We said it’s unclear whether Determinism is true about our universe. But we want to know whether, if it is true, it implies that you can only choose and do the specific things you actually choose and do. You really had no choice, after all — even if it felt like you did. So you can’t be held morally accountable for what you end up doing, and don’t deserve any more praise or blame for it than anyone else does.
Or can we resist these steps from “Determinism” to “Unfree, and so not moreally accountable”? Might it be that case that you really did have choices, and are accountable for what you actually chose and did, even if those choices were causally determined to be made the way they were?
Recall the Consequence Argument. This has one premise that gets expressed in ways like this:
1a. The distant past (some total snapshot state of the universe before you were even born) was not up to you/in your control.
1b. You couldn’t make that distant past be different than it was. (Perhaps it didn’t need to be that specific way, but you never had the power to bring it about that it’d be different.)
1c. You were never in a position to escape or avoid the past’s being the way it was. That was already settled before you even existed.
It has a second premise that says:
And a third premise that says these properties transfer to the necessary consequences of the past and the laws:
As we’re understanding Determinism, it says that our distant past and laws of nature do entail or guarantee everything that happens later, including all the facts about which choices you make, which actions you do and don’t take, and so on. So it looks as if we get the result:
If you’re a Compatibilist, probably you’ll want to resist this conclusion. Probably you’ll want to deny that Determinism would have these implications. But how can you block the argument?
One route is to try to resist premise 1 or premise 2. That doesn’t look very promising. The other route is to try to resist principle 3, about the properties transferring from our past and the laws to facts that are necessary consequences of the past and laws. This route may not look so promising at first, but Compatibilists have been able to make some progress here.
Recall back at the start of the course, we discussed how the concept of “mother” can be understood in various ways. Someone might be your mother in one sense, but not be your mother in another sense.
“Can” is another concept that seems like it can mean different things. Consider the following examples:
These examples show the word “can” (and “can’t”) being used in a variety of ways. In (1) we’re talking about what Felix is permitted to do. In (2) through (4) we’re talking about what people have opportunities and enough motivation to do. In (5) we’re talking about what John now has strength enough to do, and speculating about what strength will be achievable for him, if he continues training the way he has for a few weeks more.
Here’s another example, taken from my kids’ picture books. The background is that there’s a crazy mouse who says and believes that it is a tiger. Other animals try to reason with the mouse:
Of course we readers are not supposed to agree with the mouse. It’s not really a tiger. Still, the mouse does seem to be perversely consistent. It seems to be sticking to its view. But notice its words:
I could climb a tree. I could climb to the moon, if I wanted to… “Go on then! Climb to the moon.” I can’t just now. It’s time for my lunch.
Is the mouse contradicting itself when it says this? That’s probably not how you understood it. The mouse is being unreasonable, sure, but when it says it can climb to the moon, and then a moment later that it can’t, it doesn’t seem to be changing its mind. Rather, the sense in which (it thinks) it can climb to the moon is different from the sense in which its being time for lunch implies that it can’t.
It’s not always easy to identify and articulate what the various senses of “can” used in these examples come to. But I hope it is intuitively clear that the sense in which the mouse says it can and can’t climb to the moon are different. And the sense in which claim (1) says Felix can’t vote is not the same as the sense in which claim (2) says the speaker can’t lift weights. And so on. Claims of the form “I can do such-and-such” mean a variety of different things. So too with claims of the form “I could have done Y” or “Y might have been what I did” or “It could have happened that I did Y.” There is not just one way to interpret these claims.
We were asking whether, if Determinism is true, people can only choose and do the specific things they actually do choose and do. Now that we’re alerted to the multiplicity of things “can” can mean, we have to ask: can only do that, in what sense of “can”?
