Episode 193: Free Wanting (Frankfurt's "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:01:06] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, Disney Plus just showed a performance of Hamilton by the original Broadway cast. Would you like to take this moment to apologize to Lin-Manuel Miranda?

[00:01:22] I, as our most loyal listeners will know, I've been a member of Disney Plus since its launch and so I thought to myself, I'll give this a shot. I'll give this a shot. This gets, you know, people are paying what like $10,000 a ticket to see this.

[00:01:40] This must be better than like, you know, head by an angel. And so, so I played it and I was watching it with Nicky and with my daughter and about 45 minutes in, I couldn't anymore. It was just so bad. It was just so terrible.

[00:02:03] It was so, so terrible. Was the hip hop too hard for you? It was, I think there was a moment where they started that courtship thing with the Skyler sisters and they start like trying to be like, you know, like booty liking R&B type rap.

[00:02:19] And I was just like, oh, this is just terrible. So you didn't finish it? No, I never finished it. Was it too diverse for you? Did you not like that it wasn't all white people playing? Yeah, that was, at least the French guy had a French accent.

[00:02:37] That guy is great by the way, David Diggs, who's apparently a rapper but I didn't know that. How is he? You know what would have helped me if I had yelled fuck throughout the whole thing.

[00:02:49] Yeah, so on today's episode we're going to devote the whole episode to the Harper's letter. No, we're not going to talk about that. We're actually going to go a little old school today and talk about a classic paper in the free will literature,

[00:03:07] the kind of resurgence that happened in the 50s but mostly in the 60s and 70s. And we're going to end the paper we're going to talk about is by Harry Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.

[00:03:21] So we're going to dive deep into a real philosophy paper. Yeah, the very same Frankfurt of the bullshit article that we... I had forgotten when we did that when we decided on this paper that we had just done something by Frankfurt. I had totally the same.

[00:03:37] Completely. To me they're two different people or at least minds or authors. Like I don't hear the voice of this guy in that other quote unquote book. Yeah, but apparently all we do is talk about Harry Frankfurt now.

[00:03:55] Yeah, first what I alluded to which was I know it'd been a while since we had just done a study as an intro segment. And here's a study that caught my attention because I actually think that it captures something interesting about the act of swearing.

[00:04:15] And maybe it's just my particular fondness for the swearing that's in a motivated way making me want to believe these findings. But the findings come from a recent paper published in Frontiers in Psychology by Richard Stevens and Ollie Robertson.

[00:04:31] And it's called swearing as a response to pain, assessing hypoalgesic effects of novel swear words. So I guess that it's just known that swear words have these pain reducing effects. Although I don't know if it was known to me. It doesn't surprise me, right?

[00:04:53] Like with the ice bucket challenge if you do it and then pour it and you're just like fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Like that's going to feel better than if you don't say anything. Or if you say kittens, kittens, puppies, puppies.

[00:05:10] Which is interesting because obviously these are completely arbitrary words. But there's been other work showing that like these completely arbitrary curse words are emotionally arousing in the way that common sense would predict. But when you learn swear words in a second language, they're not as emotionally arousing.

[00:05:29] It's something about being exposed to them in your first language that gives them this emotional power. So these researchers wanted to both replicate those findings that swearing actually reduces the effects of pain. And they did something like the ice bucket challenge.

[00:05:46] This is something that's come up a bunch before on this podcast. But they basically it's called a cold presser task and you submerge your arm into a bucket of ice water that is temperature controlled. They use Celsius on three to five Celsius.

[00:05:59] So not quite freezing, but right at the point of freezing. And this has been used as a measure of pain, pain tolerance and pain threshold. And generally what they do, you can do a lot of things. You can measure things like heart rate.

[00:06:16] But the interesting part for this is just see how long can you hold it in there until it starts to hurt? And so when it starts to hurt, you say, oh, this this shit is hurting. And then that's what they call a pain threshold.

[00:06:30] And then how long can you keep it in? Keep your arm in after it starts to hurt. So that that measure of time is a measure of your pain tolerance. If listeners have done this or Tamler, if you've done this, it hurts. It actually really hurts.

[00:06:46] I would be swearing. But what they were interested in was whether these are the kinds of studies where it's like, did anybody really believe that this would be the alternative explanation?

[00:06:57] So they show they wanted to know what it was specifically about the word fuck or a swear word that was doing the work. And so it's be clear.

[00:07:07] People who swear as they're doing it, who say fuck are able to keep it in longer and also the pain threshold. I guess it started. It starts hurting less. So yeah, I think that was just an already finding.

[00:07:28] So they brought a bunch of participants in and they had them do that, the submerge their arm, their non dominant arm into the ice water.

[00:07:36] They gave them a bunch of measures that I don't think are interesting to talk about, but they had these these primary measures of pain threshold and pain tolerance. And they had people randomly either say the word fuck.

[00:07:50] They had a different condition where they had a neutral word that was just a word used to describe a table. A participant could choose whichever word they wanted to describe a table. And then they had two invented swear words.

[00:08:03] One was fouch and the other one was twiz pipe. And the best part about this is that they hired an advertising agency to come up with two words because they wanted to tease apart these two possible explanations.

[00:08:20] One was that it's just distracting you like maybe it's just saying fuck, it's not that it's the swear word that's doing the analgesic thing. It's just that you're distracting yourself. The other possibility is that it might just be emotionally arousing. Or funny, no, I think funny.

[00:08:40] Or funny, yeah, right, a humorous word. Right. So everybody, I guess crucially, everybody did this four times. It's just that what order they did it in was randomly decided.

[00:08:51] And what they found was when they were using the f word, their tolerance for pain and their threshold for pain. Raising the f word when? Oh, because it's in the article. Fuck when they say fuck this actually. Especially when there's two efforts in question. That's right. Fouch.

[00:09:08] I just want to read this part. The news where the news swear were generated by an agency working for a neurofemme.

[00:09:15] They were selected for the experiment by a panel consisting of a lead author, a lexicographer, an independent scientist and an expert with expertise in swearing and two lame members. I want to be that independent scientist with expertise in swearing.

[00:09:28] But what does it mean that it's a made up swear word rather than just a made up word? They call it a made up swear word or a made up curse word, a fouch or twiz pipe. But in what sense is that a swear word?

[00:09:41] I think that it cannot be a swear word. I think you cannot make up a swear word. They call it a made up swear word. I know, I know, yeah. They say the new swear words were selected.

[00:09:56] They give the name of the science writer who wrote a book called Why Swearing Is Good For You. And so they had a two hour meeting with a list of 60 candidate new swear words created by an advertising agency. Unsuitable words were discarded until two remained.

[00:10:15] A steer was provided that one of the new swear words should carry emotional resonance while the other should offer distraction possibly via humor. So fouch was intended to invoke emotion and twiz pipe as a new swear was intended to invoke distraction via humor.

