The kind of free will we have

[Speakpigeon]

Whatever; If someone says: "I never did <X> in my whole life, in any shape or form. I'm not going to start here.", then that's going to look a LOT like an appeal to tradition. If <X> is "appealed to tradition", then one is compelled to see that as an attempt at humour.

Yes, it might have been, I can grant you that.

And you can be forgiven for feeling compelled to construe it that way.

It's all my fault. I guess I would need to signal when I attempt humour.
EB

 

[fast]

Yes, exactly.

Appeal to tradition
Appeal to tradition is a common fallacy in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis that it is correlated with some past or present tradition.

The appeal takes the form of "this is right because we've always done it this way."

Being "right" wasn't part of my statement.

And my statement was a statement of fact, not anything like a thesis.
EB

I would have accentuated everything to the right of "right," but not "right" itself.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yes and no.

Yes as to where exactly the appeal to tradition is, but no in this instance because what matters here, too, is that it says an appeal to tradition is used to justify a claim. It has somehow to contain a claim which you then justify by appealing to tradition.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

I see free will as the ability most people have, at least to some extent, to make independent choices, i.e. choices not coerced, limited or influenced by other people.

I think this is the notion of free will most people have.

If you disagree with this, please explain why.
EB

This was your opening post. To bring it back to my point about Strawson, I can agree with you that most people have this notion of free will. However, you and TheAntiChris appear to be saying Strawson's notion of responsibility is different from this, when it clearly is not. Strawson's argument shows that nobody's choices are independent of limitation/influence from other people, including those who formed their experiential background and contributed to their genetic makeup. It's not that he is arguing for physical determinism on the scale of neurons to discredit free will, as DBT might; that would indeed run afoul of most notions of personal responsibility. Even the most commonplace and innocuous standard of moral culpability has the basic character you described in your OP, that someone has made an independent choice without coercion:

I think that those who use the term 'free will' in its practical (non-libertarian) sense are only interested in (what they see as) morally relevant coercion/limitations/influences.

Morally relevant coercion would be any kind that renders a person's conscious causal control over their behavior inert, by either showing it was not in fact under their conscious control at the time (the usual examples of hypnotism, threat of bodily harm, etc.) or that it was really caused by something other than the person's intent (Strawson's argument). Compatibilists want to maintain that only the first type of coercion is morally relevant, but there is no way to escape the transitivity of causation that necessarily implies the second type. To single out a moment of conscious intent as the place where the morally relevant buck must stop is arbitrary and no fairer than singling out some other link in the causal chain, like an unrelated biological process happening somewhere in the pancreas of the actor. The onus is on those who wish to rescue moral responsibility in its usual sense to explain why this distinction is justifiable. It does a disservice to all the people whose well-being hinges on the issue to simply say, "well, this is how we've always done it and nobody will ever change their mind about it so that's that."

 

[The AntiChris]

Compatibilists want to maintain that only the first type of coercion is morally relevant, but there is no way to escape the transitivity of causation that necessarily implies the second type. To single out a moment of conscious intent as the place where the morally relevant buck must stop is arbitrary and no fairer than singling out some other link in the causal chain, like an unrelated biological process happening somewhere in the pancreas of the actor.

It's not just self-confessed compatibilists. Most people, including most formal systems of justice, take this pragmatic view of responsibility.

I still get the impression that you think Strawson's argument negates any and all forms of responsibility. I'm pretty sure strawson's attack on true/ultimate responsibility is in fact aimed at desert-based blame and punishment (as opposed to forward looking consequentialist blame and punishment). If you're in any doubt, here's what Strawson said in his 1993 paper:

As I understand it, true moral responsibility is responsibility of such a kind that, if we have it, then it makes sense, at least, to suppose that it could be just to punish some of us with (eternal)torment in hell and reward others with (eternal) bliss in heaven. The stress on the words 'makes sense' is important, for one certainly does not have to believe in any version of the story of heaven and hell in order to understand the notion of true moral responsibility that it is being used to illustrate. Nor does one have to believe in any version of the story of heaven and hell in order to believe in the existence of true moral responsibility.