Is there some sense of “can” according to which Determinism implies that you can only do the things you in fact do? Perhaps there is. There may be a sense of “can” where that follows. If Determinism is true, then, given the way the world was before you were born, it was causally settled that you would do the things you in fact do. You “can’t” do anything else — in the sense that, given the way the past is, Deterministic laws of nature exclude your doing anything else. So in that sense of “can,” Determinism would imply the things you in fact do are the only things you can do.
But now we’ve seen that the words “can” (and “could” and so on) mean a variety of different things. What we need to know is not whether there’s a sense of “can” according to which Determinism entails that you can only do the things you in fact do. There may be other senses of “can” that do not have that consequence. What we need to know is not whether there’s some sense of “can” which lets us say such-and-such, or some sense of “can” which lets us say something else. Our task is harder than that. What we need to do is to somehow identify senses of “can” that we’re independently interested in, and ask whether, with those senses of “can,” Determinism entails that you can only do the things you in fact do.
For example, we said at the start of our discussion of free will that the notion of deserving punishment (or blame or resentment or praise or credit or gratitude) seems to involve the idea that you performed an act that you could have refrained from or avoided. Is the sense of “can” involved in that thought compatible with Determinism? This is the question we need to answer.
One point Compatibilists make against the Consequence Argument is that usually we don’t say you lack the ability to do something Y, just because you don’t currently happen to have an opportunity to Y, or don’t happen now to be motivated to Y. But the past and the laws may entail that you don’t Y right now because they entail that you don’t now have an opportunity or motivation. It’s not clear why that should be enough for them to deprive you of the ability to Y.
On pp. 515-16 of our reading by Beebee, she sketches a Compatibilist response to the Consequence Argument that proceeds on those lines.
Here’s a way these Compatibilist ideas may be developed further.
Alongside “can,” philosophers distinguish a number of different senses of “possibility.” One kind of possibility is “physical possibility.” We say that some event is physically possible (with no qualifications) iff it’s compatible with our laws of nature that that event take place. We can say that an event is physically possible at time t iff it’s compatible with our laws of nature, and the actual state of the universe at t, that the universe evolve in such a way from t so that that event comes about. (van Inwagen describes such a distinction on pp. 271–2 of his reading. He expresses the second as “having a physically possible connection with time t.”)
Another kind of possibility philosophers discuss is “epistemic possibility.” Roughly, something is epistemically possible iff it might be true, for all we know.
We also employ claims like “It’s possible for me to do A” when we’re talking about what it’s in our power to do. Say that an act A is volitionally possible for me at time t iff, at t, it’s in my power to do A. If doing A and refraining from doing A are both volitionally possible for me at t, then it is up to me at t whether to do A. (We may want to subdivide the notion of volitional possibility even further, since what we mean by “in my power” may sometimes be different. For present purposes, though, let’s assume this notion just tracks facts about what Beebee calls your “narrow abilities,” and not facts about your opportunities to exercise those abilities.)
The relations between these different kinds of possibility are not very straightforward. An important issue in recent philosophy is that some things may be imaginable or conceivable, and so epistemically possible in one sense, even though they’re not possible in other senses, including being physically possible. So “it is epistemically possible that P” will not entail “it is physically possible that P.”
The Incompatibilist thinks that, if doing A is in your power right now, then it must be compatible with the laws of nature, and the past (and present) state of the universe, that you do A. That is, he assumes that: “At t, it is volitionally possible for you to A” (you retain the ability to A) does entail “It is physically possible that you A at t.”
However, the Compatibilist thinks that the mere fact that you’re causally determined not to do A does not by itself settle the question whether you could do A. The Compatibilist thinks that, even if your doing A is ruled out by the laws of nature and the past (and present) state of the universe being as they are, doing A might nonetheless be something which you still have the ability or power to do. That is, according to the Compatibilist: “At t, it is volitionally possible for you to do A” does not entail “It is physically possible that you do A at t.” Some things can be volitionally possible which are not then physically possible.
Why would anyone believe this? How could it be in your power to violate the laws of nature, or to make the past be other than the way it was?
