Ferenc Huoranszki

_Freedom of the Will_ provides a novel interpretation of G. E. Moore’s famous conditional analysis of free will and discusses several questions about the meaning of free will and its significance for moral responsibility. Although Moore’ theory has a strong initial appeal, most metaphysicians believe that there are conclusive arguments against it. Huoranszki argues that the importance of conditional analysis must be reevaluated in light of some recent developments in the theory of dispositions. The original analysis can be amended so that the revised conditional account is not only a good response to determinist worries about the possibility of free will, but it can also explain the sense in which free will is an important condition of moral responsibility. This study addresses three fundamental issues about free will as a metaphysical condition of responsibility. First, the book explains why agents are responsible for their actions or omissions only if they have the ability to do otherwise and shows that the relevant ability is best captured by the revised conditional analysis. Second, it aims to clarify the relation between agents’ free will and their rational capacities. It argues that free will as a condition of responsibility must be understood in terms of agents’ ability to do otherwise rather than in terms of their capacity to respond to reasons. Finally, the book explains in which sense responsibility requires self-determination and argues that it is compatible with agents’ limited capacity to control their own character, reasons, and motives.

Ferenc Huoranszki, in Natural Kinds and Conceptual Truth, presents, at the very beginning of the paper, a fictional example, which is, in fact, a real life example about cases when the content of a natural kind term is determined by its microphysical constitution that exists in abundance. Even if it is true of the concept of water or gold that their content was originally determined by water’s and gold’s sensible qualities and that we discovered their constitution only later, this is pretty much a contingent fact not about gold or water, but about how we actually introduce a term into our language. A procedure in the opposite direction is equally possible. Some chemical elements’ and compounds’ names have been first introduced by identifying their constitution, and hence it seems an a priori matter that their concept refers to some stuff with that type of constitution. Consequently, by what properties we fix a natural kind term’s reference – or how we provide cognitive content – should be irrelevant regarding the modal status of propositions involving the terms. For any moderately realist account of the nature of modal truth, it must be unacceptable that a truth’s modal status is merely determined by such historical accidents.

We often say that persons had, have, or will have the power to do certain things. But do we have reasons to ascribe powers to inanimate objects as well? And if we do, is there any difference between ascribing a power and understanding what an object is disposed to do? Are objects’ powers dispositions in this sense? In this paper I shall argue that we need to distinguish powers from dispositions for certain theoretical purposes. Most ‘disposition terms’ in ordinary language do not express causal powers; and many powers cannot be expressed by a conventional disposition term. It is true that when we say that objects are disposed to do this or that, powers are involved. But the converse does not hold because having a power does not entail that objects are disposed to do or to act upon others in certain ways.

Authors of scholarly papers usually express their gratitude for the comments of their colleagues in a footnote. It is a privilege that I can express mine in the main text, and right at the beginning. In what follows I do my best to respond to many important critical remarks about a work the main purpose of which was to convince readers that the traditional conditional account of free will is not yet defunct and that it can provide the best framework for discussing important issues about agency and responsibility. But whether or not I have managed to convince my readers is not the issue here. I am grateful for the opportunity, in trying to respond to my critics, to restate, and hopefully sharpen, some of my claims on the perennial problem of freedom of the will.

The notion of free will as used by philosophers is a term of art. More often than not, such terms—such as substance, form, intentionality, reasons etc.—are introduced in philosophy in order to single out a problem rather than to solve it. Contrary to the opinion of many modern philosophers, who have been critical of the use of such terms, they can indeed help identify a cluster of problems that are not merely created by the introduction of the technical concept itself. Philosophical discussions often revolve around some such concept. But this does not mean that the problem is only conceptual. Many genuine philosophical issues can be made more easily approachable by sharpening our understanding of such technical concepts. However, even if the introduction of such technical terms is unavoidable and useful for philosophy, they can lead to confusion unless we carefully circumscribe the task for which we want to use them. It seems to me that sometimes this is exactly the case with the philosophical concept of free will. For there are many different notions of free will which are often used in philosophy, but which set at least partially incompatible tasks for those who want to provide a theory about it. In what follows i shall argue, first, that we have reasons to accept one of the most traditional concepts of free will, one that might be called the metaphysical conception of free will. Then i shall briefly present and defend a particular theory about the freedom of the will so understood.

