The Ugly Intuition at the Core of Free Will

Politics, economics, religion, culture — so much rides on belief in moral desert free will.

I usually write about politics and ethics—sharing, blame, accountability. Sometimes the arguments are strong enough to push my opponent into free will territory. It’s that final hiding place for justifying suffering after every consequentialist defense has been dismantled. (I see this a lot in economics debates.)

That’s when the argument usually begins to sound like:

“They only have themselves to blame.”

“It was their choice / they could’ve done otherwise.”

“They morally deserve to suffer.”

“They have free will, after all.”

That’s fine. I can’t force anyone to be skeptical of whether we have moral-desert free will; after all, whether we do in a meaningful sense is ultimately a matter of intuition.

What I can do is show that the default intuition is that we don’t have moral desert free will. That can be shown objectively. I’ll get to how in a sec.

Meanwhile, to get a head start on this, check out Sam Harris’ slim book Free Will. It’s been called a “museum of mistakes” by philosophers like Dennett, but it’s not. It’s just not padded with the defensive flourishes academic philosophy requires to filter out people who haven’t paid their dues.

Harris is more than adequate to get the job done outside of an academic setting. Because it’s not that complex.

In fact—just my opinion—he’s by far the clearest writer and explainer of free will skepticism compared to top contenders: Gregg Caruso, Dirk Pereboom, (well, maybe not Galen Strawson, who writes like a gonzo artist or like pure glass), Bruce Waller, or the great Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza.

In his own way, Harris lucidly covers all the core concepts: the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), sourcehood, leeway, reasons-responsiveness, hard incompatibilism, quantum randomness, downward causation, and the problem with Compatibilism—where he does no worse than Caruso in a head-to-head against Daniel Dennett (and arguably no better—it’s Dennett, after all).

Neither Harris nor Caruso fully articulated the move that Dennett-style Compatibilists are making. Harris and Caruso tend to lean hard on metaphysics, confident that the intuition of moral desert will dissolve naturally under either determinism or randomness, unless someone is confused, dishonest, or vaguely gesturing in the direction of the supernatural.

But there’s a fourth possibility. Naming this fourth argument precisely and fairly is the only honest way to engage Compatibilism. We’ll get there in a sec.

Meanwhile, if the goal is to explain to an opponent how we don’t have moral desert free will, and do so with the rigor approaching that of a respected philosopher, Pereboom’s Four Case Argument and Strawson’s Basic Argument suffice. Both are simple enough for the average layman to understand. If people still give you problems after that, check back with me.

For most readers, Sam Harris and neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky (Determined) are plenty—because, again, it’s not that hard to show that morally blaming and praising what amount to sentient dominos in a causal chain feels ugly and stupid.

Especially when we’re talking about “basic” deservedness—the kind of blame and praise disconnected from incentive or deterrent, justified purely on the idea that “they just deserve it.”

The only honest rebuttal a Compatibilist can offer is:

“It doesn’t feel ugly and stupid to me.”

Even though they admit: yes, it’s just sentient dominos in a chain.

That admission is critical. So the burden is on them to explain why, without invoking consequentialism, their intuition is more natural, more stable, or more parsimonious. (In fairness, the burden is also on us to explain why it isn’t.)

First, let’s review what they’re claiming:

That a sentient domino with:

1. the ability to sometimes not fall, and

2. an internally-understood moral reason not to fall,

3. is morally responsible if they do fall

The trick is this: any time a domino does fall, it could not have done otherwise in that instance. That’s just what determinism means.

The good news is that Compatibilists agree with this. So far so good. The vice tightens. Isn’t this exciting? 🍿😸

This is where they pivot:

“The domino itself feels like it could have done otherwise. That feeling—that experience of ‘free will’—is the only kind of ‘free will’ worth talking about.”

Dennett artfully dubs it:

“The only kind of free will worth wanting.”

That’s a killer line that plays well to the peanut gallery. But it’s a value judgment. “Worth” and “want” are tells. We’ve left metaphysics. We’re in the realm of pragmatism now.

Pragmatism is the “true if useful” model of truth. It works when something is useful by definition, like antibiotics or seatbelts. But usefulness is always tethered to values. (It can always be tied back to what is wanted, or what someone feels matters.)

So compatibilism, at its steel-man best, is pragmatism hinging on the value claim that experiencing moral desert free will is useful. Meaning it’s something we want to intuit, that it matters to us that we do.

They’ll say it’s the more intuitive path—not a contrivance, but a universally felt truth that washes over human beings even while they’re honestly looking at and understanding the metaphysics of determinism.

But here’s the thing: it’s not intuitive to everyone. It isn’t to me. And I’d argue it’s less parsimonious (less Occam’s Razorish) when you look at the metaphysics honestly.

That’s the dagger.

And if someone says parsimony is subjective? Debatable. But what’s definitive is that in one study, after subjects were quickly walked through Pereboom’s Four Case Argument, those who intuited that moral deservedness is possible plummeted to a small minority.

