Choices on a spectrum

My usual story about how to reconcile libertarianism with the Principle of Sufficient Reason is that when we choose, we choose on the basis of incommensurable reasons, some of which favor the choice we made and others favor other choices. Moreover, this is a kind of constrastive explanation.

This story, though it has some difficulties, is designed for choices between options that promote significantly different goods—say, whether to read a book or go for a walk or write a paper.

But a different kind of situation comes up for choices of a point on a spectrum. For instance, suppose I am deciding how much homework to assign, how hard a question to ask on an exam, or how long a walk to go for. What is going on there?

Well, here is a model that applies to a number of cases. There are two incommensurable goods one better served as one goes in one direction in the spectrum and the other better served as one goes in the other direction in the spectrum. Let’s say that we can quantify the spectrum as one from less to more with respect to some quantity Q (amount of homework, difficulty of a question or length of a walk), and good A is promoted by less of Q and incommensurable good B is promoted by more of Q. For instance, with homework, A is the student’s having time for other classes and for non-academic pursuits and B is the student’s learning more about the subject at hand. With exam difficulty, A may be avoiding frustration and B is giving a worthy challenge. With a walk, A is reducing fatigue and B is increasing health benefits. (Note that the claim that A is promoted by less Q and B is promoted by more Q may only be correct within a certain range of Q. A walk that is too long leads to injury rather than health.)

So, now, suppose we choose Q = Q₁. Why did one choose that? It is odd to say that one chose Q on account of reasons A and B that are opposed to each other—that sounds inconsistent.

Here is one suggestion. Take the choice to make Q equal to Q₁ to be the conjunction of two (implicit?) choices:

1. Make Q at most Q₁

2. Make Q at least Q₁.

Now, we can explain choice (a) in terms of (a) serving good A better than the alternative, which would be to make Q be bigger than Q₁. And we can explain (b) in terms of (b) serving good B better than the alternative of making Q be smaller.

Here is a variant suggestion. Partition the set of options into two ranges R₁, consisting of options where Q < Q₁ and R₂, where Q > Q₁. Why did I choose Q = Q₁? Well, I chose Q over all the choices in R₁ because Q better promotes B than anything in R₁, and I chose Q over all the choices in R₂ because Q better promotes A than anything in R₁.

On both approaches, the apparent inconsistency of citing opposed goods disappears because they are cited to explain different contrasts.

Note that nothing in the above explanatory stories requires any commitment to there being some sort of third good, a good of balance or compromise between A and B. There is no commitment to Q₁ being the best way to position Q.

Against divine temporalism

I stipulate that:

0. According to pure divine temporalism, God is a being in time without a timeless existence all of whose decisions are made at moments of time.

I will argue that on plausible assumtions divine temporalism is incompatible with divine creative libertarian freedom.

First, we need this:

1. If pure divine temporalism is true, time has no beginning in the sense that before every moment of time, there was an earlier moment.

This is because everyone agrees that God is eternal. If there were a moment that had no moment before it, then according to pure divine temporalism, that moment would be God’s first moment of existence, without any timeless existence prior to or beyond it, and that is just incompatible with divine eternity. At that first moment it would be correct to say that God has just appeared.

One might object by saying that the first moment has infinite duration, and so it was an infinitely long changeless state. This is difficult to understand. An infinitely long changeless state seems like a timeless state more than anything else. In any case, if the point is pressed, I will simply stipulate that I don’t allow for moments like that.

Now, add this:

2. Every contingent feature of creation not even partly due to creaturely indeterministic activity was decided on by God with God having had the possibility of deciding otherwise. (Divine creative libertarian freedom)

Next, add some plausible claims:

3. The fact N that there was a moment of time before which there were no stars obtains.

4. The fact N is a contingent feature of creation not even partly due to creaturely indeterministic activity.

5. There is no backwards causation.

6. Time is linearly ordered: for any distinct moments of time t₁ and t₂, one is earlier than the other.

Finally:

7. For a reductio ad absurdum, assume pure divine temporalism.

What do we have? Well, our assumptions imply that God at some time decided on N while yet having the possibility of deciding to the contrary. But prior to any past time t₁, the fact N was already in place. History by time t₁ already made it be the case that there was a time before which there were no stars. So if there is no backwards causation, at no past time t₁ did God have the possibility of making N not be true. It was always already too late! But divine creative libertarian freedom requires that possibility.

Objection 1: The fact N does not actually obtain. We live in a sequential multiverse and before every time there were already stars in our universe or another.

Response: In that case, let S be the following contingent feature of creation: it was always the case that there already had been at least one star. I.e., for any past time t, there was a time t′ < t at which there had already had been at least one star. And an argument similar to the above goes through with S in place of N. At any past time, it was already too late to make S true, because history at that time was sufficient to make it be the case that prior to every time there was a star.

Objection 2: Fact N is made true by an infinite conjunction of facts such as that in year n there were no stars, in year n − 1 there were no stars, in year n − 2 there were no stars, and God unproblematically makes each of these facts true while having the power not to make it true.

Response: This objection is basically a rejection of (2). It says that some facts (even among the ones that aren’t due to creaturely indeterminism) aren’t freely decided on by God, but are instead consequences of other facts freely decided on by God. This reminds one of the Principle of Double Effect: God need not intend all the consequences of what he intends. He intends N_n, there not being stars in year n, as well as N_n − 1, and N_n − 2, and so on, but doesn’t intend their joint consequence N. I think this is a powerful objection. I don’t want to rule out the possibility of such a thing. But N is a morally unproblematic and structurally central part of the arrangement of reality. It seems very plausible that even if we reject (2) in general, we should accept it in the special case of morally unproblematic and structurally central parts of the arrangement of reality. Otherwise, God isn’t really in charge of creation.

The replay argument against agential control

Van Inwagen’s replay experiment is supposed to show that indeterministic free will is problematic. We imagine someone choosing betweeen A and B, then we rewind the state of the universe to just how it was before their choice, and repeat. Van Inwagen thinks that as we continue the experiments, we will get the proportion of choices that are As converging to some number, say 30%, and that tends to make us think that the choices are random rather than something in the agent’s control.

Let’s imagine we’ve actually done this replay a very large number of times. Here are the three possibilities for what we might observe:

• O₁: The proportion of As settled down to some number strictly between 0 and 1.

• O₂: All the choices were As or all the choices were Bs.

• O₃: The proportion of As changed and did not settle down.

For familiar libertarian reasons, it seems that O₂ would be evidence against the hypothesis that the choice is in the agent’s control: they both support the hypothesis that the agent is compelled or nearly compelled, either by their character or by external forces, to choose as they did.

Van Inwagen claims that observation O₁ is evidence against the hypothesis that the choice is in the agent’s control. For Bayesian reasons, given that O₁, O₂ and O₃ are exhaustive and mutually exclusive, and that O₂ is also evidence against the agent’s control, the only way this could be is O₃ favored the agential control hypothesis (unless our prior probability of O₃ is equal to 1, which it’s not).

