This article suggests that our sense of free will is formed when others react to our behavior with surprise, even though our private knowledge tells us our behavior was determined by our preferences.  Such surprised reactions, even when our behavior is from our perspective fully determined, lead us to infer that we exercise free will

Markovitch, J. S.

English

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PHIL-May-2020-111 v1Free will as private determinismJ. S. Markovitch100 Saturn Rd.St. Augustine, FL 32086∗(Dated: May 14, 2020)This article suggests that our sense of free will is formed when others react to our behavior withsurprise, even though our private knowledge tells us our behavior was determined by our preferences.Such surprised reactions, even when our behavior is from our perspective fully determined, lead usto infer that we exercise free will.I. ROBERT NOZICK ON FREE WILLIn exploring free will, we will take as our starting pointRobert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations (1981, pp.291–2) [1], which speaks of the problem of free will as a“tension between causal determination and randomnesson the one hand, and valuable agenthood on the other”.His eloquent statement of the problem (the reader is ad-vised to consult the original) begins by emphasizing theimportance of “human dignity”, while relegating “pun-ishment and responsibility” to the status of a mere “sideissue”:Without free will, we seem diminished,merely the playthings of external forces.How, then, can we maintain an exalted viewof ourselves? Determinism seems to under-cut human dignity, it seems to undermine ourvalue. Our concern is to formulate a view ofhow we (sometimes) act so that if we act thatway our value is not threatened, our statureis not diminished. The philosophical discus-sion focusing upon issues of punishment andresponsibility, therefore, strikes one as askew,as concerned with a side issue, although ad-mittedly an important one.After having identified the wrong way to approach theproblem (by starting with “punishment and responsibil-ity”) Nozick then points out an obvious problem posedby a belief in determinism:The task is to formulate a conception of hu-man action that leaves agents valuable; butwhat is the problem? First, that determin-ism seems incompatible with such a concep-tion; if our actions stem from causes beforeour birth, then we are not the originators ofour acts and so are less valuable.. . . There isan incompatibility or at least a tension be-tween free will and determinism, raising thequestion: given that our actions are causallydetermined, how is free will possible?∗Electronic address: jsmarkovitch@gmail.comHaving identified determinism as incompatible with (or,at least, in “tension” with) valuable agents possessingfree will, he then casts doubt on “uncaused” randomnessas a solution by asserting that each of us must be morethan a mere “arena” in which thoughts occur. We mustbe “valuable originators of action”:Some would deny what this question acceptsas given, and save free will by denying deter-minism of (some) actions. Yet if an uncausedaction is a random happening, then this nomore comports with human value than doesdeterminism. Random acts and caused actsalike seem to leave us not as the valuableoriginators of action but as an arena, a placewhere things happen, whether through earliercauses or spontaneously.Nozick goes on to say that free will must be “somethingmore” than mere randomness:Clearly, if our actions were random, like thetime of radioactive decay of uranium 238emitting an alpha particle, their being thusundetermined would be insufficient to groundhuman value or provide a basis for responsi-bility and punishment. Even the denier of de-terminism therefore needs to produce a pos-itive account of free action. On his view, afree action is an undetermined one with some-thing more. The problem is to produce a co-herent account of that something more.Nozick, having criticized both determinism and pure ran-domness as being in tension with our sense of our selfworth then gives this succinct statement of the core prob-lem in the form of a hurdle we must clear:Given the tension between causal determina-tion and randomness on the one hand, andvaluable agenthood on the other, how is valu-able agenthood possible?He closes by expressing doubt about finding a “fully sat-isfactory” solution:The problem is so intractable, so resistant toilluminating solution, that we shall have toapproach it from several different directions.No one of the approaches turns out to be fullysatisfactory, nor indeed do all together.2II. PRIVATE DETERMINISMNozick applies the word “intractable” to the problemof free will with good reason: If our actions are:• determined, then they are merely mechanical.• random, then they are devoid of purpose.Moreover, any mere blending of randomness with deter-minism seems to provide no relief. To the extent thatour actions are:• determined, then they are merely mechanical.