Papers Presented at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting 1994 || Freedom and Strength of Will in Hoffman and Albritton

Freedom and Strength of Will in Hoffman and AlbrittonAuthor(s): Gary WatsonSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 77, No. 2/3, Papers Presented at the American Philosophical Association PacificDivision Meeting 1994 (Mar., 1995), pp. 261-271Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320567 .

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GARY WATSON

FREEDOM AND STRENGTH OF WILL IN HOFFMAN AND ALBRITTON'

(Received 16 August 1994)

I. INTRODUCTION

Rogers Albritton's essay insists on a distinction among three concepts:

freedom of action

freedom of will

strength of will

Albritton's thesis is that while there are limits aplenty on freedom of action and on strength of will, "the will is perfectly free." By and large, Albritton's procedure is to construe putative examples of unfreedom of the will as instances either of unfreedom of action or of diminished strength of will. Some instances concern action rather than will; whereas others concern the will's strength, not its freedom. In this way, he boasts "I bet I can handle any case you like" (Albritton, 250). Underlying this confidence is Albritton's striking view that unfreedom of the will is inconceivable: the reason we don't find it anywhere is "not because miraculously it isn't there, but because the idea of it is incomprehensible" (Albritton, 250).

As Paul Hoffman shows, Descartes's view of the matter is interest- ingly different. On Hoffman's interpretation, not only is unfreedom of the will conceivable, it is part of the human lot. According to Hoff- man's Descartes, we are vulnerable in two ways. First, if our "choices result from our will being carried away by present passions", and hence "are not in accordance with our values", then these choices are not

Philosophical Studies 77: 261-271, 1995. ? 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



262 GARY WATSON

free (Hoffman, 256). Second, if our choices are in accordance with values (or "firm and decisive judgments") that are "founded on passions by which the will has previously allowed itself to be conquered or seduced" (Hoffman, 255), then our choices are not free.

Despite these liabilities, complete freedom is a potential we are capable of realizing. First, we are capable of avoiding false values; "it is within our power to withhold our assent from ideas that are obscure or confused" (Hoffman, 244). Second, by a regimen in which recalcitrant passions (those contrary to the dictates of clear judgment) are eliminated and transformed, it is within our power to attain a state in which we choose only in accordance with our clear and distinct judgments of good and evil (Hoffman, 245) - that is, to achieve strength of will ("in the input sense").

The result is a state in which we are compelled by reasons (Hoffman, 246), since "the will of a thinking thing is drawn voluntarily or freely (for that is the essence of will), but nevertheless infallibly towards a clearly known good" (Hoffman, 243-244). Nevertheless, this kind of compulsion is the "highest form of freedom" - a sort of self-realization.

I shall begin with some remarks on Descartes's view, as Hoffman presents it. Then I turn to some issues in the interpretation and evaluation of Albritton's essay.

II. HOFFMAN'S DESCARTES

The relation between the two conceptions of freedom sketched above is obviously very complex. There is more than one point of disagreement and convergence. Before turning to Albritton's view, I want to make a couple of related observations about Hoffman's Descartes.

My first point is that the Cartesian program described above seems to require forms of free will that are more than potential. The realized power to assent or dissent to or from obscure judgment is a freedom that is presupposed by the power to develop the potential for self-realization. Moreover, the individual's choice to adopt or not adopt the regimen by which we subdue or transform our passionate natures must be free from the start. Otherwise, the realization of complete freedom would



FREEDOM AND STRENGTH OF WILL IN HOFFMAN AND ALBRIITON 263

not necessarily be within our power. Thus, there must be at least one instance of free will whose perfection is actualized.

The question arises: why is the range of this perfect power limited in this way to this one kind of choice? If the will must follow the good here (since adopting this regimen is the best), then why is the regimen needed in general? If the will can freely reject the good here, then the free will of a thinking thing is not necessarily drawn to the good in all respects, and here again Albritton and Descartes would find an important basis for agreement.

