Humans Are Free

Robert Kane (1938-) 

Indeterminism: true free choice must escape the determinist net and require a self-originative choice not reducible to factors over which we have no control. 

Kane, in this essay, directly contradicts the central premise of determinist that all human actions are determined by internal or external factors beyond our power to change. 

Moreover, Kane develops an explicitly libertarian alternative to determinism, arguing that at least some human actions emerge from a power to be the ultimate source of one's purpose, he calls this a "deeper freedom".

Humans Are Free

FREE WILL: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR AN ANCIENT PROBLEM

1. FREEDOM

• Surface Freedom: Everyday freedoms. We can freely choose what movie to see, where to shop, what music to listen to, and etc. This sort of freedom would subject us to manipulation of desires and wants. Desires and senses are subject to covert control.

2. RESPONSIBILITY

• Another way to reflect on the idea of freedom is to reflect on the notion of responsibility.
• The free will discussed above is also intimately related to notions of accountability, blameworthiness and praiseworthiness for actions.

3. FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

• Free will--the deeper freedom--is incompatible with determinism.
• All doctrines of determinism imply that, given the past and the laws of nature at any given time, there is only one possible future.
• Free will contradicts this claim since it seems to imply that there is more than one possible future, given the past and laws.
• Incompatibilists: Are those who believe that free will and determinism are incompatible for the reasons mentioned above.
• Libertarians: Believe in both determinism and free will.
• To defend an incompatabilist or libertarian view of free will, one must address at least two questions:
1. (The Compatibility Question) Is free will really incompatible with determinism, and if so why?
2. (The Intelligibility Question) Is such a "deeper" freedom of will intelligible and possible?

4. THE  COMPATIBILITY QUESTION: ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES AND ULTIMATE RESPONSIBILITY

• Kane defines "free will" (the deeper freedom) as such: The power to be the ultimate creator and sustainer of one's own ends or purpose. (p 397)
• The Condition of Alternative Possibilities (AP): The requirement that the free agent "could have done otherwise".
• The Condition of Ultimate Responsibility (UR): To be ultimately responsible for an action, an agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause or motive) for the action's occurring.

5. THE INTELLIGIBILITY QUESTION

• Indeterminism and probability mean: exactly the same past but different outcomes.

6. INDETERMINISM AND RESPONSIBILITY

• Kane argues that not all acts have to be undetermined, but only those by which we made ourselves into the kind of persons we are. He calls these namely, "self-forming actions" or SFAs.
• These SFAs occur at the most difficult times in our lives where we are torn between competing visions of what we should do or become.
• The uncertainty and inner tension we feel at such soul-searching moments of self-formation is thus reflected in the indeterminacy of our neural processes themselves.
• When we do decide under such conditions of uncertainty, the outcome is not determined. Because the decision is willed (and hence rational and voluntary) either way owing to the fact that in such self-formation, the agents' prior wills are divided by conflicting motives.
• In such conditions, the choices either way will not be "inadvertent," "accidental," and etc, because they will be willed by the agents either way when they are made, and done for reasons either way--reasons that the agents then and there endorse.
• In cases of Self-Formation (SFAs), agents are simultaneously trying to resolve plural and competing cognitive tasks.

7. RESPONSIBILITY, LUCK AND CHANCE

• Indeterminism is consistent with nondeterministic or probabilistic causation, where the out come is not inevitable. It is therefore a mistake to assume that "undetermined" means "uncaused".
• Luck from the view of indeterminism is "succeeding in action despite the probability or chance of failure"; and the success in carrying out the action despite such probabilities does not relieve the person of responsibility.
• A choice is the formation of an intention or purpose to do something.
• A choice is the agent's when it is produced intentionally by efforts, deliberation and reasons that are part of this self-defining motivational system, and the agent endorses the new intention or purpose created by the choice.