Free Will and Epistemology 9781350029040, 9781350044180, 9781350029057

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Free Will and Epistemology

Also available from Bloomsbury The Bloomsbury Companion to Epistemology, edited by Andrew Cullison A Critical Introduction to the Epistemology of Perception, Ali Hasan A Critical Introduction to Formal Epistemology, Darren Bradley Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics, edited by Joerg Tuske

Free Will and Epistemology A Defence of the Transcendental Argument for Freedom Robert Lockie

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 Paperback edition published 2019 © Robert Lockie, 2018 Robert Lockie has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Cover design: Irene Martinez Costa Cover image © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-2904-0 PB: 978-1-3501-2313-7 ePDF: 978-1-3500-2905-7 ePub: 978-1-3500-2906-4 Names: Lockie, Robert, author. Title: Free will and epistemology : a defence of the transcendental argument for freedom / Robert Lockie. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017029549 (print) | LCCN 2017048552 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350029057 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781350029064 (ePub) | ISBN 9781350029040 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Free will and determinism. | Transcendentalism. | Internalism (Theory of knowledge) | Knowledge, Theory of. Classification: LCC BJ1461 (ebook) | LCC BJ1461 .L63 2018 (print) | DDC 123/.5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029549 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Dedicated to the memory of my mother and father Mathilde Katherine Lockie (née Cahn), 1925–1999 John Andrew Robert Burns Lockie, 1922–2005 With love, gratitude and respect

Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface Introduction 1 Internalism as a Thin Deontological Concept 2 The Regulative and the Theoretical 3 Epistemic Deontologism and Control 4 Epistemic Agency and Executive Control 5 The Ineliminability of Internalism 6 Ought Implies Can: Deontic Leeway Entailments 7 The Lazy Argument 8 Transcendental Arguments for Freedom I 9 Self-Determination and Determination by Reasons 10 Transcendental Arguments for Freedom II Notes References Index

viii ix x 1 7 27 43 67 107 131 153 177 195 219 245 277 295

Figures 2.1 The epistemic circumplex 4.1 Metamemory – monitoring and control 4.2 Different approaches to the study of executive functioning and self-regulation 4.3 Syllogistic reasoning via mental models 4.4 Syllogistic reasoning via Venn diagram 4.5 Illustrative example of a hierarchical model of executive functioning 8.1 Components of the indirect (standard) epistemic transcendental argument represented schematically

39 85 87 94 95 106 187

Tables 2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1

Terms used to draw the regulative–theoretical distinction Three versions of the same two-stage distinction Concepts and components of executive functions Two systems/types/minds

31 47 60 98

Preface This book is the product of more than two decades of thought about some of the most difficult issues in philosophy. It may not be adequate to the severity of the tasks it undertakes, but it is the best that I can do. I have attempted to argue to conclusions I believed once to be true, and I believe now to be both defensible and in need of strong and clear representation – in the face of views I think less likely to be true, and less clearly defensible. We are at a strange late stage in the history of analytic philosophy. Our discipline is highly professionalized, specialized, focussed. It prizes precision, deference to various (exceedingly developed) literatures and a certain conception of methodological rigour – seemingly rather above many other things that might be valued. Philosophy has always needed rigour, and analytic philosophy, in its early and middle periods, represented a signal advance in this: embracing an admirable ethic of clarity. Increasingly, however, an arch, gruelling, housestyle conception of ‘rigour’ seems at odds with clarity; and especially with the aspiration for a bigger picture. A kind of neo-scholasticism prevails. Stylistic brutalism is widespread. Analytic cleverness is prized, but commonly situated within a largely undefended and often restrictive body of assumption. Any research question now drags behind it a vast and not always enlightening recent literature, often located within a contrived (and concealed) framework of presupposition and methodological commitment, frequently written in a wilfully harsh ‘analyticalese’ – with each such paper usually offering the return of very small gains, if indeed gains are to be found at all. Deference to said literature (and we are not here talking of the great works of philosophical history) is a requirement for those who wish to contribute to it and, more regrettably, for those who attempt to supersede it or finesse its framework of presupposition. The small proportion of graduate students who, after years of sacrifice in the increasingly soul-destroying major PhD programmes, eventually are permitted to enter the profession, in turn become highly professionalized, publish-orperish, status-orientated gatekeepers to the discipline. They have a stake in its continuance in something like its present form. Only a handful of major figures are permitted the status of luminaries, the right to a more sweeping view and disruptive role – and these figures are hardly major when judged by the standards

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even of our discipline’s fairly recent history, much less by any longer view. The rest of us are permitted to plough the furrows of what, in natural philosophy, Kuhn called ‘normal science’ – puzzle-solving. What has been lost in the cumulative, concentrative, individually understandable changes that have led us to this point is a consideration of our discipline itself – its nature, what it is. This is not organic chemistry or computer science. Philosophy must of course be rigorous (this, to include some larger sense of ‘rigour’), but philosophy must also, in at least much of its ambit, involve the search for a bigger picture, an overview. And, as regards this talk of a ‘larger sense of rigour’: philosophy must also scrutinize critically, searchingly, its own methodological and metaphilosophical framework. It cannot be that we permit only the geniuses to seek after said bigger picture, or to radically and reflexively scrutinize our discipline; for any such figure we may be waiting a long time, and even a genius may struggle to prevail in the discipline we bequeath them. In terms of the reflexive epistemology/methodology/metaphilosophy of our discipline, we cannot build a philosophy (whether a philosophy or philosophy per se) only by placing brick upon brick. There must be some effort to develop a top-down view, and this not only for the Kants, the Descartes’, and the Wittgensteins: a top-down view even for thee and me. This work articulates my view of the nature of epistemic justification and free will, and the relationship between these. I have endeavoured to make it as plain and accessible as the difficult nature of these topics permits. Of course, this may mean my deficiencies in addressing these questions are all the more plainly visible. Although a research monograph, it is my hope that upperlevel undergraduates may benefit from reading it. It is certainly my hope that graduate students and professional philosophers working in epistemology and free will should become aware of the positions being defended – and thereby that those working in these areas should seek to take account of said positions. I hope this aspiration is realistic, inasmuch as the positions I defend are not unique to myself, and historically have been very important; though they have, for the most part, wanted quite badly for recent defences. One position I defend permits me to acknowledge my first intellectual debt: to Richard Foley. Foley was my first teacher in epistemology – on the Rutgers Graduate Program in the early 1990s – and I was lucky to have such a teacher. Something close to his deeply subjective, perspectivist, deontically internalist conception of rationality/justification (‘Foley rationality’ – for me, ‘thin deontic internalism’) I defend in the first part of this work and rely upon in the second. His influence on my work has been profound.

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The next intellectual debt I wish to record is to Michael Morris. More years ago than I care to remember, Michael supervised both my first Masters and my eventual Doctorate. A precursor to much of what I say here he will have helped to shape, at least in some inchoate form. His impact on my philosophical development was very considerable; his influence leavens much of this work. My next intellectual debt is to an academic community, a community presently and deplorably under threat. In 2010, I had the great privilege to participate in the last of three legendary summer schools in philosophy at the Central European University (CEU) – namely, the ‘Aspects of Responsibility’ summer school. CEU – the best University in Hungary, and one of the best in central Europe, situated in the wonderful city of Budapest – is now under targeted, existential threat from malign political forces playing to ancient prejudices. I pray that it survives, and enjoin all who read this to play their part in fighting for its survival; this ought to be a beacon issue for the academy in our times. I should like to thank the organizers of and fellow participants in this summer school for one of the best and most stimulating intellectual experiences of my life. In particular, I should like to thank Derk Pereboom, Mark Balaguer, Dana Nelkin, Tim O’Connor and András Szigeti. The latter three have read and commented upon versions of several of the later chapters in this book. I am hugely grateful to them; and subsequently to András for helping to coordinate an Erasmus teaching fellowship for me at Linköping University in the summer of 2016. Others who have commented on individual chapters at various stages of this book’s development include Matthew Elton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Carlos Moya, Tony Booth, Simon Langford, Lucy Allais and Elisa Galgut. This generosity is greatly appreciated. Others who have read or commented on earlier drafts or discussion presentations of overlapping or related work include Murali Ramachandran, Richard Gaskin, Craig Callender, Alex Barber, Nadja Rosental, Corine Besson, Michele Friend, Duncan Pritchard and Heather Battaly. Others who have assisted in the development of these ideas include Andy Clark, Mike Wheeler, Paul Davies, Pepa Toribio, Dan Haas, Gunnar Björnsson, Paul Russell, Brandon Warmke, Philip Robichaud, Zac Cogley, Jean-Baptiste Guillon and Susanne Uusitalo. I want further to mention David Hanney, Jef Mullins, James Pycock, Mark Hulbert, Hamid Vahid, Rick Peels, Shira Elqayam, Jonathan Evans, Ken Levy, Aaron Meskin and Mahon O’Brien. I have given presentations of some of this work at colloquia, conference talks and workshops over the last twenty years – too many to mention, but my thanks to all. Chapter 2 is a partial reworking of my ‘The regulative and the theoretical in epistemology’, Abstracta, 8(1): 3–14 (2014c). My thanks to the journal editors and referees.

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I wish to record here my appreciation for the work done by all the good people at Bloomsbury Academic, particularly my editor Colleen Coalter; and to Bloomsbury’s anonymous referees and reviewers. I should also like to record my thanks to Andrew Wardell, Liza Thomson, Helen Saunders and James Tupper. The book involves the use of several copyright figures and tables, reused by permission of the authors and publishers. Acknowledgement for these is indicated in text; my thanks to all. In terms of academic institutions, I should like to record my various affiliations with, and indebtedness to, the psychology departments at the University of West London and the University of Bedfordshire; and the philosophy departments at the University of Sussex, Rutgers University and McGill University. My greatest debt remains to the philosophy and especially psychology departments at Hatfield Polytechnic (now the University of Hertfordshire), a wonderful institution that permitted me to embark upon the first leg of this intellectual voyage and remains my paradigm of all that a university should be. Finally, and more personally, there are those Philosophes without whom, not: Mark Roberts, my oldest and greatest friend – philosophy with an Ealing curry and a pint of Pride; Ole Holm Jensen and all my Viking shipmates on Den Vilde Jagt; Vince Hunt (my dear, great-hearted friend: in memoriam); Spencer Wicks; Jana Jacobson; Claire Blake; and Deepak Chaudhry. And to my family: Judy Manderioli, Emanuele Manderioli and Giovanni Manderioli. Thanks to one and all.

Introduction

Strictly speaking, there are no specialised investigations in philosophy. Each of the specialised problems of the discipline extends to the most abstract and ultimate philosophical questions. Whoever proposes to discuss philosophical matters philosophically must, above all, have the courage to take a general position (Windelband 1894/1980: 169). There is a species of argumentation that has been found throughout philosophical history – one that has tended to divide philosophers abruptly, whether by intellectual temperament or by core metaphilosophical sympathy and commitment. Such arguments have been given various names over time: peritrope, Epicurean, reversal, self-refutation or transcendental arguments. This type of argument has been used against many specific targets: relativism (Plato 1992); scepticism by illusion (Lucretius 1947: Bk 4, 469–521); verificationism (Ewing 1937; Putnam 1983: 184–5, 190–1); those who oppose the principle of non-contradiction (Aristotle 1941: IV, Γ, 3–6); scepticism as to the existence of a self (Descartes 1931); scepticism as to the existence of an external world (Kant 1933: A182/B224-A189/B232, B274-279); the reducibility of consciousness to material states (Kripke 1980: 144–55); mathematical psychologism (Frege 1980: 16–17); and many other targets besides. Characterizing the essential nature of such arguments is a matter of controversy in its own right. Many are of the opinion that such arguments rely upon, or derive their authority from, premises based upon the ineliminability of experience, or the ‘possibility of experience’ (Kant 1933: A737/B765, A783/B811). I do not share this view, believing that it conflates accidental features of Kant’s usage (his deployment of these arguments against targets that were particular to his era’s radical empiricism) with essential features of this argument type itself and as such. Nor do I think that such a conception of this argument type can be squared even with Kant’s own usage in certain

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cases (notably, with every aspect of his transcendental argument for free will – a version of which is defended in Part 2 of the present work). Closer to the truth would be the idea that such arguments do make use of epistemic considerations – only where this epistemology need not be as narrowly conceived as ‘experience’. Such a conception would have it that this class of argument maintains that one may not effect a reduction of a putative metaphysics (object, property, position) to some other, deflationary metaphysics plus a remainder of epistemology – of ‘mere appearance’ – if, upon completion of the reduction, this epistemic remainder can be shown to still contain within it some ineliminable residue of the putatively reduced metaphysics. Though this latter conception of things is much nearer to capturing the core nature of this argument type, I should prefer a less epistemological characterization still. Certain things, such arguments maintain, cannot be debunked, because they contain or employ the things (properties, qualities, commitments) needed to effect the debunking. Transcendental, Epicurean or peritrope arguments are negative arguments – they apply against positions. A transcendental argument is a type of intellectual jujitsu. Its characteristics are as follows: 1. It must always be against an extant or possible position. 2. This target position must be a deflationary position. 3. This target must be a sweeping, overarching, ‘totalizing’ position. Point 3 is required to prevent the target position from having a right to exclude itself from attack on the ground that it, as a position, does not apply to itself. It must be clear that the position is intrinsically so powerful as to have no principled grounds for claiming to be irreflexive. Point 2 is required so that the position does indeed undermine itself. If the position is not in itself deflationary, it cannot be supposed to undermine itself as and if it is applied to itself. This work defends two such peritrope or transcendental arguments, with the second argument making reliance upon the first. In Part 1, one such argument is used to defend a conception of ultimately, irreducibly, rational epistemic justification. And in Part 2, one such argument is advanced to defend a strongly libertarian conception of agency. This latter (the ‘selfrefutation argument against determinism’) has an ancient philosophical history – from Epicurus through to Kant and beyond – though it has lacked for recent defences. The former argument, for an irreducibly rational

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conception of epistemic justification, I may more nearly claim to be original to the present work – though there are analogous but distinct arguments in epistemology.1 Inasmuch as the work employs such a contested philosophical methodology, it is to be expected that it will divide its readership according to prior philosophical temperament and metaphilosophical commitments – even as it subsequently divides them according to their explicit views on the first-order philosophical positions at issue. Defending the work’s metaphilosophical commitments is something that can only be done as these are themselves displayed in argument: all worthwhile philosophy is also, at least incipiently, metaphilosophy – that is, if it is broad enough to be worthwhile philosophy – hence our frontispiece quotation.

Part 1: Justification The goal of the first part of this work is to develop a defence of a transcendental argument for a particular (‘thin deontological’) conception of epistemic internalism, and against a totalizing epistemic externalism. Part 1 starts by articulating three fundamental distinctions underlying accounts of value in epistemology: in Chapter 1, the distinctions between knowledge and rationality and between deontic epistemic internalism and externalism; while in Chapter 2, the distinction drawn is between a regulative and a theoretical desideratum of adequacy for any account on offer in epistemology. In Chapters 3 and 4, the classic objection to epistemic deontologism (doxastic involuntarism) is addressed. The externalist argues from ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and the claimed involuntariness of belief formation, to a rejection of epistemic ‘oughts’ (to the unsustainability of an epistemic deontology). The arguments of these chapters are positive (i.e. not transcendental) – they make extensive use of the psychological literature. The third chapter argues that the doxastic involuntarists’ arguments are contrived, and that the empirical basis of their claims is indefensible. The fourth chapter goes into great empirical detail on how epistemic freedom is positively defensible, establishing via a deep engagement with a range of overlapping scientific literatures that we possess extraordinary powers of executive intellectual agency. In Chapter 5, we see the first appearance of the argument type that reappears in the second part of the book and serves as its central theme. This

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theme is the ineliminability of certain kinds of normativity: most generally, that we cannot abandon any species of justification if, in so doing, we would be abandoning our justification for abandoning that species of justification. Motivated, perhaps, by the revolt from Cartesianism, the tendency in modern epistemology has been to challenge the internalist, deontic conception of epistemic value – threatening to replace this with the externalist notion of value alone. In Chapter 5, this is argued to be impossible: abandoning internalist epistemic value for externalist epistemic value wholesale would mean abandoning any justification for that abandonment. Removing from epistemology the internalist’s deontic conception of obligations and access withholds from the externalist the resources needed to justify the replacement of the internalist conception of epistemic value by the externalist.

Part 2: Freedom Throughout the first part of the book, heavy reliance is made on the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. At least as heavy reliance is made on this principle in this second part of the book – where it also receives its defence. Chapter 6 deals both with the Frankfurt literature that opposes this (and cognate principles) and also with an older tradition of opposition, encompassing such diverse figures as Luther and Tolstoy. The arguments of this chapter are important not merely to defend the epistemic transcendental argument of the first part of the book, but because they are needed subsequently to defend the transcendental arguments articulated in Chapters 8 and 10. These arguments are preceded, however, by Chapter 7’s defence of the ‘Lazy Argument’ (Logon Ærgon). This argument, commonly regarded as a fallacy, holds that that were determinism true, all would be futile. Something like this argument (stripped of its straw) becomes in Chapter 8 the first of three transcendental arguments for freedom: the conative transcendental argument – followed by the ethical and the epistemic transcendental argument. It is the latter of these that is pursued in detail through the last three chapters: that, were determinism true, the determinist would lack epistemic justification for holding this view or maintaining this claim. Determinism, it is claimed, is epistemically indefensible. The libertarianism that this argument is taken to defend is identified in Chapter 9 as a species of self-determinism (an emergentist view somewhat akin to agent causation – only without a commitment to substance dualism). In developing and articulating the transcendental argument for

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freedom, heavy reliance is made on the epistemic work of the first part of the book. Specifically, the distinction between internalist and externalist epistemic value is used to distinguish the claims of this transcendental argument from other, less cautious or less explicit versions of the argument found over the years.

Summary This is a work concerned with justification and freedom and the relationship between these. Its overall aim is to defend a transcendental argument for free will – that we could not be epistemically justified in undermining a strong notion of free will, as a strong notion of free will would be required for any such process of undermining to be itself epistemically justified. The book advances two transcendental arguments – for a deontically internalist conception of epistemic justification and the aforementioned argument for a libertarian conception of free will. In defending each of these arguments, the book both defends and relies upon the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In articulating the latter transcendental argument – for freedom – heavy reliance is made on the earlier epistemic work, especially on the deontological conception of rational justification (on epistemic internalism). We start in Chapter 1, with material on the internalist–externalist distinction in epistemology, developing out of that literature a ‘thin’ deontological conception of this distinction. This conception of internalism harks back to the earliest explicit period in the internalism–externalism debates; and before that into neo-Cartesian epistemic history. It is this conception of epistemic justification that will be defended in the first part of this book, then used in the second part of the book. This first chapter is intended to ensure that all readers are starting from the same understanding of this core distinction. I would ask readers who are primarily epistemologists to be patient with the speed of exegesis – other readers may have greater specialization in, for example, the free will literature.

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Internalism as a Thin Deontological Concept

1.1 Two distinctions 1.1.1 First distinction: Rationality and knowledge Epistemology’s two most major tasks are to account for the nature of rationality and knowledge. Rationality1 and knowledge are normative epistemic kinds – one validates or invalidates a belief or thought process or chain of reasoning by saying it is rational or irrational; one validates or invalidates a claim to fact by saying it is known or not known. In so doing, one may also normatively appraise the epistemic status of the cognizer who possesses such beliefs, develops such chains of reasoning and makes such arguments or claims of fact. There are then two major but prima facie distinct tasks facing the normative epistemologist: firstly, in giving an account of knowledge, to state what its epistemic value consists in – besides true belief, say. This is the Meno project, one of the great aims of epistemology, but it is no aim of this book – I address this task elsewhere. Secondly, in giving an account of epistemic rationality, the normative epistemologist takes as his task to state what its value consists in: say, what makes a belief or thought process intellectually commendable as such. This more Cartesian project is addressed in this first part of the book. Accounting for knowledge and rationality, then, in each case involves giving an account of a kind of epistemic normativity or value; and it is initially an open question whether the same kind of epistemic normativity is involved for each such account. (Not to keep you in suspense: I shall argue it is not.) Often, the more Cartesian project’s kind of normativity (rationality) is referred to as ‘justification’ per se; with the initially open question being whether or not the value of knowledge consists in substantially this kind of epistemic value being added to true belief (plus, usually, certain additions to deal with the Gettier problem). Eventually, I too shall start to refer to the kind of epistemic

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value needed for rationality (or at least a certain conception of rationality) as justification, and distinguish this from the kind needed for knowledge. However, not to undercut the initially open question too soon, I will not use ‘justification’ in this way from the start. In what follows, I shall argue for something that here I shall assert: that when it comes to cognizers, rationality, in contrast to knowledge, is an epistemic predicate that only applies to agents – in some fairly strong sense of ‘agent’ (for example, stronger by far than Steward’s (2012) sense of that term, which she is happy to apply to quite low animals orientating themselves about the world). And rationality is internally connected with agency. Rationality and irrationality are properties that require their possessors to be capable of epistemic valueattribution in ways that agents alone may be capable of value-attribution – to be among those who may be taken to be the authors of their epistemic acts. If ‘agency’ were to be attenuated to a weaker notion than this, then I should simply strengthen to the claim that rationality requires free agency, or free and responsible agency. And this claim is not obviously vulnerable to the legitimate point that we sometimes, correctly, extend out from this to apply the predicates of rationality/irrationality to those within the community of epistemic agents who are nevertheless not in this instance exercising their (free, conscious, etc.) agency – that is, in any occurrent sense, with here-and-now regulative control. We sometimes extend the predicates of rationality to those who are undoubted agents, though here are (locally) engaged in what has become an automatic subroutine. And we extend irrationality to those who arguably and locally are non-agents or less than full agents (the floridly mentally ill, the fanatically indoctrinated, those drunk or drugged). But we do not extend the concept of irrationality to those who are globally and unarguably non-agents or less than full agents – not to non-human animals,2 or the profoundly mentally handicapped, or babies, or the late-stage demented, or the seriously brain injured; not to those who never were members of the community of agents or who cannot ever rejoin that community. To infants who are older than babies and are becoming agents, the authors of their acts, we apply ‘toy’ fragments of what will one day become the predicates of rationality. Knowledge, by contrast, is a predicate that can be applied to non-agents; or at least lesser beings than those for which I wish to reserve the term ‘agent’ (if you must: less than free agents, or less than free and responsible agents). Knowledge may be possessed by dogs and pigeons and rats – perhaps even (for some kinds of knowledge) beings without much of a neocortex. And though an epistemologically interesting kind of knowledge, a kind that epistemologists

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ought disproportionately to be concerned with, typically requires massively higher-level thought than this (Lockie 2014b), it is questionable to what extent even this high-level knowledge is internally bound up with agency (though there may be specific varieties of high-level knowledge that are).

1.1.2 Second distinction: Internalism and externalism With rationality and knowledge being the things that normative epistemology seeks to account for, the major theory-families seeking to account for each of these divide into three: internalist theories, externalist theories and virtue theories. For reasons I shall touch upon in the next chapter, and have stated exhaustively in Lockie (2008) and Lockie (forthcoming), I think the former two are greatly more important than the latter – at least as source theories of epistemic normativity. The rest of this chapter is intended to clarify the ‘thin deontological’ conception of the internalist–externalist distinction that is employed in the rest of this book. It is not intended as a critical or comprehensive survey of the internalism–externalism distinction as this is understood across epistemology as a whole; and it is not intended to rebuke others’ different uses of these terms. It is rather intended to clearly articulate the sense in which I shall be using this distinction, with signposts to others who have used it thus, and some who have not.

Deontology and internalism The deontic conception of the internalist–externalist distinction developed out of the work of a number of philosophers after Roderick Chisholm; reaching probably its clearest and most developed expression in Plantinga (1993) – who identified its provenance in Descartes, Locke, Clifford and others. This chapter makes few claims to supersede Plantinga; substantially, it merely endorses his and similar accounts. Internalists working within the deontic tradition have taken epistemic justification as the discharge of an obligation to think well, as the fulfilment of one’s intellectual duties, as responsible thought. An assumption of this literature which is widespread but not unanimous amongst internalists and externalists alike, is that these terms and their cognates are by no means neutral markers, standing for things that any theory of epistemic value will be seeking to account for; but that these terms are intrinsically deontic – that is, that an informed reliance on them marks a position out as deontological.3 This assumption is critically scrutinized later. This deontic (‘ethics of belief ’) tradition does not differ from other conceptions of internalism in rejecting these

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conceptions’ access restrictions, but it takes these acknowledged restrictions to be derivative from, and subordinate to, the deontological conception of epistemic value – which latter is seen as internalism’s fundamental, axiological, core.

1.1.3 Other conceptions of internalism–externalism Although possessed of an unparalleled intellectual provenance, this is not by any means the only conception of the internalist–externalist distinction in epistemology, having, over about the last two decades, become somewhat unfashionable as a position and relatively neglected as a research programme. There is a larger literature that conceives of the internalist–externalist distinction as being exclusively about access/awareness (‘accessibilism’). I think it fair to say that variants of this tradition now dominate. Then there are others who see internalism as the position that all epistemic justifiers are internal to the mind (‘mentalism’) – sometimes as an interpretation of accessibilism, but sometimes quite explicitly as a position in its own right. Then there is a venerable tradition that involves a strengthening of the ‘mentalist’ approach, restricting this to conscious mental access – introspectionism. There are also interpretations involving the notion of an epistemic perspective (I will make use of one such conception below) and there are other notions besides. These notions often overlap, sometimes in the same philosopher’s work – with it not always being clear which conception is of primary importance at any given time. Partly because of this, some prefer to distinguish internalism per se (seen as purely access internalism) from ‘epistemic deontologism’. I shall continue, however, to use the term ‘internalism’ for the thin deontological position outlined here; but let that be stipulative if it must. The position I shall eventually defend corresponds roughly to what Bergmann (2006) calls ‘subjective deontological justification’ or ‘epistemic blamelessness’ (though for reasons that will become apparent in Chapter 5, I don’t care for the latter term) – a notion Bergmann correctly identifies in Plantinga, Foley and Alston. Alston (1985) abbreviates this notion as ‘Jdi’ – which stands for deontic, internalist, justification. Plantinga just calls this same notion ‘internalism’, but when pushed, ‘classical deontological internalism’ – and deprecates those pure accessibilist internalists who depart from what he (an externalist) nevertheless identifies as its ‘deep integrity’ (Plantinga 1993: 28). I fear that the epistemic community has mostly not followed these earlier figures, and now tends to construe ‘internalism’ as a fundamentally access-based notion (albeit with additional and not always consistent notes of mentalism/introspectionism) – hence the need for me to remind the reader that in reviving this earlier notion,

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with its ‘deep integrity’, I am deploying, as is my right, a proprietary, technical term: one embedded in a body of theory, theory to be uncovered in this chapter and the next.4 Once it is articulated, I shall use this notion – of internalism as a thin deontological concept – consistently throughout the rest of the book; but in this chapter alone, I shall regularly add the rider ‘as a thin deontological concept’.

1.2 Access internalism Internalists generally maintain that there are access restrictions on one’s justificatory ground, but deontic internalists maintain that this is not a conceptually fundamental feature of internalism, being rather derived via ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (or some cognate bridging principle: I consider others in Chapter 6) from the more basic feature of epistemic justification as responsible thought. In so doing, the deontic internalist has resources not available to the pure access or mentalist internalist to address certain otherwise vexed questions concerning the required degree and nature of this access.

How much access is needed for us to be justified, internalistically? Access comes in degrees. A critical point for even a weak version of internalism is that, as a matter of a priori necessity, certain things relevant to the agent’s justificatory status must be accessible to him. Stronger versions of internalism would then require more things to be accessible – or more immediately accessible.5 ‘Accessible’, though, is itself a vague term. How much access is needed for a justificatory ground to count as accessible? A strong answer might be to require the agent to be actually presently aware of the justifying factors for his beliefs. A weaker version would be requiring the agent to be capable of becoming aware. But how does one measure strength – merely intuitively? And assuming this problem may be solved, yielding a metric for strength, still, how strong is too strong, how weak is too weak? Can one use lawyers’ locutions like ‘reasonably accessible’, or will this be hopelessly vague and context dependent?

Access as mental An approach to such questions that has considerable intuitive appeal is to hold that an epistemic theory is internalist if the accessibility restriction it places on justifiers is that these must be internal to the mind. It must be acknowledged that

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several epistemologists see ‘mentalist internalism’ as a competitor to ‘accessibilist internalism’ (notably Conee and Feldman 2001). I think for the most part that the former is better seen as offering us one way of interpreting the latter; but as I shall reject both criteria for deontologism, little turns on this for me.6 A simple account of ‘access-as-mental’ would have it that all and only those things which are within the agent’s mind are accessible in the right way to be relevant to that agent’s justificatory status. So, any version of coherentism employing the doxastic presupposition – that only a belief can justify a belief – would widely be regarded as a paradigm of internalism, inasmuch as it would have all justifiers internal to the mind. Idealist coherentism – its strongest form – leaves nothing to chance by having everything else in the mind. But with these accounts (as for most versions of foundationalism), discovering which of one’s mental items and relations really are justifiers, and how they combine to yield an outcome that such and such is justified, is typically an enormously complex and multiply defeasible process. For instance, the task of deciding what coheres with what is an Augean one. During the process of putting it into practice with limited cognitive resources, one will at each stage be changing the information on which one based one’s interim results as to what did cohere with what. The same thing will surely happen as new and potentially salient information arrives from outside of that internal auditing process while it is in progress. These factors will commit the coherentist to an account of the process of justification that will make justifying even a single belief resemble the painting of the Forth Bridge. To employ some terminology from the psychological literature on reasoning, there are too many degrees of freedom for the task to be computed in real time: combinatorial explosion occurs, and the task becomes computationally intractable. Yet one will not be epistemically justified if one fails to reach some kind of decision – even if only a decision to withhold – within a limited period of time; and often this is a very limited period of time. Furthermore, one will often be unjustified, (sometimes very unjustified) if one withholds, or even much defers, a decision as to whether this or that course is the less unjustified – if one tosses a coin when one has in any way better information than that available. So how ought one to reach this defeasible and time-limited estimate of the Inaccessible Absolute Ultimate Coherence of the System? This ‘bounded’ estimate is alone a candidate for something that is internalistically justified, at least if this latter means accessible, and so requiring that all justifiers be inside the mind is nowhere near sufficient for internalist justification. Simply put: even exclusively mental justifiers may still be massively inaccessible.

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Access as introspectable Another position, possessed of both considerable intuitive appeal and a venerable history, can be seen as a repair to this ‘mental’ requirement – one that involves a strengthening of it. This is to claim that of the mental states, events and processes there are, all and only the subset that are introspectable are accessible in the sense required by internalism. If access through consciousness is what is meant by ‘introspectability’ though, this appears neither necessary nor sufficient for what is required to be internalistically justified. It is not sufficient, in that many introspectable mental states or processes appear to have little relevance to an agent’s epistemic justificatory status, being of largely phenomenological, appetitive or aesthetic significance. It is not necessary, in that one can intuitively have epistemically relevant access to things that are non-occurrent and non-conscious, such as information accessed through sustained, careful research – whether purely ‘armchair’ research, or research mediated by both motor and mental actions in the world: say, through using a research library or expert system, or process of consultation, or calculation – of which much more in Chapter 4. Thus, a junior doctor may be justified only if she looks something up – a dosage, say, in a pharmacopoeia – or consults (even at the risk of losing face) a senior colleague. She has access to these things; fulfilling her obligations in regard to accessing them is what she must do to be justified, but they are in no sense available to present conscious awareness, unless this notion be broadened in a strained and dubiously principled way (e.g. by saying she must have had present conscious awareness that she should consult x, y, z). If the notion of introspectability was not anchored in the notion of present conscious awareness, then it would probably be a marker term for the work needing to be done here, rather than the tool to do this work with. In remarks about the role of attention in epistemic justification, (Wu 2014: 254) notes that ‘plausibly, introspection depends on a form of attention that enables selective thought about mental properties. Introspective attention is attention that grounds introspective thought, that is thought about the mental’. I agree that this claim is plausible. I would suggest that what plausibility introspection then has as fixing just the notion of epistemic access that is crucial for internalist epistemic justification is not any primitive (e.g. phenomenal) qualities that introspection possesses per se, but its plausibility as a locus of control for this selective thought: for mental control over, and direction of, further mental action (in selecting further mental action7 – say, in dwelling on

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this rather than that object of thought). Wu identifies this more basic control with attention, but as we will see in Chapters 3 and 4, executive attention is itself just one (albeit very important) executive function: one way among others of controlling our thought, of (as Wu would put it) ‘selecting for [mental] action’. I would suggest that such plausibility as introspection has as being central to epistemic justification (and it does have some such plausibility) it has in virtue of offering us a point or place of agential, regulative control over our epistemic acts and operations. These remarks, however, come already rather too close to indicating my positive views, requiring as they do repair to a more controlbased rather than access-based conception of internalism – and that awaits our later consideration.

Access as intra-perspectival The problem of finding the right balance between too strong and too weak accessibility goes hand in hand with the problem of making principled that strength of access. A classic answer both to the problem of where to set the balance and how this may be motivated is to make recourse to the notion of an individual’s (or, by extension, a socio-cognitive system’s) epistemic perspective. Something is accessible to an agent, hence internal, if and only if it is within the compass of her perspective. This perspective is shaped and delineated by education, culture, technology and individual differences. One’s extended cognitive resources (including one’s cultural resources) are of major epistemic relevance, and although not always accessible in the sense of concern to us, they often are. ‘Epistemic perspectivism’ can be all things to all people (there are, for example, externalist conceptions of an epistemic perspective), but read in a certain way, I am highly sympathetic to such an approach, regarding it as both motivated in itself and close to the core of what the access aspect of this conception of internalism amounts to.8 Plato’s Theaetetus represents probably the first discussion of this issue in epistemology. His famous ‘aviary’ analogy, if I read it right, amounts to an investigation of internalism. It offers something that can be developed to get a solution to the problems of strength and motivation of an account of access. Socrates: … is it possible … to possess knowledge and not to ‘have’ it? Suppose a man were to hunt wild birds, pigeons or something, and make an aviary for them at his house and look after them there; then, in a sense, I suppose, we might say he ‘has’ them all the time, because of course he possesses them. Isn’t that so?

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Theaetetus: Yes. Socrates: But in another sense he ‘has’ none of them; it is only that he has acquired a certain power in respect of them, because he has got them under control in an enclosure of his own. That is to say, he has the power to hunt for any one he likes at any time, and take it and ‘have’ it whenever he chooses, and let it go again; and this he can do as often as he likes. (Plato 1992: 197c–d)

I suggest that those states and operations are accessible that are under the agent’s control, over which he has ‘acquired a certain power.’ Rather than taking the notion of access as primitive, this approach explicates what it is to have access through the agent’s degree of power or control. But then, have we not exchanged one problem for another? For how much power must the agent have over something for it to count as being within his perspective, hence ‘internal’ in the intended sense? There is an answer here, but it is not an answer available to one for whom access is a definitional primitive, the be-all and end-all of the internalism/ externalism distinction. The answer from the deontic tradition is that we must have enough power over our thought processes to be held responsible for them. So, to pick an actions- rather than introspections-based example: if our junior doctor on night duty has the power to wake her consultant when faced by a tough diagnosis, then she has access to him. If she knows where the pharmacopoeia is, and has been trained to use it, then likewise. If, for fear of losing face, she doesn’t do these things, she is culpable. The same goes for access to things within her mind as for these things without. As argued, justification cannot, for the internalist, be an unattainable, inaccessible Ideal of Absolute and Perfect Coherence. Justification must be attainable, and that means that the criterion for success – what counts as being justified – must be attenuated: specified in terms of the feasible level of control that the agent has in that situation. This means that ‘what is within the agent’s power’ can make reference only to things like checking procedures which she may embark upon given all the other things she has to do to fulfil her intellectual responsibilities. All human beings have to undertake forced-choice, time- and resources-limited decision-making in everything they do. In the end, we act (we make a decision) because not to decide is a decision in itself – and often, though not always, an unjustified or remiss decision. Situated as we are, within the powers we have, we have to determine for ourselves what we can and must do. This doesn’t mean that ‘whatever is going to seem right to me is right’ (Wittgenstein 1953: #258). Whether we have lived up to our normative standards, have fulfilled our epistemic responsibilities as best we are able to recognize them,

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is not itself something we have first-person authority over; it is an objective fact (albeit about the management of subjective epistemic resources). If it is within my power to ascertain that I should do x, y, z, and I don’t do x, y, z, then I am unjustified – such cases happen all the time. However, for the thin deontic internalist, there cannot be a case where I am unjustified (in the intended sense) despite having done everything within my power to have been right, of which more later. This conception of access explains why coherentism, even of an idealist stamp, does not become a species of internalism merely by having it that the agent’s justifiers are mental states, processes and relations. If an aviary is too large, even if it is my aviary, I will not have the power to take any bird in it whenever I choose. Idealism is then the limiting case where I declare the atmosphere to be ‘my’ aviary. The world as a whole is not an internalist perspective, with the reason being simply that our powers in regard to most of it are those of Canute. However, an agent may have power of control over non-mental things, and as we shall see in Chapter 4, there is thus no reason in principle to limit the internalist’s domain of access to the mental. To be internalist, a theory must restrict itself to justifiers we have access to; we have access to those things that are within our cognitive perspective; our cognitive perspective encompasses all those things (e.g. thought processes) that we have a certain power over; and that power is just as much as is required for us to be held responsible for these things.

1.3 Consequentialism versus deontology This idea – that justification consists in the fulfilment of one’s perceived obligations, to the best of one’s abilities, and thus that one’s justificatory status is already decided in advance of the actual but unforeseen consequences of one’s actions (Clifford 1999) – is developed explicitly in contrast to consequentialism in ethics. One may determine epistemic justificatory status with reference to the consequences of a doxastic choice, cognitive process or system of epistemic rules, with there being many different ways of spelling out these consequences.9 Familiar examples establish two directions of dissociation between the deontic and consequentialist conceptions of value. We may reliably, etc., attain the truth, yet be in dereliction of our intellectual duties, or we may discharge our epistemic responsibilities diligently, yet fall far short of the truth (Descartes 1931: 176; Chisholm 1956a: 448, 1956b: 731; Locke 1975: IV, xvii, 24; BonJour 1985: 45; Clifford 1999). The conception of epistemic value that takes justification

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as consisting in the diligent discharge of these duties, and being unjustified as consisting in the flouting of same, is thus a sui generis conception of epistemic value; that is, the normative force of these duties is seen as prior to, and radically independent of, any truth-conducive yield to be obtained from their discharge, or error-conducive consequences of their neglect.10 Matters get a little more involved here when we consider rules consequentialisms – say, Goldman’s ‘J-rules’ account (Goldman 1986, 2009). Such consequentialists do make use of apparently deontic notions, but ultimately do so only because an adherence to this system of rules, duties, etc., is objectively most likely to maximize utility, or some other consequentialist goal. The ultimate ‘cash value’ of adherence to these rules, duties and obligations is spelled out in consequentialist terms; these obligations are not foundational, primitive, sui generis,11 but derived. Such rules consequentialisms do not complicate the issue concerning the source of epistemic normativity. As Goldman is very concerned to point out, the source of his ‘J-rules’ epistemic normativity is no more deontic than was his earlier doxastic process reliabilism: the axiological source remains the causal consequence of adopting (here) such a system of rules – that their adoption tends, by outcome, to lead to truth.

1.4 Access and deontology 1.4.1 ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’ On the view defended, access and deontology are not then competing ways of glossing internalism; they are internally, conceptually connected – though with deontology as conceptually prior. This connection is summed up in the slogan ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC). This principle is a priori, is internal to the concept of ‘ought’ itself, and is what connects the access conception of internalism with the deontic conception of internalism. It is the classic bridging principle between the normative (epistemology) and the non-normative (psychology) – though, as we shall see in Chapter 6, there are other candidate bridging principles as well. The principle OIC is in no sense proprietary to internalism; at least as great a reliance is placed on it by most externalists, who argue by contraposition that since our levels of control, access and freedom are greatly less than would be required for us to be held responsible for our beliefs, we must therefore abandon any conception of epistemic value which sees this as the discharge of intellectual duties. The quality of these arguments will be appraised in Chapter

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3; here, note only their role in the structure of the debate: externalists argue that since belief acquisition and other cognitive operations are not actions that are within anyone’s power, therefore one cannot be held responsible for what one believes, or fails to believe. Not all who see themselves as internalists, or as deontologists, embrace OIC,12 but the classic epistemic deontologists did, their major externalist opponents did and I do.

1.4.2 Distinction between access and control With most of the literature, we have been talking of ‘access’, when, in fact, this term is doing dual service: we may distinguish access as such from control. The deontic picture of epistemic value presupposes there is something we can do to discharge our intellectual obligations (i.e. ‘ought’ implies ‘can’). There are two ways this ‘can’ presupposition may be challenged. One challenge is that there is nothing we can do because we have no executive control over our cognition. We might have access to what needs to be done, but no way of effecting that task. The other is that there is nothing we can do because we have no access to what it is we have to do. There could be an efferent or an afferent failure. McHugh (2013), coming from the tradition of semi-compatibilism deriving from Fischer and Ravizza (1998), distinguishes the former as reasons reactivity and the latter as reasons receptivity. (Since, as will be seen in Part 2, I am opposed to the semi-compatibilist approach, I will not myself employ these committed terms.) Classic internalism lumps access and control together, being optimistic about both of these. Classic externalism does likewise – though is pessimistic about both. Between these two positions are two other logical possibilities: transparent access but no control; or control but no access. In practice, we are likely to need both access and control for epistemic justification; though the account I will eventually defend places much greater emphasis on control. Specific attacks on the possibility of control over our cognitive lives will be considered in Chapters 3 and 4 and again in Part 2; until then, the term ‘access’ will continue (with most of the literature) to do dual service.

1.4.3 Thin deontologism Internalism as articulated here is intended as a thin deontological concept. It is thin in two senses: first, akin to the ethical use of this term, it does not articulate a thick epistemic goal state. For our purposes, at this expository

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stage, we can think of the goal state it recommends as the truth of our beliefs (but see Endnote 9 this chapter, while further remarks expanding on this will be advanced in Chapter 5, Sections 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 and elsewhere). Secondly though, the concept is ‘thin’ inasmuch as it is committed to almost no firstorder content as to what we have to do (what processes we have to go through, say) to be justified. Specifically, we don’t start with a prior conception of the type and level of access (the ‘can’) that will be needed to satisfy our ‘oughts’: say, accessibility that is directly recognizable to the agent now, or mental accessibility, or introspectability, or some other prior conception of a level or type of access. On a thin deontic view, OIC is not then shorthand for the following: To be deontically justified or unjustified one requires [insert here the prior, contentful, criterion for an acceptable level of access and control] over one’s cognition.

So there is no reasonable counterargument to be made by saddling this view with a commitment to some prior, proprietary species of access (mentalism, introspectionism, ‘reflective access’, etc.) and showing how, intuitively, this will not fit the view to satisfy a certain, also prior conception of reasoning how one ought. On a thin deontic view, OIC is rather shorthand for something like the following: To be deontically justified or unjustified one requires responsibility-relevant access and control over one’s cognition.

What this expands into (and it is not a promissory note for a definition nor yet a method) must await our later chapters, especially the next three chapters and Chapter 6; but a brief illustration may be given by considering an agent striving to manage a classic accuracy–effort (/speed–accuracy) trade-off. If I must take a serious decision within a time interval that is too short to algorithmically secure the answer, then I had better use the best heuristic I can obtain – I’d be internalistically unjustified if I didn’t. But if that decision needs to be taken within such a prescribed time interval that I cannot use a good heuristic, then I must use a weak heuristic, as long as I have reason to believe it’s better than guessing or withholding or using a weaker heuristic still: I’d be internalistically unjustified if I didn’t. And if the timescale is so short that I must simply guess or withhold – and I have time to determine that guessing is likely to be better than withholding – then I must guess: I’d be internalistically unjustified if I didn’t. And if I only have time to work out whether withholding is better than guessing (and it is) then I must withhold: I’d be internalistically unjustified if I didn’t. In each of these cases as described, I do have responsibility-relevant

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access and control over my cognition – even though, were we to consider that process of reasoning in isolation from the constraints under which it had to take place, it might appear very far indeed from what we would think of as goodquality reasoning. In each of these cases, I may be able to be internalistically epistemically justified on a thin deontological conception of that notion. There isn’t a prior, specifiable level of justification that I must achieve (say, objectively truth-conducive justification, or meeting the Chisholmian foundationalist criteria, or squaring up a highly consistent belief set), and additionally, there isn’t a prior level of access I must possess to achieve this justificatory state. The view that in a given situation the stringency of the requirements needing to be satisfied for an agent to count as epistemically justified are, to use Herbert Simon’s famous phrase, bounded by (here) time constraints (or other limitations such as a restricted knowledge base, the requirements of computational tractability, processing/capacity limitations, decision costs, etc.) is, in both the psychological and the economic literature, a commonplace. The stance Oaksford and Chater adopt (here, of Bayesian reasoning) is representative of this approach as it applies not just to Bayesianism, but to other areas in which a conception of ‘rationality as objective optimisation’ is operative: Spontaneous, real-world risky decisions, even of moderate complexity, are not made using Bayesian inference, because they could not be. Since the mind/ brain is a limited information processor, the processes of risky decisionmaking cannot be based upon optimal, algorithmic procedures. This means that the only rationality to which we can aspire, as individual decision-makers, is one bounded by our limited computational resources. In consequence, the observation that we do not behave in accordance with Bayes’s theorem could not impugn our rationality. Our rationality could be questioned only if we were capable of using the optimal strategy but failed to do so. Thinking otherwise is akin to condemning us because we do not fly even though we do not possess wings. (Oaksford and Chater 1992: 226–7)

We will have more to say on these matters in the next chapter and Chapter 5. Interestingly, however, this ‘thin’ deontological notion can diverge in the other direction also: towards far more stringent criteria for justification than a standard accessibilist conception of internalism. If I must take a very important decision, which I realize is a very important decision (I have access to that fact) and I have plenty of time and cognitive resources available (I have this level of control) and I have few other tasks competing for my attention, then in order to be internalistically justified on a thin deontological conception, I may need to embark upon a rigorous, slow, painstaking research project – one that has

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nothing to do with introspection, or directly recognizable cognition, or ‘fast and frugal’ cognitive shortcuts. In such a case, a very demanding set of procedures might have to be undergone to meet the responsibility-relevant level of access and control – far more demanding than a prior ‘accessibilist’ or ‘mentalist’ conception of this distinction would suggest should count as internalist. In case this appears an odd departure from the normal connotations of epistemic internalism – with its notes of pure accessibilism, mentalism, introspectionism, reflective access and the like – keep in mind that this specific term has only been in use for about forty years, and that it is a theory-driven term of art. Some of the theory which drives the deontic tradition in epistemology in this direction will be revealed in the next chapter. On such a thin deontological conception of internalism, for a given question that concerns me in inquiry, I have an epistemic obligation to work out both the appropriate level of certainty for that question and the methods appropriate to that inquiry, at the same time as I devote myself to answering that question itself. These obligations come all of a piece. It is this thin notion of internalism alone that I am concerned to work with and defend in what follows.13 Counterarguments against other, more committed, ‘accessibilist’, ‘mentalist’, ‘introspectionist’ and/or ‘prior criterion of justification’ views of internalism should be addressed to those who defend such notions.

No method A point mentioned already, but deserving of emphasis, is that this chapter, and this book, unashamedly describes no contentful procedure for what has to be done for us to discharge our epistemic obligations. ‘Thin deontologism’ is not then a proper name for a method or criterion or decision procedure or set of rules14 or process: a specification of what we must do to achieve rationality or some other proprietary species of epistemic justification. Methodologically, I am travelling light. I endorse no account of narrow reflective equilibrium à la L. J. Cohen; no account of wide reflective equilibrium à la Rawls; no account based on a terminus of atomistic, associative intuitions à la late BonJour, Pust and Bealer; no Chisholmian foundationalist ascent towards certainty; no fixed bridgehead (a kernel, a core canon of a priori or innate principles)15; no Cartesian clarity and distinctness; no reflective access; no méthode. I don’t believe any such method is to be found. Discovering what we have to do in order to be rational in regard to a matter of concern to us is, in any given case, a part of the task we have to embark upon to be rational, not something given to us prior to that. Rationality is coextensive with the greatest and smallest cognitive–cultural achievements

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of mankind. It is greatly implausible to suppose rationality can be reduced to a procedure, or even a complex (but specifiable) logical sum out of a disjunctive set of procedures. Rationality is a matter of using all we have got (our cultural as well as our individual cognitive resources), using these resources as well as we are able, across all the epistemic contexts and challenges we encounter, over whatever the relevant timescale may be. There is no algorithm for rationality: it is too large and too open-ended a concept. None of this means we cannot say important things about rationality. This chapter has emphasized the deontic and perspectival and metacognitive aspects of epistemic rationality (there are other aspects of course); and has done so against a tradition that has tended to de-emphasize, neglect or deprecate these things – especially the first. Expanding upon and defending these things is what this first part of the book – all five chapters – is about. But it does not take as its ambit giving an account of a (much less the) rational method, or giving a definition thereof, or set of contentful first-order procedures to achieve such a status.

1.5 Codicil to Chapter 1: Oughts and accessibility 1.5.1 Deontology without access? To say that deontology generates the access restrictions characteristic of internalism isn’t to deny that there are some epistemologists who do in fact depart from what Plantinga (1993) calls the ‘classical’ internalist model of access-plus-deontology; it is to see them as wrong. There are two ways a separation between deontology and access may be envisaged: a deontic epistemology without any access restrictions or an access-restricted epistemology without deontology. The first of these does indeed lead to strict incoherence: start with the assumed conjunction of deontology and no access restriction. Separate these conjuncts by and-elimination. A priori, OIC (deontology implies access). So we get, either by modus ponens, access and no access, or by modus tollens, deontology and no deontology – in either case, a contradiction.16

1.5.2 Access without deontology? Obviating this first envisaged possibility – of a deontic epistemology without any access restrictions – is all that this book’s further arguments require, so with this

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result established, we could move on; still, as an aside, it is worth considering the second possibility: epistemologists at least appearing to make no reliance on deontic notions, yet with explicit access restrictions on their justificatory base (or other restrictions – say, mentalist restrictions, where these are not conceived of as being in the service of accessibilism). Here, the problem is not incoherence but motivation – why advance an epistemology whose fundamental justificatory base must be accessible to the agent? On my own reading of the internalist literature, there is no obvious answer to be gleaned as to the reason for accessibility constraints from those access internalists who appear not to embrace deontology – a judgement shared by Foley (1993) and Plantinga (1993). The diagnosis of Plantinga, which seems plausible, is that these exclusively access internalists have forgotten the original, deontic motivation for their access requirements. Rejecting any (explicit) reliance on deontology, their access constraints remain, as it were, as an evolutionary appendage, a by-product of something now lost.17

1.5.3 Superlative oughts Whether in ethics or epistemology, one often encounters talk of obligations that are radically inaccessible – say, obligations that are held in virtue of an act objectively having consequences that were, however, wholly unforeseeable by the agent: the agent who is nevertheless held to be bound by, responsible for, these unforeseeable consequences. This would be a ‘deontology’ of superlative oughts, ‘oughts’ that didn’t imply ‘cans’. I don’t wish to deny that the words ‘ought’, ‘obligation’ and the like are sometimes (too often) stretched to the point where they begin to be used like this in philosophy, but using these words thus changes wholly the nature of the normative concepts that can lie behind the words. To place an ‘obligation’ upon the agent that they may be helplessly unable to fulfil either sunders the relation between the terms employed to express deontic requirement (‘ought’, ‘obligation’, ‘responsibility’, ‘duty’) and the deontic terms of praise or blame, or it makes culpable, irresponsible or blameworthy one who could not have done otherwise. To do either of these is wrong a priori – as will be argued more completely in Chapter 6. The deontic notion of ‘ought’ that applies in epistemology is an essentially agent-relative notion, as remarks concerning perspectivism should have indicated already, and as will be argued more completely in the chapter to come. One can indeed, with the externalist, advance a normative epistemic notion in terms of objective truth conduciveness and the like, a notion that makes the agent’s axiological status something that may be

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radically inaccessible to her: just such a notion (of knowledge) I shall defend elsewhere. Such a notion can have it that an agent is helplessly unjustified18 or helplessly justified as the case may be. But the inaccessibility of such a notion of epistemic value necessarily separates it from something for which the agent may be held responsible, to the point where calling this notion a notion of objective ‘obligation’ (‘ought’, ‘duty’) would be pointlessly misleading. One’s duty, what one ought to do, is something one is responsible for. To place a ‘duty’ upon one that one is yet not responsible for fulfilling, or perhaps is ‘responsible’ for ‘fulfilling’ but blamelessly unable to fulfil,19 is to place no duty upon one in any ordinary sense.

1.5.4 Role oughts Feldman has a ‘role oughts’ objection to OIC. He considers a teacher who, in virtue of her role as teacher, is required to explain things clearly, but because of her non-culpable deficiencies, cannot do so. He concludes that she did not do as she ought (role ought – qua teacher), even though in the case in question she does all she can. Moreover, he astutely contrasts this case with a case whereby the teacher is required to satisfy ‘standards for a clear explanation so demanding that no-one could ever meet them’, saying of the latter case that ‘it is not true that teachers ought to explain things that clearly’ (Feldman 2001: 88). So, in my parlance, the latter case allows him to deny that he embraces ‘superlative oughts’, yet the former case permits him to argue that we may have (role) ‘oughts’ that do not imply ‘cans’. I think Feldman’s argument is unconvincing. Certainly, we may use ‘ought’ in this ‘role ought’ way (and several other ways besides) – but the epistemic ‘ought’ is not (normally, salve tracing arguments) such a ‘role ought’. A poor teacher perhaps ought to retrain, or have worked harder up to that point, or leave the profession. But if her deficiencies really are non-culpable (diachronically as well as synchronically) and if for some reason she has no option but to stay in post, then in saying that in virtue of her role as teacher she ought to have explained things more clearly, one has simply changed the sense of ‘ought’ from ought proper to an ‘objective ought’. One can have ‘objective oughts’ in this sense, but as will be argued in the chapter to come (by Chisholm, by Alston, by myself), they are not to the point: they speak to the good and not the right – they are not true ‘oughts’ at all. Feldman ends his paper by asking ‘is this epistemic deontologism?’ and in the sense defended here it is not.

Internalism as a Thin Deontological Concept

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It is worth adding here the more direct counter that the epistemic ‘ought’ is not like a role ought anyway. Epistemic obligations pervade our lives; they are not encapsulated, they are not something one picks up in occupying a role, then sets down again when done (cf. Ryan 2003: 61ff). I may have professional obligations specific to this or that role I accidentally occupy, but I am essentially a thinker, a rational being. Feldman himself acknowledges this, holding, in a fine turn of phrase, ‘it is our plight to be believers’ (Feldman 2001: 88; cf. Kornblith 2001). Qua rational animal (which is to say, not ‘qua’ anything at all), my obligation is to reason as well as I am able – and I can have no obligation (no obligation proper) to reason more ably than that.

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The Regulative and the Theoretical

2.1 A third distinction Two distinctions drawn in normative epistemology have now been outlined: one between the things we are seeking to account for (rationality versus knowledge); and another between the different types of epistemic theory trying to account for these (internalism versus externalism). This chapter concerns a third distinction – between the regulative and the theoretical. This distinction is well known, at least at a surface level; yet its significance is still not fully appreciated. It is powerfully similar to a distinction drawn in ethics. We uncover this third distinction via a consideration of the arguments levelled by internalists (deontologists) against externalists (consequentialists) and vice versa. Of course, the protagonists in these debates see them as being directed towards establishing which of internalism or externalism is the true theory of knowledge or rationality; however, for us, uncovering these arguments will be in the service of another end.

2.2 Why internalists and deontologists draw this third distinction: The epistemic poverty objection The deontic conception of internalism (henceforth and throughout: just ‘internalism’) involves the idea of cognitive accessibility, of epistemic deontology, and of these being connected via what, in Chapter 6, I call a deontic leeway entailment – here, ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC). These things may be used to create a problem for internalism. I may have done all I can epistemically, dutifully discharging my intellectual obligations to the limit of my abilities. Still, I may be desperately far removed from either the truth or an objectively truth-conducive basis for my belief. This was entitled the ‘epistemic poverty

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objection’ by (BonJour 2003: 176); with a classic source being Alston (1985). Alston gives examples of dutiful but helplessly flawed cognizers, examples typical of many in the externalist literature: a tribesman may have been brought up to accept the traditions of his tribe as authoritative, and never have seen anything to call these traditions (of inquiry, etc.) into question. A person may be intellectually honest and diligent, but just rather dim; or not dim especially, but highly impressionable. A person may lack an education, being vulnerable to all kinds of unfounded hearsay and superstition as a result. In general, one may have discharged one’s epistemic duties as responsibly as one is able, but still (blamelessly) be holding one’s beliefs on profoundly inadequate grounds. Thus, it is argued, the deontic conception of internalism is an inadequate epistemic axiology. This objection originated as an argument against ethical deontology. In both ethics and epistemology, it has a stock response. This is to draw a distinction between objective and subjective duty.1 One is culpable, blameworthy, irresponsible, should one fail to discharge one’s subjective duty (doing what one has reason to believe will bring about the right); one is not blameworthy or irresponsible merely in virtue of failing to discharge one’s objective duty (actually maximizing the good) – which failure may be quite out of one’s hands. Owens (2000) notes this distinction in Sidgwick (cf. 1907: 413). Plantinga (1993) credits his version of this distinction to Aquinas; though a more immediate source might well be Chisholm (1957), who draws the same distinction using the terms ‘practical’ for subjective and ‘absolute’ for objective – himself crediting Richard Price. To escape the epistemic poverty objection, deontic, oughts-based justification must be restricted in its application to the subjective, practical realm. There is another objective, absolute sense of being justified for which the discharge of duty, the fulfilment of obligations, be we ever so diligent, is not guaranteed to satisfy. Consider, in light of this, a claim such as the following: I shall assume that only right epistemic rules make a difference to genuine justifiedness. This point should be equally acceptable to both internalism and externalism. (Goldman 2009: 5–6, emphasis in original)

This point will be ‘equally acceptable to both internalism and externalism’ only should it be read by each under a different interpretation of ‘right epistemic rule’. For the internalist, this means subjectively right; for the externalist, objectively right.2 Argument at cross purposes beckons if we do not keep this in mind.

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2.3 Why externalists and consequentialists draw this third distinction: The doxastic decision procedure objection In ethics, there are a set of stock objections to consequentialist theories (e.g. act utilitarianism) and in turn a stock response to this set of objections (to draw the regulative–theoretical distinction). The objection and associated response carried over into epistemology. Brink (1986) called this family of objections in ethics generally the objection from the ‘personal point of view’. There are several such objections that do not concern us, but a version that does – found in each of Bales (1971), Brink (1986) and Smith (1988) – is as follows: working through the act-utilitarian (or other) consequences of even a simple choice of action is likely to be a highly involved matter. Bring other choices into the equation, factor in a diachronic time-scale, incorporate a need to take on new information in real time, and the matter becomes massively more involved. The process of calculating these consequences – to even a modest level of surety – takes time. Frequently, for the agent to embark on the process of calculating the consequences of a course of action will itself be to choose one way or other how to act (and often, to choose wrongly).3 This objection to consequentialism in ethics carried over directly into epistemology, where it was levelled by internalists against externalism. One traditional ambition of epistemology is to offer the agent ‘rules for the direction of the mind’; that is (whether actually rules-based or not), an epistemology that can offer guidance in cases where the agent is undecided and facing a doxastic choice. But for an account to be able to offer me practical help in cases of judgement under uncertainty, it is necessary for it to restrict itself to resources – a justificatory ground – that may be available to me in that epistemic dilemma, with those limited resources (processing/capacity limitations, time constraints, restricted knowledge base, etc.). Decision-making requires me to have access to my justifiers. Goldman (1980) referred to this as the aspiration that epistemology should offer the agent, facing a decision, a ‘doxastic decision procedure’ (DDP) – where this latter is a dummy for whatever set of rules for guidance (whether actually rules-based or not) the epistemologist’s theory finally divulges. But the objective, truth-directed nature of an externalist theory in epistemology is not guaranteed to give the undecided agent access to any such DDP. In the language of the psychologists, such theories may yield accounts of justified cognition that are computationally intractable – hence unusable for the purpose of guidance under uncertainty. So, relative to this ambition, externalism is a failure.

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2.3.1 Negative response: What should we do in the meantime? Goldman (1980) made a tu quoque response to the DDP objection – namely, that it applies no less to many varieties of internalism. Whatever the internalistically right DDP is supposed to be, we could not rely on it falling to us from heaven. We should probably have to work to get it. The same questions, then, arise: how should we form our doxastic attitudes in the meantime? and which DDP should we use in searching for the internalistically right DDP? These worries do not create a special presumption against externalism, since they are of equal significance for internalism. (Goldman 1980: 46)

This point is well taken as far as it goes: many supposedly internalist theories are indeed too complex and defeasible for an agent to have access to their criterion of epistemic success. Indeed, this may serve as a criticism of certain (e.g. ‘mentalist’,4 or highly complex introspectionist–foundationalist) conceptions of internalism – this being the ‘Forth bridge’ point, articulated in Section 1.2 of the previous chapter. But we saw in that chapter that not all species of internalism are like this. With a deontic conception of internalism allied to a commitment to OIC, one may start with the powers of the agent and delimit one’s account of their epistemic requirements accordingly. This ‘bounded’ notion of epistemic justification leads to accounts of epistemic justification that are not vulnerable to the DDP objection. A paradigm of such an account in normative epistemology would be Richard Foley’s work (e.g. Foley 1993). In the economics and psychology literature, this becomes Herbert Simon’s notion of ‘bounded rationality’. Some (actually many) of these bounds are cultural, and in the anthropology and cultural psychology literatures, this involves the Vygotskian notion of a zone of proximal development (Lockie 2016a,b), with Elqayam (2011, 2012) dubbing this a notion of ‘grounded rationality’. For the deontological internalist who takes OIC seriously, epistemology cannot be the project of achieving some absolute justification, whether an objective relation to the facts or to the world; or an optimally (impossibly) coherent or foundationalist system of beliefs – some inaccessible and superlative ‘DDP’. It is rather a thinner project, one which starts with the powers of the agent, her actual, limited, time-constrained cognitive resources, then providing an account of how she should move forward from these – and these alone. For such an internalist, the project of accounting for justification is to answer the regulative question not with some enormously complex

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and inaccessible theory, some ‘DDP’ that doesn’t typically yield a decision in the time required; but to take the bounded agent, with her powers, her perspective, and ask precisely: given only this, what should she do ‘in the meantime’?

2.3.2 Positive response: The regulative versus theoretical distinction The classic response by externalists and consequentialists to the DDP objection again involves making a dichotomous distinction as to the aims of an epistemic (/ethical) theory. The terminology of this distinction varies, though in ways that carry some useful semantic pointers as to the underlying differences between its two terms. In what follows, I use the terms regulative and theoretical. A list of cognate terms, with sources, is provided in Table 2.1. Externalists/consequentialists are criticized by their opponents for offering epistemic (/ethical) theories that may not be usable by the agent facing a decision to regulate thought. Their response is simply to note that this regulative, actionguiding ambition is not a desideratum of their kind of account. Rather, in the case of epistemology, the externalist seeks only to specify when a belief, a beliefmaking process or a course of cognitive conduct is justified objectively (say, in terms of truth maximization or error avoidance).5 Table 2.1 Terms used to draw the regulative–theoretical distinction Regulative

Non-Regulative

Goldman (1986) after H. M. Smith

Doxastic Decision Procedure

Theoretical

Goldman (1980)

Regulative

Theoretical

Goldman (1980)

Practical Right [Practical Virtue]

Absolute Right [Absolute Virtue]

Chisholm (1957) [after Richard Price]

Practical

Theoretical

H. M. Smith (1988)

Decision Procedure

Right-Maker,

Bales (1971)

Decision Procedure

Criterion of rightness (Sidgwick 1907)

Brink (1986)

Motive

Standard

Sidgwick (1907)

Subjective

Objective

Alston (1985), Plantinga (1993) after Aquinas

Source: Lockie (2014c) – adapted.

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2.4 Two motivations but one distinction Each of internalism and externalism levels a standard objection against the other. Each must draw a distinction to escape the objection to their position. Each draws this distinction in terms of the desiderata of their theory – and what instead is acknowledged to be no part of its aim. And each does this by explicitly borrowing both objection and distinction from an already developed body of argument in ethics. Externalist theories identify a very central aspect of what one expects of an epistemic theory: their different, proprietary ways of marking a connection with the truth, their objectivity. Minimally, this connection is represented by the idea of truth as a necessary condition on knowledge; though, of course, conventional externalist theories tend to go far beyond this in their different accounts of warrant. These wide variations of detail do not obscure the point: that one cannot mark the objectivity, factuality, that such accounts base their epistemic success-term upon – their emphasis on what is actually truth conducive (or error avoiding) in cognition – without losing any necessary connection with accessibility. Making epistemic normativity essentially objective means that it can be at best only contingently accessible. For the world is as it is, and we are as we are, and as fallible beings with widely differing epistemic resources, our ability to achieve a given objective epistemic status will be tenuous and uncertain. The potential inaccessibility characteristic of externalist theories is then not a definitional primitive, but a derived consequence of their objectivity, however this latter be construed, even if it be no more than the attainment of truth, much less if it be something more. Internalist theories also identify a very central aspect of what one expects of an epistemic theory: their different, proprietary ways of marking a connection with the subject, their help to the subject as a guide, their directiveness – of the subject’s cognitive conduct, of thought. Internalist theories’ restrictions on only accepting a justificatory ground that may be accessible to the agent is also then best seen not as a definitional primitive, being rather derived from the desideratum of satisfying this regulative, directive aim: of satisfying it not accidentally, but essentially. To be necessarily capable of directing cognitive conduct, a theory must be accessible, it must not go beyond the resources of the epistemic agent: remaining within the compass of his intellectual abilities, or at least his ‘zone of proximal development’ therefrom (Vygotsky 1978; Plato 1992: 197c–d; Lockie 2016a,b). It is for this reason that a widely canvassed criticism of those deontic conceptions of rationality which strongly embrace

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OIC is not entirely well-taken – namely, that said approaches fail to sufficiently respect the distinction between rationality and epistemic justification. Any notion of rationality has to respect the fact that it applies to human beings (is bounded by human limits): that it is not ‘God’s Rationality’. God’s Rationality is simply truth – inaccessible truth. It cannot be that epistemic rationality is unbounded, idealized, reified. It is not then easy to motivate a distinction between deontic, perspectivist, bounded justification and a more-idealized, reified, absolutist notion of epistemic rationality. Granted, one may arbitrarily operationalize a distinction here – between more-bounded and less-bounded – but for all intellectually serious epistemologists, psychologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists, ‘rationality’ is bounded at least by human limits: our processing resources, our cultural resources, our working memory, our time to reach decision, our access to experts, our epistemic perspective, generally conceived. The two families of theory, internalism and externalism, have then, as an outcome of their conflict, each been forced to draw the same distinction – between two separate desiderata of adequacy. Under severe pressure from the other’s arguments, each has been forced to abandon any pretensions to meet one desideratum of adequacy. Between them, they account for both desiderata; separately, they each account for one alone.

2.5 Irenic resolution or Gordian (knot) threat? What is not often flagged is that this task separation at once offers us both the promise of an irenic resolution of some tangled traditional disputes in epistemology and the threat that any such resolution may be Gordian in nature. We may see as irenic a solution that promises a simple division of labour in epistemology. Many erstwhile disputes are then not so much solved as dissolved. Internalist accounts alone offer us the resources to satisfy the regulative desideratum, yet must disavow any claim to satisfy the theoretical desideratum. This surely leaves such accounts uniquely well suited to offer us our position on epistemic rationality (or if you prefer – cf. the above – epistemic justification). And externalist accounts alone offer us the resources to satisfy the theoretical desideratum, yet must disavow any claim to satisfy the regulative desideratum. This surely leaves such accounts uniquely well suited to offer us our position on knowledge. The fact remains, however, that a number of knotty problems will have been severed rather than untied. For we will end up with an account of knowledge that openly flouts paying even lip

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service to the regulative desideratum of adequacy; and an account of rationality that openly flouts paying even lip service to the theoretical desideratum of adequacy. We have seen that there are powerful motivations to go down this route; but were we to do so, could we abide the destination in which we would find ourselves?

2.5.1 Objections to the Gordian threat: The virtues objection Virtues theorists in both ethics (Aristotle 2000) and epistemology (Zagzebski 1996) are wont to claim that we have achieved our epistemic end (most commonly knowledge) or our ethical end (sometimes the good, sometimes the right) just in case we have maximized satisfaction of both desiderata: theoretical and regulative. They will deny that we have achieved our success state should only one desideratum be satisfied; thus they will deny that drawing this third distinction solves or dissolves any or many of the perennial disputes found in normative epistemology.

Response: Stipulative As I have argued at length in Lockie (2008), this objection is merely stipulative. We, all of us (pro- or anti-virtues theory), can and do recognize these two desiderata, and may identify in any given case whether this or that desideratum has separately been satisfied. As distinct axiological projects, delineating distinct axiological properties, they exist (virtues theorists do not typically deny this – nor can they). One may, after recognition of this truth, stipulate that ‘virtue’, now employed as a term of art, applies only when both desiderata are met (e.g. Zagzebski 1996); and if this is felt a useful (stipulative) restriction of our philosophical terminology, then fine. What cannot be done to win anything other than a terminological victory is to specify that knowledge (say) or rationality (say) require this stipulatively so-defined conjoint state of ‘virtue’ to be met; and thus that a candidate account of knowledge, say, which (suppose) brilliantly meets several theoretical desiderata, is to be dismissed for failing to meet certain wholly distinct regulative desiderata – thus failing to be a state of virtue, as stipulatively so defined. It is noteworthy that nonAristotelian conceptions of virtue, particularly the Stoic (Annas 2003), recognize this point and tend to restrict their account of the ‘virtuous’ to one satisfying the regulative desideratum alone: of which more in the next subsection.

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2.5.2 Objections to the Gordian approach: The ‘violated intuitions’ objection Envisage a candidate externalist theory of knowledge, one which sets out solely to address the theoretical desideratum, perhaps offering a very promising candidate to satisfy this desideratum, yet does so in a way that flouts the regulative desideratum in its entirety (perhaps it permits very ‘lucky’ or irresponsibly acquired knowledge – take Sartwell (1991, 1992) as a paradigm: the claim that knowledge is merely true belief). Or envisage a candidate internalist theory of rationality that sets out solely to address the regulative desideratum, perhaps offering a very promising candidate to satisfy this desideratum, yet does so in a way that flouts the theoretical desideratum in its entirety (perhaps it permits objectively very awry, radically false, yet putatively rational beliefs – take Foley6 (1993) as a paradigm: the claim that rationality consists simply in being justified by our own deepest intellectual standards). It will be protested (it routinely is protested) that suchlike theories ‘violate our intuitions’ (sometimes, our ‘core’ intuitions) and that this is an awful thing – so awful that we must reject the abrupt divorce between theoretical and regulative accounts of epistemic value: an ordinary language/‘conceptual analysis’/intuitions-driven metaphilosophy establishes we must satisfy both desiderata in accounting for knowledge or in accounting for rationality.

Response: Abandon the indefensible metaphilosophy When our intuitions are outraged by, say, an account which has it that an agent knows yet wholly fails to address the regulative desideratum, or is rational yet wholly fails to satisfy the theoretical desideratum, social-cognitive psychologists refer to (and dismiss) this type of phenomenon as a named species of cognitive error: a halo effect. We tacitly suppose a beautiful person must be good, and a good person must be wise … and a person who has achieved one epistemic success state must possess another; but it is not so. Our feelings of oddness at attributing knowledge to someone who has not regulated her thought well (Sartwell 1991, 1992; Lockie 2004, 2008) or rationality to someone operating under a massive framework of false beliefs (Foley 1993; Lockie 2016a,b) are just that: mere feelings of oddness. Our three major epistemic distinctions (knowledge versus rationality, internalism versus externalism, regulative versus theoretical) are all of them theory driven terms of art. The view that an argument to a position that is driven by fundamental epistemic theory should nevertheless be put in full reverse when it militates against ordinary language

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‘intuitions’ (connotations, resonances, ‘tone’) that do not answer to anything like the constraints which shaped and motivated that argument’s development is quite unacceptable. Affording a priority to such intuitions over fundamental epistemic theory rests on an indefensible (and presently very hard-pressed) tacit, framework metaphilosophy. There is no reason at all why those of us who are normative epistemologists should cede all the arguments against conceptual analysis to the naturalists. The ‘violated intuitions’ objection (better: tacit conceptual framework) is dealt with exhaustively in Lockie 2004, 2008, and especially 2014b), where the metaphilosophy that underpins it is subjected to sustained critical pressure. The arguments there cannot be given further summary at this stage.

