Sitio 13: Río Bravo
5. Sector Buenos Aires
The challenging examples for the assorted accounts of causation are many and varied. It would be easy to despair about the prospects for making any progress on the topic of causation, but don’t. We think this is a really 25 Schaffer, “Causation and laws of Nature: reductionism.”
26 See Carroll, “Anti-reductionism,” for the history of – and the motivation for – this anti-reductive stance on causation.
27 The underdetermination cases are not the only arguments that make philosophers worry about the reality of causation. Some worry that the absence of the word ‘causes’ from the formulation of fundamental theories of physics is an indication that causation is merely a folk concept, maybe like the concept of a witch, that may get lots of use in ordinary conversation, but which has no application to the world since there are no witches. our best physical theories include fundamental laws that
exciting time for metaphysicians. Philosophers are not doing drudge work; they are not digging in their heels trying to defend their favorite theory, holding whatever convenient position is necessary to do so. rather they are, somewhat independently of specific theories, revisiting some funda- mental issues in an open-minded and provocative manner. The questions are not: What’s wrong with this theory? Is there any way of revising the theory to avoid the problem? Instead, the questions are: Is causation tran- sitive? What causes what in cases of overdetermination? Is there a meta- physical difference between causes and background conditions? These are compelling issues; that they are being tackled augurs philosophical progress.
are equations relating various properties to other properties but without explicitly stating that there are any causal connections or even that there would be certain causal connections if certain conditions were to come to pass.
45 3.1 The Problem of Freedom and Determinism
Suppose that on your way home one day you discover someone else’s wallet on the sidewalk. It’s full of cash, credit cards, and so forth. But it also con- tains a driver’s license, from which you can tell that the wallet belongs to a fellow who lives nearby, in a house that you’ll pass on your way home. You deliberate about what to do. You could return the wallet to its owner with all of its contents intact, of course. or you could return it after tak- ing out some of the cash, or return it after taking out all of the cash, or just leave it where it is, or take out the cash and then leave it where it is. Suppose that while deliberating, you keep thinking about how you would really like to use the money to buy a bunch of new computer games. So in the end, even though you feel a little guilty about doing so, you decide to take all the cash and then leave the wallet where you found it. And that’s what you do.
Now let’s shift gears for a minute. We all know that the future is to some extent influenced by the past. For example, pink elephants don’t just appear out of thin air. In order for a pink elephant to appear in a place, there has to be some sort of history leading up to that elephant being in that place. (Normally this would involve a series of events such as the ele- phant walking over to the location in question. Not to mention something that accounts for the elephant being pink.) So we know that the future is to some extent shaped by the past. But to what extent? Well, suppose it turns out that the future is entirely fixed by the past. That is, suppose it turns out that every event in the history of the world is completely deter- mined by antecedent conditions. This supposition certainly seems like the kind of thing that might be true, and it also fits with the way we ordinarily think about events as always having causes.
okay, now let’s return to the example of you finding a wallet and keeping the money it contains. on our current supposition (that the future is entirely determined by the past), it turns out that, given the way things were way back when, it was guaranteed that you would find the wallet just as you did, go through the same thought processes that you in fact went through, and then decide and act as you did. In fact (given our current sup- position) all of this was in some sense determined to happen long before you or any other humans walked the face of the earth.
one question that such a “deterministic” model raises is whether you were really acting freely when you took that money from the wallet. And in fact it is easy to appreciate the thought that you would not be acting freely when you took the money (or did anything else) in such a determin- istic world. You would be more like a machine: a wind-up toy, or a robot, or a computer. Moreover, it seems to follow that you would not in that case be morally responsible for your action (any more than wind-up toys or computers are morally responsible for their actions).
But now consider the possibility that the world is not deterministic in the way mentioned above. And suppose that in fact there was some “ran- domness” in the causal history of your action of taking the money from the wallet. (For example, suppose that your deliberation process consisted of a series of neuron-firing events in your brain, and also that a certain crucial one of those events was not determined by everything that came before it, so that there was literally a fifty per cent chance that you would decide to take the money and a fifty per cent chance that you would decide to return the wallet intact.) Now it might be easier to see how you could be acting freely, in such an “indeterministic” universe. But it is still diffi- cult to see how you could be morally responsible for your action in that case. After all, why should you be responsible for something that just happened randomly and was not, in any sense, up to you?
