I would like to put together a logical syllogism which really expresses the denial of free will through the denial of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. The idea is that the ability to choose otherwise is rendered incoherent by lacking fundamental grounding reasoning since all deliberation and causal reasons are taking into account when choosing, say, A, so that what could possibly ground choosing B, rationally, in that identical scenario? As Ted Honderich states in the Oxford Handbook of Free Will:<\/p>\n
An event is something in space and time, just some of it, and so it is rightly said\u00a0to be something that occurs or happens. For at least these reasons it is not a\u00a0number or a proposition, or any abstract object. There are finer conceptions of\u00a0an event, of course, one being a thing’s having a general property for a time,\u00a0another being exactly an individual property of a thing-say my computer monitor’s\u00a0weight (19 kg) as against yours ( also 19 kg) . None of these finer conceptions\u00a0an put in doubt that events are individuals in a stretch of time and space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nWhat is required for an event to have an explanation, in the fundamental\u00a0sense, is for there to be something else of which it is the effect. That is, for there\u00a0to be an answer to the fundamental question of why an event happened is for\u00a0there to be something of which it was the effect. A standard effect is an event\u00a0that had to happen, or could not have failed to happen or been otherwise than<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nit was, given the preceding causal circumstance, this being a set of events. In more\u00a0philosophical talk, the event was made necessary or necessitated by the circumstance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\nOf course there are finer conceptions of what it is for an event’s having been\u00a0made necessary by a circumstance. Some say that since the circumstance occurred,\u00a0so did the later event. They give a simple logician’s account-disambiguate that\u00a0to your taste, reader-of such a conditional statement. This reduces to David\u00a0Hume’s story of causation, where the particular causal circumstance and the particular\u00a0event were j ust an instance of a constant conj unction. Others are impressed\u00a0by the difference between a causal circumstance for an event and an invariable\u00a0but non-causal signal of that coming event. To exclude the signal from being the\u00a0causal circumstance they say, maybe in terms of possible worlds, that what a\u00a0circumstance’s necessitating an event came to is that since the circumstances occurred,\u00a0whatever else had been happening, so did the event.\u00a0Evidently there is a little room for this difference of opinion-our conceptual\u00a0and other experience does not immediately rule out one of these views. Our\u00a0experience does rule out other contemplated accounts of what is needed for an\u00a0event to have an explanation in the fundamental sense-of its being necessitated\u00a0by a causal circumstance. Clearly we do not understand an event’s having had to\u00a0happen as being only that it was more probable, maybe j ust more probable than\u00a0not, as a result of the circumstance. That is not what we believe either, you bet, when we say the event could not have failed to happen. It is yet clearer that we\u00a0do not take an event’s having had to happen as the fact that it might well not\u00a0have happened despite there having been something on hand that was “enough”\u00a0for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIn my life so far I have never known a single event to lack an explanation in\u00a0the fundamental sense, and no doubt your life has been the same. No spoon has\u00a0mysteriously levitated at breakfast. There has been no evidence at all, let alone\u00a0proof, of there being no explanation to be found of a particular event. On the\u00a0contrary, despite the fact that we do not seek out or arrive at the full explanations\u00a0in question, my experience and yours pretty well consists of events that we take\u00a0to have such explanations. If we put aside choices or decisions and the like-the\u00a0events in dispute in the present discussion of determinism and freedom-my life\u00a0and yours consists in nothing but events that we take to have fundamental explanations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThus, to my mind, no general proposition of interest has greater inductive\u00a0and empirical support than that all events whatever, including the choices or\u00a0decisions and the like, have explanations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
and later:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nLet us leave it, and note instead\u00a0that origination’s absence from the Philosophy of Mind can indeed be taken to\u00a0suggest that there is no\u00a0tempting\u00a0<\/i>conception of origination in existence. Otherwise\u00a0it would certainly have been made use of in general explanations of behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nOrigination’s absence from the Philosophy of Mind also reinforces the question\u00a0of whether there is an\u00a0adequate\u00a0<\/i>conception of it. What has been said so far,\u00a0to recall, is that an act of origination (1) is not an effect, (2) is either a causal\u00a0predecessor of a choice and action or the choice itself, and ( 3 ) has a special\u00a0explanation such that it and therefore its effects are within the control of the<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nperson in question and such as to make her responsible in a certain sense for\u00a0them. Is this\u00a0adequate<\/i>?\u00a0That it is not has for some time been contemplated by\u00a0the more-or-Iess determinist party in the philosophy of determinism and freedom.The idea was famously expressed by Peter\u00a0Strawson when he spoke of panicky\u00a0metaphysics (P. F. Strawson 1962).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\n\nBut these, as we understand them elsewhere, are a matter of fundamental\u00a0explanation, of standard effects. “Give rise to,” ordinarily used, is as much a matter\u00a0of standard causality as “push.” It is wholly obscure what remains of the verbs of\u00a0human activity when their backbone of sense is taken out of them. They do not\u00a0have a backbone put back in, either, when it is said that !