van Inwagen pushed this argument as a libertarian. So, the below argument isn't prejudiced by compatibilist assumptions.
**QUOTE**
_________________________
I want to close by explaining why van Inwagen thinks one important group of incompatibilists, those who appeal to what is called agent-causation, do not appreciate the depth and difficulty of the problem of free will. Many philosophers would agree with this judgment for the simple reason that they think that the concept of agent-causation is incoherent, or think that agent-causation is metaphysically impossible. Van Inwagen is inclined to agree with them (although he has no firm opinion on this question), but he has lately stressed a different point. It is this: suppose there is nothing conceptually or metaphysically impossible about agent-causation; suppose in fact that agent-causation is a real phenomenon and that an episode of agent-causation figures among the antecedents of every voluntary movement of a human hand or limb or vocal apparatus. Van Inwagen’s position is that even if this is so, and even if (as some have argued) we understand the concept of agent-causation at least as well as we understand the concept of event-causation, all this does nothing to diminish the mystery of free will. I will try to explain why van Inwagen thinks this by considering a particular human action. Suppose Marie wants to vote in favor of the proposal before the meeting, and that, for this reason, she raises her right hand when the chair says, “All in favor. . .?” Suppose that one of the causal antecedents of her hand’s rising was a certain event in her brain that was undetermined by past events, that the state of her body and her immediate environment at the moment this brain-event occurred was causally sufficient for her hand’s rising, that if this event had not occurred, her hand would not have risen, and that she, Marie, a particular member of the metaphysical category “substance” or “continuant,” was the cause—that is to say, the agent-cause—of that crucial brain-event. The friends of agent-causation, if van Inwagen understands them, believe that these suppositions are sufficient for her having freely raised her hand. If that is so, these suppositions must entail the following proposition: at some moment shortly before Marie raised her hand, she was able to raise her hand and she was able not to raise her hand. But van Inwagen doesn’t see why this entailment should be supposed to hold. In fact, he thinks he sees a good argument for the conclusion that it was not up to her whether her hand rose. Suppose God were miraculously to return the world to precisely the state it was in, say, one minute before Marie raised her hand, and that he then allowed affairs once more to proceed, without any further miracles. What would happen? What would Marie do? Well, if her raising her hand was a free act, and if free will is incompatible with determinism, then we can’t say. We can say only that she might have raised her hand and might not have raised her hand. If God were to cause this episode to be thus “replayed” a very large number of times, it might turn out that she raised her hand in thirty percent of the replays and refrained from raising it in seventy percent of the replays. This much is a simple consequence of incompatibilism, and it brings one of the main reason philosophers become compatibilists into stark relief. It seems to lead us inescapably to the conclusion that on each particular replay, what Marie does on that occasion is a mere matter of chance. And if there are no replays, if there is only one occasion on which Marie is in this situation, it seems to lead us just as inescapably to the conclusion that on that one occasion what Marie does is a mere matter of chance. And if it is a mere matter of chance whether Marie raised her hand, then it cannot have been true beforehand that Marie was both able to raise her hand and able to refrain from raising her hand, for to have both these abilities would be to be able to determine the outcome of a process whose outcome is due to chance. It is true that we have, by stipulation, inserted into this process, this process whose outcome is due to chance, an episode of agent-causation. But, if I may so express myself, so what? That doesn’t change the fact that the outcome of that process was due to chance. If God caused Marie’s decision to be replayed a very large number of times, sometimes (in thirty percent of the replays, let us say) Marie would have agent-caused the crucial brain event and sometimes (in seventy percent of the replays, let us say) she would not have. Surely, then, whether she agent-caused the brain-event was a mere matter of chance? Whether her deliberations were followed by her agent-causing the brain event was, it would seem, a matter of chance; Marie, therefore, cannot have been both able to agent-cause the brain-event and able to refrain from agent-causing the brain-event, for to have both these abilities would be to be able to determine the outcome of a process whose outcome was due to chance—an impossible ability. I conclude that even if an episode of agent-causation is among the causal antecedents of every voluntary human action, these episodes do nothing to undermine the prima facie impossibility of an undetermined free act. Postulating agent-causation, therefore, does nothing to diminish the mystery of free will. Van Inwagen’s conclusion is that incompatibilists had better abandon the concept of agent-causation, and seek a resolution of the mystery of free will elsewhere—if, indeed, there is an “elsewhere.”"
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwvanInwagen2.html
_________________________
**END QUOTE**
That's a really good thought exercize there! I think it shows the dilemma perfectly.
ReplyDeleteIf the replay of the decision always turned out the same way, then the obvious fact would be that the outcome was determined. It is impossible for it to be otherwise, and therefore (according to folks like Henry) it is not a "real" choice.
On the other hand, if the replays are different, the "choice" must be completely, chaotically random--but not only that, it is actually the agent him/herself who is completely, chaotically random, since the agent is the "cause" of the choice! In such a scenario, the choices become meaningless as they are completely random, just as if you flip a coin before doing something.
I, for one, look forward to seeing how Henry gets out of this caper....
PvI now calls himself a "mysterian." See the Campbell / O'Rourke book. (I think it is 2005)
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll ammend.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't his positing mysterianism come from the fact that he wants to still hold onto some notion of libertarian free will?
I missed this Manata attack against agent causation but just noticed it by accident. Manata’s attempt shows both the desperation and extremely weak arguments against agent causation which he is advancing. Manata quotes from a paper by Ted Honderich in which Honderich refers to some statements by Van Inwagen. In pastoral counseling we are told to always consider the source. This means if you know who said it you sometimes immediately know why a particular bias is being expressed by their words.
