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last substantive content change JAN 7
2002Free Will
"Free Will" is largely a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choo a cour of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about.(And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppo that the concept of free will is very cloly connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views,is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware −− or failing that, being culpably unaware −− of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the
significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on dert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane, 1996,81ff.)
Philosophers who distinguish freedom of action and freedom of will do so becau our success in ca
rrying out our ends depends in part on factors wholly beyond our control. Furthermore, there are always external
constraints on the range of options we can meaningfully try to undertake. As the prence or abnce of the conditions and constraints are not (usually) our responsibility, it is plausible that the central loci of our responsibility are our choices, or "willings."
I have implied that free willings are but a subt of willings, at least as a conceptual matter. But not every philosopher accepts this. René Descartes, for example, identifies the faculty of will with freedom of choice,"the ability to do or not do something" (Meditation IV), and even goes so far as to declare that "the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained" (Passions of the Soul, I, art.41). In taking this strong polar position on the nature of will, Descartes is reflecting a tradition running through certain late Scholastics (most prominently, Suarez) back to John Duns Scotus.
The majority view, however, is that we can readily conceive willings that are not free. Indeed, much of the debate about free will centers around whether we human beings have it, yet virtually no one doubts that we will to do this and that. The main perceived threats to our freedom of will are various alleged determinisms:physical/causal; psychological; biological; theological. For each such variety of determinism, there are
philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either becau of the existence of free will or on independent grounds;(ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will; (iii) accept its reality and deny its
compatibility with free will. (See the entries on compatibilism; causal determinism; fatalism; and arguments for incompatibilism.) There are also a few who say the truth of any variety of determinism is irrelevant becau free will is simply impossible.
Free Will 1
If there is such a thing as free will, it has many dimensions. In what follows, I will sketch the
freedom−conferring characteristics that have attracted most of the attention. The reader is warned, however, that while many philosophers emphasize a single such characteristic, perhaps in respon to the views of their immediate audience, it is probable that most would recognize the significance of many of the other features discusd here.
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1. Rational Deliberation
2. Ownership
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3. Causation and Control
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attackers
4. Theological Wrinkles
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1. Rational Deliberation
1.1 Free Will as choosing on the basis of one's desires
The minimalist account of free will is as the ability to lect a cour of action as a means of fulfilling some desire. David Hume, for example, defines liberty as "a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will." (1748, ct.viii, part 1). And we find in Edwards a similar account of free willings as tho which proceed from one's own desires.
One reason to deem this insufficient is that it is consistent with the goal−directed behavior of some animals whom we do not suppo to be morally responsible agents. Such animals lack not only an awareness of the moral implications of their actions but also any capacity to reflect on their alternatives and their long−term conquences. Indeed, it is plausible that they have little by way of a lf−conception as an agent with a past and with projects and purpos for the future. (See Baker 2000 on the first−person perspective. )
1.2 Free Will as deliberative choosing on the basis of desires and values
A natural suggestion, then, is to modify the minimalist thesis by taking account of (what may be) distinctively human capacities and lf−conception. And indeed, philosophers since Plato have commonly distinguished the animal and rational parts of our nature, with the latter implying a great deal more psychological complexity. Our rational nature includes our ability to judge some ends as good or worth pursuing and value them even though satisfying them may result in considerable unpleasantness for ourlves. (Note that such judgments need not be bad in moral value.) We might say that we act with free will when we act upon our considered judgments/valuings about what is good for us, whether or not our doing so conflicts with an
animal desire. (See Watson 1982 for a subtle development of this sort of view.) But this would em unduly restrictive, since we clearly hold many people responsible for actions proceeding from animal desires that conflict with their own asssment of what would be best in the circumstances. More plausible is the suggestion that one acts with free will when one's deliberation is nsitive to one's own judgments concerning what is best in the circumstances, whether or not one acts upon such a judgment.
Here we are clearly in the neighborhood of the rational appetite accounts of will one finds in the medieval Aristotelians. The most elaborate medieval treatment is Thomas Aquinas's.[1] His account i
nvolves identifying veral distinct varieties of willings. Here I note only a few of his basic claims. Aquinas thinks our nature determines us to will certain general ends ordered to the most general goal of goodness. The we will of necessity, not freely. Freedom enters the picture when we consider various means to the ends, none of which appear to us either as unqualifiedly good or as uniquely satisfying the end we wish to fulfill. There is,
1. Rational Deliberation2
then, free choice of means to our ends, along with a more basic freedom not to consider something, thereby perhaps avoiding willing it unavoidably once we recognized its value. Free choice is an activity that involves both our intellectual and volitional capacities, as it consists in both judgment and active commitment. A thorny question for this view is whether will or intellect is the ultimate determinant of free choices. How we understand Aquinas on this point will go a long ways towards determining whether or not he is a sort of compatibilist about freedom and determinism. (See below. Good expositions of Aquinas' account are Donagan, 1985, and Stump, 1997.)
