Look back at what you wrote... confusing the concepts of conditional and contingent. You know better than that. You also know that modal logic isn't going to help provide any foundation for the concept of volition. It's an analytical tool, not an ontological theory.

You really don't have to go past Searle's argument for volition. Extend your index finger. Wiggle it around. QED.

Look back at what you wrote... confusing the concepts of conditional and contingent. — Mongrel

That was a bit of a shorthand but I thought the context made it clear what I meant with the phrase "... depends contingently on ..."

If A depends conditionally on C, and C is contingent, then A inherits it contingency from C's contingency even if the law that expresses the conditional dependence is necessary. Hence, if physical laws make it (physically) necessary that I would do A in conditions C, but C is a contingent set of conditions, then it may still be contingent that I am doing A. The key for understanding compatibilist free will is that the relevant contingent conditions of the action aren't outside of the scope of the powers of human beings, but are partially determined by them in accordance with our rational second-natures -- that is, in accordance with our acquired sensitivity to the reasons that we may have for acting in this or that way in relevant circumstances.

Also the suggestion that I am appealing to pure modal logic in order to provide a foundation for "volition" (a loaded philosophical term that I never even make use of) is unwarranted. I am merely making use of modal logic in order to clarify the structure of the argument as best as I can.

That was a bit of a shorthand but I thought the context made it clear what I meant. If A depends conditionally on B, and B is contingent, — Pierre-Normand

If B (a set of spaciotemporal specifications), then A (where A is a statement of natural law.)

I don't think it's presently clear what it means for B to be contingent (in some way beyond the meaning that we can imagine things being different.) Maybe the universe is like a branching shrub and every possibility is manifest somewhere, sometime. Maybe the Eternal Return is a reality, but there's always room for slight differences. Is there some formalization of physical possibility that really helps make a case for volition?

If B (a set of spaciotemporal specifications), then A (where A is a statement of natural law.) — Mongrel

Laws can't be derived logically from mere sets of empirical observations. If all ravens are black, that doesn't make it a law that all ravens are black, for it may be an accident that all ravens are black. (This is a point famously belabored by Hume). If, on the other hand, it is a law that ravens are black, then this may explain why all (or most) ravens are black. The law would derive from some features of the nature of ravens (i.e. the specific form of life they exemplify) that explain why they come to grow black feathers in normal circumstances. Those contingent circumstances, as well as the contingent circumstances of the past evolution of this life form, would explain this biological law. This would be an example of a contingent biological law about ravens.

Now, it is not within the power of ravens to modify the (contingent) circumstances that account for its being a (contingent) law that they grow black feathers in normal circumstances. If, on the other hand, it follows from some set of laws of physics that Sue -- a mature rational human being -- must do A in situation C, then, if Sue additionally had some intelligible reason to do A, it is usually as a result of Sue's exercise of her rational powers of practical deliberation that she found herself in a situation C such that the laws of physics ensure that she would decide to do A. From the point of view of the laws of physics, which have nothing to say generally about actions of type A, it is simply an accident that the antecedent physical situation C of Sue's deliberation was such that it was physically necessary that she would decide to do A. What rather explains, and necessitate, that this antecedent physical situation was such that she would proceed to do A merely is the fact that it was rational for her to do A in the intelligible circumstances exemplified by C.

Laws can't be derived logically from mere sets of empirical observations. — Pierre-Normand

That is correct.

The law would derive from some features of the nature of ravens — Pierre-Normande

To be precise, statements of natural law concerning ravens ideally express the nature of ravens. Expressions of that kind assert what one should expect regarding ravens, so there's a normative aspect to it. At the very least this is rooted in the normativity inherent in language use. Whatever more one says about it will reveal something about how one approaches the problem of induction. It's possible that some ontological commitment will fall out of that.. or not. It depends on the theory of truth in play.

Those contingent circumstances, as well as the contingent circumstances of the past evolution of this life form, would explain this biological law. This would be an example of a contingent biological law about ravens. — Pierre

Sure. It may be that the universe is necessarily the way it is. No apriori nor aposteriori knowledge contradicts this. So it may be that all true statements about the universe are necessarily true. Note that this would still be so if there actually is no such thing as natural law.

If, on the other hand, it follows from some set of laws of physics that Sue -- a mature rational human being -- must do A in situation C, then, if Sue additionally had some intelligible reason to do A, it is usually as a result of Sue's exercise of her rational powers of practical deliberation that she found herself in a situation C such that the laws of physics ensure that she would decide to do A. — Pierre

Sue was born and continues to live with hunger and needs of various kinds. These facts account for most of Sue's whereabouts and situational posturing. Whether her deliberation has any bearing on her location is broadly speaking the very issue under discussion.

