Disguised: Who will be you when you have been everyone else?
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The sun lazily crawled across the sky, seeking its place of rest. Its fading light cast a seductive glow across the horizon. Swirls of mango and passion fruit fragrance drifted lazily upwards on the steam of the soothing liquid in my cup. There is nothing like a good cup of tea at the end of the day, or any hour of the day as a matter of fact. The delighted giggles of the neighbour’s children bounced off the rays of the weary sun, drawing me from my reflections. Peering through the banister I glimpsed them playing a game of catch. Then came their mother’s voice beckoning them inside. At the sound of their names their heads snapped up and little feet hurried in the direction of the summoning sounds.
Taking a sip of the steamy refreshment, thoughts of names drifted serenely through my thoughts. We are all called something and in some cases many things. I have been called so many things at various times, I jokingly tell my friends, I only want to be called by my first name. My name has gone from my mother’s maiden name, to my stepfather’s last name, added my ex’s last name, then back to my step father’s name, then back to my mother’s maiden (I never connected with my step father’s name), and now I have attached the name of my husband (done with absolute pleasure). &Are you still with me? Good! But I have been also called a lot of other things as well. “Stupid, dumb, bitch, cold, stuck up, looser, whore, fool, donkey, brilliant, sensational, weird, different” and the list goes on. I have been called so many things and have responded to each in one form or another. Whether it be through withdrawal, silence, tears, rude comments muttered under my breath, smiles, or the common response “yes”, in part I owned them all, but they weren’t all mine. I watched as the labels given to me buried my individuality. I thought if others saw it, it had to be true. As a result, I spent too many years working to erase the negative labels that others attached to me, waiting for them to pronounce more favourable labels. But I have learned over the years the impossibility of pleasing everyone. Today, I answer to very few names and I determine the labels I accept. &
It has been an arduous journey along the path of identity and a gruelling battle shedding the labels that has been attached to me over the years. With every label we accept, the weight of its meaning blankets, interconnects or boosts who we are. &Someone else’s idea of you becomes your reality and the unique light of who you are dims and in too many cases die. A space that the authentic you should have filled remains a void in the universe. Someone else would have lived two lives. They lived theirs and you also lived theirs. So who will live your life, be the light you ought to have been, create the impact you should have created, be the ripples across humanity that you should have been? Who will be you, when you have been someone else or everyone else?
People may call you a multitude of things, they may label and name you a million more things. But it is never so much about what you are called. It is more about what you will answer to. In your name is the essence of who you are, a reflection of your character, a glimmer of your potential, the message of your life, a unique hope and love that only you can bring, a touch that only you can offer, laughter that only you can generate and a life that ripples across humanity causing significant disturbances that only you can produce.
So gently roll those shoulders back and let cloak of labels fall one by one, both the good and the bad. Let them gather at your feet. And in the nakedness of who you are, step forward and embrace the you that you have yet to know. Reconnect to the idea of you, unfold the dynamics of your essence, and embrace you. Then you decide the labels that support, reflect and promote the best of who you are. Know by what you wish to be called, then wear it boldly, bravely and with no excuses or apologies. &State and answer only to the names that reflect the authentic you!
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Who should have been together?
(showing 1-8 of 8)
I personally think Ron and Hermione were okay together, but I can totally see Hermione and Harry, however Harry and Ginny are made for each other . . .Who do you think should have been with who? :)
NEVILLE AND LUNA!! WHY DIDN'T THIS HAPPEN??
Daerwen wrote: "NEVILLE AND LUNA!! WHY DIDN'T THIS HAPPEN??"Omigod YES!! Now that's a match made in heaven!I completely forgot about that one!!!!!!
HermioneGranger wrote: "Daerwen wrote: "NEVILLE AND LUNA!! WHY DIDN'T THIS HAPPEN??"Omigod YES!! Now that's a match made in heaven!I completely forgot about that one!!!!!!"*whispers* I will never forget you, Neville...
*hand on heart* Never . . .
