Doppelganger Garden of Forking Paths

Is mere design disturbing? Should it be?

Consider the following situation.

Suppose a cosmic being sets up the initial conditions and/or laws of a deterministic world so that your entire life is predetermined.  The being knows exactly what you will do, before you do it, before you are born, and sets everything up so that you do exactly that.  The being could be God, but need not be divine.  A very powerful alien or computer would suffice.

Consider further: the being could even tell you he designed your life story.  He could say “I defined every detail of your life!  There’s nothing you can do that I didn’t predict.”  The being could write down, on a card, a prediction of what you will do, every five minutes, and then, after five minutes go by, show you the card.  And the being would always be right.  Each and every card would perfectly predict your life story.  The being could even write all of them before you are born.  This could really aggravate you, and there would be nothing you could do to stop him.

To me, the above could not be more violent to free will.

Ways to Deny the Existence of Free Will

A while back, I posted about two general strategies for trying to show that free will exists.  Here, I want to suggest that there are also two general strategies for trying to show that free will doesn't exist and get your input on them.

Before I get to that, however, I want to say that there won't be anything parallel to the indirect approach for showing the existence of free will.  In essence, the indirect approach argued (i) that free will is necessary for some other thing x, and (ii) that x exists.  But if we're focusing on the non-existence of free will, saying that free will is necessary for x and then showing that x doens't exist won't establish that free will doesn't exist.  Perhaps the closest thing to an indirect argument for the non-existence of free will would be to argue that free will is sufficient for some other thing x and then argue that x doesn't exist.  But I'm not aware of anyone who makes this kind of argument.

If this is right, then it looks like all arguments for the non-existence of free will will be 'direct'.  But there are two different ways that one could directly argue for the non-existence of free will, which I shall call contingent denials and categorical denials.  A contingent denial will be a view which holds that while it is possible that free will exists, it is a contingent truth that free will doesn't exist.  Categorical denials will be stronger: free will does not exist because it is impossible for free will to exist.  Pereboom is an example of a contigent denier, while impossibilists like Galen Strawson will be categorical deniers.  

What do you think about this way of demarcating views which deny the existence of free will?

The Consequence Argument

Why do some philosophers take the Consequence Argument (CA) seriously, whereas others do not?  This does not correlate (perfectly) with whether a philosopher is a compatibilist (either a traditional compatibilist or a semicompatibilist), incompatibilist, or skeptic.  Also, it does not seem to me that it is a matter of whether a philosopher is primarily interested in "metaphysics" or "ethics".  After all, all of us writing about moral responsibility are concerned with the appropriate conditions for praise, blame, reactive attitudes, punishment, and so forth. 

Some philosophers simply ignore the CA or shunt it quickly to the side, whereas others take it as something that must be dealt with, one way or another.  Why the difference?  Also, is it ok simply to ignore or dismiss the CA?

SSPP 2010 in Atlanta: Second Call for Papers

102nd Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology
April 15-17, 2010
Westin Peachtree Plaza
Atlanta, GA

SSPP Webpage
Information on 2010 meeting
Submission of papers having interdisciplinary interest is strongly encouraged. Papers should be no longer than 3000 words and be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 150 words. Submissions for the philosophy side of the program, accompanied by the abstract submission form from the website, should be sent to:

Daniel Weiskopf
Department of Philosophy
Georgia State University
sspp.submission@gmail.com

Submission deadline: November 16, 2009 (postmarked midnight for electronic submissions)

I would also like to draw your attention to the invited side of the program.