Epilogue

Free Will and Philosophy of Mind

Eddy Nahmias 1. Introduction: Explanatory Incompatibilism In Chapter 1 I argued that incompatibilists often falsely conflate determinism and reductionism. They suggest that, if causal determinism holds, then not only does the past determine the future but also events at the level described by physics determine what happens at any higher level, including the biological and the psychological levels. This view would lead us to believe that determinism entails that our mental states and conscious deliberations do not have the causal import we believe them to have, perhaps even that they are causally epiphenomenal. However, I argued that there is no necessary connection between determinism and reductionism (or epiphenomenalism). First of all, there is no reason to believe that a reductionistic view of causation requires the truth of determinism. One may hold that all the causal work, so to speak, occurs at the level described by physics without holding that the causal mechanisms at that level are deterministic. They may be irreducibly probabilistic, as in fact the best current theories in quantum physics suggest they are. More importantly, the truth of determinism alone does not entail that all the causal work occurs at the level of physics or that all causal interactions are mechanistic (as suggested by the picture of billiard balls colliding or the algorithmic functions of computers).1 If, for instance, biological or psychological interactions cannot be reductively explained, they may nonetheless be deterministic. Certain beliefs and desires may, with lawlike regularity, cause other beliefs and desires to occur, and these psychological explanations may not be explicable in terms of lower-level interactions. Biological phenomena, such as gene recombination, may be deterministic but not because they can be reductively explained by deterministic laws of physics.2 I need not defend here specific accounts of such emergent levels or the types of causation they may involve but only point out that their possibility is not ruled out by determinismor by indeterminismand, furthermore, they do not necessarily require the truth of one or the other metaphysical conceptions of causation. Although some specific theories of causation may suggest a logical relation between determinism and reductionism, in general the metaphysical and scientific questions about levels of causation are distinct from questions about determinism.3 It is an interesting and important question whether our conscious mental states can or cannot (should or should not) be explainedor explained awayin a reductionistic way, and it is an interesting and important question whether our conscious mental states are or are not deterministically caused by prior events (perhaps by prior conscious mental states). But I see no
For this discussion I am treating reductionism and mechanism as closely related, though it may be that these concepts of causation should be kept distinct just as reductionism and determinism should be.
2 1

Biological, psychological, and other high-level interactions may also be indeterministic, perhaps because quantum effects percolate up to the higher level or perhaps independently of quantum indeterminism (see, for example, Brandon and Carson 1996). In fact, some have suggested that such probabilistic interactions account for the irreducibility of the higher-level phenomena.

There is, of course, a good reason why such questions have historically been entangled. When the concept of mechanistic causation arose with the physics of Galileo and Newton, such causation was described with deterministic laws. Accordingly, attempts, such as Descartes dualism, to ensure that our minds are not subject to such mechanistic causation, even if our bodies are, also rejected universal determinism to suggest something like agent causation.

