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Just Deserts: Debating Free Will

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Some thinkers argue that our best scientific theories about the world prove that free will is an illusion. Others disagree. The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law?

Just Deserts brings together two philosophers - Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso - to debate their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism - for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward.

These two leading thinkers introduce the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue. What emerges is a clear account of the latest thinking on free will, and what is at stake for our moral and legal practices.

200 pages, ebook

Published January 14, 2021

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About the author

Daniel C. Dennett

56 books2,788 followers
Daniel Clement Dennett III is a prominent philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, science, and biology, particularly as they relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Dennett is a noted atheist, avid sailor, and advocate of the Brights movement.

Dennett received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.

Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

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Profile Image for Ryan Boissonneault.
201 reviews2,151 followers
July 30, 2021
Among the perennial questions of philosophy, free will remains one of the most difficult concepts to reconcile with modern science. On the one hand, our best natural science seems to point to a deterministic universe based on immutable laws of physics, yet on the other, our subjective experience seems to tell us that we have inherent freedom of choice and movement independent of the physical laws. How one chooses to reconcile this paradox largely determines where they stand in the free will debate.

In Just Deserts: Debating Free Will, philosophers Daniel Dennett and Gregg Caruso debate the philosophical merits and moral implications of two opposite and competing positions: compatibilism and free will skepticism.

This review will explain why I believe compatibilism to be fundamentally incoherent (as I believe Caruso successfully demonstrates). While not a free will skeptic myself, free will skepticism does appear to be the stronger position when compared to compatibilism.

Let’s begin by defining some preliminary terms and concepts before we get to the debate.
Preliminary Concepts

Do you believe that free will exists? Your answer depends almost entirely on how you reconcile free will with determinism. Let’s define those terms.

Determinism: The thesis that facts about the remote past in conjunction with the laws of nature entail that there is only one unique future.

Modern physics tells us that every event or effect has a preceding cause, and that if you know the causes, you can predict the effects based on immutable natural laws (quantum mechanics may prove to be an exception). Determinism holds that life, and in particular human beings—since they are part of the universe and composed of the same physical materials—are likewise completely determined by preceding physical causes. Choice is merely an illusion.

Free Will: The philosophical position that grants humans at least some capacity to choose between different courses of action independent of deterministic physical laws.

The tension between the two concepts is obvious. How can we live in a deterministic world described by the immutable laws of physics yet make choices independent of those laws? It is along these two dimensions that we can work out the various positions one can take on free will.

If you believe in the existence of free will but also in determinism, you’re a compatibilist (like Daniel Dennett). Otherwise, you’re an incompatibilist in one of three senses. If you believe in free will but not in determinism, then you’re a free will libertarian (this is distinct from political libertarianism). If you do not believe in free will, you’re a free will skeptic (like Gregg Caruso), whether or not you believe in determinism. Free will skeptics recognize that determinism rules out free will, but also believe that even if the universe is indeterministic (as some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest), this quantum indeterminacy, based on chance, still rules out free will, at least in terms of how free will is traditionally understood.

In summary, the positions you can adopt are as follows:

Compatibilism – you believe in free will and determinism and that the two are somehow compatible.
Incompatibilism – you believe that free will and determinism are not compatible in one of two ways:
Libertarianism – you believe in free will and that the universe is not deterministic.
Free Will Skepticism – you do not believe in free will (regardless of whether the universe is deterministic).

In addition, we might include two further positions:

Indifference – This is more of an attitude than a belief. You could be indifferent to the subject in the sense that beliefs regarding free will have no practical effects on an individual’s actual behavior.
Withholding Judgment – you might decide to withhold judgment entirely, on the grounds that, because free will is a component of consciousness—and because we have no satisfactory explanation of consciousness—we therefore cannot have any satisfactory or definitive explanation of free will. In other words, whether free will exists or not cannot yet (or ever) be answered. However, since we feel that free will is not an illusion, we should treat it as real unless and until it is proven otherwise.

