Abstract
Peter van Inwagen has developed two highly influential strategies for establishing incompatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility. These have come to be known as ‘the Direct Argument’ and ‘the Indirect Argument,’ respectively. In recent years, the two arguments have attracted closely related criticisms. In each case, it is claimed, the argument does not provide a fully general defense of the incompatibilist’s conclusion. While the critics are right to notice these arguments’ limitations, they have not made it clear what the problem with the arguments is supposed to be. I suggest three possibilities, arguing that none proves to be well founded. I conclude that the scope of these arguments is fully adequate for their defenders’ purposes.
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Notes
In the wake of Frankfurt’s (1969) challenge, the traditional view has become controversial. For ease of exposition, it will be supposed here that the traditional view is correct. However, nothing of substance turns on this.
Since the Direct Argument and (the relevant version of) the Indirect Argument have the same structure, and since the criticisms exploit the same feature of that structure, I shall speak indifferently of the Compatibility Problems. However, it should be understood that the Direct Argument is prima facie relevant to the (in)compatibility of determinism with the Responsibility Thesis, whereas the Indirect Argument is prima facie relevant to the (in)compatibility of determinism with Free Will Thesis. If what I am calling ‘the traditional view of responsible agency’ is correct, the Indirect Argument is also prima facie relevant—albeit indirectly—to the (in)compatibility of determinism and the Responsibility Thesis.
To the contrary, immediately after presenting the version of the argument to be discussed here, he writes: “This deduction shows that if determinism is true, then no one ever has any choice about anything…” (van Inwagen 1983, p. 95).
Warfield (2000, p. 169). It is worthy of note that this contingent claim is a premise of what is often described as the traditional argument for incompatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility. According to that argument, (1) someone is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise; (2) if determinism is true, no one ever could have done otherwise; therefore, (3) if determinism is true, no one is ever morally responsible for what she has done. So far as I know, no one has ever worried about this description of the argument in connection with the modal status of (2) and (3).
Much turns here on whether it is coherent to suppose that Adam qualifies as an agent in the very first instant of W, and that he has a choice about anything in that instant. Some might question this on the grounds that choices must be based on something, and that it isn’t clear what Adam’s choice in that first instant could be based on. However, this concern won’t be pursued here. Cf. Brueckner (2008, p. 12).
I do not wish to maintain that our concern with the actual status of the Responsibility Thesis wholly exhausts our interest in the status of the Free Will Thesis, only that the presumptive relationship between the two is among our main reasons for caring about the status of the Free Will Thesis (and, in turn, whether this thesis is strictly compatible with determinism).
Brueckner responds to Campbell’s challenge to the Third Argument with a modified version. The “New Third Argument” purports “to show that given determinism, no human act performed at a time relative to which there is a past is a free act” (Brueckner, op. cit., p. 12). While Brueckner’s development of this argument is ingenious, I share Campbell’s doubts about whether free will with respect to the relative past is at issue here (Campbell 2008). From the fact that I never have the opportunity to undo my actions from the previous day does not depend on the status of determinism; nor does it follow from this fact that I never had a choice about whether I did those things.
Campbell’s talk of Eve’s “remote individual past” helps to smooth over a minor wrinkle. Given that Adam was present at the first instant of W, we cannot use rule (β) to derive Eve’s lack of free will, for there is never a time of W at which nobody has a choice about W. Rather than imagining another world, W*, where Eve exists without Adam, we can, for expository convenience, relativize (β) to Eve’s remote past.
It should be noted that (B-c) and (B-co) are not among the exact formulations that Fischer or Ravizza considers. However, the differences are not significant for present purposes.
Here Campbell’s exact worry about the Third Argument’s (4) might be raised, mutatis mutandis, for (4) of the Direct Argument; and a response exactly analogous to the one suggested in Sect. 2 could be given.
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Shabo, S. What must a proof of incompatibilism prove?. Philos Stud 154, 361–371 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9556-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9556-6