Thomas Pink: A 'Humean' Defense of Libertarian Freedom

David Hume

Looking rather regal . . .

Portrait by Allan Ramsey (1766)

(Image from Wikipedia)

Toward the end of his short introduction to the issue of free will, Dr. Thomas Pink brings in the thought of David Hume in an argument that had already occurred to me as a potential defense of libertarian freedom. Many critics have singled out the putative 'mysteriousness' of "freedom," but "causation" is perhaps just as 'mysterious':

Hume thought causal power was just as hidden from us as the sceptic supposes libertarian freedom to be. He thought that our experience never actually represents causation to us. All we have direct experience or awareness of, Hume argued, is regularities in nature -- one kind of thing, such as a fire being lit, regularly being followed by another kind of thing, water above it boiling. We never have direct awareness of something else, causal force, as a further feature in the world connecting these. (Pink, Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, page 121)

By analogy, then, if we are going to accept causation, we should be willing to accept libertarian freedom, i.e., free will. About forty pages earlier, on page 82, Dr. Pink has already made a threefold distinction that is relevant here:

Causally Predetermined . . . so . . . Uncontrolled by us (Causation)

Causally Undetermined . . . and . . . Uncontrolled by us (Randomness)

Causally Undetermined . . . and . . . Controlled by us (Freedom)

By "Uncontrolled," Dr. Pink doesn't mean that we can't interact with causal or random events, but rather that they are not subject to our control in the way that our decisions are. The plausibility of this threefold distinction depends partly on what one thinks about "Randomness." I realize that many people believe that quantum mechanics supports the view that some events are purely random (much as macroscopic physics supports the view that most events are entirely causal), but quantum mechanics may be a limited understanding rather than capturing an ontological truth about nature. One might add that the 'random' events of quantum mechanics are not purely random anyway since they have a certain predictability and follow patterns that express lawlike behavior, which perhaps implies some large degree of causality operating at the subatomic level even if one takes the randomness seriously.

If quantum mechanics should turn out to be incomplete and subatomic particles discovered to be entirely causal in their interrelations, the threefold distinction collapses into a twofold distinction unsupported by science and thereby somewhat less plausible, though this twofold distinction would continue to receive the support of our firsthand experience and of a Humean emphasis upon the 'mysteriousness' of causality.

Thomas Pink: Critique of Hobbesian 'Free' Will

Drug Addiction

Rational Scale to Assess the Harm of Drugs

Mean Physical Harm and Mean Dependence

What about mean loss of freedom and mean dependence?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Dr. Thomas Pink explains the Hobbesian view of 'free' will as action driven causally by desires if that action is unobstructed by external constraints. Dr. Pink acknowledges that this Hobbesian view has a certain plausibility . . . but also a central problem:

Hobbesian freedom, remember, is no more than unobstructed desire. The only thing, according to Hobbes, that can remove our freedom, is some obstacle to satisfying our desires. Our freedom can never be taken away by our desires themselves. But common sense thinks of freedom quite differently. It sees freedom as something that can perfectly well be taken away from us, not merely by obstacles to our desires, but by our desires themselves. Consider drug addicts, for example. A drug addict is a person imprisoned, not by obstacles to desire satisfaction such as locked cell doors or chains, but by his own desires. A drug addict lacks the freedom not to take the drug to which he is addicted. And he lacks this freedom not to take the drug because his own desire to take it, and not any external constraint, is forcing him to act. The addict is acting exactly as he desires to act. But despite the lack of any obstacle to acting as he desires, he is still not acting freely. He is still not free to act otherwise. And it is his very own desires that have taken that freedom away. (Pink, Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, page 68)

An interesting objection to Hobbes: one's desires can obstruct one's freedom even though Hobbes defines the will as nothing more nor less than one's desires.

