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FreeWill Short
FreeWill Short
Agenda
• What is Free Will? The “Authorship
Slogan”
• Why think we don’t have it? The Evil
Scientist Argument
• The standard philosophical positions:
Compatibilism, Incompatibilism,
Libertarianism, and Hard Determinism.
Our Question
• Our question is, Do we have free will?
I don’t
understand.
• What is “free will” supposed to be?
What is a will?
What sort of freedom is at issue?
• I propose to table these questions until
later.
• … So let’s just change the subject.
A Picture of Action
I want to…,
I choose to…,
I plan to...
Cause Causes
This will be my
focus
Free Will = Authorship
• Proposal: replace “Do we have free will?” with “Are we
ever the ‘authors’ of our actions?”
• This means we stop asking, “Do we have free will?”
• Instead we ask:
1. Are our choices, etc., ever part of the full explanation for why
we perform our actions?
2. Are we ever responsible for an action we perform?
STRATEGY:
(1) Propose a case in which it is utterly
clear that the agent is not the “author” of
his action.
(2) Give reasons why we might think our
situation is exactly similar.
Meet Al and the Evil Scientist
Evil Scientist Al
The Evil Scientist Scenario
I hereby
choose to
raise my arm!
Your birth
The entire course of
your life is determined
time
NO
YES
“Authorship”? Libertarianism
NO
Hard Determinism
Hume’s Theory
• David Hume (1711 - 1776)
Hume’s Challenge:
“Let any one define a cause, without comprehending, as
a part of the definition, a necessary connexion with its
effect … and I shall readily give up the whole controvers
y.” (para. 25)
Hume: Causes Necessitate
effect effect
8
8
IMPOSSIBLE!
Any possible
situation in which
cause cause
C occurs must be
a situation in
which E also
occurs.
Human Actions and Decisions
are Caused
Causes Causes
?
(50% chance)
I want to…,
I choose to…,
I plan to...
caused Cause
(1) Kane’s List: The only reasons one can have for
denying an agent control over and responsibility for her
actions are: coercion, constraint, inadvertance,
mistake, and control by others.
(2) In the case of the businesswoman (and in similar
cases of SFAs), none of these reasons apply.
Unlike Al and the Walden Two-ers, Unlike Al and the Walden Two-ers,
we have indeterminacy in our we are not being manipulated by
psychology. someone.
Assessing Kane’s Responses
• Kane’s two different responses can be
countered by tweaking the Evil Scientist
scenario so that the differences disappear.
• We seem able to do this for both
responses.
• The argument against Authorship will then
still work.
Two Evil Scientists
I hereby choose to
raise my left arm!
Lefty
Indeterminacy in Al’s
psychology without
“authorship”
0 Evil Scientists
I hereby
choose to
raise my arm!
No manipulation and
no “authorship”
The Evil Scientist Argument
(one last time)
1) Descriptive Premise: In the Evil Scientist
Scenarios (±Universal Determinism), Al is not
the “author” of his actions. In particular, Al is
not responsible for what he does.
2) Analogy Premise: Our situation is exactly like
Al’s (in at least one of the Evil Scientist
Scenarios) in all relevant respects.