We seem to have a dilemma. on the one hand, if we say that your action was completely determined by the past, then it looks like we have to say that you are not acting freely and are not morally responsible for your action. But, on the other hand, if we say that there was some randomness in the causal history leading up to your action, then it appears that we have to say that your action is not really up to you and, hence, that you are not morally responsible for the action. either way it seems difficult to give an account of your action according to which you are morally responsible
for it. This is The Problem of Freedom and determinism, which is the sub- ject of the present chapter. We will begin our examination of this problem with a discussion of the notion of freedom.
3.2 Freedom
There are many different kinds of freedom. There is freedom to go and to do more or less as you please. (This is a kind of freedom that those in prison do not possess.) There is freedom from oppression by your govern- ment. There is freedom from financial worries. There is freedom from nagging by your parents. There is freedom to write and publish whatever you want.
Meanwhile, there is one particular kind of freedom that is especially relevant to the topic of freedom and determinism: the kind of freedom that is required for moral responsibility. For even though moral responsi- bility requires none of the other kinds of freedom mentioned above, there is nevertheless some type of freedom that is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. After all, we don’t take a person to be morally responsible for what they have done if we think that they were not acting freely in any way at all. (And this goes both for cases in which we think a person is morally responsible for performing an action that is morally wrong as well as cases in which we think a person is morally responsible for performing an action that is morally right.)
So there is a type of freedom that is relevant to moral responsibility – that is, a type of freedom that can be defined in terms of the role that it plays in our thinking about moral responsibility. For the purposes of this chapter, we will understand moral freedom to be the kind of freedom that is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. And for the remainder of the chapter, when we discuss freedom, it is this particular kind of free- dom – moral freedom – that we will be talking about.
What can we say about this kind of freedom? Well, it is natural to think that people often are morally responsible for their actions. Which means that it is natural to think that people are at least sometimes free (in the sense required for moral responsibility). Here, then, is a very natural and intuitive thesis that most people would endorse.
Free Will
But as we will see, there are some philosophers who deny Free Will. And it is not just that these philosophers are being contrarians. rather, they deny Free Will because there are seemingly powerful arguments for the conclu- sion that people never act freely. In order to appreciate those arguments, let us first consider the thesis known as determinism.
3.3 Determinism
There are different forms of determinism, but the intuitive idea behind all of them is that the past somehow determines what will happen in the future. For many years the main form that the determinist idea took in philosophical writings was in terms of causation, as in the following thesis.1
Universal Causation
every event that occurs has a cause.2
Universal Causation is closely related to the following thesis, which has been endorsed by leibniz and others.3
Sufficient Reason
There is a sufficient reason for everything that happens.
The relation between Universal Causation and Sufficient reason, though close, is not identity. For the latter is an imprecise doctrine, insofar as it is not clear what should count as a “sufficient reason”. Among the leading possibilities are (a) some kind of explanation (including a causal explan- ation), and (b) a reason in terms of the elusive in-virtue-of relation. In any case, since causes are naturally thought of as one species of sufficient rea- son, it makes sense to think of Universal Causation as a specific version of Sufficient reason, which is the more general thesis.
1 This thesis has been endorsed in one form or another by many philosophers. See, for example, Aristotle, Physics, Book II, chapter 4; and kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B232–56. (All of the works of Aristotle noted in this chapter can be found in The Basic
Works of Aristotle.)
2 Some people who like Universal Causation, but who also think that there was a first event in the history of the universe, will want to amend the principle so that it says that every event that occurs, with the exception of the first event, has a cause. 3 See, for example, leibniz, Philosophical Essays, p. 31.
