WHAT IS FREE WILL? JOHN SEARLE vs THOMAS HOBBES

What is Free Will?  John Searle v Thomas Hobbes

Several years ago former University of California philosophy professor John Searle posted a video on YouTube about the difficulty of finding a solution to the problem of free will. In the video, staged as an interview of Searle by an interlocutor, he begins with a description of the centuries old stand-off between philosophers who say we have free will and those who deny this.  

John Searle

 

1. Philosophers who are pro-free will are often referred to as libertarians.  Searle says that one of the libertarian arguments is based on our daily experience of free will (e.g. throwing a baseball, going to class, playing the piano). If I feel that I am free to either throw or not throw the baseball, then it must be that I am free to throw or not throw the baseball.  If I feel that I am free to change my mind and not go to class today, then I am free to either attend or not attend.

Philosophers who are anti-free will are referred to as determinists.  The determinist argument begins with the premise that every event has a sufficient cause. A decision or choice is an event. An event that has a sufficient cause is not free. Therefore, a decision or choice is not free. It follows that what one feels as one goes about one’s daily life is irrelevant. No matter how we feel when we throw the baseball or change our mind about going to class today, these choices have a causally sufficient explanation.  

 

Thomas Hobbes

2. One popular way out of this dilemma is promoted by a theory called compatibilism. This theory says that the phrase "I threw the ball of my own free will" is compatible with “There is a causally sufficient explanation for throwing the ball.”  When I say, “I threw the ball of my own free will” I mean that no one was stopping me from throwing the ball.  This does not contradict the determinist claim that there is a causally sufficient explanation for my choice to throw the ball.  If a neurobiologist says that she can explain why I threw the ball by examining my brain functions and the neural circuits that show how I decide or choose to behave, then this is perfectly compatible with my response that no one was stopping me from throwing the ball, that is, when I threw the ball I was doing so of my own free will. 

The first philosopher to promote compatibility was the seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan 1651).  Hobbes wrote that the concept “free will” simply means that there are no impediments to what I am doing (ch. 21). When the jailer says to the prisoner who has served his term, "You are now free to go" he means that there is no impediment to prevent the prisoner from walking out of the jail. The impediment is the jail cell.  The cell door is open.  The prisoner is free to go.   

Hobbes also draws an analogy between (a) a man who “freely” gets out of a bed where he has been tied down by ropes and (b) “floodwaters freely spilling over the riverbanks” (ibid.).   Hobbes claims that if there is no objection to the use of “freely” in (b), then there should be no objection to the use of “freely” in (a).  In both examples, the word “freely” does not mean that the events have no antecedent sufficient cause.  They simply mean that there is no impediment (the riverbanks, the ropes) preventing the man from getting out of bed and from water from spilling. 

 

This being said, the so-called "problem of free will” evaporates.  “You are free to go” is perfectly compatible with the claim that the prisoner’s choice to leave the jail is an event that has a sufficient causal explanation.

3. In the video, Professor Searle does not agree.  He says that compatibilism is a "copout." It is a theory that "evades the problem" that every decision we make has an antecedent cause that compels the decision.  If we can’t escape the chain of causation, then our actions and decisions are never free.  Therefore, freedom to choose is “an illusion.”  When I choose to throw the ball, decide to wash the dishes, or skip class, I am no different than a robot programmed to make the same choices. 

4. Searle gets the last word. In the video he says that there is a "gap" between the chain of causation and one’s choices or decisions. The gap is not an empty space.  It is the conscious process of decision-making.  Searle’s example of this process (gap) is a situation in which you are weighing the pros and cons of two candidates for political office prior to making a decision to vote for one of them or (perhaps) not vote at all. Whatever you decide, your decision is not compelled by the process. The decision you make is entirely “up to you.” And that, Searle says, is free will.

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References:

Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. Leviathan.

Houlgate, Laurence. 2021. Understanding Thomas Hobbes (Amazon Kindle).

O’Connor, Timothy and Christopher Franklin, "Free Will", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition)

Searle, John. 2023. Closer to Truth: What is Free Will. (YouTube with transcript). 

