{"id":5828,"date":"2017-01-27T15:29:41","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T15:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/27\/what-i-believe-about-free-will\/"},"modified":"2017-01-27T15:29:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T15:29:41","slug":"what-i-believe-about-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/27\/what-i-believe-about-free-will\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Believe About Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Determinism\"<\/a>My position, bluntly stated, is that we are libertarianly free (L-free).  One is L-free just in case (i) one is the agent cause or unsourced source of some of one's actions, and (ii) with respect to an action of which one is the agent cause, one unconditionally could have done otherwise.  As far as I'm concerned, the following argument is practically decisive. By 'practically decisive' I mean decisive with respect to one's actual practice in living one's life. An argument can be practically decisive for a person without being, in general, rationally compelling.<\/span><\/div>\n
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1. We are morally responsible for at least some of our actions and omissions.<\/span>
2. Moral responsibility entails libertarian freedom of the will.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
3. We are libertarianly free.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
That clinches it for me. But is this a compelling argument?  By no means.  No argument for any substantive philosophical thesis is compelling. One could, with no breach of logical propriety, deny the conclusion and then deny one or both of the premises.  As we say in the trade, "One man's modus ponens<\/em> is another's modus tollens<\/em>."  Any valid argument can be thrown into 'inferential reverse,' the result being a valid argument. For example, one might plausibly, and with no breach of logical propriety, deny (3) on the ground that L-freedom is an incoherent notion; accept that we are sometimes morally responsible, and conclude that moral responsibility does not entail libertarian freedom of the will.  This second argument, which a compatibilist could give, is of course also uncompelling.<\/span><\/div>\n
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While the original argument is not compelling, it is practically decisive for me.  I  accept both premises. That I am morally (as opposed to causally, and as opposed to legally) responsible for at least some of what I do and leave undone I take to be more evident than its negation. I can't shake the idea.<\/span><\/div>\n
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And, like Kant, I see compatibilism as a shabby evasion, "the freedom of the turnspit."  I apperceive myself as the unsourced source, the agent cause, of some of my actions and omissions and indeed in such a way that I could have done otherwise.  <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Some will say that libertarian free will and the deep moral responsibility that entails it are illusions.  I find this view incoherent for reasons supplied in Could Free Will be an Illusion?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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A reader poses the question, "How do you reconcile one's given character and moral responsibility?"  I have no really good answer to this, but I would say that no one's character is entirely given: it is in part made by the agent. One's life is a project and a task. The materials we must work with are not our doing, but what we do with them is our free doing.  Suppose you find you have an irascible temperament. That is not your doing. But you are free to either give rein to your irascibility or rein it in.  Suppose you excuse your expressions of irascibility by insisting "Hey, that's just the way I am."  That too is a free act, a free display of what Sartre calls "bad faith."<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Having mentioned Sartre, I believe he says somewhere something to the effect that freedom is what we do with what has been done to us.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
And now it occurs to me that the Sartre reference serendipitously jibes with the existentialist beatnik graphic above.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
<\/a>Ross Douthat<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Does the Divine Transcendence Require that God not be a Being among Beings?<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Do You Think Your Views Will Ever Change?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My position, bluntly stated, is that we are libertarianly free (L-free).  One is L-free just in case (i) one is the agent cause or unsourced source of some of one's actions, and (ii) with respect to an action of which one is the agent cause, one unconditionally could have done otherwise.  As far as I'm … Continue reading “What I Believe About Free Will”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[503,301],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credo","category-free-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}