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THE HEART OF LIBERTARIANISM: FUNDAMENTALITY AND THE WILL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2019

Christopher Evan Franklin
Christopher Evan Franklin*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Grove City College
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Abstract:

It is often claimed that libertarianism offers an unattractive conception of free will and moral responsibility because it renders free agency inexplicable and irrational. This essay aims, first, to show that the soundness of these objections turns on more basic disagreements concerning the ideals of free agency and, second, to develop and motivate a truly libertarian conception of the ideals of free agency. The central contention of the essay is that the heart of libertarians’ ideal of free agency is the ideal of agential fundamentality.

Keywords

free willmoral responsibilitythe willcausal theory of actionidentification theoriescontrastive explanationsrationality
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Summer 2019 , pp. 72 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2019 

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Footnotes

*

Thanks to Mark Balaguer, Justin Coates, Bob Kane, Ben Mitchell-Yellin, Garrett Pendergraft, Micah Quigley, Philip Swenson, Matt Talbert, and Neal Tognazzini for helpful comments. Earlier drafts of this essay were presented at the 2013 Tennessee Value and Agency Conference, University of Tennessee. I am grateful to the conference participants, especially E. J. Coffman and Manuel Vargas, for their helpful comments. I am also grateful for helpful discussion with the other contributors to this volume. I owe a special thanks to Michael McKenna for his careful comments on earlier drafts of this essay and hard and excellent work to make this journal issue possible.

References

1 See, e.g., Hobart, R. E., “Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable without It,” Mind 43 (1934): 1–27;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Ayer, A. J., “Freedom and Necessity,” in Philosophical Essays (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1954), 3–20.Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., Watson, Gary, “Free Action and Free Will,” Mind 96 (1987): 154–72.Google Scholar

3 See, e.g., Vargas, Manuel, “Libertarianism and Skepticism about Free Will: Some Arguments against Both,” Philosophical Topics 32 (2004): 403–26;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pereboom, Derk, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), chap. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See, e.g., Mele, Alfred, Free Will and Luck (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 3;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Haji, Ishtiyaque, “Reason, Responsibility, and Free Will: Reply to My Critics,” Journal of Ethics 16 (2012): 175–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Dennett, Daniel, “On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want,” in Brain Storms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books, 1978), 286–99;Google Scholar Wolf, Susan, Freedom within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);Google Scholar Double, Richard, The Non-Reality of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);Google Scholar Bok, Hilary, Freedom and Responsibility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Important exceptions include Frankfurt, Harry, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kane, Robert, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);Google Scholar Watson, Gary, “The Work of the Will” in Agency and Answerability: Selected Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 123–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Chisholm, Roderick M., “Human Freedom and the Self,” in Watson, Gary, ed. Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 34.Google Scholar

8 Alfred Mele, Free Will and Luck, 17.

9 For a lucid defense of this theory see Bishop, John, Natural Agency: An Essay on the Causal Theory of Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

10 Not only will compatibilists reject this ideal of agency, but so also will libertarians who embrace (something like) the event-causal theory of action (e.g., Kane, Significance of Free Will, and Laura Waddell Ekstrom, Free Will: A Philosophical Study [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000]).

11 In Plato’s example of the Charioteer (Phaedrus) and St. Paul’s description of the effects of sin (Romans 7), for example.

12 Tolstoy, Leo, “The Devil,” in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, trans. Pevear, Richard and Volokhonsky, Larissa (New York: Random House Inc., 2009 [1888]), 164–208.Google Scholar

13 Tolstoy, “The Devil,” 183.

14 Ibid., 188.

15 Ibid., 189.

16 Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” 18.