The conjunction of Sections 2.5.1 & 2.5.2: They don’t sit well together When the virtues objection is conjoined with the ‘violated intuitions’ objection, an interesting tension is manifest: the ordinary language intuitions appear to militate against the virtues account. As the present author and others have previously noted (against, for instance, Zagzebski 1996), the ordinary resonance and normative connotations of calling someone a ‘virtuous’ character suggest we identify this state with a satisfaction of the regulative desideratum alone – whether in ethics or epistemology (Lockie 2008). This is a point emphasized by the Stoic (as opposed to the Aristotelian) tradition in virtue theory, and noted in their different ways by Russell (1996), Annas (2003) and others: … men everywhere give the name of virtue to those actions, which amongst them are judged praiseworthy; and call that vice which they account blamable … (Locke 1975: II,28; cited in Goldman 2001: 30)

2.5.3 Objections to the Gordian approach: Impoverished justification is too cheap a notion Nottelmann (2013) has an important discussion of blameless belief where this be cut away from other, more objective notions: blamelessness in the minimal sense of non-blameworthiness sometimes comes cheaply. In fact too cheaply, it would seem, to take a version of [the deontic conception of epistemic justification] predicated on plain blamelessness seriously as a conception of [epistemic justification]. The problem is that there could be beliefs which are blameless, only because it makes no sense to blame the believer for holding them. But intuitively it would then seem that it makes

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as little sense to evaluate such beliefs as epistemically justified … suppose that each of us is for some reason born with an ineradicable7 belief, for or against which we may never obtain relevant evidence. … Blaming us for this belief, if it is truly innate and ineradicable, seems strange. But so does declaring it somehow epistemically justified. (Nottelmann 2013: 2236)

Nottelmann is right here, as far as it goes, but he has surely just identified that ‘blamelessness’8 (which in this context may hold place for any justificatory notion that solely answers to the regulative desideratum) is an incomplete notion of justification – and we established that ourselves. Of course, an important axiological notion in epistemology concerns objective truth conduciveness; but that is just a different notion to the deontic notion. Equally, it may sometimes be important to conjoin our two notions of epistemic justification – internal and external – but they are distinct notions for all that. What matters is that we acknowledge that the principle OIC and our epistemic limitations force on us a notion of perspectivally limited ‘blameless’ (if you must) justification, however much it jars the ears: this jarring is just a halo effect. Suppose, to take Nottelmann’s example, we consider ineradicable beliefs, or cognitive limitations forced upon us by our biological natures (à la Kant, Chomsky and McGinn): were there such beliefs/limitations, it would seem to me to be indeed correct to say we would then be, as a species, blameless and as justified as we can be in holding these (nevertheless false) beliefs. The same thing goes for beliefs that are a product of our cultural–historical rather than biological limitations: Newton blamelessly believed in absolute simultaneity – he was justified in this (false) belief9; Alston’s tribesman blamelessly believes in his culture’s metaphysical world-view, and so on. We all have our limits. Justification in this important sense applies to us thinking as well as we can within these limits.

2.5.4 The situation that confronts us There is a general objection to any attempt to efface this distinction. Any insistence that we should elide or conjoin the twin desiderata we have identified thus far faces the charge that this would be simply to ignore the situation that confronts us as epistemic agents. By hypothesis, in facing a decision, we have no ‘marker’ of which of our beliefs are true and which false – if we had, epistemology as an enterprise, and the questions we are addressing, would be superfluous. We have our beliefs, both true and false, and must move forward from these altogether to find out the justified ones – those likely to be of facts. This just is the regulative project. A consideration of one engaged with this project (and we

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are all engaged with this project) leaves us with no choice but to acknowledge the agent’s epistemic limitations, his fallibility and frailty, the fact that his epistemic resources may not (and often will not) be up to the task. This situation simply confronts us, each of us, qua epistemic agent, qua inquirer in the world, and in acknowledging it we must recognize two things. First, notwithstanding the possibility that in such situations the agent may unavoidably be led into error, there is a core, vital sense in which in such a situation he may nevertheless be justified – and will be justified should he marshal his resources as effectively as his perspectival limitations permit. Second, that in such a situation, he is nevertheless avowedly in error – that is, as much as he may have satisfied one desideratum and achieved justification thereby, he has failed to satisfy another undoubted aim of epistemology and lacks a fundamental epistemic value thereby. Conversely, when our agent, despite guiding his thought badly, has attained the truth, or some other objectively desirable factive state or relation to the world, we are describing at once both a type of epistemic success and a distinct type of epistemic failure. We have no option but to recognize these types of achievement (and failure) as distinct. There is a double dissociation between these two desiderata. Insisting that we must abandon two separate and distinct forms of assessment of the epistemic agent ignores much of what it is to be an agent in the world: the subject of decision and normative appraisal consequent upon that decision.

2.5.5 The Foley divorce Passim in the internalist/externalist literature (indeed, in epistemology per se, at least since Descartes) we see arguments establishing – surely conclusively – that one may be as justified as one can make oneself, yet still fall radically short of the truth; or one may have as reliable and objective a connection with the truth as you like, yet have attained this truth through intellectual conduct that was reckless, deplorable or remiss. This double dissociation – the basis for the Foley divorce – gives us two points of assessment for an epistemic subject in a situation: internally justified? (yes/no); and externally justified? (yes/no). These map a grid of four positions in logical space (or if, as is preferable, these contrastpairs be thought of as continuous rather than discrete, a space marked out by two bipolar, Cartesian dimensions) (Figure 2.1). Famous and not-so-famous thought experiments can be inserted at will into the top right and bottom left quadrants of Figure 2.1; I have mentioned one esoteric and one quotidian case for each, but there are of course a very large

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Greatest actual (objective) maximization of truth (/minimization of falsity)

The ‘virtuous’ cognizer

Greco’s truck, BonJour’s clairvoyant Least responsible cognition; poorest (subjective) efforts to attain truth /avoid falsity

Most responsible cognition; greatest (subjective) efforts to attain truth /avoid falsity New evil demons, Alston’s tribesman

The irresponsible & ignorant cognizer

Least actual (objective) maximization of truth (/minimization of falsity)

Figure 2.1 The epistemic circumplex

number of such cases, any of which would serve for use as examples. Should I be BonJour’s (1985) reliable clairvoyant, then I will face Descartes’ (1931: 176) charge: ‘blame of misusing my freedom.’ And for every recherché thought experiment, there is a quotidian case (that is: the dissociation is not merely conceptual) – as for the case of Greco’s truck, bearing down upon me, leading me to leap out of the way despite no discharge of any epistemic responsibility contributing to my state of knowledge (Greco 2002: 296). Similarly, one may discharge one’s obligations diligently yet be wholly unable to achieve the truth or avoid falsity – whether through being a victim of a New (actually not so new) Evil Demon, or simply by being an agent embedded within a sociocognitive milieu that does not permit one to attain the truth (as for Alston’s 1985 tribesman, brought up to accept the traditions of his tribe as authoritative, diligently working within these resources, with the epistemic resources of other intellectual perspectives being wholly beyond his compass – cf. Lockie 2016a,b). Keeping these two axes of epistemic appraisal as just that – two – yields a richer form of epistemic appraisal (far richer) than any species of epistemic appraisal forced on us if we elide these issues into one categorical measure. If there is one lesson we must learn from four hundred years of epistemology after Descartes, it is that appraisal of the epistemic status of agents requires taking a separate register to situate them on both the orthogonal dimensions identified

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above – for, in categorical terms, there is the possibility of them occupying any of the four positions identified.

2.6 Normative epistemology in light of this distinction 2.6.1 Knowledge/rationality and the regulative–theoretical distinction As stated at the outset, the existence of this third (regulative–theoretical) distinction is hardly esoteric knowledge in epistemology. Yet how seriously has it been taken by those seeking to develop accounts on either side of our first distinction – accounts of rationality or of knowledge? Does an awareness of the theoretical–regulative distinction really inform theory construction in epistemology? Periodically, the philosophical community approaches the insight that an epistemology that developed and shaped accounts of either rationality or knowledge in light solely of the appropriate desideratum for that item might make space for Gordian treatments of certain epistemic problems: shocking accounts that otherwise would be scorned, marginalized or simply not entertained. But then, having approached such insights, the world of academic epistemology just seems to veer away. So, over more than a decade, a long overdue consideration of the Meno value problem has been underway (via, for example, the growing literature on the ‘Swamping Problem’; and variants of Zagzebski’s (2003) ‘espresso machine’ analogy). But the terms under which this problem has been discussed are desperately prescribed; participants in these debates seem, at the level of framework presupposition, not to entertain the possibility of a radically theoretical account – say, of the need to address the challenge represented by a genuinely Theaetetan10 theory of knowledge (Sartwell 1991, 1992, Plato 1956: 97a–b, Plato 1992: 187b). Where such accounts are entertained, they are taken unargued to be merely a reductio of any theory that entails them (Chisholm 1988: 287). From the other side of the internalist–externalist divide, the viability of extremely internalist accounts of rationality (e.g. ‘Foley rationality’: that rationality consists in being justified by our own deepest epistemic standards (Foley 1993)) are routinely disparaged on grounds that, for one who sees any such account as answerable solely to regulative considerations, are plainly non sequiturs – of which more in Chapter 5 (and cf. Foley 2004).

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2.6.2 Internalism/externalism and the regulative–theoretical distinction The big challenge for intransigents on either side of the internalist– externalist distinction is to ask how much will remain of their respective hostile arguments after fully acknowledging this distinction concerning the desiderata for epistemic theories; and in particular after establishing that internalists and externalists alike are each already committed to their specific account satisfying only one of these distinct desiderata. Isn’t this just to effect a (possibly unwelcome) irenic resolution of much that was hitherto in vehement dispute? Internalism satisfies the regulative desideratum of adequacy and gives us our account of rationality. Externalism satisfies the theoretical desideratum of adequacy and gives us our account of knowledge. There is then plenty still to disagree about, like: what is the correct externalist theory of knowledge? What is the correct internalist theory of rationality? And in particular: what would an externalist theory of knowledge look like were this theory to be developed wholly and solely with a view to addressing the theoretical desideratum? What would an internalist theory of rationality look like were this theory to be developed wholly and solely with a view to addressing the regulative desideratum? Should such questions be addressed with, and motivated by, an explicit awareness of the foregoing meta-epistemic considerations, the answers to them would be likely to prove very interesting indeed. But that such a state of affairs should come to pass would require a Rubicon to be crossed in modern epistemology. What, minimally, an informed awareness of these meta-epistemic issues should lead us to question is how much point there is to the familiar dialectic which occurs when partisans for the one approach upbraid partisans for the other approach on the basis of, say, the inability of this (avowedly theoretical) account to satisfy this (clearly regulative) desideratum – or vice versa. Further, these meta-epistemic issues should lead us to question the requirement that one and the same normative epistemic theory should answer to (indeed maximize) both desiderata at once. There are strong reasons to doubt whether any one account can satisfy both desiderata. Within epistemology, we need to confront this situation and entertain the radical conclusions that appear to follow from it.

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Epistemic Deontologism and Control

3.1 The structure of the debate Few psychologically healthy individuals, naïve to our epistemic debates, doubt that they have considerable control over their mental lives, but many epistemologists have taken such a stance to be problematic – or at least have sought to ‘problematize’ certain (as they see it) widespread conceptions of the degree and nature of our intellectual control. Criticizing the notion that we possess significant levels of control over our mental lives constitutes the jumping off point for the major lines of attack against epistemic deontologism. Deontological appraisal generally (in ethics no less than epistemology) requires that the agent possesses responsibility-appropriate powers of control. Thus, for example, the motivation underpinning hard-determinist objections to ethical deontology is immediately obvious. However, as regards specifically epistemic deontologism, arguments we shall shortly consider claim that, without ever approaching the metaphysical or scientific commitments of hard determinism, a kind of control fit to underwrite deontological appraisal could not be possible or at least is not actual. So, deontological epistemic appraisal is argued to be indefensible. Among some who are not wholly convinced by such arguments, there is nevertheless a more positive concern as to how an agential, deontologically appropriate species of intellectual control might be possible, or could be actual. This more positive project also needs to be addressed – and will be, at length. There are three common ways these worries about deontologically appropriate control have been expressed. The first two involve slightly different ways of defending doxastic involuntarism (Premise iii in the following argument); the third may be shoe-horned into this argument via its Premise iii, but is in principle rather more general.

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i. Epistemic deontologism involves intellectual ‘oughts’ (Df). ii. ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’ (a priori). iii. We can’t choose our beliefs (doxastic involuntarism). iv. So epistemic deontologism is indefensible. First argument: involuntarism is obvious from the armchair. Second argument: involuntarism is the verdict of modern science. Third argument (what I shall call the Bias Argument): the two terms making up the conjoint term ‘epistemic freedom’ are intrinsically opposed – freedom can only bias belief formation. Our beliefs must be forced (by the facts, the world) if they are to satisfy genuinely epistemic (world-to-mind, not mind-to-world) desiderata – if they are to register the truth. The bias argument is an important one and needs a response; however, I don’t want to structure this chapter with this argument, so will bracket it, to address it exhaustively in the next chapter. Rebutting these objections is the negative aim of this chapter, and to some extent the next. Positively, however, giving an account (a non-definitional account) of what our powers of intellectual freedom and control consist in is by far the more important task of these two chapters. I shall argue in the second half of this chapter and all of the next that what we need in order to be held responsible for our beliefs is a freedom of executive functioning, where this involves the self-regulation of our thought and action – and that we, as undamaged human agents, possess such powers: remarkable powers of intellectual agency.

Doxastic involuntarism: Armchair and scientific Claims of doxastic involuntarism are the crucial premise in the first and second arguments for the untenability of epistemic deontologism, with these arguments differing only in the way these claims are defended. One defence is armchair, whether conceptual or empirical: ‘My argument, if it can be called that, simply consists in asking you to consider whether you have any such powers. Can you, at this moment, start to believe that the United States is still a colony of Great Britain, just by deciding to do so?’ (Alston 1988 in his 1989b: 122). The second argument is that doxastic involuntarism is the clear verdict of modern science. Regularly in discussion and sometimes in print, one encounters from philosophers (not just epistemologists) a conception of cognition most generally as unconscious, mandatory, automatic, autonomous, non-rational, fast, parallel, etc. – Nottelmann’s (2006: 562) description of

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belief formation as involving processes of ‘non-intentional reflex reactions’: triggered processes as little under our control as, say, digestion (Chrisman 2008).

Responses In response to the involuntarist objections, four defences of epistemic deontologism open up: 1. One may reject ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC). 2. One may claim one can directly choose one’s beliefs. 3. One may claim that one can indirectly choose one’s beliefs. 4. One may claim that the freedom (the ‘can’) needed to underpin epistemic deontologism involves regulative control of one’s cognition, yet does not normally involve choosing beliefs in any sense, direct or indirect. Defending 4 with the claim that we possess a freedom of self-regulative cognition (of executive functioning) is the positive aim of this chapter and the next; but before we get to this, the negative aim will predominate.

3.2 Belief choice is not to the point I reject 1, defending OIC in the free will literature at length in Chapter 6 and Lockie (2014a) – though it has been defended epistemologically already in the preceding two chapters. I maintain that 2 is conceptually possible and (rarely) empirically actual – defending the existence of such cases in the self-deception literature in Lockie (2003a).1 However, in epistemology (as opposed to philosophy of mind or psychopathology), such phenomena are largely tangential to the issues of concern to us. We should make almost no reliance upon 2 in defending an epistemic deontology that is meant to have very widespread applicability to human intellectual conduct, including, importantly, commendable cognitive conduct – for direct doxastic voluntarism of this unusual variety is generally a sign of epistemically unjustified belief. A freedom to choose beliefs immediately (‘directly’) is not necessary for epistemically deontological appraisal, though its rare instances may sometimes be sufficient for said deontic appraisal – most commonly, however, appraisal as an unjustified (say, self-deceiving) believer.

The ‘two-stage’ defence of involuntarism A freedom to choose beliefs directly is not only an odd conception of cognitive freedom and control, it is also an implausibly strong conception thereof.

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Although there are deontologists who defend 2 (notably Ginet 2001), they are by no means common. Many opponents of deontologism, however, take 2 as their main target. To the extent they seek to motivate this (and it does want for motivation), they typically do so by invoking a ‘two-stage’ defence of involuntarism. For example, early in these debates, Murray Clarke (1986) distinguished doxastic from ‘attitude’ voluntarism. The latter concerns voluntarism ‘with respect to directing our attention (or cognitive attitude), but not with respect to the formation of beliefs’ (Clarke 1986: 39, emphasis in the original). We get a distinction between the genuinely free and the genuinely epistemic. Motivating this distinction will be the major challenge for those who invoke it – and numbers do invoke it. Galen Strawson also mentions attention (among other things), but in summation comes closer to this: ‘the role of genuine action in thought is at best indirect. It is entirely prefatory, it is essentially – merely – catalytic’ (Strawson 2003: 231). He concedes that ‘there may well be a distinct, and distinctive, phenomenon of setting one’s mind in the direction of the problem … and this phenomenon, I think, may well be a matter of intentional action’ (loc. cit.) – but appears to regard this as a small concession, since the epistemic is what occurs (by definition?) after this: ‘The rest is waiting, receptivity: waiting for something to happen – waiting for content to come to mind, for the “natural causality of reason” to operate in one. There is I believe no action at all in reasoning and judging if these activities are considered independently of the preparatory, catalytic activity described above’ (Strawson 2003: 231). Audi (2001) distinguishes believing itself as an action-type from forming a belief as an action-type, in so doing deploying some proprietary terminology (respectively: ‘behavioural’ versus ‘genetic’ doxastic voluntarism). Many more than these three authors have drawn this distinction, or something like it, using various terminology, but Clarke was amongst the first. In part, he will have been attempting to respond to the positions of Heil and early Kornblith: ‘It is not that one has a choice in the beliefs that one forms, but that one has a say in the procedures one undertakes that lead to their formation’ (Heil 1983: 363; cf. Kornblith 1983, but contrast Kornblith 2012, cf. also Alston 1985 in his 1989b: 91ff.). Heil and (early) Kornblith conceded that some such distinction as the above may be drawn, but simply, and correctly, denied that the left-hand (‘voluntary’) column of Table 3.1 was insufficiently epistemic. This position is close to my own; saving that I shall make my case borrowing heavily from the psychological sciences, which yield us greatly more resources than is offered by talk of ‘attention’ or ‘setting one’s mind at the problem’ or ‘procedures one undertakes …’ – of which more in the second half of this chapter and all of the next.

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Table 3.1 Three versions of the same two-stage distinction Conceded as ‘voluntary’ but not [sufficiently?] epistemic:

Conceded as ‘epistemic’ but not voluntary

Directing our attention (or cognitive attitude)

Formation of beliefs (Clarke 1986)

Prefatory, catalytic, setting one’s mind at the problem

Receptivity, ‘natural causality of reason’, waiting for content to come to mind (Strawson 2003)

Forming a belief as an action-type, genetic doxastic voluntarism

Believing itself as an action-type, behavioural doxastic voluntarism (Audi 2001)

If this is simply to deny that the functions articulated in the left-hand column of Table 3.1 are, when fully and accurately described, ‘insufficiently epistemic’, noted above was the challenge for the involuntarist to motivate and defend his claims to the contrary. Such defences are relatively scant. Murray Clarke claimed ‘the internalist must accept doxastic voluntarism or she will not be able to claim that someone is justified or unjustified (i.e., epistemically irresponsible) in holding any particular belief ’ (Clarke 1986: 40). This is a commendably explicit statement (statement rather more than argument) in a debate where the motivations for a refutation of strong, (direct, immediate) doxastic voluntarism are not always explicit; but made explicit, it appears indefensible without any need to appeal to science. Examples clearly undermining said statement abound through the epistemically deontological literature – here is one to add to these. Envisage a detective who has, throughout his police career, demonstrated a poor attitude, being lazy, egotistical, lacking due diligence, lacking moral seriousness and possessing a laissez-faire approach to his professional duties. These traits have what Kane (1996) calls a ‘tracing effect’ on his character development – exacerbating an already weak character to become markedly worse, foreclosing, at a later date, possibilities for good conduct that still existed at an earlier time (cf. Aristotle 2000: III, v, 1114a).2 Through assiduous flattery and unctuous professional networking, our detective becomes lead investigator in a murder investigation, where he fails to seal the crime scene early enough, he cross-contaminates the storage of DNA evidence and he fails to systematically track down, cross-reference and record all relevant witness statements. He also fails to study the witness statements and forensic evidence with sufficient rigour and intricacy, or think carefully and systematically enough about the evidence and the unfolding investigation in the way he has been trained throughout his police career. He believes what

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he subsequently believes (‘suspect x did it!’) with sincere conviction – but he is unjustified (deontically) because of his deplorable cognitive conduct, his wholesale epistemic irresponsibility. Let us suppose his late-stage final processes of belief formation and fixation (say, the micro-cognitive processes that occur subsequent to his poor conduct, intellectual and otherwise) are entirely involuntary; still, he is epistemically unjustified in a strongly deontic sense. To emphasize: these specifically doxastic voluntarism debates may, for whichever reason, interest the reader as self-standing issues in their own right; but for our purposes they are solely in the service of deciding the viability of epistemic deontologism. One response on behalf of the involuntarist would be to maintain that cases like that of the detective are only cases of ethically deontic appraisability. However, beside the fact that the case as described does appear to pertain specifically to intellectual irresponsibility, it will anyway, more generally, be difficult to make this response against the epistemic deontologist without begging the question: the deontological tradition in epistemology has, since at least Clifford (in fact, since Locke, since Descartes – cf. Plantinga 1993) precisely seen epistemic justification as the ethics of belief. In any event, issues of epistemic deontology interpenetrate issues of ethical deontology. Neighbouring attempts to distinguish a voluntarism of motor actions (apt for ethical appraisal) rather than mental agency will be criticized in the next chapter’s assimilation of these issues to the situated and embodied cognition literature. Another response on behalf of the involuntarist opponent of deontologism would be to hold that a defence of a specifically doxastic voluntarism is mandated for the deontologist because beliefs are the items we assess for epistemic justification. Perhaps (probably) the second quotation from Clarke above shows him approaching this as an argument. I must be able to choose my beliefs if I am to be deontically appraisable for holding my beliefs, as beliefs are just the things that we are in the business of appraising for epistemic justification. However, noted right at the start of Chapter 1 was that in normative epistemology we are in the business of appraising much more than beliefs. We also, and more centrally, appraise thought processes, arguments and chains of reasoning by saying these are rational or irrational. In so doing, one also normatively appraises the epistemic status of the cognizer who possesses such beliefs, develops such chains of reasoning and makes these arguments. Indeed, it is plausible that beliefs per se are only derivatively deontically appraisable (though non-derivatively alethically appraisable) – appraisable from (say) the integrity of

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the cognitive conduct by which the agent formed them (e.g. Heil 1983; Kornblith 1983). If the deontological opponent of a doxastic voluntarist conception of epistemic freedom were in trouble on grounds that in epistemology we often speak as if some of the items that we may normatively assess are beliefs per se, then what of the position of the specifically doxastic involuntarist when faced by these other cases (of our need to normatively assess agents, thought processes, chains of reasoning?). Any belief we assess for epistemic justification is held by an agent, at the end of a belief-forming process (perhaps an involuntary process, but typically, as regards matters pertaining to the justification/rationality projects in normative epistemology, a chain of reasoning, or argument, or process of evidence gathering, or often explicit, often language-mediated ratiocination and dialectic). Cases such as that of the detective are advanced in opposition to 2, the idea that deontic appraisability requires immediate, direct, doxastic voluntarism; but note that such cases scarcely rely upon or defend 3. We would not normally condemn the detective’s conduct on the ground that he failed to implement an indirect ability he possessed to bring about that or a different belief (‘suspect y did it!’). In such an investigation, he ought not to have tried to bring about any prior-specified belief, whether directly or indirectly: he ought to have conducted his investigation thoroughly, with due diligence and integrity, and followed the evidence where it led – position 4. A freedom to choose beliefs, even indirectly, is not normally required for epistemically deontological appraisal – and this is connected with point (c) of the three points (three ‘oddities’) listed below. The kind of freedom needed to underpin epistemic deontologism is overwhelmingly a freedom of mental action and cognitive conduct more generally (of executive control), not doxastic voluntarism. Before getting to this positive claim, three cautionary points need to be flagged, followed by a counterattack.

3.3 Three oddities about the negative arguments of the doxastic involuntarists Point (a) is that the doxastic involuntarists have tended to emphasize very synchronic belief formation over diachronic belief formation. It is noted that the epistemic agent cannot typically choose to believe (say, a falsehood) at a specific instant, or very brief interval in time – or at least, that cases where he or she could would be most unusual and extreme. Epistemic conduct,

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however, is typically extended in time, involving cognitive processes, trains of thought, projects of inquiry – involving planning, sequencing, maintenance of mental set, coordination and control. These involve extended debates and dialectic (inner ratiocination and outer argument). Eventually, they may even interact diachronically with the development of intellectual character. An immediate point-instant ability to form a belief is an odd characterization of what is normally required for good or bad cognitive conduct. Revealingly, its immediacy is a characteristic more obviously applicable to automatic and involuntary processing (e.g. perceptual processing) than to the kinds of higher mental processes apt for normative epistemic appraisal – say, as rational or irrational.

The ‘final pathway’ Involuntarists are intermittently sensitive to this point, and where they try to respond to it, they commonly do so by moving to something like a final pathway (/final process) position. It is conceded that much of the agent’s epistemic conduct, like her actions (including mental actions) in pursuit of inquiry, are chosen, hence deontically appraisable in some extended sense – perhaps à la Clarke’s ‘attitude voluntarism’ or Audi’s ‘forming a belief as an action-type’. But it is demurred that the final pathway to belief formation/fixation that is consequent upon this avowedly voluntary action is, as a matter either of psychological fact or something stronger, involuntary: ‘[W]e can voluntarily influence our attention or attitude toward belief acquisition, but maintain that once this process is completed, the beliefs we do acquire are forced’ (Clarke 1986: 39, emphases in original). ‘Psychological fact or …’? The risk of an equivocation between stating an empirical falsehood or an empty formalism should be obvious to the reader. Pick any case of putatively deontically appraisable epistemic conduct, whether commendable or remiss. Is it really deontically appraisable? No, says the adherent of this approach – because after all, the final pathway to belief formation/fixation must have been involuntary. This ‘final pathway’ can presumably be made as final as is needed to make this claim come out as true. At the point of belief formation, beliefs must be involuntary. What is this point? Perhaps a vanishing point. At some final moment, belief formation just happens, is triggered. Some ‘voluntarists’ may be moved to deny this, but I don’t feel the deontologist is required to. If I lure a man to a bridge, then pose him as for a photograph, then push him off, at some final point gravity takes over. My action is deontically appraisable for all that.

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Point (b) is that the literature repeatedly argues for involuntarism on the basis that we cannot choose to believe unjustified and obviously untrue things. Examples of this are ubiquitous: Alston’s (1988) argument that it is not possible for me to believe that the US is still a colony of Britain; Feldman’s (2001) argument that it is not possible for me to inculcate ‘flat earth’ beliefs; Plantinga’s (1993) argument that it is not possible for me to foster a belief that the population of China is less than that of the US; Chrisman’s (2008) claim that it is not possible for me to believe that Hell is a bar in Chapel Hill. Often, this point is made in terms of our inability to bring about belief (at least directly) for practical reasons (say, in exchange for cash incentives). But (i) the deontologist is not defending the ability of agents’ to discharge their responsibilities to think badly, for of course he is committed to the position that they have no such responsibilities; the deontologist is defending the ability of agents to discharge their responsibilities to think well, and our right to judge certain people as culpable who have in fact thought badly yet could have thought better. And (ii) the deontologist is of course not defending the ability of agents to bring about belief for non-epistemic reasons (Hieronymi’s (2005) ‘extrinsic reasons’ – money, say). The deontologist is defending the ability of agents to discharge their epistemic responsibilities in forming their beliefs well (Hieronymi’s ‘constitutive reasons’) rather than allowing their belief-forming processes to be conducted poorly. Consider in regard to (b) Feldman’s ‘flat earth’ example. Feldman evaluates and rejects a response to Alston’s doxastic involuntarism argument made by a deontologist appealing to our possession of indirect control over our beliefs. Feldman notes, of the flat-earther’s efforts to remove his existing ‘round earth’ beliefs: ‘I can’t simply set out on a course of action that will almost surely result in my belief being changed’ (Feldman 2001: 81, emphasis added). He then notes: ‘I might enrol in the flat earth society, read conspiracy literature asserting that the satellite photos are all phony, and so on … But this gets us, at most, indirect voluntary influence and this is not the sort of effective voluntary control required to refute The [in]Voluntarism Argument’ (loc. cit.). Consider, though, an inversion of Feldman’s case: a person in the grip of such a delusion, urged by his epistemic better nature, or a responsible friend, to rid himself of his irrational belief. He can wallow in his epistemic irresponsibility, his conformity to the flat-earth cult and the wilder shores of Internet conspiracy theory addiction. Or he could enrol in an online NASA-sponsored astronomy course, read cultdeprogramming literature, listen to the efforts of friends and family to reach him, carefully study the satellite photos and so on. This effort after intellectual honesty (and mental health) gets him Feldman’s ‘indirect voluntary influence’

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and, pace Feldman, this is exactly the sort of effective voluntary control required to refute the [in]Voluntarism Argument. Point (c) is that the beliefs, considered as candidates for voluntarism or involuntarism, are typically typed by their contents, specified in advance of the initiation of the belief-forming process – cf. the quotation from Feldman, flagged above. We are invited to consider whether we can freely choose, prior to any process of truth-directed ratiocination, to believe p: that the earth is flat, or q: that the population of China is less than that of the US, etc. We are not invited to consider the inquiring subject and ask whether she is free to diligently, or instead reprehensibly, form beliefs (not already typed by their contents) about, say, physical or human geography. But it is the latter that the epistemic deontologist should be seeking to defend. No responsibly inquiring subject would normally start from a proposition, typed by its content, and seek after ways to make this her belief. Such cases (e.g. in political or religious contexts – the ‘party line’, a point of doctrinal orthodoxy) would rather be paradigms of unjustified belief formation.

3.4 The involuntarist also has a position to defend This debate is not only about whether the deontologist can defend sufficient psychological freedom to underpin her account of epistemic value. From Clifford onwards (indeed, from Descartes onward), cases have been advanced illustrating agents who appear apt for deontic appraisal – I have given one above (the detective) and shall give others below. In light of the facility with which such examples can be constructed, and their intrinsic plausibility, it would be regrettable if the dialectic were allowed to switch entirely to what the deontologist has to defend. If there are cases that appear strongly apt for deontic epistemic appraisal, then the involuntarist will face the charge that he does not furnish us with the resources to deploy these deontic appraisals. I suggest, in fact, such cases will face involuntarists with a nasty, nested dilemma. Either they concede that some such agents are deontically epistemically appraisable, or they have work to do to defend the improbable thesis that none of them are. If they do concede that some such cases describe agents who are deontically epistemically appraisable, then they face a second dilemma, as to whether these agents have ‘doxastic voluntarism’ – this term given such meaning as the involuntarist may articulate for himself (typically in sense 2, occasionally in sense 3, as above; possibly in some other senses). Should the involuntarist maintain that such

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deontically appraisable agents do have ‘doxastic voluntarism’, he loses his case of course; but should he maintain that they don’t, then epistemic deontological appraisability is shown to be quite untouched by doxastic involuntarism – as the involuntarist himself has been free to fix this notion. To repeat: in what follows, I am only concerned to defend epistemic deontology – nothing else in these debates is of concern to me. If doxastic involuntarism does not permit us to deontically appraise cases such as that of the detective, and others developed over the last 400 years from Descartes – cases apparently apt for such appraisal – then so much the worse for that position. But if it does, then doxastic involuntarism leaves the core, central argument against epistemic deontology untouched. The question nevertheless emerges as to how the agent may have the intellectual freedom to reason with either integrity or its absence. That question may exercise even those who do not doubt that agents have this freedom, and may motivate the doubts in those who do. Beginning to answer it commences after the presentation of the final (bias argument) objection to epistemic agency, and that begins after some final under-gardening.

3.5 Ethics, epistemology and the desire-based conception of freedom The arguments regarding doxastic voluntarism (especially where involving the three features (a)–(c) noted above) make illuminating, though typically unacknowledged connections with arguments in ethics regarding the distinct positions of ethical (not epistemic) internalism and externalism – and more generally with disputes between ethical determinists and their opponents as to whether we must be determined to action by what we take to be the right.3 Doxastic voluntarism then becomes structurally similar to a position taken as a target by (moral) internalist–cognitivists and attributed by them to their (moral) externalist opponents. This target position is that the moral externalist’s freedom to act or withhold action in the presence of a moral belief would have to consist in the presence or absence of a desire thus to act on that belief – and that the imperatives of morality will therefore be hypothetical on possession of such desires. This (largely straw) position is often opposed by ethical internalists on the grounds that desires are not apt to represent the world or have truth predicated of them; thus that any such ‘freedom’ – to act or not on our moral beliefs – could only underwrite a non-cognitivist approach. (This desires-based

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position is also commonly assumed to be regressive.) Moral internalists see the cognitivist as committed to the position that ‘we are not volunteers in the army of duty’ (Kant – in Foot 1978: 170)4: that we are determined to action directly by our moral beliefs. The tacit, framework reasoning of such ethical internalists is that either we are entirely determined to moral action by what we take to be morally true (cognitivist ethical internalism) or we are (partly) determined by a desire (noncognitivist ethical externalism). They tacitly already embrace the idea that we are determined to moral action. They tacitly reject the possibility of an ethically externalist cognitivism because it is assumed that to be free to act or not on our moral beliefs would have to mean we could choose to be moral or not; and the difference between one who chooses to be moral and one who does not must be that the one who chooses to be moral is determined to action by a different desire to the one who does not. And desires are taken to be intrinsically noncognitivist: that is, unlike beliefs, they are not fit to represent how the world is and thus be true or false. But unless ‘desire’ here is merely a harmless synonym for choice, this framework of argument is fallacious. Contra moral internalism, two people can choose to act differently in a situation despite sharing the same moral belief about that situation (‘I should not be cruel to that man’). And in opposition to a certain very atomistic conception of belief–desire psychology, this difference in action need not be ‘hypothetical’ on the presence of different desires-as-realmental-items (desire-item: to be cruel or not). The two people might just have the same moral beliefs in different minds. Beliefs don’t determine moral action, desires don’t determine moral action; the person determines moral action (in response to his or her beliefs). The properties of the person (e.g. her powers of moral agency) will not be an associative sum of the properties of her beliefs, desires or any other sub-personal parts. These ‘parts’ (beliefs, desires or other) do not have a prior direction and degree of moral motivation associated with them – prior to combination in a mind, that is (cf. Lockie 1998).

The bias argument Now apply the lessons of this debate to epistemology. The epistemic externalist’s opponent was held to maintain that a deontic conception of justification required a neo-Humean desires-based freedom of ‘doxastic voluntarism’. Such freedom meant one had to be able to choose one’s prior-specified beliefs p, q, r. Since the ground for choosing was presumed to have to be a desire, attributed to

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the epistemic internalist was a strange kind of non-cognitive (non-epistemic, ‘extrinsic’) conception of belief formation, whereby our belief was hypothetical on the presence of said desire – say, the (aesthetic? financial?) desire to acquire the belief that the earth is flat, etc. The position held in forced-choice opposition here was that we do not have any choice in our belief formation – this being wholly out of our control. So you’re either (non-epistemically, non-cognitively) ‘free’ to form a belief about the world on the ground that you desire it should be thus and so – and that’s no kind of epistemic freedom. Or, you’re compelled to belief by the way you take the world to be – and that’s no kind of epistemic freedom.5 What we believe, when all is going well, has nothing to do with what we want, and this is precisely why the reasoning mechanisms may operate so well. Our wants have nothing to do with the reasons we have for belief … belief formation which involved agency, and thus allowed our desires to play a role in the beliefs we form, would thus pervert the process. (Kornblith 2012: 96)

This, though, involves a false dilemma – one engendered by a picture of cognition as either passive, automatic, ‘uncontaminated’ input information, a veridical unvarnished copy of the world; or a partially contaminated, desiresaffected, ‘non-cognitive’ intrusion into/projection onto that copy. This picture of things ignores our role as inquirers, as active seekers after truth. It is qua inquirer that we are assessed for epistemic normativity most generally (that is, as opposed to mere afferent psychological processing efficiency); and particularly it is qua inquirer, as active seeker after truth, that we are assessed for epistemic rationality. These powers – of inquiry, of intellectual agency – do not stop at the periphery: at, say, the motor actions that initiate, accompany and subserve inquiry. In rational human thought, the efferent pervasively interpenetrates the afferent. We are not merely passive receivers of sensory, mnemonic, etc., information. We are epistemic agents. At many levels, we actively control our cognition. That is what it is to be a human cognizer; or at least, an undamaged human cognizer: one capable of appraisal for epistemic rationality at all. In the chapter to come, we confront (exhaustively) the picture of epistemology, and concomitant conception of psychology, which opposes this; we make good upon a conception of intellectual agency that emphasizes the role of the inquirer’s active powers – capacities not simply for reception, but very high-level powers of executive control. Introducing the material that these claims are built upon will take up the remainder of this chapter. Making good on these claims will take up the whole of the next.

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3.6 An introduction to the executive functions The executive functions (EF) are a name for the highest cognitive abilities we possess, those involving our capacity to self-regulate – to author and control our thoughts and actions. These are the capacities most central to our intellectual agency – indeed, to our agency simpliciter. The EFs subserve our ability to control and initiate our other cognitive operations, to plan, schedule, implement, monitor, adjust, integrate and inhibit: to direct our own thought. They (in addition to language and culture) distinguish us in degree, and to a very considerable extent in kind, from other animals. Although an umbrella term for many distinct families of cognitive process (how many being a major controversy), they are marvellously integrated and coordinated in actual functioning. They are significantly mediated by the frontal lobes, though to what extent, and what degree of localization, being another major controversy – other brain regions being known to be of importance also, quite apart from other, lower brain regions being tasked, scheduled, coordinated and directed by the executive as a matter of course. Executive functioning (also ‘EF’) involves behaviour or cognition being more or less effortfully guided to a goal. It involves the ability to choose which sequence or strategy will best allow a goal to be attained. It involves setting said goals in the first place. It involves sub-goal setting. It involves ongoing re-prioritization of goals. It involves planning and modifying plans. These are active mental powers. They involve control. They involve our capacities for creative thought. They are reflexive – they apply to each other at the level of these processes’ mutual interaction, and then again, at the agential level – in ways we consider below. They may involve insight, and sometimes (in some situations) a distinctive phenomenology. Many are value laden (some appear to subserve deontic thought, some subserve ethical thought more generally, some are ‘socioaffective’ more generally still) – although these ‘hot’ cognitive powers integrate closely with the ‘cold’. They involve our capacities to direct our own thoughts and actions, and as such they are metapsychological abilities: the highest we are known to possess. They involve our capacities for many kinds of cognitive monitoring. Many of them involve conscious control, and few of them are highly automatic (though they moderate and direct and integrate systemically with many lower-brain automatic processes, and of course at the level of actual implementation, even conscious processes may be instantiated by sub-personal mechanisms). They involve our capacity both for cognitive flexibility (e.g. switching between tasks); and, conversely, for intellectual

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persistence (persevering at a task, motivation, effort). They involve control of action and thought over distances of time and space that are radically impossible for other animals, and thus a sense of self over time and space that is not possessed by lesser animals (representing oneself and one’s goals across time and space is what is involved when one ‘self-regulates’). They subserve our capacities for problem solving and reasoning and intellectual fluency, including language-mediated fluency (e.g. our language-mediated inner thought, and the cognitive control regulated by said thought). They concern our capacity for regulative top-down direction and integrated scheduling of our other cognitive powers. They underpin most of our intellectual agency. Taken at an appropriate level of description, I believe that little of this summary paragraph is open to dispute; though once we move beyond such explicative, introductory levels of description to, for example, the process level, just about everything else is. The chief objection to epistemic deontologism follows from OIC, noting that deontological epistemic appraisal requires/presupposes a conception of intellectual freedom (typically involving a highly contrived notion of ‘doxastic voluntarism’) and that either a moment’s armchair consideration or a little (bluff) familiarity with the sciences of lower-level (e.g. sensory–motor) cognition indicates that we do not have said (proprietary) voluntary control of our cognition. We are meant thereby to conclude that epistemic deontologism is indefensible. Against this assembly of arguments, I contend that the intellectual control we appraise deontologically is and ought to be executive control; that we have said executive control, that it is apt for deontological appraisal and that this is the type of self-regulated intellectual agency that the deontologist should and does commit to being appraisable for being dutiful or remiss. The concept of EF first emerged out of clinical neurology and its study of frontal lobe function and dysfunction. Commonly, even in non-clinical texts, the EFs are introduced via the example of one or other of the famous clinical cases illustrating their impairment, here Lezak’s ‘Dr. P.’ – a hand surgeon who was himself the victim of frontal lobe damage due to hypoxia during minor surgery: This damage had profound negative consequences on his mental functioning, compromising his ability to plan, to adapt to change, and to act independently. Standard IQ tests administered after the surgery revealed Dr. P.’s intelligence still to be, for the most part, in the superior range; yet he could not handle many simple day-to-day activities and was unable to appreciate the nature of his deficits. His dysfunction was so severe that not only was returning to work as a surgeon out of the question, but also his brother had to be appointed his legal guardian. Previously Dr. P. had skillfully juggled many competing demands and

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In a classic case of dysexecutive syndrome following frontal lobe damage, the patient may have intact sensory and object-recognitional and (automatic, not reasoning-mediated) categorization abilities and memory systems, furnishing him with almost all the low-grade, automatic, stimulus-driven (e.g. sensory) knowledge of the world, triggered by the world, which the epistemic involuntarists find so compelling – Clarke’s (1986) involuntary ‘formation of beliefs’, Strawson’s (2003) ‘receptivity’, his ‘natural causality of reason’, his ‘waiting for content to come to mind’. Such a person may sometimes score normally even on a task as demanding as an IQ test6 or other tasks given to him, here by the psychologist, otherwise by the environment (cf. ‘environmental dependency syndrome’). Such a person’s cognition is as unbiased as the frontal lobe insult is severe, it is determined by the world triggering his unregulated mandatory lower brain processes, his beliefs are forced (Clarke) by whatever crosses his path; he makes no intrusions into this process of automatic afferent determination, he does not ‘pervert’ (Kornblith) the environment’s determination of his mental life: Self-directed visual imagery, audition, covert self-speech, and the other covert re-sensing abilities that form nonverbal working memory do not have sufficient power to control behavior in many EF disorders. That behaviour remains largely under the control of the salient aspects of the immediate context. (Barkley 2012: 201)

You might, at a first encounter, not realize anything was wrong with such a patient. Is the victim of such a syndrome nevertheless not terribly, and specifically epistemically devastated? The patient cannot direct his thought. That’s just what it means to have impaired EF. He cannot adequately plan, choose a cognitive strategy, regulate his cognition. He cannot initiate, shift, relate or inhibit his thought in a controlled fashion. He has, crucially, impaired metacognitive abilities. He has impaired planning abilities, problem-solving capacities, capacities for action selection, task selection, strategy selection; impaired capacities for abstraction, for temporal scheduling. He cannot stay ‘on task’. He cannot adjust strategy to deal with novel problem situations. It is absurd to suppose he is not specifically epistemically devastated, and he is so devastated because he lacks the abilities we have and take for granted – in general: the ability to self-regulate, to control our own thought. He may be as effective a

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processor of tasks that are given to him by the environment (cf. ‘environmental dependency syndrome’) as an unimpaired agent, but he is terribly impaired in his ability to seek after the truth – he is terribly impaired as an inquirer. Work on the EFs (often brilliant work) had been conducted by clinical neurologists/neuropsychologists investigating frontal lobe function through lesion studies spread over more than a century, reaching perhaps its apogee in the work of Luria (e.g. 1973) and his holistic notion, somewhat after HughlingsJackson, of ‘interactive functional systems’. This then made contact with the cognitive psychological tradition as it began to transition to studying the highest cognitive functions, in particular through the landmark paper by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) introducing the notion of working memory (WM) – with their original model’s central executive, phonological loop and visuospatial scratchpad. (The developing concept of WM is of huge importance in this story and will be considered in the chapter to come.) These two traditions then merged into a genuine cognitive neuropsychology, one studying higher brain–mind function. An influential early example of this would be Shallice’s (1982) two-component theory – one surprisingly consistent with the ‘two-stage’ armchair-psychological views of a number of the epistemologists we have seen thus far. This involved a ‘supervisory attentional system’ and a ‘contention scheduling system’.7 The former directs effortful attention and guides action (including, especially, mental action) through decision processes. Highly automatized processes (of the kind fitting the epistemological involuntarists’ entire conception of cognitive psychology) fall instead within the purview of Shallice’s ‘contention scheduling system’ – these often being spared in certain classic neurological syndromes involving frontal lobe damage (dysexecutive syndrome, perseveration, environmental dependency syndrome, etc.). As we saw for Lezak’s Dr. P., IQ performance (and other task-dependent activities) may be left intact in such syndromes, but highlevel cognition is devastated – the EFs are devastated: there is terrible disruption of the characteristically human, characteristically agential, regulative control of cognition. However one terminologizes it, it is the appraisal of an intact agent’s exercise of this kind of control that is central to deontological epistemic appraisal. In place of Shallice’s singular ‘supervisory attentional’ system, Lezak (1983) postulated four fundamental EFs: volition, planning, purposive action and ‘effective performance’. However, at the process level, there is radical dispute as to the number of separable executive processes we possess: from one, through to very many indeed. To give a flavour of the disagreement here, Table 3.2 is taken from Jurado and Rosselli (2007). It could easily be much longer.

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Table 3.2 Concepts and components of executive functions Author

Concepts and/or components of executive functions

Lezak (1983)

Volition, planning, purposive action, effective performance

Baddeley & Hitch (1974)

Central executive, phonological loop, visualspatial sketchpad

Norman & Shallice (1986) Supervisory attentional system Lafleche & Albert (1995)

concurrent manipulation of information: cognitive flexibility, concept formation, cue-directed behavior

Borkowsky & Burke (1996)

Task analysis, strategy control, strategy monitoring

Anderson et al. (2001)

Attentional control, cognitive flexibility, goal setting

Delis et al. (2001)

Flexibility of thinking, inhibition, problem-solving, planning, impulse control, concept formation, abstract thinking, creativity

Hobson & Leeds (2001)

Planning, initiation, preservation and alteration of goal-directed behavior

Piguet et al. (2002)

Concept formation, reasoning, cognitive flexibility

Elliot (2003)

Solving novel problems, modifying behavior in light of new information, generating strategies, sequencing complex actions

Banich (2004)

Purposeful and coordinated organization of behavior. Reflection and analysis of the success of the strategies employed

Source: Jurado and Rosselli (2007). Copyright Springer.

Notice that this table, large as it is, lists quite high-level, descriptive and/or superordinate process-level groupings of EFs. Were it to include more in the way of plausible subordinate processes under these headings, it would be considerably larger. As to a more intensional ‘definition’ (or at least an explicative summary) of EF as such: Sergeant et al. (2002) offer thirty-three definitions of EF. Barkley (2012) gives eighteen (useful) explicative definitions. The cumulative effect of these is explicative, heuristic, but by no means definitional. Most note that EF is an umbrella term for a very broad family of control processes and that these processes (often/usually) operate on lower-level cognitive processes – a point of some later importance. One thing to note from the start is that, in addition to all the other sources of confusion about EF, many of these headings cover EFs that may be applicable at radically different psychological levels – over radically different time-frames and levels of explanation/description, say. So, many of the traditional experimental and clinical measures of EF are quite narrowly operationalized over the shortest

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of timescales with specifically cold-cognitive experimental variables: WM as a score on a letter-memory or n-back task; inhibition as a score on a go/no-go task or a flanker task; flexibility as a specific measure of task or set shifting – a trail-making or a card-sort test.8 But these measures, useful as they are, are continuous with and interpenetrate (and are sometimes predictive of) much higher-level variables operating at or just below the agential level: measures of cognitive–personality variables, planning and self-management capacities operating over long and sometimes very long timescales, values-laden (‘hot’, socioaffective) cognition, characteristically human cognition that involves considerable sociocultural scaffolding (e.g. education). I note merely that this is so, and perhaps, for a concept as sweeping and high level and reflexive and specifically human as EF, this variability in purview and focus is inevitable. In any event, this variegation in the concept is there: it is not my purpose to define it out of existence, and the reader must be aware of it. Barkley (2012: 176), coming from a clinical as well as experimental standpoint, importantly emphasizes the socioaffective and culturally mediated aspects of EF, seeing EF as ‘essentially selfdetermination’, involving as this does ‘the use of self-directed actions so as to choose goals and to select, enact, and sustain actions across time towards these goals usually in the context of others, often relying on social and cultural means’. At something closer to the process level, he sees the transition from the preexecutive to the executive level as involving six factors. At this narrower, more process level, EF is identified with self-regulation: Six self-directed actions were identified as used by humans for self-regulation. They are the components of EF: Self-directed attention to create self-awareness, self-directed inhibition to create self-restraint, self-directed sensory-motor actions to create mental representations and simulations (ideation), self-directed speech to create verbal thinking, self-directed emotion and motivation to create conscious appraisal, and self-directed play (non-verbal and verbal reconstitution) to create problem solving, fluency or innovation. (Barkley 2012: 174)

The reader will note, then, that there is a great deal more agreement as to what EF is at the level of broad explicative, descriptive and clinical outline than there is as to exactly which are the (fundamental) executive processes subserving these. Purely for purposes of exegetical convenience, we will in the next chapter employ a currently common ordering of EFs under three superordinate factors (WM, inhibition and flexibility). Before getting to this tripartite ordering, and to end this chapter: here, without any attempt at order or logical priority or the avoidance of category error, are some examples of widely held EFs. WM (which is a huge component of EF) we will reserve for later.

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1. Executive attention We can direct our attention outwardly, as in sensory attention, towards different things in the world; but also inwardly, towards various of our own cognitive operations (the difference between these is probably not of fundamental psychological or epistemological importance). In either case, we choose to attend to this task or event or process or to this other one. In the case of executive attention, we select which cognitive operations we attend to, initiate and maintain. We direct our attention. (There is, in contrast, non-executive or ‘involuntary’ attention, which is under the control of the stimulus and mediated by very different neural pathways.) Executive attention may be directed attention per se or inhibitory attention (these are different). Directed: you may attend to the ink colour or semantically process the word. Inhibited: you may actively suppress your processing of the word, the better to attend to the ink colour. In general: you may look in the mirror or out of the windscreen; you may foveate at the cyclist without attention or attend to him.

2. Goal setting Executive attention already involves goal setting (you choose what you attend to), but most would separate out as a separate EF the ability to choose which task you wish to achieve. Do you want to pull away from the kerb? Do you want to book a doctor’s appointment? Do you want to discover a list of executive processes? What task do you set for yourself?

3. Sequencing (‘task scheduling’) Having set a goal (pull away from the kerb), we schedule how to implement it (mirror, signal, manoeuvre). Which sub-tasks are involved, and in which order must these be sequenced? (These are separate, experimentally dissociable functions.) Which other superordinate goals need to be sequenced in a cognitively costly attention-sharing process of further task scheduling?

4. Monitoring You may check to see how well you are performing the task both as you perform it and very shortly afterwards. This may be a behavioural or a cognitive task,

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and these checks may involve motor or inner-cognitive activities. You may in principle check most, and perhaps any executive process for errors – and many lower cognitive processes besides. This illustrates the reflexive nature of these processes (you may apply the EFs to themselves – you may, for this example, monitor other EFs). Reflexivity is a point that will be much emphasized in the next chapter.

5. Inhibiting We considered one simple example of this under inhibitory executive attention. There are others, and as they ascend in generality, they segue into a great family of systems/processes/variables, some very high order, some less so. At the lower level, Barkley (2012) distinguishes: (1) the capacity to suppress/disrupt/ prevent a prepotent or dominant response; (2) the capacity to interrupt an ongoing response; and (3) the capacity to protect from interference those selfdirected actions that are initiated and thus maintain the goal-directed actions that they are guiding. At a rather different level of generality, we have Gray’s behavioural inhibition system, Mischel’s gratification delay, various distinct literatures’ conceptions of self-regulation, and ‘impulse control’ – these are discussed in the next chapter. Inhibition is one of the leading candidates for a singular, unitary account of EF – at the very least, it is a hugely important family of processes.

6. Switching You need to switch goals, sub-goals and tasks (task or set switching/shifting). You need to allocate finite attentional and WM resources first to this operation and then to that. This is not just sequencing (cf. the above); elegant experimental work establishes that there are specific switching costs (Monsell 2003). It is hard to switch tasks (there are cognitive/attentional costs to all these EFs: many of these costs are experienced phenomenologically, and all are operationalizable with performance indicators).

7. Planning This is even more an umbrella term than others of these labels; a clinically useful and intuitive term for a great cluster of abilities most characteristically knocked out by frontal lobe damage. Of course, planning involves several

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of the putative processes above, and it operates over many different levels, specifically of time and space. You wish to get to work, get a PhD, arrange a drink for tonight, locate a philosophical literature in a research library. Your whole cognitive life involves planning – planning over many different timescales and spatial distances. Planning is close to the heart of what executive control involves.

8. Maintenance of mental/attentional set (e.g. in the face of distraction) You have made your plans, you have set your goals (and your sub-goals), but you must stay ‘on task’ through the operation of these cognitive schedules. You must continue to attend to the task in hand and not be distracted or ‘lured’ to other tasks. Frontal lobe damage profoundly impairs this ability (though sometimes, as with ‘perseveration’, it is the ability to discontinue or switch a task that is impaired).

9. Metacognition All of the above are metacognitive abilities or components/features of metacognitive abilities, yet ‘metacognition’ is often separated out as a distinct EF. We possess extraordinary metacognitive capacities, many of them culturally (and sometimes technologically) mediated. The first of these to be studied was metamemory (our knowledge of/beliefs about our mnemonic abilities). Then there are all the rest – all your study skills, all your reflexive psychological awareness and control, your (prosthetically, not immediately applied9) gratification delay and time-discounting capabilities, all of your self-regulative capabilities and theory of mind. It is common to divide metacognition into metapsychological knowledge and metapsychological regulation (more of which in the next chapter). You know you have a poor memory for names and faces. You are introduced to your new colleagues and your values impress upon you the need to remember them. You know that unmediated effortful cognition will be useless here, and that mediation through low-level rehearsal strategies will be useless. Instead, you write their names with a description in your diary immediately after they leave the room, with brief biographical information. You survive potentially embarrassing situations thereafter until their names, faces and biographical data are securely in long-term memory.

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10. Values-based cognition (‘hot’ cognition) This is not separate from, but interpenetrates most or all of these EFs. You seek to reason as you ought. Continuous with the more purely cognitive inhibitory processes above, you also possess effortful control of socioaffective behaviour – both in itself and in interaction with the cognitive. This kind of cognition is mediated by different but neighbouring brain areas to the cold cognition with which it very closely integrates. There is a vast and famous literature from Phineas Gage onwards concerning frontal injury impairments in socioaffective cognition – in the capacity for responsible conduct. An impaired agent like Gage or Dr. P. is not responsible for his actions or cognition, as he has lost the capacity to control these, but an unimpaired agent is. You have, for example, a drive to intellectual honesty, a sense of responsibility, diligence. These capacities segue into variables more characteristically studied by individual differences psychologists than cognitive neuropsychologists; and personality variables, though not well understood at a neuropsychological level, are also assumed to be disproportionately mediated by the frontal lobes.

11. Cognitive–personality variables Somewhat between the points made under ‘Inhibiting’ and ‘Values-based cognition’ above: agents differ in Big 5 conscientiousness, Big 5 openness to experience, need for cognition, impulse control, effortful control, response inhibition, self-regulation, gratification delay, motivation, internality of locus of control and consideration of future consequences: character, intellectual and otherwise.

12. Mediated cognitive control As Aristotle notes, in a classic ‘tracing case’, we may mediate cognitive control through habits engendered by the exercise of said control (Aristotle 2000: III, v, 1114a). But we also simply exercise said control; this is what EF is, after all – the most highly controlled cognition we have. There are, though, other ways of more obliquely mediating cognitive control, and we consider some in the chapter to come. One may mediate cognitive control through other EF control (cf. the reflexivity motif repeated passim above) and through other ‘internal’ techniques (e.g. ‘cognitive cueing’ – control over our direction of thought), but also through motor–actional control and in other, functional, prosthetic ways.

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The next chapter considerably expands upon these initial, explicative headings, demonstrating that even our current, inchoate understanding of EF constitutes a sophisticated body of theory and evidence, one vindicating the claim that we possess extraordinary powers of rational, self-regulative, valueladen, agential control of thought. Positively, these are powers more than sufficient to underwrite an epistemic deontology; negatively, they are more than sufficient to overturn ‘involuntarist’ arguments against any such deontology.

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Epistemic Agency and Executive Control

4.1 Grouping executive functions Diamond (2013: 136) boldly claims ‘there is general agreement that there are three core [executive functions]’ – (1) working memory (sometimes ‘updating’), (2) cognitive flexibility (sometimes ‘shifting’) and (3) inhibition. These may be used to group sub-types in a typical factor-analytic hierarchical fashion (say, inhibition as including under it suppressing attention, impulse control, selfregulation, etc.). For exegetical/heuristic purposes, I shall partly follow her scheme in the three sections that follow, whilst rather strongly disagreeing with her claim of ‘general agreement’.1 I would caution the reader: do not look at this ordering with the critical, analytic, destructive faculties of a philosopher appraising a taxonomic scheme. Considered thus, this ordering, and any alternative currently available, is shot full of holes: category errors; putatively distinct and fundamental executive functions (EFs) needing to appeal to some other, logically prior EF in order to function; higher levels needing to appeal to lower; one concept segueing into another; agential-level constructs (‘planning’?) needing to be used fairly gesturally and invoking several processes acting in concert. There are at least four clusters of good reasons for this state of affairs. In addition to the most obvious – the need for greater progress at the level of constructive scientific discovery – there are also major theoretical issues needing to be settled. These include deep matters regarding localization versus its alternatives; faculty psychology versus its alternatives; reductionism versus its alternatives; the sociocultural permeability of cognition; homuncularism versus its systems-based and functionalist alternatives; extended mind issues and twoprocess theory issues. These issues are discussed, at least to a depth appropriate to our epistemic needs, in what follows. Thirdly, there are levels of explanation/ generality/operationalization/scope issues. EFs show great variegation in generality and scope. They may involve the agential level or process level (and

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probably several kinds of process level). They may be measured by short timeinterval, cold-cognitive experimental operationalizations (the tripartite ordering Diamond refers to was based on the use of such operationalizations as inputs to factor analysis); but they may extend over very long intervals also (e.g. ‘planning’) and may (characteristically, do) involve socioaffective thought (‘hot’ cognition). Thus, for example, the narrow-scope, cold-cognitive operationalizations of EF segue into things like cognitive–personality variables. Finally, and of the first importance, there is the reflexive nature of these processes more generally: that they apply to each other, often several times over. So, executive attention is an executive process, and monitoring for errors is an executive process; but one may direct one’s attention as to how one is monitoring a cognitive process for errors, or one may monitor for errors how one is directing one’s attention. And this kind of reflexiveness is true for all of these processes, often to an exquisite degree (which might tell us something rather attractive about the nature of some of the aforementioned Big Theoretical Issues actually – regarding, say, self-organization, holism, emergentism, the agential level, downwards causation and non-homuncular control).2 These are all of them metacognitive/metapsychological capabilities and they are all of them putatively control processes – they are active and ongoing, and interpenetrate/ alter each other in real time. Nevertheless, we have to start somewhere, so over the next three sections we will loosely retain sight of this tripartite organizing scheme, whilst in its light (and, gradually, in light of the psychological literature more generally) considering the nature and extent of our actual powers of intellectual control and cognitive agency.

4.2 Working memory Working memory (WM) involves holding things in mind and manipulating them – whether these things be visuospatial, mathematical, linguistic or other. WM as a concept grew out of Miller’s (1956) short-term memory (STM: though STM is now seen as far more restrictive a process; for example, one more involved in simple maintenance rehearsal than in cognitive operations upon the items rehearsed). Miller’s (1956) was then followed in 1960 by Miller et al.’s seminal Plans and the Structure of Behaviour (concepts from this model we will employ in an example below). WM was first explicitly named thus in the hugely influential Baddeley and Hitch (1974) model – with its central executive, phonological loop and visuospatial scratchpad. It has become clear that WM is one of the most

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important concepts in cognitive psychology of the last 40–55 years – perhaps the most important. As this literature expanded, the notion of WM became ever more elastic3: indispensable, yet something of a monster. Theories of WM kept developing, with this notion becoming (at times) all things to all people. Miyake and Friedman (2012) see WM (they call it ‘updating’) as including under it monitoring, item addition, active maintenance and item deleting, but for the reasons articulated already, any such list should undoubtedly be seen as far more illustrative than definitive. WM, as for all the EFs, is a limitedcapacity system. It is used in mentally ordering and reordering items, in holding information and working with it, in updating one’s information, in translating goals into action plans. It is involved in all forms of analysis and subsequent synthesis: in recombining elements to form new or different wholes. Any form of reasoning involves WM. Working with any items that are perceptually or temporally no longer present involves WM. Transforming and manipulating any items in a mental ‘workspace’ involves WM. In any actual application of WM, it will operate in conjunction with other EFs, and our examples in what follows will therefore not much flag this when it occurs. Presently, two models of WM predominate: Cowan’s, and successors to Baddeley and Hitch’s – with a good review to be found in Conway et al. (2011); but for our philosophical purposes, we can start with an example using a much earlier model. Imagine yourself an agent instantiating a simple test–operate–test–exit (TOTE) strategy in WM – of the kind articulated in Miller et al.’s classic (1960) – itself highly mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). (You may substitute a more recent theory should you so desire.) You are an inexperienced, recently qualified driver about to pull away from the kerb – at about that period in a young driver’s career when actions are starting to become highly proceduralized, and good, or bad, habits are becoming ingrained. Your safety drills are not yet (fully) proceduralized (so, this sequence is occurring in WM, not just lower brain structures, and is occurring in partly conscious WM at that). You bring up from long-term memory the mantra you learnt rigorously in order to pass your driving test: mirror, signal, manoeuvre – you have not yet gone the way of so many unconscientious young drivers and allowed this to pass into desuetude.4 You keep in mind (‘maintain’) the superordinate goal (pulling away from the kerb) and you sequence the sub-goals. You TEST (not mirror-checked yet), you OPERATE (mirror check), you TEST (not signalled yet) … and so on, potentially all the way to EXIT (the motor operation: pulling away from the kerb). But you are attention-sharing with a vague and nagging preconscious

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awareness of the need to insert a check for blind spots somewhere in the mirror, signal, manoeuvre drill (explicit reasoning and a conscious effort at retrieval from declarative memory would, if actioned, place it between signal and manoeuvre). Implementing the drill even to this point involves (for an inexperienced driver) relatively high-order, effortful cognition in WM. Choice between strategies is, however, a very high-order cognitive task, and it incurs specific cognitive costs. It is widely but not unanimously agreed (cf. Miller and Cohen 2001) that such metacognitive decisions are mediated by more anterior locations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) than the first-order EFs (here: TOTE activity). Like Koechlin [Koechlin, Ody and Kouneiher (2003) – an alternative, also hierarchical model], they [Badre and D’Esposito (2009)] recognize that posterior regions [in the DLPFC] support the formation and execution of simple rules linking stimuli to behavior … But they contend that more anterior regions support higher-order policies for behavior, which are needed to determine which of several simple rules applies in the current context. (Purves et al. 2013: 452)

We see an ascent in prefrontal activation from the lower (but still highly sophisticated, still characteristically prefrontal) kinds of cognition in the posterior regions of the PFC to the highest, most uniquely human metacognitive abilities in the most anterior. And this hierarchical ascent is found in both the DLPFC and the neighbouring dorso-medial PFC (DMPFC)5: … increasingly complex sorts of control processes evoke activation in progressively more anterior regions within DMPFC … specifically … responserelated control [control under the influence of stimulus contingencies] evokes activation in the most posterior region, the difficulty of choosing between two options (i.e. decision-related control) evokes activation in a middle region, and deviations from an ongoing decision strategy in order to adopt a new decision strategy (i.e. strategy-related control) evoke activation in the most anterior region. (Purves et al. 2013: 457)

This choice, between strategies, is partly optional for our driver (indeed, the choice whether to continue using the simpler rule mirror, signal, manoeuvre was optional after the driving test had been passed – it is a classic ‘tracing case’ (Kane 1996; Aristotle 2000: III, v, 1114a) that many a young driver falls into irresponsibly lax but then hard-to-shift habits in this way). We are talking about decision-related and strategy-related control. The agent may or may not regularly implement either the simpler rule, or no rule, or search for (and implement) more complex rules – like mirror, signal, check blind spot, manoeuvre.

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An awareness of the need to select, then apply, the more complex rule is, as noted, in this example stipulated to be pre-conscious (hovering at the edges of consciousness, sharing finite WM and attentional resources in a classic P-FIT6 manner). Finding then implementing this further rule involves the application of reasoning procedures and context-dependent information not simply in the form of an over-learnt mantra or production system of rules (‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre but include check for blind spots when pulling away from the kerb … or overtaking on the motorway … or …’). Serious attentional demands occur when having to (a) perform the motor task itself, (b) perform a TOTE check in executive monitoring of the task and (c) effect high-level choice of strategy, and strategy implementation, at the same time. You are just at the stage of driving experience where you could enjoy cutting free from some of those attentional costs through automatization – and you can perform this pulling away at lower attentional cost and consequently greater motor fluency. Perhaps even there is someone in the car whom you wish to impress with said greater motor fluency. But you perform the slow, awkward, attentionally burdensome sequence of checks, and checks for contextrelative strategy upgrades, and consequent higher-order strategy selection, then implementation, and further checks, then initiate this strategy through sequences of further TOTE testing – perhaps it takes an additional second or two, perhaps the motor sequence is in consequence slightly more jagged. You get to the ‘check blind spot’ over-the-shoulder motor procedure just prior to EXIT (to motor driving commands) and manage a very ballistic saccade just as a cyclist whizzes past your driver’s side wing. You are lucky, and he is luckier still. But he is only lucky. You are diligent also. You achieved knowledge (cyclist, beware!) through dutiful, effortful cognition (effortful control, effortful attention, themselves examples of conscientiousness – and related high-level cognitive– personality variables much studied by individual differences psychologists). You are deontically epistemically justified. Over time, this will have a ‘tracing effect’ on your character as a driver – and these procedures will become automatized into lower-brain routines. Clifford, that delicious enfant terrible, would have immediately appreciated this example as epistemology, though he might have struggled with the neuropsychology (and perhaps have been more conversant with a ship than a car). What, then, is meant by the claim that this belief (‘there is a cyclist there, I must not pull out!’) is involuntary in some sense that warrants the conclusion: hence not deontically epistemically appraisable? What, further, is meant by the claim or assumption that its involuntary status (in this sense) is the clear

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verdict of modern psychological science, or is secure sans any such science, merely from the armchair? The afferent (final) visual process is in this case involuntary, granted – it is a triggered, mandatory output of the visual system. Moreover, in this case, that we perform the final efferent saccade is triggered and involuntary also – it obeys Sechenov’s principle: thought is not the cause of this action, the stimulus (cyclist) is. Such reflex eye movements (‘express’ rather than ‘intentional’ saccades) are mediated more exclusively by the superior colliculus than the higher brain centres in the frontal eyefields (of which more later). They are examples of involuntary (rather than executive) attention. But can we really rest with this and say the saccade is efferent and involuntary (and perhaps thereby not really actional or at least not agential), and the visual processing consequent upon that is afferent, triggered, involuntary; while the actional look over the shoulder is efferent and voluntary but exclusively motoractional, and subject thereby to merely ethically rather than epistemically deontic appraisal? Can we say there is no choice or control at the epistemic level because the final processes of afferent visual cognition and efferent cognitive– motor attention are triggered, mandatory, modular? Can we say that cognitively no actions are taking place here? Such a contention would seem to me entirely indefensible. The separating out of the final pathway as alone epistemic, of some unique importance, is nowhere defended in cases like this and would appear entirely wanting for motivation. So, some final pathway of low-brain afferent sensory processing is involuntary – so what? We are normatively assessing all the important, distinctively human cognition that occurred prior to that; or (perhaps better) we are deontically assessing that lower-brain automatic processing only inasmuch as it is integrated with, and tasked by, our higher, controlled cognition: only inasmuch as it is owned by the agent, who is responsible for it. A point of great emphasis in the deontological epistemic tradition is that the process of cognition would have been commendable, and its absence remiss (as for Clifford’s judgement on the lucky but culpable owner of an unseaworthy ship), even had the cyclist not been whizzing past the driver’s side wing, thus no final, proximal process of afferent lower-brain cognition at all: Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. (Clifford 1999: 71)

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It is not the final, fast, involuntary, afferent sensory processing that we are normatively epistemically assessing here; it is not and never was thus, and the opponents of the deontological tradition can hardly have been unaware of this. The perception of the cyclist involved you responsibly directing your thought. Your conduct in this case is deontically epistemically justified because you directed first your inner thought, and then your outer motor–cognitive actions – the look over the shoulder – diligently, thus to be epistemically justified. You controlled your cognition, and did so well: you discharged your intellectual duty, thereby to acquire knowledge.

Two-stage and final pathway arguments (again) Our driver–cyclist case was a simple example of WM involving a series of mental acts eventuating in a motor efferent and consequent sensory/perceptual afferent; one that left space for the (I maintain) illicit, philosophically contrived separation into two stages7: the EF stage (typically seen by involuntarist epistemologists in terms of a gestural, armchair model of attention or something like, and typically, more-or-less grudgingly conceded to be controlled cognition of a sort) and the triggered ‘final pathway’ sensory/perceptual stage, seen (correctly in most cases, at least of this simple a nature, and at least if allowed to be final enough) as involuntary. At the point in the last chapter when this two-stage separation was introduced, it should already have been apparent that affecting to see the second ‘final pathway’ stage as voluntary cognition is something strikingly few actual deontologists were or are tempted to do; and further, that the first stage is all one needs and all that most actual deontologists have ever wanted as the basis for deontological appraisal. Noting the appropriateness of deontic evaluation of the ‘first-stage’ regulative cognition in the absence of the final pathway (when there is no cyclist – Clifford cases) is one way to make this point. Note, however, we also and especially need normative epistemology for cases of very important practical or pure theoretical reasoning where there is in no obvious sense any ‘final process’ of mandatory, triggered, sensory processing at all.

