Mental States and Free Action
Sometimes we do things accidentally. For example, sometimes people crash their cars by accident, for instance, when the roads are icy. But most of the time we do things intentionally, that is, with a purpose. When we intentionally do some action it seems that it has to do with our mental states. For example, my intentionally going to the grocery store yesterday had to do with two of my mental states, a desire and a belief. My desire was to get something for dinner and my belief was that the grocery store had what I wanted for dinner. So there seems to be a relationship between a person’s mental states, such as beliefs and desires, and his or her intentional actions. What sort of relationship is this? Some philosophers believe that when we act intentionally our mental states cause our actions. If this is correct, then my desire for food and my belief that there was food in the grocery store caused me to go to the grocery store.
If mental states cause our actions, then does one have any control of one’s mental states? When I think about many of my beliefs it doesn’t seem that I can control them. I can’t just get myself to believe that there is no food in the grocery store. I would need some evidence that there is no food in the grocery store to change my belief. Perhaps, as some philosophers maintain, some beliefs are in a person’s control, such as a belief about God’s existence. Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t seem that I have control over beliefs that I’ve formed on the basis of empirical evidence. If you’re not convinced, consider your belief that you have right now that you’re on Earth and not on the moon. You can imagine yourself being on the moon. You might even try to believe that you’re on the moon. But you can’t just get yourself to believe that you are on the moon. What about desires? Does a person have the ability to control his or her desires? Think about your sexual desires. Can you just decide to have different sexual preferences? Perhaps one can have some control over some of one’s desires. When I have a desire for food, I might be able to focus my attention on something else (e.g. my desire to lose weight) and this might diminish my desire for food. But the longer I go without food, the stronger my desire for it becomes, and this causes my ability to control my desire for food to become weaker.
The question of whether a person can control his or her beliefs and desires is important. If a person doesn’t have any control of his or her beliefs and desires, but they cause his or her intentional actions, then it’s not clear whether a person’s intentional actions could ever be free. Could you freely do something if you’re being caused to do this something, but you’re not in control of this cause? And if actions cannot ever be free, then the common sense view that people are sometimes morally morally responsible for what they do is simply mistaken. Moral responsibility is the idea that people deserve blame or praise for their actions. You need to perform an action freely in order to be morally responsible for it. For example, if unbeknownst to you, someone puts a sleeping pill in your drink at a bar and you get into your car and drive it into a tree because you’ve passed out at the wheel you’re not to blame for the crash; you didn’t freely crash the car. However, if you get into a car and freely drive it into a tree because you want to get the insurance money for the car, then you are to blame for the crash.
So if a person doesn’t have any control of his or her beliefs and desires, but they cause his or her intentional actions, could his or her intentional actions ever be free? There are philosophers who believe the answer is yes. I will use the name “compatibilist” to refer to these philosophers because they believe that free action is compatible with having no control of the mental states that cause intentional action. I will use the name “incompatibilist” to refer to philosophers who believe the answer is no. These philosophers believe that having no control of the mental states that cause intentional action is incompatible with free action. [*See below]