I tend to fall into the latter category of withholding judgment. I’m not prepared to dismiss the idea of free will without first encountering a complete and persuasive scientific account of consciousness (of which there is none).

Note that I am not religious, and do not believe in supernatural explanations of the “soul,” but at the same time, I recognize that our scientific understanding of the world is restricted based on our technological and cognitive limitations. Taking a cue from the late Christopher Hitchens, I believe in free will because I have no choice but to believe in free will—illusion or not.

But the issue here is not the correct position to take concerning free will, or even the potential merits of free will libertarianism. The issue, rather, is the relative strength of free will skepticism versus compatibilism, as debated by Dennett (on the side of compatibilism) and Caruso (on the side of free will skepticism).
The Debate

The debate between Dennett and Caruso centers on the question of whether or not human agents should ever be held responsible for their actions in the sense of deserving either praise or blame, not in the forward-looking sense of ensuring compliance with the law or upholding agreed-upon moral standards, but in the backward-looking, basic desert sense of whether or not the agent made the “correct” moral choice in the moment when they both knew better and could have acted otherwise.

Caruso’s position is that, because the universe operates according to physical laws which are either deterministic or indeterministic (based on quantum mechanics), human agents, being a part of that universe, could not have acted otherwise than they did. There is only one unique future. Laws and moral standards evolve over time and influence reason-responsive individuals, but those laws and standards are less important in a retributive sense of punishing wrongdoers than in a consequentialist sense of establishing predictable and stable moral behavior. Just as we would quarantine an individual infected by a deadly virus to protect others—without blaming the infected individual—we should likewise punish or rehabilitate criminals to protect others without blaming criminals for actions influenced by factors ultimately beyond their control (which is consistent with determinism).

Dennett’s position is more difficult to ascertain. He seems to agree with Caruso that determinism is true and rejects the label of retributivist. He retains a forward-looking consequentialist notion of moral responsibility, yet at the same time retains the language of basic desert, or the idea that an individual should be praised or blamed for their actions. This is the point, I believe, where Dennett’s position becomes incoherent.

Caruso is correct to point out that Dennett’s version of compatibilism is closer to free will skepticism than Dennett would like to admit, and that the major flaw with Dennett’s argument is that he is conflating the following two questions:

Under the assumption of determinism, do agents actually have the control in action needed for them to be truly deserving of praise and blame, punishment and reward?
Under the assumption of determinism, is it practically beneficial to hold agents morally responsible in the relevant desert sense?

Caruso charges Dennett with answering the second question as if he’s answering the first. It appears that this is correct, in that Dennett is simply trying to hold onto language for its instrumental value and not for its relation to genuine justice or fairness.

During the debate, Caruso gets Dennett to agree to two propositions that demonstrate that Denett’s version of compatibilism is in fact free will skepticism in all but name.

First, consider the connection between determinism and a lack of free will. As the American philosopher Peter van Inwagen put it:

“If determinism is true, then there is some state of the world in the distant past P that is connected by the laws of nature to any action A that one performs in the present. But since no one is responsible for the state of the world P in the distant past, and no one is responsible for the laws of nature that lead from P to A, it follows that no one is responsible for any action A that is performed in the present.”

Dennett seems to agree with this assessment. Elsewhere in the debate, Dennett says:

“Yes, I accept that ‘if determinism is true, then all human behavior, like the behavior of all other things in the physical universe, is causally determined by antecedent conditions in accordance with natural laws.’”

Since Dennett conceded to the truth of determinism earlier in the debate, both Caruso and Dennett agree that there is only one possible future, and, therefore, that individuals can act in only one way due to factors beyond their control. If this is the case, then in what way can people actually deserve praise or blame, independent of Dennett’s desire for the deterrence of bad behavior or the encouragement of good behavior? How can you label human action that is fully determined to be the result of free will? The answer is that you can’t, at least not without twisting the definition of free will into an unrecognizable form.

