On what Hasker conceded on the Flicker Strategy

Not really very much.

Vic:

As for what I conceded: it's about the stuff on p. 91 of TES. John wrote and pointed out that what I said there about him was wrong -- that he does not make responsibility "fundamentally dependent on the overt act," and he does accept the point made by Kant, and affirmed at the bottom of that page. I went back and re-read the relevant section in his book (The Metaphysics of Free Will), and I saw that he was right, so I admitted as much. I never agreed that the Frankfurt examples are successful. And as I wrote earlier, I'm with you on the "flicker" issue.

Bill

Ham-Fisted empricism: Hasker on externalism and the AFR

It is of course true that a belief, in order to be justified, needs to have been formed and sustained by a reliable epistemic practice. But in the case of rational inference, what is the practice supposed to be. The reader is referred, once gain, to the description of a reasoning process given a paragraph back. Is this not, in fact, a reasonably accurate description of the way we actually view and experience the practice of rational inference and assessment/ It is furthermore, a description which enables us to understand why in many cases a practice is reliable—and why the reliability varies considerably depending on the specific character of the inference drawn and also on the logical capabilities of the epistemic subject. And on the other hand, isn’t it a severe distortion of our actual inferential practice to view the process of reasoning as taking place in a “black box,” as the externalist view in effect invites us to do? Epistemological externalism has its greatest plausibility in cases where the warrant for our beliefs depends crucially on matters not accessible to reflection—for instance, on the proper functioning of our sensory faculties. Rational inference, by contrast, is the paradigmatic example of a situation in which the factors relevant to warrant are accessible to reflection; for this reason, examples based on rational insight have always formed the prime examples for internalist epistemologies.

There is also this question for the thoroughgoing externalist: How are we to satisfy ourselves as to which inferential practices are reliable? By hypothesis, we are precluded from appealing to rational insight to validate our conclusions about this. One might say that we have learned to distinguish good reasoning from bad reasoning, by noticing that good inference-patterns generally give rise to true conclusions, while bad inference-patterns often give rise to falsehood. (This of course assumes that our judgments about particular facts, especially facts revealed through sense perception, are not in question here—an assumption I will grant for the present). But this sort of “logical empiricism” is at best a very crude method for assessing the goodness of arguments. There are plenty of invalid arguments with true conclusions, and plenty of valid arguments with false conclusions. There are even good inductive arguments with all true premises in which the conclusions are false. There are just the distinctions which the science of logic exists to help us with; basing the science on the kind of ham-fisted empiricism described above is a hopeless enterprise.

William Hasker, The Emergent Self (Cornell, 1999), pp. 74-75. From the chapter "Why the Physical Isn't Closed."

Hasker's argument against the compatibility of foreknowledge and freedom

Hasker's argument against the compatibility of foreknowledge and freedom.

•Arguments against the compatibility of foreknowledge and freedom
1.It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow.
2.It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe anything which is true.
3.God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet tomorrow.
4.If God has always believed a certain thing, then it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing.
5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast.
6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one.
7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow.

Hasker on Scientific Naturalism

But science as a total worldview—the idea that science can tell us everything there is to know about what reality consists of, enjoys no such overwhelming support. This worldview, (often termed scientific naturalism) is just one theory amongst others and is no more capable of being “proved to all reasonable people” than are religious belief systems. To claim that the strong support enjoyed by, say, the periodic table of the elements transfers to scientific naturalism as a worldview is highly confused if not deliberately misleading.



From Peterson, Basinger, Reichenbach and Hasker, Reason and Religious Belief 4th ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 57.



I happen to know that Hasker wrote this.

Hasker on the value of free will

I am reposting the content of this passage, which I have posted before, but am leaving out the discussion in the comments, which reflected some of the more acrimonious phases of the controversy with Calvinists I engaged in several months back.

