Some Reasons To Be Incompatibilist About Free Will

Franks furt nothing, pal

I wrote an article recently about Sam Harris’ take on free will where I criticized him for begging the question against Compatibilists. To summarise, he assumes the Incompatibilist conception of free will is correct, because that’s what most people mean by free will, and accuses Compatibilists of “redefining” it. This approach falls apart when you realise that Compatibilists are trying to determine whether we have the freedom required for moral responsibility, and not whether or not we have the freedom most people think we have. To determine we don’t have the freedom required for moral responsibility, you’re going to have to argue why the Compatibilist conception is insufficient for it, and not just assume you’re right.

Some people read my post as a critique of Incompatibilism itself (hence the added note at the start of the article), but this is a misconception. I don’t think Incompatibilism is a dumb view, I just think it would be nice if Incompatibilists actually argued for it - and some of them do! Take notes, Sam. Here’s, I think, some of the better reasons to be an Incompatibilist.

Some Revision

There’s a wide range of people that read my blog. From people that have formal education in philosophy, to friends that don’t have much of an interest in it but just like to support me. My mum is also here - Hi mum! So, before we start arguing against Compatibilism it’s probably worth giving a bit of a lay of the land first. If you’re familiar with terms like Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, Determinism, Libertarianism, Frankfurt Cases, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities - you can just skip until after the picture of Fabio.

So, what are we doing here? When we talk about free will, we’re talking about the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility. The kind of freedom such that were you to have it, you would be genuinely blameworthy for your misdeeds, and praiseworthy for your accomplishments. What does this sort of freedom look like? Well, that’s where the debate is, but the best place to start is probably the Incompatibilist account - which is the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (henceforth, PAP).

PAP: a person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise.

So, for example, you’re only responsible for stealing money from your nan if, and only if, you could have not stolen money from your nan. This has a lot of intuitive force. After all, if it were impossible for you not to steal from your nan, we’d be holding you responsible for not doing something you couldn’t have done - and that seems somewhat unfair. It’s like holding someone responsible for not being able to bench 2000kg, or for finding me attractive. We’re only human.

Surely though, we all have this freedom - so what’s the concern? Well, enter Determinism.

---

*Glass Shatters*

---

As far as we know, the universe is lawful. There are rules that matter follows. We can predict where the sun will be with pinpoint accuracy 200 days from now. We know how much energy you need to add to 200ml of room temperature water to make it boil. If you throw a ball in the air you know that it will fall back down again. Every event that happens is caused by an event that immediately preceded it. In principle, if you knew the relevant information of every atom in the universe, you would be able to predict exactly what would happen 10 minutes from now, or even 10 million years from now. The scary thing about this is that we’re part of the universe - so in principle you could predict with pinpoint accuracy what we’re going to do in the future. If all of our actions are just downstream of prior causes, going all the way back to the start of the universe, we might as well be on rail roads. Here’s a relevant limerick:

There once was a man that said “Damn,
it seems with regret that I am,
a creature that moves,
in determinate grooves,
I’m not even a bus, I’m a tram.”

We think we’re able to have acted otherwise in the past than we in fact did, but to do so would’ve required you to break the laws of physics. You couldn’t have not robbed your nan any more than a ball can fall upwards when you drop it.

You might think “What about Quantum Mechanics? Doesn’t that introduce some randomness?” but that doesn’t really get us far. If our actions aren’t caused by prior conditions, but are the product of randomness, it’s not really as if we’re the ones in control. In fact, we’re not in control by definition, because the moment you can control something, it ceases to be random. If you robbed your nan because of the rolling of the quantum dice, that doesn’t really feel like a satisfactory scenario to hold you responsible in either.

Incompatibilism gets it’s name because it’s the view that Determinism is incompatible with free will. This is because Incompatibilists believe free will requires PAP, but we couldn’t have acted otherwise if our actions are determined. So, if you’re an incompatibilist and you accept Determinism, you are a free will skeptic - here’s the sort of argument you could make.