Well, forget about Determinism for a moment. Think about an oracle 500 years ago who could look in her crystal ball, and see everything you’re now going to do. This is controversial, but many philosophers will agree that it’s already being true that you won’t do A doesn’t, by itself, entail that you were never able do A. (Remember, we’re ignoring issues about Determinism.) The mere fact that you won’t do it doesn’t show that you can’t do it. Similarly, the fact that the oracle has already seen that you don’t do it does not show that you can’t do it, either. It only shows that, as a matter of fact, you won’t do it.
Now here you are, deciding whether or not to do A. We suppose that you could do A. What does that show about your relation to the oracle? If you had done A, then presumably the oracle would have seen you doing A, instead of what she actually sees. Does that mean that your doing A today would have caused the oracle to see something different, 500 years ago? That sounds strange. How can what you do now cause something different to happen 500 years in the past? Some philosophers will say that, if the oracle really saw you do it, and wasn’t just guessing, then yes, you’ll have needed to cause her vision in the past. But another thing we can say is this. You have the power to do A, and if you had done A, and the oracle had retained her fortune-telling powers, then she would have seen you doing A. This is not the same as your having the power to cause or make the oracle see anything.
Regardless of whether you think any such fortune-telling oracles are possible, this is a helpful distinction to make when we’re thinking about free will and the Consequence Argument.
Could you have prevented the laws of nature and the past from being as they are? The Compatibilist will say: there’s nothing you can do which would cause or bring it about that the laws or past are different. Just as there’s nothing you can do now to cause the oracle to see something different 500 years ago. But that doesn’t settle the question we’re interested in. There may be things you can do (but won’t do), such that, if you were to do them, the laws and the past would have been different. In the same way that there may be something you can do (but won’t do), such that if you had done it, and the oracle had retained her powers, she would have seen something different in her crystal ball.
That is the core move in the Compatibilist’s response to the Consequence Argument. According to the Compatibilist, there are things you can do, even though the laws and the past have the consequence that you don’t do those things. The Compatibilist accepts that you can’t make the laws and the past be different. It’s just that there are certain things you can make happen, such that, in a counterfactual situation where you do make those things happen, the laws and the past would have been different. (They may have been different in such a way that they causally guaranteed that you would do those things.)
That is how the Compatibilist will argue that things can be volitionally possible for you, or in your power to do, even though it is not anymore physically possible for you to do those things.
As I’ve said, this is a subtle response to the Consequence Argument. Personally, I think it’s an effective response; but not everyone finds it convincing. Some philosophers feel that it’s a kind of “trick.” I don’t think it is a trick. But it would take a lot more discussion to settle that.
One kind of example we discussed involves a subject Nadya whose brain some neuroscientist Bhuvanesh has wired up, so that if he wants to, he can intervene and take control of what she does, perhaps even how she thinks and chooses. But Bhuvanesh is also able to monitor Nadya’s thoughts and decides not to intervene unless he needs to. It might be that she’s going to make the choices he’s hoping for, all on her own. And in fact that’s what happens. Nadya chooses to perform some act X, and then goes ahead and carries it out, all while Bhuvanesh merely monitors her, and never does anything to actively manipulate her.
These are called Frankfurt Cases, after the philosopher who first described them 50 years ago. Lemos discusses them in his text on pp. 28-32. (See also his remarks about Martin Luther on p. 27 bottom.)
When we consider Frankfurt cases, many of us have the intuitive assessment that Nadya is still morally accountable for doing X — still deserves praise or blame for it, depending on the kind of act it was. Despite the way Bhuvanesh has wired her brain. In the case as described, it was still Nadya herself who was the author of her action, and so she retains responsibility for it.
(It may be that Bhuvanesh is also to some extent accountable, since he was going to make Nadya still do X if she tried not to; but our focus here is on Nadya’s accountability, not Bhuvanesh’s.)