I think it's accepted that Strawson leaves open the possibility of pragmatic responsibility and consequentialist-based approaches to blame/punishment - he just wouldn't call it true moral responsibility.

 

[Speakpigeon]

To bring it back to my point about Strawson, I can agree with you that most people have this notion of free will. However, you and TheAntiChris appear to be saying Strawson's notion of responsibility is different from this, when it clearly is not. Strawson's argument shows that nobody's choices are independent of limitation/influence from other people, including those who formed their experiential background and contributed to their genetic makeup. It's not that he is arguing for physical determinism on the scale of neurons to discredit free will, as DBT might; that would indeed run afoul of most notions of personal responsibility. Even the most commonplace and innocuous standard of moral culpability has the basic character you described in your OP, that someone has made an independent choice without coercion:

Alright, his argument is not couched in terms of determinism. Instead, basically, it says you can't possibly have determined yourself so you're entirely irresponsible of whatever you do. And I already agreed his argument was successful except his assumptive notion of responsibility doesn't fit most people's notion.

Strawson's argument concludes with the statement, "Thus it is impossible to be responsible for what we do", essentially because "In order to be responsible for what we do, we must be responsible for the way we are", which is impossible according to Strawson.

But that last bit is not what most people mean by being responsible. People are interested in what offenders did and won't normally care about the way offenders are, except, in some cases, whether they have the ability to understand the consequences of their actions. That's it.

The "penalty" is then decided according to various methods but essentially it's about stopping the offender from offending again. If your dog bites you, you try to stop it. People take into account the fact that human beings understand quite a lot, and so stopping a human being from re-offending is thought of as requiring less radical a penalty as the death penalty. The dog may not be quite so lucky. Any penalty short of the death penalty and life emprisonnement is testimony that the offender is recognised as a human being possessing an ability to understand the penalty and stop re-offending.

Only science could help us radically improve the system and that's perhaps already happening. But Strawson's argument is just irrelevant.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

Compatibilists want to maintain that only the first type of coercion is morally relevant, but there is no way to escape the transitivity of causation that necessarily implies the second type. To single out a moment of conscious intent as the place where the morally relevant buck must stop is arbitrary and no fairer than singling out some other link in the causal chain, like an unrelated biological process happening somewhere in the pancreas of the actor.

It's not just self-confessed compatibilists. Most people, including most formal systems of justice, take this pragmatic view of responsibility.

I still get the impression that you think Strawson's argument negates any and all forms of responsibility. I'm pretty sure strawson's attack on true/ultimate responsibility is in fact aimed at desert-based blame and punishment (as opposed to forward looking consequentialist blame and punishment). If you're in any doubt, here's what Strawson said in his 1993 paper:

As I understand it, true moral responsibility is responsibility of such a kind that, if we have it, then it makes sense, at least, to suppose that it could be just to punish some of us with (eternal)torment in hell and reward others with (eternal) bliss in heaven. The stress on the words 'makes sense' is important, for one certainly does not have to believe in any version of the story of heaven and hell in order to understand the notion of true moral responsibility that it is being used to illustrate. Nor does one have to believe in any version of the story of heaven and hell in order to believe in the existence of true moral responsibility.

I think it's accepted that Strawson leaves open the possibility of pragmatic responsibility and consequentialist-based approaches to blame/punishment - he just wouldn't call it true moral responsibility.

I agree. But I disagree that most people think of moral responsibility in the pragmatic, consequentialist way you describe. The far more common viewpoint is the simple one, that people deserve certain repercussions for their actions, deserve to be called "good people" or "bad people", because of the things they intentionally do. The kind of responsibility that survives Strawson's argument is hardly responsibility at all; it is a stance that says, basically, that it makes sense to reward and punish in spite of the lack of responsibility, because of the consequences that follow from reward and punishment.

