Abstract
In this paper I propose a form of free will fallibilism. Unlike the free will realist who is fully persuaded that we have sufficient evidence of freedom to justify holding individuals morally responsible for what they do and imposing punishment, and unlike the free will skeptic who is fully persuaded that we do not have enough evidence to believe that we face a future of open alternatives, the free will fallibilist will believe that we have enough evidence to justify a belief in freedom for some purposes but not for others. Along the way I argue that deliberation-compatibilism of the sort recently defended by Pereboom is subject to a very familiar sort of counterexample. The question that concerns me the most is whether punishment—this brutal institution that disposes of the lives of countless of our most vulnerable citizens—can be justified. I think it cannot, precisely because there is not sufficient evidence that human beings are free to choose between branching alternatives and so deserve to be treated like that. At least, if there is such justifying evidence it is more or less completely balanced by evidence that all events including human actions have causes. Moreover, I find compatibilism utterly unpersuasive. At the same time, I believe that I am a free agent; what I do is in large part up to me. I believe that the explanation of action cannot be reduced to causal explanation, and I believe that the logic of action requires a notion of branching time. I have two pictures of the universe; which of the two pictures I may rely upon will depend upon just what it is that I intend to do. Between the problem that preoccupies me, punishment, and my day-to-day choices (whether to have another cup of coffee, for example), there is a wide gap. There are a lot of choices that, on the axis of justification, fall in between the two, many of them choices about how to treat those around us: whether to snub a friend who has insulted me, whether to castigate her, whether to reward a kind act with praise. Where to draw the line is a topic for another paper. The only principle that right now seems to me firm enough to act upon is this: the greater the likelihood of doing harm, the less likely the choice is to be justified.
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Notes
In spite of denying moral responsibility, Waller holds on to a notion of free will—we might call his view “semi-incompatibilism”—which is unrelated to moral responsibility and so (I think) is not of interest here. See Caruso (2016).
Prior 1967. Belnap et al. 2001 formulate a logic of “agents and choices in branching time.” “The central idea is that the concept of action must be understood in relation to an open future, and we formulate a rigorous theory that tries to understand how action is compatible with and indeed requires indeterminism.” (p. 28).
Causal determination suitably qualified with quantum indeterminacy, of course.
Thus Nelkin 2000, at pp. 575–76:
[I]t is not easy to identify a plausible criterion for deciding when a belief is held only from one standpoint. Thus, it is not clear why the belief that one is determined and not free is not held from the same standpoint as one’s belief that one is free and not determined. … Finally, even if there were a criterion for deciding when a belief is held from only one standpoint (so that we could say that each of our beliefs is held exclusively from different standpoints), it would not follow that being in such a state is perfectly rational.
Watkins 2004 makes the second point this way:
Regardless of whether or not two standpoints can be held at the same time, can they both be true or must one of them be illusory? … That is, granted that we conceive of ourselves as free and as determined (albeit from different standpoints at different times), which of these conceptions contains a true description of how we are?
This passage from Watkins is quoted in Frierson 2010.
Scott Sehon distinguishes the question being asked from the scientific/theoretical point of view—What caused that behavior?—from the question being asked from the teleological/deliberative point of view—What was the purpose of that action?—and thus claims not to fall victim to Nelkin’s arguments (Sehon 2016).
Pereboom (2014), Chapter Five. It is an interesting point that in doing this he can follow the compatibilist account of deliberation while disagreeing with that account as to both freedom and responsibility. He agrees that the compatibilist account of deliberation accounts for the intuitions behind (F), but since he believes that a claim of freedom and responsibility is inconsistent with determinism, he is not obliged to believe that what the compatibilist has offered in explanation of deliberation amounts to a commitment to freedom and responsibility.
Dana Nelkin proposes that deliberation is the nexus that explains the various alternatives actually facing us. I am not sure what role her account is supposed to play, whether it is meant as an alternative to the two-factor account of the sort Pereboom proposes, or as a supplement to it, or merely as a way of pinning down those possibilities that count as alternatives for me. In any case I believe that the example I describe below works against the nexus account as well. Nelkin (2011), Ch. 7 passim.
When it comes to the general case of deliberation, it seems to me, the importance of the distinction between trying to make happen and making happen disappears: the deliberator who believes in determinism will believe that, where the choice at a given time is between making x happen and making y happen (or making not-x happen, or not making x happen), one or the other is foreclosed to her. But she will also believe that, as between trying to make x happen and trying to make y happen (or trying to make not-x happen, or trying to not make x happen), only one of which will occur at a given time, one or the other is foreclosed to her.
