Thursday, May 9, 2013

The Heart of Men and the Direction of God

“The PREPARATIONS of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord. … The Lord had made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. ... A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.”1

There may be no more enduring philosophic problem than that of human free will. We seem to think that we are ultimately morally responsible for what we do, and yet by means of excuse we can find reasons where one might not be responsible. Some of those reasons seem to be so strong that they are either taken as Gospel or appear to be metaphysical facts of the universe.

It might be a fools errand to try to fix a date to the beginning of the free will debate, but surely the threads of the debate can be found in ancient texts, both religious and philosophic. For instance, Plato held that the will of a person comes from the rational portion of the three-part soul, and is properly used to keep base desires in check.2 Essentially, in this view, as long as reason governed desires, a person was acting freely.


David Hume disagreed with that position, stating that “[r]eason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”3 His position was drawn from his survey of what he called the “long disputed question concerning liberty and necessity[sic]” that had a direct bearing on the will.4 Hume's strictly empirical view reduced the will to a perception of oneself during an internally-initiated action, and established that determinism was a serious issue to reason-based notions of free will, in that every object is “fated” to follow an exact course, including people.5 To Hume, it is not reasonable to think that anyone is at liberty to change conditions made necessary by determinism.

Despite this seeming incompatibility between actions taken freely and a physically determined world, Hume's goal in writing was to show that moral responsibility required causally necessitated conditions of the right type, and that a person is free when an action is taken because of the will of the person.6 The basic idea is that we have a power to either act or not in a way consistent with our impressions of our will, which may be enough to say that we have a plausible “account of alternate possibilities – something that is generally assumed we need for any acceptable theory of moral freedom and responsibility.”7

Although, it is not clear that Hume's position settled that matter, since under his position, an agent is “fated” to do exactly what is necessitated by previous physical events, and that fate might include the agent's will.8 If the agents' internal mental processes are like physical objects, then the agent is not at liberty to change the necessary conditions of their own will. It is like saying that if two separate but related, fully determined events happen in the right order, then moral responsibility is a possibility. To muddle the use of Aristotle’s example with Humean though, if a stick pushes a stone,9 then the stick is not only responsible for the stone's movement, but also morally so.10 So, it remains unclear exactly how an agent can retain moral responsibility if determinism is true.

While not the only relevant factor, the conditions enabling reasonable moral responsibility, i.e., the ability to satisfy a metaphysical requirement of being responsible, is one key concern in the greater free will debate.11 If moral responsibility is possible, then one strong intuition is that the responsible agent is not just the simple cause of the event, but that the agent's relationship to the action included some kind of free choice.

It wouldn't make as much sense to say a conductor is responsible for driving a train into the ditch along a flat straightway, as it would a person driving a car. Even if the results were the same in both cases, the vehicle left the road, the train would only do that if there was some fault in the track or the mechanics of the train. Since the train operates on rails, it is forced to travel along a determined path. The car can set it's own direction of travel, and so the driver is far more likely to be morally responsible for the results of a sudden course change.

Two classic, Aristotelian ways to view moral responsibility are, 1) desert, 2) behavioral correction or conditioning.12 Under the desert model, the agent is worthy of blame or praise when the action that was taken was worthy of praise or blame, while under the correction/conditioning model, the blame or praise is only justified when it will change or reinforce behaviors. As long as the conductor had no alternative actions, then in neither sense is she worthy of blame, because there was nothing that could have been done to avoid the wreck.13 Assuming that there are no internal mechanical faults or external environmental conditions that are the cause of the car driving into the ditch, the driver is in control of the car, and both senses of moral responsibility might apply.

Under Hume's understanding of moral responsibility, both the conductor and the driver could be fully responsible if the conductor/driver wanted the train/car to leave the tracks/road. In fact, Hume thought all agents are like the train running down predetermined tracks, unable to change actions at all, but still morally responsible provided that the will aligns with the actions. In this short space, I've hardly done his full argument justice. I only mean to point out that although there are strong intuitions that moral responsibility requires freedom of choice, any concept of determinism seems to work against, but may not defeat, that responsibility.