My second point is that there seems to be a tension between the two ideas of freedom in the Cartesian conception. This point can be brought out by considering Hoffman's criticism of a view of mine:

in trying to define freedom in terms of acting in accordance with those courses of action we "identify with" or "embrace" [is to mistake] strength of will for freedom. Complete freedom requires that the judgments we identify with or embrace be up to us. Descartes does have a theory to explain how that is possible - namely, that all of our judgments concerning good and evil be based only on clear and distinct ideas - but that theory involves the objectionable move of identifying the self with intellect or reason. (Hoffman, 255-256)

The validity of this complaint seems to me to depend on how the will is conceived, and on what "up to one" means. Perhaps Hoffman is assuming that the will would be construed, on my view, in terms of what one identifies with and hence as what flows from one's valuational system. Indeed, in that case, "recalcitrant" desires would defeat the will as a kind of external obstacle. To focus solely on this kind of "unfreedom" would be either to confuse freedom of will with strength of will (in the "output" sense) or to neglect freedom of will altogether. However, it is consistent with my view to distinguish freedom of will from strength of will in the output sense as follows. One's will (or choice or decision) is up to one just in case it is dependent upon one's valuational system. The will's freedom would then be distinct from its efficacy - as Hoffman (and Albritton) require. That one's valuational scheme was not in turn up to one would not, on this view, detract from free will.

To be sure, this view would not answer to the requirement of "complete freedom". I must say, however, that I do not find this a compelling



264 GARY WATSON

or even coherent requirement. That is too large an issue to take up on this occasion. But I do want to press the question of whether Descartes's view meets this requirement, that is, whether Descartes shows how "it is up to us what we identify with or embrace." For according to Descartes we are drawn inevitably toward a clearly perceived good (Hoffman, 243-244). In what sense, then, is it "up to us" whether to identify with our clear and distinct value judgments? To be sure, in so far as it is up to us to avoid affirming or denying unclear evaluations, what we embrace or identify with its partly within our power. In the case of the clear and distinct core, however, one's practical identity is apparently not. In this respect, Descartes's position is no different from the view Hoffman criticizes.

In general, it is not clear to me how these two ideas of freedom - freedom as what is up to us and freedom as rational self-realization - can be coherently combined in a single conception. Insofar as freedom involves the realization of the rational self, as it does on Hoffman's interpretation, complete freedom cannot require that it be (completely) up to us what we identify with or embrace. So the requirement in question cannot be used as an argument against rival views to Descartes's. What Hoffman has to argue, it seems to me, is not that the view he criticizes doesn't satisfy the criterion of complete freedom, but that it rests upon a false view of the self's identity; that the view that "identifies the self with intellect or reason" is philosophically preferable to one that identifies the self with the person's valuational system. Perhaps that's right. But that's what needs to be argued.

III. HOFFMAN'S ALBRITTON

What intrigues me most in the dispute between Albritton and Hoffman's Descartes is their disagreement about the conceivability of the unfreedom of will. What in their respective conceptions of the will and its freedom explains this deep difference? What is the nature and source of the disagreement here?

Hoffman himself makes several attempts to characterize what is at issue, but I do not find them fully satisfactory. Early on, he notes that



FREEDOM AND STRENGTH OF WILL IN HOFFMAN AND ALBRI1TMN 265

Albritton's contrast of strength with freedom of will is unconvincing, or at least underargued. If strength of will is understood "on the output side", that is, as efficacy, then, as Hoffman points out, Albritton would be right to insist on this contrast. But "if our will is weak on the input side", that is, if the will is influenced by passions contrary to reason, then it is not obviously wrong to say that "what we propose to do isn't really up to us" (Hoffman, 243).

Hoffman's point is well taken, and I'll return to it. But this distinction doesn't explain the disagreement. For it is clear from Albritton's one explicit remark on strength of will that he is not referring to efficacy but to cases in which one's desires or passions affect what one decides (Albritton, 249). Thus, the question remains why he is led to reject what is so central to Descartes's account.