There are two general worries about theories of free will that principally rely on the capacity to deliberate about possible actions in the light of one's conception of the good. First, there are agents
who deliberately choo to act as they do but who are motivated to do so by a compulsive, controlling sort of desire. (And there ems to be no principled bar to a compulsive desire's being informing a considered judgment of the agent about what the good is for him.) Such agents are not willing freely. Secondly, we can imagine a person's psychology being externally manipulated by another agent (via neurophysiological implant, say), such that the agent is caud to deliberate and come to desire strongly a particular action which he previously was not dispod to choo. The deliberative process could be perfectly normal, reflective, and rational, but emingly not freely made. The agent's freedom ems undermined or at least greatly diminished by such psychological tampering.
1.3 Self−mastery, rightly−ordered appetite
地区英文Some theorists are much impresd by cas of inner, psychological compulsion and define freedom of will in contrast to this phenomenon. For such thinkers, true freedom of the will involves liberation from the tyranny of ba desires and acquisition of desires for the Good. Plato, for example, posits rational, spirited, and appetitive aspects to the soul and holds that willings issue from the higher, rational part alone. In other cas, one is dominated by the irrational desires of the two lower parts.[2] This is particularly characteristic of tho working in a theological context −− for e
xample, the New Testament writer St. Paul, speaking of Christian freedom (Romans vi−viii; Galatians v), and tho influenced by him on this point, such as Augustine. (The latter, in both early and later writings, allows for a freedom of will that is not ordered to the good, but maintains that it is of less value than the rightly−ordered freedom. See, for example, the discussion in Books II−III of On Free Choice.) More recently, Susan Wolf (1990) defends an asymmetry thesis concerning freedom and responsibility. On her view, an agent acts freely only if he had the ability to choo the True and the Good. For an agent who does so choo, the requisite ability is automatically implied. But tho who reject the Good choo freely only if they could have acted differently. This is a further substantive condition on freedom, making freedom of will a more demanding condition in cas of bad choices.
In considering such rightly−ordered−appetites views of freedom, I again focus on abstract features common to all. It explicitly handles the inner−compulsion worry facing the simple deliberation−bad accounts. The other, external manipulation problem could perhaps be handled through the addition of an historical requirement: agents will freely only if their willings are not in part explicable by episodes of external manipulation which bypass their critical and deliberative faculties. But another problem suggests itlf: an agent who was a natural saint , always and effortlessly choosing the good with no contrary inclination, would not have freedom of will among his virtues. Doubtless we wo
uld greatly admire such a person, but would it be an admiration suffud with moral prai of the person or would it, rather, be restricted to the goodness of the person's qualities? (Cf. Kant, 1788.) The appropriate respon to such a person, it ems, is on an analogy with aesthetic appreciation of natural beauty, in contrast to the admiration of the person who choos the good in the face of real temptation to act lfishly. Since this view of freedom of will as orientation to the good sometimes results from theological reflections, it is worth noting that other theologian−philosophers emphasize the importance for human beings of being able to reject divine love: love of God that is not freely given −− given in the face of a significant possibility of one's having not done so −−would be a sham, all the more so since, were it inevitable, it would find its ultimate and complete explanation 1.2 Free Will as deliberative choosing on the basis of desires and values3
et是什么意思in God Himlf.
2. Ownership
Harry Frankfurt (1982) prents an insightful and original way of thinking about free will. He suggests that a central difference between human and merely animal activity is our capacity to reflect on our desires and beliefs and form desires and judgments concerning them. I may want to eat a candy bar
(first−order desire), but I also may want not to want this (cond−order desire) becau of the connection between habitual candy eating and poor health. This difference, he argued, provides the key to understanding both free action and free will. (The are quite different, in Frankfurt's view, with free will being the more demanding notion. Moreover, moral responsibility for an action requires only that the agent acted freely, not that the action proceeded from a free will.)
On Frankfurt's analysis, I act freely when the desire on which I act is one that I desire to be effective. This cond−order desire is one with which I identify: it reflects my true lf. (Compare the addict: typically, the addict acts out of a desire which he does not want to act upon. His will is divided, and his actions proceed from desires with which he does not reflectively identify. Hence, he is not acting freely.) My will is free when I am able to make any of my first−order desires the one upon which I act. As it happens, I will to eat the candy bar, but I could have willed to refrain from doing so.