Neville and Luna are my two favourite characters, but I personally liked the fact that they didn't end up together. I'll admit they might have made a nice couple, so I see where you're coming from. But I thought their friendship was a cool example of the fact that boys and girl can be friends, without falling in love with eachother (yes I know, Hermione and Harry are too, but they might have hit it off if it hadn't been for the fact that Ron liked Hermione and she liked him).Also, I don't know whether you've seen it or not, but Rowling once said in an interview that Neville ends up marrying Hannah Abbott. And she works in the Three Broomsticks and he teaches Herbology at Hogwarts. I thought that painted a really nice picture and they were quite cute together. But I do see why you might think Neville and Luna should have been together :)
Neville and Luna end up together in the movie. It was very sweet!!
okay. neville and luna. yes. omg yes. they are just so perfect together but luna got married to the grandson of an author and idek who neville got married to but omg yes.and ron and hermione should be together. theyre perfect for each other and it would throw everything off if they werent. who would ron be with? he can't be with ginny... and who would she be with?
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Could Have Done Otherwise
The idea that a free agent "could have done otherwise" is a key element in the libertarian argument.
It is seen as a condition for moral responsibility, although freedom in this sense is prior to moral issues. In recent philosophical jargon, it is known as (PAP) the "principle of alternative possibilities."
A person is morally responsible for performing a given act only if he could have acted otherwise.
PAP is under attack by many compatibilists and determinists. It has been twisted by compatibilists into sophisticated logical arguments and "thought experiments" that purport to prove that the ability to do otherwise under identical conditions is impossible.
If such a capability did exist it could only be arbitrary (indeed), capricious (yes), and irrational. And to this day has led even some libertarian thinkers to doubt that an "intelligible" account can be given of free choice.
We will look at some of the arguments, then explain how randomly generated alternative possibilities are all we need to provide the opportunity to do otherwise - and thus be both unpredictable and responsible.
pointed out (Free Will and Values, p.9) that the idea of alternative possibilities, that "one could have done otherwise," began in modern times with the debates between
and Bishop John Bramhall.
For , the first modern compatibilist, the idea of a free agent that could
was a contradiction and nonsense.
"I hold that ordinary definition of a free agent, namely that a free agent is that which, when all things are present which are needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies a contradic being as much as to say the cause may be sufficient, that is necessary, and yet the effect shall not follow." (Of Liberty and Necessity, § 32)
sees no contradiction.
"I cannot see this nonsense nor discover this contradiction. For (a) in these words, 'all things needful' or 'all things requisite', the actual determination of the will is not included. But by 'all things needful or requisite', all necessary power either operative or elective, all necessary instruments and adjuments extrinsical and intrinsical, and all conditions, are intended. As he that has pen and ink and paper, a table, a desk, and leisure, the art of writing, and the free use of his hand, has all things requisite and yet he may forbear if he will.... (b) And indeed if the will were (as he conceives it is) necessitated extrinsically to every act of willing, if it had no power to forbear willing what it does will, nor to will what it does not will, then if the will were wanting, something requisite to the producing of the effect was wanting. But now when science and conscience, reason and religion, our own and other men's experience, do teach us that the will has a dominion over its own acts, to will or nill without extrinsical necessitation, if the power to will be present in actu primo [as a first actuality], determinable by ourselves, then there is no necessary power wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect." (A Defense of Liberty, § 32)
's compatibilist account of liberty and necessity is similar to Hobbes. Freedom to do otherwise was "unintelligible," a word still very popular with modern compatiblists and even some anxious libertarians.
"I believe we may assign the three following reasons for the prevalence of the doctrine of liberty, however absurd it may be in one sense, and unintelligible in any other. First, After we have perform' tho' we confess we were influenc'd by particul 'tis difficult for us to persuade ourselves we were govern'd by necessity, and that 'twas utterly impossible for us to
the idea of necessity seeming to imply something of force, and violence, and constraint, of which we are not sensible. Few are capable of distinguishing betwixt the liberty of spontaneity, as it is call'd in the schools, and the lib betwixt that which is oppos'd to violence, and that which means a negation of necessity and causes. (Treatise, Book II, Part III, Sections I-II, p.407)
argued in 1912 in his Ethics that one could do otherwise, but only if one had chosen to do otherwise. Many later philosophers found this idea to be empty, since under determinism one could not have so chosen.
