Darwin vs. Buridan: Free will requires Indeterminism.

Introduction and Summary

It is often objected that a random event cannot be rational or responsible. However, human decision-making is not an individual event occurring at the atomic level, it is a very complex process involving billions of neurons. It is often assumed that indeterminism can only come into play as part of a complex process of decision-making when the deterministic element has reached an impasse, and indeterminism has the "casting vote" (like an internalised version of tossing a coin when you cannot make up your mind). This model, which we call the Buridan model, has the advantage that you have some level of commitment to both courses of action; neither is exactly against your wishes. It is, however, not so good for rationality and self-control. The indetermistic coin-toss can reasonably be seen as "the" crucial cause of your decision, yet it is not under your control.

In our model, by contrast, the indetermistic element is moved back in the descision-making process. A funtional unit we call the "Random Idea Generator" proposed multiple ideas and courses of action, which are then pruned back by a more-or-less deterministic process called the "Sensible Idea Selector". (This arrangement is structurally modelled on random mutation and natural selection in Darwinian theory). The output of the R.I.G is "controlled" in the sense that the rest of the system does not have to act on its proposals. It can filter out anything too wild or irrational. Nonetheless, in a "rewinding history" scenario, the individual could have acted differently, as requied by libertarian free will, because their R.I.G. could have come out with different proposals -- and it would still be something they wanted to do, because it would not have been translated into action without the consent of the rest of the neural apparatus. (As naturalists, we take it that a "self" is the sum total of neural activity and not a ghost-in-the-machin).

It could be argued that placing indeterminism at the source of decision-making in this way means that our decisions are ultimately unfounded. We respond that being able to give a rational account of your actions, the reasons behind them, the reasons behind those reasons and so on to infinity is setting the bar too high. In real life, nobody is that rational.

We also comment on the definitions of free will and determinism, the alleged empirical evidence against free will and the existence and significance of genuine indeterminism.

Of course, being able to build a model of it does not show that that free will actually exists, but the claim is made that it is impossible, that there is no way of conceiving it, and the appropriate response to such a claim is in fact to conceive of it. We are only arguing for its possibility, and how else do you argue for the possibility of something other than showing that it can be posited to exist without entailing any contradiction?

CONTENTS

I. Preliminaries

II Alternatives to Libertarianism

II.2. Compatibilism and Alternative Possibilities.

II.3. Semicompatibilism and Responsibility

II.4. Scepticism: Does Free Will exist at all?

III Naturalistic Model of Libertarianism

IV Discussion of the Naturalistic Model

IV.2 Does Indeterminism matter ?

IV.3 Conclusion

V. Notes

I. Preliminaries

I.1 Defining Free Will and Determinism

(i)Defining Free Will

(ii)Defining Determinism

(iii) Elbow Room

(iv) Positions in the Free Will - Determinism Debate

(v)A Prima Facie case for free will

I.1.i Defining Free Will

Free Will is defined as "the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

Not that according to this definition:

1. Free will is not deterministic behaviour. It is not driven by external circumstances.
2. Nor is free will is randomness or mere caprice. ("Rationally choose and consciously perform").
3. Free will requires independence from external circumstances. It does not require independence or separation from one's own self. Ones actions must be related to ones thoughts and motives
4. But not complete independence. Free will does not require that all our actions are free in this sense, only that some actions are not entirely un-free. ("...at least some of which...").
5. Free will also does not require that any one action is entirely free. In particular, free will s not omnipotence: it does not require an ability to transcend natural laws, only the ability to select actions from what is physically possible.
6. Free will as defined above does not make any assumptions about the ontological nature of the self/mind/soul. There is a theory, according to which a supernatural soul pulls the strings of the body. That theory is all too often confused with free will. I might be taken as an explanaiton of free will, but ity specifies a kind of mechanism or explanation — not a phenomenon to be explained.

We have defined free will in relation to determinism, so we had better define that as well.

I.1.ii Defining Determinism

"An intellect which at any given moment knew all the forces that animate Nature and the mutual positions of the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit its data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom: for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and the future just like the past would be present before our eyes".

Determinism is often confused with predictability. But whether something is determined or not is an objective fact, and not dependent on the predictive abilities of any particular observer. That is why Laplace's definition includes an Infinite Intellect. It is a way of getting the limitations of observers out of the way in order to focus on the events themselves. Determinism implies that eveything is predictable in principle, but it does not imply we can predict everything, since our limitations might get in the way. Given our inability to predict everythuing, underlying strcit determinism might still be true, but then so might a form of indeterminism.

Causal Determinism is distinct from religious fatalism. Causal determinism regards the future as fixed by exceptionless natural laws. This explains the connection with predictability, since the future can be predicted if the laws are understood. In religious fatalism, by contrast, the future is fixed by the incomprehensible Will of God, and if that requires miraculous exceptions to natural laws, so be it.

Supernatural ideas will not be used in this essay, so no more need be said on the subject of fatalism. Henceforward determinism will be short for strict causal determinism.

Whilst free will only implies that some acts are free, causal determinism means that every event is strictly necessitated and inevitable. There are thus two positions opposed to it: the position that nothing is caused in any way, and the position that some things are at least partially caused.

It is fairly obvious that the nothing-is-caused-at-all position is both wrong as a description of the universe, and of little help to believers in free will, since it does not distinguish free will from "mere caprice". This observation is often invoked as an a argument against free will, on the assumption that any departure from everything-is-caused determinism must embrace nothing-is-caused indeterminism. We can now see that the argument is based on the fallacy of the false dichotomy, since there is a Middle Way.

I.1.iii Elbow Room

Strict determinism is not a pre-requisite for science. Probabilistic laws can still be confirmed and falsified, and many areas of science have always operated statistically.

