It can be sad to think that a short while after we die we will be mostly forgotten. That we can put the thought aside is thanks to something of greater value than immortality: a life of rewards, plans and possibilities. If a hundred years from now I am forgotten, then in my life, at least, I will be noticed, I will make my mark, no matter on what scale. But if I am bound to the past, and just another causal sequence among others, in what sense do / make my mark? In what sense do / do anything? In their different ways the Incompatibilist view of determinism and the NeoHumean attack on self, write us out of life. They do not deny, of course, that we are human beings, who make changes, great and small, to the world, but they place those changes - those human changes - on a par with non-human events, like natural disasters and sunsets. They leave out something of importance about the way people see them-1
selves from the picture. What I have aimed to do in this thesis, by arguing for the possibility of freedom and the reality of self, is to put human beings back into the picture, that is to say, by showing that what someone does can be truly up to them, and that there is a ‘someone’ for it to be truly up to.
To do that I began by examining the traditional debate about determinism, free will and moral responsibility, concluding, with Honderich, that the debate could never be resolved on the terms adopt ed by the contending parties: namely by determining the true meanings of ‘free will’, ‘moral responsi bility’ and the like. I suggested that despite the failure of Incompatibilists to give a positive account of uncaused choice,' they have given expression to substantial concerns about the consequences of deter minism which Compatibilists have not responded to. In chapter 2 I pointed out that the view that deter minism and moral responsibility are incompatible, misconceives moral responsibility as marked out by a fixed and determinate concept; in fact it is a practice whose rules are insufficient to decide whether it
is compatible with determinism. I also argued, however, that determinism does give us reason to rethink some of our moral attitudes and practices.
The principle objections Incompatibilists have made to the compatibility of determinism and free will, are that one does a result of things that happened long before birth, and over which one could not have had control, and the seemingly unshakeable conviction every one of us has that what we do is truly and inescapably up to us. In chapter 3 I answered the second objection by building on Mackay’s argument that predictions of an agent’s behaviour will be logically incredible for her, by showing that the reason we cannot fail to see difficult deliberations and decisions as inescapably up to us, is that we cannot experience them as caused to happen in the way they do. I argued that this arises because of the way we experience causation and not from a deep metaphysical commitment to uncaused choice.
I also claimed that part of the intuitive pull of Incompatibilism comes from a sense that determin ism renders actions pointless. I attempted to give more substance to this in the form of a fatalist dilem ma in which the idea of a predetermined future appears to rob one who believes it of any motive to act. This has not, to my knowledge, been stated before, but it does seem to give expression to a principle source of intuitive opposition people have to determinism. I argued that since the outcome of any diffi cult decision is indeterminate until the agent makes it and carries it out, any future that depends on the decision and its being carried out must also be logically indeterminate for her. This being so, she can and must regard her decision as making a difference, and therefore she does have a motive to act.
Chapter 4 examined the special case of the Epicurean objection to determinism, and Honderich’s reworking of it. I argued that even if we had a capacity for undetermined choice, we would not be in a better position as seekers after truth.
Having resolved one major Incompatibilist objection to the compatibility of free will and deter minism, there still remained the other Incompatibilist objection that determinism renders all actions the inevitable consequences of things that happened before any of us could have done anything about it. I have argued that the solution to that is to be found in the Stoic conception of freedom as doing what is right and reasonable. In setting out the Stoic conception, in chapter 5 , 1 argued that it is not alien to what is ordinarily meant by freedom, and, indeed, that it is truer to why we take freedom to be impor tant than the impoverished conception of the Bentham and traditional Compatibilism. I then went on to explore some of the implications, strengths and limitations of the Stoic conception as it is carried
through in Spinoza’s philosophy.
The further development of the Stoic conception in the work of Kant and Hegel, and its relation ship to their conceptions of self and Geist was examined in chapter 6 ,1 sought to show that a realistic idea of freedom as acting in accordance with what is right and reasonable is to be found in Hegel. I argued that what is reasonable is not, as Hume imagined, a matter merely of instrumental means to given ends, and that what is right must be determined by a free agent within conceptual and contextual limits. I showed, finally, how the Stoic conception of freedom has the solution to the problem that everything we do now is a result of what happened in the distant past. Nothing, I argued, happens without a cause, but not all that happens can be explained exclusively in terms of causes. What hap pened before I was bom was not up to me, but it is within my power to make what happens now up to me, through the exercise of reason and by acting in accordance with what is right and reasonable. The compelling image of self shot through or in the grip of causal patterns originating before one’s birth, can be broken by keeping in mind that the causal sequence does not just follow a meaningless trajectory of its own, but can be given a particular form or shape by the application of principles that are unaffect ed by the causal sequence. It is this that makes us free, and the capacity to do otherwise, contra- causally, would add nothing to it.