Cognition without any clear ‘second stage’: Heisenberg cases WM is involved at every level of higher cognition, including (especially) cognition with no significant sensory afferents and no significant motor efferents – cognition intrinsically rather than accidentally lacking this low-level, typically sensory ‘final pathway’ – cognition that includes the highest cognitive

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achievements of mankind. Consider cognition unprompted by any efferent involuntary saccade or afferent ‘triggered’ sensory processing or any proximal efferent motor output, voluntary or otherwise: endogenously guided, stimulusindependent thought. Consider ratiocination about a practical matter of great personal concern,8 or deep thought about a theoretical matter as an end in itself. The same attentional and/or executive costs have to be paid – and then some: the resolve needed ‘to drill in very hard wood … and go on thinking beyond the point at which thinking begins to hurt’ (Heisenberg, in Powers 1993: XV). Let us take as our agent, then, Heisenberg, thinking, purely for its own sake, and beyond the point at which thought has started to hurt. Granted, he’s working with a pencil and notebook, and moving his eyes (of which more when we reach matters pertaining to the situated/embodied cognition literature), but he’s surely doing a lot of thinking not involving any motor–sensory processing at all. Suppose there is an over-learnt, obvious response to the elements of the mathematical task in front of him (a ‘mental set’ – a Gestalt Einstellung). It would be awfully hard maths for even a postdoctoral specialist, but by now it’s relatively straightforward for Heisenberg, and by now he suspects it’s the wrong maths. He has made many attempts to think his way past this impediment and avoid the prepotent response (simply to go down the over-learnt, for-him cognitively straightforward, ‘functionally fixed’ response route). So Heisenberg ruthlessly maintains the elements of his mathematical cognition in WM at considerable cognitive cost, refusing to be led by easy cognitive-cue ‘lures’ into distraction – high levels of ‘goal shielding’ are consciously and deliberately applied.9 In so doing, Heisenberg forcibly prevents a prepotent response set from being implemented (he prevents ‘entrenchment’). Such cases involve ‘active maintenance and management of task goals in the face of interference’ (Friedman et al. 2008: 219). Heisenberg facilitates inhibitory control (of the Einstellung) by effortfully keeping the cognitive elements in WM. Thus does he escape ‘functional fixedness’ and discover, in a moment of Jamesian–Gestaltist insight,10 an innovative reductio solution to his problem. It hurts, but it’s commendable, and it’s WM in the service of inhibitory control. Notice, however, that in this example (of WM in the service of inhibitory control), Heisenberg also, and at the same time, needed to do the reverse, and use inhibitory control (effortful, specifically inhibitory attention) to achieve this mastery over WM (the reflexivity/promiscuity/task impurity motif that pervades EF). He needed to override prepotent responses, resisting proactive interference in order to forcibly retain material in WM when he’d rather chunk it, or sequence forward from it into the more obvious maths – or glaze his eyes over

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into the middle distance. And his awareness (hard earned) that he had to do this was metacognitive awareness, born of repeated failure at this task, coupled with Bartlett–Neisser top-down schematic expertise from experience with many such tasks (itself deontically and aretaically commendable, the product of decades of effortful cognition). We have metacognition, inhibitory control, executive attention, WM, flexibility, crystallized IQ (his mathematical expertise, his schemata), and sheer bloody effort (both at this time and in the past) all combining elegantly, systemically, in very high-level, regulative, agential cognition. That is executive functioning: it is both the most controlled and the highest-order cognition we have; it gave us the greatest cognitive accomplishments of mankind; and its levels of control both permit and encourage deontic epistemic appraisal.

4.3 Cognitive flexibility ‘Cognitive flexibility’ involves such notions as task shifting, set shifting, ‘creativity’,11 divergent thought, taking the character of the other, theory of mind, selfawareness, strategy selection, mental fluency, linguistic fluency/internalization of speech (as noted, sometimes separated out as a distinct factor). To reiterate: all EFs are incipiently metacognitive – but certainly this family of EFs is. It, too, may be tested with low-level, cold-cognitive operationalizations (e.g. card-sort, trailmaking, alternative uses); yet once again these exist in interaction with certain high-level, cognitive–personality variables. Cromwell’s famous ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken’ indicates (I take it) both the responsibility and the flexibility aspects of the case I am seeking to make in normative epistemology. Cromwell presumably felt his invocation could be acted upon by the members of the synod of the Church of Scotland: that they had the metacognitive power to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong – to exercise their responsible judgement and shift the parameters within which their first-order cognition was taking place upon being addressed in this fashion, perhaps in a classic ‘gain’/bias fashion, perhaps through set shifting, perhaps though ‘taking the character of the other’/theory of mind capabilities, perhaps in various of the ways the classic problem-solving literature identifies (a change in schema/Gestalt), perhaps in some other way. We hold people responsible for dogmatism, small-mindedness, auto-indoctrination, rigidity and inflexibility of thought. We commend people for ‘walking a mile in the other man’s moccasins’, for creativity and open-mindedness and divergent thought. We may operationalize these things as cognitive–personality variables quite

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apart from the more narrowly cold-cognitive operationalizations of flexibility made famous in the experimental–cognitive EF literature. Metapsychologically, to return to our reflexivity motif, individual differences in conscientiousness relate specifically to individual differences in open-mindedness/flexibility EFs (Fleming et al. 2016 – though with direction of cause not established) a relation, I take it, that Cromwell’s plea trades upon. In the previous example, Heisenberg shifted sets in refusing to be functionally fixed on the existing family of mathematical techniques he had used to that point. Famous Gestalt examples from the problem-solving literature could of course be invoked here (Maier’s 1930, 1931 two-string problem,12 Duncker’s 1945 candle-matchbox problem, etc.). As this literature copiously indicates, we have the capacity to restructure the elements of a problem, to employ analogical transfer and other techniques in order to avoid functional fixedness and to escape set effects. We also have capacities for insight that defy current mechanistic capture. The converse of task/set shifting is staying on task (an inhibitory EF). We saw already that maintenance of mental/attentional set (e.g. in the face of distraction, attentional lures, etc.) is an essential EF – continuing to attend to the task in hand, to ‘gate off ’ the contents of WM and not be distracted. Frontal lobe damage profoundly impairs this ability. But frontal lobe damage also profoundly impairs the ability to shift task – with the most well-known example being the extraordinary clinical symptom cluster of perseveration. Lesser cases of cognitive inflexibility are measured by clinical or experimental tests like the famous Wisconsin Card Sort Test: the patient can swiftly learn to sort the cards by one rule (shape or colour or number), but cannot shift to sorting by another. Sometimes, in a very strange phenomenon, they can state that the rule has changed yet cannot change their sorting method consequent upon this. Notice, however, that these two families of EF (task shifting, an example of flexibility; and staying on task, an example of inhibition), if described mechanistically, are simply and directly at odds with each other.13 What, then, as undamaged agents, should we do in response to the demands of some given cognitive task? A deadpan refusal to acknowledge the problem here would be to answer thus: stay on task if that is appropriate, and task shift if that is appropriate. But when is the one EF ‘appropriate’ and when the other? Well, EFs exist precisely to permit us to flexibly address novel, context-variant problems without fixed parameters (other tasks may be solved far more efficiently with lower-brain structures’ fast, evolutionarily old, inflexible algorithms). And EFs are reflexive: they apply to the application of EFs, as well as to the first-order

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problem that is set. To decide whether you should stay on task or task shift, you must use your judgement (a gestural, non-process-level composite for EFs, including these two EFs, acting in concert at the agential level in response to the demands of the problem set). But the danger of regress is obvious: which meta-level mechanism decides when to deploy the one EF and when the other? Deep issues emerge. One could supply a straight answer here – and find a mechanistic proximal determinant (and in this particular case, narrowly conceived, perhaps we would find some token algorithm14). Actually, as we noted in considering WM, some (but not all) current models (hierarchical models like Badre and D’Esposito’s and Koechlin’s) show an ascent in prefrontal activation from the lower (but still highly sophisticated, still characteristically prefrontal) kinds of cognition in the posterior regions of the PFC to the highest, most uniquely human metacognitive abilities in the most anterior. But if you keep adding actual metacognitive process mechanisms in an evermore anterior location, there comes a time when you burst out of the front of the forehead.15 And anyway, EFs are precisely needed when mechanistic (automatized or old brain) approaches are inadequate and a creative, novel, insightful approach is needed. So what else could we say here? One could claim ‘justification comes to an end’. One could claim we have come to the limits of mechanism. Or one could start by noting that these EFs are all of them (even the more anatomically posterior and behavioural) nevertheless incipiently metapsychological, reflexive, systemic. Miller and Cohen (2001) in their very influential review, advance the theory that the PFC doesn’t so much engage in self-contained ‘executive processing’ in the sense of being a cognitive supervisor, a discrete homuncular controller-in-a-box. Rather, they see EF as directing and biasing other cognitive processes throughout the brain (cf. Section 4.8 below). Miller and Cohen use the old metaphor of a train-track controller, moving points switches to prevent collisions and to make best use of the rail network (see also a deep paper by Burgess et al. 2006). But how may we have the functions of control without a controller? Fuster (2013, 2004), after Sperry and Gibson, invokes here the notion of repeated applications of multi-level, massively interpenetrating perception–action cycles, with control emergent out of these cycles operating via self-organizing, broadly cybernetic open-system feedback principles. The perception–action cycle is the circular flow of information from the environment to sensory structures, to motor structures,16 back again to the environment, to sensory structures, and so on, during the processing of goaldirected behavior. (Fuster 2004: 143)

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Such a picture of things, though moderately well anchored in present science, will undoubtedly require far more progress before it, or some successor, may be considered any kind of consensus view. Whatever may be the truth about this conception of the issues (and to me, it, or something like it, looks to be the most currently promising conception of matters), descriptively, I’d suggest we agree that the PFC doesn’t necessarily contain some, most anterior, homuncular, causa sui controller. But it need not thereby be merely a C. D. Broad-style mechanistic component system (say, massive modularity, in the modern parlance). Rather, by any of several means, the PFC (along with other higher-brain structures) may form a distributed, marvellously coordinated, reflexively applicable system of control: directing and reacting to (and continuous with) other, lower-brain resources17 – and, we shall see, not only brain resources. Regulative intellectual control is a product of the systemic whole. Mechanism does to some extent apply to the parts; but (to be argued more completely in Chapter 9) agency is emergent out of the whole.

4.4 Inhibitory control ‘Inhibition’ is an umbrella term for many kinds of downwards control processes – some very high level. Some simpler cases of effortful inhibitory attention we have already considered regarding WM and flexibility. At the level of common and surprisingly useful operationalization, an example of inhibitory attention might be when one attends to the ink colour and actively inhibits naming of the colour word in a Stroop task (‘BLUE’ printed in green ink). This segues into inhibitory self-control more generally – as when one stays ‘on task’ despite temptations to allow one’s attention to wander or ‘task switch’. This inhibition is directed, and it is also hard – there are costs involved (one pays attention – the psychologists operationalize these costs in participants’ performance). It is felt as hard. In light of the aims of this chapter, exercising such inhibitory control in a particular task may be commendable and failing to do so may be remiss. Pick a case of inhibitory attentional control; for example, a countersaccade task (looking left when the stimulus indicates right because you are required to ignore the right-hand lure). This is a classic operationalization of EF: it is a clinical and experimental test of the strength of your voluntary mental powers – to override and inhibit your involuntary attention. If you are a frontal lobe patient you cannot do this (thus cannot be blamed for not doing this) and if you aren’t you can, but it will involve cognitive costs: objective (in terms of reaction time and

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task impairment) and experiential (it feels hard, you’d rather avoid it). Pick a case where one discharges one’s obligation to effortful attentional control in a matter of practical or theoretical importance (bridge lookout duties; or difficult reading; or diligent and timely discharge of an unwanted academic refereeing task – something involving directed attention, vigilance and effortful inhibitory control in order to ‘stay on task’ and avoid distractions). These are classic cases of commendable mental/motor actions, are they not? Failure to discharge such effortful cognition may then be a classic case of remiss mental action (/omission).

Inhibitory control segues into a large tranche of broader inhibitory variables, cognitive–personality variables and ‘hot’ cognition Inhibitory control is not only, or even chiefly, a prescribed, ‘cold-cognition’ function or family of functions. Although narrowly focussed, short-duration cognitive tasks may be used to operationalize inhibitory processes, both clinically and experimentally, these are part of a large – perhaps the largest – family of EFs; and this family of inhibitory functions segues into very important cognitive–personality variables and into values-based socioaffective cognition. We possess very important effortful control capabilities. ‘Effortful control’ is, strictly, just one named version of a cluster of terms/factors/operationalizations that, though invoked by slightly different literatures, partially overlap and for the most part measure close to, though not exactly the same thing. Some of these involve sheer effort – willpower (which concept Roy Baumeister has done so much to rehabilitate) or, more narrowly, effortful attention, as mediated, say, by the posterior parietal lobes. The phenomenon of effortful attention by itself is surely sufficient to refute any global attempt to undermine our claims to cognitive control; but there are a wealth of such high-order inhibitory capabilities, possessed of varying degrees of generality, going well beyond the unmediated application of effort, willpower, impulse control or inhibitory attention. These may be terminologized/operationalized in various ways: as effortful control per se (for a review, see the excellent MacDonald 2008), as response inhibition, as self-regulation (Bjork et al. 2013), as gratification delay (Mischel passim), as motivation, as internality of locus of control (Rotter passim), as consideration of future consequences (Strathman et al. 1994), as time discounting/impulse control, as the behavioural inhibition system (Gray passim) – and other ways besides. For all the variability in scope, timespan, value-ladenness, level of explanation and generality that these represent, much of this literature is highly intuitive – especially to those, such as the readers of this chapter, involved in any capacity

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in education. For example, the (educational) self-regulation literature articulates ways in which one may achieve some measure of self-mastery and control over one’s educational development, often via metacognitive awareness and control of the learning environment. Consider a dedicated student, struggling against all the odds, mastering her discipline over a classic time period for transition to expertise (ten years or 10,000 hours: Simon and Chase 1973; Ericsson et al. 1993). Consider a great figure from our discipline, a colossus of the past, spurned by his contemporaries yet cherished by posterity. Consider just a diligently written undergraduate essay as opposed to a perfunctory ‘cuttings job’. Why is deontic appraisal appropriate here? Because of the exercise of regulative control in the face of short-term cognitive costs and longer-term adversity. Because of the effort expended in the service of the agent’s epistemic values: instrumental or, in many cases, ultimate. Because of the intellectual conscientiousness and integrity that has been demonstrated. We can, to a greater or lesser extent, defer immediate gratification in the cause of higher cognitive goals. Some of this inhibitory control is mediate and some immediate. We can suppress more basic (e.g. appetitive) responses to keep our superordinate goals in mind. Our values most certainly inform this activity. For example, even in the rather lumpen IQ literature, many, from Binet onwards, have acknowledged the importance of what Weschler called the ‘non-intellective factors’ (aretaic factors: personality, motivation, character, discipline) – even for Spearman’s putatively purely intellective factor (par excellence) of g (general intelligence) and even for Cattell’s even purer distillation of that, fluid intelligence: g(F). There is much acknowledged evidence that dependency relationships/ highly diachronic feedback loops here go in several directions at once: … individuals who are better able to suppress their emotions have higher scores than their more impulsive peers on g(F). … There are at least three possible explanations for the relationship between self-regulation and higher scores on tests of g(F): (a) The ability to self-regulate could be a manifestation of intelligence; (b) these constructs could share common variance such that they are both affected by a third variable; or (c) self regulation could be one of the processes that facilitate the development of intelligence. There is evidence that self-control, or at any rate some set of nonintellective motivational factors, contributes not only to life outcomes but to IQ scores themselves. (Nisbett et al. 2012: 152)

One persuaded by a generally hard determinism could insist that these higher-order control factors (valuational, motivational, character-mediated) are themselves entirely determined. As will be seen in Part 2 of this book,

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I am, on other grounds, not in any way persuaded by that position; but since we are trying to see if there is anything specially untenable about epistemic deontologism, having to repair to a stance whereby one’s doxastic involuntarism could be defended only sub specie a universal hard determinism would be, I take it, dialectically beside the point – indeed, as regards the specifics of the epistemic debates, an admission of defeat. One could try for some view of these higher-order control factors whereby (at some scientific level short of a sweeping metaphysical hard determinism) they are themselves the mechanistic output of some manifestly deflationary, say, additive algorithm (whereby these factors’ control capacities are somehow fictive, at least qua genuine higher-order control). Whether as regards the affective, the conative or the cognitive, this is not the verdict of the science, at least as it stands as of now. MacDonald considers the relative inapplicability of any such deflationary, associative model as regards even the psychology of other mammals, let alone human psychology, using an existing example in the literature of an organism subject to: … the conflict resulting from walking across hot sand to get water. For many animals, such conflict is resolved simply by the summed strength of the competing implicitly processed action tendencies (thirst versus pain avoidance) – a standard ethological account. … For mammals, the PFC or its analogues underlie executive control of behavior that takes into account not only subcortically generated affective cues that are routed though the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), but also sensory input and other information (e.g., learned contingencies) available to working memory. … For humans, the information available for executive control also includes explicit appraisals of the context: Is the water potable and, if not, could it be made potable using available technology? Will taking the water provoke an attack from those who currently possess it and, if so, could this attack be suppressed? Is the water part of a sacred ritual and therefore off limits for drinking? As this example indicates, conflict occurs not only because of conflicting signals from modules; there may also be conflicts between the output of modules and symbolic representations of the context. (MacDonald 2008: 1014)

To suppose that these top-down, characteristically human, rational capabilities, capabilities for hugely sophisticated control, capacities that are a product of the staggering complexity of the PFC (in many-ways, open-system interaction with other brain structures and with social, cultural and other contexts) – capabilities that vitiate any attempt to apply an unmodified version of the summative ethological model to humans – must nevertheless themselves be merely summative in turn, would be to embrace, from the armchair, nothing

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more than a mechanistic dogma. If scientific evidence were to be forthcoming for a harshly reductive algorithm, one offering some sweeping deflation of our claims to agential, values-laden intellectual control, then this would deserve our consideration; if, sans evidence, a set of mere philosophical prejudices is evinced, it does not. Deflationary epistemologists, including those making surprisingly authoritative claims as to how the sciences of cognition would have matters be, have hitherto shown no awareness that the many scientific literatures adverted to in the foregoing even exist; they might wish to assimilate the lessons of said literatures before making further confident assertions as to the non-existence or impossibility of agential, values-laden, self-regulated, higher-order, rational cognitive control.

4.5 Mediated cognitive agency Certain motifs have emerged now concerning the EFs. They are ‘promiscuous’ (they segue into and tumble over one another – ‘task impurity’ is rampant); they are reflexive; they are incipiently metapsychological (not just metacognitive); they act on lower-brain processes and more posterior cortical processes, as well as on each other; they have many levels of description, generality and temporal span (including very high-level ‘agential’ descriptions); they involve considerable ‘cultural scaffolding’; and they are values-laden. Here we transition from the last section’s discussion of inhibitory EFs to what, for want of a better word, I shall call ‘mediated’ cognitive agency and self-regulation (effected in part via manipulation of the external environment and/or self in that environment). This can bridge to take us smoothly into the next section’s discussion of situated/embodied/ extended cognition and these things’ relevance to matters of cognitive control. We considered, via our cyclist case, the distinction between executive visual attention, mediated by the frontal eyefields and under the control of the agent, and involuntary visual attention (a ‘final-process’, triggered motor efferent followed by a mandatory sensory afferent) obeying Sechenov’s principle (under the control of the stimulus) and mediated more specifically by the superior colliculus. But the EFs have a long reach, are all of them incipiently metapsychological, and act to obtain control over lower-brain cognition one way or another – including techniques of oblique, prosthetic control. Consider, then, that we may have indirect (functional) voluntary control of our avowedly involuntary attention. In addition to the educational self-regulation literature, there is a wealth of material on this in other self-regulation literatures, such

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as in addiction research. Addicts have problems with ‘cue reactivity’ (sight of the whiskey bottle). But one may seek after and gain some prosthetic control here. I wish to stay on task, devoting myself to writing my philosophy paper and avoiding the distracting effects of online poker. I may remove the poker site’s icon from my desktop, as it is an involuntary attentional lure – leading, if not removed, to problems with ‘disengagement’, indeed, possibly to task switching (as we have seen, another, flexibility, EF, and a crucially important one, but one that is here needing inhibition). The icon is an exogenous (automatic, sensory, stimulus-driven) attentional cue, but my chosen motor action (my mouse clicks) may remove it as a lure from my visual environment. It may do this to inhibit an involuntary attentional lure no less than my chosen motor action – my voluntary look over the shoulder – placed an involuntary exogenous attentional cue (the cyclist) in place to effect my involuntary ballistic saccade in the event of a driving hazard being present. This set of steps (removing the poker icon) is an example of planning, involving goal setting and sub-goal setting, subserved by decoupled thought and neo-Piagetian/theory of mind abilities – to take on the character of the other (even though the ‘other’ here is myself). Of course, I could just leave said icon in place and exercise my immediate impulse control – and, in the grip of a dubious metapsychological theory (‘it’s all about willpower, isn’t it!’), I might do this – but doing so will be an additional, needless, cognitive-conative burden here. ‘Pure’ (purely ‘internal’) inhibitory control is, from the first, bound up with, (partly) internalized out of, and interpenetrates, mediate, functional (e.g. behavioural) control. Thus, Mischel’s four-year-olds would in some cases physically cover their eyes to avoid seeing the marshmallow; and this was an effective (unprompted) cognitive-actional strategy, one in principle continuous with more internalized, ‘cognitive’ strategies: … those who were most effective in sustaining delay seemed to avoid looking at the rewards deliberately, for example, covering their eyes with their hands. … Many children generated their own diversions: they talked quietly to themselves, sang, created games with their hands and feet, and even tried to go to sleep during the waiting time. Their attempts to delay gratification seemed to be facilitated by external conditions or by self-directed efforts to reduce their frustration during the delay period by selectively directing their attention and thoughts away from the rewards. (Mischel et al. 1989: 934–5)

These are examples of functional, mediated, metapsychological control. Metacognition involves ‘internal’ and proximally ‘external’ (e.g. motor actional) self-regulation, but as noted, it also involves the ability to control our intellectual

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environment more generally (e.g. as for the educational self-regulation literature: our learning environment). Actions we control will partly determine what it is that is accessible to us (and the reverse of course). To employ some terms of art within Piagetian theory: processes of assimilation, accommodation and equilibration criss-cross the active–passive divide. To amplify a motif from Chapter 1: this should be seen as representing a partial rejection of introspection as the sole or chief criterion for accessibility in epistemology. The active and passive features of our cognition are in an inter-penetrative dialectic – a ‘perception–action cycle’ (actually: many such cycles). It would probably be a mistake to locate this access or agency at some single, Archimedean, Cartesian, introspective point. So, consider a modern Piaget-influenced theory: in Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, the Practical (Contextual) subcomponent concerns the ‘external’ aspects of intelligence – the ability of the individual to (a) adapt her behaviour to her environment; but also (crucially) her ability to (b) shape that environment and to (c) select environments that suit her, or get out of environments that don’t (‘niche picking’). The (educational) self-regulation literature repeatedly emphasizes the student’s need to learn how to manage the conditions of her own learning; and the emotional self-regulation literature emphasizes ‘situation selection’ and ‘situation modification’ as the first two out of the five components of its ‘modal model’ (Gross and Thompson 2007).18

Self-regulation The educational self-regulation (SR) literature concerns our metapsychological abilities to self-manage, control and self-initiate learning; whilst the emotional SR literature (e.g. the ‘hot sand’ example of MacDonald, considered earlier) concerns our metapsychological abilities to self-manage more generally, including socioaffectively. These are connected, as any teacher will know. Quite a lot of the educational literature pertains to memory, and here we face the difficulty that (even before considering the metacognitive level) at the first-order level, philosophers are too often in the grip of a ‘preservation’ (/‘contamination’) view of memory as a faculty for encoding events/items/information – a passive and automatic ‘module’ (i.e. one separable from, albeit perhaps connected to, other cognitive capabilities), a faculty for recording information whose mandatory outputs may perhaps be ‘contaminated’ by biases from the rest of the cognitive system, but which otherwise preserves the memory trace. This picture I shall polemicize elsewhere. The whole, vast, neo-Bartlettian tradition

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undermines this as a conception of memory. Here is a statement closer to the truth: We store new information in terms of its meaning to us, as defined by its relationships and semantic associations to information that already exists in our memories. What that means, among other things, is that we have to be an active participant in the learning process – by interpreting, connecting, interrelating, and elaborating, not simply recording. Basically, information will not write itself on our memories. (Bjork et al. 2013: 420)

These claims concern first-order learning (itself agential, active, top-down – in all the ways the Bartlettian, Piagetian and Gestaltist traditions have indicated over the last 80–100 years). This first-order conception of memory is already very difficult to square with a global cognitive involuntarism. But the SR literature adds levels of metacognitive activity above this. Although the details will not concern us, for illustrative purposes, Dunlosky, Serra and Baker’s (2007) diagram for some of the complex systems of monitoring and control of encoding, retention and retrieval is given in Figure 4.1. What was (in the preceding chapter) referred to as metapsychological knowledge is here called ‘monitoring’, while metapsychological regulation is called ‘control’.

Figure 4.1 Metamemory – monitoring and control Source: Dunlosky et al. (2007: 141, their Figure 6.2), itself adapted from the Nelson and Narens (1990) framework for metamemory. Copyright Wiley 2007.

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Acquiring these metacognitive abilities is hard, but these are ‘desirable difficulties’: Becoming sophisticated as a learner requires knowing how to manage one’s own learning activities. In that respect, we are both teacher and student. What makes acquiring such sophistication difficult is that the short-term consequences of introducing manipulations such as spacing, variation, interleaving, and generating19 can seem far from beneficial. Such manipulations introduce difficulties and challenges for learners and can appear to slow the rate of learning, as measured by current performance. Because they often enhance long-term retention and transfer of to-be-learned information and procedures, they have been labeled desirable difficulties (Bjork 1994), but they nonetheless can create a sense of difficulty and slow progress for the learner. (Bjork et al. 2013: 421)

This metacognitive processing is itself controlled (EFs are reflexive). One forms what this literature calls ‘judgements of learning’ (JOLs) throughout. If these JOLs are reductive, mechanistic algorithms, then that is certainly not an assumption this literature embraces. ‘Metacognitive judgements are also inferential’ (Bjork et al. 2013: 428). The role of monitoring (according to Miyake and Friedman 2012, a WM or ‘updating’ EF, but according to many others and on face validity, an inhibitory/attentional EF) is found throughout successful self-regulation of learning: the more you self-monitor the better, with active retrieval (itself agential, active, self-cued) also a learning event, something that re-encodes and alters the stored memories themselves. Our review suggests that effective learning can be fun, it can be rewarding, and it can save time, but it is seldom easy. The most effective cognitive processes involve some effort by the learner – to notice connections and linkages, to come up with examples and counterexamples, to generate and retrieve, and so forth. In short, effective learning requires the active participation of the learner. (Bjork et al. 2013: 436)

If you demonstrate this active participation, that is commendable; if you don’t, that may be through no fault of your own, but if it is your own fault, you are remiss. Self-regulation is rewarding, but it is seldom easy. It is, however, a characteristic of human cognition – one that invites and is highly compatible with a deontic assessment of the self-regulating cognizer.

Relationship between executive functioning and self-regulation Hofmann et al. (2012: 176) consider various ways in which EF and SR may relate to each other. Their figure is here reproduced as Figure 4.2.

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Conceptual approach

Example research questions

EF as outcome SR EF EF as predictor EF SR EF as outcome and predictor EF EF

• Does dealing with strong cravings consume WM resources?

EF as process moderator EF X SR

• Are impulsive precursors better predictors of risky sexual behavior among people low in inhibitory control?

EF as process mediator

• Are the effects of stereotype threat on performance brought about by temporary reductions in WM capacity? • Does repeated training boost inhibitory control & does this training gain in turn translate into improved self-control in everyday life?

X

EF

SR

• Does WMC predict mind-wandering in daily life? • Which EF is most strongly related to emotion regulation? • Do separate EFs have negative aftereffects on each other?

Figure 4.2 Different approaches to the study of executive functioning and self-regulation Source: Hofmann et al. (2012). Copyright Elsevier 2012.

SR may predict EF, as when our diligent student shows self-discipline, willpower and impulse control – to resist distraction, concentrate hard and thus ‘gate off ’ WM from appetitive attentional lures, in order thereby to think better. EF may predict SR, as when WM capacities or inhibitory controls subserve our self-regulatory capacities. EFs may affect other EFs – the promiscuity/reflexivity motif that runs right through this chapter. Or EF may moderate/mediate a process of SR, as when Mischel’s four-year-olds generated their own attentional diversions to mediate their capacities for gratification delay in the presence of a stimulus (the ‘X’ here being the marshmallow). Notice that this complexity is found even at the level of EFs alone (to the extent these may be distinguished from SR capacities anyway). Our capacities for hot and for cold executive, agential, self-regulative control segue into, interpenetrate, reflexively affect and feed back to one another in processes of intricate and systemic elegance.

4.6 Motor-actional freedom interpenetrates mental-actional freedom Turn away from the direct confrontation with claims of involuntarism, to the contrast between a supposedly unproblematic freedom of motor–action and the specific problems supposed to attend any acceptable notion of intellectual freedom. Such a stance may be attacked via its assumption of an unproblematic categorical distinction between motor-actional and mental agency. Here we may help ourselves to a great body of work within the embodied and situated

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cognition literature. Any categorical distinction between motor and mental actions simply breaks down: to cede motor-actional freedom is (at least for intact beings like us, and at least to a goodly extent) to cede mental freedom. Consider a very familiar example from this literature: a pattern-matching task, such as might occur when playing the video game Tetris or finding a piece to fit a jigsaw puzzle. One could employ Shepard-style mental rotation to see, without motor-actional movement, whether the piece fits (Shepard and Metzler 1971; Cooper and Shepard 1973). The Shepard literature is relatively well known by philosophers and was remarkable in its time, with a precise linear relationship between the time taken for match/no-match decisions and the angle of displacement in the matching task (between the comparison stimulus figure and the standard stimulus figure). For instance, some participants, with some stimuli, reliably demonstrated a mental rotation rate of 50° per second. A dispute occurred between those who saw these findings as vindicating the claim that we may think in mental images (and they did vindicate that position) versus those who saw them as compatible with some contrived neo-propositional explanation; but even the latter saw such tasks as involving mental representations (albeit propositional representations) then mental manipulation in the service of problem solving – here, pattern matching. These data are simply conclusive, and not in dispute. They directly demonstrate the capacity for mental agency as well as anything: in the service of problem solving, we act to rotate the figure in our mind’s eye (WM tasking offline visual cognition). Making this point is not, however, the purpose of this example. Note, rather, that one could perfectly well have physically rotated the jigsaw piece to solve the pattern-matching problem. And one could perfectly well have physically manipulated the joystick or keyboard of the computer game to rotate the Tetris blocks. And one could perfectly well have physically tilted one’s head – say, by 25°, shaving half a second of time off the pattern match, reducing thereby the cognitive load of this with any concurrent task. One may physically rotate a map or mentally rotate it or tilt one’s head or reorientate one’s body in the street – or do a little of each. These examples are repeated passim in the situated and embodied cognition literature and are in no sense original to the present work. Motor-actional agency interpenetrates mental-actional agency. There are perception–action cycles, and whether the executive actions subserving the cognitive–perceptual task in question are mental (via this route or that) or rather take a detour into the physical environment (via this route or that) is a matter of little importance – these routes are functionally ‘interchangeable’ (Luria 1979) or, in the modern parlance, ‘degenerate’ – where ‘degeneracy is the ability of elements that are structurally different to perform the same function or yield the

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same output’ (Edelman and Gally 2001: 13763). This renders deeply problematic any stance that cedes a motor-actional voluntarism fit to subserve an ethical deontologism, yet denies a mental-actional voluntarism fit to subserve an epistemological deontologism – an ‘ethics of belief ’. Consider, for example, an agent’s culpable failure or praiseworthy success in discharging her duty to find her way using said map. Motor-actional agency interpenetrates mental-actional agency. The central idea of the previous section, and a central theme of this chapter as a whole, is that efferent cognitive activity massively interpenetrates the putatively afferent apprehension of truths about the world. This is something Reid, or indeed any anti-empiricist philosopher from the early modern period, would understand well enough – when we get to the frontal lobes, we are (absolutely) talking about the active powers of man. As we ascend away from the 20–25% of the cortex that can be described as sensory or motor, there ceases to be an abrupt distinction between these notions. (Famously, by the time we get to PFC, there are no primary sensory inputs at all.) In higher-level, characteristically human thought, the efferent interpenetrates the afferent: thought (reasoning, problem-solving, judgement) is activity; activity in the service of knowledge and understanding – indeed, activity simply for its own sake. Here, in this section, we note that the motor-efferent interpenetrates the mental-efferent – with each potentially in the service of inquiry. For the example we have been working with, sometimes such action is mental rotation, sometimes head-tilting, sometimes manipulation of a joystick or physical rotation of a jigsaw piece. Of great, though not exclusive importance here is the role of eye movements – particularly those subserved by the frontal eyefields. One thinks, to some extent, in and with eye movement. Neuroscientists sometimes include the frontal eyefields in the PFC, sometimes not (Miller and Cohen 2001), but they have very tight afferent and efferent connections with both motor structures and the DLPFC – with the DLPFC being the classic epicentre of WM, fluid IQ and so much EF and higher cognition generally. The frontal eyefields don’t just move our eyes – they move our thoughts.20 We move our eyes (online or offline) to move our thoughts; and we move our thoughts to move our eyes. Thus, Ballard et al. (1997) claim that changing gaze is analogous to changing the memory reference in a silicon computer. They claim that the brain creates its programs so as to minimize the amount of WM that is required, and that eye motions are here recruited to place a new piece of information into memory. Wilson claims that ‘eye movements … allow perceivers to exploit the world as a kind of external storage device’ (Wilson 2004: 176–7 – in Clark 2008: 14). Recent work on high-level

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cognition vindicates the importance of eye movements in thought, but extends it well beyond storage. Duncker’s (1945) famous ‘radiation problem’ illustrates all the features of the Gestaltists’ attractive approach to higher-order cognition in general and problem-solving in particular. It is a difficult, genuinely highlevel problem. It involves top-down cognition, insight and ‘analogical transfer’. (How do you use a radiation beam to kill a tumour without killing healthy tissue around the tumour?) Familiarly, participants given an analogical problem (rebels storming a fortress) are more likely to solve the target problem (Gick and Holyoak 1980, 1983). But recent research shows that participants who produce certain (voluntary) eye movements in response to a visual representation of the problem are more likely to solve the radiation problem (Grant and Spivey 2003). And this finding is not merely correlational; impressively controlled experimental manipulation shows that bringing about the right kind of eye movements in participants attempting to solve this problem leads, causally, to greater success: ‘[I]t is now clear that not only do eye movements reflect what we are thinking, they can also influence how we think’ (Thomas and Lleras 2007: 668). Subsequently, these latter authors went beyond eye movements to investigate the classic Maier (1931) two-string Gestaltist problem (described earlier, in Section 4.3 and Endnote 12). In poorly controlled but deservedly famous experimentation, Maier’s subjects were more likely to solve the (difficult) problem of tying two strings together, one of which was beyond reach, when cued to the solution (using a pair of pliers as a pendulum weight) by seeing the experimenter brush against one string to send it swinging. However, in cleverly controlled experimentation, Thomas and Lleras (2009) gave participants (who had been deceived that this was an investigation of the effects of exercise and blood oxygenation on problem solving) periodic breaks involving either the exercise of swinging their arms (cueing the ‘pendulum’ role for the string + pliers that would solve the problem) or of stretching their arms (a cue-lure in the wrong direction). The former (arm-swing) group were greatly more likely to solve the problem. We may see Maier’s cue as an afferent (passive, sensory) cue – albeit one that assisted switching of the Gestalt (the (mentally, not motor) active, top-down knowledge structure, the mental set, the schema) to which the participants assimilated the elements in the problem space. Thomas and Lleras’s cue may be seen as an efferent (motor as well as mentally active) cue to effect this same switching. Such work shows that ‘body movements can actually lead participants toward complex higher order thoughts that they would have been less likely to arrive at otherwise’ (Thomas and Lleras 2009: 722). They discuss, speculatively, candidate mechanisms in that paper:

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[I]f we assume that spatial working memory is invested both in the planning of movements and in reasoning about problems that are inherently spatial (as the two-string problem is), one can easily imagine that residual activation of location and action plans that a person uses to execute movements might interact with the spatial representations he or she uses to think about the spatial problem. Although the participants are consciously aware of the directed movements that they execute and the spatial representations of the two-string problem space, they do not necessarily have to be aware of the manner in which the former shape the latter. The contents of working memory are conscious, but the route by which they enter working memory need not be. (Thomas and Lleras 2009: 722)

The latter authors see their work as falling within the embodied cognition tradition, but offline neurocognitive activity (e.g. our mental rotation) may serve just as well to facilitate problem solving: the point is, activity (whether motor or mental or both) leads to problem solving. Note that these Gestalt problems are genuinely high-level cognitive tasks – far more sophisticated intellectual accomplishments than performing the simple perceptual or recognitional or memory tasks with which so much normative epistemology has concerned itself. Cases like this cannot be dismissed or marginalized in the way certain facile examples are set up to be dismissed or marginalized (e.g. as where the agent makes the belief, p: that the light is on, true by switching it on). Motor movement may mediate the control of self-directed stimulus-independent thought – in the case of the aforementioned research, undoubtedly high-level thought. Thought is mental action; in many cases quite literally mental action. One moves one’s thoughts, one moves one’s mind, one effects this (mental) process, one controls these (mental) actions. One thinks in the world with motor and mental actions alike: Weiner once remarked casually that [a batch of notes and sketches] represented ‘a record of [Feynman’s] day-to-day work,’ and Feynman reacted sharply. ‘I actually did the work on the paper,’ he said. ‘Well,’ Weiner said, ‘the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.’ ‘No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. Okay?’ (Gleick (1993: 409) cited in Clark 2012: 277)21

Head movements, eye movements, finger movements, reading, writing, subvocalizing, changing one’s environment, manipulating one’s environment – all these things play a cognitive role. Among other ways, control over such processes may be effected by ‘cross-cueing’ and ‘self-cueing’: the kind of motor control used to achieve functional connections outside the body in Gazzaniga’s

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patients, in Gazzaniga’s split-brained rhesus monkeys and passim in the clinical (therapeutic–rehabilitative) neuropsychological literature. An internal connection that had been lesioned may be functionally reinstated if an external (motor-actional) connection can be established in its place. [T]he overall puzzle was why animals that had their brains divided, sometimes far more extensively than ever disconnected in humans, always seemed like they were behaving in an integrated way when it came to carrying out goaldirected behavior. … Dozens of studies finally revealed one major finding: The animals were engaged in self-cueing. One hemisphere was reading the cues set up by the other. … Examples of self-cueing come at almost every level of study. (Gazzaniga 2013: 7) Split-brain monkeys were examined to discover how one disconnected hemisphere could successfully guide the ipsilateral arm/hand toward a discrete object [a grape] in space. The studies revealed that the seeing hemisphere first oriented the whole body toward the object, which cued the nonseeing hemisphere the X and Y coordinates of the object. Subsequently, the appropriate ipsilateral hand posture was formed only when the hand touched the object, thereby cueing the nonseeing hemisphere via touch information. (Gazzaniga 2013: 4)

These connections are not, of course, found only in damaged agents, and do not by any means pertain solely to issues of hemisphericity. In healthy, intact subjects, there are internal-to-internal connections (as with ‘cognitive cueing’ – efferent control of cognition, but via control of one’s train of thought) and there are internal-to-external connections, internal-to-external-to-internal connections and all the rest besides. One of the ways we control our cognitive conduct is by motor action, but we also control both our cognitive and motor actions by mental action directly. Our thoughts control our movements and our movements control our thoughts, with some of these movements involving movement of thought. There are literally mental actions.22 Consider now self-directed, internalized language. One of the basic components of the Baddeley and Hitch (1974) model of WM was the phonological loop. For Atkinson and Schiffrin (1968), a precursor to this (lowlevel maintenance rehearsal) was the sole method of somehow turning STM into long-term memory – a seventeenth-century model of associative thought (‘habit’, ‘custom’, the Thorndike notion of learning as bottom-up experience being ‘stamped in’). With Baddeley and Hitch, this becomes one method of maintaining material in WM (and, in conjunction, with the full repertoire of

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WM techniques, of working upon said material – as a true EF). But one may vocalize material (a number plate, a telephone number, a name or date) or one may sub-vocalize with a little lip movement, or one may mentally rehearse without any motor movement at all, but with inner speech. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies indicate that the same speech areas of the brain are being used in each of these cases (Ryding et al. 1996, in Barkley 2012) – only in the latter (offline) case, the primary motor areas involving speech are being suppressed. Barkley relates this to the Vygotskian notion of the development of thought through the internalization of speech (cf. Vygotsky 1962: 22). As both Baddeley and Vygotsky note, our self-directed private speech can surely do a lot more than maintain, in a buffer store, someone’s car number plate. We think with outer speech and we think with inner speech, with inner speech probably not developmentally, nor perhaps ontologically separable from outer speech or action in the world – it being, as Vygotsky notes, a constituent part of the process of rational activity. Outer or inner speech may mediate thought.

Mental models and physical models Philip Johnson-Laird is the figure most associated with the notion of ‘mental models’. Were we to situate this notion within a discussion of EF (and I think it naturally belongs there), it would perhaps fit most easily within the notion of WM – though read this claim modulo general remarks about holism and promiscuity and reflexivity. There are various issues with the notion of mental models that are of psychological importance (or even of importance in the philosophy of psychology) that nevertheless do not concern me qua epistemologist. These include whether mental models commonly or always involve imagery or not (cf. Clement and Falmange 1986); whether they are fundamental or rest upon underlying logical/propositional mechanisms (thus, for example, whether their invocation to explain, say, deductive reasoning carries threats of regress or circularity – Rips 1983); and whether the use of mental models is very widespread in reasoning or relatively less so. Johnson-Laird (2001: 999) claimed, ‘Models are the natural way in which the human mind constructs reality, conceives alternatives to it, and searches out the consequences of assumptions.’ He might be right, but I would hedge to ‘a natural way’. For my epistemic purposes, it suffices that the notion of mental models is scientifically respectable (is, waiving issues of fundamentality at the level of process explanation, highly likely to be real and psychologically actual at some level and for some/many cases of reasoning) and may be applied fruitfully to explain many cases both of inductive

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and deductive reasoning. Now pick a classic example from the psychology of deductive reasoning. A participant is asked to decide what follows, deductively, from premises 1 and 2 of the following: 1. All of the artists are beekeepers. 2. Some of the beekeepers are clever. 3. …? Johnson-Laird and Steedman (1978) used exactly this example to support the notion of mental models in syllogistic reasoning. One of the participants in their experiment reported ‘I thought of all the little … artists in the room and imagined them with bee-keeper’s hats on’ (Johnson-Laird and Steedman 1978: 77). Here you see this with the illustration in Figure 4.3 (courtesy of Sternberg 2009, my arrows added). The top illustration (a) shows the participant’s inductive/ belief bias/confirmation bias lure into error; the bottom illustration (b) shows the participant’s discovery (through mental manipulation of the model) that completing the syllogism with the conclusion ‘some of the artists are clever’ will in fact be invalid (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3 Syllogistic reasoning via mental models (Johnson-Laird and Steedman 1978, as illustrated in Sternberg 2009) Source: Sternberg. Cognitive Psychology, 5E. © 2009 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions

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Notice, however, that one did not need to make this discovery through construction and manipulation of a mental model. Many of us were, as undergraduates, taught, prefatory to embarking upon a first course in predicate logic, how to prove Aristotelian syllogisms through physically drawn models – with Venn diagrams. Here, in Figure 4.4 is our earlier syllogism. A, B and C are the three sets of artists, beekeepers and clever people, respectively. ‘All’ is indicated by shading out the region A-B. ‘Some’ is indicated with a cross (indicating an element) in B ∩ C, which cross is placed on the line, indicating that there is no information contained in the premises as to whether this element is a member of the set A. With the diagram disclosing no information as to whether this element is in the set of artists, the claim that ‘some of the artists are clever’ is shown to be invalid. What is the fundamental epistemic difference between this and the former proof? Each establishes something with apodeictic certainty by construction of a model. One is a model drawn in chalk or graphite in the physical world, one

B A

+ C Figure 4.4 Syllogistic reasoning via Venn diagram

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a mental model. It could be the same model if you like – an agent well versed in the pencil and paper version of a Venn proof constructing said proof in her head; or (conversely) a person establishing the proof by drawing on paper the picture illustrated in Figure 4.3. In each of these cases, we have WM operating through the manipulation of elements in a visuospatial workspace. Fleshing the example out with the (optional) ontological commitments of the Baddeley and Hitch (1974) model: in one case, this is mental manipulation by the central executive operating on the contents of the visuospatial scratchpad; in the other case, it is mental and physical manipulation by the central executive operating on a physical notepad – and mutatis mutandis should you prefer the ontological commitments of some other model. Note, importantly, that on many/most neuroscientific concepts of EF, the frontal lobes do much EF through activating and reactivating and directing cognitive operations that occur in more posterior cortical structures – and some lower-brain structures, and (here) some physical structures in the world. The ‘central executive’ is directing, activating, reactivating and manipulating visual imagery mediated by the same structures as view the physically manipulated/ constructed diagram, only (here) doing so offline. I can prove this syllogism to be invalid with the construction then manipulation of a physical model or a mental model or a little of both. In each case, I am using cultural scaffolding that is outside of the cranium. (I didn’t discover syllogistic logic or naïve set theory or model theory ab initio, nor learn for myself how to manufacture and deploy paper and pencil, nor give myself the years of training needed to form a decontextualized mind: Cole and Scribner 1974; Luria 1976; Vygotsky 1978; Lockie 2016a,b.) Metacognition indeed may become sufficiently anterior as to burst out of the front of the forehead. But metacognition (EF generally) also tasks and governs lower cortical (and not even cortical) functions. In this and many cases, it does so through (culturally mediated) model building, with the issue as to whether this model is manipulated partly in a physical or only a mental workspace being of relatively slight psychological significance and of no obvious epistemological significance at all. As for this specifically imagistic conception of a mental (/physical) model – that is, in a visuospatial workspace, so eo ipso for other, non-visual imagery cases. We may construct imagistic models in other sensory modalities, or in natural language, or other neo-linguistic media like non-visually mediated mathematics, or any other deemed to be epistemically respectable medium. You take the medium (natural language, say) that avowedly mediates a specific case of epistemically respectable first-order cognition. You have storage and executive

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capabilities – the ability to work upon and play (Barkley) in this workspace. You perform hypothetical, decoupled thinking in this workspace. Thus do you make discoveries. Take the case of model construction in the medium of natural language. Some of these models may be in spoken language, some written, some in inner speech. You have real arguments with extant protagonists, you have written exchanges, you have spoken exchanges, you read, you annotate, you jot down notes, these become a draft, you have l’esprit d’escalier (you construct exchanges in your head with an imaginary interlocutor – exchanges that you win); thus do you construct your arguments, you discover and defend what you take to be the case. You reason (here: linguistically) offline and online and a little in-between, and you reason with the same faculties in each case. You use your intellectual freedom thus to present yourself with your chosen problems, construct models appropriate to address these problems, ‘play’ in that decoupled problem space and, if you are lucky, perhaps even solve said problems, or at least reason yourself until profoundly satisfied, by your own deepest standards, as to what you take to be the case: achieving deontic epistemic justification (if you like, becoming Foley rational) from actively seeking after the truth with all the resources at your disposal, all the active powers you possess. I do not see how these connected points – regarding the cognitive interpenetration of the motor-actional and mental-actional – can be conceded (and they must be conceded), yet the abrupt distinction between motor-actional voluntarism and mental-actional involuntarism be maintained. Grant me freedom of motor action and a good deal of freedom of mental action comes, well, for free.

4.7 Two-process theory Noted already is the tendency among numbers of philosophers to conceive of cognition most generally as unconscious, mandatory, automatic, autonomous, non-rational, fast, parallel, etc. In the (optional) terminology of the two-process literature, these are Process/Type/System 1 characteristics. In that literature, these characteristics are precisely contrasted with higher-order, rational, conscious, slow, serial, decoupled, hypothetical, controlled, metacognitive, etc., cognition (Process/Type/System 2 characteristics – the more distinctively human psychological abilities). The ontological status of this distinction is an important, disputed, issue in the philosophy of psychology; and whether it is a well-founded distinction at all is a major, live debate in theoretical psychology. Two theorists

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who have separately done more than most to champion this distinction are Jonathan Evans and Keith Stanovich. Both are essentialists about this distinction. Evans takes as definitional for Type 2 cognition that this be under the control of WM.23 In this he diverges from his recent collaborator Stanovich, who emphasizes the human capacity for cognitive ‘decoupling’ – though in their first ever jointly authored paper (Evans and Stanovich 2013), they claim that their core criteria are compatible. In the following useful table from that paper, listed here as Table 4.1, they list their (separate) definitional criteria in italics, followed by ‘correlates’ (which, in contrast, non-essentialists might choose to use disjunctively, or explicatively, or constitutively – say, to defend the distinction as a cluster concept). One might see the left-hand column of Table 4.1 as a scientifically far more developed version of the right-hand column of the little ‘toy’ table (Table 3.1) in Table 4.1 Two systems/types/minds (from Evans and Stanovich 2013)24 Type 1 process (intuitive)

Type 2 process (reflective) Defining features

Does not require working memory Autonomous

Requires working memory; cognitive decoupling; mental simulation

Typical Correlates Fast

Slow

High capacity

Capacity limited

Parallel

Serial

Nonconscious

Conscious

Biased responses

Normative responses

Contextualized

Abstract

Automatic

Controlled

Associative

Rule-based

Experience-based decision making

Consequential decision making

Independent of cognitive ability

Correlated with cognitive ability

System 1 (old mind)

System 2 (new mind)

Evolved early

Evolved late

Similar to animal cognition

Distinctively human

Implicit knowledge

Explicit knowledge

Basic emotions

Complex emotions

Note. Italicized attributes are the proposed defining characteristics in the current article. Authors proposing two systems include the features attributed to Type 1 and 2 processing but may also include the additional features named. Source: (Evans and Stanovich 2013). Copyright Sage 2013.

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the preceding chapter: the mandatory lower-brain (or at best more-posteriorcortex) ‘forced’ cognition of the involuntarist epistemologists. Notice now how Evans and Stanovich’s right-hand column itemizes a list of characteristically executive cognition. In fact, I suggest that the best sense we can make of a principled criterion for Type 2 cognition is that Type 2 processing just is executive processing25– with Evans’s WM and Stanovich’s decoupled processing each then seen as attempts to capture the essence of such processing in terms of a unitary, core feature of EF. Given (as we have seen) how complex and disputed work on executive functioning is, using this concept to capture the essence of the twoprocess distinction may be criticized as an obscurum per obscurius, but I think there has been remarkable progress in understanding EF – some of which has been summarized in this chapter. In any event, I think the connection mooted is likely true, and here (guardedly) suggest we identify Type 2 processing with executive functioning, the better thereby to make a critical point. It is an empirical truth that we, as a species, possess the extraordinary, distinctively human EFs articulated in the foregoing, and captured, I would suggest, in the right-hand column of Evans and Stanovich’s table. In light of this truth, a standing challenge for my involuntarist opponents is to articulate how the claim that our cognition is forced may be qualified to come out as true – then to work forward from this to state what normatively (epistemically) a statement so qualified is capable of warranting. These, I contend, are hard questions for my opponents; but in light of the weight of empirical evidence cited, I would suggest that the best case that could be mustered on their behalf would involve noting that certain ‘old mind’ (Type 1) aspects of cognition are indeed ‘involuntary’ in the sense at issue – hence not deontically assessable. Indeed, in a sense, such cognition – at least considered in the absence of other (Type 2, executive) characteristics of the cognitive agent who owns it or tasked it – may appear not to be epistemically assessable at all (that is, assessable in terms of normative epistemology, as opposed to psychologically assessable, say, for speed or accuracy). In any event, such cognition does not obviously appear apt for assessment in terms of its epistemic rationality, or lack thereof. But the question in these terms then becomes whether such cognition may be delineated as a class without appeal to just the notion at issue (you choose: ‘involuntary’, ‘not consciously accessible’, ‘encapsulated’, ‘automatic’, ‘not involving intellectually normative responding’, ‘mandatory’, etc.), and this appears to be a decidedly sharp question for these ‘involuntarists’. Since, however, no sensible epistemic deontologist would seek to deontologically assess these (Type 1) kinds of mental operations or outputs (at

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least, absent the Type 2 cognition that put them in process, or with which they must mesh and integrate at the agential level), the critical, epistemic point to noting the ‘forced’ (mandatory) nature of such ‘old mind’ cognition is extremely hard to fathom – and this quite apart from the aforementioned challenge of articulating any such ‘forced beliefs’ claim at all without viciously begging the question. We deontically assess epistemic agents, their thought processes, their arguments, their beliefs, on the basis of their control of their ‘Type 2’, distinctively human capabilities; or at least with their untyped cognition more generally, yet where this be bound up with such capabilities: with things that the epistemic agent may be held responsible for.

4.8 The bias argument The EFs indeed precisely bias our lower-brain belief-forming mechanisms (‘bias’ is a term repeated passim in the neuro-cognitive literature26). But this doesn’t ‘pervert’ (Kornblith) our cognition – it is essential to high-level cognition. In their influential review of PFC function, Miller and Cohen note the following: the PFC serves a specific function in cognitive control: the active maintenance of patterns of activity that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals throughout much of the rest of the brain, affecting not only visual processes but also other sensory modalities, as well as systems responsible for response execution, memory retrieval, emotional evaluation, etc. The aggregate effect of these bias signals is to guide the flow of neural activity along pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. This is especially important whenever stimuli are ambiguous (i.e. they activate more than one input representation), or when multiple responses are possible27 and the task-appropriate response must compete with stronger alternatives. From this perspective, the constellation of PFC biases – which resolves competition, guides activity along appropriate pathways, and establishes the mappings needed to perform the task – can be viewed as the neural implementation of attentional templates, rules, or goals, depending on the target of their biasing influence. (Miller and Cohen 2001: 171)

‘Bias’ here and in this literature more generally is, I believe, used in a somewhat ambiguous fashion. Narrowly, it can mean bias in an engineering sense (in terms of various theories of biased competition and contrast and signal gain, of the kind commonly employed in theories of executive attention (cf. Wu 2014) and derived ultimately from electronic engineering). More broadly, it means that EFs prevent

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cognition according to prepotent, merely associative pathways from prevailing, but by means of various mechanisms (perhaps not even/only mechanisms) as yet poorly understood – of which bias in the narrower sense would be but one. I am happy to live with any such ambiguity and do not see that it affects my arguments. The point is, EF ensures that the prepotent pathway does not always prevail. It ensures that weaker, task-relevant pathways are chosen over stronger but task-irrelevant pathways. The posterior cortex mediates more automatic, less controlled processing. The job of more anterior, executive processing is to bias this processing (n.b. and lower-brain, non-cortical processing). That’s what good cognition is: According to our current view, common EF is about one’s ability to actively maintain task goals and goal-related information and use this information to effectively bias lower-level processing.28 This basic ability is necessary for all three EFs [inhibition, WM and flexibility]. (Miyake and Friedman 2012: 11)

This lower-level processing, sans control, sans ‘bias’ (seen by the doxastic involuntarists as a contaminant of good cognition), is said involuntarists’ whole, crippled, conception of cognition – their paradigm of afferent, passive, associative, received knowledge. Only it’s not so passive. We have not simply the mediate powers of functional control already emphasized, but directly active cognitive powers. What would happen if we didn’t have this top-down avowed biasing of our otherwise passive, afferent, sensory, mnemonic, etc., systems? Tragically, from the clinical literature, we know only too well: The biasing influence of PFC feedback signals on sensory systems may mediate its role in directing attention … signals to the motor system may be responsible for response selection and inhibitory control … and signals to intermediate systems may support short-term (or working) memory … and guide retrieval from long-term memory. … Without the PFC, the most frequently used (and thus best established) neural pathways would predominate or, where these don’t exist, behavior would be haphazard. Such impulsive, inappropriate, or disorganized behavior is a hallmark of PFC dysfunction in humans. (Miller and Cohen 2001: 172–3)

Bias doesn’t ‘contaminate’ veridical cognition; it is a prerequisite of high-level, human, rational cognition. Without bias, the strongest (‘prepotent’) pathway always prevails – you have no control, you cease to be a high-level cognitive agent at all, you become a Skinnerian ‘locus of variables’, an associative adding machine – or the randomized (classic Mind argument) alternative (Miller and Cohen’s ‘haphazard’, ‘impulsive’, ‘inappropriate’ or ‘disorganized’ behaviour).

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Unimpaired agents bias their lower-brain, purely sensory systems to effect good, controlled cognition. We can relate this to the classic Hobbes–Hume–Hobart dilemma in the free will debates – which will shape so much of Part 2 of this book, and especially its last three chapters. ‘Unbiased’ cognition is (at best) the rigid, inflexible, associative, strongest-motive cognition of the kind found in lower animals and in such modular/mandatory/automatic processes as we share with said animals – the determinist horn of that dilemma. At worst it is random and haphazard – Jonathan Edwards’s (2007: 151) ‘smoke that is driven by the wind’ – the indeterminist (randomness, chance) horn of that dilemma. Both are found in frontal lobe patients. Neither is a model of good (higher-order, characteristically human) cognition, which is precisely why Hobart’s dilemma is a false dilemma – just as the agent-causationists always maintained (Reid 1969: Essay 4, Ch. 4, #3, #5; also Nozick 1981: 294–306; McCall and Lowe 2005: 686ff; Steward 2012: 144ff). Frontal lobe patients and lower animals without EF are not blameworthy or unjustified cognizers precisely because they can’t control their cognition; but in virtue of being thus ‘unbiased’ they are hardly thereby epistemically justified agents. They are not epistemic agents at all. A kind of parallel to this finding was already understood by psychologists in the distinct area of knowledge (/memory) research by the great Bartlett– Neisser constructivist tradition (Bartlett 1932; Neisser 1967). All high-level, characteristically human cognition is biased, top-down. Bias doesn’t ‘pervert’ (‘contaminate’) an otherwise pristine pathway; ‘preservation’ theories of cognition, whether as regards reasoning, memory or knowledge, are (at least in the general case and as regards higher cognition) both entirely indefensible and achingly naïve – and this as regards the scientific psychology and the normative epistemology alike. Without these abilities (‘biases’), we aren’t human cognizers – we aren’t even mammals (cf. MacDonald’s 2008 ‘hot sand’ example, cited above).

4.9 The executive functions and regress There is an obvious, distinctively philosophical problem – of regress. We want to know how normative epistemology is possible: how can we control our thoughts? I have taken my answer from the psychologists (and, in inchoate form, from common sense): through executive functioning. I contend that this extended, empirically informed answer is simply a psychological truth (hardly a counterintuitive one either) and ought never to have been called into question,

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least of all with arguments some of which purport to represent the worldview of modern psychological science. But the question arises: does the exercise of these and similar EFs constitute action? Comes the answer: yes – these functions, when exercised, constitute actions; in many cases they are more paradigmatically actional than most non-executive and specifically motor actions. But then what causes (/brings about) these EF actions? Are they determined (triggered) involuntarily (e.g. mechanistically, by the stimulus: internal or external)? Or are they caused by, say, intentions in turn? You can see where this is going. To pick one horn of this dilemma: if the proximal determinant of an EF is a mechanistic sub-agential process, what is the net gain philosophically of noting the role of the function that is then brought about as itself a contributor to what is held to be the nonautomatic, controlled modification of cognition?29 But consider the other horn of the dilemma, where an EF action is caused by, say, an agential-level ‘intention’: the same dilemma presents itself regarding this ‘intention’, and the danger of regress is obvious. Here, a few points are worth registering. One point is that the epistemic problem we were confronted with (‘doxastic involuntarism’) was not meant to be the problem of free will per se (say, in the teeth of Hobart’s Dilemma or Kim’s Exclusion Argument or Strawson’s Basic Argument or some other fundamental sceptical challenge). It was a prescribed, much more specific problem: granted that motor actions are indeed actional, hence ethically deontically appraisable, nevertheless, it was asserted that our beliefs are forced. Sometimes this was taken to be an armchair truth, sometimes the clear verdict of the cognitive sciences, sometimes the outcome of a very seventeenth-century argument which said that in order to be epistemic at all (a putatively veridical deliverance of our faculties), our cognitive faculties cannot be free (the product of our ‘desires’) as this would bias, contaminate, pervert their normative epistemic status. But we have comprehensively dealt with these objections, and that was the task we were set by the involuntarist opponents of a deontological conception of epistemology. The first two are egregiously false and/or contrived, the third involves a remarkably insouciant conception of good cognitive functioning on the model of ‘uncontaminated’ cognition: the ‘preservation’ theories so beloved of armchair psychologists and so relentlessly, utterly, refuted by the last hundred years of empirical psychology – to say nothing of the Kant/Reid philosophical traditions prior to that. Little higher cognition is to be understood (factually) on the model of a preservation of afferent signal accuracy, of ‘labelled lines’, in from the sense organs to the centre – not as much as is sometimes believed

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even of perceptual or mnemonic cognition, and very little of the active powers of man. Were epistemic deontologism indefensible because no action (motor or mental) could really be under our control in a way that makes responsibility (any responsibility) possible, that would be another argument, one far more sweeping than the specific epistemological debates about voluntarism. I shall address issues of free will and responsibility more generally in Part 2; but these debates are quite different from (are far more general than) the epistemic debate. I take it that it would be a sign that this latter debate was well won if the specifically epistemic involuntarist had to change the subject and generalize matters so drastically. Now consider the regress objection to epistemic freedom in its own right. It is exceedingly swift, and I think by no means convincing. Firstly, note the danger of mereological fallacy in claiming that since many (not all) of the parts that comprise an EF are automatic and uncontrolled, therefore the whole cannot be controlled. The parts that make up a cell are not alive, but the cell is. Secondly, note the neo-behaviouristic, neo-Wittgensteinian philosophical tendency of assuming that since a regress potentially beckons, therefore the first step should not be taken. The EFs are clearly empirically actual and a central, core aspect of what our epistemic agency consists in. Philosophical worries about a potential regress cannot alter that fact: it is an unassailable psychological truth; and one does not build a satisfactory philosophical account by ignoring, as an important descriptive starting point, a clear empirical truth simply on the grounds that it is not ‘ultimate’ enough for one’s longer-term explanatory (/reductionist) tastes.30 Thirdly, note that while some aspects of the parts that comprise an EF are automatic and uncontrolled, some (many) are themselves controlled. Fourthly, note that an alternative to a regress may be a circularity: the EFs continually, reflexively, systemically affect and control each other and lower-brain processes and actions in the world. This begins in infancy and ends in death. There is a pervasive functionalist, systems-level, self-organizing, diachronic developmental process (these are processes after all). Fifthly, note that these functions are not simply in the head: they are situated in the body and in the world and interpenetrate our cultural–cognitive achievements in openended, potentially unlimited systems of control: EF permits the development of culture, and culture radically changes the nature of EF. Sixthly, note the possibility of emergentism (highly compatible with much of the above – e.g. points 1 and 4, and points in the text and Endnote 14 regarding token versus type proximal determination of mental action – an emergentism itself compatible

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with an agent-causal (or, I shall say in Chapter 9, a self-determinist) conception of matters). Finally, note that intellectual freedom is plausibly an agential-level predicate rather more than it is a process-level one (though it may be both). The EFs, as noted, control and bias many other EFs and many lower-brain functions – which feed back to them and into the world (cf. Miller and Cohen on the EFs, Bartlett, etc.: the constructivist tradition in top-down cognitive psychology passim). I hardly think that these brief remarks are sufficient to set aside the problem of free will as it confronts us in normative epistemology in the longer term, but they throw back the onus upon the involuntarist to defend his specific regress objections, meant, of themselves, to swiftly dismiss, without even addressing, the constructive psychological points and clear descriptive/ scientific truths that I have raised in counter to that position above. This chapter and the last have addressed, with scientific evidence and constructive argument, how the intellectual freedom necessary to defend a deontic conception of internalism could be actual; and why we have strong reasons to believe these powers are actual. The next chapter is wholly different in tenor; eschewing any scientific considerations to advance a negative, transcendental argument: that at some level and to some extent we must embrace the deontic conception of internalism – that in this, we have no choice.

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CODICIL TO CHAPTER FOUR Common EF all that is specific to Inhibitory Control plus resources shared by all other EF’s Deferred Gratification

Self-regulation of affect Monitoring Item Deletion

Impulse Control Inhibitory Executive Attention

Shifting-specific EF (‘Flexibility’). Shares resources with common EF but sometimes shows negative correlations with other EF’s

Set Shifting

Item Addition

Active Maintenance

Taking the character of the other

Other Putative Superordinate EF’s?? e.g. Specifically linguistic fluency / internalisation of speech, dualtasking, etc.

Task Shifting

Cognitive Fluency

Figure 4.5 Illustrative example of a hierarchical model of executive functioning (not endorsed by the present author). Miyake & Friedman’s (2012) factor-structure for the three highest superordinate EF’s is given (light shading), together with the subordinate EF’s they mention under ‘Updating’. Merely illustrative subordinate factors are included under other superordinate EF’s (darker shading)

Free Will and Epistemology

Updating-specific EF (‘Working Memory’). Shares resources with common EF (especially attention) & in doing so closely corresponds to g (Gf)

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The Ineliminability of Internalism

5.1 Intellectual duties The earlier chapters asked how much access and control would be required for internalism to be defensible, and answered: enough for responsibility. The last two chapters attempted to defend, constructively, the claim that there was that degree of access and control. This chapter advances a more negative, transcendental argument, to the effect that there must be a role for internalist justification – for a conception of epistemic value based around the idea of intellectual responsibilities, of epistemic ‘oughts’. To do this, we begin by asking: what actually are our intellectual responsibilities – what would we have to do to discharge our epistemic duty?

5.1.1 What is our epistemic duty? The notion of duty is close to the heart of the internalist conception of justification, but what this notion amounts to is not always well understood, even by internalists themselves. I have previously written, incautiously, that one’s primary intellectual duties are to acquire truth and avoid error. What I should have said is that one’s primary intellectual duties are to believe reasonably and avoid believing unreasonably. (Chisholm 1986b: 90–1)

With even Chisholm, the last century’s pre-eminent internalist, reconceiving things thus, it is no wonder that opponents such as Alston followed suit: Note that each conception [internalism and externalism] omits the crucial emphasis of the other, thereby implicitly denying it to be necessary for justification. Freedom from blameworthiness, being in the clear so far as one’s intellectual duties are concerned, is totally ignored by the [externalist]. So long

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as one forms one’s beliefs in a way that is well-calculated to get the truth, it is of no concern how well one is carrying out intellectual duties. Conversely, the deontologist has nothing to say about truth-conducivity. (Alston 1989a: 201)

Why would later Chisholm come to believe that an internalist account of justification cannot take our primary intellectual duties as being ‘to acquire truth and avoid error’? Why did he feel he needed to retrench to the view that these duties are ‘to believe reasonably and avoid believing unreasonably’? Likewise, why would Alston believe that the internalist’s duties must concern such things as ‘freedom from intellectual blameworthiness’, and expressly may not include such things as ‘forming one’s beliefs in a way well-calculated to get the truth’? I think the reasoning goes something like this: the stock externalist argument from epistemic poverty, as represented by Alston, Chisholm and others in Chapter 2, started from the fact that internalism was a deontic theory – precisely an account in terms of our ‘intellectual duties’. Given that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, it followed that satisfying such accounts could only guarantee that we were practically, not absolutely justified (Chisholm); that is, that the internalist was restricted to an account of when we had satisfied our subjective obligations, not our objective obligations (Alston). It meant that justification was perspectivally bounded – that the agent’s epistemic status had to be assessed relative to the cognitive resources he or she possessed at a time and place. That meant that the ground for the internalist conception of duty had to include all the agent’s beliefs, true and false; it could not restrict itself to a ground including facts alone – to how objectively effective that agent was at acquiring truth and avoiding error. I then suspect the following reasoning applies: since the absolute, objective desideratum is not something internalism can guarantee to satisfy, the objective success terms – ‘acquiring truth and avoiding error’, ‘truth-conducivity’ and the like – cannot feature as the intentional objects of internalist accounts; achieving such things cannot be taken as constituting the internalist’s epistemic end, as the content of the internalist conception of duty. The internalist’s epistemic end must be attenuated, so that it doesn’t involve objective epistemic value – not even mere truth and avoidance of error, much less anything stronger. The internalist’s epistemic end must rather be to achieve the regulative, subjective desideratum – ‘to believe reasonably and avoid believing unreasonably’, ‘to be free from intellectual blameworthiness’ or something similar. However, if this were the reasoning behind such moves, it would be fallacious. A goal does not have to be guaranteed to be attainable – or even likely to be attainable – to nevertheless serve as a goal. The argument from epistemic poverty

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was that internalism could not guarantee satisfying the absolute, objective, theoretical desideratum. That result in no way establishes that an internalist theory cannot take absolute, objective, epistemic success – say, truth, or avoidance of falsity – as its end. Consider, from Chapter 2, Alston’s perspectivally limited tribesman, who, no matter how diligently he discharges his intellectual duties, is nevertheless helplessly unable to marshal the intellectual resources needed for him to be objectively justified – for instance, about some matter of physical or medical science. He may, however, perfectly well take objective justification – truth or avoidance of error – to be his end when attempting to understand these matters. Indeed, if he is diligent in the discharge of his duties, he must take objective, absolute justification to be his end. For not to seek after objective epistemic value is, a priori, to be epistemically unjustified. As Thomas Nagel puts it, ‘There is no way of determining that a belief is rationally acceptable except by thinking about whether it is true’ (Nagel 1997: 89). Contrast here Oaksford and Chater’s statement, as cited in Chapter 1. The core truth of their first sentence cannot conceal the problematic nature of the second: Since the mind/brain is a limited information processor, the processes of risky decision-making cannot be based upon optimal, algorithmic procedures. This means that the only rationality to which we can aspire, as individual decisionmakers, is one bounded by our limited computational resources. (Oaksford and Chater 1992: 226–7)

Nagel is, I take it, somewhat ‘problematizing’ the notion of an aspiration to be rational at all (that is, as opposed to achieving rationality through one’s aspiration to attain the truth). Abstracting from this, the more general point is that, granted, the processes of risky decision-making cannot usually be based upon optimal, algorithmic decision procedures; nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that our epistemic goal, the end to which we aspire (probably, for the most, part not rationality, something normally rather closer to truth) must be a bounded one. Richard Foley makes both points thus: [Y]ou might intrinsically value being rational, but there would be something misdirected, something narcissistic, about [taking] this, rather than a desire for the truth to be your principle source of intellectual motivation. Besides … [t]rying very hard to be rational ordinarily isn’t a good way to become rational.1 A better way is to try very hard to believe truths and not to believe falsehoods. (Foley 1993: 134)

It is not, however, just that this seeking after an objective epistemic goal state is a better way of being rational – it is that it is the only way. There is nothing

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it would be to seek after rationality direct, without seeking after objective justification. It would be like seeking to be virtuous without seeking to do good, ‘saintly, without being a saint’ (Waugh 1960: 246): the precious pseudo-morality of the prig. This is not to say that every rationally directed process of reflection must be immediately outer-directed. There is of course a place for projects of rational self-scrutiny in our epistemology – the intuitive pull of coherentism, for example, derives from the obvious sense it makes to take time to square up various potential inconsistencies in our belief set, regardless of any single immediate goal. But these projects of self-examination can yield internalist epistemic justification of a belief only if they, these projects as a whole, are ultimately constrained by the search for objective epistemic value. A process of internal intellectual auditing is not entirely self-contained; it must be, in some ultimate sense, in the service of inquiry into truth. As for coherentism, so for the positions advanced by Alston and Chisholm – to the extent these are distinct. It is not that we cannot take as our goals late Chisholm’s ‘to believe reasonably and avoid believing unreasonably’; it is just that, to the extent we do this, we must be directed towards his ‘primary intellectual duties’: to acquire truth and avoid error. There is nothing it would be to seek after the former unless these were in some way in the service of the latter. One only has Alston’s ‘freedom from [intellectual] blameworthiness’, one only is ‘in the clear so far as one’s intellectual duties are concerned’, to the extent one ‘forms one’s beliefs in a way that is wellcalculated to get the truth’. It was for this reason that, in Chapter 1, Bergmann’s (2006) characterization of the thin deontological conception of justification as ‘subjective deontological justification’ or ‘epistemic blamelessness’ was declined. To be subjectively justified requires us, at an intentional (and intensional) level, to seek after objective justification; and not to seek after blamelessness, but rather to seek the truth.