Adherents of the strict version of causality, who believe that for a cause to be a cause it must necessitate its effects, often say that in the case of probabilistic causality it is only lack of fine-grained information about the details of a physical situation that causes the appearance of merely probablistic causation. This is not a claim about what probabilistic causation means, since probabilistic causation is equally well understood by people who don't believe in hidden determining factors. It is not an empirical fact either, since, by definition, hidden determining factors are not apparent. It can hardly be claimed as something that can be argued for logically either, since arguments for strict determinism need to refute non-strict, probabilistic causation, and cannot do that without appealing, in a vicious circle, to the very assumption of underlying determinism in question. If there are hidden determining factors, they exist for a reason, and the reason is the truth of strict determinism.

The significance of Middle Way, probabilistic causation, for free will is that it has built in "elbow room". In general there will be more than one outcome to a physical situation, and these outcome will all be possible, and a selection can be made between them without actually breaking any laws, or anything supernatural happening. (To draw an analogy: strict determinism is like a totalitarian political system, where the laws lay down exactly what should be done in situation, and any departure is a violation of the law. Probabilistic determination is like a liberal political where some actions are still illegal (impossible), but there is a variety of legitimate actions available).

(The question of elbow room or alternative possibilities is dealt with in more detail in section II.2)

I.1.iv Positions in the Free Will - Determinism Debate

There are a number of positions in the debate about determinism and free will.

• Libertarians [note] think free will exists, and is incompatible with causal determinism. This is a variety of incompatibilism.
• Hard Determinists think causal determinism exists, and excludes free will. This is also a variety of incompatibilism.
• Compatibilists [note] think that free will, if it exists, can co-exist with causal determinism, if it exists.
• Supercompatibilists think that causal determinism is no merely compatible with free will, but is a necessary prerequisite for it.
• Semicompatibilists think that free will, if it exists, can co-exist with some but not all aspects of causal determinism.
• Sceptics think free will is excluded by both causal determinism and indeterminism and therefore cannot exist, since these are the only options.

We will argue for (the possibility) a version of Libertarianism against the other positions. First against the sceptics:

I.1.v Libertarianism -- A Prima Facie case for free will

These arguments are not to be regarded as finalising the issue of free will, but only of showing that there is a case to be answered.

1. The existence of the introspective sense of free will. (Determinists will quickly tell you this is down to not understanding the causes of our actions, but why don't we intuitively see our actions as being random or determined ? It is not as if we can't conceive of either of those).

2. The tendency to value freedom. (No-one, not even a determinist, would want a benevolent dictator making their decisions, even if the decisions in questions were better than the ones they would have made).

3. Our ability to detect greater and lesser amounts of 'robotic' or 'zombie' like behaviour in others.

4. Creativity and innovation. (Determinists often make a hand-waving argument (like this)listing all the external influences that go to act on an individual, and conclude that there is no room left for any individual contribution. But then why aren't we still in caves ?)

Recap

II.1.i Introduction

Here is case that free will requires causal indeterminism.

PRO: "Free will requires the ability to have done otherwise under the very same circumstances, which is only possible in a universe with some degree of indeterminism."

The following argument goes against the usefulness of indeterminism to free will:-

ANTI: "Freedom of a kind worth wanting requires rationality, and rationality mean following rules. Causal Determinism would ensure that the rules are followed. Indeterminism would disrupt the process of rational thought, and result in a capricious, irrational kind of freedom not worth having. An individual cannot call an action his or her own unless they can account rationally account for it, and unless it was caused by their own intentions"

I will now argue against the ANTI argument, taking it a sentence at a time.

II.1.ii Objection 1: "Freedom of a kind worth wanting requires rationality"

Yes, but it is by no means limited to rationality. free will of a kind worth wanting must facilitate the whole gamut of human behaviour, including creativity, imagination, inventiveness etc.

II.1.iii Objection 2: "Causal Determinism would ensure that the rules are followed."

Casual Determinism only guarantees that everything follows the laws of nature, not that anything follows the laws of thought. If you believe the universe is deterministic, you have to admit that any lapse of rationally is just as determined as everything else. Indeed, we are more likely to look for a deterministic -- in the sense of an external cause --explanation for uncharacteristically irrational behaviour than for rational behaviour -- so-and-so was drunk, drugged, etc.

II.1.iv Objection 3: "Indeterminism would disrupt the process of rational thought, and result in a capricious, irrational kind of freedom not worth having."

Is that so ? Computer programmes can consult random-number generators where needed, including 'real' ones implemented in hardware. (like this) The rest of their operation is perfectly deterministic. Why should the brain not be able to call on indeterminism as and when required, and exclude it the rest of the time ? And if random numbers are useful for computers, why should indeterministic input be useless for brains ? Is human rationality that much more hidebound than a computer ? Even including all the stuff about creativity ? Pseudo-random numbers (which are really deterministic) may be used in computers, and any indeterminism the brain calls on might be only pseudo-random. But it does not have to be, and if we assume it is not, we can explain realistically why we have the sense of being able to have done otherwise. People sometimes try to explain this as an 'illusion', but it do not make it clear why we would have that particular illusion.

And is it so great to be compelled into rule-following rationality ? If you asked some what 5 and 7 make, you would expect the answer 12. But if you asked them the same question ten times in a row, you would expect them to object at some stage, and stop answering, unlike a pocket calculator which will spit out the same answer ad infinitum. Surely the choice of whether or not to follow a set of rules is part of rationality ?

II.1.iv Objection 4: "An individual cannot call an action his or her own unless they can rationally account for it and unless it was caused by their own intentions"

It is true that we would not consider an individual to 'own' a an action or decision if it had nothing to do with his beliefs and aims at the time he made it -- that is, if we assume that indeterminism erupts in-between everything that happened to make him the individual he is, and the act itself.

But, we libertarians claim. an act is also not an individual's own if it entirely attributable to causes lying outside him, ultimately traceable to circumstances before he came into existence.