On edit: actually, reading further into the SEP article, it seems that logical possibility isn't sufficient for freedom, according to Leibniz; one also needs to act in accordance with one's complete individual concept (as determined by God -- who ensured that the best possible world was actualized) and this actuality is certain albeit logically contingent. See the last paragraph in section 4 of the SEP article linked above. — Pierre-Normand

I was very skeptical about Mongrel's representation of Leibniz' concept of free will. It really didn't seem reasonable to me, that a man of Leibniz' calibre would define free will in this way.

So this is the next point, and this is what makes free will so difficult to prove. Not only must both P and not-P be logically possible, but also the free willing agent must be capable of proceeding with either one of the actions, P or not-P. If the free willist chooses P, and proceeds, the determinist will say that was determined, and if the free willist chooses not-P, the determinist will say that was determined. It is impossible for the free willist to choose, and proceed with both actions, P and not-P, so it appears impossible for the free willist to prove that one is capable of proceeding with either P or not-P. Even if the free-willist flips a coin to decide to proceed with P or not-P, this does not prove free will.

Do you take this to be an objection to the Leibnizian conception of freedom, specifically, or to compatibilist accounts of free will generally? — Pierre-Normand

I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Leibnizian conception is really compatibilist, other than misrepresentations, like Mongrel's. I have no faith in compatibilist accounts, from what I've seen, free will and determinism are genuinely incompatible, and to make them appear compatible requires self-deception, misrepresenting one concept or the other, or both.

Sue was born and continues to live with hunger and needs of various kinds. These facts account for most of Sue's whereabouts and situational posturing. Whether her deliberation has any bearing on her location is broadly speaking the very issue under discussion. — Mongrel

It would be a rather crude and philosophically uninformed stance, one informed maybe by some form of physical reductionism, or by Watsonian behaviorism, to acknowledge that hunger has some bearing on the explanation of Sue's behavior while denying that the structure of her deliberative powers can have any such bearing. That is not the nature of the contemporary philosophical debate about free will. Hard determinists who are skeptical about the possibility of free will rather argue that Sue wasn't free in spite of the acknowledged causal/explanatory role of her deliberations. That's because they believe any such episode of cognitive deliberation to be the manifestation of an underlying deterministic process that isn't consistent with her having the ability to do otherwise. This is basically the argument that I have tried to show to be flawed.

So this is the next point, and this is what makes free will so difficult to prove. Not only must both P and not-P be logically possible, but also the free willing agent must be capable of proceeding with either one of the actions, P or not-P. If the free willist chooses P, and proceeds, the determinist will say that was determined, and if the free willist chooses not-P, the determinist will say that was determined. It is impossible for the free willist to choose, and proceed with both actions, P and not-P, so it appears impossible for the free willist to prove that one is capable of proceeding with either P or not-P. Even if the free-willist flips a coin to decide to proceed with P or not-P, this does not prove free will. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is the sort of argument that I have been attempting to address in this post and this post, which appeared below the post you were replying to.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Leibnizian conception is really compatibilist, other than misrepresentations, like Mongrel's. I have no faith in compatibilist accounts, from what I've seen, free will and determinism are genuinely incompatible, and to make them appear compatible requires self-deception, misrepresenting one concept or the other, or both. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whether or not an account can or can't be qualified as compatibilist depends on one's conception of what it is exactly the compatibility with which free will is deemed to be problematic. This is usually taken to be determinism, but there are many varieties of determinism. The SEP article referenced earlier does qualify Leibniz's view as a compatibilit one, albeit not unqualifiedly. It is clear that Leibniz was endorsing the reality of human free will and that he was also, on many accounts, a neccessitatian, and he was unquestioningly defending a doctrine of preestablished harmony. See Clive Borst's Leibniz and the Compatibilist Account of Free Will for further discussion. (I have only parsed it obliquely, but it seems quite informative)

I think you may be right to be suspicious of mainstream compatibilist accounts (such as those of Daniel Dennett, Anthony Kenny, Susan Wolf, or of new dispositionalists such as Kadri Vihvelin or Dana Nelkin). There is much truth in most of those accounts, but the main issue with them, on my view, is that they tend to share too much of their incompatibilist or hard determinist opponents's conceptions of determinism. What seems seldom to be questioned is that the determinism as issue somehow could be a consequence of the content of the laws of physics.

