Here is a review of libertarian free-will, it's problems and how it eliminates responsibility Quote:
One can define libertarian free will as "given a choice nothing determines which choice is made". Nothing guarantees that a particular choice will be made, not even reasons or values or knowledge. What this means is that though we will always choose according to some desire that we possess, which particular desire of the many we have that wins out is not determined in advance by anything but "us" (in some obscure sense of the word). So even if I want most of all not to raise my hand, I might raise it anyway, presumably as long as I have any minuscule desire to do it. Of course, this seems counter-intuitive right from the start. If the strongest desire in me is to stay still, how can I be caused to raise my hand by a weaker force?
Trying to bypass this problem, some libertarians argue that desires and reasons and other things "influence" but do not "cause" our actions and choices. But it remains unclear just what the difference is supposed to be. My knowledge that a wall stands before me certainly causes me to choose to change the direction of my walk. My desire to live certainly causes me to avoid leaping out of windows. Yet these libertarians would not say that walls and windows deprive us of our free will. So they have to elaborate somehow.
"Suppose some person," a libertarian asks, "freely performed some act...say raising an arm in order to vote". The libertarian says that this person "exerted [his] power as a first mover (an initiator of change) to bring about" the motion to vote. But what about the request to vote in the first place? Actually being in a circumstance that calls for a vote is itself a necessary condition for raising a hand to vote. Correct. But this does not mean that the circumstances will be a sufficient cause of the action, and the libertarian's point is that something else is necessary, which is unrelated to anything in or outside us. But this thing is not our reason or our knowledge or our character or our desires, or anything at all really. And that creates a problem. For,
instance, the premise that this person brought about [the choice] for the sake of some reason, which entails another necessary cause-the reason-without which the hand would never be raised. And this reason will certainly correspond to a brain state, and a chain of causation can be followed as we examine the path of all the calculations and knowledge that are in turn necessary causes of that reason arising in our brain. So the libertarian is forced to reject even the obvious theory that reasons cause us to act.
What libertarians must contend is that despite the necessity of all these causes, the sum of them all (having a reason and a strong enough desire, as well as the requisite knowledge and the necessary circumstances) will still not be sufficient to cause an action. In other words, though such things must be in place, something "else" is required, which is neither a reason nor a desire nor knowledge of any kind nor anything about the surrounding circumstances. And this is the problem. It is hard to see what this "something" can be.
If I have a desire to actually shoot someone, a desire that is sufficient to override all other desires which urge me against it---a necessary cause of any willful choice to shoot---why would I not shoot? If some libertarians appeal to moral shame or guilt or fear, then they are appealing to a desire. But that is a cause, and that cannot be his special "something." Likewise, if they appeal to my character, knowledge of God or moral laws, to reasons not to shoot, or any such thing, then they are still appealing to causes. So what is left that could "cause" me not to shoot? What these libertarians are saying, in effect, that there is some uncaused power in me that can cause me not to shoot---for no reason whatever. But this contradicts the premise that an agent always acts "for the sake of some reason." For if I have no reason at all not to shoot, how can it be that I might choose not to shoot for some reason? That is a contradiction. So this concept of free will seems to be self-refuting.
Libertarians might respond that we usually have a reason to do and not to do something, and which reason we follow is caused purely by "something" in us, something that is not a reason, nor anything else like desires or knowledge or circumstances. But if the ultimate reason for my doing something is not a reason, then rational action is impossible, for no rational calculation can then be the cause of what I do. Only something purely non-rational is the ultimate necessary cause on this theory, something uncaused by our knowledge, our reason, even our character. That would be terrible if it were true---far from rescuing responsibility, it destroys it.
Why Libertarian Free Will Eliminates Responsibility
Imagine two parallel universes, identical in every detail, and imagine a man in each universe, identical in their character and knowledge and desires and everything else, standing in totally identical circumstances. Now imagine that one of these men chooses to kill his wife, but the other man chooses not to. What could possibly explain this? Since the two situations and the two men are identical in every respect, there can be no cause whatsoever for either man's choice. This is what libertarian theory entails.
But this has an unacceptable consequence. For it means that neither these men's desires, nor their knowledge, nor their moral character--*nothing at all---can be blamed for having caused their choice. But this means that we could not even say that the first man was evil
and the second good, since that would assume the first man's badness caused him to kill, while the good man's goodness caused him to refrain. But these men are identical, so one cannot be evil and the other good. Libertarians might say he is evil or good after the deed, but that means we could not say he did what he did because he was a good or a bad man. In fact, we could not say at all why he acted. What quality in either man that is uniquely a part of "him" can be blamed for causing his particular choice? There is none.
Now imagine that this man is you, and in one universe you kill your wife, in the other you do not. What would you think of yourself then? You would know that nothing causes your actions---not your character, nor your environment, nor the surrounding circumstances, nor your knowledge, not even your love of your wife. Nothing. Your choice to kill or refrain is purely a result of happenstance: whichever universe you are in is a mere luck of the draw. Imagine how you would feel, having learned that it is nothing but the result of unpredictable randomness whether you kill your wife or not at this very moment. Shocking, yes? Imagine that you refrain from killing, but could step into a time machine, run the universe back a million times, and watch yourself again each time, and then saw that sometimes you killed and sometimes you didn't, even though each time all the circumstances, including your thoughts, desires, character, everything,were the same. There would be no rhyme or reason to why you did one or the other. It would be a mere shake of the dice. This is the nightmare of a world that libertarian theory describes.
Wouldn't you instead want the result every single time to be the same? Every single time you would choose not to kill, right? But if the same circumstances are followed by the same choice 100% of the time, that is determinism. In fact, we know we are good only by seeing whether our goodness causes us to do good deeds, and so we should expect deterministic causation in our own choices. After all, the only logical alternative to 100% causation is randomness, and why would we feel good about our choices if they were actually random, and not caused by any of our inner qualities?
Here's the deal. "I" am defined by my knowledge, abilities, character, values, and desires. If something causes me to act which is not one or the sum of these things, then "I" did not cause that action. Libertarians, instead, want "me" to be defined by something other than these things. But if you were to take them all away, there would be no "me," so this approach is absurd. Without knowledge, abilities, values, desires, reasoning, a character, there would be no person at all, and if something other than these things caused us to do something, then no one could really say we caused it, because we are all these other things, none of which is at fault in this libertarian view. And could anyone conclude I was at fault for something I did not cause? No.
So the key word here is "I" (or "he" or a "person" or whatever) and what it means. Libertarians defines it as some unexplainable, unidentifiable thing that excludes all memories, desires, virtues, values, traits, even reason. This is a rather illogical conception of human identity, and one any reasonable person can easily reject.
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12-03-2007, 09:28 AM
Linear Mode