There is no need to be disheartened. If the causal origins of our actions cannot lie before our births or after our decisions have been made, they can still lie, just where they should: during our lifetimes.

Our actions can be determined by our preceding mental state, providing that our mental state is not itself entirely attributable to causes outside of ourselves. This means that, although we can pin actions to immediate purposes, we cannot trace back a chain of purposes-for-purposes ad infinitum.

I do not think that is any loss, since determinism fares no better. All purposes may be causes, but not all causes are purposes. The deterministic causal chain, if traced back, is bound to encounter factors which do not rationally explain, any more than a random occurrence does. Moreover, this process of looking for ultimate rational explanations is unusual to say the least. Our normal attitude is that John and Mary have their reasons, which are very much part of who they are, and that's that.

II.1.iv Causal and Purposive Explanation

Rational explanation is like causal explanation, but only up to a point. Causal explanation is 'classical' -- everything is brought under a uniform, impersonal set of laws. Rational explanation is 'romantic' -- people have their own unaccountably individual reasons for doing things.

It is sometimes said that we are free to do what we want, but not to choose what we want. The approach sketched so far is pretty much the opposite of this. If we have clear reasons for doing something and are in a rational frame of mind our actions follow almost inevitably. Freedom lies in the fact that our basic aims and goals, our basic nature is not inevitable, We might not have done as we did because we might not have been that kind of person. Freedom is not mere caprice, not does it lie in being the puppet of circumstances, it is self determination, a gradual evolution of selfhood.

Recap

II.2 Compatibilism and Alternative Possibilities.

(i) Introduction

(ii) Who has the Right Defintion?

(iii) The Hobbesian Argument: you are free so long as you do as you wish

(iv) Is Ignorance Bliss?

(v) Alternative Possibilities: Could Have Been Otherwise

(vi) Stored Freedom: Could Have Done Otherwise

(vii) The Frankfurt Counter-Examples: Could have willed otherwise.

(i) Introduction

But whether humans have such a powers (or whether they could in a deterministic universe) is just what is at stake. That is the problem with compatibilism: common sense strongly suggest that we have a power of choice. That makes it very easy to slip into thinking such a power would still exist in deterministic universe. But the compatiblist must argue this point from first principles, and not jsut question-beggingly assume it.

I do not think compatibilist arguments work because they employ strange and unpersuasive definitions of free will (and, occasionally physical law). There is a sort of new-lamps-for-old scam being worked; you can have your belief in both the laws of nature and human freedom, providing you exchange your current notion of freedom for the compatibilists' one.

(ii) Who has the Right Defintion?

Thefore, it is generally of importance to get the definition of a claim correct.

There is a further, specific level of concern with compatibilism, because it needs to distinguish itself from determinism. The determinist maintains that what is commonly thought of as free will is not compatible with determinism. If the compatibilist maintains that what is uncommonly thought of as free will is compatible, she may not actually be in disagreement with the determinist; they may well be talking about diffeent things. It may well be that one definition of free will is compatible, and another not.

The difference between the compatiblist and libertarian definitions of free will tends to hinge on Alternative Possibilities and Ultimate Origination. It would be worth making some comments on why the libertarian notion is closer to the common idea of free will.

The phenomenon of regret implies a common belief in Alternative Possibilities -- that one could actually have done differently.

The fact that we attribute free will only to a limited range of entities indicates that we think of it as a positive power or capacity of some kind, and not just as he absence of external constraint, as compatibilists tend to think.

Fuerthermore, it is difficult to understand history of the sunder the assumption that compatibilists are using the common definition of free will. How, then, did anyone get so confused as to think free will and determinism are incompatioble in the first place?

(iii) The Hobbesian Argument: you are free so long as you do as you wish

"Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent"

Your freedom may be affected by being in jail, but it is not affected by the truth or otherwise of causal determinism. Even if your actions today were already fixed by the physical state of the universe before you were born, you are still free so long as you can do what you want.

The truth of this is not obvious -- indeed to some it is obviously false: Kant called it a 'wretched subterfuge'. If John were to put James in manacles and make him do his bidding, Hobbes and everyone else would say that James was not free.

However, if John were to hypnotise James into being a willing and eager slave whose only desire was to do John's bidding, Hobbes -- but few others -- would say James was free, since he was doing what he wanted. Hobbes' theory seems to miss something, the ability to choose what one wants.

Hobbes's account also misses the fact that we impute volition only to certain entities. We do not say a stone is free simply because it is not in a cage, although we might say that of a bird. Freedom is not just a negative condition of being free of constraint, it is also a positive power which only some entities possess.

Believers in free will, libertarians, often emphasise two key features of free will: alternative possibilities (AP), the idea that there is a genuine choice available at a given time, and Origination or ultimate responsibility (UR), the idea that there is a genuine sense in which you are the originator of your voluntary acts, and therefore bear responsibility for them.

In other words there is a choice to be made, and it is indeed you who are responsible for making it. It is famously the case that chains of cause and effect tend to stretch forwards and backwards indefinitely. Yet our accepted practices tend to place the moral responsibility only at certain points. We blame the assassin, not the gun or the bullet (or the Big Bang). If there is to be rational justification for our moral practices, there must be a rational basis for placing the blame on persons.

It could be argued that the power to make choices is compatible with causal determinism -- after all computers make choices, and they are deterministic. However, we can guarantee that two identically programmed computers will always make the same 'choice' under the same circumstances, and that the 'choice' it makes is always predictable given knowledge of its programming and external inputs; it brings nothing uniquely of its own to the 'choice'. By contrast, libertarians believe that, having chosen they could have chosen differently under the very same circumstances. That is, that alternative possibilities were actually available, they have a positive power of choice, since they bring something of their own to a choice, they have ultimate responsibility, unlike computers whose 'choices' are always attributable to external and prior factors. We cannot attribute UR to computers because one is always substitutable for another, the individuality of the computer makes no difference.