Dennett can say that we have different thoughts pulling us in different directions and encouraging different behaviors, and that free will is our capacity to make decisions based on the reconciliation of all of these competing thoughts and considerations. But if all thoughts and considerations are determined in the same way, based on “facts about the remote past in conjunction with natural laws,” then determinism still holds, and behavior can never be praised or blamed in the basic desert sense because it is, on a fundamental level, predetermined.

Dennett may argue that it is important to hold onto the language of basic desert, individual praise and blame, but this is for purely instrumental or consequentialist reasons. It doesn’t mean free will exists; it only means it’s desirable to believe that free will exists and that this leads to positive outcomes. But the heart of the debate should be on the substantive issue of whether or not free will actually exists, not on the merits of talking about it in a particular way.

Second, Caruso gets Dennett to agree with a further idea based on a thought experiment proposed by Immanuel Kant. Kant asked whether or not a murderer on a deserted island should be punished if the decision was made for all the island’s inhabitants to leave the island and scatter across the world, abandoning the murderer to live on the island in isolation, indefinitely. Since the murderer will never come in contact with another human being again, should he be punished or executed?

This hypothetical scenario cuts to the heart of the debate between the moral philosophy of consequentialism versus retributivism. If you adopt a retributivist position, you believe that the murderer should be praised or blamed for a moral action in which they had control over. If you adopt the consequentialist stance, you believe that punishment or rehabilitation should be pursued for the good of society but not simply as a punishment to an individual for an action that was fundamentally beyond their control. The retributivist wants to punish the isolated murderer; the consequentialist does not.

So how does Dennett respond to this scenario? Like Caruso, he would not punish the isolated murderer on the deserted island. This makes him a consequentialist, not a retributivist. If the murderer was deserving of blame for the murder, Dennett should want to punish him. But he doesn’t, which could only mean that, in Dennett’s eyes, the murderer is not deserving of blame after all. In other words, Dennett has contradicted himself by holding onto the language of praise and blame and then not applying it in a situation that clearly calls for it.

Dennett will probably want to say that the murderer is deserving of blame only within the system of morality established by the island’s inhabitants, and, if the island has no inhabitants, then there is nothing to be blameworthy for. But, as Caruso points out, this stance amounts to free will skepticism in all but name, because the free will skeptic will come to the same conclusion. An individual can either be worthy of praise or blame or not, and if punishment or rehabilitation can only make sense in consequentialist terms, then it makes more sense to say that free will simply does not exist.

Dennett spends a considerable amount of time trying to defend his idea of self-control, or how an individual’s actions are dependent on a complex process of comprehension and reasoning. But even though this is true, all reasoning—including the correlating brain states and electrochemical neural activity—is still determined! If there is only one unique future, then talk of self-control, reason-responsiveness, and free will is purely linguistic, a way to talk about events that can have no impact on a universe both Caruso and Dennett have agreed is deterministic. This makes Dennett’s stubborn attachments to specific language and obfuscation of the substantive issues quite difficult to read.
Conclusion

Readers can come to their own conclusions, but it’s difficult to see how this debate could have possibly been won by Dennett. For the most part Dennett is on the defensive, trying to justify the contradictions Caruso skillfully points out. Both Caruso and Dennett appear to agree on the substantive issues, yet Dennett, for some reason, feels the need to retain the language of free will and basic desert even though he’s doing so purely on what seems to be consequentialist or instrumental grounds. But his idea that individuals who could not have acted otherwise still deserve praise or blame is fundamentally contradictory, as Caruso repeatedly points out.
Profile Image for Steve.
1,035 reviews59 followers
April 19, 2021
Wasn’t sure whether I wanted to give this 3 or 4 stars. I liked the “debate” format pretty much, because it was fun to see pretty big-time philosophers punch holes in each other’s arguments (and other times agree). But it wasn’t perfect by any means. Caruso especially seems to like various complex terms to describe a position: “Oh, what you said is an example of xyzism!” And sometimes “Don’t you agree with abcdism?” Dennett has several decades more in the philosophy business than Caruso, but I don’t think they really fully agree on the definitions of these isms, and in any event Dennett seems less interested in defining his or others ideas that way anyway. I definitely didn’t understand everything in the book but I learned a lot. I think I lean more in Dennett’s direction, but I think a lot of Caruso’s ideas make sense also.

