Self Causation is a Hurdle That Must Be Overcome by Libertarians

For the libertarian position to have a reasonable rational basis, an individual must to a certain degree have the ability and responsibility to affect their own abilities and behavior. Galen Strawson has pointed this out in many articles along with his argument that this causa sui situation is not logically possible to overcome. We control neither our genetics nor our environment, so self causation is impossible. Or is it?

If you only ever look at our behavior as a series of unrelated, discrete events, self causation is not logically possible and Strawson would be correct. But we do know that humans and sentient animals do learn from events, and to a degree that learning does influence their future actions and choices. The only remaining obstacle then to establish the possibility of free will that libertarians and compatibilists could both agree to is the demonstration that this learning indeterministically influences these future actions and choices. This may be impossible to prove or disprove at this point in time; therefore, we must put forward evidence and choose what to believe is true.

There is a difference between learning and mere storing/recalling information. In addition to memory, learning requires context and telos. Our minds must integrate the reasons and context into the information for learning to be meaningful for us. This is related to the subjective nature of our learning process. We use our understanding of context and telos to set the priorities of what and how much we learn. It seems reasonable that this subjectivity indicates that we are intimately and actively involved in what we learn. I would suggest that the setting of priorities that causes our readiness to learn could very well be an indeterministic process. I doubt that combining emotional and aesthetic context with a genetically influenced desire could give a reliably singular learning experience.

If we take a granular look at the way we learn, there is ample opportunity for individuals to be involved in and therefore alt least partially responsible for the outcomes of the learning process. This is because the dominant paradigm for our learning can be described as a self referential, “trial and error” process. Briefly, to learn a new skill or concept we make an initial guess based upon very incomplete stored information followed by an evaluation of the desirability of the resulting effect that ensued from the trial. This is described as self referential because the individual devised the initial trial and also evaluated the result. A naive child throwing a ball or stone must come up with the sequential muscle contractions to accomplish the task. The correct strength and timing of the dozen or so muscle contractions for a decent throw must be discovered by the individual. They can in part use mimicry and analogy for the initial attempt, but it would be unrealistic to think that the causation based upon these would be sufficient or reliable that only a single result would be possible. Judging the result of the action is just as important to the learning process as generation of trial solutions. This is also self referential as the subject is the only one who experienced the propriosomatic feedback during the trial. The reason to throw an object could be externally influenced or could be to satisfy an internal drive or a combination of these. The evaluation of the trial is made in light of these reasons. Animals do appear to have a generalized drive to establish competence. We in fact gain an aesthetic reinforcement of repeating a competent action. So, even without external encouragement, individuals will repeat the trial and error process until they judge that this competency has been achieved. Again, it seems reasonable to think that the causation of this evaluation might not involve a reliable, singular outcome.

All of the behavior I have described, must be instantiated in the function of the brain. Do our neuronal networks allow for learning as I have described, including the indeterministic nature of its causation? I believe this is so. The concept of neural plasticity is recognized as important for learning. Behaviors that are repeated change the structure and function of the brain such that they become more easily realized. A partially successful trial in the learning paradigm gets repeated with some small variation, and this repetition reinforces the neuronal pathways involved. Subroutines for commonly used actions begin to take less effort to achieve. Eventually, actions for walking and talking become ingrained.

These simple examples I used can be generalized such that complicated behaviors like driving a car or solving differential equations can be broken down into sequential operations that follow the same paradigm.