Another cut & paste, so, again, flaws or errors in the formatting are mine, not Machan's.
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Agent Causation Defended: Theorists v. their Theories
Tibor Machan
“... the [theorist] cannot present a picture of man which patently contradicts his behavior in presenting that picture.”
Bannister, “Comment,” in Borger & Cioffi, eds., Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge UP, 1970), p. 417.
Puppets on a String?
It seems like economists and other social scientists want to explain, via factors and variables, various events, including the development of institutions, in human history. This means they want to point to such factors as the preconditions of those events. Yet, as theorists they also take the initiative to advance various theories, they set out to figure things out, organize their experiences, pick and choose what is relevant and what can be left aside.
Aren’t these facts in mutual tension? If we and all of what we do can be explained by reference to impersonal causes, factors that force us to behave in the various ways we do, where does our own creative initiative enter the picture? Is it then not through and through que sera, sera, after all? Are we just like the puppets we observe at amusement parks, being moved around without any will of their own, in the end? Isn’t even the idea of “original work” an oxymoron?
One reason so many find it a simple matter to dismiss the idea of free will is that they take it as axiomatic, utterly undeniable, that there can be behavior that isn’t caused by events that precede it. What is not considered as even a possibility, let alone a fact of reality, is that we ourselves could be causes so that some, maybe even the most significant, actions we take are to be explained by reference to our own causal agency or potency.
That I am the being whose actions produce these lines on a computer screen, who makes the movements with his fingers, guided by his judgments, that produce the text you are reading, that idea is deemed metaphysically impossible even by many who would otherwise not see themselves as having any metaphysical views at all. But what I do is seen by them as necessarily the result of events that causally impinge on me and make me act.
To explain this by reference to something I initiated—started on my own—is taken as an idea that’s out and out nonsense. Every event, including the movements of my fingers, the judgment made by me (with my mind or brain) that direct these fingers, must have been, the thesis goes, produced by a preceding event. Otherwise, it is held, the event could not have take place— there cannot be self-causation or agent causation or being causation.
And all this applies, of course, to these thinkers themselves—what they say and do, and what great scientists, composers, novelists or anyone else otherwise deemed to be a creative individual do—simply had to have happened. There is no room here for original authorship, agency or choice (initiative). Those concepts, as the late B. F. Skinner would put it, are all “pre-scientific.” Yet, some object. As the late Roger W. Sperry put it:
“We no longer seek ultimate nature of reality within the smallest physical elements, nor in their innermost essence. Instead the search is redirected to focus primarily on the patterning of the elements, on their differential pacing and timing and the progressive compounding of patterns of patterns, and on their evolving nature and complexity.” (1)
Spooky Action
I wish to offer some objections to this view and provide an alternative that would not be subject to the charge of my defending a kind of causation that is mysterious or spooky — in other words, nonexistent by scientifically respectable standards.
But first here is one of the preeminent champion of the view that no initiative can exist but with a twist, namely that despite the absence of original actions of any kind, we aren’t fated to do what we do, only a determinism, namely, that everything we do depends on something else that has happened and has impinged upon us. This is the philosopher Daniel Dennett and here is how he puts his point:
“Fatalism is the idea that something’s going to happen no matter what you do. Determinism is the idea that what you do depends. What happens depends on what you do, what you do depends on what you know, what you know depends on what you’re caused to know, and so forth — but still, what you do matters. There’s a big difference between that and fatalism. Fatalism is determinism with you left out. If I accomplish one thing in this book, I want to break the bad habit of putting determinism and inevitability together. Inevitability means unavoidability, and if you think about what avoiding means, then you realize that in a deterministic world there’s lots of avoidance. The capacity to avoid has been evolving for billions of years. There are very good avoiders now. There’s no conflict between being an avoider and living in a deterministic world. There’s been a veritable explosion of evitability on this planet, and it’s all independent of determinism.” (2)
In this discussion I will be focusing on some of the points Dennett raises above as well as on the framework that he appears to presuppose for some of the terms he uses in his discussion.
When we think of ourselves acting in the world, most of us tend to assume we can cause things to happen.(3) For one, we take our actions to be, well, our actions, not just movements or behaviors that we happen to have undergone.