While it would seem the logical, ultimate solution to this issue would be to prove if determinism is true or not, the problem becomes far more complex. There are multiple concepts of determinism which rely on metaphysical arguments about how the world is arranged, but each works roughly the same. Some fact about the universe determines all others, be it a chain of causes that necessitate effects that in turn become causes of more effects, the facts (or history) of the universe in conjunction with “the laws of nature that govern our world”14, or a god that directs the steps of all people. The collection of obtuse arguments that cover these notions of determinism nearly spans the entire history of recorded philosophy and shows no signs of an adequate conclusion. We are left in a situation where we must pursue the question of free will independent of the question of determinism, knowing that we must always couch our arguments with statements like, “if determinism is true...” and “given the possibility that ...”, so that we may fairly reach rational positions on the free will and moral responsibility debates regardless of the outcome of the determinism debate, and the form or source of determinism examined.

The way that determinism works against moral responsibility is that it seems to eliminate the possibility of free will because being “fated” to take an action by necessitating physical conditions seems to destroy any chance of a free action. The strong intuitive link between the two concepts implies that if the more basic concept of free will is not possible, then the complex concept of moral responsibility, which seems to rest upon free will, is not possible either. Establishing that free will is metaphysically possible is one major step in showing that we might be rationally justified in saying that we are morally responsible. We seem to have a very strong impression that we must be free to do otherwise if we are morally responsible. As A. J. Ayer pointed out, the common meaning when people say they do things of their “own free will it is implied that [they] could have acted otherwise...” and that is the condition that is commonly held to be necessary for moral responsibility.15

The Garden of Forking Theories
There are several theories that arise from this problem, for this paper I will focus on two: 1) events in the world are determined but that does not eliminate free will, 2) events in the world are determined and that does eliminates the possibility of free will.16 Hume's position, briefly explained above, is that of the first type, compatibilism. The second type is known as incompatibilism.

The bulk of the arguments between these two positions regard the application of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), “a person is morally responsible for what he had done only if he could have done otherwise.”17 This is what is known as a counterfactual argument, i.e., the argument does not focus on the actual facts of a case, but what could have happened counter to the actual events that did happen.

Moving forward from Hume's eighteenth century setup to the debates of the latter half of the twentieth century, let us briefly examine the first modern move in compatibilism. Ayer not only accepted the premise of determinism, but showed that if nothing fixed the actions of people, and they were able to take any random action without reference to any previous event, then they would not be moral agents at all, but rather dysfunctional in some way.18 For moral responsibility to be preserved, actions cannot be random accidents but must be based on some aspect of the person's character, but in a way that the person is not compelled, coerced, or constrained.19 A car with no driver that flies off into the ditch is no more morally responsible than a train that is forced onto a siding by a dispatcher (although this might be pushing the metaphor too far). To compatibilists like Ayer, moral responsibility is not only possible in a deterministic system, but free will requires deterministic causes of the right sort.

The chief difference between Ayer's position and Hume's is that Ayer was not saying that for free will to be true, the correct will produces the conjoined action, but that we are free when we are controlled the right way, internally and free of constraint. Ayer goes on to argue that the mere fact that actions are predictable given knowledge of the past and the laws of nature, does not mean that the “future course of events is already decided” in such a way as some person has arranged them.20 Further, it does not show that we are “helpless prisoner[s] of fate” and that our “actions make no difference to the future: for they are causes as well as effects”, but it is a tautology akin to saying “what is going to happen is going to happen”.21 To prove the thesis of incompatibilism true, requires that we exclude constraining factors, which naturally eliminate free will anyway, independently of determinism.22

Peter van Inwagen contests this view by claiming that “[c]ausation is a morass...”, a complicated and confusing situation that only serves to stall the debate by forcing philosophers off the topic at hand, and onto the issues of determinism's relationship to universal causality.23 Rather, he defines determinism as:

For every instant of time, there is a proposition that expresses the state of the world at that instant.

If p and q are any propositions that express the state of the world at some instants, then the conjunction of p with the laws of nature entails q.24

More simply stated, if a person could know every single fact about the universe at any given moment in time, and all the laws of nature, then that person could know every future (and past) fact about everything in the universe. This definition might be true because the “laws of nature” dictate how everything can move, what the results of every interaction will be, and given a starting point, the entire history and future of the universe is little more than an equation than can be worked forward or backwards in time.

