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Sunday, October 08, 2006

Identity, responsibility, and indeterminism

Open theism is a limiting case of certain kindred notions, viz. indeterminism, incompatibilism.

Open theism begins with the popular, commonsense assumption that responsibility is contingent on the freedom to do otherwise.

And, on one interpretation, the freedom to do otherwise implies that the future is “open” or indeterminate.

Let’s briefly examine some implications of this claim.

1.In what sense, on a libertarian view, is the future indeterminate?

The future cannot be entirely open. For among other things, in order for a free agent to choose otherwise, he needs to be in a position to effect his choice.

Maybe I’m tempted to rob a bank. I must be free to either acquiesce to that temptation or resist it.

Now, robbing a bank, or refraining from bank-robbery, is a physical act. I must do certain things to rob a bank, and do other things—or, if you prefer, refrain from doing the same things—in order to either rob a bank or not rob a bank.

And this, in turn, presumes at least an element of physical determinism or cause and effect.

If I’m free to rob a bank, then I must be able to will certain actions, and have my resolution carried out via a physical medium. I must be able to act on a material medium in order to enact my wish.

Perhaps one might try to distinguish between the freedom to rob a bank and the freedom to choose to rob a bank.

Maybe I could freely choose to rob a bank, but find myself unable to realize my choice. But if I were systematically unable to implement my choices, then I think a libertarian would deny that I was truly free.

So the freedom of choice must include, at least some of the time, freedom of opportunity.

We can see this even more clearly in the negative. For me to be free to refrain from robbing the bank, I must be free not to go to the bank, not to carry a gun, not to drive a getaway car. I must be free to deist from certain physical actions by taking alternative actions.

2.In that event, while the future is partly indeterminate, due to the contribution of free agents, the future is partly determinate, due to a system of cause and effect.

And, of course, while some physical effects are the result of human agency, most physical effects are not.

This, of itself, creates an odd amalgam of determinism and indeterminism. How can the same future be partly open and partly closed? How does the same future come together and come to be a partial result of physical determinates while other “parts” are to be penciled in at the last moment by the indeterministic choice of the free agent?

Do we have one future or two futures which somehow coalesce? On partial future that is predetermined by the satisfaction of certain necessary and sufficient conditions, but which remains in a state of unreality until it is realized by the creative contribution of free agents?

How can something be partly, potentially realized by physical determinates, yet fail to obtain? How can it be contingent on something unspecified until the last moment?

In that event, we lack physical determinism, for the cause/effect relation is made to be merely necessary rather than sufficient.

3.But things get worse. Suppose the libertarian is a physicalist. In that case, the human agent is a material organism, subject to the laws of physics. Wouldn’t his choice be result of a chemical reaction (brain chemistry) in conjunction with an external stimulus?

If physical determinism is even partly true, and the agent is, himself, a physical unit, however complex, then in what sense is he free to do otherwise?

4. What is the future? Does he choose his future?

On libertarian assumptions, the future is, in part, the sum total of the collective choices of all the free agents who contribute to the realization of the future by their individual decisions and actions.

So is there one open future, or many? Does an individual agent control his own future? Or is there a common future, which is the net effect of all agents, past and present?

The agent is, himself, a product of past agents, such as his parents. He wouldn’t have a future without them.

And his environment is partly the result of physical determinism, and partly the result of other free agents whose past choices add to or subtract from the present set of choices.

His opportunities are not opportunities which, for the most part, he has created for himself. Rather, he can choose from the available options resulting from the choices made by others before him and around him. Predecessors and contemporaries.

What is his future? Suppose he lives to be 90. At birth, his future is the next 90 years.

But does he choose that future? Or is it, to a great extent, chosen for for? Year after year, other agents make other decisions which impinge on his decisions, shaping his environment.

So how do all these individually open futures fuse into one open future? Which comes first? How do they coexist? How does a libertarian escape the specter of circular causation?

5. Apropos (4), obsession with the freedom to do otherwise can make us overlook another tradition condition of responsibility, which is personal identity.

To be guilty of a past crime, I must be the agent who committed that crime. I must be the same agent, between then and now.