ReplyDeleteBoth Honderich and Van Inwagen are **physicalists**. Both deny that we have a human soul, an immaterial aspect to our human nature. People like myself who advocate agent causation **and** are substance dualists **and** Christians, believe that the source of our human actions is our soul. Physicalism claims that all human actions can be explained completely by means of physical explanations. Actually physicalists who are not Christians, such as Dennett and Flanagan go even further, claiming the “causal closure principle”. This is the unsustainable belief that everything can be explained solely by appeals to physical explanation, so there are no entities (including God, or angels, or human souls) that are immaterial and interact with the physical world. Physicalists in their explanations tell only ½ of the story as they leave out the role of the soul. Since human persons are a unity of both the immaterial soul and the physical brain/body, our actions will involve a physical component.
If I raise my arm, the arm raising will involve my muscles, nerves, bones, brain, all physical entities that can be explained by physical explanations. What gets left out however in physicalist explanations is the role of my soul, or “me” in the lifting of that arm. Physicalist explanations also leave out both intentionality (conscious intention to do something) and teleology (the intentional doing of something for a purpose).
Why am I talking about these things? Because people need to understand that both Honderich and Van Inwagen are physicalists believing that the human being is solely a physical being. So their explanations by their very nature are going to leave out things such as the role of the immaterial soul and the interaction between the immaterial and the material in human actions. They are only going to tell ½ of the story!
So Manata starts with:
“Agent-causation
van Inwagen pushed this argument as a libertarian. So, the below argument isn't prejudiced by compatibilist assumptions.”
These words **are very biased** against agent causation because of physicalist assumptions on the part of both Honderich and Van Inwagen. Van Inwagen may not be a compatibilists, but he is a physicalist, so there is major bias against agent causation here from the get-go.
Next Manata quotes Honderich who is referring to Van Inwagen’s comments. I will quote portions and then interact.
**QUOTE**
_________________________
”I want to close by explaining why van Inwagen thinks one important group of incompatibilists, those who appeal to what is called agent-causation, do not appreciate the depth and difficulty of the problem of free will. Many philosophers would agree with this judgment for the simple reason that they think that the concept of agent-causation is incoherent, or think that agent-causation is metaphysically impossible.”
Agent causation is not incoherent. Actually it is quite simple to understand and as we have all directly experienced it countless times we have no difficulty at all understanding it. Agent causation involves the claim that human persons when they perform intentional actions do so for reasons. These agent caused actions are neither predetermined nor are they random (i.e. without cause, without **reason**). Peter Pike tried to argue unsuccessfully for his little false dilemma that human actions are either predetermined or random. He left out agent causation which is **neither** predetermined or random (by chance).
Have any of us directly experienced the doing of actions for various reasons? Yes, countless times, to deny this universal human experience is to be in major denial of ordinary reality.
Notice that Honderich says agent causation is both incoherent and METHAPHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. How could he know that it is metaphysically impossible unless he knows that physicalism is true? How does he know that God is not a perfect example of agent causation? Honderich is an atheist and a physicalist, so he simply ASSUMES that agent causation is metaphysically impossible. Perhaps at another time I will share some quotes by Honderich where he ridicules and mocks substance dualism, God’s existence, the human soul, and the claim that there are entities that are not physical.
“Van Inwagen is inclined to agree with them (although he has no firm opinion on this question), but he has lately stressed a different point. It is this: suppose there is nothing conceptually or metaphysically impossible about agent-causation; suppose in fact that agent-causation is a real phenomenon and that an episode of agent-causation figures among the antecedents of every voluntary movement of a human hand or limb or vocal apparatus.”
So Honderich is saying that Van Inwagen is going to assume that agent causation is possible, that it is not incoherent or metaphysically impossible. Van Inwagen is then going to construct a thought experiment/argument to show a supposed problem for agent causation.
“Van Inwagen’s position is that even if this is so, and even if (as some have argued) we understand the concept of agent-causation at least as well as we understand the concept of event-causation, all this does nothing to diminish the mystery of free will.”
First, a mystery does not mean that the mystery does not involve a real truth. Second, I believe that **I** agent cause the lifting of my arm when I decide to lift it, but it **is** a mystery to me, how my immaterial soul interacts with my physical brain and body. I know this interaction takes place but I cannot fully explain it. I also know that God is a Spirit and that He interacts with this physical world but I cannot explain that fully either. If one is an acceptable mystery so is the other.
“I will try to explain why van Inwagen thinks this by considering a particular human action. Suppose Marie wants to vote in favor of the proposal before the meeting, and that, for this reason, she raises her right hand when the chair says, “All in favor. . .?” Suppose that one of the causal antecedents of her hand’s rising was a certain event in her brain that was undetermined by past events, that the state of her body and her immediate environment at the moment this brain-event occurred was causally sufficient for her hand’s rising, that if this event had not occurred, her hand would not have risen, and that she, Marie, a particular member of the metaphysical category “substance” or “continuant,” was the cause—that is to say, the agent-cause—of that crucial brain-event.”
OK hold it right there, the physicalism is already raising its ugly head here. He speaks of a “certain event in the brain”. Marie’s action if it is agent caused by her human soul, starts not with a “certain event in the brain” but with activity in her immaterial soul which then interacts with her physical brain and body. Why no mention of the soul or the mind, instead the explanation starts with an event in the brain? And why does the explanation of a supposedly agent caused event make no reference to the reasons which Marie had for raising or refraining from raising her arm?
