Freedom in context

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 104, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 63-79

  Hawthorne, John ^a  

^a SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33746154760     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010398805497     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. 'Elusive Knowledge,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy, December 1996, pp. 549-567. Contextualism about knowledge had previously been explored in some depth by Stewart Cohen. See in particular his 'Knowledge, Context and Social Standards,' in Synthese 73 (1987), pp. 3-26 and 'How to Be a Fallibilist,' in Philosophical Perspectives (1988) ed. Tomberlin, pp. 91-123. Contextualist themes are also broached in Thompson Clarke, 'The Legacy of Skepticism,' The Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972), pp. 754-769.
2. This paper develops a suggestion canvassed briefly in John O'LearyHawthorne and Philip Pettit's 'Strategies of Compatibilism,' Analysis, October 1996, pp. 191-201.
3. 'Elusive Knowledge,' p. 549.
4. 'Elusive Knowledge,' p. 549.
5. 'Elusive Knowledge,' p. 554.
6. What is it to attend to a causal explainer of some instance of human behavior? Is it to cognize the details of those very causes or is it enough merely to cognize the second order fact that a certain kind of causal explainer exists? Similar questions arise for Lewis. Does attending to uneliminated possibilities require cognizing the details of those very possibilities or merely the fact that there are such possibilities, via perhaps such abstract theses as the underdetermination of theory by data? I'm happy to be liberal here as, I suspect, is Lewis.
7. Some readers of Lewis will have noticed the availability of the following variation on Lewis' analysis, one that is in fact significantly different from the original: S knows P iff S's evidence eliminates every possibility in which notP - Psst! - except for those possibilities that it would be proper to ignore. What's the difference? The difference is that this analysis does not require one to say that an alternative becomes relevant by attending to it. Armed with this alternative analysis one might insist that even if a certain uneliminated possibility to P is being currently attended to by S, the sentence 'I know P' may be true in the mouth of S because it would be proper to ignore it. (If one does not ignore a possibility it follows that one does not properly ignore it. But it does not follow that it would not be proper to ignore it.) This style of analysis does not at all recommend that as the sphere of attention increases, the truth conditions for knowledge ascriptions varies, unless it happens to be accompanied by the indexical maxim that it would never proper to ignore a possibility that one is currently attending to. This style of analysis may turn out to be much more conservative than Lewis'. Supposing it improper to attend to sceptical possibilities, the proponent of this analysis may say that the truth conditions for knowledge ascriptions does not vary as one attends increasingly to sceptical alternatives - what varies is one's ability to make good judgment about the truth value of those ascriptions, owing to the fact one is attending to possibilities that one should be ignoring. Will there be any trace of context-dependence left in this style of analysis? Perhaps. One might still retain the idea that the proprieties of ignoring vary from context to context (for example, what it is proper to ignore in connection with some claim to know P in the context of ordinary life may be different to what it is proper to ignore in connection with some claim to know the same P in the context of theoretical science). Contextualism may be retained while rejecting the view that attending to an alternative ipso fact makes it relevant. All these remarks, apply, mutatis mutandis, to the analysis of freedom. I leave it to the reader to consider for herself the contrasting merits of the relevant variations on the analysis of freedom that I have explored in the body of the text.
8. Especially if merely taking note of the second order fact that there are uneliminated possibilities counts as a sort of paying attention to them (cf. footnote 3).
9. 'Elusive Knowledge,' p. 554.
10. I myself have little sympathy with this broad approach. Thinking that one can analyze the rules of propriety for attending to causal forces by doing descriptive anthropology about when folk are disposed to raise their eyebrows is rather akin to thinking that one can settle debates in legal philosophy concerning when mental disorders abnegate accountability simply by investigating the dispositions of ordinary folk to attribute or deny accountability when informed of the disorder. 11 Note that the third approach might ultimately be subsumed under the first via the observation that we would all be a lot less happy were we to deny ourselves the participant stance. The preceding paragraph in the text borrows, quite obviously, from Strawson's 'Freedom and Resentment,' in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson (Oxford University Press, 1982).
11. But hasn't Lewis shown that there is a disciplined account available in that case? Only if such concepts as salient resemblance withstand reflective scrutiny. (Thanks to Stewart Cohen here.)
12. John Bennett informed me that the well-known emotivist C.E. Stevenson was fond of providing conceptual analyses deploying the term 'properly' and then going expressivist on account of the appearance of 'properly' in the analysis.
13. It is one of the three arguments for incompatibilism contained in An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
14. I am very grateful to Stewart Cohen, Jose Benardete, Jonathan Bennett, Tamar Gendler, Lynne McFall and audiences at the University of Rochester, Southern Methodist University and the University of Maryland for help with this paper.