But what does it mean to be the same individual if the future is partly and perennially open, from one moment to the next?

For an agent is, in part, the product of other agents—since the future is whatever all of us make it to be. The future is the reality of what is to be. The agent is an artifact of that reality. As much a creature of the future as he is a co-creator thereof.

So the human agent is partly the product of physical determinism, and partly the product of a corporate, indeterministic process. In that respect, in what sense is the agent his own person, if he is partly the product of a corporate process? And in what further sense is he the same person if he is, in part, the product of an indeterministic process?

A libertarian philosophy artificially isolates the individual agent: the same agent has the freedom to do otherwise. The actor remains the same, but the actions might have been otherwise.

But in a consistently libertarian scheme, the future, inclusive of the agent, is the outcome, at any given moment, of all the past and present choices of all the other agents.

So it’s not simply a case in which the same agent is the subject of the freedom to do otherwise. He is also the object of the freedom to do otherwise. He can always be other than what he was, a moment ago.

For if open theism is true, then reality takes on a highly participatory aspect, rather like idealism or quantum mechanics (on one interpretation). We make reality, and we are made by reality.

If the future is truly open, then there can be no relation between past and future. The future could be A or B or C or D…

All those possibility are equally viable until one is actualized. Prior to that moment, the future could have forked off in any number of opposing directions.

Given this radical discontinuity between past and future, there can be no basis for personal identity, in which case there can be no basis for personal responsibility.

Libertarian morality is only plausible by arbitrarily freezing some variables in place while leaving other variables up-in-the-air.

But if taken to its logical extreme, everything is a free variable in a libertarian scheme. No persistence through time.

Or, if there is, then it takes the form of physical determinism, which tugs in the opposite direction.

Hence, a libertarian philosophy is an unstable compromise between an impersonal determinism and the dissolution of personal identity. And that, in turn, undercuts a leading rationale for open theism.

1 comment:

  1. I’m surprised no one has responded to this post. Okay then, I’ll take a shot with my own “knee-jerk” reactions. I’ve made no effort at diplomacy and you’re way out of my league, so I expect no charity in return. I respect you tremendously as a thinker so I’m anxious to hear your reply, if you feel the need to do so.

    Stuart

    **************************************************************************
    Open theism is a limiting case of certain kindred notions, viz. indeterminism, incompatibilism.

    DON’T KNOW WHAT INDETERMINISM IS. IT HAS NO WORKING DEFINITION OTHER THAN AS THE ANTITHESIS OF DETERMINISM, WHICH IS ANTITHETICAL TO FREEDOM. BUT I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED INDETERMINISM, ONLY FREEDOM, SO I’D IT CATOLOGUE IT UNDER THE RUBRIC OF UNDEFINABLE CONCEPT AND WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT LIFE WHEN GOD CAN MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE TO ME.

    Open theism begins with the popular, commonsense assumption that responsibility is contingent on the freedom to do otherwise.

    COMMONSENSE IS NOT QUITE STRONG ENOUGH, SINCE THE FREEDOM TO DO OTHERWISE IS SOMETHING I EXPERIENCE AS STRONGLY AS MY OWN EXISTENCE. IT IS A PACKAGE DEAL.

    And, on one interpretation, the freedom to do otherwise implies that the future is “open” or indeterminate.

    NOT KNOWING THE FUTURE IS AS REAL AS REALITY ITSELF, I AGREE. FUTURE ACTUALIZATIONS OBTAIN IN PART BASED ON CHOICES I AND OTHERS MAKE, ALONG WITH PHYSICAL REALITIES THAT, SO FAR AS I’M AWARE, ARE BEYOND MY CONTROL.

    Let’s briefly examine some implications of this claim.

    1.In what sense, on a libertarian view, is the future indeterminate?

    IF BY INDETERMINATE YOU MEAN “UNKNOWN” THAN I’D ANSWER BY SAYING: IN THE SENSE THAT AS A FINITE, CREATED BEING, GOD CHOOSES NOT TO GIVE ME ACCESS TO FUTURE EVENTS IN THE “HERE AND NOW”.