"It must be remembered that our theory does not assert that any agent ever could have chosen any other action than the one he actually performed. It only asserts, that, in the case of all voluntary actions, he could have acted differently, if he had chosen: not that he could have made the choice. It does not assert, therefore, that right and wrong depend upon what he could choose. As to this, it makes no assertion at all: it neither affirms nor denies that they do so depend. It only asserts that they do depend upon what he could have done or could do, if he chose. In every case of voluntary action, a man could, if he had so chosen just before, have done at least one other action instead. That was the definition of a voluntary action : and it seems quite certain that many actions are voluntary in this sense." (Ethics, p.12)
(Dickinson S. Miller) claimed in 1934 that free will involved determination and was inconceivable without it.
'I mean free will in the natural and usual sense, in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which for the purposes of the personal and moral life the term is ever employed. I mean it as implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an act has been performed, that one "could have done otherwise" than one did.'
I am not maintaining that only that it is true in so far as we have free will. That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, a fact of experience. That broad fact is more assured than any philosophical analysis. It is therefore surer than the deterministic analysis of it, entirely adequate as that in the end appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance. All that is here said is that such absence of determination, if and so far as it exists, is no gain to freedom,
no advantage to the moral life, but blank subtraction from it.
Thus it is true, after the act of will, that I could have willed otherwise. It is most natural to add, "if I had wanted to"; but the addition is not required. The point is the meaning of "could". I could have willed whichever way I pleased. I had the power to will otherwise, there was nothing to prevent my doing so, and I should have done so if I had wanted. If someone says that the wish I actually had prevented my willing otherwise, so that I could not have done it, he is merely making a slip in the use of the word "could".
reiterated Moore's view, and included the idea of "" in chapter VII of his 1936 book Problems in Ethics.
Schlick introduced the terminology of a
into the debate in this chapter entitled .
The absence of the external power expresses itself in the well-known feeling (usually considered characteristic of the consciousness of freedom) that one could also have acted otherwise. How this indubitable experience ever came to be an argument in favor of indeterminism is incomprehensible to me. It is of course obvious that I should have acted differently had I willed but the feeling never says that I could also have willed something else, even though this is true, if, that is, other motives had been present. And it says even less that under exactly the same inner and outer conditions I could also have willed something else.
, in Mind, 1948, provided a lengthy analysis of "could have done otherwise" in his article .
The problem arises out of a prima facie incompatibility between the freedom of human action and the universality of causal law. It was raised in an acute form when universal determinism was believed to be a necessary presu but it was not then new, because the incompatibility, if it exists at all, exists equally between human freedom and the foreknowledge of God. As it appears to the 'plain man ' the problem may be formulated as follows: "Very often I seem to myself to be acting freely, and this freedom, if it exists, implies that I could have acted otherwise than I did. If this freedom is illusory, I shall need a very convincing argument to prove that it is so, since it appears to be something of which I am immediately aware. Moreover, if there is no freedom, there is no
for it would not be right to praise or blame a man for something that he could not help doing. But, if a man could have acted otherwise than he did, his action must have been uncaused, and universal determinism is therefore untrue."
It is evident that one of the necessary conditions of moral action is that the agent 'could have acted otherwise' and it is to this fact that the Libertarian is drawing attention. His case may be stated as follows: " It is a well-known maxim that 'I ought' implies 'I can'. If I cannot do a certain action, then that action cannot be my duty. On the other hand, 'I ought' as clearly implies 'I need not'; for if I cannot possibly refrain from a certain action, there can be no merit or demerit in doing it. Therefore, in every case of moral choice it is possible for the agent to do the action and also possible
were it not so, ther for choice is between possibilities. But this implies that the action is uncaused, because a caused action cannot but occur." The fallacy in this argument lies in supposing that, when we say 'A could have acted otherwise', we mean that A, being what he was and being placed in the circumstances in which he was placed, could have done something other than what he did. But in fact w and if we believe that voluntary action is uncaused action that is only because we believe erroneously that uncaused action is a necessary condition of moral responsibility. The Libertarian believes that an action cannot be a moral one if the agent could not have acted otherwise, and he takes no account of possible differences in the causes that might have prevented him from acting otherwise. The Determinist, on the other hand, holds that the objective possibility of alternative actions is an illusion and that, if A in fact did X, then he could not have done any action incompatible with X.