But I don’t think observation O₃ would favor the agential control hypothesis. There are two reasons for my judgment.

First, let’s subdivide observation O₃ into two suboptions.

• O_3a: There is some discernible pattern to the As and Bs that precludes the proportion of As from settling down, e.g., ABBAAAABBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...,

• O_3b: It’s just a complete mess and the proportion doesn’t settle.

Now, O_3a is a strange option. A pattern initially may seem like evidence of control. But once we recall that the experiment involved a rewinding of the universe’s state, we can see that any pattern that is not just all As or all Bs cannot be the result of agential control, since control of a pattern across time would require memory, and we have assumed that any memories are wiped. So, given the rewinding, we know that any pattern—other than the patterns that do not require memory, namely the patterns in options 2 and 3, is a fluke. Thus, 4a shouldn’t be evidentially different from 4b.

What about O_3b? Well, O_3b is more of a mess than O₁. A mess is, if anything, more random than a sequence with a probabilistic structure, and hence if anything less indicative of agential control. Thus, O_3b is either neutral with regard to the hypothesis of agential control or even evidence against it. And O_3b is in the boat by the above remarks. Thus, O₃ is either neutral with regard to agential control or evidence against it.

Second, the reason van Inwagen thinks O₁ goes against the agential control hypothesis is because it favors the hypothesis that we simply have a probabilistic structure of independent identically distributed random experiments: I will call this the “iid hypothesis”. Now, suppose we observe option O₃, and let’s consider the specific observed sequence. Let r be the final observed proportion of As. This is some number strictly between 0 and 1 (otherwise we would have O₂). Of course, because we are in option O₃, we didn’t actually observe convergence to r, but still there was some final proportion. Whatever that number r is, van Inwagen thinks that if we had observed convergence to r, that would have been evidence against the agential control hypothesis, because it would have indicated a probabilistic random structure. But now observe that on the iid hypothesis, if there are m of the As and n of the Bs in a sequence, and the probability of A is p, then the probability of the sequence is p^m(1−p)ⁿ. Note that this does not depend on the order of the As and Bs in the sequence. Hence when we keep fixed the proportion of As in the sequence, any particular sequence that looks like it converges to that proportion and any particular sequence that simply happens, after some swings, to end at that proportion are equally likely. Further, the main competing hypothesis with the iid hypothesis is that no meaningful probabilities can be attached to the situation. In that case, we cannot say anything about whether O₁ or O₃ is more likely. Thus, any particular sequence we could get that exhibits O₁ does not favor the iid hypothesis any more than any particular sequence we could get that exhibits O₃.

Let us recapitulate. Option O₃ either is neutral on whether there is agential control or is some evidence against it. Option O₂ opposes agential control. Thus, option O₁ must either be neutral on whether there is agential control or be some evidence for agential control. And so van Inwagen’s replay argument does not work.

Are free actions a counterexample to the PSR?

I’ve argued somewhat as follows in the past:

1. Necessarily, no one is responsible for a brute fact—an unexplained contingent fact.

2. Necessarily, someone is responsible for every free decision or free action.

3. So, it is impossible for a free decision or free action to be a brute fact.

But then:

4. Necessarily, a counterexample to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is a brute fact.

5. So, no free decision or free action can be a counterexample to the PSR.

One may imagine someone, however, arguing that although a free decision or a free action cannot be a counterexample to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, a contrastive report, such as that x freely chose to do A rather than B, could be a counterexample to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. But notice that if x freely chose to do A rather than B, then x is responsible for choosing to do A rather than B. Similarly if x freely chose to do A for reason R rather than B for S, then x is responsible for doing so. Freedom implies responsibility. But no one is responsible for a brute fact, so such contrastive reports cannot be reports of a brute fact.

Objection 1: Incompatibilism is true, and on incompatibilism it is obvious that no possible explanation can be given for why x freely chose to do A for R rather than B for S. Hence the Principle of Sufficient Reason is false.

Response: Given that no one is responsible for what has no explanation, if the “no possible explanation” claim is correct, then free will is impossible. Thus, rather than showing that the PSR is false, the argument would show that if incompatibilism is true, free will is impossible. As a libertarian, I think free will is possible (and actual). But it is important to keep clear on what it is that is really endangered by the argument: it is free will and not the PSR.

Objection 2: Freedom is a necessary but not sufficient condition for responsibility.

Response: I am not sure about this. When I think about what other conditions we need to add to freedom to yield responsibility, the only one I can think of is something like knowledge of what is at stake. But it is arguable that without knowledge of what is at stake, a choice is not free. Moreover, even if one does not know what is at stake with A and B beyond what is contained in the respective reasons R and S, one will still be responsible for choosing A for R rather than B for S if one chooses freely for these reasons. One just won’t be responsible for the further aspects, beyond those captured by R and S, that one does not know.

But let’s grant for the sake of argument that other conditions need to be added to freedom to yield responsibility. If so, then the claim has to be that free but non-responsible decisions or actions or contrastive reports thereof are a counterexample to the PSR although free and responsible ones are not. In other words, one has to hold that the alleged additional conditions that need to be added to freedom to yield responsibility are what secures explicability. But given that the most plausible candidate for the other conditions is knowledge of what is at stake, this is implausible. For a free action based on mistaken or limited knowledge is no less explicable than an action based on full knowledge, once one takes into account the agent’s epistemic deficiency.

Models of libertarian agency, and some more on divine simplicity

Here is a standard libertarian picture of free and responsible choice. I am choosing between two non-mental actions, A and B. I deliberate on the basis of the reasons for A and the reasons for B. This deliberation indeterministically causes an inner mental state W(A), which is the will or resolve or intention to produce A. And then W(A) causes, either deterministically or with high probability, the extra-mental action A.

Now notice two things. First, notice that my production of the state W(A) is itself something I am morally responsible for. Imagine that I have resolved myself to gratuitously insult you. If it turns out that my vocal chords are paralyzed, my resolve W(insult) is itself enough to make me guilty.

Second, note that that my production of W(A) could involve the production of a prior second-order state of will or resolve, a willing W(W(A)) to will to produce A. For there are times when it’s hard to resolve ourselves to do something, and in those cases we might resolve ourselves to resolve ourselves first. But at the same time, to avoid an infinite regress, we should not adopt a view on which every time we responsibly produce something, we do so by forming a prior state of willing or resolve or intention. In light of this, although my production of W(A) could involve the production of a prior second-order state W(W(A)), it need not do so. In fact, phenomenologically, it seems more plausible to think that in typical cases of free choice, we do not go to the meta level of producing W(W(A)). We only go to the meta level in special cases, such as when we have to “steel” ourselves to gain the resolve to do the action.