[00:10:32] They didn't work that way, so it doesn't even really matter. So how was fouch emotion provoking? This is, it was a two hour meeting with a panel of people who just discussed which ones would be. Maybe they thought it sounded like felch.

[00:10:59] Like that's the only way you could make a one. I would rouse an emotion I guess if... I don't know. Like that's the whole point of this article depends on fouch evoking an emotion and being... Now I guess they rated it?

[00:11:20] Yeah, so actual participants rated all for how emotional they were, for how humorous they were, and for how distracting they were. But if you were asked to rate how emotional fouch was, how would you understand that question? How emotion arousing? How emotion arousing, yeah.

[00:11:42] They say emotional, but yeah, how emotion arousing? Like I don't know the actual question. I'm mildly amused so I would give it like on a 100 point scale I would say like 10 you made me think that it's kind of funny that you made up a new word.

[00:11:58] Twiz pipe is a little funny. Like I would say that's a little funny. Right, but it's not a question of how funny it is because that's the second one. That's the second word, twiz pipe. Well they had every word rated on either emotion human.

[00:12:13] So what they wanted to see was that fouch was more emotional and twiz pipe was more humorous. And both of these would be so more than the neutral term. I think that all they really got action on was that fuck was different from neutral.

[00:12:34] Fuck was different from everything. So like basically they're refinding the finding that fuck is pain reducing. But they don't know why?

[00:12:43] They don't know why doesn't seem as if the when you take the ratings it doesn't seem as if the distraction ratings or the humor ratings were doing any of the work to like reduce the pain tolerance.

[00:12:55] So their conclusion is this is the first study to show that new made up swear words do not have similar pain alleviation effects to regular swear.

[00:13:04] All we know is this adds into the remember I'm always saying that slowly by slowly study by study we're going to add to knowledge. This is just another one justifying the use of the word fuck whenever you're in pain.

[00:13:16] This seems like a study thing like if the goal was to just re refine replicate essentially the effect that saying fuck seems to help when it comes to pain tolerance and pain thresholds. Then I guess that's fine. But it that's not what they set out at all.

[00:13:38] So they they set out to find something that they didn't find which is good and they published this in frontiers and psychology, which is great.

[00:13:45] Like it's better than this kind of publication I think is better than just publishing it when it works like this is showing us that at the very least.

[00:13:53] Fouch and twiz pipe and the money they paid the advertising agency to come up with these words do not make a difference. Yeah. Although one could argue it's a no result. There were 92 participants total.

[00:14:06] Yeah. Each of them did it four times. So so it's like 92 times four, you know, they're always questions. All I'm saying is there's the jury is still out on whether Fouch or twiz pipe will.

[00:14:21] Let's try it. I mean, I feel like this is where real descriptive data is necessary. So next time I like bang my foot on the on the corner of my table, I'm just going to say twiz pipe. I think this is one when we need an interview.

[00:14:36] No, so in that sense, I think you're right that, you know, it's good that they published a null finding something that they tried to find but didn't find nicely alongside like a replication.

[00:14:46] Yeah. The thing that is maybe not as admirable is just why would they think what like the way they set it up? It's like they're trying to give support to one of two different hypotheses or models.

[00:15:01] It's not at all clear that Fouch is more emotion arising arousing than twiz pipe, even though people rated it that way.

[00:15:08] But who the fuck like I will honestly would have no idea what they were talking about if they asked me to rate or emotion arousing properties of fout. I think that says nothing. And then twiz.

[00:15:19] It's so close to fuck too. Like it's like a little too in German, it might sound like fuck. Right. You know? Yeah. And twiz pipe is longer and it sounds like a twizler and a pipe like. Yeah. Twiz pipe is kind of funny, I guess.

[00:15:34] But I still feel so. I think that there's something just fundamentally misconceived about if they had some sort of positive finding, maybe that's the best way to put it. If they had found that say, you know, Fouch works almost as well as fuck, if not quite as well.

[00:15:52] I wouldn't think, oh, it must be emotion arousing rather than, you know, distraction that explains this or vice versa. Even if the Fouch, even if Fouch was judged by everybody to be as emotion arousing as fuck. Yes, because I don't I think that's a meaningless question.

[00:16:09] It's unclear to me what the hypothesis is. Like I believe this finding like both from the literature and from myself. Like if I say fuck like it feels better, but I'm not clear what the explanation could be, like as to why that works.

[00:16:23] I know there must be an explanation, maybe the explanation is physiological, but I'm not sure what's going on that makes it feel much better to say fuck.

[00:16:32] There is something about the taboo nature of the word that really does feel like it's reducing my pain and I don't I don't I would know how to test whether it's just distraction because like if you had like I think a real test of distraction would be if I stub my toe real bad,

[00:16:52] which is the levels of pain that I'm accustomed to that would make me yell fuck, stub my toe real bad and then have my daughter walk in saying curse words in Spanish like that's a distraction. Like would that distraction make it hurt less?

[00:17:06] I don't know, but that's the kind you know, I can see why they're trying to control for everything including even like the length of the word and you know, like the fact that they're making the utterance while they're doing it.

[00:17:18] But but a real distraction ought to be like someone pops out of the back room goes.

[00:17:25] Yeah, it's great that it was published even though they didn't get what they wanted to find but had they gotten it I like I think it's just sort of misconceived to think oh then we have isolated the factor that causes us to you know reduce the pain or increase the pain threshold and our and the tolerance.

[00:17:48] Yeah, I got it. I understand now finally. Yeah. Hear me out. Yes. We use a cold presser task and we give people random words just shit tons of random words and the ones that happen to reduce pain.

[00:18:06] We call those ontologically swear words and we act as if it's a process of discovery like evolution through time people discovered that the sound fuck actually made them feel better.

[00:18:17] So there's just a whole bunch of words that we haven't figured out yet they've only tested to this is like a they're out there.

[00:18:23] Yeah, you have to run this study but with just every other combination of letters until we find the other ones like the magic ones it's like it's like Borges like the library of Babel.

[00:18:36] Yeah, it's interesting that I guess the way that this was approached sort of maybe makes assumptions about how you can isolate certain properties based on certain measures.

[00:18:52] So if I was going to be like a pain in the ass I would question how that how that works but I'm not going to because you know it's fun. It's fun.

[00:19:01] Like it's I think like the right but here's where I think okay like in all seriousness like I think it's a nice result that you can get people to do this longer when they say fuck right. Yeah, right. It's a nice behavioral result.

[00:19:13] I think that's probably the best you're going to do but if you're going to do any better than that and trying to figure out why I wouldn't think this was the way to do it. Here's what I would do since you got all serious.

[00:19:28] I would like to do something like idiosyncratic words because that is words that are that are meaningful idiosyncratically so so rather than try to generate novel words which is a task that people do in a whole bunch of these cognitive studies.

[00:19:46] But you can if you really want to know whether it's the emotional aspect of the word that is doing the pain reduction or the distraction one. You could just ask people to list words that aren't swear words but that make them feel strong emotions.

