Reasonable Cause?

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Benjamin Libet's Experiment

Free or not? Decide for yourself...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Malcolm Pollack, of Waka Waka Waka fame, has lately been defending philosophical determinism, somewhat to my surprise . . . though if he's right about absolute causality, then neither he nor I have had any choice in our views.

In which case, of course, I ought not to feel surprised at my surprise (if "ought" has any meaning, given determinism).

Free will is one of those philosophical concepts that resists complete comprehension, at least for me. I can think about it and circumscribe it with my thoughts, but it remains elusive. I can, for instance, state that our will is free if a decision of the will is made freely, which entails that it not be the result of a chain of causes, either external or internal, but is a choice based on reasons.

Yet, how that works, precisely, is the elusive part, for an explanation as to how something works usually appeals to causality. I can only note that if the determinist demands that I give an explanation for how free will works, and means by that a causal explanation, then I can only reply that a causal explanation would not explain free will but deny it.

So, free will is a 'surprising' thing if it exists, but perhaps the world has a few surprising things, as the philosopher David Chalmers argues concerning consciousness in his book The Conscious Mind. One wouldn't, apriori, expect a world with consciousness in it. Why should some things in the world have any awareness? But some things, e.g., ourselves -- as we know from experience of our own qualia -- do have awareness.

I therefore asked Malcolm if he distinguishes between "causes" and "reasons." Malcolm affirms that he does, indeed, distinguish the two, but I'm left wondering what role reasons play in a deterministic schema. I sense a dilemma, so let me see if I can express it.

Assuming the truth of determinism, either the reason that one gives for an action taken does perfectly reflect the true cause of the action, or it does not perfectly reflect the true cause of the action. In the former case, the reason given reduces to the cause; in the latter case, the reason given reduces to a mistake. Therefore, either the reason is nothing more than the cause itself (or at most, one of the merely epiphenomenal qualia associated with the cause), or the reason is merely mistaken rationalization (whether in whole or in part) that itself reflects, albeit imperfectly, more basic causal processes. Determinism would thus seem to leave no genuine role for reasons.

Probably, I haven't expressed myself so well on this issue, and no doubt my friend Bill Vallicella could do far better, but perhaps my musings will spur Malcolm to further posts on this fascinating if maddening topic.