Interesting review by a philosophy blogger:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/0...
Profile Image for Giovanni84.
252 reviews70 followers
May 21, 2022
Esiste una responsabilità morale basata sul merito?
Cioè, la gente è moralmente responsabile di quello che fa, e merita punizione/premi (ad esempio, merita la punizione se non rispetta le leggi)?

E' questo, sostanzialmente, l'argomento di questo libro, che viene dibattuto da Dennett (che crede nel libero arbitrio e quindi nel merito e nella responsabilità morale) e Caruso (che invece è uno scettico del libero arbitrio e non crede nel merito).
Il dibattito verte quindi sul libero arbitrio, sul merito e su come dovrebbe essere il sistema sanzionatorio della società.

E' un libro piuttosto complesso (almeno lo è stato per me, che non sono abituato a leggere testi filosofici), pieno di definizioni (in effetti, gran parte del dibattito verte su come definire certi termini) e ragionamenti complessi. A volte è anche piuttosto noioso.

Tuttavia, è una lettura che ho apprezzato, perché entrambi gli autori sono intelligenti e abili ad argomentare, e trovo stimolante un dibattito di questo livello. Inoltre, a volte è addirittura appassionante, perché sembra che uno dei due abbia praticamente "vinto", ma poi l'altro ribatte in maniera adeguata, e così via, in una esaltante sfida intellettuale.

Alla fine si conclude sostanzialmente con un nulla di fatto, non solo nessuno ha convinto l'altro, ma per di più sembrano bloccati sempre in contestazioni definitorie, entrambi sostenendo di non comprendere la posizione dell'altro e ritenendola incoerente.