It doesn't matter what point in time is chosen as the reference, be it one second after the big bang or one second ago, the laws of nature and that point entail all future points in time. Van Inwagen forwards the argument that if the instant in time that is considered is somehow impossible for the agent to have any effect on, like before the agent was born, then to say that the agent was able to freely take an action at any future point would be to say the agent had the power to change the laws of nature.25

This argument is known as the Consequence Argument and while the more formal logic form of the argument gets rather complex, I think this short treatment is sufficient for this paper. Simply reflecting on the properties of the laws of nature and the physical world at any given point, it leads to a very powerful conclusion: to have free will, an agent either must be able to change the past or the laws of nature, but it doesn't make sense to say that every free action changes the past, the agent would have to be able to change the laws of nature. As van Inwagen states, “I have no choice about what the laws of nature are; there is nothing I can do about them. There are many propositions whose truth-values are within my power, but surely the laws of nature are not among them.”26

This serves as an answer to Ayer's observation about the common view of free will requiring the ability to do otherwise, but it goes much further than that; the Consequent Argument shows that there are no situation where the agent is free of constraint. It does that by showing that by only two propositions that are beyond any reasonable control of the agent, everything the agent did, does, and will ever do was fixed and entailed from the beginning of the universe. Not only were the train and the car going to end up in the ditch, there was nothing in the power of conductor, the driver, or anyone else for that matter, that could have prevented it; it was a fact of the universe like any other.

Van Inwagen managed to press the compatibilists into a corner, and without delving into theories that require multiple universes with alternative pasts and variable laws of nature,27 answering this challenge requires a completely different line of thought.

Practically no one, however, seems inclined to deny or even to question that the principle of alternate possibilities (construed in some way or another) is true. … People whose accounts of free will or of moral responsibility are radically at odds evidently find it a firm and convenient common ground upon which they can profitably take their opposing stands. But the principle of alternate possibilities is false.28

What Frankfurt attempts to show is that it is conceivable that a situation could arise where an agent might be forced to take one particular action, with no alternate possible actions being available, and yet, we would find the agent morally responsible for the action.29 His strategy is to show a counter-example to PAP by developing a series of examples where coercion plays a role. In the example, Jones chooses to take an action of his own free will, but before he is able to act upon it, he is threatened if he doesn't do the action he had already decided to do.30 While we are inclined to think that because Jones wanted to take the action, he might be responsible for it, it may not be true in all possible ways this could play out.

The first possibility is that Jones1 is an unreasonable person and when he is threatened, he is not swayed at all; he is committed to his action regardless of any external motivation. The second possibility is that the threat is sufficient enough for Jones2 to forget his previous decision, and becomes the sole motivation in his doing the act. The third way is that Jones3 is reasonable in that the threat does sway him, but it is not his only motivation in carrying out the act.31

In the first example, Jones1 did not lose any alternate possible actions because the threat had no coercive effect on him. The second, is closer to the traditional coercion cases in that Jones2 loses the ability to take alternate actions, and the fact he is overwhelmed shows that his will was suppressed and he only acted upon the threat. The third case is difficult to call; Jones3 both acted on the coercion and his own free will. If we say that Jones3 was not coerced, then we have to say that he didn't do the act because of the threat, and that even though coercion was a factor, in the form of an irresistible threat, it wasn't enough to eliminate alternate possible actions. If we say that he was coerced, “[t]hen we will bound to admit that being coerced does not exclude being morally responsible. … When we excuse a person who has been coerced, we do not excuse him because he was unable to do to otherwise” even when the coercion eliminates all but one action.32

In order to provide a strong counterexample, Frankfurt goes on to layout a similar situation, but one that is closer to how determinism is thought to interfere with free will. Jones4 is considering taking an action which Black wishes him to take. Black is both willing and able to manipulate Jones4 in some covert way to force him to take the action, and he (and we) would be none the wiser to the presence of coercion in this case. Unlike the first case, Black does not openly threaten Jones, but rather waits until the point Jones is reaching his decision and only manipulates Jones if he chooses to not take the action. If Jones unwittingly chooses to comply with Black's hidden wishes, then Black does nothing. Jones takes the action, and Black does nothing. No constraint or coercion is present, but it was not possible for Jones to do anything other than what Black wanted him to do.33

With this example, Frankfurt shows that like Jones3, Jones4 might retain moral responsibility for his own actions, despite not having other possible actions open to him; he chose of his own free will, but he could not have done otherwise. In Hume's sense, his will “caused” his action, and in Ayer's sense, when he chose to take the action he was free of all relevant forms of constraint. However, if Jones4 had a different will, or if he would had chosen to do otherwise, then he still could not have done otherwisehe was unable to do otherwise. We are left with Jones4 being morally responsible, and yet not free to take a different action.