The value of free will does not end there. All sorts of relationships acquire special value because they involve love, trust, and affection are freely bestowed. The love potions that appear in many fairy stories (and the Harry Potter series) can become a trap; the one who has used the potion finds that he wants to be loved for his own sake and not because of the potion, yet fears the loss of the beloved’s affection if the potion is no longer used. For that matter, individuals without free will would not, in the true sense, be human beings at all, at least this is the case as seems highly plausible, the capacity for free choice is an essential characteristic of human beings as such. If so, then to say that free will should not exist is to say that we humans should not exist. It may be possible to say that, and perhaps even mean it, but the cost of doing so is very high. William

Hasker on integrating faith and learning

This is a well-known essay by Bill Hasker.

Harry Potter, Love Potions, and Free will

The value of free will does not end there. All sorts of relationships acquire special value because they involve love, trust, and affection are freely bestowed. The love potions that appear in many fairy stories (and the Harry Potter series) can become a trap; the one who has used the potion finds that he wants to be loved for his own sake and not because of the potion, yet fears the loss of the beloved’s affection if the potion is no longer used. For that matter, individuals without free will would not, in the true sense, be human beings at all, at least this is the case as seems highly plausible, the capacity for free choice is an essential characteristic of human beings as such. If so, then to say that free will should not exist is to say that we humans should not exist. It may be possible to say that, and perhaps even mean it, but the cost of doing so is very high.

William Hasker, The Truimph of Good Over Evil (Inter-Varsity, 2008) p. 156.

Hasker's "How Not to Be a Reductivist"

Can't recommend this one enough.

The first of Hasker's three arguments for libertarian free will

I. Why should we reject determinism and accept libertarian free will
A. Our experience of choice. “This experience seems to carry with it the strong conviction that the various alternatives were within our power.” Descartes thinks that this demonstrates libertarianism and that it is absurd to doubt what we inwardly experience
1. Hasker thinks this goes too far. What seems to us to be true may not be true. (I could be, for example, deceived by an evil demon. Or just unaware of the determining causes of my action).
2. However, the inner conviction of freedom deserves to be taken seriously. Consider (my example) my seeming to see a tree in front of me. I could have good evidence that my tree-seeing experience is not veridical. But in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, I have every reason to believe that I do see a tree. The arguments for determinism are less that persuasive, according to Hasker, so we do have a good reason to take our experience seriously and believe that my will is free in the libertarian sense.

Incompatibilism and the argument from cosmic justice

A redated post

My argument is going to be an argument from cosmic injustice. No matter how the "freedom" is described, in the final analysis you have to have a certain amount of cosmic luck to have that sort of freedom and to exercise it rightly. (Or maybe good predestination, if you are operating within a theological framework. On my view compatibilism turns the argument from evil into a really good argument). But still, the ultimate responsibility goes up the causal chain to the original source.

I don't know how you could develop a Frankfurt case that would dispel my sense of cosmic injustice that Jeffrey Dahmer is blamed for his bad actions, and Mother Teresa is credited with her good actions, in spite of the fact that Teresa and Jeffrey just happened to be on the end of causal chains that produced their respective actions.

I heard about Calvinism before I heard about compatibilism, but my objections to both are the same.

Hasker's critique of the case for determinsm

A redated post

Hasker consider the case for determinism

Two misconceptions about determinism

1) Determinism means that people do not make choices.

Determinists do not deny the existence of choices. They just maintain that actions are determined by past causes.

2) Determinism means that our choices make no difference.

My actions are causally effective even if determinism is true.

Arguments for determinism

1) Determinism is a necessary truth of reason. For every event that happens, there must be a sufficient cause. Otherwise the causes would be insufficient, and the event would not take place.
2) We always act on our strongest desire. Therefore, the strongest desire determines what we do. Our strongest desire is always the sufficient cause for our actions. Given our desires, we cannot do otherwise from what we do. (Psychological determinism).
3) Determinism is a presupposition of science. The scientists seeks to predict and control nature, this presuppose that nature is predictable and controllable. Science is the business of looking for and finding universal natural laws to explain everything. To deny determinism is therefore to oppose science.
4) Determinism is supported by the conclusions of the sciences.

Hasker, however, thinks that these arguments are not convincing.