Insomma, è una lunga sega mentale. Ma le seghe mentali sono come le seghe fisiche, cioè procurano piacere, quindi mi è piaciuto questo libro.
Profile Image for Zbigniew  .
104 reviews4 followers
April 5, 2022
W filozoficznej argumentacji kluczowe znaczenie ma precyzyjne zdefiniowanie pojęć. W tej dyskusji Dennetta z Caruso ewidentnie tego brakuje. Odniosłem wrażenie, że autorzy adresują swoje rozważania raczej swoim doktorantom, niż popularnemu czytelnikowi, gdyż nader często nadmieniają, że dany ‘oczywisty’ wątek jest szczegółowo opisany w innej ich pracy. Czytelnik winien zatem się podciągnąć i kontynuować czytanie raczej po uprzednim zapoznaniu się z tymi sugerowanymi pozycjami. Może zresztą ma to sens, gdyż czytając w oryginale unikamy dodatkowych niejednoznaczności wnoszonych przez polskie tłumaczenie. W tym przypadku tłumacz ‘wymiękł’ już na etapie tytułu – oryg. Just Deserts. Debating Free Will, usuwając z niego te nieszczęsne pustynie. Kluczowym w tych dyskusjach terminem jest właśnie desert, basic desert, just desert (ale co to jest non-basic desert trzeba już sobie doczytać gdzie indziej). W skrócie chodzi o świadomy czyn, który nie jest zdeterminowany, ani losowy, zasługujący (deserving) na stosowną (just) karę lub nagrodę. Tłumacz wprowadził tu polskie terminy ‘zasługa’, ‘zasługa sama w sobie’, ‘zasługa podstawowa’ które jak dla mnie brzmią wręcz humorystycznie (w kontekście np. dokonania zbrodni). WSJP tłumaczy wyraz ‘zasługa’ jako „to, co ktoś zrobił pożytecznego i dobrego dla innych, ocenianego jako coś bardzo wartościowego”. Kropka. A gdzie tu miejsce dla antyzasługi jaką jest przewina? Może należało tłumaczyć ‘desert’ z zastosowaniem rzeczownika odczasownikowego ‘zasługiwanie’ – WSJP: „swoim postępowaniem dawać powód do określonego potraktowania lub określonej oceny’? Brzmiałoby by to okropnie, ale przynajmniej oddawałoby sens tej amerykańskiej ‘pustyni’ 😊
Pomimo powyższych trudności ze zrozumieniem polskiego tłumaczenia tej pracy zostało tu poruszone szereg istotnych wątków, jak choćby kwestia manipulacji i odpowiedzialności moralnej osoby zmanipulowanej. Rozważa się tu również kwestie reformy systemu karnego, który obecnie jest stricte retrybutywny (re-tribute, kara odwetowa, sprawiedliwy odwet, ale nie zemsta), a winien raczej służyć resocjalizacji i integracji, szczególnie w świetle determinizmu i systemowych przyczyn przestępczości, gdyż albo nasze działania są zdeterminowane wcześniejszymi przyczynami i nie jesteśmy za nie odpowiedzialni, albo są produktem przypadku i też nie jesteśmy za nie odpowiedzialni. Jeśli wybór człowieka, by zastrzelić prezydenta, jest zdeterminowany pewnym wzorcem aktywności neuronowej, który jest z kolei produktem uprzednich przyczyn – może nieszczęsnego zbiegu złych genów, nieszczęśliwego dzieciństwa, braku snu i bombardowania przez promienie kosmiczne – cóż mogłoby znaczyć, że jego wola jest „wolna”?
Caruso optuje za prewencyjnym modelem zdrowia publicznego - kwarantanny. Kwarantanna nie jest karą, gdyż kara, w odróżnieniu od kwarantanny wymaga napiętnowania. Rozważania te wydają się być nierealne, gdyż w ostatecznym rozrachunku sprawca i tak będzie poddawany karze.
Dowiadujemy się tu, że również Einstein był deterministą. „Możemy robić to, co chcemy, ale możemy chcieć tylko tego, co chcieć musimy. Nie domagam się uznania. Wszystko jest zdeterminowane przez siły, nad którymi nie mamy żadnej kontroli”.
Fajna pozycja, fragmentami przypominająca dyskusję dwóch soliptyków, ale może przez to nawet bardziej nęcąca. Libertarianie i kompatybiliści mogą się skusić na przeczytanie, a deterministom pozostaje ufać, że los im na to pozwoli.
Profile Image for Kyle Wright.
74 reviews4 followers
June 1, 2021
I'm generally sympathetic to compatibilist arguments, but in this case I think Caruso really ran away with this one. His ideas are much more clear and to-the-point throughout, and I think his attempts to make sense of Dennett's arguments often make his points more clearly than Dennett does himself. This isn't to say that Dennett doesn't have good ideas with some potential merit, but I don't think he does a particularly good job justifying them from the ground up, and it isn't obvious if all of them are even internally consistent.

All things considered, I don't think this is really a book about free will. I went into this with the perhaps unfair expectation that the subtitle ("debating free will") would carry more weight, but the title ("just deserts") really is the one doing the heavy lifting. Dennett never really does get around to making a substantive case for where the "free" comes from in his account of will, and the closest Caruso gets to making him state it plainly (the manipulation argument) never really goes anywhere (after Dennett perhaps misunderstands it entirely?). As a result, the free will argument is somewhat one-sided: we get a comprehensive and consistent argument for hard-incompatibilism, and a series of confusing and nebulous ideas in response that never manage to chart a course for how non-free agents suddenly become free. It pains me a bit to write this, because I think other authors have done a great job making coherent arguments for compatibilism, and I would've certainly liked to see that exchange!

What remains is a long-winded argument primarily about Caruso's ideas for criminal justice reform. I think this is a valuable conversation, but I found it to be much less interesting. Regarding this topic, I think Caruso's ideas come across as far too utopian and unrealistic, and Dennett's rebuttals much more grounded and intuitive, even though both of them are in agreement the whole time about pretty substantial reform.