A related suggestion is that "what underlies the dispute between Albritton and Descartes over whether the passions operate through choice or bypass choice is a dispute over whether we are doing something when we act out of passions. Descartes thinks we are, Albritton thinks we are not " (Hoffman, 250). This claim rests on a reading of Albritton's brief remarks on the relation between free will and desires, aversions and "that lot". "Of course, if it's really like chains, or like being violently thrown into bed, then it is, and there's no unfreedom of will in it. You haven't in the relevant sense done anything" (Albritton, 248). I read this passage differently. I take Albritton's point to be that acts of desire or passion are not (typically if ever) "patterns of bizarre physical seizure" (Albritton, 249). If they were, the will would be bypassed, and one wouldn't have "done anything" in the relevant sense. There would be unfreedom of action, not of will. But ordinarily, I take Albritton to be saying, when we act out of desire, with or without reasons, we are acting according to our will, and hence "doing something".

Hoffman offers another account of what's at issue: "In complete contrast to Descartes, . . Albritton holds that it is always open to us to decide not to do what reason or anything else dictates. Albritton thus seems to be identifying freedom of will with what is known as the liberty of indifference" (Hoffman, 245). To associate Albritton with the liberty of indifference is problematic, I think. The idea that "it is always open to us to decide not to do what reason or anything else



266 GARY WATSON

dictates" is perfectly consistent with compatibilism (which of course does not require liberty of indifference). Consider, for example, the familiar conditionalist treatment of 'up to us'. Getting out of bed is up to me just in case, say, I would get out of bed if I desired to do so more than I wanted any alternatives. On this view, it would be true that it is up to us to decide not to do what reason dictates, even though we don't necessarily have liberty of indifference. I do not suppose that Albritton is a conditionalist. The point is that a commitment to liberty of indifference cannot be attributed to Albritton in the absence of an account of "up to us" - which, unfortunately, he does not supply.

I suspect that the temptation to read Albritton as a traditional libertarian only as an especially "radical" one, should be resisted. Our reading of his essay must be constrained by two claims: that the idea of "unfreedom of the will is incomprehensible" and that the assertion of the perfect freedom of the will is not "a grandiosity but a simple truth. Maybe so simple that there's nothing in it, in a sense" (Albritton, 243). Now the liberty of indifference is far from a simple truth; it holds, as I understand it, that what we will is (somewhat) independent of the rest of psychophysical reality. The denial of this doctrine is not incomprehensible. To ally Albritton with this tradition is bound to make his a priori position just seem metaphysically or conceptually dogmatic.

If Albritton is a libertarian, his libertarianism is of a distinctive variety. The "incomprehensibility claim" seems to go with the follow- ing picture: the conditions that are sufficient for the application of the concepts of acting, trying, and willing suffice, conceptually, for the application of the concept of free will. The conditions that ensure that beings are not "automata" ensure that they "enjoy" freedom of will. The conditions that ensure that one is an agent ensure that one is afree agent. These are of course contingent conditions; they might be prevented in all kinds of ways. To be a libertarian, on this view, is to believe that determinism is inconsistent with these conditions; it is inconsistent with freedom of will because it is inconsistent with creatures having wills at all. Albritton expresses his attraction to this view (Albritton, 250), without endorsing it.

In any case, with friends such as Albritton, I'm not sure that traditional libertarians need enemies. For it seems to me that Albritton's



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discussion is no less debunking of the idea of free will than was Hobbes's treatment. As Harry Frankfurt has argued (Frankfurt), any significant notion of freedom and power must admit of degrees; if we can't speak meaningfully of diminished free will, then it is not clear that we can speak meaningfully of free will at all. In Hobbes's terms, if you think 'unfree will' is absurd speech, you must think that 'free will' is absurd speech. The net effect of Albritton's thesis is to make the traditional topic of freedom of will less interesting than traditionally thought.

IV. DEFENDING ALBRITON?

Nevertheless, Albritton's essay seems to me salutary. Let me try to say why.

It may be helpful to begin by correcting a misunderstanding of some brief remarks I made on Albritton in another place (Watson, 162-163). Hoffman understands me to have been claiming "to have learned from Albritton that it is a mistake to think of one's own desires and emotions as potential impediments to free will" (Hoffman, 250). What I mean to be claiming is subtly but importantly different. I had tended to think that the reason why Hobbesian views had no use for the idea of free will is that they overlooked the importance of such "internal" impediments to the will as passions and desires. Albritton's article made it clear to me that in this role passions and desires are simply further impediments to freedom of action.

