# Free Will Revisited - Soft Compatibilism (ver. 2.0) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 29, 2011, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706 "2011-07-29T05:27:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/41 "2011-08-02T14:40:24Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That wasn’t the point of the analogy. Rather, if there were some group of people that thought that brownness and bunniness mattered, for them to produce an argument to the effect that brown bunny-free will exists, and then to conclude that free will exists, is invalid – what exists, what’s really out there, are brown bunnies. Well, it’s not invalid. But it may be beside the point. Or it may not! It depends! There would be two claims on the table: 1. Brown bunnies exist. 2. Brown bunnies are what we’re after when we talk about freedom of the will. Claim 1 is trivially true. Claim 2 is trivially false. The brown bunny puzzle is solved! What I’m saying is that that when it comes to the analogous claims: 1’. Uncausedness in Dennett’s sense allows for assignment of personal responsibility 2’. Assignment of personal responsibility is what we’re after when we talk about freedom of the will there’s nothing trivial about the question whether these claims are true or not. 1 and 2 are trivial. 1’ and 2’ are not. This puzzle is definitely not solved. The brown bunny puzzle, which has been trivially solved, seems to have nothing to do with this puzzle at all, so I’ve forgotten why it was brought up. 😉 It looks like you’re sympathetic with 1’, and disagree with 2’. Is that right? > [@](#): > > And apart from that, I really have a hard time believing that there are people to whom ‘freedom’ does not have a connotation of being able to do differently – that freedom does not mean to most people the existence of choice. [The jury seems to be out on this one.](http://faculty.schreiner.edu/adfeltz/Papers/NC%20v%20NI.pdf). (I’ve only read the first couple of pages of that paper, though.) ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/42 "2011-08-02T15:47:06Z")
**Frylock** , I don’t think it’s worth continuing to argue about this; you have a valid point, but, IMO, the two definitions of free will have sufficiently little in common that using them alongside one another breaks the discussion. It’s like having two conceptions of god, one of which is a transcendent, all-powerful being and creator of the universe, the other is, I don’t know, a Spinozan embodiment-of-nature kind of being, then arguing when we talk about the former (or think we do), we really talk about the latter, then providing an argument for the latter, and then going on to claim, since all talk about the former was _really_ about the latter, the former has been vindicated as well. This, not the question of whether Dennett’s conception of free will is legal, was the point of my analogy – I have no problem with his or any conception, it describes an interesting concept that is well worth thinking about, but so does the ‘could have done otherwise’ concept, which seems to be crowded out in compatibilist arguments (since everybody is ‘really’ talking about another kind of thing). ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/43 "2011-08-02T15:58:04Z")
Hm. Okay. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/44 "2011-08-02T16:02:37Z")
**Pbear** , going back to your OP, Do I have you right when I summarize your post thusly? 1. Libertarianism doesn’t work because it’s clear that our choices are determined 2. Dennett’s compatibilism doesn’t work because, since according to compatibilism everything is determined, and since assignment of responsibility requires that an action not be determined, compatibilism doesn’t allow for the assignment of responsibility–but the ability to assign that responsibility was supposed to be one of the selling points of Dennett’s view. 3. Soft compatibilism doesn’t suffer from either of these problems. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/45 "2011-08-02T17:54:25Z")
**Half Man Half Wit** , I don’t know if you’ll respond to this, but I really don’t see how the definitions of “cause” are so different. We agreed in post [23](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14087344&postcount=23) and [24](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14087473&postcount=24) that “cause” means necessary condition. Since then, I’ve only proposed one other thing: There are some proposed causes that, while technically are necessary conditions, are so vacuous and/or tautological that they would be rejected in any serious attempt to actually determine causation. Examples [ol] [li]What caused the 69 deaths on Utøya?[/li]46 deaths per hour for 1.5 hours. (Actually, this isn’t a necessary condition) [li]What caused the recession?[/li]A sustained decrease in gross domestic product. [li]What caused our high unemployment?[/li]Lots of people being unable to find employment. [/ol] An event is “uncaused” if all possible necessary causes are either vacuous or tautological. I just don’t see where the equivocation is. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/46 "2011-08-02T18:05:54Z")
I think that defining cause as necessary condition is a non-starter. I can cause a match to light by striking it–but it’s not necessary for me to strike the match in order to cause it to light. In fact I’m not sure causes are _ever_ necessary conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/47 "2011-08-02T18:44:30Z")