reason to believe that a particular answer to one of these questions logically entails a particular answer to the other question. Nonetheless, certain types of reductionist theories of mind may threaten free will on their own. In fact, I believe such threats are much more significant than those posed by determinism. Reductionism does not threaten free will because it entails that our deliberations, choices, and actions are caused by prior states such that we cannot do otherwise given the exact same conditions. Rather, reductionism threatens free will to the extent that it conflicts with the possibility of self-knowledge, rational action or even intentional actionfor instance, if it suggests our conscious deliberations and choices do not exist or do not cause (or correspond with) our actions in the right way. For instance, Norman Malcolm argues that mechanism is incompatible with purposive behavior (1968: 143), where mechanism is identified with a complete neurophysiological (reductive) explanation of behavior, and purposive behavior involves the language of beliefs, desires, and intentions.4 The idea is that our actions cannot be explained in terms of our conscious mental states if they could be entirely explained in terms of our neurobiological states. Gary Watson, describes this tension between mechanistic explanations of psychological phenomena and teleological explanations (the purposive, goal-directed language, such as desires, used in our deliberations) and calls it a new form of incompatibilism in the free will debate: explanatory incompatibilism (1982: 12). Recall that the traditional incompatibilist argument says: (1) free will requires the ability to do otherwise, (2) causal determinism is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise, so (3) causal determinism is incompatible with free will. In parallel fashion, explanatory incompatibilism, put simply, says: (1) free will requires that our conscious deliberations (which employ the teleological concepts of desires, goals, and intentions) must play a causal role in our actions, (2) at least certain kinds of reductive mechanistic accounts of the mind are incompatible with the existence and/or the causal role of such teleological concepts, so (3) such reductive mechanistic accounts of mind are incompatible with free will. As should be clear by now, I think the first argument is problematicit illegitimately incorporates other threats into it (sometimes including the threat of explanatory incompatibilism), and it can only be answered by an incoherent theory of agency. However, I believe the second argument is sound, and powerful. Not only that; this argument is particularly relevant to free will as I have analyzed it, since it requires types of introspective awareness and knowledge that are particularly vulnerable to the threats posed by certain forms of reductionism. Therefore, protecting my account of free will against the argument for explanatory incompatibilism would require, first, determining which sorts of reductionist accounts of mind suggest explanatory incompatibilism and, then, fending off such accounts in order to protect my theory of free will. Unfortunately, that project would involve a lengthy discussion of a host of debates in philosophy of mind (e.g. the mind-body problem, mental causation and supervenience), and I cannot take on that task here. Instead, I will use two theories of mind, eliminativism and epiphenomenalism, as case studies to exemplify particularly significant reductionist threats to the Knowledge Condition for free will, and I will offer some reasons to believe these theories are
Malcolm begins his essay by suggesting the conflation between reductive mechanism and determinism that I described earlier: By mechanism I am going to understand a special application of physical determinismnamely, to all organisms with neurological systems, including human beings (127, my italics). Taylor (1971) also argues for the incompatibility of mechanism and intentional action. 2
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mistaken.5 In doing so, I hope to advance the claim, suggested in Chapter 1, that the free will debate should center on questions about the nature of mind more than questions about the metaphysics of deterministic causation. Indeed, I will conclude with the suggestion that an adequate solution to the so-called hard problem of consciousness will also help to resolve the perhaps harder problem of free will. 2. Eliminativism Some philosophers have suggested that future sciences of the mind will not validate our folk psychology, the language we use to explain and predict our own and others mental states and behavior. Instead, they claim, we will discover that the beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes, moods, and goals we refer to when we introspect and deliberate, and when we describe each others actions, do not in fact refer to the internal physical states that cause our actions. Rather, these mental concepts are theoretical constructs that do not accurately refer to an underlying structure in the world; they are analogous to the concepts of phlogiston and elan vital, which matured chemistry and biology have shown to be mistaken and eliminable. As Paul Churchland, an initial proponent of this view, says, our common-sense psychological framework is a false and radically misleading conception of the causes of human behavior and the nature of cognitive activity (1984: 43). So, the types of entities described at the level of folk psychology will not line up with the entities described at the level where the causal work is accurately described; type-type identity theories will fail. For Churchland, it is specifically a mature neuroscience that will eliminate, rather than find one-to-one type relationships with, the terms of our folk psychology. It may also be, as Steven Stich (1983) suggests, that a mature cognitive science will show that the functional relationships between our mental states and behaviors do not accord with the relationships as described by our folk psychology.6 Either way, the suggestion is that the reasons we (currently) offer for why we feel what we feel and do what we do simply get it wrong and hence will be eliminated, to be replaced by an accurate theory developed by future sciences of the mind. Hence, the name for this philosophy of mind: Eliminativism. Eliminativism offers a clear threat to my view of free will, as well as many other views which require some role for our conscious deliberations in terms of our intentional or purposive concepts. It challenges the possibility of our possessing any of the three cognitive abilities I claim constitute free will. We cannot know our competing desires, because we do not have accurate knowledge of the actual states that motivate behavior. The language of desires, beliefs, reasons, and intentions we use when we introspect is mistaken. Similarly, when we then identify ourselves with one of our motivations, we do not know what we really want, because we cannot establish such a truth about ourselves. If the truth is out there about what we really want, we wouldnt know it because we could not accurately describe it. Finally and most significantly, we cannot influence our motivations and actions in light of our identifications, because we do not know how our motivational states relate to each other or to the world. None of this is to say we could not someday have the sort of free will I have described. Or so Churchland claims. When we have an accurate understanding of the neurobiological states that
This will not prove that less extreme forms of reductionism are mistaken. As I will discuss below, there may be various degrees of conflict between free will and reductive theories of mind. 6 Stich draws his conclusions in part from the social psychology results described in the previous chapter (see, for instance, 1983, chapter 11). 3
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mediate between perception and action, he suggests, we may obtain accurate self-knowledge. Our introspection (our direct perception of our internal states) will become refined, given a mature neuroscience, in the same way a wine connoisseurs perception of wines is refined and increased by his knowledge of their chemical composition: He tastes far more than we do (1996: 178). Churchland suggests that when we can conceptualize what happens in our brains, we will be able to directly (non-inferentially) perceive these states with an accuracy and fine-grained discrimination that eclipses our currently mistaken and grossly approximated introspective categories. Eliminativism thus spells not the doom of our inner life, but a dawning, in which its marvelous intricacies are finally revealedeven, if we apply ourselves, in self-conscious introspection (1996: 180). I am less optimistic than Churchland about these prospects. First of all, his suggestion seems unlikely if we view introspection as an evolved cognitive ability. We simply did not evolve to directly perceive our neural states (for good reason, since we could not understand what they mean without a neurobiological theory), so learning to perceive them would be like learning to see molecular structure, which even the well-trained chemist cannot do. Second, eliminativism entails a complete overhaul of our conceptual scheme. Not only will the language of beliefs and desires be replaced, but so will the language of introspection, self-awareness, and knowledge.7 Without some idea of what the new conceptual scheme will look like, I see no reason to believe it will provide a place for inner life or a self at all. Rather, since the theory describes a move towards a more objective understanding of what we now consider the mind or self, it seems more likely that the new conceptual scheme will have us describing our own behavior in objective, mechanistic terms that leave no place for a subjective point of view. If so, we would be explaining, sometimes predicting, our own behavior in the way we explain and predict other mechanisms (like machines or chemical reactions), but we would not be justifying our actions in terms of our own reasons. And it is not clear why we would identify ourselves with the processes we would introspect any more than we identify ourselves with the processes that subserve our livers functioning or our hearts beating. Our brains would be ours in the way our other organs are ours, but we do not identify our agency with our organs. Finally, it seems deliberation would look more like prediction based on our knowledge of our current states and their relationships with future states. Perhaps my pessimism is unwarranted, but it is hard to know given the sketchy outline eliminativism offers of our future conceptual scheme.8 It does seem, however, that the current trend in our social and legal practices is to abjure our responsibility and control in the face of what gets reported to us about the objective mechanisms that underlie our behavior. As the media presents preliminary findings about correlations between certain genes and behavior, or
7 It is because the concept of belief will be replaced that Churchland brushes off one response to eliminativism: that it is self-refuting because the argument for it cannot be coherently presented (its proponents cannot believe the theory is true) (1984: 48). But without some conception of how truth and reasons (and arguments) will work after the conceptual overhaul, I think Churchlands brush off may be too hasty. Malcolm (1968) suggests that mechanism, which he sees as entailing eliminativism, is inconceivable because it is incompatible with intentional actions (including speech acts) and with the existence of reasons. I think Malcolms argument is too extreme for reasons he suggests in his concluding commentsfuture scientific theories may explain, rather than explain away, intentional action (149). But I think his arguments do apply to a theory as extreme as Churchlands which explicitly rules out the compatibility of our intentional, teleological mental states and future explanations from the mind sciences.