1. a person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise (PAP)

2. it’s never the case that we could have done otherwise (Determinism)

3. Therefore we are never morally responsible

4. Therefore we have no free will

Now, you can be an Incompatibilist but reject Determinism, which would make you a Libertarian. Libertarianism is just the basic view most people have - we could have acted otherwise in the past, and are morally responsible. There might be some reasons to reject Determinism, but it’s not super relevant to the Incompatibilist/Compatibilist debate, so I’ll leave that train of thought there.

So, free will is dead. Determinism is true. PAP is true. What hope do we have? If we accept Determinism, there’s no way out… unless we reject PAP? But no one would be able to do that, right? Wrong! Enter Harry Frankfurt.

---

*Glass Shatters*

---

In the mid twentieth century, Harry Frankfurt put forward what’s now called a Frankfurt case. A Frankfurt case is a scenario that aims to act as a counter example to PAP. That is, a scenario that aims to show that we can be morally responsible for our actions even if we couldn’t have acted otherwise. Here’s a common example.

Black wants Jones to shoot the president. To ensure he does so, he’s implanted a chip into Jones’ brain that will force him to shoot. However, it only switches on if Jones decides not to shoot the president himself. It’s a failsafe. If Jones decides to shoot the president on his own, the chip doesn’t come online. As it happens, Jones decides to shoot the president on his own, and the chip stays dormant.

What’s the conclusion here? Well, it certainly seems that Jones is responsible for shooting the president. The chip never came online, so Black has done nothing to influence the situation. However, it’s also true that Jones couldn’t have done otherwise, because if he did, the chip would’ve made him shoot the president anyway.

If you accept Frankfurt cases as a successful counter example to PAP, Determinism is now no longer a threat to moral responsibility. Because you think moral responsibility is compatible with Determinism, you’re now a Compatibilist!

---

Congrats. If the different free will camps in philosophy ever get into a street fight, you’d probably win now.

---

What explains Jones’ moral responsibility? It could be many things, and there are myriad compatibilist views. For example, it could be because he is sensitive to reason, or because he’s acting on his desires without external impediment. I’m not sure what the best compatibilist account is, but if incompatibilists want to stay in the race, they’re going to have to explain why Frankfurt cases fail (and not just accuse them of redefining free will, like Sam Harris does).

Okay, revision done. Here’s the picture of Fabio I promised.

---

If I’m morally responsible for staring into his eyes too long, I just don’t care.

---

Flicker of Freedom Response

Okay, time to wreck Frankfurt’s shit. One good approach to dismantle Frankfurt cases is to say they actually fail to act as counter examples to PAP. The Flicker of Freedom response aims to do just that.

Jones couldn’t have not shot the president, sure. However, he could have chosen to not shoot the president on his own. It looks like he only had one option: shoot the president - but he actually had two: shoot the president on his own, or be forced to shoot the president. If he was forced to shoot the president, presumably we wouldn’t have held him responsible.

Jones is morally responsible for shooting the president, but that’s only because he had two options, one of which he couldn’t have been held responsible for, and he chose the other. That is, he could have done otherwise, and didn’t. It’s just PAP again! Oh PAP, you sly dog, who let you back in here?!

Another thing to mention is that in Frankfurt Cases, the fact that Jones maintains the ability to either choose to shoot the president on his own, or be forced to, shows there’s more than one possible future. If we’re determined, we only have one possible future, so it’s possible that Frankfurt Cases don’t even apply to us. They’re just describing someone with Libertarian free will, and Incompatibilists would happily agree they’re morally responsible.

I think this response has something going for it, and Frankfurt Cases may just be smoke and mirrors. It certainly seems compelling. If you want to read something that argues against it, though, you should read Taylor Cyr’s paper. Also, listen to his show!

The Luck Pincer

Thomas Nagel, of “What is it like to be a bat?” fame, also wrote about free will. He identified four different types of moral luck.

