Origins of the Idea of Free Will

I wanted to recommend a recent book, A Free Will: Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought, by Michael Frede. The book stems for lectures Frede gave at U. C. Berkeley about fifteen years ago. Among the themes: Aristotle didn't have a notion of the will; the first appearance of the notion of a free will is among the Stoics, and Epictetus presents one of the first detailed views; early Christian views of free will, in Origen, Plotinus, and Augustine, for example, largely follow this Stoic conception; the idea of being able to choose any one of several options plays no role in most of these early notions. I learned a great deal from the book; it addresses questions that I think many of us have about the history of an idea that intererests us.

Comments

[Joe Campbell]

Thanks Randy! I just got the Frede book but haven't read it yet. He is terrific. His work on the Ancient Skeptics is very influential to my own thoughts on the subject, which likely dominates my thinking about philosophy in general.

But I disagree with two comments noted above.

Aristotle had the concept of "up-to-usness" and one could argue (I actually have argued this in my book) that that is the central concept underlying the concept of "free will." Free will theorists differ as to whether "up-to-usness" requires the "ability to do otherwise."

You and many contemporary philosophers seem to identify "free will" with the "ability to do otherwise" but even there we have to be careful. Did the Stoics believe that we had the ability to do otherwise given fatalism (or determinism)? Maybe not. It is arguable that many of them held something like the source view. But it doesn't follow that they lacked the concept of the "ability to do otherwise," just as it doesn't follow that Micheal McKenna or John Martin Fischer lacks the concept of the "ability to do otherwise."

Nor can you say that the "ability to do otherwise" doesn't play a role in the theories of McKenna and Fischer. They specifically think that the relevant freedom does not require the ability to do otherwise.

If you look at Cicero's accounts of the debates between the Ancient Stoics and Epicureans (libertarians), something like the consequence argument plays a significant role. And if you look at the little we know about the views of, say, Cleanthes and Chrysippus on the Master Argument, they certainly had it within their disposal to give responses to the consequence argument consistent with compatibilist accounts of the "ability to do otherwise."

Did they give such responses? That is debatable. Likely some did, though most others didn't. But if they didn't it had more to do with endorsing a McKenna/Fischer-type view than a Vihvelin-type view rather than lacking the concept of the "ability to do otherwise."

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

I haven't read Frede's book, but it sounds interesting and worth reading. Thanks for suggesting it, Randy.

In response to Joe, regarding Aristotle and free will, wouldn't "up-to-usness" be characteristic of the concept of intentional action in at least a thin sense of the term? Of course, there may be a sense of the locution that implies something stronger than just the exercise of intentional agency. But it seems to be true of any morally significant agency that it was up to us even if it was not free in any interesting way. Of course, whether intentional actions are up to us in the relevant sense depends on what you take the truthmakers for statements about actions being up to us to involve. If dual-ability must be among the truthmakers, then I'm not so sure that Aristotle had a doctrine of free will to speak of (he may have, but I have my doubts). But if something like the actual sequence of events leading to an action is sufficient for an action to be up to us in the sense required for the exercise of free agency (or at least morally responsible agency, even if not free), then perhaps he could be understood as endorsing something like semicompatibilism.

Incidentally, I think that some of the problems with understanding Aristotle arise from questionable translations of key terms. For instance, I find the translation of prohairesis as "choice" (this is how Irwin translates it, and his translation of the NM is quite popular) to be unfortunate since it gives readers the impression that Aristotle was working with similar views of the springs of action found in later writers (e.g., Aquinas, Suarez) who include acts of will as fundamental to the exercise of agency.

Alas, I am in territory that takes me well outside of my comfort zone and areas of expertise.

[Roman]

Could we say that Aristotle had a view that we could call "free will", in the sense Joe points to, but that he did not have a concept of "the will," as Randy's post states? One can, after all, accept all sorts of notions like "up-to-usness" or even endorsement without having the concept of a distinct volitional capacity.

[Michael Robinson]

Andrei,

Consider a case in which Black (the nefarious neuroscientist from Frankfurt-style cases) actually activates his device, thereby forcing Jones to form an intention to kill Smith, which then (non-deviantly) causes Jones's killing Smith. I take it we should say that killing Smith is an intentional action that Jones performs, but I can't think of any sense in which I would want to say that killing Smith was something that was "up to Jones." In your view, would the "thin sense" of "up-to-usness" to which you refer apply even in cases like this?

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

Michael,

The case you describe is not one I'm sure I'd want to describe as intentional given that the etiology of the intention is the result of the action of an intervener. For causalists it is the agent's reasons for action that must cause the intention that mediates the agent's reasons that explain why the agent acted. So if the case you describe involves by-passing Jones's reasons for action and Jones's rational capacities, then I'd say it was not an intentional action. This would be because of the causal history of the action including a process that by-passed the agent's reasons and relevant capacities.

This is all to say that I would say that the behavior that results is not up to Jones. But its status as an intentional action is questionable.

Incidentally, the case you described strikes me as involving a sort of heteromesial causal chain. Such a causal chain would be deviant, only we have a deviantly produced intention that non-deviantly causes an action (versus the standard case of a heteromesial chain that goes from the intention to the action). In any case, the deviance in the causal history prior to the intention seems like enough to me to affect the behavior's actional status.