Churchland in his more recent work presents a possible replacement conceptual scheme in terms of vector coding (but he also comes across as less extreme in his eliminativism). 4

neurotransmitter levels and moods, or brain lesions and behavioral deficits, people often assume this information shows they do not control, and are not responsible, for their actions. They draw the fallacious conclusion that if a particular abnormal condition (in genes or the brain) causes abnormal behavior, then all behavior of that sort, even the normal kind, including any accompanying mental states, must be caused entirely and simply by their genes or brain states. So, not only are criminalsor at least, their lawyersusing defenses based on biochemical conditions (like the Twinkie defense), but the rest of us are beginning to adjust our conception our control because of what we learn about the processes that occur within us. The problem, of course, is that our current understanding of the mechanisms (genetic and neurobiological) that underlie our behaviors, focuses on breakdowns, such as agnosias, or the simplest of processes, such as button pressing, and not on the incredibly complex aspects of our mental life and actions, such as rational deliberation.9 There are no good scientific theories, for instance, that explain in any detail what processes occur when we introspect, deliberate, or plan, so we do not know whether such theories will give us reason to doubt that the intentional concepts we use in such processes are accurate. But if, as eliminativism suggests, we do begin to doubt the accuracy of our intentional explanations (especially self-understanding), then the most likely reaction would seem to parallel our current deflationary reactions to the influx of information about the causes of our behavior. The burden of proof is on the eliminativist to explain how the new conceptual scheme will allow for, much less increase, our introspective abilities and selfawareness, as well as the freedom and responsibility I believe accompany these abilities. If I am right that eliminativism would in fact threaten self-knowledge and free will, then it may be that we could use a reductio argument against it: eliminativism entails we are not morally responsible, but we are morally responsible, so eliminativism is false. 10 Other philosophers have used similar arguments against eliminativism based on its apparent conflict with any conception of ourselves as rational agents.11 But these arguments might be seen as begging the question. There are, however, other responses to eliminativism that are more direct. First, eliminativism uses an argument structure and historical analogies that rely on a questionable assumption about folk psychology. The basic argument for eliminativism claims: (1) folk psychology is an explanatory/predictive theory along the lines of scientific theories; (2) future sciences of the mind will show that folk psychology is an inaccurate theory; so (3) folk psychology will be eliminated and replaced by the accurate theories of these future mind sciences. Given this argument schemata, the parallels with bad theories of the past is clear: replace folk psychology with the phlogiston theory or the framework of the heavenly sphere, and replace mind

Dennett writes, One reason we are tempted to suppose that mechanistic explanations preclude Intentional explanations is no doubt that since mechanistic explanations (in particular, physical explanations) are for the most part attempted, or effective, only in cases of malfunction or breakdown, where the rationality of the system is obviously impaired, we associate the physical explanation with a failure of Intentional explanation, and ignore the possibility that a physical explanation will go through (however superfluous, cumbersome, unfathomable) in cases where Intentional explanation is proceeding smoothly (1973: 161).
10

