Abstract
There are powerful arguments for free will scepticism. However, it seems obvious that some of our actions are done of our own free will. It has been argued that we can solve this puzzle by giving ‘free’ a contextualist analysis. In everyday contexts we are often allowed to ignore sceptical arguments, and can truly say that we acted freely. In the more demanding context of philosophy, it is true that we never do anything freely. Our freedom is elusive; it escapes us as soon as sceptical arguments are brought up. This kind of freedom contextualism has been criticized for conceding too much to the sceptic. Furthermore, it has problematic implications for moral responsibility. I develop an alternative contextualist analysis of ‘free’, according to which it is proper in certain contexts to ignore sceptical arguments even if they are brought up. Ignoring them is proper when doing so is necessary for engaging in an activity that is obviously justified. I argue that engaging in deliberation and inter-agential interaction with other people are obviously justified activities that require ignoring sceptical arguments. In these contexts, we do have a non-elusive kind of freedom.
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Notes
This is how Lewis describes the skeptical problem, since his view on knowledge is a relevant alternatives view. It is clearly meant to be a natural and intuitively plausible way to think about knowledge and what it requires, but there are many competing views both within contextualism (see, for instance, Rysiew 2007/2011 and Feldman 2004:261) and epistemology at large. However, this paper is focused on freedom rather than knowledge, and on a contextualist debate that takes its original inspiration from Lewis. I will therefore not question Lewis’ characterization of knowledge or delve into the epistemological discussion of how to best characterize it.
It should be noted that this theory is a mere suggestion from Hawthorne rather than something he confidently believes in, but he argues that it deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard compatibilism and incompatibilism (Hawthorne 2001: 77).
See Nelkin (2014) for a more detailed discussion about how difficulty to do the right thing – in Anna’s case, difficulty to restrain herself – can mitigate responsibility.
Since attributions of knowledge or freedom might have implications for how we ought to treat people as well, it is possible that analogous problems can be construed for Lewis’, Hawthorne’s and Rieber’s theories without bringing moral responsibility into the picture, but the problem certainly becomes accute when we consider moral responsibility.
It might not seem this way at first glance to competent speakers of the language, but some philosophical reflection might persuade them that the concept ‘moral responsibility’ actually fills no function in explanatory science.
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Acknowledgments
This research was made possible by funding from Anna Ahlström and Ellen Terserus’ foundation.
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Jeppsson, S. Non-Elusive Freedom Contextualism. Philosophia 44, 793–808 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9734-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9734-7