 

[PyramidHead]

To bring it back to my point about Strawson, I can agree with you that most people have this notion of free will. However, you and TheAntiChris appear to be saying Strawson's notion of responsibility is different from this, when it clearly is not. Strawson's argument shows that nobody's choices are independent of limitation/influence from other people, including those who formed their experiential background and contributed to their genetic makeup. It's not that he is arguing for physical determinism on the scale of neurons to discredit free will, as DBT might; that would indeed run afoul of most notions of personal responsibility. Even the most commonplace and innocuous standard of moral culpability has the basic character you described in your OP, that someone has made an independent choice without coercion:

Alright, his argument is not couched in terms of determinism. Instead, basically, it says you can't possibly have determined yourself so you're entirely irresponsible of whatever you do. And I already agreed his argument was successful except his assumptive notion of responsibility doesn't fit most people's notion.

Strawson's argument concludes with the statement, "Thus it is impossible to be responsible for what we do", essentially because "In order to be responsible for what we do, we must be responsible for the way we are", which is impossible according to Strawson.

But that last bit is not what most people mean by being responsible. People are interested in what offenders did and won't normally care about the way offenders are, except, in some cases, whether they have the ability to understand the consequences of their actions. That's it.

The "penalty" is then decided according to various methods but essentially it's about stopping the offender from offending again. If your dog bites you, you try to stop it. People take into account the fact that human beings understand quite a lot, and so stopping a human being from re-offending is thought of as requiring less radical a penalty as the death penalty. The dog may not be quite so lucky. Any penalty short of the death penalty and life emprisonnement is testimony that the offender is recognised as a human being possessing an ability to understand the penalty and stop re-offending.

Only science could help us radically improve the system and that's perhaps already happening. But Strawson's argument is just irrelevant.
EB

My reply to TheAntiChris addresses this distinction. I simply do not agree that anything like a sizable percentage of people believe what you say they do. Everywhere in society, people are lauded or criticized, on a personal level, for their behaviors. Not just in a legal context, where there is some control over the fate of people who are accused of undesirable behaviors, but in everyday life, in the media, in our stories as a culture and in all art everywhere. In politics, in religion. It is accepted without question that people should be judged, if they are to be judged at all, on their actions. Show me even a handful of people who actually believe--as I do, because it is the incontrovertible truth--that Donald Trump is in no way to blame for any of the actions he takes as President, and does not deserve any scorn on a personal level (though the scorn may be useful for creating negative incentives). Can you find even one person with any visibility in society who honestly believes that? Of course you can't, because society doesn't provide a platform for that view, even though it's necessarily true, because almost nobody takes it seriously. The large majority tie a person's inherent value to their behavior in a way that is exactly in line with Strawson's argument, which makes his argument exceedingly relevant.

 

[The AntiChris]

I think it's accepted that Strawson leaves open the possibility of pragmatic responsibility and consequentialist-based approaches to blame/punishment - he just wouldn't call it true moral responsibility.

I agree.

Ok, so I take it that when you said this:

- it just makes no one responsible, ever.

Precisely, and that is exactly what the argument sets out to prove: that no one is responsible for anything.

You accept that you were not being entirely accurate?

But I disagree that most people think of moral responsibility in the pragmatic, consequentialist way you describe.

Possibly, I really don't know for sure. But what I will say is that when pressed many (most?) people, when asked to justify their desert-based retributionist inclinations, frequently resort to consequentialist arguments. You can't always be certain that people report their reasons accurately.

 

[Speakpigeon]

My reply to TheAntiChris addresses this distinction. I simply do not agree that anything like a sizable percentage of people believe what you say they do. Everywhere in society, people are lauded or criticized, on a personal level, for their behaviors. Not just in a legal context, where there is some control over the fate of people who are accused of undesirable behaviors, but in everyday life, in the media, in our stories as a culture and in all art everywhere. In politics, in religion. It is accepted without question that people should be judged, if they are to be judged at all, on their actions. Show me even a handful of people who actually believe--as I do, because it is the incontrovertible truth--that Donald Trump is in no way to blame for any of the actions he takes as President, and does not deserve any scorn on a personal level (though the scorn may be useful for creating negative incentives). Can you find even one person with any visibility in society who honestly believes that? Of course you can't, because society doesn't provide a platform for that view, even though it's necessarily true, because almost nobody takes it seriously. The large majority tie a person's inherent value to their behavior in a way that is exactly in line with Strawson's argument, which makes his argument exceedingly relevant.