[00:20:01] And so you could dump your hand in the ice water and Tamler you could be yelling conceptual analysis conceptual analysis conceptual analysis like and see if that works for you right. And you could be like Lin-Manuel Miranda.

[00:20:17] I thought you were going to go with Jews but yeah that was different. Diversity. Free speech. I think that would be an interesting test it just would require a whole lot of people. Buying little girls princess dresses. That's a throwback to episode 40 something.

[00:20:41] And a throw forward to when we do a commentary on that track. All right let's move on. Yes let's move on. All right when we come back speaking of throwbacks we're going to talk about free will and talk about a classic paper on free will.

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[00:27:26] So we are going to talk about Harry Frank for its freedom of the will and the concept of a person. This is a classic paper like in the true sense of classic, certainly for the free will moral responsibility literature. It has been cited 5,284 times.

[00:27:45] All I really care about is citations. So that's pretty impressive. But it also kind of set the groundwork for one type of compatibilism about free will, meaning that you could be free according to Frankfort's account that you could have free will in a determined world.

[00:28:05] So even if everything is determined, you can still have free will if what Frankfort says is free will really is free will. Now in the past we've said that the debate over whether something is free will rather than

[00:28:22] some other kind of freedom or capacity is not that interesting. And I still believe that. However, what this paper does I think really effectively is point out a lot of different ways in which you can be free and distinguish between them in meaningful ways.

[00:28:42] And in that way I think how this paper's influence which is massive is pretty well deserved. It really did in a fairly clear way outline different conceptions of freedom and the difference of insignificance to them.

[00:28:59] Whether in the end you're comfortable calling that free will or not is less interesting to me but I think the other stuff is what's really important. And you also right like you have some history with this paper because your dissertation was. Yeah, I love it.

[00:29:15] You know, yeah, I hadn't read this in a while and I remembered why I really liked it. It's sort of like with Strossen which we bonded over I think early on in our in our intellectual relationship, Tamla, you and I. Is that what you call it? Yeah.

[00:29:35] Whatever you've been missing. There's something that it gets right about the psychology I think of how we judge others. So when I was doing my dissertation, I relied heavily on this sort of hierarchical view of

[00:29:48] the will because it captures I think a way in which we actually judge other people right not by and we'll get into this not always by their what we might call their first order desires or impulses or wants but rather by what they want to want

[00:30:06] their second order desires. Now whether or not this is a good way to be a compatibilist about determinism and free will that that was never something that I gave that much thought to when I was reading him

[00:30:20] the first time because I was using it to solve a puzzle in attribution moral attribution but since you have a background of free will I was curious to know whether or not this kind of compatibilism was satisfying to like to the field.

[00:30:39] Well I think it was it was influential whether it was satisfying I think people did a lot of variants on it like Gary Watson who brought in values in addition to desires as being central to free will but still in a compatibilist way.

[00:30:58] It's a different kind of approach to freedom really different in kind than Strawson's approach which I currently favor again when I I'm coming at this from fresh eyes when I first was interested in this topic I was always coming at it from

[00:31:16] the perspective of is this enough for moral responsibility and at the time I didn't find you know I was a skeptic about free will and I didn't find that this account could give you what you needed for moral responsibility for reasons

[00:31:31] maybe that we will get to what I was surprised at and in looking at this and I haven't really looked at it in a long time because I haven't even taught this topic in a long time never mind written on it. It's not really about moral

[00:31:43] responsibility there's a little few pages at the end where he brings moral responsibility into it but it's just it's really about free will or different kinds of freedom and so in that sense I think it was nice to go back to

[00:32:01] it with fresh eyes and I'm sure that when I go back and look at if I ever went back and look at some of my work my work would have assumed that this was supposed to do more for moral responsibility than it's actually trying

[00:32:13] to do now having said that I do think what it does say about moral responsibility is not satisfying even to me now but but yeah that's that's my take on that. So before we jump into the meat of the argument this came out

[00:32:30] before his principle of alternate possibilities. No it came out after three years after. Alternate possibilities paper is 68 this is 71 both in the Journal of Philosophy so he starts out let's just go through it I think he starts out talking about a distinction between persons and

[00:32:54] non-persons or if we or human beings most human beings and non-human animals he says here's one difference other animals like our dogs can have desires and they can act on them and they can choose to do something or choose not

[00:33:17] to do something a lot of animals can do that you know dogs for sure they can choose to do something not choose to do something I always remember my dog Tessie who would just hover over a pile of deer shit and kind of bend

[00:33:31] her shoulder she knew we hated when she rolled in deer shit and she would think about it but ultimately the deer shit desire was so strong that she just rolled around in it even though she's going to get yelled at

[00:33:45] she knew she was going to get yelled at that's why she was even deciding to do something and then still did it you know so we can all do that what we can't all do or at least what according to Frank for other animals

[00:33:58] can't do is reflect on those desires and think about which of these desires do I want to have which of them do I not want to have which do I wish I didn't have right so Tessie my dog at the time she

[00:34:12] couldn't think do I want to have the desire to roll in deer shit I wish I didn't have that desire or maybe no I'm glad I have that desire to have a deer shit dog let's just let me just embrace my deer shit

[00:34:23] missing I identify with that desire to roll in deer shit so so that's something we can do and Frankfort points out that other other creatures can't so like here's an example for me usually when I sit down to

[00:34:40] read I have a desire to get a drink when I'm reading like this is almost like automatic pathway in my brain right now so like when we're reading Dostoyevsky I was like well I should have a drink right now I should

[00:34:51] have a bourbon vodka yeah but maybe vodka I guess would be more appropriate but maybe I want to cut down on my drinking and so I can think about whether I don't want to have that desire anymore it's that capacity that according to Frankfort is essential to to

[00:35:08] it's necessary it's not necessary it's not sufficient but it's at least you need that if you're going to be a person the ability to reflect on your desires and to think and also to either want to have them

[00:35:19] or not to want to have them and this is a capacity that also forms the basis of having eventually freedom of the will with respect to certain actions and desires and not having it so that's the first distinction but the maybe an important second distinction here

[00:35:37] is between a person's desire and his or her will so Frankfort notes that we often have conflicting desires and then when we have conflicting desires one of them wins out that desire actually motivates me so if I might have a desire to have a drink while I'm

[00:36:02] reading and also a desire to just read without drinking right but if I end up pouring myself a drink then that desire wins that's my what he calls my effective desire and that's my will that is identical to my will according to Frankfort it's not necessarily

[00:36:18] a free will but it's a will so that's what separates a will from a desire is the will is the desire that motivates you to act right because at any given instant we could have a whole bunch of

[00:36:29] wants or desires and a lot of them might conflict but they're conflicting at this lower level so you know you made me think of my dog every night to distract him from trying to eat our food

[00:36:41] we give him a treat but Nikki actually holds out to treats that she knows he likes and every night it's a hilarious thing to make him like look back and forth look back and forth and try to decide because they're both treats we know he likes the