We often make or produce stuff, as I am doing when I write these thoughts down or you, when you compose a poem, organize a division of a company or arrange the flowers in your garden.
Indeed, human history is believed by most of us to consist of more or less significant things people have done, badly or well. Art, science, technology, politics, diplomacy, economics and the rest are all supposedly spheres of human conduct. And it is also thought to be comprised of actions that we might not have taken, such as built gas ovens to burn Jews, run plantations where slaves where owned, or constructed gulags where members of reactionary classes where kept captive for years.
All such actions most of us tend to distinguish from stuff that just happens, more or less significant, more or less beneficial, but we couldn’t do anything about. That earthquake in California, the tsunami in Southern Asia and that hurricane Katrina, those all happened—we didn’t do them. The rain and the virus that has produced some of the damages from which we have suffered, a flood and a widespread illness, respectively, weren’t our doing. But the damage-control applied to them, via medicine or engineering, were.
Now there are those who deny that there really is much of a difference between these two kinds of occurrences despite the fact that vis-à-vis the global warming debate the issue is central. (4) They argue that both are happenings, with some involving human beings as intermediary factors, while with others without such involvement. But in the final analysis what we do is no less a kind of happening in which we have a role, as a rather complex link in the chain of events that brings about the behavior we otherwise, misguidedly, consider acts we produce.
Indeed, the issue is whether when we do have such a part in the process that brings about the action, are we in any way decisive, first causes or are we merely one of many steps in a causal chain. And there are a great many rather influential thinkers who deny that we are—or even could possibly be—such first causes. We cannot originate or initiate anything—it would be a spooky thing if we could.
Free Will and Determinism
Yet, is that right? Why would it be spooky if we could produce something on our own? We certainly assume at times we can do just such a thing, as when we think of Einstein having originated the theory of special relativity or Mozart having originated his Requiem.
In fact, in less dramatic ways we think of ourselves as engaging in original creations, as when we put together a funny expression or take an unusual picture. My own children often let on to their belief in having said something original, when after they say it they have a big grin on their faces, indicating that, yes, they know this is a novelty.
OK, but perhaps we are just mistaken to think these self-aggrandizing thoughts about what we can do. The famous behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner, who taught at Harvard University, argued that these ideas are pre-scientific and Dennett argues that the kind of freedom of the will, the kind that involves agent causation, is mysterious and, in any case, not worth having. This is the sort that would have us be capable of being original actors, creators, and producers. Dennett says we couldn’t make any sense of such freedom of action, certainly not of any kind of responsibility for actions we take if it did exist. In his recent book, Dennett tells us:
“How does an agent cause an effect without there being an event (in the agent, presumably) that is the cause of that effect (and is itself the effect of an earlier cause, and so forth)? Agent causation is a frankly mysterious doctrine, positing something unparalleled by anything we discover in the causal processes of chemical reactions, nuclear fission and fusion, magnetic attraction, hurricanes, volcanoes, or such biological processes as metabolism, growth, immune reactions, and photosynthesis.” (p. 100) (5).
First of all, the main argument for free will is no more mysterious than any arguments that rely on a dialectical move. If, as it turns out to be the case, free will is assumed even as one tries to deny it — in other words, the action of attempting to deny free will presupposes that the agent is capable of making original choices — that is sufficient to present a very strong case for free will.
And the kind of independent thinking involved in argumentation does exactly that, namely, presuppose free will, the capacity to make choices, to take the initiative as a conceptually conscious agent. For what worth would any argument be if it merely amounted to a computational or genetic process? It would be no more compelling as argument as would be an “argument” advanced by a computer or parrot.
The reason we can understand the reference to these as arguments is that we, human agents, can take them as such. But as products of computers or parrots they aren’t arguments, only a bunch of sounds strung together.
Second, there is that aspect of the case for free will that relies on introspection. We often know about things this way, as when we answer our doctors very confidently about where we feel a pain in our bodies, or remember an event for which there is no evidence any longer apart from our memory. These are completely reliable kinds of knowledge and part of what gives us knowledge of our free will is that we know we often choose, initiate action, produce or create what we didn’t have to produce or create.
