Free Will: A Philosophical Reappraisal

232 Pages·2009·2.565 MB·English

by  Nicholas Rescher

Free Will

Free Will
A Philosophical Reappraisal
Nicholas Rescher
Second Edition
O Routledge
jfj^^ Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Originally published in 2009 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2014034640
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rescher, Nicholas.
Free will : a philosophical reappraisal by / Nicholas Rescher. --
Revised paperback edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-5593-8
1.Free will and determinism. I. Title.
BJ1461.R45 2015
123’.5--dc23
2014034640
ISBN-13: 978-1-4128-5593-8 (pbk)
Contents
Preface vii
IntroductionHistoricalandTextualPerspectives ix
1 TheNatureofFreeWill 1
2 ModesofFreedom 31
3 RamificationsofFreedom 51
4 SomeFallaciesRegardingFreeWill 67
5 FreeWillasOutsideCausalityButCompatibleWithit 83
6 F reeWillExcludesCausalPredetermination
ButNotMotivationalPrecedenceDetermination 97
7 FreedomandMotivation 121
8 C ompatibilismRegained:WhatFreeWillExcludes
isNotAgentDeterminationButAgent-Bypassing
NatureDetermination 149
9 Mind-MatterCoordination 161
10 DoesFreeWillExist?DeliberationsProandCon 181
References 201
Index 209

Preface
“Freedom of the will is as self-evident and clear
as anything we can know.”
René Descartes, Principles, No. 39
The freedom of an act is not one of its descriptive features such as its
duration or its utilization of a certain tool. Rather, what is involved is
something very complicated. As regards free will, there actually are
two very different questions: (1) What is it—or would it be—to have
free will? Just what would a realization of this condition consist in?
and (2) Do we humans actually have a free will? Do we indeed possess
this capacity to act freely sometimes? In this regard free will is akin
to mathematical genius—or for that matter to sorcery. It is one thing
to grasp how these terms are to be understood and what it is that we
commit ourselves to in applying them; and it is something else again
to be able to have due warrant for so applying them in particular cases.
The first issue is fairly simple. An intelligent agent exercises free
will whenever one of its choices is ultimately under the control of its
thought—and especially when control of its choices is exerted deliber-
ately and wholly without intervention by external forces or constraints.
The second issue, the prime focus of the present deliberations, is going
to involve a rather long and convoluted story.
To reach an appropriate adjudication of the question of free will it
is necessary to take account of so many distinctions and to address so
many complex and subtle questions that it would not be unreasonable
to regard the problem as close to irresolvable. To all easily accessible
appearances, the issue looks to be a conundrum emplaced in a puzzle
and wrapped inside an enigma.
The issue has so many subtle facets and presents so many complex
obstacles to a resolution that one is strongly tempted to see it as ratio-
nally intractable—not thereby regarding the questions as meaningless
vii
FFrreeee WWiillll
but rather as too complex for resolution with the resources at our
disposal. But such a position would be overly pessimistic.
In dealing with a complex philosophical issue there are two ways of
proceeding. One is the essentially foundational way of stipulating fun-
damentals at the outset and then proceeding inferentially from there on
forward. The other is the dialectical way of peeling off layer after layer
of complexity to arrive at an ultimately definitive core only at the very
end. As the present deliberations will indicate, it is this second, more
round-about and patience-demanding process that is appropriate for
addressing problems of free agency.
At any rate, the opening motto from Descartes is decidedly prob-
lematic. For before deciding the issue of whether or not we humans
have free will, we have to determine just exactly what free will actually
is—or would be. And this critical preliminary question is an ink-fish
that squirts its obscuring darkness across the landscape of this issue.
The whole field is full of puzzles and paradoxes. Suppose, for exam-
ple, an agent deliberately subordinates his own will to that of another:
without any sort of external compulsion or impulse he chooses to obey
X. And now X orders him to do A, which he duly proceeds to do. Has he
acted freely or not? We would not hesitate to impute freedom—seeing
that X’s move to action ratifies his policy rather than suspending it as
he was (ex hypothesi) at liberty to do. In deliberating about free will a
whole host of conceptual issues need to be confronted and clarified.
One of the factors that renders the issue of free will of supreme
importance is its role in relation to the ethical precept that “Ought
implies can”—namely that an agent is morally obligated only where he
is free to act, so that the reach of moral obligation never extends beyond
the range of free agency and moral approbation or reprehension cannot
be ascribed to an agent unless he freely performs an act deserving of
this characterization. Given these considerations, it follows that in the
absence of free agency, there is no place for moral duty. If we cannot
appropriately impute free agency to people, the entire edifice of moral
judgment collapses.
viii
Introduction
Historical and Textual
Perspectives
Synopsis
(1) Deliberation regarding freedom of the will goes back to Plato in
Greek antiquity. (2) And over many centuries it has played an important
role in philosophical and especially in theological deliberation. (3) The
change of context raises issues of continuity, but there is good reason
to consider them as tractable. (4) Problems do, however, arise from the
very vastness of “the literature of the subject.”
1. Setting the Stage
The problem of free will was put on the agenda of philosophy in Plato’s
dialogue Phaedo, where it was posed in the following classic formula-
tion, Socrates being the speaker:
I felt very much as I should feel if someone said, ‘Socrates does by
mind all he does’; and then, in telling the causes of what I am doing
should say first that the reason why I sit here now is, that my body
consists of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints
between them, and the sinews can be tightened and slackened, sur-
rounding the bones along with flesh and the skin which holds them
together; so when the bones are uplifted in their sockets, the sinews
slackening and tightening make me able to bend my limbs now, and
for this cause I have bent together and sit here; and if next he should
give you other such causes of my conversing with you, alleging as
causes voices and airs and hearings and a thousand others like that,
and neglecting to give the real causes . . . . But by the Dog! these
bones and sinews, I think, would have been somewhere near Megara
or Boeotia long ago, carried there by an opinion of what is best, if
I had not believed it better and more just to submit to any sentence
which my city gives than to take to my heels and run. To call all those
things the causes is strange indeed. If one should say that unless I had
such things, bones and sinews and all the rest I have, I should not
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