Compatibilists sometimes argue that Alternative Possibilities are available in a deterministic universe. They claim that because E happens at time T, it did not have to happen; something else, E' was possible, so there were AP's. E does not have to happen, because its cause did not have to happen (and so on back to the Big Bang).

This is another wretched subterfuge, though. Once we get to the point where C has occurred, then E must occur, if determinism holds. Under the circumstances under which I find myself at time T, only E is possible. (i.e. there is a difference between possibility per se -- according to which E' is possible -- and possibility-under-the-circumstances according to which it is not).

The compatibilists version of Alternative Possibilities is really alternative histories. It says the history of the universe could have been different up to time T. However, I have no power to change history, so the Compatibilist version of Free will does not add up to any positive power of volition.

PDJ 3/8/01

(iv) Is Ignorance Bliss?

"From these premises it follows that men think themselves free inasmuch as they they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and as they are ignorant of the causes by which hey are led to wish and desire they do not even dream that these causes exist"

(v) Alternative Possibilities: Could Have Been Otherwise

Let S1 be the state of the universe at time T1, and L the laws of the universe. According to indeterminism, there is (in general) a set of more than one future states of the universe {S21, S22, S23...} , which are all possible in that they do not contradict the conjunction of S1 and L.

<poss>(L AND S1 AND S21)

<poss>(L AND S1 AND S22)

<poss>(L AND S1 AND S23)

According to causal determinism , the set {S2..} has only one member ... there is only one state which is compatible with the conjunction of S1 and L (being the only possibility, it is also actual and necessary).

[nec](L AND S1 AND S21)

NOT(L AND S1 AND S22)

In standard single-world metaphysics, only one possibility can actually occur. The other members of the set are "alternative possibilities". Thus, if S22 is the possibility that occurs, S21 and S23 are the AP's in that case.

(vi) Stored Freedom: Could Have Done Otherwise

However, our definition of free will is ""the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances". So the ability to have done otherwise means there is more than one possibility given a set of external circumstances. Actions can still be closely coupled to brain-states providing brain-states are loosely coupled to the external environment -- that is, so long as the brain state at time T is largely caused by previous events in the brain (including indeterministic ones).

Thus CHDO means that under a set of external circumstances -- in fact, a history -- leading up to an action, there is a range of possible brain states, and actions are closely coupled to brain states, so that the actions performed are the ones the individual wants and expects given their brain state.

Thus, non-Buridan CHDO lies in being able to want differently.

PDJ 19/7/06

(vii) The Frankfurt Counter-Examples: Could have willed otherwise.

"Jones is in a voting booth deliberating whether to vote for Bush or Kerry. Unbeknownst to Jones, a neurosurgeon, Black, has implanted a mechanism in Jones's brain that allows Black to monitor Jones's neural states and alter them if need be. Black is a diehard Democrat, and should Black detect neural activity indicating that a choice for Bush is forthcoming, Black is prepared to activate his mechanism to ensure that Jones instead votes for Kerry. As a matter of fact, Jones chooses on his own to vote for Kerry, so Black never intervenes".

"Jones is evidently responsible for the decision to vote for Kerry, though Black could have intervened and manipulated Jones, he did not have to, since Jones voted for Kerry of his own will. But in fact, unknown to Jones, there is no way that he could not have voted for Kerry (because Black would have not allowed him to), thus Jones could not have done otherwise -- there were no alternate possibilities open to him (though he did not know that). Jones voted for Kerry thinking to himself 'I would still vote for Kerry, even if I could do otherwise'. Jones was responsible for that vote even though he had (unbeknownst to him) no choice".

It is not the case that he had no choice at all. Black's mechanism has to be triggered by something, by the first faint leaning toward Bush on Jones's part. So the choice cannot be eliminated entirely -- Jones can still choose "in principle". the faint leaning that triggers the mechanism is something that could have happened otherwise. If Black replaces his mechanism with a mark II mechanism that kicks in to counteract the precursors of a decision to vote Bush, he might be able to eliminate that choice entirely, but the mechanism still has to be triggered by something, which is itself will be a choice before the mechanism clamps down. The mechanism can make a choice wholly impossible only by making the prior choices that lead up to the choice impossible.

Consider a more mundane variation of the Frankfurt story. Smith goes into a restaurant. She can have steak or fish. She chooses steak. Unbeknownst to her, fish was off. Could she have chosen it ? It depends what you mean by "chosen". She could have decided on it, picked it form the menu, maybe even ordered it ...but she wouldn't have got a far as eating it.

In the first version of the story, Black can prevent a choice being carried through, but can't prevent it entirely. Jones has lost the power to "do" in the sense of deciding to vote Bush, and then doing so, but not in the sense of having the first inkling of a decision to vote Bush. He has not completely lost his CHDO. He still has free will, and still has CHDO.

It could be objected that the action (or potential action) has been reduced to a mere "flicker" of no significance. However, that cannot be the case, because whatever triggers Black's mechanism has to be a reliable indication of the eventual action, hence is must be causally significant. (At a pinch it could be a causally insignificant accompaniment to a significant event, but in that case the underlying cause must be both causally significant and capable of not happening. Only an event that is both somewhat unpredictable, and a reliable indicator of the eventual action will be suitable to trigger Blacks' mechanism).

Maybe Black could perform a more radical operation and remove even the remotest possibility that Jones would vote for Bush (so there is now no need for a mechanism, and nothing would ever trigger it anyway). But after such surgery, would we then say Jones voted freely for Kerry ? Surely the whole point of the surgery is to ensure that he cannot. So, in this case, he has neither free will nor CHDO.

So in neither scenario does Jones have free will without having CHDO.

