Flickers of Agency

Flickers of freedom is the name of the blog, so it seems appropriate to kick off with a discussion of these flickers. Flickers are freedom is what John Martin Fischer calls the (allegedly) nonrobust alternative possibilities left to an agent in a Frankfurt-style case. Fischer thinks that these flickers can’t ground moral responsibility. In this post, I want to sketch one view upon which flickers are vital to morally responsible agency: not  by being vital to moral responsibility, but by being vital to agency. The view I have in mind is Helen Steward’s (and the aim of the exercise is, as much as anything else, to get her view the audience it deserves). I shall discuss her paper The Truth in Compatibilism and the Truth of Libertarianism' (Philosophical Explorations 12.2 (2009): 167-179).

Incompatibilists generally demand the power to A or not-A, where A-ing is some broadly conceived action (a stealing, a helping of an old lady across the road). It is virtue of this alternative possibility that the agent is supposed to be morally responsible. This thought has been subject to major objections: (1) if it is possible for the agent to A or not-A, at t, with everything about the agent held fixed, then isn't it just a matter of luck whether the agent As or not-As? (2) don't Frankfurt-style cases show that agents can be morally responsible despite lacking these alternative possibilities?

Steward's response is to concede both points. If agents need to have alternative possibilities like these, she thinks, in order to be morally responsible for their actions, then we should understand these possibilities along the lines of some compatibilist proposal. But we can be morally responsible agents only if we are agents at all, and we can be agents only if determinism is false.

Agency, she argues, is the power to settle how certain things will be. A mere one-way power is not the power to settle how things will be because if I have such a power, and I am determined to exercise it, then how things will be is already settled prior to my action. So agency requires the exercise of a two-way power: to A or not-A. But because what is at stake is agency, the A-ing in question here need not be some broadly conceived action. Instead, we are agents if we exercise a two-way power over some finely individuated action tokens; eg., to A at t, rather than at t1 (where t and t1 are very close in time), or to A by means of one's left hand rather than one's right, or by flexing at the wrist, rather than an at the elbow, and so on. Agency incompatibilism is incompatibilism with regard to these finely individuted action tokens; Steward combines it with compatibilism with regard to broadly individuated actions.

This allows her to respond to the Frankfurt-style case. Even if, due to the presence of a counterfactual intervener, I do not have the two-way power to A or not-A, for some broadly individuated A, I do not lose the power to A or not-A where A-ing is finely individuated. One way to think of this view, in fact, is as claiming that though flickers of freedom may not ground moral responsibility, they can ground agency. It also allows her to reply to the luck argument. She claims that it is more plausibly up to us whether we A or not, for finely individuated A-ing, than for broadly individuated A-ing.

How should we respond? I am not convinced that whether we A rather than not, for finely individuated A-ing, is up to us in a way that renders it invulnerable to luck (it is just as true for finely individuated A-ing that in some possible worlds we A and in some we do not, and nothing about us explains this fact). I do think, though, that the view avoids the luck objection, just because finely individuated A-ing is essentially trivial: it fails to be significant enough to count as lucky.

The thought that some kind of significance condition is required for luck is the least controversial element of extant analyses, defended by Pritchard, Coffman, and me. So it is hard to see how we can develop an account of luck on which these flickers of freedom are lucky, but are trivial. But surely this is no way to avoid the luck objection! If these flickers are trivial, they may not be lucky, but nor do they do any real work.

That is, it is hard to see how I lose anything of significance in losing the power to scratch my nose by flexing at the wrist rather than at the elbow. Indeed, it is hard to see how such a power could arise in evolutionary history (here it is important to stress that Steward thinks that animals are agents too). Evolution is insensitive to this power, since it is only broadly individuated actions that are of adaptive significance.

So a dilemma: either A-ing is broadly individuted, and the view falls to luck. Or it is finely individuated and it fails to buy us anything of significance (and it is mysterious how we came to have this power). If agency requires such a trivial power, why should we care whether we are agents or not?

Comments

[R. Clarke]

Suppose a fragile glass falls and doesn't break. It has a power not to break. But it's fragile, so it has a power (disposition, liability) to break. Does it have a two-way power?

[Neal Tognazzini]

Thanks for getting us started, Neil.

I haven't studied Steward's view carefully, so I wonder whether you could say something to fill out her argument that in a deterministic world we wouldn't have the power to settle how certain things will be. At least initially, it seems like the compatibilist would just respond by pointing out that although the past and the laws settle that I will exercise my power, it's my actually exercising the power that settles how the world will be.