If we proceed on the assumption that, to be moral, an action must be uncaused, either we shall find a genuinely uncaused action at the beginning of the chain or we shall not. If we do not, then, according to the Libertarian, there can be no moral praise and blame at all (and it was to account for these that Libertarianism was invented); and, if we do, then we must suppose that, while almost all our actions are caused, and therefore amoral, there was in the distant past some one action that was not caused and for which we can justly be praised or blamed. This bizarre theory h but the objections to it are clear.
replied to Schlick and to Nowell Smith in his Mind article of 1951 entitled
It seems to me that many philosophers (and I suspect that Moritz Schlick is among them) begin their enquiry with so firm a conviction that the contra-causal sort of freedom nowhere exists, that they find it hard to take very seriously the possibility that it is this sort of freedom that moral responsibility implies. For they are loth to abandon the commonsense belief that moral responsibility itself is something real. The implicit reasoning I take to be this. Moral responsibility is real. If moral responsibility is real, the freedom implied in it must be a fact. But contra-causal freedom is not a fact. Therefore contra-causal freedom is not the freedom implied in moral responsibility. I think we should be on our guard against allowing this or some similar train of reasoning (whose premises, after all, are far from indubitable) to seduce us into distorting what we actually find when we set about a direct analysis of moral responsibility and its conditions.
Let us put the argument implicit in the common view a little more sharply. The moral 'ought' implies 'can'. If we say that A morally ought to have done X, we imply that in our opinion, he could have done X. But we assign moral blame to a man only for failing to do what we think he morally ought to have done. Hence if we morally blame A for not having done X, we imply that he could have done X even though in fact he did not. In other words, we imply that A could have acted otherwise than he did. And that means that we imply, as a necessary condition of a man's being morally blameworthy, that he enjoyed a freedom of a kind not compatible with unbroken causal continuity.
In the course of a recent article in Mind, entitled 'Free Will and Moral Responsibility', Mr Nowell Smith (having earlier affirmed his belief that 'the traditional problem has been solved') explains very concisely the nature of the confusion which, as he thinks, has led to the demand for a contra-causal freedom. He begins by frankly recognizing that 'It is evident that one of the necessary conditions of moral action is that the agent "could have acted otherwise" ' and he adds 'it is to this fact that the Libertarian is drawing attention'. Then, after showing (unexceptionably, I think) how the relationship of 'ought' to 'can' warrants the proposition which he has accepted as evident, and how it induces the Libertarian to assert the existence of action that is 'uncaused', he proceeds to point out, in a crucial passage, the nature of the Libertarian's error:
`The fallacy in the argument (he contends) lies in supposing that when we say "A could have acted otherwise" we mean that A, being what he was and being placed in the circumstances in which he was placed, could have done something other than what he did. But in fact we never do mean this.'
What then do we mean here by 'A could have acted otherwise'? Mr Nowell Smith does not tell us in so many words, but the passage I have quoted leaves little doubt how he would answer. What we really mean by the expression, he implies, is not a categorical but a hypothetical proposition. We mean 'A could have acted otherwise, if he did not happen to be what he in fact was, or if he were placed in circumstances other than those in which he was in fact placed'. Now, these propositions, it is easy to see, are in no way incompatible with acceptance of the causal principle in its full rigour. Accordingly the claim that our fundamental moral thinking obliges us to assert a contra-causal freedom as a condition of moral responsibility is disproved.
published one more criticism of Campbell in his book Ethics in 1954.
Campbell takes as a typical and, by implication, the only case of moral choice to which appraisals are relevant, that of a man who knows what he ought to do but is tempted to do something else. Now this, so far from being the only case, is not even the commonest or most important. For in the great majority of cases of moral difficulty what is difficult is not to decide to do what one knows he ought to do, but to decide what one ought to do.
