Abstract
I argue that a distinction made in recent literature in the philosophy of mind between self-organizing and self-governing systems can serve as the basis of a principled distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ determination on the part of the compatibilist with respect to freedom or control. I first consider two arguments for the claim that causal determinism undermines control: the Consequence Argument as presented by Peter van Inwagen, and the Four Case Argument of Derk Pereboom. I then elucidate the difference between a self-organizing and self-governing system, and argue that the capacity for self-representation that is constitutive of the latter allows for agential control. This difference, I argue, can provide the basis of a principled distinction between good and bad determination. I subsequently show how the framework presented undermines the Consequence and Four Case Arguments in their attempt to establish the claim that causal determinism undermines control, and I discuss the application of this framework to manipulation arguments in general. Finally, I consider and respond to Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument and the general rejoinder to my account that one is not responsible for the particular way in which one exercises one’s capacity for self-representation, and that this undermines any claim to agential control and responsibility.
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Notes
Joseph Campbell, in Free Will, writes: “All theorists should agree that an act is free if and only if it is or was up to the agent.” What they disagree on is whether or not they accept what he calls the ‘classical thesis’, which is that “an act is up to an agent only if he is or was able to do otherwise” (Campbell 2011). I reject the classical thesis, and propose an important way in which our actions can be up to us even if we lack the ability to do otherwise.
And both arguments can be taken as challenges to the ‘up-to-usness’ of our actions. As Joseph Campbell writes, “sourcehood is just a kind of up-to-usness.” (Campbell 2011)
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this line of further development. I focus on Pereboom’s manipulation argument in particular because it is perhaps the most prominent one in the literature.
McKenna, in his reply to Pereboom, actually utilizes the Zygote Argument in Case 4 of his expansion of Pereboom’s collection of cases to 6 in all.
This is my own reconstruction of Strawson’s argument.
In addition to being an instance of a Manipulation Argument, Mele’s Zygote Argument can also be understood to be pushing this same worry. Thus I take my reply to Strawson that follows to apply equally to this aspect of Mele’s argument.
References
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to John Fischer, Dan Kelly, Mark Bernstein, Alicia Finch, Mark Satta, Andrew Israelsen, and Natalia Washington for helpful comments and discussion on the issues discussed in this article. I am especially indebted to Jenann Ismael, for in-depth, insightful interaction on these and other related issues, and to a generous anonymous referee for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, for extensive comments and suggestions that were especially helpful.
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Popejoy, M. Self-Representation & Good Determination. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 113–122 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9512-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9512-1