105CANS AND IFS: ABILITY TO WILL AND ABILITY TO ACTThe Journal of Value Inquiry 38: 105–108, 2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Cans and Ifs: Ability to Will and Ability to Act

D. GOLDSTICKDepartment of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A2, Canada

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes wrote: “In Deliberation the last Appetite, orAversion, immediately adhaering to the action, or the omission thereof, is thatwee call the WILL.”1 Deterministic philosophical writers have often followedhim since by identifying as what any individual wills whatever it is the indi-vidual desires on balance. It will be harmless to adopt this technical usage here.

Philosophers subsequent to Thomas Hobbes who defend the compatibilityof causal determinism and human freedom have often argued that, where youhave done an action, to say, “You could have done otherwise,” or, at least,“You were free to do otherwise,” is equivalent to something like “You wouldhave done otherwise if you had desired, chosen, or tried to do otherwise,”which no one denies to be consistent with determinism. Already in 1951, C.A.Campbell objected, “for persons at a tolerably advanced level of reflexion,‘A could have acted otherwise,’ as a condition of A’s moral responsibility,means ‘A could have chosen otherwise.’”2 It will be good enough as anobjection to the compatibilist case if “A could have acted otherwise” logi-cally entails “A could have desired, chosen, or tried to do otherwise”. Ac-cordingly, in 1966 Keith Lehrer objected to the compatibilist equivalenceclaim on the grounds that “it is logically possible that some condition whichis a sufficient condition to cause a person to do something should also be anecessary condition of his being able to do it, and that the condition shouldfail to occur.”3

To this, Donald Davidson objected in turn that Lehrer’s reasoning, if sound,“shows that no attribution of a power or disposition is ever equivalent to aconditional.”4 He observed that “if one analyzes solubility by a causal condi-tional, one can’t consistently allow that what causes dissolving is also a nec-essary condition of solubility, since in that case the only soluble things wouldbe dissolved.”5

By and large, compatibilists have taken the line that to be able to do some-thing and to be able to desire to do it, or to desire on balance to do it, to willto do it, are different.6 They have admitted that, necessarily, what you do noton balance desire to do, you will not do, at any rate not freely. But they havenot admitted that what you cannot desire or will to do, you cannot do, whetherfreely or not.

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It is true that “If so and so, then necessarily such and such” is frequentlyused in common speech for “Necessarily, if so and so, then such and such.”But it is a commonplace among people with logical or philosophical trainingthat the necessity of a conditional is not the same as a conditional necessity.Less widely recognized is the distinction between the epistemic senses of“possibility,” “necessity,” “can,” “cannot,” and the other modal terms, on theone hand, and the senses of these words which concern ability and inability,on the other hand. However, at least since Leibniz compatibilists have hadthe argument available to them that calling something impossible epistemicallyrelates to its probability, not to its attainability, and so need not entail any-one’s inability to do it, since, in appropriate circumstances, any probabilityof a given occurrence taking place can be excluded just as completely bypeople’s lack of desire for it as by any real incapacity on their part to attainit.7 Where their lack of desire for it is what makes its non-occurrence certain,this need not mean that they would not make it occur if they did so desire. Itis consistent to say of them both, “It is equally possible for them to bring aboutthe occurrence and for them to refrain from doing that,” and, at the same time,“It is not equally possible that they will bring about the occurrence and thatthey will refrain from doing that.”

For compatibilists, by and large, what we cannot do, in the freedom ex-cluding sense of “cannot,” is only what we are blocked from doing, whetherby an external or by an internal impediment. It is that which we would fail todo, even if we did will to do it.

In one sort of case, however, there is no doubt that the same cause can takeaway our ability to desire to do something and thereby our ability to do it. Apatient in a coma can be unable, as a result, to stand up, even though, if thepatient’s mental life were rich enough to include an urge to stand up, the pa-tient would indeed then stand up. What the coma takes away from the patientis nothing less than the ability to will anything at all, or at least the ability towill any immediate action or inaction at all.8 But for the debate betweencompatibilists and incompatibilists, what is most relevant is whether peoplecan be said consistently to be able to do things which they cannot will to do.If this is not so, a potential regress is generated, since if they cannot do any-thing unless they can will to do it, then they likewise cannot do it unless theycan will to will to do it.

Though he did not use it just for that purpose, Keith Lehrer introducedan example which can be seen as tending to show that you cannot do whatyou cannot choose to do. “Suppose that I am offered a bowl of candy and inthe bowl are small round red sugar balls. I do not choose to take one of thered sugar balls because I have a pathological aversion to such candy. (Per-haps they remind me of drops of blood and. . . .) It is logically consistent tosuppose that if I had chosen to take the red sugar ball, I would have taken

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one, but, not so choosing, I am utterly unable to touch one. I can take a redcandy ball only if I so choose, but my pathological aversion being what it is,I could not possibly bring myself so to choose. I could do it only if I chose to,and I do not.”9

Dealing with the same sort of example, Peter van Inwagen added a relevantproviso: “let us suppose that something renders it impossible for Smith to eata red candy without choosing to – perhaps a mechanism outside his controlsnatches the candies away if he inadvertently reaches for one, or somethingof that sort.”10

Although there is an ambiguity embedded in the word “choose” betweenan inward wish and an outward action, it is clear both Lehrer and van Inwagenmean only an inward wish. But is the example really a case of somebodydesiring on balance to will to do something, but failing to will to do it, and so,owing to that, being unable to do it? Even if it is, here is a different sort ofcase which suggests that the inability to will to do something need not takeaway the ability or the freedom to do it.

Suppose a young woman in a traditional culture were hustled into an ar-ranged marriage but not so forcibly that a clear refusal would not be respected.Let us also suppose that after earnest consideration she finds she has no de-sire to marry the man, though she does value the tradition and wants to goalong with her family’s plans. She sincerely wishes she desired to marry theman, but her wish is thwarted. She cannot get herself to desire to marry him.She refuses and does not marry him. But that does not mean that she lackedthe freedom to marry the man.

There need be no regress, vicious or otherwise. It is possible to be free todo something without being able to desire or will to do it. Though it cannotcome about that we should be unable to desire to do something and yet stillfreely do it, it does not follow that anything we cannot desire or will to do issomething we cannot freely do. It follows only that it is something which wewill not freely do.

Notes

1. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, England: Pen-guin Books, 1985), ch. 6, p. 127.

2. C.A. Campbell, “Is ‘Freewill’ a Pseudo-Problem?,” Mind 60(240), (October 1951), p.456.

3. Keith Lehrer, “An Empirical Disproof of Determinism?,” Freedom and Determinism,ed. Keith Lehrer (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 196.

4. Donald Davidson, “Freedom to Act,” Essays on Freedom of Action, ed. Ted Honderich(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 145.

5. Ibid., pp. 155–156.6. See Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of

Philosophy 68(1).

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7. See G.W. Leibniz, Theodicy, ed. Austin Farrer, trans. E.M. Huggand (La Salle, Ill.: OpenCourt, 1985) para. 282, 367, 369.

8. Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p.119; also see D. Goldstick, “But Could I Have Wanted to do That?,” Pacific Philosophi-cal Quarterly 70(2), (June 1989).

9. Keith Lehrer, “Cans Without Ifs,” Analysis 29(1), (October 1968), p. 32.10. Van Inwagen, op. cit., p. 123.