Perhaps the most crucial objection to the libertarian thesis lies in the sharp discontinuity which it presupposes between moral and non-moral choice and between moral and non-moral appraisal. It is not enough to admit that we can, within broad limits, predict what a man of known habits, tastes, and interests will do and to insist that our powers of prediction only break down in the small, but important area of moral choice...For the rigid distinction between 'formed character' (where determinism reigns) and 'creative choice' (which is in principle unpredictable) it would be better to substitute a conception of continual modification of character in both its moral and its non-moral aspects.
's essay Freedom and Necessity (published in his 1954 Philosophical Essays) made it clear what determinism or compatibilism requires
"When I am said to have done something of my own free will it is implied that I could
and it is only when it is believed that I could have acted otherwise that I am held to be morally responsible for what I have done. For a man is not thought to be morally responsible for an action that it was not in his power to avoid. But if human behaviour is entirely governed by causal laws, it is not clear how any action that is done could ever have been avoided. It may be said of the agent that he would have acted otherwise if the causes of his action had been different, but they being what they were, it seems to follow that he was bound to act as he did. Now it is commonly assumed both that men are capable of acting freely, in the sense that is required to make them morally responsible, and that human behaviour is entirely governed by causal laws: and it is the apparent conflict between these two assumptions that gives rise to the philosophical problem of the freedom of the will.
"It seems that it we are to retain this idea of moral responsibility, we must either show that men can be held responsible for actions which they do not do freely, or else find some way of reconciling determinism with the freedom of the will."
"from the fact that my behaviour is capable of being explained, in the sense that it can be subsumed under some natural law, it does not follow that I am acting under constraint.
"If this is correct, to say that I could have acted otherwise is to say, first, that I should have acted otherwise if I secondly, that my action was voluntary in the sense in which the actions, say, of the
and thirdly, that nobody compelled me to choose as I did: and these three conditions may very well be fulfilled. When they are fulfilled, I may be said to have acted freely. But this is not to say that it was a matter of chance that I acted as I did, or, in other words, that my action could not be explained. And that my actions should be capable of being explained is all that is required by the postulate of determinism."
All this talk about "could" and "if" led the ordinary language philosopher
to look closely at what these terms mean in his famous 1956 article "Ifs and Cans". He carefully analyzed both Moore and Nowell Smith, but did not shed the least light on the problem of free will. He suggests that questions about "could have done otherwise" may as well be assigned to grammar as to philosophy.
"It will be clear at once that Nowell Smith, like Moore, is not distinguishing between the contention that 'could have' requires supplementation by an if-clause and the quite different contention that its analysis contains an if-clause. On the whole it seems plain that it is the second (analysis) view that he wishes to argue for: but the argument he produces is that 'could have' is (in important cases) like 'would have,' the point about which is that it needs an if-clause to complete it — as though this, which is an argument in favour of the first view, told in favour of the second view. But it cannot possibly do so: and in any event could have is liable, as we have already seen, to be in important cases a past indicative, so that the contention that it is like would have in requiring a conditional if-clause is unfounded.
Nevertheless, it must be allowed that Nowell Smith may still be right in urging that 'could have' means 'would have if' and that, as he eventually adds, 'can' means 'will if.'
It is not unusual for an audience at a lecture to include some who prefer things to be important, and to them now, in case there are any such present, there is owed a peroration. Why, in short, does all this matter? First, then, it needs no emphasizing that both if and can are highly prevalent and protean words, perplexing both grammatically and philosophically: it is not merely worth while, but essential, in these studies to discover the facts about ifs and cans, and to remove the confusions they engender. In philosophy it is can in particular that we seem so often to uncover, just when we had thought some problem settled, grinning residually up at us like the frog at the bottom of the beer mug. Furthermore and secondly, we have not here been dissecting these two words in general or completely, but in a special connexion which perhaps no one will hold trivial. It has been alleged by very serious philosophers (not only the two I have mentioned) that the things we ordinarily say about what we can do and could have done may actually be consistent with determinism. It is hard to evade all attempt to decide whether this allegation is true — hard even for those who, like myself, are inclined to think that determinism itself is still a name for nothing clear, that has been argued for only incoherently. At least I should like to claim that the arguments considered tonight fail to show that it is true, and indeed in failing go some way to show that it is not. Determinism, whatever it may be, may yet be the case, but at least it appears not consistent with what we ordinarily say and presumably think. And finally there is a third point. Reflecting on the arguments in this lecture, we may well ask ourselves whether they might not be as well assigned to grammar as to philosophy: and this, I think, is a salutary question to end on.
tried to refute the idea of free will in his 1961 Mind article Free Will, Praise, and Blame. He explained that "pure chance" (by which he means quantum uncertainty) exists to some extent within the universe. But he does not use it to generate alternative possibilities that would permit one to have done otherwise. Instead he looks for multiple senses of "could have done otherwise."