All in all, fun book to read, clarifies a lot of ideas, muddies some others. Not quite what I was hoping for!
Profile Image for Nathan.
45 reviews
May 14, 2021
An excellent discussion, I thoroughly enjoyed this! Dennett is always fun to engage with. This is the first book or conversation by Dennett in which I feell I finally understand (to the point of pragmatic clarity anyway), his position in regards to compatibilism. In past works it has always felt (to my untrained ear) that he was flipping definitions, as others have also complained. Here Caruso and Dennett draw out a very clear and nuanced picture of compatibilism that in no way defends the "folk" understanding of free will.

While I can't say Dennett has yet convinced me to move away from Hard determinism (or hard incompatibilism), his version of compatibilism is much easier to swallow than most, and I will admit he moved me a little bit in that direction. His picture of what we should pragmatically aim for in society also seems more reasonable for than Caruso's solution, at least for the near future.

At the end I found myself spending alot of time trying to synthesize their views. There are a few bits that they never quite hammer out, but some of that I think can be understood as the "vagueness of philosophers". It was a very good read, very engaging, and just encouraging to listen to a discussion between two people who generally want to see the same ends accomplished, just with different approaches.
Profile Image for Nicolas Martorell.
102 reviews3 followers
December 30, 2021
Excelente debate, buenísimo para entender cómo se charla de filosofía y qué difícil que es entenderse entre personas que piensan distinto. Me encantó.
4 reviews
January 2, 2023
Full disclosure: I was pretty deep in Caruso's territory at the start of this book, despite only being familiar with the work of his opponent Dennett. Determinism negating any kind of meaningful free will or choice seems to intuitively also negate deserts or any kind of judgement based on someone making a "bad choice" or "good choice." That being said, I was intrigued.

I should have known better. 30 or so years after Dennett claimed (falsely) to explain consciousness he's back to condescend and brow beat us with yet more nonsensical opinions and half-baked arguments. Dennett struggles for the entirety of the book to even DEFINE what kind of deserts he's talking about. Even now, after reading the entirety of all three debates and scouring over a few parts I believed to most salient, I'm still uncertain what he's arguing for. Caruso likens the task of clarifying his opponent's position to wrestling an eel, and I have to agree. In one moment I think I have it: we have a social contract in our society called laws and people who are at an acceptable level of "reasons responsiveness" can and must be held accountable for any transgressions against that law. Failure to do so may cost us the benefits of society, essentially offering forward looking reasons to maintain a concept of deserved punishment. This makes sense, but then he insists that, no, it's not just about the forward looking benefits of enforcing rules, it's about the person DESERVING repurcussions. What? SO then he's a retributivist? No he denies that as well. Then again I think I have him when he states something along the lines of "just deserts exists in the same way economic value does: it's really because of our collective agreement that it's real" (bad paraphrasing). Still, he rejects the notion that it's illusory or manmade but that the individual DESERVES punishment regardless of a strictly social expectation. Maybe I need to read it again, but I'm fairly certain Dennett is just committed to circular reasoning because he wants to remain committed to determinism while maintaining his indignance at wrongdoers. What's the point of having the cake if you can't also eat it, right? He also keeps trying to dismiss the idea of determinism eradicating free will by stating that since the past physical state of the Universe doesn't possess intent or autonomous will, it cannot manipulate a person. Dennett only ascribes a loss of free will to manipulations by another conscious agent. It seems in Dennett's view that the flowers swaying in the breeze outside my window are exhibiting free will since the wind is not a conscious manipulator. Absolutely absurd.

To make matters worse he seems angry and insists on dismissing arguments with phrases like "who cares" and accusing Caruso and his ilk of clinging to libertarian freewill and God if they dare take the free will skeptic position. I know this kind of "suffer no fools" style worked for the "new athiests" in the mid 2000's, but it's poor form in this setting and makes for unconvincing arguments as far as this reader is concerned.