But, the Hobbesian might object, is the desire caused by drug addiction an entirely internal desire? Some might counter that the drug is introduced from outside the body. I'm not sure that this objection would be valid, however, for the Hobbesian view hasn't distinguished between imposed and unimposed desires. But even if one grants the distinction, what about unimposed desires that can tend to compel us against our will? On Hobbesian principles, this can't even be properly expressed, for the will is nothing more than desire, which would mean that our desire is compelling us against our desire -- or our will against our will. Moreover, we may find multiple, competing desires.

Are we legion? For we sound like many. And it's beginning to get a little crowded in here.

Free Will: Medieval Spirit-Matter Hierarchy

Philosophy

Seated among Seven Liberal Arts

Hortus Deliciarum (12th century)

Herrad von Landsberg

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've not yet found Dr. Thomas Pink's explicit reason for seemingly treating mental acts and physical acts as the same sort of activity, but it seems to be a post-Hobbesian formulation in which the will is not a distinct, spiritual 'substance' but also, in some sense, 'material'.

Dr. Pink notes the difference in the free will problem for Medieval philosophy:

The medievals' belief in the immateriality of decision-making prevented them from seeing the free will problem as we do -- as mainly a problem about how to reconcile freedom with the likelihood that actions are events within a physical world, subject like events of any other kind to physical causation. Instead, the medievals generally saw the world as a cosmic hierarchy -- a hierarchy in which spirit or the immaterial outranked matter. And because spirit or the immaterial outranked matter, immaterial processes, processes such as reasoning or deliberate human action, could not be determined or necessitated by physical or material causes. (Pink, Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, page 40)

Interesting. The medievals were 'blind' to the mind-body problem that we moderns see whenever we investigate the possibility of free will, for they saw spirit as intrinsically superior to matter and thus necessarily to be obeyed by matter . . . as a matter of course, one might put it. A bit like a lord commanding a knight to enter the field of battle. The knight obeys out of a sense of duty legitimated by a medieval hierarchy in which a lord outranks a knight. Understanding that -- for the medievals -- posed no 'interaction' problem.

The medieval free will problem lay solely in reconciling the free will of humans with the omniscience and providence of God.

Thomas Pink: Free Will

Dr. Thomas Pink

Department of Philosophy

(Image from King's College London)

On Tuesday last week, I visited Kyobo Bookstore at Ewha University to pick up a copy of the textbook for my Research Writing class and happened to notice a book section devoted to Oxford's Very Short Introduction series, so I browsed and selected three booklets -- one on the crusades, one on terrorism, and one on free will.

The one on freedom of the will is by Dr. Thomas Pink, who seems to be an expert. His academic site at King's College London states that "[t]he two past moral philosophers from whom Pink has learnt most are probably David Hume and Francisco Suarez" -- two very different thinkers, I might note. If I recall, Hume denies free will, whereas the earlier thinker, Suárez, follows Luis de Molina in defending it. However, I'm no expert on either Hume, Suarez, or Molina.

But Dr. Pink, who defends free will, occasionally expresses himself in ambiguous ways:

Our freedom, we must remember, is a freedom of action -- a freedom to do things or to refrain from doing them. (Pink, Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, 5)

I wouldn't put the point quite like that, for action can be quite limited by circumstances beyond our control. Earlier on the same page, Pink states the point more to my liking:

Freedom of action may even depend on freedom specifically of decision-making -- on a freedom of will. (Pink, Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, 5)

To my way of thinking, we may freely decide on a course of action that is then forcibly prevented in some manner. Our inability to follow through would not mean that our will was unfree but merely that our actions were constrained.

Possibly, Dr. Pink is simply using the term "action" in a loose way that mirrors our everyday use, in which something that we decide and something that we do are both 'actions', for we speak both of acts of the will and acts that we carry out, but there is surely a distinction between a mental act and a physical act, as Dr. Pink himself implies in his reference to "freedom . . . of decision-making" and "[f]reedom of action," and I suspect that he will have some things to say about this difference.

Perhaps, then, I'll be reporting on my reading of this very short text, which goes only up to 132 pages . . . though I may also be reporting from Holbrook Jackson or Herman Melville in ways that might restrict my freedom.