Abstract
John Fischer has recently argued that the value of acting freely is the value of self-expression. Drawing on David Velleman’s earlier work, Fischer holds that the value of a life is a narrative value and free will is valuable insofar as it allows us to shape the narrative structure of our lives. This account rests on Fischer’s distinction between regulative control and guidance control. While we lack the former kind of control, on Fischer’s view, the latter is all that is needed for self-expression. I first develop Fischer’s narrative account, focusing on his reliance on temporal loops as giving us control over the value of our lives. Second, I argue that the narrative account grants us greater power over the past than Fischer would allow: since narrative allows not only for changes in how we feel about episodes in our past but what those episodes in fact were, it allows for a kind of retroactive self-constitution. Finally, I suggest that this modification of the narrative view opens the possibility of a conception of freedom far stronger than guidance control. It does not give us the libertarian control over whether to choose A or B in the present, but it does provide a measure of control over the sort of person an agent has been, and thus whether she is the sort of person who will choose A or B in the future.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I will not dwell on the account presented in Responsibility and Control here, because Fischer repeatedly stresses that his views on the relation between guidance control and narrative do not depend either on the specifics of his own view or, even, on which “actual-sequence” view one holds (Fischer 2009b, 165–166).
A point worth considering in this regard is that, if Fischer is right, then “meaning” cannot merely supervene on physical reality, since meaning can be altered retroactively, while physical reality cannot.
Peter Goldie (2012, chap. 1) argues that while narratives typically involve causal, emotional, and evaluative elements, they need not do so, and they can disclose a different kind of meaning: they can show, for example, how the events they describe hang together in the view of a character or the narrator. One such sense of meaning is conveyed by Thomas Scanlon, who takes “the meaning of an action for a person [to be] the significance that person has reason to assign to it, given the reasons for which it was performed and the person’s relation to the agent” (Scanlon 2008, 54). In his example, there is a difference in meaning between a phone call to an ill relative that one makes out of genuine concern and one made out of a desire to thereby cultivate the approval of a wealthy grandfather. But even if learning the motives in such cases is likely to change how we feel about the agent in question, how we see him changes independently of how we feel.
Velleman’s affective view of narrative coherence is just one of many attempts to define essential features of narrative. For views that reject Velleman’s proposal, see Noël Carroll (2007) and Gregory Currie (2010, chap. 2), who emphasizes that narrative requires causality in a fairly loose sense—including all sorts of dependence relations that would not pass muster with philosophical accounts of causality—and adds thematic unity as an important feature of narratives. Mark Bevir (2000) also emphasizes thematic unity, focusing not on the overall unity of the narrative but on the way narrative connections are formed between individual elements that share loose “themes.” For a very schematic overview of some leading contenders in the quest to uncover central elements of narrative coherence, see Paisley Livingston (2013, 341–342).
More accurately, the point is that such anger in response to the gift will have to be explained through psychological, rather than rational, means. Contrast this with the explanation of getting angry at an accidental shove: it may be misguided to get angry in such a circumstance (unless, of course, the accident was itself due to carelessness on the part of the person doing the shoving), but we can still understand the anger as a rational response. I am leaving the distinctions here somewhat vague because I think they really are vague: we might better say that anger at an insult is appropriate in most senses, anger at the shove is inappropriate in some senses but appropriate in others, and anger at the gift is inappropriate in most senses.
The example, of course, is adapted from The Confessions of St. Augustine (Augustine 2002).
This does not mean, however, that any interpretation can be correct. I’ve argued that the identity of motives is partially, but only partially, constituted by narratives. Thus, motives can only be correctly identified by narratives that are consistent with the existing facts. I am not here taking a position on just how much of a motive’s identity should be left to narrative and how much to fixed facts, but we can suggest the following. If the (otherwise) most coherent explanation of an action does not require reference to emotion, neural activity in the limbic system need not concern us. Similarly, if a narrative calls for an emotional explanation in the absence of activity in the limbic system, we should seek a better narrative.
