Abstract
Harry G. Frankfurt has presented a case of a counterfactual intervener CI with knowledge and power to control an agent so he will do A. He concludes that if the agent prefers to do A and there is no intervention by CI, the agent has acted of his own free will and is morally responsible for doing A, though he lacked an alternative possibility. I consider the consequences for freedom and moral responsibility of CI having a complete plan P for all actions of an agent, Lucky, who luckily has preferences that accord with P, and I extend the argument to all citizens of a land, Luckyland, who are like Lucky. I argue the citizens of Luckyland have free will but lack moral responsibility because of the connection between moral responsibility, reactive attitudes and future action. Furthermore, the presence of CI and his plan P may allow free will but is incompatible with freedom of preference. Preference concerns alternatives excluded by CI. I argue that a special higher order preference for the preference structure, a power preference, ends the regress of higher order preference and explains the first order preference. Causal determinism is compatible with freedom of preference explained by a power preference when a power preference would also explain an alternative preference. The remoteness argument for incompatibility fails because of a lack of transitivity causal explanation. The power preference is the self-explained source of freedom of preference. That basic freedom may be limited by government knowledge of our preferences, even if, like Lucky, our preferences do not provoke intervention and we conform of our own free will.
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Notes
I regard the concept of preference as being more scientific, embedded in decision theory rather than folk psychology, but that is more a personal preference than an argument. The argument could be reformulated in a more complicated way in terms of higher order desires and volitions.
Watson quotes Frankfurt, “It is possible … to terminate such a series of acts [i.e., the formation of ever higher-order volitions] without cutting it off arbitrarily. When a person identifies himself decisively with one of his first-order desires, this commitment “resounds” throughout the potentially endless array of higher orders …” and Watson queries, “But either this reply is lame or it reveals that the notion of a higher-order volition is not the fundamental one. We wanted to know what prevents wantonness with regard to one's higher-order volitions. What gives these volitions any special relation to “oneself”? It is unhelpful to answer that one makes a “decisive commitment,” where this just means that an interminable ascent to higher orders is not going to be permitted. This is arbitrary.” (Watson 2004: 29) Frankfurt (1988: 21) replies to this sort of worry: “For a commitment is decisive if and only if it is made without reservation…” I argue in reply that the person only needs the power preference, which includes the preference for the first order preference that reveals itself in choice, without decisively identifying as a person with that choice or making it without reservation in a way that resounds through conflict. Morally sensitive people decide with remaining reservation and without decisively identifying with their decision.
If X is the cause of Y, presupposes that Y would not have occurred if X had not occurred or that X occurring is probabilistically positively relevant to Y occurring, then transitivity will fail because the failure of transitivity of counterfactuals and positive relevance.
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Acknowledgments
My special thanks to Michael McKenna and Angelo Corlett for their assistance with the manuscript and for their splendid philosophical criticism.
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Lehrer, K. Freedom of Preference: A Defense of Compatiblism. J Ethics 20, 35–46 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9220-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9220-2