What do these intuitive assessments show? There’s an important principle that many philosophers accept in these discussions, which says:
Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP): An agent who did X did so freely, and is morally accountable for doing X, only if there were other things the agent could have done instead — only if the agent “could have done otherwise.”
Philosophers all across the debate find this principle compelling. But Frankfurt cases like Nadya’s may be counterexamples to it. It seems like Nadya is accountable even though she couldn’t have done otherwise. If she tried — or even started to think about trying — Bhuvanesh would have prevented her.
Thus, this is one strategy a Compatibilist might employ. They might allow that Determinism stands to all of us the way Bhuvanesh stands to Nadya, and takes away any possibility for us to do otherwise than we in fact do. But they could argue that this is still compatible with us being the sources or authors of some of our actions, and that is what’s important for morality. Not having other choices and actions really being open to us.
This is sometimes put as the slogan that’s what important for moral accountability, responsibility, blameworthiness, and so on, is source freedom (being genuinely the author of the action), rather than leeway freedom (having alternative possibilities).
A few philosophers, including Frankfurt himself and Fischer, think the PAP is wrong when it comes to moral accountability, but may be right when it comes to notions like “freedom,” “control,” and so on. But most philosophers treat these as a package deal. They think that constraints on one of them are constraints on the other.
This kind of Compatibilism reminds us of a metaphor used by the ancient Stoics, who may have been the first Compatibilists.
The Stoics thought that, even if our actions are determined, still, we can find a certain kind of peace and “liberation” by not struggling against the inevitable. We should resign ourselves — adjust our ambitions and expectations — to our circumstances. Like dogs on a leash being pulled behind a wagon, we can trot along peacefully or we can resist. Either way we’ll end up at the same destination. At least if we accept our circumstances and trot along willingly, the Stoic thought goes, we can take a kind of responsibility for our inevitable fate.
In later philosophy, this was developed into the idea that:
(C1) An agent does X freely, in the sense we’re interested in, iff:
“Iff” is philosopher’s shorthand for “if and only if,” or “just in case.”
“Choosing” here just means going through the motions of selecting and agreeing to option X. It doesn’t have to involve there being other things the agent could have done instead.
There is no obvious reason why the kind of freedom we articulate in (C1) should be incompatible with Determinism. The fact that I was causally determined to lecture today does not entail that I don’t want to lecture. (I may very well have been causally determined to want to lecture, too.) The fact that I was causally determined to lecture is compatible with my wanting to, and deciding to, lecture today.
So if this is the kind of freedom we’re interested in, if it’s the kind of freedom which is required for moral accountability, then freedom does seem to be compatible with Determinism, after all.
This account of freedom is sometimes expressed with the slogan “Freedom is opposed to constraint not to necessity.” What this means is that the opposite of freedom is not causal “necessity” or Determinism. Rather, the opposite of freedom is being constrained to act, that is, not being able to act in the way you want to act, because of a force or threat or chain binding you. It’s not the mere fact that your act is causally determined that makes it unfree. It has to be caused in certain ways, for it to be unfree. It has to be caused in a way that prevents you from acting the way you want to act. In his essay “Freedom and Necessity,” the philosopher A.J. Ayer says:
It is not when my action has any cause at all, but only when it has a special sort of cause, that it is reckoned not to be free.
Lemos describes something like this first version of Compatibilism on pp. 22-3. On p. 22 we’re told:
A person is free if and only if he has the power to do what he wants and there are no constraints preventing him from doing as he wants.
One awkwardness here is that Lemos uses the concept of “power,” and that concept (and related ones like “ability”) are very close to the notions we’re trying to explain. But if we focus on what this account would say about actions that a person actually performs, as (C1) does, then it seems to be saying the same thing about those cases. A bit later, Lemos writes something that looks closer to (C1):
We only hold people responsible when they are doing what they want to do and they are not acting as a result of threat or external physical force. (p. 23)
I don’t know about you, but the Stoic’s dog doesn’t strike me as having a very satisfying sort of “liberation” or “responsibility for its own fate.” Yet trotting along peacefully behind the wagon is what it wants and chooses to do. If we hanker for more freedom than the dog has, we must be hankering for a kind of freedom that (C1) doesn’t yet deliver.