[00:36:56] one that he picks out is the desire that you know the desire that he acted on was his will his will to have that bone yes right so you like a bird bird and ass you're trying to

[00:37:06] exactly like a bird and that bird and that bird and that's who gets paralyzed is somebody who is an agent without will right but desires they have desires to go to both bales of hay but no will at that point so now where while we're at the

[00:37:23] higher level of reflecting on our desires we can also reflect on what we want our wills to be or in other words what we want our effective desires to be so here's another example I was thinking of so you take an older guy maybe who finds

[00:37:38] himself attracted to the younger people who work in his job at his office he has these desires to have affairs with them or have sex with them if he can but then he also has desires to be faithful

[00:37:50] to his wife to not fuck up his family life and to not fuck up his job which means come on Tamler don't do it don't do it this is not autobiographical he may so here's the distinction I want to bring up though right

[00:38:06] like you could think of this two ways right this could be two different kinds of ways the person could handle the fact that he has these conflicting desires at the first order right he may just want to get rid of the

[00:38:18] desires to be with younger women right like like a pedophile might just not want to be attracted to children at all right or he might be fine with having the desires for younger women right like he's like oh it keeps me young

[00:38:34] it keeps me alive or whatever but he doesn't want them to be effective like he doesn't want to fuck up his family life that's a more important desire so it's not that he wants to not

[00:38:46] have desires that he have that he that he has he's fine with having those desires it's just that at the higher level he doesn't want those desires to ever cause him to act in a way that is detrimental to

[00:38:58] other things that he that he wants so according to Frankfurt he would have a second order volition volition with respect to this would be the one to be faithful that the desire to be faithful to not fuck up his family

[00:39:14] life that's the one that he wants to even if he's fine with having those other desires that's the one he always wants to be effective that is according to Frankfurt a second order volition

[00:39:26] and these are what is connected to freedom of the will according to Frankfurt so it's not just the second order desires it's the second order volitions that are connected to freedom of the will right this is the example

[00:39:38] that he gives of the doctor who wants to know what it's like to have drug addiction cravings right where it's similar in structure to what you just said but basically the doctor's like I wonder what it's like to be a serious addict and so he's having the

[00:39:54] second order desire to have the pull of addiction while at the same time not wanting that pull of addiction to actually be effective this is what I like about this hierarchical will the way that he's structuring this lends for a nice analysis of

[00:40:10] the kinds of psychological situations that we can easily see in ourselves and in others I think it's very keen a very keen observation absolutely now this the reason I didn't use that example and I came up with my own is

[00:40:26] that seems like such a far fetched example it's this it's this like guy who works on addiction who wants to understand addiction and so really wants to have the desire but I think these kinds of this distinction between second order volitions and second order

[00:40:42] is actually pretty common like there's plenty of desires that I don't mind having as long as they're not effective you know as long as they're not actually making me do something that conflicts with other first order desires that are stronger

[00:40:58] and so it is a big difference to either not want to I don't mind wanting to have a drink when I'm reading I would like though sometimes for me to like have the effective desire

[00:41:10] to be the one that is just a drink to read without drinking you know what I mean right and I think that's a really this is one of my favorite distinctions in the essay is this distinction between like the second because I think

[00:41:22] like this gets lost sometimes in hierarchical accounts they think either you want the desire or you don't but it's not that simple it's like it's which of your desires do you want to be effective that's right yeah because you could yeah just add to that you could definitely

[00:41:38] be part of your identity that you really like having the desire to drink bourbon and you know all kinds of bourbon you just know you're an alcoholic and you need to keep that in check but it's not as if you have a

[00:41:50] second order desire to just be a tea totaler by the way as we get into this maybe I'll bring it up this there's a lot in here that kind of reminds me of Freud's analysis of the of the self because they're both

[00:42:02] fundamentally questions about what makes a person a whole person and there were times when I was like oh like Freud has language that sounds almost exactly like like the conflict between the super ego and the ego just being sort of driven by whatever

[00:42:18] reality lets it have right I mean the difference is that for Freud the super ego isn't really determined right by the person it's more determined by like the it's all for Freud it's all just like what he called biology as destiny like the

[00:42:34] developmental forces that shaped you early on will determine all of this stuff so then frankfort goes into this whole thing about the the wanton which I don't know if you want to talk about it it seems like it gets

[00:42:46] it has been picked up in a lot of the secondary stuff about this but I'm not sure if it's worth talking about certainly at the length that he talks about it but the general idea is it's somebody that just doesn't care which of

[00:43:02] his or her first order desires are effective so they might have second order desires they might not but what they absolutely lack is any preference as to which of their desires determine their actions so I like the wanton

[00:43:22] and the reason I like the description of the wanton is that I think it captures at least my observation of some people and this often happens in a tv show where you're trying to determine whether a person is say a good person

[00:43:38] like are they really wanting to help or are they a bad person are they somebody who's driven by selfishness and you see them do both things you see them act in ways that make them seem good

[00:43:50] and ways that make them seem bad and you realize that they are just simply being driven by whatever local desires are pulling them and sort of if they have empathy for the person in front of them they won't kill them or

[00:44:06] will help them and if not they'll do some bad shit it's driven solely by these lower level desires and the strength with which one is elicited in any given situation they walk around living their life

[00:44:22] being pulled by these first order desires and I think that captures something interesting about a person maybe it's a caricature of a person because most people are probably reflective but there's at least large chunks of my life where I could describe my actions my daily actions

[00:44:38] sort of wanton the actions of a wanton person he doesn't seem to use it as a description of parts of our life and it's so extreme that this person just never even thinks about you know even if they might have

[00:44:54] their own desire or desire desires like I want this or I want to want this I don't want to want that I wish I didn't want that they just never have any preference as to which of their desires determine their action

[00:45:06] it's so extreme that it's as Frank for it says for him the wanton isn't a person they're like animals like he says all animals are wantons they don't because they're not at any higher order level at all

[00:45:22] they're not the human being like what you're talking about but I do think it's more useful to talk about them in terms of just so much of our everyday life is like that where we don't even really think about whether we want which of our

[00:45:34] desires we want to be effective like we can sleepwalk through life in large chunks of it and not be reflective about you know whether that's how we want to live or not. And he makes an interesting point about being a wanton doesn't mean that you're not

[00:45:54] deliberating so you can have rational faculties and you can actually determine which of your first order desires you want to win out but it's not what does he say is it does not mean that each of his

[00:46:10] first order desires is translated heedlessly and at once into action he may have no opportunity to act in accordance with some of his desires moreover the translation of his desires into action may be delayed or precluded either by conflicting

[00:46:22] desires of the first order or by the intervention of deliberation. For a wanton may possess an employee rational faculties of a higher order nothing in the concept of a wanton implies that he cannot reason or that he cannot deliberate concerning how to do