[Neil]

I won't respond for a bit, Neal - I'm hoping that Helen will respond herself. Let me just note, though, that your question and Randy's are related in the following way: possession of a two-way power is something that seems obviously compatible with determinism. A two-way power (Steward defines such a power as "the power to phi or not to phi in respect of at least some phi") seems to be something that agents possess just in virtue of the truth of a bunch of counterfactuals, not in truth of some claim about the metaphysical availability of incompatible ways of going on.

[Dan Speak]

Off to an excellent start! I'm giddy.

Now, to the matter at hand. I'm troubled by Steward's thought that agency itself hangs on alternative possibilities but I haven't yet been able to work out my concern. At this point I just want to register that I'm not particularly troubled by Neil's dilemma. Partly, this is because I'm not that worried about the luck objection in the way he is (so the first horn doesn't seem so threatening to me). But let me also defend Helen against the second horn.

I take Neil's worry to be that the fine-grained flickers are too trivial to make a real difference. Here, though, won't the onus be on us to address directly Helen's argument that agency requires these thin flickers? Otherwise, the claim that they "fail to buy us anything of significance" seems clearly false. They buy us agency, after all. And that seems pretty important. (This thought parallels the kind of argument Michael Della Rocca has made in response to John's initial complaints about the flicker of freedom strategy.)

Neil might still raise his concluding question though: "If agency requires such a trivial power, why should we care whether we are agents or not?" This one's really got me thinking. Here's a first thought. The question is premised on a mild confusion; namely, that what we care about when we care about a power is the power's necessary conditions. As soon as we look at that premise we are likely to reject it. I don't care about agency because of the conditions under which it obtains. I care about agency because of what agency IS or what it entails. Suppose clear vision requires my ability to open my eyelids. If sight requires such a trivial power, why should I care whether I am sighted or not. Well, because sight it a powerful ability that makes my life much richer. In any case, the point is that the apparent triviality of a power's necessary conditions is no reason to suppose that the power itself is trivial.

Yo

[John Fischer]

I might be missing something, but I think the same considerations apply to agency as apply to moral responsibility. So why should the existence of mere flickers of freedom be required for agency? Why should the existence of such flickers transform something from a mere event into an action?

I replied to Helen Steward in my contribution to the JOET 10th Anniversary issue on my work.

[Neil]

Nice, Dan. I'm really jetlagged (arrived in Oz yesterday after 36 hours of travel), but here's an attempt at a response.

What do we have if we *don't* have agency? According to Steward, we would then have the power to cause the way things go, but not to settle how things go. So in asking why we would agency, I am asking about the *difference* between the state of affairs in which I have the first power and the second. And the only difference between these powers consists in the possession of trivial (you seem to be conceding) flicker of agency. Given that shmagency is so very much like agency, why should we care about being agents rather than shmagents? So I think the analogy with vision is misleading; what we are after is not why we should want a necessary condition of some ability, but why we should want that ability, given that if we lack it we will have some very similar ability.

[Dan Speak]

Good. I see the challenge more clearly now. Thanks Neil.

[Helen Steward]

OK - so let me try to respond as best I can to some of these concerns. (I'd also like to say, incidentally, how very thrilled I am that this blog has kicked off with a discussion of my work - what an honour. Thanks, Neil, for putting it in the spotlight like this!)

I agree that it doesn't, on the face of it, seem to matter much whether I have the power e.g. to pick up a drink with my right hand rather than my left, or to scratch my nose before rubbing my ear rather than after, etc., etc. But my thought is that although the powers we really want are much grander powers than these, those grander powers are dependent for their existence on the simpler ones. What I say in my forthcoming book is this:
"It would be surprising if anyone thought the freedoms available to a shark or a horse or even to a chimpanzee, in and of themselves, were really terribly desirable from the point of view of a human being, were ‘worth wanting’. But for all that, it is evident that in order to be a human being, one has to be an animal. In order to exercise the forms of agency that we value so highly – moral choice, exercises of taste and skill, communication, self-disciplined attention to duties, personal development, creativity, etc., – we have to be able also to exercise forms that in themselves almost escape our notice – we have to be able to move our bodies in such a way as to make them carry out plans of our own devising, in the service of our ends. My claim will be that these humble abilities which are widely possessed throughout the animal kingdom are themselves already incompatible with universal determinism. I take it that if this can be made out, it will be enough already to show that no freedom worth wanting can be compatible with determinism either, since all significant freedoms depend for their existence on such basic capacities as these".

