I don’t think that’s EY’s solution—I don’t think his discussion of Free Will has anything to do with moral responsibility being a matter of convention.
From what I recall, the argument is something more like this: When people talk of “Free will”, it’s not clear what exactly they are referring to. If you try to pin down a more precise meaning that matches people’s intuitions, you get something like “the subjective sensation of evaluating different available courses of action one might take”—and that is compatible with determinism (you can run decision algorithms in a perfectly deterministic binary world e.g. a simulated tile-based game world).
If you try to pin down a more precise meaning that matches people’s intuitions, you get something like “the subjective sensation of evaluating different available courses of action one might take”
...seems obviously false to me, not least because it’s a category error. This sounds like a description of the sensation of having free will, not free will. I don’t think anything can be identical to the sensation of itself, but even if so, that’s not what’s going on with free will.
And that’s not what people mean by free will, even if it might be all there is to free will. I think most people concerned with the question would say that having such a sensation is neither necessary nor sufficient for having free will, if this means something like ‘being the ultimate author of your actions’ or ‘being able to evaluate your options’ or something like that.
There’s a difference between being confused about what you mean, and being confused about what something is. The libertarian about free will might be confused about what free will is (i.e. thinking it a metaphysical property rather than an illusion brought about by a certain perspective), but she’s not therefore confused about what she means by free will. And if you clear up her confusion by showing her that the impression that she’s free is merely an impression, then she’ll reasonably conclude that ‘it turns out I don’t have free will after all, but merely the sensation of having it.’
Agreed . Philosophy is difficult. A major part of the difficulty is understanding the questions. A common failure mode of amateurs is to solve the wrong problem.
I don’t think that’s EY’s solution—I don’t think his discussion of Free Will has anything to do with moral responsibility being a matter of convention.
From what I recall, the argument is something more like this: When people talk of “Free will”, it’s not clear what exactly they are referring to. If you try to pin down a more precise meaning that matches people’s intuitions, you get something like “the subjective sensation of evaluating different available courses of action one might take”—and that is compatible with determinism (you can run decision algorithms in a perfectly deterministic binary world e.g. a simulated tile-based game world).
Does that make sense?
Yes, though this...
...seems obviously false to me, not least because it’s a category error. This sounds like a description of the sensation of having free will, not free will. I don’t think anything can be identical to the sensation of itself, but even if so, that’s not what’s going on with free will.
And that’s not what people mean by free will, even if it might be all there is to free will. I think most people concerned with the question would say that having such a sensation is neither necessary nor sufficient for having free will, if this means something like ‘being the ultimate author of your actions’ or ‘being able to evaluate your options’ or something like that.
There’s a difference between being confused about what you mean, and being confused about what something is. The libertarian about free will might be confused about what free will is (i.e. thinking it a metaphysical property rather than an illusion brought about by a certain perspective), but she’s not therefore confused about what she means by free will. And if you clear up her confusion by showing her that the impression that she’s free is merely an impression, then she’ll reasonably conclude that ‘it turns out I don’t have free will after all, but merely the sensation of having it.’
Agreed . Philosophy is difficult. A major part of the difficulty is understanding the questions. A common failure mode of amateurs is to solve the wrong problem.