The neuroscience of "free will"

Advances in neuroscience over the past 40 or more years are causing a re-visiting of an old debate: Does man possess free will over his actions, or do forces out of his control determine his behavior? Philosophers and biologists since the beginning of recorded history have taken positions on each side of the debate. Recent discoveries of brain activation prior to conscious awareness and genetic conditions that induce impulsive violent behavior are fortifying the perspective that biological determinism is basic to the human condition. But some contemporary thinkers are conflicted in this viewpoint since “free will” is a necessary element for self-determination and for attributing personal responsibility for one's actions. Hence, modifications of strict determinism have emerged which try to incorporate the features of determinism enforced by neuroscience findings with some element of “free will”, making the two seemingly opposed positions compatible. How successful this will be to rescue “free will” in the long term depends on future discoveries in neuroscience and genetics. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Indeterminacy and Moral Action in Laozi

There is an apparent tension in Laozi 老子 between his denial of the adequacy of positive theoretical formulations and his concomitant endorsement of certain kinds of practical action over others. Laozi writes, for example, “Where they all know the good as good, there is evil, Therefore Being and non-being produce each other” (Laozi 2.3–5), which suggests that good and evil produce each other the way being and non-being produce each other; in which case to do good will lead to evil and to do evil will lead to good. The result threatens to become moral paralysis. I argue that this destabilization of moral concepts does not amount to a moral relativism, but leaves us with a consistent moral point of view in its own way.     

Wittgenstein,Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty

Alice Crary claims that “the standard view of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics” is dominated by “inviolability interpretations”, which often underlie conservative readings of Wittgenstein. Crary says that such interpretations are “especially marked in connection with On Certainty”, where Wittgenstein is represented as holding that “our linguistic practices are immune to rational criticism, or inviolable”. Crary's own conception of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics, which I call the “intrinsically‐ethical reading”, derives from the influential New Wittgenstein school of exegesis, and is also espoused by James Edwards, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall. To my eyes, intrinsically‐ethical readings present a peculiar picture of ethics, which I endeavour to expose in Part I of the paper. In Part II I present a reading of On Certainty that Crary would call an “inviolability interpretation”, defend it against New Wittgensteinian critiques, and show that this kind of reading has nothing to do with ethical or political conservatism. I go on to show how Wittgenstein's observations on the manner in which we can neither question nor affirm certain states of affairs that are fundamental to our epistemic practices can be fruitfully extended to ethics. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon that I call “basic moral certainty”, which constitutes the foundation of our ethical practices, and the scaffolding or framework of moral perception, inquiry, and judgement. The nature and significance of basic moral certainty will be illustrated through consideration of the strangeness of philosophers' attempts at explaining the wrongness of killing.     

Damasio’s body-map-based view,Panksepp’s affect-centric view,and the evolutionary advantages of consciousness

Although dualism has the advantage of being intuitively plausible, it is not compatible with a 21^st-century (scientific) world view. Jaak Panksepp and Antonio Damasio are contemporary writers who reject dualism, and whose views take the form of “biological naturalism”. I first discuss how their views compare in five specific respects; and then I look more closely at how the different emphases of the views affect their ability to account for the evolutionary advantages of consciousness, specifically. Both authors agree that “consciousness” provides creatures with a survival advantage in terms of their ability to produce novel and/or flexible responses, their ability to plan ahead, and their motivation to promote their own survival – but the exact means by which they think these advantages are conferred, in each of these respects, differ. One might say that, whereas Damasio thinks the main evolutionary advantages of “consciousness” (the “higher reaches” of which are unique to humans) have to do with enabling creatures to work out what to do to promote their well-being, Panksepp thinks the main advantage of “consciousness” is that being “conscious” of affective feelings urgently motivates creatures to take action when their well-being is threatened. Considering that “working out what do” is only possible for a small selection of cognitively sophisticated organisms, I argue that Panksepp’s account is more plausible than Damasio’s account.     

Intentional action and the frame-of-mind argument: new experimental challenges to Hindriks

Based on a puzzling pattern in our judgements about intentional action, Knobe [(2003). “Intentional Action and Side-Effects in Ordinary Language.” Analysis 63: 190–194] has claimed that these judgements are shaped by our moral judgements and evaluations. However, this claim goes directly against a key conceptual intuition about intentional action – the “frame-of-mind condition”, according to which judgements about intentional action are about the agent’s frame-of-mind and not about the moral value of his action. To preserve this intuition Hindriks [(2008). “Intentional Action and the Praise-Blame Asymmetry.” The Philosophical Quarterly 58: 630–641; (2014). “Normativity in Action: How to Explain the Knobe Effect and its Relatives.” Mind & Language 29: 51–72] has proposed an alternate account of the Knobe Effect. According to his “Normative Reason account of Intentional Action”, a side-effect counts as intentional only when the agent thought it constituted a normative reason not to act but did not care. In this paper, I put Hindriks’ account to test through two new studies, the results of which suggest that Hindriks’ account should be rejected. However, I argue that the key conceptual insight behind Hindriks’ account can still be saved and integrated in future accounts of Knobe’s results.     

