Re: The Road with no Branches argument

From: Immortalist (Reanimater_2000_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 23:01:12 -0700

"Here I stand," Luther said. "I can do no other." Luther claimed that he could do
no other, that his conscience made it impossible for him to recant. He might, of
course, have been wrong, or have been deliberately overstating the truth. But
even if he was...his declaration is testimony to the fact that we simply do not
exempt someone from blame or praise for an act because we think he could do no
other. Whatever Luther was doing, he was not trying to duck responsibility.

There are cases where the claim "I can do no other" is an avowal of frailty:
suppose what I ought to do is get on the plane and fly to safety, but I stand
rooted on the ground and confess I can do no other-because of my irrational and
debilitating fear of flying. In such a case I can do no other, I claim, because
my rational control faculty is impaired. But in other cases, like Luther's, when
I say I cannot do otherwise I mean I cannot because I see so clearly what the
situation is and because my rational control faculty is not impaired. It is too
obvious what to do; reason dictates it; I would have to be mad to do otherwise,
and since I happen not to be mad, I cannot do otherwise. (Notice, by the way,
that we say it was "up to" Luther whether or not to recant, and we do not feel
tempted to rescind that judgment when we learn that he claimed he could do no
other. Notice, too, that we often say things like this: "If it were up to me, I
know for certain what I would do.")

I hope it is true-and think it very likely is true-that it would be impossible to
induce me to torture an innocent person by offering me a thousand dollars. ...
Those who hold dear the principle of "could have done otherwise" are always
insisting that we should look at whether one could have done otherwise in exactly
the same circumstances. I claim something stronger; I claim that I could not do
otherwise even in any roughly similar case. I would never agree to torture an
innocent person for a thousand dollars. It would make no difference, I claim,
what tone of voice the briber used, or whether or not I was tired and hungry....

Now why would anyone's intuitions suggest that if I am right, then if and when I
ever have occasion to refuse such an offer, my refusal would not count as a
responsible act? Perhaps this is what some people think: they think that if I
were right when I claimed I could not do otherwise in such cases, I would be some
sort of zombie, "programmed" always to refuse thousand-dollar bribes. A genuinely
free agent, they think, must be more volatile somehow. If I am to be able to
listen to reason, ... they think, ... I must be able to pause, and weigh up the
pros and cons of this suggested bit of lucrative torture [so that there would be
some chance I might change my mind]....

That would be fallacious reasoning.

http://www.ptproject.ilstu.edu/fwdtdd.htm

--------------------------------------------

Dennett's basic thesis is that most of the fuss about free will has been caused
by the summoning of bogeymen -- non-existent and sometimes barely credible powers
that are supposed to be able to interfere with our free will in a deterministic
universe. The opening chapter, "Please Don't Feed the Bugbears", looks at some of
these bogeymen, and discusses the more general use of "intuition pumps" (stories
that appeal to our human level intuition to prejudice us for or against more
technical ideas). The following chapters lay the groundwork for understanding
different conceptions of free will: the second discusses "reason", the third
"control" and "self control" and the fourth "self" and ideas of "self-made
selves". These concepts are set within an evolutionary context.

The next chapter, "Acting Under the Idea of Freedom", looks at how we can
continue deliberating while believing that the universe is deterministic. In
particular it considers different definitions of "opportunity" and "avoidable",
and how these things tie in with real life deliberations, motivations and
expectations. The chapter "Could Have Done Otherwise" finally takes the lid
completely off the metaphysical "can" of worms (Dennett is fond of the occasional
pun). Retrospective desires to change the past, wanting to be able to make
several incompatible choices at once, confusion about the difference between the
actual and the possible, the role of chaos in physics -- these are just a few of
the things considered.

The final chapter looks at what Dennett considers the most important question --
Why do we want free will anyway? Dennett thinks that the fears raised by hard
determinists and incompatibilists are about kinds of free will which aren't
really worth wanting anyway (when they are not simply self-contradictory). Before
getting worked up considering the details of their arguments we should consider
whether we really care about what is at stake.

For anyone concerned with arguments over "free will" Elbow Room will be essential
reading. (It is also suitable as an introduction to the topic.) Elbow Room may
also be of interest to a wider audience; even if you are uninterested in or bored
by the metaphysical "Problem of Free Will", you may find Dennett's ideas on such
topics as rationality, selfhood and personal identity thought-provoking. (If that
is the case you should also have a look at his more recent Consciousness
Explained.)

http://dannyreviews.com/h/Elbow_Room.html