Flickers of Freedom

After the Free Will Renaissance

Some folks who weren't going to be attending the Pacific APA asked me to post my SPA Meeting remarks on the future of the free will debate (thanks Andrei and Luca for organizing that session!). For those interested, here were the core of those remarks: 

1. The past 40 years of work on free will work has been dominated by philosophers working out the consequences of a problematic given to us by the Great Trinity
2. We’re approaching Event Horizon for that work, i.e., the point where that work will have significantly less visible influence on subsequent generations. 
3. What comes next is hard to see, and indeed, it is entertaining but Ultimately Fruitless to speculate about what comes next.  
4. However, since reality is no constraint on The Provocative, I’ve made some prognostications that are at least as plausible as any random selection of theses 

For the details, read on.

Accessible readings on reasons responsiveness?

If you were going to teach a group of undergrads about the current literature on free will and moral responsibility, what would you/do you use for reasons-responsiveness views? Ideally, for my purposes, it would be a piece that presents a fairly worked out view of what a Reasons-oriented view comes to, but that is also self-contained enough to do in a week without needing to read big chunks of a book. (Something like "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" does for hierarchical views, for example.) Lots of definitive statements of such views seem to be in books where the argument is spread out over chapters, or such that they don't provide the sort of neat, discrete can-be-done-in-only-a-week format. But I could just be blanking on some obvious choices. 

For example, I'm (unsurprisingly) a fan of John Fischer's bit in Four Views on Free Will, but it doesn't spend a lot of time trying to flesh out his picture of moderate reasons responsiveness. I suppose there is the secondary literature route—there are some really good overviews of the literature out and coming out, so that might work. But if there is a good (perhaps great, or perhaps greatly underappreciated) article I should take a look at as a candidate for a piece that is accessible, self-contained, do-able in a week with undergrads who may not know much philosophy, then please let me know in the comments thread or via email. Thanks.

Conversation and Responsibility

Congratulations to Michael McKenna!  His book entitled Conversation and Responsibility (Oxford University Press) is now available for mass consumption.  Don't be the last fool who hasn't read what I can only imagine will be a book that shapes the free will debate in the years ahead.

 

OUP Description:

In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P.F. Strawson. As McKenna demonstrates, moral responsibility can be explained on analogy with a conversation. The relation between a morally responsible agent and those who hold her morally responsible is similar to the relation between a speaker and her audience. A responsible agent's actions are bearers of meaning -- agent meaning -- just as a speaker's utterances are bearers of speaker meaning. Agent meaning is a function of the morally quality of the will with which the agent acts. Those who hold an agent morally responsible for what she does do so by responding to her as if in a conversation. By responding with certain morally reactive attitudes, such as resentment or indignation, they thereby communicate their regard for the meaning taken to be revealed in that agent's actions. It is then open for the agent held responsible to respond to those holding her responsible by offering an apology, a justification, an excuse, or some other response, thereby extending the evolving conversational exchange. 

The conversational theory of moral responsibility that McKenna develops here accepts two features of Strawson's theory: that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal -- so that being responsible must be understood by reference to the nature of holding responsible -- and that the moral emotions are central to holding responsible. While upholding these two aspects of Strawson's theory, McKenna's theory rejects a further Strawsonian thesis, which is that holding morally responsible is more fundamental or basic than being morally responsible. On the conversational theory, the conditions for holding responsible are dependent on the nature of the agent who is responsible. So holding responsible cannot be more basic than being responsible. Nevertheless, the nature of the agent who is morally responsible is to be understood in terms of sensitivity to those who would make moral demands of her, thereby holding her responsible. Being responsible is therefore also dependent on holding responsible. Thus, neither being nor holding morally responsible is more basic than the other. They are mutually dependent.

3:AM Interview with Mele

Yet another interesting and illuminating interview by 3:AM's Richard Marshall.  This time, Al Meletalks about free will, self-deception, neuroscience, experimental philosophy and a number of other themes.  Check it out!

Crowd-sourcing my SPA Remarks

At the annual International Free Will Conference (you know, the Pacific APA), the Society for the Philosophy of Agency is having its inaugural meeting. There’s going to be a panel discussion on the State of the Field, and I’m tasked with talking about free will. Among the things I’m supposed to be ready to talk about are the current central issues in debates about free will, interesting developments, and emerging topics over the next 5+ years.

For the talk, I thought about consulting my intuitions on the matters. However, I’ve been told that my intuitions are generally defective. So, I thought I should do some Serious Experimental work and just ask you, dear blog reader, what you think about these matters. I can’t promise that I will use your remarks in my talk, but I can’t promise that I won’t. I can promise that I won't run a regression analysis on the frequency of various remarks.

So I bleg of you: what do you think is Big Time in free will, what’s new and exciting to you, and what do you think will be Big Time in 5+ years? 