[00:46:34] what he wants to do. What distinguishes the rational wanton from other rational agents is that he is not concerned with the desirability of his desires themselves he ignores the question of what his will is to be

[00:46:46] so that separates them from the animals and that they can have like some sort of deliberation between these little level desires they're just not connecting them to anything like their second order their will like what they want to want or what they want to be effective

[00:47:02] which of their desires they want to be effective right so he uses it as a contrast with the unwilling addict so you take somebody who's addicted to say cocaine wants to do coke whenever they see it but maybe they don't want the desires

[00:47:18] to do coke to be effective right now again it could be that this addict is fine with having the desires but he doesn't want them to overwhelm all his other desires like it currently does or it could be that they just don't want the desire at all

[00:47:34] either way what they really their volition is they don't want because it's fucking up their life they don't want the desire to do coke to be effective to actually make them do it because they are they're trying to quit and

[00:47:50] what frankfort says is that this unwilling addict this person identifies himself again it's could be herself he always uses him this was pre your you know woke yes but this this person identifies himself with the second order with with their second order volition

[00:48:14] not wanting to desires to do like an eight ball every night to be effective I guess that would be a lot when I was reading this I thought to myself that bubs in the wire has a nice

[00:48:30] there are times in which he's clearly the unwilling addict but like there are long periods of time where he's just a wanton and at his worst when he's a heroin addict and he doesn't seem to

[00:48:42] care he doesn't seem to be influenced by any second order desire to be a heretic addict or not he just kind of wants the drug uses his rational faculties to obtain the drug quite often like he strips copper from buildings and

[00:48:58] it never occurs to him to consider whether he wants the relations among his desires to result in his having the will he has actually has that second order desire kick in and he feels guilt and he wishes that he

[00:49:14] wasn't what he is right I guess the question that I would ask there is is he being a wanton in those periods or is he being a willing addict which is the distinction he introduces at the end which is somebody who has reflected on their desires and decided

[00:49:30] I want to have the desire to do heroin and so I'm going to take these steps to carry that out like strip copper or whatever the so I don't know if it's totally clear from Bob this is bubbles from the wire

[00:49:46] and heroin addict as Dave said is he just a wanton where he has where he never reflects on whether this is a good or bad desire I don't think so he's a thoughtful guy he's definitely a reflective person in other ways even during those periods

[00:50:02] so I guess I yeah I would think maybe in those times he's more of a willing addict or you know some combination of a willing and unwilling addict you know the wanton is just weird like they just never care

[00:50:18] I guess I like I resonate with that like I feel like I see wantonness in people in the way they're just pulled by whatever they just don't care and I think it may be not like bubbles but in some addicts it seems that they are solely

[00:50:34] driven by first order desires that they can often rationally deliberate about but they don't seem like maybe when pushed they would say well of course I don't want to be an addict but you're like wait but then how come that hasn't connected to your first order

[00:50:50] desires in the way that it ought to it's interesting maybe the train spotting guys and at least the first half of the year like that right there they're just being let around by it and they're just not thinking at a higher level one of the

[00:51:06] things that frank for it doesn't do this will be important when it comes to finally getting to what free will is but he doesn't separate between individual cases of acting according to your own free will or and just having free will or individual cases

[00:51:22] of being a wanton which are plenty and just being a wanton and it seems like when he's talking about the wanton right now in this paper at least the way I read it this time it's like the wanton is like this almost because of just

[00:51:38] they're wired that way for all of their desires and even bubbles if he's wanton if you're right that he's a wanton when it comes to heroine he's not a wanton when it comes to other things he's not a wanton he's just wanton with respect

[00:51:54] to heroine and I think this is a similar tension when we get to like what's an act of free will versus somebody who has free will actually do you want to get to his description? Yeah let's do that because I also noted

[00:52:10] that usually free will is talked about as sort of this metaphysical thing that you have or you don't and on this analysis it really does seem like frank for to saying certain actions are free and certain actions are not and

[00:52:26] maybe people with the biology of a human are capable of having free actions but that's not to say that they all are free and maybe yeah. Yeah there's a difference between asking whether you have the capacity to act according to your own free will and whether

[00:52:46] did you do this of your own free will for this specific instance now obviously I guess the latter presumes the former but he often he pretty much almost exclusively talks about it in terms of you know individual actions

[00:53:02] well or at least maybe he does let's see so here's what he says it seems this is on page 15 if from the pdf it seems to me both natural and useful to construe the question of whether a

[00:53:14] person's will is free in close analogy to the question of whether an agent enjoys freedom of action now freedom of action is roughly the freedom to do what what one wants to do analogously then the statement that a person enjoys freedom of the will means also

[00:53:30] roughly that he is free to want what he wants to want he's free to want what he wants to want more precisely it means that he is free to will what he wants to will or to have the will he wants this is like a dr. Seuss

[00:53:46] there he's just saying just for my sanity he's just saying it's a person who can choose what second order desires that they know a person who can choose what second order of volition volitions well sorry yeah volition it means that he is

[00:54:02] I think the it's free to have the will that he wants and so just as the question about the freedom of an agent's action has to do with whether it is the action he wants to perform so the question of freedom of his

[00:54:14] will has to do with whether it is the will that he wants to have so like the unwilling addict doesn't have free will according to this account when it comes to say doing cocaine or heroin because they can't have the will that they want

[00:54:34] to have so the will is at the first order they want to have he wants to have the will the effective desire be the one to refrain from doing coke and he doesn't

[00:54:46] have that even though it's what he wants you know in the same way that like free action if I want to drink water but I can't then I'm not free to drink water in the sense that I don't have freedom of action if even though I want it

[00:55:02] to be part of my will that I don't have a drink when I'm reading but I can't do it I can't have that will I'm always getting a drink even though it's not the will I want to have then I don't have free will with respect to that

[00:55:18] it obviously doesn't mean I don't ever have free will it just means I don't have free will with respect to drinking and reading I hope that makes sense to listeners you shouldn't have been drinking so much while you were reading

[00:55:31] so you might think of this as trying to figure out whether somebody acted according to their own free will is the way people talk did they do this of their own free will and according to frank for it if it was

[00:55:47] the will that they wanted to have then the answer is yes if it wasn't then the answer is no I mean this is where I say that I think this gets to a good way to analyze how

[00:55:59] we make attributions for other people's actions so when we see an unwilling addict we have some sympathy for them because we see that they're having tension between a second order and a first order desire they actually don't want to do

[00:56:15] drugs but they're compelled to do they're not free and so we have some measure of sympathy and that's actually what my dissertation was about we simply described people who acted upon an impulse and punch somebody in the face in a bar fight

[00:56:31] sure enough people like think that's bad they blame you but if you calmly, coolly planned to punch somebody in the face people think that you're more of an asshole and they blame you more but what the frankfurt part that came in was showing that the reason that people

[00:56:51] discounted blame for the impulsive puncher is that they assumed that that person had a second order desire not to punch right they lost control in the moment whereas so they assumed inconsistent hierarchical will the first order and second