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THOMAS HOBBES, CHATgpt AND PLAGIARISM

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 THOMAS HOBBES,  CHATgpt, and PLAGIARISM

I was hoping that the headline would attract your attention.  What does Thomas Hobbes have to do with AI?  His Leviathan was published in 1651, long before anyone could imagine that something artificial could be intelligent.[1] 

1. CHATgpt

Before I answer this question, let’s take a look at what has recently spurred the excitement about artificial intelligence (AI).  In November of 2022, “an AI chatbot that’s a human-like conversationalist”[2] was born.  Its inventors named it CHATgpt.  The word “chat” means that the bot can engage in a dialogue with a human being, as in “Let’s have a chat with the bot and ask it a question about what it can do.”  Here is the answer of  CHATgpt’s creators:

"The dialogue format and training make it possible for ChatGPT to answer our follow-up questions, admit mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests… [It is] trained to follow instructions and provide a detailed response."[3]

Although CHATgpt has been all the rage, much of it is not positive.  It has made many philosophy and other liberal arts professors apoplectic because chatbots can write an assigned term paper on a  philosophical topic following instructions of a student.  From what I have seen so far, a bot's 1,000-word paper on “What is the Mind-Body Problem?” would get a passing grade. In a few years from now, I predict that chatbots will easily deliver  “A” grade papers

Of course, a passing or “A” grade paper can easily be accomplished by hiring a ghost writer, using the name of the student who pays them. [4]   Find a starving philosophy graduate student, give them enough money, and they will deliver the desired product that a failing student can submit to their astonished professor.

2.  Plagiarism

If students do not reveal to their professor that they are copying the work of others or put their own name on a paper they did not write, this behavior is called “plagiarism,”[5] and if discovered, it can have dire consequences for students.  They will either receive an automatic “F” in the course and/or they will be suspended from the university.  If students do acknowledge on the title page that they have copied the work of others, then this no longer comes under the umbrella of plagiarism, but their essays will probably not be accepted by the professor or it will receive a low grade.

There are some educators who have doubts about applying the word ‘plagiarism’ to a work “generated by something rather than someone.”[6]  They contend that the definition of plagiarism implies stealing from a person not from a machine. Hence, the doubters are not prepared to declare that a term paper using only the words of a bot is an instance of plagiarism.  Their question is whether an algorithm involving text generation can be classified as a person for the purpose of preventing or punishing plagiarism.[7] 

3. Thomas Hobbes on Persons, Authors, and Things Personated

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

This brings us back to Thomas Hobbes.  Here is a passage in Leviathan that caught my attention:

“Of persons artificial, some have their words and actions OWNED by those whom they represent.  And then the person is an ACTOR, and he that owns his words and action sis the AUTHOR;  in which case the actor acts by authority… And as the right of possession is called dominion, so the right of doing any action is called AUTHORITY.  So that by authority is always understood a right of doing any act; and done by authority, done by commission or license from him whose right it is.” (Part I, ch. XVI)

Hobbes originally used these distinctions in preparation for a later discussion about representative democracy. But they can also be helpful in sorting cases of suspected plagiarism.  Suppose that a student in my Philosophy 101 class (John) asks his girlfriend (Marsha) to write an essay on the assigned topic mentioned earlier. Marsha trolls the internet and discovers the website of a graduate student (Edgar), containing several essays he has authored.  Marsha cuts and pastes Edgar’s essay into a Word document, and puts John's name as author on the title page.  John delivers the manuscript and does not tell me that he is not the author. [8] 

Compare this with another scenario.  John asks a chatbot the question “What is the mind-body problem?”  It delivers a 1,000 word answer in a few seconds.  John copies the answer, puts his name on the title page, hands the essay to me and does not reveal that he is not the author.

The author of the essay in the first case is Edgar.  The author of the essay in the second case is the chatbot.  The actor in both cases is John, pretending that he is the author of the essay.  Hence, John, not Edgar (the graduate student) nor the AI bot is an artificial person   The words of John or the chatbot in the essay are owned either by Edgar (first scenario) or by the chatbot (second scenario).

 If John later comes to my office and confesses that he is not the author, then I would tell him to go home and write his own essay.  If he hides the fact that he is not the author, then in both scenarios he has pretended that the words owned by another are his words.