1) Determinism is not self-evident. It can be asserted, but that doesn’t prove it.
2) There is no good way of deciding what one’s strongest desire is apart from seeing what motivates action. So “strongest desire” just means “the desire we act on.” Therefore the principle “We always act on our strongest desire,” just means “We always act on the desire we act on.” That’s trivially true.
3) Science seems to be getting along fine without determinism in physics. Quantum indeterminacy does not prove free will, but it does undercut the argument from presupposition for determinism.
4) The results of science also don’t support determinism. A good deal of behavioral science is statistical in nature. The existence of statistical laws is consistent with determinism, but also consistent with the rejection of determinism.

Therefore, Hasker concludes, the case for determinism is insufficient.

Another argument for determinism occurs to me. Suppose we assume a naturalistic or physicalistic world-view. If we do, then the physical world is a causally closed system. And everything else that exists, at least in space and time, is a necessary consequence of the state of the physical. Now it seems as if we don’t choose the state of the physical, since the physical is determined and determined only by other physical states. Nor are we responsible for the necessary consequences of the physical. But if our actions are the necessary consequences of the physical, then we are not responsible for our actions either.

Of course, one must be a physicalist in order to accept this argument, which Hasker is not.

Response to comments on Hasker

Also a redated post

Anon 1: These are interesting responses. Of course Max can't prevent what does happen. That isn't what libertarianism says. Libertarianism just says that when we act, we could have done otherwise.
Anon 2: He's not arguing against compatibilism because it has bad consequences. He's saying that the consequences of determinism is that moral responsibility is an illusion. That's an argument that could be used by hard determinists, who say that moral responsibility is an illusion, or by libertarians, who believe that determinism is false.
Libertarianism maintains that we are responsible for some actions, and does not require that we be responsible for all our actions.
Hasker doesn't deny that if determinism is true, we make choices. It is just that, if determinism is true, then our choices are determined and therefore we are not the ultimate causes of our actions. Therefore, in the final analysis, we aren't responsible.
Hasker is an open theist; so he does see a problem reconciling foreknowledge with free will. On his view omniscience is knowledge of all there is to know. God doesn't know the future comprehensively, according to open theism, because it depends of future free choices. Google "open theism" and find out what open theism is.
Hasker attacks the Frankfurt counterexamples of pp. 86-94 of the Emergent Self. Have these arguments been rebutted?
I don't see how, in the final analysis, I can be responsible for the logical consequences of thins I am not responsible for.
I think that if you take moral responsibility to involve a difference of desert based on a difference of conduct, I think Hasker's argument really is a slam dunk. However, there may be some concepts of moral responsiblity don't involve desert, and if we are using those concepts perhaps some sense can be made out of compatibilism. Nevertheless, I am convinced that if determinism is true then whether I am virtuous or not is a matter of moral luck.

More Hasker on free will: Hasker's refutation of compatibilism

This is a redated post also.

Hasker provides a definition of compatibilism or soft determinism

There is no logical inconsistency between free will and determinism, and that it is possible that human beings are free and responsible for their actions even though these actions are causally determined.

Of course, for it to be soft determinism, as opposed to compatibilism, it must be the case that determinism is true.

One thing a lot of people get confused about that they typically suppose that soft determinism as opposed to hard determinism is a different type of determinism—that our actions are determined in a different way depending on which type of determinism it is. That’s false. Soft determinism and hard determinism do not differ with respect to how the actions are determined. The difference is that hard determinists bite the “hard” bullet and accept the idea that moral responsibility is an illusion, while soft determinists do not.

The soft determinist position is an initially appealing one, and the textbook author (Thiroux) defends it. However, Hasker presents what I think is a powerful attack against it.

To get soft determinism off the ground, you need a concept of what it is to act freely which doesn’t conflict with determinism. According to compatibilism a free action has three characteristics:

1) It is not caused by compulsion or by states of affairs external to the agent. A compelled action would, for example, be an act performed at gunpoint. The robber says “Your money or your life!” and most people (Jack Benny excepted, who in the famous comedy sketch had to think it over), even though they desire to keep their money, give it to the robber to protect their own lives.
2) Instead the immediate cause of the action is a psychological state of affairs internal to the agent—a wish, desire, intention or something of that sort.
3) The situation is one in which it was in the agent’s power to have acted differently, if he had wanted to.

