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Kane, Luck, and the significance of

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 Discussion:The Significance of Free Will

Kant, Luck, and the

Significance of Free Will
Alfred R. Mele
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Robert Kane's The Significance of

Abstract • Free Will, as I say on the book's
dust jacket, is "quite simply, the
This paper raises a pair of objections to the novel most thoughtful and detailed
libertarian position advanced in Robert Kane's defense of libertarianism cur-
recent book, The Significance of Free Will.The first rently available." The book's the-
objection's target is a central element in Kane's sis is that free will, "the power to
intriguing response to what he calls the "Intelligibili- be an ultimate creator and sus-
ty" and "Existence" questions about free will. It is tainer of one's own ends or pur-
argued that this response is undermined by consid- poses," is "a significant kind of
erations of luck.The second objection is directed at freedom worth wanting" (p. 15)
a portion of Kane's answer to what he calls "The that is incompatible with deter-
Significance Question" about free will: "Why do we, minism but consistent with a
or should we, want to possess a free will that is naturalistic view of human
incompatible with determinism? Is it a kind of free- beings and their world. For
dom 'worth wanting'... and, if so, why?" A desire some much-deserved praise for
for "objective worth" has a featured role in his Kane's book, see Mele 1998. In
answer. However, a compatibilist can have that the present paper, I raise a pair
desire. of objections. The target of my
'•.-••• ; first objection is a central ele-
ment in Kane's intriguing
response to what he calls the "Intelligibility" and "Existence" questions about free
will (p. 13): Is incompatibilist "freedom coherent or intelligible?" "Does such a
freedom actually exist in the natural order, and, if so, where?" My second objec-
tion is to a portion of Kane's answer to the question about free will from which
the book derives its title, "The Significance Question" (p. 13): "Why do we, or
should we, want to possess a free will that is incompatible with determinism? Is
it a kind of freedom 'worth wanting' . . . and, if so, why?" One of the many
admirable features of Kane's book is that it goes well beyond a traditional liber-
tarian attack on compatibilism and offers detailed, thoughtful responses to the
challenging trio of questions just mentioned. Of course, one can admire that
without being persuaded by central parts of the answers.

96 Philosophical Explorations • N r 2 • May 1999 -96-104

 ~— Kane, Luck, and the Significance of Free Will —

I. Libertarian Freedom and Luck

Kane argues that "A willed action is 'up to the agent' in the sense required by free
will only if the agent is ultimately responsible for it" (p. 35). In basic instances of
ultimate responsibility, there is an internal conflict - for example, "between what
an agent believes ought to be done and what the agent wants or desires to do" (p.
126). If agents' choices "are not determined in such cases," Kane writes, they
"might choose either way" (p. 127). "The choice in moral and prudential conflict
situations terminates an effort (to resist temptation) in one way or another" (p.
127), and since the effort is "indeterminate," "the choice that terminates it is unde-
termined" (p. 128). A failed effort terminates in a choice of the tempting course of
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action, whereas a successful one more happily terminates in a choice of the sub-
jectively right course (p. 127). "[T]he agent's past character and motives . . . influ-
ence the choice without determining it" (p. 127). "Some of the agent's reasons or
motives (the moral or prudential ones) explain why the agent makes an effort to
resist temptation, while others (self-interested motives or desires for present sat-
isfactions) explain why it is such an effort" (p. 128).
Libertarians rightly regard determinism as a bar to agents' having more than
one causally open future (i.e., more than one future that is consistent with their
past and the laws of nature), and they traditionally maintain that such openness
is required for free will and moral responsibility. Although indeterminism
removes this bar, it also raises a worry about luck. If there are causally undeter-
mined or indeterminate aspects of a process that terminates in, for example, a
choice - including, as in Kane's picture, aspects that are present at the very time
the choice is made and directly relevant to the process's outcome - then, to the
extent that the agent is not in control of these aspects, luck enters the picture in
a way that seemingly threatens both moral responsibility and any desirable
species of free agency. Agents' control is the yardstick by which the bearing of luck
on their freedom and moral responsibility is measured. Luck is problematic when
it seems significantly to impede agents' control over themselves. And given the
indeterminacy of an agent's effort to resist temptation on Kane's view, it may seem
that luck plays too great a role in the success or failure of the effort for the agent
to have freedom-level control over the outcome and to be morally responsible for
it. An agent who luckily succeeds might have unluckily failed; seemingly, in some
nearby possible worlds, that is precisely what happens.
It can be said, in a rough and ready way, that the sphere of luck (i.e., good or
bad luck) for an agent is the sphere of things having the following two features:
the agent lacks complete control over them; even so, they affect his or her life.1
An agent-internal activity over which the agent has only partial control is subject
in part to luck. The attempts or efforts of Kane's agents to resist temptation when
making choices in conflict scenarios are activities of this kind. These agents have