As I am writing the next few words in this discussion, I know at every moment that I could stop, get up and get a soda from the fridge or continue with my project, as indeed I am choosing to do.
Finally, is Dennett’s distinction between determinism and inevitability (or fatalism) sound? Let’s look again at what he says:
“Inevitability means unavoidability, and if you think about what avoiding means, then you realize that in a deterministic world there’s lots of avoidance. The capacity to avoid has been evolving for billions of years. There are very good avoiders now.”
Now suppose that I am typing along here and someone maintains that I am fully determined to do this. I, however, in order to try to show that I am not, stop. Have I avoided something now?
No, not according to determinism. Some factor, such as the presentation of the idea that I am determined, along with my hard wired and trained responsiveness to such a presentation, have simply come into play to redirect the flow of events, so that I am no longer typing along but stopping, reacting to the factors or forces.
Could I have done otherwise? Not according to the determinist view. Was it inevitable what happened? Surely, the presentation of the determinist’s idea couldn’t be avoided; my reaction couldn’t either, and so on and so forth. What Dennett takes to be a serious difference between determinism and fatalism is only a difference in how detailed a story one is going to tell.
Sure, there is no fatalism of the sort where merely large movements proceed, unstoppably; but there is a fatalism of the sort where zillions of micro-movements interact in ways that even a humongous computer could not predict exactly what is going to happen next. Still, a sophisticated fatalist would rightly hold that whatever is going to happen, is fated to have happened, all the details being considered.
So, pace Dennett, if we know what avoidance means, we know that, paraphrasing him, “in a fatalistic world there’s lots of avoidance.” Why? Because what is called avoidance is a form of behavior that is determined to occur, just as any other form of behavior is determined to occur.
What the above does not show is the right account of free will, only that free will is real, it exists, indeed, it is undeniable for us who are acting agents. The theory of agent causality serves as an account of free will, not as a proof of it, however. If it fails, however, perhaps the idea that we have free will is false. Maybe a deterministic account of the phenomenon of free will shall succeed where the agent causality account has failed.
The Nature of Causality
So, it does matter whether the agent causality account of free will is sound. The first obstacle to this is the claim, made by Dennett and others, that the very idea of agent causation is mysterious, spooky. But why is Dennett so confident that agent causation would have to be mysterious? Well, to answer we need to consider a famous argument about the nature of causality that occurred back in the 18th century.
It was David Hume who reasoned that if we depended for knowing the world entirely and solely on our sensory information, then causality itself must not be thought of as any kind of production or power. The billiard ball that strikes another and is taken, thus, to have made the other move has no (empirically) demonstrable productive powers at all.
Instead, if we depend on our senses for knowledge, all we can justifiably claim is that the first billiard ball’s motion was followed by that of the second, and the oft-repeated instances of this result in our coming to gain the idea of causality. (This is an odd move, by the way, since Hume is depending on a productive notion of causality to explain our belief in causality.)
Regular or constant sequences like that are, for Hume, all that causes are, involving no evident causal powers. Now the assumption that all of what we know comes from our senses is a pretty radical one and although Hume’s idea of causality was very influential, most scientists and nearly all the rest of us did not fully accept his claim about causality because it rested on his radical empiricism.
But many did accept a good deal of it, so the idea that there can be something productive in a causal relationship has been dropped by most of those who think about causal connections in the world. It is this idea that is deemed to be spooky or mysterious by many because the productivity of a causal factor assumes something that is not directly evident — it isn’t perceived by the senses. Instead it is inferred from the entire context of the causal situation.
So, for example, that the billiard ball has something about it — say, its solidity, its mass and density – that would produce an impact on another billiard ball so this other ball would be moved by it, is something that we do not see but infer. And although much of science welcomes direct evidence, first and foremost, as it considers convincing explanatory stories, science also makes room for inferred powers.