> [@Dr.Love](#): > > An event is “uncaused” if all possible necessary causes are either vacuous or tautological. The problem with the notion of vacuousness is that it lifts up the decision of whether or not an event is caused to the level of human reasoning, which I think is a massive level-confusion. Whether or not something is caused or not should not depend on whether or not we feel its putative cause is enlightening. As for tautologies, ultimately, all explanations are tautological – I don’t see why that would render an event uncaused, either. Perhaps it helps to regard causes informally as reasons why something happens. The fact that 46 people died per hour for 1.5 hours is very much a reason for the fact that 69 people died in total; that the GDP decreased is a reason for the recession; that people find no jobs is a reason for unemployment. The reason why we don’t think of these things as ‘causes’ is that we don’t think of either them or their ‘effects’ as events, but in more abstract terms; causes in a more specific sense could then mean reasons for events. **Frylock** , the problem with leaving out the ‘necessary’ is that if we do, we can’t point to anything as a thing that must have occurred in order to have another thing occur – but if there’s nothing that must have occurred prior to some thing’s occurrence, then in a sense there’s ‘no cause’ to some event. (That’s a rather clumsy sentence, but I’m too tired to go back and rephrase it…) But I still see no problem with just forming the disjunction of sufficient causes to find a necessary cause, because, in order for the match to be on fire, it _must have been_ the case that _either_ you struck it, _or_ you ignited it with another match, _or_ you subjected it to heat beyond its ignition point, _or_… And in general, the more in detail you describe your system, the less possible causes will there be, up eventually to microscopical time-reversibility, were knowledge of the state and the dynamics of the system allows you to calculate every prior state, yielding a necessary cause. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/48 "2011-08-02T23:19:51Z")
I don’t see a way to avoid intertwining causation with reasoning. Nature by itself gives us very little information on causation. If all you know is that determinism is true, and that the universe went through state A and then state B, you can only conclude that B will follow A again, if A should ever recur. If determinism works in the other direction, you can only conclude that A will always precede B. Even with more information, I don’t see how it changes much. The laws of physics are mute when it comes to necessary conditions. By themselves, they tell us only sufficient conditions (if the system starts like _this_, and evolves for some amount of time, the we get _that_, or vice versa). To get necessary conditions, _we_ have to look for them—through experimentation or by using our mathematical intuition to discern which terms are important and which are not. This whole undertaking is governed by our own sense of what is “reasonable.” For example, by examining the mechanical equations of a coin flip, we might conclude that the mass of the Andromeda galaxy is not a causal factor. Why? Because the outcome wouldn’t change if we altered the mass of Andromeda, or even if we remove it entirely from consideration. Unless we made it much, much larger. Is this counterfactual sufficiently different from the real world that we can ignore it in our causal calculations, or do we need to admit that Andromeda’s mass is a causal factor in the coin flip? Unless we have some idea of what is a reasonable counterfactual, it seems like our necessary condition will quickly encompass the entirety of the universe. I can’t imagine why all explanations would be tautological. There are statements in logic that aren’t tautological, so why do explanations comes exclusively from the ones that are? How is the statement “The diversity of species is explained by evolution via natural selection” tautological? There’s not even a purely logical reason why it should be true! I’m not sure what to say about my three examples, particularly the GDP one. A [definition of a recession](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession#Definition) is falling GDP (for two quarters). Saying that a recession is caused by its definition being true strikes me as incorrect use of the word “cause.” It’s like saying that the Super Bowl is caused by the national championship game of the NFL. If 46 deaths/hr and 1.5 hours caused 96 deaths, could we also say that 96/n deaths per grain of sand and n grains of sand on Utøya is the reason? What if I multiplied and divided 96 deaths by the temperature that day? Or the number of active volcanoes in the solar system? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/49 "2011-08-03T04:39:33Z")
It’s just that, if A happened because of B, C, and D, and if B, C and D are not the kinds of things we would like to call ‘causes’ for whatever reason, to me, it still just doesn’t seem right to me to call A therefore uncaused – it didn’t happen for no reason, or ‘just happen’, after all. That would only be the case if there were no B, C and D. The notion or definition of ‘causation’ you employ when you exclude certain causes is not the same notion used in calling something uncaused, at least to me – that’s where I think things get somewhat word-gamey. As for tautological explanations, I gave an example earlier – wrt natural selection, since it is a mechanism leading to diversity, one could say that ‘species evolving according to a mechanism leading to diversity leads to diversity’; to me at least, this does not seem substantially different from ‘flipping the coin so that it lands heads causes the coin to land heads’. But you wouldn’t now call biological diversity unexplained. As for the examples, it’s a question of what constitutes an explanation – what is relevant to the to-be-explained. The number of grains of sand isn’t, for example: a difference in that number would not lead to a difference in the number of deaths, while a difference in the time the massacre lastet likely would have. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/50 "2011-08-03T06:30:35Z")
