Incompatibilism proved

The consequence argument attempts to show that incompatibilism is true by showing that if there is determinism, then we never had, have or will have any choice about anything. Much of the debate on the consequence argument has focused on the “beta” transfer principle, and its improvements. We shall show that on an appropriate definition of “never have had, have or will have any choice”, a version of the beta principle is a theorem given one plausible axiom for counterfactuals (weakening). Instead of being about transfer principles, the debate should be over whether the distant past and laws are up to us.     

Incompatibilism and the garden of forking paths

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom.     

How Not to Argue for Incompatibilism

Ted A. Warfield has recently employed modal logic to argue that compatibilism in the free-will/determinism debate entails the rejection of intuitively valid inferences. I show that Warfield's argument fails. A parallel argument leads to the false conclusion that the mere possibility of determinism, together with the necessary existence of any contingent propositions, entails the rejection of intuitively valid inferences. The error in both arguments involves a crucial equivocation, which can be revealed by replacing modal operators with explicit quantifiers over possible worlds. I conclude that the modal-logical apparatus used by Warfield obscures rather than clarifies, and distracts from the real philosophical issues involved in the metaphysical debate. These issues cannot be settled by logic alone.     

Being Emotional about the Past: On the Nature and Role of Past‐Directed Emotions*

We sometimes experience emotions which are directed at past events (or situations) which we witnessed at the time when they occurred (or obtained). The present paper explores the role which such “autobiographically past‐directed emotions” (or “APD‐emotions”) play in a subject's mental life. A defender of the “Memory‐Claim” holds that an APD‐emotion is a memory, namely a memory of the emotion which the subject experienced at the time when the event originally occurred (or the situation obtained) towards which the APD‐emotion is directed. On this view, APD‐emotions might play an important role in our acquiring knowledge about our own past emotions, which renders the view rather attractive. However, as I show in the present paper, none of the various possible versions of the Memory‐Claim are tenable. This leaves us with the “Universal‐New‐Emotion‐Claim”, according to which all APD‐emotions are new emotional responses to the past events (or situations) towards which the relevant APD‐emotions are directed. Further consideration of the “Universal‐New‐Emotion‐Claim” shows that while APD‐emotions do not play the epistemological role they could have played had some version of the Memory‐Claim turned out to be true, a subject's APD‐emotions nevertheless do play a vital role in a subject's mental life: they help the subject to develop a balanced sense of self.     

Past Desires and the Dead

I examine an argument that appears to take us from Parfit’s [Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1984)] thesis that we have no reason to fulfil desires we no longer care about to the conclusion that the effect of posthumous events on our desires is a matter of indifference (the post-mortem thesis). I suspect that many of Parfit’s readers, including Vorobej [Philosophical Studies 90 (1998) 305], think that he is committed to (something like) this reasoning, and that Parfit must therefore give up the post-mortem thesis. However, as it turns out, the argument is subtly equivocal and does not commit Parfit to the post-mortem thesis. I close with some doubts about Parfit’s case for his indifference thesis.