5.1.2 Objective justification What is it to have ‘objective justification’, though? Under this umbrella term I have grouped truth and avoidance of error, but these are different epistemic goals. In other work (a successor monograph on knowledge), I shall deliver my theory of knowledge. There I specify exactly where I stand on issues of truth maximization versus error minimization versus other kinds of objective epistemic goods. I want what I have to say here to be as neutral as possible on the specifics about what our external goal should be. Talk of ‘truth maximization’, ‘truth conducivity’ and the like then serve for me, just as these did for Alston,

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Chisholm, Nagel, Foley, etc., as markers for whatever conception of objective justification is seen as constituting the agent’s goal – including accounts that rather emphasize error minimization and the like. As a result of this neutrality, what I say here can then be in agreement with other epistemologists in maintaining that one is subjectively justified only to the extent that one takes objective justification as one’s goal, yet with us free to substantially disagree as to the specifics of this, the epistemic good: truth maximization, error minimization or any number of other objective ends. This disagreement takes place elsewhere. So, one may only be subjectively justified if one strives to be objectively justified. Taking epistemic duty seriously requires one to take it in this thin fashion: the only fundamental internalist ‘ought’ is (early) Chisholm’s ‘primary intellectual duty’ to aim to acquire truth and avoid error. That is as much content to the notion of duty as internalism as such need make space for. Given such an approach to epistemic duty, it becomes optional whether the proponents of any particular internalist account wish to articulate, at the level of first-order epistemic theory, any system of duties, rules, etc. Given that one ought to aim to possess truth, developing an account of the means to that end then becomes an engineering problem. As a position on this problem, some internalists may indeed go for an obligations (rules-based) account at the first-order level as well as at the higher-order level, but they need not, to be internalists as such; just as, conversely, the rules-consequentialist can be wholly externalist concerning the source of epistemic normativity, yet still have the option of subscribing to a first-order system of obligations, of ‘J-rules’, ‘E-rules’ – or, for that matter, other, non-deontic yet (at the first-order level) non-act-externalist systems that are, in a deeper sense, nevertheless profoundly externalist (such as, for example, strong virtues reliabilism).

5.1.3 Is this still internalism? How, though, are we to make in any way compatible with internalism the argued-for priority of this external, trans-perspectival goal over the conception of intellectual duty as being to believe reasonably and avoid believing unreasonably? By prioritizing the former over the latter, how do we not have rather a defence of externalism? The issue as to how internalism could be compatible with the requirement that any epistemology should be intrinsically truth-directed is widely taken to be one of the core challenges to this position. I find this surprising, as I take the solution proffered here to be so obvious: the priority is of intentional goal not actual goal (actual consequences). We are only

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internalistically epistemically justified if we aim to achieve the truth (or avoid error). But we don’t need to actually attain truth or avoid error. On the contrary, the whole of the foregoing has argued that satisfying this absolute, objective, theoretical desideratum may, given our perspectival limitations, often be quite impossible; yet still we may be justified. We must direct our perspectivally limited resources as best we are able, where, a priori, this requires us to look outside of ourselves and seek to be objectively, trans-perspectivally, truth-conducively justified. To the extent we do this with integrity, whether or not we attain the intentional object of our efforts, we are justified in another, regulative, practical, subjective sense. We here rehearse our earlier arguments as to why expected consequentialist theories in epistemology precisely aren’t consequentialist (externalist) theories. An account of epistemic value has it that one is justified either to the extent one actually maximizes consequences or to the extent that one seeks to maximize consequences. These two theories diverge starkly, and are in no sense the same. It is the right and not the good that concerns us here. The motivation behind restricting one’s justificatory ground to expected consequences is precisely that these alone are accessible to the agent – the agent can’t be praised or blamed for actual but unforeseen consequences, but can for expected consequences – and the agent can only use the consequences she can foresee to direct and regulate her thought. This point may be made vivid with the use of temporal language – for the internalist, all the data relevant to deciding an agent’s justificatory status are already in, before the objective consequences of that agent’s thought have come to pass: was the pursuit of truth, from that agent’s perspective, carried out as dutifully as that agent was able?

5.1.4 Objective versus subjective pursuit of truth Consider, then, the earlier Alston quotation, siding with later Chisholm against this view. Notice, with the conception of duty I am urging against Alston and later Chisholm, how much of the letter of Alston’s quotation about ‘externalism’ (taken out of context but in a way his language partly encourages) is now available to the internalist. ‘Freedom from blameworthiness, being in the clear … etc.’, if embraced as more than mediate, instrumental tools – if taken as ultimate ends – will not lead to an agent being internalistically justified; they lead to Foley’s ‘narcissism’: an unanchored intellectual self-absorption that any internalist who is serious about what it is to be intellectually responsible must reject. Conversely, Alston’s next sentence almost defines internalism: ‘So long as one forms one’s

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beliefs in a way that is well-calculated to get the truth, it is of no concern how well one is carrying out intellectual duties’ – the contentful first-order duties that is, if one even uses them. For the ‘so long as …’ clause already adumbrates our whole epistemic duty – all that represents internalism as such: what we do in the meantime. Here, though, one must be on one’s guard, for Alston’s artful ‘well-calculated’ qualifier is used by him in a non-standard way; disambiguating it distils the whole internalism/externalism issue into this one phrase. As one would naturally understand ‘well-calculated’, it makes the quotation into a statement of internalism. In this sense, ‘well-calculated’ means ‘as the cognizer, from his epistemic perspective, with his resources, can best determine’. But as Alston uses it (counterintuitively), it means something like ‘as God, or a third-party cognitive scientist could calculate it, as the objective, mind-independent probabilities in nature have it, this cognizer will get the truth’. It is … to believe that p in a ‘truth conducive’ way. It is for one’s belief to have been formed in such a way or on such a basis that one is thereby likely to be believing correctly. (Alston 1989a: 201)

So the issue over which internalism and externalism disagree may be brought to a head by asking whether, for (a) knowledge and (b) rationality, one is required to have formed one’s belief in a way that is objectively or subjectively well-calculated to get the truth; that is, to be ‘truth-conducive’ from the God’s-eye view or from the epistemic agent’s perspective. My position is simple enough: knowledge requires the agent to stand in an objective relation to the truth. Rationality requires the agent to stand in a subjective relation to the truth. Minimally, rationality must be directive, involving processes leading to decision and the regulation of thought. Whether, and to what extent, rationality requires something objective as well is very much a live issue; the motivation for which is obvious both from quotidian and experimental cases, but may be made vivid with esoterica such as the ‘new evil demon problem’. Consider a subject who is a brain in a vat, or the victim of an evil demon. We recognize that these subjects cannot, for the most part, have knowledge – at least, since they will lack truth. But there is a venerable internalist tradition holding that such envisaged subjects could be rational2 (Foley 2001: 38, 2004: 69; Weatherson 2008: 564–5; Williamson 2007: 182–3; but see Nottelmann 2013); likewise for Alston’s tribesman who is brought up to be deferential to a spurious authority, and all other perspectival limitations (Lockie 2016a,b). One is dealt the cognitive hand one is dealt, and if this be a poor hand, it may deny one the

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possibility of knowledge; but rationality (in this thin, deontic sense – it may not be the only sense) has to do with how well one plays the cards one is dealt, be these good or bad. One may of course take a ‘factive turn’ and re-terminologize ‘epistemic reason’, ‘justification’, etc., as terms of art that cease to be possessed unless certain (proprietary, stipulative) external specifications are met; but terms for being as justified as one can make oneself, as justified as one may be held responsible for, will then simply have to be recoined. I may be helplessly in error, but there is a sense (this sense) in which I may not be helplessly unjustified: if I fulfil my subjective intellectual duties as well as I am equipped to, then though I be objectively badly awry, subjectively I am justified. This deeply subjective, agent-relative, perspectival notion of rationality has been developed to a high degree of sophistication by Richard Foley (‘Foley rationality’). I think that here, or somewhere like it, is where the notion of epistemic rationality (or at least one, very central, Echt notion of epistemic rationality3) has to repair to: Foley’s what am I to believe? (Foley 1993). Although this conception of matters leads to superficially counterintuitive results (objectively awry agents seen as nevertheless – in this sense – rational), philosophically it is motivated, above all, by the need to retain the regulative aspect of rationality and to have rationality as a genuine species of epistemic value, a justificatory ‘kind’, one type of normativity. We do this if we judge an account of rationality entirely by how well it satisfies the regulative desideratum of adequacy. I shall qualify things somewhat below (and see Lockie 2016a,b), but broadly, I recommend that the species or kind or type of epistemic value – ‘rationality’ or ‘knowledge’ – is simply identified with the task requirements it answers to: regulative or theoretical. What if instead we require the one epistemic success term – here, rationality – to serve two masters, the regulative and the theoretical: to satisfy some admixture of each desideratum of adequacy? We may more nearly track a certain kind of philosopher’s intuitions this way, intuitions vectored through ever more contrived thought experiments, but we will do so aimlessly – unless something like ‘ordinary language’ or ‘conceptual analysis’ is our metaphilosophical aim (the position polemicized in Lockie 2014b). We will still need a term for when the agent is as justified as she can make herself – that is, directing her thought as well as she is able. And we will still need a term for when the agent is instantiating an objectively truth-conducive relation to the world. Those who wished to cross these two species of epistemic value and have each of ‘rationality’ and ‘knowledge’ a subtly different hybrid of the same two species of epistemic value could read what is being done here as stipulative, then translate into their

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own vocabulary. When they say ‘John knows that p’, in my vocabulary they are saying ‘John knows that p and is rational in believing that p’. Unfortunately, when they say ‘John is rational in believing that p’, they are also saying ‘John knows that p and is rational in believing that p’. In an effort to track our supposed intuitions, such philosophers may mark many subtle nuances here, but what is of primary importance in our descriptive epistemology is that we recognize when an account is being judged against the objective of satisfying the regulative desideratum and when it is being judged against the objective of satisfying the theoretical desideratum. For the normative epistemologist, ‘rationality’ and ‘knowledge’ are theory-driven terms of art. The constraints of theory motivate us to employ these terms in this way: to mark this strict task separation.

5.2 The transcendental argument against a totalizing externalism The question then arises: could deontic internalism, precisely as articulated in the foregoing, be radically undermined by externalism? Could epistemology somehow do without internalism?

5.2.1 Two debunking possibilities There are two ways that such a radical undermining of internalism might be attempted. One way would be to maintain that those cognitive structures whose outputs are accessible to us and within our control are so small and impotent relative to the bulk of cognition that is involuntary and inaccessible as to establish our rational faculties and powers to be an epistemically insignificant aspect of our cognitive lives. That is, to hold that the proportion of our mental lives over which we have access and enjoy some measure of control is tiny, and incapable of being seriously increased – hence that our epistemic obligations may be so limited as to be uninteresting. The factual judgement underlying this epistemological claim represents an emphasis still found in some sub-areas within psychology and the cognitive sciences – and certainly many philosophical commentators thereupon. It is probably less prevalent now than, say, thirty or forty years ago, when automatic and involuntary processing was more emphasized as an object of study, and a polemical need was still felt to undermine the attractions of introspectionism. A conclusion about normative epistemology is thus held

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to be motivated by an assumed-to-be-emerging body of data from cognitive science, experimental psychology and the like. One could seek to dispute these scientific data or their philosophical interpretation; but while the objections of the previous chapter spoke to the science, the counterargument of this chapter does not. The other way that one might envisage internalism being radically undermined would be to suppose that externalism could replace internalism wholesale. On this view, unlike the first debunking possibility, internalist justification isn’t just seen as unimportant or trivial relative to externalist justification – it is not accepted at all: the entire framework of internalist justification is abandoned for the entire framework of externalist epistemic value. This would be an elimination proper: the externalist tendency pushed to the point whereby externalism becomes a totalizing thesis. The challenge of this latter position will be the better addressed by first considering the former.

5.2.2 The Freudian iceberg To what extent, then, is it possible that we may end up with an internalist account of what we can grasp, can have access and control over, yet be lacking an account of what is really important in epistemology? To what extent is it possible that our voluntary epistemic powers could be so puny as to make even an accurate account of them be trivial? I contend that the internalist standpoint in epistemology cannot be unimportant or trivial, no matter how relatively impotent our cognitive access and control might be shown to be by psychological science. A central theme of the account of internalism given thus far is that epistemic uncertainty confronts us with various forced-choice scenarios and dilemmas. That is just the nature of our cognitive lives. The rational agent cannot radically withhold from these forced choices, because even on the occasions where withholding is possible, to do so is also to make a choice, and thus not radically to withhold. We can withhold from a decision sometimes (less often than may be thought), but that too is a decision. We cannot withhold from ‘decision’ per se. We cannot withhold from epistemology. We have no choice but to fulfil the regulative desideratum of adequacy as best we can. The agenda set by the regulative project places no reliance on our possessing some optimal Cartesian rationality – some divining rod of clarity and distinctness to act as guarantor of truth or knowledge. It cannot then be undermined by showing

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how far short of such an optimal rationality science reveals we are. The regulative agenda concerns working with whatever we have (however much or little that is) and saying, given that this is all we have to go on, what should we do in the meantime? Wu (2014), in his extended essay on attention, calls this the ‘Many–Many Problem’: with many possible inputs in psychological space, and many possible responses, the problem is how to selectively couple a specific input to a specific response. He maintains that this problem ‘could just be re-named the Selection Problem,’ and that ‘action just is solving the Many–Many Problem’ (Wu 2014: 82). I find this a plausible picture of things. Wu points out that this problem remains even if there is only one possible input and one possible output (a ‘one– one’ problem) as long as there remains the choice: to act or not to act. Remove all choice and there is no action, no agency, no rationality – indeed, no agent (Steward 2012). Internalism answers to the regulative desideratum of adequacy – the various specific, substantial, internalist theories compete to offer us an account of how we may have subjective, practical, intra-perspectival justification. An internalism that acknowledges it must abandon any guarantee of providing an account of objective, absolute, trans-perspectival justification cannot then be undermined by showing how far short of satisfying such a desideratum it could potentially fall. However limited our agency and access may seem when considered from without, considered from within an epistemic perspective these are all the resources we have; and any limitations of these resources will leave unaffected the importance of doing the best we can. We act within our powers to act, for we have no other means of acting. We ratiocinate from what we have access to, for we have no other basis on which to ratiocinate. We may be considered trapped within or limited by a perspective, only when considered – as if one of Alston’s tribesmen, by a Victorian anthropologist – from without. Considered from within a perspective, we are just living our cognitive lives, doing the best we can. The importance of a project for trying to live these lives as well as we are able with the resources we command would not be compromised – indeed, not be addressed – by evidence as to how little direct regulative control we have. Though such scientific evidence, if the agent is apprised of it, may certainly affect the details of what he has to do if he is adequately to address the regulative tasks with which he is confronted, the only change that any such evidence would effect would be to map out a new body of information for that cognizer’s cognitive agency to work through and with.

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5.2.3 The elimination of internalism This response generalizes to the second debunking possibility mooted above: the replacement of internalism by externalism. In so doing, it can be seen more clearly that it is a transcendental argument. So, how might one pursue the envisaged external, scientific, debunking project? However limited psychological science shows us to be, we cannot be so limited as to undermine the ability of such scientists to uncover our limits, then recommend (pessimistic) conclusions for epistemology based on such discoveries. On the assumption that they must have access to the ground for maintaining how limited we are in our access, there must be a limit to those limits. Arguments from psychological science against ‘doxastic voluntarism’ and the like – arguments that are claimed to undermine our pretensions to regulative, directive powers of the mind – cannot be so powerful as to make it impossible for us to be directed as to these regulative limits in turn, then to use these rational conclusions to recommend to others that they pursue a different, prescribed, revisionary, non-regulative epistemology.4 This different, successor epistemology cannot, in being put forward, have eschewed the regulative desideratum tout court. All epistemically limited beings – tribesmen, cognitive scientists, epistemologists – must confront epistemic dilemmas, and have to make forced choices; including, sometimes, the choice to withhold from judgement. In this, each has no choice but to employ only such epistemic resources as he commands, to engage with this process of decision-making as best he is able. We are all of us ‘epistemically impoverished’. One may, from a relatively privileged position, see that an agent has not the epistemic resources to attain objective justification, but one has to reach this conclusion from oneself only a relatively privileged position, and if challenged on the warrant that this, one’s own position, permits, one can only argue from such justifiers as one has access to, saying: ‘Look, these, such and such, are my reasons and arguments, they make this choice rational for me – if I am missing something, bring it within my purview, engage with me in argument, I can, in the limit, only address what is put before me.’ What goes for access and control, goes for obligations – in which terms I should anyway prefer to deploy this argument. It was stressed above that internalism should be understood as a very high-order theory, not the claim that we must be operating on a set of first-order rules or obligations – the ‘J-rules’ externalist would satisfy that requirement. So, the crucial question is this: at the very high-order level, is the last, most fundamental epistemic ‘ought’

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ineliminable, foundational, sui generis, or is it not? We have to hold that it is ineliminable. It is indefensible to suppose we could abandon the last epistemic ‘ought’ for a wholly externalist conception of epistemic value, as the last ‘ought’ is the ought that urges us to eliminate itself.5 Since ought implies can, the former version of the argument follows as corollary: that enough access to draw this conclusion is ineliminable also. Internalism, then, cannot be replaced by externalism; in a sense, it is prior to externalism.

5.2.4 What can this argument achieve? What, though, is supposed to be the target of the argument deriving from the point just made: that the last ‘ought’ is ineliminable? Is the target externalism as such? If externalism as such were held to be the target of this argument, surely an appropriate response would simply be to advance an externalism that didn’t seek to abandon the last epistemic ‘ought’ – such a position now looks to be the most defensible form of externalism, and an attack on externalism as such should take the most defensible version of that position as its target. Emphasized earlier was that we should see externalism and internalism as tendencies, not categories. Since these terms group and order individual, substantial epistemic theories – theories that vary in strength, in how radical they are – the gamut of individual accounts in epistemology must then fall between the two limiting extremes of the strongest coherent externalism and the strongest coherent internalism. The tendency towards the strongest coherent externalism we can call the ‘externalist tendency’ or ‘externalist project’ or just ‘externalism’ – and likewise for internalism. I have here argued that a totalizing externalism is too strong to be coherent; that is, that the externalist tendency, when left unbridled and unlimited, undermines itself. This argument refutes a totalizing conception of externalism alone (an ‘existential externalism’): any externalism that seeks to entirely replace internalism. What this argument does not aspire to is to refute a less-than-totalizing externalism. On the contrary, externalism is an essential component in any complete normative epistemology – it is the fundamental basis of any adequate theory of knowledge. The argument here given seeks to establish that any totalizing externalism is reflexively untenable – that is, any approach to epistemology that only allows there to be externalist epistemic value, any basis for epistemic normativity as a whole that is exclusively externalist, any approach to epistemology that is eliminatively (deontically) non-normative. Putting the conclusion of this argument in terms of access would be regrettable – since access

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isn’t the heart of the matter – but to do so would be to overturn the view which has  it that there is no a priori necessary accessibility requirement in epistemology: a view that is no straw man. Putting things in terms of obligations is better, however, since one can derive this lesser access conclusion as a corollary: one cannot overturn at some fundamental level6 a deontic basis for epistemic normativity, since the last ‘ought’ is the ought that urges abandonment of all ‘oughts’. The emphasis given – the italicized ‘fundamental level’ – is meant to nip in the bud any counter that would seek to defang this argument by providing an externalist basis for an understanding of ‘oughts’ in epistemology. In Chapter 1, it was pointed out that a ‘J-rules’ externalism can provide the epistemic equivalent of a rules-consequentialism in ethics by employing such a basis: that we ought to obey our rules even when flouting them yields better consequences. However, such a position does not fundamentally embrace ‘oughts’ – it ultimately reduces the normativity of the rules system as a whole to the overall consequences of embracing that system. So we must return to ask of such a position why we ought to maximize these consequences (of the rule system) in turn. The last ‘ought’ is the ought that urges us to abandon an oughts-based epistemology. Since ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, sufficient access to one’s justificatory ground to draw this conclusion is needed: the example given was the curious ability of those cognitive scientists, experimental psychologists, deflationary naturalistic epistemologists, etc., who seek to undermine the notion that we have sufficient epistemic access and control for epistemic responsibility, to nevertheless apprehend the discoveries that ground their claim that we are access-limited, then draw rational, justified and pessimistic conclusions as to what we should believe about our epistemic limits on the basis of this ground, these discoveries.7 This last ought, or other, fundamental deontic notion, then becomes what must be irreducible and sui generis: a conclusion the early Goldman was perhaps aware of when, in advancing a simpler, but not essentially distinct externalism – the causal theory of knowledge – he cautioned that he was not applying his theory to itself, to the doing of epistemology. In the very last sentence of that paper, conventionally taken as being the first modern externalist theory, he said: I think my analysis shows that the question of whether someone knows a certain proposition is, in part, a causal question, although, of course, the question of what the correct analysis is of ‘S knows that p’ is not a causal question. (Goldman 1967: 372)

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‘Of course’? One looks in vain in that paper for a reason. An irreflexive theory cannot be reflexively incoherent of course, but if an implicit awareness of the threat of this kind of peritrope was not behind the otherwise stipulative limit early Goldman placed on his theory, one is left wondering what was.8 Externalism is a tendency in philosophy, a very important tendency, one whose star is currently in the ascendant. The philosophical spirit of our times is strongly externalist; numbers of philosophers have pushed externalism hard: this argument establishes that there is a limit to this tendency. It does not seek to refute any less-than-totalizing externalism, nor yet to establish that externalism is intrinsically totalizing. Externalism is, however, a tendency that has hitherto lacked any argument representing a recognition of an intrinsic motivation – a reason contained within the view itself – to brake itself short of being totalizing (‘existential’, ‘strict’, ‘absolute’: Weinberg 2006; Goldman 2009). This argument is that there is such a limit. A totalizing reduction (an elimination) of internalism by externalism is self-undermining: there is a transcendental limit on any such reductive tendency. The externalist tendency must and does limit itself; limiting itself short of any totalizing position. A less-than-totalizing externalism is the only (coherent) form of externalism. Once this result is established, a nontotalizing externalism precisely then becomes a tenable position, and certainly no target of my further arguments.

5.2.5 A totalizing internalism? Another direction of dependence The argument just given is that internalism is transcendentally prior to externalism, hence cannot be eliminated by externalism, for it contains the resources needed for the elimination to be effected. This argument will be further scrutinized below and defended against a basic objection. First, however, it should be made very clear that in opposing a totalizing externalism, the reverse kind of elimination, a totalizing internalism – Goldman’s (2009) ‘existential internalism’ – is absolutely not being defended. There are, on the contrary, three ways in which the external project is prior. Earlier, it was argued that the ‘primary intellectual duties’ of an internalist epistemology should be specified in terms of aiming for objective epistemic success. Pace Alston and later Chisholm, these trans-perspectival goals are available to the internalist, and indeed, one can only be internalistically justified to the extent one pursues them. In this sense, the objective, theoretical project is identified as fundamental, prior: the intentional object of one who is internalistically justified must be to stand in an objective relation to the truth.

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Not to aspire to such an objective relation to truth is to fail in one’s epistemic duty a priori. This means that one must seek after a type of epistemic value that is ‘perspective-transcendent’ even for one to be internalistically (perspectivally) justified. In this sense, we have a reverse direction of priority to that which our transcendental argument established. Further, as noted earlier: whether we have satisfied our own, subjective, perspectival standards, and are justified by those standards, is itself an objective, trans-perspectival fact – albeit an objective fact about the subjective, internal domain. Whether we have discharged our epistemic duties as best we are able to determine given the cognitive resources we command, is not something we are the final judge of – this is not something we are ‘criterial for’ or have some privileged authority over. My epistemic duty is something that must be within my compass, accessible for me. But what is and is not within my perspective is an objective, ‘absolute’ fact about my cognitive limits; and whether I have done all I am able within my limits is, further, an objective fact about me. This means that however sympathetic I am to the rationalist sentiments underlying L. J. Cohen’s deployment of a transcendental argument, I would reject outright a statement like the following: [W]e cannot attribute inferior rationality to those who are themselves among the canonical arbiters of rationality. Nothing can count as an error of reasoning among our fellow adults unless even the author of the error would, under ideal conditions, agree that it is an error. (Cohen 1981: 322)9

Pace Cohen, we can indeed attribute an error of reasoning among our fellow adults, even when the author of the error would, under ideal conditions, refuse to agree that it is an error. And we can thereby attribute inferior rationality to these persons even were we to agree with Cohen’s over-strong claim that normal adults who are non-specialists in statistical, logical or otherwise scientific reasoning are to be taken as ‘canonical arbiters of rationality’.10 What we can’t do is attribute inferior rationality among our fellow adults (at least, ‘inferior rationality’ in the deontic-internalist, epistemic-justificatory sense under consideration – granted that we are waiving ‘tracing’ qualifications) when, as a matter of fact, the author of the error would, even under ideal conditions, be unable to do better than commit this error when confronted with this problem, or have the capacity to apprehend that this was an error within even his zone of proximal development. We are not, then, the arbiters of when we have transgressed the norms of rationality – the latter is an objective fact – but what those norms are is something that is fixed with reference to the capacities, resources and limits of humans in general and

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(here) this human in question, in this situation, located within and delineated by this, his epistemic perspective and zone of proximal development therefrom. The necessity of a further limit, a limit to perspectivism, a limit to (here) subjectivist relativism, was itself established on the basis of a transcendental argument by Plato, in the same dialogue – the Theaetetus – in which he gave epistemic perspectivism to the world. My conception of that famous argument, and defence of it against a set of responses, is given elsewhere (Lockie 2003b, 2006), but its conclusion as this applies to epistemic perspectivism is given here. It has been argued exhaustively above that internalism is a species of epistemic perspectivism, but there are limits to perspectivism as a tendency, too. The Theaetetan peritrope against relativism, when applied to epistemic perspectivism, also refutes a totalizing conception of epistemology – a totalizing internalism – and likewise leaves explicitly untouched a less-than-totalizing version of this position. A further motivation for an externalist limit to internalism worth mentioning is that we prevent various potentially nasty internalist regresses by making the facts about what an agent’s access limits are, and whether they have done all that is necessary to be justified within those limits, precisely thus ‘facts’ – transperspectival, objective, not necessarily accessible in turn. This is more than a handy bulwark against self-serving exculpation in epistemology – against agents being able to claim special authority over whether they have discharged their epistemic duties. It also reflects an important truth: that one’s epistemic limits are not static; the nature of one’s epistemic perspective changes and develops over time in ways the agent need have no privileged access to. So in these respects, in our epistemic aim, in what our epistemic limits are and in whether we have done all we are able to within those limits, the external project is fundamental, prior. To be justified internalistically, we must nevertheless aspire to an objective relation to the truth; and whether we have marshalled our cognitive resources as well as we are able in doing this is an objective fact about us, it is in no sense access-restricted, or necessarily oughtsbased, or something that must be within our epistemic perspective. But the transcendental argument against a totalizing externalism demonstrates a reverse direction of priority also. The last ‘ought’, at the highest level, is ineliminable, fundamental, sui generis – and ought implies can. In this respect, internalism is prior to externalism. So there is an interdependence of the two projects, each prior to the other in a certain respect – or better, under a certain aspect. Still the question will be pressed: is one project really more fundamental than the other simpliciter? In current philosophy, this is above all

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the question as to whether one may dispose of the internal project and restrict oneself to the external.

5.3 The transcendental argument is tested Is there, then, a defensible epistemology whereby externalism is not just prior in one aspect, but in every aspect? I think the argument for the ineliminability of internalism just given will be conceded, up to a point, by many radical externalists, who will nevertheless feel that no worthwhile objection has been made against their position. They will see the ineliminability argument as a trivial, even rhetorical point pertaining to the pragmatics of arguing for their position, one that does not argue against that position of (radical, totalizing) externalism itself and as such. Here, Alston makes this counterattack: Of course if I am to carry out the activity of justifying a belief, I must provide an argument for it; I must say something as to why one should suppose it to be true. … In saying what reasons there are for supposing that p, I am expressing other beliefs of mine and contextually implying that I am justified in accepting them. But this all has to do with the activity of justifying a belief, showing it to be justified. (Alston 1989a: 197–8, emphases in original)

Alston is here marking a distinction between two things. The first is the metaphysics of justification, a belief ’s state of being justified – to the extent it is. The second is variously glossed as the epistemology of justification (‘reasons … for supposing’); the activity of justifying (‘showing …’); and the pragmatics of that activity (that it ‘contextually implies’ that I accept, hence have internalist access to, my reasons). Alston is saying that externalism is being put forward as an account of the metaphysics of justification – what it is to be justified. It is not put forward as an account of the epistemology of justification – how we can show or tell that we are justified. He concedes that the project of finding out if one is justified, the activity of justifying and the pragmatic implications of arguing for a claim’s being justified all (‘of course’) require internalism. But to urge this against externalism is an epistemic (or pragmatic) non sequitur: externalism is a metaphysical thesis. From the fact that I can justify a belief only by relating it to other beliefs that constitute a support, it does not follow that a belief can be justified only by its relations to other beliefs. Analogously, from the fact that I cannot justify my

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expenses without saying something in support of my having made them, it does not follow that my expenses cannot be justified unless I say something in support of my having made them. (Alston 1989a: 198, emphases in original)

Goldman, in the context of discussing another Alston paper, notes approvingly: ‘this just shows that being justified cannot be equated with having a justification’ (Goldman 2009: 29, emphases in original). Although Alston is the figure who is rightly most cited for drawing this distinction, it is a move now very widely deployed in epistemology, with a good review of it being offered by Leite (2004).11 Leite calls this the ‘spectatorial conception’ of justification – inasmuch as one’s justificatory status is something entirely extrinsic to one’s knowledge of, or beliefs about, or activity in regard to that status: it is something one may ‘spectate’ in activities extrinsic to and dissociated from that justificatory status itself. One’s justificatory status itself and as such is an entirely theoretical state; one’s knowledge of, or beliefs about, or efforts to work towards that status (say, through active, agential, executive cognition) is a wholly distinct, extrinsic, regulative issue. One could seek to dispute the right of externalists to draw this distinction, but grant it. A very fair test of such a total, exclusive, ‘existential’ externalism is instead to evaluate it on its own terms: to ask whether there is any case at all whereby the metaphysics of justification cannot be accounted for by externalism. If there is even one case of being justified, of justification as such, which is unaccountable for by externalism alone, then any attempt to establish the eliminability of internalism stands refuted. But of course this case was already established, and all such arguments as these begin by conceding it: what is it to be justified in undertaking the requirements (social or individual) of justifying? What is it to be justified in showing that we are justified? (Paradigmatically, showing this to ourselves – though also and often to another individual or social group.) The answer is – has to be – to be possessed of internalist justification: for there was a pragmatic, epistemic remainder needing to be accounted for by the externalist, and ceding these things (avowedly unaccountable for by externalism) as a remainder over to the internalists was the externalists’ way of doing so. Now this may seem just a trick – a play on words. The regulative project was concerned with the epistemology of justification, but the externalist objection will be that all that has now been done is to hypostatize this epistemic kind and treat it as a metaphysical thing, obtaining thereby the form of words ‘to be justified’ out of the form of words ‘activity of justifying’ – a shallow terminological point.

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As a response to the internalist, however, this does not seem a happy one, because the deployment of this ‘trick’ began with the externalists. They took the paradigmatically epistemic kind – of epistemic justification simpliciter – and, when their various positions were shown (by the stock doxastic decision procedure (DDP) objection of Chapter 2 and the later arguments of this chapter) to be insufficient to account for that epistemic kind, responded by maintaining that these positions were advanced only as a candidate metaphysics for that erstwhile epistemic kind. Externalism was challenged by stock examples purporting to establish that it was an incomplete epistemology. To these arguments it gave a stock response: identifying itself as a metaphysics of that epistemology, with its own epistemology/pragmatics grudgingly conceded to the internalists as a residue. Here, the externalists have merely been given a Roland for an Oliver, when, in order to demonstrate that there is something of the metaphysics of justification that cannot be accounted for externalistically, their epistemological remainder is hypostatized in turn. The objection to this move, then, cannot be that one may not reify, objectify, hypostatize an epistemic kind – or externalism does not even get this far. Indeed, this manoeuvre of Alston (and others) is more directly questionbegging than the last point indicates. For what was distinguished in Alston’s work as the ‘metaphysics’ of justification really just is what was earlier identified (after his fellow externalist, Goldman) as the theoretical project. And what was variously identified in Alston’s argument as the epistemology or ‘activity’ or pragmatics of justifying, really just is the regulative project. It was argued in Chapter 2 that the theoretical project should be ceded wholly to externalism, and the regulative project ceded wholly to internalism – the claim being that a conceptual interdependence exists between these. To seek to sever one arm of that inter-dependence in favour of a hegemonistic priority of externalism, it can scarcely then be argued that from the point of view of the metaphysics of justification (i.e. the aforementioned ‘theoretical project’) internalism is an excrescence or irrelevance: we started by establishing that ourselves (in Chapter 2 – the internalists’/deontologists’ concession to the otherwise fatal stock counterargument from epistemic poverty). The question was whether the second arm of our interdependence was correct in turn: the externalists’ own need to draw this self-same distinction to escape the stock DDP argument. To address that question, one must return to the question of whether there is a perspective, complete in itself, from which one may do without this regulative (epistemological, ‘pragmatic’, etc.) project tout court; that is, whether the regulative desideratum can be satisfied by a wholly externalist account without remainder. And that means

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without putting all the real work needed by the theory into a (gestured-towards) unreduced residual realm of ‘mere’ epistemology, pragmatics or what have you. Such an approach cannot be legitimate when it is ‘mere epistemology’ we are doing, after all. Drawing an epistemology/metaphysics distinction is normally a benign realist move in philosophy; but here the metaphysics of decision-making is the epistemology – is the decision-making. A failure to appreciate the special nature of situations where this state of affairs obtains is a common feature of a number of fallacious attempts to respond to transcendental arguments. Such moves cannot be legitimate when the epistemology is the metaphysics; and this claim does not in any obvious way rely on tacitly verificationist (or otherwise less than realist) assumptions – it relies on the fact that when we are doing epistemology we are doing epistemology, not metaphysics. There must be space in philosophy for approaches that take their proper object of inquiry to be terminus questions of what we should do. This type of question may not always be deferred. When we are trying to decide what to do, the metaphysics of the decision is the epistemology – is the decision-making. We are making the decision. This is not an insight restricted to the aprioristic tradition in normative epistemology. In his monograph deriving from a lifetime of investigation into the clinical and research neuroscience of frontal lobe function, Fuster bridges from an etymological note to an acute psychological insight: The verb ‘decide’ comes from the Latin decidere, which means literally ‘to cut off ’. In this sense, to decide is to conclude, to terminate – a debate, for example – and to initiate an action, whatever that action may be. In every case, deciding is bringing closure to competing or compatible demands. (Fuster 2013: 126)

‘Decision-making’ is epistemology and metaphysics. Decision making is already an epistemic activity, that is its metaphysics – what it consists in. A significant aspect of what concerns us here is a conception of ourselves as epistemic agents – agents, not patients – persons who are not just affected by the world but are actors in the world, who ‘secure and bring into existence values … by means of the exercise of our own agency’ (Russell 2008: 308). Without this, in the case of epistemic value, we confront the possibility that we cannot ultimately defend our epistemic status, whether to ourselves or another. ‘Ultimately’ meaning ‘all the way up’. We may passively possess a certain (externalist) epistemic status, but then again, we may possess a certain alethic status: the project of epistemology precisely takes its point of departure from the commonplace that, axiologically, mere possession of a certain metaphysical status is not enough (Chisholm 1988: 287ff, 1989: 77ff, Plato: Meno, Theaetetus). We cannot always

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treat the cognizer extrinsically, in a dissociated (‘spectatorial’) fashion – as a third party. Mere possession of a certain metaphysical status is insufficient for the entirety of our epistemic needs – for the entirety of our valuational needs, for us to live in accordance with the ethics of belief. Mere possession of a certain metaphysical status is insufficient if we cannot sometimes answer for this status; and that can mean all the way to source. If we cannot ever do this, there will be times when we cannot give what we owe,12 we cannot terminate challenges as to our epistemic status or legitimately stand fast upon that status. And this means we are denied a certain conception of epistemic status, of epistemic authority (of epistemic authorship): a status essential to reflexive justification. There is a further rather sharp question for the pragmatic version of these counterarguments: why should the property ‘justification’ be internalist when it comes to showing, socially, that we are justified, yet externalist when it comes to being justified? We saw Alston conceding internalist justification within a social context of argument, but regarding that as a minor concession. However, the social–cognitive system is still a cognitive system. What transfiguration occurs in social contexts uniquely via the interaction of reasons in argument between persons, persons who constitute that social–cognitive system – such that this interaction is avowedly required for justification to be present in that system – yet with this not required for justification to be present when such reasoning and argument is occurring within an individual’s cognitive system? We are considering here an apparently mundane phenomenon that actually should be seen as something quite remarkable: the emergence of the normative from the non-normative. It seems unaccountable and suspicious that the fundamental normative property of epistemic justification should require such a perspectival, reasons-based exchange to emerge within a social–cognitive system, yet not at all to emerge within an individual cognitive system. Burnyeat makes this challenge in the course of an examination of issues deriving from the Theaetetus: Debate is the interpersonal version of something that can go on in the mind of an individual deliberating on some matter that is in doubt with him when, to borrow Plato’s well-known description (Theaetetus 190a), the soul is questioning itself and answering ‘Yes’ – ‘No’ – ‘Yes’ – ‘No’, until it settles the question to its own satisfaction one way or the other.13 We conduct internal debates as well as external ones, and if this fact is ignored, so too will be the role of reasons in the formation of views. Debate of either variety presupposes an open issue, with neither ‘Yes’ nor ‘No’ given in advance as the right answer: that is what the requirement for external debate that genuine disagreement be

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possible amounts to, and without it there would be nothing to debate. It must be left to the considerations and reasons contending for or against the thesis in question, in external debate to the reasoners representing them on either side, to determine by contending with each other what the answer is. Victory in debate is not truth, but it is the subjective appearance of truth – the individual debating with himself is no longer, as we say, in two minds about the issue; the disputants who disagreed with each other are now, as we also say, of one mind about it. (Burnyeat 1976: 60)

My conclusion is that there is a standpoint from which internalism is prior to externalism; but it has been fully acknowledged that there is another standpoint from which externalism is prior to internalism. We require both standpoints. Any philosophy that seeks to eliminate one of these in its entirety will offer us a radically incomplete picture of epistemic value.

6

Ought Implies Can: Deontic Leeway Entailments

6.1 The Frankfurt challenge The principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC) is of central importance in this work – both in the epistemic material dealt with thus far and in the material on free will in Part 2 of the book – but this principle has of course scarcely been left unchallenged. Some of these challenges have been addressed already, but others remain. There is an older tradition in philosophy, religion and literature that challenges this principle radically. This tradition will be considered in the last section of this chapter. Then there is the vast body of work developing out of Frankfurt’s seminal (1969) paper on alternative possibilities. I shall not attempt the forbidding task of surveying this literature in all its minutiae (though see Lockie (2014a) for a very detailed rebuttal of the three leading recent Frankfurt cases). I shall here restrict myself to outlining why the core deontic entailments that matter to my arguments remain untouched by this literature. Most readers will be familiar with the original Frankfurt scenario. Jones is deciding whether to shoot Victim. If Jones isn’t about to pull the trigger, evil neuroscientist Intervener will be able to tell, and will intervene just before Jones’s act of omission, to effect the killing himself – say, by innervating Jones’s trigger finger. (Intervener is sufficiently close to omniscience/omnipotence to tell/do this, we are to suppose.) But Jones willingly kills Victim anyway, so Intervener did not need to act. We are to conclude that Jones is morally responsible for his actions, although he could not have done otherwise. Thus, the presence of moral responsibility (MR) does not entail the presence of alternative possibilities and so the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) is false.

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6.1.1 OIC and PAP There are important differences between OIC and PAP. There are also similarities. As regards the differences, OIC is a considerably weaker principle than PAP: ‘With respect to any action, Kant’s doctrine [OIC] has to do with the agent’s ability to perform that action. PAP, on the other hand, concerns his ability to do something else’ Frankfurt (1983/1988: 95–6, emphases in original). Frankfurt, notably, defended OIC yet rejected PAP.1 PAP and OIC possess important similarities, however. Each of PAP and OIC is a deontic leeway entailment. With both PAP and OIC we are arguing philosophically as to whether removing from the agent a certain type of freedom (a certain kind of ‘leeway’) thereby removes from us a basic form of value appraisal of that agent: deontic appraisal. We shall see that there are other attempts to capture the insight behind such deontic leeway principles besides OIC or PAP (a variety of differently terminologized leeway principles that, in my previous work (2014a), I call ‘intentional PAP’ requirements). In Chapter 8, I shall seek to advance an argument based on the weaker principle of OIC; yet in this chapter, I shall seek to defend a stronger principle – not PAP exactly, but a deontic leeway entailment close to the underlying spirit of PAP (an ‘intentional PAP’ requirement). If the arguments of this chapter work, then a fortiori, the weaker commitments of Chapter 8 will be secure.

Qualification: Ignore asymmetry until later As noted, PAP (that MR requires one could have done otherwise) is a stronger principle than OIC. However, this divergence between OIC and PAP most centrally has to do with praise, not blame. Frankfurt’s original target position, PAP, maintained that doing as we ought (being praiseworthy, behaving responsibly) requires the ability to do otherwise (Frankfurt 1983/1988: 95–6). PAP requires what Haji (1999) calls ‘dual control’ and what McKenna sees as requiring Fischer’s regulative control. That we require such control may be called into question. Early Frankfurt, Wolf (1990) and Nelkin (2011) do call it into question, seeing OIC as saying merely that doing as we ought requires the ability to do as we ought (Kant 1933: A548/ B576), not to do otherwise than we ought: what Haji (1999) calls ‘singular control’ and McKenna sees as requiring only Fischer’s guidance control. This issue will be of importance in Section 6.7, and again in two chapters’ time; here, it need not be dwelt upon.

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Strangely (to my eyes), there nonetheless remains a live debate, even where we ignore ‘asymmetry’ issues of praiseworthy conduct and restrict ourselves to blameworthy conduct, as to whether there is a divergence that really matters between OIC and PAP. I am solidly on the side of those (e.g. Widerker 1991; Copp 2003, 2008) who say that as regards blameworthiness, being blameworthy requires that one could have done otherwise. This concerns how we read OIC.

Omission and commission There is no particular reason to elevate into a major metaphysical divide the distinction between OIC for acts of omission and acts of commission. Ought Jones to have let Victim live? Or ought Jones to have refrained from killing Victim? Actions are intentional (hence intensional), so there could be a difference here, but surely not that often, and it will be a nice difference when there is. Sometimes a demarcation between OIC for acts of omission and acts of commission seems metaphysically salient, but often it is arbitrary how we describe a case (we will encounter both kinds of cases in what follows). Both on that ground and in trying to capture the spirit of the maxim in its own right, I feel that OIC should be read as saying of refrainings from action also, that if we ought to refrain from acting then we must be able so to refrain – though this contention is slightly disputed (Copp 2003, 2008) says we should read OIC in this way, but Yaffe (2005) disagrees – though with a counterexample that is tortuous even by the standards of this literature). In any event, I shall stipulate that the OIC maxim does, for me, mean also ‘ought-not’ implies ‘can-refrain-from’ – that is what I am concerned with and am arguing about; and I think it is what anyone genuinely concerned with issues of moral and epistemic responsibility is and should be concerned about. So, I take it that OIC includes the claim that if one ought to perform action a, it must be within one’s power to perform action a; and if one ought not to perform action aʹ, it must be within one’s power to refrain from performing action aʹ. Pedantry aside, reading OIC as including ‘ought-not’ implies ‘can-refrain-from’ makes OIC close to or identical with PAP for the case of blameworthy, irresponsible actions; or so I contend. The question then is whether OIC (to include ‘ought-not implies can-refrainfrom’) is true for blameworthy, irresponsible actions and refrainings; or, which comes to near enough the same thing, whether some suitably interpreted conception of PAP (or a cognate principle) is true for blameworthy, irresponsible actions and refrainings. With this question phrased and these qualifications registered, we need to proceed to the argument.

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6.1.2 The WKG Dilemma and the basic response Notice, as many have done, how close to begging the question against the nondeterminist is the Frankfurt assumption of the (near?) omniscience/omnipotence of Intervener – as evidenced by Intervener’s ability to be certain, prior to its occurrence, exactly what was to be his agent’s soon-to-follow action. Frankfurt in his original (1969) paper smoothly elides over this point of vulnerability when referring to his evil intervener, ‘Black’, and agent ‘Jones4’, thus: ‘[Black] does nothing unless it is clear to him (Black is an excellent judge of such things) that Jones4 is going to decide to do something other than what he wants him to do’ (Frankfurt 1969 in Frankfurt 1988: 6). What means this ‘Black is an excellent judge of such things’? Is Frankfurt’s intervener, Black, held to be omniscient and omnipotent about a matter of future decision in the actions of a putatively responsible agent, Jones4? If he is, the question is begged against Frankfurt’s libertarian opponent. If, though, Frankfurt’s intervener, Black, isn’t omniscient and omnipotent, the thought experiment doesn’t get off the ground. This telling objection has come to be referred to as the ‘WKG Dilemma’ – after Widerker (1995), Kane (1996) and Ginet (1996). I think this objection reveals that the framework set-up of the Frankfurt and neo-Frankfurt thought experiments is highly dubious, and the manoeuvres used to shore this situation up appear yet more dubious2 – of which more in Lockie (2014a) should you wish – still, this is not the main point where I wish to counterattack. Rather, I object to the claim that in this case, as described, Frankfurt’s agent, ‘Jones4’, could not have done otherwise – for of course, he could. He could have refrained from pulling the trigger. Had he not pulled the trigger, Intervener would have pulled the trigger; but Intervener’s pulling the trigger (albeit via manipulations of Jones4’s musculature, innervations, whatever) is not then Jones’s moral responsibility. As the (suspiciously) near-omnipotent/omniscient scenario would have it, Jones could not have ensured that Victim lived. However, this just reminds us of what our analysis of (epistemic) ‘oughts’ has already told us: deontic value ascriptions do not take place on the basis of the objective outcome of an agent’s acts, the occurrence of which may fall outside of the agent’s power to anticipate, but rather of subjective things like the intentions that underpin the agent’s actions (here: the intention to take life/to refrain from taking life). The deontic tradition in ethics stands in marked contrast to the consequentialist. Because of the presence of Intervener, Jones could not have done otherwise at the level of displacement of his limbs or preservation of Victim; but he could have done otherwise at the level of his (in fact, prematurely strangulated) action. That is, he

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could have aimed to maximize the good (or been about to aim thus) and to the extent he did this/was going to do this, even though Intervener may necessarily thwart this intentional outcome from occurring, Jones’s actions – those that he is responsible for – are right.

6.2 The right and the good We recapitulate here material that has already been laboured in Part 1 of this book regarding intentional versus actual goal-state maximization in epistemology and ethics. The right and the good are the positive terms for two quite separate dimensions of value assessment. Although each of these two dimensions plausibly exists on a continuum, we may simplify matters by treating of them categorically. They are orthogonal inasmuch as there is a double dissociation between them: an agent may do right yet bring about bad consequences, or do wrong yet bring about the good. So, let Jones willingly and with malice aforethought pull the trigger – for Victim then to be shot through the chest. Victim is rushed to hospital where his life is miraculously saved. Under emergency surgery, a pre-existing and otherwise soon-to-be-fatal pathology is detected (an aneurysm, say) and is corrected. Were it not for Jones’s malevolent act, Victim would have died anyway (so in fact we would have had no need of the recherché Intervener to make the original Frankfurt point). However, in this new twist, Jones’s wicked act now brings about Victim’s survival. Jones is morally responsible for the attempted murder, yet causally responsible for saving the man’s life. The Frankfurt literature establishes that we can be morally responsible despite lacking alternative possibilities at the level of maximization of the good; it does not thereby establish we can be morally responsible despite lacking alternative possibilities at the level of attempting to do what’s right.

6.3 The moral argument for ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ Copp (2003) advances what he entitles the Argument from Fairness: it is unfair to blame someone for failing to do X if he could not do X. (Copp’s example is to cook a soufflé for everyone in the post office in five minutes.) Widerker’s (2000) neighbouring argument is the ‘what should he have done instead defence’ (the ‘W-defence’). I would endorse these and cognate claims. It is self-evident that it

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is morally unreasonable to blame someone for something when they could not have done otherwise. This is the basic positive argument for a deontic leeway entailment and it is a powerful one. Fischer (2006a) attempts to respond to Copp’s version of this argument by distinguishing simple from complex acts and omissions.3 Complex omissions (to cook a soufflé for everyone) are, Fischer agrees, something it is unfair to blame the agent for, but simple omissions he feels are not. It is not easy to understand what Fischer is proposing here – to see how his (largely unexplicated) terminology enables him to respond to the moral argument for OIC. Nevertheless, he does offer us an example of a purportedly ‘simple’ act/omission (a standard example originating with Frankfurt 1994): that of an agent sitting very, very still – even though, were she to move, a Powerful Other would paralyse her anyway. Frankfurt and Fischer argue this person is morally responsible for not moving, though unable to do otherwise. Let us vivify this example through consideration of a real-life case.

6.4 Geneviève and André Imagine you are the young Geneviève Pondard, hiding with your lover, the resistance hero André Hue, under hay in the attic of a barn when a Gestapo squad comes in to make a search – probing the hay with bayonets, centimetres from your hiding place. The bulk of their party loudly exit, yet they cunningly leave confederates only metres below, silently waiting to see if anyone emerges. Uncertain if they have left, you are morally obliged to keep utterly still for a long time in the most trying of circumstances. Suppose you have a nervous tic or a reflex response to straw up your nose that makes such stillness impossible: well, you cannot be blamed, though the consequences be disastrous. Suppose instead that you choose to move out of petulant discomfort and a Powerful Other as a result has to paralyse you – or, more prosaically, M. Hue has to use his SOE training to pinch your carotid artery until you are unconscious.4 You could not have done otherwise (there is no ‘alternative possibility’ to your immobility), yet this was not known to you and you can be blamed because you forced the Powerful Other to paralyse you: so far as you were aware you were free to do otherwise and so you failed to discharge your moral responsibility. This then becomes a different act – the act of being still under the threat or actuality of imposed paralysis when you wish petulantly to move, rather than the act of staying still. (Terminologically, there will be many ways of making this point.)

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Fischer’s contention is that ‘in simple omissions an agent can be blameworthy for failing to do X, even though she could not have done X’ (Fischer 2006a: 347). I cannot see how this contention is argued to by his use of the Frankfurt immobility example or any other such example except by simply punning on the sense of ‘failing to do X’ (=df not making a sufficient attempt to stay still; failing to do as she ought: abrogating the right) versus ‘failing to do X’ (=df failing in external success state; failing to prevent motor movement: failing to maximize the good). We don’t need appeal to evil super-intelligences to make this point; envisage a bit of ‘local fatalism’: a blind man is walking towards the edge of a cliff fifty yards away. I callously fail to shout a warning but look on indifferently as he falls to his death. Unbeknownst to me, he was deaf as well – I could not have prevented his fall, but I didn’t know this and I could have shouted. I am blameworthy, not for his fall, but for my (in fact necessarily inefficacious) failure to shout. We can say there was no alternative possibility to event X (his death), but there was an alternative possibility here – event X plus my (in fact and unbeknownst to me, impotent) shouting. Or we can terminologize things rather by saying that the event itself would have been different (event Y, where he dies despite my shout, as opposed to event W, where he dies and I do not shout). If we choose rather to describe each of these as the same event (his death, X), we nevertheless must acknowledge the two cases involve different acts bringing this event about – but how we terminologize things scarcely matters, the point here is clear in any case.

Flickers of freedom and intentional leeway entailments It will make no difference if we invoke a far-fetched ‘Powerful Other’ and move this example inwards into the nervous system. Suppose that the innervation to my larynx would have been severed were I to have attempted to shout. Still, to be morally responsible for a failure to shout, I (myself) would have had to have chosen not to send the efferent signal to the larynx, rather than to have attempted to do this only to have had this signal blocked. I think these are clearly different acts, and perhaps different events: not shouting due to a thwarted signal to shout versus not shouting due to callous indifference; but nothing turns on terminology – in terms of moral responsibility, they are utterly distinct states of affairs, however this be described. Should this really come as a revelation? That moral appraisal takes place on the basis of more than gross motor displacement of the limbs and larynx?

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Suppose now that the Powerful Other blocks even the formation of the impulse to vocalize in my left third prefrontal gyrus – well, we need no Powerful Other to imagine this: clinical patients, of the kind noted in Chapters 3 and 4, may have such impairments. Indeed, the most famous of all these patients, Broca’s expressive aphasic ‘Tan’, had a tumour that effected just this impairment. But this is a classic case (of neurophysiological determination) in which the agent is cleanly and clearly not responsible for a failure to act. (Although, depending on the neurological facts, the patient might still be responsible for not trying to emit what (alas) becomes only a hoarse, inarticulate cry: ‘Tan!’) Take the thought experiment inside the nervous system as far as you want; you either are left intact enough to retain a recognizable attempt to act on your intention to do what you perceive to be right – in which case your moral responsibility is retained – or, if in these thought experiments one butchers or manipulates the erstwhile agent far enough, all we will have done is envisage the construction of a Zombie; and a Zombie is a paradigm of a determined, non-responsible non-agent. One cannot, à la Skinner (1971), argue from an ability to force ever more total, Skinner-box imprisoned control on one’s subjects (real or imaginary) thereby to conclude something salient about freedom and control in actual non-imprisoned subjects in the real world. With such methods one would at best be discovering facts about the moral responsibilities of the jailers. All libertarians accept (insist) that I may be morally responsible for a wrong act even though I could not in fact have effected a good outcome, just as I may be morally commended for a right act (a heroic rescue) that nevertheless unavoidably fails to achieve a good outcome (the swimmer had already drowned). Incompatibilist indeterminists deny that I can be morally responsible for an unintentionally bad outcome when I was not trying to act wrongly; indeed, when I was trying not to act wrongly. What the friend of Frankfurt cases needs is an example whereby I could not have done otherwise yet can be blamed, where ‘doing otherwise’ involves more than outcomes at the level of, say, motor movement: where ‘doing otherwise’ involves intentional-level description – description of an act. It is self-evident that I cannot be justifiably blamed if I couldn’t help being blameworthy. If I could not even have tried to stay still, shout, etc., I cannot be blamed for this.

Intentional leeway entailments On this basis, Otsuka (1998) rephrases PAP to a ‘principle of avoidable blame’ (PAB), which he plausibly claims is immune from Frankfurt counterexample; while Moya (2011) develops his principle ‘DEC’ (from ‘doing everything

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one can’): if one has done all one can, one cannot thereby be blameworthy. Widerker rephrases PAP to a ‘principle of alternative expectations’ (PAE): ‘An agent is morally blameworthy for doing A only if in the circumstances it would be morally reasonable to expect S not to have done A’ (Widerker 2000: 192). Each of these is an attempt to frame an intentional leeway entailment: an attempt to capture the deeper meaning behind such principles as PAP. In terms of the ‘letter of the law’, PAP may be falsified (arguably) by an agent being morally responsible for an unavoidable outcome – provided that outcome be described purely in terms of causal consequences (the good). But in terms of the ‘spirit of the law’, PAP concerns the intentional outcome of an act (the right). And this (a concern with the right and not the good) is what one should expect (after all, these and cognate principles are meant to be deontic leeway entailments). It is not appropriate – indeed, it is morally wrong – to blame a person for something when they could not, in any way, at any time, have done anything to avoid being blameworthy. I take it this is self-evident. I cannot see how Frankfurt cases, however sophisticated, overturn this principle, or even, fundamentally, speak to it when it is properly qualified and its root motivation is clearly articulated.

6.5 Frankfurt pairs Standard Frankfurt pairs may be taken to involve the following (after Copp 2003): Madeleine2, who tells a lie – but could not have done otherwise. (A counterfactual intervener would have ensured that a lie emerged from her mouth had she been about to tell the truth.) Madeleine1, in other respects identical to Madeleine2 – the same lie is told – but without the counterfactual intervener: she could have done otherwise.

Madeleine1 and Madeleine2 represent a ‘Frankfurt pair’. Frankfurt, Fischer and others argue across many papers that there is no moral difference between these two Madeleines, and I agree: there is no difference in terms of either the right or the good between Madeleine1 and Madeleine2 in this scenario – call these our two ‘Vice Worlds’. Each Madeleine commits a wrong as opposed to a right (tells an intentional falsehood), and each Madeleine’s falsehood has as consequence that deception occurs – which is bad as opposed to good.

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However, change the scenario. Let it now be the nearest possible world where Madeleine, despite having all the same temptations to lie as in the actual world, is righteous and tells the truth (Virtuous Madeleine1) or (for the case of Virtuous Madeleine2, who cannot do this) would have told the truth were the intervener not to have interceded to prevent truth-telling and ensure a falsehood is emitted from her mouth. In these worlds (call them ‘Virtue Worlds’5) the causal consequences differ between Virtuous Madeleine1 and Virtuous Madeleine2: in the latter but not the former case, deception occurs due to the evil intervener, which is bad – so there is a difference in the good between Virtue World1 and Virtue World2. But there is no difference in the right between Virtuous Madeleine1 and Virtuous Madeleine2. In each case, the agent is identically virtuous: such viciousness as is present in Virtue World2 (and absent in Virtue World1) is entirely due to the presence of the evil intervener in the former world. Now consider Madeleine of whichever world at decision time. In deciding how to act (whether to tell a lie), she is not deciding between World 1 and World 2 – for this matter is entirely out of her hands (she cannot decide whether she is in a world with an evil intervener in it, any more than she could decide whether she is in a world with a Cartesian Demon in it; in neither case would she know if she were in such an objectively poor situation, and if she did know this, ex hypothesi, by her decision she couldn’t change the outcome of the evil intervener’s machinations). Instead, she is deciding whether to be Virtuous Madeleine or Vicious Madeleine. She is deciding whether her world is a world where she is virtuous or not. And that she can decide: we remove from her that power only by stipulating this is a deterministic world even at the level of her moral decisions – and thus presupposing the point at issue. She chose to be Vicious Madeleine and could have chosen to be Virtuous Madeleine. In terms of the good, she could not ‘do’ (=df ‘make the situation’) otherwise: deception will occur and she cannot alter that fact. But how she is will decide questions of the right. This is not different in kind from how matters stand in epistemology. As Richard Foley puts it, ex hypothesi, I cannot discover whether I am a brain in a vat; but even in a Vat World, I can decide to be a dutiful (justified, ‘Foley-rational’) brain (Foley 2001: 38). Remove from me that ability (by stipulating there may be determination by the Vat Scientist of my mental operations, acts, and the processes that eventuate in outputs during my epistemic cogitations about the world he presents me with as input) and you’ve removed all point to my consideration of this and suchlike examples – besides, as noted, begging the question.

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All of this comes down to the commonplace that one who is a determinist must embrace an ethical theory whereby the right reduces to the good. That is, one who is a determinist must embrace a consequentialist ethical theory. Most of the older determinists managed to work that one out for themselves (Smart 1961; Hobbes 1962; Grünbaum 1971).

6.6 A different approach to Frankfurt pairs 6.6.1 Copp’s position As noted, Copp (2003) advanced the example of the twin Madeleines; and we may consider his very different solution to the puzzle they represent. For Frankfurt to claim that there is no moral difference between our two Madeleines, Copp notes that it is crucial that: 1 The agent (Madeleine) is blameworthy in both cases in the pair. 2 The agent (Madeleine) couldn’t do otherwise in the second (omniscient, omnipotent being) case of the pair. I of course deny (2). The agent (Madeleine) could have been going to act in such a way as to force the omniscient, omnipotent being to intervene, and so take moral responsibility for the outcome, rather than act herself – and so herself be morally responsible for the lie. Copp rather denies (1). He claims that Madeleine2 has moral luck – the presence of the omniscient, omnipotent being absolves her of moral responsibility since she couldn’t have done otherwise. Presumably (perhaps?) we are to take it that the foredoomed causal outcome – of deception occurring, whether by her act or not – leaves her with ‘clean hands’. Copp’s is surely an idiosyncratic position – but one that is instructively so. To respond to Copp, we must reiterate the distinction laboured in Chapter 2 between objective and subjective responsibility: only subjective responsibility is real responsibility. Objectively, Madeleine could not have ‘done’ otherwise (=df brought about a different outcome); but subjectively, as it appears to her, she could have done. Objectively, all kinds of things are impossible for me, but if I don’t know this, this is irrelevant to a (deontic) moral appraisal of my actions. Objective ‘responsibility’ – so misnamed – is not responsibility at all; it speaks to the good, not the right. Real responsibility, properly so-called, speaks to the right, not the good. On the principle of OIC, an agent may be held responsible

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only for those things within her purview, her epistemic perspective, those options and choices she is aware of. Madeleine2 can see what she ought to do, yet she makes no attempt to do it. The fact that (objectively) she would have been unable to achieve the good were she to have attempted to act upon what she subjectively believes to be an option for her is irrelevant to an appraisal of the wrongness of her actions. To see how simple and unassailable this point is, let the point Copp seeks to illustrate with Madeleine be illustrated with Geneviève, hiding under the hay. However, instead of the real, heroic Geneviève, imagine a ‘Frankfurt pair’ of Fictional Genevièves. Fictional Geneviève1 betrays André Hue to the Gestapo by petulantly moving, with the consequence that he is tortured and killed, and his resistance network rolled up. Now have it that Fictional Geneviève2 ‘betrays’ André Hue to the Gestapo in exactly the same way; yet that in this case, his hiding place was (unbeknownst to Fictional Geneviève) already known to the Gestapo by a prior act of betrayal by another. What difference should this make to our moral judgement of Fictional Geneviève2? Do we say she was ‘morally lucky’ not to have committed a vile act of betrayal? Of course not. The bad consequences may actually have already been determined, but this was not known to Fictional Geneviève2, and the wrongness of the act applies to the intentions underlying it: the foreseeable (by her) consequences. An account of ethics based on actual consequences is a consequentialist account: an account of the good. An account of ethics based on foreseeable (by the agent) consequences is a deontological account: an account of the right. This is pretty basic stuff; it should need no rehearsal here.

6.6.2 Intentional and intensional contexts: The right and the good The domain of moral responsibility is an intentional domain. And intentional contexts are intensional contexts (Lockie 2003a, Moya 2006: 68ff). These contexts are not transparent, they are opaque. Oedipus intends to marry Jocasta; he doesn’t intend to marry his mother. Jones intends to stop Victim’s heart, not repair his aneurysm. In contrast, any alethic entailment, and any causal consequence, is transparent. I cannot be morally responsible for unforeseen consequences (well, taking account of culpable inattention to the consequences of my actions, at least of unforeseeable consequences), but causally, consequences may be as unforeseeable as you like. Each of our Frankfurt pairs is supposed to represent an agent who could not have done otherwise. But each of them could in one sense, and could not

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in another. Madeleine could not have prevented a lie from occurring, and the callous cliff observer could not have prevented the blind man’s death, and Fictional Geneviève could not have prevented the betrayal of André Hue to the Gestapo. To this (consequentialist) extent, there is no morally salient difference between the Frankfurt pairs Madeleine1 and Madeleine2, Fictional Geneviève1 and Fictional Geneviève2 and so on. That is, in each of these cases, objectively the same externally specifiable outcome occurs (André Hue’s capture, a falsehood coming out of Madeleine’s mouth, the blind man’s death). And in each such case, as described, subjectively the same degree of inner, intentional moral responsibility is present – whether by act or omission, the agent is equally immoral. But in each such case, the agent – Madeleine, Fictional Geneviève, the cliff observer – has it within her power to be not herself immoral. The cliff observer can shout a warning (a futile warning, it would then transpire). Unbeknownst to her, she could not prevent the event (the death of the deaf– blind man), but because she didn’t know this, she could have acted in a way that has her as not immoral – she could have prevented the act (here: of omission). Unbeknownst to her, Madeleine cannot prevent the event represented by a lie being emitted from her mouth, but she can prevent having it that she lies – that that be her act.6 For a lie is a deliberate untruth, and moreover, one that is intentionally, morally, attributable to an agent; and if a Powerful Other makes her larynx work to form noises that deceive another, this is no more a work of her deliberation, morally attributable to her,7 than if the Powerful Other appears as an avatar in her surface form to effect the same deception – or mocks up a false CGI film or hologram appearing to show this, or directly innervates the brain of the deceived person to make it appear as if it is Madeleine before them, stating an untruth; or (most mundanely) simply testifies to the falsehood that ‘Madeleine told me this …’. None of these are Madeleine lying. Madeleine cannot lie unless Madeleine could have done otherwise. Madeleine cannot lie in a determined world.

6.6.3 Relevance to transfer of non-responsibility and the Direct Argument Frankfurt arguments are usually deployed against leeway (‘indirect’ e.g. consequence argument) incompatibilisms; but famously, another ‘direct’ line of argument exists for incompatibilism – one that does not rely on ‘could have done otherwise’ (van Inwagen 1980, 1983). This direct argument becomes of interest to us in Chapter 10. Surprisingly, since the Direct Argument expressly

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doesn’t work via leeway, the issues we have just considered nevertheless have some relevance to this argument also.

The Direct Argument (generic, elliptical version, after van Inwagen) 1. No-one has any responsibility for the Big Bang or the laws of nature. 2. The Big Bang and the laws of nature determine (/‘entail’ =df logical version8) every given event or act, and no-one has any responsibility for the fact that the Big Bang and the laws of nature determine (/‘entail’ =df logical version) every given event or act. 3. So no-one has any responsibility for any given event or act. Van Inwagen’s (1980, 1983: 182–9) version of the Direct Argument makes reliance on the principle of the Transfer of Non-Responsibility (‘Transfer NR’). Issues of transfer, albeit not exactly in this form, are of considerable relevance to Chapters 7 and 10. With ‘NRp’ =df ‘no-one is responsible for the fact that p’, van Inwagen’s version of Transfer NR (his Rule B – the parallel to Rule β in the Consequence Argument) is then: (B) NRp, NR(p→q) 䡚 NRq

Mark Ravizza (Fischer and Ravizza 1998) offered the first and still the most influential line of objection to this rule. One of his thought experiments (‘Erosion’) envisages a soldier (‘Betty’) who has placed explosives in the crevices of a glacier to produce an avalanche that will destroy the enemy fortress. A Frankfurt-style pre-emptive overdetermination scenario has it that erosion causes the avalanche simultaneously with her detonation of the charge. The thought experiment is meant to meet the requirements of van Inwagen’s Transfer NR rule (Rule B) in the following way: 1. No-one is morally responsible for erosion (NRp). 2. No-one is morally responsible for IF erosion THEN avalanche (NRp→q). 3. SO: No-one is morally responsible for the avalanche (NRq). Yet we are meant to share the insight that Betty has some moral responsibility for the avalanche (hence ¬NRq). Thus, maintains Ravizza, Transfer NR principles like Rule (B) may be shown to be false. Fictional Geneviève2 tracks some of these Transfer NR cases rather closely and is suggestive of a response to the Frankfurt-style objections to them by Ravizza and others. The line of argument I have advanced above maintains that an agent is primarily responsible for the intentional (hence intensional) object

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of her act (the right) rather than the actual (e.g. causal) consequences of her motor movements (the good). So, applied to Betty, we conclude that she may be responsible for her act of detonating the charge with the intention of destroying the fortress (because she had full responsibility for originating this) notwithstanding that the outcome, described as a consequence (fortress being destroyed), could not have been otherwise, just as Fictional Geneviève2 had responsibility for betraying André notwithstanding that she could not have prevented André’s being betrayed. Frankfurt-style pre-emptive overdetermination arguments are not the only way Transfer NR principles have been challenged (though to date these arguments have been the most influential). And, as we shall see in later chapters, van Inwagen’s logical version of Transfer NR is not the only (nor perhaps the best) form that a transfer principle may take (other, e.g. causal, versions of Transfer NR are still less vulnerable to counterexample; cf. Shabo 2010a,b). Still, the style of response offered here does suggest a response to one influential body of argument against Transfer NR. More discussion of Transfer NR will occur in the chapters to come.

Totalizing theses require compatibilists to employ one-path not two-path arguments There is also a swifter line with such cases, a line somewhat after McKenna (2008: 365). Determinism is a totalizing thesis. Determinism maintains that all actions of all agents are entirely determined by the Big Bang and the laws of nature. These Frankfurt-style pre-emptive overdetermination counterexamples all work from envisaging an agent (here: ‘Betty’) who has undisputed (e.g. libertarian) moral responsibility for an action whilst another causal pathway ‘overdetermines’ that action. These cases have ‘two paths’ to their outcome (erosion and Betty). And we are to imagine their extension to the totalizing case in point (determinism) thus: we (you, I) could be just like Betty in our acts (unproblematically free), whilst the determined world is just like ‘erosion’ – the other Frankfurt path.9 But generalizing these cases to the ‘one-path’ totalizing scenario changes utterly the resources available to the proponents of these Frankfurt cases (of which much more in the next chapter). It very much ‘problematizes’ the notion of Betty, etc., being free. In the onepath case, Betty’s actions are as determined as the erosion is – determined by the Big Bang and the laws of nature. Taking her to be (in contrast to erosion) nevertheless unproblematically free for the purposes of argument becomes very much the point at issue.

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6.7 Against global asymmetry The forgoing claimed that we may not say of Madeleine that she has done as she ought not should it transpire that she was unable to refrain from. However, may we nevertheless say that she has done as she ought, if she does putatively do as she ‘ought’ yet it transpires that she could not have done otherwise? Sometimes, I shall argue, we can say this; but not always: global asymmetry is false. To concede something to asymmetry: one may endorse the position that if one cannot do an action it may not be said of one that one ought to do that action (the contraposition of OIC), without thereby being committed to the position that if one ought to do an action one must be able to do otherwise (PAP). Indeed, quite apart from Frankfurt cases, an unqualified adherence to this latter view seems dubious. Character-based counterexamples (so named by Shatz 1988; sometimes ‘Luther cases’) are often used to argue that I may be unable to deviate from a path that I, my moral nature, has determined – say, Dennett’s (1984) example that I may be unable to torture the innocent for $10. Notwithstanding such character-based determination, I may thereby be doing as I ought. Reasoning thus has led Susan Wolf (1990) and Dana Nelkin (2011) to endorse an asymmetry thesis: to be blameworthy, one must have been able to do otherwise, but to be praiseworthy does not require the ability to do otherwise. Praiseworthy behaviour requires only singular, guidance control; blameworthy behaviour requires dual, regulative control. Praiseworthy behaviour, in other words, is possible in a determined world, whereas blameworthy behaviour is not. If any such global asymmetry thesis could be defended, then certain of the transcendental arguments I give in Chapters 8 and 10 would face difficulties – at least as regards their specific form. But is global asymmetry defensible? Firstly, realize that we are talking about a global asymmetry thesis. A number of libertarians – and their opponents – seem to forget that.10 No libertarian is required to defend the claim that doing as one ought, always and everywhere, requires the ability to do as one ought not. Indeed, as various character-based counterexamples illustrate, that seems an unwise thesis to seek to defend.

Tracing One way that local asymmetry may be conceded without conceding global asymmetry is via ‘tracing’ responses to the arguments from character-based counterexamples. Much has been made of this response – for instance, by

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Robert Kane (e.g. 1996) and by those who follow him. The locus classicus here is Aristotle: [F]rom the start it was open to the unjust person and the intemperate person not to become such, so that they are what they are voluntarily; but now that they are what they are, it is no longer possible for them to be otherwise. (Aristotle 2000: III, v, 1114a)

The agent may be responsible (for good or ill) even though she couldn’t have done otherwise at a time and on an occasion, provided that on other occasions over time – occasions that ‘trace’ back from this – she had a significant role in the development of her own character: into the agent who now, locally, cannot do otherwise. I think that Kane’s and Aristotle’s point about ‘tracing’ is an important and worthwhile one. But more radical replies can also be developed.

