There's a simple fallacy in Chomsky's/Hornstein's views about free will. We do have a strong intuition that IF we want to raise our arm now, or throw an available object across the room, we can do it (if nothing external to us is constraining us). That is a hypothetical statement. We DON'T have any intuition that we can conjure up our wants, that we can will into being our desire to raise our arm. As Hobbes said, it's not the will that is free, but the man. The man is free to raise his arm if nothing external constrains his arm, and it may be the case that he wants to raise his arm, in which case he can. But we have no intuition of willing into being our wanting to raise our arm. From the fact merely that a person (or dog) is free to perform an action that it is capable of performing if nothing external prevents it from doing so, no interesting conclusion follows about free will as opposed to determinism. No determinist (including Hobbes) ever claimed, or needed to claim, that a person cannot perform actions that they want to perform if unconstrained externally.
Thanks for the interesting comment! Here's a possible response: "No. Our intuition is that we, the person, can choose to lift our hand. No one has the intuition that first a want appears from somewhere and then we fulfill the want. And even if we add that superfluity, the same question arises: we can choose whether or not to fulfill the want."
The same point applies to our "choosing". If I choose to raise my arm, the phenomenology (that Chomsky misleadingly, followed as usual by Hornstein, calls "intuition") is that I formed a desire, wish, inclination to raise my arm. That inclination may have followed a more or less rational process, or may have been an arbitrary or erratic impulse. In either case, I have no phenomenological experience - as I prefer to call it - that the inferential process in the case of that type of rational choice, or the sudden impulse if that is what it was, came to me itself by a "free choice" as opposed to a predetermined event. That is, I didn't choose to think rationally, If I'm a more or less rational person, or to have that impulse if that is what it was. If I'm more or less rational, my thought processes - probably through some combination of genetic inheritance and training - have come to work in a certain way that conforms to reason. We can make a similar point philogenetically. It's a pretty safe assumption that the evolution of our species has favoured development of rationality. A person doesn't CHOOSE to benefit from this inheritance when they do benefit from it; evolution couldn't have worked unless it inclined us to choose in particular ways.
I consciously skipped over a wrinkle in my first post for the sake of concision, but it might be worth mentioning now. Harry Frankfurt has pointed out that there are cases of bringing about first order desires through what he calls second order desires, or cases of getting rid of first order desires or overruling them or deciding not to act on them. I can feel hungry but decide (choose) not to eat because I want to swim first, or (less trivially) I can be so angry that I "feel like murdering someone" but refrain from doing so, and so on. In such cases my original claim that we don't have the phenomenological experience of conjuring up a want is not strictly speaking true. I skipped over this, however, because it doesn't really affect the basic point that I don' have an "intuition" that my "will" is "free" in an incompatibilist sense (the sense presumably that Chomsky and followers mean). Indeed Frankfurt's very motivation was compatibilist. He defined freedom of the will as simply acting on first order desires that second order desires want to act on. For present purposes, the point is that in such cases we have no "intuition" that the second order desire governing ("choosing") which first order desire we act upon was itself chosen (and so on for even higher order thoughts: thoughts about thoughts about thoughts). There is always an ultimate level the occurrence of which is unaccompanied by any "intuition" of free choice.
We have a very strong sense that we can do many actions we choose to do. Lift hands, get up, turn head. That's enough for the argument to get off the ground.
The question before us is whether we intuit that I can choose to raise my arm. The common-sense intuition is that sure, I can so choose. The reply seems to be that this is not an intuition that this replying person (call them R) shares. When R chooses to raise their arm the choosing is preceded by a desire or something that causes the choosing to go ahead. And this is what I would deny. There is nothing behind many choosings but the simple choice. Of course behind others there may be deliberation that may (through a long path of desires and beliefs) lead me to a choosing. But Noam’s point is that at the end of that long line of deliberation we are still faced with the intuition that we can choose to follow through on the line of deliberation or not. We can choose to fulfill the desire or not. So, we have an intuition that we are “free” to choose, period. This intuition that we need not have done (some) of the things we do is very robust.
