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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Oxford handbook of free will / edited by Robert Kane. — 2nd ed. p. cm. — (Oxford handbooks) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–539969–1 (alk. paper)
1. Free will and determinism. 2. Philosophy, Modern—20th century. 3. Ethics, Modern—20th century. I. Kane, Robert, 1938–BJ1461.F742011 123'.5—dc222010032533
135798642
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
To Nathan Kane, Caitlin O’Brien and Liam O’Brien Kane
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Contributors xi
1. Introduction: The Contours of Contemporary Free-Will Debates (Part 2) 3 Robert Kane
P ART I. T HEOLOGYAND F REE W ILL
2. Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom 39 William Hasker
P ART II. P HYSICS , D ETERMINISM , AND I NDETERMINISM
3. Quantum Physics, Consciousness, and Free Will 57 David Hodgson
4. Chaos, Indeterminism, and Free Will 84 Robert C. Bishop
5. The Causal Closure of Physics and Free Will 101 Robert C. Bishop and Harald Atmanspacher
P ART III: T HE C ONSEQUENCE A RGUMENTFOR I NCOMPATIBILISM
6. The Consequence Argument Revisited 115 Daniel Speak
7. A Compatibilist Reply to the Consequence Argument 131 Tomis Kapitan
P ART IV. C OMPATIBILIST P ERSPECTIVESON F REEDOMAND R ESPONSIBILITY
8. Compatibilism without Frankfurt: Dispositional Analyses of Free Will 153 Bernard Berofsky
9. Contemporary Compatibilism: Mesh Theories and ReasonsResponsive Theories 175
Michael McKenna
10. Moral Sense and the Foundations of Responsibility 199
Paul Russell
11. Who’s Still Afraid of Determinism? Rethinking Causes and Possibilities 221
Christopher Taylor and Daniel Dennett
P ART V. M ORAL R ESPONSIBILITY , A LTERNATIVE P OSSIBILITIES , AND F RANKFURT -T YPE E XAMPLES
12. Frankfurt-Type Examples and Semicompatibilism: New Work 243
John Martin Fischer
13. Frankfurt-Friendly Libertarianism 266
David Widerker
14. Obligation, Reason, and Frankfurt Examples 288
Ishtiyaque Haji
P ART VI. L IBERTARIAN P ERSPECTIVESON F REE A GENCY AND F REE W ILL
15. Agent-Causal Theories of Freedom 309
Timothy O’Connor
16. Alternatives for Libertarians 329
Randolph Clarke
17. Freedom and Action without Causation: Noncausal Theories of Freedom and Purposive Agency 349
Thomas Pink
18. Free Will Is Not a Mystery 366
Laura W. Ekstrom
19. Rethinking Free Will: New Perspectives on an Ancient Problem 381
Robert Kane
P ART VII. F URTHER V IEWSAND I SSUES : H ARD D ETERMINISM , H ARD I NCOMPATIBILISM , I LLUSIONISM , R EVISIONISM , P ROMISES , AND R OLLBACKS
20. Free-Will Skepticism and Meaning in Life 407
Derk Pereboom
21. Free Will, Fundamental Dualism, and the Centrality of Illusion 425
Saul Smilansky
22. Effects, Determinism, neither Compatibilism nor Incompatibilism, Consciousness 442
Ted Honderich
23. Revisionist Accounts of Free Will: Origins, Varieties, and Challenges 457
Manuel Vargas
24. A Promising Argument 475
Peter van Inwagen
25. Rollbacks, Endorsements, and Indeterminism 484
Michael Almeida and Mark Bernstein
P ART VIII. N EUROSCIENCE , P SYCHOLOGY , E XPERIMENTAL P HILOSOPHY , AND F REE W ILL
26. Free Will and Science 499
Alfred R. Mele
27. Contributions of Neuroscience to the Free Will Debate: From Random Movement to Intelligible Action 515
Henrik Walter
28. Free Will and the Bounds of the Self 530
Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols
29. Intuitions about Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing 555
Eddy Nahmias
References 577
Index 621
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Contributors
MikeAlmeida is professor of philosophy and chair of the department of philosophy and classics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He works primarily in metaphysics and philosophy of religion. He is the author of The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings (2008) and many articles in philosophy of religion, ethics, and metaphysics.
Harald Atmanspacher has been head of the Department for Theory and Data Analysis at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology in Freiburg, Germany, since 1998. He has been a faculty member of the C. G. Jung-Institute Zurich since 2004 and a faculty member of the Parmenides Foundation in Capoliveri, Italy, since 2005 and has been an associate fellow of Collegium Helveticum, ETH, in Zürich, Switzerland, since 2007. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Mind and Matter and writes and teaches in such areas as nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, psychophysical problems, and selected topics in the history and philosophy of science. Mark Bernstein is the Joyce and Edward E Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University, and a founding fellow of the Oxford Centre of Animal Ethics. He has written Fatalism (1992) and numerous articles on facets of the free will problem in Mind, Philosophical Studies, The Monist, and other journals. Most of his current research focuses on animal ethics. In addition to On Moral Considerability (1998), Without a Tear (2004), and several articles, he has a forthcoming book provisionally entitled Human-Animal Relations (Palgrave Macmillan) that argues for a robust moral status of animals grounded on the fact that humans and animals share a loving relationship.
Bernard Berofsky is professor emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University. His principal areas of interest are free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, and metaphysical topics, including causation and the self. His major works are: Liberation from Self, Freedom from Necessity, Determinism, Free Will and Determinism (an anthology) and numerous articles in major philosophical periodicals. He is a member of the executive committee of the editorial board of the Journal of Philosophy and has taught at the University of Michigan, Vassar College, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Robert C. Bishop is associate professor of Physics and Philosophy and the John and Madeleine McIntyre Professor for the Philosophy and History of Science at Wheaton College. He has published numerous articles on reduction and emergence, nonlinear dynamics, complexity, determinism and free will. His most recent book is The Philosophy of the Social Science
RandolphClarke is professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (2003) and a number of articles on agency, free will, and moral responsibility, including “Toward a Credible AgentCausal Account of Free Will” (1993), “Modest Libertarianism” (2000), and “Dispositions, Abilities to Act, and Free Will: The New Dispositionalism” (2009).
