But I don't see how my argument (...) is an instance of the modal fallacy, even if my serial killer example might not be absolute proof that we cannot choose to do otherwise if we have no power over the facts of the future. — ToothyMaw

I wonder why you are favoring this form of the argument for incompatibilism, starting with a premise denying control over facts of the future, over the more commonly encountered versions of van Inwagen's consequence argument, which rather start with the much more uncontroversial premise that no one has power over facts of the past. Van Inwagen then has to make use of the so called Rule Beta in order for his argument to carry through without relying on a modal fallacy (also called the fatalist fallacy, in this context: asserting that whatever was the case in the past necessarily was the case).

Rule Beta asserts that from N(p) and N(p implies q), we may infer N(q),

where the operator N signifies 'No one ever has any power over...'

You can refer to Kadri Vihvelin's SEP article for a detailed statement and discussion of van Inwagen's argument.

The manner in which you formulate your own argument appears to straddle the compatibilist with the burden of demonstrating not only that agents can have power over their own choices, and hence also over the future consequences of their choices, but that, in addition, they must demonstrate that such a power must somehow consist in an ability to make the future different than what it actually is. But that's not what (most) compatibilist ever have set out to demonstrate. They rather want to say that although what the future facts actually are may be fully determined by the actual past (and the laws of nature), this determination is mediated in part by the choices agents make unconstrained (or not fully constrained) by facts external to their own power agency. Furthermore, on a conditional reading of the principle of alternative possibilities, it remains true that if the agents had made different choices (counterfactually) then the future (and the past!) would have been different (still counterfactually).

It seems undeniable to me then that our own actions are facts of the future that we must not have control over unless we could could have acted differently then we did due to a factor that is not external. To presume that one could have acted differently due to a difference in character that is not external to the will, however, is to assume that determinism is false.

I think this misconstrues the compatibilist claim regarding PAP. When the compatibilist claims that, on her conditional reading of it, the PAP is satisfied by her (compatibilist) conception of free agency, she isn't claiming that the agent had the power to change her own character from what it actually was, at the time when she deliberated or acted. This would indeed involve a denial of determinism. The compatibilist rather is claiming that although facts of the actual past entail the actual facts about the character of an agent, and also entail that her power of agency was actualized in the specific way that is actually was, nevertheless, counterfactually, the agent's character could have been different and hence her power of agency could have been actualised differently. That may seem to be a distinction without a difference for an incompatibilist who assumes that agents have no power over 'the past' (and hence over the characters that they actually have when they start deliberating practically). But the incompatibilist conception of 'the past', and of the past 'circumstances' of an agent, violate the compatibilist conception of embodied agency. It seems to be relying on construing our own bodily and cognitive features and abilities as 'circumstances' externally constraining our actions, whereas the compatibilist insists that they are part of us. In other words, they aren't determining us to act in specific ways, they rather are us determining (not in an instantaneous present instant but in the fullness of time) how to act.

I wonder why you are favoring this form of the argument for incompatibilism, starting with a premise denying control over facts of the future, over the more commonly encountered versions of van Inwagen's consequence argument, which rather start with the much more uncontroversial premise that no one has power over facts of the past. — Pierre-Normand

I actually make use of that argument. Check out one of my earlier posts. The argument I gave depends on the one in the SEP article.

I actually make use of that argument. Check out one of my earlier posts. The argument I gave depends on the one in the SEP article. — ToothyMaw

Yes, I had read most of the post in this and in the previous thread. But in that case, if you rely on the idea of the fixity of the past to infer that agents lack power over present and future facts, you also have to justify some analogue to van Inwagen's Beta Rule in order that your argument not exemplify the modal (or fatalist) fallacy. When it is made explicit that you are reliant on such a rule, and you've explained the nature of the N operator that you are making use of, it may become apparent that you are tacitly assuming an implausibly thin conception of the power of human agency in the way @khaled had suggested.

When it is made explicit that you are reliant on such a rule, and you've explained the nature of the N operator that you are making use of, it may become apparent that you are tacitly assuming an implausibly thin conception of the power of human agency in the way khaled had suggested. — Pierre-Normand

I have a reply to this, but first I'll fix my argument.

1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

This is valid because of the following rule:

N(p)

N(p entails q)

N(q)

Where the operator N means "no one has any power over over"

@Pierre-Normand Is this valid?

