FREE WILL & DETERMINISM

Causation
1. If A then B, if no B no A.
  1. Determinism: not remembering lecture, not going. remembering, going. Was there a choice here?
    1. What would be the worth of choice function if determinism were true?
DETERMINISTIC WORLD VIEW
1. importance of FW: we like to feel people can be held accountable for their actions, we like to feel like we're in control of our own lives
  1. HARD DETERMINISM: ALL EVENTS ARE DETERMINED BY THEIR CAUSES AND CONSEQUENTLY THERE'S NO FREE WILL
    1. SOFT DETERMINISM/COMPATIBILISM: HUMAN ACTIONS ARE DETERMINED BY PRIOR CAUSES, BUT FREE WILL STILL EXISTS
      1. (e.g. prior events include your own choices)
      2. INCOMPATIBILISM: FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM CANNOT EXIST TOGETHER
        CLASSICAL FREE WILL THEORY : HUMAN ACTIONS NOT DETERMINED BY CAUSES & THERE IS FREE WILL
        an arg for FW: if there was no free will, there would be no difference between those under compulsion (addiction) and ordinary non compulsive actions
        P2: there is a diff
        Conc: free will exists
        Invalid
        Begs Q
      3. Dennett: my actions are result of my conditioning and genes, then my choice responsibility on this basis - caused by other things but still yours
  2. can't do this is life is determined
2. Why deny FW? belief everything is determined, everything has a cause and what happens is predetermined by past events
  1. Hobbes: "Every act of a mans will procedeth from some cause"
    1. Spinoza: "Man is necessarily always prey to his passions
      1. KANT: held that we have to presuppose that every event is determined by a cause, if we didn't the thought of science would be impossible
    2. Holbach: "he is born without his own consent"
      1. for Holbach - how ever voluntary an action may seem to you, it's part of a cause and effect cycle, this goes outside of you & out of your control
        "Whatever manner he is considered, is connected to universal Naure"
        A system of Nature, Vol 1, 1770.
  2. observation is reliable. Presuppose patterns
  3. every event has a prior cause (water at 100 degrees), that prior cause determines next event (water boils) - the prior cause is also predet. caused
3. PREMISE 1: Every event is determined - it couldn't have happened differently
  1. PREMISE 2: Human actions are also determined, they're events like any other.
    1. Premise 2: Perhaps human actions are not events like any other?
      1. Humans think about what they do before they do it? Is this FW? think but not action? not the case for nature - rain etc. no thinking involved
        but our actions are then caused by our thought - are they physical events? Yes - doesn't affect determinist arg then.
        But our actions just don't FEEL determined!
        Determinist: it's just a powerful illusion
        Wittgenstein's leaf analogy - thinks to itself in the wind - now i'll go this way, now i'll go that.
        FW not compatible with science -- science tells us we are evolved creatures on a continuum so we would have to accept dogs, plants, ants have FW
        Also, humans are subject to the laws of physics
        Determinist - feeling of having free will exists only in some creatures
        Taoist philosophy teaches everything happens in accordance with the tao inc. our actions
  2. does this beg the Q? is it dependent on deterministic world view - physicists prepared to accept that some events aren't determined
    1. but if actions are random rather than determined does this make them any closer to being free?
4. The No 3rd Way Arg.:
  1. P1: cause is prior to effect
    1. P2: nothing is prior to itself
      1. Conc: nothing is the cause of itself
    2. is this true? water at 100 degrees it boils IMMEDIATELY
  2. No 3rd Way Arg (Version 2):
    1. P1: cause is always distinct from it's effect
      1. P2: nothing is distinct from itself
        Conc: nothing is the cause of itself
        still caused by itself/random - not free
5. Classical Free Will Theory: Human Actions are DIFFERENT.
  1. agent causation: intelligent beings have actions which are independent
    1. no truth of the matter of future states - before something happens its true nor false that they'll happen
      1. we can't know something until it happens. Is this true?It is true that I will die, but it hasn't happened yet.
PRAISE AND BLAME
1. NO FREE WILL = NO MORAL RESPONSIBLITY
2. Clarence Darrow and the Trial of Leopold and Loeb (1924): said that their actions were due to their environment/genetics
  1. hence they shouldn't he held accountable for the actions of someone else.
  2. no free will = no blame
    1. isn't it irrational to accept we can't praise or blame anyone?
3. determinists try to make sense of moral resp. in consequencialist reasons:
  1. they deserve it, to protect society, to deter others
    1. how does this make sense if they nor us have free will?
      1. we can't affect how they will act in the future if it's predetermined
        if we blame we must think that the could have done otherwise!
        Schoolboy - didn't learn because he was stupid. Didn't learn because he was lazy.
        in determinism, laziness and stupidity are traits with prior cases - could they have done otherwise?
        SMART: jurisdiction of praising or blaming is pragmatic - blaming someone for being lazy might make them less lazy. Blaming them for being stupid
        wont make them less stupid
        so we can still praise/blame when we have no free will
        produce a change doesn't accept people DESERVE it.
        worries of consequentialism will affect this:
        -To protect society - dangerous but innocent, guilty not violent?
        As a deterrent - no fw = won't work. not known to be empirically effective
        Rehabilitation - not known empirically whether rehab actually works
        Rule utilitarianism: do what as general rule has good effects
        so don't put people in prison if they're innocent as it's likely to have bad consequences - misses the point they're INNOCENT!
        SMART'S approach is impersonal and instrumental
        Don't confuse with fatalism - determinism doesn't say that smthng bound to happen no matter what else happens
        previous factors ARE important to determ.
4. for praise and blame to be effective, we must accept actions have causes like intentions
5. Peter Strawson
  1. Expressivist reasons - punishment of expressing society's approval/dissaproval of actions
    1. punish people going against my values - Smart misses this
  2. language is expressive: well done!
    1. interpersonal situations - someone steps on your toe - RESENTMENT but they didn't mean to
      1. Were they forced? mentally ill, addicted? continuously in this state of not meaning to - acceptance, no blame regardless of your loss
        we therefore have an objective view
6. useful for conditioning regardless of determinism