• random, then they are devoid of purpose.How then to resolve Nozick’s “tension between causal de-termination and randomness on the one hand, and valu-able agenthood on the other”?Introspection provides some insight: We as individualsare capable of knowing more about our future actionsthan others know; and, conversely, others know moreabout their future actions than we know. When askedto name a number between 1 and 1,000 we learn nothingwhen we reveal our answer, whereas others learn our an-swer for the first time. From our point of view our actionsare deterministic in the limited sense that we know aheadof time what we will say. From the perspective of othersour choices are indeterministic in the sense that they donot know ahead of time what we will say. In this way wesee our small pocket of the world as deterministic, evenas we find the wider world indeterministic.So we identify the first property of what will be calledprivate determinism:Property 1: We come to regard ourselves asfreely acting because we are aware in advancethings that no one else can know about ourfuture behavior.This will be called “private” determinism for the obviousreason that our sense of free will is assumed to arise fromour private foreknowledge of our own behavior. This fore-knowledge will be regarded as evidence of determinismbecause we know in advance what we will do, and thereis no way to know in advance an event that is random(though, unlike with successful scientific predictions, weappear to cause our behavior).Good evidence that we actually cause the events weimagine is provided by a simple thought experiment: Webegin counting from one upwards while waiting for analarm to sound on the decay of a radioactive atom. Whenthe alarm sounds we are to announce the number we arethinking. No matter when the alarm sounds the numberwe are thinking will be the number we announce, ap-parently because it is the thought (of the number) thatgives rise to the act (of saying the number). In contrast,in science we cannot keep counting from one upwardswhile waiting for the results from an external physicalexperiment and expect the number we are thinking tomatch the experimental results as they arrive.III. PRIVATE KNOWLEDGEShould we find it acceptable to our dignity if our ac-tions are determined in the above way? Yes, because ouractions are “determined” only in the limited sense thatwe know what we are going to do immediately before wedo it. So our pocket of determinism is bounded in spaceand time, and our actions are not determined from birth,let alone from before birth. As John Passmore points outin A Hundred Years of Philosophy (1968, pp. 509–519)[2] in his interpretation of Stuart Hampshire’s Thoughtand Action (1959) [3]:. . . the leading characteristic of a free agentis that he can tell us in advance — not byinference from his past but directly and im-mediately — what he is going to do.In this way I regard others as free to act, with just myselfas a private pocket of determinism. In addition, my self-worth—and sense of free will—is bolstered by my beingaware that I know more about my small pocket of theuniverse than all others combined.Moreover, not only am I uniquely knowledgeable aboutwhat I am going to do, I am also uniquely knowledgeableabout what I have thought. Others therefore have to relyon me to truthfully convey information about my priormotives, just as I have to rely on others to truthfullyconvey this same information about themselves to me.We are not, therefore, just unique private pockets of de-terminism, we are also unique private pockets of history.We know many things about our past that no one elsecan know. Of course, if my secret past drives my futurebehavior it should come as no surprise that my behavioris often unpredictable to others.So we identify this second property of private deter-minism:Property 2: We come to regard ourselves asfreely acting because we know things that noone else can know (except by being told by us)about our past thoughts.IV. ORIGINATORS OF ACTIONMoreover, I come to regard myself as freely acting be-cause others inform me that I act unpredictably, and be-cause I see others acting unpredictably as well. Were Ialone in the universe I would never get the equivalentsense of existing as a free individual. In the absence ofthe claims of others that I am unpredictable and there-fore free (and my observing unpredictable and thereforefree behavior in others) I would always tend to see mybehavior as determined by my preferences. I ultimatelycome to see myself as unpredictable (and therefore free)because I see others act unpredictably in the course offulfilling their needs which leads me to draw the obvious3inference that I am similarly unpredictable (and there-fore free) when fulfilling my needs. I think: If they arefree despite following internal motivations then so am I.And if my actions are determined by the past it is my(private) past, not the (public) past, that plays this role,where my private past is part of what defines me. In thisway I come to view my preferences and ensuing actionsas the exercise of free will.So we identify this third property of private determin-ism:Property 3: Our sense of free will is formedwhen others react to our behavior with sur-prise even though our private knowledge tellsus our behavior was determined