“The friends of agent-causation, if van Inwagen understands them, believe that these suppositions are sufficient for her having freely raised her hand. If that is so, these suppositions must entail the following proposition: at some moment shortly before Marie raised her hand, she was able to raise her hand and she was able not to raise her hand.”
So at some moment shortly before the raising of her hand Marie was **able** to both raise her hand or refrain from raising her hand. Sounds like an acceptable description of free will.
“But van Inwagen doesn’t see why this entailment should be supposed to hold.”
But Van Inwagen does not agree with what at first appears to be the case. And he develops the following argument:
“In fact, he thinks he sees a good argument for the conclusion that it was not up to her whether her hand rose. Suppose God were miraculously to return the world to precisely the state it was in, say, one minute before Marie raised her hand, and that he then allowed affairs once more to proceed, without any further miracles. What would happen? What would Marie do? Well, if her raising her hand was a free act, and if free will is incompatible with determinism, then we can’t say. We can say only that she might have raised her hand and might not have raised her hand. If God were to cause this episode to be thus “replayed” a very large number of times, it might turn out that she raised her hand in thirty percent of the replays and refrained from raising it in seventy percent of the replays.”
So if we **replayed** the tape, 30% of the time she chooses to raise her hand and 70% of the time she chooses not to raise her hand, she chooses to refrain from raising her hand.
Now here comes the supposed problem:
“This much is a simple consequence of incompatibilism, and it brings one of the main reason philosophers become compatibilists into stark relief. It seems to lead us inescapably to the conclusion that on each particular replay, what Marie does on that occasion is a mere matter of chance. And if there are no replays, if there is only one occasion on which Marie is in this situation, it seems to lead us just as inescapably to the conclusion that on that one occasion what Marie does is a mere matter of chance. And if it is a mere matter of chance whether Marie raised her hand, then it cannot have been true beforehand that Marie was both able to raise her hand and able to refrain from raising her hand, for to have both these abilities would be to be able to determine the outcome of a process whose outcome is due to chance. It is true that we have, by stipulation, inserted into this process, this process whose outcome is due to chance, an episode of agent-causation. But, if I may so express myself, so what? That doesn’t change the fact that the outcome of that process was due to chance. If God caused Marie’s decision to be replayed a very large number of times, sometimes (in thirty percent of the replays, let us say) Marie would have agent-caused the crucial brain event and sometimes (in seventy percent of the replays, let us say) she would not have. Surely, then, whether she agent-caused the brain-event was a mere matter of chance? Whether her deliberations were followed by her agent-causing the brain event was, it would seem, a matter of chance; Marie, therefore, cannot have been both able to agent-cause the brain-event and able to refrain from agent-causing the brain-event, for to have both these abilities would be to be able to determine the outcome of a process whose outcome was due to chance—an impossible ability.”
OK what words gets repeated here over and over here?
CHANCE.
The argument is that if she chooses to raise her hand sometimes (30%) and sometimes chooses to refrain from raising here hand (70%), then her agent caused action is just a result of CHANCE.
In seeing this argument there are multiple ways of attacking it, but one that jumped out at me was this: Van Inwagen and Honderich are making a major, major category mistake in this argument. They claim that this “argument” is problematic for agent causation and they claim that in their argument they were claiming that agent causation was true for the sake of argument. I have not read the literature exhaustively on agent causation (not even close), but in my reading I have never seen a person who holds to agent causation suggesting that our actions are a result of CHANCE. That our agent caused actions are random.
In fact, the agent causal theorist holds TO THE DIRECT OPPOSITE. Chance events are events that do not involve intentionality, events that are not done “on purpose”, events that do not involve reasons. Agent caused events on the other hand, do involve reasons, are done for a purpose. Purposeful actions are one category, chance events are another category.
The agent causal theorist would argue that EACH AND EVERY TIME Marie agent causes a particular action (either raises or refrains from raising her arm) SHE DOES SO FOR REASONS. Say she raises her hand because in her thinking there are good reasons to endorse the proposal. This would mean that each time she raises her hand for these reasons (the 30%) she is not acting by chance at all, but for reasons. Similarly, if she has reasons to not vote for the motion and so she refrains from raising her hand (the 70%),she is AGAIN doing her actions FOR REASONS. So if she was acting for reasons in each instance, which **is** the view held by agent causation proponents, then 100% of the time she WAS NOT ACTING BY CHANCE. 100% of the time she was instead acting for reasons and none of her actions were by chance. Now an outsider may not like the reasons which Marie has for raising her hand or refraining from raising her hand, but if SHE IS ACTING FOR REASONS THEN SHE IS NOT ACTING RANDOMLY AND HER ACTIONS ARE NOT A RESULT OF CHANCE.
I find it amazing that Van Inwagen and Honderich present an argument as weak as this against agent causation. And yet Paul Manata desperate for anything that could be used against agent causation brought up Van Inwagen’s argument as if it were some strong knock-down argument. Does Manata fail to see the category mistake present in this argument? Is Manata able to distinguish between events that are random from events that occur as a result of agents acting for reasons? And if he is able to do this, which I am quite sure he can do, then why does he intentionally try to present agent causation as involving chance, being random?
“I conclude that even if an episode of agent-causation is among the causal antecedents of every voluntary human action, these episodes do nothing to undermine the prima facie impossibility of an undetermined free act. Postulating agent-causation, therefore, does nothing to diminish the mystery of free will.”