On my view, the mainly empirical issue of the determinism of the laws of physics proper doesn't have much of a bearing on the metaphysical doctrine of universal determinism. That's because the possibility to derive the latter from physical determinism is questionable, often assumed without argument, or, when attempted, is seen to be relying on questionable reductionist theses, or on flawed ideas about global supervenience that are insensitive the the peculiar modal character of laws, norms and principles of animal/rational life that don't belong to physics proper. I hold universal determinism to be false, and its falsity to be knowable a priori, whatever physics may have to tell us regarding the behavior of matter.

If the fool on the hill understands the world. (Why is he always on the hill, by the way?).

Cool. How is that shown? — Mongrel

Consider a finite physical system. Due to the Bekenstein bound, any such system is a finite state machine - i.e. only a finite number of configurations is available to it. Allow the system to evolve under the laws of physics, from T=0 to T-infinity and list all of these physical environments which constitute a denumerable set:

P1, P2, P3, P4 ...

Now, consider a logical environment of this form: L1 is different from P1 at T1, different from P2 at T2 etc. L1 is clearly not in the set of physical environments, and moreover there is an infinite number of ways of constructing L1. Thus the set of logically possible environments is uncountable.

I don't think so. Suppose some new discovery reveals to us that the universe couldn't have been any other way (no specifics required... all we need is that such a thing is conceivable. — Mongrel

If only I thought that were conceivable. ;-)

If it's true that the universe couldn't have been any other way, then laws of physics are necessarily true statements (though we may not have previously known that.) — Mongrel

That doesn't actually follow. You'd need the additional requirements that (a) there are indeed laws of physics (as something real), and (b) we've got the laws of physics right. Not to mention that you'd need truth to be something objective.

If it's true that the universe couldn't have been any other way, then laws of physics are necessarily true statements (though we may not have previously known that.) — Mongrel

A la a logical or a metaphysical necessity or something else? Unfortunately, you're not actually interested enough in learning about these ideas to bother trying to read the Kit Fine paper.

Physicists investigate empirical laws of physics. They don't know them to be logically necessary. We may suppose, if you like, that, unbeknownst to us, those laws are logically necessary. In that case, the concepts of logical possibility and physical possibility would be co-extensive. — Pierre-Normand

I can't really imagine how that would be the case, though. How could something be a logical necessity just because it's a metaphysical necessity?

The only thing I can imagine working there is if it were a metaphysical necessity that logic worked a particular way. For example, given that I'm an anti-realist/instrumentalist on logic, maybe there's some metaphysical necessity about the way brains work that constrains logical necessity.

But aside from that, if it were to turn out that, say, it's a metaphysical necessity that the Planck mass is 2.176 51(13) × 10^−8 kg. How could that amount to it being a logical necessity that that's the mass rather than 2.176 51(13) × 10^−7 kg? To say that it would amount to them being the same thing seems to miss the idea of what logical possibility/necessity is in the first place.

You really don't have to go past Searle's argument for volition. Extend your index finger. Wiggle it around. QED. — Mongrel

I like Searle's explanation. He does argue for free will, and he makes a lot of sense to me. It seems we can't help but think in terms of our responsibility. I love his story about someone going into a restaurant and saying to the waiter, "I'll just wait and see what the universe determines that I'll eat."

I can't really imagine how that would be the case, though. — Terrapin Station

I can't either. I was granting this possibility to Mongrel merely for the sake of argument. The conversation then moved beyond that. If we move beyond idealized "fundamental" (so called) laws of physics to the more generalized concept of a law of nature exemplified in ordinary scientific practice (including the practice of physicists) then the sort of natural necessities at issue appears quite distinct from logical necessities.

I was very skeptical about Mongrel's representation of Leibniz' concept of free will. It really didn't seem reasonable to me, that a man of Leibniz' calibre would define free will in this way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Me too. It resulted from the fact that his central theses clearly ruled out free will. Unlike Spinoza, he wasn't prepared to abandon freedom because of the place it occupies in morality. He played around with backing off of this being the best of all possible worlds, but that notion was designed to save God's character from the problem of evil.

I'm not thrilled by philosophers who start with a conclusion and then seek to built an argument to meet it. Maybe it's my Anglo-Sax cultural bias.

I like Searle's explanation. He does argue for free will, and he makes a lot of sense to me. It seems we can't help but think in terms of our responsibility. I love his story about someone going into a restaurant and saying to the waiter, "I'll just wait and see what the universe determines that I'll eat." — anonymous66

:)

It resulted from the fact that his central theses clearly ruled out free will. — Mongrel

What central theses of Leibniz do you take to be ruling out free will?