Daniel C. Dennett is university professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is also the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies there. His most recent book on free will is Freedom Evolves (2003) and among his recent articles are “Toward a Science of Volition,” with W. Prinz and N. Sebanz, in Disorders of Volition, edited by N. Sebanz and W. Prinz (2006), and “Some Observations on the Psychology of Thinking about Free Will,” in Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will, edited by John Baer, James C. Kaufman, Roy F. Baumeister (OUP, 2008).
Laura W. Ekstrom is chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of William & Mary. She is a graduate of Stanford University (B.A., Philosophy) and the University of Arizona (Ph.D., Philosophy). She is the author of Free Will: A Philosophical Study (2000) and the editor of Agency and Responsibility (2001). Her published articles include “A Coherence Theory of Autonomy” (1993), “Free Will, Chance, and Mystery” (2003), “Alienation, Autonomy, and the Self” (2005), and “Ambivalence and Authentic Agency” (2010). She is currently writing a book on luck and free will.
John Martin Fischer is distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, where he holds a University of California President’s Chair. He is the author of The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control (1994); (with Mark Ravizza), Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (1998); and Four Views on Free Will, coauthored with Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas (2007). He is the author of a trilogy of collections of his essays with Oxford University Press: My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (2006); Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will (2009); and Deep Control: Free Will and Values (forthcoming 2011).
Ishtiyaque Haji is professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary. He has research interests in action theory, ethical theory, metaphysics, and philosophical psychology. His publications include Moral Appraisability (OUP, 1998). Deontic Morality and Control (2002), Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Education (2008, with Stefaan Cuypers), Freedom and Value (2009), and Incompatibilism’s Allure (2009).
William Hasker (Ph.D., Edinburgh) is professor emeritus of philosophy at Huntington University, where he taught from 1966 until 2000. His main interests in philosophy are philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. He is the author of Metaphysics (1983), God, Time, and Knowledge (1989), The Emergent Self (1999), Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God (2004), and The Triumph of God over Evil (2008), and is coauthor or coeditor of several other volumes. He has authored
numerous articles in journals and reference works. He was the editor of Faith and Philosophy from 2000 until 2007.
David Hodgson is a Judge of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia. Although his career has been in the law, he has had a long interest and involvement in philosophy. He has published two philosophical books through Oxford University Press, Consequences of Utilitarianism (1967) and The Mind Matters (1991), and many articles on philosophical topics including consciousness, probability, plausible reasoning, and free will.
TedHonderich is Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London. He takes an adequate understanding of real causation to be plain and not to include probabilistic causation, determinism to be unrefuted, thinking about determinism and freedom to require more philosophy of mind, both compatibilism and incompatibilism to be false, the problem of the consequences of determinism to be mainly attitudinal, but new thinking about freedom in connection with the nature of consciousness to be needed or desirable. His small book, How Free Are You? The Determinism Question (OUP, 1993), is the most-translated modern book on the subject.
Robert Kane is University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of Free Will and Values (1985), Through the Moral Maze (1994), The Significance of Free Will (OUP, 1996), A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (OUP, 2005) and Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom (2010), among other works on mind and action, free will, ethics, and value theory.
Tomis Kapitan is professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University. He has also taught at Birzeit University, East Carolina University, the American University of Beirut, and Bogazici University. He is the author of several articles dealing with the free will problem, practical thinking, propositional attitudes, indexical reference, logical form, the semantics of variables, abduction, terrorism, self-determination, and political rhetoric. He has also edited or coedited three volumes, including The Phenomeno-Logic of the I (1999), and coauthored The IsraeliPalestinian Conflict: Philosophical Essays on Self-Determination, Terrorism, and the One-State Solution (2008).
Joshua Knobe is an assistant professor at Yale University, appointed both in the Program in Cognitive Science and in the Department of Philosophy. He is one of the founders of the “experimental philosophy” movement, and he has therefore published widely in both philosophy and psychology. He is coeditor, with Shaun Nichols, of the volume Experimental Philosophy (OUP, 2008).
Shaun Nichols holds a joint appointment in philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Arizona. He is author of Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment, coauthor (with Stephen Stich) of Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretense, Self-Awareness and Understanding Other Minds, and coeditor (with Joshua Knobe) of Experimental Philosophy (OUP, 2008).
Michael McKenna is professor of philosophy and the Keith Lehrer Chair in the Department of Philosophy and the Freedom Center at University of Arizona. He writes primarily on the topics of free will and moral responsibility. His book, Conversation and Responsibility (OUP, forthcoming), proposes a new theory of moral responsibility, one that understands responsibility in terms of a conversation between a responsible agent and those who hold her accountable for her actions. McKenna has held tenured positions at Florida State University and Ithaca College, as well as visiting positions at University of Colorado, Boulder, and Bryn Mawr College.
AlfredR.Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University and director of the Big Questions in Free Will Project (2010–13). He is the author of Irrationality (1987), Springs of Action (OUP, 1992), Autonomous Agents (1995), Self-Deception Unmasked (2001), Motivation and Agency (OUP, 2003), Free Will and Luck (OUP, 2006), and Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will (OUP, 2009). He also is the editor or coeditor of The Philosophy of Action (1997), Mental Causation (1993), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality (OUP, 2004), Rationality and the Good (2007), and Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work? (2010).
Eddy Nahmias is associate professor in the Philosophy Department and the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. He specializes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, free will, moral psychology, and experimental philosophy. He has published two dozen chapters and articles in these areas, is coeditor of Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings and is completing a book, Rediscovering Free Will (OUP), which develops a naturalistic theory of free will and considers scientific challenges to, and explanations of, free will.