17 Michael McKenna and David Shoemaker both raised this worry in conversation.

18 David Shoemaker, “Caring, Identification, and Agency,” Ethics 114 (2003): 115.

19 See, respectively, Frankfurt, Harry, “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love,” in Fulda, H. F. and Horstmann, R. P., ed., Vernunftbegriffe in der Moderne: Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress 1993 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994);Google Scholar Shoemaker, David, “Caring, Identification, and Agency”; Chandra Sripada, “Self-Expression: A Deep Self Theory of Moral Responsibility,” Philosophical Studies 173 (2016): 1203–32;Google Scholar Bratman, Michael, “Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency,” Philosophical Review 109 (2000): 35–61;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Watson, Gary, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 205–20;CrossRefGoogle Scholar David Velleman, J., “What Happens When Someone Acts?” Mind 101 (1992): 461–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Watson, “Free Action and Free Will,” 168.

21 I have, however, offered extensive discussion and criticism elsewhere. See Christopher Evan Franklin, “Self-Determination, Self-Transformation, and the Case of Jean Valjean: A Problem for Velleman,” Philosophical Studies 172 (2015): 2591–98; “If Anyone Should Be an Agent-Causalist, Then Everyone Should Be an Agent-Causalist,” Mind 125 (2016): 1101–31; “Bratman on Identity over Time and Identification at a Time,” Philosophical Explorations 20 (2017): 1–14; “Cares, Agency, and Identification Reductionism,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (2017); and A Minimal Libertarianism: Free Will and the Promise of Reduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), chap. 7.

22 Richard Taylor, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 55; cf. Franklin, “If Anyone Should Be An Agent-Causalist, Then Everyone Should Be An Agent-Causalist,” 1119–27, and Franklin, A Minimal Libertarianism, chap. 7.

23 For key explanations and defenses of the agent-causal theory see O’Connor, Timothy, Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000);Google Scholar Clarke, Randolph, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), chaps. 8–10;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Griffith, Meghan, “Why Agent-Caused Actions Are Not Lucky,” American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (2000): 43–56;Google Scholar Steward, Helen, A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 The will’s being a second-order power explains both how we are continuous and discontinuous with other animals. Our agency shares much in common with other mammals since much of what we do is wholly reducible to the causal activities of our mental states, just like animals. What distinguishes us is the development of a power to modify how we exercise these powers in a way that is not merely a function of our current motivational states.

25 Steward, A Metaphysics for Freedom, 51

26 An important implication of this account of free will is that we can perform actions over which we have free will even though we do not exercise free will in so acting. That is, we can perform actions that we do not play a fundamental causal role in bringing about even though we could have. While such actions will not be instances of the exercise of free will according to my account, we can still say we had free will over such an action and thus the action is free. Thanks to Mark Balaguer for raising this issue.

27 See, e.g., Muraven, Mark and Baumeister, Roy F., “Self-Regulation and Depletion of Limited Resources: Does Self-Control Resemble a Muscle?” Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 247–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

28 Holton, Richard, Willing, Wanting, Waiting (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009),CrossRefGoogle Scholar chap. 6. This of course does not mean that your will operates wholly independent of your motivations either. It is plausible to think that our motivations set some bounds on what options we can will. Much more needs to be said here, but the point I am making about the will is not that it operates wholly independent of our motivations, but that it is not wholly dependent on our motivations. Thanks to Mark Balaguer for raising these issues.

29 O’Connor, Timothy, “Agent-Causal Power,” in Handfield, Toby, ed., Dispositions and Causes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 189–214.Google Scholar

30 Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will, chap. 8.

31 Ibid., 135–36.

32 See Markosian, Ned, “A Compatibilist Version of the Theory of Agent Causation,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (1999): 257–77;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Markosian, Ned, “Agent Causation as the Solution to All the Compatibilist’s Problems,” Philosophical Studies 157 (2012): 383–98;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Nelkin, Dana K., Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 The next two paragraphs draw on Franklin, A Minimal Libertarianism, chap. 4.

34 From here on I will drop the qualification “so conceived.”

35 Bok, Freedom and Responsibility, 48. This is one of the varieties of free will that Dennett claims is not worth wanting: “The libertarian could not have wanted to place the indeterminism at the end of the agent’s assessment and deliberation” (Dennett, “On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want,” 51). Dennett thinks such a desire would be “insane.”