I really enjoy the way philosophers write, talk and argue, and I can easily recommend this for any philosophy junkies. For those interested in expanding on their understanding of free will and the practical applications of our current understanding of it, I strongly recommend looking elsewhere. Perhaps one of Caruso's books would do well. I plan on adding some of his works to my TBR.
February 25, 2024
Gregg Caruso argues that determinism and free will are incompatible. He describes himself as a ‘free-will sceptic’. He says that nothing we do is within our control and in consequence praise and blame, reward and punishment are all equally undeserved. ‘Constitutive Luck’ determines our genetic endowments and nurture. ‘Present Luck’ determines all that follows; our achievements, failures, crimes and their social outcomes. There may be a utilitarian payoff when we punish people for the crimes they have committed, but the infliction of punishment can only be justified when it serves as an effective warning to reduce future offending. Blame for past wrongdoing is unjustifiable. Daniel Dennett disagrees. He argues that determinism and free will are compatible and that punishment for wrongdoing is deserved when it is within the agent’s control. He contends that the capacity for control that most people acquire with maturity justifies punishment in some form or another for their wrongdoing. Clearly Caruso and Dennett mean something different when they refer to the ‘control’ required for free will. Their three ‘exchanges’ on the question whether we do have free will consist for the most part of a wrangle over definitions. They conclude their debate with confessions of mutual incomprehension and disappointment over their failure to achieve a resolution of their differences.(174-5) That need not detract from an appreciation of ‘Just Deserts’, if you enjoy lively argumentation.
Though Dennett and Caruso have equal billing as authors, the structure of their book gives Caruso a head start. Derk Pereboom, co-author with Caruso in a more recent work (‘Moral Responsibility Reconsidered’, 2022), writes the Foreword and Caruso writes the Introduction, which concludes with a ‘List of Useful Definitions’. The definitions, in particular, Caruso’s definition of ‘Basic Desert Moral Responsibility’ are the subject of contention throughout.
Though Caruso argues that praise and blame, reward and punishment are all equally inconsistent with determinism, his exchanges with Dennett focus with obsessive concern on the imputation of blame and infliction of punishment. This is a very American focus of concern. Both philosophers are painfully aware of the punitive excesses of American criminal law and penal practice, which support an incarceration rate beyond that of any comparable democracy. Caruso proposes complete abandonment of both criminal law and penal sanctions and their replacement by a ‘public-health quarantine’ system that would be entirely prospective in its operation and limited to necessary and proportionate measures to avert further harm. Dennett would retain the criminal law and penal sanctions for conduct deserving punishment. It would be however, a civilised and reformed criminal version of the criminal law. He briefly recommends ‘a humanised prison system’ along Scandinavian lines. Both propose policies that would mitigate the criminogenic effects of existing levels of inequality, deprivation and absence of opportunity. Neither of their visions of the future for the criminal law seems remotely likely to eventuate in the current state of American politics and constitutional law.
Two more immediate areas of concern about free will, determinism and agency are neglected in their exchanges. For Caruso, determinism and his free-will scepticism have the consequence that the ‘reactive attitudes’ of resentment and indignation in response to wrongful conduct by others are unjustifiable – though understandable. The second neglected area of concern is whether praise and reward for successful achievement can ever be justified.
There are intermittent references to the reactive attitudes. Caruso suggests at one point that resentment and indignation in response to wrongdoing are irrational and unjustifiable for a determinist, though perhaps ‘beyond our power to affect’. Later he suggests that conversion to Buddhist ethics might inspire a salutary transformation of our-selves.(91) He has considered the reactive attitudes more extensively elsewhere so it is unnecessary to say more of them in this review. Martha Nussbaum, ‘Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice’ (2018) provides a gracefully fluent consideration of the perils of indulgence in resentment, indignation and anger in law, politics and our lives. But her argument.is not based on determinism and she accepts that denunciation of past wrongdoing can be appropriate as a prelude to sanctions.