Timothy O’Connor is professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has published numerous articles in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, and philosophy of religion. He is the editor of Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will (OUP, 1995) and coeditor of Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings (2003), Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will (2009), Emergence in Science and Philosophy and A Companion to the Philosophy of Action. He is the author of Persons and Causes (OUP, 2000) and Theism and Ultimate Explanation (2008).
Derk Pereboom is professor of philosophy at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in 1985, and subsequently taught at the University of Vermont for twenty-two years. He is the author of Living without Free Will (2001), Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (2011), and a coauthor of Four Views on Free Will (with Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, and Manuel Vargas) (2007). He has published articles on free will, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and history of modern philosophy.
ThomasPink is professor of philosophy at King’s College, London. He is the author of The Psychology of Freedom (1997), and Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004) and articles on ethics and the history of philosophy. He is currently complet-
ing a two-volume study of the ethical significance of action, The Ethics of Action (OUP), dealing both with freedom and with moral normativity. He is preparing an edition of Hobbes’s Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance for the Clarendon edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes, and an edition of Francisco Suarez’s ethical and political works for Liberty Fund.
PaulRussell is professor in philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he has taught since 1987. He has held research and teaching positions at Cambridge University, University of Virginia, Stanford University, University of Pittsburgh, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His publications include Freedom and Moral Sentiment (OUP, 1995) and The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise (2008). He has also edited, with Michael McKenna, Free Will and Reactive Attitudes (2008). His current and forthcoming projects include an edited collection The Philosophy of Free Will (with Oisin Deery) and The Limits of Free Will, which is a study of the contemporary debate.
DanielSpeak is associate professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside in 2002. His published work on free will and moral responsibility includes “Fanning the Flicker of Freedom” (American Philosophical Quarterly, 2001), “Toward an Axiological Defense of Libertarianism” (Philosophical Topics, 2004), and “The Impertinence of FrankfurtStyle Argument” (The Philosophical Quarterly, 2007). He is also interested in more general issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion.
SaulSmilansky is a professor at the department of philosophy in the University of Haifa, Israel. He is the author of Free Will and Illusion (OUP, 2000) and 10 Moral Paradoxes (2007), and numerous articles on free will and normative ethics.
Christopher Taylor is Paul Collins Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, maintaining an active career as a concert pianist and recording artist. He graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude, in mathematics from Harvard University (1992) and an M.M. in piano performance at New England Conservatory (1999). While pursuing the latter degree he began his philosophical collaboration with Daniel Dennett, the first fruit of which appeared in the first edition of The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (2002). He maintains active interests in the domains of causation and temporality, as well as in mathematical logic, computer science, and linguistics.
Peter van Inwagen is the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He has delivered the Maurice Lectures at King’s College, London, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University, the Stewart Lectures at Princeton University, and the Gifford Lectures at St Andrews University. His books include: An Essay on Free Will (OUP, 1983), Material Beings, Metaphysics (2002 [2nd ed.]), God, Knowledge, and Mystery, Ontology, Identity, and Modality, and The Problem of Evil (2006). He is at work on a book called Being: A Study in Ontology. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, and was president of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, 2008–2009.
ManuelVargas is professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco. With John Fischer, Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom, he coauthored Four Views on Free
Will (2007). He has published on a variety of topics including practical reason, psychopaths, evil, and Latin American philosophy.
Henrik Walter is professor for psychiatry, psychiatric neuroscience and neurophilosophy at the Charité in Berlin, Germany. He is board certified in neurology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy and holds doctoral degrees in medicine and philosophy. He is author of Neurophilosophy of Free Will (2001) and “Neurophilosophy of Moral Responsibility” (Philosophical Topics, 2004), and editor of several German books including The Nature of Emotion (2003), Morality, Rationality and the Emotions (2004), and From Neuroethics to Neurolaw? (2009). Empirically, he works on the neural and genetic basis of higher mental functions, in particular emotion regulation, the theory of mind, and volition.
David Widerker is professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He has published widely on the topics of free will and moral responsibility. He is a coeditor (with Michael McKenna) of Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities (2003). His recent articles include “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities” (Philosophical Review, 1995), “Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: A Further Look” (Philosophical Topics, 2000), “Agent-Causation and the Control-Problem” (Faith and Philosophy, 2005), “Libertarianism and the Philosophical Significance of Frankfurt Scenarios” (The Journal of Philosophy, 2006), and “A Defense of Frankfurt-Friendly Libertarianism” (Philosophical Explorations, 2009).
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INTRODUCTION: THE CONTOURS OF CONTEMPORARY FREE-WILL DEBATES (PART 2)
robert kane
This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Free Will, like the first edition published a decade ago, is meant to be a sourcebook or guide to current work on free will and related subjects. The first edition focused on writings of the last forty years of the twentieth century, in which there was a resurgence of interest in traditional issues about the freedom of the will in light of new developments in the sciences, philosophy, and humanistic studies. This second edition continues that focus, but adds discussion of debates about free will from the first decade of the twenty-first century. All the essays of this second edition have been newly written or rewritten for this volume. In addition, there are new essayists and essays surveying topics that have become prominent in debates about free will since the publication of the first edition.
What is often called “the free-will issue” or “the problem of free will,” when viewed in historical perspective, is related to a cluster of philosophical issues—all of them dealt with to some degree in this volume.1 These include issues about (1) moral agency and responsibility, dignity, desert, accountability, and blameworthiness in ethics; (2) the nature and limits of human freedom, autonomy, coercion, and control in social and political theory; (3) compulsion, addiction, self-control, selfdeception, and weakness of will in philosophy and psychology; (4) criminal liability, responsibility, and punishment in legal theory; (5) the relation of mind to body,
consciousness, the nature of action, and personhood in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive and neurosciences; (6) the nature of rationality and rational choice in philosophy and social theory; (7) questions about divine foreknowledge, predestination, evil, and human freedom in theology and philosophy of religion; and (8) general metaphysical issues about necessity and possibility, determinism, time and chance, quantum reality, laws of nature, causality, and explanation in philosophy and the sciences. Obviously, this volume does not discuss every aspect of these complex issues, but it does attempt to show how contemporary debates about free will are related to them.
