The Paradigm Case Argument and the Free-Will Problem Arthur C. Danto Ethics, Vol. 69, No. 2. (Jan., 1959), pp. 120-124. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1704%28195901%2969%3A2%3C120%3ATPCAAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U Ethics is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.
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Discussion T H E PARADIGM CASE ARGUMENT AND
T H E FREE-WILL PROBLEM
ARTHUR C. DANTO HE controversy over the freedom of the will has seldom proceeded to cases. I t is pointless for the determinist to provide cases and instances of determined behavior, for his antagonist is prepared aforehand to admit that there are cases and instances of determined behavior. And it is futile for the free-willist to provide cases and instances of free acts, for his opponent is prepared aforehand to disallow them as genuine counterinstances to the theory he advocates: his contention is that there are no free acts. Accordingly, a peculiar abstractness has characterized the dispute down the ages. And the brisker sort of empiricist is apt to lose all patience with it: ". . . if a man should talk to me o f . . . . a free subject, a free will, or any free, but free from being hindered by opposition; I should not say he were in error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd" (Leviathan, I, 5). Hobbes often had a short way with a philosophical issue, but here he is not crediting himself with having settled an old quarrel; he is rather giving himself licence not to be party to an idle debate. For we all know well enough when to say a man is free, and we all know well enough what it will take to convince us we were wrong in so saying. The word "free" has a plain use, and metaphysical thundering is not to the point. By present standards, of course, Hobbes did solve the problem with this analysis, and he might thus have spared himself the pains of arguing with the Bishop of Derry. For, since we do have a plain use for the epithet "free" when we wish to distinguish certain acts, there are in fact free acts. And the only thing which remains to be done is to convince the determinist and his adversary that
T
they have been respectively abusing and dramatizing ordinary usage. The thundering is not so much meaningless as it is trivial. Such, if I properly construe it, is the argument of our philosophical avant-garde. Professor Flew writes: Since the meaning of "of his own free-will" can be taught by reference to such paradigm cases as that in which a man, under no social pressures, marries the girl he wants to marry (how else could it be taught?): it cannot be right, on any grounds whatsoever, to say that no one ever acts of his own free will ["Philosophy and Language," in Essays in Conceptual Analysis (London, 1956), p. 191. And Mr. H. F. R. Hardie concurs: From the fact that "of his own free will" has a standard use, and therefore an application, it follows that it is trivial to assert and absurd to deny that men will freely, that the will is free ["My (hvn Free Will," Philosophy, XXXII, No. 120, p. 211. And so the ancient issue stands closed. Of course, there might be a modern, smallerscale issue which resembles it-the issue over the ascriptive versus the descriptive rendering of the expression "of his own free will." One might point out that saying someone did something of his own free-will is not exactly like saying he did something with his own two hands. The expression has ascriptive overtones, and it would leave a moral skeptic unfazed were we to remind him that ascriptive predicates have an application and a use when his claim is merely that they are not descriptive. But I am not concerned with this for the moment. M y purposes are rather more reactionary. I wish to show that the sort of argument I have quoted does not in fact close the books even
DISCU'SSION
on the ancient issue. And I wish to show that ordinary language so construed is simply irrelevant to the celebrated problem of the freedom of the will. Presumably the determinist's thesis is this: given any act whatsoever, there exists some set of conditions such that information about these conditions, together with certain laws, would enable us accurately to predict that act. The determinist does not himself pretend to know what these conditions are for any given act, nor again does he pretend to know what are the laws which will sanction any such prediction. His claim is only that they can, in principle, be found. Accordingly, the determinist's thesis must be distinguished from a specific scientific theory to the effect that a certain specified sort of act (or occurrence) can be accurately predicted, given information about specified conditions and employing specified laws. Now let us suppose that someone, say a social scientist, advances a special theory of the latter sort with respect to marriage. Suppose indeed that he claims that whoever marries does so under social pressure, and that anyone will thus be wrong who asserts that Smith married of his own free-will if "married of his own free-will" means "married under no social pressure." H e would not be arguing that one couldn't say that Smith married of his own free will if all that was meant was that Smith was under no psychological pressures at the time. For his theory may have nothing to say about psychological pressure. Now, should it be urged against him that Smith did indeed marry of his own free-will in the required sense, that there were no social pressures upon him a t the time, then he would be able to resort to the following options. He could give up the theory. Or he could show-'that there were in fact social pressures which had not been noticed. Or he could draw our attention to his special way of using the term social pressures and explain that we had failed to consider his terminological strictures. What he could not do (and still remain a scientist)