\\s having caused B was\u00a0just !\\s having been “enough” for B, which was consistent with B ‘s not happening.\u00a0No sense has ever been given to the “enough.” (Cf. Ginet 1990)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nQuite as plainly, there can be recourse to talk of reasons of a kind in trying\u00a0to explain choices and actions without the aid of fundamental explanation. There\u00a0can be recourse, that is, to logical or conceptual relations of an essentially normative\u00a0kind. But that I had good reason eventually to confess to my lover, in\u00a0terms of whatever value-system, including my own morality, gives no explanation\u00a0of why I confessed. There may be the explanation that I was caused to confess\u00a0by my good reason in a more robust and a standardly causal sense-where my\u00a0reason clearly was something more than an abstract entailer or other premise but\u00a0this, of course, is exactly what origination is supposed to replace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The idea of being able to choose otherwise is also explained as being problematic by a libertarian himself. As Robert Kane states:<\/p>\n
\n“(The Indeterminist Condition \u2014 Second Form): Given all past circumstances relative to t and all laws of nature, (i) it can be the case that S makes J at t, and (ii) it can be the case that S does other than make J at t.” (Free Will and Values, p.33)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
He actually spells out his own difficulties really well:<\/p>\n
\n“Some awkward consequences do seem to follow, If the agent might either make a choice or do otherwise, given all the same past circumstances, and the past circumstances include the entire psychological history of the agent, it would seem that no explanation in terms of the agent’s psychological history, including prior character motives and deliberation, could account for the actual occurrence of one outcome rather than the other. (p.53)<\/p>\n
“I can understand how the outcome of my deliberation may have been different, if I had known other facts, considered other consequences, imagined other scenarios, etc. But what I cannot understand is how I could have reasonably chosen to do otherwise, how I could have reasonably chosen B, given exactly the same prior deliberation that led me to choose A, the same information deployed, the same consequences considered, the same assessments made, and so on.” (p.57)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“This way of stating the argument shows what is at stake in the charges of arbitrariness, irrationality, etc., made against the indeterminist condition. If the choice of A was the reasonable outcome of my deliberation, then the choosing otherwise (the choice of B), which may have occurred given the same past circumstances, would have been “arbitrary,” “capricious,” “irrational,” and “inexplicable,” relative to my prior deliberation. Similarly, if the choice of B had been the reasonable conclusion of my deliberation, then the choice of A, had it occurred, would have been arbitrary relative to the prior deliberation, In general, where the indeterminist condition is satisfied, and the outcome is the result of prior deliberation, at least one of the outcomes (choosing or doing otherwise) must be arbitrary or irrational in relation to the prior deliberation.” (p.57)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
So what I really want to do is encapsulate these ideas into a robust syllogism. Here is one such example:<\/p>\n
First:
\n(1) Every human choice or action is an event.
\n(2) Every event has its explanatory cause.
\n(3) Therefore, every human choice or action has its explanatory cause.
\nBuilding upon (3), we have our second syllogism:
\n(3) Every human choice or action has its explanatory cause.
\n(4) To have explanatory cause is not to be free.
\n(5) Therefore, human choice or action is not free.<\/p>\n(Solomon and Higgins, The Big Questions: A Short Introduction into Philosophy \u2013 Free Will and Determinism)<\/p>\n
Hume was one of the first people to apply the principle of universal causation to the free will debate and found it inescapable.<\/p>\n
In fact, as Solomon and Higgins state (p. 231):<\/p>\n
\nWithout the assumption that every event has its sufficient natural explanatory cause(s), human knowledge would seem to be without one of its most vital presuppositions. Not only scientific research but also even our most ordinary everyday beliefs would be forced to an intolerable skeptical standstill. Our every experience would be unintelligible, and our universe would appear to be nothing but a disconnected stream of incoherent happenings, from which nothing could be predicted and nothing understood. So the answer to the question, \u201cWhy should we accept the determinist\u2019s first premise?\u201d seems to be, \u201cWe cannot give it up; how could we possibly do without it?\u201d For no matter how it is rephrased or philosophically altered, the assumption that every event in the universe, including our own actions, can be explained and understood, if only we know enough about it and its earlier events and conditions, is a presupposition of all human thinking that we cannot imagine doing without.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I would like to put together a logical syllogism which really expresses the denial of free will through the denial of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. The idea is that the ability to choose otherwise is rendered incoherent by lacking fundamental grounding reasoning since all deliberation and causal reasons are taking into account when choosing, say, A, so that what could possibly ground choosing B, rationally, in that identical scenario? As Ted Honderich states in the Oxford Handbook of Free Will:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1054,8,212],"tags":[52,58,435,1092,1090,1093,1091],"class_list":["post-3620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-free-will-and-determinism","category-general-philosophy","tag-determinism","tag-free-will","tag-libertarian-free-will","tag-logic","tag-robert-kane","tag-syllogism","tag-ted-honderich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}