Determinism, self-efficacy, and the phenomenology of free will

Inquiry

Volumn 52, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 412-428

  Holton, Richard ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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EID: 70349606701     PISSN: 0020174X     EISSN: 15023923     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00201740903087383     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. In addition to the Oslo Workshop on liking and wanting, versions of this paper have been given at Florida State, Oxford, Edinburgh and Paris. I am very grateful to comments from the audiences there, and in particular to Kent Berridge, Elizabeth Fricker, Elizabeth Harman, Jennifer Hornsby, Joshua Knobe, Rae Langton, and Nick Shea.
2. K. Vohs and J. Schooler, "The value of believing in free will" ms.
3. R. Baumeister, E. Masicampo and C.N. DeWall, "Prosocial benefits of feeling free" ms.
4. See, for instance, Nichols, S. and J. Knobe, J. (2007) Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions, Noûs, 41, pp. 663-85.
5. For the caveat about the need for abstract thinking see Nahmias, E. et al. (2005) Surveying freedom: Folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility, Philosophical Psychology, 18, pp. 561-84.
6. Nahmias, E., Coates, D.J. and Kvaran, T. (2007) Free will, moral responsibility, and mechanism: Experiments on folk intuitions Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31, pp. 214-42.
7. The study found that people think that neurological determinism (everything we do is determined by the prior arrangement of our neurons) poses more of a threat to free will and to moral responsibility than does psychological determinism (everything we do is determined by our prior beliefs, desires and intentions). The authors interpret this as driven by different reactions to more or less mechanistic conceptions of determinism. I think that that is very plausible, but the data could be interpreted rather differently. It could be seen as indicating an implicit belief in dualism.
8. Seligman, M. (1993) What You Can Change and What You Can't (New York: Knopf).
9. For an accessible survey of some of the empirical data on how hard it is to loose weight by dieting see Kolada, G. (2007) Rethinking Thin (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Of course this is a controversial issue, upon which I don't want to rest too much. If you are sceptical, substitute one of the other things that are very hard to change, such as sexual orientation (for pure homosexuals, not bisexuals).
10. I say "implicitly", since the explicit discussion of free will is in all or nothing terms: Seligman, Rethinking Thin pp. 22ff.
11. See for example Gary Watson. In his excellent piece (1977) "Skepticism about weakness of will", Philosophical Review, 86, pp. 316-39, Watson endorses an account based around the idea of degree of difficulty of resistance, but denies that there is any place for a notion of effort.
12. Don't put the definition in classic conditional form: "if one were to decide to F one would". We know from Frankfurt cases that that will fall foul of the conditional fallacy; moreover, it is quite unclear how to convert it to a graded form.
13. Collins, A. [1717] (1976) An Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty, ed. J. O'Higgins, (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff) p. 30.
14. Holton, R. (2006) "The act of choice", Philosophers' Imprint, 6.
15. The qualification "when choice arises" is an important one. If much contemporary social psychology is right, most actions are performed automatically, with no need for choice.
16. On this approach it is an interesting question as to why we have choice. It can look like a liability, opening as it does the possibilities of akrasia and inaction. Wouldn't we do better as creatures whose actions are linked directly to what we judge best, circumventing any need for choice? Briefly, my answer was that, as cognitively limited creatures, we are frequently unable to make a judgment as to what is best. We need to be able to choose to act even in the absence of such judgements, especially if can be influenced by relevant factors, even if these are not perceptible at the level of judgement. For instance, it looks as though we can be sensitive to patterns in the world, so that our choices may be influenced by them, even though we form no conscious beliefs about them.
17. Bratman, M. (1987) Intentions, Plans and Practical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
18. Baumeister, R., Heatherton T., and Tice, D. (1994) Losing Control (San Diego: Academic Press) pp. 151ff. The same is true of those who are dieting (Intentions, Plans and Practical Reasoning. pp. 184ff.), or trying to give up smoking (Intentions, Plans and Practical Reasoning. pp. 212ff.) or taking drugs (Muraven and Baumeister, Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources, p. 250).
19. Moreover, whilst bad moods make dieters want to eat more, they tend to have the opposite effect on those who are not on a diet. So it seems that it is the resolution being affected, not the desire. See Muraven and Baumeister "Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources" p. 251.
20. Baumeister, R., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M. and Tice, D. (1998) Ego-depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, pp. 1252-65. The puzzles were in fact insoluble.
21. Muraven, Tice and Baumeister, "Self-control as a limited resource".
22. NE 1104a34. Aristotle is here talking about how we develop the excellences. He does not explicitly say the same about the development of self-control though. He does say that lack of self-control can be cured, but he doesn't say how.
23. Muraven, M., Baumeister, R. and Tice, D. (1999) Longitudinal improvement of selfregulation through practice: Building self-control strength through repeated exercise, The Journal of Social Psychology, 139, pp. 446-57.
24. Geoffrey Keynes talks of his experiences as a doctor in the trenches in the First World War, finding his legs reluctant to take him towards the falling shells, despite his intention to go and tend to the wounded. Keynes, G. (1981) The Gates of Memory (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 137. Of course that involves lack of action, not action. It would have been odder if his legs had started walking of their own accord. Odder still if his body had embarked on a complex series of actions-walking to his horse, mounting it, riding back to his quarters, writing a letter to his commanding officer asking for compassionate leave or whatever.
