Hi dmb, all, Last night I read an essay by William James called "The Dilemma of Determinism" where he defends free will before an audience of Harvard Divinity School students in 1884. Some interesting things came up for me.
First of all, James seems to accept that determinism is the fashion of the day, and that he is arguing for an unpopular position. It seems that at the time determinists had co-opted the word "freedom," so James chose to discuss the issue in terms of determinisms/indeterminism instead of in terms of freedom and will: "I wish to get rid of the word 'freedom.' It's eulogistic associations have so far overshadowed all the rest of its meaning that both parties claim the sole right to use it, and determinists today insist that they alone are freedom's champions." So much for determinism and freedom being simple logical opposites. Secondly, when he talks about what determinism means, he seems to conflate it with what we would today call "fatalism." Further, what he calls indeterminism is entirely consistent with what many would today call "determinism" especially given quantum mechanics. It is clear to me that what James is talking about as INdeterminism is the the determinism of Dennett, where "could have acted differently" is a real consideration and fatalism is rejected. Third, the position which James defends in this talk is "indeterminism" (since he would like to drop "freedom") which he says means "chance" (rather than a capacity of the will to override deterministic laws). Fourth interesting point: When James explains what the difference is between determinism and indeterminism, he makes exactly the move that dmb said a pragmatist can't make with regard to the notion "could have acted differently"--the thought experiment of rewinding time. He asks the audience to "imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate the ten minutes of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door of the door to this hall just as I was before the choice was made [between Divinity Street and Oxford Street]. Imagine that I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. You, as a passive spectator, look on and see two alternative universe,--one of them with me walking through Divinity Avenue in it, the other with the same me walking trough Oxford Street. Now if you are determinists you believe one of these universes to have been from eternity impossible...But looking outward at these universes, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one, and which the rational and necessary one?...There would be absolutely no criterion by which we might judge one necessary and the other a matter of chance." So he says that there is no rational basis upon which to decide between determinism and indeterminism.. Today of course we have such a basis for thinking that indeterminism is true in quantum mechanics, but note that this is no sort of "freedom" that is worth having. This is just randomness--"ambiguity" and "chance" as James calls it. But as Steven Pinker said, "a random event does not fit the concept of free will any more than a lawful one does, and could not serve as the long-sought locus of moral responsibility." This is the dilemma of determinism. If determinism is true, our actions are controlled by past events and thus we do not have free will, and that if indeterminism is true, our actions are just random. Since determinism and indeterminism are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, then free will is a logical impossibility unless it is conceived of as some sort of determinism. Our actions, to be free, must be determined by _something_ (the will?) or they would just be random. So a defense of human freedom needs to be some form of compatibilism with determinism rather than conceiving of freedom as at odds with determinism. As Dennett put it, "In fact, we have more freedom if determinism is true than if it isn't. Because if determinism is true, then there's less randomness. There's less unpredictability. To have freedom, you need the capacity to make reliable judgments about what's going to happen next, so you can base your action on it." In MOQ terms, it's a matter of finding the dynamic in the static. Our freedom comes from predictability. That's what makes our choices matter. If the results of our actions were completely indeterminate (i.e. random) then moral responsibility could make no sense. The more determinism and the less indeterminism there is, the better for moral responsibility and human freedom to act in ways that make a difference in the world. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