1 Notice that luck, in this sense, is found not only in indeterministic worlds but also in determin-
istic worlds. Events that occurred even before we were born affect us, whether our world is deter-
ministic or indeterministic, and we plainly have no control over the occurrence of such events.
Libertarians appeal to deterministic luck in attacking compatibilism, and compatibilists appeal to
indeterministic luck in attacking libertarianism.
 — Alfred R. Mele —

limited control over whether these attempts succeed or fail, and the limitations
on their control run at least as deep as the relevant indeterminism and indeter-
minacy run.
Although at one point Kane claims that in conflict scenarios of the pertinent
sort, agents who make causally undetermined choices "might choose either way,
all past circumstances remaining the same up to the moment of choice" (p. 127, my
emphasis), he takes this typical libertarian claim back when responding to a
familiar anti-libertarian worry about luck voiced by Bruce Waller in a review of
an earlier book by Kane (Waller 1988, p. 151). Kane summarizes Waller's state-
ment of the worry as follows:
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'Suppose two persons had exactly the same pasts and made exactly the same efforts of
will,' says Waller, but one does the moral or prudential thing while the other does not.
Given that their pasts were exactly the same up to the moment of choice, as indeter-
minism requires, wouldn't that mean that the outcome was a matter of luck? One of
them got lucky and succeeded in overcoming temptation, the other failed. Would there
then 'be any grounds for distinguishing between [them], for saying that one deserves
censure for a selfish decision and the other deserves praise for generosity? If they are
really identical, and the difference in their acts results from chance, then it seems irra-
tional to consider one more praiseworthy (or more blameworthy) than the other
should be.'(p. 171)

Kane argues in response that, given the indeterminacy of efforts to resist tempta-
tion, we cannot "imagine the same agent in two possible worlds with exactly the
same pasts making exactly the same effort and getting lucky in one world and not
the other. Exact sameness or difference of possible worlds is not defined if the
possible world contains indeterminate efforts or indeterminate events of any
kinds" (p. 172). Does this soften the anti-libertarian's worry about luck?
Consider Ann. She has promised to call her colleague Beth at 8:00 this morn-
ing to brief her for an important business meeting. Ann believes that she ought
to call at 8:00. However, Beth recently broke a promise to Ann, and Ann is still
seething about that. She is tempted to call Beth late in retribution and takes plea-
sure in the thought of Beth's worrying that she will not call and Beth's feeling anx-
ious about not being prepared for the meeting. Ann tries very hard and very intel-
ligently to resist her temptation, right up to 8:00; and she has a reasonable chance
of succeeding. But her indeterminate effort fails, and she decides at 8:00 not to
call Beth for at least several minutes. Is Ann ultimately responsible for her effort's
failing and for her decision not to call at 8:00?
Consider a nearby world with the same laws and a very similar past - as sim-
ilar as can be regarding Ann (or her counterpart), given that she sometimes makes
indeterminate efforts of will, including the present effort. Here too the agent - call
her Ann* - believes that she ought to call her colleague at 8:00 and is tempted to
call late, for the same reason. Here too she tries very hard and very intelligently
to resist her temptation, and her effort is indeterminate. But in this world she suc-
ceeds. Ann* masters her temptation, decides at 8:00 to make the call straight-
away, and does so (using her phone's speed dial function, of course).
If Ann failed where Ann* succeeded because the latter tried harder or more