    The future cannot be entirely open. For among other things, in order for a free agent to choose otherwise, he needs to be in a position to effect his choice.

    Maybe I’m tempted to rob a bank. I must be free to either acquiesce to that temptation or resist it.

    Now, robbing a bank, or refraining from bank-robbery, is a physical act. I must do certain things to rob a bank, and do other things—or, if you prefer, refrain from doing the same things—in order to either rob a bank or not rob a bank.

    And this, in turn, presumes at least an element of physical determinism or cause and effect.

    If I’m free to rob a bank, then I must be able to will certain actions, and have my resolution carried out via a physical medium. I must be able to act on a material medium in order to enact my wish.

    Perhaps one might try to distinguish between the freedom to rob a bank and the freedom to choose to rob a bank.

    Maybe I could freely choose to rob a bank, but find myself unable to realize my choice. But if I were systematically unable to implement my choices, then I think a libertarian would deny that I was truly free.

    THIS SEEMS TO BE AN UNHELPFUL DISTINCTION. IF I LIVED IN A WORLD IN WHICH MY CHOICES WERE UNFAILINGLY FRUSTRATED BY EXTERNAL FACTORS, I’D STILL EXPERIENCE THE REALITY OF FREEDOM, AND FOR ME THAT IS THE CRUX OF THE MATTER. I CAN’T IMAGINE A POSSIBLE WORLD W/O THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE THAT I EXERCISE EVERY DAY, EVEN IF IT IS FRUSTRATED AT EVERY TURN.

    So the freedom of choice must include, at least some of the time, freedom of opportunity.

    NOT TO ME. THE QUESTION IS ABOUT THE REALITY OF CHOICE, AND IN A WORLD IN WHICH FREEDOM OF CHOICE OBTAINED W/O ACUALIZATION OF THE OBJECTS OF CHOICE, THE PHENOMENON OF FREEDOM WOULD REMAIN. IT’S IRRELEVANT REALLY, ISN’T IT? I MEAN, WE DON’T LIVE IN A WORLD LIKE THIS, NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THIS.

    We can see this even more clearly in the negative. For me to be free to refrain from robbing the bank, I must be free not to go to the bank, not to carry a gun, not to drive a getaway car. I must be free to deist from certain physical actions by taking alternative actions.

    2.In that event, while the future is partly indeterminate, due to the contribution of free agents, the future is partly determinate, due to a system of cause and effect.

    And, of course, while some physical effects are the result of human agency, most physical effects are not.

    This, of itself, creates an odd amalgam of determinism and indeterminism. How can the same future be partly open and partly closed? How does the same future come together and come to be a partial result of physical determinates while other “parts” are to be penciled in at the last moment by the indeterministic choice of the free agent?

    STILL DON’T ACCEPT THE INDETERMINISTIC LABEL, SINCE I’VE YET TO SEE A WORKING DEFINITION OF IT THAT ISN’T ONE AND THE SAME AS THE “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE” AND THEREFORE DOES NOTHING TO CLARIFY THE CONCEPT OF “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE”. HAVING SAID THAT, HOW CAN ANY OF THE ITEMS MENTIONED IN THE LAST PARAGRAPH BE OTHERWISE SINCE THEY ALL BELONG TO *MY* REALITY (AND YOURS TOO, I BET)? IF THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE BRUTE FACTS OF EXISTENCE MENTIONED IN THAT PARAGRAPH, HOW WOULD I DEMONSTRATE IT TO MYSELF, AS OPPOSED TO APPEALING TO SOME SPECIES OF UNCONCEPTUALIZED REALITY, WHICH BY DEFINITION I CAN’T HAVE ACCESS TO ANYWAY. FACT IS, THERE IS FREEDOM FOR ME AND OTHER AGENTS (OR SO IT SEEMS) THAT FIGURES INTO MY CONCEPTION OF REALITY. IN ADDITION TO THIS, THERE ARE KNOWN PHYSICAL LAWS THAT SEEM INVIOLATE THAT LIMIT MY ABILITY TO CHOOSE. DOES *ANY* PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM *ACCOUNT* FOR THIS WITHOUT OBVIOUS CIRCULARITY?