So we are supposed to conclude from this extremely weak argument of Van Inwagen’s that agent causation is impossible? I guess God is unable to do actions that are not as a result of being predetermined by some outside factor or random, but are done for reasons? If doing actions for reasons is impossible for us, then why is God capable of doing actions for reasons? And if God is capable of doing actions for reasons and decided to create humans with this same capacity, then why would **that** be metaphysically impossible and/or incoherent?
“Van Inwagen’s conclusion is that incompatibilists had better abandon the concept of agent-causation, and seek a resolution of the mystery of free will elsewhere—if, indeed, there is an “elsewhere.”"
Van Inwagen expects us to conclude from this exceedingly weak argument, this major, major category mistake, that we should abandon the concept of agent causation? When he completely confuses chance and doing actions for reasons? When he, as a Physicalist, leaves out the role of the immaterial human soul in our actions? I don’t think so. Van Inwagen’s argument is not even close to justifying his conclusion here.
Manata did not see the weakness of this argument nor did Peter Pike who wrote:
“That's a really good thought exercize there! I think it shows the dilemma perfectly. . . . .
I, for one, look forward to seeing how Henry gets out of this caper....”
How do I get out of this caper?
Very, very, very simply, by understanding that actions done for reasons are not actions that are a result of chance. By understanding the difference between something that results from the use of our minds and consideration of reasons, and something that is random, without reason, without intentionality, by chance. Apparently, Paul Manata and Peter Pike do not see the problem with Van Inwagen’s argument. They are just **so desperate** to find something, anything, that can be used against against causation that they are willingly to appeal to Van Inwagen’s extremely weak argument.
It is sad that Manata and Pike do not seem to understand the agent causation view.
If a person does an action or refrains from doing an action **for reasons**, then those actions are neither predetermined nor are they random (by chance). And considering that Manata and Pike have been doing their own actions **for reasons** for many years they ought to be quite familiar with this concept and the reality of this truth that they do many of their actions **for reasons**. In denying agent causation, Manata and Pike are arguing against God’s design. He designed us to be beings capable of doing our own actions for reasons. To deny **that** is to deny the design plan of God for human persons. It is also to engage in an unwinnable campaign: no matter what Manata and Pike come up with, it will always be defeated by the simple reality that indeed we were created to be capable of doing our own actions for reasons, and we in fact engage in this capacity all the time. Fighting against agent causation is fighting a war that you cannot win.
Henry
Henry misses the point of the "luck" objection. If history were re-round, would he chose the same event, **for the same reasons?**
ReplyDeleteSo, Henry's long post is easily refuted by a simple question which fleshes out that he doesn't even understand the objection.
Also note that Henry is waiting for the posts to dissapear into obscurity before he comments.
ReplyDeleteAnd, note his use of invectives and putdowns, yet earler he made a big deal about how he was being treated. These are all sympotoms of a man who knows he's lost and has to keep pawing at anything to use, including appeals to emotion and tattle-taleing, to gain the upper hand.
Paul Manata had written:
ReplyDelete“Henry can have the last word. The debate is simply taking too much of my time.”
I took this as very good news because then I could take my time in responding to Manata’s points, respond at my leisure. I also knew this was too good to be true, that people like Manata cannot let it go, they have to keep arguing. We all have time for what we **choose** to make time for, and Manata is no different.
I had responded to his extremely weak argument against agent causation in which he was suggesting that agent causation amounts to being a **chance** event when an agent intentionally and for reasons causes an action to occur. Manata tried to make this weak argument appear stronger by citing Van Inwagen to make his argument for him. My reply to that argument was that whether “Marie” raises her arm or refrains from raising her arm, either way, she does these actions intentionally and for reasons, so these actions ought not to be considered to be **chance** events.
I also repeated my still-standing claim, that agent causation involves intentionally doing actions for reasons and so does not involve randomness, arbitrariness, or chance. As such, it is a category mistake to claim that actions done intentionally and for reasons are random or **chance** events. Now Manata is free to claim that actions done intentionally and for reasons ought to be described as **chance** events, that is his **choice**. But more reasonable persons will not agree: because doing actions intentionally and for reasons is very different from doing things randomly or by chance.
Now Manata claims that I did not understand his argument:
“Henry misses the point of the "luck" objection. If history were re-round, would he chose the same event, **for the same reasons?**
So, Henry's long post is easily refuted by a simple question which fleshes out that he doesn't even understand the objection.”
The agent causation view involves the claim that when we do agent caused actions intentionally we are doing these actions for reasons. And since they are done for reasons and intentionally by the persons doing these actions, it is a major category mistake to label these as **chance** events. Events which occur as a result of **luck**. In fact if Manata understood agent causation he would see it to be the antithesis of random, chance events.
Manata wants to re-wind the tape to see if a choice may have been different. So let’s take one of my favorite examples: God making the choice of creating the universe. I said it before and it bears repeating yet again: THE BEST EXAMPLE OR MODEL OF AGENT CAUSATION IS GOD HIMSELF. His actions are **not necessitated** by factors external to Himself, His actions are not random, arbitrary or by “chance”, His actions are always done for reasons, and He does his actions in line with what is important to Himself.
So re-wind the tape, or go to the “moment” just before God created the universe, could God have also made the choice of not creating the universe for reasons known to Himself? Yes. Was God’s action of creating the universe a necessitated event in which He had no choice, but had to create the universe? No. In creating the universe did God do so for reasons? Yes. If God had decided not to create the universe, would this action of refraining from creating the universe also have involved reasons? Yes. If God created the universe, was this agent caused event random, arbitrary, or done “by chance”? No. If God refrained from creating the universe, was this agent caused event random, arbitrary, or done “by chance”? No.