98
 ^ ^ Kane, Luck, and the Significance of Free Will ^ ^

intelligently than the former to resist temptation, then we might be inclined to

regard Ann as morally responsible for her failure and Ann* as morally responsi-
ble for her success. But this is not the tack Kane takes. If Ann's and Ann*'s cases
are to be basic instances of ultimate responsibility, then, on Kane's view, the
strength and intelligence of their efforts to resist temptation cannot be part of
something that causally determines the efforts' success or failure. Now, perhaps it
can be said that the harder, or more intelligently, people try to resist temptation,
the more likely they are to succeed, other things being equal. It might also be said
that even if it was not causally determined that a certain agent's effort to resist
temptation in the service of a moral judgment succeeded, an agent who tried hard
and intelligently to resist - thereby increasing the probability that she would
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choose to do what she judged best - and succeeded in so doing deserves moral
credit for her successful resistance and for the associated moral choice and is
responsible for the success of the effort and for the choice. But what should be
said, then, about a very similar agent who also tries very hard and very intelli-
gently to resist a very similar temptation, but unluckily fails to resist it? On Kane's
view, given that the agents' efforts are "indeterminate," it cannot properly be said
that the latter agent (Ann, for example) tried exactly as hard and as intelligently
as the former (Ann*, for example). But given that the difference in outcome in the
two cases — successful resistance and a subjectively morally proper choice in one
and unsuccessful resistance and a subjectively morally improper choice in the
other — is not to be explained by a difference in the amount of effort or in the
intelligence of the effort, this alleged implication of the efforts' being indetermi-
nate seems insignificant.2 The unsuccessful agent has worse luck than her suc-
cessful counterpart. And if it were not for Ann's having worse luck than Ann*,
Ann would have been in Ann*'s shoes: she would successfully have resisted temp-
tation.
Although Kane's appeal to the indeterminacy of an effort blocks a familiar,
crisp formulation of the "objection from luck" to libertarianism, the spirit of the
objection survives. If Ann's effort to resist temptation fails where Ann*'s effort suc-
ceeds, and there is nothing about the agents' powers, capacities, states of mind,
moral character, and the like that explains this difference in outcome, then the
difference really is just a matter of luck. That their efforts are indeterminate
explains why the outcomes of the efforts might not be the same, but this obvi-
ously does not explain (even nondeterministically or probabilistically) why Ann
failed whereas Ann* succeeded.
A predictable misunderstanding should be avoided. I have not claimed that it
is just a matter of luck that Ann* (the counterfactual agent) decided to call at
8:00. After all, her effort to resist the temptation to call late might have signifi-
cantly increased the probability that she would decide to call on time. If she had
made no effort to resist temptation, the chance that she would decide to call on
time might have been minuscule. What is just a matter of luck is that Ann*'s effort

2 Timothy O'Connor suggests that the agents are in "states having the same properties within the
same value intervals" (1996, p. 156). However, Kane can reply that even if this is true, it is false
that the agents try exactly as hard and intelligently, insofar as it is false that there is a precise
degree of effort and a precise degree of intelligence that both attempts to resist temptation exem-
plify.