    Do we have one future or two futures which somehow coalesce? On partial future that is predetermined by the satisfaction of certain necessary and sufficient conditions, but which remains in a state of unreality until it is realized by the creative contribution of free agents?

    How can something be partly, potentially realized by physical determinates, yet fail to obtain? How can it be contingent on something unspecified until the last moment?

    In that event, we lack physical determinism, for the cause/effect relation is made to be merely necessary rather than sufficient.

    DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER TO THESE QUESTIONS. THE ONLY VIABLE ANSWER WOULD BE ONE THAT FOLLOWS FROM STRICT LOGICAL IMPLICATION, WHICH I’VE YET TO SEE ANYONE SUCCESSFULLY ROLL OUT. THE ALTERNATIVE IS ALWAYS ANY ONE OF A HODGEPODGE METAPHYSICAL SOLUTIONS THAT ASSUME WHAT THEY PURPORT TO EXPLAIN. WHEN I SAY THAT THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE IS A REALITY THAT I INSTANTIATE EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY IN THE ABSENCE OF A FULL ACCOUNTING AS PART OF THE LARGER AND EQUALLY SLIPPERY PHENOMENON OF EXISTENCE, I AM AS FAR FROM AN ANALYTICAL STATEMENT AS ONE COULD BE, AND YET THIS STATEMENT IS AS REAL TO ME AS THE COLOR GREEN.

    3.But things get worse. Suppose the libertarian is a physicalist. In that case, the human agent is a material organism, subject to the laws of physics. Wouldn’t his choice be result of a chemical reaction (brain chemistry) in conjunction with an external stimulus?

    If physical determinism is even partly true, and the agent is, himself, a physical unit, however complex, then in what sense is he free to do otherwise?

    WHO CARES IF A LIBERTARIAN IS A PHYSICALIST. IF HE IS, SO MUCH THE WORSE FOR HIM.

    4. What is the future? Does he choose his future?

    CAN *YOU* TELL *ME* WHAT THE FUTURE IS? IT’D LIKELY BE THE SAME EXPLANATION I’D GIVE. IT WOULDN’T BE AN EARTH SHATTERING EXPLICATION, BUT ONE THAT ANSWERS TO CRITERIA THAT HAVE UTILITY IN DAY-TO-DAY EXISTENCE. ANYTHING MORE THAN THIS WOULD BE METAPHYSICAL BLATHER. AND I’VE NEVER MANAGED TO CHOOSE MY FUTURE IN ANY SORT OF EXHAUSTIVE SENSE, BUT HOW DOES THAT COUNT AGAINST FREE WILL?

    On libertarian assumptions, the future is, in part, the sum total of the collective choices of all the free agents who contribute to the realization of the future by their individual decisions and actions.

    So is there one open future, or many? Does an individual agent control his own future? Or is there a common future, which is the net effect of all agents, past and present?

    The agent is, himself, a product of past agents, such as his parents. He wouldn’t have a future without them.

    And his environment is partly the result of physical determinism, and partly the result of other free agents whose past choices add to or subtract from the present set of choices.

    His opportunities are not opportunities which, for the most part, he has created for himself. Rather, he can choose from the available options resulting from the choices made by others before him and around him. Predecessors and contemporaries.

    What is his future? Suppose he lives to be 90. At birth, his future is the next 90 years.

    But does he choose that future? Or is it, to a great extent, chosen for for? Year after year, other agents make other decisions which impinge on his decisions, shaping his environment.

    AGAIN, I’VE NEVER “CHOSEN” MY FUTURE AND NEITHER HAS ANYONE I’D VENTURE. BUT WHERE IS IT WRITTEN THAT FREE WILL ENTAILS CHOOSING ONE’S FUTURE. TO THE EXTENT THAT MY EXPERIENCE HAS NOT ENTAILED *THAT* KIND OF CHOICE, I’D NOT DEFINE FREEDOM IN THAT WAY. HOW IS THAT PROBLEMATIC?

    So how do all these individually open futures fuse into one open future? Which comes first? How do they coexist? How does a libertarian escape the specter of circular causation?

    WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING? THAT FREEDOM TO CHOOSE IS AN ILLUSION. I DOUBT IT, BUT IF YOU ARE SUGGESTING THIS, I’D SAY, “SO WHAT”; IF ILLUSION IS ALL I HAVE, I’LL LIVE WITH IT UNTIL A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE IS DEMONSTRATED. IF THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO LOGICAL DEMONSTRATION, IT IS SOMETHING LIKE DIVINE ILLUMINATION, WHICH NEEDS NO DEMONSTRATION BUT IS ENDOWED DIRECTLY BY GOD, HIMSELF. AND WHAT OF THE “SPECTER OF CIRCULAR CAUSATION”? NO METAPHYSICAL SYSTEM ESCAPES THE SPECTER OF CIRCULAR CAUSATION, EXCEPT BY ARTIFICIAL DECLARATION. CIRCULAR CAUSATION IS ALWAYS IN PLAY IN A MAN-MADE METAPHYSICS. DECLARING THAT SOME METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLE LIKE “UNCAUSED FIRST CAUSE” IS AN ESCAPE HATCH FROM INFINITE REGRESS IS TO MISS THE POINT: BOTH CONCEPTS ARE METAPHYSICS AND SUFFER EQUALLY BY VIRTUE OF BEING SYNONYMOUS WITH “UCONCEPTUALIZED REALITY”.

    5. Apropos (4), obsession with the freedom to do otherwise can make us overlook another tradition condition of responsibility, which is personal identity.

    ARE YOU CLAIMING TO HAVE A WORKING DEFINITION OF HUMAN IDENTITY? WHATEVER REFUTATION IS TO FOLLOW RINGS HOLLOW W/O IT, IT SEEMS TO ME. I DON’T *ACCOUNT* FOR MY IDENTITY ANY MORE THAN MY EXISTENCE. BOTH ARE JUST A GIVEN, SO FAR AS I CAN DETERMINE.

    To be guilty of a past crime, I must be the agent who committed that crime. I must be the same agent, between then and now.

    But what does it mean to be the same individual if the future is partly and perennially open, from one moment to the next?

    For an agent is, in part, the product of other agents—since the future is whatever all of us make it to be. The future is the reality of what is to be. The agent is an artifact of that reality. As much a creature of the future as he is a co-creator thereof.

    So the human agent is partly the product of physical determinism, and partly the product of a corporate, indeterministic process. In that respect, in what sense is the agent his own person, if he is partly the product of a corporate process? And in what further sense is he the same person if he is, in part, the product of an indeterministic process?

    A libertarian philosophy artificially isolates the individual agent: the same agent has the freedom to do otherwise. The actor remains the same, but the actions might have been otherwise.

    But in a consistently libertarian scheme, the future, inclusive of the agent, is the outcome, at any given moment, of all the past and present choices of all the other agents.

    So it’s not simply a case in which the same agent is the subject of the freedom to do otherwise. He is also the object of the freedom to do otherwise. He can always be other than what he was, a moment ago.

    For if open theism is true, then reality takes on a highly participatory aspect, rather like idealism or quantum mechanics (on one interpretation). We make reality, and we are made by reality.

    If the future is truly open, then there can be no relation between past and future. The future could be A or B or C or D…

    WHAT COUNTS AS A RELATION BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, EXCEPT FOR THE CONSTRUCTS WE USE IN EVERYDAY LANGUAGE? I’VE NEVER SEEN A RELATION, ONLY CORRELATION, AND I FAIL TO SEE HOW ANY BRAND OF DETERMINISM ACCOUNTS FOR “RELATION” IN A WAY THAT PRECLUDES FREEDOM, OR FOR THAT MATTER HOW ANY BRAND OF DETERMINISM ACCOUNTS FOR THE NOTION OF RELATION AT ALL. THE TERM “RELATION” AS A UTILE LANGUAGE CONSTRUCT HAS, SO FAR AS I CAN TELL, NO METAPHYSICAL BAGGAGE THAT REQUIRES ME TO REGARD IT AS INCOMPATIBLE W/ FREEDOM. AM I TO REGARD THE PERSONAL FREEDOM I EXPERIENCE ALONGSIDE THE DETERMINISM I ATTRIBUTE TO OBJECTS OF EXPERIENCE AS SOMEHOW INVALID? HOW WOULD ONE SHOW ONESELF THAT THIS IS UNTRUE? I DON’T *SHOW* “RELATIONS” BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, I USE THEM AS A KIND OF CONVENTION. THAT IS AS FAR AS IT GOES.