would be to concede that there were no social pressures in his sense but then go on to claim that there must be social pressures in some unspecified sense. For this would be to maintain that his theory was correct when it had been shown to be incorrect on its own terms. For, as stated, the theory was restricted to the conditions specified. Per contra, a person who argues the general determinist thesis need not expose himself to the embarrassment of circumstantial rebuttal. For he is maintaining that there always are conditions which completely and uniquely determine any act whatsoeverwithout specifying what these conditions are. So if he insists that nobody ever marries of his own free-will, he is not in any sense committing himself to a special theory about marriage. For no special theory of marriage, indeed no special theory a t all, follows as a deductive consequence of his thesis. H e might, if he wished, argue that since he is not pleading a specific socialpressure theory of marriage, we can if we wish go on saying that people marry of their own free-will-providing we mean only that they sometimes marry in the absence of social pressures of a specified sort-because we may very well be right. His contention is only that we cannot use the expression "of his own free-will" in a general, unspecified sense; for if we do so, then, according to his claim, we shall always be wrong. But this is not much of a linguistic prohibition, since we hardly ever, in ordinary usage, employ the expression that way. We only do so when we take a certain philosophical stance. Let us put this more generally. I assume that whenever any ordinary speaker employs the expression "of his own free-will" in order to characterize a specific act, he always has in mind a specific meaning. He will always be implying that certain specific pressures or conditions were absent. But if this is so, then, in each context in which the expression is used, an equivalent expression could be used instead, an expression, that is, which refers to just the conditions and pressures we would be saying are absent. Thus, any sentence of the form (1) X did
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x of his own free-will-which occurs in a normal, i.e., non-philosophical contextmay be translated into an exactly synonymous sentence of the form ( 2 ) X did x in the absence of condition C. C is the specific condition which the user of a (1 )-like sentence means to exclude, and will vary, of course. from context to context. But whenever a ( 1)-like sentence is true, it will serve to contradict a sentence of the form (3) Nobody does x in the absence of C. Now (3) yields a general-law-like sentence for appropriate values of x and C. But in no sense will such a sentence be a deductive consequence of the general determinist thesis. So that if such a sentence is false (because a (2)-like sentence is true), this will fail utterly to affect either the truth or falsity of the general determinist thesis. The determinist, indeed, may be unmoved by the empirical unseating of any number of empirical theories. For he is committed to none of them. Nor is his just another special scientific theory. No scientist sets out to show that behavior is everywhere and always determined. But since he has no specific scientific commitments, and because again each occurence of a (1 )-like sentence is used in a specific context with reference to specific conditions (pressures), the determinist can allow all ordinary uses of the expression "of his own free-will" and still retain his metaphysical equanimity. No revision of ordinary language is entailed by his thesis. When we say of someone that he acted of his own free-will, we may be mistaken. But we a t least know in what way we may be mistaken, for we know what we meant by the expression in the specific context in which we used it. We meant that one or another of the pressures which are known to be sometimes responsible for marriages (as an example) was not responsible for this marriage; And we will have been mistaken if one of these relevant pressures was in fact present and operative. I cannot claim that we could frame a complete and exhaustive
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list of all the pressures we might be excluding in all the contexts in which we would be using this expression. But we could certainly recognize pressures which don't belong in the list. Should someone argue that we have no right to say that Smith married of his own free-will because we have not considered the effect that sunspots might have on a person with Smith's peculiar calcium deficiency, we would surely reply that we had not, for that reason alone, been careless or mistaken in using the expression. For this is not a relevant pressure; it does not belong to the range of pressures which the expression "of his own free-will" is meant to exclude. So we will admit to error only when it has been shown that we were appropriately wrong, when in fact Smith was forced, or coerced, or tied hand and foot, o r . . . So, since we know what we mean each time we use the expression, we know in each context what sort of reason must be given by someone who contradicts us, who says that Smith (or whoever) did not in fact marry (or whatever) of his own free-will. Suppose now we have made such an assertion and are declared wrong. And suppose the reason offered is the following one: nobody ever does anything of his own free will. We would, I think, be impatient; we would regard the person who says this as altogether facetious. When we were declared wrong, we were primed to hear a fact, were prepared for a piece of history or a bit of gossip; and what we received instead could not have been more beside the point. "No one ever does anything of his own freewill" simply fails, in the normal contexts to which I refer, to mesh with, or oppose, "Smith married of his own free-will." I t comes as an unwelcome visitor from another linguistic space, as alien a presence as the Ancient Mariner at the wedding feast. I t would be like going to the doctor with a headache, expecting a powder or a pill, and he instead solemnly intones "Desire is the cause of suffering. Seek Nirvana! " He may be right. He might even have come to feel it his duty to remind his patients of their cos-
DISCUSSION
mic status. And we might be so shocked by the incongruity of his utterance that our headache disappears. But it is not what we came for, nor wanted, nor expected. Sentences like these cut into the plane of ordinary language a t right angles. I am not saying that "Nobody ever does anything of his own free-will" and "Smith married of his own free-will" are not logically opposed. They are, of course. But here we are in the homelier province of ordinary language. And ordinary usage, we are told, has no exact logic. The occasions on which we might use the expression in ordinary life are really rather special. There is, of course, the reproachful use: Smith has botched his marriage and cries on our shoulder, so we say "Well, you married of your own free-will." We would not say this were we sympathetic with Smith, or felt his problem deeply, or were being paid to listen to him, or blamed his wife. Mainly, however, we use the expression only when someone else has said, or thought, that somebody was forced to do something against his will. "He did it of his own free-will" then serves to deny such an assertion. I t is a characteristic (and perhaps a crucial) difference between ordinary and philosophical denials of free-will that willingness is not a component of the latter. The determinist is surely not arguing the patently false proposition that we always act unwillingly, contrary to our will. But that, I think, is nearly always what we mean in ordinary life when we say that someone did not act of his own free-will. We mean he was forced to do it. Furthermore, we never say, apropos of nothing, that someone did something of his own free-will. Indeed, were someone to tell me that Smith married and add that he did so of his own free-will, I should wonder what he was insisting upon. And I would gather that there was more to the story than I had been aware of. Now if I am correct in all this, then, I think, even if determinism came to be uni-