Thus we have seen that, assuming libertarianism, it is possible for me to be responsible for indeterministically producing a state of affairs W(A) without producing a prior state of willing or resolving or intending in favor of W(A). The state W(A) is admittedly an inner mental state. But the responsibility for W(A) does not seem to have anything to do with the innerness of W(A). We are responsible for W(A) because our deliberation indeterministically but non-aberrantly results in W(A).

Here is a question: Could there be cases where we have libertarian-free actions where instead of our deliberation indeterministically non-aberrantly resulting in W(A), and thereby making us responsible for W(A) as well as A, our deliberation directly indeterministically and non-aberrantly results in the extra-mental action A, without an intervening inner mental state W(A) that deterministically or with high probability causes A, but with us nonetheless being responsible for A?

Once we have admitted—as a libertarian has to, on pain of a regress of willings—that we can be responsible for producing a state of affairs without a prior willing of that state of affairs, then it seems hard to categorically deny the possibility of us producing an extra-mental state of affairs responsibly without an intervening prior willing. And in fact phenomenology fits quite well with the hypothesis that we do that. We do many things intentionally and responsibly without being aware of a willing, resolve or intention to do them. If we stick to the initial libertarian model on which there must be an intervening mental state W(A), we have to say that either the state W(A) is hidden from us—unconscious—or that these actions are only free in a derivative way. Neither is a particularly attractive hypothesis. Why not, simply, admit that sometimes deliberation results in an extra-mental action that we are responsible for without an intervening willing, resolve or intention?

Well, I can think of one reason:

1. It seems that you can only be responsible for what we do intentionally, and we cannot do something intentionally without intending something.

But note that if this reason undercuts the possibility of our responsibly directly doing A without an intervening act W(A) of intention, it likewise undercuts the possibility of our responsibly directly producing W(A) without an intervening W(W(A)) act, and sets us on a vicious regress.

I actually think (1) can be accepted. In that case, when we directly responsibly produce W(A), the intentionality in the production of W(A) is constituted by the non-aberrant causal connection between deliberation and W(A), rather than by some regress-engendering intention-for-W(A) prior to W(A). And the occurrence of W(A) means that we are intending something, namely A.

But what would it be like if we were to directly responsibly produce A, without an intervening act of intention W(A)? How would that be reconciled with (1)? Again, the intentionality of the production of A would be constituted by the non-aberrant causal connection between deliberation and A. And the content of the intention would supervene on the actual occurrence of A as well as on the reasons favoring A that were instrumental in the deliberation. (There are some complications about excluded reasons. Maybe in those cases deliberation can have an earlier stage where one freely decides whether to exclude some reasons.)

Call the cases where we thusly directly responsibly produce an extra-mental action A cases of direct agency.

A libertarian need not believe we exhibit direct agency. Perhaps we always have one level of resolve, willing or intention as an inner mental state. But the libertarian should not be dogmatic here, given the above arguments.

Our phenomenology suggests that we do exhibit direct agency, and indeed do so quite commonly. And if God is simple, and hence does not have contingent inner states, all of God’s indeterministic free actions are cases of direct agency.

In fact, independently of divine simplicity, we may have some reason to prefer the direct agency model in the case of God. Consider why it is that sometimes we go to the meta level of W(W(A)): we do so because of the weakness of our wills, we have to will ourselves to will ourselves to produce A. It seems that a perfect being would never have reason to go to the meta level of W(W(A)). So, the remaining question is whether a perfect being would ever have reason to go to the W(A) level. I think there is some plausibility in the idea that just as going to the W(W(A)) level is a sign of weakness, a sign of a need for self-control, going to the W(A) level is also a sign of imperfection—a sign that one needs a tool, even if an intra-mental tool, for the production of A. It seems plausible, thus, that if this is possible and compatible with freedom and responsibility, a perfect being would simply directly produce A (where A is, say, the action of the being’s causing horses to exist). And I have argued that it is possible, and it is compatible with freedom and responsibility.

Divine simplicity and responsibility for creation

Libertarians believes something like this:

1. If an agent has primary responsibility for a state of affairs A, then the agent gained that resposibility by intentionally indeterministically causing A.

Here, primary responsibility is distinguished from the kind of derivative responsibility that someone who freely got drunk (and hence has primary responsibility for getting drunk) has for the accident caused while drunk.

Next, add this plausible thesis:

2. If an agent gains primary responsibility for a state of affairs A by intentionally causing A, then the agent has primary responsibility for an intention relevantly connected to A.

Now, combine (1) and (2). Suppose Alice has primary responsibility for A. Then she had an intention I = I₁ relevantly connected to A that she had primary responsibility for. Applying (1) and (2) to I₁, we conclude that Alice had primary responsibility for an intention I₂ relevantly connected to I, and primary responsibility for an intention I₃ relevantly connected to I₂, and so on, ad infinitum.

But of course we don’t have an infinite chain of intentions. So we must break out of the chain. I think there is only one way to do so: at some point, I_n = I_n + 1. In other words, the intention relevantly connected to I_n just is I_n once again: there is no further intention. Rather, one’s intention to produce I_n is just constituted by I_n.

This means that it is possible for one to be primarily responsible for a state of affairs A—say an intention I_n—when the intention with which one caused A is itself at least partly constituted by A.

Now, I take it that something like this is what happens when a simple God creates something: God’s intention to create horses is partly constituted by horses, rather than simply by some inner state of God’s.

There is a lesson here: The primary worry that one has about a simple God’s contingently creating things—namely, that a simple God cannot have contingent inner states—is mirrored by a parallel worry about a libertarian agent’s production of intentions.

Subjective sameness of choice situations and Molinism

Suppose that Alice on a street corner sells Bob a “Rolex” for $15. Bob goes home and his wife Carla says: “You got scammed!” Bob takes the “Rolex” to a jeweller and finds that it is indeed a Rolex. He goes back to Carla and says: “No, I got a good deal!” But Carla says: “But if it was a fake, you would have bought it, too.”

Here is Carla’s reasoning behind her counterfactual. A typical fake would have looked the same as the real thing to Bob, and so the counterfactual situation where Bob is offered the fake would have been subjectively the same to Bob. And Carla subscribes to this principle:

1. If you were instead in a different situation that was subjectively identical to the one you were in, you would have chosen the same way.

I find (1) pretty plausible, and it seems to nicely come out as true on a Lewis-style account of counterfactuals in terms of similarity of worlds (with approximate match counting as similarity).

But I doubt a Molinist should accept (1). For the Molinist does not think that counterfactuals of free will are grounded in similarity of worlds (except of the trivial sort, where truth values of counterfactuals count as part of the similarity).

A pre-established harmony with genuine mind-world causation

Molinists have the ability to give a distinctive pre-established harmony account of how the exceptionless truth of deterministic laws of nature could be made compatible with libertarianism.

Here is the story. God considers possible worlds where dualistic agents have the causal power to miraculously contradict the physical laws in their free choices, but where outside of exercises of free will, there are elegant deterministic mathematical laws governing the world. Call such worlds Candidate Worlds.

