We Can Act Only Under the Idea of Freedom

Abstract

In his address to the Pacific Division last year, Barry Stroud called attention both to the ubiquity of appeals to naturalism in the contemporary philosophical arena and the lack of anything approaching a consensus concerning the meaning of the term.' As he noted, the varieties of naturalism run the gamut from highly restrictive forms, such as physicalism and naturalized epistemology, which are exceedingly controversial, to more inclusive forms, which preserve their popularity by avoiding a commitment to anything recognizably "naturalistic" beyond the rejection of appeals to the super-natural. In the case of the latter forms, Stroud remarks sensibly, the term 'naturalism' is often reduced to an empty slogan, which could more appropriately be rendered by 'open-mindedness.'2 There is, however, at least one central area of philosophical inquiry where naturalism is not only alive and well but has a fairly determinate sense, namely the question of free will or agency. In spite of an ongoing debate around the edges of this topic, for some time the ruling orthodoxy has been a form of compatibilism that is naturalistic in the sense that it dismisses any account of agency that is not positively related to the framework of nomological explanation operative in the natural sciences. For upholders of this point of view, action descriptions may have their own language (that of reasons) and need not be reducible to physicalistic or neurophysiological accounts; but at the end of the day these descriptions must be mappable on to the causal order of nature, which, in contemporary terms, is usually thought to involve either token-token identity or supervenience.3 Moreover, there appears to be much in favor of this approach, since human beings are parts of nature and their intentional actions can be regarded as events in the natural order, even if, considered as actions, they are taken under different descriptions. Nevertheless, not all philosophers have been willing to accept this naturalized conception of agency, which, in one form or another, has been with us at least since the 17th century. One who did not is Immanuel Kant, and it is his views that I shall discuss tonight. My main text will be Kant's famous remark in the Groundwork that "to every rational being possessed of a will we must also lend the Idea of freedom as the only one under which he can act."4 In his metaphysical lectures he makes essentially the same point by claiming that, "Freedom is a mere Idea and to act according to this Idea is what it means to be free in the practical sense." And he adds that, "Freedom...is practically necessary-man must therefore act according to an Idea of freedom, and he cannot act otherwise."5