So that's the idea. The second big question, of course, is whether I am right to suppose that these relatively lowly animal powers, as I think of them, really are inconsistent with determinism.

Why should they be? Well - here, as Neil notes, the point is about the distinction I believe exists between *causing* and *settling*. My claim is that agents must settle (not merely cause) certain things - that is, they must be able to bring it about *at the moment (or, better, throughout the period) of action* that something occurs at that moment (or during that period) which need not have occurred. I believe that's part and parcel of the concept of agency.

Why care if we don't have this power? Well, what 'we' would we be referring to, if we didn't? I guess I think, in a way, that our very existence is connected with these agential powers - that the whole idea that there is a 'we' at all is connected with the fact that 'we' (animals) are special amongst the entities in the world in the nature of the causing we do. Agency is a bit like consciousness for me, in that respect - it's connected with things like the appropriateness of personal pronouns and the distinction we make between ourselves and our bodies. We can say, if we like, that rocks and the sea and moving air, or whatever, cause events. But the causing that such things as these go in for is causing which these entities are made to go in for. They don't generally make interventions into the course of nature that they aren't caused to make. But animals, I want to claim, do do this - and the fact that they do is part of what makes it useful to conceptualise them quite differently from the way in which we conceptualise inanimate entities - as things, roughly speaking, which have minds and the crucial component of mind which we call 'the will'.

From my point of view, then, the question 'what difference would it make to us if we didn't have this power?' presupposes something which I reckon it isn't allowed to assume - namely, that there would be any 'us' in the first place, in the absence of the power. Another way to put the point - if a rock (say) were to acquire the power somehow, it would become worth talking about the rock and its body).

I don't want to go on too long - so I'll shut up now - but I hope that makes the general picture a bit clearer. (No doubt it's still pretty murky!)

[John Fischer]

I'm looking forward to reading Helen's article; if it is anything like her other pieces, it will be a challenging and insightful paper.

But I'm still wondering (although perhaps I should wait until I read it--but then again what's the point of a blog, anyway???)--why can't my general arguments against PAP be recast, mutatis mutandus, into arguments against the requirement of alternative possibilities for agency? What exactly is the diffeence?

[R. Clarke]

I believe my tangerine tree can exist even if determinism is true. You aren't saying my dog can't, are you? Perhaps the claim is that although the dog can still exist, it can't be a genuine agent, can't even be a "he," if determinism is true? If it could still exist, still cause its behavior, and so on, what's at stake?

[Helen Steward]

I need to think a bit more about how to respond properly to John. But on the tangerine tree question - yes, I guess I *am* saying that your dog couldn't exist unless determinism were false. If determinism were true, I want to say, nothing could cause its own behaviour except by being deterministically caused to cause it. And that would rule out entities of the sort I believe animals mostly are - true initiators of causal chains which can really be the *source* of things.

[Chris Franklin]

I hope this comment is not too much of a digression or nitpicky, but I am wondering why we should think Steward's position adopts a flickers of freedom approach. Didn't John coin this term to refer to non-voluntary, perhaps even non-actional, alternatives that remain in FSCs, such as the possibility of blushing. In this case, John's argument about robustness has considerable force. Now, subsequently, the notion of robustness has taken on different shades, particularly in the work of Mele and Pereboom.

But for clarity sake, I would argue that flickers of freedom approach only applies to those approaches that attempt to argue PAP is safe from Frankfurt's attack so long as somevless-than fully actional- alterative remains. While those like Steward's argue that actional-alternatives remain are not flicker of freedom approaches.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something?

[Chris Franklin]

I should have added, I am very excited to see the new blog up. So in the words of Dan, Yo.

[Thomas Nadelhoffer]

My initial response to Helen is that if you define an animalistic agent as a "true initiator [or true source] of causal chains" that is not deterministically caused to initiate the causal chains she initiates, I don't see how you avoid the problem of luck. After all, why does the agent initiate one particular causal chain rather than the other causal chains that were indeterministically open to her? In this sense, I suppose I want to hear more concerning how Helen avoids the first horn of Neil's dilemma...

That being said, I will now take the time to read Helen's article since I suspect she has already taken the time to carefully respond to this concern! In the meantime, I thought I would at least add my two cents to the thread to keep the discussion going!

[Justin Capes]

Thanks to Thomas and Neil and others for starting the Flickers Blog. This is an excellent start; I share Dan's giddiness.