You're clearly mixing up different levels of behaviour. The reality is that people do responsibility ascription at the same time that they are going to do all sorts of things to take advantage of the situation, not necessarily as compensation for the offense or the damage suffered but often out of sheer greed. Some people will get violent, some will try to steal, some will try to score political or ideological points etc. Doing one thing, possibly many things, won't stop them doing responsibility ascription. I don't think it would be possible to understand human beings and life in society without taking this into account and seeing it as absolutely central to how we relate to each other.

Now, yes, ascribing responsibility comes with blaming and shaming. However, this is to be understood as a consequence of the fact that we live together as a social body. Most people don't bake their bread, somebody else is doing that for them. However, we still have to do something. Here, it is just walking to the baker's to fetch the bread and hand out a few coins. Similarly, in many cases, most people won't exact punishment by themselves. Somebody else will do it for them. And there again, they will still have something to do, namely to provide the necessary evidence and perhaps to express as vocally as possible who they think is the guilty one, and to encourage whoever will be exacting punishment to exact enough of it. And then, of course, you'll have many people who will try to use this opportunity to unload all their life's misery and frustration onto the offender. And, yes, it's done with Trump to some extent, even on this forum.

All this doesn't detract to the fact that responsibility ascription is a universal and independent variable in social and interpersonal relations. It is even more universal than that. In other animal species, immediate retaliation exacted in person is probably the only punishment option available. We humans do responsibility ascription because we're more sophisticated. If we didn't do it, we would have to go back to exacting retaliation by ourselves, and that's already what many people do out of frustration with the system. Not pretty.

As to the personalisation of blame and scorn, this, too, is part and parcel of living in society. We objectify people. We see them as objects with properties, and in this case "agents". But we already do that with objects, so no surprise here. Still, people are ascribed with more properties than mere objects, like possessing "responsibility for their actions". Part of this, maybe, is a vestige of the way ascribing responsibility worked when there were no modern justice system. It was probably all done by pointing vengeful fingers and shouting obscenities. However, responsibility implies the identification of the responsible one, so it is necessary. Blame and scorn only come with the fact that exacting punishment is often done through, or mediated by, the community, or society. The way our justice systems usually work seem like a dream in comparison.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

Saying that people are consequentialist just because they also consider consequences is not something I find persuasive. People will of course always consider consequences, but that does not mean that consequentialism is the underlying basis for their moral judgements. What appears to be the underlying basis of their moral judgements (of guilt or culpability) is the guilty person's human capacity for free will, however they conceive of it. Ditto for courts. First, guilt is assessed (assuming free will), followed by an appropriate punishment, which may have consequences as a consideration (eg bad person should be put away so that they cannot harm again).

 

[PyramidHead]

Ok, so I take it that when you said this:

- it just makes no one responsible, ever.

Precisely, and that is exactly what the argument sets out to prove: that no one is responsible for anything.

You accept that you were not being entirely accurate?

I later elaborated on my agreement with your point to say:

The kind of responsibility that survives Strawson's argument is hardly responsibility at all; it is a stance that says, basically, that it makes sense to reward and punish in spite of the lack of responsibility, because of the consequences that follow from reward and punishment. I guess what I mean to say is that I'm committing to the idea that responsibility is kind of like God. The gap that remains for either concept after being whittled away by reasoning and evidence renders them almost unrecognizable. But I will concede that anybody can use their corresponding words to refer to whatever they want.

But I disagree that most people think of moral responsibility in the pragmatic, consequentialist way you describe.

Possibly, I really don't know for sure. But what I will say is that when pressed many (most?) people, when asked to justify their desert-based retributionist inclinations, frequently resort to consequentialist arguments. You can't always be certain that people report their reasons accurately.

