of free will skepticism, which maintains that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense – i.e. the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward.
Just Deserts
Debating Free Will
Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso
polity
Copyright © Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso 2021
The right of Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4577-3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dennett, D. C. (Daniel Clement) author. | Caruso, Gregg D., author.
Title: Just deserts : debating free will / Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso.
Description: Medford : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “An eye-opening debate on the philosophy and psychology of free will and what they tell us about our societies”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020029874 (print) | LCCN 2020029875 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509545759 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509545766 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509545773 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Free will and determinism. | Free will and determinism--Psychological aspects. | Civilization, Modern--21st century.
Classification: LCC BJ1461 .D4276 2021 (print) | LCC BJ1461 (ebook) | DDC 123/.5--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029874 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029875
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Foreword
Derk Pereboom
This exchange between Daniel Dennett and Gregg Caruso on free will, moral responsibility, and punishment is intense and engaging, and will captivate any reader who is interested in the cutting edge of the contemporary free will debate. It has much to offer newcomers and seasoned veterans alike. This exchange serves as an excellent introduction and at the same time provides details about the contested positions not available elsewhere.
Caruso is an incompatibilist about free will and determinism. If determinism is true, then there are factors beyond our control, events in the distant past and natural laws, that causally determine all of our actions, and incompatibilists maintain that this would rule out free will. Incompatibilists divide into those who hold that determinism is false and that we have free will – the libertarians – and those who hold that determinism is true and we lack free will – free will skeptics. Dennett affirms compatibilism about free will and determinism, and he contends that we do have free will. Caruso argues that we would lack free will if our world is deterministic, but also if it were indeterministic, say in the way some interpretations of quantum physics propose. Caruso and Dennett are thus situated on opposite sides of a traditional divide – Dennett is a compatibilist and affirms free will, Caruso is an incompatibilist and a free will skeptic.
There is also a conceptual issue about how “free will” should be defined, which divides Dennett and Caruso. Dennett is well known for recommending that we should use “free will” so that it refers to a kind of free will worth wanting. The kind of free will worth wanting is a capacity for rational response to stimuli in our natural and social environment, which has developed in our species in its evolutionary history and matures in individuals as they become adults. This is clearly a valuable capacity, and I think that Dennett’s proposal is defensible.
But a question that arises about Dennett’s characterization is whether it works for dividing the sides in the debate. Because few believe that Dennett’s notion of free will is incompatible with determinism, his definition results in a challenge for defining compatibilism so that it’s controversial. Caruso, by contrast, defines free will as the control in action required for attributions of desert in its basic form, as do a number of other participants in the current debate. In the basic form of desert, someone who has acted wrongly deserves to be blamed and perhaps punished just because she has acted for morally bad reasons, and someone who has acted rightly deserves credit or praise and perhaps reward just because she has acted for morally good reasons. Such desert is basic because these desert claims are fundamental in their justification; they are not justified by virtue of further considerations, such as anticipated good consequences of implementing them. According to Caruso, in order to facilitate the free will debate, so that there are substantial numbers of participants on each side, free will should be defined as the control in action required for basically deserved praise and blame, reward and punishment.
Dennett and Caruso disagree about the prevalence of the notion of basic desert. By contrast with Dennett, Caruso believes it is widespread. He supports his view by using a thought experiment that derives from Immanuel Kant, in which there are no good consequences to be achieved by punishing a wrongdoer (1785: Part II). Here is a version of such an example. Imagine that someone on an isolated island brutally murders everyone else on that island, and that he is not capable of moral reform, due to his inner hatred and rage. Add that it is not possible for him to escape the island, and no one else will ever visit because it’s too remote. There is no longer a society on the island whose rules might be determined by a social contract aimed at good consequences, since the society has been disbanded. Do we have the intuition that this murderer still deserves to be punished? If so, then punishment would be basically deserved