In this introduction, I describe the contours of contemporary debates about free will and in the process provide an overview of the essays of the volume.
Free Will and Conflicting Views about Persons
The problem of free will arises when humans reach a certain higher stage of selfconsciousness about how profoundly the world may influence their behavior in ways of which they are unaware (Kane 1996, 95–96). The advent of doctrines of determinism or necessity in the history of ideas is an indication that this higher stage of awareness has been reached—which accounts for the importance of such doctrines in the long history of debates about free will (Woody 1998).
Determinist or necessitarian threats to free will have taken many historical forms—fatalist, theological, physical or scientific, psychological, social, and logical—all of which are discussed in this volume. But there is a core notion running through all forms of determinism that accounts for why these doctrines appear to threaten free will. Any event is determined, according to this core notion, just in case there are conditions (e.g., the decrees of fate, the foreordaining acts of God, antecedent physical causes plus laws of nature) whose joint occurrence is (logically) sufficient for the occurrence of the event: It must be the case that if these determining conditions jointly obtain, the determined event occurs. Determination is thus a kind of conditional necessity that can be described in variety of ways. In the language of modal logicians, the determined event occurs in every logically possible world in which the determining conditions (e.g., antecedent physical causes plus laws of nature) obtain. In more familiar terms, the occurrence of the determined event is inevitable, given these determining conditions.
Historical doctrines of determinism refer to different kinds of determining conditions, but they all imply that every event (including every human choice or action) is determined in this general sense.2 To understand why such doctrines might seem to pose a threat to free will, consider that when we view ourselves as agents with free will from a personal standpoint, we think of ourselves as capable
of influencing the world in various ways. Open alternatives seem to lie before us. We reason or deliberate among them and choose. We feel it is “up to us” what we choose and how we act; and this means that we could have chosen or acted otherwise—for, as Aristotle (1915, 1113b6) succinctly put it, “when acting is ‘up to us,’ so is not acting.” This “up to us-ness” also suggests that the origins or sources of our actions lie in us and not in something else over which we have no control— whether that something else is fate or God, the laws of nature, birth or upbringing, or other humans.
Historical doctrines of determinism may seem to pose a threat to either or both these conditions for free will. If one or another form of determinism were true, it may seem that it would not be (a) “up to us” what we chose from an array of alternative possibilities, since only one alternative would be possible; and it may seem that (b) the origin or source of our choices and actions would not ultimately be “in us” but in conditions, such as the decrees of fate, the foreordaining acts of God or antecedent causes and laws, over which we had no control. Yet these apparent conflicts can only be the first word on a subject as difficult as this one. Many philosophers, especially in modern times, have argued that, despite intuitions to the contrary, determinism (in all of its guises) poses no threat to free will, or at least to any free will “worth wanting,” as Daniel Dennett (1984) has put it.3
As a consequence, debates about free will in the modern era since the seventeenth century have been dominated by two questions, not one—the “Determinist Question”: “Is determinism true?” and the “Compatibility Question”: “Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinism?” Answers to these questions have given rise to two of the major divisions in contemporary free will debates, between determinists and indeterminists, on the one hand, and between compatibilists and incompatibilists, on the other. There are other questions central to modern debates about free will, as we shall see. But let us look at these two first.
The Determinist Question and Modern Science
One may legitimately wonder why worries about determinism persisted at all in the twentieth century, when the physical sciences—once the stronghold of determinist thinking—seemed to turn away from determinism. Modern quantum physics, according to its usual interpretations, has introduced indeterminism into the physical world, giving us a more sophisticated version of the Epicurean chance “swerve of the atoms” than the ancient philosophers could ever have conceived. We have come a long way since the eighteenth century when Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace, could claim that discoveries in mechanics and astronomy unified by Newton’s theory of gravitation, have made it possible
to comprehend in the same analytical expressions the past and future states of the system of the world. . . . Given for an instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes (Laplace 1951, 3–4).
Twentieth-century physics threatened this Laplacean or Newtonian determinist vision in several related ways. Quantum theory, according to its usual interpretations, denies that elementary particles composing the “system of the world” have exact positions and momenta that could be simultaneously known by any such intelligence (i.e., Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle”); and it implies that much of the behavior of elementary particles, from quantum jumps in atoms to radioactive decay, is not precisely predictable and can be explained only by probabilistic, not deterministic, laws. Moreover, the uncertainty and indeterminacy of the quantum world, according to the orthodox view of it, is not merely due to our limitations as knowers but to the nature of the physical world itself.
In the light of these indeterministic developments of twentieth-century physics, one may wonder why physical or natural determinism continues to be regarded as a serious threat to free will. That it continues to be so regarded is evident from many of the essays of this volume. Indeed, it is an important fact about the intellectual history of the past century that, while universal determinism has been in retreat in the physical sciences, determinist and compatibilist views of human behavior have been thriving while traditional anti-determinist and incompatibilist views of free will continue to be on the defensive.
What accounts for these apparently paradoxical trends? There are four reasons, I believe, why indeterministic developments in modern physics have not disposed of determinist threats to free will, all of them on display in this volume. First, there has been, and continues to be, considerable debate about the conceptual foundations of quantum physics and much disagreement about how it is to be interpreted. Orthodox interpretations of quantum phenomena are indeterministic, but they have not gone unchallenged. These issues about determinism and indeterminism in physics and the physical sciences generally—and their implications for the free-will problem—are the subject of essays of this volume by David Hodgson, Robert Bishop, and Harald Atmanspacher.
