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
Political Libertarians, so modest or adequate seems more appropriate
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.
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
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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
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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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