What philosophers and scientists do is chip away at this by developing theories of action that try to undermine this intuition. They point out that we need causes and/or we have belief/desire structures that lead us to do what we do. And then conclude that we don't really JUST choose. Maybe they are right. But if they are it's because they deny that the intuition should be honored, not that the intuition is robust. They cannot do the latter because it is robust. The phenomenology is I chose X but could have chosen Y...that's all there is to the story. We feel our choices are free. Of course this fits very poorly with other parts of our worldview (as Kant, I think, worried about). Imagine actions with no causes! So people suggest we reject this way of seeing things for all sorts of reasons, usually quite elaborate ones about how the world works or how choosing “really” works.
What I take Noam’s view to be is the following. The intuition (that we are free to choose) strikes as far more compelling than the stories being told that counsel us to abandon this intuition. When faced with a compelling story and a “datum” that seems powerfully to go against the story, it's rational to respect the datum and dump the story. It's rational to say: "Nice theory, but this here counterfactual (that I could have done otherwise) seems more secure than your fancy theory. Thus, so much the worse for the latter."
Sometimes an intuition seems robust because the person having it misunderstands their own thoughts. Many people have very robust intuitions that God or their deceased father is talking to or looking after them. Sometimes when these people are interrogated, those intuitions begin to dissolve. Suppose I decided to study philosophy. I might have a "robust intuition" that I could have chosen to study accounting or engineering or just work in a factory all my life. But what does that really mean? That I could have been exactly the same person I was then, but chosen in identical circumstances one of those other fields? I for one don't have even a weak intuition of that sort. I might think, in fact I do think, that had I been a different person or had different interests I could have chosen otherwise, but that is certainly not the same thing. I also believe my choice wasn't coerced, and one might then say I chose "of my own free will" and "could have chosen otherwise". But that merely reverts to the Hobbesian dictum I cited earlier: the man, not the will, was free. I could have chosen otherwise as a "free" (uncoerced) woman.
One might object that I ought still to have the intuition that I could have chosen contrary to my interests. And certainly sometimes we all do choose contrary to our interests. But those are typically cases of either conflicting desires or insufficient information. In the case under discussion, to have chosen contrary to my deepest interests would have made me profoundly irrational, and thus again a different person from the one who made the choice. And of course, the "robust intuition" that had I been a different person I would have chosen differently is either meaningless or tautological. "If I had been a fervent Nazi in 1942 I would have supported Hitler" tells me nothing interesting or useful.
The comment above refers several times to an alternative "story", which the writer seems to assume is causal. Perhaps the analysis I suggested is such a "story" if one accepts that reasons can be causes. But I haven't challenged the allegedly "intuitive" account with a physical-determinist story appealing to science (which was Kant's worry). I have kept to a more or less phenomenological account, and am still challenging the claim that we have a "robust intuition" that our choices are free in any sense that is both non-Hobbesian and not confused. Of course, if we're talking about "intuitions" then all manner of confused self-understandings are possible. But confused intuitions are worthless.
In my opinion, Chomsky doesn’t offer any positive account of how people manage to use language to refer. And I suspect that Chomsky doesn’t expect that a decent theory of how people refer will soon be forthcoming—I know that I myself certainly don’t have any expectations on that front.
E.g., a guiding Q: Given a particular sentence and an agreement about what is expressed by that sentence, how is it possible to produce that particular and relatively definite "what is expressed" (it could be a proposition) as opposed to some other possible "what is expressed" that was not expressed by that sentence?
Another Q: Given a particular situation and two truthful descriptions of that situation by different languages L and M, where do the differences between what is expressed by the two sentences come from? (A Q that typically arises in linguistic fieldwork)
Putnam took "How does language hook on to the world?" as a central question; are we just going to be defeatist about it, or take it as a challenge?
Re: question 1, you might be interested to know (but probably not surprised) that Chomsky shows up in the acknowledgements for relatively diverse philosophical work, like Daniel Stoljar's Physicalism, Colin McGinn's Problems in Philosophy, Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works, etc.
