Greetings,
Klaus wrote that “an important criterion for being an agent is whether they have choices”. My understanding is that there are different philosophical views on what is means to “have choices”. We might distinguish degrees of having choices between “unconstrained choice” at one level and “ultimate free choice” at a deeper level.
When we say we are free to choose, we might mean that we have the power or the ability to do something that we may not actually do. According to this view, to “have choices” is to have the power or ability to act without constraints or impediments; such as physical restraints, coercion, compulsion or lack of opportunity. For example, a student that has the unconstrained choice to complete their assignment has the power or ability to do so, should they want or decide to do it, a power that they may not choose to exercise.
But most objections this view of “unconstrained choice” aim at defending the deeper meaning of “ultimate free choice”; a kind of ultimate control that would be incompatible with the idea that your will is determined by events in your past. This objection is often refers to the Consequence Argument:
“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.” (Kane, 2005, p. 23)
That “ultimate free choice” is incompatible with determinism, implies that the same past can have different futures, since the consequences of our acts are really “up to us”. The opposing view argues that this deeper meaning of “ultimate free choice” is incoherent because it implies that given exactly the same past, someone could choose to do otherwise. For example, “ultimate free choice” implies that the student, faced with completing the assignment, who has considered the all benefits and disadvantages of completing their assignment in detail, at the very last nanosecond, after the exact same thought process, could still chose to do otherwise. The agent may have free choice, but they also appear to be irrational.
Now, coming to the example of the computer programme being an agent. From the point of view that “having choices” means that our acts are really up to us and that we could to do otherwise, it does not seem to me to make sense to say that a computer programme is an agent.
When I think about the computer programme example, I imagine an operator searching a database of bridges. The operator inputs a request such as “Find the bridges that are Suspension and Red and not Stone” and the programme returns a result such as “Golden Gate”. Although there may be many bridges stored in the database, it is not “up to” the computer programme which result it returns, in either the sense of “ultimate free choice” or “unconstrained choice”. The computer programme cannot choose to do otherwise.
However, positing an agent with “ultimate free choice” makes the metaphysical assumption that there is a kind of primitive event in a causal chain, a kind of “prime mover unmoved.” For example the event [stone breaking window] would be caused by the stone’s moving and striking the window, which is caused by the hand throwing the stone, which is caused by the action of the arm muscles, which is caused by the activity of the brain, which is caused by the agent and not by any other prior events. In this sense the agent’s actions involve the relation [agent > event], rather than [event > event]. Although this form of non-event agent-causation appears to account for undetermined “ultimate free choice”, how this “prime mover unmoved” is empirically possible remains a mystery.
I haven’t yet been able to make up my mind on this topic. It seems like a choice between a mysterious (possibly irrational) agent on one hand, and our acts not being up to us on the other.
I don’t think that a computer programme can be an agent in the philosophical sense of having “ultimate free choice”, but then that might not be too much to give up if solves the more troubling metaphysical problem.
Best,
Luke
Kane, Robert. (2005). A contemporary introduction to free will. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
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Luke Feast, Ph.D. | Industrial Design | Senior Lecturer | Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies | Auckland University of Technology | New Zealand | Email [log in to unmask]
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