Hasker presents a refutation of compatibilism or soft determinism which to my mind is very forceful. He uses as his example the case of Max, a 17-year-old high school dropout, who was caught stealing hubcaps. He wasn’t forced to steal them, he stole them because he wanted new ones to replace his old hubcaps, which were scratched and rusty. There is, according to soft determinism a sufficient condition of his taking them—such that, given those events and circumstances, it is impossible that he should not steal the hubcaps. He calls these set of events and circumstances the proximate cause. In this case the proximate cause is his desire for new hubcaps and the belief that he could get them only by stealing them. Since these are internal states of Max, according to the compatibilist, this makes his action free and responsible.

But, Hasker says, this is an illusion. Soft determinism earns a appearance of legitimacy so long as we pay attention to the proximate cause and ignore what he calls the prior cause. The prior cause is the set of events a circumstances which together constitute a sufficient condition for the occurrence of the proximate cause, and if determinism is true, then there is a set of circumstances sufficient for the occurrence of the proximate cause all of which occurred before Max was conceived or born.

The problem if this: Max is clearly not responsible for two facts, which jointly entail that Max will steal the hubcaps.

1) The prior cause, which occurred at a time when Max did not exist.
2) The fact that if the prior cause occurs, Max will steal the hubcaps.

1) existed before Max did, and 2) is a necessary consequence of the laws of nature (or the eternal decrees of God, if God exists).

“The act of stealing is causally necessitated by the events and circumstances of the prior cause, to which Max contributed nothing at all. And given that the prior cause did occur, Max could not more prevent its inevitable outcome—the stealing of the hubcaps—than he could stay the planets in their courses or stop the crustal plates of the earth in their relentless march across the ocean floor. So determinism and moral responsibility just are incompatible, and that is that."

An overrated objection to Cartesian dualism

A redated post.

William Hasker, who is not a Cartesian dualist, thinks so.

The hoariest objection specifically to Cartesian dualism (but one still frequently taken as decisive) is that, because of the great disparity between mental and physical substances, causal interaction between them is unintelligible and impossible. This argument may well hold the record for overrated objections to major philosophical positions. What is true about it is that we lack any intuitive understanding of the causal relationship between Cartesian souls and bodies. And there is no doubt that, other things being equal, a mind-body theory that allowed such understanding would seem preferable to one that did not. The reason this is not decisive is that, as Hume pointed out, all causal relationships involving physical objects involving physical objects are at bottom conceptually opaque. We find the kinetic theory of gases, with its ping-pong-ball molecules bouncing off each other, fairly readily understandable. This, however, is only because we have learned from experience about the behavior of actual ping-pong balls, and our expectations in such cases have become so habitual that they seem natural to us; we have no ultimate insight into the causal relations except to say, “That’s the way things are.” But equally and emphatically, “the way things are” includes the fact that our thoughts, feelings, and intentions are affected by what happens to our bodies, and vice versa, and to deny these palpable facts for the sake of a philosophical theory seems a strange aberration.

William Hasker, The Emergent Self (Cornell, 1999) p. 130.

Hasker on the problem of interaction

Since Mark Frank has raised the issue that dualism has a problem dealing with the possibility of mind-body interaction, I thought I should link to a passage from Hasker's book which was quoted on John DePoe's blog.