Even more neglected in the exchanges between Caruso and Dennett is the relationship between determinism and praiseworthy conduct. Caruso lumps praise and blame together from the outset with his blanket statement that we are never ‘truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward’ because ‘everything we do and the way we are is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control’.(19) If it were implemented, his suggested principle would have profound implications for those existing social institutions, far more extensive in their reach than the criminal law, in which praise and rewards for successful achievement are central. Consider, for example, Eliud Kipchoge’s gold medal for the marathon in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Must we conclude that Kipchoge’s marathon winning performance, like a murderer’s fatal assault on his victim, was ‘ultimately a result of factors beyond [his] control,’ with the consequence that praise or reward were not ‘truly deserved’?” That is the apparent result of Caruso’s free will scepticism: the one-two punch of constitutive luck…and present luck…completely undermine basic-desert moral responsibility’.(24-5).
Dennett’s response, frequent and insistent, is that blame and desert are anchored ‘in the everyday decisions and distinctions we make when evaluating our own and other people’s behaviour’.(73-4). In consequence, ‘the sense of “desert” that I defend is the everyday sense in which, when you win the race fair and square you deserve the blue ribbon or gold medal….and if you committed premeditated murder, you deserve to go to prison for a very long time’.(26)
The notion of ‘basic desert moral responsibility’, which appears in Caruso’s opening List of Useful Definitions’, remains problematic throughout.
It was inevitable that rising levels of inequality and the consequential diminution of opportunities for disadvantaged communities in western democracies would encourage free will scepticism. The severity of the criminal law and its disproportionate and racist impact on those disadvantaged communities is a spur to empathy and sympathetic resentment on their behalf. It is very far from clear however, that abandonment of the principle that we will be held responsible for what we will do next would reduce current levels of inequity and injustice.
14 reviews4 followers
May 26, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed the debates between Dennett and Caruso, representing Compatibilism and Skepticism respectively. I found that Caruso gave crisp, clear arguments for a world with justice but without free will. I found myself in agreement with Caruso, even before he had made note of it in the book, that Dennetts arguments could be semantically rebranded as representing free will skepticism. That seems to be the key takeaway of the book for me. The two philosophers seem to agree on more than they disagree, although Dennett seemed over eager to distance himself from free will skepticism, as if it were a taboo. It wasn't until the end of the book that Dennett clarified his definition of "desert", and immediately muddied it in the following passage. Regardless, I would not necessarily mind living with either model of justice, although I believe Caruso's is simpler, more in tune with reality, and less likely to preserve a reduced form of retributivism. One thing is certain, neither philosopher endorses the Libertarian "self-making" super power version of free will. While Dennett claims to endorse the only version of free will "worth wanting", I would contest that, in fact, the super power version is the true version of free will "worth wanting", and if we don't have that we may as well just be skeptics and avoid the linguistic gymnastics necessary to preserve some sense of free will.
53 reviews1 follower
May 1, 2022
This is a really interesting debate that focuses very clearly on what matters most about free will, the extent to which we are justified in our ordinary practices of praise and blame. Dennett and Caruso agree about a lot, both being convinced materialists who see no role in understanding human life for anything that transcends the laws of physics. But that still leaves significant questions about what that means for ideas of justice and responsibility, which are the primary focus of the debate.

Caruso sometimes gets frustrated with Dennett, apparently thinking that Dennett could come completely over to his side if Dennett just accepted his definitions of key terms. But Dennett is less interested in the fine details of Caruso's philosophical distinctions and thought experiments than he is in understanding how responsibility is understood in ordinary life.

My take is that Caruso is a revolutionary who wants to redesign the justice system "rationally" from the ground up, ditching anything that he can't see the sense of. But Dennett is a pragmatist who wants to progressively reform our ideas of justice rather than overthrow them entirely.
Profile Image for Mark.
Author 2 books11 followers
September 23, 2023
Many thanks to the other reviewers, some of whom have summarized this complex back and forth much better than I could. Determinism certainly seems to exclude free will, yet I find Dennett's comments attractive. As Sir Thomas More says to William Roper in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons,
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?.
Profile Image for Paul.
140 reviews
November 8, 2021
Excellent book. A must-read for those who are interested in the subject of free will.
Profile Image for Sasha Mircov.
32 reviews8 followers
December 25, 2022
A philosophical box match Caruso wins on points, despite Dennett’s excellent footwork and occasional heavy blows.
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