God then narrows his consideration to Finalist Worlds, which are Candidate Worlds that are feasible—i.e., compatible with the Molinist conditionals—and where as it happens the agents’ free choices accord with the elegant deterministic mathematical laws that govern the rest of the world.

And then God wisely and prudently chooses one of the Finalist Worlds for actualization.

On this story, there are elegant deterministic mathematical laws of nature which are true even of the agents’ choices, but they are true of the agents’ choices because the agents freely chose as they did. The agents had the causal power to violate, say, the conservation of momentum, but in fact freely did not do so.

There is an ambiguity in the concept of “exceptionless laws”. “Exceptionless laws” could mean: laws that allow no exception (they are pushy laws that are so strong as to make no exception possible) and laws that in fact have no exception. The deterministic laws in this story are exceptionless in the sense of having no exception, which is why I am talking of their exceptionless truth rather than their exceptionless power.

In this story, there is a dual explanation of the agents’ choices. On the one hand, there is a standard libertarian story about the agents’ free causality. On the other hand, the laws have explanatory power, because God chose the Finalist Worlds because they are worlds where the laws have exceptionless truth.

The big difficulty with the above story is Molinism. Also, it is worth noting that it is metaphysically possible that there turn out not to be any (feasible) Finalist Worlds: in that scenario, God wouldn’t be able to create a world where there is freedom and elegant deterministic mathematical laws holding exceptionlessly. But for reasons similar to why many people think Transworld Depravity is unlikely to be true, I think it is unlikely that there would be no Finalist Worlds.

It is also interesting to note that there are two more views that could be plugged into the story that can do the same job: Thomism and compatibilism.

On Thomism, God can use primary causation to make agents freely choose as he desires. Then we can suppose that God surveys the same Candidate Worlds as on the Molinist story. Then he chooses Finalist Worlds as those Candidate Worlds where the agents’ free choices in fact do not contradict the mathematical laws. And then God uses primary causation to actualize one of the Finalist Worlds. Again, the agents have the power to contradict the laws, but freely choose not to exercise it.

Finally we have straightforward compatibilism. A dualist can just as easily be a compatibilist as a materialist. On this story, we skip the Candidate Worlds, and the Finalist Worlds are worlds with compatibilist agents, with a deterministic non-physical mental life, who have the power of contradict the physical laws of the world but who are mentally determined, in a way compatible with freedom, never to exercise such a power. And then God chooses one of the Finalist Worlds. The agents then are as free as any compatibilist agents.

The compatibilist version of this story is close to Leibniz’s pre-established harmony, except that it has real mind-world causation, which is a big improvement.

Of course, the non-theist can’t make any of these moves. And, alas, neither can I, since my mere foreknowledge view denies Molinism, Thomism (about free will) and compatibilism.

A responsibility remover

Suppose soft determinism is true: the world is deterministic and yet we are responsible for our actions.

Now imagine a device that can be activated at a time when an agent is about to make a decision. The device reads the agent’s mind, figures out which action the agent is determined to choose, and then modifies the agent’s mind so the agent doesn’t make any decision but is instead compelled to perform the very action that they would otherwise have chosen. Call the device the Forcer.

Suppose you are about to make a difficult choice between posting a slanderous anonymous accusation about an enemy of yours that will go viral and ruin his life and not posting it. It is known that once the message is posted, there will be no way to undo the bad effects. Neither you nor I know how you will choose. I now activate the Forcer on you, and it makes you post the slander. Your enemy’s life is ruined. But you are not responsible for ruining it, because you didn’t choose to ruin it. You didn’t choose anything. The Forcer made you do it. Granted, you would have done it anyway. So it seems you have just had a rather marvelous piece of luck: you avoided culpability for a grave wrong and your enemy’s life is irreparably ruined.

What about me? Am I responsible for ruining your enemy’s life? Well, first, I did not know that my activation of the Forcer would cause this ruin. And, second, I knew that my activation of the Forcer would make no difference to your enemy: she would have been ruined given the activation if and only if she would have been ruined without it. So it seems that I, too, have escaped responsibility for ruining your enemy’s life. I am, however, culpable for infringing on your autonomy. However, given how glad you are of your enemy’s life being ruined with your having any culpability, no doubt you will forgive me.

Now imagine instead that you activated the Forcer on yourself, and it made you post the slander. Then for exactly the same reasons as before, you aren’t culpable for ruining your enemy’s life. For you didn’t choose to post the slander. And you didn’t know that activating the Forcer would cause this ruin, while you did know that the activation wouldn’t make any difference to your enemy—the effect of activating the Forcer on yourself would not affect whether the message would be posted. Moreover, the charge of infringing on autonomy has much less force when you activated the Forcer yourself.

It is true that by activating the Forcer you lost something: you lost the possibility of being praiseworthy for choosing not to post the slander. But that’s a loss that you might judge worthwhile.

So, given soft determinism, it is in principle possible to avoid culpability while still getting the exact same results whenever you don’t know prior to deliberation how you will choose. This seems absurd, and the absurdity gives us a reason to reject the compatibility of determinism and responsibility.

But the above story can be changed to worry libertarians, too. Suppose the Forcer reads off its patient’s mind the probabilities (i.e., chances) of the various choices, and then randomly selects an action with the probabilities of the various options exactly the same as the patient would have had. Then in acting the Forcer, it can still be true that you didn’t know how things would turn out. And while there is no longer a guarantee that things would turn out with the Forcer as they would have without it, it is true that activating the Forcer doesn’t affect the probabilities of the various actions. In particular, in the cases above, activating the Forcer does nothing to make it more likely that your enemy would be slandered. So it seems that once again activating the Forcer on yourself is a successful way of avoiding responsibility.

But while that is true, it is also true that if libertarianism is true, regular activation of the Forcer will change the shape of one’s life, because there is no guarantee that the Forcer will decide just like you would have decided. So while on the soft determinist story, regular use of the Forcer lets one get exactly the same outcome as one would otherwise have had, on the libertarian version, that is no longer true. Regular use of the Forcer on libertarianism should be scary—for it is only a matter of chance what outcome will happen. But on compatibilism, we have a guarantee that use of the Forcer won’t change what action one does. (Granted, one may worry that regular use of the Forcer will change one’s desires in ways that are bad for one. If we are worried about that, we can suppose that the Forcer erases one’s memory of using it. That has the disadvantage that one may feel guilty when one isn’t.)

I don’t know that libertarians are wholly off the hook. Just as the Forcer thought experiment makes it implausible to think that responsibility is compatible with determinism, it also makes it implausible to think that responsibility is compatible with there being precise objective chances of what choices one will make. So perhaps the libertarian would do well to adopt the view that there are no precise objective chances of choices (though there might be imprecise ones).