The Heart Devising the Way
What Frankfurt's attack on PAP does is unpack another portion of the meaning hidden in plain sight in the word “own”. Moral responsibility not only includes that an agent acts according to the will, but that the agent's own will is the source of the action. This view is known as a Source Theory, and it opens the debate past both the consequence argument, and attacks on PAP by attempting to show that an agent can be fully determined, but still the relevant source of a moral action.

To understand how it is possible to not have alternate possible actions, while still preserving moral responsibility, we need to examine how moral responsibility enters into the decision process to begin with. Agents have many different motivations which influence the decision making process, but not all of them are acted upon. Frankfurt describes the most basic motivations as first order desires.34

First order desires can be expressed as “A wants to X”, which is meant to cover not only positive actions but also negative ones as well, the desire for something and the desire to abstain from doing something.35 While some of those actions will become the effective actions, the ones that will be acted upon, every type of environmentally aware animal possesses and acts upon this kind of desire. Despite Hume's position, it is not sufficient to say that wanting some thing is enough for moral responsibility, or we would have to say that all animals are moral agents. We have a more robust meaning than that when we say moral agent, we mean to invoke personhood.36

The distinguishing characteristic between animals and persons is the ability to form second order desires, to form wants about wants by self-reflection.37 I want to crack open a beer and spend the rest of the day relaxing, but I also want to finish this paper before the deadline. Both of those are first order desires that may have been imparted to me by purely deterministic means, well beyond my control. However, I have the ability to form a second order desire regarding those lower order desires. I want to have a beer, but I don't want to act on that desire right now, because I am capable of self-reflectively examining how that would impact my other desires. I can go on to form a desire that finishing this paper is the desire that I wish to act upon, that it becomes my will.

When the second (or higher) order desire is thus directed at enacting, or refraining from acting on a lower order desire, then that can be called a second-order volition, but holding second-order desires does not mean that they are automatically volitions.38 To be a volition it must be the will of the person that a desire is the effective desire. So, when I say that I keep writing instead of cracking open a beer of my own free will, I mean to say that while I have these two conflicting desires, I have chosen one of them as my will. I have reached a point where I could both enjoy a freedom of my will or I could lack a freedom of will, and according to Frankfurt, that is a “distinguishing mark of the human condition” as persons.39

If despite my volition I find myself unable to refrain from getting a frosty adult beverage from the fridge, even knowing what impact it will have on my paper writing ability and not wanting that to be my effective desire, my will is not free. I may even become aware that I am not enacting my second-order volition, and I would not enjoy a freedom of my will. Luckily, I am not a young sailor any more, and I can resist my first-order desires that I willed to not be effective. However, it is conceivable that someone might not have that ability, and if they do not that might mean that they do not have true moral responsibility, e.g. unwilling alcoholics may not be able to resist the desire in a way that is completely beyond their control, and if that is true, they are not the source of the action.

The way persons are morally responsible not only only includes doing what they want, but also having the capacity to will which desire they want to be their action, to form second-order volitions. “We do not suppose that animals enjoy freedom of the will, although we recognize that an animal may be free to run in whatever direction it wants.”40 This source compatablist view is known as a mesh theory in that it requires that the internal, psychological factors that generate actions mesh in the right way to produce a state control that allows for agent-source freedom. While it is not the only theory, it does provides a strong distinction between persons and non-persons, and accounts for how agents can be morally responsible.41

However, it is completely focused on internal factors. “In order to be legitimately considered morally accountable, [a person] must possess the powers of reflective self-control: (1) the power to grasp and apply moral reasons, and (2) the power to control or regulate his behavior by the light of such reasons.”42 Known as a reason-response theory, it is comparable with mesh theories in that both require a form of self-reflectively that enables control. Derk Pereboom uses such a theory with the above definitions in an attempt to show that it is not sufficient to say that normal functioning agents are morally responsible.