99
 — Alfred HMele —

to resist temptation culminated in this decision whereas Ann's effort to resist

temptation terminated in a decision to call late: Ann simply had worse luck than
Ann*, and if it were not for this, Ann would successfully have resisted tempta-
tion. Put differently, what is just a matter of luck is that Ann's effort to resist temp-
tation had the outcome it did rather than having the outcome Ann*'s effort had -
that is, a decision to call late rather than a decision to call on time. Here, other
things being equal, luck seems to play too great a role in the success or failure of
Ann's attempt to resist temptation for Ann to have freedom-level control over the
outcome of her attempt and to be morally responsible for that outcome. A differ-
ence in luck, and that difference alone, apparently, is what separates an unsuc-
cessful effort to resist temptation from a successful one in this case. Ann's effort
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failed, but if Ann had had Ann*'s luck, her effort would have succeeded.
Can one consistently maintain (1) that it is not just a matter of luck that Ann*
(the counterfactual agent) chooses to call on time and (2) that it is just a matter
of luck that Ann's effort to resist temptation has the outcome it has rather than
having the outcome Ann*'s effort to resist temptation has? The salient difference
between Ann's effort and Ann*'s effort is that the former fails whereas the latter
succeeds. Nothing about the efforts explains why Ann*s succeeds and Ann's fails.
Therefore, no difference in the control that the agents had or exerted over their
efforts explains this difference in outcome. So the difference in outcome is just a
matter of agential luck. Even so, for the reasons I have offered, it is not just a mat-
ter of luck that Ann* chooses to call on time. Bear in mind that Ann and Ann*
made "an effort to resist temptation," to use Kane's expression (p. 128), and a suc-
cessful effort to resist the temptation to call late is one that culminates in a choice
to call on time. It is not as though Ann and Ann* were simply making an effort
to decide what to do without aiming in that effort at a specific outcome - name-
ly, the resistance of temptation.
Since Ann* tried very hard and intelligently to resist temptation and it is not
just a matter of luck that she chose, accordingly, to call on time, a theorist may be
inclined to hold that, other things being equal, Ann* (the counterfactual agent)
is ultimately responsible for her choice and chose freely. The same theorist may
also be strongly disinclined to hold that Ann is ultimately responsible for her
choice to call late and chose freely to call late, since she too tried very hard and
intelligently to resist temptation and, as I put it earlier, there is nothing about
Ann's and Ann*'s powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character, and the like
that explains why Ann's effort to resist temptation failed whereas Ann*'s succeed-
ed. Such a theorist, impressed partly by the asymmetry between a successful effort
to resist temptation and a failed effort to do the same thing, may opt for an asym-
metrical assessment of the ultimate responsibility and freedom of the actual and
the counterfactual agent. However, Kane insists on symmetry in this regard in his
standard scenarios featuring an effort to resist temptation (see pp. 109-17, 126-
35, 179-80). On his view, if Ann* is ultimately responsible for choosing to call on
time, then Ann is ultimately responsible for choosing to call late, and if Ann lacks
ultimate responsibility regarding her choice, the same is true of Ann*. (The task
of determining whether the two conjuncts in the preceding sentence are equally
plausible or implausible is left as an exercise for the reader.) What I have been
suggesting is that given the place luck has in the failure of Ann's effort to resist

100
 — Kane, Luck, and the Significance of Free Will ^—

temptation, and, hence, in her choosing to call late, it is highly implausible that
Ann has freedom-level control over the outcome of that effort - that is, her choice
to call late - and bears moral responsibility for that outcome. Readers who agree
with this suggestion may or may not believe that it has important implications for
Ann*'s successful effort and for her choice to call on time.
Now, if Ann is ultimately responsible for being so constituted that there was
a significant chance that her attempt to resist temptation would fail, we may want
to hold her responsible for her failure and for her decision to call late. But the
hypothesis expressed in the antecedent of the preceding sentence merely pushes
the problem back a step. If Ann's alleged responsibility for the condition in ques-
tion derives from past, unlucky failures of indeterminate efforts she made to resist
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temptation, the worry I have been developing applies straightforwardly to these

earlier episodes.
Modify my story about Ann and Ann* with the supposition that Ann* was
exceptionally lucky. Suppose this time that our agent (Ann, Ann*) is as close to
being a habitual backslider as a free agent can be and is a terribly vindictive per-
son. Imagine, accordingly, that there was, say, about one chance in a thousand
that her attempt to resist temptation would succeed, but it succeeded nonethe-
less. (Of course, on Kane's view, there is no precise chance of success, given the
indeterminacy of Ann's effort; but "about one chance in a thousand" is not a pre-
cise chance. Also, there is no reason to think that an effort's being indeterminate
entails that it has about a 0.5 chance of succeeding [cf. Kane, p. 180].) The odds
against Ann's attempt's succeeding are roughly the same. So should we say that it
would be misleading to claim that Ann was unlucky (even though she was, of
course, less lucky than Ann*), and should we infer that she is morally responsi-
ble for the failure of her attempt to resist temptation? Two considerations are rel-
evant here. First, how did it come to be the case that the odds against Ann's effort's
succeeding were so high? If this is the result of bad luck at resisting temptation
in the past, the problem is again pushed back a step. Second, given that Ann* was
exceptionally lucky, it is difficult to see how she can be morally responsible, or
deserve moral credit, for the success of her effort to resist temptation. (An analo-
gy: When people luckily win lotteries, they do not deserve nonmoral credit for
winning.) If Ann is morally responsible for the failure of her effort whereas Ann*
is not morally responsible for her effort's success, there is a kind of asymmetry
regarding moral responsibility in this case that has no place in Kane's picture of
moral responsibility, ultimate responsibility, and free will (see, e.g., pp. 179-80).
If Kane maintains that Ann has "ultimate moral responsibility" (p. 179) for her
effort's failing and for her decision to call late in the present (slim-chance-of-suc-
cess) scenario, he is committed - very implausibly - to holding that Ann* has
ultimate moral responsibility for her effort's succeeding and for her decision to
call on time.
It merits emphasis that the indeterminism and indeterminacy featured in
Kane's account of "self-forming willings," basic instances of ultimately responsi-
ble choice, is located at a juncture treacherously close to the time of decision.
Once an indeterminate effort to resist temptation has ended, there is no oppor-
tunity for the agent to exert any further control over what decision she makes.
Again, a failed effort simply is one that "terminates" in a decision to pursue the

