The BCN Challenge to Compatibilist Free Will and Personal Responsibility

Maureen Sie Arno Wouters 0 ) Department of Philosophy, Erasmus University of Rotterdam , P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise. - The behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences (hereafter: the BCN-sciences) are gradually beginning to reveal the mechanisms that make us who we are. The success of this enterprise has led some to worry that these sciences will undermine the notion of free will and the idea that people are responsible for what they do [e.g. 13]. The feared challenge of the BCN-sciences is often seen as a denial of the idea that persons are able to act differently than they in fact do. However, many philosophers have abandoned the idea that the ability to do otherwise is relevant to free will and responsibility long ago and they tend to dismiss the challenge as directed at an outdated view [e.g. 4, 5].1 According to a strong and influential current in philosophy, it is rather the ability to act for reasons that is crucial to our everyday practices of personal responsibility [e.g. 911]. We shall call this view new compatibilism. One important reason to favor 1 We suggest that the fears raised by the results of Libets [6] experiments on the timing of consciousness in relation to brain activity and bodily movement and bold titles such as Wegners The Illusion of Conscious Will [7] concern the thesis that consciousness does not influence our behavior rather than their alleged support for determinism. Such a lack of influence (if true) would threaten compatibilist and incompatibilist positions alike. Several compatibilists have recognized this threat and argued in response that the impotence of consciousness does not follow from the experimental results (e.g. [8]). We agree with that conclusion. the new compatibilist account of responsibility over accounts in terms of the ability to do otherwise is that it seems so obvious that we act for reasons, whereas it is unclear and highly controversial what kind of ability the ability to do otherwise would be (especially if our behavior turns out to be determined by genes and environment). Because such determinism seems not to preclude us from acting for reasons, research that merely seems to strengthen determinism is perceived as irrelevant by these compatibilists. Ironically, as we shall show, the ability to act for reasons is central to a great deal of interesting research in the BCN-sciences. This research indicates, as we shall argue, that it is not as obvious as it seems that the ability to act for reasons can serve as an unproblematic basis to justify our daily practices of responsibility. This does not imply, of course, that this research shows that we do not act for reasons, but it does pose a challenge to new compatibilist philosophers, as we shall explain.2 This challenge deserves full philosophical attention. This paper has two aims. We would like to invite those who think that the BCN-findings challenge our views of free will and personal responsibility to explicitly address the new compatibilist view, and we aim to convince the new compatibilist that the results from the BCN-sciences provide an interesting challenge to what we believe to be the core strength of their position. In The Classical Problem, Two Crucial Turns, New Compatibilism we present a short en sketchy introduction to the view we call new compatibilism. These sections are not meant as a review of the state of the art of the contemporary free will debate, but as an introduction to one influential and attractive family of positions in this debate, namely the positions we collect under the heading new compatibilism. In The Classical Problem we introduce the idea of free will as the ability to do otherwise and the debate about the compatibility of this notion with the thesis of determinism. In Two Crucial Turns we describe two important contributions to the discussion that shifted attention away from the ability to do otherwise 2 As the ability to act for reasons also figures in other accounts of personal responsibility, some or all of the challenges for new compatibilism identified by us, may apply to other views as well. We leave it to others to point that out. and determinism. Peter Strawson moved the focus of the debate to our everyday practices of holding ourselves and each other responsible for what we do. Harry Frankfurt argued that in those practices talk of free will does not refer to alternative possibilities, but to something we did willingly. In New Compatibilism we describe the new compatibilist view and explain why it is so attractive. In BCN Findings we summarize some relevant BCN-findings. In New Problems we explain how these findings pose a challenge to new compatibilist philosophers. In Conclusion we draw some conclusions. The Classical Problem The problem of free will is one of the oldest and most frequently discussed in philosophy. It is traditionally framed as the problem of how to reconcile freedom and determinism. This difficulty arises out of the tension between our view of ourselves as persons who can be held responsible for what they do, and the scientific view that depicts our actions as the combined result of genes and environment. The traditional view is that humans are responsible for what they do to the extent that they have the freedom to do otherwise. Determinism poses a threat to personal responsibility because, if true, it is not clear how it could ever be possible that someone could ever do otherwise. Classical compatibilists (beginning with Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century) argued that determinism does not exclude human freedom by interpreting the principle of alternative possibilities in a conditional way. According to them being able to do otherwise means that one would have done otherwise if one had willed or chosen to do otherwise. Incompatibilists such as Thomas Reid (18th century) have objected that, while this interpretation might perhaps salvage human freedom, it does not restore personal responsibility. Suppose, for example that, unbeknown to me, some gum that I chewed co (...truncated)