For instance, black holes could not be detected by way of direct evidence for a long time, since by their very nature they didn’t release any sensory information since their immense gravitational force did not allow such information, involving as it has to the emission of light, to escape for us to perceive it. So, the existence and nature of black holes were both discovered by inference, by noticing facts that could best be explained by the postulation of the black hole. (This is, of course, how the reality of many other beings are routinely established — for example, intentions, motives, wants, wishes, expectations, and so forth.)
The existence of black holes – super-massive singularities so dense that not even light can escape from their gravity once it enters the “event horizon” – can only be inferred, as there is no way of directly observing them in nature.
In response to those like Dennett, then, who deny the possibility of agent causality because they regard productive powers of causal factors something mysterious or spooky, such powers are not directly perceived but they can be inferred from other facts that can be. So, if the best explanation of what makes the second billiard ball move is that the first has certain properties which can produce this movement in an entity such as the second ball, then that is a conclusion that is certain beyond a reasonable doubt (although not certain in the incorrigible, absolute sense Descartes’ idea of knowledge, which Hume deployed for sensory impressions, would have required).
Similarly, the power of human agents to be first causes can also be inferred along these lines. Given a certain composition and constitution of their brains, given their properties, they are capable of making original choices, of taking the initiative, just as we ordinarily believe we can.
Inferred Powers, or Who Produced the Theory?
Dennett and other compatibilists hold that the kind of freedom that agent causation involves is not worth having. They argue that to attribute responsibility to human individuals is, ipso facto, to see them as explaining their conduct as determined, since “responsible” means causally potent. Yet, if agent causation is a fact, it provides the causal potency by which responsibility may be ascribed to individual human beings, not because their conduct is caused by prior events but because they are themselves beings that can cause actions. (6)
As such it provides, also, a foundation for something Dennett & Co. need to deny, namely, that when we consider our past conduct, we normally, routinely take it that we could have acted other than we did, all things being equal — so that, without any impersonal forces have to have caused us to do a different thing, we could indeed have done a different thing.
This is a view that underlies our ordinary understanding of human action, as well as our view of moral and legal responsibility and culpability. It is also something that is presupposed in criticism, say, of philosophical thinking — when Dennett construes this argument as misguided and not something anyone ought to accept, he, too, implicitly accepts that those who propose it could have done otherwise not because they could have been made to do otherwise but because they could have, on their own initiative, acted differently — say, thought harder about the topic at hand.
This isn’t the place where the full story of this capacity can be told but it is the place where it can be noted that the requisite evidence for such a capacity could involve inferred powers. These, in turn, need by no means be mysterious or spooky things, any more than the immense gravitational powers of black holes had to be deemed spooky or mysterious simply because no one could, until recently, directly perceive them, or one’s intention to work hard for the next year or motivation to feed one’s children need be mysterious or spooky things because these aren’t directly perceived.
There is more to reality than just what the senses can record, even if what that is needs to be fully squared with what the senses can record. And this fact, which has tripped up empiricist views such as logical positivism, is evident in the central point of this paper: No defender of determinism, or denier of free human agency, can account for one of the most evident facts that just cannot be missed, namely, that a theorist’s theory has that theorist as its cause — he or she produced the theory and might not have done so were it not for the causal efficacy that had been freely, as a matter of the theorist’s initiative, put in service of that product.
Endnotes:
(1) Roger W. Sperry (1995), “The Future of Psychology,” American Psychologist, Vol. 50, 506
(2) Daniel Dennett, Interview in Reason Magazine, May 2003 (
http://www.reason.com/0305/fe.rb.pulling.shtml ).
(3) This, by the way, does not imply that we do not often act from habit—just note the ease with which Dennett, in the quote passages, makes reference to a “the bad habit of putting determinism and inevitability together.” For a good discussion of the compatibility of habitual conduct with human agency, see Bill Pollard (2006), “Explaining Actions With Habits,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 43, 57-69.
(4) A good popularizer of that view is Thomas W. Clark. (See his works at
http://www.naturalism.org/clark_nec.htm .)
(5) Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves (New York: Viking, 2003), p. 100.
(6) This view is laid out and fully defended in Edward Pols, Acts of our being: a reflection on agency and responsibility (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982).
See, also, Tibor R. Machan, Initiative—Human Agency and Society (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2001).