As mentioned upthread, the idea of using emergence to solve the free will puzzle occurred to me as I was reading the passage on causation in Dennett’s _Freedom Evolves_. I thought, hey, isn’t that an emergent property? What’s funny is that, at the time, I couldn’t have strung together twelve words describing what the phrase means. It’s something I’d bumped into from time to time but never had need or occasion to understand. So, I turned to my internet machine to see whether my hunch was right. What I discovered, based on the Wiki and SEOP articles linked in the OP, was that he was making a more-or-less emergence argument. (This was based on my _in effect_ reading, which as I’ve said may well have been wrong.) I thought, how clever. That’s a compatibilist stance which might go through and went back to reading the book. Only to discover Dennett doesn’t develop the argument along those lines after all. Frankly, I didn’t find his thesis persuasive but I wondered whether something similar could be made to work by exploiting my initial hunch. So back I went to the internet machine and read everything I could find, of which the three best papers were those linked in the OP. But best of all was the book _Emergence_ (2008), edited by Mark Bedau and Paul Humphreys, collecting previously published essays by various philosophers and scientists. At first, when I hadn’t yet discovered the book, I developed the argument in the alternative. That is, I wrote an argument showing how easy it is for compatibilism to go through in a naturalistic way if one assumes strong emergence is true (as several philosophers have argued, especially Paul Humphreys). Importantly, no magic is involved. It’s a real interaction of real things. Whether the interaction can have causal effects not accounted for by the parts is the question. In the alternative, I composed an argument based on weak or descriptive emergence, the form which eventually became the OP. I abandoned the strong argument for several reasons. First, upon finding and reading _Emergence_, I discovered no scientist will have anything to do with strong emergence or irreducibility in principle. Second, no one seemed to be able to point to a clear example of it happening, or even a reasonably contested or disputed example. All I could find was speculation without evidence that consciousness might be such a thing. Third, I learned a good argument can be made for downward causation in a weakly emergent system. That seemed to me enough to put through a compatibilist thesis. Fourth, as mentioned in the OP, although scientists assume reducibility in principle, irreducibility in practice (in a complete sense) and inability to work reductionism in reverse are the norm. In such cases, a macro theory based on observation is as good an explanation as we’re going to get. The third point is based mainly on Bedau’s work, Chapter 8 of _Emergence_, originally published in 2003 (see [here](http://people.reed.edu/~mab/publications/papers/principia.pdf)) (marked as a draft but I’ve noticed no differences from the version published in _Emergence_ and the link is to his college website) (the original published version is available [here](http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~principi/p61-2.PDF), but it’s a much larger download). This article was an extension of a 1997 paper (see [here](http://people.reed.edu/~mab/publications/papers/weak-emergence.pdf)) in which he apparently introduced the phrase “weak emergence,” which others sometimes call descriptive, predictive or epistemological. His further argument in this article is that weakly emergent systems can have downward causation. (He also argues weak emergence can have explanatory autonomy in some cases, e.g., traffic jams, but I don’t think emergence of the mind is one of those cases.) The full argument is too long to give here, so I’ll quote what seems to me the crucial passage (p.177): > [@](#): > > [W]eak downward causation is simply a species of ordinary downward causation. Many ordinary macro objects with downward causal effects are weakly emergent. Waves, vortices and traffic jams are all plausible candidates for weak emergence. Their macro causal powers are constituted by the causal powers of their micro constituents, and these are typically so complicated that the only way to derive their effects is by iterating their aggregate context-dependent effects - i.e., by simulation. In any event, weak emergent properties and objects have the kind of relation to their micro-level bases that ordinary macro-scale physical properties and objects have to their bases. Weak emergent causal powers are constituted by the causal power of the micro constituents. The weak emergent macro cause is nothing but the iteration of the aggregate micro causes. Ontological and causal reduction holds. Since weak downward causation is just a subset of ordinary macro causation, the one is no more problematic than the other. The fourth point, irreducibility in practice and