That evidence suggests that moral desert skepticism may very well be what we naturally intuit most of the time.

More studies need to be done to verify this. But if true, it means that if we think of human beings as sentient dominos in a chain, our intuition is that they lack the control required for moral desert.

Even if the domino feels like it had control.

Even if we feel it’s useful to pretend it did.

Ask yourself: what’s your intuition?

Or better yet: what feels ugly to you?

Is it uglier to say:

“This person couldn’t have done otherwise. Let’s prevent harm, rehabilitate if possible, but stop short of indulging in retributive cruelty.

Or:

“This person could not have done otherwise—but they still deserve to suffer for it.”

The latter feels uglier to me. And if you’re honest, I think it does to you too.

But there’s a whole world out there counting on you to not think that hard.

To blame the domino.

To protect systems that run on that blame.

😔

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This is the end of the article.

Wanna try Pereboom? It’s below.

Wanna see Strawson’s Basic Argument? That’s down there too.

In a future post, I’ll be suggesting rewrites for these four phrases:

“They only have themselves to blame.”

“It was their choice / they could’ve done otherwise.”

“They morally deserve to suffer.”

“They have free will, after all.”

Because if we’re honest about what’s ugly, and what’s clear, we can start saying things that don’t do quiet harm.

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Pereboom’s Four Case Argument

Case 1: A team of neuroscientists has the ability to manipulate Plum’s neural states at any time by radio-like technology. In this particular case, they do so by pressing a button just before he begins to reason about his situation, which they know will produce in him a neural state that realizes a strongly egoistic reasoning process, which the neuroscientists know will deterministically result in his decision to kill White. Plum would not have killed White had the neuroscientists not intervened, since his reasoning would then not have been sufficiently egoistic to produce this decision. But otherwise Plum’s decision meets the requirements set down by standard compatibilist accounts of free will (i.e. it is consistent with his character, reflexively endorsed by a second-order desires, produced by a mechanism that is sensitive to reasons, moral and prudential).

It seems straightforward enough to say that Plum’s decision is not freely willed in this case. It is the result of external manipulation.

Case 2: Plum is just like an ordinary human being, except that a team of neuroscientists programmed him at the beginning of his life so that his reasoning is often but not always egoistic (as in Case 1), and at times strongly so, with the intended consequence that in his current circumstances he is causally determined to engage in the egoistic reasons-responsive process of deliberation and to have the set of first and second-order desires that result in his decision to kill White. The neural realization of his reasoning process and of his decision is exactly the same as it is in Case 1 (although their causal histories are different).

Again, it seems straightforward enough to say that Plum’s decision is not freely willed in this case. The only difference between this case and Case 1 is that the manipulation took place at an earlier moment in time (during his initial development). But that can’t be a relevant difference. At least not when it comes to assessing free will and responsibility.

Case 3: Plum is an ordinary human being, except that the training practices of his community causally determined the nature of his deliberative reasoning process so that they are frequently but not exclusively rationally egoistic (the resulting nature of his deliberative reasoning processes are exactly as they are in Cases 1 and 2). This training was completed before he developed the ability to prevent or alter these practices. Due to the aspect of his character produced by this training, in his present circumstances he is causally determined to engage in the strongly egoistic reasons-responsive process of deliberation and to have the first and second-order desires that issue in his decision to kill White.

This case is like Case 2. The only difference is that it removes the technological manipulation by neuroscientists and replaces it with cultural and behavioural manipulation. Pereboom’s claim is that the fact that the manipulation is done by some brain implant or programming device, vis-a-vis traditional methods, should play no part in our moral assessment. If technological manipulation undermines free will and responsibility, so too should cultural and behavioural manipulation. Once again Plum is not responsible for his action.

Case 4: Everything that happens in our universe is causally determined by virtue of its past states together with the laws of nature. Plum is an ordinary human being, raised in normal circumstances, and again his reasoning processes are frequently but not exclusively egoistic, and sometimes strongly so (as in Cases 1-3). His decision to kill White issues from his strongly egoistic but reasons-responsive process of deliberation, and he has the specified first and second-order desires. The neural realization of Plum’s reasoning process and decision is exactly as it is in Cases 1-3.

Okay, so this is where things get really interesting. The idea is that Case 4 is like Case 3, only there is no explicit manipulation by another set of agents (neuroscientists or cultural peers). No doubt some environmental manipulation is taking place — we are all, on determinism, products of our historical and contemporary environments — but we don’t know exactly what it is. This is pretty much the view of all causal determinists in the present age.

(Example above lifted in entirety from Philosophical Disquisitions)

Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument

Brief version:

1. “What you do, in the circumstances in which you find yourself, happens based on what you are.”

2. “Thus, to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are, at least in some mental respects.”

3. “BUT you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are.”

4. “Thus, you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.”

Stella commentary:

Sometimes the phrase “ultimately responsible” trips people up and they say: “When we blame we are not saying people are ULTIMATELY responsible.”

Agreed. So why treat them like they are if we can go easier (and more accurately) on them without breaking anything?