Idle predicates It is perhaps not redundant to say one ought to perform an act one cannot but perform, or ought not to perform an act one cannot but refrain from performing – that is, it is probably not improper to say such things of any given, single act (of omission or commission). However, after Frege, it is doubtful whether a basic predicate without a counterextension anywhere in the domain can have sense, for there will be no contrast to its warranted application: it will be semantically redundant. (If one affects to make no sense of anything being not red one cannot distinguish and use the predicate red.)11 On the theory under consideration, if determinism were true, none of an agent’s acts could ever fall into the counterextension of ‘ought to have done and did do’, and none of the acts an agent refrains from could fall into the counterextension of ‘ought to have refrained from and did so refrain’. For the notion of ‘ought’ to have application, persons must sometimes do as they ought not. Acknowledging this would not withhold from us the ability to judge a person commendable for doing as they ought, even though they, given their moral nature, couldn’t have done otherwise on a given occasion – perhaps many such occasions. I question whether we can make sense of a notion of obligation (‘ought’) if we maintain that everyone, necessarily, exceptionlessly, who may be said to have an obligation to discharge, did so discharge that obligation: did as they ought and had to do as they ought. How can we have a notion of ‘ought’ if no-one ever did or could have done as they ought not? And how can we have a notion of ‘ought not’ if no-one ever did or could have done other than withhold from doing as they ought not? These predicates can have

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application at a time if, on that occasion, we did as we ought (and could not have done otherwise); but not every time – just as we may speak of everything in a room being red without entertaining the notion of everything being red tout court. Such a notion has, in Kant’s phrase, ‘no meaning whatsoever’: ‘Ought’ expresses a kind of necessity and of connection with grounds which is found nowhere else in the whole of nature. The understanding can know in nature only what is, what has been or what will be. We cannot say that anything in nature ought to be other than what in all these time-relations it actually is. When we have the course of nature alone in view, ‘ought’ has no meaning whatsoever. It is just as absurd to ask what ought to happen in the natural world as to ask what properties a circle ought to have. All that we are justified in asking is: what happens in nature? what are the properties of the circle? (Kant 1933: A547/B575, emphases in original) No matter how many natural grounds … impel me to will, they can never give rise to the ‘ought’, … the ‘ought’ pronounced by reason confronts such willing with a limit and an end – nay more, forbids or authorises it. … Reason … frames for itself … an order of its own … according to which it declares actions to be necessary, even although they have never taken place, and perhaps never will take place. (Kant 1933: A548/B576, emphases in original)

Talk of ‘oughts’ is idle unless sometimes people do as they ought not – and it is pleonastic to say: that means culpably do as they ought not. We may indeed speak of an agent doing as they ought when (say, for character-based or ‘tracing’ reasons) they simply couldn’t do otherwise – at a time, on an occasion – but universally? On one, several or many occasions, the concept ‘ought’ may retain its application, yet a person be unable to do otherwise; but not on every occasion, and not every person. To have a right to the concept of ‘ought’ requires that persons sometimes act as they ought not. To deny the latter is to abandon the former.

Superlative oughts (again) An obvious response, apparently available to the global asymmetry theorist, will be to maintain that the counterextension of ‘ought to have done’ may be made unproblematic by moving to a ‘superlative ought’ of the kind criticized already in the codicil to Chapter 1 (Section 1.5.3); that is, to maintain that in a determined world indeed no-one could have done otherwise, yet to claim that still there will be unavoidable, determined acts that ‘ought not to have been done’. (Perhaps

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an ordinary language job may be done on the resonances of this latter locution – in isolation from the framework of philosophical theory it in fact answers to.) But this manoeuvre – to make ‘superlative’ the notion of ‘ought’, to separate it from ‘can’, and from blame, and from punishment – is, it has been argued, illicit. A ‘superlative ought’ is just the good: a consequentialist and not a deontic concept – not an ought at all. Undoubtedly, one may have a determinist axiology of the good: all the older determinists recognized and embraced that concept and enjoined us to repair to it. This axiology of the good is called utilitarianism. There aren’t any (bona fide) obligations on such a view: the right reduces to the good wholly, and without remainder. Determinism removes our entitlement to the notions of culpability, of blameworthiness, that deontology requires. It thereby makes the notion of obligation idle, at least, and of doubtful sense. And because it denies us the negative, culpability aspect of any deontic moral distinctions, it withholds from us the ability to distinguish and use the positive, commendability aspect of such distinctions. A move to a global asymmetry thesis will, for all the arguments given, be unsustainable, whatever may be said for it at the local (e.g. character-based) level.

6.8 Tolstoy’s unattainable stars: Obligations and the Ideal One may say to a man who is navigating close to the shore: ‘Steer by that rise, that cape, that tower’, and so on. But there comes a moment when the navigators sail away from the shore and only the unattainable stars and the compass may indicate the direction they should follow, and serve as their guides. We have been given both. (Tolstoy 1983: 282)

There is a tradition of opposition to OIC both older and starker than that of Frankfurt. Examples are found in certain parts of scripture and literature (of Christian and of other religions – including the Greeks); in Luther and in Tolstoy. Wayne Martin has recently defended some aspects of this approach. It can be a harsh viewpoint – witness Luther’s statement, as cited by Martin (2009): ‘By the words of the law man is warned and instructed as to what he ought to do, not what he is able to do’ (Luther 1969: 190). Stated this starkly, we may simply reject this view as abruptly indefensible,12 but reasoned defences may be attempted for it. Tolstoy, throughout his later, shorter writings, advanced such a view – particularly, though not exclusively, in regard to his very strict later outlook on sexual morality and celibacy. He defended his

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views regarding the Christian doctrine of the Ideal in his postface to the Kreutzer Sonata. He argued that we should not work backwards from what we believe our limits to be, thereby to work out what our feasible, achievable, attenuated ‘duty’ can be. Rather, we should unforgivingly start with our duty and work forwards from that. Martin (2009) independently approaches this point, giving the example of a soldier who is sure of his duty, and whose duty obliges him do something (stay in his ditch and die, say), which he is unsure whether he can do. ‘Work forwards from what you know your duty to be’, says this tradition – not backwards from what you believe your limits to be. ‘Man is weak, he must be set a task that is within his power,’ people say. This is just the same as saying: ‘My hands are weak, I cannot draw a line that is straight … and so, in order to make it easier for myself, instead of drawing the straight line I should like to draw, I shall take as my model a crooked or broken line.’ The weaker my hand is, the greater my need of a model that is perfect. (Tolstoy 1983: 281)

What there is that is good in this tradition of thought has already been acknowledged in this work. In Chapter 5’s remarks on Chisholm, Alston and others concerning what we should take for our epistemic (and ethical) ends, it was argued that we need not and should not attenuate these goals: we should aim for the truth in epistemology just as we should aim for the good in ethics. A goal may turn out to be an unattainable ideal, yet still may serve as our goal. (Though it should be noted, in opposition to Tolstoy et al., that it is extremely unusual to know a goal to be unattainable, rather than to believe it to be attainable, and to know the direction it lies within to be worthwhile, only to find out after the attempt that complete attainment of its success state exceeded one’s abilities.) The question for us, though, is not whether we may sometimes have an obligation to aim for what could turn out to be an unattainable ideal, but what our normative status should be judged to be if we unavoidably fall short of that ideal. It may be that we ought to aim for something that turns out to be unattainable, but we should be judged by how well we attempt to do as we ought; with the ‘should’ here itself a moral should – itself an ought, whatever else it is besides. The domain of oughts is thus inescapable. This domain may coexist with other (consequentialist, externalist) forms of value judgement in both ethics and epistemology, and may even take such consequentialist, externalist success states as its intentional ends, but it may not be simply replaced by these.

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So, let there be two agents, each of whom is tasked by the obligation to follow a ‘model that is perfect’. One agent sees this as a waste of time and makes no effort at all – indeed, goes in quite the opposite direction. The other tries diligently, indeed heroically, and makes great strides towards the goal – before, as indicated, unavoidably falling short. Surely the latter agent is commendable, the former agent reprehensible? He may have a model of perfection set before him which he is unable to reach; but, if he does to the utmost of his power, this is all he can be answerable for. (Reid 1969: 319)

Whether as regards rationality or righteousness one may indeed be set an ideal of the good or the true that turns out to be unattainable; but one’s status as rational or irrational, right or wrong, depends upon the diligence with which one pursues that goal. A goal such that every striver after the goal is equally, categorically thwarted, and thereby condemned to exactly the same absolute degree, is no goal at all – not even an ideal one. If determinism is true, all our strivings are equally futile to an absolute and categorical degree.

7

The Lazy Argument

7.1 The Lazy Argument ‘If determinism is true, all our strivings are equally futile to an absolute and categorical degree.’ Not many would agree with this, the last chapter’s concluding sentence. For is this not the fallacy of Logon Ærgon (Ignava Ratio, ‘the Lazy Reason’, ‘the Lazy Sophism’, ‘the Idleness Argument’)? Generations of philosophers have thought so – from Chrysippus to Aulus Gellius to Cicero to Leibniz to Oliver Wendell Holmes. This chapter, however, defends the claim that the Lazy Argument is no fallacy. Start with clarity on one matter: the Lazy Argument precisely isn’t claiming that ‘what we do doesn’t make a difference’; and nor (we shall see) is it claiming ‘therefore we should do nothing’ – notwithstanding that its critics, ancient and modern, wish us to take it in such ways. This … demolishes … what the ancients called the ‘Lazy Sophism’, which ended in a decision to do nothing: for (people would say) if what I ask is to happen it will happen even though I should do nothing; and if it is not to happen it will never happen, no matter what trouble I take to achieve it … (Leibniz 2005: #55)

The defender of the Lazy Argument, though, isn’t defending its subjunctive conclusion – of futility or impotence, a ‘decision to do nothing’ – he is saying that since any such conclusion is untenable, so is determinism. Throughout the ancient and modern literature, we are invited to amuse ourselves at reasoning like this: ‘If determinism were true, then what happens would happen of necessity. If I’m to be hit by a sniper’s bullet, then this will happen of necessity, and if I’m not to be hit by a sniper’s bullet, then this will happen of necessity, so I might as well show my head above the parapet as not’. However, actual, as opposed to straw-man defenders of the Lazy Argument don’t believe in determinism. So the defender of the Lazy Argument precisely doesn’t advocate reasoning to a conclusion of impotence or futility (except conditionally – as a reductio). He advocates keeping

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one’s head down, because he supposes this is something one can do to increase one’s likelihood of survival, as against other, unwise things one equally well could do. After a period in the trenches, such an indeterminist philosopher can nevertheless have acquired a good (but less than total) measure of the fatalist attitude; for he may have seen a good measure of local fatalism (Dennett 1984: 104) – as, say, when reflection indicates that the deaths of the occupants of a deep dugout with a difficult egress would have been already determined from the moment a shell was fired, more than a minute previously and 10 miles distant. But that soldier nevertheless resists any global determinism – the idea of his survival or death being determined before even his conscription. For the determinist, though, his survival or death and its precise time, date, method, precursor events and causal chain are indeed held to be determined before his conscription – indeed, before his birth, before even his grandparents’ birth or the start of life on earth. Notably, such a view is sufficiently all-encompassing that it must apply to its authors and proponents. On this view, were you to come to believe some sophistic version of the Lazy Argument – perhaps thus to show your head above the trench parapet – this philosophical conviction would have been predetermined. And were you to come to oppose this argument, then this, together with the precise grounds that convinced you (incompatibilist, compatibilist, Ciceronian, Leibnizian, fallacious or sound) would likewise have been predetermined: determined in the first instance causally, not rationally – by the laws of nature and the startup distribution of matter and energy that obtained at the time of the Big Bang. There are two common responses to the Lazy Argument. Either is meant to be sufficient to justify replacing ‘argument’ with ‘fallacy’, but though they may be conjointly held, they aren’t identical. 1. The ‘Co-Fated’ response – ‘the inevitable comes to pass through effort’ (Wendell Holmes, paraphrased by Grünbaum 1971: 302). 2. The ‘Epistemology not Metaphysics’ response: what happens is unavoidable, but as we don’t know what will happen, our actions in trying to find out are non-futile.

7.2 The ‘co-fated’ response In work which is now lost, Chrysippus originated this response with his famous example of the doctor (in Cicero 1942: xii 28–xiii 30; Gellius 1927: 7.2.11). Put

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into the mouth of his opponent is the argument that if it is determined that I shall die of my illness, it won’t make a difference whether I call the doctor. If it is determined that I survive the illness, it makes no difference whether I call the doctor. So just lie there in a torpor and hope to be fated to get better – says his version of the Lazy Sophist. Chrysippus countered by claiming that the act of calling the doctor would be a part of the causal chain that resulted in my health (should I survive). Calling the doctor is ‘co-fated’ with recovery. As the continuation of the earlier quotation has it: … the effect being certain, the cause that shall produce it is certain also; and if the effect comes about it will be by virtue of a proportionate cause. Thus your laziness perchance will bring it about that you will obtain naught of what you desire, and that you will fall into those misfortunes which you would by acting with care have avoided. We see, therefore, that the connection of causes with effects, far from causing an unendurable fatality, provides rather a means of obviating it. (Leibniz 2005: #55)

Generations of determinists after Chrysippus have repeated this counter with gusto, supposing it to offer an easy refutation of its target position. Is, though, the ‘co-fated’ response really a good answer to the Lazy Argument?

7.2.1 Normatively prescribed inaction is also denied us by the Lazy Argument The first thing to note of the co-fated response is that it attributes to the defender of the Lazy Argument the claim that a certain action follows, normatively, from determinism – say, that the Chrysippan patient should remain in a torpor and not call the doctor. But the defender of the Lazy Argument is precisely claiming that (subjunctively) were determinism true, nothing at the level of normatively, agent-determined action would be achievable by us – for determinism would rob us of the ability to act in a way that is normatively determined yet diverges from the path that is causally predetermined. The Lazy Argument claims (subjunctively) that no action would follow, normatively, were determinism to be known or believed to be true; not that inaction would follow from this – Leibniz’s ‘decision to do nothing’ (cf. Bobzien 2001: 192ff). An actual (as opposed to straw man) defender of the Lazy Argument may not claim that some specific course of action would be mandated to follow, normatively, were determinism’s truth to be established – here, that one persuaded of that truth ought to desist from action; for that too is an action, that too is a normatively urged prescription held to follow from determinism’s

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truth. The defender of the Lazy Argument is committed to denying that, were determinism true, a course of inaction could or should be chosen (determined by the agent qua agent in the exercise of their agency and response to their reasons). Granted, such things could be causally determined, but so could anything else – say, the contrary of any such position, or something wholly orthogonal to the issue. The anti-determinist’s repudiation of the idea that inaction might follow, normatively, from determinism’s truth (that, on the assumption of determinism’s truth, inaction could be advocated, normatively, as an act) is not different in kind from the anti-determinist objections to the inaction (immobility) examples of Frankfurt and Fischer attacked in the last chapter. To claim, normatively, that an agent ought to remain immobile requires that the agent has the ability to determine her immobility, when any such ability is just what has been called into question. You might think the incompatibilists are wrong to call this into question, but manifestly they do, and to attribute to one’s opponents an argument that their position defines itself as opposing is a poor tactic at best.

7.2.2 Overdetermination and the Eleatic conception of agency The challenge of the Lazy Argument can be phrased as asking about the point to action and deliberation given determinism’s truth; but a stronger version would rather phrase this as asking whether, given determinism’s truth, there could be any actions proper at all, any acts determined by agency: any agency proper. This is the position of Helen Steward – a position I find plausible and motivated. ‘What ought I to do?’ looks, as a question, to be inapplicable if there is only one thing I can do (better: only one thing that can be done) – what it was that was determined by the Big Bang. Agency, if it is anything, is a power to determine things: actions. Steward (2012) calls this the ‘up-to-usness’ of actions: that they may, sometimes, settle matters. And, to go beyond Steward, agency fulfils a normative role. That is, an agent can decide (sometimes) what she ought to do, and can determine (sometimes) that this thing gets done. Questions of this normative stamp have application, if at all, only to those who are agents, and those who are agents must sometimes be able to decide such questions and determine their answers in actions, including mental actions – cf. Chapter 4. An agent, furthermore, is an agent only inasmuch as she determines her acts qua exercise of her power of agency. But now consider these matters in light of the thesis of global determinism. The Big Bang and the laws of nature are held to entirely determine everything. How, without

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overdetermination, can the agent then decide or determine anything? And even if the attempt were made to embrace overdetermination, how may the agent determine anything qua power of agency – when the determination of that thing is deemed to have been entirely decided causally, 13.75 billion years prior to her power of agency being in existence? At least partly underpinning the dissatisfaction with the co-fated response expressed in these questions is an Eleatic conception of agency. By Alexander’s Principle, to be real is to possess causal powers (better: powers of determination). That is, for agency to be real, the agent’s exercise of that agency must determine her acts. That is what the notion of a power of agency means. That is what an agent is. But according to determinism, the Big Bang entirely determines the act, and does so prior to the determination of any event by any agent – before powers of agency are acting in the world. Can it be said that the agent really determines action – determines this qua exercise of his agency – notwithstanding that the exercise of this agency in all its acts was itself wholly determined by the Big Bang and the laws of nature? Though I have many times heard this position stated in words, I find it profoundly difficult to understand what is meant by such a claim – and specifically, the meaning of this ‘determines’. Aristotle, famously, says in the Physics: ‘The stick moves the stone and is moved by the hand, which is moved by the man’ (Aristotle 1999: 256a 6). The man is the mover, the stick is not – it is an intermediate stage in the communication of movement that is determined by the man. If, now, the movement of the stone, together with the precise manner of its movement, is wholly determined, and is so determined many billions of years prior to the presence of any agency in the world and fully 13.75 billion years prior to this agent’s putative act, for these putative reasons, then the man is at best no more than an ‘intermediate mover’: I cannot see how the man then really determines movement any more than the stick did in the original, Aristotelian example.1 Consider Chrysippus’s doctor example. The libertarian wants to know how the patient’s decision – whether to call a doctor or refrain therefrom – can determine the outcome of his illness; given that this outcome and the route the world takes to it has, on the determinist’s assumptions, been already entirely determined by the Big Bang 13.75 billion years ago. The determinist offers him the idea that the already determined and inevitable fact that he will call the doctor (if he will, given that it has been determined for 13.75 billion years that he will) or won’t (if he won’t, given that it has been determined for 13.75 billion years that he won’t) will bring about the inevitable outcome. Where is the determining factor of agency (qua agency) here? Are we to believe that a power

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of agency determined the medical decision 13.75 billion years ago? For that was when, on the determinist’s own view, these matters were entirely determined. The only agency even a candidate for being in existence at the Big Bang was God’s – but God’s agency is not our patient’s agency. McKenna swiftly dismisses something in the vicinity of these remarks when he declares the following argument (which he constructed for the purpose of informative destruction) to be a ‘certainly a nonstarter’: ‘to assert that if determinism is true, the fact that no agents existed at earlier moments in time could transfer through to a conclusion that no agents exist now’ (McKenna 2008: 381). Notwithstanding that it was intended as an Aunt Sally, why, actually, is McKenna’s argument a nonstarter – that is, given the antecedent ‘if determinism is [/were] true’? Determinism, note – not, for instance, materialism, for which, in an interesting contrast, an analogous argument (mutatis mutandis) does indeed appear without foundation – as when Reid, despite his own hostility to materialism, notes: ‘[if matter were to] require only a certain configuration to make it think rationally, it will be impossible to show any good reason why the same configuration may not make it act rationally and freely’ (Reid 1969: 357 cited in O’Connor 1995: 178–9). The argument McKenna sets up in order to dismiss is not, however, in any obviously similar way fallacious – at least, not if it works via a consideration of the properties of agency. What are the properties of agents? That these possess powers of agency. The agent’s exercise of that agency must determine her acts – and determine these acts qua exercise of her power of agency (see Reid, ibid). And agency fulfils a normative role – determining acts in accordance with the agent’s reasons (see Reid’s use of ‘rationally’ above). But it is defining for determinism that the Big Bang entirely determines our acts. ‘Transfer’ remains a problem because overdetermination is a problem, and overdetermination is a problem because intrinsic to the concept of an agent is the concept of a power of agency. In light of this, I fail to see how McKenna’s selfconstructed and putatively straw man overdetermination problem warrants so swift a dismissal. McKenna follows his remarks above with: ‘if determinism is true, there is a causal history according to which agents emerged from causal conditions that did not themselves include any agents’ (McKenna 2008: 381). He is not by any means the only compatibilist to make such a claim; yet I think, in terms of the logic of the dialectic, this is the wrong thing to say; and wrong in just the way I shall argue a cognate claim by P. S. Churchland is wrong in the chapter to come. All that McKenna may maintain is that if determinism is true and determinists wish to save the existence of agents and agency in their ontology, and Alexander’s

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Principle is true, then determinists will have to hope they can somehow develop and defend an account whereby ‘agents emerged from causal conditions that did not themselves include any agents’. This is a commitment of their position; it is not something we may presuppose they are able to do, it is a state of affairs they will have to work very hard to secure. And their prospects in this task do not look promising. For they will have to attempt to make good this commitment in the teeth of their own view’s claim that everything (every act, say) is entirely, exhaustively determined by the Big Bang, billions of years prior to the existence of any agent, much less this agent, and any reasons, much less these reasons, yet with an agent being taken to be one who possesses a genuine power of agency and, further, capable of determining acts qua this power of agency (not, say, exclusively qua the powers of the perduring quarks that aggregate their features into a compositional behavioural resultant). Good luck to the compatibilists in this, their task; but having a metaphysical commitment does not establish that one can discharge that commitment, nor does it establish that one who seeks to press them on such a point is somehow begging the question. Note also, and particularly, McKenna’s use of the term ‘emerged’ in the above. This is repeated in the near-identical passage that immediately follows – a passage that now concerns responsibility: ‘[the compatibilist holds that] if determinism is true, there is a causal history according to which morally responsible agents emerged from causal conditions that did not themselves include any morally responsible agents’ (McKenna 2008: 381). ‘Emerged’? McKenna’s determinism (any determinism) is ineluctably homopathic (resultant) not heteropathic: on such a picture, novel determining properties (like powers of agency or responsibility) do not simply ‘emerge’ – as, say, in an act of ‘creative synthesis’. As shall be argued in Chapter 9, the agency theorist can say things such as Reid says, above; and the anti-associationist emergentist can make claims to the effect that ‘agents emerged from causal conditions that did not themselves include any agents’ – in fact, it is defining for such a view and only such a view that it makes exactly such claims (cf. Lewes 1875; Alexander 1920). The determinist, however, cannot just help himself to such claims. Novel properties, properties which satisfy Alexander’s Principle and possess determining powers (of agency, normativity, responsibility) – powers that radically transcend any previously found swirling in the void – are not things that just any metaphysics has title to. The structural emergentist (Broad 1925) has resources available to him that the component non-emergentist does not. The structural emergentist pays for these resources with his metaphysical commitments, which are considerable: arguably, with a commitment to ‘downward causation’ (Sperry 1986). The

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commitments of emergentism and self-determinism appear in any obvious sense to have been eschewed by determinists. Compatibilists are committed to trying to resurrect some simulacrum of these powers with only the tools at their disposal. A number of hard-headed philosophers who share their deterministic metaphysics but without a prior allegiance to the compatibilist stance on freedom of the will, doubt, in the general case, whether anything that even approximates to higher-level powers of determination can be defended (Kim 1989, 1992, 2000 – the Exclusion Argument). Compatibilists cannot point to their conjoint commitments – to determinism plus free will/powers of agency – and premise that the latter has been discharged, then see any attempt to tax them with a conflict between it and the former as question-begging. One does not beg the question against the compatibilists by pointing out that things their opponents are required to pay for (and they wish for) are not obviously available to them. From the foregoing, we may concede to the co-fated response that the inevitable may come about as a result of prior ‘efforts’ (scare quotes indicating there is nothing agential about these efforts); but what entirely determined these efforts, and will determine all others that follow, is not the agent determining her acts in response to her reasons qua exercise of her power of agency – it is the Big Bang and the laws of nature. I can think of myself as ‘determining’ acts in such a fashion only passively, qua patient not agent, which is to say I cannot conceive of myself, qua agent, determining acts on this basis at all.

7.2.3 The point to our actions (co-fated itself determined) The co-fated response is meant at least to underwrite a point to our actions in the teeth of the Lazy Argument: that, in a determined world, there would be no space for the determinations of agency – no space for normative determination of action at all. Perhaps the co-fated response is meant to do more than this and defend a notion of agency (‘determined agency’) itself. Granted, the presence of a co-fated precursor to and prerequisite of the inevitable outcome is meant to invest our actions with a point: the question is how? The co-fated determinant is itself co-fated. Any challenge to agency or the point to our actions that derives from determinism will just resurface at the level of these actions’ co-fated determinants in turn. We don’t get agency emerging from a sufficient number of epicycles added to the basic determinist account. The Lazy Argument questions how we, with our powers to decide, could make a difference to the way the world might be, yet determinism still

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be true – determinism which insists that the way the world is and has been and will be is wholly determined by the fundamental laws of nature and the start-up conditions that obtained at the Big Bang, long before we, with our powers to decide, were in existence. Surely, though, no-one was or is baffled, metaphysically, by how our behaviour (well, our movements) could have been caused by the Big Bang as such; nor yet by how our behaviour could in turn be a part of a causal chain that brings about other events – themselves ultimately necessitated by the Big Bang. The puzzlement is how, if determinism were true, the person could exhibit agency (could determine action). A large part of what motivates the co-fated response is undoubtedly the straw man version of the Lazy Argument, which has it that what the determinist must oppose is the enervating conclusion criticized above: that we ought to choose inactivity. Versions of the Chrysippan counterargument have, throughout its long history, taken the task of this argument to be that of convincing those who are vulnerable to the Lazy Argument that there is a point to their actions (an emphasis, we shall see, that is shared by the proponents of the sister to this Chrysippan counterargument – the ‘epistemology not metaphysics’ position). Repeatedly we see the successors to Chrysippus urging upon a potentially ‘lazy’ agent that he should realize how his actions are causally, hence conatively, significant – as these actions may be ‘co-fated’ with their desired (and determined) intentional outcome. There’s a point to calling the doctor. The Chrysippan counterargument becomes, as it were, a pep talk: the agent would be foolish (in this literature, repeatedly he is characterized as a fool) were he to lapse into lassitude; the doctor needs to be called – to effect the patient’s (inevitable) survival. How, though, on the determinists’ own assumptions, can taking this task as their project make sense: of reassuring us as to the point of our actions? How can there be a point to being told to call the doctor (on grounds that his being called may be ‘co-fated’ with the patient’s recovery) when that act of calling the doctor is itself entirely fated – quite as fated as the patient’s survival or death? At a second-order level, how can there be a point in urging upon the person that they be convinced by the ‘co-fated’ response – thus not to be a fool? That act itself is entirely fated. The agent either is co-fated to be convinced (by the co-fated response) or is not; but this state of affairs was decided already, 13.75 billion years ago. And the ‘decision’ to advance the co-fated argument, to do this urging, was itself an act already entirely co-fated in turn. Why the urgency then? What is it that the Chrysippan is trying to bring about that was not anyway going to happen? What are the followers of Chrysippus trying to prevent that is in any way preventable? How can there be a point to being urged to do anything

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(any more than there would be a point to being urged to do nothing) given that the power to bring about your doing that thing avowedly does not rest with you now – it rests with the fundamental laws of nature and the start-up conditions that obtained at the Big Bang? A major issue here is whether determinism may be seen by its proponents as possessing any practical consequences at all. As will be seen in the chapters to come, determinists vary considerably; yet even those numbered among the hardest of determinists/incompatibilists typically dispute the claim that determinism has genuinely devastating practical consequences, while even very soft determinists typically dispute the claim that determinism has no practical consequences. From the tradition this book defends there comes a standing challenge as to the practical consequences of determinism. Thus, Diogenes Laertius reports of Zeno: ‘we are told that he was once chastising a slave for stealing, and when the latter pleaded that it was his fate to steal, “Yes, and to be beaten too,” said Zeno’ (Diogenes Laertius 1925: Bk7 #23). Kant famously maintains on just such a basis: ‘I assert that every being who cannot act except under the Idea of Freedom is by this alone – from a practical point of view – really free’ (Kant 1964: PA 448, emphasis in original – and cf. Kant 1933: A689 B717ff.). This general direction of argumentation is deemed by Bobzien (2001: 193) to be very far from what the ancients took the Lazy Argument to be about; but it is close to where the core issues of that argument should lie for us, possessed of a modern conception of determinism. Those who make the ‘co-fated’ response are claiming that my action is metaphysically potent and non-futile, as without it, subsequent actions won’t happen. But defining for determinism is the claim that only the Big Bang and the laws of nature have what Kane calls a power of ‘originative control’. All else is mere ‘relative’ or ‘hypothetical’ necessity, mere guidance ‘control’. Nothing has a power of arché, of initiating causal potency (rather than inevitable causal continuance) apart from the Big Bang and the fundamental laws of nature. It is hard, then, to see how in any deep sense the charge of futility is blunted rather than deferred by the co-fated response. What is co-fated is itself co-fated, all the way back to the Big Bang. It is hard to see how I, as an agent, then have any causal role. I transmit causation, but I do not initiate it, and on a basic Eleatic principle – that to be real is to have causal powers – it is at least questionable whether I then count as possessing causal powers, or agency proper, at all. The quotation above has Leibniz claim that determinism ‘far from causing an unendurable fatality, provides rather a means of obviating it’. But on Leibniz’s declared views, the agent can’t obviate anything. ‘The inevitable comes to

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pass by human effort,’ but which efforts are made are themselves inevitable. If inevitability is really not a problem, why make one pass at solving it through reference to (inevitable) human effort?

7.2.4 The mode of determination (partial fate determinism) Grünbaum’s earlier paraphrasing of Wendell Holmes constituted a very minor divergence from his source quotation. The original is ‘the mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort’ (Wendell Holmes 1992: 118). This slight divergence (‘mode’) may be used to develop a point. The mode by which I travel from Edinburgh to London may be train, aeroplane, car, etc., but the destination is the same. The determining factor is my intention to be in London, and the means to that end is left open. Plenty have embraced this picture as an anti-reductive, intentions-based model of agency (Compton 1939; Tolman 1948; Popper 1966; Luria 1979; Fodor 1988; Edelman and Gally 2001); indeed, I shall defend just such a picture in two chapters’ time (cf. also remarks on ‘interchangeability’ and ‘degeneracy’ in Chapter 4, Section 4.6). When conjoined with determinism, however, this model yields a very odd, rather beautiful, pre-modern picture: the original picture of determinism, nowadays no longer encountered outside of literature and mythology. This is the (typically polytheistic) model of a deity or fate’s intentional stipulation of an outcome, with a human pawn possessed of just enough ‘wriggle room’ to decide the method by which he (perhaps surprisingly – even to the supernatural agent) reaches what is, alas, a foreordained outcome. The destination is inevitable, but the mode of transportation to it is not. Both the destination and the mode of transport to it derive from irreducibly agential, intentional, teleological forces – human or supernatural. Perhaps (for all we know) this picture may have been behind Chrysippus’s original version of the ‘co-fated’ response.2 However, on a modern determinist view, there is no telos. Intentions – whether human or divine – are not the source determinants of anything; and the mode of arrival at our destination is as precisely specified as that destination itself: specified to the last detail and with no degree of freedom, no wriggle room, at all. I then simply cannot see how the co-fated mode of achievement of the determined outcome may be invested with the properties this device needs to possess: of yielding a point to our agency; or even of permitting us agency at all. The goal state and the mode of travel to it and the degree of ‘effort’ applied to the latter were all entirely determined prior to our agency’s putative presence in the world. And they weren’t determined as a semantic, content-driven, intentions-

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based representation of a desired outcome. They were determined by the Big Bang: by energy that eventually became quarks, in a purposeless universe blindly pushing outwards to the heat death. This indicates that there is a significant issue as to the ‘co-fated’ argument’s target; and specifically, whether anyone occupies this position. Fatalism with regard to an event, e, is often glossed as the claim that that event’s occurrence will be brought about ‘regardless’ of what we/anyone does prior to e. (Regardless of any specific ‘co-fated’ antecedent events.) There is a strong suspicion that many (most?) of the determinists who are responding to the Lazy Argument have such a picture in their sights. But such a position (held globally) really is a straw man – at least in the modern era. Locally, there can be such fatalism: even on the assumption that they possess an incompatibilist freedom, the occupants of this deep dugout will die regardless of what they or anyone else does once the distant gun is fired – for after this point they cannot be clear of the exit in time. Avowedly, though, they will only die here, in this way, granted that they go into the dugout, and the distant gun is fired – and no-one at all in the modern era holds the contrary view – it is entirely a straw man. Their death, all acknowledge, will occur, if it occurs, because of other events that bring it about; here (for the determinist and non-determinist alike), their going into the dugout and the firing of the big gun. The determinist needs to show how all events, without exception, could be co-fated with all others back to the one event that cosmically necessitated all others, long prior to the existence of any agent, yet have everything else we want to say about agency remain wholly unaffected. Prima facie, one might think that an extraordinarily ambitious aim. The co-fated response, so far from enabling them to achieve this aim, is one more statement of the problem that confronts them.

7.3 The ‘epistemology not metaphysics’ response The second major way determinists have sought to defang the Lazy Argument is to mark a standard epistemology/metaphysics distinction and acknowledge that it is metaphysically impossible to succeed in avoiding or altering something (whatever it is) that has been in the post for 13.75 billion years and cannot possibly be avoided or altered. However, it is maintained this would not establish that it is futile to attempt to avoid or alter matters – given that it is not known (at this stage) what is unavoidable or unalterable. Nor, the determinist’s response continues, does the fact that we are apprised of determinism’s truth vitiate this

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point. The determinist knows that all things are unavoidable and unalterable, but the determinist does not know which things are unavoidable and unalterable. Because we don’t know what will come to pass – only that (whatever it is) it will have been pre-determined – the idea is that it is still epistemically possible for many different things to come to pass. The determinist will argue it is thereby not futile (epistemically, that is) to struggle to bring about the (metaphysically) inevitable by our human efforts. Fischer puts matters thus: Even if … antecedent psychological states are causally sufficient for my decision, and I know this, it does not follow that I know what decision I will make and what action I will perform. Hence … there is a clear point to engaging in deliberation. (Fischer 2006a: 328)

Two things are striking from this. The first arose with the earlier ‘co-fated’ response (Section 7.2.3): the determinist, in responding to the Lazy Argument, is searching for a point to (here) deliberation. The second is that the passage has an oddly dissociated (‘spectatorial’) ring to it. I am seen as trying to find out ‘what decision I will make and what action I will perform’ – this is the ‘clear point to engaging in deliberation’. In considering the ‘co-fated’ response, it seemed as if we were to envisage matters in the following way: conatively, a wholly determined world (‘world’ to include ourselves and our actions) whose determined outcome (/actions) we were struggling to bring to pass – in case, as it were, these (inevitable) occurrences otherwise should not take place. Here, it seems we envisage something like the epistemic equivalent: a determined world (‘world’ to include ourselves and our decisions) whose determined outcome (/decisions) we are closed off from and therefore are struggling to predict. It’s as if the world (to include ourselves and our actions/decisions) is seen as determined, but we – or rather an epistemic part of us – is, as it were, sideways on to it, in a place where our effort is crucial, and must be exerted, to permit us to predict the decisions … that we are anyway inevitably going to take, or to predict/effect the actions … that we are anyway inevitably going to perform. The importance of this project (of ourselves predicting the purportedly inevitable in our actions) purportedly invests a ‘clear point’ to our engaging in deliberation. We here see the agent as estranged from himself – as separate, dissociated. One part of the self is a Cartesian automaton, obeying the determined laws of nature – the metaphysics of determinism. The other part of the self is an epistemic monitor of, or spectator to this automaton: trying to predict his (‘its’?) behavioural and cognitive outcomes. Since the epistemic monitor of the

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automaton is closed off from the inevitable, determined outcome, ‘there is a clear point to engaging in deliberation’ – for he does not know ‘what decision I (/it?) will make and what action I (/it?) will perform’. The obvious question needs to be asked, though: what is the status of the epistemic monitor here? Consider Kapitan’s version of this ‘epistemology’ response: Given our limited grasp of the actual facts, what we wonder about and want to know is what we can do given what we take to be the relevant past, present and future circumstances. However, the conviction that what we take to be relevant allows for different circumstances is entirely consistent with adopting a deterministic stance. (Kapitan 2002: 140, emphasis in original)

The trouble is, ‘what we take to be the relevant past, present and future circumstances’ may not, by the defender of this position, itself be seen as metaphysically open. When we claim a course of action is non-futile because, although metaphysically impossible, it is exploring epistemic possibilities: is it that these are epistemic or that these are possibilities that they are held to be nonfutile? For they are not possibilities (as opposed, that is, to necessities), are they? What happens has been in the post for 13.75 billion years and was, from the moment of postage, wholly unpreventable. Nothing else is or was ever possible. What happens is wholly unpreventable, where ‘what happens’ includes what happens in us, in our thought processes, what seems possible to us. The epistemic ‘possibilities’ – what these are taken to be by the agent – are all of them fixed, and were so fixed 13.75 billion years ago: nothing else is or was ever possible. Which thought processes we undergo in eliminating, on which grounds, such lines of reasoning as end up being eliminated, is and always has been unpreventable. What singular ‘possibility’ remains as one’s eventual decision is and always has been unpreventable. To be consistent with the position it is being marshalled to defend, the notion of ‘epistemic possibility’ in use must be a wholly determined one. Unless we fix on this point, it is easy to make the ‘epistemology not metaphysics’ defence against the Lazy Argument so facile as for this latter to deserve the title of sophism. But consider how odd the notion of a causally necessitated ‘possibility’ is: The useful notion of ‘can’, the notion that is relied upon not only in personal planning and deliberation, but also in science, is a concept of possibility – and with it, of course, interdefined notions of impossibility and necessity – that are, in contrast to first appearances, fundamentally epistemic. (Dennett 1984: 148)

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Dennett’s ‘can’ here (meaning ‘it is possible’) deserves to be scare quoted twice over: once because, as the view itself acknowledges, it is an epistemic not a metaphysical notion of possibility; the other (which defenders of this view do not commonly dwell upon) because the view itself must be committed to this ‘can’ being a notion of ‘possibility’ that is entirely necessary. That is, in placing scare quotes around talk of other options being ‘possible’, we not only indicate that it is epistemic rather than metaphysical possibility that we are talking about; these scare quotes also indicate a heavily scare-quoted (indeed fictive) sense in which the options being considered are even epistemically possible. Consider what one would naturally suppose to be involved in a case of epistemic as opposed to metaphysical possibility in a quotidian case. Bad weather has grounded my flight in Edinburgh and I use all the resources available to me to decide whether to book a hotel in Scotland and wait for the weather to lift, or instead to get either a train or a car rental to make the journey down south to home. Unbeknownst to me, my activities are (metaphysically) futile: the credit card I would require for the car rental has been cancelled in a computer error and the trains I might be about to take are shortly to be victims of a wildcat strike. (Suppose this is due to local fatalism rather than global determinism: that is, ‘determined’ only in that the events in question – strike decision, computer error – have already occurred, not ‘determined’ in the sense that they, much less events more generally, were fixed by the Big Bang.) Unaware of these events, I phone some car rental companies, use an online train timetable and so on. Eventually, after intelligent consideration of many factors – cost, reliability, effort, potential to go wrong – I decide on the train. Here, I am fated to be thwarted in my aim to reach my destination, so my activities are metaphysically futile; but epistemically they are not futile at all. So far as I am able to know (within all I have access to – all that is available to me in my epistemic perspective) there is a point to my inquiries; they are instrumentally and otherwise rational. My efforts were metaphysically futile because it was determined (locally fated) that I could not achieve my end; and from the moment consideration occurred I was in fact always going to have to remain in Scotland for the night. But my efforts were not epistemically futile because my reasoning takes place within a framework of (here, warranted – though untrue) assumptions in which this isn’t the case; and in regard to this reasoning, I can achieve my end: deciding whether to book a hotel or find an alternative mode of transportation. Be clear: although my reasoning is an epistemic activity par excellence, nevertheless it too has a metaphysics – it has ‘being’ after all. For it to be epistemically non-futile, its metaphysics (the metaphysics of this reasoning) must be non-futile.

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What is it, then, for the metaphysics of (considered, conscious, rational) reasoning to be futile or non-futile? Well, what was it for the metaphysics of my actions (actions per se, as opposed to mental actions) to be futile? Consider the epistemically non-futile status of my trips to the train station, the car garage, my inquiries about road and rail-works and the like… Is it only the fact that these are in the service of epistemology not metaphysics that saves them from the charge of futility? Surely that would be a difficult position to defend. Suppose it were locally fated that I was to ‘choose’ in my decision-making to travel by train – say because of an overwhelming phobia3 against other forms of transport,  and an overwhelming irrational distaste for remaining in Scotland, or because of post-hypnotic suggestion, or demonic neuronal manipulations – then activities exploring other modes of transport would indeed be futile. Why, however, does local fatalism (phobia, etc.) avowedly entail that the metaphysics of epistemology is futile, when a stronger, global determinism that entails but is not entailed by the level of unavoidability of the local does not? In the case we are considering (of local fatalism), attempting to leave Scotland is metaphysically but not epistemically futile. What, though, of my inquiries at the train station, rentals office, telephone and computer terminal, etc.? And what of my inner decision-making, my consideration of options, my train of thought? Are these always going to lead to exactly one outcome by exactly one and the same (perhaps circumlocutious) route; and exactly that one outcome, and that route, alone? Yes. The epistemology no less than the metaphysics has been in the post for 13.75 billion years – we can deviate from it not one bit. Indeed, the epistemology has been in the post for 13.75 billion years precisely because it (the epistemology) has a metaphysics, and its metaphysics – of ratiocination, telephone inquiry, etc. – is and has always been determined. How are these epistemic activities thereby non-futile? If goal-directed human activity in the face of only one outcome’s being possible doesn’t lead to futility, why not insist on this abruptly, baldly, without further argument or digression in the direction of epistemology? Why feint in the direction of epistemology, when just the same issues will only end up having to be addressed (or rather, finessed) for the metaphysics of that domain, too? I’d suggest the answer here is simply that the determinist doesn’t look too deeply into the consequences of her views – that the determinist chooses to suppose that determinism can be true and everything else left pretty much as it is. Tacitly, the determinist who deploys the ‘epistemology not metaphysics’ response is relying on an unscrutinized, ultimately incompatibilist epistemology (notwithstanding that, on having this pointed out, any such epistemology would of course have to

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be disavowed). We saw in Part 1 of this book that there is space for a determined epistemology. But as Chapter 5 argued, this determined epistemology cannot be the only epistemology there is.

7.4 Compatibilism and epistemology Can we then construct a compatibilist epistemology that will do the job of undermining the Lazy Argument – characterizing the activities that this argument dismisses as futile as being only metaphysically but not epistemically futile? An obvious starting point here would just be to apply classical Hobbesian compatibilism (or some advance on this) to epistemic activity. Among others, Steup (2008) takes this line. The following is not the final version of his sophisticated account, but as the details will not concern us, it will do to give a flavour of the approach: Doxastic Freedom: 1st Account S’s doxastic attitude A towards p is free iff (i) S has attitude A toward p; (ii) S wants to have attitude A toward p. (Steup 2008: 376)

The trouble is, if classical compatibilism (or anything like it) were felt to be adequate, the Lazy Argument would already have been refuted without any need for diversion into an epistemic counterargument. The epistemic move precisely took its point of departure from a dissatisfaction with the standard compatibilist line on (metaphysical) free will. It was supposed to offer us a line on the Lazy Argument that was quite distinct from a standard compatibilist formulation on ‘could have done otherwise’ (had the agent had the (determined) will to do otherwise). If this epistemic diversion merely recapitulates standard compatibilism, it is hard to see why we made the feint into epistemology in the first place. If I ‘could have done otherwise’ metaphysically (à la Hobbes–Locke–Hume), why then should it ever have been conceded to the Lazy ‘sophist’ that metaphysically I can’t do otherwise – but that I ‘could have done otherwise’ epistemologically (also, however, à la Hobbes–Locke–Hume)?

7.5 Broad’s ‘Mathematical Archangel’ It is doubtful, then, whether the ‘epistemology not metaphysics’ response is defensible; yet scrutiny of the commitments of those who defend it offers us further lessons from which we may learn.

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If our agency is only to be defended as epistemically non-futile, would we cease to have a point to our deliberation in the event that we had access to a supercomputer’s perfectly accurate accelerated emulation of our decisionmaking; or, say, the results of calculations by Broad’s (1925) ‘Mathematical Archangel’? Would it be mere epistemic doubt that would lead us to refuse to accept the outcome of the Archangel/computer’s workings until we had laboriously ‘hand calculated’ them for ourselves? Fischer explicitly endorses such an approach: ‘if I genuinely knew all my future choices and behaviour, then it would seem to me that I could just sit back and let the future unroll’ (Fischer 2006a: 350). I think Fischer’s position here is commendably consistent with his starting assumptions – and that he has honestly gone down a line of thought that others, hostile to the Lazy Argument, would rather not examine. I don’t think his line of reasoning will work, however. Consider first the ‘mere epistemic doubt’ that might lead us to refuse to accept the outcome of the Archangel/ computer’s calculations. The Archangel/computer’s workings were meant to emulate our ‘mere epistemology’ – how is it acceptable to have an excrescence of doubt that follows this output? Are we to require a supercomputer’s emulation of these epistemic doubts also? Consider a ‘neo-Sartrean’ case like the following: A bright young man from a country with a demoralized and underfunded education system has won the opportunity for graduate-level study at a first-class university abroad, at a crucial time in his academic development. But just in the last few weeks prior to leaving his home nation he commences a relationship with a woman (herself in a relationship with another) that appears as if it could be very serious indeed. Given another few months, the relationship could have defined itself, perhaps (probably?) into something so serious he would abandon his academic ambitions without a care, and one in which she would probably (he believes) be his alone. But his relationship with her isn’t there yet, all is undefined, it is very, very early days and his academic offer must be accepted or rejected now. Does he abandon his academic ambitions nevertheless? Or does he go abroad with an inchoate and undefined relationship that perhaps (probably?) won’t survive the enforced separation? What does he do? He agonizes. Would it really help to tell him we’ve stuck his neuronal inputs into a supercomputer to run a perfectly accurate emulation of his reasoning processes; and (by the way) he will in three weeks’ time board that aeroplane? Would he say ‘oh well, that’s it then’? Would his only doubts be whether it is a perfectly accurate emulation? And if he could be reassured on this point, would his only further agony be, as it were, Fregean ‘tone’ rather than genuine uncertainty in his decision?

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As a non-determinist of course I doubt much of what this example is predicated upon – that such a computer, such an emulation, is one of Russell’s ‘mere medical impossibilities’ – but ignore this doubt and continue to entertain the thought experiment. Imagine our wavering student is given as output from the Archangel/computer: ‘You will board the aeroplane – this will be your decision,’ and imagine this output is perfectly accurate (and he believes it to be perfectly accurate). Nevertheless, that output is for the world in which he isn’t given this as an output. In the world where he is given this output it will give him further ‘material to work through’ (in the psychodynamic sense). He incorporates the vividness of that image, of himself boarding the aeroplane, its finality, its status as ‘actual’ (as it were) in another world (the world without the archangel monitoring and predicting4). Its ‘actuality’ makes horrifyingly real for him what he will be abandoning, losing. It strips bare from him all self-deception. He realizes, early days or no, he cannot abandon this relationship. In the three weeks of anguish he has left, he comes to the decision to abandon this educational opportunity for what he now comes to see (comes to fix, comes to define for himself) as love. He makes the decision. His agonizing, epistemically, isn’t the epistemic monitoring of a metaphysics that is, at least in principle, something the monitor is extrinsic to, dissociated from, a spectator to. The epistemology is the metaphysics of decision-making. Constitutive of decision-making is, well, the decision-making.

7.6 The epistemology is the metaphysics (when a response to a transcendental argument becomes illicit) We are not, in our epistemology, running offline an attempt to predict what our determined bodily system is going to do anyway. We are trying to decide what to do. The metaphysics of the decision is the epistemology – is the decision-making. As noted in Chapter 5, a failure to appreciate the special nature of situations where this state of affairs obtains is a common feature of a number of fallacious attempts to respond to transcendental arguments by marking an epistemology/ metaphysics distinction. Such normally unproblematic realist moves are by no means unproblematic when the epistemology is the metaphysics.5 The metaphysics of the decision-making is not a separate event or process that the epistemology is monitoring or ‘spectating’ or estimating. The standard, epistemic line by determinists against the Lazy Argument illicitly separates two things: the determined decision and the epistemology of that decision (finding

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out that it is to be your decision). The decision is the finding out – one and the same. ‘Decision-making’ is epistemology and metaphysics. Decision making is already an epistemic activity; that is its metaphysics – what it consists in, what constitutes it: the settling of doubts.

7.7 The ‘Locked Door’ example Throughout the earlier, purely epistemic, material of Part 1, the regulative, practical, action-guiding context of ethical and epistemic appraisal was emphasized. Martin (2009) calls this the ‘context of deliberation’. What point would there be to such deliberation in a determined world? This question is an ellipsis for an argument, something Copp (2003) calls the Argument from Guiding Action: that there must be a point to requiring an action – namely, to get it done. If determinism is true, only one thing is possible. If that thing is morally prohibited, this makes moral obligation irrelevant – it cannot provide the agent with guidance (and mutatis mutandis for epistemic obligation). A similar argument is made by van Inwagen (1983) out of his ‘Locked Door’ example. This example has the agent desirous to exit a room, standing before the sole exits: two unbreakable doors, one of them securely locked. Van Inwagen asks: what would be the point of decision-making in such a circumstance? And he claims that if determinism were true, all our circumstances would be relevantly similar to this. Something like van Inwagen’s example originates with Erasmus: It would be ridiculous to command one to make a choice, if he were incapable of turning in either direction. That’s like saying to one who stands at the crossroads ‘choose either one’, when only one is passable. (Erasmus 2005: 27, in Martin 2009)

Erasmus then cites an example from scripture consisting of God’s edicts to His people preparing to cross the Jordan. Of these edicts (enjoining them to obey His commandments, etc.), Erasmus notes: You hear again and again of preparing, choosing, preventing, meaningless words unless the will of man were not also free to do good, and not just evil. Otherwise it would be like addressing a man whose hands are tied in such a manner that he can reach with them only to the left, ‘to the right you have excellent wine, to the left, poison. Take what you like.’ (Erasmus 2005: 27)

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Fischer takes up the challenge represented by this family of arguments to consider the ‘Locked Doors’ example: In a causally deterministic world [two doors – one locked, we don’t know which] … every choice and action would be such that … I could not have made another choice (or performed another action). But it seems to me that there could still be a perfectly reasonable point to deliberation. … All that is required is that I have an interest in figuring out what I have sufficient reason to choose. (Fischer 2006b: 186–7)

An interest? How is his semi-compatibilist agent (avowedly bereft of regulative control), in ‘deciding’ (being determined by the Big Bang to decide) to reflect on what he has ‘sufficient reason to choose,’ really here in a different position to Schopenhauer’s hubristic water, similarly deciding to reflect? [L]et us imagine a man who … would say to himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to the see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife.’ This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond.’ (Schopenhauer 1999: 36–7)

Suppose I am deciding which of van Inwagen’s doors to attempt to open. I don’t know which is locked – epistemically either seems available – so, allegedly, decision is not futile. But decision only seems not futile precisely because I (and you, and everybody else) is in the grip of a deep, tacit view that I am incompatibilistically free to decide. Make this tacit view explicit and of course it must be disavowed – it is clearly unavailable to the determinist. What, then, becomes of the dismissive line that consideration is non-futile because other possibilities are epistemically available? It is a position that is now more difficult to animate. Let us make the attempt.

7.8 Double doors Suppose, then, I am in front of two separate sets of double, not single doors. The two outer doors are in each case transparent – bulletproof, say – and very

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securely locked. Each of these two outer doors gives access to its own (and only its own) inner door, one of which I know to be locked and one of which I know to be not locked – but I don’t know which is which. Let one of the inner doors be a red door, the other blue. In a sealed, soundproof cell, through CCTV, I can see a rigorously trained dog, whose behaviour I cannot alter, choosing, apparently on canine whim, between a red and a blue key – each located for it at either end of a T maze. The dog will emerge into my chamber through a one-way and unreturnable dog flap with the single key it has chosen between its teeth. If it is a red key, it will allow me to open only the outer, transparent door that gives access to the inner red door – which may be locked or unlocked as the case may be (if it is locked I cannot open it). If a blue key, it will open only the outer, transparent door to permit me to try the blue door. Whether the door I try is unlocked or locked is already fixed; and which door I try is also fixed. I can witness but not influence the dog ‘choosing’ between the keys in real time. Perhaps the dog makes this ‘choice’ in a way that is determined, or perhaps it is random (though certainly its set-up training is determined). As a matter of empirical fact, I may or may not agonize over the dog’s choice – perhaps I am oddly indifferent to it – but, rationally, how is any thought I give to the matter other than futile? And how has Fischer’s ‘epistemology’ response to van Inwagen’s Locked Door example added more than an epicycle to the charge of futility? The determinist must be committed to the epistemology being as unavoidable as the metaphysics. Something 13.75 billion years prior to the agent has already predetermined which door is to be tried. Something 13.75 billion years prior to the agent has already predetermined that agent’s thought processes leading up to this choice. It will do no good to claim that in our decision we make the ‘choice’, not the dog: this is precisely to presuppose what is at issue – and to do so for the second time. We asked what would be the point to rational consideration in a world that is seen as wholly fixed in advance – a world whose outcome we cannot alter (the locked doors). The response came back that this concerned metaphysics, but our decision-making still yielded a point to our rational consideration (epistemology). It is then countered that the metaphysics of this ‘rational consideration’ is itself wholly fixed in advance – it is already determined which decision it will yield, and that this decision we cannot alter. Is the erstwhile determinist, against the content of her own views, baldly denying this? Or is she simply embarking on a futile regress of responses? On her metaphysical picture, we no more have control over the direction of our thoughts than we do over the dog: our ‘choice’ is determined by the Big Bang; and the appearances to us as to what our possibilities are in this situation will likewise be determined by the Big Bang.

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Is there a counterattack available to the determinist on the ground that we instantiate, we ‘enclose’ the determined process?6 Well, so what? I enclose various cellular processes, but am not thereby responsible for them. Put another way, let the dog analogy be placed in the head. The dog is a homuncular dog, but which arm of the T maze it goes down isn’t up to me, to my agency (though it may be ‘up to’ my neuronal mitochondria, or sodium ion pumps – themselves determined by the Big Bang). It appears to be possible for me to take actions other than the one I am (metaphysically, actually) determined by the Big Bang to take – and thus, it is claimed, there is a point to agonizing over which course of action to take. But according to determinism, metaphysically, only one set of courses of action can appear to be possible, and only one passage of reflective, cogitative travel is possible through these appearances: a path fixed prior to my epistemic agency (any epistemic agency) determining anything. What is the point to reflective cogitation in one who believes all is determined? Answer: he doesn’t know what is determined and he needs to decide between options that appear to him to be open. But what is the point to reflective cogitation in one who believes all is determined including the appearance to him of which options are open – and including which one of these options he will eventually decide, and why? This question may most obviously be responded to by noting that this, his putative decision, is a determined process he undergoes, not an option he may or may not take.7 He instantiates (is the site of) the process that was determined from the Big Bang: the process that involves seeing some things as possible, then moving through them via various transition states to end up with the one thing that he does or thinks. Why, though, describe this as a model that needs, as it were, the assent, the say-so of an executive ‘final word’? Why suppose such a picture is available to the determinist (or intelligible under the assumption of determinism)? The idea will be that ‘this reflection has some point because I don’t know which of these options I’m determined to take, so I must decide this’. But you don’t decide this (as if you might decide otherwise), and you certainly don’t give permission for this process to unfold; you host the neuronal (and ultimately quark-based) dance that spits it out, and was always going to spit it out. The appearances (to you), the epistemology, have, and has, been in the post for 13.75 billion years. You could be missing some possibilities, in some reified sense of ‘possibility’, and perhaps even some ‘obvious’ possibilities in this sense; but no effort on your part can uncover them: they are not possibilities for you – whether epistemically or metaphysically. And of the epistemic ‘possibilities’, the

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appearances, those that you have access to (that it has been determined that you will consider): those of these that you choose, and the reasons why you choose, and precisely the rate and manner and route of ratiocination by which you consider and accept/reject them … these, all of them, have been in the post for 13.75 billion years. What does it mean, for one who embraces this view, to take seriously and respond to arguments such as Copp’s, van Inwagen’s and Erasmus’s? I can see no point. I see only epicycles and confusion.

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Transcendental Arguments for Freedom I

He who says that all things happen of necessity can hardly find fault with one who denies that all happens by necessity; for on his own theory this very argument is voiced by necessity. (Epicurus 1964: XL)

8.1 Three transcendental arguments Why cannot the determinist find fault with one who opposes determinism? Epicurus does not expand upon what he offers us in the fragment quoted, but something is supposedly denied us by determinism. Such peritrope or ‘transcendental’ arguments seek to turn whatever this is against determinism itself. Arguments like those of Epicurus are the concern of this and the final chapter. These are often represented as being against determinism, but they plausibly oppose many indeterminist views as well. These arguments would be better interpreted as being against any conception of determinism or indeterminism where such views are seen as opposing a certain, strong conception of freedom; or, more positively, as transcendental arguments for freedom. Determinism is believed by incompatibilists to deny us the freedom to choose our actions, and is believed even by compatibilists to deny us certain conceptions of choice. Structurally related transcendental arguments then emerge within several different fields: the conative, the ethical and the epistemic.

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The conative transcendental argument 1. Necessarily, given a complete state of the world at some time in the remote past and all the laws of nature, then p, for any arbitrary p (Df: determinism). 2. We are powerless to avoid or alter the remote past or the laws of nature. (‘Powerless’ being a modal notion – meaning ‘it is impossible’ in some sense: we cannot do so, we are unable in some radical sense.) 3. We are powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p. 4. It is futile to attempt to avoid or alter something that we are powerless to avoid or alter (and which we know we are powerless to avoid or alter). 5. Every executive, regulative, human activity, where this includes mental activity, can be taken as an attempt, by an agent, to avoid or alter something. 6. So, if determinism were true, the following would be futile: urging it; striving to understand it; attempting to derive or follow through any consequences of it; attempting make it function, cognitively, such that it was fit to count as knowledge; affecting to possess such knowledge so as then to profit from it; entertaining the bare possibility that it was nevertheless true (though pragmatically/rhetorically indefensible); pessimistically acknowledging its likely truth (whilst admitting it rendered that acknowledgement and everything else futile); and so on. Of course, if it is not futile to urge futility, then something is not futile, and so any view that entails every human activity is futile is false. Determinists (even fairly hard determinists/incompatibilists) typically do not see themselves as vulnerable to the conative transcendental argument because they do not see their position as leading to any thesis of futility or impotence. Many of their reasons for supposing this we have already evaluated in the previous chapter – chief among them the ‘co-fated’ and the ‘epistemically non-futile’ responses. Determinism maintains that externally characterizable natural law wholly fixes whether and what efforts may be made, but allows that these (wholly determined) efforts may sometimes bring about their intended outcome, and certainly always contribute to ‘the outcome’. Which premise such compatibilist approaches should be seen as attacking is often rather arbitrary; they may be seen as differing in emphasis, but as threatening the thrust of the argument in any of several ways. It is the same, broad compatibilist tendency that motivates the response, whichever form it comes in – that is, whichever specific premise it is taken as undermining.

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So, such compatibilists will oppose the consequence argument of 1–3, typically by opposing the modal transfer from 2 to 3: granted, we are powerless in one sense – the sense of premise 2 – to change the laws of nature or the Big Bang. However, we are not powerless in another sense, for we have the power to act on our determined desires – thus to bring about their intended outcome. Forms of these compatibilist approaches are sometimes phrased as rejecting or qualifying 2 itself (the ‘local miracle’ and ‘backtracking counterfactuals’ approaches). Or, the same broad thrust can be framed more as being directed against premise 5: we aren’t trying to avoid or alter something (an ‘alternative possibility’) – we’re trying positively to bring something about, albeit something that is inevitably going to be brought about. This rather odd response was also encountered in several places in the preceding chapter – being considered in remarks concerning the point to our actions in addressing both the ‘co-destined’ and the ‘epistemically non-futile’ responses. Or, as has been seen already in appraising the Lazy Argument, there are other approaches threatening premise 4 (and especially its parenthetic clause): it may be acknowledged that it is metaphysically futile to avoid something one is powerless to avoid or alter without it being epistemically futile – since we don’t know what it is that is inevitable. Historically, of course, the Kantian development of this family of Epicurean arguments came after the development of soft determinism by Hobbes, Locke and Hume. Nevertheless, soft determinism – or at least some kind of ‘softening’ of determinism – is here needed by their successors as a response to such transcendental arguments. It is, then, important to note that this softening of determinism is not any concession on the part of the determinist, but much of what stands between determinism and the transcendental argument given.

The ethical transcendental argument 1. ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’: so, if one ought to perform action a, it must be within one’s power to perform action a. And if one ought not to perform action aʹ, it must be within one’s power to refrain from performing action aʹ. 2. Necessarily, given a complete state of the world at some time in the remote past and all the laws of nature, then p, for any arbitrary p (Df: determinism). 3. We are powerless to avoid or alter the remote past or the laws of nature. 4. We are powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p.

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5. We are powerless to perform any action a, that we do not perform, or to refrain from performing any action aʹ that we do perform. 6. So, if determinism is true, it is, will be, and has always been, on all occasions false1 that one ought to perform any action one does not actually perform, or ought not to perform any action that one does perform. Whether by omission or commission, no-one can ever be, or has ever been, culpable, blameworthy, irresponsible. 7. Because determinism globally denies us the negative, ‘culpability’ aspect of any deontic moral distinctions, it removes from us the ability to distinguish and use the positive ‘commendability’ aspect of such distinctions. (If one affects to make no sense of anything being not red, one cannot distinguish and use the predicate red.) 8. If determinism were true, there could be no deontic, ‘oughts-based’ moral theory. (N.b. This as a totalizing thesis.) In light of the common counter to these kinds of argument – that they beg the question against the determinist – it is significant that the reasoning to this stage is of a type that determinists (very many determinists, including soft determinists) have been concerned to urge themselves. Here is an example of the argument to 8, in Grünbaum’s opposition, on deterministic grounds, to the deontic (pure retributive) conception of punishment: The humane determinist rejects as barbarous the primitive vengeful idea of retaliatory, retributive, or vindictive punishment. He condemns hurting a man simply because that man has hurt others. … [T]he decision whether pain is to be inflicted on the culprit, and, if so, to what extent, is governed solely by the conduciveness of such punishment to … reform and re-education. … The requirement that punishment can be expected to be reformatory does not itself specify what choice is to be made among two equally effective punishments of differing severity. But the use of the moral requirement that gratuitous suffering be avoided as a principle of justice does indeed make this choice unique. (Grünbaum 1971: 307, emphasis in original)2

So we are to take it that because no-one is free to decide, the criminal was not free to decide, and that therefore we should take our decision with the aim of reform and not retribution in mind. That because a criminal is not free to live up to any deontic requirements not to hurt others, therefore it is a requirement on us (as a ‘principle of justice’) that we minimize the unnecessary hurt he suffers. That because no-one has free choice, the criminal could not have chosen to commit these crimes, and therefore our choice should be made with care, lest we choose

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the ‘primitive’, ‘vengeful’ and ‘barbarous’ option of retributive punishment. In the event that we do choose this option, the humane determinist condemns us. Now surely one can concede the following point (which may capture some part of the confused motivation behind such passages): in a world in which some acts are free and others determined, the free ones may be responsible or culpable as the case may be; the determined ones may not – hence at best perhaps subject to a consequentialist ethics. Thus, we ought not to take a smugly judgemental or vengeful attitude to crimes that may turn out, say, for reasons of psychological or criminological detail, not to warrant such a stance. But in making this concession, the last ‘ought’ has to be a moral ought, a deontic obligation upon us, which renders false the totalizing claim that nothing warrants deontic judgement. The conclusion to the ethical transcendental argument then is: 9. If there were no deontic basis to morality at all, it could not be said of determinists that they ought to oppose deontology – say, for a consequentialist ethics – or that their opponents ought not to maintain their own, retributive, ethics. Determinists would have no basis for opposing those who rejected their morality – even on a whim – whether rejecting it for deontology or anything else. Determinists must, however, be able to justify their position and oppose their opponents’ positions. The framework for such reflexive justification must be left in place – no metaphysics can be so powerful, so totalizing, as to undermine this. The response to the ethical transcendental argument is in step with the soft determinist response to the conative transcendental argument: to soften determinism. Rather more than with the conative argument, a number of different avenues then open up – for instance, in terms of which of the numbered premises this approach rejects. At this stage, note only that like the response to the conative transcendental argument, this softening of determinism is not a mere concession, but a response to a counterargument that otherwise undermines determinism as such. I think that each of the arguments just given represents a serious challenge to determinism; but we have been addressing epistemic issues in this work for a reason, and it is the following ‘indirect (standard) epistemic transcendental argument’ that I wish to proceed with. The indirect argument is so called (appropriating terminology from van Inwagen 1983) because it doesn’t argue that determinism removes epistemic justification directly; rather, determinism removes some conception of leeway – with this kind of leeway then held to be essential for justification. (A ‘direct’ epistemic transcendental argument is considered in Chapter 10.) That is, the indirect argument proceeds via two things: firstly, the aforementioned deontic leeway requirement, which here is

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OIC – though a quicker argument would be available were the stronger principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) to be employed. Secondly, it proceeds via the Consequence Argument, which maintains that the leeway necessary for that deontological epistemic justification is denied us by determinism.

The indirect (standard) epistemic transcendental argument 1. ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’: so, if one ought to argue, reflect, ratiocinate, generally: reason r, it must be within one’s power to reason r. And if one ought not to reason rʹ, it must be within one’s power not to reason rʹ. 2. Necessarily, given a complete state of the world at some time in the remote past and all the laws of nature, then p, for any arbitrary p (Df: determinism). 3. We are powerless to avoid or alter the remote past or the laws of nature. 4. We are powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p. 5. We are powerless to argue, reflect, ratiocinate, generally: reason r, for any argument, course of reasoning or conclusion that we do not actually undertake or accept; and we are powerless to refrain from reasoning rʹ for any argument, course of reasoning or conclusion that we do actually undertake or accept. 6. So, if determinism is true, it is, will be, and has always been, on all occasions false that anyone ought to argue, reason or conclude otherwise than they do. Whether by omission or commission, no-one can ever be or has ever been (deontically) irrational, unreasonable, epistemically unjustified, intellectually blameworthy. 7. Because determinism globally denies us the negative, ‘irrational’, ‘unjustified’ aspect of any internalist value terms, it removes from us the ability to distinguish and use the positive ‘rational’, ‘justified’ aspect of such terms. (If one affects to make no sense of anything being not red, one cannot distinguish and use the predicate red.) 8. If determinism were true, there could be no internalist, oughts-based, epistemic theory. (This as a totalizing thesis.) 9. But then, of no argument for determinism or the entailment from it to externalism, or for that externalism direct, could it be said that we ought to believe it – that we are required to believe it. And no course of reasoning against determinism, or against the entailment from determinism to externalism, or against externalism direct, can be seen as such that we ought not to believe it – that in accepting it we would be (deontically) irrational or unjustified. There would be no libertarianism,

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internalism or whatever else, such that we ought not to believe it. (The determinist’s opponents could, however, consistently maintain that one ought to accept their libertarian internalism, and ought not to accept determinism.) In summary, we get the following: if determinism is true, then no-one can do otherwise (2–4) and therefore no-one may reason otherwise (5). Assuming that the ability to reason otherwise is necessary for someone to be held epistemically irresponsible (1), no-one may then be held responsible for their intellectually wrong actions or unjustified, irrational cognition (6). But if no-one is responsible for their unjustified cognition, then no-one is epistemically justified either (7) – in the intended, internalist sense (8). If no-one is ever, under any circumstances, epistemically justified (in the intended, internalist sense), then one who contends that determinism is true is without the kind of epistemic justification they require to make or defend that contention (9). So, one cannot be epistemically justified in claiming that determinism is true. So, determinism is an intrinsically unjustified theory. I take it that this would be a wholly unsustainable position for the determinist to be in – that the determinist simply must resist the conclusion of this argument. Determinists must be able to justify their position and oppose their opponents’ positions. The framework for such justification must be in place – no metaphysics can be so powerful, so totalizing, as to undermine it. Determinists will respond here, and the responses available to them will be similar to those offered to the other transcendental arguments – particularly the ethical. At the heart of many of these responses will be some softening of determinism. Various proprietary versions of compatibilism (old and new) will compete to furnish us with a sense in which the demands of this argument can be met – as, say, for the classic compatibilists, where the ‘can’ component of the internalist implication is satisfied: at its crudest perhaps just a freedom from constraint, though other requirements – deliberation, for example – could be added if wished. Whether or not the argument survives such counters, let us scotch the abruptly dismissive view that transcendental arguments like these are merely and immediately question-begging. Here this claim is made by Patricia Churchland in regard to Popper and Eccles’s (1977) use of this chapter’s Epicurean title quotation as an epistemic transcendental argument (Popper and Eccles had

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argued that the ‘weighing of reasons’ was a necessary condition on epistemic justification that would be denied us by determinism): That the question is well and truly begged can be seen. … Determinism does not deny that our opinions are sometimes the result of the weighing of reasons. On the contrary it is a theory concerning how we are going to explain the phenomenon we call ‘the weighing of reasons’. (Churchland 1981: 100)3

Determinism, however, is not an epistemic theory, any more than it is an ethical theory – it is a metaphysical theory: that every event which occurs (including ‘opinions’, ‘the weighing of reasons’) was determined prior to the existence of any agent and any reasons by a complete state of the world at some time in the remote past together with all the laws of nature. Determinism’s epistemic consequences (or ethical consequences, or other consequences) are of the nature of commitments which follow from this: commitments which Epicurus, Kant, Popper and others have revealed it must defend or be refuted by. When the full panoply of such commitments is revealed, it will be a substantive issue as to whether determinism has the resources to reconstruct them in a way that leaves it no longer vulnerable to the transcendental argument.

8.2 Options for the determinist Besides claiming that the above argument begs the question, the determinist possesses a number of options. Among the more obvious are these: • The determinist may oppose internalism tout court, claiming that epistemic normativity is not to be understood on the model of ‘oughts’. This means accepting 9 and saying ‘so what?’ One embraces a totalizing, eliminative, ‘existential’ externalism. This position has been dealt with already, at length. • The determinist may accept epistemic internalism, at least at some surface level – thereby understanding epistemic normativity on a model of intellectual ‘oughts’ – yet oppose premise 1, OIC (or, at least oppose ought not implies can refrain from). This position has been dealt with already, at length.4 • The determinist may accept OIC, but claim that some version of soft determinism satisfies the ‘can’ requirement – say, opposing 4 or 5. This was

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the approach of all the classic compatibilists, from Hobbes through to the many ‘conditional analysis’ accounts of the twentieth century. Although, after Frankfurt placed other resources at the compatibilists’ disposal, such accounts have substantially fallen into desuetude, I will have some brief things to say of such approaches later. However, two points deserve to be made even at this initial stage: one, these attempts have been failures. Two, this general approach – that a soft determinist ‘can’ is hard enough to satisfy the internalist conditional – is question-begging against this argument (van Inwagen 1983: 121ff ). An argument has been advanced (2–4) that a soft determinist agent (any determinist agent) cannot really do otherwise. Soft determinists must engage with the specifics of that argument in order to escape it: not merely reassert their compatibilist formulations regardless of it. • The determinist may insist this argument fails against ‘reasons-responsive’ compatibilist views: ‘we’re immune – we build reasons in from the beginning’. More will be said of this in the remaining two chapters. However, even at this initial stage, it should be pointed out that metaphysics must come first. This transcendental argument is precisely raising a problem (a metaphysical problem) with the idea that a determinist account can be reasons responsive in any sense deep enough for reflexive epistemic justification. • The determinist may embrace global asymmetry (rejecting premise 7). The determinist could see herself as possessing epistemic justification in embracing and advancing her metaphysics, even though she could not (globally) ever have been other than thus, epistemically, justified. However, the bracketed clause gives in ellipsis the neo-Fregean counter to this that has already been advanced in Chapter 6 (Section 6.7).5 • The determinist may reject the Consequence Argument – claiming that the notion of modality employed (‘powerlessness’) is illicitly transferred across premises 2–4 in the epistemic and ethical transcendental argument (1–3 in the conative transcendental argument). This response will be considered shortly. In fact, any intellectually serious determinist will likely be committed to more than one way of opposing this argument. So, alternating between rejecting the validity of the Consequence Argument and accepting its validity but maintaining that soft determinism can satisfy the ‘can’ aspect of this requirement is labelled by Kapitan (2002) as the ‘Main Compatibilist Response’ (to the Consequence

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Argument) – with the Consequence Argument still the most powerful counter to compatibilism, and the ‘softening’ of determinism that compatibilism represents being, we shall see, the chief underlying motivation for rejecting transcendental arguments of this kind. The basic response to the Consequence Argument is that the modal notion used (here, of ‘powerlessness’) does not transfer across the premises. Though it is conceded that we are, in one sense of ‘powerless’, powerless to change the laws of nature, etc. (as in premise 3), we nevertheless are not powerless in some other sense – say, to act as we will (as in 4 or 5). But making this argument against modal transfer crucially requires the determinist to motivate, philosophically, a determinist account of ‘power’ or ‘ability’ – and that just is the enduring compatibilist project, in one form or other, from Hobbes through to Frankfurt and beyond. The Consequence Argument is of course only one argument for incompatibilism. Among the others there is the Direct Argument, there are arguments from source and/or ultimacy, there are manipulation arguments and there are luck arguments. I think that the best versions of each of these arguments present challenges that are difficult for compatibilists to respond to in a principled fashion; and that some, where suitably qualified and developed, may rival the Consequence Argument for power and scope. Were, then, the opponent of this transcendental argument to oppose the Consequence Argument, it would be open to the transcendental argument’s defenders to employ one of these other arguments for incompatibilism. I have already, in Chapters 5–7, drawn upon strands derived from some of these other arguments (especially the source argument), and will do so again in Chapter 10. The indirect epistemic argument above, then, may be taken to have its premises 2–4 (already only an ellipsis for the fully developed Consequence Argument) as a plug-in ‘module’ for whatever is taken to be the best argument for incompatibilism – and I shall here work with the assumption that this is (whatever is agreed to be the best version of) the Consequence Argument. It is noteworthy that other parts of this argument could be taken as separable components or ‘modules’ in turn – for example, as we have seen in Chapter 6, the conception of deontic leeway that is deployed: PAP, OIC, principle of avoidable blame (PAB), etc. The conception of epistemic justification that determinism is taken to withhold from us has likewise taken different forms in previous authors’ versions of this argument; though there I stand fast upon the thin deontic account that was articulated in the first part of this book (Figure 8.1).

