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The Metaphysics Of Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Fred Dretske
Fred Dretske*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-2155, USA
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Extract

I offer Jimmy a dollar to wiggle his ears. He wiggles them because he wants the dollar and, as a result of my offer, thinks he will earn it by wiggling his ears. So I cause him to believe something that explains, or helps to explain, why he wiggles his ears. If I push a button, and a bell, wired to the button, rings because the button is depressed, I cause the bell to ring. I make it ring. Indeed, I ring it. So why don’t I, by offering him a dollar, make Jimmy wiggle his ears? Why, indeed, don’t I wiggle them? If I ring a bell by pushing a button, why don’t I wiggle Jimmy’s ears by offering him a dollar?

That is a question that has always vexed a compatibilist’s vision of human freedom. If an intentional act–say, wiggling one’s ears in order to earn a dollar–is caused by one’s beliefs and desires (the reasons one has for wiggling one’s ears), then, by the transitivity of the causal relation, it appears to follow that it is (also) caused by whatever causes one to have those beliefs and desires. But the causes of belief and desire are often (in fact, if we trace the causal chain far enough backward, always) factors over which one has no control. So intentional behavior is often (or always) something one is made (caused) to do by factors over which one has no control. This, however, robs intentional behaviorand, presumably, also voluntary action–of its autonomy. Deliberate acts–Jimmy wiggling his ears to earn a dollar–have the same causal structure as does a bell that rings because a button is pushed. The only difference is the switch.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 Davidson, Donald ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes,’ in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980) 3-19Google Scholar

2 Goldman, Alvin A Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1970)Google Scholar

3 In speaking of normal conditions, I mean to exclude coercive conditions. When acting under threat, people act deliberately and purposefully (they certainly act intentionally—so as to save their own life, for instance) without acting voluntarily. Though I do not have the time to develop the point here, I think coercion (of the threat variety) is a very special case. When the act is intentional, as it must be for the threat to be effective, I think the resulting act is, metaphysically speaking, as free as everyday rational acts. It derives its special status (i.e., its status as involuntary) from the moral dimensions of our concept of freedom. Since I lack the space to defend this claim, I restrict the argument in the text to intentional actions of the non-coercive kind.

4 Feinberg, Joel ‘Causing Voluntary Actions,’ in Capitan, W.H. and Merrill, D.D. eds., Metaphysics and Explanation (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press 1966).Google Scholar Feinberg is here describing a principle derived from Hart and Honore (Causation and the Law [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1959]) who regard a fully voluntary act as ‘a barrier and a goal ... through which we do not trace the cause of a later event' (41). Feinberg thinks this principle puts a restriction on the ‘extendibility' of action: if X talks Y into killing Z, thereby causing Z's death through the will of Y, it is (by this principle) Y, not X, that kills Z. For further discussion see David Lewis, ‘Causation' and ‘Postscripts to "Causation"' in Philosophical Papers, Vol II (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986); Bennett, Jonathan Events and their Names (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett 1988);Google Scholar and Mackie, J. L. The Cement of the Universe (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1974)Google Scholar.

5 Anyone who subscribes to a causal theory of knowledge will be committed to the idea that, in many cases at least (all those in which we act from knowledge), we are caused to have the beliefs that (in part) constitute our reasons for acting.

6 Assuming, as I do, that causality is an extensional relation: that if A causes B, and B = C, then A causes C. This is not to say, of course, that causal explanation is extensional.

7 I developed such a component theory of behavior in Explaining Behavior (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1988). If we let M stand for the movement of Jimmy's ears and C for some internal event that causes his ears to move, then Jimmy's behavior, his moving his ears, is identified with C's causing M — a process of which M is the product. Some behavior is unintentional (the way snoring, blinking, and breathing are). In this case C is merely some (non-intentional) internal cause. If C consists of Jimmy's reasons, some belief-desire complex, then the behavior is an action.

8 Though, of course, we may be legally and morally (not to say causally) responsible for the result of this action.

9 Though it may say something about his freedom of will — another problem about which I have little to say in this essay.

10 'Causation' and ‘Postscripts to ‘Causation" in Philosophical Papers, Vol II (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986)

11 One should not confuse ‘sensitivity' with ‘improbability.' As Lewis himself points out, you can kill someone by planting a bomb attached to a randomizing device. When the bomb goes off, killing someone, you are the killer no matter how low you set the probability on the randomizer. Sensitivity has more to do with the number of intervening coincidences.

12 This is not to say I cannot wiggle Jimmy's ears by going through Jimmy. We saw earlier how I might wiggle Jimmy's ears by triggering an automatic (reflexive) response. This is the way I make you blink by a sudden movement towards your face.

13 Cf. my Explaining Behaviour.