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‘Can,’ Compatibilism, and Possible Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael J. Zimmerman
Michael J. Zimmerman*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

Most compatibilists have sought to defend their view by means of an analysis of the concept of ‘can’ in terms of subjunctive conditionals. Keith Lehrer opposes this analysis; he nevertheless embraces compatibilism. In a recent paper he has proposed a novel analysis of the concept of ‘can’ within the framework of possible-world semantics. The paper has provoked considerable discussion. In it Lehrer claims that he demonstrates the truth of compatibilism (p. 241). Others have claimed that this is not so, but at least one commentator has asserted that Lehrer's analysis strongly supports compatibilism. In this section I shall give a brief exposition of relevant portions of Lehrer's account of ‘can’ and then in the next section I shall seek to show that it fails to render compatibilism any more plausible than incompatibilism. Indeed, I shall seek to show that, if one of Lehrer's primitive concepts (the concept of an ‘advantage’) is understood as it seems it should be understood, then there would seem to be good reason to believe that his analysis supports not compatibilism but incompatibilism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 679 - 691
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1981

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References

1 The type of ‘can’ at issue here is that which features in such sentences as ‘Smith can run a four-minute mile,’ ‘Jones can recite the Greek alphabet backwards,’ and so on, when these are understood in the most natural manner and understood to imply that there is nothing preventing the agent from performing the action in question. I shall not elaborate on this here; the matter should be familiar enough. Among the most prominent proponents of the conditional analysis of this concept of ‘can’ are Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Jonathan Edwards, Mill, Moore, Schlick, Stevenson, Ayer, and P.H. Nowell-Smith.

2 Lehrer, Keith ‘An Empirical Disproof of Determinism?’, in Lehrer, Keith ed., Freedom and Determinism (New York: Random House 1966) 195-7;Google Scholar and “‘Can” in Theory and Practice: A Possible Worlds Analysis,’ in Myles Brand and Walton, Douglas eds., Action Theory (Dordrecht, Holland/Boston, U.S.A.: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1976) 248–50.Google Scholar Henceforth I shall refer to the latter article as ‘CTP.’

3 I take compatibilism to be the doctrine that it is logically possible that determinism be true and free action yet occur; incompatibilism is the denial of this possibility. The link between's freely does A’ and 'S can do A’ is one that I shall not explore here, except to say that the truth of the former implies the truth of the latter.

4 Lehrer, CTP.

5 Horgan, Terence ‘Lehrer on “Could“-Statements,’ Philosophical Studies, 32 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (henceforth I shall refer to this article as ‘LCS’); Audi, Robert ‘Avoidability and Possible Worlds,’ Philosophical Studies, 33 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (henceforth I shall refer to this article as ‘APW’).

6 All such page-references will be to the text of CTP.

7 Horgan, LCS, 409; Audi, APW, 419.

8 Audi, APW, 419.

9 The account that follows is not only an abbreviated, but also a somewhat reconstructed, version of the original. The reconstruction is undertaken out of a desire for uniformity both of exposition and of evaluation. I believe that no distortion of Lehrer's position results from it; indeed, his position is somewhat clarified because of it.

10 Pollock, John L. Subjunctive Reasoning (Dordrecht, Holland/Boston, U.S.A.: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 This is putting the matter only in rough form. Pollock in fact distinguishes between many kinds of subjunctive conditionals.

12 For example, I shall ignore remarks made by Lehrer to the effect that an event may be ancestrally determined even though none of its causes occurs more than ten minutes before it does.

13 Audi (APW, 414) also suggests that the concept of minimal difference is dispensable.

14 Horgan gives this argument (LCS, 409-1 0).

15 Horgan, LCS, 407-9.

16 Horgan obviously relies at this point on P.H. Nowell-Smith's analysis of the concept of ‘can,’ as presented in the latter's Ethics (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1954) Chapter XIX. But it should be noted that, despite its other problems which I discuss immediately below, the present argument is further undermined by the fact that Lehrer explicitly rejects (CTP, 242) Nowell-Smith's analysis.

17 Audi concurs (APW, 418).

18 Perhaps the grounds are to be found somewhere in his remarks on p. 266 of CTP, but I am not sure of this.

19 I am grateful to Fred Feldman, and also to referees of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, for valuable advice on an earlier draft of this paper.