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Argument for Incompatibilism Component (e.g. Consequence Argument, Luck Argument, Manipulation Argument, Source/Ultimacy Argument, etc.). Determinism denies us a fundamental kind of freedom.

Deontic Leeway Component (e.g. OIC, PAP, PAB, etc.). Lack of that fundamental kind of freedom withholds from us a basic kind of value appraisal.

Epistemic Axiology / Ethics of Belief Component (Thin Deontologism). A certain kind of epistemic justification (one essential to reflexive epistemic justification) requires that kind of value appraisal.

Figure 8.1 Components of the indirect (standard) epistemic transcendental argument represented schematically

In what follows, we won’t do anything like going through the numbered premises in order, giving arguments for and against each in isolation from the other premises. We will criss-cross the possible objections to premises as they arise in consideration of opposing positions. We start with some observations concerning this argument’s reliance on the Consequence Argument.

8.3 The Consequence Argument There has been a vast body of work addressing the Consequence Argument, and in a book of this size, possessed of so many other aims, I should prefer not to add to this literature. If challenged, I would be prepared to claim to be relying on the Consequence Argument rather than defending it. Nevertheless, several points are worth registering before repairing to this position.

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8.3.1 Fallacy of equivocation Look at the modal term (‘powerless’) that is used in the argument across premises 3–5, and especially its use in the (elliptical) Consequence Argument proper of 2–4. ‘Powerless’ is the same term, given the same sense, throughout. The basic compatibilist objection to the Consequence Argument is, however, that the modal notion used (here, of ‘powerlessness’) does not transfer across the premises. In other words, we are, in some one sense of ‘powerless’, powerless to change the laws of nature, etc. (as in premise 3), but we are not powerless in some quite other sense (say, for example, the classic Hobbesian sense: to ‘act as we will’ – in premises 4 or 5). It is difficult for me to appreciate this family of counters to the Consequence Argument. The objection precisely isn’t that the Consequence Argument commits a fallacy of equivocation in the sense of its modal notion (‘powerlessness’) from its premises through to its conclusion. The objection seems to be exactly the reverse: that it doesn’t change the sense of its central modal notion (‘powerlessness’) from that used in its premises through to that used in its conclusion – and what kind of objection is that? The opponent of the Consequence Argument appears to be arguing that modal notions should be used equivocally across 2–4 (but aren’t) – a very odd objection to any argument. One could go so far as to see this objection as requiring of us that we commit a fallacy of equivocation across 2–4; namely, that although avowedly we are powerless to change anything in the sense of ‘laws plus Big Bang’, we have some neo-Hobbesian (or other) sense of ‘power’ or ability to act on our determined desires in 4 or 5. Well, so what for that? An argument ought not to equivocate in the sense it attaches to its crucial operators or terms from across its premises and through to its conclusion. We teach undergraduates that to equivocate thus is to commit a basic fallacy. The Consequence Argument notes that if we accept determinism, we are powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p, in exactly the sense that we are powerless to alter the laws of nature and the start-up conditions of the universe. This is the appropriate sense of ‘powerlessness’ for us to employ – rightly, it does not change across the premises to the conclusion.

8.3.2 Opacity, the main compatibilist response and belt-and-braces There is a fundamental distinction between compatibilists and incompatibilists in their treatment of the argument surrounding 2–4. It is a commonplace that one philosopher’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens. Consider in this regard a modified version of Moore’s notorious argument:

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M1 Here is a hand. M2 If this is a hand, then I am not a brain in a vat. M3 I am not a brain in a vat. The Moorean argues by modus ponens from his being justified in maintaining M1 and M2 to conclude M3. His sceptical opponent argues by modus tollens from the fact that we cannot justify M3, to conclude that we cannot justify M1. Read purely alethically, each of these different uses of M1–M3 must be valid, but read epistemically, most maintain that these and cognate arguments do not go through (in either direction, quietist or sceptical). Many see this as being because epistemic notions like warrant, justification, etc., are not transparent, but are trans-substitutionally opaque – they are not closed under logical deduction. We have warrant, in the context of everyday perceptual judgements, in asserting M1. But M3 embeds within a context of utterance relative to the refutation of idealism or scepticism, or some other very philosophical context – and the avowed truth of M2 still may not licitly transfer epistemic warrant from M1’s epistemic context to M3’s epistemic context, of which more in Chapter 10. Consider now, our 2–4: 2. Necessarily, given a complete state of the world at some time in the remote past and all the laws of nature, then p, for any arbitrary p. 3. We are powerless to avoid or alter the remote past or the laws of nature. 4. We are powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p. The compatibilist and the libertarian alike reject 4 – but then radically diverge. The libertarian rejects 4 and then concludes that 2 is false – via an acceptance of 3. Similarly, though in the other direction, the incompatibilist (‘hard’) determinist just accepts the Consequence Argument 2–4 in its entirety. Akin to Moore and his sceptical opponent, both kinds of incompatibilist (libertarians and hard incompatibilists) are such because they accept transparency: ‘power’ and ‘ability’, ‘cans’ and ‘cannots’ in the above argument are taken to have the same transparent sense, which modally transfers via 3 in the argument. In contrast, the compatibilist accepts 2 (on pain of not being a determinist), and rejects 4 (on pain of not believing in free will). But compatibilists must reject transparency, and argue for 2 and 4 having a different, equivocal sense of ‘power’, ‘can’, etc. – on pain of not having a motivation for their position. For the compatibilist, ‘ability’, ‘inability’, ‘avoid or alter’ – all our terms for intentional achievement, etc. – are trans-substitutionally opaque; for the incompatibilist of either type, they are transparent. Sometimes, the compatibilist’s position on opacity

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here is augmented by the ‘epistemology not metaphysics’ arguments already considered in the preceding chapter (Dennett 1984: 148; Kapitan 2002: 149). However, whether or not there is seen as being an epistemic component adding to the arguments against transparency, the compatibilist already maintains the position that there are different senses of ‘can’ (or ‘power’) operative across 4 and 3; and thus, independent of epistemic considerations, that opacity obtains and deductive closure fails. Compatibilists take as their starting point that we can do something ordinary language, common sense, pragmatics, etc., would hold we can do – a ‘p’, any arbitrary p (raise one’s hand). This is like Moore’s ‘here is one hand’. But they refuse to make the neo-Moorean, experiential-libertarian incompatibilist move – that is, employing closure to argue that thereby determinism/indeterminism is false. The truth of 2 is embraced on physical grounds (embedded within Campbell’s (1957) ‘external standpoint’), the truth of not-4 is embraced on common sense or pragmatic or experiential grounds (embedded within Campbell’s ‘internal standpoint’) and 3 is qualified, perhaps with a neo-Lewisian form of words, to prevent conflict. Notice, though, that 3 need not be qualified or opposed by the determinist, and that it isn’t at all obvious why it so commonly is. If lemma 2–4 is opposed on grounds that 2 and 4 embed within different, opaque, non-alethic schemata (wholly different senses of modality, say), then it is not clear why some clever scholastic take on 3 is required – what it adds. Once we insist on different, subscripted senses of ‘power’ or ‘can’, the argument doesn’t go through anyway. Consider the following argument: R1 Ratty and Mole sat down by the bank. R2 A bank is a financial institution. R3 So Ratty and Mole sat down by the financial institution. This argument doesn’t go through because bankR1 and bankR2 are wholly distinct in meaning, and so the argument R1–R3 commits a fallacy of equivocation. There is no need at all to provide some additional, frankly odd, form of words in which saying R3 is ‘permitted’: bankR1 and bankR2 are distinct and that’s it – that’s all that’s needed. Consider, then, how odd is the work of very many compatibilists in trying to establish that there is a sense in which we can change the laws (‘local miracles’) or start-up conditions (‘backtracking counterfactuals’) that would be needed to permit them as determinists to embrace premise 2, yet as believers in free will to oppose premise 4. Leave aside the already strange conception of philosophy which has it that our aim should be to search after a clever form of words that would licence us to say we can act such that the laws of nature or start-up conditions

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that obtained at the Big Bang would have had to have been different. Instead, ask where the point is to this, as an argumentative response, given the other things the compatibilist is anyway committed to. It’s belt-and-braces: if you’re a compatibilist, you already deny transparency – at least in some (crucial) sense – for you deny that the sense of ‘powerless’ used across the premises of this argument is the same. Why, then, try to provide a sop to an entailment that only applies if you accept transparency? The underlying motor driving compatibilism is an adherence to the claim that there is a meaningful and worthwhile sense in which it is true we can do p, and yet to insist that determinism is also true. The modal operators (the ‘cans’) applying across the premises of the argument are and must be held to be different. How, then, is there any pressure on the compatibilist to satisfy the entailment that only emerges if we carry the same cans/cannots across the premises of the argument to the conclusion? I’d suggest that working through this otherwise superfluous line of argument is a sign that the compatibilist is profoundly uneasy in dismissing the metaphysical reasoning which every undergraduate accepts until it is educated out of them; indeed, which every pre-philosophical intellect embraces – and that the rigorous work of van Inwagen, Wiggins, Ginet and others make respectable for the professional philosopher: that were determinism true, we would be powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p.

8.3.3 Must have a motivation to oppose modal transfer The Consequence Argument is a philosophical argument – not a ‘proof ’ (van Inwagen 1983: 69; Warfield 2000: 168ff).6 In the extensive literature discussing the various versions of it, this is sometimes overlooked. There are very many counterarguments to the effect that, as a point of logic, the modal notion of ‘powerlessness’ (or other modal term used) does not transfer across the premises. In other words, we are, in some one sense of ‘powerless’, powerless to change the laws of nature, etc. (as in premises 2 or 3), but that this would not, as a point of logic, establish the validity of a claim that we are powerless in some other sense – say, to ‘act as we will’ (in 4 or 5). It is, however, not enough to point out that as a point of logic, the modal notions used across these premises might change, and thus that we can entertain the supposition that, in some sense or other, our agent ‘could’ do otherwise – has that power, that ability. These counterarguments ultimately require their proponents to defend an analysis of ‘power’, ‘ability’, ‘can’, whereby – say, as in opposition to 4 – we ‘can’ do otherwise than the laws of nature and the Big Bang necessitate. We are all familiar with various formulations here – a small

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sample of which will be considered in Chapter 10. The compatibilist, however, has to motivate her chosen interpretation of these terms. Of course we ‘can’ do otherwise than we do in the sense that this is logically possible, but so what for that? It is logically possible that we change the distribution of energy at the Big Bang, or change the fundamental laws of nature – one would not normally think that this, of itself, represented a good argument for compatibilism. A famous compatibilist treatise was subtitled: ‘The varieties of free will worth wanting’. Well, one could require of the compatibilist in turn that she give us an analysis of ‘can’, ‘power’ or ‘ability’ worth wanting – not merely a form of words, that is, or an exercise in analytic casuistry; not yet another formulation of the kind that warranted Kant’s famous judgement on classic compatibilism: ‘a wretched subterfuge … a petty word-jugglery’ (Kant 2004: 76). Thus, O’Connor put it: When I wonder what it is now in my ability to do, I am wondering what is open to me given the way things are and have been and the laws that constrain how things might be. … An ‘ability’ to act here and now, the actual exercise of which strictly requires a prior condition that is lacking and which I cannot in any way contribute to bringing about, is, in the sense at issue, no ability at all. (O’Connor 2000: 17)

I share O’Connor’s ‘brute wondering’ in this regard. I doubt, that is, whether there is a separate front to be fought in the compatibilist/incompatibilist wars concerning the logical status of modal transfer across the many versions of the Consequence Argument. A number of compatibilists would like us to believe there is such a separate front, but I suspect that the issues all along are the classic philosophical ones, familiar in their different ways from Hobbes onwards. It is to these we now turn.

8.4 What kind of freedom do we need to resist the transcendental argument? The transcendental argument is meant to require us to abandon determinism. What are we meant to abandon this for? The obvious answer is indeterminism. However, we are all of us surely familiar with the determinist response to this position.

The dilemma argument This stock argument, developed by the classical compatibilists, the indeterminist disjunct of which was sardonically labelled the ‘Mind Argument’ by van Inwagen,

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presents us with the dilemma that our acts of will, desires, cognitions, etc., must be either determined or undetermined. If they are undetermined, they are by chance, random. They are thereby not a choice of the person, an act proper, the expression of a preference of the agent. A ‘freedom of caprice’ is not in any way fitted to ground an account of free will, of agency. So they must be determined. The notion mankind have conceived of Liberty, is some dignity or privilege, something worth claiming. But what dignity or privilege is there, in being given up to such a wild Contingence as this, to be perfectly and constantly liable to act unreasonably, and as much without the guidance of understanding, as if we had none, or were as destitute of perception, as the smoke that is driven by the wind! (Edwards 2007: 151)

There are things to cavil at in the dilemma argument, but it at least shows that indeterminism, merely as such, even if ‘enclosed’ within an agent, would not be sufficient, and perhaps not necessary, for the personal, moral and epistemic responsibility needed to resist the transcendental argument structures given earlier. Indeed, the transcendental argument structures seen above threaten to ‘gearup’ the determinists’ objections to the ‘free will as simple indeterminism’ position in a way that would not have been anticipated by the dilemma argument’s historical proponents. It would be a simple matter to adapt the transcendental arguments against determinism to claim that the indeterministic agent may, as a result of his ‘wild contingence’, lack epistemic justification to reach or advance his defence of indeterminism. However, consider the role that the dilemma argument was meant to play as a whole: not simply to undermine indeterminism, but to establish determinism as a necessary condition on personal, moral and epistemic responsibility. Does it do that? No, for two reasons. Firstly, because even if there were no alternatives, still it has not positively established that determinism is compatible with responsibility – against the pessimistic, sceptical conclusion of hard incompatibilism. This is because responsibility requires not chance but choice, with soft determinism and indeterminism both denying we can choose our acts of will, our desires. That is (secondly) because there is a positive alternative, and so the argument rests on a false dilemma: our acts of will, desires, could be neither determined by external natural law, nor undetermined and by chance, but self-determined. By the liberty of a moral agent I understand a power over the determination of his own will. (Reid 1969: 259 – Essay 4, Ch. 1)

This power is that ‘dignity or privilege’, necessary for internalist justification, which even softer forms of determinism deny us.

9

Self-Determination and Determination by Reasons

9.1 Self-determinism The idea that we have a power to determine our wills has historically faced a number of objections. One is that it is simply false: ‘Conative (/Cognitive) Voluntarism’ does not ever obtain. We have dealt with this position already in Chapters 3 and 4. More common, however, is the claim that the notion is conceptually confused. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech. (Hobbes 1962: 246, emphases in original)

Why is it absurd to say I determine – choose – my will? Historically, there have been several ways of making essentially the same objection; exemplified, for example, by these three points from Jonathan Edwards (2007). First, determining my will is said to entail a vicious regress: choosing must take place on the basis of an act of will, choosing my will then requires a further act of will and so on. Second, there would have to be a first choice, but this must be either determined or by chance, for if chosen in turn, it would (incoherently) require a choice before the first choice. Third, choice implies a preference (a desire) for something on the part of the chooser – a preference that the compatibilist thinks is determined, not chosen. If, however, we are free to choose our choices (our preference for something), then that cannot be a ‘freedom’ merely to be determined by another preference (desire) in turn. So we must ‘choose’ from nothing – no preference, perfect indifference or caprice – and that is no choice. These objections are question-begging, in each case for the same reason. The self-determinist’s position is that choice is ultimately a determination of the self,

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the whole person, the mind. Automatically, then, it will be in opposition to any claim that choice has to be a determination of one or more sub-personal items (‘desires’, ‘acts of will’), at least if these be seen as separable parts of the mind rather than properties of the whole. That is just why the self-determinist regards as fallacious the stock dilemma argument of the previous chapter. It presents us with a question: Whatever the conative part was that determined your choice, was this in turn determined by natural law or by chance? But this question presupposes already that a determination of action must be made by one or other part or item, rather than the self as a whole: I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself. (Hobbes 1962: 271)

This presupposition is question-begging: persons, not their parts, determine choices. So, the regress objection presupposes that if an act is determined, this can only be by an ontologically real, prior and separable item in the chooser called an act of will – historically: a ‘desire’, or sometimes ‘volition’. (‘Ontologically real …’ is meant to highlight the fact that we must preclude a tacitly question-begging defence of this position under which we see a slide towards the committed term ‘desire’ being waived through because it is read as a harmless synonym for ‘choice’.) For one such prior item to be chosen is then seen as requiring another act of will (‘desire’) in turn. The self-determinist position this is supposed to be refuting says that acts are determined by persons, not items within them. If I choose my desires, or anything else, I determine these, some other desires don’t (or don’t have to) and there is no regress. Similarly, the second objection presupposes that our first choice must, if it too is chosen, be chosen by a determining item – desire, act of will – before the first. But the self-determination view is defined by its claim that the first choice (to the extent one accepts this notion) is a determination of the person, not a sub-personal part, prior to that person. Finally, notice that the ‘indifference’ objection has emerged in a specifically epistemic idiom in Part  1 of this work – the externalists’ attack on doxastic voluntarism: that we are not epistemically free because we cannot believe on a whim. The response here is as given previously: no-one aspires to a freedom of caprice. Choice may be a preference, but it is a preference of a person, not a ‘preference’ where this be a sub-personal item.

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9.2 Indeterminism and self-determinism The correct response to the dilemma argument, then, is that it is a false dilemma: we may be neither undetermined (in the sense used by this argument) nor determined (in the sense used by this argument); instead, we may be selfdetermined. This is the freedom required for us to possess the reflexive epistemic and ethical justification we need to be no longer vulnerable to the transcendental arguments of the last chapter. This is the freedom we need for our lives not to be futile. The claim that self-determinism is neither a species of determinism nor indeterminism – that it is a ‘third way’ between these – needs expansion though. After all, on the one hand, self-determinism, if it is anything, is a kind of determinism (only, a determinism where actions and decisions are determined by the self who originates them). And on the other hand, such ‘third-way’ (false-dilemma) responses are invariably listed by their critics, and not a few of their adherents, as indeterminist positions. This state of affairs is insufficiently remarked upon. Perhaps, on other grounds, the determinism/indeterminism dilemma can be forced on the self-determinist, but that needs to be argued, not assumed. Otherwise, to specify self-determinism as an indeterminist position looks to beg the question against it – or, for the case of those ‘third-way’ libertarians who identify themselves as indeterminists, for them to commit a category error and fail to understand the logic of their own position. The exception to or qualification of this line of reasoning comes with William James, and it is an important exception or qualification. James (1897b) distinguished positive chance from negative chance. The former sense of ‘chance’ he took, with the classic compatibilists, to be pernicious, destructive of freedom and responsibility; the latter harmless, indeed necessary for freedom and responsibility. The former is the conception of chance that the indeterminist horn of the dilemma argument relies upon – we consider it now. Imagine that there could be a true generator of randomness in the world (metaphysical randomness, that is). Let it drive, in some way (to some extent), our acts and thought processes, our decisions and behaviour. That is, insert this randomizer into, or over, or at, the origin of our acts. To the extent this positive source of chance exerted its influence, we would surely see a diminution in our degree of responsibility-relevant control.1 That is, such responsibility for our actions as remained to us would be just that degree of determination of our

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actions as was robust enough to survive this chaos, this noise, these gremlins. The more noise, the less we would determine action – the less we could be said to act at all. Surely our ability to act, and to bear responsibility for our actions, could survive some such randomness, and perhaps it could survive quite a lot; but it is hard to see how this randomization would enhance our freedom, and as it increased beyond a certain influence, surely it would only degrade it until we could not be said to determine our actions at all. There have been efforts to withstand this stock objection in the recent literature,2 but they seem less than compelling to me. In contrast, however, James’s negative conception of indeterminism does not take indeterminism to be a positive randomizing force – one of Pereboom’s (2001) ‘alien-deterministic events’. It is simply an absence of determination by any positive force external to the agent himself. Maintaining that I am not determined is not, then, the same thing as maintaining that I am undetermined. Saying ‘nothing made me take this path’ is not the same thing as saying ‘something made me take this path’ (to wit, ‘randomness’, ‘chance’).3 Strictly, then, we should distinguish a positive force – whether determined or random – from the absence of such a force. The absence of determination by a positive force external to the agent does not imply the presence of determination by another such positive force – positive indeterminism (randomness, chance) – while the converse applies also: the absence of randomness does not imply the presence of an external determining factor. Nor does this mean that the event that is produced as effect (the action or decision) is thereby not caused. It may be caused all right – as perhaps is every event – but it is not determined by anything external to the agent (drawing, somewhat after Anscombe (1971), the distinction between causation and determination by law). It would be quite coherent, even, to entertain the notion of an event not determined by anything at all. Perhaps such things happen, perhaps not; but there is nothing incoherent in saying such a putative effect is nevertheless caused. An event or act could be caused by a heterogeneity of lower-level determinants (by items falling under a heterogeneity of lower-level laws) to the point where this event or act, typed as (intelligible as) this event or act, is not determined by any one such law – yet it is caused right enough.4 Or it could be caused by a determinant (a power of necessitation in nature, a power that brings about its effect) that is singular: that does not instantiate any universal law. In the case of human action, it could be determined, perhaps, by the agent being a ‘law unto themselves’.

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9.3 Self-determinism not agent-causation I don’t wish to develop the positive side of this viewpoint at great length, because, as will be made clear in the final chapter, I am not completely convinced by the positive side of this viewpoint – at least, as when put forward as a constitutive solution to the problems of pure metaphysics (as opposed to high-level theoretical psychology or philosophy of science). Also, it is not necessary to develop this viewpoint at length because it is not original to this work and its existing sources are well documented – basically the 1960s and 1970s ‘special sciences’ literature and the older emergentist literature. It is worth adverting to these sources, though, in order to distinguish this position from the notion of agent-causation, with which it is apt to be confused. The 1960s functionalist (‘special science’) literature contained many familiar examples (concerning the ontological status of tigers, Gresham’s Law – that good money drives out bad, rivers eroding their outer banks and all the like5) that were used to establish that the determination (sometimes: ‘nomologicity’) of an event commonly occurs only at the level of the particular higher-order special science that types and quantifies over such events. At levels below that (say, at the level of the quarks), the event is anomalous. We were only able to deduce a statement which is lawful at the higher level, that the peg goes through the hole. … When we try to deduce the possible trajectories … from statements about the individual atoms, we use statements that are totally accidental – this atom is here, this carbon atom is there, and so forth. … This means that the derivation of the laws of economics from just the laws of physics is in principle impossible. … The conclusion I want to draw from this is that we do have the kind of autonomy that we are looking for in the mental realm. (Putnam 1980: 138–9, emphases in original)

I take the various now-familiar examples in this literature to be pretty much unassailable so far as the narrower interests of the philosophers of science and psychology go. The older, emergentist literature was then rediscovered to add that: the characteristic behaviour of the whole could not, even in theory, be deduced from the most complete knowledge of the behaviour of its components, taken separately or in other combinations, and of their proportions and arrangements in this whole. (Broad 1925: 59, emphasis in original)

This picture, as applied to human psychology, has been underpinning many of the constructive philosophical approaches found in this book. Human thought is

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creative: it involves radically non-associative, top-down, higher-order, emergent processes. As far as it goes, as a position in theoretical psychology, I take this position to be very strongly defensible. The problem is that at the level of pure metaphysics, there is no very hopeful prospect of satisfactorily solving the overdetermination problems that then arise – most notably ‘the Exclusion Argument’ (Kim 1989). This means the ultimate adequacy of this position as a positive account of the hardest problems concerning the metaphysics of free will (as opposed to a core truth about free will needing to be accounted for by any such metaphysics) is open to question – of which more in the chapter to come. But denying the datum – that determination often occurs only at the level of a specific, autonomous, higher-order science and those entities/objects/properties that it alone recognizes – is a Procrustean nonsolution – it is simply not an option: downward determination (not causation6) is an inescapable truth. So, at the level of the specific special science of psychology, our intentions frequently determine that we are here rather than there – that our quarks and mitochondria and sodium ion pumps are here rather than there. There had better be some quarks and mitochondria and sodium ion pumps working according to the determinations of the sciences that type them if this is to occur, but that this ad hoc, open-endedly disjunctive swarm of quarks is here rather than there (that I am here rather than there) is due to me. I determined it, I intended to be here (Compton 1939: 53; Popper 1966: 66; Luria 1979: Ch. 7; Fodor 1988: 3–4; O’Connor 1994: 101, 1995: 178). There has been a tendency to identify this relatively unmysterious ‘third-way’ alternative to the dilemma argument – self-determination – with a different type of ‘false-dilemma’ rejoinder to that argument: agent-causation. The friends and enemies of agent-causation alike see this as a species of causation that is quite distinct, ontologically, from other (say, event) causation. Notwithstanding my great admiration for Roderick Chisholm, C. A. Campbell and Tim O’Connor, I do not wish to embrace any such position and do not see my view as merely a terminological re-badging of it. O’Connor (2011) identifies three characteristics of agent-causal theories: 1. Agents as substances that endure through time. 2. Agents as compositionally irreducible (though possibly physically composed). 3. Causal antireductionism. I wholeheartedly endorse his 2 and 3, but wonder why, with these endorsed, he sees his view as committed to 1. Note that, historically, substance theorists were very far from embracing O’Connor’s modern emergentist conception of 2 (the conception highlighted by 2’s parenthetic clause); and historically, substance theorists embraced a heavily ontological, pre-modern conception of

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3. In contrast, emergentists were, from the start, wholly explicit that they trod a middle path between substance dualism and materialism (a point often ignored or misunderstood by their recent materialist critics). Emergentism defined itself from the first as embracing an ultimate physicalist ontology (Kim 1992: 122). And emergentism defined itself as opposing dualism (Broad 1925; Putnam 1980). Emergentists were precisely not ‘component theorists’ (Broad 1925). They were precisely not (substance) dualists. I endorse wholeheartedly the emergentism and antireductionism of O’Connor, but fail to see how, with this strand of his theory embraced, he needs, or indeed can easily make his position consistent with, this quite different pre-modern conception of ‘substance’. Agreed, agents endure through time, and must, by Alexander’s Principle, have their own causal properties – as opposed to merely perduring, or having causal properties entirely via their aggregate parts. But in making such a point, one is not in any obvious sense required to embrace a conception of agents as substances – unless this notion be attenuated almost beyond recognition. Strip out 1 in this way, maintain a modern emergentist conception of 2 and a modern non-reductive (nomological) conception of 3 and you have something like the view defended here. In defending such a view, one is very far from endorsing a heavily metaphysical, neo-scholastic conception of these matters – as, say, where Chisholm’s agent (/immanent) causation is held to be metaphysically distinct from his event (/transeunt) causation: with substances, heirloom-causation and who knows what else louring out of the background fog. For these reasons, I would think it highly misleading to describe the position defended here as an agent-causal libertarianism. Notice, however, that these differences do not need to be articulated by claiming that self-determination, in contrast to agent-causation, restricts itself to invoking only event-causation – and I would resist any such characterization of the difference between these positions. For one thing, we should be sceptical of the widespread assumption that event causation is an especially or uniquely pellucid notion. But more importantly, notwithstanding various unclear and undefended ‘uniformity of causation’ assumptions, many other things have at least as much claim to determine outcomes besides events: objects (tigers, rivers, stars), and higher-order structural relations or systems (pressure–volume– temperature relations, predator–prey ratios, a nervous system, increases in the money supply, differing schedules of reinforcement); and probably much else besides (an invitation? Education? Personality? Emotions?). We do not by any means face simply a choice between only event versus event-plus-substance causation.

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The claim here is rather that the (profound) ontological addition made by the emergence of a self is to the furniture of the universe, not to Hume’s ‘cement of the universe’. Agreed, by Alexander’s Principle, with the emergence of a self must come an entity postulated as possessing a new repertoire of causal powers (better: powers of determination), but not a new kind of causation (‘agentcausation’). Selves are, as the older emergentists stressed, a quite extraordinary ontological addition to the world; yet self-determination invokes determination by a self in a way that should be seen as continuous in principle with how chemical determination invokes determination by chemicals, zoological determination invokes determination by tigers, economic determination invokes determination by inflation and geological determination invokes determination by rivers. The river erodes its outer bank: this is the level at which erosion is determined. The tiger determined the death of the antelope: this is the level at which the death is determined. Gresham’s Law determined the whereabouts across the region of space–time that is revolutionary France of a disproportionate number of assignats being in circulation and a disproportionate number of Louis d’or being secreted in walls and mattresses and attics. Try even to make these sciences’ predicates intelligible in lower-level terms7: what is a ‘tiger’ in terms of the quarks? What is ‘death’? ‘Currency’? ‘In circulation’? ‘Erosion’? What, for our case, are such things as ‘intention’, ‘purpose’, ‘reason’, ‘ambition’ in terms of quarks? Special sciences detail the determinations appropriate to them of events that are typically anomalous (indeed, typically incomprehensible, typically indefinitely and open-endedly disjunctive, typically not events, not kinds or projectable predicates at all) at levels below that at which the determining special science operates.

9.4 The dilemma argument and the external perspective One who subscribes to Hobbes’s view that ‘nothing taketh beginning from itself but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself ’ may be said, in Campbell’s phrase, to take an external conception of determination. An event, externally conceived, is either determined or by chance; just as the dilemma argument would have us believe. So, for events such as this radioactive decay …, the path of this pollen particle …, the position and momentum of this photon …, each either obeys determinate laws or is random. The external perspective contains only these two possibilities; but these are not the only possibilities there are.

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Libertarians hold that the causal conditions that produce the action or decision do not have effects that go through the agent (or the agent’s desires) to circumstances outside the agent’s control, but new conditions for the action or decision that originate within the agent. (Rudder Baker 2006: 309, emphases in original)

The positions are now on the table: the dilemma argument offers us a forced choice between determinism and indeterminism – each externally conceived. The latter is to be assimilated to James’s positive chance. Opposing this as a false dilemma is the view that a third position exists: self-determinism, where this entails that actions are ‘undetermined’ only negatively – in the sense of ‘not externally determined’. This would not mean such acts were uncaused, nor even that they were undetermined: they are determined by the agent. This picture of self-determination, as it applies to epistemology, has already been both defended and relied upon in this book – notably, in Chapter 4, on executive control. In the domain of ethics, I have articulated this approach to moral psychology and the metaphysics of moral freedom elsewhere (Lockie 1998). We must reject the tacit theory of judgement, including philosophical judgement, which has it that this consists in passively collating to a resultant the associative sum of conatively prior items. Consider again, from Chapter 3, some of the straw men constructed by the doxastic involuntarists, who have the power to choose the specific content of their beliefs, as it were, upon a whim (‘I want to believe that the US is still a colony of Britain!’). Noone should (qua rational agent) aspire to such powers; and, where present, they are certainly not what our intellectual freedom consists in. Yet this is in no sense to say that our beliefs sum, passively, associatively, to yield a resultant judgement. Our agency – intellectual, moral and other – is not to be driven by Edwards’s ‘wild contingence’ – a freedom of caprice, a freedom of positive indeterminism, of chance; and nor is it to be associatively, additively, determined to action or judgement. Rather, it is to have freedom of thought. Our beliefs are combined non-additively in acts of judgement. This is an emergent, heteropathic process: the beliefs don’t possess a prior conative or cognitive value (prior to combination in the act of judgement). Beliefs and desires don’t homopathically augment and countervail each other in a kind of automatic mental accounting, faithfully to preserve their prior conative or doxastic value to a bottom line. Rather, the act of judgement is just that: an act, or series of acts, a series of controlled processes, controlled by the agent. In judgement, we actively make a new creation in thought.

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The ‘parts’ that go into that judgement (our reasons, evidence, argument, data) are combined non-associatively to yield a judgement owned by the agent – for the agent created this belief through his cognitive activity: his thought.

9.5 Determination by reasons and determination by a self: The overdetermination objection One fundamental challenge for a self-determination view may be expressed as a dilemma problem or as an overdetermination problem. We have already encountered the dilemma version of this problem in Chapters 3 and 4. This way of framing the problem asks how we may be epistemically free: if our actions and decisions are caused by our reasons, then they are reasonable (but not ‘free’). If our actions and our decisions are chosen by the agent, then they are free but not determined by reasons – not reasonable. I refer the reader to Chapter 3, Section 3.5, and Chapter 4, especially Sections 4.8 and 4.9, for my response to this challenge in its specifically epistemic and specifically dilemma-based form. This challenge may instead be expressed as an overdetermination problem. Philosophers representing as diverse positions as the acausal libertarian Carl Ginet (2002b) and the hard incompatibilist Galen Strawson (1995) think that if there is determination by an agent and determination by reasons, then there is an indefensible overdetermination. ‘It seems clear that what [agent] a does when he acts intentionally is always and necessarily a function of his reasons; and that he cannot therefore truly be self-determining …’ (Strawson 1995: 21). This problem remains under the assumption of (positive) indeterminism. Ginet (2002b: 398–9) considers Randolph Clarke’s (e.g. 1995) views (Clarke, in the position he held then, had combined elements of indeterministic event causalism – ‘reasons’ – with agent-causation). In making a case against Clarke, Ginet employs a revealing analogy, where he asks us to imagine Clarke’s reasons as being ‘like springs’, whose energy is ‘being released’ in action. He envisages two such springs, each with the potential to release a distinct and separate action; and asks as to the role an agent could then have in also contributing to the outcome. The agent ‘releasing’ said springs is either otiose (should a reasons view, probabilistic or deterministic, be an explanatorily adequate account); or the agent is properly considered as the sole (albeit perhaps homuncular and regressive) explanation. There’s no role for both explanations, Ginet avers; and interpreting reasons probabilistically does nothing to deflect this objection.8

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Much of this objection has already been addressed in Chapters 3 and 4 (in regard to its counterpart in ethics, see Lockie 1998). There is no overdetermination in cases where an agent self-determines and acts for reasons; in fact, quite the contrary: for reasons only are reasons in a mind and for a self. When I determine an act, I am partially comprised by my reasons, which I, as a person, assimilate, accommodate and equilibrate. They only are reasons (fully) inasmuch as they are thus assimilated. This is precisely not an additive, associative process. Reasons are incomplete as reasons (reasons in a psychological, motivational sense and also in a normative sense) until they become that agent’s reasons. Reasons for one agent are not reasons for another. Only consider agents and reasons found in cases like the following.

9.5.1 Character and reasons: Non-associative motivation Give Othello his reasons – Iago’s whispering campaign, Desdemona’s stolen and artfully placed handkerchief, etc. – and watch the ‘green-eyed monster’ take hold, not to lose its grip until his personal tragic dénouement. Give Macbeth his reasons – the weird sisters’ clever manipulations, his wife’s whispered aspersions against his masculinity, etc. – and watch his ‘vaulting ambition’ o’erleap itself; not then to lose its grip until his personal tragic dénouement. But preserve such details as make it intelligible to say we have given Macbeth’s reasons to Othello, or Othello’s reasons to Macbeth, and in neither case does such tragedy occur. Macbeth doesn’t have Othello’s tragic flaw – nor Othello Macbeth’s. Their reasons only are reasons in the light of their characters. Nor is saying this shorthand for something quite different: it’s not that Macbeth could be pressed, conatively, with some ‘bat-squeak’ impulse to jealousy in the light of a Caledonian Iago’s machinations – an impulse that is nevertheless countervailed by other reasons (perhaps so overwhelmingly that it never reaches consciousness). Othello’s reasons, for Macbeth, needn’t be reasons at all (indeed, they might even be reasons with a reverse direction of conative pressure). And Macbeth’s reasons need not move Othello at all. It is not that Othello could at some level be made to see the possibility of killing and replacing the head of state in whose service he is sworn, and be affected (consciously or not) with some desire to attain this end, yet have other reasons that countervailed and overcame this ambition (perhaps overwhelmingly so). On the contrary: he wouldn’t be affected at all – not consciously nor yet unconsciously. Macbeth’s reasons (to usurp the head of state) simply would not affect Othello. When Othello, just prior to his suicide, says, ‘I have done the state some service, and they know ’t,’ this is with, as the later

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poet puts it, ‘an humble and a contrite heart’. When Othello’s end comes, as the tragic form requires, he achieves nobility; and in his case this is in no small part due to his death coming with contrition and by his own hand. When, though, Macbeth nears his end, he asks contemptuously, ‘Why should I play the Roman fool and die on mine own sword?’ His end is also noble, as required, but noble because it comes with defiance in the face of the certainty of his own death, and not by his hand but facing his enemy – as, given his character, it always would. Great as Hume is as a philosopher, a choice between his psychological insights or Shakespeare’s is no choice at all. Othello and Macbeth simply have different characters – they are different agents. Reasons for one are not reasons for the other, and what it is to have the character of the one isn’t just to be built up out of (‘bundled out of ’) different, and different-strength, ‘reasons’ – it is to be ontologically different; it is to be a different person. The same reason given to two different agents may possess a different conative strength, or even direction: the same reason. So, give a Nietzschean/Adlerian type – a Cassius, say – an oath of service to a superior, and his ressentiment is a constant pressure upon his future actions: a pressure he may resist, and perhaps with other reasons (of prudence, peer pressure, regard for his family, etc.) he may censor and overwhelm, but a direction of conative pressure nevertheless – a pressure to rancour, seething, betrayal (‘such men as he be never at heart’s ease, whiles they behold a greater than themselves’). Give a gruff ‘honest retainer’ type the same oath of service, and his oath is a constant conative pressure in the other direction – to loyalty, fidelity, duty. That is, this reason (this self-same oath of fealty) has a different strength and direction of conative pull depending on the mind it enters into. It is not that, as the same reason, it must and does have conatively the same pressure to a direction and strength of action – one that, nevertheless, in the case of one agent is overwhelmingly countervailed by their other (bundled) reasons (or, if you prefer, some wretched notion of ‘disposition’) whilst in the case of another agent it is overwhelmingly augmented by a different bundle or standing disposition. Quite apart from the other reasons that are possessed, the self-same reason at input may be conatively different (even in direction, much less force) depending upon the other reasons it non-associatively, non-compositionally combines with – according, in other words, to the mind of the agent that it enters into. And though conatively different, it is the self-same reason to the extent anything may be said to be – on pain of the associationist clearly begging the question and defining ‘reason’ by its conative effects at output, then concluding ‘reasons’ so defined must determine action.9

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We may terminologize this anti-associative insight with a distinction standardly employed in theoretical psychology: between idiographic and nomothetic theories of personality (Allport 1937; Windelband 1894/1980). ‘Individual differences’ is not the study of group sameness (Bannister and Fransella 1971). Understanding persons requires an idiographic approach, in which the person’s character is, in a significant sense, ontologically unique, prior and fundamental: under which, reasons for one would not and should not be reasons for another. The reasons that an agent possesses must indeed play their role in determining her action and cognition if she is to be rational, if she is to be responsible. But these reasons do not additively combine. For them to play a role, they don’t associatively cause action and cognition. They enter a mind and become active in interaction in that mind. The mind (the agent, the person, the self) decides – in active assimilation, accommodation and equilibration of that agent’s reasons. Reasons are in non-compositional combination. The person determines action in the light of their reasons.

9.5.2 A reason to drink So, for this alcoholic, the presence of alcohol provides a reason to drink – and that conative state or disposition partially (perhaps not so partially) comprises that agent. And the presence of a social occasion – here, a wake – in his, this agent’s, culture and community provides yet more of a reason to drink. And a moment of grief, of upsetting emotional upheaval, in a man who has always looked for a crutch in escaping from self-scrutiny and the expression of fraught emotions, likewise provides a reason for drinking. But these reasons in this agent do not sum: they provide a ‘crossover interaction’. This wake is his mother’s wake. And he comes to feel he has shamed her and failed her with his alcoholism throughout his adult life. This is his ‘moment of clarity’ – the first sober day of the rest of his life. The associationist will surely refuse to accept the terms under which this example is described, to insist that this onset of sobriety has to be because of other, countervailing reasons: reasons which outweigh the alcoholic’s (nevertheless additive) reasons to drink – reasons that subtract their conative toll. And, the associationist will insist, there is one such countervailing reason staring us in the face. After all, the agent gave up drink, and avowedly he did so because of his mother’s death; so his mother’s death (so described) must have been the overwhelming, countervailing motive (‘reason’) which, added into the mix, urged abstinence – made this his ‘strongest motive’ (Reid 1969: Essay 4, Ch. 4, #3, #5).

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Of course, in one sense, the death of his mother is undoubtedly his reason for stopping drinking here – making that claim was the starting point for this example. But her death was not a reason at input – or so this example stipulates (a stipulation that I hope is psychologically plausible). Of course the death of his mother was his eventual reason for giving up drinking. And it was the input fact, the ‘state of affairs’ that led to the changes in him that brought about his giving up drinking. That is not enough to make it a motivational force towards abstinence at input. At input, if and to the extent we can speak of it as a motivational force, it represented a motive to drink. At input, all his reasons/ motives taken separately are to drink. Separately, they predict his drinking (an epistemic way of making vivid this metaphysical point). In interaction, in his mind, through his reasoning (and affect, and goodness knows what else), he and he alone acquires his reasons to abstain. No additive, associative, nomothetic function determines his act. Reasons and self do not overdetermine action: something that is not a self cannot have reasons. The reasons may partially constitute the self, but composition is not identity – the properties of the whole are radically distinct from any homopathic construction out of the properties of its parts. Our alcoholic is not a Skinnerian ‘locus of variables’ (a linear function of deterministic conative weightings – inputs – to a resultant). Nor is he the randomized indeterministic equivalent of that model – perhaps, as on some event-causal views, randomized only when ‘torn’ (Kane, Balaguer) in a situation where otherwise he is in perfect balance. Sechenov’s principle is radically false10; associationism is radically false. In this respect, there are points of contact between Reid’s views and those of the much later, emergentist tradition. Critically scrutinizing what would later be entitled a ‘composition of causes’ view, Reid says: It is a law of nature with respect to matter, that every motion, and change of motion, is proportional to the force impressed, and in the direction of that force. The scheme of necessity supposes a similar law to obtain in all the actions of intelligent beings; which, with little alteration, may be expressed thus: every action, or change of action, in an intelligent being, is proportional to the force of motives impressed, and in the direction of that force. The law of nature respecting matter, is grounded upon this principle, that matter is an inert, inactive substance, which does not act, but is acted upon; and the law of necessity must be grounded upon the supposition, that an intelligent being is an inert, inactive substance, which does not act, but is acted upon. (Reid 1969: 284 Essay 4, Ch. 4)

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As Reid notes, this supposition is just false. The human mind is creative, interactive, idiographic. Our recovering alcoholic is a self, his mind is active: it determines (he determines) his acts. This is something that is intelligible (sometimes) from the internal perspective. It is not something to be understood on the model of a balance beam, from the standpoint of external observation – whether of determined or positively undetermined external observation.

9.5.3 ‘Reasons’ at input or outcome? (What is a psychological ‘simple’?) Notice also that it is rather loose talk to speak of a reason’s already being a reason before combination in a mind. A bit like the sensation/perception issue in philosophy and psychology in the early twentieth century, the first move is the move that goes unchallenged. It is acknowledged that there may be reasons ‘at input’, we may speak of them, picking them out by reference to their typical (probabilistic and predictive) conative effects – or these effects in isolation from these other inputs, in other contexts or at other times, or under these laboratory presentation conditions (pick your preferred operationalization). But these properly become reasons – become motives – in a self. How these reasons bring about action – what actions they bring about – is something determined by the self whose reasons they are, through the process of decision: the self that these reasons nevertheless partially comprise. The mind is ontologically and explanatorily more fundamental than the ‘reasons’ that are wrongly assumed to reductively constitute it. Reasons are already active, are already interpreted, are already reasons before they ever become further analysed, further interpreted, compared with other reasons, in that mind. This process of accommodation, equilibration and assimilation is an active process. The process of comparison of one reason with another is what is involved in judgement and decision. Which reasons are dwelt upon, in which order, how they are incorporated, absorbed and opposed, involves active organizing principles under the direction of, or constituted by, the individual mind in question (and not necessarily the conscious mind).

9.6 Cartesian Theatre objections The self-determinist viewpoint should not be assimilated to a very particular, radically untenable notion of ‘freedom as choice’: of incompatibilist freedom

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as having to involve a situation whereby the agent looks dispassionately at his reasons, sees they are reasons and asks which of these reasons shall move him. This ‘Cartesian Theatre’ position is actually one horn of a false dilemma. On this one horn of the dilemma, we have the view that the free decision-maker is like a spectator at a theatre, looking at his reasons and deciding which will be his reasons. From Hobbes through Leibniz to Edwards to Galen Strawson, the familiar regress objection is then made: on the basis of what (other) reasons does he take that decision? I am the play, I am not a spectator at my own play. On the other horn of the dilemma, we have the picture (initially much less absurd) that the agent just is his reasons – the reasons which associatively comprise him. So, he is the reasons-bundle that just happens to be there at the time, or perhaps he is the resultant of that bundle – with each reason in the bundle adding or subtracting its conative push or pull. Against any such picture, the agent is not an aggregate that reduces to Humean mental (or even non-mental) simples – desires, beliefs or other Humean mental items, say. The agent is an enduring item in his own right – is ontologically distinct. As noted earlier, in distinguishing this self-determinism from its ontologically more committed cousin, agent-causation, this doesn’t mean we must see the agent as a Cartesian Simple made of soul-stuff.11 The agent may in a sense be made up out of simpler mental (or ultimately non-mental) items, but composition is not identity, and the mental (e.g. conative) properties of the whole agent do not reduce to a resultant of the mental (e.g. conative) properties of the items which comprise that agent. The agent’s reasons combine nonassociatively; the whole has different, irreducible properties to the properties of its parts – conative, epistemic, moral properties: a mind, a self, rationality, agency, a conscience. The agent doesn’t select from options like a spectator at a Cartesian Theatre. The agent is the chooser. This choice, however, need not thereby be an additive, homonomic resultant of previously assigned preferences. Motivational preferences are usually better seen as things that are assigned through and with the process of decision, rather than as fixed inputs – ‘prior settings’ into that process. To the extent we can make sense of a prior preference for each option (and sometimes we can), this ‘prior’ preference is actually an artefact of another, different preference context – an operationalization, if you like (‘prior to decision, he preferred this option’). To the extent that a reason may harmlessly be said to have a prior weighting, this is a whole outcome of another preference context. However, even in such cases, it is potentially misleading to talk of reasons possessed of ‘prior weightings’. A reason is ‘weighed’, by the mind, each

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time it is combined. It is better to say the mind is the weighing, the weighing of items that have no fixed, determinate prior weights – that have weights only after combination in that mind (cf. Nozick 1981: 294–306; McCall and Lowe 2005: 686ff; Steward 2012: 144ff). In decision-making, a whole person – a whole mind – experiences and possesses many reasons. What is denied here is that there are any (many? enough?) reasons that have a fixed prior weight in this decision process. There are reasons right enough, but they play their part only in relation to a self and processes of reasoning directed by that self. The self isn’t a construct (a ‘bundle’, a ‘locus of variables’) out of reasons supposedly possessed of prior conative ‘weights’; yet nor are those reasons superfluous, or in some way not ‘real’ reasons, or in some way a logical construct out of the organism’s behaviour at outcome. The weightings given to these reasons, and that they are reasons at all, and the reasons that may succeed them or develop out of them, will emerge out of a process of engagement with them by the self. They aren’t added up and weighed (except metaphorically, and that only sometimes) by that self. The self is real, it isn’t a Skinnerian ‘empty organism’ – a fulcrum, a balancing point. There is a dynamic, non-additive, non-monotonic process of thinking through and with these reasons, whereby what is a reason, to what extent it is a reason, what weighting, and even what conative direction it represents, is the outcome of its interaction in that mind, during that process, by that person. The free decision is reflexive; it holds in virtue of weights bestowed by its holding. An explanation of why the act was chosen will have to refer to its being chosen. (Nozick 1981: 304)

9.7 Framework objections Objections to this position are typically animated by a framework view that has been strongly criticized already in this work. Here is Galen Strawson, a trenchant representative of this opposing view. Note the modal operator he applies to this venerable view of ‘reasons as input beliefs and desires’. It may now be suggested that the reason we are truly self-determining free agents is simply that the process of deliberation … is truly our deliberation, our doing, ours in a way that we are truly responsible for whatever we do as a result of it. … But … in the end such deliberation comes down to a process of (practical) reasoning that necessarily takes one’s desires (values, etc.) and beliefs

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as starting points. And, given that one does not want to be self-determining either with respect to (simple, factual) belief or with respect to one’s canons of reasoning, but simply want truth in beliefs and validity in reasoning, once again the question arises as to how this process of deliberation can possibly give rise to true self-determination in action. (Strawson 1995: 23, emphasis in original)

Of Strawson’s point about reasoning: why, actually, wouldn’t one ‘want to be self-determining … with respect to one’s canons of reasoning’? Reader: when you do philosophy (and much else), do you not sometimes wish to be seen as the author of your canons of reasoning? In reasoning, I may wish for much beyond validity: for rationality, say; or integrity; or depth; or creativity; or responsibility; or insight; or wisdom. As a philosopher, I may wish even to inquire into the nature of validity. Here, for example, Strawson and myself are inquiring into (and disagreeing about) a fundamental canon of reasoning: Mill’s ‘composition of causes’. We are seeking to determine whether this canon is universally applicable or not. Why wouldn’t I want to determine the applicability of that principle for myself? I assume Mill, Reid and Broad did precisely that. And of Strawson’s point about beliefs: we don’t just trundle ourselves around and wait for beliefs to be mechanically, involuntarily initiated in us. There are an infinity of potential beliefs to be had out there, out of which each of us, spread across a life, will have to select a finite set to actively seek after the possession of – possession, that is, within any of a great range of potential knowledge structures. In judgement under uncertainty, lots more is uncertain than such models typically acknowledge. I have to decide what, actually, my reasons are. I have to ask myself what I really believe. I have to ask myself questions about what I really value. Strawson’s framework of presupposition here is a good example of the position opposed in Chapters 3 and 4 regarding the forced choice offered us between either no freedom or no reason – see remarks there on Owens (2000), Sidgwick (1907), ‘false accounting’ and the like. Look again at Strawson’s ‘necessarily’ in the above. Over the last 165 years, psychology has been thought, at least by many, to be an a posteriori discipline. Here, rather, an early-modern associationist psychology of ontologically and conatively prior, real, concrete, propositional attitudes summing to a ‘strongest motive’ is assumed to be simply undeniable: an armchair-necessary truth, a framework assumption all are compelled to share. It is philosophy we are doing here, granted, but this is a psychological assumption; and the history of twentieth century empirical psychology is littered with the discarded remnants of theories assembled on the basis of just this assumed-to-be-undeniable framework view.

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9.8 Codicil to Chapter 9: Source and leeway incompatibilism In recent years, incompatibilists have been divided over the issue of whether they embrace a leeway or a source conception of incompatibilism. The leeway incompatibilist is usually taken to be the defender of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), or some similar, proprietary formulation, to the effect that the freedom necessary for responsibility requires an ability to do otherwise – and the variant of this principle that this work defends has been given in Chapter 6 (see also Lockie 2014a). The source incompatibilist locates the freedom necessary for responsibility in the notion that the agent is the ultimate source (originator) of his or her actions, decisions and choices – and this position has been defended in this chapter. Why does this work defend both these things?

9.8.1 The source not leeway position I am hardly the first to note that these two ways of being an incompatibilist are not necessarily in conflict (e.g. Kane 2000; Timpe 2007 – ‘wide source incompatibilism’). Nevertheless, they may be. So, some incompatibilists concede the central argument from the Frankfurt examples – taking the message of that literature to be that the freedom necessary for responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise (e.g. Stump 2003; Widerker 2009, 2011). These incompatibilist neo-Frankfurters (unlike Frankfurt himself and those compatibilists and semi-compatibilists who followed him) take his arguments not to overturn incompatibilism; but rather to establish that the conditions of freedom are not to be located in the principle of alternative possibilities – being found instead elsewhere: in the agent being the source of her own agency. On this view, the agent, to possess freedom, must bear ultimate responsibility for her acts; and to do this she must be the source or origin of these acts – as opposed, that is, to the determined world’s being the origin of these acts. In contrast to the leeway incompatibilists, these source incompatibilists take the conditions of freedom to be located solely in the agent’s ability to determine her acts: in so doing, they may (and some – Timpe’s ‘narrow source incompatibilists’ – do) concede to Frankfurt that it is possible that the agent could not have done otherwise. Not all source incompatibilists concede the case for PAP to the Frankfurters, however; and I am among those who do not.

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9.8.2 The source therefore leeway position Leeway is not chance We should start by granting to the pro-Frankfurt, anti-PAP source incompatibilists the following point: of course indeterminism in and of itself is not sufficient for any freedom fit to underwrite moral or epistemic responsibility. This point is surely just the stock move that has historically been made in urging the unacceptability of the ‘chance’ horn of the dilemma argument – a point considered at length in this and the previous chapter. Merely having the ability to do (better: have things be) otherwise is in no way sufficient for freedom and responsibility. Pro-Frankfurt philosophers on occasion come close to making a straw man of this, the position they oppose: few if any incompatibilists are unwise enough to think that the presence of alternative possibilities will, in and of itself, establish freedom and responsibility.

Incompatibilism therefore leeway A critical question arises for the ‘source not leeway’ libertarians, however: what does it mean for them to call themselves source incompatibilists? It surely requires them to at least deny that the start-up conditions of the Big Bang plus the laws of nature determine all that happens thereafter. For a source incompatibilist of whichever stamp to be an incompatibilist, the power of arché, of ‘new chain’ initiating causal potency, must be taken to be possessed by something more in the universe than just the singularity that was the Big Bang taken together with the laws of nature. The source incompatibilist must insist that a source power of determination comes into being with the presence of an agent in the world: agency precisely is that power – the power of the agent, qua agent, to make some ultimate, settling contribution to determining how things will turn out, whether this way or that. And I am not the first to note that an incompatibilist conception of this power – of source, ultimacy, arché, originative agency – requires as necessary condition that the agent can decide in a way that is not determined (radically not determined) from outside of, or prior to, that agent. This positive power, if it really is a source incompatibilist power, requires, negatively, that our acts possess a freedom from determination by the Big Bang and the laws of nature. Ontologically, any source incompatibilist is committed to a power of ‘new chain’ initiating agency entering the world with the existence of free and responsible agents in that world. Any source

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incompatibilism thus entails a commitment to some conception of leeway. Given this, though, why resist the earlier neo-Frankfurt characterization of this indeterminism? Why hold that this characterization (the simple PAP characterization) of incompatibilism-as-indeterminism is close to being a straw man?

Source incompatibilism entails negative leeway The answer here is that a source incompatibilist conception of agency, though it entails the ability to do otherwise, should be taken as doing so only in the sense of a Jamesian negative indeterminism. A conception of ‘could have done otherwise’ where this is taken to involve a Jamesian positive indeterminism (randomness) is precisely not what the source incompatibilist (nor any considered incompatibilist) should require for responsibility and freedom. Source incompatibilism indeed entails ‘could have done otherwise’, but in the sense of a negative, not a positive indeterminism (not a randomness or chance conception of PAP). Source incompatibilism and leeway incompatibilism are then related, but are not biconditionally related. First, source incompatibilism entails we have leeway – but not vice versa (Timpe 2007). Second, the conception of leeway is, as has been indicated, a Jamesian negative indeterminism: that ‘nothing [apart from myself – as source] made me take this path’; not that ‘something [randomness, chance] made me take this path’. Third, to embrace source incompatibilism is precisely to embrace self-determinism. Source incompatibilism and self-determinism are not two things, they are one.

Leeway as the ability to do what’s right A further point relates this to material found in Chapter 6 regarding the appropriate understanding of leeway. We saw that the central incompatibilist argument in this vicinity is variously baptized as Copp’s Argument from Fairness, Widerker’s W-defence (‘what should he have done otherwise?’) and various similar arguments: that moral (or epistemic) responsibility requires that one’s self, this moral agent, could have done otherwise – not merely that things could have been otherwise. This agency-based, source-based, revised notion of PAP (‘intentional PAP’ – Lockie 2014a) has, we saw, variously been glossed as Otsuka’s principle of alternative blame, Widerker’s principle of alternative expectations), Moya’s DEC (doing everything one can) and other notions besides. A source-based, ‘ultimacy’ notion of responsibility of the kind defended

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in this work requires something in the vicinity of this notion of ‘alternative possibility’, not some other. This notion of source entails a commitment to this notion of leeway.

9.8.3 Character-based counterexamples This conception of matters offers us certain resources to resist the challenge represented by character-based counterexamples. Not only is positive indeterminism not sufficient for freedom and responsibility (the Mind Argument’s randomness objection); it (positive indeterminism) is not necessary either. I may be unable to deviate from a path that I, my moral nature, has determined (say, Dennett’s example that I may be unable to torture the innocent for $10). Contra Dennett, this would be far from establishing that I do not have an incompatibilist freedom or responsibility. Ethical responsibility (where this includes the ethics of belief) is something that requires freedom from determination by the Big Bang and laws of nature precisely in order to preserve the possibility of self-attributable axiological determination: of the agent determining acts in accordance with his moral nature and responsiveness to moral (and other) reasons. Moral beliefs are of course moral reasons for action (Lockie 1998), but they need not thereby be psychological motivators of action. Determinism will be false should the morally responsible agent be able to determine himself to act in accordance with his conscience and not merely be determined externally, by natural law. It is strange to see an argument advanced that begins by acknowledging this capacity – for an agent to act in the direction indicated by his possession of a Tolstoyan moral compass – yet takes this to be a determinist challenge to libertarianism. Determination by the dictates of conscience rather than empirical law looks to be, in contrast, rather a challenge to determinism.

9.8.4 In many cases we just act (self-determine); only in some do we choose As Chapter 6’s remarks on global versus local asymmetry noted, source incompatibilism requires the capacity for leeway incompatibilism, it doesn’t by any means always require the actuality of leeway incompatibilism (and it certainly doesn’t require positive indeterminism). A lot of the time in our conduct – including conduct we are morally and epistemically responsible for – we just determine our actions, we don’t choose in the sense of ‘select from a menu

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of options’. This is still an incompatibilist conception of freedom. We, ourselves, are the ultimate sources of our actions. We aren’t a spectator at a Cartesian Theatre and, as noted, to impose such a view on the libertarian is to create a straw man. Undoubtedly, we do sometimes select from a range of options, but often we just do: we, ourselves, determine our actions or decisions. As long as this is taken to involve determination by an emergent self acting in response to axiological demands, rather than the determination of action by natural law, then we will have a Jamesian negative indeterminism, notwithstanding the absence of theatre.

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10.1 Compatibilism and the transcendental argument Given that this ‘third way’ – of self-determinism – establishes a coherent alternative to the determinism/indeterminism dilemma, the question remains as to why it should be preferred to soft determinism. One venerable way of answering this question is to turn the tables on the conceptual objections of the classic compatibilists: on their picture of things, the notion of a power to determine not just one’s acts, but one’s will, is incoherent. On a self-determinist picture of things, it is coherent. If, then, any example of this power can be shown to be actual, this refutes the conception that entails it is incoherent. Manifestly, it does make sense to talk of ‘choosing to choose’ and ‘desiring to desire’. An obese person wants to have a taste for healthier foods: he doesn’t desire these foods now, but he wants to desire them. A timid person wants to be more outgoing – she wishes she were more extravert – where an extravert is just by definition someone with different social appetites to the introvert. An obsessive–compulsive has an overwhelming desire, will, compulsion to wash her hands until these be red-raw. She has the great desire to be free of this desire, however. It is on the basis of this that sense can be made of her going to a behaviour therapist. She chooses to will differently. Since these attempts to change our will are sometimes successful, the claim that we cannot ever choose our will is false, and, a fortiori, the framework of assumption which entails that it is senseless must be in error. Conative ‘voluntarism’ (if you must) is actual – we see it in our own and others’ lives. As an argumentative response to compatibilism, this would have been highly effective until about four and a half decades ago. There has, though, of course been a revolution in compatibilist thinking from Frankfurt (1971) onwards, and few philosophers, whether compatibilist or incompatibilist, now doubt that talk of higher-order cognition and conation – of the kind implacably prohibited

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by the classic Hobbes–Locke tradition – is in fact entirely legitimate. The challenge presented by such higher-order cognition and conation led to two main responses from an evolving compatibilist tradition: the older, ‘strongest motive’ opposition, which maintained that such higher-order conation was in fact a logical or psychological construction built out of an associative sum of first-order conation; and the newer, ‘quasi-realist’ (mesh account) response of the last forty-five years. The former has been dealt with in the previous chapter. The latter will be considered now.

10.2 The quasi-realist response From the early 1970s, over a period of just a few years, compatibilists en masse abandoned as indefensible the line that they, after Hobbes, had resolutely tried to hold for more than 300 years, finally surrendering what those unencumbered by their theoretical commitments had seen as obvious throughout: that higherorder choosing – Reid’s determination of one’s will – was not only conceivable, but actual. The new line that most, though not all, retrenched to, and have in their different ways defended since, is that this is not sufficient of itself to establish a freedom of self-determination: a determination of the self by the self. For to suppose that these higher-order choices were determined not by the self as such, but by another Hobbesian conative item, itself determined by natural law, would be no more than an iterative addition to the soft determinist’s account. This, of course, is the position of Frankfurt, and, with significant differences of detail, of those who succeeded him with other mesh accounts: the first major development of the compatibilist position since Hobbes. Moral responsibility requires personhood, where a person just is a creature with second-order desires (Frankfurt) – or, mutatis mutandis, such mental contents as satisfy the details of these other accounts. These desires to desire are, however, held by this tradition to be themselves just determined mental items in turn. Why, in the face of this compatibilist retrenchment, do we have to suppose that they must be selfdetermined instead? As matters were left in Chapter 8, determinism as such was presented with transcendental arguments in three different forms. The obvious response to such arguments was, as indicated, to soften determinism such that this thesis no longer possessed the deflationary characteristics capable of reflexively undermining it. Classic compatibilism, though more or less obsolescent as a position, offers us a paradigm of what such a softening might look like; and how,

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structurally, a response to these arguments might go. Successor soft determinist theories will attempt to pick up where it left off. It cannot be expected that we here consider the prospects for each such candidate theory in turn (to do this, even a book-length treatment would probably not suffice); but we may see how, schematically, one such category of theory has poor prospects of meeting the reflexive, justificatory demands of these kinds of arguments, then to develop some general morals therefrom. Hard determinism is an error theory of human freedom. The hard determinist agrees with the libertarian that the meaning of a claim to freedom is that the person exercises a power of determination over her actions and ratiocination, and that the truth of this claim is incompatible with natural law also having this power. Where the hard determinist disagrees with the libertarian is over the question as to whether we are ever able to determine an action, ratiocination φ. That is, hard determinism is committed to 1, below, being always false: 1. Person P has a power over φ (for some action/ratiocination/argument φ).

This invites us to make the claim, ratiocination, argument, for hard determinism or its consequences, a substitution instance of φ in the putatively erroneous 1. And that, on a deontic leeway assumption of the kind defended in this work, leads to the conclusion that hard determinism is without epistemic justification. It leads also to the Epicurean frontispiece point from Chapter 8: that the determinist is powerless to take his libertarian opponents as being unjustified, since they too are powerless to do or be convinced otherwise. The libertarian is not similarly hamstrung. So classical soft determinism provides a revisionary account of what the power to determine an action consists in. On this view, 1 above is not false. 1 just means whatever the details of the species of compatibilism in question require it to mean – here, for a neo-Hobbesian dummy account: 2. Person P has not been thwarted in carrying out her action, ratiocination, argument to φ, in accordance with her decision, intention or desire to φ, where, however, this decision, intention or desire was itself wholly determined by natural law.

This, the neo-Hobbesian will maintain, is what saying that the person has the power to act, ratiocinate, argue means. Notice that this soft determinism opposes hard determinism no less than it opposes libertarianism, and has to do so, on pain of being unable to resist the transcendental argument against the former position. It does not, however, collapse into any kind of ‘hard libertarianism’, since 2 clearly holds that the

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power to choose is restricted to first-order choice – a freedom from constraint in acting on our determined mental items. There is no freedom to choose these items: the person has no power to determine them – they are determined by natural law, externally conceived. That is, soft determinism cannot accommodate a statement such as 3: 3. Person P really has a power over φ (for some action/ratiocination/argument φ).

Where ‘really’, to avoid question-begging, is (for this dummy account) cashed out as: 3.1. Person P has a power over her decision, intention or desire φʹ to φ.

Ordinary soft determinism must hold this to be false. However, as noted, it is easily established that such talk as this makes sense – that, pace Hobbes, Reid’s claim to a ‘power over the determination of his own will’ is not some kind of conceptual error. Further, it is easily established that, as a matter of fact, instances of this power over our will are actual – so soft determinism stands refuted. Here, however, soft determinism is already established as being reflexively untenable; for, if all power to determine our mental items is outside of our control, a requirement of internalist justification is denied us. Ratiocination, argument, deliberative judgement – whether in private or public – requires, contra Hobbes, that the person be responsible for what he called their ‘trayne of thought’. Let us suppose these trains of thought are (as on the philosophy of mind that has historically accompanied the soft determinist view) contiguous successions of mental items connected by frequency of co-occurrence – though some more substantial principle of connection could be substituted here. The mental items themselves, those items that are so connected, are just those things over whose occurrence we supposedly have no power. But if the person has thus no power to determine these, their individual mental items, a fortiori their order of succession and development, then the person has no responsibility for their train of thought.1 The freedom required for rational justification to be present cannot be merely the ‘freedom’ to have an externally determined train of private thought or public argument come forth or be emitted. That is, the claim, ratiocination, argument for soft determinism or its consequences may be made a substitution instance of φ (φʹ) in the putatively erroneous 3 (3.1). Soft determinists must maintain that neither they nor their opponents (incompatibilist determinists and libertarians alike) really have the power to determine their arguments, ratiocinations and so on. This reprises

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the defensive motivation behind the soft determinists’ position – their need to avoid the re-emergence of the transcendental argument that undermines hard determinism. The quasi-realism we are envisaging will hold that 3/3.1 can be accommodated by an extension of the determinist’s position – that the determinist need not maintain 3/3.1 is in error. That is: 3. Person P really has a power over φ (for some action/ratiocination/argument φ).

is not false. It just means: 4. Person P has not been thwarted in carrying out her decision, intention or desire φʹ, to form a decision, intention or desire to φ, where, however, that decision to decide, desire to desire, intention to intend, is itself wholly determined by natural law.

To describe this developing series, we may borrow some terminology from modern neo-Humean metaethics. Hard determinism, as noted, may be seen as a direct error theory of human freedom. Soft determinism (classic compatibilism) is the simplest form of non-literal semantics for ‘freedom talk’. That is, within a world wholly bereft of real freedom, an ersatz simulacrum of such is constructed: to be free is to have one’s (determined) desires be unfrustrated by external constraint, to be conatively potent is to have one’s (determined) efforts unobstructed, and so on for all the other cases. Finally, a kind of ‘quasi-realism’ may be developed – the open-ended iteration of this approach to accommodate cases that cannot be handled by the simpler approach. Notice that this quasirealist compatibilism opposes the earlier, more familiar soft-determinism out of which it grew, no less than this latter position opposed the hard determinism out of which it grew, and in each case for the same reason. Soft determinism had to oppose hard determinism to resist the transcendental argument that could be developed out of the deflationary commitments that followed from this position. The (softer still) quasi-realist position of Frankfurt and those other accounts that followed his must then oppose ordinary soft determinism in turn – to avoid the re-formed transcendental argument that can develop out of this latter position. That is, any softening of determinism is, again, no concession on the part of the determinist. As was the case for ordinary soft determinism, this envisaged quasi-realism is not supposed to collapse into any kind of hard libertarianism, since it holds that the power to choose is restricted to (now) only first- and second-order choice: We have a freedom from constraint in acting on our determined mental items, where some of these determined mental items are now items that determine

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our other mental items, and thus ultimately our train of thought, our arguments and deliberative judgement. There is, though, no freedom to choose the items with this executive power (these second-order cognitions and conations) – they are determined by natural law, externally conceived. They in turn determine all else – all argument, ratiocination, action and judgement. To appropriate some terminology from Kane (1996), we have the appearance of ‘will-setting’ on this view, but no ‘ultimate responsibility’2 for that will-setting – as the will is not set, is not formed, by the self. Our will-setting takes place by determined prior mental events – or indeed, not even mental events. It is clear enough how the counterarguments to this position will in turn proceed, and it is obvious how the quasi-realist position will respond. A reformed transcendental argument can be levelled against this position, and one must expect its defenders to respond to any such argument by a softer-still determinism, a yet more sophisticated, third-order quasi-realism. Throughout this extended discussion, we have maintained, with the soft determinist tradition, the fiction that a conation will consist in an actual, separable item, à la Hobbes, Sechenov, etc., in the mind/brain – not an assumption the selfdeterminist will typically accept. Still, operating on this assumption, it is clear that any such regress of higher-order conation could not be actually infinite. Often, it will not actually be even begun – mostly we just choose; we don’t make a discrete, actual choice to choose (cf. codicil to Chapter 9: Section 9.8.4). Given this fact, isn’t it unfair to press the compatibilist as above – can’t their response be that at one level or other the chain of conative determinants comes to an end? Suppose it does – the question is, with what? Does the determination of action, ratiocination and the like end with a determined component of the mind – an unchosen, ontically real item in the mind/brain: a desire, ‘volition’, act of will, etc., that natural law and the Big Bang necessitated (or, for that matter, that blind chance brought to pass)? Or does it end with the self, the agent, the person, their mind as a whole (in the ethics case, their conscience)? What determines the last conation? This ‘last’ conation may be the first – as for the case of ordinary first-order conation – or it may be the nth. But the question cannot be indefinitely deferred: whichever it is, if it is determined by natural law, externally conceived, then the agent no more satisfies the deontic requirements for rational justification than they would on the picture sanctioned by the simplest form of hard determinism. The first and most plain argument given was that if we did not have a power to determine our actions and ratiocinations, we could not satisfy internalism’s requirements for justification. That is, if we, ourselves, did not determine them,

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as source, but a finite set of externally conceived natural laws did, then we would not be responsible. For to say that what depends upon the will is in a man’s power, but the will is not in his power, is to say that the end is in his power, but the means necessary to that end are not in his power, which is a contradiction. (Reid 1969: 266, Essay IV Bk 1)

So long as ‘nothing taketh beginning from itself but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself ’, a soft determinism, however sophisticated, will no more be able to satisfy the requirements of reflexive epistemic justification than will the plainest hard determinism. Iterating the causal chain that gives rise to the action or ratiocination, as for the quasi-realist account, does not change the issue here. The person must have the power of determination. An ‘immediate agent without’, even if not ‘without’ the cranium, does not answer to this requirement. There must be some measure of ultimate responsibility for there to be any responsibility. Another way of putting matters is to note that the soft determinists face a squeeze between, on the one hand, the transcendental arguments that can be marshalled whenever we reach a level of decision, ratiocination or choice over which we have fundamentally no control, and, on the other hand, the need to distinguish their various positions from ‘hard libertarianism’. The self-determinist embraces the latter position: we, ourselves as a whole, have the power to determine our actions – this power is not to be identified with any externally characterizable determination by natural law and will not reduce to the determination of Hobbesian sub-personal mental items; at best ‘internal’ in the sense of being ‘within the cranium’. The action (ratiocination) of a person may ‘taketh beginning from itself ’, and not any ‘immediate agent without itself ’. Hard determinism, on the other hand, abandons any claims to freedom, and with this abandons the resources needed to respond to even the simplest version of the transcendental argument – this position becomes self-defeating. If the quasi-realist is really to defang this whole family of arguments, this cannot be merely by surrendering to the transcendental arguments which undermine hard determinism, save only that this surrender takes place when we reach secondor third- or nth-order cognition/conation. Such manoeuvres delay the onset of these arguments, but do not blunt their force – their ability to withhold (here) reflexive epistemic justification. If, however, the quasi-realist never surrenders to these transcendental arguments – if there is a wholly open-ended preparedness to hold that any level of conation/cognition is ‘freely’ chosen – then any such quasi-realism will be unable to distinguish itself from hard libertarianism.