Kane,Luck, and the significance of free will

Abstract

This paper raises a pair of objections to the novel libertarian position advanced in Robert Kane's recent book, The Significance of Free Will.The first objection's target is a central element in Kane's intriguing response to what he calls the “Intelligibility” and “Existence” questions about free will. It is argued that this response is undermined by considerations of luck.The second objection is directed at a portion of Kane's answer to what he calls “The Significance Question” about free will: “Why do we, or should we, want to possess a free will that is incompatible with determinism? Is it a kind of freedom ‘worth wanting’... and, if so, why?” A desire for “objective worth” has a featured role in his answer. However, a compatibilist can have that desire.     

Willpower Satisficing

Satisficing Consequentialism is often rejected as hopeless. Perhaps its greatest problem is that it risks condoning the gratuitous prevention of goodness above the baseline of what qualifies as “good enough”. I propose a radical new willpower‐based version of the view that avoids this problem, and that better fits with the motivation of avoiding an excessively demanding conception of morality. I further demonstrate how, by drawing on the resources of an independent theory of blameworthiness, we may obtain a principled specification of what counts as “good enough”.     

RESPONSE TO “STEPS TOWARD A SCIENCE OF FREE WILL”: The Enduring Power of Agency and Control in Theoretical and Applied Psychology

This commentary addresses the origins and trajectory of the concepts of fate, will, agency, and determinism in Asian and Greco-Roman cultures, provides an analysis of the role of these concepts in the evolution of theological doctrine, and discusses the so-called “modern” and “post-modern” trends of both glorifying and gutting the “generic” human being as an agent of existential choice.     

Psychoanalytic action explanation

Psychoanalysis is concerned with neurotic behaviour that counts as an action if one takes into account “repressed” mental states. Freud's paradigmatic examples are a challenge for philosophical theories of action explanation. The main problem is that such symptomatic behaviour is, in a characteristic way, irrational. In line with standard interpretations, I will recap that psychoanalytic action explanation is not in accordance with Davidson's classical reason-explanation model, and I will recall that Freud's unconsciousness is not a second mind with its own rationality but that it is non-propositional in character. However, I then will argue that this characterization is not discriminating enough to explain the dynamical unconscious and overlooks the crucial role of “counter-cathexis”. With counter-cathexis the relevant desire turns out to be a complex with two inseparable aspects (“double-aspect view”), so that the causing belief–desire pair is still part of the space of reasons, although it cannot rationalize the behaviour. Psychoanalytic action explanation is hence still Davidsonian, albeit in a modified way.     

Determinism and sporting prowess: A response to Mumford and Anjum

In Getting Causes from Powers, Stephen Mumford and Rani Anjum published a novel approach to the metaphysics of dispositional properties, according to which causal powers are to be viewed as vectors. Recently (at the time of writing) they have employed a similar system to represent prowess in sport. In this paper, I discuss the Mumford/Anjum tendential theory of sporting prowess. I question their motivation for the tendencies account, concluding that (contra Mumford and Anjum) determinism would not take away from the enjoyment of spectator sports, so long as epistemic uncertainty is preserved. Nonetheless, I deem the tendencies theory of prowess a good one, so in addition, here I develop the Mumford/Anjum thesis, applying the multi-dimensional aspect they themselves apply to “complex causal situations” in their 2011 work on properties, to the philosophy of sport.     

The Guise of the Bad in Augustine’s Pear Theft

In the second book of his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo presents his famous juvenile Pear Theft as an apparent case of acting under the guise of the bad. At least since Thomas Aquinas’ influential interpretation, scholars have usually taken Augustine’s detailed discussion of the case to be dispelling this “guise of the guise of the bad”, and to offer a solid “guise of the good”-explanation. This paper addresses an important challenge to this view: Augustine offers two different “guise of the good”-explanations in his text rather than just one, and the two explanations seem to be mutually exclusive. A number of more recent attempts to reconcile Augustine’s two lines of explanation are discussed and found wanting, and a new suggestion is made. The proposed solution focuses on the Pear Theft as a joint action, and it departs from the Aquinian interpretation in that it accounts for a way in which the “guise of the bad”-hypothesis survives the explanation.     

Reviving the no‐bad‐action problem in Kant's ethics

In the final section of the Groundwork, Kant famously declares that “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.” Though this claim is put to use in Kant's eventual deduction of the moral law, it appears to introduce a difficulty of its own: It complicates Kant's ability to describe immoral action as free action. Over the last 3 decades, no scholar has done more to exonerate Kant from this apparent problem than Henry Allison. Allison's chief strategy has been to show (a) that the volitional apparatus (i.e., the executive will) Kant develops in his late Religion is present from the beginning of the critical project and (b) that this apparatus dissolves the apparent worry. In this paper, I argue that even if Allison succeeds in establishing (a), it puts him no closer to establishing (b). Kant does not think that agents, good or bad, can act out of character.     

