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Core Concepts
Adequate Determinism Agent-Causality Alternative Possibilities Causa Sui Causality Certainty Chance Chance Not Direct Cause The Cogito Model Compatibilism Conceptual Analysis Control Could Do Otherwise Creativity De-liberation Determination Determination Fallacy Determinism Disambiguation Either Way Ethical Fallacy Extreme Libertarianism Event Has Many Causes Free Choice Freedom of Action "Free Will" Free Will in Antiquity Free Will Mechanisms Free Will Requirements Free Will Theorem Future Contingency Hard Incompatibilism Illusion of Determinism Illusionism Impossibilism Incompatibilism Indeterminacy Indeterminism Infinities Libertarianism Liberty of Indifference Luck Modest Libertarianism Moral Responsibility Moral Sentiments Mysteries Naturalism Necessity Noise Non-Causality Pre-determinism Predictability Probability Pseudo-Problem Random When?/Where? Rational Fallacy Responsibility Same Circumstances Science Advance Fallacy Second Thoughts Semicompatibilism Soft Causality Standard Argument Temporal Sequence Tertium Quid Torn Decision Two-Stage Models Ultimate Responsibility Uncertainty Up To Us Philosophers Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine A.J.Ayer Mark Balaguer William Belsham Henri Bergson Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien George Boole Émile Boutroux F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Philippa Foot Alfred Fouillée Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Carl Ginet Nicholas St. John Green Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume William James Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus C.I.Lewis David Lewis Peter Lipton John Locke John R. Lucas Lucretius Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Hilary Putnam Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher C.W.Rietdijk Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith L. Susan Stebbing Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin Voltaire G.H. von Wright R. Jay Wallace Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Michael Arbib Bernard Baars John S. Bell Charles Bennett Margaret Boden David Bohm Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Max Born Stephen Brush Leon Brillouin Thomas Buckle Anthony Cashmore Arthur Holly Compton Abraham de Moivre Paul Dirac John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Albert Einstein Richard Feynman GianCarlo Ghirardi Nicolas Gisin A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg Pascual Jordan Simon Kochen Stephen Kosslyn Rolf Landauer Alfred Landé Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Benjamin Libet Josef Loschmidt Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Roger Penrose Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Adolphe Quételet Jerome Rothstein Erwin Schrödinger Claude Shannon Herbert Simon B. F. Skinner Antoine Suarez Leo Szilard William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg Norbert Wiener Eugene Wigner E. O. Wilson Ernst Zermelo |
Modest Libertarianism
"Modest" Libertarianism is the name given to two-stage models of free will by Alfred Mele.
"Conservative Libertarians" on Free Will would be confused with
It might also be called "Adequate" Libertarianism (since it involves adequate determinism) or "Conservative" Libertarianism to contrast it with the "Radical" Libertarianism of Robert Kane, Peter van Inwagen, and other recent event-causal libertarians.
"Modest" Libertarians believe that one's actions are adequately determined by events prior to a decision, including one's character and values, one's feelings and desires, in short, one's reasons and motives. Their model of free will is "reasons responsive."
The role of pure chance, irreducible randomness, or quantum indeterminacy, is limited to generating alternative possibilities for action. Chance events are not direct causes of our thoughts and actions, as radical" libertarians believe. Although chance may be involved in cases of the "liberty of indifference."
"Modest" - or "Adequate" or "Conservative" - Libertarians believe that humans are free from strict physical determinism - or pre-determinism, and all the other diverse forms of determinism. They accept the existence of chance, but believe that if chance were the direct cause of actions, it would preclude control of the agent's actions and deny moral responsibility.
Note that information philosophy and its value theory separate free will from moral responsibilty.
The existence of free will is a scientific question for physics, biology, and psychology. Political Libertarians, so modest or adequate seems more appropriate Moral responsibility is a cultural question for sociology and the law. Information philosophy also separates responsibility from the ideas of retributive punishment, which is still another social and cultural question.
Libertarians in general believe that determinism and freedom are incompatible. Freedom requires some form of indeterminism. But the two-stage models of free will favored by modest libertarians also require determination of the action by the agent's motives and reasons, following deliberation and evaluation of the alternative possibilities for action provided by that indeterminism.
Critics of libertarianism (determinists and compatibilists) attack the view of radical libertarians that chance is the direct cause of actions. If an agent's decisions are not connected in any way with character and other personal properties, they rightly claim that the agent can hardly be held responsible for them.
Many determinists and compatibilists now accept the idea that there is real indeterminism in the universe. Conservative libertarians can agree with them that if indeterministic chance were the direct direct cause of our actions, that would not be freedom with responsibility.
But determinists and compatibilists might also agree that if chance is not a direct cause of our actions, it would do no harm to responsibility. In which case, conservative libertarians should be able to convince some determinists of their position. Galen Strawson agrees that conservative libertarianism is a "kind of freedom that is available" to us.
If chance is limited to providing real alternative possibilities to be considered by the adequately determined will, it provides an intelligible freedom and can explain both freedom and creativity.Modest libertarians can give the determinists, at least the compatibilists, the kind of freedom they say they want, one that provides an adequately determined will and actions for which we can take responsibility, actions that are up to us. Even the current chief spokesman for libertarianism, Robert Kane admits that "radical" libertarian accounts of free will are unintelligible. No coherent idea can be provided for the role of indeterminism and chance, he says. But Kane insists that "something more" is needed beyond simple determination of our thoughts and actions by our desires and feelings, our character and values, and our motives and reasons. That something more is not just the adequate freedom, but the creativity that comes with a two-stage model of free will. For Teachers
References:
Dennett, D. C. (1978). Brainstorms : philosophical essays on mind and psychology. Montgomery, Vt., Bradford Books. (see "Giving the Libertarians What They Say They Want.")
Kane, R. (2001). The Oxford Handbook of Free Will. Oxford ; New York, Oxford University Press.
For Scholars
Notes:
1. Clarke, Randolph (2003), Libertarian Accounts of Free Will, p.xiii. Accounts of free will purport to tell us what is required if we are to be free agents, individuals who, at least sometimes when we act, act freely. Libertarian accounts, of course, include a requirement of indeterminism of one sort or another somewhere in the processes leading to free actions. But while proponents of such views take determinism to preclude free will, indeterminism is widely held to be no more hospitable. An undetermined action, it is said would be random or arbitrary. It could not be rational or rationally explicable. The agent would lack control over her behavior. At best, indeterminism in the processes leading to our actions would be superfluous, adding nothing of value even if it did not detract from what we want. 2. Honderich, Ted (2002), How Free Are You?, p.5. "Maybe it should have been called determinism-where-it-matters. It allows that there is or may be some indeterminism but only at what is called the micro-level of our existence, the level of the small particles of our bodies." 3. Searle, John (2004), Freedom and Neurobiology, p.74-75. "First we know that our experiences of free action contain both indeterminism and rationality...Second we know that quantum indeterminacy is the only form of indeterminism that is indisputably established as a fact of nature...it follows that quantum mechanics must enter into the explanation of consciousness."
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