Compatibilism according to Daniel Dennett

1.8.3. Compatibilism according to Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett is a popular advocate of contemporary compatibilism. He describes Nicholas Maxwell’s (1984, Dennett 2003) definition of freedom; “the capacity to achieve what is of value in a range of circumstances.” as “as good as a short definition of freedom could be.”

(Dennett, 2003, p. 302). If we go along with such a definition of freedom then I agree it solves the problem of compatibility between freedom and determinism, but the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. I can`t see how that kind of “freedom” can have any value in terms most of us (I think) expect freedom to have; grant us the opportunity to control our choices and give us the kind of moral responsibility we can only have in true choice situations. It is like arguing that “yes we do have unicorns in the garden, only they might really be horses with card board toilet paper tubes glued to their foreheads, but they are unicorns!”. Or perhaps more precise: “Unicorns exist and are horses with card board toilet paper tubes glued to their forehead”. Point being, the magic that is associated with unicorns is not associated with horses with ugly head ornaments. “Freedom” is the kind of word that, along with “unicorn”, “magic” and “God” do not refer to something in reality but to made-up concepts. And though I do not believe the concept “troll” refers to creatures existing in reality, I would still be able to spot a fake one walking past me on the street.

There is a competition between hard and soft determinists (compatibilists) going on where both parties make arguments about how the other party really agrees with them, and that the only reason why they think they disagree are small and terminological. Dennett, the ultimate champion for the compatibilists, writes in his Freedom Evolves that

The hard determinists among you may find … that your considered view is that whereas free will- as you understand the term- truly doesn`t exist, something rather like free will does exist, and it`s just what the doctor ordered for shoring up your moral convictions, permitting you to make the distinctions you need to make. Such a soft landing for a hard determinist is perhaps only terminologically different from compatibilism, the view that I am defending in this book. (Dennett, 2003, pp. 97, 98 (in parenthesis)).

There are two problems with this attempt to sneak hard determinists onto the compatibilist team. The first one is that yes, something rather like the type of free will that Dennett suggests probably does exist. I would call that control instead of free will because I find it a much more appropriate term. The type of freedom that Dennett suggests is (as mentioned) Maxwell`s definition: “the capacity to achieve what is of value in a range of circumstances.”

(Dennett, 2003, p. 302). This type of definition doesn`t contradict determinism but it also doesn`t put humans in the special moral position Dennett wants us to have. Bacteria can get what is of value to them in their circumstances.

The other problem is his claim that this soft landing is what incompatibilists need for shoring up their moral convictions. The hard determinist/hard incompatibilist doctor ordered a change of moral convictions, a small but in my view crucial change. The point is that the hard incompatibilism I hold and many versions of hard determinism are pursuing something quite different from what the compatibilists like Dennett are; they want to keep the moral convictions that allow us to condemn each other, “we” want to remove them.

Jeremy Randel Koons tries in his paper “Is Hard Determinism a Form of Compatibilism?”

to show that the answer to the question in the title is yes; hard determinism is just another version of compatibilism and because not many philosophers value libertarianism very highly any more, compatibilism is the last standing contestant aka the winner of the free will debate.

His argument is based on the fact that humans have certain kinds of actions they find praise- or blameworthy and (somehow) he draws from that that humans have some actions

that are free. His “logic” is that because the actions that are considered morally charged are largely the same actions that are considered free, they must also be free and we can all lay our pens down and finally stop debating this topic. He feels certain that hard determinists, given their way with society will continue to punish wrongdoers as the compatibilists and

libertarians have. This may or may not be the case and in part two I will look into Strawsons reactive attitudes etc. My point for now is that treating people as blameworthy doesn`t show anything of them deserving that or not. If sanctioning is a social way of regulating behavior in a group, then it can be true that some actions are sanctionable even though they are not free. Punishment for the sake of revenge however will not be very meaningful.

1.8.3.1. Dennett`s Evitability

Physical laws often predict causation. Laws about the relation between events involve causality. For example; event p causes event q. many natural laws seem to involve causality, this is especially the case for laws in biology, e.g. the function of the heart is to cause blood to be pumped and spread in the body etc.

If we can assume causation among the biological events of human lives, then we can also assume determinism. Compatibilists like Dennett already do that so this is not where our quarrel lies.

Inevitability seems to follow logically from determinism. Daniel Dennett thinks it doesn`t and I will try to make a counter argument. His argument goes like this; “In some

deterministic worlds there are avoiders avoiding harms. Therefore in some deterministic worlds some things are avoided. Whatever is avoided is avoidable or evitable. Therefore in some deterministic worlds not everything is inevitable. Therefore determinism does not imply inevitability.” (Dennett, 2003, p. 56).

My answer to Dennett`s argument is that first of all; evolution has made sure that all living animals today do avoid harm as far as what is possible, if they didn`t they would not survive the natural selection. Secondly, given that avoiding harm is possible: it is on the contrary rather (almost) impossible for the organism not to avoid it with its best effort. (Whether they succeed in avoiding harm is of course dependent not just on their own abilities but of the situation, abilities of the harmful thing etc.) There are a few exceptions to this, for instance a suicidal human being, a dehydrated antelope running the risk of crocodile attack to drink water etc. (though you could still make the argument that they are both avoiding harm- for the suicidal person life might seem harmful and for the antelope death is certain without water. Or when it comes to the suicidal person one could make the argument that in order to

commit suicide there must be something so wrong with him or her that they are not fit for survival- and that leaves one less exception to the above “rule”).

The point is if determinism is true, then everything that happens has necessary causes for happening and could not be avoided in the particular situation it occurred in. The reason consists of prior events that had direct causal effect on the happening in question. There is no room for Dennett`s evitability; whichever event has the antecedent events required to happen will happen. Again I`d like to point out that this does imply that fatalism is true, nor that perfect predictability will be possible in the future for the reasons given previously.