His strategy is to use four similar cases in which the agent, Professer Plum, is manipulated in various degrees to murder Ms. White in an attempt to show that Plum was causally determined despite satisfying both conditions to be morally accountable.43 The first case has Plum being directly controlled by a team of neuroscientists, moment by moment, where Plum forms second-order desires based on the manipulated first-order desires, and retains the relevant reflective-control. Like Jones4, Plum remains unaware of the manipulations and chooses to act upon the desire to murder.44

The second and third cases operate in a similar manner except the level of manipulation is reduced with each, first by removing the direct control, while leaving Plum “programmed” from an early age to murder White, and second by replacing the neuroscientists' programing with “rigorous training practices of his home and community”.45 With each successive step down in the manipulations, it becomes less clear which sets of controls Plum acts upon, his own, or the external manipulations. The final case places Plum as a regularly functioning agent with no special factors influencing him in any way beyond determinism.46

Pereboom believes that since the only distinguishing aspect from case to case is the level of manipulation that Plum has undergone, that we must conclude that if Plum is not morally accountable in case one, then he can not be morally accountable in case four. That is because “between each successive pair of cases there is no divergence at all in factors that could plausibly make a difference for moral responsibility, and that we are therefore forced to conclude that all four cases exhibit the same kind and the same degree of an incompatibilist responsibility-undermining feature.”47

This strong a connection between the cases can actually work against the manipulation argument. When the argument is run in reverse, so to speak, without presupposing that determinism rules out free will, the opposite conclusions can be drawn, Plum in Case 1 might be free and morally accountable.48 After further strengthening Pereboom's argument by adding intermediate cases, Michael McKenna points out, “[m]y claim is only that it is not evident that Plum in Case 6 [Pereboom's Case 4] is not free and morally responsible” even if causal determinism is true.49 If it is not clear that Plum is not morally responsible at that point, then given the strength of the connections between each pair of cases, it is not clear that Plum is not free and morally responsible in Case 1, and these arguments either end in a stalemate, or serve as a test of intuitions with compatablists agreeing with McKenna and incompatibilists agreeing with Pereboom.50 Perhaps to resist the incompatibilist conclusion, it is only necessary to cast doubt on it.51

Conclusion
Where does that leave us? A division between those that think moral responsibility is possible if determinism true, and those that don't? That feels unsatisfyingly repetitive, but the real value is what we have learned in the process. We may not be able to say at this point, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we either do or do not have free will, but we can say that manipulation may not sufficient grounds to discredit free will. We can say that moral accountability requires both an internal component and an external one; to be free, we must choose the desires that we act upon, and we must be responsive to our environments. We can say that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise, that we might be free even if we are only able to take one relevant action. We can say that sometimes our freedoms are coerced, compelled and constrained away, but if our actions happen with no reason, we can not be free.

These are significant improvements over where we were one hundred years ago. Intuitions may still be the dividing line between the major camps, but the picture is far more clear. Maybe we are like the train running on the tracks. Maybe that is the only way the world is arranged. Certainly, there are times where we are more like a train than a car, but while we rumble down the rails toward what might have been an unavoidable derailment in our lives, there is a reasonable hope that we have the type of control to stop. Before, all we had were the plans from the hearts of men and a god conducting us to our fates. Now, we have a possibility of control.

Nonetheless, the seeming stalemate has left us at an unsatisfying position. The dividing of the intuitions almost seems to separate the optimists and the pessimists. It may take answering the question, “is the world deterministic?” before we can have a satisfying answer. That is why the problem of free will is one of the most enduring.

Bibliography
Aristotle. Physics. Trans. By R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. Available from The Internet Classic Archive, accessed May 3, 2013.

Ayer, A. J. “Freedom and Necessity”, Free Will. Ed. By Gary Watson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Eshleman, Andrew. “Moral Responsibility”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2009 Edition. Ed., Edward N. Zalta. Last modified November 18, 2009. Accessed April 30, 2013. 

Frankfurt, Harry G. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Free Will. Ed. By Gary Watson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011.

– “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, Free Will. Ed. By Gary Watson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. ed. David Norton and Mary Norton. Oxford U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Lewis, David. “Are We Free to Break the Laws?”, Free Will. Ed. By Gary Watson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011.

McKenna, Michael. “A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom's Four-Case Manipulation Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77.1 (2008)

O'Connor, Timothy. “Free Will”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2013 Edition. Ed., Edward N. Zalta. Last modified February 12, 2013. Accessed April 27, 2013. 

Pereboom, Derk. Living Without Free Will. Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Prov. 16:1-9 (Authorized King James Version).

Russell, Paul. Hume on FreeWill”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2008 Edition. Ed., Edward N. Zalta. Last modified August 29, 2008. Accessed April 27, 2013.

Van Inwagen, Peter. “An Argument for Incompatibilism”, Free Will. Ed. By Gary Watson. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011.



1 Prov. 16:1-9 (Authorized King James Version).


2 Timothy O'Connor, “Free Will”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), ed., Edward N. Zalta, last modified February 12, 2013, accessed April 27, 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/freewill/, 1.3.