Free will, randomness and functionalism

Plausibly, there is some function from the strengths of my motivations (reasons, desires, etc.) to my chances of decision, so that I am more likely to choose that towards which I am more strongly motivated. Now imagine a machine I can plug my brain into such that when I am deliberating between options A and B, the machine measures the strengths of my motivations, applies my strengths-to-chances function, randomly selects between A and B in accordance with the output of the strengths-to-chances function, and then forces me to do the selected option.

Here then is a vivid way to put the randomness objection to libertarianism (or more generally to a compatibilism between freedom and indeterminism): How do my decisions differ from my being attached to the decision machine? The difference does not lie in the chances of outcomes.

That the machine is external to me does not seem to matter. For we could imagine that the machine comes to be a part of me, say because it is made of organic matter that grows into my body. That doesn’t seem to make any difference.

But when the randomness problem is put this way, I am not sure it is distinctively a problem for the libertarian. The compatibilist has, it seems, an exactly analogous problem: Why not replace the deliberation by a machine that makes one act according to one’s strongest motivation (or, more generally, whatever motivation it is that would have been determined to win out in deliberation)?

This suggests (weakly) that the randomness problem in general may not be specific to compatibilism, but may be a special case of a deeper problem that both compatibilists and libertarians face.

It seems that both need to say that it deeply matters just how the decision is made, not just its functional characteristics. And hence both need to deny functionalism.

Prosthetic decision-making

Let’s idealize the decision process into two stages:

1. Intellectual: Figure out the degrees to which various options promote things that one values (or desires, judges to be valuable, etc.).

2. Volitive: On the basis of this data, will one option.

On an idealized version of the soft-determinist picture, the volitive stage can be very simple: one wills the option that one figured out in step 1 to best promote what one values. We may need a tie-breaking procedure, but typically that won’t be invoked.

On a libertarian picture, the volitive stage is where all the deep stuff happens. The intellect has delivered its judgment, but now the will must choose. On the best version of the libertarian picture, typically the intellect’s judgment includes a multiplicity of incommensurable options, rather than a single option that best promotes what one values.

On the (idealized) soft-determinist picture, it seems one could replace the mental structures (“the volitive faculty”) that implement the volitive stage by a prosthetic device (say, a brain implant) that follows the simple procedure without too much loss to the person. The actions of a person with a prosthetic volitive faculty would be determined by her values in much the same way as they are in a person with a normal volitive faculty. What is important is the generation of input to the volitive stage—the volitive stage is completely straightforward (except when there are ties).

On the libertarian picture, replacing the volitive faculty by a prosthesis, however, would utterly destroy one as a responsible agent. For it is here, in the volition, that all the action happened.

What about replacing the intellectual faculty by a prosthesis? Well, since the point of the intellectual stage is to figure out something, it seems that the point of the intellectual stage would be respected if one replaced it by an automated process that is at least as accurate as the actual process. Something else would be lost, but the main point would remain. (Compare: Something would be lost if one replaced a limb by a prosthetic that functioned as well as the limb, but the main point would remain.)

So, now, we can imagine replacing both faculties by prostheses. There is definite loss to the agent, but on the soft-determinist picture, there isn’t a loss of what is central to the agent. On the libertarian picture, there is a loss of what is central to the agent as soon as the volitive faculty is replaced by a prosthesis.

The upshot of this is this: On the soft-determinist picture, making decisions isn’t what is central to one as an agent. Rather, it is the formation of values and desires that is central, a formation that (in idealized cases) precedes the decision process. On the libertarian picture, making decisions—and especially the volitive stage of this process—is central to one as an agent.

Analogue jitter in motivations and the randomness objection to libertarianism

All analogue devices jitter on a small time-scale. The jitter is for all practical purposes random, even if the system is deterministic.

Suppose now that compatibilism is true and we have a free agent who is determined to always choose what she is most strongly motivated towards. Now suppose a Buridan’s ass situation, where the motivations for two alternatives are balanced, but where the motivations were acquired in the normal way human motivations are, where there is an absence of constraint, etc.

Because of analogue jitter in the brain, sometimes one motivation will be slightly stronger and sometimes the other will be. Thus which way the agent will choose will be determined by the state of the jitter at the time of the choice. And that’s for all practical purposes random.

Either in such cases there is freedom or there is not. If there is no freedom in such cases, then the compatibilist has to say that people whose choices are sufficiently torn are not responsible for their choices. That is highly counterintuitive.

The compatibilist’s better option is to say that there can still be freedom in such cases. It’s a bit inaccurate to say that the choice is determined by the jitter. For it’s only because the rough values of the strengths of the motivations are as they are that the jitter in their exact strength is relevant. The rough values of the strengths of the motivations are explanatorily relevant, regardless of which way the choice goes. The compatibilist should say that this kind of explanatory relevance is sufficient for freedom.

But if she says this, then she must abandon the randomness objection against libertarianism.

A new theory of limbo

A fairly standard libertarian response to the question about how people can freely choose right over wrong in heaven is this: They have a morally perfect character that makes them unable to choose wrong but this character is the result of choices in this life, choices that they could have avoided. Thus, the choice of right over wrong in heaven is derivatively free, with the freedom deriving from non-derivatively free choices in this life. For a nice development, see Timpe and Pawl.

I had a student ask the question how this works for those who as small children and who hence have not developed their character through free choices. Multiple answers are possible, but I wanted to offer one that yields a somewhat interesting theory of limbo. The theory of limbo holds that some people--those who die in infancy are often given as an example--have not had the kind of life of faith that is required for heaven but nonetheless have done nothing to deserve hell. They are, thus, in limbo: a happy state that, nonetheless, falls short of heaven.

Here, then, is a theory of limbo. Limbo is very much like heaven. In fact, those who are in limbo are a part of the same community as those in heaven, and there is no difference of location, but only of state. Those who are in limbo enjoy most of the joys of heaven: the beatific vision of God, union with wonderful people, flourishing human activity, etc. Their lives are very much like the lives of those who count as being in heaven. However, their choices of right over wrong are not free, because although they have the same morally perfect character that those in heaven do, in the case of those in limbo, that morally perfect character is not the result of their own free choices in this life--it is simply imposed on them by God. So they don't have the joy of knowing that these choices are free, and they don't have the joy of remembering how they freely formed their character, but otherwise they get to enjoy all the joys of heaven.

On this theory, it is better to be in a heavenly rather than limboic state, but the main joy of heaven--the beatific vision--is equally had by people in both states. The difference is solely that those in the limboic state lack the derivative freedom that those in the heavenly state have.

What I don't like about this theory is this: I have the intuition that God shouldn't force people to love him. But perhaps I should simply say: it is better to love freely, but loving unfreely is still good?