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10.3 Mesh accounts more generally Mesh accounts generally are those compatibilist accounts, whether of free will or moral responsibility, which hold that free will or moral responsibility obtains when there is a mesh between one set of determined things and another – say, first-order desires and second-order desires (Frankfurt 1971) or first-order desires and values (Watson 1975). Although mesh accounts are usually taken to be one, fairly recent sub-species of compatibilist accounts in general, this assumption may be called into question. It is arguable that even classic Hobbesian compatibilism is a mesh account – the limiting case of such: we are free (and/or responsible) just in case there is a mesh between what we are determined to desire (drugs, say) and what we are determined to be able to do (get hold of drugs). The Frankfurt addition to this was to acknowledge that the basic Hobbesian account is inadequate, but to take this insight – hitherto taken to be proprietary to the libertarian – and spin another, higher-level mesh account off it: to hold that the mesh must be between what we are determined to desire (drugs, say) and what we are determined to desire to desire (to be a drug addict – or not). The idea is that free will (sometimes: moral responsibility) is to be found in having a match between one determined set of mental events (say, our first-order desires) and another set of equally determined events (say, our second-order desires). Although Frankfurt, more than any other philosopher, is associated with the development of mesh accounts, he didn’t rest easy with his initial notion of a mesh. In later work, to the requirement that we have our requisite second-order desires is added the requirement that we identify with said desires. He may become morally responsible, assuming that he is suitably programmed, by identifying himself with some of his … second-order desires, so that they are not merely desires that he happens to have or find within himself, but desires that he adopts or puts himself behind. In virtue of a person’s identification of himself with one of his own second-order desires, that desire becomes a secondorder volition. And the person thereby takes responsibility for the pertinent first- and second-order desires and for the actions to which these desires lead him. (Frankfurt 1988: 53, emphases added)

Frankfurt’s (1975/1988) ‘identification’ epicycle on his original (1971) account looks (despite his denials) to be a further mesh (and a frankly regressive one): between what we are determined to desire to desire and which desires (to desire) we are determined to identify with: a regressive sop to the underlying problem of responsibility that will continue to nag at such accounts, regardless of such additions.

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So, some probed this account with thought experiments. What if the agent’s first-order desires were determined (imposed upon that agent – inserted into him, for example, by some neuroscientist/demon) and his higher-order desire also? What if our drug addict were to have had imposed upon him not only his addiction, but also his second-order desire to be a drug addict? Or his higherorder identification with his status as an addict? (These being the various manipulation arguments against compatibilism – e.g. Pereboom 2001; Mele 2006.) Frankfurt responded with further remarks in turn – about the agent’s activity versus passivity (with respect to their identification … with their secondorder desires … to have their first-order desires): What is at stake [regarding ‘acting freely’] is not so much the causal origins of the states of affairs in question [the subject’s first- and second-order desires] but X’s activity or passivity with respect to those states of affairs. (Frankfurt 1988: 54, emphasis added)

As noted in Chapter 7, the problem Frankfurt is here seeking to address is hardly one that is unique to his position, or even the extended family of recent mesh accounts more generally. It is shared by a number of other philosophical positions – existentialist, Nietzschean,3 hard incompatibilist (of various kinds), reflective endorsement accounts (of different kinds) – the need for the final commentary, the final ‘but’ clause, the last word: yes, we’re determined, it’s all futile, eternal recurrence is true or whatever … but … you can adopt an attitude of identification, or higher-order approval, or irony, or defiance, or wryly amused recognition of the absurdity, or stoic resignation, or amor fati, or detachment, or affirmation, or whatever. However, if the pessimistic metaphysics which precedes the ‘but’ clause is true, you can do none of these. An attitude of irony, or defiance, or resignation, or whatever else, is already in the post, to be delivered courtesy of the Big Bang and the laws of physics. Whether there is a ‘mesh’ in determined attitudes or a jagged incongruity isn’t down to you; you have no choice in the matter, even in your most final and pessimistic surrender – or, for that matter, your defiant and brittle irony. I then simply cannot see what entitlement the mesh theorist has to language meant to signal such ownership of his attitudes – that they are a product of his ‘real self ’ – and which in the hands of a libertarian would represent acknowledgement of the metaphysical commitments that signalled a terminus to questions of such ownership. Work through this literature and see the requirement that the agent identifies himself with his desires; of these being desires that he adopts or puts himself behind; that the person must take responsibility for his pertinent first- and secondorder desires; requirements that the agent reflects critically on a first-order

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desire before giving ‘higher-order’ approval of that desire … and many, many similar locutions. What means such talk – of ‘higher-order’ approval,4 reflective endorsement and the like? In the hands of a libertarian, I understand well what it means: the claim to a power of arché, the claim to be causa sui, the claim to a power of originative action, of authorship, of terminus authority – in at least some final assent, commentary, gesture or response. But what means this talk in the mouth of the determinist? I can see its rhetorical power, but not the metaphysical entitlement to the role these words are meant to play. So, a muchinvoked move was originated by Dennett when he cited Luther’s ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’ (Dennett 1984: 133). Dennett claimed that this may bring home to us that there can be responsibility in a determined world – because we see Luther taking responsibility for a determined act. But that’s surely the point: if determinism is true, not only the act, but the taking responsibility for it, the identification (or otherwise), is determined also. Consider Fischer and Ravizza’s5 way of putting matters: As the child grows up, he is subject to moral education … the child comes to believe that he is a fair target of certain responses – the ‘reactive attitudes’ – and certain practices, such as punishment … it is in virtue of acquiring these views of himself (as a result of his moral education) that the child takes responsibility. More specifically, it is in virtue of acquiring these views that the child takes responsibility for certain kinds of mechanisms. (Fischer and Ravizza 2000: 442; emphases in original)

The child’s ‘taking responsibility’ is, however, itself wholly determined. How can it be an adequate response to the objection that the child doesn’t have responsibility for actions, decisions, ratiocinations, etc., which are wholly determined prior to that child’s existence and outside of his power to alter, to say that the child nevertheless ‘takes responsibility’ (is wholly determined to ‘take responsibility’ prior to that child’s existence and outside of his power to alter) for these actions, decisions, ratiocinations, etc.? Of course, as a point of detail, a second determined process might prove to be required over the first; but arguing that claim would be something that would then be answerable to various scientific, etc., desiderata or minutiae. Here, one doubts that is what is happening. Moving to the second-order level looks like a sop to an incompatibilist objection, one held on stark metaphysical grounds – an objection that is not seen as answerable mechanistically at the first-order level. It is hard, then, to see why it should be satisfactorily answerable in just the same way at the second-order level.6 Either flout the incompatibilist objection from the off, or address it fully – this seems to be neither option. That is, one can of

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course go ‘hard compatibilist’ here; and in some sense, ultimately this must be the option any compatibilist takes: to bite the bullet and stick by one’s preferred compatibilist account, no matter how counterintuitive this be in light of how the poor (e.g. manipulated) victim came by his suitably meshed (etc.) mental states. But note the role compatibilism is (or was) meant to play in the logic of the dialectic that concerns us: to offer the determinist greater retorsive, reflexive, normative–epistemic resources than those offered by hard determinism/hard incompatibilism – in dealing with the transcendental arguments that otherwise threaten determinism as such. How does ‘going firm’ after one iterative cycle (or two, or three) offer the hard compatibilist an alternative, more satisfactory stance than that of the hard determinist/hard incompatibilist who honestly gives the obdurate response from the off? To need an attenuated, etiolated concept of freedom – merely a ‘last word’ of identification (or pessimism, or irony, or commitment) – is still to need a concept of radical freedom. Thus, to abandon internalist or deontic justification for externalism or consequentialism still requires the final, reflexive ought in putting the externalist or consequentialist theory forward. Everyone, even the hardest, most pessimistic determinist/incompatibilist, must acknowledge some ultimate responsibility in reason.

10.4 Justification, overdetermination, time and the genetic fallacy Chapter 8 gave a transcendental argument against determinism – the conative transcendental argument – that did not proceed via a deontic leeway principle. The conative argument, however, was not a specifically epistemic argument. It was remarked in Chapter 8 that not even all epistemic transcendental arguments went via the principle of ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ – nor any cognate deontic leeway principle. I wish to give one such argument here: an argument I shall not endorse, but that I believe opens up a line of thought that the determinist nevertheless should find troubling. A central insight behind any epistemic transcendental argument is that for the determinist to be able to justify her position epistemically, it is necessary that at least some aspects of the adoption, articulation and defence of her position should have been determined by normative epistemic determinants: reasons, judgement, argument, insight, awareness. More plainly: for the determinist to be epistemically justified, her embrace of determinism should have been at least partly determined by

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epistemic justifiers. I take it that this is self-evident. But the content of determinism itself maintains that its adoption, articulation and defence is wholly, exclusively determined by the Big Bang and a finite set of natural laws, externally conceived. So, this argument goes, determinism cannot possess the reflexive epistemic justification it requires. The (radical, totalizing) externalist will simply oppose the first and second sentences of the previous paragraph – and claim, on that basis, that all else in that section begs the question. What I will have to say shortly has some relevance to this; but Part 1 of this book has already, exhaustively taken issue with this totalizing, eliminativist position. Aspects of one’s epistemic life may be accounted for externalistically, perhaps large aspects, but not all. And recall: we are concerned with epistemology, not metaphysics here. Further, we are concerned with the epistemology of that epistemology: not just the metaphysics of that epistemology. (The point made in Chapter 5, Section 5.3 to counter Alston and others’ attempted saving distinction – that between ‘being justified’ (the theoretical project) and the ‘activity of justifying a belief, showing it to be justified’ (the regulative project).) Of course, a proposition, belief or argument could be true (or valid), yet its truth/validity not be determined by any justifiers. The claim is that there is one, essential sense of ‘justification’ under which a proposition, belief or argument could not be justified were its adoption, articulation and defence not determined by any justifiers. This line of reasoning owes something to both the Direct and to the Source arguments for incompatibilism. It is still an epistemic transcendental argument, but one that does not appear to work via any deontic leeway principle. Should Frankfurt arguments be assumed to prevail, or should an ‘asymmetry’ position prove invulnerable to the counterarguments of Chapters 6 and 8, this argument would remain. To repeat: I do not endorse this argument (I fear it may be too powerful, for reasons given below). Nevertheless, I believe it raises large metaphysical challenges for the determinist.

The direct (source) epistemic transcendental argument 1. For the determinist to be epistemically justified, her embrace of determinism (its adoption, articulation and defence) must have been at least partly determined by epistemic justifiers. 2. The content of determinism itself requires that its adoption, articulation and defence was entirely determined by the Big Bang and a finite set of natural laws, externally conceived.

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3. The laws of nature were fixed 13.75 billion years ago. 4. The Big Bang was fixed 13.75 billion years ago. 5. 13.75 billion years ago, there were no epistemic determinants of anything anywhere in the universe. 6. So, the determinist cannot be epistemically justified in her embrace (adoption, articulation and defence) of determinism. In response to this argument, the most likely move for the determinist is to claim that her embrace of determinism is in some way both determined by the Big Bang and by normative epistemic determinants. Focus not on the details of such accounts, but at a more purely metaphysical level, ask how this can be: how can the normative epistemic properties that, reflexively, the determinist requires to have been the determinants of her advancing and inhabiting her position then coexist with the exclusively causal determination of her advancing and inhabiting her position? For example, which of these has priority? (Temporally, it is entirely clear which has priority.) Note that we are not here concerned with the specific details of some single, proprietary, epistemically externalist account of justification (Goldman, Nozick, Dretske, etc.), nor yet with similar, specific, fine-grained details of this or that compatibilist account of free will (Hobbes, Frankfurt, Fischer, etc.). We are concerned with the bigger view of codetermination that may be seen as underpinning these.

The bigger metaphysical picture In broad outline, the range of responses available to the determinist here will closely resemble those found in the structurally similar special science and mental causation literature as this developed from Descartes onwards – and in the previous chapter (after acknowledged reservations regarding the exclusion problem) I guardedly mentioned my own preferred option in that literature (emergentism, of a self: with attendant determination by that self in interaction with its reasons). Notice, though, that when the various positive responses to overdetermination have been advanced by anti-reductive philosophers of mind, science and metaphysics, they have been vigorously attacked by a large subset of those determinists who now have need of them in turn (see Endnote 9 at the end of this paragraph). How can normative epistemic properties determine adoption of the belief in determinism and this belief have been entirely determined by the Big Bang and the fundamental laws of nature? The problems which attend attempted solutions to the structurally similar problem in the philosophy

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of mind and special sciences include among them at least those of escaping epiphenomenalism (Davidson 1980),7 problems of empty, terminological evasion of the problem (Smart 1959)8 and the ‘Exclusion Problem’ (Kim 1989).9 Severe as they are when they appear in the philosophy of mind and special science literature, these and cognate problems become that much more severe when we factor in the temporal component intrinsic to determinism. To contrast our case with a stock special science example: it may already be difficult to make a river’s determining the erosion of its outer bank something that is metaphysically compatible with the quark-level determination that apparently competes for this role; but at least each of these putative determinants (river, quarks) operates at more or less the same time.10 Consider, though, our case. The content of determinism requires that the defence of this position (the arguments for, convictions about, articulation of and actions rationally consequent upon determinism) should all of them have been entirely determined by the Big Bang, thereby entirely fixed and immutable from the moment of that singularity, 13.75 billion years ago. But at that time, there were no normative epistemic properties determining anything at all: no reasons, etc., would determine anything anywhere for about 13.74 billion years. Those normative epistemic reasons (arguments, evidence), on the basis of which the determinist must claim to embrace and defend her position, are, according to the content of her own theory, things that, at the time that her theory’s adoption was determined, could not have been determinants of anything in the universe. So determinism must be without epistemic justification.

Objection: ‘The Direct Argument is parasitic on leeway incompatibilism’ One influential counter to the Direct Argument’s use of transfer principles has been addressed already in Chapter 6 (Section 6.6.3; Ravizza and others’ Frankfurt-style pre-emptive overdetermination arguments – such as ‘Erosion’). After Widerker (2002), a distinct challenge is that these arguments tacitly contain the principle of alternative possibilities/‘ought’ implies ‘can’ as a suppressed (framework) premise. This challenge is that the premise that there can be no (here) epistemic responsibility for events occurring 13.75 billion years ago invites the question: ‘why not?’ And the answer, this ‘parasitic’ criticism maintains, must be: because no-one could alter these things. It is questionable, however, whether this is a good objection to seeing this family of incompatibilist argumentation as being distinct from leeway

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incompatibilism. Haji’s (2008) response is that ‘fixity’ premises of this kind may be vindicated simply because the states of affairs they describe (laws, Big Bang) obtain independently of the existence of anyone – or, stated causally, that no-one is causally responsible for the existence of such states of affairs.11 McKenna (2008) notes that the fact that the Big Bang and the laws of nature were temporally prior to anyone existing at all – and further the fact that noone can produce a law of nature (or could produce a singularity) – seems relevant.12 A profound impossibility is enough to ground a philosophical argument; and as noted in Chapter 8, it is a philosophical argument that is being advanced here, not a ‘proof ’. On the determinist’s own views: (a) at the time of the Big Bang, no epistemic properties could have determined the determinist’s embrace of determinism; and (b) the determinist’s embrace of determinism was entirely determined at the time of the Big Bang. The determinist must maintain that all aspects of the defence and articulation of determinism were already and entirely determined billions of years prior to the existence of any epistemic determinants of anything in the universe – that is her thesis; it is not something imposed upon her. Whether or not this response is sufficient to overturn Widerker’s ‘parasitic’ objection, as a ‘wide source incompatibilist’ (one who wishes to defend leeway as well as source incompatibilism), I would be unfazed if in some deep sense a tacit reliance on leeway turned out to be contained somewhere within the direct/ source transcendental argument. Conceptual connections between source, leeway and ultimacy arguments for incompatibilism are undoubtedly present, albeit difficult to draw out; but these connections appear to go in more than one direction of dependency at once. I should be content were each such core motivation found to be as fundamental as each other.

The genetic fallacy objection A distinct, earlier response to the direct (source) transcendental argument is the contention that it embodies a genetic fallacy (e.g. Anscombe 1981: 226). The stock realist dismissal of the genetic fallacy is to distinguish a ‘logic of discovery’ (here: determination by the Big Bang) from a ‘logic of confirmation’ (here: current best arguments for determinism). The objection will be that it matters not how we come by our belief in determinism, it matters only that the belief is true, or the process by which we arrive at it is truth conducive (Anscombe herself uses the example of a reasoning process being valid).

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In this case, however, any such response does not appear to be an easy one to make good. Firstly, bear in mind the point emphasized especially in Chapters 5 and 7: we are here concerned with epistemology (that is, in this avowedly normative epistemic context, there is a limit to how ‘realist’ we can go in regard to drawing an epistemology/metaphysics distinction). Then realize that we are concerned with determinism as a totalizing thesis. The legitimate deployment of this realist distinction in other, more local contexts takes place against a backdrop of there being avowedly some normative epistemic properties: those resources with which we evaluate the quality of the logic of confirmation (those normative epistemic resources with which we decide whether the argument, however it came to pass, is a good one). These resources, though (to evaluate the logic of confirmation), were, according to determinism, themselves entirely determined many billions of years before any normative epistemic properties were acting to determine anything. So, when Kekulé discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule upon waking from a reverie of a snake seizing its own tail, the origin of his position in a non-rational process (his dream) did not impugn his discovery because the outcome product of this process of discovery (his published hypothesis about benzene’s shape) is subject to its own normative epistemic checking procedures – those of the organic chemists in his scientific community. They didn’t check Kekulé’s discovery by dreaming about it themselves, in turn. We (if realists) waive any right to criticize or subject to normative epistemic scrutiny the genesis of an idea, argument or theory, because, by hypothesis, we have sufficient freedom from non-rational (causally-genetic) determinations at the point of outcome: in assessing this idea, argument or theory for truth (or validity, or evidence, etc.). However, this state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the case in point – that of determinism. Both the origin of the hypothesis (‘discovery’) and its testing ground in argument, reasons, etc. (‘confirmation’), are envisaged as having been as determined as each other, which is to say wholly determined, by just the same singularity, 13.74 billion years before normative epistemic determinants were determining anything on earth.13 This points up the fact that, in contrast to such piecemeal and workaday examples as Kekulé’s dream, there are complete metaphysical positions which, given their content, are vulnerable to being reflexively undermined due to the all-encompassing nature of their own claims about their determined origins. That is, there are ‘totalizing’ metaphysical positions for which the distinction between the logic of discovery and the logic of confirmation is unavailable. The most notorious of these is relativism – it exemplifies most of what is wrong with

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the rest.14 To claim a complete social determination of all human thought requires that this view (relativism) in turn should have been socially determined – and the peritrope problems for that position, familiar to us from the Theaetetus onwards, emerge. These problems are unsolvable by this and similar positions. Making such peritrope arguments into problems for (here: social) determinism is not a question-begging contrivance of the opponent of such positions, but something that develops out of the content of the target position (determinism, relativism, eliminativism) itself. I have defended this view for these other cases elsewhere and at length (Lockie 2003b, c, 2006).

Objection: The direct transcendental argument is much too powerful (the abiogenesis objection) The strongest objection, an objection I shall not accede to, but which is strong enough to stop me from simply, wholeheartedly endorsing this direct (source) transcendental argument, is just that it is too powerful – that it must go wrong somewhere. This, however, is a wholly negative counterargument; were it to be conceded, it would nonetheless leave undiagnosed where the Direct Argument goes wrong, and thus acknowledging the force of this counterargument would continue to leave work for the determinist to do: it would continue to be a challenge for determinists to state how they would resist this argument (see remarks under ‘the bigger metaphysical picture’ above). But a case can be made that it is too powerful. Life emerged perhaps 3.7 billion years ago, and there were no biological properties 13.75 billion years ago. Yet the conjunction of physical determinism with the thesis that there are true biological determinants of occurrences over the last 3.7 billion years is not obviously problematic – or so this objection goes. If true biological determination can emerge out of a physically deterministic system, then why cannot true epistemic determination emerge likewise? Well, a caution here: there is no analogical extension of the above argument to commit its defender to the view that true biological determination cannot emerge out of a physicalistically deterministic system through abiogenesis – in fact, quite the contrary. Rather, it is plausibly an analogical extension of the above argument that after true biological determination indeed unproblematically emerges out of a physicalistically deterministic system, the era of true physical determinism must then be seen as having come to an end (physical determinism, mind, not physical determination). A structural analogue of this argument would plausibly require us to argue that modern biologists can unproblematically

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retain abiogenesis, but that they may do so only by insisting that after life’s emergence, the presence of biological determinations in the universe prevents physical determinism (a totalizing thesis) from continuing to be true. That is what a commitment to true biological determination and Alexander’s Principle (or something like it) requires. But is this entailment of the argument itself quite damaging enough? Well, maintaining the latter line is not by any means absurd. As indicated, reductionism may make things difficult for many special sciences, including the biological sciences (the classical emergentists accordingly had ‘life’ as one of their major emergent strata). The other great emergent strata15 (chemical, biological, perhaps non-agential psychological) may indeed conflict with physical determinism – the special science literature may be seen precisely as identifying that conflict.16 It may also be noted that the properties of life – homeostasis, replication, metabolism, etc. – do not obviously include anything resembling full-scale agency, and that it is agency above all that makes things difficult for the determinist. Agency, if it is anything, is a power to determine action. And agency fulfils a normative role (cf. Chapter 7, Section 7.2.2). Accordingly, agency appears to implacably conflict with (compete with) any thesis as to physical determinism’s exhaustive prior determination of action. Whether this argument is over-powerful, then, is controversial; but overpowerful or not, one should expect a bigger metaphysical picture from the determinists in response to the reflexive problems such arguments present regarding source, ultimacy and the emergence of the normative from the non-normative in a world exhaustively fixed prior to the existence of the normative.

10.5 Opacity and presupposition The claim of the previous chapter was that the freedom needed for epistemic (and other) responsibility is a freedom of self-determinism. This position may now be related to the material considered in Chapter 8 (Section 8.3.2) on transparency versus opacity in argumentation. From Chapter 8, we saw that for the compatibilist, ‘able’, ‘unable’, ‘avoid’ and ‘alter’ – all the modal verbs of intentional achievement, etc. – are transsubstitutionally opaque, analogous to the propositional attitudes in the philosophy of language. For the incompatibilist, able, unable, etc., are transparent. That is, for the incompatibilist, of course if you are powerless to change the laws

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and start-up conditions – given that these would need to be different to perform an action p – then you are powerless to bring about p. For the compatibilist, just as Lois Lane can want to kiss Superman but not want to kiss Clark Kent, so I can have the ability to perform an action p, yet not have the ability to change the laws or conditions that would in fact need to be changed to permit this to happen. Are these two possibilities – transparency and opacity – the only ones available to us? Consider again the neo-Moorean argument given in Chapter 8. Some philosophers (Wright 2002; Davies 2004) oppose this argument by claiming that warrant doesn’t transfer from M1 (‘Here is one hand’) and M2 (‘If this is a hand, then I am not a brain in a vat’) through to M3 (‘I am not a brain in a vat’). Others (Beebee 2001) claim that M1–M2 may well offer warrant for M3 as far as it goes, but that statements like M3 are tacit, framework presuppositions required for the warranted utterance of statements like M1. Since M3 is presupposed by M1, M1 can hardly then be support for M3 – on pain of begging the question. In either such case, it is held that we can’t use Moore’s M1 and M2 to constructively argue for M3. But if we take something like the Beebee line, we can say M3 is presupposed in the proposition asserted in M1 – indeed, in pretty much any proposition, p, one cares to assert. Denying M3 is not then in any obvious sense an option. M3 is indispensable – though not ‘warranted’ from the warrant possessed by statements like M1 in any conventional, constructive (say, evidence-based) sense of ‘warrant’. M3 is not, however, in any sense thereby unwarranted – indeed, it is a presupposition of other things (any other things, like beliefs about hands) having warrant. M3 must be presupposed yet cannot be proved (at least, in any sense of ‘proof ’ continuous with the sense in which M1 is provable); or so a version of this argument would go. Now consider those who object to the transfer principle in the consequence argument: 2. Necessarily, given a complete state of the world at some time in the remote past and all the laws of nature, then p, for any arbitrary p. 3. We are powerless to avoid or alter the remote past or the laws of nature. 4. We are powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p. The libertarian, along with the soft determinist, takes as a given that we can do something that experience, ordinary language, common sense, pragmatics, etc., would hold we can do – a ‘p’, any arbitrary p (raise one’s hand). This is like Moore’s ‘here is one hand’. But unlike the compatibilist, the conventional libertarian does make a neo-Moorean move: employing closure to argue

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that determinism (or, for a more sophisticated version of the argument, the determinism/indeterminism dilemma) is false (or a false dilemma). In the older, now somewhat unfashionable tradition, the libertarian did this as a result of the data of his own experience as of freedom. Again there are parallels with Moore – just as Johnson refuted Berkeley ‘thus!’ and kicked his stone, so he held ‘of course the will is free and there’s an end ont’!’ And just as for Moore’s argument, with transparency accepted, one philosopher’s modus ponens may be another’s modus tollens: the hard determinist will argue from 2 and 3 to 4. In contrast to these ‘transparent’ incompatibilists, the compatibilist denies that we can transfer warrant from our motivated opposition to 4 (namely, the warrant we have to think we are not powerless to avoid or alter p, for any arbitrary p) to conclude by modus tollens the refutation of 2. No less than this, the compatibilist denies that we can transfer warrant from our motivated endorsement of 2 to conclude by modus ponens that we are powerless as in 4. These argumentative contexts are opaque, says the compatibilist. The warrant we have for 4 is (say, with Hobbes) that we can ‘do as we will’. The warrant for 2 is our best theory of physics – or was once, when physics was assumed to be deterministic. The point is, deterministic or indeterministic, the standpoint of physics is external. The objection to the transparency incompatibilists made by the opacity compatibilists is to deny that we can argue from Campbell’s ‘inner standpoint’ to a substantive claim about his ‘standpoint of external observation’17; that is, to deny that my experience as of freedom, embedded within a context of justification answerable to the inner standpoint, can urge a substantive claim about physics, embedded within a context of justification answerable to the standpoint of external observation. Admittedly, the reverse kind of parochialism – of enthroning one standpoint above the other – is far more common: enthroning the theoretical standpoint, the standpoint of external observation, over the inner, or ‘practical’ standpoint. This direction of parochialism is now more common even than when C. A. Campbell wrote: if determinists could provide convincing theoretical arguments against a free will of this [incompatibilist self-determinist] kind, the awkward predicament would ensue that man has to deny as a theoretical being what he has to assert as a practical being. Now I think that the determinist ought to be a good deal more worried about this than he usually is. He seems to imagine that a strong case on general theoretical grounds is enough to prove that the ‘practical’ belief in free will, even if inescapable for us as practical beings, is mere illusion. But in fact it proves nothing of the sort. There is no reason whatever why a belief that we find

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ourselves obliged to hold qua practical beings should be required to give way before a belief which we find ourselves obliged to hold qua theoretical beings; or, for that matter, vice versa. All that the theoretical arguments of Determinism can prove … is that there is a radical conflict between the theoretical and the practical sides of man’s nature, an antinomy at the very heart of the self. And this is a state of affairs with which no-one can easily rest satisfied. (Campbell 1957: 158–79)

Campbell has, to my mind rightly, identified two things here that other, lesser philosophers often hold separately but not conjointly. He holds with the ‘transparent’ incompatibilists that propositions like the denial of 4, vouchsafed to us by his inner standpoint (the practical realm), do conflict with propositions like 2, vouchsafed to us by his standpoint of external observation (the theoretical realm). But he also holds with the ‘opaque’ compatibilists that these propositions do indeed embed within radically different standpoints (perspectives, schemata, Gestalten). I do not see how we can deny either of these claims – except on the most unprincipled grounds: of effacing one or other apparent truth merely for the sake of making our position defensively less exposed. Those philosophers who are convinced, on other grounds, of the correctness of some one particular, proprietary, compatibilist analysis (say, the Hobbesian, or one of its successors) will have reason to carry that ingenious formulation forward like a shield and just stand fast upon the claim of opacity; but no-one else will have reason to accept the claims of opacity and then simply, irenically, rest with these claims. Specifically, the separately warranted beliefs that you have freedom (not 4) and that determinism is true (2) absolutely will not, in and of themselves, give you any reason to believe in opacity. These twin beliefs will only give you reason to agonize over the fact that the consequence argument shows that two positions you wish, on distinct grounds, separately to believe in appear nevertheless to be incompatible. Equally, however, it seems wretchedly unsatisfactory to argue from the utter indispensability of freedom – which datum is embedded within the practical, inner standpoint – to some positive view (we yet know not what) about, what, indeterminism in physics? Neither indeterminism nor determinism in physics? Some novel position on the conservation of mass–energy? It seems scarcely less unsatisfactory to argue by contraposition from the dilemma of indeterminism/ determinism to some ‘hard’ successor view of incompatibilist non-libertarianism. The practical/theoretical Gestalten are just radically unalike: the schemata their propositions embed within do not permit easy alignment with each other, and we must be cautious about drawing any swift conclusions in such cases. It is

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unsurprising that some regard this as more than a philosophical problem, but as an unsolvable mystery (Chomsky 1988: 151–2, 2004: 382–3, 2016: 53–4 and Ch. 4; McGinn 1993; Kim 1989 – e.g. 96–7; Nagel 1986; van Inwagen 2000; Kant 1933: 3rd Antinomy). If we cannot solve a McGinn/van Inwagen mystery, it is surely at least incumbent on us to try to explain why we can’t solve such – why it is a mystery. These two standpoints represent very major, intertwined groupings of schemata: practical versus theoretical. Propositions that are intelligible only inasmuch as they embed within the one grouping of schemata are then compared with propositions that embed only within the other grouping of schemata: mystery results. The standpoint of external observation answers to a different Gestalt to the inner standpoint – of practical freedom.18 This, as far as it goes, starts to resemble the position of certain other ‘two-standpoint’ philosophers: that we note the different (opaque) contexts represented by the practical and the theoretical standpoint. But all too often is added the rider that we should stop worrying about conflict since each of our premises belongs to a different sphere (whilst at the same time pretty clearly according the theoretical sphere a metaphysical or other priority).19 I think that this, as a positive view, is far too irenic, too quietist, too complacent. It is true that the internal and the external answer to different constraints, but we can’t help drawing the alethic consequences and we aren’t wrong to draw these consequences. We see the conflict – it hurts. Other ‘two-standpoint’ positions have tended to be compatibilist – mine is not. But I do not think we can go to a conventional, constructive, ‘modus tollens’ libertarian incompatibilism either. I want to suggest, at least at this stage in intellectual history, that we be presuppositional (Kant’s, though not my ‘regulative’) rather than ‘constructive’ (Kant: ‘constitutive’) incompatibilists. We have to embrace freedom, and we note that this presupposes an ability to do otherwise than determinism would have it. This isn’t an optional standpoint, one that is ‘useful’, say, for us to choose to adopt (that we might equally set aside). But we can hardly claim thereby to have a constitutive proof of determinism’s refutation. Determinism’s acceptance or positive refutation answers to a different Gestalt (standpoint, context, perspective) than that of freedom: theoretical rather than practical, external rather than inner. It’s not that we can then, irenically, leave it at that; this is not an acceptable state of affairs – it’s not as if we can say, ‘So there’s no conflict then,’ and carry on without metaphysical distress. Just as for the Moorean epistemic example, there is conflict; but the separate premises do answer to different schemata. We

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must presuppose freedom within the practical Gestalt. We must then address the forced choice between determinism and indeterminism within the almost incommensurable theory structures of natural science (sometimes physics, sometimes other sciences, with no surety that these physical, psychological, etc., schemata are themselves compatible). We note the conflict between the thesis of freedom and that of determinism – and indeed physical indeterminism. We note also that the content of these theses – of freedom, of determinism/ indeterminism – themselves are embedded within separate schemata; and so we cannot even be certain as to the degree of implacability of this conflict. This position is that of presuppositional incompatibilism. Abandoning freedom, radical freedom, is not an option; and an ersatz, reductive construction thereof does not avail us. But our presuppositions within the practical sphere cannot claim the status of positive, constitutive results within the theoretical, external standpoint – for theory construction within this standpoint answers to, and embeds within, quite other schemata. This is transcendental presupposition. We are practically free – free within the domain of appearances (all possible appearances) – with a failure to appreciate this point leading to unfortunate passages like that offered by Grünbaum in Chapter 8.20 Moreover, all appearances transcendentally presuppose more – though they cannot constructively prove more. Epistemology aims at truth (Chapter 5): it is intrinsically truth directed. And truth is transparent: we can, philosophically, follow the arguments, and see the trouble we are in. Even in recognizing the fact that practical freedom and theoretical determinism/indeterminism embed within different schemata, we can’t rest with this – any more in the conative than in the epistemic case. Moore’s epistemic argument shows us something is profoundly wrong with regard either to our presumed knowledge of hands or our presumed possibility of philosophical doubt. And the consequence argument does likewise with regard to our necessary presupposition of freedom in the teeth of indeterminism and determinism alike. We can’t bracket a clear alethic consequence on grounds that an epistemic practice or an ordinary language usage or a proprietary formula has it that transfer fails. I can see the validity of the Moore argument – so can you. It has no epistemic operators in it – we are (rightly) reading these into it afterwards, because that is its philosophical context; but alethically it is valid, and we can (and must) see that, too. In just such a way there is still a mystery surrounding free will and determinism. But recognizing something of why a mystery arises is progress, too, of a sort.

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10.6 The issue of transcendental realism versus idealism Transcendental or Epicurean or peritrope arguments are negative arguments – they apply against positions. A transcendental argument is a type of intellectual jujitsu. Its characteristics are as follows: 1. It must always be against an extant or possible position. 2. This target position must be a deflationary position. 3. This target must be a sweeping, overarching, ‘totalizing’ position. In responding to a transcendental argument, there will then be either of two basic escape strategies available: to make the target of the transcendental argument an irreflexive position – one that doesn’t apply to itself – or to make it less deflationary than it appears at first. We saw that the latter position – trying to make determinism softer and less deflationary – ends up with determinism regressively chased up a ladder of transcendental arguments until it faces a forced choice between hard libertarianism and hard, futile determinism. The former position, though – that we should make determinism irreflexive – is hopeless. Even if one only has enough freedom to take epistemic responsibility for the argument as to one’s lack of freedom, the property of freedom comes into the world. For there to be even just a ‘final ought’, a ‘last word’, there has to be a space for reason, and the freedom needed to inhabit that space is ineliminable. This engages more generally with the eliminativist options of embracing an ‘existential’ (totalizing) rejection of deontology (for the ethical transcendental argument) or internalism (for the epistemic transcendental argument). Consider again arguments like Grünbaum’s in Chapter 8. Of course we can argue that this or that badly damaged moral agent had only an attenuated degree of freedom, or indeed no freedom, and thus must not be judged harshly – or perhaps at all. Of course such agents may not be fully responsible for their actions, and may at best be subject to a consequentialist ethics. But what of the situation of we who are reaching this conclusion? Or being urged by argument to reach this conclusion? As for ethics, so for epistemology: one may point to the limits to any Cartesian picture of our mental powers, note our lack of ‘cognitive voluntarism’ and recommend a strongly externalist epistemology. But what of we, the epistemologists, cognitive scientists and the like, who are arguing for that claim? The last ‘ought’ – that we ought to embrace externalism, that we would be irrational not to – is ineliminable and, in a certain crucial sense, prior. To argue for a strong externalism, one always needs the ‘last word’, the last ought. It is easy to argue for a (very strong) externalism as long as one forgets this.

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The determinist must be arguing for a totalizing externalism. In doing this, the externalist will end up as the ‘subject who fails to take account of himself ’ (Schopenhauer 1966: 13). The last ought is ineliminable, and ought implies can. Those who resist these transcendental arguments have sometimes approached the points being expressed here without realizing how much they are conceding. So, Anscombe responded thus to C. S. Lewis’s attempts to develop a transcendental argument against what he called ‘naturalism’ and we would call determinism: [Of the ‘naturalistic hypothesis’] … you say ‘But if this were so it would destroy the distinction between valid and invalid reasoning’. But how? … What can you mean by ‘valid’ beyond what would be indicated by the explanation you would give for distinguishing between valid and invalid, and what in the naturalistic hypothesis prevents that explanation from being given and from meaning what it does? (Anscombe 1981: 226, emphasis in original)21

What the determinist has needed all along to escape the transcendental arguments is this autonomy of reason; a normative epistemic and ethical autonomy from Anscombe and Lewis’s ‘naturalism’ – the domain of natural law. We saw earlier that the determinist’s right to such an autonomy may be queried – such a passage raises the spectre of overdetermination problems – but grant it. The aim of these chapters was to develop a transcendental argument for freedom, not necessarily against determinism. A radical, necessary independence, an autonomy of purely internally characterizable reason, must be conceded, and not as an optional concession, but as all that stands between determinism and incoherence. This autonomy of reason is not, as it were, at the level of empirical hypothesis or constructive, constitutive analysis. It must be presupposed, as something prior to doing our naturalistic empirical sciences – our physics, our cognitive science – or our philosophy. This idea of presupposition raises serious questions as to whether these transcendental arguments, and this freedom they defend, is something we can claim to be transcendentally real (Kant: per rationes essendi); or whether instead the preconditions for this freedom are wholly beyond our ken, and all we can conclude from these arguments is that we have to act under the supposition of such freedom, making its presupposition a (Kantian) regulative condition of rational thought, but not an object of knowledge (Kant: per rationes cognoscendi). I think a good deal remains to be said in the constructive articulation of the self-determinist viewpoint as empirical psychology – a psychology of emergentist, holistic, anti-reductive agency – in which the self and its reasons are irreducible to associative non-rational components: irreducible to Hobbes’s

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‘action of some other immediate agent without’. Nevertheless, whilst prepared to defend the truth of such a picture as (perhaps very high-level) empirical psychology, I wonder whether it will be adequate to address the more severe, more purely metaphysical problems of free will and determinism: problems of overdetermination, of exclusion, of conservation, of ‘downwards causation’. Perhaps it will be adequate to this task; but were this positive programme unable, ultimately, to solve the biggest metaphysical problems, still the negative point deriving from the transcendental arguments would remain: we have to presuppose freedom. To say freedom is something that is transcendentally presupposed is not to say, with the great family of reductive compatibilisms, that such a freedom is not radically incompatibilist, is really a construction, a variant of the various formulations of ‘doing as we can’, etc. Regardless of the specific content of the views they develop, the activities of the physicists and philosophers in their exercise of reason, alike transcendentally presuppose freedom. Yet the free exercise of reason in doing, say, physics, one of its loveliest products, can yield a belief in a purely externally characterizable determinism or (positive) indeterminism, either of which appears complete in itself, and incompatible with freedom. Can it be made intelligible how the freedom we must rationally presuppose could coexist with the universe physics tells us there is – whether determined or not? This is a very tough question, one to which Kant, in the end, replied in the negative: Nothing is left but defence – that is, to repel the objections of those who profess to have seen more deeply into the essence of things and on this ground audaciously declare freedom to be impossible. (Kant 1964: PA 459)

Can it be made intelligible how an anti-associationist empirical psychology of emergent self-determined holism could be sufficient for the freedom that this chapter’s, and this book’s, transcendental arguments compel us to assume? Perhaps: the positive account given in this work travels some distance in that direction (and certainly I take it to be true as far as it goes), but, with Kant, I doubt whether it will go far enough. Can we, however, make intelligible how the requirements of freedom might be a kind of rationally necessary illusion? To the extent they were necessary, they would not be an illusion.

Notes Introduction 1

Cf. on the one hand Cohen (1981) and Dennett (1981), and on the other Bealer (1996a,b), Pust (2001) and BonJour (1998). Though there may be much to admire in these distinct arguments, much in them I would not endorse – see e.g. Lockie (2014b).

Chapter 1 1

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Throughout, as should be obvious, I am concerned with ‘epistemic’ rationality (see Foley, passim – e.g. 1993 – for more on this point). Over and above this point, there is the issue of how far and to what extent any philosophical concept of rationality exhausts the open-ended and disjunctive concept of rationality per se; and also to what extent any philosophical concept of rationality may be distinguished from epistemic justification. I shall talk more of these issues anon, but to state my stance very early on: I make no claims that the notion of rationality adumbrated here and in what follows exhausts the concept of rationality per se (and I doubt if any laundering of the concept or other philosophical research project will do this); and I make no claims that it corresponds to any ‘ordinary language’ conception of rationality. I also identify the sense of epistemic rationality I am operating with far more closely with epistemic justification per se than is currently fashionable, and am unapologetic about doing so. ‘What the old mind cannot do – and this is a big limitation of animal cognition – is to make decisions by reasoning about future consequences. That now leaves us with the question of whether epistemic rationality is a useful concept when talking about the old mind, and I rather think it is not’ (Evans 2014: 138). Many accept but many deny this. For one example of the latter, Ryan (2003: 48) distinguishes ‘(1) the view that we have epistemic obligations, (2) epistemic deontologism, and (3) internalism’. Be clear: no one should doubt that some philosophers use (1) the language of epistemic or ethical obligation (‘oughts’, etc.) without drawing on (2) the full deontological framework (OIC, etc.) underpinning these terms. Even more indisputable is (3) the fact that there are numbers of nondeontological (pure access, or mentalist) internalists. I, however, do elide Ryan’s (1),

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Notes (2) and (3); and I argue in this chapter and (especially) Chapters 2 and 6 that I am right to elide these. There is philosophical disagreement but no confusion here; and the issues are not merely stipulative or (insubstantially) definitional. It is noteworthy that the thin deontological conception of the internalist–externalist distinction was developed as much through the work of externalists (e.g. Alston, Plantinga and Goldman) as through the work of internalists (e.g. Chisholm, Foley and early BonJour). Foley and Plantinga simply embrace this notion of our distinction, or something like it, from the standpoint of (respectively) a proponent and an opponent of such an internalism; and Alston’s arguments were crucial in motivating this distinction (see Chapter 2). Chisholm endorses something very like this notion at a metaphilosophical level, and was the single biggest influence on its modern development; but his specific first-order account (his very complex and involved introspectionist foundationalism) is precisely not such a ‘thin’ concept. Goldman and BonJour (and many others) say things that clearly indicate their endorsement of such an account of the distinction at some high-order level, yet say other things elsewhere (particularly Goldman) that are not compatible with attributing to them a consistent deployment of such a thin, not purely access-based account, especially at a first-order level. Early BonJour (1985: 8, 41–5) accepted this deontic view of internalism, but by 2003 (e.g. pp. 175–7) had recanted – for reasons we consider in the chapter to come. Some philosophers seem to think that internalists (or at least some internalists – Goldman (2009) calls them ‘existential’ internalists, Weinberg (2006) calls them ‘strict’ or ‘absolute’ internalists) maintain that all justifiers are internalist: such that if any justifiers were externalist, internalism, or at least this kind of internalism, would stand refuted (e.g. Greco 2005: 258). I should like to regard this as a straw man, but inconveniently for me, BonJour (2010: 35) appears to embrace this position (though see BonJour 1998: 128–9). However, it is exceptionally and uncharacteristically strong. I am in widely shared company in repudiating it as in any way definitive of our distinction – and certainly as definitive of my position. A strong point worth registering against mentalism as such is that it motivelessly requires us to employ a metaphysical criterion for what is meant to be a key epistemological concept (cf. BonJour 2010). Wu rejects consciousness as central to an account of attention. For Wu, attention is selection for action – including (especially) mental action. Of course, one famous perspectivist is at least substantially an externalist: Ernest Sosa. However, (a) Sosa’s perspectivism is plausibly an internalist component of his account and (b) Sosa’s perspectivism is only terminologically related to the matters addressed here. Richard Foley (e.g. 1993) is a much better example of the type of strongly agent-relative, reasons-based, justificatory perspectivism I am referring to here (see also Alston 1989b). See Lockie (2016a,b) for more on perspectivism and deontology.

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A minor disanalogy with ethics: the various specific consequentialist theories in ethics differ more over which goal state they specify – utility, preferences or interests – whereas the various specific externalist theories in epistemology agree rather more on the goal state they specify (generally truth, of beliefs, with only occasional diversions into pragmatic utility) and disagree more in the measure of goal maximization they employ to gauge whether this state has been achieved (statistical, counterfactual, causal, etc.). In what follows, I shall use ‘truth’, ‘truth conduciveness’, ‘truth maximization’, etc., as marker terms for the externalist goal state, without regard to the possibility of disputes elsewhere about the specifics of this goal state. (Note that these dummy terms can anyway be allowed to include under their auspices the notion of error minimization, just as the utilitarian’s goal state is tacitly taken to include minimization of disutility as well as maximization of utility.) 10 Cf. Kornblith’s (1983) objections to Boyd and Goldman – that we cannot identify justified belief with reliably regulated belief. With suitable (e.g. time-indexed) provisos, I maintain we can assimilate it to diligently regulated belief, of which more in the next chapter. 11 Putting matters thus enables us to make best sense of early Feldman’s view that the heart of the internalism/externalism controversy concerns whether epistemic value is sui generis (Feldman 1985). Chisholm also adhered to this sui generis view (Chisholm 1988, 1986a: 52). Nottelmann, in contrast, attempts to analyse his basic deontic notion (epistemic blameworthiness), noting of the analysans that the need for it ‘to be non-deontic … should be obvious. If not, no analytical progress would have been made. [Epistemic blameworthiness] would then be flatly circular or analyse epistemic blameworthiness in terms of an equally mysterious deontic notion’ (Nottelmann 2008: 79); later objecting (2013: 2239) that the ‘DCEJ [deontic conception of epistemic justification] must deviate from mainstream epistemology in regarding EJ [epistemic justification] as a non-instrumental good [i.e. good in itself].’ I am solidly on early Feldman and Chisholm’s side here, seeing this as being, at least since Descartes, very much mainstream epistemology. 12 Ryan (2003) rejects OIC – as do Bergmann (2006), Hieronymi (2008), Feldman (2001) and Owens (2000). It is somewhat surprising that Bergmann, the externalist, rejects this principle since, as indicated, it is the classic modus tollens bridging principle to enable the externalist dismissal of a deontic conception of epistemic value – through first rejecting the doxastic freedom requirement of the ‘can’. Ryan (like Steup) is a compatibilist about epistemic freedom, and given how relatively easy it is to defend a conception of freedom, epistemic or otherwise, if one is prepared to embrace compatibilism, it is likewise surprising to see the deontologist Ryan (but not Steup) reject OIC. (Hieronymi’s compatibilism is of a neo-Strawsonian variety and may be supposed to have certain special features thereby.)

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13 It should be made clear that this is not intended as a contentful, first-order theory of justification – not in thumbnail sketch as given here, and not as fleshed out and defended in later chapters. For an excellent exemplar of one specific, contentful epistemic theory that is a species of thin deontological account, consider Foley (1993). 14 Deontological approaches are, by some epistemologists, taken to be approaches that are governed by rules. This is incorrect. Deontological approaches are those that embrace sui generis obligations or duties. Being rules-based is neither necessary nor sufficient for deontology. 15 There may be indispensable sine qua non rational principles to some extent, but I suspect these are more for the psychologists than the philosophers to discover (a variable bridgehead, certainly – that’s just a neo-Lucretian argument that you can abandon some rational principles, but not all). Both the Vygotskian tradition in cultural psychology and the Bartlettian tradition in social–cognitive psychology indicate how far from a Meno slave boy are actual, culturally distinct humans from possessing what philosophers would think of as a ‘fixed bridgehead’ of rational principles (e.g. modus ponens: Bartlett 1932; Cole and Scribner 1974; Vygotsky 1978; Lockie 2016a,b). 16 A more technically sophisticated argument than this, defending not only the conclusion, but the OIC premise, is the so-called Anderson–Kanger proof (Anderson 1957; Prior 1957: 140–5). Martin (2009) attempts (I think unsuccessfully) to qualify their conclusion. 17 For an example of a quite brilliant thinker who nevertheless seems to embrace a motiveless access constraint, consider Alston (e.g. 1985). 18 Etymologically, the root term ‘justification’ has deontic connotations from the off, but I am using it neutrally here to mean ‘pertaining to value’, ‘normatively’ or ‘axiologically’. 19 Very much in keeping with this reified approach to deontology, Owens even attempts what might be called a ‘superlative blame’ manoeuvre, claiming: ‘We rightly blame people for things over which they have no control.’ He tries to claw back from the obvious objections thus: ‘but it does not follow that we are entitled to punish people for things over which they have no control’ (Owens 2000: 126). One wants to ask of such ‘blame’ whether it is a wheel that turns yet does no work. If it does some work, call this ‘punishment’ or no, the obvious objections look to resurface (cf. also Owens 2000: 83–4, 141, 149).

Chapter 2 1

Objective and subjective duty because we are here dealing with a response to an objection to ethical/epistemic deontology; shortly, we will generalize this response

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to a distinction between the subjective and objective without any restriction to duties. I note this because there are clear problems with a (strong) notion of objective duty – at least for one who embraces OIC and seeks after more than an account of the good – cf. remarks about ‘superlative oughts’ in the codicil to the last chapter. Goldman subsequently considers the application of his interpretation of this principle to a specimen ‘rightness criterion’ from the internalist camp – and he chooses as his specimen Richard Foley. He objects that the subjectivism of a ‘Foley rationality’ approach ‘makes Foley’s approach ill suited to the objectivist, nonrelativistic spirit of our entire framework’ (Goldman 2009: 28). But this section has argued such a subjectivism is and must be a feature of any deontically internalist account. What then becomes of Goldman’s claim that ‘this point should be equally acceptable to both internalism and externalism’? Against an internalist of Foley’s stamp, I’d suggest this comes worryingly close to begging the question. Pettit and Brennan (1986) refer to this state of affairs in ethics as one in which the consequentialist conception of the good is ‘calculatingly elusive’ or (more strongly) ‘calculatingly vulnerable’. A common response to this objection (in its many forms) is to look for auxiliary rules – ‘rules of thumb’ – perhaps (Smith 1988) the rule to work from expected utility, or perhaps obedience to the rules of common morality. We will not discuss these responses here; noting, however, that whatever may be said in favour of them on their own terms, there is reason to doubt they will be adequate rebuttals of this point. Two objections that are well discussed in the literature are, firstly, that an expected consequentialism is precisely not a form of consequentialism. A ‘bounded’ restriction of the agent’s justificatory status to expected consequences is motivated by an OIC deontic limit on the grounds for normative appraisal – cf. Clifford’s (1999: 1) judgement on his ship owner: whether a given decision is justified is decided before the consequences are in. Secondly, as regards auxiliary rules/rules of thumb: the objection is made that these lead to regress (Bales 1971; Goldman 1980; Brink 1986; Smith 1988). This is a familiar objection to ‘mentalist’ conceptions of internalism (e.g. Conee and Feldman 2001). Simply put: even exclusively mental justifiers may still be massively inaccessible. I shall use this family of contrast terms strictly as explicated here, and have myself been confused by other authors’ unexplicated usages. Note that this distinction is not to be assimilated to Sosa’s animal versus reflective knowledge – an unrelated distinction that it precedes by many decades. Goldman’s ‘strong versus weak’ justification is clearly somewhere in the vicinity of our distinction (though Goldman (1988: F.N 1) distinguishes that distinction from this). However, I consider the ‘strong versus weak’ distinction to be confusing and ill-formed, accompanied as it is by stipulative and unmotivated entailment claims (e.g. that

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‘strong’ entails ‘weak’ – Goldman 1988: 56); claims that represent what I have (in this chapter) entitled ‘halo effects’. There is a double dissociation between the internal and the external success notions in epistemology. Any terminology which obscures the radical nature of that dissociation is to be regretted. 6 The ‘Gordian’, meta-epistemic conclusions of this chapter are conclusions that many epistemologists seem to approach, only at the last moment to veer away. Foley (e.g. 2004) is the one great stand-alone exception here, and I am right glad to acknowledge my debt to him. 7 I have corrected throughout ‘eradicable’ to ‘ineradicable’, as Nottelmann has confirmed (personal communication) that these are typos. 8 Note that I don’t define thin deontologism in terms of blamelessness (cf. remarks on Bergmann in Chapter 1, Section 1.1.3, as well as other remarks in Chapter 5). My deontologically justified subject has typically worked hard for his justificatory status – for instance, to the point where he could be commended for this. But certainly he could be (radically) wrong – conceivably because of ineradicable beliefs. Note also that most justified beliefs (in the epistemic sense at issue) are not ‘punctate’ (e.g. indivisible, sui generis – say, biologically ‘ineradicable’). Usually, even if objectively false, they are a product of articulated reasoning, inferential relations and complex argument. Such argument is (significantly) a cultural–cognitive product, and the beliefs that eventuate from it may indeed be ‘eradicated’ by further argument or diachronic dialectic, albeit not necessarily for an objectively true belief in turn. 9 Newton’s justified false beliefs about physics offer us a clear example whereby, pace Nottelmann, internalist justification is anything but cheaply earned. 10 I mean: the theory advanced by Theaetetus in the Theaetetus (187b), not the theory advanced by Plato in the Theaetetus.

Chapter 3 1

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There I contend that indirect, intentionally false belief formation (position 3) is, however, greatly more common. In epistemology (that is, to set aside the distinct literature concerning the alleged paradoxes of self-deception), not very many doxastic involuntarists maintain that direct belief-voluntarism is conceptually incoherent; most maintain that it is (profoundly) empirically false. I maintain that (at least in its stronger forms) it is atypical in non-clinical populations and/or subclinically dissociative syndromes and is anyway paradigmatically unjustified. In a tracing case, the person may be culpable or commendable for an action (/ cognition) even if he, in virtue of his character, could not have done otherwise at the time of the action (or here, final process of belief formation) provided that earlier free choices of his which ‘trace back’ to this led to the development of

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his determining character – to himself as he is now. Bergmann and Greco each (separately) see the tracing argument (though neither uses that term) as counting against epistemic internalism (one assumes access internalism): ‘because current blameworthiness can depend on past blameworthiness and past blameworthiness isn’t always accessible, I am not guaranteed to be able to tell on reflection alone whether or not I am currently blameworthy’. (Bergmann 2006: 93; and see Greco 2005: 261). Point 1: I don’t need to be ‘guaranteed to be able to tell on reflection alone whether or not I am currently blameworthy.’ As emphasized in Chapter 1, to be blameworthy doesn’t require a specified (‘tell on reflection alone’) level of access; it requires responsibility-relevant access and control. Point 2: just mark a distinction between synchronic and diachronic (ir)rationality; or if you prefer, synchronic rationality now and synchronic irrationality previously – which point, surely, we would anyway want to mark. The dispute between ethical internalism and externalism is the idiom in which recent generations of philosophers have come to engage with the issue of ethical determinism most generally. Ethical internalists maintain that it is conceptually necessary that moral beliefs motivate (/provide reasons for) moral actions – which claim moral externalists deny. The words ‘internalism’ and ‘externalism’ of course stand for terms taking profoundly different meanings to the terms these words stand for in the epistemic debate. At the time of writing, this paper by Foot was a (rare) example of a genuine occupant of the desires-based ‘hypothetical’ position with which Kant’s maxim is counterpoised. Later, she abandoned that position. Sidgwick (1907) famously criticized Kant on precisely these grounds: that he equivocated between freedom as determination by reason (the Kantian Moral Law – what Sidgwick called ‘Good’ or ‘Rational’ Freedom) versus freedom to obey or break that law (what Sidgwick called ‘Neutral Freedom’ and Campbell (1957) called ‘Elective Freedom’ – to do bad, to be irrational). Note that Kant does so equivocate. Sidgwick then ran precisely this dilemma: either no freedom or no reason. During the same era as Sidgwick, William James soared magnificently: ‘talk of believing by our volition seems, then, from one point of view, simply silly. From another point of view it is worse than silly, it is vile. When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar (James 1897a: 7). However, James, unlike Sidgwick, by no means rested with this point, nor found these objections compelling. There typically will be considerable differences between agents receiving neuropsychological insult after intact EFs have yielded, say (for Dr. P.), a superior IQ (presumably through acting on other brain structures through the lifespan) versus those

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Notes who are impaired prior to that (congenitally, say, or through traumatic brain injury in early childhood). (This is true of socioaffective EF impairment also.) EF involves both hot and cold cognition, each of which is significantly mediated by the frontal lobes. Later versions of Shallice’s theory became considerably more complex. Letter-memory task: update WM by remembering the last few words/letters of an ongoing list. N-back task: you are presented with a series of stimuli, one every two or three seconds, and must decide if the present stimulus is the same as one presented n-items back in the list. Flanker task: you must indicate the direction of a central fixation target arrow using a keypad, sometimes when its flanking (distracting) arrows are pointing in the same direction (congruent) and sometimes when they are pointing in a different direction (incongruent – thereby needing inhibition). Go/no-go task: you press a button on each presentation of a letter stimulus as fast as you can – except when the letter is an ‘x’ (when you must inhibit the prepotent response). Trail-making test: connect the circles containing letters and numbers in order, only alternating between connecting by number and by letter (thereby having to ‘shift’). The Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST): each card in the deck has one, two, three or four of the same shape on it; these shapes are one of four different kinds (triangles, stars, etc.) and in one of four colours. You have to guess whether you should sort by number, colour or shape and are told only ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. A while after establishing the correct rule, it changes: how quickly can you detect this and change your sorting principle? It is only fair to note that there are longstanding doubts about the psychometric properties (especially reliability) of tests like these; and there are issues as to their short timescale and the fact that they exclusively measure cold cognition. EF is commonly measured by tests like this, but, constitutively, it is a lot more than the cognitive processes subserving only these things. Immediately applied gratification delay (resisting the cream cake) would be an example of impulse control (an inhibitory EF) – or perhaps ‘willpower’ to the extent this is something different. Prosthetically/functionally applied gratification delay (not shopping when hungry, not stocking your refrigerator with cream cakes, avoiding stimulus cues by covering tomorrow’s tea party’s cream cakes from sight in the refrigerator) would be an example of metapsychological regulation; also in this case a (higher-level) inhibitory EF to some extent, but one involving other EFs like WM and theory of mind and umbrella-term EF’s like ‘planning’ – besides, crucially, operating over a much longer timescale.

Chapter 4 1

Quite a few (neuro)psychologists, especially those influenced by factor analytic approaches, do separate out something like three superordinate factors in this

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fashion. It originated with Friedman et al. (2008) and Miyake and Friedman (2012). I have illustrated a version of their model (similar to that which is endorsed by Diamond) in Figure 4.5. Some distinguish a fourth: specifically, verbal fluency (sometimes ‘self-directed speech’). Best et al. (2009) have as a fourth ‘planning’ (to include ‘problem solving’). Others distinguish ‘dual tasking’ or ‘interference control’ (Willcutt et al. 2005). However, many don’t take such a ‘superordinate grouping’ approach, and the debates about whether such superordinate factors are psychologically real or correlational artefacts are well worked in, for example, the individual differences literature. (Exploratory factor analysis, for all its complexity, is only a descriptive statistic, and the factors extracted are very strongly determined by several arbitrary matters under the control of the researcher – here, notably, the fact that the inputs to this analysis are exclusively short-duration, cold-cognitive tasks.) Note that for any of these superordinate factors there is the problem that they may be too broad and inclusive to be seen as more than expository grouping variables, and too disjunctive at the process level, which is anyway little understood. Also, as already emphasized, finding one putatively orthogonal factor (‘WM’) requiring or logically presupposing the actions of another (‘inhibition’) is a phenomenon that is simply ubiquitous. In contrast to Diamond’s confident assertion, Barkley (2012: 8) strongly repudiates any claim of consensus here, talking of the ‘dog’s breakfast of constructs that EF has become’. Some researchers prefer to see this as simply a tough measurement problem (‘task impurity’: the problem that a given operationalization doesn’t measure only the one EF, or even only EFs rather than lower-brain functions) – a problem to be overcome either with more careful experimental isolation of one’s dependent variable or with greater statistical sophistication (e.g. the use of latent variable analysis; Friedman et al. 2008; Miyake and Freidman 2012). But the low process–behaviour correspondence for EFs (that similar behaviours may have quite different causes) may not be a source of error, (‘task impurity’), being due rather to features that Luria (say) would have immediately understood: the fact that executive functioning is intrinsically holistic, functional, systemic and coordinated. There are lessons to be learnt here from the Bartlettian objections to the Ebbinghausian tradition in memory research: ‘purify’ your DVs too much and you may well throw the baby out with the bath water. ‘Task impurity’ may, then, not be a methodological problem, but a profound functionalist, holistic truth about the in vivo higher cognitive functioning of the human mind. It is not only an elastic notion, but also (like so many of these EFs) has tendencies to be somewhat homuncular – something Baddeley honestly acknowledged of his ‘central executive’ from the start. I am concerned to identify scientifically respectable, roughly agreed truths about the extent of our psychological powers: descriptively accurate accounts of our abilities that any normative epistemologist

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Notes may make appeal to, and with which any acceptable normative epistemology must comport. I do not then feel that such matters, however much they may be of concern to psychology or even to the philosophy of mind, vitiate my deployment of this and cognate notions, nor require much further engagement in this (epistemological) context of inquiry (although homuncularism I engage with further below). Using TOTE to illustrate WM is borrowed from Conway et al. (2011), but the driving example is my own and is introduced for three reasons, the first being its ecological validity: weak executive functioning is massively predictive of poor, reckless, accident-prone and inconsiderate driving. The second is that it foregrounds variegation in scope as a key feature of both normal and impaired EF: some of these driving problems are more narrowly cognitive (cold cognitive: Norman 1981; Reason 1992 on field dependence, etc.), some more cognitive– affective, some more personality-mediated or agential. The clinicians emphasize things that the cognitive psychologists insufficiently emphasize: that hot cognition and the socioaffective nearly always interpenetrate cold cognition when it comes to executive functioning. Finally, driving is one of the classic examples used to indicate that what counts as executive functioning is not static: what was at one stage an EF becomes, through processes of automaticity, a more posterior cortical function and eventually a lower brain function. This latter is of importance when we reach the section dealing with two-process issues below. This posterior-to-anterior ascent in hierarchical abstraction in rules and reasoning is found in the DMPFC and DLPFC, which have major anterior-to-anterior and posterior-to-posterior connections with each other. There are claims that something like this posterior-to-anterior ascent in abstraction is also found in the ventro-medial PFC (VMPFC; Bechara and Damasio 2005), with the VMPFC occupying a crucial role in mediating social and moral cognition. It is highly likely that these three key areas in the PFC play a major role in deontic reasoning, with there already being evidence that VMPFC-lesioned patients are more utilitarian and less deontic in their judgement of classic (ethical) trolley-car cases (Greene et al. 2001; Greene et al. 2004; Greene 2007; but see Moll and de Oliveira-Souza 2007) – presumably because their judgements are solely informed by consistency and other types of ‘cold cognition’ (as mediated by the DLPFC) rather than also by the ‘hot cognition’ mediated by the VMPFC. If there is a deontic aspect to our learner driver’s invocation of checking procedures, then I would warrant a role for VMPFC. To the extent this remains reasoning, I would expect, however, that it involves VMPFC in close systemic interaction with DLPFC. Jung and Haier’s ‘parieto-frontal integration theory’: sharing resources across a network of regions predominantly in the parietal lobes and frontal lobes in an integrated fashion – cf. Haier (2017).

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The separation per se isn’t (here) claimed to be illicit: insisting sans motivation that the deontologist must be committed to defending voluntarism with respect to the avowedly automatic ‘final process’ is; while insisting/assuming (sans argument) that the deontologist’s actual, expressed defence of deontologism of the processes leading up to these somehow doesn’t answer to her specifically epistemic needs. Elsewhere (in Lockie 2014b and a planned monograph on knowledge) I ‘problematize’ certain lower-to-higher stage separations of this nature per se (in arguments referring to historic disputes of Bartlett versus Ebbinghaus, and Titchener versus the Gestaltists – the idea that the putatively lower level is unvarnished and prior data: prior, that is, to the higher-level, top-down putative ‘contamination’ of that data). I have too little space to address issues pertaining to personal/practical cognition with the depth they deserve, but awareness of self across time (‘autonoetic awareness’) is a distinctively human, late-developing capacity that involves/ integrates with controlled reactivation of memories, planning over variable time-and-distance frames, capacities for ‘decoupled’ (hypothetical) thought and model building involving self-relevant counterfactuals over time. Can such cognition, involving ‘prospection’ (Seligman et al. 2013), be deontically appraised? Yes, in many instances. Does such cognition involve agential-level control? Yes, paradigmatically. ‘The capacity to imagine a hypothetical future from an experienced past is one of the three most important or foundational EFs. The other two are self-directed attention (self-awareness) and self-restraint … together they create the human sense of the future’ (Barkley 2012: 85). Can we deontically assess an agent (as commendable or remiss) for their consideration of future consequences (or lack thereof)? Of course we can, and do. It is even operationalized as a named cognitive–personality variable (Strathman et al. 1994). It is partly mediated, anatomically, by regions that are of importance in deontic reasoning more generally (the VMPFC: Bechara et al. 1994, 2005). A deontic conception of epistemic responsibility is often assimilated to a very ‘synchronic’ notion of responsibility (e.g. Foley, passim); but cognitively, I can deploy the EFs Barkley identifies to travel in time and space, and I may be held responsible for failing to do so. ‘Directing and redirecting executive attention to goal-relevant information may be the primary mechanism by which self-regulatory goals are “shielded” from competing goals or other distractions. … According to this view, goal shielding is the consequence of sustained attention to a goal or task and provides an indirect or “passive” form of inhibitory control. … The ensuing mental state in which individuals “zoom in” on the goals they want to achieve may closely correspond to what has been called an implementation or action-orientation mindset in self-regulation research’ (Hofmann et al. 2012: 175). Notice the promiscuity/ reflexivity motif here: executive attention, WM, inhibitory control, self-regulation,

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Notes passive, active … one explaining the other and then explained by the other in turn. One could seek to clarify a structured path through such accounts, but I think (conceptually, not empirically) that would be unwise. The functional, holistic interpenetration of EFs in vivo is, I think, a profound and important truth about the higher cognitive powers of man. Will this moment of insight then be defined into our involuntarists’ ‘final pathway’ for non-sensory cognition? I take it any such move would simply represent a determination to find a terminological sop for a substantial philosophical defeat. Note that Heisenberg will work forward (in his controlled, executive cognition) from this insightful discovery also (into further mathematics) and will have developed the mathematical expertise that permitted this moment of insight significantly because of his preparedness to work as doggedly yet flexibly as this for many thousands of hours previously over the years; and (more proximally) for many scores of hours previously on this specific problem. His thought is massively diachronic, is pervasively and systemically the product of many different perception–action cycles (Fuster 2013). These cycles, occurring at every level of cognition from the lowest to the highest, involve afferent and efferent processes partly tasked by the agent and partly (as diachronic, developmental and selforganizing processes) leading to the development of the agent, ontogenetically and aretaically. No intellectually serious thinker working on these issues doubts that automatic and uncontrolled cognition is bound up with creative, controlled, executive cognition – or that (in unimpaired agents) each is present in a single mind: cf. remarks to follow on two-process theory. In scare quotes because creativity as an agential-level property is a product of all the EFs and much more besides. We deal with an important update to Maier’s two-string experiment below. Maier’s subjects had been given the problem of tying two strings together that were suspended from a ceiling. The strings were long enough to reach each other if the participant could reach both, but the participant could not stretch to reach the second string whilst still holding the first. A range of objects were in the room that the participants were permitted to use. The correct solution was to tie one string to a pair of pliers then use this as a pendulum to swing this string towards the first until able to grasp both together. This task was difficult for participants because they were functionally fixed on the pliers as a gripping tool – not a weight. This joins several other Gestalt cases as a classic investigation of ‘insight’ problem solving, which in our modern terms mostly concerns flexibility of thought. Miyake and Friedman (2012) see cognitive flexibility (‘shifting’) as involving shifting-specific EF and general EF (= cognitive inhibition, shared by all EFs) – see this chapter’s Figure 4.5. They claim, however, that shifting-specific EF shows some evidence of negative associations with certain developmental indicators of cognitive

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inhibition (which latter they see as a general factor partly underpinning EFs) – better inhibitory control, to some qualified extent, predicts poorer shifting-specific EF. On reflection, that’s kind of intuitive, isn’t it? Within the individual differences literature, Carson et al. (2003) established that decreased latent inhibition (the ability to ‘gate off ’, attentionally, task-irrelevant stimuli) is associated with increased creative achievement (though in high-functioning individuals, not generally – where it may predict psychopathology). Decreased latent inhibition is also known to predict the exploratory cognitive virtues more generally, such as Big 5 O (openness to experience) – in Carson et al., ibid. 14 Whether this token would be an instance of a type – that is, whether EF selection is a sufficiently disjunctive, holistic product of an open system as to be not really (in the sense intended, in a sufficiently meaningful sense) algorithmic (fixed output for fixed inputs thereby mapping a finitely writeable, time transfer-invariant function) is of course a very well-worked debate in classic (functionalist) philosophy of mind. Whatever problems are held to attend functionalism on other grounds and in the context of other philosophical questions, I see no reason to retrench from that position’s standard emergentist stance in this domain. 15 In a sense, we do just this. We are the only organism with language and the only organism with (in any meaningful sense) culture (and technology). We are also, as noted, the only organism with anything like our level of autonoetic consciousness: our sense of self and self-relevant (counterfactual) model building (planning) across time. The socio-cultural extensions of frontal lobe function are extraordinary. Just as the extended mind hypothesis extends mind into the physical world, so the neo-Vygotskian tradition extends mind into culture, education and society: ‘One startling observation Premack made was that chimps do not engage in pedagogy. The flip side of the observation is that humans are the only primates that teach their young’ (Gazzaniga 2013: 12). Clark and Wilson note of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s bonobo, Kanzi, raised via a humanly imposed pedagogy using a symbolic keyboard: ‘The system that Kanzi plus his keyboard constitutes forms a cognitive system with memory and other cognitive capacities that seem qualitatively distinctive from that of other, unaugmented bonobos, capacities that are somewhere between those of humans and other apes. It is not simply that Kanzi’s enriched learning environment has restructured his neural wiring (although it has almost certainly done that too), but that his cognitive restructuring has proceeded through a potent cognitive extension involving these stable symbolic structures in his environment’ (Wilson and Clark 2009: 67). 16 ‘Motor structures’ for Fuster, after Koechlin, range from the most basic aspects of muscle movement mediated by the motor cortex, to the highest, most abstract, pure, agential cognition (e.g. Heisenberg cases) mediated significantly by the most anterior areas of the PFC (not intrinsically involving actual motor movement at all).

