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A Compatibilist Account of the Epistemic Conditions on Rational Deliberation

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Abstract

A traditional concern for determinists is that the epistemic conditions an agent must satisfy to deliberate about which of a number of distinct actions to perform threaten to conflict with a belief in determinism and its evident consequences. I develop an account of the sort that specifies two epistemic requirements, an epistemic openness condition and a belief in the efficacy of deliberation, whose upshot is that someone who believes in determinism and its evident consequences can deliberate without inconsistent beliefs. I argue that conditions of both types are indispensable, and that they can be formulated so as to withstand the relevant objections.

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Notes

  1. For discussions of this type of view, see Kapitan (1986), Searle (2001), Nelkin (2004a, b), Coffman and Warfield (2005).

  2. van Inwagen makes the related claim that “anyone who denies the existence of free will must inevitably, contradict himself with monotonous regularity” (van Inwagen 1983, p. 160).

  3. I have defended incompatibilism about the relation between determinism and the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility, but compatibilism about many other features of agency and morality (Pereboom 2001). In particular, I have endorsed without elaboration Kapitan’s compatibilism about determinism and the beliefs required for deliberation (Pereboom 2001, pp. 135–137). Here I present my more considered deliberation-compatibilist view.

  4. Thanks to David Christensen and Sarah McGrath for pressing this point.

  5. For discussions of when options for action are mutually incompatible or mutually exclude one another, see van Inwagen (1983, p. 240); and Coffman and Warfield (2005, p. 26). I intend “distinct actions” to be equivalent to “mutually incompatible actions.”

  6. Figuring out what to do essentially involves an epistemic dimension that is practical in a more robust sense than is essentially involved in, say, merely trying to find out what one will do.

  7. Kapitan raises an apt concern for the “knows”-version of the epistemic openness requirement, which, according to him favors the “believes”-version: “I may, for instance, believe I will not fly to Copenhagen tomorrow and thus I do not deliberate about so doing, yet I may not know what I believe (perhaps some unforeseen emergency will call me to Copenhagen). The action is impossible relative to what I believe and so does not appear open to me, though it is contingent with respect to what I actually know” (Kapitan 1986, p. 239). What I mean by certainty is a credence of 1.0, and I do not have in mind an epistemic notion of certainty that builds in knowledge. Consequently, my claim is not undermined by the sort of concern Kapitan raises.

  8. Or, more elegantly but less transparently stated, instead of (a) and (b), simply: if the proposition that she will do A i is inconsistent with some proposition that she in the present context regards as settled, she cannot believe that it is.

  9. McGrath made this point in her commentary at the Florida State University conference. The version I presented on that occasion featured (S) without (b).

  10. As we shall see, an epistemic deliberative efficacy condition can also handle this example, but there are other cases, like the one in the next paragraph, that demand an epistemic openness condition as well. In Nelkin’s example, floating counts as an action because we are imagining the agent having a body mass that requires that she wiggle her legs to float.

  11. On OPC2.

  12. In her commentary on this paper for OPC2.

  13. On OPC2.

  14. Coffmann and Warfield (2005, p. 38) note that a “no belief in ability” thesis is endorsed by Bok (1998, p. 110), Clarke (1992, p. 110), Kapitan (1986, pp. 235–241), Petitt (1989, p. 43), Searle (2001); Taylor (1966, chap. 12), and Waller (1985, p. 49).

  15. Clarke suggests this line of argument in correspondence.

  16. As Coffman and Warfield point out, this thesis is endorsed by Kapitan (1986, p. 241) and Bok (1998, pp. 112–113).

  17. For a general defense of animal cognition, see Kornblith (2002, pp. 28–69).

  18. Coffman and Warfield (2005, 38) formulate the “belief in epistemic possibility” thesis as follows:

    S deliberates among some different courses of action only if S believes of each of those actions that her performing it is consistent with certain other propositions she believes,

    citing Dennett (1984), Jones (1968, p. 260), Kapitan (1986, p. 241), and Mele (2002, pp. 906–907).

  19. That said, I suspect that a good case can be made that all rational deliberators will be sensitive to consistency and inconsistency, even if they need not have the concept “consistency.” Kornblith (2006) points out that animals and young children have sensitivity to logical notions, but may well lack corresponding concepts.

  20. Thanks to Louis deRosset for this point. One might add that if the deliberation-incompatibilist’s concern is that deliberators who believe that determinism is true will have inconsistent beliefs, and the deliberation-compatibilist proposes belief-conditions that avoid such inconsistent beliefs, it is dialectically questionable for the deliberation-incompatibilist to object that the compatibilist proposal fails to allow for deliberation that involves inconsistent beliefs. See also Neil Levy’s discussion of this issue (Levy 2006).

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  1. Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Derk Pereboom

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Correspondence to Derk Pereboom.

Additional information

This paper has benefited from discussion on the Second On-line Philosophy Conference, May 2007—OPC2, and at the Free Will and Science Conference at Florida State University, January 2008. Thanks especially to Dana Nelkin and Joseph Campbell, my commentators at the OPC2, to Sarah McGrath, my commentator at FSU, for exceptionally helpful discussion. I am also grateful to Tomis Kapitan, Randolph Clarke, Al Mele, David Christensen, Tim Schroeder, Fritz Warfield, Seth Shabo, Richard Holton, Josh Gert, Helen Beebee, Michael McKenna, Michael Robinson, Brad Weslake, Eddy Nahmias, and Benjamin Kelsey for valuable contributions either on OPC2, at FSU, or in private correspondence or discussion. Special thanks are due to Louis deRosset for splendid conversation and comments on several drafts. Research on this article was facilitated by a generous Visiting Fellowship in the Centre for Consciousness of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, October–December 2005.

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Pereboom, D. A Compatibilist Account of the Epistemic Conditions on Rational Deliberation. J Ethics 12, 287–306 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9036-9

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