Randomness and compatibilism

The randomness objection to libertarian free will holds that undetermined choices will be random and hence unfree. Some randomness-based objectors to libertarianism are compatibilists who think free will is possible, but requires choices to be determined (e.g., David Hume). Others think that free will is impossible (cf. Galen Strawson). I will offer an argument against the Humeans, those who think that freedom is possible but it requires determinism for the relevant mental events. Consider three cases of ordinary human-like agents who have not suffered from brainwashing, compulsion, or the like:

1. Gottfried always acts on his strongest relevant desire when there is one. In cases of a tie between desires, he is unable to make a choice and his head literally explodes. Determinism always holds.
2. Blaise always acts on his strongest relevant desire when there is one. In cases of a tie between desires, his brain initiates a random indeterministic process to decide between the desires. Determinism holds in all other cases.
3. Carl always acts on his strongest relevant desire when there is one. In cases of a tie between two desires, his brain unconsciously calculates one more digit of π, and if it's odd the brain makes him go for the first desire (as ordered alphabetically in whatever language he is thinking in) and if it's even for the second desire (with some generalization in case of an n-way tie for n>2). Determinism always holds.

Gottfried isn't free in cases of ties between desires--he doesn't even make a choice. Our Humean must insist that Blaise isn't free, either, in those cases, because although Blaise does decide, his decision is simply random. What about Carl? Well, Carl's choices are determined, which the Humean likes. But they are nonetheless to all intents and purposes random. A central part of the intuition that Blaise isn't free has to do with Blaise having no control over which desire he acts on, since he cannot control the indeterministic process. But Carl has no control over the digits of π and these digits are, as far as we can tell, essentially random. The randomness worry that is driving the Humean's argument that freedom requires determinism is not fundamentally a worry about indeterminism. That is worth noting.

Now let's go back to Gottfried. Given compatibilism it is plausible that in normal background conditions, all of Gottfried's choices are free. (Remember that if there is a tie, he doesn't make a choice.) Suppose we grant this. Then there is a tension between this judgment and what we observed about Carl. For now consider the case of closely-balanced choices by Gottfried. Suppose, for instance, Gottfried's desire to write a letter to Princess Elizabeth has strength 0.75658 and his desire to design a better calculator has strength 0.75657. He writes a letter to Princess Elizabeth, then, and does so freely by what has been granted. But now notice that our desires always fluctuate in the light of ordinary influences, and a difference of one in the fifth significant figure in a measure of the strength of a desire will be essentially a random fluctuation. The fact that this fluctuation is determined makes no difference, as we can see when we recall the case of Carl. So if we take seriously what we learned from the case of Carl, we need to conclude that Carl isn't actually free when he chooses between writing to Princess Elizabeth and designing a better calculator, even though he satisfies standard compatibilist criteria and acts on the basis of his stronger desire.

What should the Humean do? One option is to accept that Gottfried is free in the case of close decisions, and then conclude that so are Carl and Blaise in the case of ties. I think the resulting position may not be very stable--if compatibilism requires one to think Carl and Blaise are free in the case of ties, then compatibilism is no longer very plausible.

Another option is to deny that Gottfried is free in the case of close decisions. By parallel, however, she would need to deny that we are free in the case of highly conflicted decisions, unless she could draw some line between our conflicts and Gottfried's fifth-significant-figure conflict. And that's costly.

Finally, it's worth noting that the objection, whatever it might be worth, against the incompatiblist that we shouldn't need to wait on science to see if we're free also works against our Humean.

Responsibility and randomness

Consider this anti-randomness thesis that some compatibilists use to argument against libertarianism:

1. If given your mental state you're at most approximately equally likely to choose A as to choose B, you are not responsible for choosing A over B.

Note that being in such a state of mind is compatible with determinism, since even given determinism one can correctly say things like "The coin is equally likely to come up tails as heads."

Thesis (1) is false. Here's a counterexample. Consider the following family of situations, where your character is fixed between them: You choose whether to undergo x hours of torture in order to save me from an hour of torture. If x=0.000001, then I assume you will be likely to choose to save me from the torture—the cost is really low. If x=10, then I would expect you to be very unlikely to save me from the torture—the cost is disproportionate. Presumably as x changes between 0.000001 and 10, the probability of your saving me changes from close to 1 to close to 0. Somewhere in between, at x=x₁ (I suppose x₁=1, if you're a utilitarian), the probability will be around 1/2. By (1), you wouldn't be responsible for choosing to undergo x₁ hours of torture to save me from an hour of torture. But that's absurd.

Thus, anybody who believes in free will, compatibilist or incompatibilist, should deny (1).

Now, let's add two other common theses that get used to attack libertarianism:

2. If a choice can be explained with antecedent mental conditions that yield at most approximately probability 1/2 of that choice, a contrastive explanation of that choice cannot be given in terms of antecedent mental conditions.
3. One is only responsible for a choice if one can give a contrastive explanation of it in terms of antecedent mental conditions.

Since (2) and (3) imply (1), and (1) is false, it follows that at least one of (2) and (3) must be rejected as well.

There is an independent argument against (1). The intuition behind (1) is that responsibility requires that a choice be more likely than its alternative. But necessarily God is responsible for all his choices. And surely it was possible in at least one of his choices for him to have chosen otherwise (otherwise, how can he be omnipotent?). If the choice he actually made was not more likely than the alternative, then he was not responsible by the intuition. But God is always responsible. Suppose then the choice he actually made was more likely than the alternative. Nonetheless, he could have made the alternative choice, and had he done so, he would have done something less likely than the alternative, and by the intuition he wouldn't have been responsible, which again is impossible. Thus, the theist must reject the intuition.

A regress of reasons

Suppose I vote to admit Artur to our program because Artur is Polish. A colleague then criticizes me, not for my voting to admit Artur, who is indisputably an excellent candidate, but for my voting to admit Artur for the reason I did. The colleague says that I should have voted to admit Artur because of his qualifications, not his ethnicity. And of course the colleague would be right in the criticism.

It is a familiar phenomenon that when we make a decision, we can be morally criticized (by others or by ourselves) for acting on the reasons we did. Sometimes it is not up to us which reasons we act on—we might, after all, not be free at all, but be compelled to act on the reasons we act on. Such cases could lead to a paralysis: I know what I ought to do, and I know the reason I ought to do it for, but I am unable to do the action for the right reason.

I suspect that when we conscientiously realize that we are in a position where we are moved to do what we know is the correct action, but we know we are moved by reasons we should not be moved by, typically we are not helpless. We can in fact get ourselves to act for the right reasons. It would be too paradoxical if it were typical in such cases that the only way we had to avoid acting for the wrong reasons was to avoid the correct action.

But this means that we should be able to exercise some power of choice over the reasons for which we choose. To choose an action A for reason R is itself an action, and it is possible to have reasons for and against this action, since choice requires reasons. This threatens a regress of reasons.

One way to arrest the regress is to say that, in practice, our freedom eventually runs out. Eventually, we have no freedom to choose our reasons, but only freedom to choose the action. That may be the case sometimes. But I think a more interesting case would be where we can choose to act on a reason for that very reason, thereby arresting the regress. My love for my children, perhaps, not only provides me with reason to spend time with my children, but reason to do things out of love for my children.

