27 February 2001
A. Conflict
between three claims:
1. We (sometimes) act freely.
2. Every event is preceded by events that are
causally sufficient for it.
3. If you act freely, then you could have done
otherwise.
B. Each
claim looks good in its own right.
1. Can we really deny that we act freely? Hardly.
2. “Every effect has a sufficient
cause”: even for unexpected events we presuppose a cause (and expected
events are expected on the basis of their causes).
3. “No freedom without alternate
possibilities”: if the act is just bound to occur, if you aren’t
really selecting among alternatives, then are you really free?
C. Paradox: (2) and (3) imply that you never act
freely, that (1) is false. What to do?
D. Three
positions
1. Hard Determinism: accepts (2) and
(3), denies (1).
2. Libertarianism: accepts (1) and
(3), denies (2).
3. Soft Determinism (or
Compatibilism): accepts (1) and (2), denies (3).
II. Hume
(Compatibilism)
A. Denial of compatibility of liberty and
necessity based on linguistic confusion
B. Doctrine of Necessity: “every natural
effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other
effect, in such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from
it” (p. 447, top column 1).
C. Causation
1. When we experience regularities, we form a
habit; we expect one kind of event to follow another.
2. Hume: that’s all causation is! Constant
conjunction together with our inference.
D. Human beings are not outside of the causal
network—they are as subject to the doctrine of necessity as anything else
(multiple examples on pp. 447–452).
E. Doctrine of Liberty: “By liberty, then,
we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the
determinations of the will” (p. 452, column 2).
F. Compatibilists find freedom not in the absence of causal
determination but in the way the act is determined: so long as the
act is controlled by your choice, you are free.
G. Problem: what about the freedom of the
controlling choices? Compare Campbell on freedom’s pertaining to
“inner” acts.