It is true that Jones has moral responsibility for voting for Kerry even though he could not do other wise, in the sense that of completely performing the action of voting for Bush. But as we have shown in the discussion of semicompatibilism, it was always the case that a degree of responsibility can be asserted in the absence of full Free Will. PDJ 26/07/06 (Thanks to MF! )

Recap

II.3 Semicompatibilism and Responsibility

(i)Introduction

(ii)Casual Responsibility

(iii)Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality

(iv)Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress

(v)Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action

II.3.1 Introduction

"These arguments which are, up to a point successful" -- up to which point ?

There are five kinds or degrees of responsibility

1. Causal responsibility
2. Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality alone
3. Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress
4. Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action
5. Supertnaturalist Libertarian Responsibility

II.3.ii Casual Responsibility

The point about moral responsibility is that we hold some entities responsible and not others. A meaningful argument for compatibilism, must be more than a mere convention, it must have an objective basis. The basis is the ability to intentionally originate actions. We do not blame the gun for the murderer, the artist, not her brushes. The sight of Basil Fawlty thrashing his car for failing to start is absurd.

II.3.iii Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality

II.3.iv Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress

II.3.v Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action

An indeterministic cause is an event which is not itself the effect of a prior cause. Thus, if you trace a cause-effect chain backwards it will come to a halt at an indeterministic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down the originative power, of agents.

There are two important things to realise at this point:

Firstly, I am not saying that indeterministic causes correspond one-to-one to human decisions or actions. It takes billions of basic physical events to produce an action or decision. The claim that indeterminism is part of this complex process does not mean that individual decisions are "just random". (As we expand in (Section III.1)). We will go onto propose that there are other mechanisms which filter out random impulses, so that there is rational self-control as well as causal originative power, and thus both criteria for UR are met.

Secondly, I am also not saying that indeterminism by itself is a fully sufficient criterion for agenthood. If physical indeterminism is widespread (as argued in section IV.2), that would attribute free will to all sorts of unlikely agents, such as decaying atoms. Our theory requires some additional criteria. There is no reason why these should not be largely the same criteria used by compatibilists and supercompatibilists -- rule-following rationality, lack of external compulsion, etc. Where their criteria do not go far enough, we can supplement them with UR and AP. Where their criteria attribute free will too widely to entities, our supplementary criteria will narrow the domain.

PDJ. 18/9/06

Recap

II.4. Scepticism: Does Free Will exist at all ?

(i) Can Free Will Be Defined?

(ii) "True" Free Will? Is it Possible? Does it Matter?

(iii) The Dilemma of Determinism Dismantled

(iv) Prime Mammals and Ultimate Responsibility

(v) Does Benjamin Libet's Research Empirically Disprove Free Will ?

II.4.i Can Free Will Be Defined?

"the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

II.4.ii True Free Will? Is it Possible? Does it Matter?

In those instances we don't draw the conclusion that ordinary, everyday memory and intelligence don't exist in all their familiar fallibility. So it would be unprecedented to conclude that free will doesn't exist at all, just because its highfaluting cousin, True Free Will, doesn't.

II.4.iii The Dilemma of Determinism Dismantled

In this article I will attempt to disprove a frequently employed and plausible-seeming argument against free will. Since the argument does indeed seem plausible on the surface, the criticism will have to be somewhat subtle and detailed.

(DDD1) An action can only be caused or uncaused (DDD2) If my action is caused, I have no freedom, and therefore, no Free Will. (DDD3) If my action is uncaused, it is random and therefore irrational (DDD4) Therefore, I have no rational Free Will.

The argument plays on two sets of double meanings. DDC1/ "Caused" meaning "fully determined by an inevitable consequence of a chain of cause-and-effect started long before I was born DDC2/ "Caused" meaning "causally accountable in any way whatsoever" (for instance, pertinently, accountable in terms of a purposive act of volition -- I did X because I wanted to, not because the sum total of forces acting on me at the moment forced my hand). DDR1/ "random" meaning, "patternless, disordered" DDR2/ "random" meaning "not fully determined by a set of external causes".

So the actual argument is:

(DDD1) An action can only be caused or uncaused (DDD2) If my action is caused (C1), I have no freedom, and therefore, no Free Will. (DDD3) If my action is uncaused (C1), it is random (R1) and therefore irrational (DDD4) Therefore, I have no rational Free Will.

(DDD2) is fallacious because my action can be caused in a sense that falls under DDC2 -- that is by an act of will that sprang into being at the moment, rather than by an endless chain of cause and effect. Since I could have willed differently, I was free.

(DDD3) is fallacious because and uncaused (DDC2) action only has to be random in the R2 sense -- that is, we cannot account for why it is the way it is (in terms of a chain of prior cause and effect) but it may nonetheless be non-random in the DDR1 sense -- that is, it has an intrinsic pattern in which direction towards the achievement of some purpose is desirable.

Thus, rationality and freedom can be simultaneously achieved and (DDD4) does not follow. PDJ 22/02/06

II.4.iv The Metaphysical Objections: Prime Mammals and Ultimate Responsibility

"Only a Libertarian account, Kane claims, can provide the features we [...] yearn for, which he calls ultimate Responsibility. Libertarianism begins with a familiar claim: If determinism is true every, then every decision I make, like every breath I take, is an effect, ultimately,, of chains of causes leading back into times before I was born. [...] As many have claimed, then, if my decisions are caused by events leading back before my birth, I can be causally responsible for the results of my deeds in the same way a tree limb falling in a storm can be causally responsible for the results of the death of the person it falls on, but it's not the limb's fault that it was only a strong as it was, or that the wind blew so fiercely, or that the tree grew so close to the footpath. To be morally responsible I have to be the ultimate source of my decision and that can be true only if no earlier influences were sufficient to secure the outcome, which was truly "up to me". Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk in the Oval office saying the "The Buck Stops Here". The human mind has a place where the buck stops, Kane says, and only libertarianism can provide this kind of free will, the kind that provides Ultimate Responsibility".

