I was worried for a second that because my view on free will involves making a sharp distinction between the self as a subject that chooses (or experiences the choices its brain makes) and the self as an organism or animal, that I commit myself to a very specific theory of mind. The problem then would be that I would feel compelled to defend that theory of mind not because I thought it was true, but because I need it to be true for my view on free will to make sense. I guess I hoped that it only commits me to aspect dualism, which is a hill I'm happy to die on anyway, because I cannot imagine dispensing with either mental or physical properties.
But now it seems to me that we can obviously distinguish between the self as mental and the self as physical on a variety of views. My free will skepticism is openly available.
Identity theory says that there are mental properties, but these properties reduce to physical ones. So we have the mental self, which is a special subset of the human organism's physical properties (brain properties), and we have the non-mental self, which is the set of the remaining physical properties. No one chooses their brain properties, and so no one chooses their mental properties. But all deeds done are done by brain properties. So all deeds done are traced to factors outside the person's control. You still have good and bad people, it's just that no one is responsible for their goodness or badness.
I'm pretty sure epiphenomenalism immediately entails free will skepticism anyway, so that one doesn't matter. (Identity theory probably does too, but whatever.) Epiphenomenalism says that there is no mental causation. So you don't cause anything; everything that you experience is caused by your brain interacting with your environment. Not only are you not responsible for your actions, but technically you don't have any actions to be responsible for. Your soul is a pure byproduct, a spectator.
I'm pretty sure behaviorism immediately entails free will skepticism too? If consciousness is just behavior, then the self is just behavior, and so there is no self that causes the behavior, and so there is no self to blame. Behaviorism is so easily refuted that it's a moot point anyway.
Functionalism is trickier. Can the self / qualia / subjectivity be analyzed in terms of function? If functionalism implies that philosophical zombies can be conscious, then that's a problem. But why couldn't we say qualia is a function? You certainly have a sharp break between the mind as a function and the material that gives rise to the mind. So there you have the two senses of "I" and "You" that I need for my free will skepticism. But functionalism might immediately lead to free will skepticism anyway because if the self is a function and functions are traced to factors beyond the control of the function, then traceability will apply to the functional self.
Now that I think about it, it's really hard to see how free will can fit on any theory of mind. It certainly doesn't fit on eliminativism.
That seems to leave only substance dualism and monistic idealism as refuges for free will. But again traceability concerns apply, not to mention all the arguments against these views.
I guess free will just really doesn't make sense to me at all.
Recently, getting into action theory, I wondered whether you could defend free will on the basis that if someone does something knowingly wrong, then surely the person who causes this action is morally responsible for it. But two things came to mind: one, I'm highly suspicious of the possibility of akrasia, the weakness of will needed for this kind of deliberate evil, and two, even if akrasia is possible, you could run into traceability problems there. People who have akrasia don't choose to have it, and we can trace their akrasia to their genetics, environment, etc. So even something as solid as the idea of deliberately doing wrong doesn't save free will.
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