Yes, but what it takes to be autonomous is what's at issue. My argument appears to demonstrate that it requires aseity and thus that one cannot 'become' autonomous. For to be autonomous in the way presupposed by moral responsibility requires that one's actions 'not' be the product of external causes (not wholly, anyway). Which they will be, of course, if one has come into being. So by suggesting that though one is not responsible for the way that one is, one can nevertheless 'become' autonomous is already to have begged the question. If there is no false premise in my argument, then the very idea of 'becoming' autonomous is confused. — Bartricks

Your argument, so far as I had understood it, basically amounts to a combination of van Inwagen's argument for incompatibilism and Galen Strawson's 'Basic Argument' (a regress argument) for the impossibility moral responsibility. You accept the validity of both (while qualifying the first) but deny the soundness of the second. You assert the existence of human responsibility (and hence also of free will) as a premise and then turn Strawson's modus ponens into your own modus tollens. Strawson's argument tacitly assumes the lack of aseity (since his regress stops at a time before the agent was morally autonomous) and concludes to the lack of moral responsibility. While you are accepting the validity of this argument, your are postulating the negation of his conclusion (to a lack of responsibility) to infer the falsity of his tacit premise (the lack of aseity). That is fine, as far as the logic of your argumentation goes. However, if we deny the implausibly thin conception of agency that both van Inwagen's and Strawson's arguments seem to be relying on, then you can't rely on their modus ponens to ground your modus tollens. If Q does not logically follow from P, then not(P) does not logically follow from not(Q) either. Aseity might still be able to ground free will and moral responsibility (although I'm still rather unclear how it does so) but it's not logically required to do so even on the assumption of physical determinism.

I have a reply to this, but first I'll fix my argument.

1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

This is valid because of the following rule:

N(p)

N(p entails q)

N(q)

Where the operator N means "no one has any power over over"
p is the facts of the past and the laws of nature
q is the facts of the future

@Pierre-Normand Is this valid? — ToothyMaw

Yes, thank you. Now it is valid. It's a good starting point. It now remains to be elucidated what "having the power over..." means exactly in such a way that the two premises are true and this operator represents a plausible conception of the power of human agency. One question that can be asked is how very much your "power over" something is restricted when those past facts about yourself that you presently lack "power over" are both (1) partially constitutive of who you are and (2) contribute to the determination of the future. In other words, the argument may be trading on a equivocation between your "present self" (who allegedly lacks power over facts of the past) and yourself as an embodied animal characterised as having temporally protracted dispositions (and therefore whose very existence reaches into the past). Put yet in another way, even though the argument is sound in yielding the conclusion that your "present self" can't change the actual future into some alternative future, how does that imply anything about someone (i.e. an embodied agent who didn't exist exclusively in an instantaneous present moment) lacking the ability to set this future in accordance with her will?

Should it be

N(p)

N(p entails q)

N(q) — ToothyMaw

or:

N(p)

N(p entails all q)

N(q)

I'm thinking if it's to be a general rule it's the first one.

I'm thinking if it's to be a general rule it's the first one. — ToothyMaw

I'm not sure I understand the second one. Since p and q are propositional variables, they can represent the conjunction of all the statements of 'fact' that are true at a time -- what is also called 'a past' or 'a future'. (or also, of course 'a past in conjunction with the laws of nature')

I have absolutely no background in logic at all. I'm just learning as I'm going. But that makes sense. I'll think on your last post.

Yes, thank you. Now it is valid. It's a good starting point. It now remains to be elucidated what "having the power over..." means exactly in such a way that the two premises are true and this operator represents a plausible conception of the power of human agency. One question that can be asked is how very much your "power over" something is restricted when those past facts about yourself that you presently lack "power over" are both (1) partially constitutive of who you are and (2) contribute to the determination of the future. — Pierre-Normand

I suppose it is implausible to assert that one's current character is a blend of all of the factors external to their wills and their interactions with these external factors (environment, laws of nature, initial character)? It does seem odd, as one's previous character affects one's previous actions and thus current character, and is not really external to their will according to the compatibilist. If the will is externalized then one's current character results directly from one's previous character and one's current character is pretty much predetermined and there is no agency at all. No one would have any power over anything they do. .

I mean if character is defined in that way I think it accounts for (1) and (2), but the ramifications it has for agency are pretty implausible, yes.

I mean if character is defined in that way I think it accounts for (1) and (2), but the ramifications it has for agency are pretty implausible, yes. — ToothyMaw

Yup!

Looks like moral responsibility might exist!