What distinguishes agents’ intentional actions from those episodes in their life that merely happen to them? This paper argues that the intentionality of agents’ actions is an irreducibly teleological phenomenon. An intentional action is a process that occurs for the sake of an end that we ascribe to the agent who performs it. This intrinsic teleological structure is a precondition, rather than a causal consequence, of human agents’ capacity to mentally represent and consciously initiate their actions. Hence teleology is an intrinsic, and not a derivative, feature of the process in which agents who act participate. More specifically, the paper argues for two major claims. First, whenever agents’ actions are intentional there must be a sense in which what they do is not a mere accident. The paper shows that the sense in which intentional actions are not accidents can only be explained with reference to the actions’ final, rather than their efficient, causes. Second, it argues that it is the intrinsic teleological structure of actions that best explains the sense in which agents always try to do what they do intentionally.

Jonathan Dancy has argued that agents’ reasons for their actions are facts or features of the situations rather than their psychological states. The purpose of the paper is to show that even if we grant that this is so in most of the cases, there is a class of mental states that can be reasons. Although beliefs and desires are not reasons for actions, some emotional states—like loving, liking or disliking someone—can generate reasons. The distinctive feature of these states is that their content is a particular, and not a proposition. Hence in certain situations their love or admiration can provide agents with reasons to do one particular thing rather than another.

Agents have no control over the formation of their own zygote. Others may do. According to a well-known argument, the so-called Zygote Argument for incompatibilism, these facts, together with a prima facie plausible further assumption, are sufficient to prove that human agents cannot be responsible for their actions if they live in a deterministic universe. This paper argues that the lack of agents’ control over the constitution of their own zygote can undermine their responsibility only in exceptional conditions and that the occurrence or non-occurrence of those conditions has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of determinism. What undermines agents’ responsibility in the situations described by the Zygote Argument is the occurrence of some specific initial conditions which may render the manipulation of agents’ behaviour possible, and not the truth of determinism.

Freedom of the Will provides a novel interpretation of G. E. Moore’s famous conditional analysis of free will and discusses several questions about the meaning of free will and its significance for moral responsibility. Although Moore’ theory has a strong initial appeal, most metaphysicians believe that there are conclusive arguments against it. Huoranszki argues that the importance of conditional analysis must be reevaluated in light of some recent developments in the theory of dispositions. The original analysis can be amended so that the revised conditional account is not only a good response to determinist worries about the possibility of free will, but it can also explain the sense in which free will is an important condition of moral responsibility. This study addresses three fundamental issues about free will as a metaphysical condition of responsibility. First, the book explains why agents are responsible for their actions or omissions only if they have the ability to do otherwise and shows that the relevant ability is best captured by the revised conditional analysis. Second, it aims to clarify the relation between agents’ free will and their rational capacities. It argues that free will as a condition of responsibility must be understood in terms of agents’ ability to do otherwise rather than in terms of their capacity to respond to reasons. Finally, the book explains in which sense responsibility requires self-determination and argues that it is compatible with agents’ limited capacity to control their own character, reasons, and motives.

This paper aims to defend the common-sense view that we exempt compulsive agents from responsibility to the extent that they are unable to choose what they do and hence they cannot control their actions by their choices. This view has been challenged in a seminal paper by Gary Watson, who claimed that akratic agents lack control in the same sense but they are responsible nonetheless. In the first part of the paper, I critically examine the arguments Watson advances for this claim first in his original paper and then in some more recent works. I conclude that his account is based on the widely held assumption that both compulsive behavior and weakness of the will must be understood as a direct result of some inner motivational conflict. In the second part, I argue for an alternative understanding of the difference between weakness and compulsion. My claim is that compulsion is a cognitive rather than a motivational deficiency, since the compulsive, unlike the weak-willed, does not desire to perform the action which she actually performs. Furthermore, I argue that compulsive agents cannot control their actions by their choices because they have a distorted view of their own actional abilities. In the final part of the paper, I discuss a consequence of this account to the conditional analysis of free will as a condition of responsibility.

This paper has two aims. First, it raises the issue whether and how contractarian political theory can justify political obligations toward some particular political authority. Second, it attempts to draw some brief conclusion from this regarding the prospect of Europe as a political community. The paper argues that there is a common assumption to almost all contemporary versions of contractarian political theory which must be dropped in order to make room for the contractarian justification of such obligations. The assumption of mutual unconcern seems to make it impossible for such theories to rationally justify particular obligations towards a particular political authority. I suggest that this limitation can be theoretically overcome. But I also suggest that the feeling of mutual concern of citizens towards each other is a necessary condition of their rationally justifiable obligations towards the decisions of a political authority. The development of this social emotion is a precondition of Europe as a political community

This paper argues against dismissing the Principle of Alternative Possibilities merely on the ground of so-called Frankfurt-style cases. Its main claims are that the interpretation of such cases depends on which substantive theory of responsibility one endorses and that Frankfurt-style cases all involve some form of causal overdetermination which can be interpreted either as being compatible with the potentially manipulated agent’s ability to act otherwise or as a responsibility undermining constraint. The paper also argues that the possibility of such scenarios can support the truth of classical compatibilism as much as the truth of semicompatibilism.

The paper addresses the problem whether arts, sciences and humanities can be regarded as useful. First it examines the means-ends relation and argues that some means are not causally but rather constitutively connected to ends. Second, it specifies two dimensions along which the problem of values will be addressed. One is the issue about the relation between values and desirability, the other is the active and affective conceptions of valuation. Third the paper offers a concise reconstruction of the answers to the question of usefulness formulated during the enlightenment. It will be argued that traditionally usefulness was understood causally and not on the individual, but rather on the social level. In the final section the paper contends that values should be understood in terms of activities rather than in terms ofdesire satisfaction and that this interpretation can bring us closer to answering the question whether and why arts and sciences are useful.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sense in which laws of physics are contingent. It argues, first, that contemporary Humean accounts cannot adequately explain the contingency of physical laws; and second, that Hume’s own arguments against the metaphysical necessity of causal connections are not applicable in this context. The paper concludes by arguing that contingency is an essentially emergent, macroscopic phenomenon: we can understand the contingency of fundamental physical laws only through their relation to the distribution of macroscopic modal properties in the manifest world.

Argument for fatalism attempts to prove that free choice is a logical or conceptual impossibility. The paper argues that the first two premises of the argument are sound: propositions are either true or false and they have their truth-value eternally. But the claim that from the fatalistic premises with the introduction of some innocent further premise dire consequences follow as regards to the possibility of free choice is false. The introduced premise, which establishes the connection between the first two premises (which are about the nature of propositions) and the concept of free choice is not innocent. It creates the impression that the truth of certain propositions can somehow determine the occurrence of certain events. But no proposition can have such an effect since the counterfactuals If proposition P were true, event E would happen does not say anything about determination. The argument for fatalism is, however, not a boring sophism. It does reveal something about the nature of propositional representation. It shows that each proposition represents necessarily the fact what it represents, i.e. it shows that propositions have their truth conditions non-contingently. But from this nothing follows as regards to the contingent nature of the facts represented. On the bases of the first two premises of the argument for fatalism we cannot infer to the impossibility of free choice. The argument for fatalism should not be interpreted as an attempt to prove on purely logical or conceptual grounds that we do not have the ability to influence future events by our choices. But it could be used to show something about the nature of propositional representation.

I offer an analysis of Reid's notion of the will. Naturalism in the philosophy of action is defined as the attempt to eliminate the capacity of will and to reduce volition to some class of appetite or desire. Reid's arguments show, however, that volition plays a particular role in deliberation which cannot be reduced to some form of motivation present at the time of action. Deliberation is understood as an action over which the agent has control. Will is a higher-order mental capacity enabling us to control our own attitudes, decisions and actions. Reid investigates several distinct forms of this control. I conclude with some remarks about the relation between Reid's arguments about the function of the will and his moral rationalism

Some things happen or exist only contingently: although they do happen or exist, they do not have to. Some other things do not happen or come to exist, although they could. They are contingent possibilities. Philosophers have tried to understand contingent possibilities in two different ways. According to one, possibilities should be understood with reference to worlds. A nonactual event is possible because there is a world in which it does happen. According to another, possibilities should be understood with reference to modal properties. An event or an object is possible because it would occur or come to exist if a modal property of some substance, another object or set of objects were exercised. This book argues that the latter approach provides a better account of possibilities than the former. It develops a theory of contingent possibilities according to which possibilities within a world must be distinguished from the possibility of worlds. It is the distribution of modal properties within a world which metaphysically determines what could happen in that world. The most important of these modal properties are abilities and dispositions. Dispositions explain nomic and behavioural regularities, while abilities ground more or less abstract possibilities. By way of connecting the ascription of more or less specific modal properties to different counterfactual conditionals, we can identify various possibilities that we are concerned with when we try to understand what can happen in our world.