Me too. It resulted from the fact that his central theses clearly ruled out free will. — Mongrel

It's interesting that, in their own different ways the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz all seem to make free will impossible.

Descartes and Leibniz tried to 'save the appearances' though, whereas Spinoza 'bit the bullet'

Yep. I'm becoming fascinated with how Leibniz sort of sets the stage for Kant and Schopenhauer.

It's interesting that, in their own different ways the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz all seem to make free will impossible. — John

The main problem, for Descartes, it seems to me, it to account for the intelligibility of interactionism: how can immaterial souls have effects on material bodies. I don't see how his philosophy makes trouble for free will as such, since the orientation of the will originates in the soul and there is no indication that, for him, the activity of the soul must be governed by deterministic laws. There may be a problem with free will and divine foreknowledge, but that is quite different from the problem of free will and determinism that afflicts materialistic accounts of the mind.

As for Spinoza, his view of the mind is often characterized as a form of epiphenomenalism. If natural processes are deterministic, then he would inherit the problem of free will and determinism. This may be why he bit the bullet. He didn't envision the possibility of some sort of compatibilist solution, as Leibniz did.

Spinoza only rejects libertarian free will. Causality is never pre-constrained to any particular outcome for Spinoza. Any state of the world might come or go. Human will is free insofar it is a particular action taken by us. At any time, we might act one way or another.

I agree the intelligibility of interactionism seems on one hand to be very the main problem for him, but on the other hand, since he envisages nature as being like a giant clockwork, and that, for him constitutes its very intelligibility, there wouldn't seem to be any room for the activity of the soul, in any case. That is, even if he could explain its interaction with nature, any interaction it would still amount to a disruption of the mechanism from the 'outside', so to speak, which would effectively undermine the whole view of nature as mechanism, since it would also allow for divine intervention everywhere and at all times.

In Spinoza there is a foreshadowing of compatibilism since as he denies the separate substantial existences of cogitans and extensa, and therefore the possibility of any causal interaction between them that requires explanation (thus escaping the Cartesian dilemma) he opens the possibility of compatible parallel accounts for (at least human) activity, in terms of reasons and causes, respectively.

But then, he seems to close the door on this possibility and opt for physical determinism, thus seeming to reduce the understanding of human activity to the perspective from extensa, that is, of being seen only in terms of the physical state as being utterly determined by physical causes, and thus rejecting the parrallel possibility of the perspective from cogitans, that human activity can also rightly be understood as rationally self-determined (that is radically free).

Leibniz' view that there are no causal interactions between monads at all, and thus no real causation, but that all the appearance of causation is the result of all actions being internally coordinated by God to bring them into harmony, seems to radically rule out any possibility of free will, and thus also seems to rule out compatibilism altogether, since "it takes two to tango", so to speak.

Personally, I have never found any notion of free will even intelligible, let alone convincing, other than the libertarian.

and thus also seems to rule out compatibilism altogether, since "it takes two to tango", so to speak. — John

This is also the issue with Spinoza: unity. Descartes can be interpreted as offering the indubitable statement of duality: cogito ergo sum. Of course, indubitability is a sure sign that we're just mapping out the contours of mind.. identifying what we're bound to think.

Spinoza removes the dualism of substances. For him human minds (i.e. our existing thoughts, feelings and experiences) are extensa. They are included within physical determinism of causality.

You are falling into the same trap Spinoza did. He posited that cogitans and extensa are the two possible attributes, that is, 'parrallel' accounts of the one substance, and then went on to privelege the account from extensa over that from cogitans.

As in my response to TWoD, I think Spinoza in a way sets the stage for Kant also. The unity of substance is not exhausted by either of its attributes of cogitans and extsensa; neither one should be privileged over the other. They are the twin aspects of the phenomenal realm, whereby it is intelligible. However, the posited unity of substance, wherein the two accounts become one, cannot be modeled by human thought; we just cannot bring reasons and causes into intelligible harmony. This foreshadows the 'in itself', or the noumenal; which Kant used to open the door to the possibility of genuine freedom beyond the appearance of determinism. Well, at least that's my interpretation.

Cogitans was never considered part of causality. It's logical meaning: that which is true regardless of causality. He "privileges" extensa because logic is not an existing mind. To try and invove cogitans here is to say that which does not exist can interact and cause in the world.

There's no trap. Just the recognition non-existing things are not part of causality.

That's to miss Spinoza's major point: Substance doesn't have unity, it is unity. It's what cannot be captured by giving accounts different modes or states.

The point of Substance is that two accounts do not become one. Both accounts are themsleves and they express a unity which is captured in neither.