3 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Norton and Mary Norton, (Oxford U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2.3.3.4, pg. 266.


4 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.1.2, pg 257.


5 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.1.2-3, pg 257.


6 Paul Russell, “Hume on Free Will”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), ed., Edward N. Zalta, last modified August 29, 2008, accessed April 27, 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/hume-freewill/, section 1.


7 Russell, “Hume on Free Will”, 1.


8 I do not pretend to be a Hume scholar; my reading is very likely wrong. It appears that Hume made use of his notion of constant conjunction between a perceived impression of the will and a given action to establish that when the necessary will condition is present, then the agent takes an action. It appears to me that there are only two ways that this would not be a conceptual issue for Hume, 1) he thought that the will was, in some sense, freely chosen, 2) he thought that moral responsibility was not dependent on any sense of choice, and only required that the right will state accompany an action. His treatment of “liberty of indifference,” the ability to negate necessity and causes, inclines me to think that that he meant that we are not rationally justified to think we are free, but, despite that, we retain moral responsibility.


9 Aristotle, Physics, trans. By R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, available from The Internet Classic Archive, accessed May 3, 2013, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.8.viii.html, Section 5.


10 This, of course, ignores that the hand is moving the stick. That omission is intentional, meant to show that if the will is determined, then it might as well be just another physical object.


11 Timothy O'Connor, “Free Will”, introduction.


12 Andrew Eshleman, “Moral Responsibility”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), ed., Edward N. Zalta, last modified November 18, 2009, accessed April 30, 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/moral-responsibility, 1.


13 For the sake of argument, grant me that the conductor is either unaware or unable to correct the cause of the wreck, be it a break in the track or a mechanical fault of some kind. The salient point for the example is the lack of steering ability of a train.


14 David Lewis, “Are We Free to Break the Laws?”, Free Will, ed. By Gary Watson, (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011), pg. 122.


15 A. J. Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity”, Free Will, ed. By Gary Watson, (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1982), pg. 15.


16 Timothy O'Connor, “Free Will”, para. 4.


17 Harry G. Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”, Free Will, ed. By Gary Watson, (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011), pg. 167.


18 Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity”, pg. 17.


19 Ibid., pgs. 18-23.


20 Ibid., pgs. 22-3.


21 Ibid., pgs. 23.


22 While it is tempting to recount the entire move, counter-move between the incompatibilists and the compatablists, I stop here with Ayer to allow enough space in this paper for the main topic. While a gross over-simplification, it seems to me that Ayer managed to express an argument for compatibilism that serves as an archetype for compatablists until Frankfurt's attack of the PAP and the source theories. I mean that every argument that cuts off a possible “space” for free will to “hide” in determinism, the compatablist found a new type of “constraint” until the stalemate of the “free to choose the content of one's own character” move.


23 Peter van Inwagen, “An Argument for Incompatibilism”, Free Will, ed. By Gary Watson, (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011), pgs. 45-6.


24 Van Inwagen, “An Argument for Incompatibilism”, pg. 45.


25 Ibid., pg. 50.


26 Ibid., pg. 53.


27 Which is a possible way out of the dilemma, but one that requires acceptance of a metaphysical model that introduces as many problems as it solves.


28 Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”, pg. 167.


29 Ibid., pg. 168.


30 Ibid., pgs. 168-71.


31 Ibid., pg. 168-71.


32 Ibid., pg. 171.


33 Ibid., pgs. 172-4.


34 Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, Free Will, ed. By Gary Watson, (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2011), pg. 323.


35 Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, pgs. 324-5.


36 Ibid., pgs. 322-3.


37 Ibid., pgs. 323-4.


38 Ibid., pg. 237.


39 Ibid., pg. 330.


40 Ibid., pg. 331.


41 Ibid., pg. 333.


42 Wallace as qtd. by Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will, (Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pdf accessed on University of Arizona D2L May 3, 2013, pg. 110.


43 Pereboom, Living Without Free Will, pg.112.


44 Ibid., pgs. 112-3.


45 Ibid., pgs. 112-4.


46 Ibid., pgs. 115.


47 Ibid., pg. 116.


48 Michael McKenna, “A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom's Four-Case Manipulation Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77.1 (2008), pg. 153


49 McKenna, “A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom's Four-Case Manipulation Argument”, pg. 153.


50 Ibid., pgs. 153-4.


51 Ibid, pg. 155.

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