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p99

Let's get one confusion out of the way: the libertarian only needs to claim that responsibility stops with the agent, not that there is a single place within the agent where it stops, or a single time at which it stops.

Dennett has an eloquent series of arguments against a "single place" within the mind where it "all happens", a "homunculus", which he has developed in "Consciousness Explained", and which he re-deploys in "Freedom Evolves".

If it really matters, as Libertarians think, then we had better shield your process of deliberation from all such external influence

Why all ? Our definition of free will is "The power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances". "At least some of which" is not "all" there is no need for such "shielding". The engineering is not required by the specification. (Ultimate) Responsibility belongs to the agent as a whole, not to a subsystem within the agent. We are quite happy to accept Dennett's distributed model of the mind.

Compatibilists and determinists are able to argue that it is undesirable for a "snap" decision to be made randomly, since such decisions need to be reliable -- indeed, they may even be "life or death" decisions. This is far from being a smoking-gun refutation of Libertarianism, however. The libertarian only needs to be able to say that her decision could have been different under the same external circumstances at time T. The libertarian's internal state could have been different under the circumstances prevailing at T (In other words, there are sets of possible worlds where everything outside the libertarian is identical), so the action resulting from the libertarian's internal state could have been different, even if it was brought about more-or-less deterministically by their state at time T. Thus they could have done otherwise so long as the series of states leading up to the reactive snap decision could have been different. Thus, freedom of the will can, as it were, be stored and used at a later date. (The idea that free decisions occur immediately before action is criticised in section III.1. We also argue for this point in section II.2; and compare what Dennett says about Libet's work in section II.4)

However, this idea of stored inentionality (or deferred responsibility) has some problems, whcih we will now consider.

Dennett has a real point against Kane with his accusation that there is a special time at which free will occurs. In Kane's theory the essence of free will is something called a "self forming action" which occurs at particular times in the life of an individual. This leads to a number of problems:

• 1 An SFA may or may not occur at all in an individual, yet by all common-sense standards an individual without SFA's is as free and responsible as anyone else.
• 2 Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice!
• 3 There must have been a first SFA , which itself cannot have been brought about intentionally, freely and responsibly.

II.4.iv.1 First Objection to Self-Forming Actions

II.4.iv.2 Second Objection to Self-Forming Actions

Responsibility is a relationship that holds or fails to hold between an agent and an action performed externally. You are not responsible for things like earthquakes: the relationship fails to hold. You are also not responsible for neural firings as such; in this case is a category error to say that you are responsible or not for your neural firings. A different relationship holds: you are constituted by them. So, no, you cannot be held responsible for what your RIG does. But you are responsible for actions you perform (whether or not your RIG is involved).

Moreover, in our model we posit another module in addition to the indeterminism module (or Random Idea Generator) whose function is specifically to "filter" the output of the Random Idea Generator. Thus the objection that you cannot control which signal the indeterminism module is going to generate is vitiated by placing the control after the generation of the signal. (Just as Natural Selection rescues Darwinian evolution from being mere caprice by acting on genes after they have mutated). There is no straightforward inference from a lack of causal responsibility for one's indeterminism generator to a lack of moral responsibility an agent

Finally, recall that in our discussion of semicompatibilism and responsibility we agreed that there are forms of moral responsibility which are compatible with determinism. Thus, responsibility does not kick in when and only when the R.I.G or indeterminism module fires; responsibility is not created ex nihilo. 3

II.4.iv.iii Third Objection to Self-Forming Actions

And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Since we must exclude capricious intentional states, states that do not have enough of history of being produced intentionally by previous states. Thus, there must be some kind of a regress to intentional states. Dennett has a parable that can act as a warning of what happens if you think about regresses in a too rigid, absolute way. it also illustrates that this is indeed a structural problem about regresses, not a problem about free will specifically).

"You may think you're a mammal, and that dogs and cows and whales are mammals, but there really aren't any mammals at all -- there can't be! Here's a philosophical argument to prove it.

1) Every mammal has a mammal for a mother
2) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals
3) but if there has been even one mammal, by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals , which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals.

Since we know perfectly well there are mammals, we take this argument only a challenge to discover what fallacy is lurking within it. [..] A gradual transition occurred from clear mammals to clear reptiles, with a lot of hard-to-classify intermediaries filling the gaps "

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p126)

The absolutist way of thinking about things falls on the "infinite" side of the dichotomy. For the absolutist, and intentional state has to be fully and 1005 brought about by the preceding state...ad infinitum.

Kane's SFA's fall on the other side ...the regress just stops dead.

We favour the kind of solution that is the correct solution to the Prime Mammal problem. The parent of a mammal only needs to be more-or-less mammalian. The mammalhood can fade out as you trace things go back. Likewise the "at least partially" clause in the definition of free will allows us to regard present intentional states as being only more-or-less engendered by previous ones, so that the causal and intentional history of an intentional state peters out rather than going back forever or stopping dead.

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.
2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state. The only time in your life when you are lacking in intentionality is in infancy, when you are not a fully-formed person anyway. There is no point where you are a fully-formed person , yet lacking responsibly. Personhood, agenthood, intentionality, responsibility all develop together
3. There is no need to identify "you", your "self" with any particular module, including the "indeterminism module".
4. There is no one-to-one correspondence between actions and the output of the "indeterminism module", so actions are not "just random".
5. The fact that you cannot control what your "indeterminism" module will do is vitiated by the fact that you -- the rest of you -- do not have to act on its decisions.

II.4.v The Empirical Objection: Does Benjamin Libet's Research Empirically Disprove Free Will?

