Christopher List, the new hottie on free will, leads me to double down on "mu"

Christopher List has a new book out defending free will from determinists.

Two online friends of mine, John Horgan and Massimo Pigliucci, have strongly differing reactions.

Massimo, citing a Nautilus piece, calls his arguments muddled.

Horgan, interviewing him, loves him.

So, who's right?

Neither, totally, and of course, List isn't totally right.

He first says, per Nautilus, that free will is compatible with physics. Any non-greedy reductionist, or non-reductionist, who is still a materialist, has no problem with that. Does that mean that compatibilist free will is what's in play, per a Dan Dennett?

No, because there is nothing free will needs to be compatible TO. But, List doesn't really delve into that, it seems.

He does seem to make some sort of argument for some sort of traditional free will, either weakly compatibilist or non-compatibilist.

And, in doing so, he assumes a unitary self is running the switches — the same mistake Dennett makes in assuming there is a Cartesian Free Willer even after denying there is a Cartesian Meaner. All ground I've covered regularly. But List seems to assume a unitary self.

Now, per Hume and his comment to people who asked how he slept at night after articulating the Problem of Induction, to some degree, "we" act as if "we" have unitary selves.

Well, not always, we don't.

From St. Paul's saying "that which I don't want to do, I do the more," to alcohol and drug addicts having a sober self and addicted self, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (that's what the book was actually about, folks) battling it out, "we" sometimes recognize there IS no unitary self in command. It's rare for us to do that, and it usually has to be shoved in our faces.

But, "we" pick which one of these subselves wins, don't we?

No. And Dennett easily could have taken the Daniel Wegner step to accept that.

The medieval western church said, "Cur alii, non alii?"

"Why are some (saved), not others?"

"Why does one subself (win out), not another?"

It's a mystery to psychologists in general who are honest about it, let alone addiction researchers and counselors in that particular area.

He's also a bit off on intentionality.

First, there's nothing that indicates groups have intentionality.

Second, intentionality is not the same as, or necessarily a part of, free will. Barbara Ehrenreich, in "Natural Causes," invokes Jessica Riskin's book "The Restless Clock," which talks about "agency" as a purpose-based set of actions below the mental level of consciousness.

That said, List does partially address that in Horgan's interview, where he explicitly separates free will and consciousness.

He also is more generous to Benjamin Libet and the Libet-class  (class, as others have done follow-up) experiments than is Massimo, which I think is still a bit of a failure of Massimo's on the issue.

Thirdly, while agency doesn't require consciousness (he uses that word next, so I stand by the not above that it's equivalent to intentionality), free will, especially if one uses the broad idea of volition, is much more than "just" agency. And, it does, as I see it, require consciousness. And, in Horgan's own interview, I see some of the muddling that Massimo saw elsewhere.

In fact, with more thought, I think "agency" and "intentionality" actually are separate concepts, and that part of List's muddling is happening when he fuses and confuses the two. Agency, at least as I see Riskin discuss it, by being below the level of consciousness, is not intentional. Per Dennett's infamously titled book, intentionality, to me at least, is linked to consciousness.

I have pulled further discussion of Riskin's book out for a separate piece.

Fourthly, this whole issue, despite his talk of an analog switch two-thirds of the way down, ignores what I have previously talked about as psychological "constraints." That means whatever subself is in the driver's seat doesn't act fully freely, but is not determined in a physics way, either. Rather, things like child abuse, a loathsome boss, etc., all constrain how freely that subself acts.

And, we may be differently constrained, by degree of constraint, on different current issues at different times in our lives by different specific issues from our pasts. It could be 90 percent at some times, near but not at one pole, 10 percent at other times, and 40 percent at yet other times.

List does talk about "contingent factors" in Horgan's piece, but that's not at all what I mean.

I'll stick with "mu." As I've done for nearly a full decade.