101
 — Alfred R. Mele —

tempting course of action, whereas a successful one more happily terminates in a

decision to do what one believes one ought.3 Bad luck in this connection simply
is the indeterminate effort's terminating in a decision that conflicts with what one
believes one ought to do and with what one was trying to do (i.e., resist tempta-
tion), whereas good luck is the effort's terminating in a choice of the action judged
best, a choice that the effort was aimed at. Perhaps libertarians would do better
to postulate freedom-promoting indeterminism (and indeterminacy, if they want
it) at a location further removed from choice or decision. A buffer zone of robust
agential control between lucky occurrences (good or bad) and agents' decisions
maybe useful to libertarians. So, at least, I have suggested elsewhere (Mele 1995,
ch. 12; 1996, 1999). The opportunity to cancel or attenuate the effects of bad
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luck prior to the time of decision promises to give agents greater control over what
they choose to do than Kane's position allows them in basic instances of ulti-
mately responsible choice.

2.The Significance of Free Will

I turn now to the significance of free will. In a chapter on that topic, Kane writes:

when one traces the desires we have for incompatibilist free will to their roots, by way
of [ultimate responsibility], one eventually arrives at two elemental (and I think inter-
related) desires - (i) the desire to be independent sources of activity in the world,
which is connected . . . to the sense we have of our uniqueness and importance as
individuals; and (ii) the desire that some of our deeds and accomplishments . . . have
objective worth - worth not just from one's own subjective point of view, but true (i.e.,
nondeceptive) worth from the point of view of the world, (p. 98)

I start with the desire for "objective worth." Kane invites us to "understand what
objective worth is" by considering "a story about Alan the artist" (p. 97). The
story has two main versions. In the first, a wealthy friend cheers Alan up by
arranging for confederates to pay large sums of money for Alan's paintings. "Alan
thinks he is a great artist, and thinks he is being duly recognized as such, but real-
ly is not." In the second, "Alan has many of the same experiences, including the
belief that he is a great artist," and "he really is a great artist and really is being
recognized as such." In both versions, "Alan dies happily, believing he is a great
artist."
Kane remarks that "to say that there is an important difference in value in the
two [cases] for Alan, even though he would not know it and would feel equally
happy in both, is to say he endorses a notion of objective worth." He adds:

I want to suggest that the notion of ultimate responsibility is of a piece with this notion
of objective worth. If, like Alan, we think that the objective worth of our acts or accom-
plishments is something valuable over and above . . . felt satisfaction . . ., then I sug-
gest we will be inclined to think that a freedom requiring ultimate responsibility is

3 Of course, this does not preclude the agent's later reconsidering the matter and coming to a dif-
ferent decision, in the case of decisions for the non-immediate future.