Nahmias is BQFW Essay Prize Winner

Here is the announcement from the BQFW homepage:

Eddy Nahmias has won a Big Questions in Free Will essay prize for his article, “Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?”, published in the New York Times (online Opinion section in The Stone series) on Nov. 13, 2011.

Congratulations!  Hooray for us as well.  The next round is on Eddy!

 

Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will

While I haven't had a chance to read it yet, David Hodgson has recently published what looks to be an interesting and important book with OUP entitled Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will.  

Here is the description:

In recent years, philosophical discussions of free will have focused largely on whether or not free will is compatible with determinism. In this challenging book, David Hodgson takes a fresh approach to the question of free will, contending that close consideration of human rationality and human consciousness shows that together they give us free will, in a robust and indeterministic sense. In particular, they give us the capacity to respond appositely to feature-rich gestalts of conscious experiences, in ways that are not wholly determined by laws of nature or computational rules. The author contends that this approach is consistent with what science tells us about the world; and he considers its implications for our responsibility for our own conduct, for the role of retribution in criminal punishment, and for the place of human beings in the wider scheme of things.

 

The Antisocial Person: A Review of the Literature

The Annals of General Psychiatry has a nice review piece entitled, "The 'antisocial' person: an insight in to biology, classification and current evidence on treatment." I thought some of the readers of this blog might find the results relevant, interesting, thought-provoking, etc. 

Abstract

Background: This review analyses and summarises the recent advances in understanding the neurobiology of violence and empathy, taxonomical issues on defining personality disorders characterised by disregard for social norms, evidence for efficacy of different treatment modalities and ethical implications in defining 'at-risk' individuals for preventive interventions.

Methods: PubMed was searched with the keywords 'antisocial personality disorder', 'dissocial personality disorder' and 'psychopathy'. The search was limited to articles published in English over the last 10 years (1999 to 2009)

Results: Both diagnostic manuals used in modern psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association and the International Classification of Diseases published by the World Health Organization, identify a personality disorder sharing similar traits. It is termed antisocial personality disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual and dissocial personality disorder in the International Classification of Diseases. However, some authors query the ability of the existing manuals to identify a special category termed 'psychopathy', which in their opinion deserves special attention. On treatment-related issues, many psychological and behavioural therapies have shown success rates ranging from 25% to 62% in different cohorts. Multisystemic therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy have been proven efficacious in many trials. There is no substantial evidence for the efficacy of pharmacological therapy. Currently, the emphasis is on early identification and prevention of antisocial behaviour despite the ethical implications of defining at-risk children.Conclusions: Further research is needed in the areas of neuroendocrinological associations of violent behaviour, taxonomic existence of psychopathy and efficacy of treatment modalities.

 

MAOA and Criminal Responsibility

Matthew Baum has a new piece in Neuroethics entitled, "The MAOA Predisposition to Impulsive Violence: Is it Relevant to Criminal Trials?"  I, for one, think it is relevant no matter what one's philosophy of punishment happens to be, but I would love to have a discussion here on Flickers about the issue.  So, hopefully, folks will take the time to read the article and post their thoughts!  

Here is the abstract:

In Italy, a judge reduced the sentence of a defendant by 1 year in response to evidence for a genetic predisposition to violence. The best characterized of these genetic differences, those in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), were cited as especially relevant. Several months previously in the USA, MAOA data contributed to a jury reducing charges from 1st degree murder (a capital offence) to voluntary manslaughter. Is there a rational basis for this type of use of MAOA evidence in criminal court? This paper will review in context recent work on the MAOA gene–environment interaction in predisposing individuals to violence and address the relevance of such findings to murder trials. Interestingly, the MAOA genetic variants impact future violence and aggression only when combined with the adverse environmental stimuli of childhood maltreatment. Thus nature and nurture interact to determine the individual’s risk. Based on current evidence, I argue there is a weak case for mitigation. But should future experiments confirm the hypothesis that individual differences in impulse control and response to provocation found in MAOA-L men (without abuse) are significantly magnified when combined with childhood maltreatment, the case could turn into a stronger one.

p.s.  I also wanted to congratulate and thank Neil Levy for all the work he's done getting Neuroethics off the ground.  I think the journal has published some of the most interesting and important work on agency and responsibility during the past few years.  Minimally, I think the journal filled a much needed niche.  

Doyle, Free Will and the Scandal in Philosophy

Bob Doyle is offering to send review copies of his forthcoming college-level sourcebook and textbook on the problem of free will and determinism to Flickers of Freedom contributors and commentators. Doyle was an occasional contributor to the Garden of Forking Paths blog.

The 480-page book contains a history of the free will problem, a taxonomy of current free will positions, a few dozen examples and analysis of the standard argument against free will, a glossary of a hundred technical terms in the free will debates, and chapters on the physics, biology, and neuroscience of free will.

It features lengthy critical reviews of the work of the leading hard determinist, Ted Honderich, the leading libertarian, Bob Kane, the well-known compatibilist, Dan Dennett, and determinism-agnostic flickerer Al Mele.

The title is Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy