Huemer's Objection to Compatibilism Does Not Succeed
Compatibilism is still on firm ground
Credit to Peter Railton for this insight—he presented it when I asked him about this argument after class.
Compatibilism is the idea that determinism and free will are compatible. Determinism is the idea that everything is determined—that the physical laws dictate everything that happens. Free will is the idea that you can choose what you do, in some sense. Thus, compatibilism says that it is both the case that everything is determined and that you have free will, in some deep sense.
Huemer believes in libertarian free will, the idea that we have some special, non-deterministic free will faculty. In this article, he presents his argument against compatibilism—arguing that free will and determinism are incompatible.
Huemer’s argument is roughly the following.
if no one has control over X and X entails Y then no one has any control over Y.
no one has any control over the initial conditions of the universe.
if determinism is true, then the initial conditions of the universe entail all actions.
Therefore, if determinism is true, then no one has any control over actions.
If free will exists, then people have control over actions.
Therefore, determinism is incompatible with libertarianism.
It’s a neat little argument and it sounds right—at first. But I don’t think it ultimately succeeds. Premises 2-6 are all either trivial or follow from previous premises. Thus, the premise to dispute is premise 1. But I think there’s good reason to dispute premise 1.
Ask yourself the following question: does a remote controller control a drone? Of course it does. But does it control the initial conditions of the universe. No. Now, the initial conditions of the universe does entail the way the drone works, so this argument would prove too much—it would prove that drones aren’t controlled by remote controllers.
The basic insight is this: if you are part of a causal chain, then you may not control the fundamental beginning of the chain, but you do control the things that come after you in the chain. In the free will case, just as in the remote control case, you are in control of the things that come after you, even if they’re ultimately determined by the things that come before you, because you are part of the causal chain.
i like this
I feel like there is some sematnic trickery at play here.
Huemer doesn't define his first premise as:
"1.if no one has control over X and X entails Y then no one has any control over Y."
Really, his article only includes the word 'control' once, when he says that free will requires open alternate possibilities + control of actions. 'Control of actions' is distinct from the sense of control present in your article, he defines it as 'you determining which possibilities are realized', not you having a causal relationship with subsequent events in the causal chain.
I rephrased his premise in the same universal way you did, and I can no longer see what the drone example can do to challenge it:
1.If no matter what anyone does, X, and X entails Y, then no matter what anyone does, Y.