In Van Inwagen’s statements his example involved a lady named “Marie” intentionally raising her hand to vote for a motion. And I said about this in a previous post that “Marie” did so for reasons, so her action was not “by chance”. And if “Marie” intentionally refrained from raising her hand to vote for the motion, this also would have been done intentionally and for reasons and so her action would not have been “by chance”.
Paul Manata said he had no time for debating these things, now he writes again. In deciding to write again, did Manata do so for reasons? I am going to guess Yes. And if Manata had instead decided to refrain from writing again, would he have also done this for reasons as well? Again, I am going to guess Yes.
Notice the pattern here, the common denominators in the agent caused actions of God, “Marie”, and Manata. Each person acted intentionally and for reasons when they performed their actions. Each person was performing his/her own actions. These actions were not necessitated, but involved choices of doing something or refraining from doing something. All three persons performed agent caused actions (actions done by them intentionally and for reasons), and in none of these cases were their actions done “by chance”, or were random, or were instances of **luck**.
Or does Manata want to claim that when he intentionally writes his posts with reasons for doing so, that we ought to describe **his posts** as resulting from LUCK? Or being done “by chance”? Are his posts random, arbitrary, not done intentionally, not done for reasons?
This is one of the reasons why Manata’s attack against agent causation is so weak: in attacking agent causation, he is presenting his arguments, writing his posts intentionally and for reasons. SO HE IS ENGAGING IN AGENT CAUSATION EACH TIME HE WRITES AGAINST AGENT CAUSATION!!!
That puts him in a place where he cannot win because he finds himself arguing against reality. And when you argue with reality you always lose.
John Frame makes the same mistake that Pike and Manata keep making, and does so, so often in his writings that I am tempted to call it the FRAME ERROR. It is the error of supposing that a human action is either necessitated or it is random. This false dilemma leaves out the possibility of actions that are not random, nor are they necessitated, but are done by agents intentionally and for reasons.
Kane in his A CONTEMPORARY INTRODUCTION TO FREE WILL makes some helpful comments on the “luck objection” and notion that agent causation involves chance, randomness, or arbitrariness. Kane writes (p. 48ff):
“According to the Luck Objection, if there is nothing about John’s and John*’s powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character, and the like leading up to their choices that explains why John chose one way and John* another, then the difference is just a matter of luck. John got lucky in his attempt to overcome temptation, while John* did not.
Agent-causalists respond that merely because the choices of John and John* were not caused by prior events does not mean they merely occurred out of the blue, uncaused by **anything**. The choices were caused, not by prior events, but by the agents. . . . So it was up to them which choice occurred.”
Later on pg. 140 Kane further discusses the problem of chance, luck:
“Some people have objected that if choices like the businesswoman’s really are undetermined, they must happen merely by chance - - and so must be “random,” “capricious,” “uncontrolled,” “irrational,” and all the other things usually charged. The first step in responding to this objection is to question the assumption that if indeterminism is involved in an occurrence, that occurrence must happen merely as a matter of chance or luck. “Chance” and “luck” are terms of ordinary language that carry the meaning of “its being out of my control.” So using them already begs certain questions. “Indeterminism,” by contrast, is a technical term that merely rules out deterministic causation, but not causation altogether. Indeterminism is consistent with nondeterministic or probabilistic causation, where the outcome is not inevitable. It is therefore a mistake (in fact, one of the most common mistakes in debates about free will) to assume that “undetermined” means “uncaused” or “merely a matter of chance.”
Did you catch that? It is one of the most common mistakes in this area to claim that undetermined means uncaused or by chance. Yet Frame presents this false dilemma over and over in his writings and people like Pike and Manata follow suit. If only I had a dollar for each time that some Calvinist has presented this false dilemma and argued that agent causation or libertarian free will involves actions that are **uncaused** or “by chance”. Agent caused actions **are** caused, the cause just happens to be the agent. The calvinists will regularly engage in this false dilemma and argue that our actions are either determined (and they are thinking ***necessitated***) or random/by chance. Our actions obviously are not random so then they must be determined/necessitated according to this “logic”.
What this false dilemma intentionally leaves out are actions done by a person that are caused by that person but not necessitated.
And again, God himself furnishes proof of the existence of this kind of agent causation as God does His actions which are neither random nor necessitated, but are chosen by Him for reasons.
In an earlier quote Kane talked about various factors that it may seem at first glance to have no connection to agent caused actions. I do not claim that these factors are not influences on an agents actions. They do have influence, where I draw the line is to claim that while they influence a person’s actions they do not **necessitate** that person’s actions.
In physical causation if certain conditions are present, the resulting effect follows necessarily from the cause (absent some sort of intervention by some other factor or person). With human persons on the other hand, there may be causal influences on a person’s choices, but usually these influences do not necessitate the resulting action. We even have a well known home-spun expression that conveys this reality quite well: you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. The conditions may be present for a person to do a particular action, but those conditions alone do not necessitate that the person do the particular action.
Again, consider God in creating the universe. His action of creating the universe was certainly influenced by His character, His knowledge, etc. etc. And yet the action of creating the world was not a necessitated action. God did not have to do it. He intentionally agent caused the existence of the universe, but He also could have intentionally agent caused the refraining from causing the universe to exist.
In another post I want to discuss the issue of why was one choice made and not another.
