Free Will: The Basics by Meghan Griffith

Author:Meghan Griffith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

SOME CURRENT INCOMPATIBILIST

PROPOSALS

For those who remain unconvinced that moral responsibility and freedom are compatible with determinism, this chapter will provide a number of alternatives. Recall that incompatibilism is the view that free will and determinism cannot exist together. Thus, some incompatibilist theories claim that because determinism appears to be false, there is room for free will. Libertarianism is a kind of incompatibilism according to which we sometimes have free will. There are three basic varieties of libertarianism (with considerable variation within each category): simple indeterminism, event-causal libertarianism, and agent causation (or agent-causal libertarianism).

But recall also that not all incompatibilists endorse free will. Some think that we do not have free will, either because they believe that determinism is true, or because they believe that both determinism and indeterminism are incompatible with free will. These views are called hard determinism and hard incompatibilism.

This chapter will discuss all of these general incompatibilist categories.

LIBERTARIAN VIEWS

SIMPLE INDETERMINISM

Do you ever feel as if you do something spontaneously and intentionally? It often seems to me as if I do. For example, I spontaneously raise my hand, turn on the computer, smile at a friend, or make a decision to go to the movies. It's not that these actions are without rhyme or reason. But they feel as if I am making them happen without anything making me bring them about. And perhaps nothing is making me perform them. Perhaps our free and intentional actions are, at their roots, uncaused. Simple indeterminism is the view that when we act freely there is an uncaused basic mental action. A basic mental action is just what the name implies. It is basic, meaning that it is not a complex process composed of other actions. And it is mental, meaning that it is to be distinguished from a bodily movement or what philosophers sometimes call an “overt” action. Examples of basic mental actions are choices, decisions, volitions (i.e. willings), and tryings. Sometimes a basic mental action just is the entire action. In other words, sometimes we just act by doing something in or with our minds, rather than by making any bodily movements. So, I make a decision without moving my body and this is my action. Other times, the basic mental action is the beginning of a more complex action. So, perhaps I raise my hand and this action begins with a volition – I will to raise my hand. The volition then causes a chain of events culminating in my arm's rising. Simple indeterminism is the view that all free actions either are, or begin with, uncaused basic mental actions.

Carl Ginet espouses an interesting and important version of simple indeterminism. Ginet suggests that uncaused basic mental actions are characterized by an “actish phenomenal quality”. A phenomenal quality is the way something seems or feels to us – i.e. how we experience it. So if something has an “actish phenomenal quality”, it feels like an action. What Ginet means here is that the event feels to us as if we are making it happen.

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