Sorry, not maybe might

Looks like moral responsibility might exist! — ToothyMaw

I mean maybe I will have to admit it exists

I mean maybe I will have to admit it exists — ToothyMaw

That's cool. In care you're interested, the published positive account that has seemed the most convincing to me so far, is Victoria McGeer's, in her recent paper Scaffolding agency: A proleptic account of the reactive attitudes

I'll check it out. To be honest, I don't read nearly as much as I should. And I'm often intimidated by rigorous arguments. But I'll try to get through it if I can get it free somewhere.

Yes, that sounds correct about Strawson.

When it comes to Van Inwagen, I am not so sure. You're focussing on Van Inwagen's incompatibilism. However, I am agnostic on whether incompatibilism or compatibilism is true (for I am arguing that aseity is necessary for moral responsibility, not that it is sufficient - so I leave open that it may still be the case that alternative possibilities of the indeterministic kind are also needed if one is to be morally responsible for one's actions.....though I am a long way from being convinced about that).

What I do share with Van Inwagen is a belief that it is more plausible that we have free will and are morally responsible than that free will requires indeterminism. As I understand him, he has argued that if determinism could somehow be established to be true, then he would simply conclude that compatibilism is true, rather than abandon belief in free will. That is, he would give up his incompatibilism over the reality of moral responsibility. He believes the reality of moral responsiblity is more clear and distinct than any theory about what moral responsibility requires.

And that seems quite right: it is, after all, demonstrably more manifest to our reason that we have free will and are morally responsible than it is that free will requires this or that metaphysical thesis to be true. It seems absurd to think that incompatibilism is more obviously true than that we have free will; the reverse is clearly the case. And so anyone who, after concluding that free will requires x, then concludes that as we lack x we lack free will, is someone who is allowing the weaker overrule the stronger.

I apply that to my own view as well, of course. It is much more powerfully self-evident that I am morally responsible than that moral responsibility requires aseity. I think it demonstrably does require aseity - I have yet to hear any reason to think it doesn't - but I accept that its requiring aseity is less powerfully self-evident than the reality of our moral responsibility itself. And thus if it was established that we do not exist with aseity, I would take this to constitute evidence that free will does not require it.

That, however, is not our situation. The situation is that we have an argument - the aseity argument - that appears to establish that moral responsibility requires aseity. Every premise in that argument is well supported. And aseity is something we possibly are, as we know on independent grounds that at least some things must exist in that way.

This, combined with the fact we so obviously are morally responsible gets me to my conclusion.

You have said that Strawson assumes a 'thin' conception of agency (and so by extension, so do I). I do not really know what you mean by that. But I stress, aseity is a necessary condition, not sufficient. By making aseity necessary I am adding, not subtracting from an account of what moral responsibilty conferring agency involves. For I am saying that in addition to whatever reason-responsiveness conditions the compatibilist or incompatibilist says are necessary, aseity is needed as well.

What I do share with Van Inwagen is a belief that it is more plausible that we have free will and are morally responsible than that free will requires indeterminism. As I understand him, he has argued that if determinism could somehow be established to be true, then he would simply conclude that compatibilism is true, rather than abandon belief in free will. That is, he would give up his incompatibilism over the reality of moral responsibility. He believes the reality of moral responsibility is more clear and distinct than any theory about what moral responsibility requires. — Bartricks

I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm going to read his 2008 paper How to Think about the Problem of Free Will in order to better understand his conception of the most plausible compatibilist account that he'd be willing to endorse if determinism were established to be true. I'll then come back to you to address the remainder of your post.

He doesn't express the view I attributed to him in that piece. But it is attributed to him by John Martin Fischer in his article "Recent Work on Moral Responsibility" (Ethics 1999, fn. 67).

He doesn't express the view I attributed to him in that piece. But it is attributed to him by John Martin Fischer in his article "Recent Work on Moral Responsibility" (Ethics 1999, fn. 67). — Bartricks

Oh, I see. Thanks. I'll probably have a look at that too, as well as Lewis's Are we free to break the laws?

I suppose it is implausible to assert that one's current character is a blend of all of the factors external to their wills and their interactions with these external factors (environment, laws of nature, initial character)? It does seem odd, as one's previous character affects one's previous actions and thus current character, and is not really external to their will according to the compatibilist. If the will is externalized then one's current character results directly from one's previous character and one's current character is pretty much predetermined and there is no agency at all. No one would have any power over anything they do. — ToothyMaw

How is it implausible? It clearly 'is' the case if you have come into being. There's no way around it.

Imagine we're making a soup. We start with a saucepan of water. Is that the soup? No. We add some ingredients - some stock, some herbs, some onion etc. Adding each one affects the flavour. And how that affect the flavour, let us imagine, depends on what flavour it had when they were added. Okay.