This argument would parallel libertarians argument against determinism. Van Inwagen (1983), for instance, argues that if determinism is true, then we do not have free will (and free will is necessary for moral responsibility); so, since it would be absurd to deny the existence of moral responsibility, we should reject determinism (223). See, for instance, Baker (1970) and Horgan and Woodward (1985). I have not seen any philosophers specifically discuss the threat of eliminativism to free will. 5

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sciences with modern chemistry or astronomy. But the assumption that folk psychology is a scientific theory is not obvious nor are the parallels between it and these historical mistakes. There is no question that our folk psychology offers explanations and predictions for behavior. And sometimes beliefs and desires are described as theoretical entities that are unobservable and serve to unify diverse patterns of behavior. But, despite these parallels with scientific theories, it seems more accurate to describe folk psychology as a practical set of generalizations we use to facilitate our social interactions.12 It is like our folk physics, which helps us negotiate the world of medium-sized objects and which has not been replaced by scientific theories that tell us, for instance, that these medium-sized objects are in fact mostly empty space. Our mature physical sciences do not refer to cars or billiard balls, though they still apply to cars and billiard balls and the interactions between them. When two cars collide, our description of the event is not wrong just because physics would explain the event, ultimately, in terms of concepts and particles we ignoreand are usually ignorant ofwhen we describe the event. Similarly, when I explain why I am crying in terms of my frustrated hopes, that description is not necessarily wrong just because future mind sciences would explain my crying, ultimately, in terms of neurobiological events or functional relations which I do not know about. My explanation may be more practical even if it is less precise. On the other hand, the historical theories Churchland discusses were more clearly attempts to produce scientific theoriesthat is, they aimed not only to explain and predict with maximal accuracy but also to uncover the actual mechanisms that accounted for that accuracy. They were attempts to go deeper than the available folk theories about, for instance, the nature of heat or the movement of the stars. Daniel Dennetts (1987) claim that some behaviors can be described from difference stances is helpful here. Though the mind sciences may focus on explanations in terms of the physical stance and the design stance, certain behaviors may also be described from the intentional stance, which uses the language of our folk psychology. For instance, though a chess-playing computers moves may be explained and predicted by understanding the physical mechanisms that instantiate the moves or by understanding the way the program was designed, for the practical purposes of competing with the computer, it may be most helpful to understand the goals of the computer program (e.g. how it intends to trap your knight). Dennett seems to suggest (in places) that the reality of the intentionality of a system is determined simply by whether the intentional stance is the most pragmatic stance to take towards the system. If it works best, from our point of view, to explain and predict another systems behavior in terms of intentional states, then it does have intentional states. Regardless of the coherence of this instrumentalist interpretation, the usefulness of the intentional stance suggests that folk psychology as a pragmatic explanatory scheme may be here to stay. At a minimum, if it is to be eliminated by future scientific theories, these theories will have to be pragmatic as well as accurate. Thus, if folk psychology is viewed as a practical theory rather than a scientific one, then the question of whether mature sciences of the mind will replace it becomes a practical (and normative) question more than just an empirical one. The second premise of the eliminativist argument focuses on this empirical claim that future mind sciences will in fact replace folk psychology. But this premise is also suspect. First of all, in many cases folk psychology offers the explanandum for cognitive psychology and the neurosciences. Experiments in these sciences often begin by using first-person reports offered in the terms of folk psychology and then trying to correlate these reports with the objective stimuli,
12

See Hannan (1993). 6

behaviors, and neural activity of the subjects. The mechanisms and theories discovered by such experiments may offer increased precision in describing the phenomena they explain, but to replace them would require either forgoing first-person reports or somehow providing subjects with a new conceptual scheme in the midst of developing it. More likely, future mind sciences will continue to use folk psychology to provide the starting points for discovery and to find correlations between our intentional language and underlying mechanisms. Such sciences have and will continue to improve our folk psychology, especially in elucidating the breakdowns due to malfunctions of its underlying mechanisms. Thus, the eliminativist strategy will likely apply primarily to limited cases, notably abnormal cases, like mental illness, that, as Churchland rightly points out, are poorly explained by folk psychology.13 I have described a rather stark version of eliminativism to serve as a case study of the type of problem philosophical theories of mind can pose for my view of free will. It may be that few philosophers still hold a position so extreme. Nonetheless, eliminativism comes in degrees. Depending on how future sciences of the mind turn out, our folk psychological categories may turn out to be more or less accurate. We may have good reason to alter some of the practical language we use to understand and predict behavior. For instance, it may become meaningless to say that certain mental illnesses are psychosomatic rather than physiological, because we will come to recognize that all such illnesses involve some physiological damage.14 We have already seen some of the changes brought by the human sciences to our folk conception of ourselves. And some of these changes have affected our thinking about freedom and responsibility (e.g. people say, I cant help it; it must be genetic). But the conceptual changes may be more extreme than this.15 The question is whether they will be extreme enough to entail that we cannot (or at least do not now) know why we do what we do, that our understanding of our motivations and our alternatives for action do not map onto the mechanisms that cause our actionsthat is, to entail that we do not have free will. I have offered some reasons to think the sciences of the mind will not in fact explain away our current folk psychology, with its intentional language. Instead, they will, I believe, have to explain how we have the abilities to introspect on our motivations and to come to know what we really want. 3. Epiphenomenalism Whereas eliminativism rejects the existence of the mental states, such as beliefs and desires, that we refer to when we introspect and deliberate, epiphenomenalism admits their existence but instead rejects their causal efficacy. This philosophy of mind claims that mental phenomena as we experience them are caused by physical processes but do not have any (or any significant) causal effects in turn. Rather, our conscious experiences are after-effects, like the noise of the steam whistle that has no effect on the running of the trains engine (to use Thomas
13

