The New Argument About Freedom
Traditionally, conflicting positions on free will have
diverged and defined themselves according to the question:
‘Are free will and moral responsibility compatible with determinism’?
It does seem that we are free to act, if our choice is
not the result of external coercion and reflects our own desires,
beliefs and deliberations. This is enough for ‘compatibilists’ to
grant us moral responsibility for these actions and declare that
free will is compatible with determinism.
However ‘libertarians’ are steadfast in their plea for persons
to be truly deserving of praise and blame. If determinism is
true then the situations in which we make our choices, and the
desires and beliefs upon which we base them, are the inevitable
result of chains of cause and effect starting long before our
births. So in what sense can we be truly responsible for them?
To secure the libertarian quest for moral responsibility it is
required that a person is self-determined, rather than merely
not physically determined by something else or the result of
chance. But as Galen Strawson has demonstrated, any
attempts at establishing this will lead to a self-defeating infinite
regress.
Consider that a choice or free action must be done for a
reason to be non-arbitrary. The reason can be in the form of
principles, preferences or values. But if someone is responsible
for their actions, they must act in accordance with principles,
preferences or values they themselves have freely chosen: that
is, one must be responsible for the preferences upon which
one acts. The question must then arise, where do these preferences
come from? In order to be responsible for our preferences,
etc, they too must be chosen in a reasoned and conscious fashion. But for this to be the case, one would have to
exist prior to that choice, with a certain set of preferences
about how to choose one’s preferences in a reasoned and conscious
fashion. And so it goes on. It seems then that being the
sort of person one is, having the desires and beliefs one does, is
something over which we cannot have ultimate control – it’s
only the result of our upbringing, etc. And one’s life and all one
does is an unfolding of non-self-chosen preferences. So ultimately
speaking, one is not free in any meaningful sense.
Determinism is not the problem with responsibility, then;
rather, it’s the incoherence of the libertarian quest. As Strawson
says, “True self-determination is impossible because it requires
the actual completion of an infinite regress of choices and principles
of choice”.
What is striking about this is that since the argument didn’t
appeal to determinism, it seems that the problem that has been
the bane of the free will debate can be dispensed with. This
realisation opens up a whole new avenue of investigation.
Determinism is moot, but this does not mean that the issue of
moral responsibility is also dispensed with. Rather the question
becomes something like “Is moral responsibility compatible
with the ultimate absence of libertarian free will?”
Strawson’s approach to this question is to take the same line
as the hard determinist: he concludes that moral responsibility
is impossible, and hence that it would be wrong to praise or
blame anyone on account of his or her actions. In response,
Professor Saul Smilansky, author of Free Will and Illusion
(2000), claims that Strawson demonstrates the impossibility of
libertarian free will, but not of moral responsibility; even
though libertarianism is incoherent so that ultimate responsibility
eludes us, there still remains the real and important compatibilist
sense in which we are free to act and so can take
responsibility for our actions. For the compatibilist, distinguishing
between an action that was coerced and one that was
conducted with autonomy is relevant to the way we should
treat the agent. Consider Adam, Beryl and Cheryl. Adam steals
something whilst Beryl does not. Cheryl also steals, but is a
kleptomaniac. The hard determinist perspective hold all morally equal – as morally unresponsible. From the compatibilist
perspective, however, since both Adam and Beryl were
able to resist, yet only Beryl did, there are grounds for holding
Adam responsible. However, since Cheryl is a born kleptomaniac,
we have reason to distinguish her from Adam. Despite
some potential ultimate injustice in holding Adam responsible
and punishing him, to hold Cheryl responsible and punish her
would be much more unjust. In fact, the failure of hard determinism
in distinguishing between such cases shows its inadequacy.
It has been shown that determinism need no longer be our
main concern in considering moral responsibility, since the
problem over it arises whether determinism is true or false.
The futile search for libertarian free will can also at last be laid
to rest. I have tentatively suggested what seems the most fruitful
avenue of investigation from this point: this is also Smilansky’s
suggestion, to “start from the collapse that results from
the realization of the absence of libertarian free will and its
implications, and then reconstruct the free will related conceptual
world on the basis of the shallower compatibilist
resources” (from a personal correspondence).
A revolution is occurring in the debate on free will that
requires the renouncement of instinctively-held ideals and
beliefs. The first step is to renounce the idea that the central
problem concerns determinism. This will in turn pave the way
for the truth about libertarianism to be seen. Giving up libertarianism,
however, isn’t a step to be taken lightly, since it
encapsulates the kind of freedom we normatively think we
have and need. The greatest obstacle therefore, is going to be
whether people can live with the truth concerning free will.
VOCABULARY
- coercion - принуждение
- establishing - налаживание
- incoherence - согласованность