Pereboom (2014). I have not attempted to quote directly here, though I believe I have not changed the meaning. But I do follow Pereboom is using “doing A” here rather than “making x happen.” There is an obvious problem with the effectiveness condition: if I believe it is psychologically impossible for me to judge that I ought to do A I might still believe that were I to reach that judgement that would cause me to do A, so that the effectiveness condition would be met in spite of the fact that I would not believe that doing A was a genuine alternative for me. I’m not sure how Pereboom meets this objection; he deals with a similar objection that involves choosing rather than judging, but .
If the reader should object that the hypothetical is too implausible to be effective, let her consider this: Even if there is no possible world in which these things happen, all that is necessary is that in some possible world Harold believe that they are happening: that is, Harold believes that control of his actions has been taken over in this way. The conclusion will be the same. Although Harold’s beliefs satisfy the two parts of Pereboom’s scheme, it would be inconsistent for Harold to believe that what he was doing was up to him.
I am using the term “fallibilist” like this: not all skeptics are fallibilists, but all fallibilists are skeptics. The free will-and-responsibility skeptic may oppose punishment, believing that there is not enough evidence of “ultimate” or metaphysical freedom to warrant the attributions of moral responsibility that would justify punishment. She argues in opposition to the free will realist, whether libertarian (that is, one who agrees with the skeptic about whether metaphysical freedom is necessary for responsibility, but insists that we have such freedom) or compatibilist (that is, one who denies that the freedom necessary for responsibility is metaphysical freedom). The fallibilist, as I am using the term, opposes punishment and believes with the skeptic both that it is metaphysical freedom that is necessary for responsibility and there is not enough evidence of such freedom to warrant attributions of responsibility. But the fallibilist is also concerned that the blanket denial of such freedom may lead to other undesirable forms of treatment of human beings, namely the kind of treatment warranted by what that Strawson means by “a thorough-going objectivity of attitude.” An example of this would be the so-called “humanitarian” approach to criminal justice in which offenders and prospective offenders would be subject to indefinite periods of detention and treatment at the hands of experts in such treatment. For the fallibilist there is not enough evidence of the lack of the requisite form of treatment to justify that sort of treatment either. The problem, of course, is to find a solution to the problem of criminal justice in light of this even-handed skepticism (Corrado 2018a).
See The Washington Post, March 22, 2017, “A painkiller found to be no better than a placebo for sciatica,” by Jia Naqvi (2017). In the case of this particular drug, Lyrica (pregabalin), studies showed that the drug not only did no good, it was positively harmful, causing more side effects than the placebo.
I began to think about the two standpoints as a matter of burden of proof after reading Pigliucci & Boudry 2014. Pigliucci and Boudry distinguish between a prudential burden of proof and an evidential burden of proof, but do not apply the distinction to the question of free will. I believe that the distinction they make is important but that there is no need to distinguish two different sorts of burden.
See, for example, Clermont 2009. The notion of “conviction [or belief] to an appropriate level” is borrowed from French criminal law.
For example, Ekstrom would put the burden on the compatibilist; Lycan would, instead, put the burden on the incompatibilist. Kadri Vihvelin (Vihvelin 2013) seems to follow Lycan’s lead in this. She contrasts common sense beliefs with philosophical intuitions; the common sense belief shifts the burden of proof to the philosopher to support his intuition.
Or, taking the Frankfurt examples into account, unless the actor was the uncaused source of the action. That qualification should be understood throughout; it would bog the text down to make reference to it on every occasion.
The best statement of this argument is in Sehon (2016) at pp. 202, 207. Sehon believes that his own teleological account of freedom is immune from this objection.
I owe the following point to an anonymous reviewer, who concedes that Minos may well deliberate about whether others are responsible for what they do, but suggests that Minos, in deliberating, must hold himself responsible (and punishable) for his decisions, and in particular for the harm caused by the “enormous rise in crime” attributable to his refusal to punish. But I believe the same considerations should apply. Minos (an agent causalist in action theory, let us suppose) may believe that there is not enough evidence against freedom of the relevant sort to undercut his deliberating about it while at the same time he comes to the conclusion that there is not enough evidence in favor of freedom of that sort to justify punishing him for what he has done. As to the enormous rise in crime the reviewer points to, there must of course be some use of force on the part of the state in controlling crime. The question is whether it should be retributive punishment. The position I believe is correct is that what is now being called the quarantine approach is wrong, but that the punishment approach is also wrong, insofar as punishment is retributive and presupposes moral responsibility and metaphysical freedom. But an approach that limits what the state can do in pursuit of crime control, in the way that punishment does, and at the same time treats the individual as not deserving of punishment, is I think the right answer.
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I would like to thank the editor of the journal and three of its reviewers for holding my feet to the fire. Their comments forced me to reconsider much of what I had written, and resulted in a much better paper.
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Corrado, M.L. Free will fallibilism and the “two-standpoints” account of freedom. Synthese 198, 1967–1982 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02181-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02181-1