See Churchland (1984: 46). He is also correct that folk psychology does not provide good explanations for how we learn or remember. No doubt we will understand these processes better by studying them scientifically, but that does not imply that the concepts we employ in learning and memory will also be replaced.

14

This need not entail that we treat mental illnesses only or even primarily like bodily diseases, for instance, with pills. The Prozac revolution does not prove that talk therapy should be eliminated. Indeed, because we will better understand the intimate relationship between mind and body, we may come to understand how talk therapy works to adjust ones physiology. And we may also learn how to use mental treatments to alleviate bodily diseases (in the mold of non-traditional medicine). See Dennett (1973: 173). 7

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Huxleys famous example). Hence, the mental terms we employ to explain why we do what we do not in fact refer to causes of our behavior. At best, our deliberations may correlate with what moves us to act but they do not cause our actions. Epiphenomenalism threatens my account of free will, most significantly because it precludes the possibility that our identifications can influence our motivational states or our actions. When we introspect on our motivational states, identify what we really want, and consider how to act accordingly, these mental activities do not make anything happen. If we end up acting in accord with our identifications, it is fortuitous, not the result of the agents thoughts or knowledge. And as Frankfurt says, if an agents will coincides with his identifications but this is not his own doing but only a happy chance, then the person does not have freedom of the will (1971: 20).16 I will describe two types of epiphenomenalism and suggest a few reasons why they should be rejected. The first, metaphysical epiphenomenalism, argues for the view from philosophical premises. The second, neuroscientific epiphenomenalism, argues for the view from empirical data. Metaphysical epiphenomenalism may be viewed as a mere premise away from eliminativism. If your ontology only accepts the existence of states or events that have causal import, then if mental events do not cause anything, they should be eliminated (and the conceptual space they took up should be replaced with concepts that describe the states and events that actually do the causal work). Epiphenomenalism differs from this eliminativist stance in that its ontology makes room for states or eventsspecifically mental onesthat do not have causal import. One way to make such room is by segregating the mental into its own realmthat is, by being a dualist. Unlike the interactionist dualism of Descartes, the epiphenomenalist dualist does not face the objection that the mind, by causally affecting the physical, thereby upsets the causal closure of the physical. Instead, such a dualist views the mind as affected by the physical world (notably, the body) but not as affecting the physical world (though it may be that mental events can affect each other). I believe such substance dualism is untenable, but its attempt to maintain some place for the mental rather than eliminate it is understandable.17 Another attempt to secure a place for the mental, but without resorting to dualism, is offered by Donald Davidson in his argument for anomalous monism. This argument is interestingly similar to the eliminativists, but reaches a quite different conclusion. Davidson works from three assumptions. The first asserts that at least some mental events interact causally with physical events (208), notably in perception and action. The second assumption is that all causal interactions must fall under strict deterministic laws (though elsewhere Davidson allows that some causal laws may turn out to be probabilistic). The third assumption is that there are no strict laws governing mental events. This is because the propositional attitudes form a holistic web whose internal consistency cannot be subject to the rigid confines of physical laws.18 From these assumptions he concludes that there can be no laws
16

It may also be that epiphenomenalism threatens just about any theory of free will, since it seems to conflict with the conception of intentional action such theories require. That is, if epiphenomenalism is true, then our actions are not caused by our beliefs and desires at all.

