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Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Frankfurt: A Reply to Vihvelin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John M. Fischer
John M. Fischer*
Affiliation:
University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA92521, USA
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Extract

In a fascinating and challenging article in this journal, Kadri Vihvelin presents a spirited and vigorous critique of the strategy of defending compatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility that employs (in part, at least) the ‘Frankfurt-examples.’ Here is her presentation of such an example:

… Jones … chooses to perform, and succeeds in performing, some action X. Tell the story so that it is vividly clear that Jones is morally responsible for doing X. If you are a libertarian, you may specify that Jones is an indeterministic agent who can choose otherwise, given the actual past and the laws. If you are a compatibilist, you may fill in the details so that Jones does X in a way that satisfies your favorite account of the counterfactual or dispositional facts that make it true that Jones could have done otherwise in the sense you think relevant to responsibility. Now, add to your story the following facts: there is standing in the wings another agent, Black. Black is interested in what Jones does. In particular, he wants Jones to do X and, moreover, Black has it in his power to prevent Jones from doing anything other than X.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 327 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008

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References

1 Kadri Vihvelin, ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (2000) 1-24

2 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 4

3 Among other strongly critical statements, Vihvelin says:

If Frankfurt's aim was to convince libertarians that even if determinism renders us unable to do otherwise, it does not undermine responsibility, he has failed. If his aim was to make it easier to defend compatibilism, he has failed. And if his aim was to bypass questions about the truth-conditions of ‘can do otherwise’ claims, he has also failed, for the debate that has arisen in the wake of his original thought experiment is now mired deep in the very metaphysical questions he sought to avoid.

… It is my view that this literature is a philosophical dead end. Although I am a compatibilist, I think that Frankfurt's strategy for defending compatibilism is a bad one. If we begin with the commonsense view that someone is morally responsible only if she could have done otherwise, then Frankfurt stories will not and should not change our minds. If we are persuaded by Frankfurt, it is because we have been taken in by a bad argument (‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 2-3).

4 In a recent post on the blog, ‘The Garden of Forking Paths,’ http://gfp.typepad.com, Terrance Tomkow states:

It seems to me that Kadri Vihvelin (USC) demonstrated some time ago (CJP 2000) that Frankfurt's arguments turn on a modal fallacy. No matter how you tell these stories, Frankfurt Style Cases simply fail to describe agents who ‘cannot do otherwise.’

If that's so then FSC cases have nothing to tell us about free will and the whole of the debate about FSCs has been a snare and a delusion.

To my knowledge no one has answered Vihvelin's arguments. So my question is: does anyone have an answer to Vihvelin or does the Frankfurt literature just keep stumbling forward out of inertia? (http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2005/06/compatibilism_a.html#comments)

5 Harry G. Frankfurt, ‘Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969) 829-39

6 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 10.

7 For some of this literature, see John Martin Fischer, ‘Some Recent Work on Moral Responsibility,’ Ethics 111 (1999) 99-137; and David Widerker and Michael McKenna, eds., Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importanceof Alternative Possibilities (Williston, VT: Ashgate 2003), 235-50.

8 John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1994); ‘Frankfurt-Type Compatibilism,’ in S. Buss and L. Overton, eds., Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 2002) 1-26, reprinted in G. Watson, ed., Free Will: OxfordReadings in Philosophy, 2nd Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003) 190-211. and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.

9 For an elaboration and discussion of the two distinct kinds of arguments (direct and indirect), see John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control:A Theory of Moral Responsibility.

10 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 8

11 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 9

12 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 11

13 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 11

14 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities,’ 14-15

15 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 15-16

16 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 18

17 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 18

18 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 22-3. Vihvelin goes on to assert that a ‘complicated truth’ — parallel to the complicated truth about her story — obtains here.

19 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 23

20 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 15

21 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ 15

22 For discussions of the assumption of essential infallibility, see John Martin Fischer, ed., God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1989).

23 John Martin Fischer, ed., God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom and John Martin Fischer, ‘Recent Work on God and Freedom,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1992) 91-109

24 The passage is from John Martin Fischer and Paul Hoffman, ‘Alternative Possibilities: A Reply to Lamb,’ Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993) 517-27. It is quoted by Vihvelin on p. 20 (n. 30) of ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.’

25 ‘Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ p. 20. Vihvelin here refers to various discussions of the alleged ‘fallacy’ in question: P. J. Downing, ‘Subjunctive Conditionals, Time Order, and Causation,’ Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society 59 (1958-59), 125-40; David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1973), 31-6; and Jonathan Bennett, ‘Counterfactuals and Temporal Direction,’ Philosophical Review 93 (1984), 57-91.

26 David Lewis, Counterfactuals, 32-3

27 David Lewis, Counterfactuals, 33-6

28 For a similar point about a different argument, see: John Martin Fischer, ‘A New Compatibilism,’ Philosophical Topics 24 (1998) 49-66; reprinted in Laura Waddell Ekstrom, ed., Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 2001) 38-56. Here I respond to a criticism that a version of an argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and freedom to do otherwise I sketched is ‘formally invalid.’ I contend that the argument is valid, given its form and thecontent of the premises. For further discussion and defense, see: John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, ‘When the Will is Free,’ Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992) 423-52, reprinted in Timothy O'Connor, ed., Agents, Causes, and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995) 239-69; and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, ‘Free Will and the Modal Principle,’ Philosophical Studies 83 (1996) 213-30. Also, see John Martin Fischer, ‘Critical Notice of J. Howard Sobel's Puzzles of the Will,’ CanadianJournal of Philosophy 31 (2001) 427-44.

29 David Lewis, Counterfactuals, 33

30 David Lewis, Counterfactuals, 33

31 David Lewis, Counterfactuals, 33

32 David Lewis, Counterfactuals, 33-4

33 There has been considerable controversy about whether the Frankfurt cases are really cases in which this sort of biconditional is true; but Vihvelin believes we can avoid getting into the details of these discussions entirely. This is important to keep in mind when evaluating Vihvelin's critique, which she supposes is more fundamental than others, and can help us to side-step the complex and voluminous literature on Frankfurt cases. To be a bit more explicit, some might call into question some version of the counterfactual, ‘If [the relevant agent] were about to refrain (in the absence of intervention by an external agent or factor), the triggering event would already have occurred.’ It might be considered contentious, within the dialectic of the debates between compatibilism and incompatibilism, whether such a counterfactual is true. But I wish to avoid such controversies here; after all, Vihvelin has provided no argument that such a counterfactual cannot be true, and her contention is that employing her critique can help us to see a deeper, more general problem with Frankfurt examples.

34 Of course, the discussion in the text above shows that the analysis can indeed be regimented in the way suggested by Vihvelin without rendering it invalid, given that it is understood in light of the comments by David Lewis about strengthening the premises.

35 I wish to thank Neal A. Tognazzini and four anonymous referees for the CanadianJournal of Philosophy for their helpful comments.