36 Wolf, Freedom within Reason, chap. 3.

37 Ekstrom, Free Will, 104–106; Steward, A Metaphysics for Freedom, 127–33.

38 Wolf, Freedom within Reason, 53–54. For simplicity I will assume that there is always a uniquely best option.

39 As Mark Balaguer and Justin Capes have pointed out to me in conversation, one might dismiss this objection outright: After all, what does the desirability of an account have to do with the truth of the account? I don’t think the rationality and explanation objections can be that easily dismissed. Frankfurt (“Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,”) contends, rightly to my mind, that an adequate theory of free will must explain why we find free will attractive, something worth wanting. Thus, while in general the fact that we find an account unattractive has little bearing on the truth of the account, it is quite relevant if we are trying to give an account of something we find attractive. Thanks to Dana Nelkin for some helpful ideas on how to think about these issues.

40 Cf. Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969 [1788]), III.i–ii.

41 Holton, Willing, Wanting, Waiting, chaps. 4–6.

42 Cf. Mele, Free Will and Luck, 111–17.

43 An additional way to respond, as Michael McKenna and Bob Kane have pointed out to me, is to call into question the prevalence of all-things-considered judgments. It is very often not the case that when we make a crucial life-setting decision we can tell which option is best. While I am convinced that this is correct, I will not take up this response. Rather, I want to show that even if we assume that such all-things-considered judgments are quite prevalent, there is reason to be attracted to the libertarian ideal.

44 Watson, “Work of the Will,” 129–30.

45 I owe this point to Justin Coates.

46 I owe this point to Matt Talbert.

47 Wolf, Freedom within Reason, chap. 3.

48 Ibid., 58–59.

49 Ibid., 59.

50 Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, IV.i.

51 A. J. Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity.”

52 For some directly free actions, it will be possible for the agent to have done one of a number of different things, given the past and laws of nature, in which case there will be multiple core contrasts. I ignore this complication since it does not affect the substance of my argument.

53 See, e.g., Mele, Free Will and Luck, chap. 3; Haji, “Reason, Responsibility, and Free Will: Reply to My Critics.”

54 Broad, C. D., “Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism,” in Ethics and the History of Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 195–217;Google Scholar Rice, Rebekah L. H., “Agent-Causation and Acting for Reasons,” American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (2011): 333–46.Google Scholar

55 Aspects of the following argument are borrowed from Franklin, A Minimal Libertarianism, chap. 5.

56 Hitchcock, Christopher, “Contrastive Explanation and the Demon of Determinism,” British Journal of the Philosophy of Science 50 (1999): 585–612;CrossRefGoogle Scholar “Contrastive Explanations,” in Contrastivism in Philosophy: New Perspectives, ed. Martijn Blaauw (London: Routledge, 2012), 11–34.

57 Hitchcock, “Contrastive Explanation and the Demon of Determinism,” 599. The slight modification concerns the fact that Hitchcock states his account in terms of probability raising rather than causal contribution. His account runs as follows: if E raises the probability of C more than not-C, then citing E explains why-C rather than not C—even though C’s occurrence was undetermined and even if C’s occurrence is overall less probable than C’s nonoccurrence (Hitchcock, “Contrastive Explanation and the Demon of Determinism,” 602).

58 This case is taken from Kane, Significance of Free Will, 28.

59 Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will, 45–46.

60 Lipton, Peter, Inference to the Best Explanation (London: Routledge, 1991), 43.Google Scholar

61 Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 43.

62 Fred Miller has pointed out to me in conversation that one might think that my responses to the rationality and explanation objections are individually successful but jointly incompatible. In responding to the explanation objection, I argue that instances of free will can be given contrastive reasons-explanations of type-1. In response to the rationality objection, I argue that free will requires the possibility of acting irrationally. The key to seeing the compatibility between these claims is that type-1 contrastive reasons-explanations do not require that one act for the best reasons, but just for some reasons. Thus, we can give a reasons-explanation of an irrational action so long as the agent had at least some reasons for acting against his best reasons.