Morality without virtue

Habits induces correlations between choices in similar epistemic circumstances. A person who has behaved courageously in the face of physical danger on ten past occasions is more likely to be a physically courageous person, and therefore is more likely to behave courageously now when again facing physical danger, even when we control for the considerations on the basis of which we are deciding, unlike a fair coin which is not more likely to land hands just because on the ten past occasions it has done so. Our choices, moreover, modify our habits thereby even further increasing these correlations.

Now imagine persons that do not have habits in this sense. They make their choices based on the considerations present in each case, on a case by case basis. The fact that they have braved physical danger ten times does not make it more likely that they will brave it now, as long as one controls for the considerations present in the cases. Moreover, I will suppose that the motivational strength of the considerations they are deciding on the basis of does not change over time. They always find duty to have a certain pull and they always find convenience to have a certain pull, and the degree of pull does not change.

Such persons would not have character in the way we understand character. They would have neither virtues nor vices. They would have much less control over the shape of their lives. For we can shape our futures by inducing in ourselves a certain character. They could, however, influence the shape of their lives through rational means, by gaining new beliefs or by creating reasons to act.

It would be difficult for such beings to live in community. But we could imagine that one of their very clever engineers builds a mechanical sovereign who enforces basic rules for harmonious living through harsh punishment. For although there are no correlations between choices made in similar circumstances, one could change the circumstances to increase the weight of considerations in favor of actions that conduce to harmonious living. Or a prophet could convince the people that great rewards for virtue and harsh punishments for vice follow in an afterlife, and that, too, would conduce to harmony. But that still wouldn't be virtue.

The lives of such beings would be less storied. They would not exhibit the good of making a certain kind of person out of oneself. There are, indeed, many goods that they would lack.

But without any virtues or vices, these beings could still could have morally significant freedom. They could freely choose, on a case-by-case basis, whether to follow duty or some other consideration. Many of the familiar moral norms that bind us could apply to them. It would be no more permissible for them to kill the innocent or build palaces on the backs of the suffering poor than it is for us. They would have one fewer reason in favor of doing the right thing, though. If I build a palace on the backs of the suffering poor, I become a more vicious person. That wouldn't happen to them. But they would still have the simple reason that it's wrong to do this, together with extrinsic considerations coming from hope of reward or fear of punishment. And that I will become a more vicious person is only an extrinsic consideration against committing an action, anyway.

Virtue ethicists will probably disagree with me that such beings couldn't have morality. So much worse for virtue ethics. Virtues are an important component of human moral life, but I think they are not a component of moral life in general as such, just as physical interaction is an important component of human moral life, but isn't a component of moral life in general (angels have a moral life but as far as we know they have no physical interaction).

Theists can't be anti-libertarians

Strong anti-libertarians believe that choices need to be determined by our motives in order to be free.  Weak anti-libertarians believe that choices need to be probabilified, with a probability greater than 1/2, by motives in order to be free.

Strictly speaking, one could be a libertarian and a weak anti-libertarian.  But it would be odd.  As a weak anti-libertarian, one would say something like this:  When I am choosing between two equiprobable options, I am not free.  It's just chance how I choose.  When I am choosing between an option A whose probability is greater than 1/2 and another option B, I may be free if I choose A, but I won't be free if I choose B.  And that would be a weird thing for a libertarian to say.

Theists should be neither weak nor strong anti-libertarians.  Consider these two plausible premises:

1. Necessarily, whatever God chooses, he chooses freely.
2. God made at least one choice that it was possible for him to have made otherwise.

I actually think premise 1 is true for any agent: I think non-free choices are impossible.  But that's very controversial, and the special case of God is much more clear.  If non-free choices are possible, surely God isn't going to be making any such--that would surely be contrary to an important aspect of omnipotence.

Premise 2 is I think a part of standard religious views.  For instance, Catholics are committed (by the First Vatican Council) to the claim that God isn't necessitated to create.  Christians more generally tend to think that God has chosen to redeem us, but did not have to.  It would, I think, be difficult to reconcile omnipotence with a denial of 2--we can perhaps allow that doing wrong or doing the impossible are things an omnipotent being can't do, but surely some alternate options are needed for omnipotence.  Moreover, merely conditional "had he willed otherwise, he would have done otherwise" options won't be enough to do justice to omnipotence.

We can also argue for premise 2 as follows.  Intuitively, there is a possible world w* which has no contingent beings in common with our world.  God exists necessarily.  Hence, God exists at w*.  At w*, God must have decided something differently from what he decided in our world.  (Some differences between worlds can be due to inter-creaturely causal processes having gone differently.  But in this case because w* has no contingent beings in common in our world, the differences can't be like that.)

If one accepts 2, one has to deny strong anti-libertarianism.  And if one accepts both 2 and 1, one has to deny weak anti-libertarianism.  For suppose God is choosing between alternatives A and B and can choose either one.  Then it cannot be that both the alternatives have probability greater than 1/2.  Hence at least one of the alternatives fails to have probability greater than 1/2.  Let's say that's B.  Now consider a world where God chooses B.  That's a world where God chose something that did not have probability greater than 1/2.  But by 1, the choice was still free, contrary to weak anti-libertarianism.

It doesn't follow that theists have to be libertarians.  But they have to think that freedom is compatible with lack of determinism.

[Edited to reflect my view that all choices are free. -ARP]

The randomness argument against compatibilism

The randomness argument insists that if our actions are not determined by our character, then they are a matter of chance and hence not free. This is the most powerful argument against libertarianism. I want to think about whether the argument presents a challenge to the compatibilism. (Compatibilists think freedom is compatible with determinism; libertarians think that (a) freedom is incompatible with determinism, and (b) there is freedom. I shall assume that freedom and responsibility go together, though a more careful examination will require dropping the assumption.)

The compatibilist had better have something to say about how on her preferred view of action the actions do not come out as "a matter of chance". As a warmup, observe that for the purposes of evaluating whether something is "a matter of chance" in our ordinary intuitive sense—which is presumably the sense at play in the argument—the question isn't whether the event is determined or not. We think of coin flips as a matter of chance, and we would think this even if it turned out that the outcomes of coin flips are determined by the precise values of the initial conditions, so a slightly different angle or velocity would produce a different outcome, and we do not have precise enough control over the angle or velocity. If our actions came from a deterministic coin flip in the head, they would be no less objectionably random than if they came from an indeterministic coin flip.

Now, add this observation. People sometimes make seriously responsible decisions where their desires are very close in strength. For instance, no one would get off on a murder charge just because her desire to do the right thing was almost as strong as her desire to inherit the money from her uncle. But when desires are sufficiently close in strength, then which desire is the stronger is "a matter of chance" in exactly the same sense in which a deterministic coin flip is "a matter of chance". What sense is that? It's the sense that when something depends on very fine differences in conditions, too fine for us to discern or control, it's "a matter of chance." Whether one is seriously responsible for murder or not responsible for murder at all shouldn't depend on such tiny differences in desires: if it depends on the fact that one's desire to commit the murder has strength 27.4837 while one's desire not to commit the murder has strength 27.4836, that's just as chance as a truly indeterministic choice would be.