Hodgson’s essay, “Quantum Physics, Consciousness, and Free Will,” begins with an account of how quantum physics represents physical systems and how it differs from classical physics, focusing on three features of quantum theory that have been thought to be relevant to free will: indeterminism, nonlocality, and observer-participation. Hodgson critically examines various interpretations of quantum theory, including deterministic interpretations, such as the “many-worlds” interpretation and hidden variable interpretations (of Bohm and others). In the process he discusses, among other topics, puzzles about Schrodinger’s cat and a recent challenge to deterministic
interpretations of quantum theory in the form of a theorem devised by mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen, which they provocatively call “the free will theorem” (Conway and Kochen 2006, 2009). Hodgson then turns to the possible relations between quantum physics, consciousness, and free will, discussing the views of three thinkers who have argued in different ways for the relevance of quantum theory to both consciousness and free will: mathematician Roger Penrose, physicist Henry Stapp, and neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles. The essay concludes with a discussion of Hodgson’s own distinctive view about the relation of quantum physics, consciousness, and free will.
Robert Bishop’s essay, “Chaos, Indeterminism, and Free Will,” begins with a discussion of modern efforts to clarify and define the meaning of physical determinism. Four features of the Laplacean vision of physical determinism are distinguished—differential dynamics, unique evolution, value determinateness, and absolute prediction—and the relevance of each to free-will debates is discussed. Bishop then turns to the role of indeterminism in quantum mechanics and discusses current philosophical debates about the nature of indeterministic or probabilitic causation. He also considers debates about the possible relevance of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics in physical systems to free will as well as the possible relevance of recent research on far-from equilibrium physical systems pioneered by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine. Bishop concludes with some general remarks about the causal completeness of physical explanations and the possibility of emergent phenomena in physical systems.
These last two topics are considered in greater detail in the next essay by Bishop and physicist and philosopher Harald Atmanspacher, “The Causal Closure of Physics and Free Will.” The focus of their essay is the thesis known as the causal closure (or causal completeness) of physics (CoP)—the thesis, roughly, that all physical events can be fully explained by physical causes governed by the fundamental laws of physics. This thesis raises well-known questions central to free-will debates about the nature and possibility of “mental causation” of physical events, i.e., causation by psychological states and events (e.g., beliefs, desires, intentions). If all causes are physical causes, as CoP implies, it would seem that psychological states or events must be fully reducible to physical events or they would be epiphenomenal (see Kim 1998, 2005). Bishop and Atmanspacher consider objections to this closure principle and raise questions about it. In the light of their discussion of closure, they critically examine recent arguments by Lockwood (2005) and Levin (2007) (anticipated by Rietdijik 1966) that the theory of special relativity in physics has deterministic implications. Finally, they introduce a notion of “contextual emergence” (according to which lower-level descriptions of events in physical terms contain necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for higher-level descriptions in mental terms) and argue that such a notion of contextual emergence allows one to answer objections to the possibility of mental causation.
I suggested that there were four reasons why indeterministic developments in modern physics have not disposed of worries about determinism and free will. The first reason concerns the continuing debates just mentioned about the
interpretation of modern physical theories, such as quantum theory and relativity. A second reason is that contemporary determinists and skeptics about free will are often willing to concede (for the sake of argument) that the behavior of elementary particles is not always determined (cf. Honderich 1988; Weatherford 1991; Pereboom 1995). But they insist that this has little bearing on how we should think about human behavior, since quantum indeterminacy is comparatively negligible in macroscopic physical systems as large as the human brain and body. If physical systems involving many particles and higher energies tend to be regular and predictable in their behavior, modern determinists argue that we can continue to regard human behavior as determined at the macroscopic level “for all practical purposes” (or “near-determined,” as Honderich [1988, 1993] put it) even if microphysics should turn out to be indeterministic; and this is all that determinists need to affirm in free will debates. (This line of thought is developed by Honderich in his essay, which I discuss below.)
In addition, one often hears the argument that if undetermined quantum events did sometimes have nonnegligible effects on the brain or behavior, this would be of no help to defenders of free will. Such undetermined events would be unpredictable and uncontrollable, like the unanticipated emergence of a thought or the uncontrolled jerking of an arm—just the opposite of what we think free and responsible actions would be like (see, e.g., Dennett 1984; G. Strawson 1986; Honderich 1988; Double 1991). This argument has been made in response to suggestions by prominent twentieth-century scientists (such as Nobel prize-winning physicist A. H. Compton [1935]) that room might be made for free will in nature if undetermined events in the brain were somehow amplified to have large-scale effects on human choice and action. Unfortunately, this modern version of the Epicurean swerve of the atoms seems to be vulnerable to the same criticisms as its ancient counterpart. It seems that such undetermined events in the brain or body would occur spontaneously and would be more of a nuisance—or perhaps a curse, like epilepsy—than an enhancement of an agent’s freedom. As a result, modern debates about free will, as we see in many essays of this volume, have not only been concerned with questions about whether free will is compatible with determinism, but also about whether it is compatible with indeterminism.
A fourth, and perhaps the most important, reason why indeterministic developments in modern physics have not disposed of worries about determinism and free will has to do with developments in other sciences. While determinism has been in retreat in the physical sciences, developments in other sciences—biology, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, social and behavior sciences—have been moving in the opposite direction. They have convinced many persons that more of our behavior is determined by causes unknown to us and beyond our control than previously believed. These scientific developments include a greatly enhanced knowledge of the influence of genetics and heredity upon human behavior; a rapidly growing body of research on the functioning of the brain in the neurosciences; a greater awareness of biochemical influences on the brain; the susceptibility of human moods and behavior to drugs; the advent of psychoanalysis and other theories of unconscious
motivation; the development of computers and intelligent machines that mimic aspects of human cognition in deterministic ways; comparative studies of animal and human behavior that suggest that much of our motivational and behavioral repertoire is a product of our evolutionary history; and the influences of psychological, social, and cultural conditioning upon upbringing and subsequent behavior. (The impact of such trends on contemporary free-will debates is considered in many essays of this volume to which I will refer below, including those of Mele, Walter, McKenna, Taylor and Dennett, Knobe and Nichols, and Nahmias.)