There may be some ambiguity at play here about consequences. I would wager that the majority of people are indeed consequentialists of some stripe, but among the consequences they regard as desirable, everybody getting what they 'deserve' is given high priority. That is to say, in addition to the fact that putting a child molester in prison is good because it prevents him from molesting any more children, it is ALSO good because the child molester should suffer for what he did. In many people's minds, a better consequence would be that he died a painful death. These convictions remain commonplace even after the emotional fervor has died down.

I think you might be minimizing the impact of what is being claimed; if Strawson's reasoning is to be taken seriously, there is no justification for hating someone who does bad things, nor loving someone who does good things, at least not for either of those reasons. At most, we can hate and love people like we hate a rainy day or love a sunny day. I don't think it is dubious to say that most people never consider this angle. Everybody admires people who do things they approve of, in a way that goes beyond enjoying the good fortune of a cloudless sky on a Saturday, even though there is no way that the people are more worthy of admiration than the prevailing winds. And people really, really hate each other for what they perceive as deficits in inherent value, nothing at all like hating a traffic jam that ruins their commute. The concept of moral responsibility goes a lot further than the courtroom.

 

[The AntiChris]

You accept that you were not being entirely accurate?

But I will concede that anybody can use their corresponding words to refer to whatever they want.

This seems like a grudging admission that Strawson's version of ultimate responsibility is not the only type of responsibility in everyday use (not surprising since Strawson's version can never exist in the real world). That's all all I've been saying.

 

[ruby sparks]

Butting in again....


If we want to gauge what conceptions of of free will are in everyday use, we can look at the (admittedly limited) studies done, and we can look at what is written and said both in everyday life and in the courts. In all of these, the picture is confused, with a heavy dash of libertarianism, evidently, but also some naive compatibilism and determinism. I for one have said this before, and I don't think anyone, other than DBT, is saying there is only one way to refer to or conceive of free will.

If that's all you're saying, then fine. I do wish someone, if not you, would flesh out a case for compatibilism though, because imo, it's when compatibilism 'comes out in the open' that its limitations are more visible. So imo it is a shame that you have retreated again, to only making a small and rather obvious point that is not being contested much, and not, I think, by your current interlocuter.

One small thing, the fact that something can't, as far as we can reasonably tell, exist in the real world is no obstacle to people in everyday life commonly believing it does anyway, as appears to be the case for common/popular aspects/conceptions of free will, and gods.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Butting in again....


If we want to gauge what conceptions of of free will are in everyday use, we can look at the (admittedly limited) studies done, and we can look at what is written and said both in everyday life and in the courts. In all of these, the picture is confused, with a heavy dash of libertarianism, evidently, but also some naive compatibilism and determinism. I for one have said this before, and I don't think anyone, other than DBT, is saying there is only one way to refer to or conceive of free will.

I'll butt in also and agree. Courtrooms are places where guilt and blame are individualized and assigned, not determined. If one has sufficient resources it becomes obvious that free will for such a person is greater than for someone of lesser means. Does a person really have free will if they are forced to steal to support themselves and their families? Academically I think we agree that this person still possesses free will, but practically their choices are more limited than someone who controls greater resources.

This deterministic side of compatibilism can be viewed as very broad in scope or arbitrarily restricted by immediate, local conditions. And the same for free will.

Claiming free will is one thing, but claiming freedom of choice, and therefore guilt, is really something else.

 

[PyramidHead]

You accept that you were not being entirely accurate?

But I will concede that anybody can use their corresponding words to refer to whatever they want.

This seems like a grudging admission that Strawson's version of ultimate responsibility is not the only type of responsibility in everyday use (not surprising since Strawson's version can never exist in the real world). That's all all I've been saying.