inability to work reductionism in reverse in most cases, is made many times in the science essays in _Emergence_. I particularly like the statement of the problem by Philip Anderson, winner of the 1978 Nobel prize for his work in solid state physics. The original essay (see [here](http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~jay/880/moreisdifferent.pdf)) was published in 1972 and appears as Chapter 10 of the book (p.221): > [@](#): > > The reductionist hypothesis may still be a topic for controversy among philosophers, but among the great majority of active scientists I think it is accepted without question. The workings of our minds and bodies, and of all the animate or inanimate matter of which we have any detailed knowledge, are assumed to be controlled by the same set of fundamental laws, which except under certain extreme conditions we feel we know pretty well. > > It seems inevitable to go on uncritically to what appears at first sight to be an obvious corollary of reductionism: that if everything obeys the same fundamental laws, then the only scientists who are studying anything really fundamental are those who are working on those laws. In practice, that amounts to some astrophysicists, some elementary particle physicists, some logicians and other mathematicians, and a few others. … > > The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a “constructionist” one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society. > > The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. … > > [He then sketches out a hierarchy of sciences running from elementary particle physics to psychology.] > > But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is “just applied Y.” At each stage entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. To similar effect, see Robert Laughlin & David Pines (also physicists), Chapter 14 in _Emergence_ (originally published in 2000) (see [here](http://www.pnas.org/content/97/1/28.full)) at p. 261, “The emergent physical phenomena regulated by higher organizing principles have a property, namely their insensitivity to microscopics, that is directly relevant to the broad question of what is knowable in the deepest sense of the term.” They then illustrate by various examples how, as a practical matter, almost all advances in physics and other sciences are possible only by experiment and approximation, rather than reduction to fundamental equations. In sum, they say at p. 265, “Rather than a Theory of Everything we appear to face a hierarchy of Theories of Things, each emerging from its parent and evolving into its children as the energy scale is lowered.” With that as background, what I think emergence brings to the table is a useful way of looking at complexity. On one hand, if we accept (as I do) that the brain is a natural system and reducible in principle, it’s ultimately determined in a Laplacian sense. On the other, if we accept that this system exhibits volition, we can look to emergence as an explanation, or at least the best description we can manage, of how this ultimately determined system acts as it does. I’m happy to leave that as a compatibilist compromise. But, if we are to apply Occam’s Razor as **HMHW** suggested earlier, what we should cut is the useless abstract deterministic reduction. Rather, it’s the observable volition (subject to observable constraints) which matters. Whether the mind observably demonstrates volition (and the constraints, for that matter) is, of course, a legitimate subject for debate. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/51 "2011-08-03T07:29:01Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > **Pbear** , going back to your OP, Do I have you right when I summarize your post thusly? > > 1. Libertarianism doesn’t work because it’s clear that our choices are determined > > 2. Dennett’s compatibilism doesn’t work because, since according to compatibilism everything is determined, and since assignment of responsibility requires that an action not be determined, compatibilism doesn’t allow for the assignment of responsibility–but the ability to assign that responsibility was supposed to be one of the selling points of Dennett’s view. > > 3. Soft compatibilism doesn’t suffer from either of these problems. Sort of, but not quite. My problem with libertarianism, as I explained to **Dr. Love** in [Post #18](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14083551&postcount=18), is that I think behavior is influenced and that when we give those influences their appropriate weight, we end up with a form of compatibilism. As for Dennett, I was using him in the OP as an example of traditional compatibilism. In that sense, you’ve fairly characterized my objection. Or rather the objection of the SEOP article. Stated a little differently, I don’t think Dennett delivers on the promise of giving his verson of compatibilist free will (or what I think can only be called responsible agency) the same content as what what most of us call free will, or even what I define as volition. Having failed in this regard, he doesn’t answer the ethically hard question (which he acknowledges) of whether it’s fair to punish (legally or socially) those who do wrong. Whether my model of soft compatibilism solves this problem is, of course, what we discussing. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/52 "2011-08-03T14:36:11Z")
