The BCN Challenge to Compatibilist Free Will and Personal Responsibility
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The BCN Challenge to Compatibilist Free Will and Personal Responsibility Maureen Sie & Arno Wouters
Received: 2 February 2009 / Accepted: 23 November 2009 / Published online: 15 December 2009 # The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise. Keywords Compatibilism . Acting for reasons . Reasons-responsiveness . Personal responsibility . Free will . Determinism M. Sie : A. Wouters (*) Department of Philosophy, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.xs4all.nl/∼morepork/ M. Sie e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://web.mac.com/mmsksie/
Introduction The behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences (hereafter: the BCN-sciences) are gradually beginning to reveal the mechanisms that make us who we are. The success of this enterprise has led some to worry that these sciences will undermine the notion of free will and the idea that people are responsible for what they do [e.g. 1–3]. The feared challenge of the BCN-sciences is often seen as a denial of the idea that persons are able to act differently than they in fact do. However, many philosophers have abandoned the idea that the ability to do otherwise is relevant to free will and responsibility long ago and they tend to dismiss the challenge as directed at an outdated view [e.g. 4, 5].1 According to a strong and influential current in philosophy, it is rather the ability to act for reasons that is crucial to our everyday practices of personal responsibility [e.g. 9–11]. We shall call this view ‘new compatibilism’. One important reason to favor 1
We suggest that the fears raised by the results of Libet’s [6] experiments on the timing of consciousness in relation to brain activity and bodily movement and bold titles such as Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will [7] concern the thesis that consciousness does not influence our behavior rather than their alleged support for determinism. Such a lack of influence (if true) would threaten compatibilist and incompatibilist positions alike. Several compatibilists have recognized this threat and argued
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