by our pref-erences. Such surprised reactions, even whenour behavior is (from our perspective) fullydetermined, lead us to infer that we exercisefree will.On the surface it is plausible to dismiss free will simplyon grounds that our actions are determined by our per-sonal preferences, which are in turn determined by ourpersonal circumstances, and so on. And of course thisleads us to suspect that we lack the dignity rightly re-quired by Nozick. But in fact we retain our dignity inthe face of the above argument by virtue of our prefer-ences being private. We would only lose our dignity ifour preferences were as well known to others as they areto ourselves, because then our behavior would be pre-dictable to others, and we would rightly be regarded byothers as lacking free will. In this way we see that ourdignity ultimately derives from the privacy of our prefer-ences, where we learn about this privacy only from ourinteractions with others. And if we do not exactly seeourselves as “originators of action”, we can at least seeourselves as the origin of the private preferences that de-termine our public actions.In practice I may first serially consult my senses (sight,hearing, taste, and so forth). Only then do I identifyfrom among competing preferences my main preference(inexplicably, I crave turnips). And only then do I takeaction (I eat a turnip). Although these steps may seem tobe forced, their private character makes them correspondto the exercise of free will. Of course, at times I maybe tempted to see myself as merely an “arena” in whichactions occur that are determined by random preferences;but it is unlikely that others will see me that way. Toothers my unpredictable actions will seem to make me atrue “originator of action”.Does this then resolve Nozick’s “tension betweencausal determination and randomness on the one hand,and valuable agenthood on the other”? Possibly. Byproviding a solution to Nozick’s problem that is neitherdeterministic nor random—because this varies withperspective—private determinism appears to neatlysidestep Nozick’s dilemma.V. PUNISHMENT AND RESPONSIBILITYWe are now ready to address the issue of “punishmentand responsibility”, properly postponed as a “side issue”by Nozick earlier.Imagine a serial bully who goes on a rampage: Thepolice never know who he is going to assault next. Fromtheir point of view his behavior is entirely (and dis-turbingly) random. Simply put, they see random beat-ings. Ultimately he is caught and confined to a cell.Thereafter his behavior becomes predictable from thepoint of view of the authorities. From the bully’s per-spective, however, the area over which he asserts freewill shrinks to insignificance: He is moved from cell tocell against his will, so that even his own behavior be-comes to him random.This punishment is justified from the perspective ofsociety because he has interfered with the free will ofhis victims. He imposed his will beyond his own areaof local control into the corresponding areas of others.And because his behavior was “determined” only in thelimited sense that he was aware of his own motivationsand anticipated his own actions (something no one elsewas able to do) this form of determinism in no way un-dermines the ethics of imposing restrictions on his freewill. That is to say, he cannot plead external compulsionas an extenuating circumstance because his behavior wasnot “causally determined” by external force (which wouldhave made his behavior predictable). His behavior was“determined” only in the limited sense that he under-stood his own motivations and foresaw his own actions,even as others did not.So we identify this fourth property of private deter-minism:Property 4: Private determinism is an un-usual form of determinism in that it amplifiesguilt rather than conferring innocence.VI. INCAPACITY VERSUS DETERMINISMOne issue remains to be clarified and that is thedistinction between incapacity and determinism. Whenwe face an imminent calamity we usually ask: Can Iprevent this disaster? And when we are powerless toprevent a disaster we may be led to think our entirefuture is determined. But clearly physical incapacity(powerlessness in the face of a overwhelming externalevent) must not be mistaken for philosophical determin-ism (a preordained outcome governing all events largeand small alike). Capable people who mistake physicalincapacity for philosophical determinism run the risk offailing to act solely because they believe all outcomesare predetermined. People who make this mistake wouldbe predictable to others and so would not be seen byothers as originators of action.4[1] Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Belknap Pressof Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1981).[2] John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, 2nd ed.(Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, England, 1968).[3] Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (Chatto and Win-dus, London, 1959).

Free will as private determinism

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Free will as private determinism

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