But the question I have is still: How does volition emerge, and what does it do? What, to the best of my ability to tell, you seem to be doing is to assert that volition is an emergent notion, to then proceed to elaborate on emergence in general. That’s all very fine, but it doesn’t give me a better an understanding of your model – indeed, lacking such justification, there’s hardly a model at all. Take snowflakes. Their unique shape is an emergent property, but just to say so isn’t very illuminating; rather, the interesting thing is to describe why and how such shapes emerge, and while we in general can’t as a practical matter predict the shape of a snowflake, we understand very well how it comes about. As for volition, it clearly isn’t present in the fundamental description, so it may well be emergent. But it also may well be illusory – we may simply be mistaken about possessing volition. Absent any justification for the emergence of volition, both possibilities remain open – and absent any need for volition, Occam would have us conclude that it’s just not there. Moreover, weak emergence can’t introduce any wiggle room in order to make genuine choices – since the micro level always determines the macro level, determinism on the micro level means determinism on the macro level, even if it’s not obvious. The need for volition is the other thing I don’t see in your posts. You’ve stated that it’s ‘just a label’, which would suggest we can do away with it without consequences, obtaining a description of the world that is just as good. Also, and I’m sorry if I just missed this, but I don’t see where you have given an argument to the effect that there are problems determinism can’t solve, while volition does, and discussed how it solves them. And moreover, the stances that volition is just a label and that it has any explanatory utility determinism alone lacks seem to be contradictory to me. Speaking very opportunistically, why should I believe in volition? What do I gain? Why should I believe it exists? * * * As for my stance on Dennett, I think the problem I have is really twofold. One, it seems to me that the argument proceeds somewhat as follows: 1) lack of strict causality allows freedom, 2) let’s define strict causality in such-and-such a way, 3) plainly, the just defined thing doesn’t exist, 4) hence, we have freedom! But the causality defined in the second step is not the causality in the first one, or at least need not be. And if Dennett uses the notion of causality as it was presented in this thread (or rather, as I understand what was presented in this thread), I don’t think it is. Freedom is granted by the existence of uncaused events only if uncaused means that there is no reason for the event to happen, if it ‘just happens’, or something like that. But in Dennettian causality, things always do happen for a reason, we just don’t call all of these reasons causes. Equivocating one notion of causality with the other is, I think, where things go wrong. The second problem is that then, it appears, one goes on and defines an appropriate notion of freedom allowed by the Dennettian notion of causality. So, Dennettian-uncaused events grant Dennettian freedom – which I grant. But what have we learned? The conclusion is trivial, following purely definitionally: Dennettian freedom is defined such that it is granted by Dennettian causality. So all that we get out of it in the end is that there is a definition of the words ‘causality’ and ‘freedom’ such that we have this particular kind of freedom in a deterministic world. But that’s hardly a revelation – we could have just defined freedom as whatever it is we have, and come to the same conclusion. The interesting questions are completely missed by this exercise in definition-making (well, one set of interesting questions, anyway; as I said, I think that he makes great strides on the front of moral responsibility, which is of course a pretty interesting question as well). ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2011, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/53 "2011-08-03T21:50:36Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > It’s just that, if A happened because of B, C, and D, and if B, C and D are not the kinds of things we would like to call ‘causes’ for whatever reason, to me, it still just doesn’t seem right to me to call A therefore uncaused – it didn’t happen for no reason, or ‘just happen’, after all. That would only be the case if there were no B, C and D. The notion or definition of ‘causation’ you employ when you exclude certain causes is not the same notion used in calling something uncaused, at least to me – that’s where I think things get somewhat word-gamey. So you’re worried that people could be wrong in their assessment of causation under this theory? That will happen with any reasonable theory of causation. Besides, I’ve given conditions about when B, C, or D won’t count. > [@](#): > > As for tautological explanations, I gave an example earlier – wrt natural selection, since it is a mechanism leading to diversity, one could say that ‘species evolving according to a mechanism leading to diversity leads to diversity’; to me at least, this does not seem substantially different from ‘flipping the coin so that it lands heads causes the coin to land heads’. But you wouldn’t now call biological diversity unexplained. I assume you mean the gravity example from upthread. You said “And of course, ultimately, all explanations can be cast into such a tautological form.” A statement like this potentially confuses two distinct propositions: [ol] [li]For any event, there is a tautological explanation.[/li][li]All explanations are tautological.