[00:57:07] order was in conflict in the case of the person who deliberated to punch people assumed that they were consistent right they had a second order desire to punch they had a first order desire to punch that turned into the punch

[00:57:19] and that's why people are more likely to judge them badly and this it seemed to us could explain why in cases of praise worthy action you had an asymmetry so if Tamler you saw somebody you were motivated so much by your empathic compassion you emptied your wallet

[00:57:39] to the gave it to the homeless person right in front of you versus you planned this out you're like I really want to be a good person I want to donate money and I go and I find a homeless person I give them all of that money people

[00:57:51] didn't they don't reduce the amount of praise for your empathic compassionate emotional act and that we found was because we assume that you want to be that sort of person in a Aristotelian sense like you actually have cultivated empathy

[00:58:07] you want to be the sort of person who would donate money to a homeless person if you saw them suffering if we told people that they had a conflicting second order desire that damn it I wish I wasn't such a sucker I wish I wasn't so

[00:58:19] motivated by homeless people I walk by I need to be more stoic and not look in their eye and not feel sympathy then they reduced their praise because then that's just an unwilling it's like the case of an unwilling addict except for your addicted to compassion

[00:58:35] yeah so but what's interesting and I think different from what frankfort's talking about at least where we've gotten to here so you're pointing to an asymmetry between sort of blame worthy versus praise worthy behavior but the question

[00:58:51] for frankfort at least at this point has nothing to do with whether it's praise worthy or blame worthy or it's a question of whether one of those is a freer act than the other or not even a freer

[00:59:03] act because you it's definitely a free act because you wanted to do it and you did it it's the question is whether the person who gives money to the homeless person just out of the spontaneous empathy is that freer than the

[00:59:19] person who gets into a bar fight because they have a spontaneous impulse of anger and I wonder if you would have that same asymmetry in when you're asking about free free will rather than about moral responsibility right that's it's a good question because we didn't ask that and

[00:59:39] my intuition is that those are at least constructed to be the same right like that our description was such that people ought to say that these were both actions that were unfree what we thought was simply that people were judging you based on whether your higher order will

[00:59:59] endorsed it so which is an idea that frankfort does I remember if you were first to adhere but like you having some committing a first order action that is clear that you had no freedom over but endorsing

[01:00:15] it saying like yeah but I like that I did that that's kind of what we were looking for and we think that the people were praising the second order desire to want to be compassionate but that has but it's the question is whether

[01:00:31] they would call that person freer and maybe they would because they would assume that people reflectively endorse their good desires or good volitions read it in their bad volitions but also maybe not maybe you might think if in both cases the person had either never reflected

[01:00:51] on it or reflected the other way then it's not then it's not free it's not an act of free will even if it's pray it might still be praiseworthy but it's not an active free will and this is something that he

[01:01:03] distinguishes later in the essay right that he thinks certain acts you might do a certain action not of your own free will but you might still be blame worthy or praise worthy for it you know so here's where the rubber meets the road so the

[01:01:19] willing addict he says so he brings up this person who say like a coke fiend but just loves being a coke fiend you know like they're just happy with it it's their life choice but they're also addicted to it so if it wasn't their choice

[01:01:35] to be a coke fiend they still would be a coke fiend it just so happens that as they've reflected about it they're happy with having that be their will so this is something I honestly don't fully get he gives this example as a way

[01:01:51] of showing how willing addict might be morally responsible for their drug abuse but not free because they're addicted what's not totally clear to me is why the willing addicts doesn't have free will so here's what he says about the willing addict the willing addicts this is on

[01:02:11] the bottom of page 19 the willing addicts will is not free for his desire to take the drug will be effective regardless of whether or not he wants this desire to constitute his will but when he takes the drug he takes it freely and of his own free will

[01:02:27] so he says the willing addicts will is not free but when he takes the drug he takes it freely and of his own free will I understand that distinction between their will is not free but they are acting of their own free will when they take the drug

[01:02:47] is he trying to say that in that first order desire that's kicking in when they're making the decision to take the drug that that is never free like they are pulled by that first order desire right because the will is always identical with your first effective

[01:03:07] first order desire yes right but if he's willing and he endorses that his second order desire endorses that action he has it has made that taking of the drug free is that what he's saying he's it's made but it's it's made it's made the action free

[01:03:27] the action is free regardless because he if he wanted to take it and he had it available to take it and so that's for freedom of action is you get to do what you want to do the question is and this is so it's free will

[01:03:43] because they were able to act in a way that they wanted to will right it was consistent with it was consistent with what they wanted to will yeah it was consistent with their first second order volition but their will was not free I guess because it couldn't have

[01:04:03] been other like there is no way their will was not they're physiologically addicted so there's no way their will wasn't going to be to do the drug whether or not they endorsed it at the higher level

[01:04:15] but it is a weird thing to talk about the will not being free but when they act they act of their own free will very confusing we need he needs more words for it and he tries he really is trying to avoid the moral responsibility language

[01:04:31] here and I but I think that it is replete with latent moral concerns about moral responsibility well I think here he is not trying to avoid the question he only brought up the willing addict because of the question of moral responsibility

[01:04:47] so as I understand it you can correct me if you read it this way he he says alright well now that I've given you this conception of free will I'm going to clear up a misconception which is some people think that free will is necessary for moral responsibility

[01:05:03] or and that somebody can only be morally responsible for their freely willed acts and he says that's false because you can be morally responsible even when your will isn't free and that's

[01:05:19] when he brings the willing addict into it and the frankfort cases which we're not going to talk about are perhaps examples of this too that's the way in which he talks about moral responsibility and note that he doesn't say

[01:05:35] you know what would be necessary or sufficient for moral responsibility he just talks about one thing that he believes isn't necessary for moral responsibility it's and that's all that that he gives us in this and I think the willing addict is in his example of somebody

[01:05:51] whose will is not free even though they act of their own free will when it comes to taking the drug their will is not free but they are still morally responsible right he sidesteps two things right the principle of alternate possibilities he says I mean he says

[01:06:07] doesn't matter if the person could have done otherwise or in this case could have willed otherwise yeah could have willed otherwise and he really sidesteps the threat of causal determinism he's like well that's I don't think he sidesteps it

[01:06:23] he just says it's not yeah well he just takes it down with one paragraph like he says look all actions are caused like that can't possibly be what makes somebody a free agent or not or act freely or not he just dismisses

[01:06:39] that as as a potential threat to free will I don't think he's just dismissing it as much as he's saying look if you are able to have the will that you want to have and you're able to you know act in a way that you

[01:06:55] want to that that you that you want that's just all the freedom that you could want or that you could desire or conceive of right and having this additional thing be like but no you're the unmoved mover you're the cause of it and there's

[01:07:11] no cause of view that doesn't make you any freer like having it be magic instead of you know part of some that's what I meant by dismissing this as an important feature of free will but I mean I think he gives a little bit of an argument