In fact, Libet himself doesn't draw a sweepingly sceptical conclusion from his own results. For one thing, Readiness Potentials are not always followed by actions. he believes it is possible for consciousness to intervene with a "veto" to the action:

"The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act! Is there, then, any role for conscious will in the performing of a voluntary act?...To answer this it must be recognised that conscious will (W) does appear about 150milliseconds before the muscle is activated, even though it follows the onset of the RP. An interval of 150msec would allow enough time in which the conscious function might affect the final outcome of the volitional process."

(Libet, quoted in "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 230 )

"This suggests our conscious minds may not have free will but rather free won't!"

(V.S Ramachandran, quoted in "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 )

However, it is quite possible that the Libertarian doesn't need to appeal to "free won't" to avoid the conclusion that free won't doesn't exist.

Libet tells when the RP occurs using electrodes. But how does Libet he when conscious decision-making occurs ? He relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock. But, as Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they occur.

Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at second 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the clock dot was straight down (which is what you reported you saw) at millisecond 7,005. How many milliseconds should he have to add to this number to get the time you were conscious of it? The light gets from your clock face to your eyeball almost instantaneously, but the path of the signals from retina through lateral geniculate nucleus to striate cortex takes 5 to 10 milliseconds -- a paltry fraction of the 300 milliseconds offset, but how much longer does it take them to get to you. (Or are you located in the striate cortex?) The visual signals have to be processed before they arrive at wherever they need to arrive for you to make a conscious decision of simultaneity. Libet's method presupposes, in short, that we can locate the intersection of two trajectories: # the rising-to-consciousness of signals representing the decision to flick # the rising to consciousness of signals representing successive clock-face orientations so that these events occur side-by-side as it were in place where their simultaneity can be noted.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 )

Dennett refers to an experiment in which Churchland showed, that just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds.

Does that mean that all actions taking longer than that are unconscious ?

The brain processes stimuli over time, and the amount of time depends on which information is being extracted for which purposes. A top tennis player can set up to design a return of service within 100 milliseconds or so. The 78 feet from base line to base line can be traversed by a serve from Venus Williams [...] in less than 450 milliseconds [...] And since the precise timing and shape of that return depends critically on visual information and put it to highly appropriate use in that short a time. As Churchland showed, just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 238 )

Our lives are full of decisions to act when the time is ripe, revisable commitments to policies, and attitudes that will shape responses that must be executed top swiftly to be reflectively considered in the light of actions.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 239 )

The timing tricks usually fit together seamlessly and are incorporated into the brain's own monitoring of what it is up to, but in artificial circumstances (as set up by clever experimenters) the tricks can be exposed.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 239 )

It is important to separate the idea that of an action being done (or not) by you, being consciously done (or not) by you, and the being done (or not) by you at a moment in time. The Tennis player who reacts too quickly to have made a conscious decision is reacting too quickly to have made a decision at that time. On the other hand, their decisions is not unwelcome or unexpected. It feels like their decision. And why should it not when it is the outcome of long practice, practice of the kind that is necessary to fulfil any tasks that requires precise timing, such as sport or music. The consciousness of the decision comes from the conscious decision to train oneself to react in a certain way. The consciousness of the act is stored, and pre-prepared, and using it we can perform feats where Libet's 300m sec. delay would be quite unacceptable.

One thing going for this hypothesis is that such judgments of simultaneity are unnatural acts in the first place, unless they are framed for a particular purpose, such as your trying to get your staccato attack in sync with the conductor's downbeat, or trying to connect with a low fastball so a to send it straight back over the pitcher's head.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 235 )

Dennett's idea of "stored" conscious volition is quite in line with our theory. Indeed, we would like to extend it in a way that Dennett does not. We would like to extend it to stored indeterminism. Any decision we make in exigent situations where we do not have the luxury of considered thought must be more-or-less deterministic -- must be more-or-less determined by our state of mind at the time - -if they are to be of any use at all to us. Otherwise we might as well toss a coin. But our state of mind at the time can be formed by rumination, training and so over a long period, perhaps over a lifetime. As such it can contain elements of indeterminism in the positive sense -- of imagination and creativity, not mere caprice.

This extension of Dennett's criticism of Libet (or rather the way Libet's results are used by free-will sceptics) gives us a way of answering Dennett's own criticisms of Robert Kane, a prominent defender of naturalistic Free Will. PDJ 14/9/06

Recap

The Naturalistic Solution

III.1 The Engineering of Naturalistic Free Will: Darwin vs. Buridan

Introduction.

(i) The Basicness Assumption.

(ii) The Separate Self assumption.

(iii) The Buridan's Ass Assumption

(iv) The Supernatural Assumption

(v) Natural and Artificial Free Will

(vi) How Deterministic is the Sensible Idea Selector ?

III.1.i The Basicness Assumption.

Or perhaps there it is more than that ? Perhaps the determinist is making the assumption that free will is a basic ingredient to the universe, and using that as a reason to exclude the possibility that it is a composite, emergent phenomenon. This would certainly explains why Gordon Orloff says things like:- "if so, how and why doesn't everything in the universe -- atoms, cells, dogs, cars -- possess this unnatural quality? [free will]" Why should they ? If free will is an outcome of the engineering of the brain, we would not expect to find it in the absence of any other mental faculties. We would hardly expect to find thought in the absence of memory, for instance. If free will is looked at as a psychological phenomenon, it depends on other psychological phenomena. we have specific reason to think it is dependent on other mental faculties, because, we need the ingredient of rationality to distinguish free will from "mere caprice". If we adopt the hypothesis that free will is indeed and outcome of a complex combination of causal determinism and indeterminism, we have further reason not to ascribe it to systems with the wrong engineering: systems like sticks and stones, or deterministic computers.

This does not add up to chauvinism, by the way. Non-humans could have the appropriate engineering, and appropriate equivalents of the accompanying mental faculties. Even a convincing artificial intelligence could have free will -- if it had genuine rationality and genuine indeterminism. The basicness assumption seems to provide a justification for the supernatural assumption: causal determinism and indeterminism seem to be the only logical options for basic features of the world, so if free will is a third basic feature, it must be supernatural. But, I am contending, it is a third option which is natural but non-basic.

