We were talking about a Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) for notions like acting freely or making a free choice or being morally responsible for your action. This says you had to have picked the option you did because it’s the option you wanted, not because it was the only option there was.
We saw van Inwagen expressing this idea:
To make a negative moral judgment about one of your acts is to evaluate your taking one of the forks in the road of time, to characterize that fork as a worse choice than at least one of the other forks open to you… A negative moral evaluation of what someone has done requires two or more alternative possibilities of action for that person, just as surely as a contest requires two or more contestants. (p. 268)
Lemos discusses Frankfurt cases on pp. 28-31 which are meant to push back against the PAP, and say that people can and should sometimes be held responsible for their actions even if they didnt have real alternatives they could have done instead. (See also the invocation of Martin Luther on p. 27 bottom.)
But we’re going to explore instead whether there’s a way for the Compatibiist to accept the PAP, and incorporate it into their view.
The Compatibilist thinks the basic insight of the PAP is that had we chosen a different alternative, there should be no obstacle to our pursuing that option, instead.
They think this insight is one they can accommodate. We do that by understanding the phrase “you could have done something else” in a particular way.
When we say “you could have done something else,” the Compatibilist thinks we mean that if you had chosen to do something else, you would have succeeded in doing something else. Nothing but your choice prevents you from doing the other thing. We call this the Compatibilist’s analysis of “could have done otherwise.” (Sometimes it is called the conditional or hypothetical analysis, instead.)
There are several variations on this basic analysis. As I’ve presented it, the Compatibilist says that “Y could have done otherwise” means that if Y had chosen or decided to do otherwise, then Y would have done otherwise. You may instead see Compatibilists saying that “Y could have done otherwise” means that if Y had tried to do otherwise, then Y would have done otherwise.
Here are presentations of this idea from our texts. van Inwagen writes:
According to this [Compatibilist version 2] solution, a future is open to an agent if, given that the agent chose that future, chose that path leading away from (what semed to be) a fork in the road of time, it would come to pass. Thus it is open to me to stop writing this book and do a little dance because, if I so chose, that’s what I’d do. But if Alice is locked in a prison cell, it is not open to her to leave: if she chose to leave, her choice would be ineffective because she would come up against a locked prison door. (p. 272)
Lemos has:
KATE: Many compatibilists believe we could do otherwise [than what we do] even if our acts are causally determined. They provide what’s called a conditional analysis of ‘could have done otherwise.’ So for instance, consider the case of John going to class this morning. He contemplated staying in bed and not going to class, but he got up and went to class… Many compatibilists think such free acts can be determined and the agent still could do otherwise. The compatibilist may say that the phrase ‘the agent could have done otherwise’ just means ‘he would have done otherwise, if he had wanted to or chose to.’ So for instance, even though John’s decision to go to class was causally determined, he still could have done otherwise in the sense that he would have done otherwise if he had wanted to.
PROF. DANIELS: Right, the idea here is that John’s decision to go to class was determined by his stronger desire to improve his GPA. But, even though the decision was determined, he could have done otherwise in the sense that if he’d had a stronger desire to stay in bed then he would have. (pp. 25-6)
In the the dog-behind-the-wagon story, it is not true that you could have done otherwise, in the Compatibilist’s sense. If you had chosen to stand in one place, you would have been dragged along after the wagon anyway. Nor is it true that you could have done otherwise in our other paradigm cases, involving chains or locked doors or paralyzed limbs. Hence, the Compatibilist proposes:
(C2) You do X freely iff:
Is freedom in this sense compatible with Determinism? It seems like it is. If we accept this account of what it is to do X freely, then once again, being causally determined to do X seems to be compatible with doing X freely. After all, being causally determined to do X does not prevent me from satisfying condition (b). And it does not seem to prevent me from satisfying condition (c), either. It may be causally determined that I would lecture to you right now. But that’s because (it was causally determined that) I chose to lecture to you. If the world had gone differently, in such a way that I (was causally determined to) choose to stay home today, instead, then I would be at home right now, instead of standing here lecturing to you. So I can satisfy condition (c) of this proposal, even though I am causally determined to act in the way I do.
We’re considering a Compatibilist proposal that says:
(C2) You do X freely iff:
Condition (c) is how these theorists aim to capture the insight that “you could have done otherwise.”
Is the Compatibilist right about what it means to say that someone “could have done otherwise”? And is she right about what it means to act freely?
The Compatibilist says that I “could have done otherwise” just in case, if I had chosen (or tried) to do otherwise, I would have done otherwise. But is this right?
Arguably at least some of the time this is not what we mean by “could.” The philosopher John Austin imagined an expert golfer who shoots an easy putt but misses it. The golfer curses, “Darn it, I could have (and should have) made that.” If this judgment might be correct, then the golfer could have made the putt, even though she tried and did not succeed. So “could have made it” doesn’t seem to be equivalent here to “If I tried, I would succeed.”
Perhaps the Compatibilist may agree that sometimes we mean other things by “could.” All she needs is that the notion she explained captures what we’re thinking about when we’re counting actions as free/unfree.
Imagine someone who has a psychological defect that forces him to make certain choices. We can suppose that when such a person is presented with the option of doing X, he is unable to choose to do anything other than X. He’s a compulsive Xer. For example, perhaps you’ve gradually introduced curry into his diet, so that now he has an addictive desire for curry which he cannot control. So he always chooses to eat curry. Notice: his obsession is so strong that it does not merely cause him to X, it also prevents him from choosing not to X.
