Abstract
The “problem of present luck” (Mele, Free Will and Luck, chapters 3 and 5) targets a standard libertarian thesis about free will. It has been argued that there is an analogous problem about luck for compatibilists. This article explores similarities and differences between the alleged problems.
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Notes
Determinism is “The thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future” (van Inwagen 1983, p. 3). There are more detailed definitions of determinism in the literature, but this one suffices for my purposes.
The subjunctive conditional I quoted leaves it open that there are moral-responsibility-level free actions for which the agents are not morally responsible. As I understand moral responsibility, agents are not morally responsible for nonmoral actions; and a nonmoral action may satisfy the subjunctive conditional.
Libertarians who reject the idea that there are indirectly free actions should ignore the word “directly” in “directly free.”
Readers who reject the idea that the same agent can be located in different possible worlds should replace the second occurrence of “S” with “S’s counterpart.” They should take the same approach to stories in this article in which the same agent is located in different possible worlds. A comment on time t is also in order. Some actions take more time than others to perform. In the case of a nonmomentary action A performed at t in W, the possible worlds at issue have the same laws of nature as W and they have the same past as W up to a moment at which the agent’s conduct first diverges from his A-ing. This initial divergence can happen at a moment at which the agent is A-ing in W or at the moment at which his A-ing begins in W (see Mele 2006, pp. 15–16).
Obviously, that S does not do A at t does not entail that S does nothing at all at t. In typical cases of the kind under consideration, an agent who satisfies O3 also satisfies O2.
Participants in some neuroscience experiments are encouraged to decide among morally insignificant options that they are indifferent about—for example, exactly when to flex a wrist [see Mele (2009) for discussion]. Possibly, considering such scenarios would activate in some readers a conception of free action that is less demanding than a promising conception of what, in my introduction, I referred to as moral-responsibility-level free action.
Semicompatibilist readers are invited to imagine that the compatibilist conception of “able to do otherwise” that they would find most attractive if they were traditional compatibilists is a version of, for example, their account of a mechanism’s being moderately reasons responsive at a time (see Fischer and Ravizza 1998, pp. 243–44). Any semicompatibilists who are unwilling to do this are encouraged to characterize directly free action in terms of what they regard as the best semicompatibilist analogue of an agent’s being able to do otherwise in a deterministic world. For relevant discussion, see Mele (2006, pp. 157–59).
Levy notes this (2011, p. 93).
On counterparts, see n. 4.
In some Frankfurt-style scenarios, there are pairs of worlds with the same laws and the same past up to t that differ in that although the agent A-s at t in both worlds, he A-s on his own in one of the worlds but not in the other (see Mele and Robb 1998, 2003). Regarding present luck in cases of this kind, see Mele (2013, pp. 247–48).
See Kennett and Smith (1996, p. 63, 1997, p. 123). I defend qualified versions of T in Mele (1992, ch. 3, 2003, ch. 8). It is sometimes claimed that T and its ilk entail that agents are at the mercy of whatever desire happens to be strongest. I argue elsewhere that this claim is false and that theses such as T leave it open, for example, that we can exercise self-control to bring the strength of various desires of ours into line with our considered judgments about what it is best to do (Mele 1987, ch. 5, 1992, ch. 4, 1995, ch. 3, 2003, ch. 8).
Another option is to represent the PSTs as microphysical realizers of the neural processes at issue. One might also treat the PSTs as tips of icebergs, as it were, where the icebergs are lengthy microphysical processes. These modifications would not affect the general shape of the following discussion.
Imagine that it is claimed that appearances are misleading here on the grounds that in another possible world with different laws agents sometimes make different decisions than they do in Wd, owing to PSTs. It is claimed as well that the absence of any one of these PSTs in Wd is itself a PST in Wd. The imaginary proponent of this idea grants that the laws of Wd do not permit peripheral scale tipping. Accordingly, he claims that when the absence of a particular PST itself counts as a PST, the absence sometimes partly consists in the absence of laws that permit peripheral scale tipping. The idea is that PSTs in Wd are partly constituted by Wd’s lacking laws that permit peripheral scale tipping. At this point, I think my imaginary friend has gone off the deep end.
Pérez de Calleja does not view the problem of C-luck as applying to all candidates for directly free action (see 2014, p. 120).
A comment by Randy Clarke motivated my discussion of this question.
For a useful critical discussion of the alleged relevance of contrastive explanation to the problem of present luck, see Steward (2012, pp. 133–41).
For comments on a draft of this article, I am grateful to Randy Clarke, Neil Levy, Michael McKenna, and Mirja Pérez de Calleja.
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Mele, A.R. Libertarianism, Compatibilism, and Luck. J Ethics 19, 1–21 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9188-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9188-8