[Michael Robinson]

Andrei,

I see. Personally, I'm not (at present) inclined to think that the intentionality of an action depends on the etiology of the relevant intention. In any event, just stipulate that Black's manipulation does not involve bypassing Jones's reasons and relevant capacities: Black forces Jones to have the relevant beliefs and desires, forces Jones to exercise his deliberative capacities in such a way that results in an intention to kill Smith, and forces whatever else you think would need to occur in order for Jones's killing Smith to be intentional. (I trust it will be allowed that such a case is coherent-- unless one wants to maintain that intentional actions must also be free actions.)

As before, I can't think of any sense in which I would want to say that killing Smith is something that was up to Jones in this case. Would you?

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

Michael,

Sorry about the belated reply. I think there is still a really thin sense of Jones's action being up to Jones. This is so because, as far as Jones knows, he has reason to kill Smith and acquires an intention in response to his reasons and his intention causes his action.

I should say that Jones's action is up to him to the extent that Jones is genuinely doing something. If we are stipulating that Black's manipulation of Jones is momentary and not diachronic (guiding Jones's behavior), then Jones is doing the killing, not Black. Is Jones free and morally responsible? Nope. But it's because the agency he exercises is not sufficiently robust. That is, it is not up to him in the sense required for him to be a free and morally responsible agent.

So what I think is that, to the extent that an agent exercises any intentional agency, what the agent does is up to the agent. But in order to pass from performing a merely intentional action to performing a FREE intentional action the agent must exercise more robust agency.

[Robert Allen]

'Did the Stoics believe that we had the ability to do otherwise given fatalism (or determinism)? Maybe not.'

Joe,

My reading of Epictetus is that he is a Determinist for everything but our attitudes toward our experiences. He does seem to be admonishing us to become serene, as if rancor were a real possibility. I know that some say that self-control simply meant for him being uncoerced, but it is hard to square advice of any sort with the belief in Determinism, as Augustine later noted. (My problem with Illusionism also boils down to this inconsistency: if someone believes in Hard Determinism, it doesn't seem to make sense to advise like-minded philosophers to engage in self-deception, given that it would require the Scotistic ability to disregard even one's own knowledge.) If not even God can cause decisions that are up to us (Dissertationes, 1.6.40), then rancor or acceptance are both live options in considering any given misfortune, the choice being wholly determined by one's fiat.

Happy football season.

[Robert Allen]

Aristotle says that "The sticks moves the stone, the hand moves the stick, but the man moves the hand." If that isn't Agent Causalism, I don't know what is. He also posits a "rational power/potency" in the soul, which is tantamount to what we mean by an ability to do otherwise. So it's all there whether it's labeled free will or not. It's not for nothing that Anselm, Aquinas and Scotus, explicitly discussing free will, borrowed so heavily from his philosophy.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Robert follows others in supporting the claim that Aristotle is an agent causation theorist with the quote about the man moving the hand. Seriously? Isn't it just as easy to read that sentence in event-causal terms? How does the stick move the stone? Not with an act of "stick-causation", but because of the stick's moving into the stone in a certain way. How does the hand move the stick? Not with an act of "hand-causation", but because of the hand's moving the stick in a certain way. How does the man move the hand? Not with an act of "agent-causation", but because of the man's moving his hand in a certain way. How does he do that? Presumably by forming an intention (making a choice) to move it. And given what Aristotle says in the surrounding text of NE book III, he seems to suggest that there is nothing metaphysically fancy about making a choice or acting voluntarily, though he does say that the actions have to have their source within the agent and cannot be traced to starting points beyond the agent (which I take to mean that the "teleological source" is the agent and not some other agent).

Anyway, if anyone has a suggestion for the best defense of Aristotle as an agent causation theorist (or as a compatibilist), please let me know. I'm sure I read him through my compatibilist-tinted glasses, but I just don't see libertarianism lurking in the heart (or texts) of our best ancient philosopher.

[Robert Allen]

Eddy,

Of course I'm serious.

I'm reading E.J. Lowe's Personal Agency in which he argues that ALL causation is substance/agent causation. His argument is based on the Aristotelian notion that it is "substances, not events, that possess causal powers and liabilities." (143-44. Charlotte Witt makes a similar claim in "Aristotelian Powers, although she also maintains that all powers, including the rational potency, are deterministically activated. Lowe cites Metaphysics Book IX as the locus classicus for the distinction between rational and non-rational powers.) So the materials for developing AC certainly can be found in Aristotle's somewhat disjointed writings. All you really need to make him out to be a proto-ACist is the prima facie reading of the above quote according to which the relata of the basic act are the man and the moving of his hand. I see no reason to construe it with 'by-locutions' as you do, especially when it comes to "forming a intention," on pain of a Chisholmian regress. What caused the forming of the intention, an event? It is either the man himself or some other event. If the latter, then, assuming Determinism and the above notion of causal powers, it will also be traceable to teleological "starting points beyond the agent," the final causes of other substances. (Or you might take it to be "spontaneous," a la Lowe, but even then you wind up with a version of AC.) At the very least, then, there is tension in Aristotle's philosophy between the traceability requirement and whatever deterministic notions it contains. Scotus took this requirement so seriously that he rejected Aquinas' teleological reading of Aristotelian agency. The will is the "total cause" of its willing, he said.