To say this, however, is not to acknowledge that passions cannot in any way diminish freedom of will. I'll explain shortly why I agree with Hoffman that Albritton has not established the stronger claim of his essay. But first I want to bring out some of the other ways in which Albritton's essay seems to me an important corrective to loose talk about free will.

It may be useful to assess Albritton's position by comparing the libertarian views of Thomas Reid. "By the Liberty of a Moral Agent", Reid understood "a power over the determinations of his own will" (Reid, 323). For our purposes, this conception is close enough to Albritton's; what the agent with moral liberty wills is up to her. Like Descartes, Reid



268 GARY WATSON

did not find unfreedom of the will to be at all incomprehensible. Reid speaks of a number of ways in which moral liberty

may be impaired or lost, by disorder of body or mind, as in melancholy, or in madness; it may be impaired by lost by vicious habits; it may, in particular cases, be restrained by divine interposition. (Reid, 326)

Some of these conditions - such as schizophrenia or extreme inebriation - might affect the will in a way that Albritton acknowledges explicitly: by rendering one incapable of willing anything at all. As he puts it: so long as one "is not too far gone to try anything" (Albritton, 242), one's freedom of the will hasn't been affected. However, Reid's example of vicious habits rather suggests individuals who (unfreely) try for bad things and (or) fail to seek what they should.

Who is right about this? Vicious habits might affect one's choices in two ways: they might distort one's perception or understanding of what is best to pursue, or they might affect one's motivation to pursue what one perceives to be best. Albritton must deny not only that these effects do in fact restrict the will's freedom, but that they could.

Regarding the first affect, Albritton seems to be right. There are ways of preventing one from choosing something without tampering with one's will. If I get you to choose to turn left (rather than right) by convincing you (falsely) that you'll thereby reach your destination, I might in a sense prevent you from making the right choice, but I haven't diminished your freedom of will. It seems no different in the case of conceptions of the good. If you were raised so badly that you mistook the unjust life for the best life, or so that you couldn't tell the difference, you would in a sense be prevented from choosing as you should. But that is not a sense in which the freedom of your will has been diminished. What has been affected is your knowledge or understanding, not your will.2

Imagine that a certain part of my brain is so affected that I cannot think of eggs. In this condition (call it C), it cannot occur to me to have an omelette for breakfast. So one way to prevent me from choosing eggs for breakfast is to cause me to be in condition C. (Perhaps my neurophysiologist wife attempts in this way to minimize my cholesterol intake.) All of this is conceivable, but it would not be a case in which



FREEDOM AND STRENGTH OF WILL IN HOFFMAN AND ALBRITTON 269

my will has been "tampered with" (Albritton, 241). What has been diminished in this case is not my capacity to will but my conceptual capacities. Of course, in virtue of this conceptual inability, it is true in a sense that I am unable to will to have eggs for breakfast. But this latter inability is what Albritton calls a logical or grammatical inability, similar to my inability to will to jump over the Sears Towers (Albritton, 245). My beliefs and conceptions about my circumstances and alternatives affect what I can be coherently said to be trying to do. In the imagined circumstances, nothing I could do could count as "choosing to have eggs". I am unable to choose not because she tampered with my will but because she tampered with my understanding.

Anyone who is inclined to think that my freedom of will was diminished in this way should reflect on ordinary cases of forgetfulness. If being in C diminishes freedom of will, so, it seems to me, would one's tendency to forget about eggs. But no one would describe the latter as a restriction on freedom of will. (C cannot be a freedom-diminishing condition just in virtue of its being intentionally induced. My freedom is equally diminished if C comes about naturally. The same goes for forgetfulness.)