The problem with the the dog-behind-the-wagon story is that you’re not following the wagon because you want and choose to follow it. You’d be following it no matter what. You have no choice in the matter. Yes, you may have gone through the process of choosing, and “decided” (or agreed) to follow the wagon. But you have no choice — in the sense that there’s no other action which you could perform, instead. If you had chosen to stay in one place, instead, you’d be out of luck. Your leash will pull you along after the wagon whether you want to follow it or not.
All this suggests that the concept of freedom we’re after really should include something about our having alternative choices open to us. As the PAP says, we think that, whenever we really do something of our own free will, it has to be the case that we could also have done something else instead. We needed to have (at least some) control over which option we picked.
So most Compatibilists don’t want to give up the PAP. They want to retain the idea that freedom of the sort we’re interested in, that’s an essential part of moral accountability, requires having multiple options open to one.
You had to have picked the option you did because it’s the option you wanted, not because it was the only option there was.
Here is van Inwagen expressing this idea:
To make a negative moral judgment about one of your acts is to evaluate your taking one of the forks in the road of time, to characterize that fork as a worse choice than at least one of the other forks open to you… A negative moral evaluation of what someone has done requires two or more alternative possibilities of action for that person, just as surely as a contest requires two or more contestants. (p. 268)
Is there any way for the Compatibiist to accept the PAP, and incorporate it into their view?
(C1) did seem to be on a promising track, in that in many ordinary paradigm cases where an agent is unfree, they’re being forced to do something they don’t want to do, or they’re being prevented from doing something that they do want to do.
So a central idea behind (C1) is that when you act freely, there are no obstacles to you doing what you want. The Compatibilists think the basic insight that PAP adds to this is that, had you chosen a different alternative, there should also be no obstacle to your pursuing that option, instead.
Compatibilists think this insight is one they can accommodate, even if Determinism is true. They do that by understanding the phrase “you could have done something else” in a particular way.
When we say “you could have done something else,” the Compatibilists think we mean that if you had chosen to do something else, you would have succeeded in doing something else. Nothing but your choice prevents you from doing the other thing. We call this the Compatibilists’ analysis of “could have done otherwise.” (Sometimes it is called the conditional or hypothetical analysis, instead.)
There are several variations on this basic analysis. As I’ve presented it, the Compatibilists say that “Y could have done otherwise” means that if Y had chosen or decided to do otherwise, then Y would have done otherwise. You may instead see Compatibilists saying that “Y could have done otherwise” means that if Y had tried to do otherwise, then Y would have done otherwise.
Here are presentations of this idea from our texts. van Inwagen writes:
According to this [Compatibilist version 2] solution, a future is open to an agent if, given that the agent chose that future, chose that path leading away from (what semed to be) a fork in the road of time, it would come to pass. Thus it is open to me to stop writing this book and do a little dance because, if I so chose, that’s what I’d do. But if Alice is locked in a prison cell, it is not open to her to leave: if she chose to leave, her choice would be ineffective because she would come up against a locked prison door. (p. 272)
Lemos has:
KATE: Many compatibilists believe we could do otherwise [than what we do] even if our acts are causally determined. They provide what’s called a conditional analysis of ‘could have done otherwise.’ So for instance, consider the case of John going to class this morning. He contemplated staying in bed and not going to class, but he got up and went to class… Many compatibilists think such free acts can be determined and the agent still could do otherwise. The compatibilist may say that the phrase ‘the agent could have done otherwise’ just means ‘he would have done otherwise, if he had wanted to or chose to.’ So for instance, even though John’s decision to go to class was causally determined, he still could have done otherwise in the sense that he would have done otherwise if he had wanted to.