  1. determined conditioning (cause), better person (effect)
    1. actions owned by them
      1. even if no fw, it works with dogs!
Classical Free Will Theory
1. reject compatibilism - William James "makes the word free meaningless"
2. common sense understanding of free will
  1. P1: our actions are not determined
    1. P2: our actions are not random either
      1. P3: We make things happen
        what does it mean to say we make something happen
        clouds cause rain - not fw
        causes and effects can't pass through us, we are the origins of our actions
    2. trick dice, not determined but not random. Weighted makes it unfree?
3. do we understand the nature of cause and effect? Hume first to point this out
  1. Billiard balls - we don't actually see a ball causing another to move - we add the causality due to the regularity of experience of it
    1. science itself gives us reason to believe there are things science cannot understand
      1. consciousness - one of those things we don't understand - when we act consciously we act freely
        we feel as though we're doing things and nothing else is causing us to do them
      2. scientisim - science can answer every question, is this true?
        even if we knew all the physical facts in the world there would still be things about the mind we don't know
        does this mean we have a non physical soul? - Nagel not arguing for this but for the fact there are somethings that science cannot know
        Nagel - there is something it is to be you - we will never know what it is like to be a bat.
4. directly aware we're doing something is the same as being directly aware of our thoughts
5. Chisholm: we're in a better position to know we're doing things than we are to know external events cause each other
  1. our actions are caused by our minds, minds may be different from anything else in the world
    1. this difference is free will - Brain = immediate cause of actions, we're conscious.
6. how is us doing things any different from inanimate objects?
  1. 1. Agent causation - Chisholm, 2. Volitional causation = Hodgson
    1. 1. Agent Causation - either something is caused by something else or its not caused at all - something else could be another event - an AGENT
      1. events & agents = causes which then have effects
        Aristotle, Physics 256a, "A staff moves a stone, and is moved by a hand, which is moved by a man."
        for Chisholm there is a difference between an event causing something and an agent doing something
        physical events can cause things, but an agent can cause and do things
        you cause things to happen, but that doesn't mean that's what you're doing - grass is moved when staff is moved
        direct experience - a third thing neither determined nor random
    2. Volitional causation - when we act we're influenced by reason, but we're not determined by them
      1. Some reasons are incommensurable with others - they have more weight
        Hodgson- we can't often outweigh reasons against each other - some can't be reduced to algorithms
        are algorithms underlying our reasons?
        outcome of decision making nor random but reasoned consciously
        weakness of will - sometimes we accept weaker reasons because of preferences
Neuroscience and Free Will
1. evolution: change through really small steps (gradualism). implies transformation from earlier to later lifeforms has to be through small changes
  1. principle of uniformality states that living organisms are made of fundamentally unchanging stuff - so no special substance that organisms made of
    1. we wouldn't say bacteria has free will
      1. continuum - chimpanzees have free will? maybe? us, definitely?
        how did fw evolve then? evolutionary emerging traits - eyes - but we can physcially see how these evolved!
  2. how can FW gradually evolve?
    1. Strawson - 'when X emerges from X, Y has to be explainable in terms of X, but fw is a type of causation not reducable to other types of causation
      1. just because this proves it didn't evolve doesn't mean it doesn't exist
        myths - we used to not know how bumblebees flew
        problem for evolution not for CFWT
        true for other things i.e. consciousness - evolutionary theory incomplete
        psychological mechanisms inherited from stone age ancestors - products of natural selection, too complex to have come about by chance
        evolutionary psychology implies genetic determinism - compelled by our genes to act in certain ways
        Dawkins - genes and environment deciefer how an organism turns out
2. Benjamin Libet
  1. person set up with machine which detects neuron movement/activity in the brain which comes out on a EGC
    1. takes note of intention formed and then when action was performed
      1. proves an awareness of intention around 200 miliseconds before action was performed
        also build up of readiness potential to form action 550m/s before action
        so process was already happening before the person because conscious of intention
        when we act freely we're aware of ourselves initating the action - but Libet's experiment proves unconcious initation
  2. epiphenomentalism - idea that consciousness is a by product of the brain's activity.
    1. observer of our own actions - Hume's billard balls.
      1. but perhaps there is a scientific mystery about free will and consciousness
  3. if consciousness isn't involved the action, perhaps we can still explain the will?
    1. Libet suggests there's enough time in the 200 milisecs for consciousness to act as a veto - a free won't
      1. during build up of readiness potential
      2. familiar with such self - vetoing events in everyday life
        build up of readiness potential and the conscious awareness of it are necessary for an action to be free
        people with tourettes have no build up of readiness potential
  4. Haggard contrasts free actions not with ones with unconcious causes but with:
    1. reflex actions
      1. constrained actions - could act differently but you are constrained
    2. Haggards account of unconstrained decision making
      1. brain processes make decisions below your awareness taking in your personal beliefs about the world
        1. Early decisions - do it or not do it
        2. what will I do - task selection
        3.Action selection - how will I do it?
        4. Will i do it?
        free won't - Haggards 4th stage allows freedom
        Brass and Haggard (2007) - specific areas of the brain which developed more activity when people stopped themselves
        free actions result of underlying neurological processes
        CONC: actions are free - but he has redefined free - bad news for CFWT.

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FREE WILL & DETERMINISM

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	Created by beth.kirby over 11 years ago