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C. A. Campbell's Effort of Will Argument
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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C. A. Campbell has for many years defended vigorously, and often persuasively, the following libertarian claims: (1) that the libertarian concept of freedom of choice is meaningful; (2) that the libertarian variety of freedom of choice is necessary for moral responsibility; and (3) that the libertarian variety of freedom of choice is a reality. This paper will be concerned with Campbell's effort of will argument for the last claim.
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page 429 note 1 Campbell has elaborated this argument in a number of published works, but perhaps most fully in the following: ‘The Psychology of Effort of Will’, in Free Will and Determinism ed. Berofsky, Bernard (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 345–64.Google Scholar See also On Selfhood and Godhood (New York: Macmillan, 1957), lecture viii, part ii, and lecture ix.Google Scholar
page 429 note 2 To take one religious position that is of particular philosphic interest, the free will defence against the problem of evil requires the libertarian variety of freedom if it is to be at all plausible. This point is acknowledged by such prominent advocates of the free will defence as Alvin Plantinga and John Hick. See Hick, John, Evil and the God of Love (Toronto: Macmillan, 1966), chapter xivGoogle Scholar. See also Plantinga, Alvin, ‘The Free Will Defence’ in Philosophy in America, ed. Black, Max (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965), 204–20.Google Scholar
page 429 note 3 Indeed, Religious Studies recently carried an article that not only was highly sympathetic to Campbell's effort of will argument, but concluded that ‘effort of will may appropriately be conceived as a basis for moral freedom’. See Howie, John, ‘Is Effort of Will a Basis for Moral Freedom?’, Religious Studies viii 4 (December 1972), 345–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 430 note 1 These terms are borrowed from Chisholm, Roderick, ‘Human Freedom and the Self’, in Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, 2nd edn, ed. Feinberg, Joel (Belmont, California: Dickenson, 1971).Google Scholar
page 431 note 1 There are, of course, important differences between Kant and Campbell regarding motivation and freedom; however, both regard desires as completely determined, both believe that not only man's desiring nature is capable of originating action, and both grant a unique significance to action for the sake of duty.
page 431 note 2 Keith Lehrer makes this point in criticism of Campbell - though he supports other aspects of Campbell's argument - but he does not draw the implications of it for Campbell's position. See ‘Can We Know that We Have Free Will by Introspection?’, The Journal of Philosophy, LVII (1960), 151.Google Scholar R. L. Franklin makes this same point in a somewhat different way; but, again, the implications for Campbell's argument are not worked out. Franklin's concern in the portion of the paper in which this point appears is simply to make the general criticism that Campbell, and MacLagan, W. G. fail to justify the radical distinction they make between moral and non-moral choice. ‘Moral Libertarianism’, The Philosophical Quarterly, xii (1962), 26–8.Google Scholar
page 432 note 1 Campbell has given his introspective data somewhat different formulations in different publications. For example, in his article ‘Is Free Will a Pseudo-problem?’ what I have called ‘datum one’ is described as the awareness that ‘one's choice is not just the expression of one's formed character’. See Free Will and Determinism, ed. Berofsky, Bernard (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 133.Google Scholar Campbell elaborates and argues from datum one most fully, I believe, in ‘The Psychology of Effort of Will’.
Also, in detailing his introspective data, Campbell frequently emphasizes his conviction that the volitionally effortful choice is indeed a choice that he makes and is not just something that happens to him. He emphasizes this in order to rebut the charge that he is arguing merely for causal contingency. Campbell doesn't claim that this conviction is particularly inimical to the deterministic view for he admits that it is present in cases of determined choices as well. Since I agree that it does not militate against determinism, I shall ignore that particular aspect of his argument.
page 433 note 1 James, William, The Principles of Psychology (New York, 1902), ii, 549.Google Scholar
page 433 note 2 Campbell, C. A., ‘The Psychology of Effort of Will’, pp. 345–64.Google Scholar
page 434 note 1 Ibid., p. 357.
page 434 note 2 Since Campbell first set out this argument considerable controversy has raged over the question of whether desires can be said to cause actions. Campbell's assumption that they can will not be questioned however, for the refutation of his argument does not hinge on the outcome of this controversy. Likewise certain key notions in Campbell's argument such as ‘desire’ and ‘motive’ have undergone considerable analysis in recent years; but, again, the elaboration of such analyses is not necessary to unseat Campbell.
page 434 note 3 Campbell, C. A., ‘Moral Libertarianism: a Reply to Mr. Franklin’, The Philosophical Quarterly, xii (1962), 337–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 436 note 1 Campbell, , ‘The Psychology of Effort of Will’, 363.Google Scholar
page 437 note 1 Grunbaum, Adolph, ‘Free Will and the Laws of Human Behavior’, The American Philosophical Quarterly, viii, 4 (1971), 306.Google Scholar
page 438 note 1 Notice that this is not so in all choice situations. The phenomenological facts surrounding my decision to avoid an oncoming bus, typically, do most certainly suggest that the choice had antecedent sufficient conditions; my belief that collision with the bus would result in serious injury or death, my desire to avoid serious injury and death and the non-perception of any good reason for risking life and limb in this situation would seem to be causally sufficient for my attempting to avoid the bus.