Albritton's claim then is this: in so far as the conditions in question are disabling, they incapacitate something besides the will. Either they leave one as fully able to try as before, or the resultant volitional incapacity is "grammatical". But couldn't someone cause me to will cereal rather than eggs, not by affecting my imagination, beliefs, appetites or interests, but "directly"? I am not sure what Albritton would say about such examples. I am inclined to say this: nothing brought about in this way (with this history) could be correctly described as an act of will(of the person in question). We wouldn't have the requisite context for describing the person as trying or willing to do this or that. Clearly, this response requires a good deal of elaboration and defense, but it seems to be to have considerable plausibility, and to be consistent with the general tone of the essay.

Let's turn to the other way in which vicious habits were said to be relevant to choice - by affecting one's motivation to pursue what one takes to be the best course of action. Here Albritton's position is not so easy to defend. It is true that not any such fiddling with my



270 GARY WATSON

motivation will constitute tampering with my will. If, adapting our earlier example, we imagine a way of inducing in me an appetitive indifference or revulsion to eggs, we would not be any closer than before to unfreedom of the will. Anyone who is inclined to see this as diminished free will would have to say the same thing, implausibly, about a natural loss or change of appetite.

But this suggests a more pertinent case: imagine that what is induced is an "overwhelming" craving for drink or drugs, or that this craving is due to the "vicious habit" we call alcoholism. This looks like the right kind of case. Compulsive desires, if they exist, diminish freedom of will in Albritton's sense: what one wills is not fully up to one. The question is whether this is a comprehensible idea.

Albritton discusses alcoholism at some length, but what he says about compulsion is puzzling. "Is it possible that [the alcoholic] can't [stop]?" Albritton asks. "Perhaps he just hasn't the strength of will to hold out, as one might be unable to withstand torture ... . All right. But strength of will is one thing and freedom of will is another" (Albritton, 249). This is puzzling in two ways. First, given the importance of the case, it is certainly underargued. Albritton is here describing what Hoffman calls "weakness of will in the input sense"; and, again, as Hoffman says, "it is not obviously wrong to say that if our will is weak on the input side, what we propose to do isn't really up to us" (Hoffman, 243). Suitably qualified, the thought seems perfectly comprehensible.

What is more puzzling, however, is that Albritton seems here to be conceding that the individual might be unable to hold out. In the context of the passage, this is tantamount to conceding that the individual might not be able to decide otherwise than to keep drinking (either on this occasion or in general), just as the victim of torture is unable to stick to his decision to withhold the information. It is hard to see how this inability could fail to constitute unfreedom of will in Albritton's sense: what I decide is not fully up to me.

Thus, I don't think Albritton has made out his position for the central case of compulsion; indeed, on this crucial point, I find it difficult to say what his position is.



FREEDOM AND STRENGTH OF WILL IN HOFFMAN AND ALBRiTrON 271

NOTES

1 This paper is a revision and expansion of comments presented at the Pacific Meet- ings of the American Philosophical Association, in March, 1994. I have profited from discussions with John Fischer, Edwin McCann, and especially Paul Hoffman. 2 Reid's idea of moral liberty is explicitly motivated by accountability, with which Albritton's essay is not concerned. Here I think it is plausible to say that diminished responsibility is not due to diminished freedom of will, but to non-culpable ignorance - if one is responsible for one's vicious habits, that is of course a different matter. Thus, insofar as the power over the determinations of one's will is diminished by lack of knowledge, that power involves more than freedom of will.

REFERENCES

Albritton, Rogers, "Freedom of the Will and Freedom of Action", Proceedings and Addresses of the American PhilosophicalAssociation, 59 (1985), pp. 239-251.

Frankfurt, Harry G., "Concerning the Freedom and Limits of the Will", Philosophical Topics, 17 (1989), pp. 119-130.

Hoffman, Paul, "Freedom and Strength of Will: Descartes and Albritton", Philosophical Studies, 77 (1995), pp. 241-260 (this issue).

Reid, Thomas, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, Essay 4, "Of Liberty of Moral Agents", in Inquires and Essays, ed. by R. Beanblossom and K. Lehrer (Hackett, 1983).

Watson, Gary, "Free Action and Free Will", Mind, 96 (1987), pp. 145-71.

Department of Philosophy University of California Irvine, CA 92717 USA



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Papers Presented at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting 1994 || Freedom and Strength of Will in Hoffman and Albritton