Traversing the Maze of Free Will

Arete's Editor-in-Chief, Andrea Lowry, sent me a link to an article by professor Galen Strawson of Reading University. Written for the New York Times, the article can be read by clicking here. It argues that one cannot be "ultimately responsible" for what one does, and that any actions will be "determined... by your genetic inheritance and previous experience." Bold statements, to be sure. He offers two arguments, the latter "expanded" from the former. Let's look at the former first:

(1) You do what you do — in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you then are.

(2) So if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain mental respects.

(3) But you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.

(4) So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.

Is his argument sound? It seems to have problems-- for example, the first premise begs the question, because it assumes that you do what you do because of "the way you are", which implicitly denies any sort of volition-- and responsibility, presumably, requires volition. I don't want to spend too much time on this argument, because Strawson seems to desire us to consider it in light of his expanded argument:

(a) It’s undeniable that the way you are initially is a result of your genetic inheritance and early experience.

(b) It’s undeniable that these are things for which you can’t be held to be in any way responsible (morally or otherwise).

(c) But you can’t at any later stage of life hope to acquire true or ultimate moral responsibility for the way you are by trying to change the way you already are as a result of genetic inheritance and previous experience.

(d) Why not? Because both the particular ways in which you try to change yourself, and the amount of success you have when trying to change yourself, will be determined by how you already are as a result of your genetic inheritance and previous experience.

(e) And any further changes that you may become able to bring about after you have brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by your genetic inheritance and previous experience.

I believe that Strawson errs in several of his premises. First, premise (a)-- that it is "undeniable that the way you are initially is a result of your genetic inheritance and early experience"-- is actually contradictory. The way you are initially (meaning, at the earliest moment of personhood) cannot result from earlier experience, which he said it does. Strawson might wish to make the conjunction apply only to post-initial status, but the premise loses its power, and it is clearly false that a person is how they are initially as a result of genetic inheritance (for example, because two individuals with the same genetic inheritance might not act the same way). The premise fails.

Premise (d) asserts that "both the particular ways in which you try to change yourself, and the amount of success you have when trying to change yourself, will be determined by how you already are as a result of your genetic inheritance and previous experience", but this to a large degree what needs to be proved. Strawson has constructed an elaborate format to beg the question, which is hidden behind a series of arguments whose foundation is problematic (the first premise). Of course, if Strawson had his way, his mistake would be seen as a result of experience and genetic inheritance. Personally, though, I think he should have known better.

Back to Business

Monday August 23rd is the start of classes again at Berry College. We've been dormant on the blog for the summer, but with the beginning of the new semester it's time to get back to business.

One debt that I have to discharge now is to note the passing since my last post of one of my intellectual heroes, the great Martin Gardner (1914-2010). It is hard to describe the man in one word, but perhaps "polymath" is most appropriate. I wrote a post on his 95th birthday and discussed the influence that he had on me. A University of Chicago philosophy major, Gardner became the mathematics columnist for Scientific American and wrote prolifically on topics that included but also reached far beyond science, math, and philosophy. I especially appreciated his efforts to expose the frauds who founded and promoted various pseudo-scientific movements. Gardner was a much needed defender of reason and careful thinking. All should be grateful for his long and productive life.

Coffee Confessions

Kind readers,

If you’ll allow, let me divulge a tad about my life. No, I will not bore you with some trivial private gossip or pent up angst and frustration about the woes of life or anything of that sort, but I would like to call your attention and get your reactions to a problem I’m dealing with: I can barely type the words, but I, regrettably, have lost my taste for coffee, and it is a sad, cold world without the brew.

This revelation will probably be better placed within the proper context. I was bred to drink this stuff. My parents are big coffee drinkers, and I was literally raised with the aroma of coffee abundant in the air and loved that smell, I’ve been told, as a very young child and have never stopped. In fact, at age four I pestered my parents so much one fateful day for a taste of their coffee that they allowed me to have a sip, thinking that, like a normal child, I would be utterly repulsed by the bitter taste (there’s never any added sugar or sweeteners in our coffee!) and give up on the drink till I got older. Well, I was not a very normal child. (Insert your own joke here about me still not being normal if you like!) To their surprise, or maybe dismay, I loved the coffee, and they were then somewhat forced to keep allowing me to have sips every now and then. When visiting either friends of my parents or my own friends’ parents as an elementary-aged child, I would often shock adults who’d ask what beverage I’d like (them expecting me to say Coke or juice) with the reply of coffee, and they’d undoubtedly proceed to question the kind of parents I had! And so began my love affair with the, to me, ineffably tasty drink.

You see, coffee for me was not about a caffeine-induced rush; in fact, it was no sort of stimulant at all, as it normally is for people. Instead of a jilting morning wake-up, coffee affected me in the reverse fashion: actually making me quite relaxed and much more focused, which is very useful as a student! But something terrible has happened! About three and a half weeks ago until this present day, my beloved coffee has not loved me back in return. It does not give those same fulfilling feelings nor taste as appealing, and the focus it once provided is gone, along with my longing for it.

I do not want the coffee any longer, but I want to want it.

In philosophy, this is known as a second-order desire: the desire to desire. This is the same feeling as the self-loathing drug addict who wants to refrain from his habit but cannot, or the unwilling antisocial person who desires to want companionship but does not actually posses that want – simply, their will is to want something other than that which they really want. A couple terms used above to describe these scenarios, “unwilling” and “the will,” are interesting here. What is it that is doing the willing and unwilling? What part of you wants and what doesn’t want?

For me, it is my mind that wants, but my body that does not. A certain event in my brain may be altered in some way to have a different effect, causing this lack of desire. But what was it that was doing the willing in the first place? Not, apparently, my mind or will. I had this craving that was brought on by something I didn’t will (though it was a bodily reaction of mine), and so it was out of my control and brought upon me. But this was far from a negative thing. Apart from just the satiation of the particular thirst, satisfying a longing of any sort, even an imposed craving, can be a great pleasure in and of itself. But now I’ve been “freed” from this craving, and yet am unsatisfied! Some will say that this is crazy: you had this thirst that you did not will and now that you’re liberated from it, you want it again? But it was not I, really, who willed the removal of the craving – again, something happened apart from my own willing to put me in this situation! I am no more free now if I did not will the abrupt cessation in the same way that I did not will the original craving.

It is strange to talk in this fashion for it is truly me – my will, maybe my mind? – who is doing the desiring and the desiring of the desire, but it is also me – my body, either in stomach or just in the brain – who is controlling it all. Perhaps willpower is not as powerful as we’d like. It seems odd that I at the same time both want and don’t want (and want to want and don’t want to want, ad infinitum), but that is the nature of the situation. As much fulfillment there is (or, was) from the coffee for what it did for me, and also the satisfying of the craving itself, am I yet irrational in my second-order desire? Ought I crave the craving, or be content coffee-need-less?