The Separate Self Assumption.

III.1.ii The Buridan's Ass Assumption

We do not need to make a Supernatural Assumption about the free will in this case; indeterminism would do just as well in allowing the Ass to decide.

This approach does indeed indicate that free will is inimical to rational decision making..up to a point. The Ass has no rational reason to prefer one bale over the other. It's decision to go for, say the left bale, is therefore irrational. But how much more irrational to starve to death! One of the morals of the story is that there is more to rationality -- of a kind worth having -- than being able to logically justify every one of you actions. As I have explained in a previous section, the whole gamut of human behaviour has to include pragmatic decision-making, creativity, and many other styles of behaviour that don't reduce to following explicit rules/

However, the real problem is that it is locating indeterminism in the wrong place -- ie, interposed between decision making and action. If you are committed to a model in which determinism and randomness combine to produce free will, you still have a range of options as to how they combine.

The alternative I prefer is the Darwinian model, according to which an indeterministic process (the R.I.G or "Random Idea Generator") plays a role analogous to random mutation , in that it throws up ideas and potential solutions to problems which another, more rational and deterministic process selects between (I call this the S.I.S. or "Sensible Idea Selector"). ( A similar idea is briefly mentioned by Marvin Minsky)

Thus:-

The Random Idea Generator	is analogous to	Random Mutation.
The Sensible Idea Selector	is analogous to	Natural Selection.
The "Indeterministic free will would be random and irrational"	is analogous to	"Darwin's theory is just random-- it doesn't explain how organisms are adapted to their environment".

Another name for the Buridan's Ass assumption is the "Do Not Pass Go Objection". The idea is that once an indeterministic action arises, it is translated immediately into action. This would indeed be mere caprice, but we do not have to think of free will that way. In Darwinian terms, this is equivalent to supposing that when a random mutation occurs, it rapidly spreads throughout the population. In fact, most mutations are non-adaptive and get weeded out by natural selection. The equivalent of natural selection in my model is the Sensible Idea Selector.

II.1.iii The Supernatural Assumption, or have I explained the right version of free will?

Definitionally, free will must include consciousness and rationality, and these surely include the ability to learn and to modify behaviour. People sometimes argue that free will is incompatible with causal determinism because our decisions must be causally related to our natures. My response is that the causal relation runs both ways; our choices determine our natures as well as our natures determining our choices. In mechanical terms, the S.I.S. modifies its behaviour with a feedback loop.

IV Discussion of the Naturalistic Solution.

Recap

IV.1 Does Physical Indeterminism actually exist ?

(i) The "Law of Large Numbers"

(ii) Quantum Amplification and Instrumentation

(iii) Chaos and Classicism

(iv) The Macroscopic Evidence for Indeterminism

(v) The Myth of the "Heisenberg Cut"

IV.1.i The "Law of Large Numbers"

Something like this must be happening in some cases, assuming QM is a correct description of the micro-world, or there would not even be an appearance of a deterministic macro-world. Since deterministic classical physics is partially correct, there must be a mechanism that makes the QM micro-world at least approximate to the classical description.

IV.1.ii Quantum Amplification and Instrumentation

IV.1.iii Chaos and Classicism

The term "classical" misleads some people. Chaos can be defined within the framework of classical physics, which is strictly deterministic. This is sometimes taken to mean any chaotic system encountered in nature (such as a weather system) is classical and deterministic. However, when we tall about ordinary, non-chaotic systems being classical, we mean they are *approximately* classical. Classical physics is not entirely wrong; it worked for 100's of years after all. But it is not entirely right either. "Classical" systems are quantum systems that approximate classical behaviour.

Thus any chaotic system that you can actually encounter, such as a weather system, is only approximately classical. It has no underlying strict determinism. At the most fundamental level it is a quantum system -- because everything is.

So we can have classical system that behave predictably (ordinary Newtonian physics), quantum systems that behave predictably on the macroscopic level (through the Law of Large Numbers), classical systems that behave unpredictably (through classical chaos) and quantum systems that unpredictably on the macroscopic as well as microscopic level (chaos and other "quantum amplifiers").

IV.1.iv The macroscopic Evidence for Indeterminism

IV.1.v The Myth of the "Heisenberg Cut"

Recap

IV.2 Does Physical Indeterminism matter?

(i) Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: The difference

(ii) Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: Objectivity

(iii) Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: Subjectivity

(iv) Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: Necessity

IV.2.i Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: The difference

"A pseudo-random numbers is a mechanism (usually an algorithm) that spits out numbers deterministically. They are deemed to be pseudo-random so long as they are reasonably unpredictable and evenly distributed. Detecting a pseudo-random number generator as such depends on how much of its output you have in relation to how complex it is".

IV.2.ii Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: objectivity

IV.2.iii Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: subjectivity

IV.2.iv Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: necessity

IV.3 Conclusion

1. That (traditionally defined) free will is incompatible with determinism.
2. That (traditionally defined) free will requires indeterminism.
3. How, specifically, free will is based on indeterminism.
4. That indeterminism can manifest itself in the macroscopic world.

What are the consequences if it actually falsified ? We do not have to abandon the idea of free will entirely. We could lapse back into the weaker definition used by compatibilists, for instance (just as the empirical discovery that atoms can be split prompted us to stop defining them as ultimate units of matter). The argument against compatibilism is that it does not work with the stronger concept of free will embodied in our natural language and everyday prices, and in the absence of evidence for strict causal determinism there is no motivation to adopt a weaker definition. However, the discovery that the brain is effectively deterministic might provide us with just such a motivation.

Peter D. Jones Birmingham/Sussex 2004-2006.

V. Notes

Compatibilism

Marvin Minsky Asks: Do We Normally Think "Bipolarly"