With Frankfurt's account of free will, much hangs on what being able to will otherwi comes to, and on this Frankfurt is officially neutral. (See the related discussion below on ability to do otherwi.) But as he connects moral responsibility only to his weaker notion of free action, it is fitting to consider its adequacy here. The central objection that commentators have raid is this: what's so special about higher−order willings or desires? (See in particular Watson 1982a.) Why suppo that pki
they inevitably reflect my true lf, as against first−order desires? Frankfurt is explicit that higher−order desires need not be rooted in a person's moral or even ttled outlook (89, n.6). So it ems that, in some cas, a first−order desire may be much more reflective of my true lf (more "internal to me," in Frankfurt's terminology) than a weak, faint desire to be the sort of person who wills differently.
In later writings, Frankfurt responds to this worry first by appealing to "decisions made without rervations" ("Identification and Externality" and "Identification and Wholeheartedness" in Frankfurt, 1988) and then by appealing to higher−order desires with which one is "satisfied," such that one has no inclination to make changes to them (1992). But the abnce of an inclination to change the desire does not obviously amount to the condition of freedom−conferring identification. It ems that such a negative state of satisfaction can be one that I just find mylf with, one that I neither approve nor disapprove (Pettit, 2001, 56). Furthermore, we can again imagine external manipulation consistent with Frankfurt's account of freedom but inconsistent with freedom itlf. Armed with the appropriate neurophysiology−tampering technology of the late 21st century, one might discreetly induce a cond−order desire in me to be moved by a first−order desire −− a higher−order desire with which I am satisfied −− and then let me deliberate as normal. Clearly, this desire should be deemed "external" to me, and the action that flows from it unfree.
3. Causation and Control
Our survey of veral themes in philosophical accounts of free will suggests that a −− perhaps the −− root issue is that of control. Clearly, our capacity for deliberation and the potential sophistication of some of our our practical reflections are important conditions on freedom of will. But any propod analysis of free will must also ensure that the process it describes is one that was up to, or controlled by, the agent.
1.3 Self−mastery, rightly−ordered appetite4
Fantastic scenarios of external manipulation and less fantastic cas of hypnosis are not the only, or even primary, ones to give philosophers pau. It is consistent with my deliberating and choosing in the normal way that my developing psychology and choices over time are part of an ineluctable system of caus necessitating effects. It might be, that is, that underlying the phenomena of purpo and will in human persons is an all−encompassing, mechanistic world−system of blind cau and effect. Many accounts of free will are constructed against the backdrop possibility (whether accepted as actual or not) that each stage of the world is determined by what preceded it by impersonal natural law. As always, there are optimists and pessimists.
3.1 Free Will as guidance control
John Martin Fischer (1994) distinguishes two sorts of control over one's actions: guidance and regulative. A person exerts guidance control over his own actions insofar as they proceed from a weakly
reasons−responsive (deliberative) mechanism. This obtains just in ca there is some possible scenario where the agent is prented with a sufficient reason to do otherwi and the mechanism that led to the actual choice is operative and it issues in a different choice, one appropriate to the imagined reason. In Fischer and Ravizza (1998), the account is elaborated and refined. They require, more strongly, that the mechanism be the person's own mechanism (ruling out external manipulation) and that it be moderately responsive to reasons: one that is "regularly receptive to reasons, some of which are moral reasons, and at least weakly reactive to reason" (82, emphasis added). Receptivity is evinced through an understandable pattern of reasons recognition −− beliefs of the agent about what would constitute a sufficient reason for undertaking various actions. (See 69−73 for details.)
None of this, importantly, requires regulative control: a control involving the ability of the agent to ch
oo and act differently in the actual circumstances. Regulative control requires alternative possibilities open to the agent, whereas guidance control is determined by characteristics of the actual quence issuing in one's choice. Fischer allows that there is a notion of freedom that requires regulative control but does not believe that this kind of freedom is required for moral responsibility. (In this, he is persuaded by a form of argument originated by Harry Frankfurt. See Frankfurt 1969 and Fischer 1994, Ch.7.)