The last sentence explains the discomfort of the doubting educators mentioned earlier about the personhood of an AI algorithm.   Plagiarism, they said, requires “a someone, not a something” as the source of the plagiarized work.  People, not machines, can own what they write.  People, not machines, can have the right of  possession. People, not machines can authorize or refuse to authorize the use of their words by others.

It may come as a surprise that Hobbes was aware of the same kind of problem in the mid-17^th century. The problem he confronted is that “things inanimate cannot be authors, nor therefore give authority to their actors.”  His examples of inanimate things are “a church, a hospital a bridge” (Ch. XVI). They may be personated “by a rector, master or overseer.”

Hobbes’ answer to the aforementioned doubters is that “actors may have authority to procure their maintenance, given them by those that are owners or governors of those things.”  He then cautions readers that “such things cannot be personated before there be some state of civil governments.”  Thus, a bridge may be personated if there is a civil government that legally permits an overseer to maintain it and control the number of people who walk upon it.

If Hobbes was still alive, he would say the same thing about chatbots.  As inanimate things, they cannot be an author and thus cannot give authority to actors, that is, those who would personate the use of the bot to produce written content for an essay or book.  This confirms the earlier criticism that the AI bot is a machine, not a person and thus cannot authorize anything. 

But those who invented and own chatbots can be authorized to personate it (make it a person) if there  is “some state of civil governments” with laws that would permit the use of chatbots under certain conditions . University rules imply a kind of civil government, and in most universities there are rules that define and prohibit plagiarism.  These rules apply as much to those who use chatbots to write their term papers as those who hire a ghostwriter. The owners of the chatbots are legal persons who authorize the use of their algorithm. 

But this is only part of the story.  It tells the “theft of intellectual property” part of plagiarism.  It does not tell the “dishonesty” part.[9]  When John delivered his paper to me he not only stole the words of another (person or machine), he lied to me about the source of his words.  The fact that John used the words of a chatbot is not relevant to my assessment that what he did was morally wrong.  What matters is that he falsely presented these words as his own.

There is no need for universities to “rethink” plagiarism before they decide whether to treat an essay generated by an chatbot as plagiarized.  Thomas Hobbes did most of the thinking 375 years ago.

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References:

Hobbes, Thomas.  Leviathan. 1958 [1651).    New York: Macmillan.

Houlgate, Laurence. 2020. Understanding Thomas Hobbes: The Smart Student’s Guide to Leviathan.  Kindle Books.  Amazon.com 

 

 

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[1] “The earliest substantial work in the field of artificial intelligence was done in the mid-20th century by the British logician and computer pioneer Alan Mathison Turing,” .https://www.britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/Alan-Turing-and-the-beginning-of-AI   See also Shaan Ray, “History of AI” at https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-ai-484a86fc16ef

[2] Open AI. https://chat.openai.com/

[3] Open AI. https://chat.openai.com/

[4] A ghostwriter is “a person whose job it is to write material for someone else who is the named author.” Oxford Languages.  The ghostwriter’s name may or may not appear on the title page of the book or other material.

[5] “Plagiarism is presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.” University of Oxford.

[6] Barnett, Sofia. 2023. “ChatGPT is making universities rethink plagiarism.” Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-college-university-plagiarism/

[7 Some might respond to this by referencing the Supreme Court’s decision to classify a corporation as a person, thereby allowing it to donate large amounts of money to favored people running for political office. 

[8] This is a real case of plagiarism that happened in my classroom many years ago.  I found a word-for-word paper identical to his on a website owned by a graduate student.  When I confronted him with this, my student replied, “But my girlfriend found and copied that paper.  I had nothing to do with it.”

[9] In an email message, Professor Ernest Alleva  wrote “I think that there are usually two distinct moral considerations involved in plagiarism: One involves dishonesty about the source of the words/ideas in something that an individual falsely presents as their work; in effect, you are lying about who (or what) is the source of the words/ideas. The other involves intellectual property of a sort (though not necessarily depending on intellectual property law), where credit/acknowledgement is owed regarding the author/source of the words/ideas (and until chatbots become legal/moral persons, such credit/ acknowledgement is only owed to persons or owners of chatbots).