17

I am inclined to agree with those philosophers of mind who suggest that epiphenomenalism entails this sort of dualism (and should hence be rejected). 18 Davidson seems to beg the question here in asserting that the reason there are no psychological laws (and hence no psychophysical laws) is that the rationality inherent in our psychology cannot be lawlike. 8

governing the causal interactions between types of mental events and types of physical events; there are no psychophysical laws. But since mental events causally interact with physical events, and causal interaction requires laws, the laws in question must be governing physical events, entailing that each mental event must be identical to some physical event. That is, Davidson concludes that token identity theory must be correct (hence his monism). Notice the similarities with the eliminativist argument. Both model their conception of causation on mechanistic laws and suggest such laws will be found at low levels (physical or neurobiological). And both reject the possibility that our belief-desire psychology will be explicable in terms of such laws, hence rejecting any type-type identity between mental concepts and lower-level events. The difference is that Davidson begins with the assumption that mental events exist (premise 1 above) and that they interact with physical events, while eliminativists like Churchland suggest the lack of type-type relations should lead us to remove mental concepts from our ontology. It seems that Davidsons approach could be more clearly distinguished from the eliminativist position if he could secure a causal role for mental events, despite his claim that mental interactions cannot be explained in terms of strict laws. But anomalous monism is often criticized precisely because it seems to suggest epiphenomenalism. Davidson writes: Suppose m, a mental event, caused p, a physical event; then, under some description m and p instantiate a strict law. This law can only be physical, according to the previous [argument]. But if m falls under a physical law, it has a physical description; which is to say it is a physical event. An analogous argument works when a physical event causes a mental event. So every mental event that is causally related to a physical event is a physical event. (224). This passage is meant to demonstrate monism (specifically, token identity theory). But on this view, if mental events cause anything, they do so in virtue of being (identical with) a physical event that can be captured in a strict law. For instance, if a particular belief precedes a particular physical action, the causal influence of the belief on the act is due not to the beliefs being a mental event but to the beliefs being identical with some particular physical event that instantiates a lawlike relation with the physical event of the action. There appears to be no leftover causal work to be done by the event in virtue of its being a mental event. Whether Davidsons position implies epiphenomenalism is a hotly debated issue.19 However, I think the problem could be avoided if, unlike Davidson, we allow for a broader conception of the sorts of laws that can instantiate causal relations. Davidson models his view of laws on the deductive-nomological conception of laws, which takes as its paradigm the theories and laws of physics. These areat least ideallyuniversal (both in time and space), deterministic, and deductive (not inductive). In addition to there being problems with this conception of explanation and causal laws, there are also reasons to believe that sciences other than physics, such as biology, employ a different conception of laws, which may be projectable but within limits (e.g. to life on earth) and refer to historical processes (e.g. natural selection), and which may be statistical rather than deterministic. If psychological laws do exist, then it likely that they will be modeled on this conception of laws rather than the one Davidson demands they satisfy (after all, psychology deals with biological systems).
19

See, for instance, Heil and Mele (1995, chapters 1-4). Davidson denies that anomalous monism commits him to epiphenomenalism, but I find his arguments unconvincing. 9

It is at least possible that there will be psycho-physical lawsthat is, type-type identity relations. If so, questions about mental causation will remain, but mental events will not be precluded from being causes. It may be that some events cause other events in virtue of being mental events that instantiate psychological laws. Again, questions about levels of causation arise, which are beyond the scope of my argument, but to avoid the threat epiphenomenalism poses to free will, we will have to develop an account of how mental events can causes of behavior. This, as I suggest below, will require a better understanding of how mental events are related to physical events. Whereas metaphysical epiphenomenalism suggests mental events do no causal work because they are superceded by physical causes, neuroscientific epiphenomenalism suggests mental events do no causal work because they are preceded by physical causes. Our conscious intentions to act occur too late to cause our actions, and in that sense, they are epiphenomenal. This view is based on experiments that suggest that our conscious experiences of intentions to act occur after neural events that initiate the action. The implication is that this unconscious neural activity is a common cause of both our actions and our conscious will to act, such that our experienced desire to act is an effect, not a cause, of what actually moves us to act. If, as some have interpreted these experiments, they are generalized to apply to all conscious mental activity, then it would seem our conscious deliberations and intentions would be irrelevant to how we in fact acted.20 The experiment most often cited and discussed in this context was performed by Benjamin Libet (1985). He asked subjects to flex their wrist whenever they felt like it and to note the moment (on a revolving clock face) at which they experienced the intention to flex. He recorded a negative shift in electrical potential in the subjects brains (the readiness potential) that regularly preceded, by up to a second, the muscle activity that accompanied their wrist movement. The readiness potential also occurred more than one-third of a second before the subjects experienced the intention to move.21 Libet and others have interpreted this finding to mean that the conscious intention to move does not cause the movement (as it seems to the subject); instead, unconscious neural activity initiates both the movement and the awareness of the intention to move.22 There are several problems with this interpretation of Libets experimental results. For instance, it implies a dualistic conception of mind in which consciousness represents a distinct sphere of influence that sends commands down to the brain to initiate neural activity. An identity theorist, on the other hand, will not be surprised that there is unconscious activity that precedes awareness of intentions (or any other mental state). Conscious mental activity will always involve unconscious neural activity. Most significantly for my purposes, the epiphenomenalist interpretation neglects the importance of earlier conscious activity in initiating the movements. Subjects have already consciously perceived the experimenters instructions and agreed to follow themthat is, to form intentions to flex their wrist and to carry out those intentions. Nothing in
20

