engleski

Against Chaotic Compatibilism

Once upon a time, the free will problem had been an exclusive province of philosophy. The problem consists in the following: concerning some action A at time t, can an agent be in control of his action in such a way that he can act otherwise, namely, to do action not-A at t, though he did action A at t, in the same antecedent conditions which obtain prior to performing action A. (I shall assume here that forming intentions and will are also types of action (of psychological nature)). Incompatibilists argue that freedom and determinism could not be reconcilable – either freedom is the case or determinism is the case, but not both. Compatibilists in the free will debate argue that we can be free though we can also be, at the same time, fully determined in our deliberations, will and action ; according to compatibilists, agents are free if agents successfully translate their intentions and will into intended action, regardless of the fact that even our beliefs, intentions and will, and so an action, are determined in a unique way by factors which are out of control of any agent. For compatibilists, it is only important that it is provided that we are not coerced into some action by other agents or that there are no some overwhelming obstacles for agents to do the willed and intended action. Today, we can be armed with powerful tools which come from mathematics, physics and neuroscience in order to try to solve the problem of free will with much more precision and effectivness. One important tool could come from chaos theory. In this text I shall examine a specific kind of comaptibilism regarding free will and determinism. I shall take critically some claims made by Marius Usher in his try to establish compatibilism. He uses notions of chaos theory and properties of dynamical systems such as convergence, divergence, attractors and bifurcations to argue for a specific compatibilistic position regarding the free will problem. I shall try to show that, since chaos theory is deterministic, then, if we can successfully apply it to describe and explain human deliberation, forming intentions, will and performing an action, then we are determined and there is no free will and free action in any sense. Such a claim is incompatibilistic claim because incompatibilists argue that there is no possibility of reconciling the concepts of „freedom“ and „determinism“: either we are free or we are determined. I shall speculate a bit about what would be, perhaps, required for genuine freedom in the libertarian way concerning chaos theory. Thinking about free will problem as Usher does, and, as it is in this text, shows also the great importance of mathematical and physical theory of chaos applied to traditional philosophical problem.

Free will, compatibilism, incompatibilism, convergence, chaos theory, determinism

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