The Compatibility Question and Arguments for Incompatibilism
These continuing concerns about determinism make the second pivotal question of modern free-will debates, the Compatibility Question, all the more important: Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinism? If it should turn out that determinism poses no real threat to free will because the two can be reconciled, then continuing worries about determinism in physics and other sciences would be misplaced. We could have all the freedom “worth wanting,” even if determinism should turn out to be true. To show that this is so has been the goal of modern compatibilists about free will since Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century. And compatibilist views continue to be popular in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries because they seem to offer a simple resolution of the conflict between ordinary views of human behavior from a practical standpoint and theoretical images of human beings in the natural and social sciences.
The prevalence of compatibilist views has in turn shifted the burden of proof back upon those who believe that free will is incompatible with determinism to provide arguments in support of their view; and one of the interesting developments of the past forty years is that new arguments for incompatibilism have appeared to meet this challenge. Recall the two features of free will mentioned earlier that seem to imply its incompatibility with determinism—(a) it is “up to us” what we choose from an array of alternative possibilities and (b) the origin or source of our choices and actions is in us and not in anything else over which we have no control. Most modern arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism have proceeded from condition (a)—the requirement that an agent acted freely, or of his or her own free will, only if the agent had alternative possibilities, or could have done otherwise. Let us refer to this requirement as the “alternative possibilities” (AP) condition. (It is also sometimes called the “could have done otherwise” condition or the “avoidability” condition.)
The case for incompatibility from this AP (or “could have done otherwise”) condition has two premises:
1. The existence of alternative possibilities (or the agent’s power to do otherwise) is a necessary condition for acting freely, or acting “of one’s own free will”;
2. Determinism is not compatible with alternative possibilities (it precludes the power to do otherwise).
Since it follows from these premises that determinism is not compatible with acting freely, or acting of one’s own free will, the case for incompatibilism from AP (and the case against) must focus on one of these premises. In fact, there have been heated and labyrinthine debates in recent philosophy about both premises. Premise 1 is just the AP condition itself (i.e., free will requires alternative possibilities or the power to do otherwise) and it has been subjected to searching criticisms. But I shall begin with premise 2, which has usually been regarded as the most crucial (and vulnerable) premise since it asserts the incompatibility of determinism with the power to do otherwise.
The most widely discussed argument in support of premise 2 in recent philosophy, the so-called “Consequence Argument,” is the subject of two further essays (comprising Part III) in this volume by Daniel Speak and Tomis Kapitan. The Consequence Argument was first formulated in varying ways in modern times by Carl Ginet (1966, 1980), David Wiggins (1973), Peter van Inwagen (1975, 1983), James Lamb (1977), and (in a theological form) by Nelson Pike (1965).4 Alternative formulations have since been proposed and defended by many others. Van Inwagen, who offers three versions of the argument, regards the three as versions of the same basic argument, which he calls the “Consequence Argument” and states informally as follows:
If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born; and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us (van Inwagen 1983, 16).
To say “it is not up to us what went on before we were born” or “what the laws of nature are” is to say that there is nothing we can now do to alter the past before we were born or the laws of nature. But if determinism is true, the past before we were born and the laws of nature jointly entail our present actions. So it seems that there is nothing we can now do to make our present actions other than they are. In sum, if determinism were true we would never have the power to do otherwise than we actually do, and hence determinism would preclude alternative possibilities, as premise 2 asserts.
Daniel Speak, in “The Consequence Argument Revisited,” surveys the most recent versions of this Consequence Argument and objections to them. He points out that “the” Consequence Argument, as stated by van Inwagen in the above quote, is really a schema for a whole family of arguments that may be regarded as particular versions or instantiations of the Consequence Argument. Speak considers objections made to some of the more well-known versions of the argument and recent
attempts by defenders to answer these objections by offering reformulated versions of it. Many objections involve a principle van Inwagen called “Beta,” which is regarded by many as the most controversial assumption of the argument.5 Beta is a “transfer of powerlessness” principle, which states, roughly, that if you are powerless to change something “p” (e.g., the past or the laws of nature), then you are also powerless to change any of the logical consequences of “p.” Speak discusses various formulations of Beta as well as purported counterexamples to it and responses to these counterexamples by current defenders of the Consequence Argument. He also considers other issues related to the argument, e.g., about the fixity of the laws and the past, among others.
Tomis Kapitan’s essay offers, as its title indicates, “A Compatibilist Reply to the Consequence Argument.” Like many compatibilist critics of the argument, Kapitan believes its soundness depends upon how one interprets modal notions such as power or ability (to bring something about) and avoidability (the power to do otherwise). Kapitan’s essay explores these “practical modalities,” and he shows how different interpretations of them yield different versions of the Consequence Argument. In the light of this discussion, he critically examines some familiar compatibilist responses to the argument, including those based on conditional analyses of the ability to do otherwise (which are discussed in the next section) and the response of David Lewis (1981), and finds them wanting. An adequate response, Kapitan argues, must identify an ability to act that is adequate for moral responsibility, yet invalidates the Consequence Argument; and the remainder of his essay attempts to identify such a notion.