There are some events that even a superhuman calculator could not predict, however precise his knowledge of however wide a region of the universe at some previous time...It is important to distinguish "pure chance" from "chance" or "accident." Things may happen by chance or accident in a purely deterministic universe...Now there is perhaps a sense of "could not have done otherwise" in which whether or not a person could or could not have done otherwise depends on whether or not the universe is deterministic...But it does not follow that if a person could not have done otherwise in this special sense then he could not have done otherwise in any ordinary sense. Taken in any ordinary sense, within some concrete context of daily life, "he could have done otherwise" has no metaphysical implications. (p.294-296)
, in his 1964 Lindley Lecture Human Freedom and the Self (adapted as his essay ), identified "could have done otherwise if
he had chosen otherwise" as a strategem used, among others, by Jonathan Edwards in the early 1700's. Chisholm says it lacks a third step to justify moral responsibility:
The expression
(a) He could have done otherwise.
it is argued means no more or less than
(b) If he had chosen otherwise, then he would have done otherwise.
Chisholm maintains we could not have made an inference to (a) from (b) unless we can also assert:
(c) He could have chosen to to otherwise.
Chisholm concludes that this stratagem to ascribe responsibility conflicts with determinism.
thought he could prove that someone who showed he could do something (by doing it) could equally refrain, and therefore establish that he could always do otherwise. Lehrer thought this argument strong enough to constitute An Empirical Disproof of Determinism, published in his 1966 collection of essays, Freedom and Determinism. He said there (p.177)
"I now wish to argue that we can know empirically that a person could have done otherwise. A person could have done otherwise if he could have done what he did not do. Moreover, if it is true at the present time that a person can now do what he is not now doing, then, later, it will be true that he could have done something at this time which he did not do. This, of course, follows from the fact that "could" is sometimes merely the past indicative of "can." What I now want to argue is that we do sometimes know empirically that a person can do at a certain time what he is not then doing, and, consequently, that he could have done at that time what he did not then do. Moreover, we can obtain empirical
evidence in such a way that our methods will satisfy the most rigorous standards of scientific procedure."
, in his article Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility (Journal of Philosophy, 1969), formalized the idea that one "could have done otherwise" as the "principle of alternate possibilities," now known as PAP in current jargon.
"A dominant role in nearly all recent inquiries into the free-will problem has been played by a principle which I shall call "the principle of alternate possibilities." This principle states that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise."
"But the principle of alternate possibilities is false. A person may well be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. The principle's plausibility is an illusion, which can be made to vanish by bringing the relevant moral phenomena into sharper focus."
wrote in his 1983 book Essay On Free Will...
"The Conditional Analysis Argument maintains that statements ascribing to human agents the power or ability to act otherwise are to be analysed as disguised conditionals, which, when their disguise is removed, can be seen to be compatible with determinism.
"To deny the existence of free will commits one to denying the existence of moral responsibility. Until a short while ago, most philosophers would have taken this to be obvious. But if any of these philosophers had been asked to defend this obvious thesis, he would almost certainly have appealed to the following principle: a person can be held morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. In a recent remarkable article, however, Harry Frankfurt has presented convincing counter-examples to this principle...Even if Frankfurt is right, it is none the less true that moral responsibility is possible only if we have free will.
