A REAL “Could Have Done Otherwise”

The cartoon on the above infographic was inspired by a facebook comment of a fellow free will skeptic (Stephen Lawrence) who used the analogy of a court judge:

“So imagine a man in court accused of a crime. The judge says “you could have done what you should have done”. The accused says “can you be clear about what that means for the jury”. The judge says ” yes, what it means is you could have done otherwise by virtue of the fact that if circumstances you did not choose had been appropriately different you would have done”.

I think the jury would fall about laughing since it’s so far removed from what they imagine it means.”

This analogy denotes the absurdity of thinking that it is this sort of coherent usage that is taking place when a person is asked if someone could have done otherwise. Rather, people imagine a sort of special ability in which, even given identical causal variables, that the person has it in their power to make a different decision. For example, to decide not to commit the crime. This is why a certain type of moral responsibility in the stronger sense is often assigned.

It isn’t the idea of some external source such as a different initial condition of the universe or a non-caused event that changes the universe that people think of when they believe that a person could have done otherwise. Rather it is the idea that multiple options in which a person deliberates on are all REAL possibilities (meaning all options are actually viable), and that at the time the person is thinking about the options, they really could have, of their own accord, select any one of the options.

So when given a scenario “of an entirely causally deterministic universe where a mega-computer predicts future events with 100% accuracy, it predicts a person will rob a bank at X day and time, and that person does” – and then asked if that person could have not robbed the bank, most people still say “yes”. In other words, this is outside of any circumstantial changes to the universe. People are separating out their assessments about the abilities to make decisions from a rational assessment about reality itself.

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'Trick Slattery

'Trick Slattery is the author of Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind. He's an author, philosopher, artist, content creator, and entrepreneur. He has loved and immersed himself in philosophy since he was teenager. It is his first and strongest passion. Throughout the years he has built a philosophy based on analytic logic and critical thinking. Some of the topics he is most interested in are of a controversial variety, but his passion for the topics and their importance drives him to want to express these ideas to others. His other passions include pen and ink line art and digital artwork.

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