There's a simple fallacy in Chomsky's/Hornstein's views about free will. We do have a strong intuition that IF we want to raise our arm now, or throw an available object across the room, we can do it (if nothing external to us is constraining us). That is a hypothetical statement. We DON'T have any intuition that we can conjure up our wants, that we can will into being our desire to raise our arm. As Hobbes said, it's not the will that is free, but the man. The man is free to raise his arm if nothing external constrains his arm, and it may be the case that he wants to raise his arm, in which case he can. But we have no intuition of willing into being our wanting to raise our arm. From the fact merely that a person (or dog) is free to perform an action that it is capable of performing if nothing external prevents it from doing so, no interesting conclusion follows about free will as opposed to determinism. No determinist (including Hobbes) ever claimed, or needed to claim, that a person cannot perform actions that they want to perform if unconstrained externally.
Thanks for the interesting comment! Here's a possible response: "No. Our intuition is that we, the person, can choose to lift our hand. No one has the intuition that first a want appears from somewhere and then we fulfill the want. And even if we add that superfluity, the same question arises: we can choose whether or not to fulfill the want."
The same point applies to our "choosing". If I choose to raise my arm, the phenomenology (that Chomsky misleadingly, followed as usual by Hornstein, calls "intuition") is that I formed a desire, wish, inclination to raise my arm. That inclination may have followed a more or less rational process, or may have been an arbitrary or erratic impulse. In either case, I have no phenomenological experience - as I prefer to call it - that the inferential process in the case of that type of rational choice, or the sudden impulse if that is what it was, came to me itself by a "free choice" as opposed to a predetermined event. That is, I didn't choose to think rationally, If I'm a more or less rational person, or to have that impulse if that is what it was. If I'm more or less rational, my thought processes - probably through some combination of genetic inheritance and training - have come to work in a certain way that conforms to reason. We can make a similar point philogenetically. It's a pretty safe assumption that the evolution of our species has favoured development of rationality. A person doesn't CHOOSE to benefit from this inheritance when they do benefit from it; evolution couldn't have worked unless it inclined us to choose in particular ways.
I consciously skipped over a wrinkle in my first post for the sake of concision, but it might be worth mentioning now. Harry Frankfurt has pointed out that there are cases of bringing about first order desires through what he calls second order desires, or cases of getting rid of first order desires or overruling them or deciding not to act on them. I can feel hungry but decide (choose) not to eat because I want to swim first, or (less trivially) I can be so angry that I "feel like murdering someone" but refrain from doing so, and so on. In such cases my original claim that we don't have the phenomenological experience of conjuring up a want is not strictly speaking true. I skipped over this, however, because it doesn't really affect the basic point that I don' have an "intuition" that my "will" is "free" in an incompatibilist sense (the sense presumably that Chomsky and followers mean). Indeed Frankfurt's very motivation was compatibilist. He defined freedom of the will as simply acting on first order desires that second order desires want to act on. For present purposes, the point is that in such cases we have no "intuition" that the second order desire governing ("choosing") which first order desire we act upon was itself chosen (and so on for even higher order thoughts: thoughts about thoughts about thoughts). There is always an ultimate level the occurrence of which is unaccompanied by any "intuition" of free choice.
Below is one potential response that I saw.
We have a very strong sense that we can do many actions we choose to do. Lift hands, get up, turn head. That's enough for the argument to get off the ground.
The question before us is whether we intuit that I can choose to raise my arm. The common-sense intuition is that sure, I can so choose. The reply seems to be that this is not an intuition that this replying person (call them R) shares. When R chooses to raise their arm the choosing is preceded by a desire or something that causes the choosing to go ahead. And this is what I would deny. There is nothing behind many choosings but the simple choice. Of course behind others there may be deliberation that may (through a long path of desires and beliefs) lead me to a choosing. But Noam’s point is that at the end of that long line of deliberation we are still faced with the intuition that we can choose to follow through on the line of deliberation or not. We can choose to fulfill the desire or not. So, we have an intuition that we are “free” to choose, period. This intuition that we need not have done (some) of the things we do is very robust.