[01:07:27] for I don't think he's just like dismisses it it's the part that's dismissive or even just sidestept is anything to do with moral responsibility I think yeah no when I said dismisses it actually didn't mean

[01:07:43] to imply that he didn't take care I'm gonna say that he took care of it underlined and good point where he's saying exactly what you said that what does it matter that like your the movement of your arm is a miracle

[01:07:55] so so is a rabbit's arm moving like it's the same kind of miracle so it doesn't matter it's dismissive in a good way it's just saying in one paragraph like stop it with all the causal determinism here's what I want to ask you like you know he he

[01:08:11] goes on to say look this could be a very this can be a very simplistic understanding of the will like the hierarchies can be more complex and get higher and higher for the true for the person who truly believes that the determinism is the ultimate threat

[01:08:27] does this do any work like because you still have causes that cause second order desires that then either link up to first order desires or not like is this like a hardcore determinist will just be like yeah nice try well not a hard a hardcore

[01:08:43] and a compatibilist will be incompatibilist determinist yeah yeah so again I think it matters what we're talking about if you're talking about moral responsibility then I then I it's not satisfying because maybe the willing addict like maybe it's because you know of their how they're wired both from

[01:09:03] their DNA and also their environment and their upbringing and all of that and other experiences to not only be addicted to drugs but to just want to embrace being addicted to drugs right and so why should you blame the willing

[01:09:19] more than you would blame the unwilling addict because both of those things are ultimately determined by things that are outside of their control so when it comes to moral responsibility even though I'm a compatibilist but not of this kind it doesn't seem to be satisfying in answering

[01:09:39] incompatibilist objections to responsibility but in terms of marking a distinction of an important kind of freedom to have I think it is satisfying like I do want the freedom to be able to choose which of my desires are effective

[01:09:59] and not be held hostage to first order desires that I don't want to be my will right this is why I really like that this is framed as the concept of a person like we're like he's primarily tackling what makes a person whether he's successful at his compatibilism

[01:10:19] is less interesting to me what I do care about is that he is describing a feature of the human mind or the mind of any other being that is as complex as ours that really does distinguish us from just animals we have

[01:10:35] there is something that makes you you in the way that your higher order and lower order desires interact like that is fundamentally the nature of our human life is this set of hierarchical goals that we have to deliberate like and we're obviously taking

[01:10:55] like very low level actions all day long in that sense we're like animals but these are all linked to some higher order desires and we are either failing or succeeding in meeting making those identify with each other

[01:11:11] those higher order and lower orders identify with each other and be powerful and act have volition in the world exactly it's very good at so for the people who say well you know if determinism is true we're just

[01:11:23] like animals like no there's a very significant way in which we're not like non-human animals because we have these capacities and these capacities are important and again whether they're important for moral responsibility is a separate question but that they are important and distinct is I think undeniable

[01:11:43] right like it really it really actually matters and I mean for me it often matters in a moral sense but it really matters if say the thing that you did like if you lapsed back into addiction even though you really really didn't want to but there was

[01:11:59] something happened versus you just having this second order desire to like become an addict again like that matters like that should actually matters to me and it's right to say you're less free in the latter case than in I'm sorry you're more

[01:12:15] free in the latter case if you just let yourself do it because you are fine with it you're more free even if like you were probably going back to being a drug addict either way just because the physiological addiction is so strong

[01:12:27] there was a sense in which you're more free if you get to do the one that you identify with as this is who I want to be because you're allowed to have the will that you want to have and

[01:12:39] I think there is something that is connected to freedom there we also do deliberate about what kinds of second order desires we want to have like this is a lot of what you know what it means to you think we deliberate over what second order

[01:12:55] desires we want to have yeah we do say like do I want to be the kind of person who does this but that's a deliberating over first order desire right no do I want to desire to exercise like I want to be a person who desires exercise right

[01:13:11] like I would like to be the kind of person who wakes up at six and goes jogging right I can't get it like I can't do it but I would like to be that so in other domains though it might be more successful I might be able

[01:13:23] to actually make myself somebody who is sympathetic to the IDW like by going and reading all the right things and then my first order beliefs and desires can actually change that way right I guess

[01:13:35] I would say you're still deliberating over whether you want to have the first order desire to exercise you're not deliberating over you whether you want to have the second order desire to want to want to exercise or not but maybe you are I was thinking like

[01:13:47] when this goes to higher levels it starts to get very confusing like I might a higher level deliberation to me like say a third order is do I want to be the kind of person that is so fully in control of their desires and who has that much

[01:14:03] self-control or do I want to be more of an impulsive person that sometimes they act in ways that they just wouldn't you know their second order desires wouldn't have endorsed that but I want to be the kind of person that every once in a while

[01:14:15] my passion and my just get the better of me I want to be the kind of person that is always in control of themselves actually that's actually something that is you might deliberate about you know but that to me is a deliberation at the third order

[01:14:31] not about any individual desires but about whether you want to be the kind of person who can always have the will that you want to have or not that's also sort of interesting but what he says is like this is potentially endless

[01:14:47] except that when you identify with a desire decisively then that just ends the discussion if you just say I want to be like Ulrich and dark I want to be a dog I want to be constantly like chasing strange

[01:15:03] at every point and that's it and I don't want to think about like whether I want to have that like anymore like whether I want to have or not like this is who I am then I think like that ends the discussion and now if

[01:15:19] he's able to act in the way that he wants then he has all the freedom of the will it's possible to want or conceive of It's funny, Frankfurt does nicely get out of what an annoying conceptual analysis would do which is like well where does it stop

[01:15:39] you can have more and more loves but it's like but come on it's not turtles all the way up like it's actually like two or three turtles and then that fat turtle at the top just determines everything

[01:15:51] or you can be a turtle at a lower level that determines it just by your decisive commitment to it so what are you decisively committed to that would constitute you your personhood in this well so like I don't know being somebody who

[01:16:07] will try to liven up a conversation with jokes dirty jokes whatever you know like that's something that I typically want to do glad I do it glad I want to do that glad I can do it sometimes

[01:16:23] and I just don't have any further like I don't need to keep deliberating about it like it's just who I am and it's done and so when I when I can do that because back to the IDW

[01:16:35] but what they're saying is for those kind of people right now have to live in fear that they're going to be cancelled at every moment I don't think that's true and so I both have freedom of the will when it comes to that

[01:16:47] on Frankfort's account and also freedom of action. It's funny because I like you have always liked to say shit to stir things up and make life less boring from everything from like talking out in class when I was younger to committee meetings and Cornell and

[01:17:07] making jokes but I used to feel like like it was I was a wanton person in that regard that I couldn't help myself but say things so I would get in trouble often in junior high and elementary for talking out of turn for making jokes and I felt

[01:17:27] like I just couldn't help myself and then over time I nurtured the second order desire to be that kind of person in a way that just according to Frank I think made me go from an unfree person to a free person