PROF. DANIELS: Right, the idea here is that John’s decision to go to class was determined by his stronger desire to improve his GPA. But, even though the decision was determined, he could have done otherwise in the sense that if he’d had a stronger desire to stay in bed then he would have. (pp. 25-6)
In the the dog-behind-the-wagon story, it is not true that you could have done otherwise, in the Compatibilists’ sense. If you had chosen to stand in one place, you would have been dragged along after the wagon anyway. Nor is it true that you could have done otherwise in other paradigm cases of being unfree, involving chains or locked doors or paralyzed limbs. Hence, the Compatibilists propose:
(C2) You do X freely iff:
Is freedom in this sense compatible with Determinism? It seems like it is. If we accept this account of what it is to do X freely, then once again, being causally determined to do X seems to be compatible with doing X freely. After all, being causally determined to do X does not prevent me from satisfying condition (b). And it does not seem to prevent me from satisfying condition (c), either. It may be causally determined that I would lecture to you right now. But that’s because (it was causally determined that) I chose to lecture to you. If the universe had gone differently, in such a way that I (was causally determined to) choose to stay home today, instead, then I would be at home right now, instead of standing here lecturing to you. So I can satisfy condition (c) of this proposal, even though I am causally determined to act in the way I do.
Is the Compatibilist right about what it means to say that someone “could have done otherwise”? And is she right about what it means to act freely?
The Compatibilist says that I “could have done otherwise” just in case, if I had chosen (or tried) to do otherwise, I would have done otherwise. But is this right?
Arguably at least some of the time this is not what we mean by “could.” The philosopher John Austin imagined an expert golfer who shoots an easy putt but misses it. The golfer curses, “Darn it, I could have (and should have) made that.” If this judgment might be correct, then the golfer could have made the putt, even though she tried and did not succeed. So “could have made it” doesn’t seem to be equivalent here to “If I tried, I would succeed.”
Perhaps the Compatibilist may agree that sometimes we mean other things by “could.” All she needs is that the notion she explained captures what we’re thinking about when we’re counting actions as free/unfree.
Imagine someone who has a psychological defect that forces him to make certain choices. We can suppose that when such a person is presented with the option of doing X, he is unable to choose to do anything other than X. He’s a compulsive Xer. For example, perhaps you’ve gradually introduced curry into his diet, so that now he has an addictive desire for curry which he cannot control. So he always chooses to eat curry. Notice: his obsession is so strong that it does not merely cause him to X, it also prevents him from choosing not to X.
We can note two features of this person:
So here we have a person who is not entirely free, because of not being able to choose or act otherwise. Yet the counterfactual “If he had chosen to act otherwise, he would have acted otherwise” is true. If this is correct, then the Compatibilist’s account of what it means to be able to act otherwise must be wrong. It is not enough for the counterfactual “If you had chosen to act otherwise, you would have acted otherwise” to be true. In addition, you have to be able to choose to act otherwise.
Another case of this sort would be where my choices are caused by an evil scientist’s neural manipulations. I’m not like Nadya. My evil scientist is actively manipulating me. My actions in that case may correspond perfectly to my choices: the scientist manipulates them both. But intuitively I am not acting freely, and I could not have acted otherwise than I do in fact act, because I could not have chosen otherwise than I did. Nonetheless, it can still be true that if I had chosen to do otherwise — for example, because the evil scientist made me choose something else — then I would have done that other thing instead. So here again the Compatibilist seems to be wrong. It can be the case that if I had chosen to do otherwise, I would have done otherwise; but in fact I could not have chosen to do otherwise; hence in such a case it’s wrong to say that I could have done otherwise.