What philosophers and scientists do is chip away at this by developing theories of action that try to undermine this intuition. They point out that we need causes and/or we have belief/desire structures that lead us to do what we do. And then conclude that we don't really JUST choose. Maybe they are right. But if they are it's because they deny that the intuition should be honored, not that the intuition is robust. They cannot do the latter because it is robust. The phenomenology is I chose X but could have chosen Y...that's all there is to the story. We feel our choices are free. Of course this fits very poorly with other parts of our worldview (as Kant, I think, worried about). Imagine actions with no causes! So people suggest we reject this way of seeing things for all sorts of reasons, usually quite elaborate ones about how the world works or how choosing “really” works.
What I take Noam’s view to be is the following. The intuition (that we are free to choose) strikes as far more compelling than the stories being told that counsel us to abandon this intuition. When faced with a compelling story and a “datum” that seems powerfully to go against the story, it's rational to respect the datum and dump the story. It's rational to say: "Nice theory, but this here counterfactual (that I could have done otherwise) seems more secure than your fancy theory. Thus, so much the worse for the latter."
Sometimes an intuition seems robust because the person having it misunderstands their own thoughts. Many people have very robust intuitions that God or their deceased father is talking to or looking after them. Sometimes when these people are interrogated, those intuitions begin to dissolve. Suppose I decided to study philosophy. I might have a "robust intuition" that I could have chosen to study accounting or engineering or just work in a factory all my life. But what does that really mean? That I could have been exactly the same person I was then, but chosen in identical circumstances one of those other fields? I for one don't have even a weak intuition of that sort. I might think, in fact I do think, that had I been a different person or had different interests I could have chosen otherwise, but that is certainly not the same thing. I also believe my choice wasn't coerced, and one might then say I chose "of my own free will" and "could have chosen otherwise". But that merely reverts to the Hobbesian dictum I cited earlier: the man, not the will, was free. I could have chosen otherwise as a "free" (uncoerced) woman.
One might object that I ought still to have the intuition that I could have chosen contrary to my interests. And certainly sometimes we all do choose contrary to our interests. But those are typically cases of either conflicting desires or insufficient information. In the case under discussion, to have chosen contrary to my deepest interests would have made me profoundly irrational, and thus again a different person from the one who made the choice. And of course, the "robust intuition" that had I been a different person I would have chosen differently is either meaningless or tautological. "If I had been a fervent Nazi in 1942 I would have supported Hitler" tells me nothing interesting or useful.
The comment above refers several times to an alternative "story", which the writer seems to assume is causal. Perhaps the analysis I suggested is such a "story" if one accepts that reasons can be causes. But I haven't challenged the allegedly "intuitive" account with a physical-determinist story appealing to science (which was Kant's worry). I have kept to a more or less phenomenological account, and am still challenging the claim that we have a "robust intuition" that our choices are free in any sense that is both non-Hobbesian and not confused. Of course, if we're talking about "intuitions" then all manner of confused self-understandings are possible. But confused intuitions are worthless.
In my opinion, Chomsky doesn’t offer any positive account of how people manage to use language to refer. And I suspect that Chomsky doesn’t expect that a decent theory of how people refer will soon be forthcoming—I know that I myself certainly don’t have any expectations on that front.
I think you all just lack imagination.
Thanks for commenting! Do you happen to have a positive account in mind?
Yes! Forthcoming. I'll keep you posted.
E.g., a guiding Q: Given a particular sentence and an agreement about what is expressed by that sentence, how is it possible to produce that particular and relatively definite "what is expressed" (it could be a proposition) as opposed to some other possible "what is expressed" that was not expressed by that sentence?
Another Q: Given a particular situation and two truthful descriptions of that situation by different languages L and M, where do the differences between what is expressed by the two sentences come from? (A Q that typically arises in linguistic fieldwork)
Putnam took "How does language hook on to the world?" as a central question; are we just going to be defeatist about it, or take it as a challenge?
Re: question 1, you might be interested to know (but probably not surprised) that Chomsky shows up in the acknowledgements for relatively diverse philosophical work, like Daniel Stoljar's Physicalism, Colin McGinn's Problems in Philosophy, Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works, etc.
Thanks! That's indeed very interesting! :)