Dennett illustrates his compatibilist position by criticizing one of John Austin's analyses of ordinary language. That analysis is of situation in which Austin attempts to putt, misses and exlaims (I suppose with a certain exasperation), "I could have made that putt!" These words indicate, Austin proposes, that the utterer thought that prior to attempting the putt there was a real possibility of succeeding. From this common sense perspective, therefore, determinism is false.
True to his compatibilist spirit, Dennett both disagrees and agrees with Austin. First his disagreement: if Austin had sufficiently precise knowledge of all of the relevant measurable circumstances as they were just a moment before the putt was attempted, then he would see that these circumstances thus described excluded a successful putt. The failure was predetermined. But Dennett goes on to find a way of looking at Austin's missed putt that allows him to say, without guile, that Austin could have made it. Key to this second way is the imprecision that characterizes our normal discourse regarding our own dispositions and the circumstances. This imprecision allows for various plausible initial conditions, at least one of which would result in the successful execution of the putt. Given that imprecision, the initial scenario -- Austin prior to his attempting the putt -- could have been followed by his successfully completing it. With these qualifications in mind, Dennett can respond to Austin, "Yes, you could have made that putt. But you are wrong to suppose that your missing it was not predetermined."
Dennett believes that the qualifications he places on his agreement with Austin leave ordinary language use intact while remaining consistent with determinism. But his way of reinterpreting ordinary discourse seems to me to leave us short-changed. In replacing something like "I could have taken the right course of action (when I in fact took the wrong one)," with "it seems from an everyday, imprecise take on the initial situation that a successful putt was probable (when, from a more precise consideration of all of the factors, it clearly wasn't)," he replaces a first-person perspective with a third-person perspective. That is, he takes "I could have done this" as veridical only inasmuch as it signifies factors that can be known by looking at the speaker, as it were, under a microscope. By replacing the first-person perspective with the third, he leaves behind something more basic than free will, something more basic than will: he leaves behind agency or endeavor (where the latter is a broader term applicable to non-humans).
Let's leave the question of free-will behind for a moment by taking up the example of a dog, who(m) we'll call Lassie, that attempts to catch a frisbee. She has been so well trained to catch frisbee that she catches upward of 90% of those thrown at a normal height. If you had placed a bet on her catching a particular throw, you might be exasperated at seeing her miss it. You might then note this by saying "she could have caught it,"and then adding,"but something went wrong." In other words, you wouldn't blame her as Austin blamed himself for missing the putt. You would focus on what happened to Lassie as she tried rather than regard her as responsible for missing the catch.
Suppose, however, that you are the dog owner. You might just ignore for the moment the fact that dogs can't understand human words: "You could have caught it! Shame on you!" you say as you go on to punish her. In other words, you might treat her as if she were responsible for her failure. Doing so may be a useful fiction: it may be part of a strategy to get her to try even harder. But at the end of the day, you would admit that we were just pretending: it's just your human way of barking at her.
Dennett's compatibilist manner of interpreting "I could have made that putt!" is best understood by comparison with Lassie's missed catch. Saying that "Lassie could have made that catch, but something happened ... (perhaps her desire to try was adversely affected by chemical reactions)" differs from saying that "Austin could have made that putt but he chose the wrong strategy" inasmuch as the former leaves out the notion of responsibility, while the second (at least when said in by Austin himself) often includes it. To say to Lassie, "You could have made that catch!" is to pretend that she is responsible when she is not. The latter attitude toward Lassie (shall we call this attitude a Lassitude?) might be very effective in getting the desired behavior, but it involves pretending.
Intermediate conclusion: the compatibilist attitude is one like that of the dog trainer. We should engage fellow humans and ourselves as if we all were responsible for our actions, because that is the way that we get things done. But once we've put on our thinking caps, we'll recognize that, when it comes to canine and human behavior, the explanation for why living things move one way than another is to be found in physics and chemistry rather than in moral philosophy.
Actually, this comparison is unfair to dog owners. The reductive materialism that underlies Dennett's flavor of compatibilism is based upon a reductivism that doesn't even give dogs a fair shake (or should I say "paw"). In spite of our anthropocentric chauvinism, we marvel at dogs and other animals for what they can do, what they try to do and we praise them when the succeed in doing marvelous things. We marvel, I propose, at how these animals are able to act on their desires. We do all of this without supposing they deliberate. But the line of analysis Dennett uses to deconstruct volition would also eliminate any initiative on the part of Lassie. If all animals are machines then our desires are at most epiphenomenal. Reductive materialists marvel at mutts as complex machines, not as individuals.
For the non-reductionist, Lassie's act of trying to catch the frisbee is more than the sum of the processes that would be discovered by looking under a microscope. For a reductionist like Dennett, however, biological processes are entirely explainable in terms of physics. To argue in terms of anything more than this is to adopt vitalism--a kind of "Dualism Light" (as in "Bud Light") that has been debunked by the last century of scientific progress (or so they assume). Dennett may admire Lassie's catch, but this admiration is ultimately directed toward the marvelously balanced concatenation of forces. "Lassie" is at best a useful shorthand for this concatenation: if we think otherwise, we are fooling ourselves. But it is useful to fool ourselves. In fact, we must do so in order to get on with our lives, for these higher order configurations, illusory as they are, are the patterns that we naturally recognize. It's good to fool ourselves when it comes to free will, as doing so engages our sense of responsibility, and such an engagement is a necessary condition for political and moral discourse. And such discourses (speaking here from the pre-scientific attitude) are indispensable toward making a better world.