We can note two features of this person:
So here we have a person who is not entirely free, because of not being able to act otherwise. Yet the counterfactual “If he had chosen to act otherwise, he would have acted otherwise” is true. If this is correct, then the Compatibilist’s account of what it means to be able to act otherwise must be wrong. To be able to act otherwise, it is not enough for the counterfactual “If you had chosen to act otherwise, you would have acted otherwise” to be true. In addition, you have to be able to choose to act otherwise.
Another case of this sort would be a case where my choices are caused by an evil scientist’s neural manipulations. My actions in that case may correspond perfectly to my choices. But intuitively I am not acting freely, and I could not have acted otherwise than I do in fact act, because I could not have chosen otherwise than I did. Nonetheless, it can still be true that if I had chosen to do otherwise, e.g., because the evil scientist made me choose something else, then I would have done that other thing instead. So here again the Compatibilist seems to be wrong. It can be the case that if I had chosen to do otherwise, I would have done otherwise; but in fact I could not have chosen to do otherwise; hence in such a case it’s wrong to say that I could have done otherwise.
In his book Metaphysics, the philosopher Richard Taylor describes someone whose choices are manipulated by a scientist and says:
This is the description of a man who is acting in accordance with his inner volitions, a man whose body is unimpeded and unconstrained in its motions, these motions being the effects of those inner states. [So it’s a case the Compatibilist would count as acting freely. But] It is hardly the description of a free and responsible agent. It is the perfect description of a puppet. To render someone your puppet, it is not necessary forcibly to constrain the motions of his limbs, after the fashion that real puppets are moved. A subtler but no less effective means of making a person your puppet would be to gain complete control of his inner states, and ensuring, as the theory of soft determinism does ensure, that his body will move in accordance with them. (p. 46-7)
Now, Determinism threatens to show that this is always our situation. We are always causally determined to choose as we do. Hence, even if it’s the case that if we had chosen otherwise we would have done otherwise, that doesn’t help us very much. We’re always causally determined to choose as we do, so it’s never the case that we could have chosen otherwise.
In summary: we were considering the Compatibilist proposal:
(C2) You do X freely iff:
The objection we heard was that this would count some people as free who, as they are, couldn’t have chosen any differently. (But if they had been different enough that they could choose differently, would have succeeded.) But the objector says, these people intuitively don’t seem to be free. So this proposal makes counter-intuitive claims.
These kinds of objections are presented in Lemos (pp. 26-7 and 33) and van Inwagen (pp. 272-3).
It looks, then, like acting freely requires more than we laid down in (C2). It’s not enough that you’re merely such that if you had chosen to do otherwise you would have done otherwise. That might be true even in a case where, intuitively, it was not in your power to choose to do otherwise. You might be choosing the way you do because you have a psychological obsession or addiction; or perhaps an evil scientist is causing you to choose in the way you do. In such cases, we wouldn’t want to say that you’re acting freely.
A more sophisticated form of Compatibilism accepts that criticism. It proposes the following:
(C3) You do X freely iff:
This account does rule out people who are unable to choose otherwise. Such people don’t count as acting freely, because they do not satisfy condition (d) of the account. They are not sensitive to reasons in the right way. It doesn’t matter what reasons the obsessive-compulsive, or the addict, or the scientist’s victim have for not doing X. They would still choose to do X anyway. X is the only choice they are able to make.
We’ve already seen that being causally determined to do X does not prevent one from satisfying conditions (b) and (c) of this account. Is being causally determined to do X also compatible with satisfying condition (d)? It seems that it is. For it may be that one is causally determined to do X because one is causally determined to have good reasons to do X. If one had been causally determined to have good reasons to do something else, instead, then one may have gone ahead and done that other thing. All that’s important, according to this Compatibilist, is that your choices are sensitive to and track your reasons. The mechanisms that produce those choices have to be reasons-responsive mechanisms. They have to be such that, if you had had different reasons, they would have produced different choices. If your choices are produced by reasons-responsive mechanisms, and you also satisfy conditions (b) and (c), then you do act freely, on this account. It is not necessary that your choices or actions be causally undetermined.
This theory sounds pretty good. It’s very sophisticated, and it avoids most of the problems that we’ve discussed so far. However, there are difficulties for it, too.
One difficulty is this. Not just any reasons-responsive mechanism will do. Suppose my choices are being caused by the neural manipulation of a benevolent scientist. This scientist always causes me to choose and act in the way that accords with the reasons I have. If there is a good reason for me to X, the scientist causes me to choose to do X. If there is a good reason for me to Y, the scientist causes me to choose to do Y. And so on. In this case, my choices are produced by a reasons-responsive mechanism, but I do not seem to be choosing or acting freely. Perhaps we can get around this problem by requiring that the reasons-responsive mechanism be located entirely inside the agent.
A second difficulty is this. On the current view, it sounds like I can act freely only if I always choose to do what I have good reason to do. I have to always choose to do “the right thing.” But if I’m free, can’t I also choose to do the wrong thing? Can’t I choose to do something which I recognize I don’t have good reasons to do? Sure, maybe that would be foolish or evil. But it does seem like it ought to be in my power. The current view says that such a choice would not be free, because it would not have been produced by a mechanism that responds to my reasons in the right way. But it’s hard to see why choosing to do the wrong thing has to be less free than choosing to do the right thing.