[/li][/ol] Proposition 1 is true, and obvious. One can always say “Event E was caused by the event E occurring.” Proposition 2 is false. In order to get some explanations into tautological form, you have to remove information. You simplified natural selection to “a mechanism leading to diversity,” but the theory of natural selection is considerably more complicated than that! In the other example, the statement that “gravity is an 1/r attractive potential” is not a tautology. Not all vector fields are conservative (e.g., magnetic fields are not). Of those that are, not all of them have a potential that decreases with 1/r. A priori, there’s no reason that either of these things should be true of gravity. Thus, the statement is not a tautology. Compare this to your suggestion to “forming the disjunction of sufficient causes to find a necessary cause.” Logically, this statement will be true for **every possible event**! This is a tautology. Do you see the difference? In science, the concept of falsifiability is a pretty popular one. Tautologies are one kind of unfalsifiable statement. Why is falsifiability important in science, but not when investigating causation? Or are you attempting to argue that there are no falsifiable statements? > [@](#): > > As for the examples, it’s a question of what constitutes an explanation – what is relevant to the to-be-explained. The number of grains of sand isn’t, for example: a difference in that number would not lead to a difference in the number of deaths, while a difference in the time the massacre lastet likely would have. Isn’t this rather question begging? You seem to be assuming that deaths/hour is some fundamental property of the massacre, but deaths/grain isn’t, and basing your conclusion on that. Or, consider another thought: suppose that I take all possible values of (deaths/grain) and (number of grains), and form a disjunction of them. By your own reasoning, haven’t I just created a necessary cause? What makes the disjunction of (deaths/time) and (time) to be “causier” than (deaths/grain) and (grains)? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/54 "2011-08-04T04:44:05Z")
No, I’m not worried that people may consider the wrong causes, I’m worried that different ‘cause-assignments’ yield different judgement on whether or not something os caused or uncaused – that causation becomes a subjective matter, from which allegedly objective conclusions (such as whether or not we are free) are drawn. Whether you call something a cause or not does not have any bearing on whether it happened for a reason or not. Regarding tautologies, you claim that being able to formulate the reason for heads coming up as ‘throwing the coin such that heads comes up’ means the description is void, and hence, no cause can be pointed to; I merely pointed out that you can do an analogous thing with every explanation, but we don’t consider these explanations void for that. And not every conceivable event can be given a necessary cause by disjoining sufficient ones – those that don’t have any, that I would consider uncaused, can’t. And regarding what constitutes an explanation: do you think varying the number of grains of sand on the beach would have made a difference in the number of deaths? Do you think varying the amount of time wouldn’t have? You’ve talked about varying the comditions of some event counterfactually to find its causes, so I don’t see where the problem lies. Anyway, I’lö be away on holiday for the next twp weeks or so, so don’t be offended if replying might take some time… ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/55 "2011-08-04T06:10:05Z")
**Half Man Half Wit** : I realized earlier today that I’ve not thanked you for taking the time to think about and comment on my model. As I said to Dr. Love, I was hoping for push-back in this thread and you’re certainly doing that. So, thank you. Also, I will mention that I have a humble skepticism about my model for the simple reason that so many great minds have wrestled with the problem over the years without achieving a resolution. I have to assume there’s a pretty good chance I haven’t either. On the other hand, bear in mind that hard determinism hasn’t carried the day with the majority of careful thinkers. It’s very much a minority view. All that said, let’s turn to substance. First, you’re reading too much into “just a label.” In [context](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14086375&postcount=21), this was in response to your question of what I thought the concept added. I acknowledged, “of itself nothing. It’s just a label.” But, I continued in the very next sentence to explain, “Whether it’s a useful label depends on how one considers the observational evidence discussed in the OP.” As a matter of principle, I think it’s inappropriate to load one’s theory into the definitions, which is pretty much the objection you’re making to Dennett (with which I mostly agree). I was pointing out that I was doing no such thing. Second, what it seems I’m not communicating effectively is that one of my core claims is that we should view the free will problem as an empirical question rather than an analytical one. That’s the point of my relying on emergence. Since descriptive emergence stipulates reduction in principle, it has no magical causal powers and I’m not asserting any. On the other hand, reduction in principle doesn’t generally give us a useful way to get at problems, whether they be in solid state physics, chemistry, biology or psychology. We figure those things out by observation. I’m saying we should use the same approach with the free will problem. Perhaps