Abstract
This is a critical discussion of Vihvelin’s recent book Causes, Laws, and Free Will. I discuss Vihvelin’s ideas on Frankfurt-style cases and the actual-sequence view of freedom that is inspired by them.
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Notes
See Sartorio (manuscript).
I’ll drop the scare quotes from now on. It should be clear that I think the label is not apt.
Vihvelin writes: “I’m not a pure metaphysical compatibilist; I work in the messy borderline between metaphysics and moral philosophy, and I want to defend the claim that we are morally responsible and that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, in addition to defending the claim that we have free will and that free will is compatible with determinism.” (p. 19).
In particular, Fischer and Ravizza (1998) distinguish “regulative” control from “guidance” control, and they take only guidance control to be relevant to moral responsibility. On their view, guidance control captures the freedom condition of responsibility (see below in the text).
In Sartorio (manuscript), I draw on certain metaphysical properties of causation to build a compatibilist actual-sequence view of freedom. See also Sartorio (2012).
Another potential criticism of Vihvelin’s treatment of Frankfurt-style cases is that her taxonomy doesn’t seem to be exhaustive, because it leaves out some scenarios that have been discussed in the literature (such as “trumping” and “blockage” cases). I won’t focus on this issue here.
Franklin also hints at this gap in Vihvelin’s argument in his review of her book (Franklin 2013).
On p. 110, Vihvelin suggests that obstacles are things that do or would prevent attempts from succeeding, and she seems to take this as something like a conceptual truth. Perhaps, then, the implication is supposed to be that the concept of obstacle doesn’t apply to attempts themselves. Thanks to Randy Clarke for discussion of this point.
This is an example by Lehrer (1968).
I discuss this in Sartorio (forthcoming).
As Vihvelin notes, others have raised similar objections to the supervenience claim; in particular, she credits van Inwagen (1983).
See Sartorio (2011 and manuscript). I actually think that the supervenience claim is a claim about the freedom condition of responsibility, not about responsibility per se, and only holds for responsibility when the epistemic conditions for responsibility are held fixed, but I won’t get into this here, since Vihvelin’s objections to the supervenience claim are objections of a different kind.
I argue for this in more detail in Sartorio (manuscript).
I argue for this in Sartorio (manuscript).
References
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Fischer, J. (2013) “The Path of Life.” Presidential address, given to the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division).
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Franklin, C. (2013) Review of Vihvelin’s Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn’t Matter. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/43781-causes-laws-and-free-will-why-determinism-doesn-t-matter/.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Randy Clarke, Juan Comesaña, Michael McKenna, and Derk Pereboom for helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Massimo Renzo for the invitation to contribute this critical review.
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Sartorio, C. Vihvelin on Frankfurt-Style Cases and the Actual-Sequence View. Criminal Law, Philosophy 10, 875–888 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9355-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9355-9