"By 'the thesis that there is such a thing as moral responsibility', I mean the thesis that someone is morally responsible for something — for some act, some event, some state of affairs, the publication of some scurrilous pamphlet, the currency of some malicious rumour, or the decline of classical studies at some university. By 'the free-will thesis', it will be recalled, I mean the thesis that most people, if not all people, are very often, if not always, in the following position: when they are faced with having to choose among various incompatible courses of action, each of these courses of action is such that they can (are able to, have it within their power to) choose it." (Sounds like Frankfurt's PAP.)
devoted chapter 6 of his 1984 book Elbow Room to the "Could Have Done Otherwise" principle. He says
"l have not yet touched the central issue of free will, for I have not yet declared a position on the "could have done otherwise" principle: the principle that holds that one has acted freely (and responsibly) only if one could have done otherwise. It is time, at last, to turn to this central, stable area in the logical geography of the free will problem. I will show that this widely accepted principle is simply false."
"The "could have done otherwise" principle has been debated for generations, and the favorite strategy of compatibilists -
who must show that free will and determinism are compatible after all — is to maintain that "could have done otherwise" does not mean what it
se the sense of the phrase denied by determinism is irrelevant to the sense required for freedom."
"Instead of rising to the defense of any of the earlier analyses — many of which are quite defensible so far as I can see — I will go on the offensive. I will argue that whatever "could have done otherwise" actually means, it is not what we are interested in when we care about whether some act was freely and responsibly performed. There is, as van Inwagen notes, something of a tradition of simply assuming that the intuitions favoring the "could have done otherwise" principle are secure. But philosophers who do assume this do so in spite of fairly obvious and familiar grounds for doubt."
"If our responsibility really did hinge, as this major philosophical tradition insists, on the question of whether we ever could do otherwise than we in fact do in exactly those circumstances, we would be faced with a most peculiar problem of ignorance: it would be unlikely in the extreme, given what now seems to be the case in physics, that anyone would ever know whether anyone has ever been responsible. For today's orthodoxy is that indeterminism reigns at the subatomic level of quantum mechanics, so in the absence of any general and accepted argument for universal determinism, it is possible for all we know that our decisions and actions are truly the magnified, macroscopic effects of quantum-level indeterminacies occurring in our brains." (p.131-136)
, in his 1985 Free Will and Values, gives a modern specification for "could have done otherwise," which however threatens to make free will "arbitrary, capricious, and irrational."
Kane defines what he calls the Indeterminist Condition. An agent S is free at time t to make a decision J or do otherwise. As Kane puts it,
"(The Indeterminist Condition — Second Form): Given all past circumstances relative to t and all laws of nature, (i) it can be the case that S makes J at t, and (ii) it can be the case that S does other than make J at t." (Free Will and Values, p.33)
Kane calls the ability to do otherwise the dual power of the self or dual rational self-control. But Kane then says that this is an extremely problematic condition.
"There is, first of all, the problem of explaining why such a condition should be regarded as necessary for free will at all. And, second, there is the problem of explaining how a theory of free will can accommodate a condition of this kind without making free choices arbitrary, capricious, and irrational. (p.33)
"What sort of an argument lies behind these charges? Assume, first, that the indeterminist condition is satisfied for a free choice. This means that the agent may either make the choice or do otherwise given all the same past circumstances and laws of nature. Assume further that the past circumstances include the entire psychological history of the agent prior to choice (as well as a complete account of his or her physiology and environment) and thus all of the agent's earlier formed character traits, prior decisions, processes of reasoning, experiences, motives, and so on. (p.52)
"Some awkward consequences do seem to follow, If the agent might either make a choice or do otherwise, given all the same past circumstances, and the past circumstances include the entire psychological history of the agent, it would seem that no explanation in terms of the agent's psychological history, including prior character motives and deliberation, could account for the actual occurrence of one outcome rather than the other. (p.53)
"I can understand how the outcome of my deliberation may have been different, if I had known other facts, considered other consequences, imagined other scenarios, etc. But what I cannot understand is how I could have reasonably chosen to do otherwise, how I could have reasonably chosen B, given exactly the same prior deliberation that led me to choose A, the same information deployed, the same consequences considered, the same assessments made, and so on." (p.57)
"This way of stating the argument shows what is at stake in the charges of arbitrariness, irrationality, etc., made against the indeterminist condition. If the choice of A was the reasonable outcome of my deliberation, then the choosing otherwise (the choice of B), which may have occurred given the same past circumstances, would have been "arbitrary," "capricious," "irrational," and "inexplicable," relative to my prior deliberation. Similarly, if the choice of B had been the reasonable conclusion of my deliberation, then the choice of A, had it occurred, would have been arbitrary relative to the prior deliberation, In general, where the indeterminist condition is satisfied, and the outcome is the result of prior deliberation, at least one of the outcomes (choosing or doing otherwise) must be arbitrary or irrational in relation to the prior deliberation." (p.57)
, in his 1991 (The Non-Reality of Free Will, p.194) agrees with Kane,
"Kane's point makes one wonder: why bother to deliberate if you are just as likely to opt for either of two contradictory alternatives?