Classical Compatibilism: Interpretations of “Can,” “Power,” and “Could Have Done Otherwise”
Historically, most compatibilists have believed, like Kapitan, that the Consequence Argument and all arguments for incompatibilism can be defeated by giving a proper analysis of what it means to say that agents can (or have the power or ability to) do something; and consequently there has been much debate in recent philosophy about the meaning of these notions. Traditionally, compatibilists have defined freedom generally in terms of “can,” “power,” and “ability.” To be free, they have insisted, means in ordinary language (i) to have the power or ability to do what you will (desire or choose or try) to do, and this entails (ii) an absence of constraints or impediments preventing you from doing what you will (desire or choose or try) to do. Note how the notion of “will” enters this picture. To be able to do what you will to do may variously mean what you desire (or want) to do or what you choose (or intend) to do or what you try (or make an effort) to do. “Will” thus becomes a cover
term for several different notions, all expressing in one way or another what we “will” to do. (In Kane 1996, chapter 2, I showed how these different notions relate to different senses of the term “will” in historical debates about free will, e.g., appetitive will, rational will, and striving will.6)
The constraints or impediments compatibilists typically have in mind preventing us from doing “what we will” may be internal constraints, such as paralysis or mental impairment, that affect our abilities to act, or external constraints, such as being physically restrained or coerced, that affect our ability and/or opportunities to act. You lack the freedom to meet a friend in a café across town if you are paralyzed or unconscious, tied to a chair, in a jail cell, lack transportation, or someone is holding a gun to your head preventing you. In this manner, compatibilists have insisted that (i) and (ii) capture what freedom means in everyday life—i.e., an absence of such constraints and hence the power (which equals ability plus opportunity) to do what you will to do.
A view that defines freedom in this way has been called classical compatibilism by Gary Watson (1975), and this is a useful designation. Classical compatibilists include well-known philosophers of the modern era such as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill, as well as numerous twentieth century figures (e.g., A. J. Ayer [1954], Moritz Schlick [1966], and Donald Davidson [1973]). Despite differences in detail, we can say that what these classical compatibilists have in common is that they define the freedom to do something in terms of (i) and (ii). What do they say about the freedom to do otherwise? They typically offer conditional or hypothetical analyses of the freedom to do otherwise in terms of (i) and (ii): Given that you have acted in a certain way, to say (iii) you were “free to do otherwise” or “could have done otherwise,” is to say that no constraints or impediments would have prevented you from doing otherwise, had you willed to do so. In other words, “you would have done otherwise, if you had willed (desired or chosen or tried) to do otherwise.” Classical compatibilists then typically argue that if the freedom to do otherwise has such a conditional or hypothetical meaning, it would be compatible with determinism. For it may be that you would have done otherwise, if you had willed to do otherwise (since nothing would have prevented you), even though you did not in fact will to do otherwise and even if what you in fact willed to do was determined.
Recent debates about the adequacy of such conditional analyses of freedom and about classical compatibilism in general are the subject of Bernard Berofsky’s essay, “Compatibilism After Frankfurt: Dispositional Analyses of Free Will,” which is the first of four essays (of Part IV) surveying recent compatibilist theories of freedom and responsibility. Berofsky’s essay begins with a discussion of objections to conditional or hypothetical analyses of freedom (and hence objections to classical compatibilism) that began to surface in the 1950s and 1960s in the work of Austin (1961), Chisholm (1964), Lehrer (1964, 1968), Anscombe (1971), and others. Four such objections to conditional analyses are discussed by Berofsky, some of which, he argues, can be successfully rebutted by classical compatibilists, but several of which present serious problems. These problems, as he explains, have led over the past fifty years
to the abandonment of conditional analyses of freedom (and hence to the abandonment of classical compatibilism) by many “new” compatibilists inspired by the work of Harry Frankfurt (1969, 1971), P. F. Strawson (1962), and others. These “new” compatibilist views are the subjects of the essays by Michael McKenna and Paul Russell (also in Part IV), to which I turn in the next section.
The concern of Berofsky’s essay, by contrast, is with the work of recent compatibilists who have resisted attempts to abandon classical compatibilism altogether and have attempted instead to offer improved conditional analyses of freedom that might escape the usual criticisms of such analyses. These new “conditionalist compatibilists,” as Berofsky calls them (who include Michael Smith [2003], Kadri Vivhelin [2004], Michael Fara [2008]), among others),7 appeal to insights from the rich recent philosophical literature on dispositions, or dispositional powers, and subjunctive conditionals to argue that free will is a kind of dispositional power and that dispositional powers are analyzable in terms that are compatible with determinism. Berofsky critically examines these views and the recent work on dispositions to which they appeal, arguing that while they are an improvement over classical compatibilist analyses of freedom, they face certain objections that have not yet been successfully answered. Berofsky thinks compatibilists must look beyond conditional accounts of freedom (to issues about the nature and alterability of laws) if they are to fully blunt the force of incompatibilist arguments; and he explains his own compatibilist alternative in these terms at the end of his essay.
Beyond Classical Compatibilism: New Compatibilist Approaches to Freedom
and Responsibility
As noted, the two essays of Part IV following Berofsky’s, by Michael McKenna and Paul Russell, deal with “new” compatibilist theories of freedom and moral responsibility that emerged in the past fifty years, inspired by the work of Harry Frankfurt (1969, 1971) (in the case of McKenna’s essay) and by work of P. F. Strawson (1962) (in the case of Russell’s essay).
McKenna, in “Contemporary Compatibilism: Mesh Theories and ReasonsResponsive Theories,” considers two of the most widely discussed types of new compatibilist theories under the headings of “mesh theories” and “reasons-responsive theories.” To understand the motivations for mesh theories, one must consider another shortcoming of classical compatibilism that was pointed out by Frankfurt and other modern philosophers. In a seminal paper (“Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” 1971), Frankfurt argued that to have freedom of will it is not sufficient to be able to do what you will or desire without impediments, as classical compatibilists such as Hobbes held. For it may be that your lack of freedom lies not
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jackie sees a star
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Title: Jackie sees a star
Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Illustrator: Alex Schomburg
Release date: July 28, 2024 [eBook #74144]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1954
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACKIE SEES A STAR ***
Jackie Sees a Star
By Marion Zimmer Bradley
Jackie's star was his own secret discovery at first. But then—even Dr. Milliken became excited.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe September 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Marion Zimmer Bradley is a New Englander by speech, habits and tradition. Transplanted to Texas four years ago, she complains that she never has enough room to roam in the sand flatssurroundingherdwelling. Coulditbethat, likeJackie,shemuchprefers thevastsweep of the Galactic universe—and a splendor which makesevenTexasseemspatiallyminute?