Meanwhile, in more recent times, the determinist idea has been understood in terms of laws of nature and physically possible futures. The concept of a law of nature is discussed at length in Chapter 4. But it is worth saying a bit more here about physical possibility and physical neces- sity. The alethic modalities are the notions of possibility and necessity that are connected with the laws of logic. (The word ‘alethic’ means having to do with truth.) When we talk of something being logically possible or logic- ally necessary, we are talking about alethic modalities. The nomic modalities, on the other hand, are the notions of possibility and necessity that are con- nected with the laws of nature. (‘Nomic’ means having to do with laws.) To say that something is physically possible is to say that it is allowed by the laws of nature. So a physically possible future, relative to a certain time, is a way that things could continue from that time that is permitted by the laws of nature. (And a physically impossible future is one that is not per- mitted by the laws.) To say that something is physically necessary, however, is to say, roughly, that it is required by the laws of nature.4,5
In addition to the notion of physical necessity, our characterization of determinism in terms of laws of nature will depend on several key pre- suppositions. First, we will assume that it’s possible for a proposition to “express” the state of the world at a particular time, and, in fact, that for every time, there is a proposition that expresses the state of the world at that time. In addition, our discussion will be much simpler if we agree to think of propositions as “tenseless” items that have fixed truth values (like the proposition that Juan is standing at noon on June 1, 2525), rather than thinking of propositions as “tensed” items that can change their truth values over time (like the proposition that it will be the case in 515 years that Juan is standing).6 (It is also possible to formulate determinism in a
4 More precisely, to say that some event, e, is physically necessary as of time t is to say that conditions at t are such that e occurs in every physically possible future rela- tive to t. In the text we sometimes speak of an event (or set of conditions) “making” another event physically necessary, which we take to be a shorter and simpler way of saying that, given that the first event occurs (or that the relevant conditions obtain), the second event is physically necessary at the time of that first event (or those conditions).
5 Why “physical” possibility and necessity? Because the presumption is that all the laws of nature are reducible to the laws of physics. But “nomic” (or “lawful”) possibility and necessity would work just as well, if we wanted to drop that presumption.
way that is more friendly to the tensed way of thinking about proposi- tions, but doing so would be a bit more complicated.)
The intuitive idea, then, is that at each instant, there is exactly one phys- ically possible future. In other words, for any time, t, given the way the world is at t, and given the laws of nature, there is only one way that things could continue. Here is a way to formulate this thesis that is a variation on van Inwagen’s formulation from page 65 of his An Essay on Free Will:
Determinism
For any propositions, p1 and p2, and times, t1 and t2, such that p1 expresses the state of the world at t1 and p2 expresses the state of the world at t2, the conjunction of p1 with the laws of nature entails p2.
This formulation has the consequence that the present always determines a unique future. But it also has the consequence that the present always determines a unique past. For there is nothing in the formulation requir- ing that time t2 be later than time t1. It could be earlier. This is a feature of van Inwagen’s formulation as well, and it is a feature that he welcomes. Nevertheless, van Inwagen points out that it would be easy to reformulate determinism so as to avoid the relevant commitment to “backwards deter- minism.” We would just have to restrict the thesis in a way that requires that t1 be earlier than t2, as follows:
Future-Oriented Determinism
For any propositions, p1 and p2, and times, t1 and t2, such that t1 is earlier than t2, p1 expresses the state of the world at t1, and p2 expresses the state of the world at t2, the conjunction of p1 with the laws of nature entails p2.
It is important to appreciate how determinism is different from Universal Causation. determinism is formulated in terms of laws of nature (and hence in terms of physical necessity) rather than in terms of caus ation. This is important because it is at least arguably possible to have causation without having physical necessity. That is, a particular event can be caused without being made physically necessary. (For example, suppose there is a bomb with an indeterministic detonation device. It is a genu- inely indeterministic matter, as far as the laws of nature are concerned, whether Tim pushing the button will result in the bomb being detonated; but his pushing the button ensures that there is, let’s say, a “nomic” prob- ability of 0.99 [on a scale from 0 to 1] that the bomb will detonate. Now
suppose Tim pushes the button and the bomb ends up detonating. Then we will want to say that Tim pushing the button caused the explosion, but that the explosion was not made physically necessary by Tim pushing the button.) Meanwhile, you presumably cannot have physical necessity without having causation. In other words, if it is physically necessary that a particular event occurs, then that event must be caused. The upshot is that determinism (as formulated here) captures a stronger version of the general idea that the past determines the future than is captured by Universal Causation.7
Here’s an important question for students of The Problem of Freedom and determinism: what status should we give to determinism? Traditionally, many philosophers (including leibniz and kant) have thought that some- thing like determinism is an a priori, necessary truth. But nowadays most philosophers tend to think that if anything like determinism is true, then it is contingently true, and also (relatedly) that whether determinism is true is an empirical (rather than an a priori) matter. We tend to agree with most contemporary philosophers on these matters (that if determin- ism is true then it is contingently true, and that whether determinism is true is an empirical matter), but we will not argue for these claims here. Instead, we now turn to a consideration of the popular view known as Hard Determinism.