In his book Metaphysics, the philosopher Richard Taylor describes someone whose choices are manipulated by a scientist and says:
This is the description of a man who is acting in accordance with his inner volitions, a man whose body is unimpeded and unconstrained in its motions, these motions being the effects of those inner states. [So it’s a case the Compatibilist would count as acting freely. But] It is hardly the description of a free and responsible agent. It is the perfect description of a puppet. To render someone your puppet, it is not necessary forcibly to constrain the motions of his limbs, after the fashion that real puppets are moved. A subtler but no less effective means of making a person your puppet would be to gain complete control of his inner states, and ensuring, as the theory of [Compatibilist] determinism does ensure, that his body will move in accordance with them. (p. 46-7)
Now, Determinism threatens to show that this is always our situation. We are always causally determined to choose as we do. Hence, even if it’s the case that if we had chosen otherwise we would have done otherwise, that doesn’t help us very much. We’re always causally determined to choose as we do, so it’s never the case that we could have chosen otherwise.
In summary: we were considering the Compatibilist proposal:
(C2) You do X freely iff:
The objection we heard was that this would count some people as free who, as they are, couldn’t have chosen any differently. (But if they had been different enough that they could choose differently, they would have succeeded.) But the objector says, these people intuitively don’t seem to be free. So this proposal makes counter-intuitive claims.
These kinds of objections are presented in Lemos (pp. 26-7 and 33) and van Inwagen (pp. 272-3).
It looks, then, like acting freely requires more than we laid down in (C2). It’s not enough that you’re merely such that if you had chosen to do otherwise you would have done otherwise. That might be true even in a case where, intuitively, it was not in your power to choose to do otherwise. You might be choosing the way you do because you have a psychological obsession or addiction; or perhaps an evil scientist is causing you to choose in the way you do. In such cases, we wouldn’t want to say that you’re acting freely.
A more sophisticated form of Compatibilism accepts that criticism. It proposes the following:
(C3) You do X freely iff:
This account does rule out people who are unable to choose otherwise. Such people don’t count as acting freely, because they do not satisfy condition (d) of the account. They are not sensitive to reasons in the right way. It doesn’t matter what reasons the obsessive-compulsive, or the addict, or the scientist’s victim have for not doing X. They would still choose to do X anyway. X is the only choice they are able to make.
We’ve already seen that being causally determined to do X does not prevent one from satisfying conditions (b) and (c) of this account. Is being causally determined to do X also compatible with satisfying condition (d)? It seems that it is. For it may be that one is causally determined to do X because one is causally determined to have good reasons to do X. If one had been causally determined to have good reasons to do something else, instead, then one may have gone ahead and done that other thing. All that’s important, according to this Compatibilist, is that your choices are sensitive to and track your reasons. The mechanisms that produce those choices have to be reasons-responsive mechanisms. They have to be such that, if you had had different reasons, they would have produced different choices. If your choices are produced by reasons-responsive mechanisms, and you also satisfy conditions (b) and (c), then you do act freely, on this account. It is not necessary that your choices or actions be causally undetermined.
This theory sounds pretty good. It’s very sophisticated, and it avoids most of the problems that we’ve discussed so far. However, there are difficulties for it, too.
One difficulty is this. Not just any reasons-responsive mechanism will do. Suppose my choices are being caused by the neural manipulation of a benevolent scientist. This scientist always causes me to choose and act in the way that accords with the reasons I have. If there is a good reason for me to X, the scientist causes me to choose to do X. If there is a good reason for me to Y, the scientist causes me to choose to do Y. And so on. In this case, my choices are produced by a reasons-responsive mechanism, but I do not seem to be choosing or acting freely. Perhaps we can get around this problem by requiring that the reasons-responsive mechanism be located entirely inside the agent.
A second difficulty is this. On the current view, it sounds like I can act freely only if I always choose to do what I have good reason to do. I have to always choose to do “the right thing.” But if I’m free, can’t I also choose to do the wrong thing? Can’t I choose to do something which I recognize I don’t have good reasons to do? Sure, maybe that would be foolish or evil. But it does seem like it ought to be in my power. The current view says that such a choice would not be free, because it would not have been produced by a mechanism that responds to my reasons in the right way. But it’s hard to see why choosing to do the wrong thing has to be less free than choosing to do the right thing.