25. For a survey of a large body of work see Robinson, T. and Berridge, K. (2003) "Addiction", Annual Review of Psychology, 54, pp. 25-53. As against rational choice accounts which understand addiction in terms of a desire to avoid the pains of withdrawal, Robinson and Berridge's account explains how the desire for the addictive substance can start before withdrawal sets in, and can continue long after it has passed. Indeed there is some evidence that the sensitization might be permanent.
26. For something like the picture that the different forces are additive, see Velleman, D. (1992) "What happens when someone acts", Mind, 101, pp. 461-81.
27. It might be argued that states disconnected in these ways should not count as desires: Scanlon, for instance, writes that "what is generally called having a desire involves having a tendency to see something as a reason" Scanlon, T. (1998) What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 39. That strikes me as either wrong (if viewed as a description of our current practice of using the term), or as an unhelpful stipulation (if viewed as a instruction for how we should use it). Addictive desires are surely desires. What is plausible in these writers' accounts is the thought that desire might be a cluster concept, and that there might be dissociable elements within the cluster. For a nice discussion of how this can lead to difficulties in deciding which desire is strongest.
28. see Humberstone, L. (1990) Wanting, getting, having, Philosophical Papers, 19, pp. 99-118
29. The findings here concern inability to delay gratification rather than addiction. See Karniol, R. & Miller, D. (1983) Why not wait? A cognitive model of self-imposed delay termination, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, pp. 935-42._rfaut Karniol R. Miller D.
30. It is well established that, after making a choice, subjects tend to view the option that they have chosen as more markedly superior to the alternatives than they did before: a phenomenon that is known as post-decisional spreading of alternatives. See Brehm, J. and Cohen, H. (1962) Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance (New York: Wiley).
31. Baumeister et al. (2008) Free will in consumer behavior: Self-control, ego depletion and choice, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 18, pp. 4-13, at p. 9.
32. For good discussion of the features of craving see Loewenstein, G. (1999) A visceral account of addiction in: J. Elster & O-J. Skog (Eds.) Getting Hooked, pp. 235-64 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
33. For a summary of a large body of work see Mischel (1996) From good intentions to willpower in: P. Gollwitzer & J. Bargh (Eds.) The Psychology of Action, pp. 197-218 (New York: The Guildford Press).
34. Gollwitzer, P., Fujita, K. & Oettingen, G. (2004) Planning and the implementation of goals in: R. Baumeister & K. Vohs (Eds.) Handbook of Self-Regulation, pp. 211-28 (New York: Guilford Press).
35. Gollwitzer, P., Bayer, U. & McCullouch, K. (2005) The control of the unwanted, in: R. Hassin, J. Uleman, & J. Bargh (Eds.), The New Unconscious, pp. 485-515 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). This might help explain why people are more likely to be successful giving up alcohol than losing weight. One can form a simple implementation intention never to drink alcohol again, one that will need no further consideration. In contrast one cannot simply decide not to eat again: one will need to be constantly considering what is a permissible amount.
36. For this explanation see Ainslie, G. (2001) Breakdown of Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 147.
37. Here and in the seven paragraphs that follow I draw on my (2003) How is strength of will possible? in: S. Stroud & C. Tappolet (Eds.) Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality, pp. 39-67 (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
38. which gives a more detailed account; see also my (2004) Rational resolve, Philosophical Review, 113, pp. 507-35.
39. The need for self-monitoring is central to Carver and Scheier's influential feedback account. See Carver, C. & Scheier, M. (1998) On the Self-Regulation of Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
40. Wegner, D. (1989) White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts (New York: Viking Press); Uleman, J. & Bargh, J. (Eds.) (1989) Unintended Thought (New York: the Guildford Press).
41. Again, it has been suggested that this is connected with the idea of self-monitoring: in order to be sure that one is not thinking about something one needs to monitor that one is not: Wegner, D. (1994) Ironic processes of mental control, Psychological Review, 101, pp. 34-52.
42. Ignatius of Loyola [1548] (1996) Spiritual exercises in: Personal Writings, 33-5 (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 291.
43. Maugham, S. (1933) Sheppey: A Play in Three Acts (London: W. Heinemann), Act III. It is quoted by many authors from John O'Hara on. The origin of the story appears to be from the ninth century author Fudail ibn Ayad.
44. see Shah, I. (1967) Tales of the Dervishes (London: Jonathan Cape), p. 191. I am indebted here to Sobel, J.H. Notes on 'Death Speaks' at http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~sobel/PuzzlesDEATHSPEAKS.pdf
45. As quoted by Cicero, On Fate 30, translation in Long, A. & Sedley, D. (1987) The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 339.
46. For discussion of Chryssipus's argument see Bobzien, S. (1998) Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press), Ch. 5. As she points out (pp. 231-33), Chryssipus is not really concerned to answer the question of how something that is determined can still be up to us: what I earlier called the more global skepticism.
47. In general self-efficacy-one's belief in one's own degree of control-is extremely important in explaining behaviour. For a general overview see Bandura, A. (1992) Exercise of personal agency through the self-efficacy mechanism in: R. Schwarzer (Ed.) Self-Efficacy, pp. 3-38 (Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis).
48. Flaubert, G. [1856] (1992) Madame Bovary, trans. G. Wall (Harmondsworth: Penguin), Part 2, Chap. 8. Rodolphe's approach is subtler still, since he suggests that it is merely the pressure of conventional morality that will be overcome by fate; he doesn't acknowledge to Emma that she is struggling against her conscience.
49. This two level view is a pervasive feature of our psychological and moral thought. It comes up, for instance, in the legal doctrine of provocation. For discussion see Holton, R. & Shute, S. (2007) Self-control in the modern provocation defence, The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 27, pp. 49-73.