Henry
A common objection brought up by Calvinists against free will choices is to ask something like: So why is one choice made rather than another in regards to a specific choice in a specific situation with the circumstances being exactly the same?
ReplyDeleteIn order to answer this question I want to interact with some comments by Bruce Ware on the compatibilism/libertarian free will issue. Just as Frame makes an error over and over in his writings, so does Ware. Ware makes this error repeatedly in his writings. And exposing this error will help to better present the agent causation position. The following Ware comments are representative of this error and come from his book GOD’S GREATER GLORY). He is discussing the “philosophical objections” to libertarian free will:
===========================================
“Philosophical Objections. First, consider the philosophical objection. You’ll recall that libertarian freedom proposes that we have the power of contrary choice. That is, an agent is free when making a choice, if in choosing A, all things being just what they are at the moment of choosing, he could instead have chosen B, or not-A. In other words, when he chose A, he could have chosen otherwise.
This view clearly has a sort of intuitive appeal. It just seems to many people that this matches their experience. When they choose one thing, it was in their power to choose something different, they reason. For example, after dinner last evening, I took my family to a nearby ice cream store, and each of us stood at the counter looking over the selection. Eventually each of us made our choice, but we had other options, and it seems as though we could have chosen differently than we did. What’s wrong with this notion?
The philosophical problem comes here: if at the moment that an agent chooses A, with all things being just what they are, when the choice is made, he could have chosen B, or not –A, then it follows that any reason (p.85) (p. 86) or set of reasons for why the agent chooses A would be the identical reason or set of reasons for why instead the agent might have chosen B, or not-A. That is, since at the moment of choice, all factors contributing to why a choice is made are present and true regardless of which choice is made (i.e., recall that the agent has the power of contrary choice), this means that the factors that lead to one choice, being made must, by necessity, also be able to lead just as well to the opposite choice. But the effect of this is to say that there can be no choice-specific reason or set of reasons for why the agent chose A instead of B, or not-A. It rather is the case, according to libertarian freedom, that every reason or set of reasons must be equally explanatory for why the agent might choose A, or B, or not-A. As a result, our choosing reduces, strictly speaking to arbitrariness. We can give no reason or set of reasons for why we make the choices we make that wouldn’t be the identical reason or set of reasons we would invoke had we made the opposite choice! Hence, our choosing A over its opposite is arbitrary.
This Arminian notion of libertarian freedom is often referred to as a “freedom of indifference” in contrast to the Reformed notion of a “freedom of inclination”. In the former, we are strictly indifferent to whether we choose A or not-A, since the reason or reasons we have for one are identical to the reason or reasons we have for the other. Imagine this in a concrete situation: the reasons that the murderer had for pulling the trigger must be, on grounds of libertarian freedom, exactly and precisely the same were he, instead, to have refrained from pulling the trigger. If this is the case, then we cannot know “why” he committed the murder, i.e., why he chose to pull the trigger instead of not. There is no accounting, then, for human moral choice, and our actions become fully inexplicable. Philosophers might put it this way: while necessary conditions surely can be present in order for us to be able to choose what we do (e.g., the necessary conditions of our being alive, and being present where we are, and having these particular options set before us, may all be present), yet none of those conditions can either be individually or jointly sufficient for why we choose what we do. There simply cannot be any choice-specific explanation for why we choose one thing over another, and this renders libertarian freedom fully inadequate as an explanatory model for human freedom and human volition.
The freedom of inclination proposed here, on the contrary, argues that we always do what we most want to do, and hence there always is an explanation (i.e., choice-specific explanation) for the particular choices that we make. To illustrate the difference, let’s consider my family’s trip to the ice cream store. Our older daughter, Bethany, looked over the selection and finally decided to order one scoop of peanut butter chip. Now, was it in her power to choose otherwise? The answer is yes and no – yes, before here eyes was spread an array of options, and had her strongest inclination been directed toward a flavor other than the one she chose, in this case, she would have chosen otherwise. For example, if she had overheard another customer say, “the peanut butter chip looks different than it normally does,” this may have influenced her to consider another option more seriously, resulting in her having a strongest desire for a different flavor. But no, at the moment of her choice, all things being just what they were (e.g., she did not, in fact overhear anyone question whether the peanut butter chip ice cream was as good as normal, but instead she did remember how much she enjoyed it on another occasion), the factors that went into her choosing the flavor she chose were such that these factors produced in her a “strongest inclination” for peanut butter chip ice cream over any other flavor. So, she chose the flavor that she most wanted - - i.e., at that moment, with those factors being what they were, she could not have chosen otherwise, because she acted according to her strongest desire.
How different this would be if libertarian freedom were considered. Instead, at the moment that Bethany selected peanut butter chip, all things being exactly what they were at that moment, she could just as well have chosen, say, black raspberry. But if this were the case, then it follows that any reason and any set of reasons for why she chose peanut butter chip would be the identical reason or set of reasons for her choosing, instead, black raspberry. In this case, there simply would be no explanation at all for why she chose peanut butter chip instead of black raspberry. Her choice, in this case, would be both inexplicable and arbitrary.
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Ware claims that: “any reason or set of reasons for why the agent chooses A would be the **identical reason or set of reasons** for why instead the agent might have chosen B, or not-A.”
Actually, each possible choice will have **different** reasons or sets of reasons associated with it. I call some of these reasons “importances” to convey the idea that people act with their own set of “importances” in mind. And the person considers these differing reasons or “importances” and acts based upon the “importances” which the person prefers/chooses in a given situation.