So Dennett's reasons for rejecting free will are also reasons for rejecting animal desire generaliter as something more than molecules obeying chemical laws.
True to his compatibilist spirit, Dennett both disagrees and agrees with Austin. First his disagreement: if Austin had sufficiently precise knowledge of all of the relevant measurable circumstances as they were just a moment before the putt was attempted, then he would see that these circumstances thus described excluded a successful putt. The failure was predetermined. But Dennett goes on to find a way of looking at Austin's missed putt that allows him to say, without guile, that Austin could have made it. Key to this second way is the imprecision that characterizes our normal discourse regarding our own dispositions and the circumstances. This imprecision allows for various plausible initial conditions, at least one of which would result in the successful execution of the putt. Given that imprecision, the initial scenario -- Austin prior to his attempting the putt -- could have been followed by his successfully completing it. With these qualifications in mind, Dennett can respond to Austin, "Yes, you could have made that putt. But you are wrong to suppose that your missing it was not predetermined."
Dennett believes that the qualifications he places on his agreement with Austin leave ordinary language use intact while remaining consistent with determinism. But his way of reinterpreting ordinary discourse seems to me to leave us short-changed. In replacing something like "I could have taken the right course of action (when I in fact took the wrong one)," with "it seems from an everyday, imprecise take on the initial situation that a successful putt was probable (when, from a more precise consideration of all of the factors, it clearly wasn't)," he replaces a first-person perspective with a third-person perspective. That is, he takes "I could have done this" as veridical only inasmuch as it signifies factors that can be known by looking at the speaker, as it were, under a microscope. By replacing the first-person perspective with the third, he leaves behind something more basic than free will, something more basic than will: he leaves behind agency or endeavor (where the latter is a broader term applicable to non-humans).
Let's leave the question of free-will behind for a moment by taking up the example of a dog, who(m) we'll call Lassie, that attempts to catch a frisbee. She has been so well trained to catch frisbee that she catches upward of 90% of those thrown at a normal height. If you had placed a bet on her catching a particular throw, you might be exasperated at seeing her miss it. You might then note this by saying "she could have caught it,"and then adding,"but something went wrong." In other words, you wouldn't blame her as Austin blamed himself for missing the putt. You would focus on what happened to Lassie as she tried rather than regard her as responsible for missing the catch.
Suppose, however, that you are the dog owner. You might just ignore for the moment the fact that dogs can't understand human words: "You could have caught it! Shame on you!" you say as you go on to punish her. In other words, you might treat her as if she were responsible for her failure. Doing so may be a useful fiction: it may be part of a strategy to get her to try even harder. But at the end of the day, you would admit that we were just pretending: it's just your human way of barking at her.
Dennett's compatibilist manner of interpreting "I could have made that putt!" is best understood by comparison with Lassie's missed catch. Saying that "Lassie could have made that catch, but something happened ... (perhaps her desire to try was adversely affected by chemical reactions)" differs from saying that "Austin could have made that putt but he chose the wrong strategy" inasmuch as the former leaves out the notion of responsibility, while the second (at least when said in by Austin himself) often includes it. To say to Lassie, "You could have made that catch!" is to pretend that she is responsible when she is not. The latter attitude toward Lassie (shall we call this attitude a Lassitude?) might be very effective in getting the desired behavior, but it involves pretending.
Intermediate conclusion: the compatibilist attitude is one like that of the dog trainer. We should engage fellow humans and ourselves as if we all were responsible for our actions, because that is the way that we get things done. But once we've put on our thinking caps, we'll recognize that, when it comes to canine and human behavior, the explanation for why living things move one way than another is to be found in physics and chemistry rather than in moral philosophy.
Actually, this comparison is unfair to dog owners. The reductive materialism that underlies Dennett's flavor of compatibilism is based upon a reductivism that doesn't even give dogs a fair shake (or should I say "paw"). In spite of our anthropocentric chauvinism, we marvel at dogs and other animals for what they can do, what they try to do and we praise them when the succeed in doing marvelous things. We marvel, I propose, at how these animals are able to act on their desires. We do all of this without supposing they deliberate. But the line of analysis Dennett uses to deconstruct volition would also eliminate any initiative on the part of Lassie. If all animals are machines then our desires are at most epiphenomenal. Reductive materialists marvel at mutts as complex machines, not as individuals.
For the non-reductionist, Lassie's act of trying to catch the frisbee is more than the sum of the processes that would be discovered by looking under a microscope. For a reductionist like Dennett, however, biological processes are entirely explainable in terms of physics. To argue in terms of anything more than this is to adopt vitalism--a kind of "Dualism Light" (as in "Bud Light") that has been debunked by the last century of scientific progress (or so they assume). Dennett may admire Lassie's catch, but this admiration is ultimately directed toward the marvelously balanced concatenation of forces. "Lassie" is at best a useful shorthand for this concatenation: if we think otherwise, we are fooling ourselves. But it is useful to fool ourselves. In fact, we must do so in order to get on with our lives, for these higher order configurations, illusory as they are, are the patterns that we naturally recognize. It's good to fool ourselves when it comes to free will, as doing so engages our sense of responsibility, and such an engagement is a necessary condition for political and moral discourse. And such discourses (speaking here from the pre-scientific attitude) are indispensable toward making a better world.
So Dennett's reasons for rejecting free will are also reasons for rejecting animal desire generaliter as something more than molecules obeying chemical laws.
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