Freedom could now be said to be within reach, but within reach of what or whom? The Hegelian conception of freedom set out in chapter 6 was bound up with his idea of Geist as the unifying principle of consciousness and an activity embodying reason. Part 3 sought to apply this idea of Geist to the concept of self, to show not only that we are free, but also that there is a ‘we’ to be free. In chapter 6 1 showed how self as an activity can play a unifying role in consciousness. I argued that the reductionist arguments of Dennett and Parfit assume, tacitly or otherwise, that mental contents are self-subsisting and discrete: a view that is utterly misconceived. In chapter 7 I showed how self, unlike personal identi ty, can be said to endure over time.
Supposing then, that freedom is possible in a deterministic universe, and that there are selves to be free, what else can be said? What is the value of this account, practically or theoretically? and what are its implications? It is difficult to know what the consequences would be if views such as Parfit’s on personal identity, and those of Incompatibilist determinists, were to really take hold: some form of mass fatalism perhaps? Distorted echoes of their views resonate in the social sciences, and one could wish
that they did not. For people to be free it does appear to be a prerequisite that they should believe themselves to have the capacity for freedom.
The usefulness and application of the account of freedom and self were examined in Part 4. In chapter 8 I adapted the idea of self as reasoning activities to the concept of agency, by arguing that agency consists in the activity of practical reasoning. I showed, therefore, that the idea that one’s ac tions are one’s own doing can be reconciled with a naturalistic account in which they are described as discrete events. I also argued, however, that between playing no part in one’s behaviour and fully iden tifying with it, is a range of intermediate cases of limited agency.
In chapter 101 sought to explore further what ways we can be free and unfree. 1 explained how, given the claim that freedom consists in acting in accordance with what is right and reasonable, a conception of self as reasoning activities can account for internal ‘obstacles’ to freedom and self enslavement. At the same time 1 indicated how self-conscious reflection on the reasonability of one’s thoughts and actions can bring freedom truly within reach.
Is it enough?
1 have shown that it is possible to go much further towards meeting Incompatibilist concerns, or what motivates them, than Compatibilists have done hitherto. 1 have identified as one of their major preoccupations, the need to be free of the past, or at least not to be completely bound to it. If being free of the past means one’s actions not being the results of causal chains stretching back into the past, then that concern cannot be met, not only because determinism is most likely true, but because there seems no way that undetermined actions could be made to look like free and responsible ones. Incompatibi lists can, of course, insist that this is the sort of freedom they are interested in and that nothing else will do. If so they will be bound to declare that my arguments do not meet their true concerns. But Incompa tibilists do not, by and large, take their concerns to be straightforward expressions of what most people believe is necessary for freedom and responsibility. Rather, they take them to be theoretical expressions of those concerns (cf. Honderich 1988, pp. 389-390). We do, as Honderich suggests, have hopes, or at least images, of open futures. If, as 1 believe, such hopes or images can be accommodated without indeterminist theories of mind, then Incompatibilists who insist on exactly what they say they want.
would be clinging to the lifeless letter of their theories, rather than what has made them attractive or persuasive.
What indeterminist theories of mind give expression to (and, thus, what Incompatibilists want) in addition to our hopes of open futures, is the idea or image that actions are owed to selves who are not caused to do what they do. If the picture of self and decision making I have set out is sound, then these hopes, concerns, images, and ideas, at least, are realisable in a deterministic universe. Our futures are open not merely because we do not, as a matter of fact, happen to know how things will go, but because it is logically impossible for us to know our own brain states and, consequently, what we will do. When it comes to decisions and actions that are routine or characteristic, agents can be said, in a loose sense, to know what they will decide or do. But any decision that requires deliberation cannot be known by an agent until she makes it, and the outcome of any endeavour that requires determination and effort of will cannot be known until it has either succeeded or failed. Our futures are open, then, in just this sense. The past may be there in our decisions, but not in such a way as to take our decisions away from us. When it comes to deciding and carrying through what we decide, we are, as Sartre has it, on our own.
