Lecture 8 Ultimate Responsibility

Topics for this lecture: What does FW imply? An open future? Or that I am the origin of the action? Methodological Constraint: what we care about. Dennett. Agent Causation and Ultimate Responsibility Education and brainwashing again … what’s the difference?

COMPATIBILISM: DEVELOPMENTS Recall the idea that freedom implies CHDO principle, or PAP (Could have done otherwise… or principle of alternative possibilities.)

Recall Frankfurt cases…. Pre-emptive over-determination. A decides to do X. But if they had decided not to B would have intervened and made A do X. In fact A decided to do X. Here we see a separation of causation from necessitation (a metaphysical point). Some reply that there is nevertheless a ‘flicker’ of freedom in such cases. So… even in Frankfurt cases, we can will otherwise…

Agent causation Some say that when we act, the person is the cause, not some event. We bring things about. We have an active power. When we exercise it, we are free. The action is not caused by anything except us. Not by our psychological states… as many compatibilitists said… Instead: we act for reasons… we have a rational power.

Therefore, many have thought, the self, us, is an uncaused cause. An unmoved mover. This seems like a libertarian position. Or can such a rational self be an emergent entity, ultimately subject to the physical laws of nature? That is, can an agent-causation picture be compatibilist? You decide! (A difficult question.)

Source incompatibilism: Consider this revised Van Inwagen argument: I think of myself as the source of my actions. But my actions are determined by events before my birth. I had no control over those events. Therefore I am not free. … because I do not have ultimate responsibility.

The idea of ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ One idea: FW implies open possibilities? Another: FW implies that the source of the action lies in us. The origin of the action is in us…in our minds. UR = ultimate responsibility. If our character issues in the action, and it is a free action, surely, it might be argued, we must be responsible for our character… ?

Jojo thinks he is free. But what of his father’s influence? He determines Jojo’s character. ‘Brain-washing’...

Agent-causation Again The agent-casuation idea contrasts with the compatibilist idea that mental states cause actions…. This seems to miss the idea that … I cause them, not my mental states. Compare this with an object causing something, and its properties causing something. But…

Does one do what one does because of one’s character or nature…? So if one is truly responsible one must be responsible for what one is. (An existentialist idea?) The idea of UR is at work here. Or: does this generate some kind of regress? Is real freedom, a kind of God-like self-causing? When we act we think: it is up to us now … not our parents, education, culture etc.

(an existentialist)

Me in Paris (not strictly relevant)

If one were in a different culture one’s second- order desires or values might be in line with one’s first-order desires (compare Frankfurt and Watson). It seems that … some desires, at some order, must be unreflective. This is arbitrary, at some level. Is that ok?

Value of Free Will FW is something we care about. Dignity/responsibility… Consider the agent-causation idea that I am the cause not my desires or character… Does this imply contra-causal freedom? We should ask: what would freedom have to be for us to think it valuable?

Would we value contra-causal freedom? Or …. Do we value the freedom of acting in a way that flows from me and my character, my mental life, however that got there? How all that came about is not up to me … Is that ok? So acting from our desires/character etc is enough for freedom and its value? Or do we need to be self-creating mini-Gods? That’s the issue on which the free will issues seems to rest.

Dan Dennett (raises the value question)

What conception of free will would be such that it would be worth wanting and valuing? Is what we have enough for a relatively valuable kind of freedom? Is a non-self-creating kind of compatibilist freedom enough? Or does our valuing freedom imply a more demanding kind of contra-causal agent causation, which seems to lead to incompatibilism (and therefore to either libertarianism or hard- determinism).

And that’s it for free will! I have left you with more questions not answers… Which is philosophy … But they are not the questions we started with. A kind of progress!

Next topic…. Personal Identity I’ll see you in next lecture…. or someone just like me will see someone just like you.