"I hope to show that a libertarian account of dual rationality, control, and the ability to choose otherwise also fails.
"The most important [condition] for the libertarian is the requirement that free agents have the ability to choose otherwise under the exact conditions that obtain at the moment of choice. The libertarian's interpretation of this requirement signifies the clearest demarcation between the incompatibilists and the compatibilists and is probably incompatibilism's greatest selling point. The compatibilist's argument that the concept of "can choose otherwise" is analytically definable in terms of the hypothetical notion that agents would have chosen otherwise had some condition been different seems dubious to me. Chisholm rejects the hypothetical analysis by arguing that the categorical statement (a) "He could have done otherwise" is not logically equivalent to the hypothetical statement (b) "If he had chosen to do otherwise, then he would have done otherwise". I think that Chisholm is correct in his rejection of the compatibilist's claim when viewed as linguistic analysis. (p.191)
"the libertarian's commitment to indeterminism guarantees a dual interpretation of the control and rationality conditions. For the libertarian, free agents not only have the ability to choose in two directions, but they must be in control of either choice. This consequence could be deduced from the demands of moral responsibility. If an agent is to be truly responsible for either choice, A or not A, then both outcomes are under the agent's control. The case is likewise with rationality, although a predictable amount of strain is likely to arise. Libertarians, at the very least, need to show how indeterministic choices can be rational whichever way they turn out. Ideally, libertarians will show us how such a dual ability might be, contrary to appearances, a desirable or even necessary element of rational choices. (p
The simple answer to Kane's point and Double's is that we are not "just as likely" to opt for something different from "rational self control", but as human beings we can and do choose occasionally to be irrational.
Who said just consider the present case of
- "I can do otherwise."
Then change that to the past tense once the will has chosen - "I could have done otherwise."?
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From David Wiggins, Towards a reasonable libertarianism, 1975, in Essays on Freedom of Action, ed. T. Honderich.
Maybe it is pointless to debate whether the sentence "he could at t have done otherwise at t" does have the sense I have ascribed to it in the incompatibilist demonstration of Section III above until it has at least been shown that that sense is even a possible sense, or that it could do for the libertarian what he wanted. This is often taken to be equivalent to the following question: can the libertarian even specify a possible world, however different from the actual one, in which there are particular responsible actions which people can (in the libertarian's sense) do but do not do? Hume has been followed by a large number of philosophers in holding that not even a possible world of the required sort could be specified. If it were false that every event and every action were causally determined then the causally undetermined events and actions would surely, to that extent, be simply random. So the argument goes. That a man could have done x would mean no more than that it might have turned out that way - at random. It will be asked if it makes any better sense to hold a man responsible for actions which happen at random than for ones which arise from his character. Surely then, if it doesn't, we ought to prefer that our actions be caused?
Considered simply as an argument this objection is circular, and flagrantly so.
J.J.C.Smart (Mind 1961)seems to argue this
One cannot prove that determinism is a precondition of free will by an argument which employs as a premiss everything is either causally determined or random. This is nothing other than a form of the conclusion, that whatever is undetermined is random. This is what had to be shown. But in the form of a challenge something in the objection can stand. If an event is undetermined, if an event of different specification might have taken its place, then what does it mean to deny that the event is simply random? What is it justifiably to ascribe the action identical with the event or comprised of the event to an agent whom one holds responsible for that action? In the unclaimed ground between the properly or deterministically caused and the random, what is there in fact to be found?}