The idea of self I have argued for might also be dismissed by libertarians and dualists as not the genuine Cartesian item. Again, however, what we must be concerned with is not the theories, but what the theories give expression to: and that is an idea, or image, or sense, that our actions are owed to a ‘determinate centre’ (Honderich 1988, p. 386), that acts, decides and is the subject of experience. The conception of self as a reason-embodying unifying activity is at one with that sense of self. The proc esses or activities I described as substantial self, is what makes conscious control over one’s body possible, and what makes it possible to have experiences. The concept of self-conscious self, or the Subject, refers to the activities of questioning, identifying, analysing, comparing, evaluating, deciding and acting, which make one’s hopes, goals, beliefs, and values, truly one’s own.
That self, thus conceived, is not an item to be introspectively experienced, but an activity or activi ties, which we have a sense of, just in being able to carry them out, and in their consequences, brings our sense of self together with the open future that confronts us. Just as we are compelled to decide alone, and can find nothing in the past to cause us to decide in this way rather than that, so also we can find nothing of self that will determine for us what we should do or decide. The sense of our actions as
owed to ourselves and not as following inevitably from what went before, is, therefore, a real feature of the way we act and decide. It is no illusion.
It is not only in the sense of self and the experience of freedom, however, that Incompatibilism can be shown to be needless. The Stoic conception of freedom I have outlined overcomes the inadequa cies of the lesser freedom with which, until comparatively recently, Compatibilists have satisfied themselves. To be free in the sense that matters, consists not only in being able to do what one wants, but also in being able to want what one wants, and in being able to act on that. This freedom comes of the capacity self-consciously to reflect on and evaluate one’s values, beliefs, goals, habits and character. Often enough there are no right answers about how one should live and believe, and what one should do, but it is also often enough that there are decisions and actions that are clearly wrong. If, in a deter ministic universe, one does not do those things and what follows from them, then one loses no freedom in not being able to do them. To choose them is to be unfree. To be apt to choose them is to have an unfree character. The capacity to make voluntary choices which is emphasised by Compatibilists, is a necessary but not sufficient constituent of the capacity to act, decide and live in accordance with reason. The capacity to make undetermined choices is irrelevant to it and would add nothing to it.
It seems to me that my arguments give a better expression to the unreflective ideas and images that Incompatibilist theories try to give expression to. Those ideas and images, as I have mentioned, have to do with hopes for open futures that are not bound to what has gone before, and with our being able to have control over ourselves as free agents and selves, i.e. that what we do should be up to us. There are, however, limits to how much control and autonomy we may expect to have, and, probably, to how much we should reasonably want.
The limits of control
I have indicated that to act and decide in accordance with reason need not be to live according to some absolute Kantian schema, but to rationally reflect on personal goals, values, character, and so on, and to put that into practical effect where appropriate. All of that goes to make what an agent does and chooses properly her own. I have also suggested, however, that the ultimate source of reasons for what one does, is the social historical environment in one lives. It hardly needs saying that it is also the
ultimate source of what an individual is.
Ownership of oneself and one’s actions therefore is circumscribed. Belonging and participating are features of human experience that are necessary and universal. There is little that any of us can hope to get accomplished without the work and cooperation of others. Freedom for any of us, therefore, can depend on things that are outside our control. To be utterly in control of oneself would be a strange thing indeed.
In chapter 6 1 suggested that the Stoics conception of freedom was developed through criticism of a standard identification of freedom with slavery. Since ideas of freedom take off from notions of unfreedom in slavery and imprisonment, there has always been a metaphorical temptation to perceive freedom as attainable by replacing one source of domination with another: the external by the internal, the master by self, and the rule of nature by the rule of reason. The image is present in Stoic ideas of ‘self-mastery’ or ‘self-control’. It is there in Kant’s conception of reverence and obedience to the moral law. The importance of control and acting in accordance with reason, however, is that it liberates us from the blind dominion of the past and of circumstance, and that it gives us the possibility of a life with possibilities and worthwhile choices. It is not an end in itself. To seek self-control for its own sake would be tail-chasing, and all too likely to produce self-enslaving obsessiveness.
Freedom, like happiness, is best understood as characteristic of one’s ongoing life rather than of this or that choice or action. A person is free according to the degree she is characteristically able to