So you want to hear about the Edwards child? Oh, no, you don't get by with thatone! You can just put on your hat again, and walk right back down those stairs, Mister. We've had too many psychologists and debunkers around here, and we don't want any more.
Oh you're from the University? Excuse me, professor. I'm sorry. But if you knewwhat we've put up with, from reporters, and all kinds of crackpots ... and it isn't good for Jackie, either. He's getting awfully spoiled. If you knew how many paddlings I've had to give that kid in just this past week.
His mother? Me? Oh, no! No, I'm just Jackie's aunt. His mother, my sister Beth, works at the Tax Bureau. Jackie's father died when he was only a week old. You know ... he'd been in the Big Bombings in '64, and he never really got over it. It was pretty awful.
Anyhow, I look after Jackie while my sister works. He's a good little kid—spoiled, but what kid isn't, these days?
It was I who heard it first, as a matter of fact. You see, I'm around Jackie a lot more than his mother is.
I was making Jackie's bed one morning when he came up behind me, and grabbed me round the waist, and asked, real serious, "Aunt
Dorothy, are the stars really other suns like this one, and do they have planets too?"
I said, "Why, sure, Jackie. I thought you knew that."
He gave me a hug. "Thanks, Aunt Dorothy. I thought Mig was kidding me."
"Who's Mig?" I asked. I knew most of the kids on the block, you see, but there was a new little girl on the corner. I asked, "Is she the little Jackson girl?"
Jackie said, "Mig isn't a girl!" And did he sound disgusted! "Besides," he said, "Mig doesn't live 'round here at all. His name is really Migardolon Domier, but I call him Mig. He doesn't really talk to me. I mean, just inside my head."
I said, "Oh." I laughed a little bit, too, because Jackie isn't really an imaginative kid. But I guess most kids go through the imaginaryplaymate stage. I had one when I was a kid. I called her Bitsy—but anyway, Jackie just ran out to play, and I didn't think about it again until one day he asked me what a spaceship looked like.
So I took him to see that movie—you know the one Paul Douglas played in about the trip to Mars—but would you believe it, the kid just stuck up his nose.
"I mean a real spaceship!" he said. "Mig showed me a lot better one than that!"
So I spoke kind of sharp. You know, I didn't like him to be rude. And he said, "Well, Mig's father is building a spaceship. It goes all the way across the Gal—the gallazzy, I guess, and goes through—Aunt Dorothy, what's hyperspace?"
"Oh, ask Mig what it is," I said, real cross with him. You know how it is when kids act smart.
The next day was Saturday, so Beth was at home with Jackie, and I stayed with Mother. But when I came over Monday morning, she
asked me, "Dorrie, where on earth did Jack pick up all this rocketship lingo? And what kind of a phase is this Migbusiness?"
I told her I'd taken him to see ROCKET MARS, and she was quite provoked. Beth still thinks rockets are kind of comic-book stuff, and she gave me a long talk about trashy movies, and getting him too excited, and overstimulating his imagination, and so forth.
Then she gave me the latest developments on this Mig affair. It seemed that Jackie had given with the details. Mig was a little fellow who lived on a planet half-way across the "gallazzy," and his father was a rocketship engineer.
Well, you know how kids are about spaceships. Jackie wasn't quite six, but he's always been kind of old for his age. That afternoon he started teasing me to take him to the Planetarium. He kept on about it until I finally took him, that evening, after Beth got home. It was quite late when we left. The stars had all come out, and while we were walking home, I asked him which one of the stars Mig lived on. And, professor, do you know what that child said? He said, "You can't live on a star, dummy! You'd burn up! He lives on a planet around the star!"
He pointed off toward the north, fidgeted around for a few minutes, and finally said, "Well, the sky kind of looks different where Mig lives. But I think it's up there somewhere," and he pointed into the Big Dipper.
I didn't encourage the Mig business, but, good gosh, it didn't need encouraging. I guess it was two or three days later when Jackie told me that Mig's sun was going to blow up, so his father was building a spaceship, and they were coming here to live.
I kept a straight face. But I couldn't help wondering what would happen when Jackie got his Mig, so to speak, down to earth. Probably it would just ease the fantasy off into a more normal phase, and it would gradually disappear.
One night in August, Beth wanted to go to a movie with some girls from her office, so I stayed with Jackie. I was reading downstairs when I suddenly heard him bawling upstairs—not very loud, but real unhappy and pitiful.
I ran upstairs and took him up, thinking he'd had a bad dream, and held him, just shaking and trembling, until he finally quieted down to a hiccup now and then.
And then he said, in the unhappiest little voice, "Mig has to leave his —his erlingon the planet, to get blowed up with the sun! It's a little bitty thing like a puppy, but his Daddy says there isn't any room on the spaceship for it! But he got it for his—well, I guess it was kind of like a birthday—and he wanted to show it to me when he got here!"
Well!
I guess the lecture I gave him about imagination had something to do with it, because I didn't hear any more about Mig for quite some time. He kept Beth posted, though. He even told her when the spaceship was going to take off and when Mig's sun was going to blow up, or else where we'd see it. I don't know which. But anyway, he made her mark it down on the Calendar. The fifth of November, it was.
Well, in September I went back to college, and—well, I don't just talk about things outside of the family, but my boy friend, Dave, he was almost like one of the family, and this year he'd got a job working with Professor Milliken at the Observatory.
You know Professor Milliken, don't you? I thought so. I told Dave about this Mig phase of Jackie's, and one night when Dave was over at Beth's with me, he got the kid talking about it. He humored the kid a lot. He even took him over to the Observatory and let Jackie look through the big telescope there. And of course Jackie gave Dave all the latest details on Mig.
It seems that this spaceship had already taken off—that was why he hadn't heard much from Mig lately, because—"Mig's Daddy sealed him up in a little capsule, so he won't wake up till they are 'way out