surprisingly, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on [Free Will](http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/) says something similar. Section 3.b summarizes the current state of the debate as follows: “Most philosophers agree that whether or not determinism is true is a contingent matter; that is, determinism is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. If this is so, then whether or not determinism is true becomes an empirical matter, to be discovered by investigating the way the world is, not through philosophical argumentation.” Third, as for why you should care about volition, you captured it pretty well yourself [yesterday](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14091224&postcount=38). Volition (or free will) is a key concept upon which turns the issue of moral responsibility. Yes, one can justify punishment and social sanctions on utilitarian grounds without volition, but it’s hard to defend that position ethically. It’s all very well to say punishing misconduct will deter others, but what of the perp in the dock? He didn’t heed the sanction and, if determinism is true, couldn’t. Would you say it’s okay to punish the perp’s mother if that would deter misconduct by other perps? I assume not, even though arguably this would be very effective. Substituted punishment is frequently used in war for that very reason. So, we’re relying on more than utilitarian justification. We’re relying on the perp’s owning the misconduct. And have to, I think, to justify deterrence ethically. Straight determinism won’t get us there, which is why traditional compatibilists spend so much time trying to give deterministic free will morally relevant content. See the SEOP article on Compatibilism linked in the OP. Fourth, and this is the problem which particularly interests me, there are cases such as senility, homelessness and mental illness where judging people by their actions is palpably unfair. IMHO, punishing such people in the interest of deterrence is just as wrong as punishing the perp’s mother. In real life, this is the side of the issue I find myself most often defending and wonder whether I’m not more of a determinist (in this sense) than are you. Abstract determinism is all very fine, but where do you come out on these difficult “edge cases”? On preview, I see you’re about to leave on holiday. Have fun. If you have a chance to reply before you leave, so much the better for us. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706/56 "2011-08-04T06:53:45Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Regarding tautologies, you claim that being able to formulate the reason for heads coming up as ‘throwing the coin such that heads comes up’ means the description is void, and hence, no cause can be pointed to; I merely pointed out that you can do an analogous thing with every explanation, but we don’t consider these explanations void for that. That is absolutely not my claim. My claim is: if ALL (correct) necessary conditions are vacuous or tautological, then the event is uncaused. You think my claim is: if ANY (correct) explanation is vacuous or tautological, then the event is uncaused. > [@](#): > > And not every conceivable event can be given a necessary cause by disjoining sufficient ones – those that don’t have any, that I would consider uncaused, can’t. Let me amend this clam. I should say “Logically, this statement will be true for every possible event in a deterministic universe.” Now we’re back to tautology. > [@](#): > > And regarding what constitutes an explanation: do you think varying the number of grains of sand on the beach would have made a difference in the number of deaths? Do you think varying the amount of time wouldn’t have? I’ll try to explain how I see the situation. If we assume that the ratio deaths/time is constant\*, then changing the time will change the number of deaths. Similarly, if we assume that the ratio deaths/grains is constant\*, then changing the number of grains will change the number of deaths. Or we could look at it from the other direction. If we assume that time is constant\*, then changing the deaths/time ratio will change the number of deaths. If we assume that grains is constant\*, then changing the deaths/grain ratio will change the number of deaths. You probably think that discussing the number of grains of sand in this context is ridiculous. Of course it’s ridiculous! But if we appeal to it’s being ridiculous then we’re bringing the question of causation “to the level of human reasoning.” I’m trying to figure out how to avoid such a “massive level-confusion.” I’m trying to figure out why multiplying and dividing the number of deaths by “time” counts as an explanation/necessary cause, but multiplying and dividing by “grains” apparently doesn’t. Given this, I really would like an answer to my last question.. Suppose that I take all possible values of (deaths/grain) and (number of grains), and form a disjunction of them. By your own reasoning, haven’t I just created a necessary cause? What makes the disjunction of (deaths/time) and (time) to be more valid than (deaths/grain) and (grains)? As far as I can see, the mathematics and logic used to generate a necessary cause with time is identical to that with grains. > [@](#): > > Anyway, I’lö be away on holiday for the next twp weeks or so, so don’t be offended if replying might take some time… Have fun on vacation. Reply when you can. \*Or doesn’t vary in a certain way [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-revisited-soft-compatibilism-ver-2-0/590706.md?page=2)