Hasker, sensible naturalism, and causal closure

What would the naturalist have to accept, in order to accommodate the demands of reason at this point? At minimum, the naturalist must accept the existence of emergent laws—laws which manifest themselves in complex organic situations, and which result in behavior of the fundamental particles of nature different from the behavior predicted on the basis of the physical laws alone. To admit this is to reject the “causal closure of the physical domain” that is so dear to the hearts of many, perhaps most, contemporary naturalists. The naturalist will have to acknowledge that new causal powers emerge in suitably complex configurations of organic chemicals.—powers that are not evident in simpler situations, and are not deducible from any laws that operate in simpler situations. It will have to be true that, given a particular sort of brain-state, there supervenes, say, a desire to hear a performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and that, in virtue of this desire, certain actions, and certain bodily movements occur that could not be predicted merely on the basis of the physical laws that apply to the elementary particles making up the nervous system. A view that countenances the emergence of such causal powers might provide the basis for understanding mental states that could be effective in virtue of their propositional content. Many naturalists, however, will be extremely reluctant to abandon causal closure; if they do so, their status as naturalists in good standing could plummet alarmingly.

My question for Paul Draper

My question for Paul Draper on the Internet Infidels God or Blind Nature debate

In your reply to Plantinga, you maintain that a “sensible naturalism” can provide an adequate response to Plantinga’s EAAN. I would like to take a closer look at that “sensible naturalism.”

Surely you must know who invented the term “sensible naturalism.” It comes from William Hasker’s generally friendly response to my presentation of the Argument from Reason, entitled “What About a Sensible Naturalism: A Response to Victor Reppert," Philosophia Christi 5 (2003), at 53-62.

In your essay you define a set of beliefs that Hasker would accept as part of what a sensible naturalist must accept:

S: Beliefs exist, they affect behavior by virtue of their contents, and a belief's having a particular content is not the same as its displaying a certain set of third-person properties.

I quite agree. But I wonder if you are willing to accept the next step in Hasker’s argument, the claim that a sensible naturalist ought to deny the causal closure of the physical. Do you accept that, or not?

The problem here is that orthodox physics does not import first-person properties to its descriptions. It must be admitted that before living things ever came to exist, there was nothing that had a first-person perspective. Yet, if naturalism is true, all the causes were in place within the physical world to produce everything that has been produced since. So how does third-person physical stuff give rise to first-person entities?

If the physical is closed, the every particle’s being where it is can be fully accounted for in terms of physics. If you were physically omniscient, then nothing from the world of the mental could possibly give you any information about where a particle was going to be. You are familiar, surely with the difficulties Jaegwon Kim has raised for mental causation in a physicalistic world, or the argument from mental causation found in Hasker’s The Emergent Self (Ithaca: NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), ch. 3, or in my book, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (Inter-Varsity Press, 2003).

If you say that the universe started out as a physicalistic system with no mental causes in place, how did it create a distinct, irreducible mental realm that interacts with it?

Hasker, of course, argues that sensible naturalist should set the causal closure of the physical aside, even though many of you fellow naturalists will wonder whether you’re still a naturalist. But it seems to me that one must do more than that, one must admit that there are basic, irreducible causes in the universe that are mental in nature. Now you can do that without accepting theism per se: pantheism and absolute idealism are OK also. Admitted this is not supernaturalism, in the sense these world-views do not posit a separate, supernatural realm. But it does so at the cost of maintaining that the physical world is quite different from what orthodox physics says that it is.

DI2 post on Hasker on intentionality

Does functionalism solve the problem of intentionality, even though it may have trouble with qualia? William Hasker says no.

A Key Passage from Hasker

In this passage from Hasker, which I feature of DI2, Hasker describes propositional mental states, and he maintains, that there are propositional states which we are conscious of when we have them, and that there is something it is like to have them.

This is an important concept. The idea that there is "something it is like" to, say, find a winning combination against Reppert in chess, is critical. When I play against a computer, and the computer finds a winning combination against me, the thing "functions as if" it has found the winning line against me, but there is nothing it is like to find that combination. Fritz wins all the time but never experiences the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat.

My conviction is that the intentionality Fritz possesses is a second-rate, derived, kind of intentionality, which is not to be confused with the intentionality that comes from my conscious perception of what is going on on the chessboard. Therefore, in my view, the problem of propostional attitudes "inherits" all the "hard" problems related to consciousness. When I am talking about intentionality, this is first and foremost what I have in mind, and acccounts of intentionality that leave this out are drastically incomplete.