Now, perhaps it is not clear when, exactly, we have a soup on our hands. But that's irrelevant. The fact remains that the soup did not create itself, yes? Even though it acquired a flavour and the flavour it had affected how other ingredients affected it, at no point does this mean that the soup was not a product of external causes.

That's obvious. And it is no less obvious when it isn't a soup, but a body. So, if you accept that if you're not responsible for A and A is causally responsible for B, then you have to accept that you're not responsible for your body if you came into being. And if your mind is part of your body, then you're not responsible for your mind - not responsible for it being the kind of mind that produces this or that decision under this or that circumstance.

Does it make a dot of difference if indeterminism is involved? Nope. Just imagine it was indeterministic what flavour the soup would have. Is it now true that the soup creates itself? If the soup had a mind could it now be morally responsible for its flavour? No, the idea is absurd.

So, while it may - perhaps - be a requirement of responsible agency that one have an ability to do otherwise of a kind only indeterminism can facilitate, the fact remains that this will do nothing in terms of making one morally responsible if one does not already satisfy the aseity requirement.

Eating a healthy diet is good for long life. But if you're dead already there's no point in forcing vegetables into your corpse, is there? Likewise, unless you exist with aseity you can have all the abilities to do otherwise you like, you're dead responsibility wise.

Again, so far I have not heard a single good objection to any of the premises of the aseity argument. Rather, it is just being ignored and focus is transferring to abilities to do otherwise. They're beside the point. Like I say, it's like discussing what the best diet may be for the corpse in front of you.

As if the cake analogy wasn't enough.

I can't really dispute the aseity argument, but I can dispute whether or not we have aseity, and I think that if you agree that our initial, current, and future character is solely the product of external causes, then the argument:

1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.
4. If we do not have power over the facts of the future we cannot choose to do otherwise.
5. No one has power over the facts of the future.
6. Therefore, we cannot choose to do otherwise.
7. We have free will only if we can choose to do otherwise.
8. Therefore, we do not have free will.

applies. There are definitely objections to this argument, but they don't include assuming that we have aseity, because I'm attacking one of the premises necessary for showing that we have aseity.

Cakes, soups - it's all the same.

No, you're assuming we do not have aseity, not showing it.

If the aseity argument cannot be refuted - and as yet I see no grounds for thinking any of its premises are false - then aseity has been shown to be required for moral responsibility. And you accept this.

Well, moral responsibility is something we have excellent evidence we possess. The reason of virtually all of us represents us to be morally responsible. What better evidence can we have that we are morally responsible?

So, it follows that we exist with aseity. That is, the evidence that we are morally responsible is, by extension, evidence that we exist with aseity.

What you're doing is arguing that we are not morally responsible on the basis of an argument that has a premise - premise 1 - that is false if we exist with aseity. So you're not providing evidence that we lack aseity, you're just assuming we lack it.

I derived this from your argument, so if anything is wrong just say so (this is my first try at an argument like this):

1. It is logically necessary that((FW => A) => U)

2. N((FW => A) => U)

3. A <=> U (A is materially equivalent to U)

4. N((FW => U) => U) (from 2 and 3)

5. Therefore, it is logically necessary that((FW => U) => U)

N is the operator “no one has any power over” (which signifies “is logically necessary”)
U is moral responsibility
A is aseity
FW is free will

This argument (derived from 5 and your own argument for aseity) is fallacious:

1. It is logically necessary that((p => q) => q)
2. p & q
3. Therefore, it is logically necessary that q

Here is an example of said argument that is obviously fallacious:

1. You have no power over the fact that if you put out cookies and milk for Santa, he will eat them.
2. You put out cookies and milk for Santa.
3.Therefore, you have no power over whether or not Santa eats the cookies and milk.

You could always just eat the cookies yourself, or hit Santa with a baseball bat for invading your home; the argument suffers from the fatalist fallacy. Just because we can't alter the facts of the past doesn't mean our actions cannot bring about different outcomes. The past, while fixed, runs forward into the future, and we are able to deliberate in the present, critically evaluating our reasons for acting. So there is some agency even if the past is fixed, I think.

In order for the Santa argument not to be fallacious you must have a rule that accounts for the fact that the past might have been different; you couldn't have not put out the cookies and milk, but even so, that doesn't mean you cannot deliberate and take actions that lead to Santa not eating the cookies. So, again, you must come up with a rule that allows one to infer that the future follows directly from past events we have no control over.

But this is just an example put in terms of an argument you have used. The main point is that your argument for aseity is fallacious, I think.