I too am troubled by the thought that agency in general requires alternative possibilities. I've read several of Helen's papers and have been thinking for a while now about her view and others like it, though I should say that I haven't read the piece Neil points to in this post. (Maria Alvarz's recent paper in AJP should also be mentioned in this connection, though Helen's view, if I understand it, is slightly different.)

One thing I wonder: objections to the view aside, why should we think it is true? What arguments can be mustered for a conception of agency according to which alternative possibilities are required for agency? I find it quite easy to swallow the idea that if determinism is true, there are no free agents. The thought that if determinism were true, there would be no agents period goes down less smoothly. (FWIW: I find it even harder to swallow the idea that if determinism were true, my dog wouldn't exist.)

Also, I'd be interested to here what Helen thinks about manipulation cases. In your JOET paper you say something like this: in the counter-factual sequence of a Frankfurt-style case in which Black intervenes, it's plausible to suppose that what Black causes can't be an action of Jones's. I guess I'm wondering why this is plausible. Suppose that Black causes the relevant bodily movement (say, filling in a bubble on a ballot) by first causing Jones to intend to fill in that bubble, an intention that produces (non-deviantly, of course)the relevant movements by Jones. Here it seems very plausible to me that, although JOnes has not performed a free action, he has performed an action (and thus counts as an agent, albeit not a free agent). Is there just a conflict of intuitions here?

[Neal Tognazzini]

I don't know whether this is what Helen has in mind, but here's one reason someone might think agency doesn't sit well with determinism:

A deterministic world would be a world of events -- one event after another. But events are essentially *happenings*, whereas actions are essentially *doings*. No amount of fancying up happenings will ever get you a doing, so if you want a world with doings, it had better a world in which determinism is false. (That's not sufficient, of course, but necessary.)

Personally I don't think this bit of reasoning is obviously wrong, though I'm not sure why a deterministic world would have to be a world of only events.

About the existence of dogs: presumably the charitable interpretation of Helen's claim is not that dogs wouldn't exist in a deterministic world (as though the matter would disappear), but that we would be systematically wrong in ascribing purposeful action to them.

[Neil]

Hi Chris,

Note, first, that Helen did not call her response a flicker of freedom one; that was me. Your response gives a plausible ground for thinking that I was wrong. But I'm not entirely sure. The kinds of microactions that she makes the locus of agency don't seem to me to really constitute actions (surely not all the components of actions are themselves actions: the neural bursts that initiate actions aren't themselves actions). Here is some reason to think that these flickers are not actions: they are typically under the control of subpersonal mechanisms delegated to carry out the action that the person chooses. Some evidence for this claim comes from studies of hand aperture in the Titchener illusion, where the agent judges that the circles are of different sizes, yet when grasping for them the hand aperture is a function of genuine rather than perceived size. What I am tempted to call the intentional content of an action which is personal level is something of the sort , , whereas what Helen focuses on is all subpersonal. It is odd to say that we are agents in virtue of goings on that are all subpersonal.

[Eddy Nahmias]

I find this discussion very interesting. It would help me (and perhaps others), Helen, if you could clarify whether you are making a conceptual claim about what it means to be an agent (and to perform an action) or a metaphysical claim about what constitutes an agent and actions, or what. For instance, are you saying:

1. By definition, a necessary condition for being an agent is that determinism is false? (sorry I haven't read the paper yet, but are you also saying that an action must be undetermined, that otherwise it is a mere behavior or bodily movement?)

2. Necessarily, if something is an agent, indeterministic processes occur within it (at the right time and place)? (and if something is an action, a relevant part of the causal processes leading to it are not deterministic?)

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, does that mean you want to say that anyone who thinks that agents (and actions) could (perhaps do) exist in a deterministic universe is simply making a conceptual mistake (or not understanding the true nature of things)? And if we discover that determinism is true in our world, we will thereby be discovering that no animals, including us, are agents or ever performs genuine actions?

[Michael Robinson]

Chris,

While some versions of the flicker strategy have focused on alternative possibilities that are non-voluntary (at least in prior sign cases), this doesn't seem to be an essential feature of this approach. The defining characteristic of flickers of freedom, at least as Fischer initially characterized them, is that they are not "alternative possibilities of the normal kind"--since, presumably, alternatives of the normal kind are eliminated in Frankfurt-style cases. Here, alternative possibilities of the normal kind seem to be those that correspond to what Mele calls "normal action-descriptions" (e.g., "Bob's deciding to steal the car" and "Bob's deciding otherwise than to steal the car"), whereas flickers of freedom are alternatives that correspond to what he calls "fancy action-descriptions" (e.g., "Bob's deciding on his own to steal the car" and "Bob's deciding otherwise than on his own to steal the car").