Constitutive Luck: The luck of who one is, or the traits and dispositions they have. This is affected by things like your genetics, up-bringing, economic status, traumatic experiences you had as a child, etc. They all have effects on your character, but are really the result of your spawn location. I was born to a middle class family in the 1990’s in the UK, so it’s unsurprising that I have liberal views about homosexuality. I was lucky that I wasn’t born in the middle ages, because then I would probably be homophobic (Bet I’d have mad farmer strength though).

Circumstantial Luck: This is the luck of the circumstances one finds themselves in. For example, Germans born in the first half of the 20th century found themselves under Nazi Occupation. Some people risked their lives to oppose the regime, but most did not, and are considered blameworthy. People in the UK, however, never found themselves under such circumstances, and weren’t tested in that way. People in the UK aren’t really that different than Germans (apart from how early in the morning we reserve pool chairs), so were it the case that the Nazis rose to power over here, it’s likely most of us wouldn’t have opposed them either. The fact that we weren’t born into a scenario where we’d be considered blameworthy is a matter of luck.

Resultant Luck: The luck in how things turns out. Here’s an example. Steve runs a red light and hits no one. Derrick runs a red light and hits a child, killing them. Our intuitions say that Derrick is more blameworthy. He should go to prison, while Steve should probably get a ticket, go to a driving safety course, or maybe get a nice kick to the nuts. Nothing too bad though. However, the only difference between the two scenarios is that one happened to have a child step out, which was not in either of their control. Steve was lucky to not be considered as blameworthy as Derrick

Causal Luck: This is the luck of the prior causes that led to your actions. Some people have criticized Nagel for including this, as it seems that it’s just a generalized version of the other three forms of luck, and I agree with them. Not really sure why he added it.

So, it seems that what influences our actions in any moment are the products of luck, but it also seems inappropriate to blame or praise people for what is not under their control. We can map it out like this

1. Any morally significant act is either Constitutively, Circumstantially, or Resultantly, lucky

2. Constitutive, Circumstantial, and Resultant luck negate moral responsibility

3. A moral agent is not morally responsible for any morally significant act

Now, you might have read this section and thought “Isn’t this just the basic Incompatibilist argument?” and I think the answer is yes, it basically is. However, I think laying it out this way, and focusing on the prevalence of luck, does a good job of explaining why we find PAP intuitive. It’s possible that you can use Frankfurt cases to push back on the second premise, but the second premise does seem mightily plausible. Additionally, if you cast doubt on the success of Frankfurt cases with the Flicker of Freedom response, it might make it too weak to take the second premise down.

Principle of Avoiding Blame

I said earlier that the Incompatibilist conception of freedom required for moral responsibility is PAP, but that’s not strictly speaking true. It’s not like there’s a law that Incompatibilists have to accept PAP, they just need to have a conception of freedom that’s incompatible with Determinism (it’s just that most of them do accept PAP). There are alternatives though, such as GK Harrisons Principle of Avoiding Blame (henceforth PAB).

PAB: a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have avoided blame.

Harrison argues that even if we accept that Frankfurt Cases refute PAP, it does not act as a counter example to PAB. This is because even though Jones could not have done otherwise, he still could have avoided blame by ensuring he was forced to shoot the president.

The freedom required to avoid blame, however, is still incompatible with Determinism. If you stole your nan’s money because you were determined to, and avoiding blame would’ve required you to have acted differently, avoiding blame would’ve required you to break free from physical law. Which is impossible. Presumably.

---

I would say I’m still officially on the fence about free will. Ask me two weeks ago, and I would’ve said I lean Compatibilist. After researching and writing this, I feel I lean Incompatibilist again. I bounce around too much to feel confident planting my feet anywhere (kind of my position on most debates, to be honest). It’s not an easy one, but I do think that Incompatibilism has a lot going for it, and I appreciate the Incompatibilists that do try to substantiate their view, instead of dismissing Compatibilists out of hand. Here’s a reward for making it all the way to the end.

---

Candid photo of me thinking about the nature of freedom.

---