This gloss will work for my purposes here, but it is an oversimplification insofar as it assumes that actions occur at definable times. On a more complex account, on which actions are processes, themselves linked to other processes either by being embedded in them or being rationally or physically linked to them, the picture becomes significantly more complicated.
I am ignoring important nuances here, since Fischer’s brand of semi-compatibilism can be taken up by either determinists or indeterminists. The latter may grant that it is possible for there to be two possible worlds in which I perform different actions, A and B, but deny that it is within my power to decide which of these worlds will come about. The point, then, is not that I cannot do something that will make a difference to the world, but that it is not up to me whether I do so.
This is meant only to be a quick sketch of how guidance control without regulative control might be thought to exclude free will. It is not my goal here to defend any of these claims.
Whether (1) and (2) can ultimately be resolved without resolving (3) is a separate concern I will not address here.
References
Anscombe, E. (2000). Intention. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Augustine. (2002). The confessions of St. Augustine. Mineola: Dover Publications.
Bevir, M. (2000). Historical explanation, folk psychology, and narrative. Philosophical Explorations, 3(2), 152–68.
Carroll, N. (2007). Narrative closure. Philosophical Studies, 135(1), 1–15.
Currie, G. 2010. Narratives and narrators: a philosophy of stories. Oxford University Press.
Davidson, D. 1980. “Actions, reasons, and causes.” In Essays on actions and events. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D. C. (1992). The self as a center of narrative gravity. In F. S. Kessel, P. M. Cole, & D. L. Johnson (Eds.), Self and consciousness: multiple perspectives. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fischer, J. M. 2006. “Responsibility and self-expression.” In My way: essays on moral responsibility, 106–29. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, J. M. 2009a. “Free will, death and immortality: the role of narrative.” In Our stories: essays on life, death, and free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, J. M. 2009b. “Stories and the meaning of life.” In Our Stories: essays on life, death, and free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, J. M. 2009c. “Introduction: meaning in life and death.” In Our Stories: essays on life, death, and free will, 3–25. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, J. M., & Ravizza, M. (1998). Responsibility and control. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Frankfurt, H. 1982. “Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.” In Free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ginet, C. (1990). On action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goldie, P. (2012). The mess inside: narrative, emotion, and the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kane, R. (1996). The significance of free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Korsgaard, C. (2008). The constitution of agency. New York: Oxford University Press.
Livingston, P. (2013). Narrative. In B. Gaut & D. Lopes (Eds.), The routledge companion to aesthetics, third edition (pp. 340–50). London: Routledge.
MacIntyre, A. C. (2007). After virtue: a study in moral theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
McDowell, J. (2011). Some remarks on intention in action. The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy, 6, 1–18.
Scanlon, T. (2008). Moral dimensions: permissibility, meaning, blame. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality: an essay in the philosophy of mind. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (2001). Rationality in action. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Thompson, M. 2008. Life and action: elementary structures of practice and practical thought. Harvard University Press.
Uebel, T. (2012). Narratives and action explanation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 42(1), 31–67.
Velleman, J. D. (1992). What happens when someone acts?. Mind, 101, 461–81.
Velleman, J. D. 2000a. “Well-being and time.” In The possibility of practical reason, 56–84. New York: Oxford University Press.
Velleman, J. D. 2000b. “Introduction.” In The possibility of practical reason, 1–31. New York: Oxford University Press.
Velleman, J. D. (2003). Narrative explanation. The Philosophical Review, 112(1), 1–25.
Velleman, J. D. 2006. “The self as narrator.” In Self to self, 203–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Velleman, J. D. (2009). How we get along. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Luca Ferrero, Robb Eason, and audience members at the 2013 meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (including my commentator, Tina Talsma) for helpful discussion of earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to Maureen Sie and several anonymous referees for their thorough feedback.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Altshuler, R. Free will, narrative, and retroactive self-constitution. Phenom Cogn Sci 14, 867–883 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9365-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9365-z