Free Will: Blackford reviews Swinburne

[fleetmouse]

(I posted this on Carm and didn't get much of a response. Maybe people here have more interesting perspectives on this.)

The issue of free will is central to the theist / atheist debate, with substantial chunks of Christian apologetics being based on the idea that God grants humans free will, and that this is an explanation for the "problem of evil". Russell Blackford, in his review of Richard Swinburne's Mind Brain and Free Will offers what I think is the best summary of why free will is conceptually incoherent:

The weakest chapters of Mind, Brain, and Free Will are those relating to free will and moral responsibility. These add little to past attempts to make agent causation seem plausible and to undermine the attraction of compatibilist views in particular. Swinburne concludes that we can exercise agent-causal free will in a limited class of cases where we choose between acting either on our strongest desires or in accordance with our moral beliefs. Imagine, then, that Abigail is in a situation where one course of action (D-ing) would benefit a loved one (an outcome that she greatly desires). However, she considers herself objectively required to conform to a standard of behavior that prescribes a contradictory course of action (M-ing). According to Swinburne, the intention that she forms and acts upon is not caused by anything pre-existing, including her own brain states or neural events, her beliefs, desires, or character, or any combination of such things. Instead, Abigail, as an agent, simply causes her intention to D or to M.

Many commentators, dating back at least to Hume, have regarded anything like this as a mysterious account of free will or moral responsibility. In such an account, if Abigail decides to D rather than to M, the decision does not reflect, or flow from, what she is like or what she wants. She could have had exactly the same desires and dispositions but have M-ed. Likewise, if she forms, and acts upon an intention to M, rather than to D, this is not because she is a morally good person; instead, it just seems to happen. She could have had precisely the same moral character and yet D-ed. But in that case, how does the outcome express Abigail’s will, and how can she be said to be responsible for what happens? Swinburne offers no new or satisfying answers to this kind of concern.​

I think this captures the contradictory nature of free will perfectly. If my decisions and actions are not the consequence of anything about me, how is it even will, let alone free? Note that this critique does not rely on physicalism or neurology. It's a conceptual problem, and remains just as thorny even if you postulate an immaterial mind / soul - because then the question would shift to whether or not the "free" decision was the result of something pre-existing about the immaterial mind / soul.

 

[DBT]

According to Swinburne, the intention that she forms and acts upon is not caused by anything pre-existing, including her own brain states or neural events, her beliefs, desires, or character, or any combination of such things. Instead, Abigail, as an agent, simply causes her intention to D or to M.

That's absurd. Information input from the senses is propagated, processed and correlated with memory function before conscious representation is even formed.

 

[Togo]

I've not read the original source, but it's a familiar argument.

I think this captures the contradictory nature of free will perfectly. If my decisions and actions are not the consequence of anything about me, how is it even will, let alone free?

<shrug> If your decisions and actions are only the consequence of something about you, in what sense are they yours? Let's say you make a decision that can be traced strictly and absolutely back to the upbringing you received in religious household. What makes the decision yours? It was made by your upbringing, wasn't it?

Assigning responsibility to an external cause doesn't help.

The confusion may be that the free will need not be 'will' in any useful sense. If you decide that free will can not coherently encompass the idea of will, as in will power or effort of will, how is that fatal to concept?

That's absurd. Information input from the senses is propagated, processed and correlated with memory function before conscious representation is even formed.

???
It would be a bit weird if conscious representation was formed before the sensory information it was based on.

 

[Speakpigeon]

My guess is that we would need to read Swinburne to discuss Swinburn.

I have no idea who is Russell Blackford but the extract below taken from his short paper suggests a lack of understanding of what I can only guess Swinburne means with his definition, also repeated here, of "mental property". I underlined what seems problematic in Blackford's critic of Swinburne :

To put this in easier language, a property such as, say, “has a toothache” is classified as “mental” only if nothing will count as having a toothache unless the conscious being concerned is able to experience the pain of toothache. Abigail really does have a toothache if she is consciously experiencing the toothache, or is at least able to do so. The rest of us can know about it only through other means such as listening to her testimony, drawing inferences from her behavior, or examining an up-to-date X-ray image of her teeth.
What about a property such as “hates her mother”? If we accept the existence of entirely subconscious hatreds of mothers — hatreds not available to conscious experience — this should not be classified as a mental property. It is not available to “privileged access” on all occasions when it is instantiated. But nor is it a physical property. Recall that a property will be classified as “physical” only if no property bearer can ever access it through inner experience. Perhaps “hates her mother” meets Swinburne’s definition of a neutral property on p.70, but even this seems doubtful.

So I define a mental property as one to whose instantiation in it a substance necessarily has privileged access on all occasions of its instantiation, and a physical property as one to whose instantiation in it a substance necessarily has no privileged access on any occasion of its instantiation.