    All those possibility are equally viable until one is actualized. Prior to that moment, the future could have forked off in any number of opposing directions.

    Given this radical discontinuity between past and future, there can be no basis for personal identity, in which case there can be no basis for personal responsibility.

    WHOA… THAT’S A HUGE LEAP. ISN’T IT? WHAT RADICAL DISCONTINUITY BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE? YOU SEEM TO BE ASSIGNING SOME KIND OF SUPERIORITY TO SOME CONCEPTION OF DETERMINISM. HOW DOES ONE ESTABLISH THAT DETERMINISM ACCOUNTS FOR PERSONAL IDENTITY? HOW DOES ONE *SHOW* THIS? YOU SEEM TO BE SAYING THAT IN THE SAME WAY THAT AN OPERATION ASSIGNED BY A GIVEN COMPUTER PROGRAM CAN NOT DEVIATE FROM THAT ASSIGNMENT, THE CHOICES I MAKE FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT MUST BE THE RESULT OF SOME DIVINELY CONCEIVED ALGORITHM, THAT ONLY IF HUMAN IDENTITY IS CONCEIVED IN THIS WAY IS IT COHERENT. BUT DEMONSTRATION AND ANALOGY ARE *NOT* THE SAME.

    TO BE FAIR, I DOUBT YOU CLAIM THAT HUMANS ARE AUTOMATONS AND THAT OUR FREEDOM IS MERELY ILLUSORY. YOU’D LIKELY SAY THAT WE ARE FREE BUT ALWAYS CHOOSE TO REJECT GOD UNLESS GOD CHOOSES US. IF THE LATTER IS THE CASE, AND IT MAY WELL BE, IS A DEMONSTRATION OF IT REALLY IN THE CARDS? HAVE WE REFUTED IT BY SUPPLANTING ONE METAPHYSICAL CONCEPT W/ ANOTHER: ONTOLOGICAL FREEDOM WITH ONTOLOGICAL DETERMINISM (WHATEVER BRAND WE INVOKE)?

    Libertarian morality is only plausible by arbitrarily freezing some variables in place while leaving other variables up-in-the-air.

    But if taken to its logical extreme, everything is a free variable in a libertarian scheme. No persistence through time.

    ARE YOU NOT BEGGING THE QUESTION IN FAVOR OF DETERMINISM WITH A STATEMENT LIKE THIS? DETERMINISM IS AN OBJECT OF EXPERIENCE, NOT AN EXPLANATION OF EXPERIENCE. PERSISTENCE THROUGH TIME IS AS REAL TO ME AS TIME ITSELF, AND, YET, MY EXPERIENCE OF FREEDOM IS NOT THREATENED BY THIS. IF THE ADJOINING OF THESE TWO SELF EVIDENT PHENOMENA IS INCOHERENT OR ILLUSORY, HOW WOULD YOU PROVE IT?

    Or, if there is, then it takes the form of physical determinism, which tugs in the opposite direction.

    YOU’RE SAYING PERSISTENCE THROUGH TIME ENTAILS DETERMINISM? I DON’T SEE IT.

    Hence, a libertarian philosophy is an unstable compromise between an impersonal determinism and the dissolution of personal identity. And that, in turn, undercuts a leading rationale for open theism.

    THIS SEEMS WAY OVER THE TOP. LIBERTARIANISM AS ONTOLOGY FAILS FOR THE SAME REASON DETERMINISM (AS ONTOLOGY) DOES: IT MISTAKES OBJECTS OF EXPERIENCE FOR THE JUSTIFICATION OF EXPERIENCE ITSELF.

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