I think three families of answers are available to the compatibilist.

Answer 1: Insist that as the strengths of desires get closer and closer, the degree of freedom and responsibility decreases to zero.

Objection: It doesn't! While perhaps we want to especially criticize the character of the person whose desire for murder was by far the stronger desire, the person for whom the desires were closely balanced, and who agonized over the decision is still seriously responsible, and not merely vanishingly responsible.

Answer 2: Go for Markosian's agent causal compatibilism.

Objection: I have some problems with Markosian's story, but once one goes for agent causation to respond here, one should allow the libertarian the courtesy of relying on agent causation to respond to the randomness argument as well. But if one does that, one loses the strongest argument against libertarianism.

Answer 3: The person whose desire for murder has strength 27.4837 and whose desire not to commit the murder has strength 27.4838 is still a pretty bad person, even if she does not commit murder. Thus, our moral evaluation of the character of the person who in fact commits the murder because her desire strengths are 27.4837 and 27.4836 for and against respectively and the person who does not commit the murder because her desire strengths are 27.4837 and 27.4838 should be very similar, all other things being equal. The latter person does not commit the murder, but that's just her luck, and it is not a very different kind of luck from the luck of a person who does not murder her uncle because he happens to die before she gets around to trying to kill him. In all of these cases, ordinarily, we are dealing with persons with a corrupt moral character, persons who can be appropriately criticized for that character. Largely for pragmatic reasons, however, we do not punish the person who does not commit the murder, whether because her uncle dies on his own or because her desire for murder is slightly the weaker.

Objection: I do not think this fits with how we ordinarily think about the situations. We think there is something significantly praiseworthy when someone with very closely balanced desires for good and evil does the right thing. Yet the difference between the significantly praiseworthy and the significantly blameworthy action shouldn't be "a matter of chance".

Here, the compatibilist pressing Answer 3 might bite the bullet and say that while for pragmatic reasons we praise the person with such closely balanced desires, perhaps in the hope that the balance is shifting in a good direction and our praise will push it further there, she is a really bad person. But I still doubt this: Is she morally really about as blameworthy as an actual murderer? It still seems that the blameworthiness in the action is objectionably a matter of chance, unless one takes Answer 2 as the way out.

In any case, let's explore this compatibilist answer some more. Even if the bullet has been bitten, it's only going to have any hope of working in cases where the person is responsible for her character. For if her character is not something she's responsible for, it might as well be a matter of chance (and indeed may be a matter of chance circumstances and genetics). In particular, it won't work for the first responsible choices a person makes. The story has to be a story of bootstrapping: one has a very low level of responsibility in the initial choices, but then as one's choices build up a character in concert with them, the level of responsibility rises.

I doubt this this bootstrapping. If the choice itself does not inject any new responsibility, as I think on a deterministic story it does not since it is simply an outcome of earlier character, then one is no more responsible for the up-built character than for the initial character. But that is a different and independent objection to compatibilism, I think.

In sum, I think the randomness argument isn't so much an argument against libertarianism as an argument against the possibility of freedom: it affects compatibilists and libertarians alike. Oh, and I think it doesn't work, either because of agent causation or because it fails to notice how well indeterministic explanation can be made to work.

Frankfurt and choices

Here is a picture of how choices work. Suppose a binary choice between A and B, and suppose what you choose is A. Then there are two events. There is a token of the event type c(A,B) of your choosing between A and B, and there is the token of the event type w(A) of your willing A (or of your "being set" for A). What makes it true to say that you chose A over B? It is not simply that a c(A,B) event happens and then a w(A) event happens. For instance, that a c(A,B) event happens and then a w(A) event happens happens is compatible with the hypothesis that first you're choosing between A and B, and then something external causes you to interrupt that process of choosing and forget all about B, and instead you embark on a process of choosing between A and C, and you choose A over C and hence a w(A) event happens. Nor is it true that you chose A over B provided that the w(A) event follows right after the c(A,B) event. For it could be that some external cause causes the w(A) event while suspending the causal effects of the c(A,B) event. Then you didn't choose A over B, because the choosing between A and B was causally irrelevant to your choosing A.

So, maybe we should rather say this: What makes it true to say that you chose A over B is that a w(A) event is caused by a c(A,B) event. That is close, but not quite right. After all, there could just be some weird causal chain on which a c(A,B) event causes an external cause to cause w(A), and that won't be a case of choosing A over B. We need to say:

• CHOICE: What makes it true to say that you chose A over B is that a w(A) event is caused by a c(A,B) event in the right way.

And as is ever the case in philosophy, we can't spell out what "in the right way" means.

Notice that in the above I said nothing about whether the causation between the c(A,B) event and the w(A) event is deterministic or not. The above story about choosing is one that both compatibilists and libertarians can adopt, though they will likely spell out "in the right way" differently. It is likely that libertarians will understand choice in such a way that the "in the right way" condition requires, among other things, that the causation be indeterministic.

So what's the point of this? Here is one point. Frankfurt proposes as a counterexample to the principle that if you are freely doing something then you could have done otherwise a case where a neurosurgeon watches what you're about to do. If you're about to do B, then he intervenes and makes you do A instead. But if you're going to do A, he doesn't intervene. You do A, and so he doesn't intervene. Surely you're free, but you couldn't have done otherwise.

Fair enough. But the libertarian really cares more about choices here. It is the choice in which you acquire primary responsibility. So, the libertarian can very reasonably retreat to:

• PAPC: If you freely chose A over B, then you could have failed to choose A over B.

But it is far from clear that the neurosurgeon case challenges PAPC in a way that does not beg the question against the libertarian. For the neurosurgeon would have to be able to ensure you to choose A over B, if you were about to choose B over A, in order for the story to work. But how could he do that?

One option would be to modify the c(A,B) event so that it deterministically causes a w(A) event. But the libertarian can reasonably say that a part of the "in the right way" condition in CHOICE is that w(A) is caused indeterministically by c(A,B). The other way would be to produce w(A) by means of some external cause, but then the w(A) event either won't be caused by the c(A,B) event or won't be caused by it in the right way, and so the agent won't be choosing A over B.

These considerations make it plausible that on the libertarian's view, no one can ensure you will choose A over B. And of course the claim that no one can ensure you will choose A over B is incompatible with determinism (since if determinism is true, someone could set up conditions before your conception such that you would have to choose A over B). And this, in turn, suggests that the libertarian can afford to say that to freely choose A over B is just to choose A over B.

I suspect that my above remarks are partly inspired by Richard Gale telling me that he thought Frankfurt and Locke showed you couldn't act otherwise but not that you couldn't choose otherwise. But I didn't manage in the above to show that if you freely chose A over B, you could have chosen B over A.