See, for instance, Wegner and Wheatley (2000), who write: the will is not a psychological force that causes action. Rather, as a perception that results from interpretation, it is a conscious experience that may only map rather weakly, or perhaps not at all, onto the actual causal relationship between the persons cognition and action (481). 21 Timing the conscious awareness of the intention is problematic for technical and conceptual reasons (see commentaries in Libet [1985]).
22

Libet, however, also found that the 200 ms between the experienced intention and the movement allowed time for the subjects to veto the movement with a conscious decision to inhibit it, though given his overall schema, it seems that this veto would also have to be preceded by an earlier unconscious event. He locates free will in this veto power. 10

the experiment undermines the significance of the subjects earlier deciding consciously to flex their wrists at random times they feel like it. This earlier intention to comply sets the course for the later actions, which do not in fact have the phenomenology of planned action (Libet asks them not to pick a particular time to flex their wrist but to let it arise spontaneously).23 The case for neurophysiological epiphenomenalism is not established by Libets work. And it is unlikely that conscious mental activity always occurs after behavior has already been set in motion and can only, as Libet suggests, veto already initiated movements. But the extent to which conscious mental activity does play a role in our actions is an open question. To use Dennetts analogy, our conscious awareness may be more like the Presidents press secretary than the President, reporting decisions already made rather than making them. My theory of free will, however, allows that much of our behavior can occur without conscious attention or occurrent decision-making. However, when we introspect on our motivations and determine what we really want, such conscious activity cannot be epiphenomenal. As I have suggested throughout, this is in part an empirical question. But so far there are no empirical results that suggest epiphenomenalism of this magnitude is true of us. 4. Two Hard Problems The problem of free will is one of the most difficult and seemingly insoluble problems in philosophy. It has led some very clever philosophers to throw their hands up and suggest that the problem simply cannot be solved, at least by us humans with our limited cognitive and conceptual resources. Peter van Inwagen has become attracted to the view that there is something about our biology, something about the ways of thinking that are hardwired into our brains, that renders it impossible for us human beings to dispel the mystery of metaphysical freedom. However this may be, I am certain that I cannot dispel the mystery, and I am certain that no else has in fact done so (1994: 374). He refers to Noam Chomsky and Colin McGinn as the original proponents of this view, which I will call mysterianism.24 Mysterianism says there is no way we will ever solve the problem of free will, at least if it is conceived as the metaphysical problem of reconciling the intuitions both that we somehow create our selves and that our selves must be explicable by reference to earlier events or states. Some very clever philosophers (sometimes the same ones) have taken a similar attitude towards another problem in philosophy, the so-called hard problem of consciousness. This is basically the problem of how we can understand and explain the subjective nature of consciousness, its first-personal phenomenal feel, given the resources of the natural sciences, which generally approach the phenomena they study from a third-person, objective standpoint. Though the hard problem of consciousness has received a lot of philosophical attention of late, it obviously goes back a long way, at least to Descartes realization that mental properties appear to be of a different kind than material properties (especially as described by the physics of his day). That is, the hard problem simply presents a new rendition of the mind-body problem, with its
23

See Chapter 2, section 3 where I discuss the Norman-Shallice model of action. The subjects decision to comply seems to set up a motor schemata that they then carry out without conscious attention. When my students mimic the Libet experiment, they do not feel like their awareness of the intention to flex precedes the movement; rather, they feel like they occur at the same time.

24

This name is shamelessly lifted from my advisor, Owen Flanagan (1992), who uses it to refer to philosophers who believe that the problem of consciousness is insoluble. I will discuss the connection between these two varieties of mysterianism below. 11

