.nr LL 6i
.nr PO 1i
.nr VS 24
.PP
.XP
(a) What, according to Flanagan, is
.I "compatibilism?"
.sp 4
.XP
(b) How does Flanagan encorporate the notions of free choice and responsibility
into a (soft) deterministic setting?
.sp 4
.XP
(c) Evaluate Flanagan's idea (from (b)); what are your views on what he says?
.bp
.PP
According to Flanagan
.I "compatibilism,"
or
.I "soft determinism,"
differs from hard determinism in the following way: the hard determinist
believes that all our actions are caused, or determined, somewhere down the
line, by factors beyond our control.  Because of this the hard determinist
believes that there is no sense in which our actions are free.  But the
compatibilist believes that the the question of whether an action is free or
not depends on the
.I "type"
of the cause the action has.  If the immediate cause of an action is due to
some processing by a conscious system (what he calls
.I "Conscious Mental Life,"
or CML, as I will refer to this conscious system from now on) then that action
can count as free.  Flanagan implies that the fact that the underlying
structure of the processing mechanism (CML) might have come about, somewhere
down the line, from outside causes does not matter for the issue of free
choice or free actions.
.PP
Something that seems to go along with the idea of free action is the idea of
responsibility.  Presumably if one acts as the result of a free choice one is
responsible for that action.  Flanagan does not believe that in a
deterministic system there can be a concept of responsibility which justifies
punishment of peoples
.I "past" 
actions with the assumption that it was possible for them to have done
otherwise.  Rather, Flanagan adopts Dewey's view of responsibility and
morality; this is the view that morality has to do with events of the future,
\*Q`...The moral problem is that of modifying the factors which now influence
future results'\*U (Flanagan quotes Dewey, p. 51).  
.PP
The idea behind this is that CML is extremely sensitive to outside
information, information about the world, and is very flexible in relation to
the outside world.  It is also capable of representing past, present, and
future events, and changing these representations depending on information
from the outside.  Flanagan argues that this flexible system allows us to
acquire \*Qknowledge, information, and motivation\*U so that we can respond to
situations in a different way than we do currently.  So if one comes to
understand that one's stealing gum from the drugstore was wrong (by a parent
explaining all the implications and effects of that action, for example) one
might not do it in the future, and one might even tell others not to do it.
In this way congratulations, punishments, awards, hugs, etc., can be processed
by CML in a way that could lead to different (possibly moral) responses to
situations in the future.  (This should not be interpreted as a behaviorist
model since CML implies a consciousness playing an active role in producing
causes.  A functionalist, however, could readily adopt this notion.)
.PP
Flanagan talks of CML's ability to
\*Qrepresent desired goals and choose the means to reach these goals.\*U The
idea is that this conscious system has the ability to weigh factors based on
present and passed circumstances and predict and choose between future
circumstances.  This is what gives us free choice.
.PP
I think Flanagan right in the way he views free choice within a deterministic
background; but I'd like to describe it in a different way.  When I first read
his description I was left with the idea that even though our actions can be
modified in the future because of our sensitive CML, these actions are still,
eventually, caused by outside events.  Even our very reasoning process is a
result of many outside events that happened far in the past; in that way how
could there be any freedom (this is also what a hard determinist would say).
But at the same time I very much believed in the notion that we have free
choice.  It seemed to me that because when making a decision we have a 
.I "sensation"
of making a decision, and that because we have the notion that we are actively
and consciously choosing something, weighing factors, etc., we are somehow
making a free choice.  The fact that it seems to be a conscious process
seemed significant.
.PP
In rereading what Flanagan says about free choice I saw that he too emphasizes
the 
.I "conscious"
process.  I then understood that what he is saying is that, yes, the
representations that CML is reasoning with are caused, and the very manner in
which CML is reasoning is caused, but it is conscious reasoning nontheless;
and this reasoning is free.  So, in fact, it is through determinism, through
caused events, that one gets free choice, which I understand as conscious
reasoning.  (In connection with responsibility and morality it would seem that
the longer period of time that one is conscious, the more reasoning one can
do, therefore the more mentally caused actions (or thoughts) one can create,
the more one will be removed from outside causes (and the more different one
person will be from another).  This coincides with the general development of
responsibility in children.)
.PP
Both Flanagan and I connect free choice with conscious reasoning, or CML.  The
fact that the process of conscious reasoning and the representations it
operates on exist deterministically, as caused events, does not necessarily
deny freedom to CML.  Determinism can give rise to an extremely flexible
conscious system that is able to consider the past and the present to reason
about, and choose actions for the future.  These properties satisfy my notion
of freedom in choice while allowing for a deterministic system.