[Russell Hemati]

About avoiding the problem of luck:

I'm not sure I understand the objection. It seems to me that the problem of luck must employ a premise like: All events (broadly construed) without sufficient conditions to ensure them are no different than lucky events.

If this is an epistemological statement, such that these events are observationally indistinguishable from lucky events, then that seems fair, and perhaps even self-evident. If this premise is a metaphysical statement, what about it would be attractive to a defender of alternative possibilities? I expect they would assume that actions of agents are quite different from non-agent-performed events. It seems reasonable, given this assumption, to claim that though lucky events had no cause, an agent is the cause of her own actions.

[Neil]

None of the three philosophers I referenced in my post (Pritchard, Coffman, me) utilize the premise you suggest, Russell. My view is that there are three sufficient conditions for an event to count as lucky: significant variation across possible worlds, absence of control on the part of the agent, and significance. Unsurprisingly (since my view draws heavily upon their work), Pritchard and Coffman have similar conditions.

[Russell Hemati]

Thanks, Neil. I realize I am wading in over my head on this one - I may be missing the point and I certainly don't want to put words in other mouths.

I am still puzzled by the luck objection. Of the three sufficient conditions you mention, the second seems to be one an agent-theorist should investigate in free-will cases. If one considers a particular agent to be an explanatory terminus for an action, there can be no further explanation of that action. Thus, an agent-theorist of the stripe I imagine would consider agent-caused events non-lucky because they are, by definition, under the agent's control.

They might also be wary of calling significant variation of close possible worlds "chance" except for purposes of prediction or in some Aristotelian sense. In the latter case, only outcomes could be considered lucky, but not the agent-caused actions themselves.

Why would an agent-theorist (as opposed to an indeterminist) find the luck objection compelling?

[Chris Franklin]

Thanks Michael and Neil. You are right Michael. I rechecked John's Metaphysics of Free Will and he does use Flicker of Freedom in a much broader sense then I was suggesting. Thanks for helping to clear me up!

Neil,

I wasn't quite sure I followed why you think these finely indviduated actions aren't actions. Is your suggestion something like this: we have control broadly over what we do. For example, whether to eat cherrios or wheaties, but lack control over whether we do this at some particular time?

I think I am missing it.

[Neil Levy]

Russell, this is taking us off topic but quickly - I agree you are pressing on the right place. In fact, I introduce the absence of control condition to avoid begging the question against the agent-causalist. However, the onus is on them to show how agent-caused actions are controlled. I argue they can't. But its a long story (read the book when it comes out).
Chris, my idea was about what we do intentionally. Normally, I eat Cheerios intentionally but I don't eat Cheerios intentionally by flexing at the elbow. Rather, I am unaware of how I flex. These components of actions are supposed to be central to my being an agent, but it seems more natural to say that I am an agent because of what I do intentionally, not because of how I implement what I do intentionally,

[R. Clarke]

May I ask again about the vase (1st comment)? Does it merely have two one-way powers, or does it have a two-way power? If the latter, presumably this isn't the kind of two-way power required for agency. Aside from not being a power to do things intentionally, how is it different?

[Joe Campbell]

Randy,

Don't you think that all the vase is missing is the power to act? If you added that to the minor two-way power of the vase, what would it be missing? But the power to act does not seem to be problematic given determinism. We can all agree that even if determinism is true, action is possible. Thus, an adequate compatibilist theory could simply combine the minor two-way power of the vase with the power to act.

Best, Joe

[Kevin Timpe]

I'm sorry to be late in coming to this discussion.

According to Neil, Steward holds the following: "But we can be morally responsible agents only if we are agents at all, and we can be agents only if determinism is false." But if agency requires alternative possibilities, and being morally responsible requires being agents, then moral responsibility seems to require alternative possibilities. (Maybe this is related to Dan's earlier comment, and I think it is related to John's first comment.)

And I'm wondering if Helen would be willing to comment (or point us to a published discussion, if one is available) on what John Fischer has called, in a slightly different context, a view's 'being held hostage to science'. I think this is part of what a number of people are having a difficulty with. Helen's arguing that if determinism is true, then there are no agents (and thus no dogs, not to mention humans). And while the existence of dogs is related to the physics, this seems to be the wrong kind of relationship. But perhaps she'd endorse a kind of revisionism about our concept of dog if determinism ends up being true.