102
 —— Kane, Luck, and the Significance of Free Will ^—

valuable over and above compatibilist freedoms. . . . Such freedoms would be enough,
if we did not care about more than what pleases us - namely, if we did not care, in
addition . . . about our 'worthiness' or 'deservingness' to be pleased. . . . It is this con-
cern for the objective desert of our deeds and characters that leads naturally to a con-
cern about whether those deeds and characters have their ultimate sources in us. . . .
(pp. 97-98)

Kane's reasoning here is unpersuasive. The desire for "objective worth" is not a
distinctively libertarian desire. Even if Alan is a compatibilist, he can reasonably
prefer the second scenario to the first. A compatibilist can reasonably prefer actu-
ally being a great artist and having the associated feelings and experiences of suc-
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cess to having the same feelings and experiences while falsely believing himself to
be a great artist. He can prefer that these qualitative states are grounded in his
excellent work and that he not be radically deceived about himself. As far as I can
see, this can be true of a compatibilist who is not at all "inclined to think that a
freedom requiring ultimate responsibility is valuable over and above compatibilist
freedoms."
If Alan is a libertarian, he might respond that he prefers a version of the case
in which he is a great artist and no state of the universe obtaining even before he
was born was causally sufficient for a chain of events that deterministically result-
ed in his artistic excellence and his production of his beautiful paintings. This
takes us to the first alleged libertarian desire that Kane describes — "the desire to
be independent sources of activity in the world, which is connected . . . to the
sense we have of our uniqueness and importance as individuals."
Elsewhere, I have argued that this desire, on a certain construal, is neither
unintelligible nor irrational, and, on the relevant construal, it has a distinctively
libertarian flavor (Mele 1999). As I observed, some people value independence,
in some measure, from other people and from institutions. An agent may value,
as well, a measure of independence from the past and a kind of independent
agency that includes the power to make a special kind of explanatory contribu-
tion to some of her actions and to her world - contributions that are not them-
selves ultimately causally determined products of the state of the universe in the
distant past. An agent may value having an explanatory bearing on her conduct
that she would lack in any deterministic world. She may prize indeterministic
freedom as an essential part of a life that she regards as most desirable for her.
And the kind of agency she hopes for may render her decisions and actions per-
sonally more meaningful from the perspective of her own system of values than
they would otherwise be. Determinism may be incompatible with the satisfaction
of some of her deepest life-hopes, and her having ultimate responsibility for some
of her actions may be required for her satisfying those hopes.4
Be this as it may, one would like to be confident that this desire for indepen-
dent agency can be satisfied in an indeterministic agent without its satisfaction's
hinging on the agent's being subject to a kind of luck that precludes moral
responsibility and any kind of free will worth wanting. For the reasons I offered
in section 1,1 am doubtful that the primary location Kane has selected for free-

4 On life-hopes, see Honderich 1988.

103
 — Alfred R. Mele —

dom-promoting indeterminism (and indeterminacy) in choice-producing

processes will prove to be adequate for the libertarian's purposes. Although I
myself am not a libertarian, I have elsewhere suggested, in response to the liber-
tarian's problem with luck, an alternative location for such indeterminism that
preserves ultimate responsibility (Mele 1995, ch. 12; 1996; 1999). The location
undoubtedly will not satisfy some libertarians, but it may be that some of their
libertarian desires are simply unsatisfiable.5

CV Alfred R. Mele, Vail Professor of Philosophy at Davidson College, is the author of Irrationality
(Oxford University Press, 1987), Springs of Action (Oxford University Press, 1992), and
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Autonomous Agents (Oxford University Press, 1995), editor of The Philosophy of Action (Oxford
University Press, 1997), and co-editor of Mental Causation (Oxford University Press, 1993). His
primary research interests are in the philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics.
E-mail: almele@davidson.edu.

References

Honderich, Ted. (1988), A Theory of Determinism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kane, Robert. (1996), The Significance of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mele, Alfred. (1995), Autonomous Agents. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mele, Alfred. (1996), "Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Scenarios." Philosophical Topics 24, 123-
141.
Mele, Alfred. (1998), Review of Robert Kane's The Significance of Free Will. Journal of Philosophy
95,581-84.
Mele, Alfred. (1999), "Ultimate Responsibility and Dumb Luck." Social Philosophy and Policy, forth-
coming.
O'Connor, Timothy. (1996), "Why Agent Causation?" Philosophical Topics 24, 143-58.
Waller, Bruce. (1988), "Free Will Gone Out of Control, A Critical Study of R. Kane's Free Will and Val-
ues." Behaviorism 16, 149-67.

5 I am grateful to Jan Bransen for comments on a draft of this paper. Parts of this paper derive from
Mele 1998 and Mele 1999.

104