Hampshire on the ungrammaticality of 'self-prediction'

by JLS
for the GC

While Hampshire was 'posh', while Grice had been born on the 'wrong side of the tracks', Hampshire (being younger than Austin) was invited to Austin's Play Group meetings on Saturday mornings ('by invitation only', of course).

Berlin was not.

Berlin summarisses Hampshire's views. Grice thought that Hampshire and Hart had taken his ideas in "Disposition and intention" which he had taken from Stout. Grice grew to be an uncertainty-based indeterminist. But he wouldn't say it.

Hampshire advances the view that self-prediction is (logically) impossible.

When I say

'I know that I shall do X'
(as against, e.g.,
'X will happen to me', or 'You
will do X'), I am not contemplating myself, as I might someone else,
and giving tongue to a conjecture about myself and my future acts, as
I might be doing about someone else or about the behaviour ofan animal
-for that would be tantamount (if I understand him rightly) to looking
upon myself from outside, as it were, and treating my own acts as mere
caused events.

To use Grice's clever metaphor ("Disposition and intention" -- I'm on the stage, not on the first row." 1949). Grice thought that Hampshire had taken that idea from him. Hence his "Intention and uncertainty."

----

In saying that I know that I shall do X, I am, on this
view, saying that I have decided to do X.

For to predict that I shall in
certain circumstances in fact do X or decide to do X, with no reference to
whether or not I have already decided to do it - to say 'I can tell you
now that I shall in fact act in manner X, although I am, as a matter of
fact, determined to do the very opposite' - does not make *sense*.

Any
man who says 'I know myself too well to believe that, whatever I now
decide, I shall do anything other than X when the circumstances actually
arise' is in fact saying that
he does not really, i.e. seriously, propose to set himself against doing X,
that he does not propose even to try to act otherwise, that he has in
fact decided to let events take their course.

For no man who has truly
decided to try to avoid X can, in good faith, predict his own failure to act
as he has decided.

He may fail to avoid X, and he may predict this.

But
he cannot both decide to try to avoid X and predict that he will not even
try to do this.

For he can always try; and he knows this.

ANTHROPIC.

He knows that
this is what distinguishes him from non-human creatures in nature.

To
say that he will fail even to try is tantamount to saying that he has
decided not to try.

In this sense 'I know' means 'I have decided' and


(1 Iris Murdoch, S. N. Hampshire, P. L. Gardiner and D. F. Pears,
'Freedom and Knowledge', in D. F. Pears (ed.), Freedom and tAe Will
(London, 1963), pp. 80-104.)

"... cannot in principle be predictive."

I have a good deal of sympathy with Hampshire's position, for
I can see that self-prediction is often an evasive way of disclaiming
responsibility for difficult decisions, while deciding in fact to let events
take their course, disguising this by attributing responsibility for what
occurs to my own allegedly unalterable nature.

But I agree with
Hampshire's critics in the debate, whom I take to be maintaining that,
although the situation he describes may often occur, yet circumstances
may exist in which it is possible for me both to say that I am, at this
moment, resolved not to do X, and at the same time to predict that I
shall do X, because I am not hopeful that, when the time comes, I shall
in fact even so much as try to resist doing X. I can, in effect, say 'I know
myself well. When the crisis comes, do not rely on me to help you. I
may well run away; although I am at this moment genuinely resolved
not to be cowardly and to do all I can to stay at your side.

My prediction
that my resolution will not in fact hold up is based on knowledge of
my own character, and not on my present state of mind; my prophecy
is not a symptom of bad faith (for I am not, at this moment, vacillating)
but, on the contrary, of good faith, of a wish to face the facts. I assure
you in all sincerity that my present intention is to be brave and resist.
Yet you would run a great risk if you relied too much on my present
decision; it would not be fair to conceal my past failures of nerve from
you.' I can say this about others, despite the most sincere resolutions on
their part, for I can foretell how in fact they will behave; they can
equally predict this about me. Despite Hampshire's plausible and
tempting argument, I believe that such objective self-knowledge is
possible and occurs; and his argument does not therefore appear to me
to lessen the force of the determinist thesis. It seems to me that I can,
at times, though perhaps not always, place myself, as it were, at an
outside vantage point, and contemplate myself as if I were another
human being, and calculate the chances of my sticking to my present
resolution with almost the same degree of detachment and reiiability
as I should have if I were judging the case of someone else with all the
impartiality that I could muster. If this is so, then 'I know how I shall
act' is not necessarily a statement of decision: it can be purely descriptive.

Self-prediction of this kind, provided that it does not claim to be too
exact or infallible, and meets Popper's objection, cited above, by
remaining tentative, allowing for possible alterations of conduct as a
result of the self-prediction itself - seems possible and compatible with
determinism.

In other words, I see no reason to suppose that a deterministic
doctrine, whether about one's own behaviour or that of others, is in
principle incoherent, or incompatible with making choices, provided
that these choices are regarded as being themselves no less determined
than other phenomena. Such knowledge, or well-founded belief, seems
to me to increase the degree of rationality, efficiency, power; the only
freedom to which it necessarily contributes is freedom from illusions.
But this is not the basic sense of the term about which controversy has
been boiling for twenty-two centuries.

I have no wish to enter into the waters of the free will problem more
deeply than I already have.