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Notes These structures are seen as ranging hierarchically, from those involving the most basic limb movement to those involving the most sophisticated levels of abstract goal-directed thought, but in every case involving multiple self-organizing, opensystem feedback cycles from the perceptual to the motor and back. Of course, this doesn’t vitiate the importance of the PFC in EF, or cognitive agency per se. A strong statement of the role of the PFC as ‘capital C’ Controller is the frontal executive hypothesis – that all executive control processes are subserved by the frontal lobes (this is now known to be too strong). Less-strong would be parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT) – that attentional and executive processes are shared in a highly integrated fashion between frontal and parietal lobes. Probably matters are more complex than that, too. Nevertheless, even approaches conceding more to the holistic and emergentist traditions in neuropsychology acknowledge the critical role for the frontal lobes in the highest, most specifically human, rational, executive, metapsychological, reflexive, insightful, flexible and controlled thought. ‘My PFC is not my “center of free will” but it is the neural broker of the highest transactions of myself with my environment, internal as well as external’ (Fuster 2013:10). The others are (3) attention regulation, (4) cognitive change/reappraisal and (5) response modification/modulation/suppression. Spacing: the extraordinarily powerful ‘spacing effect’ – distributing practice a little and often and not ‘massing’. Interleaving – introducing ‘contextual interference’ (e.g. practicing different swimming strokes (and different components of swimming strokes) in the same training session and not ‘blocking’). Generating (e.g. generating answers, self-testing, elaborating on the material). This is a slightly under-qualified statement. It may be read as rather too close to Giacomo, Rizzolatti et al.’s committed Premotor Theory, the truth of which is still in the balance (cf. Wu 2014). As regards attention, Wu (2014: 66, emphases in original) usefully distinguishes ‘three possible formulations of the Premotor Theory: the identity, causal and anatomic formulations. The strongest thesis is the identity formulation: the neural circuits for preparing eye movement to location L just are the neural circuits for visual spatial attention to L. The causal formulation is weaker in that it endorses only a causally sufficient condition: normal preparatory processing for eye movement to location L is sufficient to cause visual spatial attention to L. Finally, the anatomic formulation holds that a brain region contains circuitry for preparatory eye movement activity and for spatial attention’. Suitably qualified, however, it is widely accepted that (in some sense) both online and offline efferent circuitry in the frontal eyefields is in intricate connection with (other) frontal lobe functions, in which role they mediate movement of thought. Piaget (1952) contended that, for him, thought was impossible without writing. Wittgenstein absurdly, but rather splendidly, over-stated the Piaget–Feynman thesis

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thus: ‘this activity [thinking] is performed by the hand, when we think by writing, by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking (Wittgenstein 1958: 6). To see how hard the notion of mental action may be pushed, certain brain scientists now take talk of ‘mental agility’ literally, this being a variable mediated by structures (especially the cerebellum) that mediate motor agility. Damage these structures and dysmetria results, but this may be a motor dysmetria (ataxia) or dysmetria of thought – an impairment of mental agility (e.g. Schmahmann 2004). Notably, Johnson-Laird agrees with Evans here. Evans assimilates this (WM) to issues of control and volition. In seeking to understand the Type 1/Type 2 distinction ‘[w]e should not rely on the distinction between conscious and unconscious processing, as both old and new minds have aspects that are conscious and unconscious. … The key difference is that the old mind operates through automated Type 1 systems that have mandatory outputs, whereas Type 2 systems are in some sense volitional: the new mind is capable of forming plans and carrying out intentions under controlled attention’ (Evans 2014: 133, emphasis in the original). Note of their ‘bias’ item in the left-hand column: they are referring to ‘bias’ in the Kahneman–Tversky (heuristics and biases) sense: precisely not our sense – cf. next section. Keren and Schul (2009) in their influential polemic against two-system approaches note (correctly) the heterogeneous nature of such dichotomous lists as that offered by Evans and Stanovich (2013); adding to that heterogeneity a tendency among some theorists to associate System 1 cognition with hot cognition versus System 2 with cold. This is not found in the table I have taken from Evans and Stanovich (2013) and would seem to myself to be quite indefensible on its own terms. We have ‘old mind’ subcortical surges of affect, granted (Evans and Stanovich’s ‘basic emotions’); but we most certainly have ‘new mind’ great systems of ethics, normative epistemology and value theory more generally (Evans and Stanovich’s ‘complex emotions’): we have rigorous socioaffective cognition. Our executive functioning both mediates and is mediated by massive cultural scaffolding and unquestionably involves moral thought. This identification (plus a non-essentialism about the binary distinction) allows us to accommodate an influential criticism from Keren and Schul (2009): that many of the processes subsumed under the two-process distinction are continuous, perhaps dimensional, rather than dichotomous or discrete. We have seen already how executive functioning segues into non-executive functioning – as, say, processes that once were mediated by the most anterior areas of the PFC become progressively more posterior and eventually perhaps no longer mediated by the PFC: via automaticity, proceduralization, etc. I am interested in, but not committed to, two-process/system/type theory; but were I to commit to it, I would not be an essentialist about it, and would want to defend it as a heuristically useful

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Notes dimensional tendency to be kept in mind through psychological theorizing. Considered thus, some of Keren and Schul’s criticisms are against a conception of the distinction that is excessively strong, abrupt and dichotomous. Note that the distinction between executive and non-executive functioning is clearly useful and well-founded whilst not being ‘ontologizable’ in any simply dichotomous way (e.g. the frontal lobe hypothesis is clearly too strong). Functionally, the distinction between executive and non-executive functioning requires the sort of explication we have seen over this chapter, not a ‘definition’ in any sense: it is a well-founded distinction for all that. ‘Bias’ is also used passim by researchers into ‘hot’ cognition and moral thought (e.g. Anderson et al. 1999). Wu (2014) calls this phenomenon as it manifests in attention the Many–Many Problem. Importantly, in light of (e.g. regress) issues shortly to be discussed, one may also bias one’s biases – cf. Burgess et al.’s (2006) ‘gateway hypothesis’. I suspect that a strong reductionism, narrowly and locally and ontologically conceived, may be needed as a premise to make this argument work: ‘I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself ’ (Hobbes 1962: 271). There are clear parallels with the classic compatibilist literature here. For three hundred years after Hobbes and prior to Frankfurt, one classic compatibilist after another denied the obvious descriptive truth that there were higher-order cognitions and conations – because, in the grip of a theory and seeing a regress beckoning, they felt that doing so would be insufficiently ‘ultimate’ for their purposes: ‘I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech’ (Hobbes 1962: 246). This die-in-aditch tendency simply melted away when Frankfurt placed other resources at the compatibilists disposal – to the point where classic compatibilism is now (almost?) a museum piece. Yet the armchair psychological truths that Frankfurt adverted to (as to there being higher-order intentional states) should have been quite as obvious, descriptively, three hundred and fifty years ago as they are today.

Chapter 5 1 2

A point originally made of happiness in the ethical literature (Sidgwick 1907: 405–6). Of course, not if, by stipulation of the thought experiment, the demon is held able to manipulate the envatted agent’s active thought processes – his decision-

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making, his erstwhile, hitherto seen as executive functioning. Here, there are many similarities between the new evil demon problem and the Frankfurt literature (and the need of the latter to avoid begging the question: Widerker 1995; Ginet 1996; Kane 1996 – cf. Lockie 2014a). We know that one can impair individuals epistemically in suchlike ways without appeal to recherché thought experimentation. But if our demon merely manipulates appearances – say, the sensory inputs to said agent (that is, if the envatted brain, by hypothesis, really has powers of cognitive agency, really is an agent) – then my points stand: he (our brain) can be rational. Reader: if your intuitions are too outraged to see ‘epistemic rationality’ tout court as being this subjective a notion, either substitute a prefixed term of art (‘Foley rationality’?) or substitute ‘epistemic justification’. Little turns on terminology. ‘To abandon the desire for control over beliefs is not to cease to evaluate them. What the epistemologist does is to describe, as best she can, the principles underlying our practices of evaluation’ (Owens 2000: 50). Objections: (1) we never will abandon this desire; (2) to evaluate beliefs presupposes control; (3) what of the epistemologist doing the ‘describing’ of said principles and practices? (Compare the reflexive position of relativists describing the processes of social determination of beliefs, ‘practices of evaluation’ and the like – processes that leave oddly untouched the descriptive and evaluative practices and capacities of said relativists.) I have, in previous work, entitled this ‘ineliminability’ move the Paradox of Abandonment (Lockie 2003c). ‘Fundamental’ not ‘foundational’, note. This style of argument has, as indicated, had many commendable precedents in philosophical history; and in recent work has been represented by Bealer (e.g. 1996a,b), Pust (2001) and BonJour (1998). Although sympathetic to their different attempts to deploy transcendental arguments to defend a profoundly normative, ratiocentric conception of epistemology and metaphilosophy, I would not endorse what they separately take the conclusion of their arguments to be. Specifically, I do not see my own use of this style of argument as committing me to any kind of meta-epistemic foundationalism, nor any commitment to ‘immediate’ (conscious? non-relational?) awareness/intuition. This argument rather opposes (negatively) any attempt to eliminate at some fundamental level a deontic basis for epistemic normativity. I shall not, then, advance a constructive account of said fundamental level, or enthrone this basis for epistemic normativity over all others – of which I then seek a reduction or elimination in turn. I do not have a constructive account of said fundamental level (in particular, not in terms of ‘intuitions’) and would be suspicious of one who did – see my first chapter (remarks on ‘no method’) and Lockie 2014b.

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Compare this with the debate over the claims of various ‘first-wave’ (irrationalist) cognitive psychologists working in the heuristics and biases literature, which, notwithstanding recent apologetics, at least much of the time (at the time) read as the claim that science establishes that human beings are profoundly irrational. Cohen (1981) and Dennett (1981) advanced transcendental arguments (admittedly rather different to that given here) against the possibility of any fundamental result to this effect, and Stich (1990, 1994) attempted to respond. Though I am very sympathetic to the spirit of Cohen and Dennett’s arguments in this debate, I would not accept much of the details of their respective positions – see below. 8 For an indication of where Goldman ended up, metaphilosophically, forty years later, read Goldman (2007). His (1967) quotation already indicates a sensitivity to the issues I am raising here, and thus that he is by no means the best exemplar of the kind of eliminative, irreflexive stance I am targeting: ‘A main theme of naturalistic epistemology is that the project of epistemology is not a (purely) a priori project. But it doesn’t follow from this that there is no a priori warrant at all’ (Goldman 2007: 19 F.N. 5). Goldman, in 2007 no less than 1967, appears to have turned his ‘naturalistic epistemology’ (externalism) into a very reasonable rejection of a totalizing internalism (Goldman’s 2009, ‘existential internalism’) – not itself a totalizing (‘existential’) externalism in turn. Goldman and I are in agreement so long as that is all that is being defended – see Section 5.2.5, shortly to follow. Note: Kornblith (2007) precisely attacks Goldman (2007) for what he calls his ‘détente’ in this regard: for making his meta-epistemology insufficiently consistent with his first-order views (in my language: for advancing a ‘nontotalizing’ epistemology). 9 Surprisingly, those from the tradition that Cohen bitterly opposed did and do endorse very similar sentiments here – witness Stanovich and West’s (2000) ‘understanding–acceptance principle’ (after Slovic and Tversky). This latter principle is invoked to defend the judgements of irrationality levelled against (e.g. undergraduate) participants who fall foul of Kahneman–Tversky cases. These researchers claim, in vindication of their judgement of irrationality, that after having said cases explained to them at debriefing, ‘more reflective and engaged reasoners [amongst their participants] are likely to affirm the appropriate model [to endorse as correct the reasoning solution that they fell foul of] for a particular situation’ (Stanovich and West 2000: 651). See Lockie (2016a,b) for a comprehensive critique. 10 There are of course no ‘canonical arbiters of rationality’, and Cohen’s narrow reflective equilibrium is no more plausible than the broad reflective equilibrium of the psychologists, decision theorists, logicians and statisticians that he opposes. Note, by the way, that his narrow reflective equilibrium might not be that of a logician or decision theorist, but it is pretty clearly that of

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at least a moderately educated, at least normally intelligent (and that means highly decontextualized) ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’ – it is not, say, the reflective equilibrium of an illiterate Uzbek peasant or Kpelle tribesman (cf. the ‘cultural psychology’/psychological anthropology traditions of Bartlett 1932, Cole and Scribner 1974; Vygotsky 1978; Luria 1979 – of which read Lockie 2016a). 11 Leite identifies this distinction in, amongst others, Robert Audi, Michael Williams, Hilary Kornblith and Gilbert Harman (for an example of this move with regard to the pragmatic turn in such arguments, see Chomsky 1995: 26, 27, 53). Leite also correctly identifies this manoeuvre in numbers of (access and mentalist) internalists (he cites BonJour and Chisholm among others). Here, note the ‘Forth Bridge’ argument of Chapter 1, Section 1.2 and the response to Goldman’s tu quoque of Chapter 2, Section 2.3.1: my preferred species of thin deontological internalism will precisely not make space for a (radical, ultimate) deployment of this distinction since it will not permit internalisms of such unbounded complexity that we need another (‘what should we do in the meantime?’) species of epistemic access to discover whether we have attained their putatively internalist (complex foundationalist, coherentist, etc.) success state. 12 ‘Ought’ derives etymologically from the old English past tense of ‘owe’, and in middle English meant ‘under obligation to pay’. Etymological roots for cognate terms are similarly revealing. ‘Deontology’ comes from the Greek deon, meaning ‘one must’, and what one must do is, variously, give what is due (one’s duty), what is binding on one (one’s obligations) and what one is answerable for (one’s responsibilities). Etymology: Oxford English Dictionary (1989) 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 13 Psychology has its footnotes to Plato also, and this is currently a fashionable view amongst those who embrace two-system (two-process) theories. ‘The proposal is that Type 2 processing is best thought of as an internalized self-directed form of public argumentation, and that it is a voluntary activity – something we do rather than something that happens within us’ (Frankish 2011: 20b). Noaves (2011: 254) argues that this was the standard view prior to Kant: ‘The concept of judgement, for example, traditionally used to refer to linguistic claims made by speakers in the public sphere, is transformed by Kant into the mental act of the understanding involved in the apperception of objects. With Kant, logic no longer primarily concerns argumentation; instead, it concerns the inner mental activities of the lonesome thinking subject.’ Chapter 4 already has remarks concerning the Vygotskian notion of the development of thought through the internalization of speech; G. H. Mead of course also approached this via his views as to the social genesis of the self.

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Chapter 6 1

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A point I owe to Carlos Moya is that Frankfurt may have demurred from this recently (cf. Frankfurt 2003: 344). However, whatever Frankfurt’s current view, endorsing OIC whilst rejecting PAP was a view he held, and is a view that Kant, Wolf and Nelkin have held and do hold. It is noteworthy that the key recent developer of a neo-Frankfurtian approach does not follow him here: Fischer (1999) rejected both PAP and OIC. For example, the ‘prior sign’ manoeuvre (Fischer 1994: 136ff ) – and the tortuous expansions and commentaries thereupon. The distinction between simple and complex has a long history as a compatibilist defence against incompatibilist objections. So, Chrysippus’s ‘co-fated’ response to the Lazy Argument (Cicero 1942: xii 30ff ) relied on the distinction between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ facts/occurrents (cf. Bobzien 2001: #5.2.1.1). Fischer’s own distinction between simple and complex acts is considerably under-explicated and appears to be very thinly motivated – perhaps due to his metaphilosophical aim of simply tracking our intuitions (Fischer and Ravizza 1998: 40). But in general (to endorse the classic argument of Reid 1969: Essay 4, Ch. 6), one doubts whether there is any distinction the compatibilist can draw between responsible and non-responsible acts that is not illicitly ad hoc – that will not tacitly track, ex post facto, intuitions that are alone motivated incompatibilistically. In real life, M. Hue most certainly didn’t have to use this device with the heroic (and smitten) Geneviève (Hue and Southby-Taylour 2005: 213–7). I should have preferred to call this ‘Truth World’ and the former ‘Lie World’, but cannot, as Madeleine’s disposition to honesty in Virtue World2 will not eventuate in her obtaining the truth – due to the presence of the Counterfactual Intervener. As noted and criticized in Lockie (2008), there are interpretations of Aristotle (e.g. Zagzebski 1996: 248) that would deny me even the right to call this latter ‘Virtue World’ as it does not eventuate in success (the good, the truth being told). If this be correct as an interpretation of Aristotle (and it is certainly an accurate description of many Aristotelians), then in using the term ‘Virtue World’, I should simply claim to be operating with another, more intuitively plausible notions of ‘virtue’ and vice’ (say, the Stoic versions thereof – cf. Annas 2003). This line is that of Carlos Moya (2006: Ch. 2, 62ff, 67–70). However, it goes back well before Moya: ‘“I did not shoot him. I did not pull the trigger. My muscles tightened in response to electrical stimulation.” Here we are partly rejecting the did – it was not a deed I did but something that happened to me. We are also partly rejecting the you – it was not I who had a hand in it’ (Lucas 1970: 6, emphases in original).

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This point needs emphasis and is in no sense directed against a straw man. For instance, in a recent review, we are told ‘a Frankfurt-type counterexample to PAP purports to describe a situation in which: (i) an agent S decides-to-V on his own, but (ii) unknown to S, there is some factor that would have caused him to decide to V, had S not decided-to-V on his own’ (Widerker 2011: 270–1). No such factor can cause Widerker’s agent, S, to decide to V. If it causes him to act, it’s not his decision. It’s not even his act – cf. material cited above from Moya (2006), Lucas (1970) and Lockie (2014a). 8 Shabo (2010a,b) usefully distinguishes causal (‘determines’) from logical (‘entails’) versions of the Direct Argument. The danger with the former is that they may be question-begging against the compatibilist (or at least that they may lead to ‘dialectical stalemate’ with the compatibilist). The danger of the latter is that they may lead to fussy, clever, ‘logical puzzle’ objections to the transfer principle that are not obviously relevant to the core metaphysical concerns of these discussions. Shabo is of the opinion that causal versions, notwithstanding the threat of dialectical stalemate, show perspicuously the motivations underpinning an endorsement of Transfer NR and the price paid by those who flout these principles. I commend Shabo’s discussions to the reader. 9 There were responses somewhat in the neighbourhood of this from numerous preFrankfurt twentieth-century compatibilists: to the effect that freedom is not to be contrasted with determinism, but rather with constraint; that we may obey physical laws, yet still be free inasmuch as we are ‘doing what we want’ – much as we may obey the rules of chess (Ryle), yet be free, etc. The twentieth-century rewriters of Hume had no obvious title to these moves, for the chess player’s intentions were quite as determined as the rules of the game; and what the unconstrained agent willed was as determined as what the prisoner was constrained to do. Given that all acts are as determined as each other, and only ‘one path’ is possible, the unproblematic use of a contrast class (a ‘second path’) of something that is unfree in contrast to free becomes very much the point at issue. (See Reid 1969: Essay 4, Ch. 6 concerning the contrast between free and unfree in a totally determined world.) 10 ‘A single counterexample is enough to refute PAP’ (Hunt and Shabo 2013: 604). No it isn’t. The leeway incompatibilist holds that sometimes people must have been able to do otherwise if they are ever to be capable of being responsible for their acts. 11 This ‘neo-Fregean’ example (red) is originally in Lucas (1970: Ch. 3 – he called it his ‘Ionian’ example). He is cautious as to its applicability. I am less so. Recall, we are talking about a predicate without a counterextension anywhere in the domain. And we are talking about a basic predicate, fundamental to moral thought – not a complex predicate, the atomic parts of which avowedly have counterextensions (so, responding with an adaptation of Hume’s ‘golden mountain’ approach,

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developed as it was to deal with the related problem of non-existence, is not obviously applicable here). In prior research-talk presentation of this material, Derk Pereboom suggested the example of ‘is identical with itself ’ as a predicate possessed of sense yet no counterextension (Tim Crane on a separate occasion made a related suggestion). But ‘is identical’ (with other things) has a clear counterextension – and so this remains a ‘golden mountain’ response. This problem (of universal existence) is the mirror image of the problem of non-existence. This latter is often thought to be a pseudo-problem (e.g. Quine 1948; Devitt and Rey 1991), but the ‘golden mountain’-style arguments that seek to establish this do not in any obvious sense work for basic predicates and across an entire domain – a point the later Quine came to recognize when he abandoned that entire neo-Russellian style of approach for his web-of-belief ‘theory’ theory. Without embracing eliminativism, how do we say of this (a basic predicate) that it (what?) has no existence? (cf. Lockie 2003c). 12 Luther’s own reply against Erasmus is overtly cruel and peremptory: ‘The commandments [of God, that, ex hypothesi, the man in question cannot obey] are neither inappropriate nor purposeless, but are given in order that blind, self-confident man may through them come to know his own diseased state of impotence if he attempts to do what is commanded’ (Luther 1969: 191). That is: if he (the damned man) attempts to do what is commanded mind – if he attempts to obey (not disobey) God.

Chapter 7 1

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Dana Nelkin (2004a,b) cites Aristotle (e.g. ‘no-one deliberates about what cannot be otherwise’ N.E. 1139 13–14) in her impressive discussion of deliberative incompatibilism. She partly endorses, as a compatibilist response to such positions, the claim that we only are rationally required to refrain from clearly causally inefficacious reasoning (a locked door), not from causally determined reasoning: ‘The motivating idea … is that deliberation is the “difference maker”; that is, your deliberation is what will explain why you do what you do, rather than something else’ (Nelkin 2004a: 230 and cf. her 2011). I cannot see, however, how this survives the Eleatic point: you aren’t really the difference maker – the difference maker was the distribution of energy at the Big Bang. It is noteworthy that in subsequently expanding on what a ‘difference maker’ is, Nelkin (in 2004a) adopts a highly context-relative (less than realist) ‘contrastive explanation’ stance. Susanne Bobzien (2001: 228) allows that this ‘partial fate determinism’ is one possible and plausible interpretation of Chrysippus; and certainly that this was a widely held pre-modern view. Unlike Bobzien, I have no intrinsic interest in the history of this argument; I am interested in why modern philosophers, who

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surely cannot embrace this ‘partial fate determinism’, nor yet attribute such to their modern opponents, nevertheless take themselves (on the basis of these ancient arguments) to be able to refute a thesis, ‘fatalism’, with such facility. What thesis are they refuting, and what thesis are they defending? Modern conceptions of determinism look likely to be a good deal closer to whatever a modern, nonstraw man, ‘philosophical not literary’ conception of (non-logical) ‘fatalism’ might be than modern determinists are wont to acknowledge. And in regard to this ‘non-logical’ qualifier: be clear that we, in contrast to others in the history of this debate, are specifically concerned with the Lazy Argument as a species of causal, not logical determinism. So, O’Keefe (2010) notes that Carneades developed a species of counter to Epicurean versions of the Lazy Argument that was in precise contrast to both the Chrysippan ‘co-fated’ response and the (attributed, and certainly indefensible) Epicurean view that causal determinism inter-entails logical determinism – thus to require both a rejection of the principle of bivalence and an embrace of positive indeterminism (the famous atomic swerve). In contrast to both the Chrysippan and Epicurean positions, Carneades treated the Lazy Argument as a specifically causal argument, to which he offered the solution of self-determinism – the position I defend in Chapter 9 and have partly articulated already in Chapter 4. In summary: the Lazy Argument should not, for a modern author, be assimilated to either logical determinism or partial fate determinism, and arguments that attribute such commitments to the defender of the Lazy Argument in order to overturn it will (when used against modern authors – and also Carneades) amount to straw man arguments. This is a familiar manoeuvre in the dismantling of classical compatibilist analyses of ‘can’ (Berofsky 2002). This argument clearly walks some distance in the footsteps of Popper’s (1982) response to Laplacean determinism. Popper’s response has achieved considerable notoriety because he has been taken to have conflated determinism (metaphysics) with predictivity (epistemology) – attacking the latter yet claiming a refutation of the former. There is, though, no suggestion his attack on the latter was weak when considered only in its own right – and I am here precisely taking issue with Fischer and others’ defence of a predictiveness-based position. So we don’t need an additional, hidden premise (of transcendental idealism, or, in a more modern idiom, some form of verificationism) to make such arguments work. Transcendental arguments are negative arguments. Here, the target of my counterargument attempts to draw a simple realist epistemology–metaphysics distinction to apply to an area whereby the metaphysics is the epistemology. That this state of affairs obtains is not something we have imported in as a concealed, verificationist premise.

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Notes This appears to be what Fischer means by ‘guidance’ (as opposed to ‘regulative’) control – though (notwithstanding its widespread adoption) his distinction has always appeared worryingly under-explicated to me. In any event, I would contend that ‘control’ in such a case is a misnomer. Stated more sympathetically than I have here, this appears to be in the vicinity both of what Nelkin (2004a) calls the ‘nexus’ view and also her ‘abstraction view’ (she acknowledges that the distinction between these is not easy to draw). The abstraction view has it that nothing outside of the deliberation process makes one choice or other inevitable. However, under the assumption of determinism, something outside of the decision process indeed appears to makes it inevitable – namely, the Big Bang (also: under any set of assumptions, things outside of the deliberation process ought to impinge upon these processes – so, not necessary or sufficient). And the nexus view has it that ‘[r]ational deliberators must believe, in virtue of their nature as rational deliberators, that they have multiple alternatives from which to choose, where their deliberation is the critical nexus (or decisive factor) among those alternatives’ (Nelkin 2004a: 229). I would contend, though, that rational deliberators who are also determinists ought not to believe that their deliberation is the decisive factor among those alternatives – the Big Bang is. Notwithstanding these brief remarks, I commend Nelkin’s (2004a,b, 2011) serious discussions to the reader.

Chapter 8 1

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‘.. is, will be, and has always been, on all occasions false ..’ I should have been quite happy to say ‘necessarily false’ here, but there is a risk this would be misunderstood. It is powerlessness that transfers through the Consequence Argument, and ‘powerless’ is a modal term – but it is not a formal modal operator (it is formally, logically, possible that we go back in time to alter the start-up conditions at the Big Bang or change the fundamental laws of nature). The Consequence Argument seeks to establish that, were determinism true, doing otherwise than we do would be profoundly impossible for us; and this transcendental argument seeks to reason forward from this. See remarks about philosophical arguments versus proofs later in this chapter and the next, and also the comments about causal versus logical determinism in the preceding chapter. Separately, note that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, together with cannot, entails not ought [‘no oughts’], not ought not. Emphasis Grünbaum. Consider also Hobbes (1962: 256), Nietzsche (1996: #105), Smart (1961), (Pereboom 2011: 417–18) and passim from determinists of various different degrees of hardness.

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See also Popper’s (1983) response, and Rudder Baker (1988). For remarks on begging the question generally, see van Inwagen (1983: 102ff ). As noted in Part 1 of this book, premise 1 is a conditional; and epistemic externalists, who oppose epistemic ‘oughts’, are usually quite as committed to it as internalists (indeed, they require it for their anti-deontological arguments). Opposition to premise 1 tends, then, to be a response specifically motivated by the desire to defend determinism, rather than by any antecedent, specifically epistemic objections to OIC. In light of the issues raised by the Churchland quotation above, make of this motivation for opposing OIC what you may. Earlier versions of the transcendental argument sometimes deploy what we would now identify as an epistemically internalist premise, but with an ‘accessibilist’ rather than my preferred deontological conception of this internalism – for example, Hasker’s (1973: 178) ‘premise A’: ‘For a person to be rationally justified in accepting a conclusion, his awareness of reasons for the conclusion must be a necessary condition of his accepting it.’ Even without directly confronting the global asymmetry thesis in the manner given in Chapter 6, note the following: (I) there are transcendental arguments against determinism which are not epistemic in nature that do not need OIC (see, for example, the conative argument, and the related (Kant–Zeno) challenge that determinism can have no practical consequences – cf. Chapter 7, Section 7.2.3). (II) There are even epistemic transcendental arguments against determinism that do not need OIC (I shall consider one in the final chapter). (III) The specific form of the epistemic transcendental argument that I do give can be substantially preserved on some other, nearby principle – for instance, one of the stronger intentional leeway principles already defended in Chapter 6 and Lockie (2014a). So, (III.i) there is a quicker argument available deriving from ‘ought’ implies ‘control’ – though I think it is too quick to compel those not already persuaded of its conclusion. (III.ii) There is a quicker argument available for those who see epistemic responsibility as entailing some version of PAP (or PAB, or cognate principle), and I should be happy to use the arguments of Chapter 6 and Lockie (2014a) to repair to one such position were I unable to meet objections from the asymmetry theorists. For all these reasons, I do not see premise 7 as vulnerable. Surprisingly, Warfield, later in that paper, makes the very strong assertion that ‘in order to get the incompatibilist conclusion … [the defender of the Consequence Argument’s] conditional proofs must not … appeal to premises that are merely contingently true’ (Warfield 2000: 169). As I point out later, a philosophical argument (in contrast, perhaps, to a ‘proof ’) may surely be grounded in the profound impossibility of something’s being the case, regardless of whether this profound impossibility is seen as possessing this or that formal modal status. Shabo (2011) makes a similar point, noting moreover that van Inwagen does not derive a modal conclusion in his version of the argument.

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I find plausible the intuition that positive indeterminism, even merely as such, might give us something we would value: an unwritten future (whether we are wise to value that or not). But positive indeterminism merely as such doesn’t in any obvious way enhance our responsibility-relevant control (in fact, it seems to threaten such control), and it is hard to see how it could then be a central component of a satisfactory theory of freedom (though on this point I remain interested in views to the contrary – e.g. Balaguer 2010: 125–6). The ‘into, or over, or at’ clause of course merely gestures at what are important differences of detail between the accounts of Kane, Balaguer, Dennett, Ekstrom, etc. See: McCall and Lowe (2005), Ginet (2002a,b), Clarke (1995), Kane (1996, 2002) and Balaguer (2010). O’Connor (2000), despite not being an event-causal or acausal indeterminist, nevertheless offers perhaps the best of these rather variable-quality arguments; however, in the face of strong counters from the determinists – e.g. the ‘replay’ (/‘rollback’) argument – it is still questionable whether positive indeterminism is necessary for free will, and certain that it is not sufficient. A neighbouring, though I think distinct, point – one more used by those who in their different ways embrace the indeterminist horn of the dilemma argument than by those who see this as a false dilemma – is that chance is not an event; chance is an adjective modifying events. Chance doesn’t cause anything, chance describes a property of the causes of things. (I was prompted to make this point by a talk delivered by Audrey L. Anton.) The presence of chance need not then alienate the producer of an action or event from responsibility for that event. Here, by contrast, I claim that negative indeterminism (not positive chance) is an absence of determination by factors external to the agent, not that it is the presence of determination, albeit determination suitably randomized at some (details-specific) point close to the origin of the action. This commits the position to a rejection of the ‘covering law’ model of causation, certainly (at least) where these are interpreted as strict covering laws (the ‘nomologicity of the mental’) – a principle, however, that one should be right glad to reject. This literature developed in two tranches: firstly, out of the work of the classical emergentists – from (in their different ways) Mill (1843), Lewes (1875), Alexander (1920) and Broad (1925) onwards; secondly, from the more recent ‘special science’ philosophy of mind functionalists – from Putnam (1975, 1980) and Fodor (1974) onwards. These approaches have partially merged, philosophically, in the work of O’Connor (1994, 1995, 2000). This isn’t qualified to ‘determination (not causation)’ in order to make a weaker (perhaps even a neo-compatibilist) statement as to the role of the agent – this is

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intended to be an intransigent statement of libertarianism. This qualification is made because of the suspicion that talk of subscripted, hyphenated causation may be a category error. It is hard to see causation as ‘hyphenated’ (except as a façon de parler, a ‘transferred epithet’ from the sciences or items under which that causal transaction is typed). 7 This challenge is an ellipsis for an argument (call it the Intelligibility of Reduced Predicates Argument) one McLaughlin (1992: 80ff ) considers so bad that he assumes only an opponent of Broad would attempt to make a straw man by attributing it to him. (He cites Ernest Nagel (1961: Ch. 11) in this regard – claiming that by Nagel (1963) he had better arguments.) I am genuinely taken aback by McLaughlin’s judgement here (summary judgement, not argumentative response) – which is precisely contrary to my own judgement and that of many others (Fodor, Broad, Putnam, etc.) in the face of this argument. 8 Ginet’s objection may perhaps have force against Clarke’s former view, his ‘integrated’ attempt to combine agent-causation with an indeterministic (probabilistic) event-causal role for reasons. My own position is not to be assimilated to such a view. 9 The connection between moral internalism (ethical determinism) and logical behaviourism is noted in Lockie (1998). Commitment to such a connection is inescapable for one who claims a necessary (a priori) connection between the presence of a reason and a disposition to behaviour. Arguing for the equivalent a posteriori connection simply commits one to an empirical version of behaviourism (or closely similar associationism) – see remarks below regarding Sechenov, Skinner, etc. 10 ‘The first reason of any human action lies outside of it’ (Sechenov 1942: 136 cited in Barbashin 2008); often paraphrased as ‘thought is not the original cause of any action, the stimulus is’. Compare Hobbes, cited above: ‘I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself ’ (Hobbes 1962: 271, emphasis in original). 11 ‘[T]he question of the autonomy of our mental life does not hinge on and has nothing to do with that, all too popular, all too old question about matter or soul stuff. We could be made of Swiss cheese and it wouldn’t matter’ (Putnam 1980: 134).

Chapter 10 1

I intend this as an ellipsis for a direct (causal) argument. So, Shabo, responding to a putatively responsible yet determined agent envisaged by McKenna (2008), says: ‘Given that the [causal] relationship [between transition mental states] is deterministic, it is hard to see how he can be any more responsible for the efficacy

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Notes of his deliberative states (the fact that they are efficacious in precisely the way they are) than he is for those states themselves. And, as I have argued, it is hard to see, as well, how he can be morally responsible for his action if he isn’t morally responsible for its causes or the fact that those causes must be efficacious in precisely the way they are’ (Shabo 2010a: 417). See also the quotation by Reid (1969: 266, Essay IV Bk 1) cited below; and note that this direct argument and the various arguments from ultimacy (e.g. from Ultimate Responsibility: Kane 1996) are not mutually exclusive. Strictly, these are terms of art within Kane’s (1996) event-causal libertarianism; I am removing them from the structure of his theory and employing them for my own purposes. I mean this judgement to apply to Nietzsche’s views on free will, eternal recurrence, etc., regardless of whether he is himself esteemed as a mesh theorist; though there are plausible interpretations of his position on free will that, without using this terminology, read very much as if we should take him as such (e.g. Gemes 2006). As regards Nietzsche on eternal recurrence, a representative illustration of the problem that confronts him here would be exemplified by Danto’s (entirely ingenuous) commentary that ‘Nietzsche thought eternal recurrence was a test, and that if we could pass this test there might be some hope for us. If we could, in the face of knowledge he presumed scientific and certain, continue to act despite having acted in just this manner countless times before in periods of the universe just like the present one, which itself is a phase that will return again and again, then one will have achieved a certain meaning in one’s actions and a kind of moral strength. For the action will be seen as done for its own sake (Danto 1987: 203). Also, what is the mark that any such mental content is ‘higher order’? For any given mental item to be higher order is for said item to have a decidedly useful authority for the soft determinist – specifically, the authority to help decide questions as to which of a selection of equally determined actions nevertheless counts as our true choice: historically, a tough, tough question for the compatibilist (Reid 1969: Essay 4, Ch. 6; compare the unsatisfactory response to this challenge in Fischer and Ravizza 1998: 40). For the modern compatibilist – one who has abandoned strongest motive associationism, yet who also rejects incompatibilist self-determinism – specifying what it is to be a higher-order mental item on a non-ad hoc basis (e.g. without tracking ex post facto ‘intuitions’ that are alone incompatibilistically motivated) looks to be by no means merely a problem of analytic detail. Fischer and Ravizza (1998) first coined the term ‘mesh account’. Their own mesh theory is historical (unlike Frankfurt’s) – something that gives them the resources to deal with certain of the manipulation problems (but not all: Pereboom 2001), though thereby has certain costs also. Entitlement to the requirement that historical conditions be satisfied is something that is also open to dispute (van Inwagen 1983: 133). The core problem is that it doesn’t seem to be the presence of an odd

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history that is producing our revulsion against holding manipulated agents morally responsible (and anyway, what is an ‘odd history’ – in a non-question-begging sense?). It rather seems to be determination by factors not under the agent’s control. In this and any similar position, one sees two other things besides: a metaphysically irrelevant emphasis on a speculated environmental locus of determination – on Bildung – which, in the hands of certain philosophers (and, in particular, many social scientists), is tacitly, indefensibly, treated as if somehow ‘less determinist’ than other loci of determination. And one sees the child’s coerced, ‘educated’ acceptance of his responsibility bounced back at him, but above all at us, his ‘educators’, as a vindicating proof of his ultimate responsibility. For caustic commentary about this latter style of move cf. Nietzsche (1973: Maxim #148) – and of course the famous #21 (‘to absolve God, the world, ancestors … society’, etc.). The hard compatibilist will maintain that the child owns his mechanism without having consented to it (Russell 2010), but the question returns: how, then, may he be held responsible for it? In current philosophy, epiphenomenalism is most often seen as a bogey position, but it has been advanced as a positive solution to the problem of overdetermination; and, as for epiphenomenalism, there are other, classic options here – options that determinists probably need to re-engage with. So, Jordan (1969), in defending his version of the transcendental argument against determinism, suggested (albeit somewhat sardonically) that, in the face of just this problem, the determinist might wish to embrace the notion of pre-established harmony (causal sufficiency for the belief, plus normative epistemic sufficiency in a parallel world of epistemic value). I think actually that determinists might wish to take such suggestions at face value, as attempts to furnish them with a response. In general, given their reflexive situation, determinists should explore the spectrum of such positions, including some of the more rarely entertained, exotic possibilities. For instance, an intellectually serious position that would be available to the determinist here is panpsychism (Skribina 2005) or even pantheism, whereby the ‘World-Mind’ is seen as speaking, rationally, in the determinist – or through the determinist – from 13.75 billion years ago, as to the truth of determinism: a truth that applies to itself. (Though admittedly other avatars of that World-Mind will conflict in this judgement – but perhaps we may allow that it contains multitudes.) His ‘nomological dangler’ objection – which appears to undercut many of the (differently jargonized, but essentially the same) ‘two senses of causation’ positions that followed him (e.g. Yablo’s (1992) distinction between ‘causal relevance’ (of the mind) and ‘causal potency’ (of the quarks); the objection being that if the quarks really are causally potent, the mind is causally irrelevant). Those with a lessthan-realist view of causation (Dennett, Rudder Baker) will be unmoved by this objection; but no-one should have a less-than-realist view of causation.

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Notes Kim’s early work on the exclusion problem (Kim 1989) precisely developed out of his attempt to counter Goldman’s (1969) neo-compatibilist response to Malcolm’s (1968) transcendental argument against ‘mechanism’. Goldman had been taken by many to have developed a strong response to Malcolm; but Goldman’s argument on close re-reading is hard to make sense of and does not appear to survive contemporaneous and later developments in the ontology of the mental. (For example, in his compatibilist response to Malcolm, Goldman (1969: 478) explicitly disavows making a bridge-law/type-type identity connection between reasons and causes – with all the difficulties that at that time were just starting to be seen to attend any such move – yet in invoking something called ‘simultaneous nomic equivalents’, Goldman nonetheless appears to be making exactly such a connection.) Pace Broad (1952: 216) and the odd consensus that has coalesced around the view that his brief, obscure, but highly influential remarks in the essay in question constitute a telling argument against the possibility of non-event causation being temporally located (against, for example, causation by a river, or a self, being located at a time). Clarke (1995) was one of the few who shared my view that Broad’s argument is at best hard to discern, and, if present at all, question-begging; though O’Connor (2011) notes that Clarke appears now to have significantly resiled from this view. As Haji (2008) notes, this way of putting things makes it very close to van Inwagen’s (1980, 1983) original principle (A) in the Direct Argument (or (α) of the Consequence Argument): …p 䡚NRp. (‘NRp’ =df ‘no-one is responsible for the fact that p’.) It is additionally questionable whether the argument above needs to rest on any kind of general transfer principle like van Inwagen’s; and if, tacitly, it does, it is further questionable whether this principle is logical rather than causal (Shabo 2010a,b). This should be seen as consonant with many of the arguments of Chapter 7 – and those of the current chapter’s preceding Section 10.3. It is also of a piece with the objection (e.g. from McKenna 2008) to Frankfurt (‘two-path’) pre-emptive overdetermination counters to transfer considered in Chapter 6, Section 6.6.3: if both paths are assumed to be determined (as they must be), then such cases cannot do the work required of them in non-question-beggingly arguing that there is compatibilist freedom in our putatively one-path world. Cf. Lockie (2003b, 2006). Others, less in vogue now than once they were, would be the Economic Determinism of the Marxists and the ‘Psychic Determinism’ of the Freudians. (Both are remarked upon by several authors in the older literature advancing transcendental arguments against determinism.) I have argued that Eliminativist Materialism has many of the properties of such positions also (Lockie

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2003c). If you think that the Platonic and later Greek peritrope arguments work against relativism, yet the Epicurean peritrope arguments do not work not against determinism, ask yourself what the salient differences are here: is it merely the differing locus of determination? What are the important structural differences? I wish to commit to emergentism as the most nearly adequate (/least inadequate) position on special science determination. I remain agnostic on whether to commit to a classic ‘stratified’ model of emergentism. In the philosophy of science literature, this is a point both the reductionists and anti-reductionists substantially agree on – with those who would oppose this being mostly either anti-realists about causation or the defenders of other non-standard views. Remove issues as to the entailments of determinism from the specific area of free will and the compatibilist stance becomes rather more of a minority view. Both Kim and his emergentist opponents substantially agree that any special science causation (real causation – not causal ‘relevance’) would represent a severe problem for the causal completeness of the physical. Campbell distinguishes the ‘inner standpoint’ from ‘the standpoint of external observation’. He assimilates the former to the practical and the latter to the theoretical, though he does (regrettably) assimilate the practical to the experiential – his being an argument from the phenomenological experience of freedom to its reality. I have not in this work articulated my theory of knowledge, and cannot here offer a précis thereof; but I embrace the view that abstract, high-level knowledge is best understood on the basis of modern cognitive psychology’s schema theory – as developed out of the classic approaches articulated by Bartlett (especially) and Piaget and the Gestaltists. On such views, propositional knowledge (at least, highlevel propositional knowledge) involves the knower assimilating propositions to very large, intertwined, holistic, inferential, active, top-down knowledge structures – schemata or Gestalten. A commendable exception here is Thomas Nagel, who considers P. F. Strawson’s (1962) quietist views – to the effect that we may properly question only the correct application of the reactive attitudes internal to our practices (say, local determinism due to coercion, mental illness, etc.), and not on grounds external to our practices (overarching metaphysical determinism). Nagel demurs: ‘I believe this position is incorrect because there is no way of preventing the slide from internal to external criticism once we are capable of an external view. It needs nothing more than the ordinary idea of responsibility’ (Nagel 1986: 125, emphases in original). Nagel clearly precedes my own arguments in drawing direct parallels between this libertarian–compatibilist debate and the situation regarding epistemic scepticism, then to note ‘this is a genuine challenge to our freedom and the attitudes that presuppose it, and it cannot be met by the claim that only internal criticisms are

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legitimate, unless that claim is established on independent grounds’ (Nagel 1986: 126, emphasis added). 20 This should be seen as reinforcing the question of Chapter 7 (e.g. Section 7.2.3 – of Kant and Diogenes Laertius’s apocryphal Zeno) as to whether determinism may be seen as having any practical (here normative-epistemic) consequences at all. Notwithstanding my hostile claims in the introduction, it must be admitted that it does also give us one interpretation of the transcendental argument for freedom in which this is centrally concerned with the ‘possibility of experience’. 21 Anscombe’s response here, in admittedly one of her very earliest papers, may have application against the specifics of Lewis’ (1947) position, but seems less than convincing as a response to any carefully thought-through version of this argument, where it is concerned with the normative epistemology of reasoning (as opposed, that is, to the metaphysical status of its results). James Jordan, though himself a defender of the epistemic transcendental argument, corrected an incautious version of it precisely akin to the Lewis overstatement when he qualified H. J. Paton’s interpretation of the Kantian argument in the Groundwork: ‘Nor would it follow from the truth of any deterministic theory that there is no difference between valid and invalid arguments. What does follow … is that noone is able rationally to assess an argument for validity’ (Jordan 1969: 53) of Paton (1965) – and cf. remarks in Section 10.4). Consider also the applicability of such remarks to the dismissive hard incompatibilist passage from Galen Strawson (1995: 23) in the previous chapter: ‘one does not want to be self-determining either with respect to … belief or … reasoning, but simply want truth in beliefs and validity in reasoning’.

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Wright, C. (2002) ‘(Anti-)sceptics, simple and subtle: G.E Moore and John McDowell’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65: 330–48. Wu, W. (2014) Attention, Oxford: Routledge. Yablo, S. (1992) ‘Mental causation’, Philosophical Review, 101: 245–80. Yaffe, G. (2005) ‘More on “ought” implies “can” and the principle of alternate possibilities’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 29: 307–12. Zagzebski, L. (1996) Virtues of the Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zagzebski, L. (2003) ‘The search for the source of epistemic good’, Metaphilosophy, 34(1–2): 12–28.

Index Note: Page references with letter ‘n’ followed by locators denote note numbers. abiogenesis 235–6 access and control, distinction between 13–14, 18 access internalism. See internalism, access access without deontology? See internalism, access, without deontology active powers 55, 89, 97, 104 Adler, Alfred 206 afferent. See efferent vs. afferent agency Eleatic (see Eleatic (conception of agency)) epistemic 8, 38, 55, 67–105, 128, 175, 203 (see also situation that confronts us) mediated cognitive 82–4 moral 54, 193, 215, 216, 242 agent-causation. See self-determinism, distinguished from agent-causation alcoholic (mother’s wake) example 207–8 Alexander’s Principle 157–9, 201, 202, 236 Allport, Gordon 207 Alston, William 10, 24, 28, 31, 37, 39, 44, 46, 51, 121, 150, 246 n.4, 246 n.8, 248 n.17, 278 spectatorial conception of justification 124–8, 230 subjective vs. objective pursuit of truth 107–13 amor fati 227 Anderson-Kanger proof 248 n.16 aneurysm case 135, 142 animal vs. reflective knowledge (Sosa) 249 n.5 animals, rationality and agency 8, 56, 57, 81, 102 Annas, Julia 34, 36, 264 n.5 Anscombe, Elizabeth 198, 233, 243, 276 n.21 Archangel example (C. D. Broad) 169–71

arché 162, 214, 228 argument vs. proof 191, 233, 268 n.1, 269 n.6 Aristotle 1, 34, 47, 65, 70, 147, 157, 264 n.5, 266 n.1 asymmetry 132, 133, 146–9, 185, 216, 230, 269 n.5 attention 14, 46, 47, 50, 78, 79 executive vs. involuntary 62, 72, 82–4 supervisory attentional system (Shallice) 59 Audi, Robert 46, 47, 50, 263 n.11 aviary, Theaetetan 14–15, 16 backtracking counterfactuals 179, 190 Baddeley, Alan and Hitch, Graham 59, 60, 68, 69, 92, 96 Balaguer, Mark 208, 270 n.1, 270 n.2 Bales, R. E. 29, 31, 249 n.3 Bannister, Donald and Fransella, Fay 207 Barkley, Russell 58, 60, 61, 63, 93, 97, 253 n.1, 255 n.8 Bartlett, Frederic 75, 84, 102, 105, 248 n.15, 253 n.2, 255 n.7, 263 n.10, 275 n.18 Baumeister, Roy 79, 255 n.8 Bayesianism 20 Bealer, George 21, 245 n.1, 261 n.6, 278 Beebee, Helen 237 belief choice direct 45, 49 indirect 45, 49 not to the point 7, 45, 48–9 Bergmann, Michael 10, 110, 247 n.12, 250 n.8, 251 n.2 Berofsky, Bernard 267 n.3 bias argument 54–5, 100–2 Bjork, Robert 79, 85, 86 blamelessness, epistemic 10, 24, 28, 36–7, 110, 112, 250 n.8

296

Index

blind man and cliff example 137, 143 Bobzien, Susanne 155, 162, 264 n.3, 266 n.2 BonJour, Laurence 16, 21, 28, 39, 245 n.1, 246 nn.4–6, 261, 263 n.11, 278 bounded rationality 12, 20, 30, 31, 33, 108, 109, 249 n.3 brain in a vat 113, 140, 189, 237, 260–1 n.2 bridge murder example 50 Brink, David 29, 31, 249 n.3 Broad, C. D. 78, 159, 170, 199, 201, 212, 270 n.5, 271 n.7, 274 n.10 Broca’s ‘Tan’. See cognitive impairment, Broca’s ‘Tan’ Burnyeat, Myles 128, 129 Campbell, C. A. 190, 200, 202, 238, 239, 275 n.17 Canute 16 caprice. See freedom of caprice Carneades 267 n.2 Cartesian Theatre 209–11, 217 Cassius (Julius Caesar) 206 causa sui 78, 228 causal potency 162, 214, 273 n.8 causation agent vs. event vs. structural 200–2 anti-realism 266 n.1, 273 n.8, 275 n.16 covering law 270 n.4 distinction with determination by law (Anscombe) 198 event (see event causation) chance objection. See randomness objection (free will) character-based counterexamples (Luther cases) 146, 148, 149, 216, 228 China population example 51, 52 Chisholm, Roderick 9, 16, 24, 28, 31, 40, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 121, 127, 150, 200, 201, 246 n.4, 247 n.11, 263, 278 Chomsky, Noam 37, 240, 263 n.11 Chrisman, Matthew 45, 51 Chrysippus 153, 154, 155, 157, 161, 163, 264 n.3, 266 n.2 Churchland, Patricia 158, 183, 184, 269 n.4 Cicero 153, 154, 264 n.3 Clark, Andy 89, 91, 257 n.15 Clarke, Murray 46, 47, 48, 50, 58 Clarke, Randolph 204, 270 n.2, 271 n.8, 274 n.10

Clifford, William, K. 9, 16, 48, 52, 71, 72, 73, 249 n.3 cognitive impairment 8, 28, 251 n.6 Broca’s ‘Tan’ 138 Dr. P 57–8 dysexecutive syndrome 59 environmental dependency syndrome 58, 59 perseveration 59, 64, 76 Phineas Gage 65 split brain monkeys and humans 92 unbiased cognition and 101–2 cognitivism-non-cognitivism. See ethical internalism-externalism Cohen, L. J. 21, 122, 245 n.1, 262 n.7, 262 n.9, 262 n.10, 278 coherence theory (‘unbounded’ objection) 12, 15 coherentism 12, 16, 110 idealist 16 combinatorial explosion 12 compatibilism 219–29 epistemic 169, 247 Compton, Arthur 163, 200 computational intractability 12, 29 conceptual analysis. See intuitions (metaphilosophy) Conee, Earl 12, 249 n.4 conscientiousness 65, 69, 71, 76, 80 consciousness 8, 10, 13, 56, 69, 84, 91, 97, 209 consequence argument 187–92 consequentialism actual vs. expected 16–17, 28, 111–12, 142 consideration of future consequences 65, 79, 255 n.8 contamination/preservation model of cognition 55, 84, 101, 102, 103, 255 n.7 Copp, David 133, 135, 136, 139, 141, 142, 172, 176, 215 Cromwell (bowels of Christ quotation) 75, 76 cyclist example 69–73 Danto, Arthur 272 n.3 Davies, Martin 237 debunking 2, 115, 116, 118

Index decision-making 15, 20, 109, 118, 127, 170, 171, 172, 174, 211 degeneracy. See Edelman, G. M. and Gally, J. A. (‘degeneracy’) Dennett, Daniel 146, 154, 166, 167, 190, 216, 228, 245 n.1, 262 n.7, 270 n.1, 273 n.8, 278 deontic leeway entailment 27, 132, 136, 138–9, 181, 186, 215 deontology without access. See superlative oughts Descartes, René 1, 9, 16, 38, 39, 48, 52, 53, 231 desires 53–4 detective example 48, 52 Diogenes Laertius–of Zeno of Citium 162, 276 n.20 direct argument (for incompatibilism) 143–5, 186, 230, 232, 235, 265 n.8, 272 n.1, 274 n.11 discovery vs. confirmation. See genetic fallacy; Kekulé’s dream DLPFC 69, 70, 89, 254 n.5 doctor example (Lazy Argument) 155, 157, 161 doctor, junior example. See junior doctor example downwards causation 68, 159, 200, 244 doxastic decision procedure (DDP) 29–32, 126 doxastic involuntarism 43–4, 118 dilemma argument against 52–3 two stage defence of 45–7 of untruths 51 doxastic presupposition 12 doxastic voluntarism. See belief choice Dr. P. See cognitive impairment, Dr. P driver example (WM). See cyclist example; TOTE; WM Duncker, Karl 76, 90 duties, epistemic 107–12 dysexecutive syndrome. See cognitive impairment, dysexecutive syndrome Ebbinghaus, Hermann 253 n.2 Edelman, G. M. and Gally, J. A. (‘degeneracy’) 89, 163 Edinburgh to London (train) example 167–9

297

Edwards, Jonathan 102, 193, 195, 203, 210 EF. See executive functions/executive functioning efferent vs. afferent 18, 55, 74, 87–93 Einstellung (mental set) 74 Eleatic (conception of agency) 156, 157, 162, 236, 266 n.1 eliminativism 118, 119, 184, 230, 235, 242, 262, 266 n.11, 274 n.14 Elqayam, Shira 30 embodied/situated cognition 87–97 emergentism 68, 77, 78, 104, 160, 200, 201, 203, 217, 231, 236, 244, 275 n.15 Epicurus 2, 177, 184 epiphenomenalism 232, 273 n.7 epistemic circumplex 39 epistemic goal state 19, 32, 107–13, 121–2, 123, 135, 150–1, 241, 247 n.9 epistemic justification. See justification, epistemic epistemic perspectivism. See internalism, perspectivist epistemic poverty 27, 28, 36–8, 108, 118, 126 equivocation. See fallacy of equivocation Erasmus, Desiderius 172, 176, 266 n.12 Erosion example (Ravizza) 144, 145, 232 espresso machine example (Zagzebski) 40 ethical internalism-externalism 53, 251 n.3 ethics of belief 9, 48, 89, 128, 216 Evans, Jonathan 98, 99, 245 n.2, 259 n.23, 259 n.24, 278 event causation 201, 204, 270 n.2, 274 Evil Demon 39, 113, 140, 168 Ewing, A. C. 1 exclusion argument 103, 160, 200, 231, 232, 274 n.9 executive functions/functioning (EF) 56–66 examples of 62–5 hierarchical theories of 70, 77 introductory 56–7 promiscuity, (task impurity, reflexiveness) 74, 82, 87, 93, 253 n.2, 255 n.9 regress objections 76–8, 102–5 table of concepts and components 60 tripartite theory 67, 106, 252 n.1 existential externalism 119, 121, 125, 184, 242 existential internalism 121, 246 n.5, 262 n.8

298

Index

extended mind. See embodied/situated cognition eye movements 89–91, 258 n.20 fallacy of equivocation 188, 190 fatalism, local. See local fatalism fatalism, partial fate determinism. See partial fate determinism Feldman, Richard 12, 24, 25, 51, 52, 247 n.11, 247 n.12, 249 n.4 Feynman, Richard 91, 258 n.21 final pathway/final process 50, 72, 73, 82, 250 n.2, 255 n.7, 256 n.10 Fischer, John Martin 18, 132, 136, 137, 139, 144, 156, 165, 170, 173, 174, 228, 231, 264 nn.1–3, 267 n.4, 268 n.6 Fischer, John Martin and Ravizza, Mark 18, 228, 264 n.3, 272 n.4, 272 n.5 flat earth example 51, 52 flexibility, cognitive 75–8 flicker of freedom 137–8 Fodor, Jerry 163, 200, 270 n.5, 271 n.7 Foley, Richard 10, 23, 30, 35, 38, 40, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 245 n.1, 246 n.4, 246 n.8, 248 n.13, 250 n.6, 255, 278 Foley divorce 38–40 Foley rationality 35, 40, 97, 114, 140, 249 n.2, 261 n.3 Foot, Philippa 54, 251 n.4 Forth Bridge 12, 30, 263 n.11 foundationalism 12, 20, 21, 30, 246 n.4, 261 n.6, 263 n.11 Frankfurt cases (against PAP) 131–49 basic case 131 Frankfurt, Harry 4, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 156, 185, 186, 213, 214, 215, 219, 220, 223, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232, 260 n.30, 261 n.2, 264 n.1, 265 n.9, 272 n.5, 274 n.13 freedom of caprice 193, 195–6, 203 Frege, Gotlob 1, 147 Freudian Iceberg 116 Friedman, Naomi 74 functionalism (philosophy of mind) 104, 199, 257 n.14 Fuster, Joaquin 77, 127, 256 n.10, 257 n.16, 258 n.17

Gazzaniga, Michael 91, 92, 257 n.15 Gellius, Aulus 153, 154 Gemes, Ken 272 n.3 genetic fallacy 229, 233–5 Geneviève and André 136, 142, 143, 264 n.4 Gestalt/Gestaltism 74, 75, 76, 90, 91, 240, 241, 256 n.12, 275 n.18 Gibson, J. J. 77 Ginet, Carl 46, 134, 191, 204, 261 n.2, 270, 271 n.8 golden mountain (Hume) 265 n.11 Goldman, Alvin 17, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, 120, 121, 125, 126, 231, 246 n.4, 246 n.5, 249 n.2, 249 n.3, 262 n.8, 274 n.9, 278 good, the. See right and good Gordian knot division 33–41 Grant, E. and Spivey, M. 90 Greco, John 39, 246 n.5, 251 n.2 grounded rationality 30 Grünbaum, Adolf 141, 154, 163, 180, 241, 242, 268 n.2 guidance vs. regulative control (Fischer) 132, 146, 162, 173, 268 n.6 Haji, Ishtiyaque 132, 233, 274 n.11 halo effect 35, 37 hard compatibilism 229, 273 n.6 hard incompatibilism 162, 189, 193, 204, 227, 229, 276 n.21 Hasker, William 269 n.4 Heil, John 46, 49 Heisenberg example 73–5 Hell is a bar in Chapel Hill example 51 heuristics 19, 259 n.24, 262 n.7 hierarchical. See executive functions/ functioning (EF), hierarchical theories of Hieronymi, Pamela 51, 247 n.12 Hobart’s dilemma 102, 103, 193, 202–4 Hobbes, Thomas 102, 141, 169, 179, 185, 186, 192, 195, 196, 202, 210, 220, 222, 224, 231, 238, 243, 260 n.29, 260 n.30, 268 n.2, 271 n.10 homuncularism 77, 78 hot sand example 81 Hughlings-Jackson, John 59 Hume, David 102, 169, 179, 202, 206, 265 n.9

Index Hunt, David 265 n.10 hypothetical imperatives (ethics) 53 idiographic and nomothetic 207, 208 ineradicable beliefs 37 inhibitory cognitive control 78–82 Intelligibility of Reduced Predicates Argument 202, 271 n.7 intentional and intensional (responsibility) 110, 133, 142, 144–5 intentional leeway entailments. See deontic leeway entailment; PAB; PAE; DEC internalism access 11 without deontology 22 conceptions of 10 deontic 9–10 introspectionist 13, 14, 84 mentalist 12 perspectivist 14–16, 112–14, 117, 122–3, 142, 167 thin deontological 11, 18–21 internalism, ethical. See ethical internalism-externalism introspection. See internalism, introspectionist intuitions (metaphilosophy) 21, 35–6, 114–15, 245 n.1, 261 n.6 IQ 57, 58, 59, 75, 80, 89, 251 n.6 Irenic resolution. See Gordian knot division irony 227, 229 James, William 251 n.5 Johnson-Laird, Philip 93, 94, 259 n.23 Jordan, James 273 n.7 J-Rules 17, 111, 118, 120 junior doctor example 13, 15 Jurado, María & Rosselli, Mónica 59, 60 justification, epistemic and rationality 7, 33, 114, 261 n.3 sui generis 17, 119, 120, 123, 247 n.11 Kahneman, Daniel 259 n.24, 262 n.9 Kane, Robert 47, 70, 134, 147, 162, 208, 213, 224, 260–1 n.2, 270 n.1, 270 n.2, 272 n.1, 272 n.2 Kant, Immanuel 1, 37, 54, 103, 132, 148,

299

162, 184, 192, 240, 243, 244, 251 n.4, 251 n.5, 263 n.13, 264 n.1, 269, 276 n.20 Kapitan, Tomis 166, 185, 190 Kekulé’s dream example 234 Keren, G, and Schul, Y. 259, 259 n.24 Kim, Jaegwon 103, 160, 200, 201, 232, 240, 274 n.9, 275 n.16 knowledge contrast with rationality 7, 8, 33–41, 113 Kornblith, Hilary 25, 46, 49, 55, 58, 100, 247 n.10, 262 n.8, 263 n.11 Kripke, Saul 1 last ought. See transcendental argumentation, ineliminability of the ‘final ought’ Lazy Argument co-fated response 154–64 epistemology not metaphysics response 164–72 locked door example (see locked door example (van Inwagen)) Leibniz 153, 155, 162, 210 Leite, Adam 125, 263 n.11 Lewes, George Henry 159, 270 n.5 Lewis, C. S. 243, 276 n.21 Lezak, Muriel 57, 58, 59, 60 local fatalism 137, 154, 164, 167, 168 local miracles 179, 190 Locke, John 9, 16, 36, 48, 169, 179, 220 locked door example (van Inwagen) 172–6 Lucas, John 264 n.6, 265 n.7, 265 n.11 Lucretius 1, 248 n.15 Luria, Alexander 59, 88, 96, 163, 200, 253 n.2, 263 n.10 Luther cases. See character-based counterexamples (Luther cases) Luther, Martin 4, 149, 228, 266 n.12 MacDonald, Kevin 79, 81, 84, 102 Madeleine case (Copp) 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 264 Maier, Norman 76, 90, 256 Malcolm, Norman 274 n.9 manipulation argument 186, 227, 273 n.5 map example 88–9 marshmallow (Mischel) 83, 87 Martin, Wayne 149, 150, 172

300

Index

McCall, Storrs and Lowe, E. J. 102, 211, 270 n.2 McGinn, Colin 37, 240 McHugh, Connor 18 McKenna, Michael 132, 145, 158, 159, 233, 271 n.1, 274 n.13 McLaughlin, Brian 271 n.7 Mele, Al 227 Meno project/problem 7, 40, 127 mental agility 259 n.22 mental models 93–7 mental rotation (Shepard) 88, 89, 91 mental vs. motor actions 13, 82–97, 259 n.22 mereological fallacy 104 mesh accounts 220, 226–9 metacognition 64, 83, 96 metacognitive 22, 58, 64, 68, 70, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 97 metamemory 64, 85 Mill, John Stuart 212, 270 n.5 Miller, E. K. and Cohen, J. D. 70, 77, 89, 100, 101, 105 Miller, George 68 Miller, George, Galanter, Eugene and Pribram, Karl 68, 69 Mind argument 101, 192, 216 Mischel, Walter 63, 79, 83, 87 Miyake, Akira and Friedman, Naomi 69, 86, 101, 253 n.1, 256 n.13 Moore’s argument (applied to free will debates) 189, 190, 237, 238, 240, 241 moral luck 141 movement of thought 92, 258 n.20 Moya, Carlos 138, 142, 215, 264 n.1, 264 n.6, 265 n.7 Mysterianism (McGinn-Chomsky ineffability thesis) 37, 200, 239–41 Nagel, Ernest 271 n.7 Nagel, Thomas 109, 111, 240, 275 n.19 narcissism, epistemic (Foley) 109, 112 Neisser, Ulric 75, 102 Nelkin, Dana 132, 146, 264 n.1, 266 n.1, 268 n.7 Newton, Isaac 37, 250 n.9 Nietzsche, Friedrich 268 n.2, 272 n.3, 273 n.6 Nietzschean ressentiment 206 no method (méthode) 19–20, 21–2

nomothetic. See idiographic and nomothetic Nottelmann, Nikolaj 36, 37, 44, 113, 247 n.11, 250 n.7, 250 n.9 Nozick, Robert 102, 211, 231 O’Connor, Timothy 158, 192, 200, 201, 270 n.2, 270 n.5, 274 n.10 O’Keefe, Tim 267 n.2 Oaksford, Mike and Chater, Nick 20, 109 objective ‘obligation’ (‘ought’, ‘duty’). See superlative oughts objective and subjective duty 28, 108, 141 epistemic desiderata 32 pursuit of truth 112–14, 121–2 Oedipus 142 omission and commission 133 opacity vs. transparency 142, 188–91, 236–41 ordinary language. See intuitions (metaphilosophy) Othello-Macbeth example 205–6 Otsuka, Michael 138, 215 Ought, etymology 263 n.12 ought, final. See transcendental argumentation, ineliminability of the ‘final ought’ ought implies can (OIC) 17–18, 23–4, 27–8, 44, 132–3, 135–6, 146, 149–51, 247 n.12. See also deontic leeway entailment contrast with PAP 131–3 overdetermination 144, 145, 156, 157, 158, 200, 204, 205, 229, 231, 232, 243, 244, 273 n.7, 274 n.13 Owens, David 28, 212, 247 n.12, 248 n.19, 261 n.4 panpsychism 273 n.7 pantheism 273 n.7 Paradox of Abandonment 261 n.5 partial fate determinism 163–4 Pereboom, Derk 198, 227, 266 n.11, 268 n.2, 272 n.5 peritrope arguments 1, 2, 121, 123, 177, 235, 242, 275 n.14 perspectivism. See internalism, perspectivist

Index perversion (of belief formation) 55, 58, 100, 102, 103 Pettit, Philip and Brennan, Geoffrey 249 n.3 P-FIT 71, 254 n.6, 258 n.17 phobia 168 Piaget, Jean 84, 258 n.21, 275 n.18 Piagetian 83, 84, 85 Plantinga, Alvin 9, 10, 22, 23, 28, 31, 48, 51, 246 n.4, 278 Plato 14, 15, 32, 40, 123, 127, 128, 250 n.10, 263 n.13 peritrope against relativism 1 Popper, Karl 163, 184, 200, 267 n.4, 269 n.3 Popper, Karl and Eccles, John 183 positive vs. negative chance (James) 197–8, 203, 215 presuppositional incompatibilism 237, 240–1 principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) 131–3. See deontic leeway entailment principle of avoidable blame (PAB) 138, 186, 215 principle of non-contradiction 1 Pust, Joel 21, 245, 261 n.6, 278 Putnam, Hilary 1, 199, 201, 270 n.5, 271 n.7, 271 n.11 quasi-realism (free will) 220–5 Quine, W. V. 266 n.11 radiation problem (Duncker) 90 Railton, Peter 255 n.8 randomness objection (free will) 102, 197, 198, 215, 216 Ratty and Mole 190 Rawls, John 21 red case (idle predicates objection to asymmetry) 147, 148, 180, 182, 265 n.11 regress objections to agency. See executive functions/functioning (EF), regress objections regulative vs. theoretical distinction , 27–41, 126 internalism/externalism and 41 knowledge/rationality and 40 list of cognate terms 31

301

Reid, Thomas 89, 102, 103, 151, 158, 159, 193, 207, 208, 209, 212, 220, 222, 225, 264 n.3, 265 n.9, 272 n.1, 272 n.4 relativism 1, 123, 234, 235, 275 n.14 replay/rollback argument 270 n.2 right and good 24, 112, 135–43, 144–5, 149 role oughts 24–5 Rudder Baker, Lynne 203, 269 n.3, 273 n.8 rules consequentialism. See J-Rules Russell, Bertrand 36, 171 Russell, Paul 127, 273 n.6 Ryan, Sharon 25, 245 n.3, 247 n.12, 278 Ryle, Gilbert 265 n.9 Sartwell, Crispin 35, 40 scepticism existence of a self 1 external world 1 free will 193 by illusion 1 Moorean 189 Schopenhauer 173, 243 Sechenov’s principle 72, 82, 208, 224, 271 n.9, 271 n.10 self awareness 255 n.8 self-deception 45, 171, 250 n.1 self-determinism 195–6 distinguished from agent-causation 199–202 indeterminism and 197–8 overdetermination objection 204–5 self regulation 61, 80, 79–81, 85, 84–7 Seligman, Martin 255 n.8 Shabo, Seth 145, 265 n.8, 265 n.10, 269 n.6, 271 n.1, 274 n.12 Shakespeare, William 205–6 Shallice, Tim 59, 60, 252 n.7 ship-owner example (Clifford) 72, 249 n.3 Sidgwick, Henry 28, 31, 212, 251 n.5, 260 n.1 Simon, Herbert 20, 30 situated cognition. See embodied/situated cognition situation that confronts us 37–8 Skinner, B. F. 138, 271 n.9 empty organism 211 locus of variables 101, 208, 211 Skinner Box 138 Skribina, David 273 n.7

302

Index

slave beating example (Diogenes, of Zeno) 162 Smart, J. J. C. 141, 232, 268 n.2 Smith, Edward and Kosslyn, Stephen 58 Smith, Holly, M. 29, 31, 249 n.3 Sosa, Ernest 246 n.8, 249 n.5 soufflé example (Copp) 135–6 source vs. leeway incompatibilism 213–16 special sciences 199, 200, 202, 231, 232, 236, 270 n.5, 275 n.15, 275 n.16 spectatorial conception of justification 125, 128, 165–6, 171, 230 speed-accuracy trade off 19 Sperry, Roger 77, 159 Stanovich, Keith 98, 99, 259 n.24, 262 n.9 Sternberg, Robert 84, 94 Steup, Matthias 169, 247 n.12 Steward, Helen 8, 102, 117, 156, 211 Strawson, Galen 46, 47, 58, 103, 204, 210, 211, 212, 276 n.21 Strawson, P. F. 247 n.12, 275 n.19 strong vs. weak justification (Goldman) 249 n.5 strongest motive 207, 212, 220, 272 n.4 Stroop task 78 student (lovelorn) example 170–1 subjective deontological justification. See blamelessness, epistemic subjective duty (responsibility, obligation) 28, 108, 112, 141–2 substance dualism 200–1 superlative oughts 24, 28, 108, 148–9 supervisory attentional system. See attention, supervisory attentional system swamping problem 40 synchronic vs. diachronic 24, 29, 49–50, 112, 251 n.2, 255 n.8 task impurity. See executive functions/ functioning (EF), promiscuity, (task impurity, reflexiveness) teacher example (Feldman) 24 Tetris 88 theoretical. See regulative vs. theoretical distinction thin deontologism. See internalism, thin deontological Thomas, L. and Lleras, A. 90, 91 Timpe, Kevin 213, 215

Tolman, Edward 163 Tolstoy, Leo 149–50 TOTE (Test Operate Test Exit) 69, 70, 71, 254 n.4 tracing 24, 47, 65, 70, 71, 122, 146, 147, 148, 250 n.2 tracing cases 146–7 train of thought 50, 58, 59, 65, 91, 92–3, 96–7, 168, 174–6, 222, 224 transcendental argument against totalizing externalism 119 conative 178 direct (source) 229–31 ethical 179–81 indirect (standard) 182–3 components illustrated schematically 187 spectatorial counterargument 129, 171–2 transcendental argumentation does not rely on verificationism 127, 267 n.5 epistemic considerations 2 ineliminability of the ‘final ought’ 2, 4, 119, 120, 123, 181, 229, 242, 243 possibility of experience 1, 162, 276 n.20 question-begging, issues of 126, 159, 160, 180, 183–4, 185, 235, 237, 265 n.8, 269 n.3 transcendental arguments examples 1 transfer agency 158 causal vs. logical 145, 265 n.8, 269 n.6, 271–2 n.1, 274 n.12 epistemic 189, 237, 241 modal 185–6, 188–92 of non-responsibility 143–5, 232, 265 n.8, 274 n.11, 274 n.12 transparency (in argumentation). See opacity vs. transparency tribesman example (Alston) 28, 37, 39, 109, 113, 117, 263 n.10 truck example (Greco) 39 tu quoque 30, 263 n.11 Tversky, Amos 259 n.24, 262 n.9 two process theory 97–100 two-stage (attention + final pathway) views of EF 47, 59, 73 two-string problem 76, 90, 91, 256 n.12

Index USA colony of Britain example 44, 51, 203 van Inwagen, Peter 143, 144, 145, 172, 173, 174, 176, 181, 185, 191, 192, 240, 269 n.3, 269 n.6, 272 n.5, 274 n.11, 274 n.12 verificationism 1. See transcendental argumentation, does not rely on verificationism virtue theory 9, 111, 140 objections to Foley divorce 34, 36 Stoic 34, 36 VMPFC 70, 254 n.5, 255 n.8 Vygotsky, Lev 32, 93, 96, 248, 263 n.10 Warfield, Ted 191, 269 n.6 water example (Schopenhauer) 173 Watson, Gary 226 Waugh, Evelyn 110 W-defence (Widerker) 135, 215 Weatherson, Brian 113 weighing of reasons 210–11 Weinberg, Jonathan 121, 246 n.5

303

Wendell Holmes, Oliver 153, 154, 163 what should we do in the meantime? 30, 31, 113, 117, 263 n.11 Widerker, David 133, 134, 135, 139, 213, 215, 232, 233, 261 n.2, 265 Wiggins, David 191 Williamson, Timothy 113 Windelband, Wilhelm 1, 207 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 15, 258 n.21 WKG Dilemma 134 Wolf, Susan 132, 146, 264 n.1 working memory (WM) 68–75 Wright, Crispin 237 Wu, Wayne 13, 14, 100, 117, 246 n.7, 258 n.20, 260 n.27 Yablo, Stephen 273 n.8 Yaffe, Gideon 133 Zagzebski, Linda 34, 36, 40, 264 n.5 Zeno of Citium 162, 269 n.5, 276 n.20 zombie 138 zone of proximal development 30, 32, 122, 123