Baggini on Free Will

“I am determined to make my own choices”

Baggini on Free Will

In his book, optimistically entitled “Freedom Regained – the Possibilty of Free Will”, Baggini seeks to update a compatibilist version of free will (compatibilism being the, or a, school of thought which holds that human free will is “compatible” with a deterministic model of the universe; which entails that the universe is, without exception, governed by physical laws such that all that happens, or has happened, happens inevitably from a set of initial conditions, including what all that happens inside us. Incompatilists argue the opposite, either in despair of free will or because they hold to some variety of indeterminism, whereby the physical laws don’t necessarily apply to all or an important element of human action).

His principle conclusions are:

-       We can have control over our actions;

-       We can be responsible, and hold others so,

without subscribing to the “myth” that we originate decisions and actions “free of” the iron laws of nature as manifested in our physical neurological being or (at a higher or related level) as manifested in the genetic and environmental factors which shape our dispositions and beliefs.

In pursuit of this project, Baggini engages in a familiar tug-o-war over the concept of “Free Will”. The direction in which he wants to drag the rope is opposite to those on the incompatibilist team. This is an arid contest. “Free Will” as untrammelled human agency is one line over which the rope’s victory riband must be dragged. “Free Will” as human agency which is uncoerced and in good natural  working order( even if trammeled) is the other.

So why give both winning lines the same title? It is to do with the comfort value of being able to lay claim to some notion of free will – such as implicit in the title of Baggini’s book. But the free will on offer from Baggini would, I suspect, still be dismissed by Kant as a “wretched subterfuge”.

So, I think Baggini should have bitten the causal bullet and opted for a slogan which more accurately reflects his actual objective – something along the lines of ( but less plonking than) “Agency Preserved: Human Choice and Responsibility without Free Will” (ie the concept of the opposing tug-o-war team).

Baggini makes a good job of tackling the central dualist metaphor which, in many guises, animates the tug-o-war. This is the notion of the conscious “I” who (to some greater or lesser extent) sits above the firing of our neurons and the causal laws of nature.

Doom-mongers (in Baggini’s eyes) claim that the determinist thesis condemns us to a variety of metaphoric fates. For example, we (the I’s) are helpless passengers on a ship in the grip of currents and winds beyond our control  (a fatalist picture); or, and worse, we are the self-deluded captain of the same ship, spinning a wheel on the bridge, which wheel, like the levers of power pulled by an incompetent politician, is connected to nothing effective (Free Will as hopeless illusion). Both horrified traditionalists and gleeful debunkers of free will can peddle these sorts of images.

Baggini’s argument implies what is, in effect, a more accurate and helpful/hopeful metaphor: we are not passengers, nor impotent captain; “we” are the totality of the ship as vessel and crew, and a ship can navigate and use the elements even as, so to speak, it is in the grip of the elements. (But all these metaphors ultimately hit a rock if pushed too far.)

Humans, argues Baggini, are a complex part of the natural world, and it is in our better nature to be reflectively self directing, even if this does not mean that we can get “free” of universal causation (I underline “complex” because Baggini wants the notion of complexity to do a lot of work – see further comments below).

In arriving at this conclusion, Baggini’s argument goes by way of examining and rebutting what he calls ten “myths” of the Free Will debate. He helpfully summarises both myths and rebuttals towards the end of the book. Some of the myths are, in my view, well debunked by Baggini; others less so. And Baggini does not always resist the temptation to define awkward concepts in his way to “win” an argument – something he rightfully accuses other protagonists of doing.

Myth 1: A choice cannot be free unless at the moment of choosing you could have chosen other than you did

This is a fundamental tenet of the traditional Free Will argument for the unfettered Self. Baggini rejects it. For him (squaring his compatibilist jaw), “Nature unfolds…at each moment what happens next is purely the result of what has happened so far”.

The “what has happened” includes the agent’s history – circumstances and previous choices. What we do at the present point is determined by the past which has brought us to that point. There is no free-floating self who can change this.

Although Baggini thus readily concedes the general determinist argument, he goes on to argue that agency, human choice and responsibility, still matters.

Myth 2: If your choices are predictable, they are not free

This is sub-set of Myth 1 – if your past and present circumstances determine your choices, then of course a close observer of you can predict them (and this is our common experience).

Myth 3: If a person could not have done other than as she did at the time of acting, she is not responsible for her actions

This a crucial reductio often cited in the Free Will debate – that determinism abolishes moral responsibility and brings down the false edifice of criminal and civil liability.

Baggini’s response is not to deny the stark logic but to assert what amounts to a substantial qualification to do with naturalistic idea of “control”. He says that true (or the only available) responsibility consists in “being in control of our behaviour and having the ability to alter it [over time]. His argument here is related to his argument against neuroscience reductionism (see Myth 7), and rests on the claim that, as natural beings, we exercise control and respond to reasons and incentives and disincentives. Of course, one can easily deflate this claim by pointing out that our abilities or disabilities in these directions are themselves determined etc etc.

This is not just a base utilitarian line, like shouting at dogs to make them behave. We respond to introspection, blame, shame, praise and pride – even if “determined” to do so. But the fundamental worry about determinism and, at least, the inequality of everyone’s chances (you are easily shamed to virtue; I am constitutionally a reprobate) remains; and Baggini doesn’t really deal with this.

Myth 4: if a choice is free, you must be conscious that you have made it

Of course, many of our choices (including of words and ideas and when steering a vehicle) are not made “consciously” in the sense of following deliberation. These sorts of decisions are perhaps tangential to the Free Will debate, except to the extent that they demonstrate the many-layered complexity of our agency and rebut the “helpless victim of forces beyond my control” scenario. For these are decisions which “we” originate, if not the we-as-captain-on-the-bridge.

Myth 5: if choice is free, you must have known why you have made it

This appears to be another way of putting Myth 4.

Myth 6: freedom of thought requires that you have chosen your own beliefs

A somewhat odd “myth”. Freedom, Baggini says, is more about the faculty of examining one’s own beliefs rationally and being able to change them as a result. But such a faculty begs all the usual questions.

Myth 7: Neuroscience threatens to prove – or may have already proved that Free Will is an illusion

This is a central myth, which may be true in that, as Baggini accepts, humans have no faculty which escapes causal necessity, which works, among other ways, through our neurological systems. So, according to Baggini, we must console ourselves with a different thought: humans are complex organisms whose whole is somehow greater than the sum of the neurological parts. Thus, for example, conscious deliberation really does affect actions (even if the process is ultimately determined).

This doesn’t really rebut the Myth, which is likely correct under one, purist, definition of what is to have Free Will, but (subject to the science about “complexity” being more corroborative than the rather meagre and anecdotal evidence that Baggini adduces) represents perhaps the best shot at preserving some truth in our intuitive sense that we are originating agents.

Myth 8: Everything not under our control diminishes our freedom

To this, Baggini says: 2+2 = 4, and quotes Luther: “Here I stand; I can do no other”; which he takes to imply that deeply held convictions lead us to make inevitable choices. And one should see this as “diminishing”.

Myth 9: Free Will is a single capacity

Baggini has already dismissed this implicitly . As is true of..

Myth 10: People either have Free Will or they don’t

Baggini’s whole argument is that the concept is graduated and means different things in different contexts (..so why not abandon the label as misleading?)

In summary, Baggini accepts determinism, but claims that we can go along with it (have to, indeed) with our fundamental concepts about human decisions and responsibility relatively unruffled.

We have more agency than snooker balls poked about by the Universe’s indifferent cues.

But we are not spirits free of natural laws.

May 2015