Abstract
The Consequence Argument is one of the leading arguments for the incompatibility of causal determinism and free will in the sense of freedom to do otherwise. Thus, it challenges “classical compatibilism” of the sort defended by many philosophers, such as Hume, Schlick, Ayer, Lehrer, Perry, Lewis, Vihvelin, et, al. David Lewis has offered what has become the most influential response: local-miracle compatibilism. I present a critique of this kind of response to the Consequence Argument. My critique shows that, although Lewis-style local-miracle compatibilism may effectively address some versions of the Consequence Argument, it does not succeed in refuting others (that involve a plausible principle that is arguably the best way to capture the intuitive idea of the fixity of the past and has nothing to do with counterfactuals). My critique consists, in large part, in arguing for a new reconstruction (and extension) of the principle of the fixity of the past - a principle that played a crucial role in the history of the debate and that has, in one form or another, been employed by many important historical figures (including Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham and Kant). I will also show why Lewis’s famous views about our powers in time-travel are false.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
- 2.
For a recent discussion and analysis, see: John Martin Fischer (2016), “Introduction: God, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility.”
- 3.
Discussions of the argument(s) for fatalism go back at least as far as Aristotle’s famous analysis of the Sea Battle Argument (De Interpretatione Bk. II) and can be traced through David Foster Wallace’s (2011) essay, “Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality.” The argument for theological incompatibilism was first presented by Cicero and remains controversial even now:
The Stoics wrestled with such problems, and Cicero framed what may have been the first argument for the incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will, in the form of an argument against divination. The Jewish and Moslem traditions have contributed their share of reflection on these matters. But the fullest and richest development of these questions has occurred in the Christian theological tradition, beginning at least as early as Origen and reaching a climax in the debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (Hasker 1989, 1)
For an overview and discussion of the historical treatments of these arguments, see: William Lane Craig (1991). The essays in my Our Fate give an analytical overview.
- 4.
- 5.
Similarly Michael Slote (1982, 9) writes, “I want to argue, in particular, that [all versions of the Consequence Argument] will rest on [a] questionable [modal] inference…” Slote is here asserting that all versions of the argument depend on the crucial principle employed in the “modal’ version of the argument. The modal version employs a “transfer of powerlessness” principle.
- 6.
Kadri Vihvelin (2013, 162-166) calls it, or a relevantly similar version, the “counterfactual version.”
- 7.
Note that this claim does not in itself capture the notion of causal determinism, since it does not explicitly state anything about causation. The idea here is that, whatever else causal determinism implies, it implies the claim in the text.
- 8.
I employ “S” as a variable for agents, and “s” to indicate a “state” of the world. So, s1 is the (intrinsic) state of the world at t1.
- 9.
That laws have a property in virtue of which they are “fixed” (out of our control) is denied by the proponents of a Humean view of natural laws, according to which they are mere generalizations. A view of this sort is developed in Beebee and Mele (2002).
- 10.
- 11.
There is a detailed discussion in Fischer (1994, 67-78).
- 12.
There is another possibility: “If S were to do X, then some natural law would not have been one or the past would have been different.” But for our purposes we can put this aside; nothing in our discussion will be affected by doing so.
- 13.
The Humean Compatibilist (Beebee and Mele 2002) will reject (PFPL) insofar as she does not accept the requirement of holding the natural laws fixed. The view then is vulnerable to the challenges presented below in the text to the rejection of (PFPL).
- 14.
In footnote 5, Lewis (1981, 119) seems to anticipate this switch to a “counterfactual-free” version of the argument (my term), along the lines of (PFPL). He contends that it is “uninstructive” to learn (in my terms) that the compatibilist must deny (PFPL). The dialectic here is very delicate, and I cannot pretend to give the issues a fair treatment here. My co-author and I seek to address them in Fischer and Pendergraft (2013). I contend that the denial of (PFPL), the regimentation of Ginet’s deeply intuitive way of expressing the view that the past and laws are fixed, highlights a jarring commitment of the compatibilist about causal determinism and freedom to do otherwise. Is this “uninstructive”? I do not think so, because (PFPL) captures a natural way of thinking about our practical reasoning. We learn that the compatibilist cannot accommodate this intuitive framework.
- 15.
Of course, someone might deny that the backtracker (“If Sam were to decide to go ice-skating on Tuesday, the accident would not have occurred on Monday”) is true in the example. After all, if Sam were to decide to go ice-skating on Tuesday, perhaps he would have forgotten about the accident or he would have been acting out of character, and so forth. I do not have any knockdown argument that the backtracker is true in the example, but I believe that the story can be filled in so that it is at least plausible that the backtracker is indeed true. (Nothing in the argument here depends on defending the claim that the backtracker is obviously true; all we need is the claim that it is at least plausible that, if one fills in the details suitably, the backtracking conditional would be true.)
