As I regularly teach a course called “Freedom and Human Action” in which one of the central concerns is whether freedom and responsibility are compatible with causal determinism, I am always on the lookout for texts that might be suitable for my course. I expect at best to get a competent review of the centuries old free will debate, with perhaps a few small technical innovations here, a few small conceptual clarifications there, moving the debate forward ever so slightly.

Bok’s book far exceeded my expectations. It is a beautifully written, clearly argued and highly original defense of the compatibilist position. Unlike much writing in this area, it is refreshingly free from jargon, and you’ll find no numbered propositions or ugly acronyms for obscure and complex principles. Thus Bok’s book should be accessible to non-philosophers interested in the topic of human action and moral responsibility. This is not to say that it will be an easy read. The arguments are carefully crafted but very detailed, and it will take some concentration to keep focused on the details so as not to lose the thread of the argument.

Bok’s book is an attempt to defend a compatibilist position that takes very seriously the criticisms leveled against compatibilism by libertarians. Compatibilists argue that even if all actions are caused, this doesn’t mean that they are not free, because free actions are those caused in a certain way. We are free if we act as the result of a process of deliberation and are not constrained or compelled in any way (say by someone holding a gun to our heads). Libertarians on the other hand believe that if actions are causally determined they cannot be free. According to libertarians, you are free if and only if you choose your actions and nothing causes you to choose those actions. The debate between libertarians and compatibilists has been stalled for many decades. Compatibilists argue that the notion of a self that chooses but is not itself caused to choose is incoherent. Libertarians on the other hand reject the attempt by compatibilists to draw a distinction within the realm of naturally produced events between free actions and other events.

Bok’s contribution is to suggest a way out of this stalemate. She argues that both libertarians and compatibilists have failed to distinguish between theoretical and practical reasoning. Since they adopt a theoretical perspective, they must interpret claims about how our choices and actions are determined as claims about how they are caused, and hence they are unable to resolve the problem of freedom of the will. Bok argues instead that freedom is a practical concept.

From the perspective of practical reasoning we are concerned to ask what we should do, not to describe, predict or explain our actions. When we try to decide what to do, we consider reasons and choose the best course of action, given the alternatives available to us. Our alternatives include all those things that we would do if we chose. If determinism is true then only one of those alternatives is possible tout court, but this is irrelevant from the practical point of view. When we deliberate, we take the question what we will choose to do to be open. In regarding this question as open we are not manifesting a belief that what we will do is physically undetermined. Rather, this is simply a reflection of the fact that what we decide to do is up to us.

Bok defines freedom as follows: “a person is free if she is capable of determining her actions through practical reasoning; such an agent is free to choose among all those acts that she would perform if she chose to perform them, and she is free to perform a given action if she would perform it if she chose to do so.” (p.120) Having defined this practical conception of freedom, she goes on to show how it answers to what the libertarians want out of a conception of freedom, while at the same time avoiding the libertarian’s dubious notion of agent causation. Moreover, it avoids the usual libertarian objections against compatibilism, as it does not attempt to define free actions as those that are caused in a special way.

Another major concern of Bok’s is to explain how to accommodate our practices of holding ourselves and others responsible within the practical perspective. She also has very interesting discussions of the concepts of guilt and blame and why these need not be thought of as punitive in nature. She also devotes a chapter to defending her distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning, in which she argues that claims that originate from the two perspectives do not conflict with one another, and that both perspectives can yield claims that are objectively true. This chapter also contains an explanation of why, even if determinism were true and you or someone else had the theoretical capability of predicting what action you would choose, this knowledge could not be used to help you decide what to do.

Bok argues that the theoretical perspective cannot be used to decide what to do. It does however provide the data for practical reasoning. She writes: “The fact that practical reasoning must use the data provided by theoretical reasoning, without providing any data of its own, explains why practical properties supervene on theoretical properties. And the fact that practical reasoning must perform some operation on these data, and that the nature of this operation is determined by practical reasoning, explains why the theoretical facts… leave questions about… practical properties open.” (p.68). The claim that practical reasoning supplies no data of its own suggests that it is simply a decision procedure, and that there are no substantive, contentful practical claims that can act as premises in practical syllogisms. But then it is unclear what Bok has in mind when she talks of practical properties that supervene on theoretical ones. Nor is it clear whether or how her notion of supervenience is related to any of the many technical notions of supervenience that have been discussed in the philosophical literature in recent years. This aspect of Bok’s position is left underdescribed, which is bound to disappoint many of her readers.

In the chapter on theoretical and practical reasoning and for most of the rest of the book we are led to believe that Bok thinks that these two perspectives are autonomous from one another. However, in her conclusion she considers the possibility that the realm of reasons is not entirely independent from the realm of causes, because reasons must come to an end at some point. When pushed to this point we will have to admit that our practical principles depend on something outside the system of reasons, such as the fact that we have a certain character or set of dispositions. Bok argues that this is not to reintroduce the specter of causal determinism. In order to make a case for the stronger notion of autonomy presupposed in earlier sections of the book, what would be needed is not a demonstration that we were not caused to hold the practical principles that we in fact hold, but rather a demonstration that our principles “can be rationally justified a priori: that our search for their grounds does not simply come to an end at some point, but results in a demonstration of their general rational validity.” (p. 209). My quibble is that this weakening of the thesis of the autonomy of reasons from causes is no minor adjustment to Bok’s overall view. This issue should have been confronted much earlier in the book, and not stuck in the conclusion, almost as an afterthought.

However, overall Bok’s book is an impressive one that ought to breathe new life into the tired old debate between compatibilists and libertarians.

Anne Bezuidenhout teaches at the University of South Carolina in the Philosophy Department and the Linguistics Program. Her research interests lie mainly in the philosophy of language and psycholinguistics. Her work has appeared in such journals as Philosophical Review, Mind, Noûs, Mind & Language and Pragmatics & Cognition.

Categories: Philosophical