[01:17:43] just but with my actions themselves not changing and assuming you weren't you're not addicted to it then you know so that if you change your mind at the second order like wait I want to be a more sensitive person

[01:17:59] and I'm willing to just have another fucking boring conversation where nobody says anything like interesting or worthwhile like assuming you if you had that shift in second order you could make it effective then then you're just as free as anyone could possibly be

[01:18:15] when it comes to that interestingly though if you never test that out like you know for Frankford if you never really yeah you might never really know so you're still free and again we're not getting into Frankford cases but those I think

[01:18:27] do become kind of interesting so here's if I have a criticism of this account of free will it's I think he gives good accounts of success stories where everything aligns perfectly but what about in cases where you don't

[01:18:43] that's not what happens so say going back to my example of the drink right what about the case where ah you know I would really like to be able to sit down and read without always thinking god you know bourbon would be nice

[01:18:59] to have with this and then because you know it makes you drink more and it fucks up your concentration sometimes I want to be the kind of person that doesn't that doesn't do that so let's say I have that second order

[01:19:11] desire but I'm not able to make it a the desire effective I still always do it I still always go get the drink when I read according to Frankford my will isn't free there and I'm not sure that's totally true right I'm thinking maybe I still

[01:19:27] have a free will when it comes to that I maybe have my second order desire just isn't quite strong enough you know but it's not something that is really diminishing my capacity for free will at that point it's just

[01:19:43] I need to have a stronger second order desire when it comes to that than I currently have and I just don't and it's not because I have a competing second order desire to not do that it's just cause you know like

[01:19:55] I don't think it's as big a deal as I should or maybe I so in other words I guess what I'm saying is when it comes to saying that a certain act is free this account does well when it comes to saying that a certain act

[01:20:07] is not free I think it becomes a lot more complicated or not an act is not free we keep doing this that a person's will is not free I think there becomes you know a little

[01:20:19] dicey air to say when somebody doesn't act according to the will that they want to have is it because they lack free will or is it because of something else cause the the addict is that's just that's just

[01:20:31] strong case but the person who's not necessarily addicted but just doesn't like or you know it's not that you couldn't make yourself love X want to go to the gym four times a week you probably could if you really said your mind

[01:20:43] to it you really could but maybe you just don't want to be that person you know strongly enough even if you want to be that person to set to a significant degree you see what I'm saying yeah yeah yeah so I don't know I mean I get

[01:20:59] frankfurt's intuition that you're still not free like you there is no unless there's evidence that you sometimes are able to affect your right desire to not have a drink but if you never can like you're always like kind of

[01:21:15] want to be a person who goes to the gym four times a day but you I've never done it then I'd be like well you're just like not quite so clear as to how much like a drug addict you really are or not going to the

[01:21:27] gym addict but I guess the the issue is what about those times where it's maybe there have been times in your life where you have gone to the gym regularly and now you're not but it's been like

[01:21:39] three years four years since we've done that regularly you've been trying to get yourself to go back for the last couple and it just hasn't it hasn't worked is that because you don't have free will or is that just because

[01:21:51] other things like that get in the way of it or that your desire is not as strong as it once used to be or but I get what you're saying also that sometimes these things these habits are stronger than you think they have more of a control

[01:22:07] over you than you think that they have but how much your second order desire kicks in every time you pour yourself a bourbon does like I don't know what it says about free will but like expanding it says something about you that's interesting and

[01:22:23] that you're not the sort of person who either has embraced the second order desire to always have a bourbon and you're not the sort of person who's wanton who just like mindless lead drinks bourbon you are

[01:22:35] the sort of person who is worried about their health or whatever and free will or not I think that's the kind of interesting question we can ask about people when you lose your temper and you do something wrong are you

[01:22:47] like we've seen all these like social media videos of people like losing their shit and like saying crazy things was that just one time or did they cultivate a life in which they just let themselves like yell at people because

[01:23:03] that like kind of matters you know right and I think Frank for it in later work talks about ambivalence which sort of describes what you're talking about like with the bourbon thing it might be that partly you are you are ambivalent at the

[01:23:19] second order like partly you're like I just have a fucking drink and read your thing you like it it's fun like it's not that big a deal you're healthy you're like you're not breaking shit around the house and beating your wife and child

[01:23:31] you just like to have a drink you've conquered those fires like what's the big deal and then there's another part is like yeah but enough with all this you know it's not good for you in the long run you know like so you could be ambivalent

[01:23:43] about it in a way that I don't think really speaks to your freedom as much as it speaks to something about you as a person as you say which is a conflict at the second order. I'd make a character judgment about like which desires won out over time

[01:23:59] you know like which second order desires you cultivated successfully if you always let yourself be pulled by bourbon like upon reflection you decided that's the kind of person you want to be again I think

[01:24:11] that I would give you more moral responsibility than somebody who has just raised drinking bourbon from the bottle. But I mean again that's moral responsibility right? I know yeah. I think that's where the this account is you know it's potentially useful and I think

[01:24:27] certain people have found it to be the cornerstone of their conception of moral responsibility but that's when the regress concerns really begin because you have to start asking questions about why you have the second order desires or volitions that you have. And we haven't even talked about

[01:24:43] this but I think that this is a way in which people talk about implicit attitudes. I don't know that they ever explicitly endorse Frankfurt but there is a lave view of the hierarchical will that says hey you know it's not you like who hates black people

[01:24:59] it's just you in this small sense you in this big sense clearly you don't want to be racist. Right. Yeah. You just read white fragility. Or this other list of books that people are compiling to like raise your kid non-racist.

[01:25:15] Oh my god that stuff I want to be the kind of person that doesn't do that as a way of making your kid not racist but instead like actually has them hang out with people of different races. I know I can't it's such a bad proxy.

[01:25:35] Of course that's the white intellectual solution to the problem like if your kid is on a list of these books rather than actually maybe take them to playgrounds where there's other kids. Yeah live in neighborhoods where like... Or like virtual reality where you can interact

[01:25:55] with black people safely. That's going to be the next big thing. And that'll do it for this podcast. Dave thinks the only way you can interact with black people safely is virtual reality. No but like that's probably what the police are using to train. Yeah.

[01:26:19] You could see that coming on the horizon. And then you would be judged by like which apps you had on your virtual reality device You're only on level 3 of Woke My kid's at level 9 My kid asks people their pronouns before they even start talking. Alright

[01:26:47] Do you have anything more to say about that I'd say? No I really like it. I really like it. I like it way more than his on bullshit. Yeah. Oh yeah for sure. This is like an important you know as somebody who's skeptical of sometimes fault this is

[01:27:03] important in a way that I think on bullshit really is. I'm very glad to see that you think of some philosophy that's important. I do. Yeah no it was fun to go back you know there's obviously so much secondary literature

[01:27:15] on this but a lot of that's faded from my memory and so really just reading this with fresh eyes was nice. Cool. Alright join us next time on Very Bad Wizards