Psychological Arguments for Free Will DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the ...

169 Pages·2017·0.59 MB·English

by  Kissel, Andrew T.

Psychological Arguments for Free Will

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By
Andrew Kissel
Graduate Program in Philosophy

The Ohio State University
2017

Dissertation Committee:
Richard Samuels, Advisor
Declan Smithies
Abraham Roth
Copyrighted by
Andrew Kissel
2017
Abstract

It is a widespread platitude among many philosophers that, regardless of whether we
actually have free will, it certainly appears to us that we are free. Among libertarian
philosophers, this platitude is sometimes deployed in the context of psychological
arguments for free will. These arguments are united under the idea that widespread
claims of the form, “It appears to me that I am free,” on some understanding of appears,
justify thinking that we are probably free in the libertarian sense. According to these
kinds of arguments, the existence of free will is supposed to, in some sense, “fall out” of
widely accessible psychological states. While there is a long history of thinking that
widespread psychological states support libertarianism, the arguments are often lurking in
the background rather than presented at face value. This dissertation consists of three
free-standing papers, each of which is motivated by taking seriously psychological
arguments for free will. The dissertation opens with an introduction that presents a
framework for mapping extant psychological arguments for free will. In the first paper, I
argue that psychological arguments relying on widespread belief in free will, combined
with doxastic conservative principles, are likely to fail. In the second paper, I argue that
psychological arguments involving an inference to the best explanation of widespread
appearances of freedom put pressure on non-libertarians to provide an adequate
alternative explanation. In the third paper, I argue that the best non-libertarian
explanations of a related phenomenon, the apparently widespread belief in
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indeterministic choice, fail to meet their own conditions of adequacy. The appendix
explores an alternative non-libertarian line of explanation of the apparently widespread
belief that choice is indeterministic.

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Dedication

To my beloved wife, Teresa.

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Acknowledgments

I owe too much to too many people in the course of writing this dissertation to
properly thank all of them adequately in this short space. Nevertheless; thank you to my
advisor, Professor Richard Samuels, whose philosophical and personal guidance shaped
me into the philosopher that I am today as much as it shaped this dissertation. Thank you
to my committee members, Professors Declan Smithies and Abraham Roth, for their
invaluable feedback and support. Thank you to Professor Timothy Schroeder, without
whom this project would never even have begun. Thank you also to the numerous
philosophers, including Professor Julia Jorati, Professor Robert Kraut, Professor Tristram
McPherson, Professor Chris Pincock, and Professor Tumar Rudavsky, who have devoted
time and energy to reading drafts, discussing my work, and guiding me in the
philosophical arts. Without all of these people, and many unnamed others, this project
would have fallen apart long ago.
Thank you also to my graduate student colleagues at Ohio State, both for their
philosophical input as well as their valuable support and friendship. My time working on
this dissertation in Columbus, while arduous at times, has also been an extreme pleasure
thanks to all of you.
Finally, thank you to my families in the U.S. and in Canada. My parents, John
and Peggy, my sister, Emily, and brother-in-law, Paul, my brother, Jimmie, and sister-in-
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law Jackie, have all listened patiently and provided advice over drinks when needed, and
told me to stop thinking so much when needed as well. My parents-in-law, Brian and
Vikki Kouri, and my brother-in-law Brad, have provided an oasis in Montreal to visit and
decompress from philosophical work. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart.
And of course, thank you to my wife, Teresa, to whom this work is dedicated. She has
been my engine, pushing me forward when I was ready to give up, and a constant source
of love and support. Teresa, I love you, and look forward to many more years of
happiness and philosophy with you.

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Vita

June 2006 .......................................................Worthington Kilbourne High School
2010................................................................B.A. Philosophy, Georgetown University
2010 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department
of Philosophy, The Ohio State University

Publications

Review of A. Mele’s Free: Why science hasn’t disproved free will. (2015). Teaching
Philosophy, Vol. 38 No. 3

Fields of Study

Major Field: Philosophy

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Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v
Vita .................................................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xi
Introduction- A Framework for Dealing with Psychological Arguments for Free Will..... 1
1. What is represented? ................................................................................................ 5
2. What are the psychological states? .......................................................................... 9
3. How do these states support libertarianism? .......................................................... 10
4. Looking Backward and Forward ........................................................................... 12
Chapter 1: The Cartesian Doxastic Argument ................................................................. 15
1. Doxastic Conservatism .......................................................................................... 18
2. The Principle of Credulity & the Cartesian Doxastic Argument ........................... 21
3. The PoC and the Bootstrapping Problem............................................................... 26
4. Reformulating the Principle of Credulity .............................................................. 31
5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 39
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Chapter 2: On Libertarianism as an Explanatory Hypothesis ........................................... 43
1. Appearances of Freedom ....................................................................................... 46
2. Four Readings of Appearance Claims ................................................................... 51
2.1 The Subjunctive Reading..................................................................................... 51
2.2 The Epistemic Reading ........................................................................................ 54
2.3 The Comparative Reading ................................................................................... 55
2.4 The Phenomenological Reading .......................................................................... 56
3. The Prima Facie Case for Libertarianism ............................................................. 61
3.1 Premise 1 ............................................................................................................. 63
3.2 Premise 2 ............................................................................................................. 63
3.3 Premise 3- Assessing Libertarian Alternatives .................................................... 68
4. Assessing Non-Libertarian Alternatives ................................................................ 76
5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 81
Chapter 3: Indeterministic Intuitions and the Spinozan Strategy ..................................... 82
1. Setting the Stage .................................................................................................... 84
2. How Possibly Story 1: The Deductivist Account .................................................. 93
2.1 The Account ........................................................................................................ 93
2.2 Concerning the Folk Acceptance of (D2) ............................................................ 98
2.3 Objections to the use of IOEDs in the Deductivist Account ............................. 103
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