tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post6497161824427649715..comments2024-03-28T13:23:50.623-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Choice and incommensurabilityAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-801867957599830392010-12-12T21:26:34.867-06:002010-12-12T21:26:34.867-06:00As for the question of how to solve the problem on...As for the question of how to solve the problem on an incompatibilist view, I think the following is extensionally correct: A is among the options that X is deciding between in an act C of choice if and only if it is possible that C results in X's having chosen A. <br /><br />In what sense of "possible"? Because of the kinds of essentiality of origins theses I find plausible, I think metaphysical possibility will do the job. Failing that, make it be causal possibility.<br /><br />While this view is, I think, extensionally correct, it isn't ideal. People will want to fink it by using Frankfurt cases. One can do a bit better by saying that C is disposed to produce a choice of A, as well as being disposed to produce one or more other choices. I still think this isn't quite right.<br /><br />Maybe, though, both the compatibilist and incompatibilist can say that there is a <em>sui generis</em> relation between an act of choice and its options?Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-7678082774664728292010-12-12T20:38:22.432-06:002010-12-12T20:38:22.432-06:00About domination and choice: I am inclined to thi...About domination and choice: I am inclined to think of deliberation as, roughly, a matter of figuring out what to do, and dominated options can be eliminated very quickly. I agree that the options we spend time deliberating between are typically not dominated, at least so far as we can tell. (If we could tell, we’d eliminate the choice.) I also think there are a lot of goods which are incommensurable in the sense that there is no obvious choiceworthiness mapping between, say, units of pleasure and units of good repute. Nevertheless I do think token alternatives are often “on balance better” than others and I would have a hard time understanding any moral realist who thought otherwise. I do not think anything follows about how people choose, on either a compatibilist or an incompatibilist view, other than what would be entailed by sanity.<br /><br />You may have the view (I’m not sure) that this incommensurability among choices, or absence of domination among alternatives, is a condition of free action or free will. I don’t think so and it seems to me to have bad consequences. Growth in virtue is often a matter of coming to clarity about choices that previously were muddy. For example, once one adopts the policy “do not do evil that good may come” along with a list of intrinsically evil actions, that narrows down the options one faces considerably. It may result in only one viable option in cases of choice that would leave less virtuous (but still good-willed) people with many un-dominated options. (Something similar could happen when one decides that personal integrity is worth more than any amount of money. Etc.) Views on which an increase in virtue leads to a decrease in freedom strike me as wrongheaded.<br /><br />Final thought: what is the correct incompatibilist view of choice? :-)Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-25503344678326148002010-12-12T20:37:56.509-06:002010-12-12T20:37:56.509-06:00I can at least play a compatibilist on the interne...I can at least play a compatibilist on the internet. Let me start with your final paragraph. I do think action is basically about figuring out what should be done. It’s just that if there genuinely are no choices to be made, this is not very hard. I do not believe it follows that there is no akrasia, but leave that aside as it’s somewhat involved. I can see why you would say this gives us epistemic responsibility, but coming from the guy who says all reasons are moral reasons, I do not see why you would say this does not give us moral responsibility. I also think retributive punishment is not an end in itself but a (constitutive, defeasible) means to some other end (the right ordering of a community, roughly); and the view that it is an end in itself is not well supported by either scripture, tradition, or reason. I also hypothesize that whether one has the intuition that retributive punishment is/is not an end in itself is a significant sociological divide among philosophers and others.<br /><br />The bulk of the post appears to be an attempt to understand the phenomenon of “choosing between” from the point of view of the compatibilist. I do not think anything about capabilities is even tempting. It’s something about mental states, and it is not the proposition, but the attitude, that makes it the case one is entertaining an option, for reasons you come up with. I became convinced long ago that all appeals to subjective strength of reasons, or motivational strengths, to explain why we choose what we choose, are circular reasoning. <br /><br />It seems, in the body, as if you want to saddle the compatibilist with a view that would be friendly to some form of psychological determinism: choices must be explained by strength of reasons, or strength of motivation, or something along that line. But that seems to me to be an unpromising view and not one to which compatibilists ought to be committed. There can be just as much slippage between the reasons one perceives, etc. and the actions one takes, on either compatibilist or incompatibilist views.Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-44412346718015687832010-12-12T14:12:25.122-06:002010-12-12T14:12:25.122-06:00Granted, the motivational strength of reasons is a...Granted, the motivational strength of reasons is a function of one's character. But it is not a function of one's rationality.<br /><br />Here's one way to make the randomness point. Imagine an agent who in an objectionably random way "chooses" between A and B. Now, modify the world by adding a new law of nature that says that under precisely these conditions, the agent "chooses" A. Now "choosing" A is determined. There is no randomness. But the agent is no more free for that law of nature being added and no more in control.<br /><br />Now, one might say that the law of nature is external, while motivational strength is internal, so by adding the new law, we haven't changed the motivational strengths. But that's mistaken. For while content strength is unchanged by adding the new law, the motivational strength is surely just functionally defined in terms of its action-producing tendencies. (At least, I see no hope for any other account of the motivational strength of a reason.) And the law changes the action-producing tendencies.<br /><br />If, on the other hand, it is the content strength of reasons that drives deliberation, then the law of nature objection doesn't work. But then there is no akrasia.<br /><br /><br />It would be an interesting result if the only kind of compatibilism were incompatible with Calvinism. I actually think Calvinists perhaps should not be compatibilists in the ordinary sense. They should say with Aquinas that freedom is compatible with determination by God but not with determination by any finite beings. And there are Calvinists who say this, but many are Jonathan Edwards style compatibilists.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-40588697484038726422010-12-12T13:42:17.004-06:002010-12-12T13:42:17.004-06:00Alex,
The compatibilistic model that you have com...Alex,<br /><br />The compatibilistic model that you have come up with, where we act on the option that has the greatest motivational strength, sounds like what Hume had to say about practical rationality. ("Reason is, and ought to be, slave to the passions.") It also sounds like something Jonathan Edwards would be fine with. <br /><br />I'm curious about your claim that this model faces the "randomness objection." I understand the randomness objection to be that a choice that was not determined by one's motive states (whether rational or non-rational) would not be under one's control. On this compatibilist model, the choice is determined by the non-rational rather than the rational. But if the choice is determined by which option has the strongest motivational strength, and motivational strengths are determined by one's psychological makeup, then the choice doesn't seem random. <br /><br />There does, however, clearly seem to be a lack of control problem for this view.<br /><br />I think your last comment about retributivist punishment is right. It made me wonder about something, though. I'm curious if some folks who argue for compatibilism (of moral responsibility & determinism) are OK with giving up on retributive punishment and the robust type of moral responsibility upon which retributivism is based. Perhaps instead these compatibilists argue that we have another kind of moral responsibility where we can be praised or blamed for our actions, but punishment is to be construed in remedial and consequentialist terms. <br /><br />This option, however, doesn't seem to be open to the Calvinist, at least Calvinists who want to affirm that God is just for the retributive punishment of hell.Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08849232803661162716noreply@blogger.com