Personally, I don't see any difficulty with a certain hatred of mothers being a mental property, à la Swinburne, while another hatred of mothers would be a physical property. What would be problematic would for the same hatred of mothers to be both mental and physical according to Swinbur's definition, but there is no necessity for that in the case suggested by Blackford, although he clearly seems to believe there is a problem, which therefore suggests a lack of understanding on his part.
EB

 

[DBT]

???
It would be a bit weird if conscious representation was formed before the sensory information it was based on.

What about the quote I was responding to? Is that what you are referring to?

 

[The AntiChris]

Russell Blackford, in his review of Richard Swinburne's Mind Brain and Free Will offers what I think is the best summary of why free will is conceptually incoherent:

It's worth noting that Blackford is pointing out the contradictory nature of Swinburne's libertarian version of free will. Blackford is, in fact, a defender of compatibilist free will.

 

[Togo]

???
It would be a bit weird if conscious representation was formed before the sensory information it was based on.

What about the quote I was responding to? Is that what you are referring to?

No, I was referring to your critique of the quote you were responding to, which I quoted. The problem (with what Swinburn is said to be saying) is not that memory forms before conscious intention, because that would be the case whether he were right or not, but rather the idea that intention doesn't involve incoming information at all.

Russell Blackford, in his review of Richard Swinburne's Mind Brain and Free Will offers what I think is the best summary of why free will is conceptually incoherent:

It's worth noting that Blackford is pointing out the contradictory nature of Swinburne's libertarian version of free will. Blackford is, in fact, a defender of compatibilist free will.

I'm finding it very hard to get any useful information from the critique, when I can't see the original text he's critiquing. Is there any on-line source for Swinburn's ideas?

 

[The AntiChris]

I'm finding it very hard to get any useful information from the critique, when I can't see the original text he's critiquing. Is there any on-line source for Swinburn's ideas?

If you've got an account, there's Oxford Scholarship Online. That's the only online resource I know.

 

[DBT]

What about the quote I was responding to? Is that what you are referring to?

No, I was referring to your critique of the quote you were responding to, which I quoted. The problem (with what Swinburn is said to be saying) is not that memory forms before conscious intention, because that would be the case whether he were right or not, but rather the idea that intention doesn't involve incoming information at all.

That was the point of my comment - ''that intention doesn't involve incoming information at all'' - is absurd for the reason I gave. Memory is composed of prior inputs, a second ago and month ago, years ago. This is all prior information .... all of being at one time or another ''incoming information.'' That's why the proposition that ''intention doesn't involve incoming information at all'' is utterly absurd.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

According to Swinburne, the intention that she forms and acts upon is not caused by anything pre-existing, including her own brain states or neural events, her beliefs, desires, or character, or any combination of such things. Instead, Abigail, as an agent, simply causes her intention to D or to M.

That's absurd. Information input from the senses is propagated, processed and correlated with memory function before conscious representation is even formed.

Yes. This is libertarian free will in its most extreme form. But that is impossible. We all have religions or lack thereof, ideas about the nature of the Universe, morality et al. This sort of libertarian free will seems to be common enough in theoretical - theological debates, but I have never managed to track down whoever started this metaphysically impossible idea. It is impossible to be a functioning adult and have this sort of theoretical libertarian free will utterly unshackled from all thought or belief that may possibly influence us.

There is no idea so foolish that some philosopher has not believed it.
- Cicero

 

[Togo]

That's absurd. Information input from the senses is propagated, processed and correlated with memory function before conscious representation is even formed.

Yes. This is libertarian free will in its most extreme form. But that is impossible.

Well it depends on how you look at cause and effect. If you view the entire universe as a great chain of cause and effect, whereby every event is simply the sum of it's prior causes, then yes, libertarian free will violates this view pretty thoroughly, because every decision must be caused by the inputs of the decision maker.

If you view the entire universe as being a randomised chain, so that every event is simply the sum of it's prior causes and random chance, then libertarian free will may or may not violate that view, but where it doesn't it becomes the product of chance and thus a fairly incoherent concept.

If you don't have one of the two above, if for example you view the entire universe as being a set of complicated interactions to which cause and effect are approximations or regularisations of something more complicated, then libertarian free will isn't impossible at all. It's simply a handy way of approximating or regularising observed phenomenon. As such, you can have free will being influenced by others, but still not bound by causation.

but I have never managed to track down whoever started this metaphysically impossible idea.

Metaphysically impossible? It violates some dearly held assumptions about causation, but I'm not seeing why that would make it 'metaphysically impossible.

I don't know about started, but philosophers like Chalmers are fairly prominent modern proponents.

It is impossible to be a functioning adult and have this sort of theoretical libertarian free will utterly unshackled from all thought or belief that may possibly influence us.

Libertarian free will doesn't require this though. All it requires is that decisions are not somehow the sum of their influences. It doesn't require influence or belief to be totally without effect. Why would it?