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versally accepted, it would leave this part of ordinary language quite unmodified. For people would still have inclinations, would still sometimes be forced to act against those inclinations, would very likely still seek extenuation, etc. Or they would sometimes be released from certain pressures, restrictions, and obligations. So we should still require the expressions we now employ, e.g., "He did it of his own free-will" or "He is free" (i.e., "no longer in conference," "no longer engaged to the girl from Vassar," "has broken the habit," "is out of jail"). Someone might of course complain, once determinism were universally accepted, that these expressions smack of an old, wrong view of things, that new expressions ought to be found. But what would be the gain? The distictions would still need somehow to be made. And the point is, the expression "of his own free-will" is used simply to make these distinctions now. I t has no implications, certainly no philosophical implications, beyond this. When Edmund Spenser wrote that "euery dore of freewill open flew" he is using a philosophically neutral word to convey the idea that nobody pushed the doors open. But we ourselves do not become free-willists malgre' nous when we use the expression the way we do. I t would indeed be but a ponderous joke were someone then to say (in that society where determinism were universally accepted) "Nobody ever acts of his own freewill" after we had insisted that Smith married of his own free-will. I t would be the same sort of heavy-handed nonsense of which the compulsive epistemologist would be guilty were he to contradict us when we say the rose is lovely by insisting that we ought to say something about rose-ish sensedata instead. Such language does not belong in everyday contexts, we have no reason now, nor would we have reason then, to drop perfectly innocuous, perfectly clear ways of making needed distinctions. We will always have to have some way of distinguishing shot-gun marriages from other kinds. I t might of course someday happen that
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no one is forced to marry against his or her will. I t is probably a lot less frequent these days than formerly. Then we shall no longer have a use for the expression "of his own free-will" speaking about marriages. But this will be because marriage patterns will have changed, not because a metaphysical convention will have been adopted. So it comes to this. When, in ordinary contexts, we say that Smith married of his own free-will, we mean only that there was no shotgun being pointed a t him by an angry father (or something like this). We do not deny that marriages are predictable, or even that this marriage was. Nor are we denying that the behavior of the groom could not have been explained along certain causal lines. When a gossip says: "It was love at first sight, the moment we saw them together we knew it was meant to be, it was inevitable they should be married"; she would not know what to make of the rejoinder "Then they didn't marry of their own free-will!" She could only repeat: "It was love at first sight, etc." Given the present conventions, such people, when they marry, don't marry against their wills. But the man who believes in the freedom of the will can not only be meaning the patent truth that people sometimes act willingly, are not coerced. What then precisely is it in which the freewillist believes? I t is never easy to make out except, negatively, that determinism is wrong. "The utmost that a believer in freewill can ever do will be to show that the deterministic arguments are not coercive" (Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, 11, 5 7 3 ) . The determinist, I have remarked, is not committeed to any specific causal hypothesis. His position indeed is logically independent of every specific causal hypothesis. Symmetrically, the free-willist is not committed to any specific ascription of freewill, to any specific agent or act. And he might continue to believe in the freedom of the will even if every specific ascription
he might make were rebutted, just in the way in which Mencius might go on believing in the basic goodness of mankind though he encountered only evil men. I t is to this remarkable looseness between principles and instances that the curious abstractness of the whole controversy is due. The free-willist does not so much try to furnish instances as to give reasons why there must be instances, why such ascriptions are, in principle, allowable. But the reasons themselves are likely to be by way of general metaphysical contentions: "Existence precedes essence" or "Other universes are possible so this one is not necessary." So the quarrel between the free-willist and his metaphysical enemy in no way resembles an argument between two plain men who might debate over whether or not Smith married of his own free-will. One need only imagine the sorts of reasons they might give, the facts they might cite. Then one should read through the controversy between Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall. There is, so far as I can see, not a single argument, not a single reason there which would be of use to those plain men in settling their dispute. To introduce any of the Hobbes-Bramhall sorts of arguments or reasons would warp the fabric of the plain men's controversy; it would bring it to a halt. The disputants could then go on to argue metaphysics, or they could return to the history of Smith's matrimony. But not both together. One might now ask: if we can truly decide, a t least in principle, whether or not Smith (or whoever) married (or whatever) of his own free-will, what reason have we for ever entertaining the sorts of arguments which engaged Hobbes and the churchman? And my answer is: none whatsoever; it depends on what you are after; it depends upon whether you are interested in doing history or in doing metaphysics. But a metaphysical problem requires a metaphysical solution.
