Robert Kane (philosopher)

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Robert Kane (born 1938) is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently on phased retirement. He is the author of Free Will and Values (1985), Through the Moral Maze (1994), The Significance of Free Will (1996; awarded the 1996 Robert W. Hamilton Faculty Book Award), edited the Oxford Handbook of Free Will (2004) and is widely published in the philosophy of mind and action, ethics, the theory of values and philosophy of religion.

1 Causal indeterminism
2 Critique of causal indeterminism
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Causal indeterminism

Kane is one of the leading contemporary philosophers on free will. Advocating what is termed within philosophy "libertarian freedom", Kane argues that "(1) the existence of alternative possibilities (or the agent's power to do otherwise) is a necessary condition for acting freely, and (2) determinism is not compatible with alternative possibilities (it precludes the power to do otherwise)" (Oxford Handbook of Free Will, page 11). It is important to note, however, that the real crux of Kane's position of indeterministic free will is grounded not in a defense of alternative possibilities (AP), but rather in the notion of what Kane refers to as ultimate responsibility (UR). Thus, AP is a necessary but insufficient criterion for free will. It is necessary that there be (metaphysically) real alternatives for our actions, but that's not enough. Our actions could be random without being in our control. The control is found in "ultimate responsibility."

Ultimate responsibility means that agents must be the ultimate creators (or originators) and sustainers of their own ends and purposes. There must be more than one possible way for a person's life to turn out (AP), but more importantly, whichever way it turns out must be based in the person's willing actions. As Kane defines it,

UR: An agent is ultimately responsible for some (event or state) E's occurring only if (R) the agent is personally responsible for E's occurring in a sense which entails that something the agent voluntarily (or willingly) did or omitted either was, or causally contributed to, E's occurrence and made a difference to whether or not E occurred; and (U) for every X and Y (where X and Y represent occurrences of events and/or states) if the agent is personally responsible for X and if Y is an arche (sufficient condition, cause or motive) for X, then the agent must also be personally responsible for Y.

In short, "an agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause or motive) for the action’s occurring."^[1].

What allows for ultimacy of creation in Kane's picture are what he refers to as "self-forming actions" or SFAs. An SFA is a moment of indecision during which a person experiences conflicting wills. These SFAs are the undetermined, regress stopping voluntary actions or refrainings in the life histories of agents that are required for UR. UR does not require that every act done of our own free will be undetermined, and thus that for every act or choice we could have done otherwise. Rather, UR requires only that certain of our choices and actions be undetermined (and thus we could have done otherwise); namely, SFAs. Such SFAs form our character, or nature; they inform or future choices, reasons, and motivations in action. If a person has had an opportunity to make a character-forming decision (SFA), she is responsible for the actions that are a result of her character.

In defending libertarian freedom Kane opposes many modern philosophers, most notably Daniel Dennett.

[edit] Critique of causal indeterminism

Randolph Clarke objects that Kane's depiction of free will is not truly libertarian, but a form of compatibilism. The objection asserts that although the outcome of an SFA is not determined, one's history up to the event is determined, so the fact that an SFA will occur is also determined. The outcome of the SFA is based on chance, and from that point on one's life is determined. This kind of freedom, Clarke argues, is no different than the kind of freedom argued for by compatibilists, who assert that even though our actions are determined, they are free because they are in accordance with our own wills, much like the outcome of an SFA.

Kane responds that what you don't get in compatibilism is "ultimate control—the originative control exercised by agents when it is ‘up to them’ which of a set of possible choices or actions will now occur, and up to no one and nothing else over which the agents themselves do not also have control" ^[2]. UR assures that the sufficient conditions for one's actions do not lie before one's own birth.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ Kane, Robert. “Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem.” (2003). In Free Will, Robert Kane (ed.) (2003) Malden, MA: Blackwell, p 224
^ Kane, Robert. “Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem.” (2003). In Free Will, Robert Kane (ed.) (2003) Malden, MA: Blackwell, p. 243.