible
with the idea that our will is determined by events in our past. In
addition, incompatibilists argue that if determinism is true then there are
implications for the relationship between free will and moral
responsibility. This key objection is often discussed in incompatibilist
accounts with reference to the Consequent Argument, which following Peter
van Inwagen (Kane, 2005, p. 23), can be described as:
-snip-
If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of
nature and events of the remote past. 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. Therefore the consequences of these things (including our own acts)
are not up to us.
-endsnip-
The consequence argument implies that under determinism, if it were true,
we could not be responsible for our actions. For example how could a
student be praised or blamed for the quality of her essay if it was not up
to her but determined by events in the remote past or by the circumstances
of her tuition? On the contrary, our everyday experience accords with the
idea that someone is responsible for her actions only if those actions were
done freely and only if they could have done otherwise. The consequence
argument does not in itself show that we have do in fact have free will, it
just shows that free will and determinism cannot both be true. The
incompatibilist position can either defend the view that determinism is
true and we do not have free will (hard determinism) or that we do have
free will and determinism is false (incompatibilism).
Looking at Jerry’s and Terry’s comments, I suggest that Terry’s position
can be considered as hard determinism and Jerry’s as incompatibilism
According to Terry (Hard determinism)
-snip-
Try a starting point that the choices occur in the body outside the mind;
the mind gymnastics feed some additional information to the body; and the
body then gives us the illusion we are thinking and having freedom of
choice… freedom of choice in decisions and belief that one has made the
correct choices are clearly false and illusory - our sense of self is
deluded.
-endsnip-
According to Jerry (Incompatibilism)
-snip-
A design theory that involves negotiating transformative preferences and
assumes a conversation among actively participating stakeholder minds must
necessarily require some freedom of choice. Terry’s presentation of mind as
a kind of receptacle showcase and phantom ambassador for decisions made
elsewhere doesn’t obviously allow for this and raises, I think, strong
ethical concerns.
-endsnip-
It follows then that both Terry’s and Jerry’s are positions are
incompatibilist. Neither Terry nor Jerry believe that free will are
determinism are compatible. Terry argues that determinism is true and
freewill is an illusion. Jerry argues that determinism is false because
then we would not have free will we therefore we could not be morally
responsible for our actions.
The onus is placed on the incompatibilist to show that the kind of deep
free will they are defending is both something worth wanting as well as
something incompatible with determinism. This however has proven to be a
difficult task, and in most accounts this source of this ultimate control
is attributed to some kind of mysterious extra factor or “unmoved mover.”
The most obvious form of the “extra-factor” strategy is found in Cartesian
mind-body dualism. In this perspective, the immaterial soul is distinct
from the body and not governed by the laws of nature, allowing it to
interact with the brain to intervene in the world and influence physical
events. However positing such an agent presents a strong metaphysical
assumption and showing how this activity of the soul is empirically
possible remains a mystery.
The onus is placed on the hard determinist to account for moral
responsibility. If a designer does not have the freedom to do otherwise
(i.e. *preferred* situations imply alternative possibilities), how can they
be responsible for design failures?
This post is long enough already so I will I will only briefly outline one
possible version of the alternative position, namely compatibilism.
Compatibilists argue that our common objections to determinism reflect an
underlying confusion that determinism is form of constraint or fatalism.
Determinism should not be confused with the idea that whatever is going to
happen, is going to happen, no matter what we do. A person’s character is
formed by their circumstances, however, their desire to mould it in a
particular way is also one of those circumstances, and so our deliberations
do affect our future even if determinism is true (Kane, 2005, p. 20).
Best
Luke
Reference
Kane, R. (2005). A contemporary introduction to free will. Oxford ; New
York: Oxford University Press.
--
Luke Feast | Early Career Development Fellow | PhD Candidate | Faculty of
Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia |
[log in to unmask] | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/
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