attendant questions about mental causation, reductionism, privileged access, and subjectivity. Confronted with this problem, Colin McGinn adopts the mysterian position: We have been trying for a long time to solve the mind-body problem. It has stubbornly resisted our best efforts. The mystery persists. I think the time has come to admit candidly that we cannot resolve the mystery (1989: 349). The most obvious response to this position, I believe, is to reject the claim that the problem has resisted our best efforts. It has perhaps resisted our best philosophical efforts thus far, but we have very little empirical information about the way the brain works and no unifying neurobiological theory. With conceptual assistance from philosophy of mind, such a theory will presumably look unlike other scientific theories (and as I suggested above, involve different conceptions of causation, explanation, and laws)after all, the theory deals with a phenomenon unlike any studied by other sciences (and not how significantly the theories and practice of biology differ from those of physics). If the mind sciences do not eliminate consciousness, then a successful theory will have to explain how consciousness arises in organic creatures. Given the overall tenor of my project, it should be no surprise that I believe the problem of free will and the problem of consciousness are closely related. Likewise, a resolution of the problem of consciousness will, I believe, go a long way towards alleviating the problem of free willand the feeling that it will forever remain mysterious. More specifically, if we develop a conceptual and empirical understanding of consciousness that does not explain away those features that seem crucial for free willsubjectivity, introspective access, self-knowledgethen we will, I believe, develop an understanding of how we are agents in the (physical) world. In that case, we will not have to seek recourse in a theory like agent causation that presents us as agents outside of the (physical) world (but that somehow affect the world). Furthermore, if the problem of consciousness is resolved in such a way that subjectivity is not eliminated, then this should have a beneficial consequence for my conception of free will: it would, I believe, suggest that we have a type of knowledge about our own mental states that cannot be obtained from an objective point of view and that cannot be acquired by any person other than the subject of those mental states. If so, each of us would in principle have information predictive of our future behavior that could not be shared by others, which accords with the intuition associated with free will that we are unpredictable.25 One route to this conclusion is through the so-called Knowledge Argument originally introduced by Frank Jackson (1986), though for a different purpose.26 Jackson suggested that a persons complete knowledge of the physical, neural, and functional processes involved in seeing colors would not provide her with complete knowledge of color perception. If she had never seen red, for instance, she would learn something when she first saw a ripe apple. If this conclusion is correct, then it suggests that there is some sort of knowledge that cannot be obtained from a third-personal point of view. There is no received view of how to describe such knowledge. Perhaps it is know-how, a skill that allows her to deal with the (colorful) world better. Perhaps it is relational knowledge that allows her a new understanding of similarities and differences between certain properties (e.g. colors). Perhaps it is phenomenal knowledge that gives her a new way to understand old facts (what it is like to see an object as red
25

See my discussion of this point in Chapter 1, section 5C.

26

Jackson developed the argument to support the conclusion that physicalism is false. I certainly do not support that conclusion, but in light of responses to his argument, Jackson himself has backed off from this conclusion. The argument instead suggests that not all facts are physical facts. 12

rather than to pick it out as red by its objective properties such as the wavelength of reflected light). Regardless of how we describe such knowledge, it may be that it allows the agent who has itthe conscious agentto be able to access and interrelate her conscious mental states in a way that cannot be achieved by an observer of her underlying neural or functional states.27 This difference in access may, in some cases, provide her with unique knowledge of her desires, her identifications, and her intentions that predict for her future mental states and actions. Another route to the conclusion that we have unique access to some information about our mental states is based on the fact that each of us is unique. Human beings have incredibly complex histories and neural structure. It may well turn out that some sort of type-type identity theory or functionalist theory is correct. But even so, the types involved will be general and apply across whatever class(es) of creatures can instantiate those types. But the token instances of these types will be embedded in a system with a unique history and a unique neural (or functional) structure. So, let us imagine that whenever a human sees a red apple, a relevantly similar set of neural circuits activates. But those circuits will be connected in a unique pattern to others pathways in her brain. So, it is likely her experience will be at least subtly unlike others experiences of the apple (perhaps for her it sparks memories of her grandmother). Unless an outside observer (like the nefarious neurosurgeon) has had access to the agents entire neural history, he will not be able to make the connections that provide her with a unique conscious experience. She will have access, for instance, to her experienced motivations that cannot be obtained from the third-person point of view.28 Whether these suggestions about the nature of subjectivity can be maintained in the face of various objections is a difficult question. I have simply been gesturing at possibilities that may (I hope) pan out as we continue to study the nature of consciousness. But I have offered reasons to think the question of free will is tied to these questions in philosophy of mind as well as reasons to think that its ties to the question of metaphysical determinism can and should be loosened. This does not necessarily make the problem of free will any easier to solve (whatever it might mean to solve a philosophical problem), but since we are so very far from understanding the way the brain works, it seems premature to declare mysterianism a reasonable position. Perhaps understanding how we are conscious, intentional creatures is impossible for us. If it is, I predict we will feel similar confusion about how we are free agents. But if it is possible for us to understand the nature of our minds, I think we will attain a similar sense of resolution about the nature of our freedom and responsibility. In any case, no declaration of hopelessness will subdue the search. My modest proposal has been that knowledge of ourselves and our place in the world gives us free will. Perhaps understanding how it is possible that we have such knowledge will help us understand how it is possible that we have free will.

Perhaps this lack of access from the objective point of view is not an in principle deficiency but only a practical deficiency; perhaps we are hooked up to ourselves in such a way that our conscious experiences provide information about our internal states that could not be obtained quickly enough by an outside observer for the information to be useful in making predictions. None of this is meant to suggest that outside observers may not, in certain cases, have better knowledge about our internal states and about our likely future behavior.
28

27

This conclusion is similar to one Davidson (1970) reaches but via a different argument, one I rejected above: Even if someone knew the entire physical history of the world, and every mental event were identical with a physical, it would not follow that he could predict or explain a single mental event (so described, of course) (224). 13