Can Libertarian Free Will Be Made Consistent With Modern Science?

Robert Hilary Kane, University of Texas, Austin. Presented at the Social Trends Institute Experts Meeting on the question "Is Science Compatible with Our Desire for Freedom?" held in Barcelona, Spain, October 30, 2010.
See Kane's Free Will lecture: • Free Will: New Perspec...

[@psychologyis]

Take this in again carefully. "What I argued fueled intuitions about incompatibilism…I call it the condition of ultimate responsibility, or UR. The basic idea is to be ultimately responsible for an action, an agent must be responsible for anything that is sufficient reason, cause, or motive for the actions occurring. Compare Aristotle’s claim that if a man is responsible for wicked acts that determinantly flow from his character and motives, he must at some type in the past have been responsible by past choices or actions for forming the wicked character and motives from which this act flows. This is no esoteric principle. It’s woven into the fabric of our ordinary thinking about responsibility in moral and legal contexts. If a drunk driver could not have avoided hitting and killing a pedestrian because his drunken condition and the conditions of the road, he’s not thereby exonerated from responsibility. We have to ask whether he is in any way responsible for being in the drunken condition he is in by his prior actions of drinking and choosing to drive. This basic line of reasoning identified by Aristotle and which is the basis for the condition of Ultimate Responsibility lies behind our every day judgments about responsibility. In fact I find it to be absolutely fundamental and essential. The condition of UR has numerous implications for free will." That's the strongest argument for free will that there is. I am free to make of myself a conscious being who gives rise to intentions, choices, and actions that are of the highest nobility, creativity, or whatever I, the conscious participant, wish to be, given what already is.

[@henryporter101]

I appreciate you writing this out,however,you've only pushed the problem back.The question remains,given the antecedent conditions,how are you free to choose one action over another? Kane's contribution is his claim that at certain points,people have occasions where they can form their character by selecting one of two options available to them,as in the example of the business woman.Kane claims(justifiably in my view) that we experience this phenomenologically ,by an inner tension at some moments when we(an agent) selects one course of action over another.Indeterminism is important at these moments,and Kane calls on Quantum indeterminism to allow us to override past causes.Dan Dennett's criticism of this is that these type of self forming actions(S.F.As) only occur for some people. Again,thanks for writing what you did,it reminded me of kane's views on this vexed topic.

[@jirivesely5697]

So if I Am understanding this correctly - you are for Free Will?! I think that UR is strongest argument against Free Will if anything!!! Einstein: "in Schopenhauer's words: man can do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants"! UR also dubbed as "Causa Sui", or "Prime Mover unmoved"! BTW analytical philosopher has UR on his site (also equivalent - "Origination Problem") but not sure if he had it there before you wrote this... Also another philosopher gives his accounts on this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson I think Free Will is illusion, we would have to ultimately reject everything that we observe in order any chance for Free Will may exist! As we have empirical evidence our personality is determined by environment and genes!!! And we didn't choose these! In fact before we existed we couldn't choose anything right?! So something has to be given to us first, before we can choose anything, as nothing can't choose anything, because it doesn't have any preferences yet! But these given preferences to us, are not chosen by our own free will! Yet they drive our actions and determine how our character is developed! You would have to get even behind origin of the universe to demonstrate there is free will by some incomprehensible way to humans we cannot even imagine! As decisions are based on preferences and these can't come from nothing!!! Even QM information can't come from nothing! And if so you would run into the same problem: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iIqamZ2qaqycY6c Framework for Free Will cannot be even imagined, that is the scary thing!!! BTW aside: Goethe, Tesla, Schopenhauer, Einstein, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking on assumption of materialism: none believed in Free Will! It seems that smartest people who ever lived have this in common!

[@karstennicholson3060]

He looks like Larry David.

[@CheekyVimto08]

with the arm swinging thing, it seems like he was determined to swing his arm. it's only the success of the swing which is a matter of chance..

[@matthewjamesmjw4172]

and it is the success that determines his responsibility. If he had broken the table, he would be responsible for something worse than merely swinging his arm.

[@dfpolis]

How can indeterminate noise, not the result of human agency, underpin a free will robust enough to support responsibility? &, if we only need noise, thermal noise is much more energetic than quantum. There is equivocation here. To be motivated is not to be willed. It is insufficient for conflicting options to be motivated. If they weren't, they wouldn't be a viable. Responsibility requires a decisive commitment originating in the agent as agent, not as a patient subject to noise. Peace, Dennis

[@syed9576]

You missed the point. In cases of moral responsibility the 'indeterminate noise' is the result of competing motivation that stem from the agent himself.

[@alexanderserdyukov1891]

Both freedom of will and moral responsibility are irrelevant - all we need to know is whether the agent can be trusted to fulfill some particular contractual obligations.

[@stevekennedy5380]

Moral responsibility and social responsibility are profoundly different.

[@sylvainpoirier4206]

As the concept of free will is not well itself describable in words, I see clearer to point out how it may differ from what is, namely, the concept of mathematically expressible law (may it be a deterministic or probabilistic one). Indeed that negative concept of mathematically inexpressible law turns out to be itself well expressible, namely in terms of the Turing test. Moreover, the problem of the paradoxical combination of indetermination with determination by will, which is contained in the concept of free will, should not be so surprising as a similar paradox arises in pure mathematics in the form of Tarski's truth undefinability theorem. More details in my work on the foundations of maths : settheory.net As for the connection of free will with quantum physics, I would turn the question the other way round : instead of trying to explain free will by quantum physics, I see the features of quantum physics well explained by the basic need for mathematical laws of physics to leave the door open to the action of free will by non-physical minds, in order for such a universe to be habitable. More details in settheory.net/quantum-mind-collapse

[@stevekennedy5380]

Is the speaker a scientist or a theologian?

[@syed9576]

Philosopher

[@davidsimpson7229]

No.