- 16.
Of course, (PFPL*) and (PFPL**) only specify necessary, not sufficient conditions for the relevant power attributions. Fair enough, but it is unclear to me what could be added to such principles to rule out the attribution of fantastic powers. What other principle can be invoked? Further, given that (PFPL) does indeed rule out such attributions, this would seem to be pro tanto reason to prefer (PFPL).
- 17.
Source Incompatibilism is not available to the incompatibilist about God’s foreknowledge and moral responsibility, insofar as one holds that Gods prior beliefs to not cause agents’ choices and actions. This is one way in which theological determinism (God’s prior beliefs) is less menacing to moral responsibility than causal determinism. Note, however, that Local-Miracle Compatibilism is not available to the theological fatalist, and in this way causal determinism is perhaps less menacing to human freedom. (But, of course, I’ve argued against Local-Miracle Compatibilism in the text.)
- 18.
I employ (PFPL) to provide a solution to Newcomb’s Problem that also avoids the need to evaluate counterfactuals in Fischer (1994, 87-110). The reader might discern a pattern: much ink has been spilled unnecessarily in seeking to figure out which counterfactuals are true in all of these puzzling situations.
- 19.
As I state in footnote 4, I began publishing on the Consequence Argument and Local-Miracle Compatibilism in 1983, and through the years I have received invaluable help from colleagues and students at Yale and UC Riverside, and from commentators and audience members at countless colloquia and conferences. I wish I could thank you all individually, but, in any case, thank you! It will be obvious that I have borrowed from my previous published work, as well as extending it. I have benefitted from thoughtful comments on the current paper from Helen Beebee, Marco Hausmann and Andrew Law.
References
Beebee, Helen, and Alfred Mele. 2002. Humean Compatibilism. Mind 111 (442): 201–223.
Craig, William Lane. 1991. Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Fischer, John Martin. 1983. Incompatibilism. Philosophical Studies 43 (1): 127–137.
———. 1988. Freedom and Miracles. Noûs 22 (2): 235–252.
———. 1994. The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Fischer, John Martin, and Mark Ravizza. 1996. Free Will and the Modal Principle. Philosophical Studies 83 (3): 213–230.
Fischer, John Martin, and Garrett Pendergraft. 2013. Does the Consequence Argument Beg the Question? Philosophical Studies 166 (3): 575–595.
Fischer, John Martin. 2016. Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ginet, Carl. 1966. Might We Have No Choice. In Freedom and Determinism, ed. Keith Lehrer, 87–104. New York: Random House.
———. 1983. In Defense of Incompatibilism. Philosophical Studies 44 (3): 391–400.
———. 1990. On Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hasker, William. 1989. God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca: New York University Press.
Lehrer, Keith. 1976. ‘Can’ in Theory and Practice: A Possible-Worlds Analysis. In Action Theory: Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Humean Action, edited by Myles Brand and Douglas Walton, 241-70. Dordrecht, Reidel. Reprinted in Free Will: Determinism [Volume II Critical Concepts: Free Will], edited by John Martin Fischer, 2005, 234-61. London: Routledge.
Lewis, David. 1973. Counterfactuals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 1976. The Paradoxes of Time Travel. American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (2): 145–152.
———. 1979. Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s Arrow. Noûs 13 (4): 455–476.
———. 1981. Are We Free to Break the Laws? Theoria 47 (3): 113–121.
Slote, Michael. 1982. Selective Necessity and the Free-Will Problem. Journal of Philosophy 77 (1): 5–24.
Stalnaker, Robert. 1968. A Theory of Conditionals. In Studies in Logical Theory, ed. Nicholas Rescher, 98–112. Oxford: Blackwell.
van Inwagen, Peter. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 2004. Freedom to Break the Laws. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 28 (1): 334–350.
———. 2008. How to Think About the Problem of Free Will. The Journal of Ethics 12 (3/4): 327–341.
Vihvelin, Kadri. 1996. What Time Travelers Cannot Do. Philosophical Studies 81 (2-3): 315–330.
———. 2013. Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn’t Matter. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wallace, David Foster. 2011. Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality. In David Foster Wallace. Fate, Time, and Language, ed. Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, 141–216. New York: Columbia University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fischer, J.M. (2021). Local-Miracle Compatibilism: A Critique. In: Hausmann, M., Noller, J. (eds) Free Will. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61136-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61136-1_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-61135-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-61136-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)