The Significance of Free Will by Robert Kane

Author:Robert Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780199880355
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-03-07T10:11:03+00:00

8. Purpose and Agency: The Self-Network

Plural voluntariness (T32) and rationality (T33) provide some of the further conditions for plural voluntary control, but not all of them. In the broadest sense, one has plural voluntary control over a set of options when “one is able to do or bring about whichever of the options one wills, when one wills to do it, for the reasons one wills to do it, rather than accidentally or by mistake or merely by chance, and without being coerced, compelled, or otherwise controlled by anyone or anything else in doing it or willing to do it (such as a Frankfurt controller or mechanism, or a CNC controller or mechanism).” Not all of these conditions are dealt with by prior theses, but some are. Thus “doing whichever of the options you will (i.e., most want) to do, when you will to do it” is covered by T31 plus r3 of T33 (plural rationality). “Doing it for the reasons that you will to do it” is covered by r2 of T33 along with the commentary on choosing for reasons in T34 and 35; and “doing it and willing to do it without being coerced or compelled” is covered by T32 (plural voluntariness) plus r3 ofT33.

This leaves two further conditions of plural voluntary control to deal with: not doing it “accidentally or by mistake or merely by chance,” and doing it “without being controlled by any other agents or mechanisms” such as Frankfurt or CNC controllers. Regarding the first of these conditions, it may appear that since moral and prudential SFWs are undetermined, they must be done “accidentally,” or “by mistake,” and hence “merely by chance.” But this is not so.

T36 (on FW) (“On Purpose” [I]): Moral and prudential SFWs are very much unlike cases in which agents do things accidentally or by mistake, and hence merely by chance, such as my pressing the wrong button on the coffee machine or the sniper missing his victim by accident (T27). Note, first, that if I press the right button at the coffee machine, the one I was trying to press, I do not do so accidentally, by mistake, or merely by chance, even though the outcome was not determined and I might have failed (and similarly for the sniper if he hits the victim he was aiming at). It is only if we fail in such attempts that we do so accidentally, by mistake, or merely by chance. But with moral and prudential SFWs, either way, the agents do what they will to do when they will to do it (T31), they do it voluntarily, that is, without being coerced or compelled in doing it (T32) or in willing to do it (T33 [r3]), and they do it for the reasons that they will to do it (T33 [r2]), so that the reasons (moral or immoral, prudent or imprudent, as the case may be) do not influence their choices merely accidentally, but rather the agents choose for the reasons in the manner described by T34 and 35.

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