So in any given situation there are first order reasons for doing things (e.g., in a class room a student lifts up his arm to signal to the teacher that he has something to say) and second order reasons for doing things (e.g., in this class part of the grade involves class participation and the student wants a good grade, having a good grade is important to him, he needs to have good grades to qualify for say med school and it is important to him to go to med school, etc. etc.). The first order reasons are usually context bound, they operate in a given context or situation (cf. lifting your arm when alone in your home may be doable and yet there may be no reason to do so in that situation).
Second order reasons are usually brought by the person into the context or situation (cf., the person who wants to have good grades to go to med school has that importance in mind before he enters the classroom). With this distinction in mind I believe that we can explain a lot of human intentional actions (i.e.,in a given situation, various possible alternative possibilities will have various importances associated with them, and it is these importances that are the reasons for doing a given action or not doing a given action or doing a different action).
Ware compounds the error when he says: “But the effect of this is to say that there can be **no choice-specific reason or set of reasons** for why the agent chose A **instead of B**, or not-A.”
The opposite is the case, each alternative possibility has “choice specific reasons” associated with it (what I am calling second order reasons, or importances). So when we make a decision we are acting in light of, (but not necessitated by) these “choice specific reasons”/importances.
Ware claims that the problem becomes: “It rather is the case, according to libertarian freedom, that every reason or set of reasons must be **equally explanatory** for why the agent might choose A, or B, or not-A. As a result, our choosing reduces strictly speaking to arbitrariness.” So Ware’s error results in the Frame error (choices are either predetermined or random, by chance, arbitrary). Actually, the opposite is the case, in most of our intentional actions, we are acting based upon our importances, and this is the opposite of arbitrariness.
Ware continues: “We can give no reason or set of reasons for why we make the choices we make that wouldn’t be the identical reason or set of reasons we would invoke had we made the opposite choice!” This is an irrational notion (the **identical** reason or set of reasons would explain both the choice to do A as well as the choice to not do A).
I do not believe that the same reason or set of reasons will explain two opposite actions. Rather, each opposite action has its own importance or set of importances associated with it.
Ware brought up his family members picking a flavor of ice cream as an illustration. He talks about his daughter Bethany choosing peanut butter chip rather than black raspberry. And he talks about **reasons** for why she prefers one flavor over the other flavors (i.e., on another occasion she picked that flavor and enjoyed it; this is an example of the importance of having present pleasurable experiences similar to past pleasurable experiences).
Ware also talks about the possibility that she overhear someone say that the peanut butter chip looks different than it usually does (which kicks in another importance for Bethany; the importance learned from past experience that if something looks different it may taste different and not be as good). My point is that whatever choice Bethany ends up making is going to involve her acting in light of her own set of importances. So regardless of how she chooses she will be **acting for reasons** (first and second order reasons) so she will be engaging in agent causation as I have described.
Significantly, Ware writes that it appears that she has “free will”: “ . . . Bethany looked over the selection and finally decided to order one scoop of peanut butter chip. Now was it in her power to choose otherwise? The answer is yes and no – yes, before her eyes was spread an array of options, and had her strongest inclination been directed toward a flavor other than the one she chose, in this case, she would have chosen otherwise.”
Ware believes that our choices are determined by our **strongest inclination** (Edwards argued similarly that our strongest desire determines our choice). So while Bethany appears to have available alternative possibilities before her (“an array of options”). According to Ware, she is able to “choose” only the flavor that is determined by her strongest inclination. I disagree with Ware here. If she can only do the one action that is predetermined for her to do, then the statement that she is faced with “an array of options” is false. That phrase “array of options” suggests she has a real choice and can choose from any of these options in that particular situation. But if everything is predetermined then she does not have options she has only one possible action which she can and will perform. An “array of options” is available to her if she can choose from any of these options in that situation. The libertarian says that she can choose from any of these options, the determinist says she can only do the action which was predetermined for her to do.
This brings out an important difference between the compatibilist and the libertarian. According to the compatibilist, unless certain conditions were different (i.e., she had different desires) then she could not have done otherwise. She could only do otherwise if in some way the circumstances were different. On the other hand, the libertarian suggests that given the exact same circumstances, she could have chosen in multiple different ways. Given the **exact same circumstances**, according to determinism she will only do the one action which she did in fact do. Given the **exact same circumstances**, according to the libertarian, she could have done otherwise than the action which she did in fact do.
Determinists speak of choices, but the reality of choice can only exist in a situation which is not completely predetermined. The compatibilist wants to claim that we are acting freely or have “free will” when we do what we want to do and do this without being coerced to do so. Compatibilists carefully define free will in this way so that this “freedom” can exist in a completely determined world. That description would fit a situation in which we only do what we are predetermined to do.
The libertarian suggests free will involves more. Not only doing what we want to do and doing so without coercion, but also being able to make different choices in the same situation(staying with the ice cream parlor example; being able to choose and actually pick different flavors whether peanut butter chip or raspberry or whatever, with the choice being up to the person). The compatibilist determinist is very careful to present a situation where it sounds like a person has a choice between alternatives, but in actuality no choice is present. And a different choice could only occur if the circumstances were in some way different than they were when the action occurred.
The compatibilist challenging others who hold to libertarian conceptions of free will, will sometimes ask: OK, so if a person is able to choose in the way that you describe, why do they make one choice rather than another **in the exact same circumstances**? Behind this question is Ware’s error of supposing that libertarians do not believe that our choices involve “choice-specific reasons” or what I call importances. Without choices involving these realities, the choice would appear to be willy-nilly, arbitrary, by chance, random, unexplained.