[Helen Steward]

Sorry to have been so long in returning to the blog - I've had an exceptionally busy week.(It's both wonderful and terrible to have all these comments on one's own views - wonderful, because of course it is so illuminating to hear exactly what people find problematic or under-argued; but terrible because I can't possibly keep up with responses to all the different points as they occur!)

Let me then just plump almost at random for the last one by Kevin. I have found that this is the aspect of my view that many people have most difficulty with. The relevant bit of published discussion is my review article, 'Moral Responsibility and the Irrelevance of Physics' (Journal of Ethics 12 (2008): 129-45). What I argue there is that it is a mistake to suppose that the question whether determinism is true is one which we have to hand over to the people whom John calls 'the theoretical physicists and cosmologists'. Here's a taster:

"If we are to decide who might have the right to tell us whether the doctrine of causal determinism is true or not, we are going to have to know what that doctrine asserts. Fischer claims that
"the doctrine of causal determinism entails … that for any given time, a complete statement of the (temporally genuine or non-relational) facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time. (p.5)"

Let us take this, then, for the time being, as our guide to the question what the thesis of causal determinism says. Is it up to physicists to tell us whether or not it is true? It is not immediately obvious why it should be. On the face of it, there seems no reason why, amongst the “temporally genuine facts” we might not find included (for example) certain biological, psychological, sociological, and economic facts, about which physicists can claim to have no particular expertise – not to mention a whole pile of utterly mundane particularities which belong neither to any scientific nor indeed to any other domain of enquiry – such as that there is currently a globe on my desk, that my printer is out of ink, that there are no elephants in this room and that my favourite colour is green. Neither have we been told why the “laws of nature” are to be regarded as entirely the preserve of the physicist; it is not immediately obvious (again, without further argument) why some of them might not belong to geology or chemistry or biology; or even to psychology or economics or sociology. As stated, then, there is no immediate connection between the thesis of causal determinism and physics – that connection is going to have to be forged".

The question then is how to forge it - and the rest of the relevant section spoarticle is devoted to a discussion of how it might be so forged - and to the question whether the supervenience of what we tend to think of as 'higher level' facts on 'lower level' ones implies that the evolution of reality over time depends (in so far as it depends on anything) only on physical laws. And I argue that the answer to that is 'no'.

BTW - I don't think the vase has a two-way power because it isn't up to the vase which possibility is realised. Two-way possibilities attach to it. But that's different.

[R. Clarke]

Does the vase have two one-way powers? It doesn't seem to be powerless.

Some writers take it's being up to oneself what one does as equivalent to one's having free will. Then, if being an agent requires having a two-way power, and having such a power implies its being up to oneself what one does, every agent has free will.

One might reject the equivalence, holding that free will requires rational capacities that go beyond its being up to oneself what one does.

[Eddy Nahmias]

I have to say that so far this blog is no mere flicker--we are fanning the flames of freedom (that is, *discussion* about freedom; I don't want us get linked to Tea Party blogs!). I hope we don't burn up all our fuel too quickly and flame out.

Anyway, I still hope Helen might answer my earlier questions, but now I have read her very interesting response to Fischer ("MR and the Irrelevance of Physics") and have a few more questions about the position expressed there. Helen argues, contra John, that incompatibilism does *not* entail that whether we are morally responsible agents hangs on what a bunch of MIT physics nerds discover. Rather, the question of whether determinism is true is not only up to the physicist, but also biologists, psychologists, etc. as well as metaphysicians studying the question of whether higher-level properties and facts are fully "fixed" by properties and facts studied by physics (a view Helen calls "fundamentalism").

I agree with some of these points. In fact, I think the question of determinism (as defined in the compatibility debates) is much less important than the question of reductionism and epiphenomenalism (and "fundamentalism").

Here are my initial questions for Helen:
1. Does fundamentalism entail determinism?
2. Does determinism entail fundamentalism?
3. Do fundamentalism or determinism entail ephiphenomenalism (about mental states)?
4. If the laws of physics turn out to be deterministic (at the level of physics), does that allow that determinism could still be false? (at some higher level such as psychology?)
5. If the laws of physics turn out to be indeterministic, does that allow that determinism could still be true? (at some higher level such as psychology)?

(For some relevant discussion that suggests some of my answers to these questions, see my old Garden post: http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2009/05/defining-determinism-and-such.html)