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OK - let's go back to free will for a second, and consider what we mean by it. I'd like to draw on the work of G.E. Moore, notably the Principia Ethica and Keifer Sutherland, notably 24.
In one sense, the determinist sense, Keifer's actions might be said to be motivated by his past experiences, and as such are not in fact "free". In another sense, of course, his actions are also not free, because at various points in the series he is being compelled to act in a certain way because his family are being held hostage. So, we have conception of freedom (1), in which Keifer takes actions as responses to stimuli which, although more complex, are in fact not much more surprising than Keifer deciding, as he has decided every day for the last twenty years, to begin his day with a cup of black coffee if he finds himself awaking in his own house with fresh coffee available. Conception of freedom (2) is a bit more complex. leaving aside the question of determinism for a second, Keifer could presumably respond to the kidnap of his wife in any number of ways. He could say "fuck it" and go golfing. He could have a nervous breakdown. He could go by the book, or he could behave in a way that he would not normally behave if there was a security threat to a presidential candidate, on the grounds that they have his daughter/wife/border collie. His decision may be as predictable, in a determinist universe, as his decision to have a cup of coffee in the morning or indeed as predictable as the knowledge that if you drop a piano on him he will go squish. In another sense, however, his will is clearly not free here, or as free; his choice is being compelled by extraordinary factors. I think it's Strawson who says that we only consider actions praiseworthy or blameworthy if those actions are in some sense of the term free. Therefore, despite repeatedly breaking protocol, Keifer would not be considered as blameworthy as he would have been if he had, for example, driven a coworker out to a deserted location and shot her in the chest, having previously provided her with a bulletproof vest, on a whim or because a friend phoned up and suggested it.
We're moving away from precognition here, but work with me. Moore's maxim is that an action can be said to be a free action if it agrees with the statement I could have done otherwise, that is that I made a conscious choice to do so, and could, if I had chosen, have done otherwise, because that choice was open to me. So, Keifer could say that, given who he was and what the course of his life had made of him thus far, he could not have done otherwise than to break protocols in the pursuit of his daughter's safety. His choice was determnined *and* compelled, in a way that his decision to have a nice cup of coffee is not.
Now, that commonsense approach comes up against both the precognitive determinist perspective, in which compulsion is irrelevant, or rather just one of the predictable, non-stochastic factors affecting an equally non-stochastic action seen in advacne by the precognitive, and for that matter the quantum perspective, that sees causality break down at a quantum level. However, the quantum approach is in moral terms at least pretty irrelevant. If Keifer is holding a bad guy at gunpoint and suddenly another bad guy appears from thin air and tackles him, causing the gun to go off and perforate bads guy the first, then we can hold Keifer responsible for pointing a gun with the safety catch off at another person, we can hold him responsible possibly for not waiting for backup, who might have seen the man emerging from the hidden trapdoor, or for not anticipating that a man might suddenly appear out of thin air, et cetera, but shooting the man was not his personal choice and he is not in a sense to be blamed for the actual action of bullet on human flesh.
Question being, can he be held responsible for anything else, if his actions are determined by previous actions in his past and the actions of elements upon him at that moment? In what sense can he be held responsible, if somewhere in a tenement block in New York somebody successfully predicted that he was goign to shoot bad guy number one? Is there a part of us that can originate action independent of previous circumstance and current environment? |
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