So why is one choice made rather than another in regards to a specific choice in a specific situation with the circumstances being exactly the same?
My answer is **importances.**
Bethany when making her choice of ice cream is considering different importances (2nd order reasons) connected with different available choices (i.e. deliberation is the consideration of importances in a given situation, and usually we deliberate to some extent in regards to our decisions). After she deliberates she arrives at a decision (which Ware refers to as her “strongest inclination” and Edwards called her “strongest desire”). This decision then leads to her action, her actualizing of one possibility while excluding the other possibilities (i.e. she picks one flavor and thereby excludes the other possible flavors which she could have chosen).
A key issue that Ware and Edwards seem to skip over, is this: how does one desire become the strongest desire/inclination in a given situation? Recall that Ware said “we do the one (and only one) thing that we most want”. Well how and why does that **one thing** become **the** thing that we most want, in a given situation? What process is involved in making one option from among the “array of options” the most strongly desired option/the one thing that we most want?
I would say that the process is what we mean by and call deliberation. And deliberation always involves the consideration of multiple possible alternative actions. We do not deliberate about the past, rather, we deliberate in the present in order to choose an action for the future. And this deliberation involves considering what is important to us in a given situation, it is not a random process nor is it properly described as arbitrary. What Ware and Edwards do is start their explanation at the point of decision (a person makes a decision which then leads to their action, and they call this decision the strongest desire or strongest inclination). But a decision occurs in the process only after deliberation has occurred. Only after different alternative possibilities have been considered.
And a decision **is a choice** between available alternative possibilities. Where there is no choice there is no decision. I do not make decisions about how my heart is presently beating, but I do make decisions about when and why I need to have my heart examined by a doctor (do I need to do it immediately? Do I need to do in within the next month, six months? Etc. etc.).
When Ware argues that Bethany’s choice of ice cream flavor is caused by her “strongest inclination” he is only telling a small part of the story. The parts he leaves out include that this “strongest inclination” arose **after she deliberated**, after she considered her importances, after she considered what importances were associated with the various available alternative possibilities before her. Ware leaves out everything that was involved in her making a choice from available alternatives.
This is one of my major problems with compatibilist thinking: they intentionally leave out parts of reality that are involved when we do intentional actions. If you are going to define the decision that results **after we make a choice**/arrive at a decision, as the “strongest inclination” then of course we act based upon our “strongest inclination”. But that explanation that we act upon this “strongest inclination” is a truism because it refers to the decision that has already been made, it says nothing about how we arrived at this decision (which involved our making a choice from among available alternative possibilities).
It reminds me of the evolutionist who speaks of “the survival of the fittest.” OK, but why was this one more “fit” than this one over here? What factors lead to the one being the “fit” one while the others were not as fit? Similarly, why did Bethany pick peanut butter chip rather than black raspberry or sherbet or cherry jubilee or . . .? To say that her “strongest inclination” is peanut butter chip says nothing about how that particular inclination/desire became the strongest from among competing available alternative possibilities.
If we know a person’s importances and what importances they were associating with each particular option, then we can understand why one option was preferred over the others. We will also see that this preference of the one option over the others is itself a choice, made by the person and not necessitated by the reasons which they were considering.
Recall Ware’s concrete example of the murderer:
“Imagine this in a concrete situation: the reasons that the murderer had for pulling the trigger must be, on grounds of libertarian freedom, exactly and precisely the same were he, instead, to have refrained from pulling the trigger. If this is the case, then we cannot know “why” he committed the murder, i.e., why he chose to pull the trigger instead of not. There is no accounting, then, for human moral choice, and our actions become fully inexplicable.”
We may not like the importances which the murderer had in his mind when he chose to pull the trigger, but we can be sure that if he was not insane when he did his evil acts that he was doing so for reasons in light of what **he** considered to be important (e.g. he was robbing a house and wanted the stolen property to make some money for himself, and he did not want any witnesses of his crime). When Ware says that the “reasons that the murderer had for pulling the trigger must be, on grounds of libertarian freedom, exactly and precisely the same were he, instead, to have refrained from pulling the trigger” this is COMPLETELY FALSE.
In reality the murderer would have some importances attached to the choice of pulling the trigger and some importances attached to the choice of not pulling the trigger and these importances would be very different from each other. One importance that he may have had in mind, for not pulling the trigger, would be that since he had already committed certain crimes, committing this one might get him locked up for a very long time, and he considers being out of prison to be very important. On the other hand, an importance for him to pull the trigger could have been that he was doing a hit and would receive lots of money for doing the hit. These importances then are not identical reasons for doing opposite actions but are very different importances for doing opposite or different actions.
Ware says that there is “no accounting then, for human moral choice, and our actions become fully inexplicable”. This true if you leave out the importances which are attached to various alternative possibilities. If you know what importances a person has when making their choices then you can account for these choices and these actions are then fully explicable.
Importances, like choices, are inescapable realities for us. We find time for what we consider to be important. We have no difficulty neglecting or ignoring what we do not consider to be important. If you want to see what most people consider important, watch how they use their time. Or better yet, watch how they spend their money.
Importances also partly explain why God created us to be human persons capable of doing our own actions for reasons, to be capable of agent causation. God desired to create human beings capable of **worshipping** Him. When we worship Him we are treating Him as He deserves to be treated as the most important reality, the most important person. In order to worship then, we have to be capable of choosing what we worship as well as how we worship. And in order to worship we need to be able to prioritize our desires/actions and choose to have God as our highest desire/ priority.
Henry