Okay, but what I will continue to contest is your parenthetical. Just because something cannot exist in the real world does not mean people cannot be referring to it in speech. We only need to look at logically impossible conceptions of God (all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good) for evidence of that. It's perfectly commonplace for people to believe that the thing they are talking about is something that can exist in reality, while just being wrong about that belief. I mean, the point I made about words is incredibly trivial. Technically, someone could use the word 'responsibility' to just mean pizza. That doesn't make much difference for Strawson's argument one way or another, because his argument is not about pizza.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there is another way of defining 'responsibility' that both sidesteps the argument and is also actually responsibility and not just an unrelated thing using the same label. Intuitively, I can't think of any definition of moral responsibility that does not imply personal accountability, answer-ability, of the style that affects how someone's character as a human being should be valued. To be morally responsible is to be culpable, implicate-able, on-the-hook for whatever you did--it's being able to receive the admonishment "you shouldn't have done what you did", which altogether implies that your doing so was a self-initiated act. We don't morally admonish people for reflex actions, nor inanimate objects for acting like inanimate objects. I'm repeating myself of course, but what I'd like to hear from you or anyone else is what kind of moral responsibility is possible. If you're just trying to use the term 'moral responsibility' to refer to 'applying external incentives to influence the behavior of conscious actors,' then I'm gonna have to call foul and say that's pizza.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I have always had some difficulty with the concept of free will. It seems apparent and even necessary for me to remain sane to believe it exists, and yet all of the research I have seen on it points the other way. If my mind is merely chemicals and neurons firing as they are triggered by others and by outside stimuli and genetic programming, I don't see how "Free Will" can truly exist and perhaps we only have the perception of it. But that kind of erases the concept of self as I see it.

 

[The AntiChris]

This seems like a grudging admission that Strawson's version of ultimate responsibility is not the only type of responsibility in everyday use (not surprising since Strawson's version can never exist in the real world). That's all all I've been saying.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there is another way of defining 'responsibility' that both sidesteps the argument and is also actually responsibility and not just an unrelated thing using the same label.

Absolutely. You implicitly accepted this when you agreed with me that Strawson left open the possibility of pragmatic responsibility.

Whenever we praise or blame we're holding someone responsible. This type of responsibility exists in everyday use. It might not satisfy your requirements for 'actual' responsibility but to deny that it is real responsibility simply means you and the rest of us are talking about different things.

 

[PyramidHead]

This seems like a grudging admission that Strawson's version of ultimate responsibility is not the only type of responsibility in everyday use (not surprising since Strawson's version can never exist in the real world). That's all all I've been saying.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there is another way of defining 'responsibility' that both sidesteps the argument and is also actually responsibility and not just an unrelated thing using the same label.

Absolutely. You implicitly accepted this when you agreed with me that Strawson left open the possibility of pragmatic responsibility.

Whenever we praise or blame we're holding someone responsible. This type of responsibility exists in everyday use. It might not satisfy your requirements for 'actual' responsibility but to deny that it is real responsibility simply means you and the rest of us are talking about different things.

I take it by your statement that 'pragmatic responsibility' is praising or blaming people even though they deserve neither praise nor blame. Is that accurate? If so, do you really think this is the everyday meaning of moral responsibility? If not, in what actual way do the responsible parties deserve praise or blame?

 

[The AntiChris]

Absolutely. You implicitly accepted this when you agreed with me that Strawson left open the possibility of pragmatic responsibility.

Whenever we praise or blame we're holding someone responsible. This type of responsibility exists in everyday use. It might not satisfy your requirements for 'actual' responsibility but to deny that it is real responsibility simply means you and the rest of us are talking about different things.

I take it by your statement that 'pragmatic responsibility' is praising or blaming people even though they deserve neither praise nor blame.

I don't subscribe to the sense of desert you (and Strawson) are alluding to.

I understand the colloquial sense (non-metaphysical) of "deserve" in which it's commonly said that someone who's not responsible (i.e. didn't do it) didn't deserve to be blamed or when someone is perceived to be punished disproportionately (beyond what is strictly required for consequentialist purposes) that they didn't deserve their treatment.

I've no idea what proportion of people use the term 'deserve' in its colloquial sense as opposed to those who use the Strawson (metaphysically required) sense. But I'm pretty certain that everybody praises and blames out of practical necessity.