THE INSPIRATION OF GOD AND WOLFHART PANNENBERG'S “FIELD THEORY OF INFORMATION”

Abstract This paper will examine the implications of an extended “field theory of information,” suggested by Wolfhart Pannenberg, specifically in the Christian understanding of creation. The paper argues that the Holy Spirit created the world as field, a concept from physics, and the creation is directed by the logos utilizing information. Taking into account more recent developments of information theory, the essay further suggests that present creation has a causal impact upon the information utilized in creation. In order to adequately address Pannenberg's hypothesis that the logos utilizes information at creation the essay will also include an introductory examination of Pannenberg's Christology which shifts from a strict “from below” Christology, to a more open “third way” of doing Christology beyond “above” and “below.” The essay concludes with a brief section relating the implications of an extended “field theory of information” to creative inspiration, as well as parallels with human inspiration.     

A brief history of the concept of free will: issues that are and are not germane to legal reasoning

Examining the history of the concept of free will helps distinguish metaphysical issues beyond the interest of a court of law from considerations about the nature of human action germane to legal reasoning. The latter include Plato's conception of the rational governance of the soul and Aristotle's conception of voluntary action, both of which arose before Hellenistic philosophers propounded analogues of modern positions against determinism (Epicureans) or for the compatibility of free will and determinism (Stoics). The concept of will itself also has a history, being first conceived as a distinct power by Augustine. Modern physics raised new problems about free will, as human motivations began to look less like rational perceptions of the good and more like mechanistic causes. Contemporary philosophy has not solved the problem of free will but has spun off analyses of the nature of action and moral responsibility that are of interest for legal reasoning.     

Re-Reading the Post-Kantian Tradition with Milbank

The essay explores the meaning and implications of Milbank's claim that the post‐Kantian presuppositions of modern theology must be eradicated. After defining and locating the post‐Kantian element in the context of Milbank's broader concerns, the essay employs a comparison between Milbank and Barth to draw out the differences between radical orthodoxy and neo‐orthodoxy with respect to the Kantian ideal of “mediation” between theology and culture. The essay concludes with comparisons of Milbank's metanarrative concerning “modern” thought with those offered by Hans Blumenberg and James Edwards. The effect is not only to suggest the apparent arbitrariness of Milbank's account, but also to indicate the evident futility of arguing with Milbank's theological position on the basis of alternative accounts of the post‐Kantian tradition.     

Nature and Nurture: A False Dichotomy?

Nancy Tuana holds that the nature/nurture dichotomy does not accurately represent the world and hence that a whole series of assumptions about human nature is mistaken. She rejects both biological determinism and alternative interactionist views. I argue that although her arguments and political concerns do rule out any kind of simple biological determinism, they do not show that the alternative interactionist view is untenable: in fact, she uses the distinction in her attempt to demolish it. 1 argue that the assumption that “nature” implies fixity is the source of difficulties here, not the dichotomy itself.     

Enactive or inactive? Cranially envatted dream experience and the extended conscious mind

When we dream, it is often assumed, we are isolated from the external environment. It is also commonly believed that dreams can be, at times, accurate, convincing replicas of waking experience. Here I analyse some of the implications of this view for an enactive theory of conscious experience. If dreams are, as described by the received view, “inactive”, or “cranially envatted” whilst replicating the experience of being awake, this would be problematic for certain extended conscious mind theories. Focusing specifically on Alva Noë’s enactive view, according to which the vehicles of perceptual experience extend beyond the brain, I argue that dreams are a quandary. Noë’s view is that dreaming is consistent with enactivism because even if dreams are inactive and shut off from the external environment, they are not “full-blown” perceptual consciousness, and also, there is some reason to reject the inactive claim. However, this view rests on an unjustified and reductive account of dreams which is not supported by empirical evidence. Dreams can indeed replicate waking phenomenal experience during inactive periods of sleep, and we have no reason to suspect that dreams which are more inactive are less “full-blown”. Taken together, this shows that dreams are indeed relevant to extended conscious mind theories and need to be taken into account by enactivists.     

Divine determinism,human freedom,and the consequence argument

In this paper I consider the view, held by some Thomistic thinkers, that divine determinism is compatible with human freedom, even though natural determinism is not. After examining the purported differences between divine and natural determinism, I discuss the Consequence Argument, which has been put forward to establish the incompatibility of natural determinism and human freedom. The Consequence Argument, I note, hinges on the premise that an action ultimately determined by factors outside of the actor’s control is not free. Since, I argue, divine determinism also entails that human actions are ultimately determined by factors outside of the actors’ control, I suggest that a parallel argument to the Consequence Argument can be constructed for the incompatibility of divine determinism and human freedom. I conclude that those who reject natural compatibilism on the basis of the Consequence Argument should also reject divine compatibilism.