3.2 Free Will as ultimate origination (ability to do otherwi)
Many do not follow Fischer here, however, and maintain the traditional view that the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility does indeed require that the agent could have acted differently. As Aristotle put it, "...when the origin of the actions is in him, it is also up to him to do them or not to do them" (1985, Book III).[3]
A flood of ink has been spilled, especially in the modern era, on how to understand the concept of being able to do otherwi. On one side are tho who give it a deflationary reading, on which it is consistent with my being able to do otherwi that the past (including my character and prent beliefs and desires) and the basic laws of nature logically entail that I do what I actually do. The ar
e the compatibilists, holding that freedom and causal determinism are compatible. (For discussion, e O'Connor, 2000, Ch.1; compatibilism; and incompatibilism: arguments for.) Conditional analys of ability to do otherwi have been popular among compatibilists. The general idea here is that to say that I am able to do otherwi is to say that I would do otherwi if it were the ca that ... , where the ellipsis is filled by some elaboration of "I had an appropriately strong desire to do so, or I had different beliefs about the best available means to satisfy my goal, or ... ." In short: something about my prevailing character or prent psychological states would have differed, and so would have brought about a different outcome in my deliberation.
3. Causation and Control5
Incompatibilists think that something stronger is required: for me to act with free will requires that there are a plurality of futures open to me consistent with the past (and laws of nature) being just as they were. I could have chon differently even without some further, non−actual consideration's occurring to me and tipping the scales of the balance in another direction. Indeed, from their point of view, the whole scale−of−weights analogy is wrongheaded: free agents are not mechanisms that respond invariably to specified motive forces. They are capable of acting upon any of a plurality of motives making attractive more than one cour of action. Ultimately, the agent must determine hims
elf this way or that.
右派是什么意思>好处英语We may distinguish two broad families of incompatibilist or indeterminist lf−determination accounts. The more radical group holds that the agent who determines his own will is not causally influenced by external causal factors, including his own character. Descartes, in the midst of exploring the scope and influence of the passions, declares that "the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained" (1984, v.I, 343). And as we've en, he believed that such freedom is prent on every occasion when we make a conscious choice −− even, he writes, "when a very evident reason moves us in " (1984, v.III, 245). More recently, John Paul Sartre notoriously held that human beings have absolute freedom : "No limits to my freedom can be found except freedom itlf, or, if you prefer, we are not free to cea being free." (567) His views on freedom flowed from his radical conception of human beings as lacking any kind of positive nature. Instead, we are non−beings who being, moment to moment, is simply to choo: For human reality, to be is to choo onelf; nothing comes to it either from the outside orpopular
from within which it can receive it is entirely abandoned to the intolerable
necessity of making itlf be, down to the slightest details. is the being of
man, i.e., his nothingness of being. (568−9)
Scotus and, more recently, C.A. Campbell, appear to agree with Descartes and Sartre on the lack of direct causal influence on the activity of free choice while allowing that the scope of possibilities for what I might thus will may be more or less constricted. So while Scotus holds that "nothing other than the will is the total cau" of its activity, he grants (with Aquinas and other medieval Aristotelians) that we are not capable of willing something in which we e no good, nor of positively repudiating something which appears to us as unqualifiedly good. Contrary to Sartre, we come with a nature that circumscribes what we might conceivably choo, and our past choices and environmental influences also shape the possibilities for us at any particular time. But if we are prented with what we recognize as an unqualified good, we still can choo to refrain from willing it. And while Campbell holds that character cannot explain a free choice, he suppos that "[t]here is one experiential situation, and one only, ... in which there is any possibility of the act of will not being in accordance with character; viz. the situation in which the cour which formed character prescribes is a cour in conflict with the agent's moral ideal: in other words, the situation of moral temptation" (1967, 46). (Van Inwagen 1994 and 1995 is another proponent of the idea that free will is exercid in but a small subt of our choices, although his position is less extreme on this point tha
n Campbell's. Fischer and Ravizza 1992 criticize van Inwagen's argument for this position, as does O'Connor 2000, Ch.5.)
A more moderate grouping within the lf−determination approach to free will allows that beliefs, desires, and external factors all can causally influence the act of free choice itlf. But theorists within this camp differ sharply on the metaphysical nature of tho choices and of the causal role of reasons. We may distinguish three varieties. I will discuss them only briefly, as they are explored at length in incompatibilist (nondeterministic) theories of free will.
First is a noncausal (or ownership) account (Ginet 1990 and McCann 1998). According to this view, I control my choice simply in virtue of its being mine −− its occurring on[in] me. I do not exert any special kind of causality in bringing it about. While there may be causal influences upon my choice, there need not be, and any such causal influences wholly irrelevant to understanding why it occurs. Reasons provide an autonomous, 3.2 Free Will as ultimate origination (ability to do otherwi)6
