Hare and Grice on freedom

By JLS
for the GC

Everyone at the Play Group was into 'free': Hamsphire, Hart, Hare, Grice, Nowell-Smith, Pears, Strawson, Austin, Gardiner, Thomson...

NOT Berlin.

In his "From hope and fear set free" by Berlin, considers Hare.

The views of R. M. Hare as presented in his relatively early "Freedom and
reason" (Oxford, 1963) are aptly summaried by Berlin in his inaugural
lecture, "From hope and fear set free".

The grammar of 'free':

R. M. Hare, distinguishes free acts from mere behaviour. A pointer to
whether I am free to do X is almost grammatical, and provided by asking oneself
whether it makes *sense* to ask

'Shall I do x?'

(or in his prescriptivist favoured version, 'Ought I to do X?')

Hare correctly says that one CAN ask

'*Will* I make a mistake?' or
'Will I be wrecked on the sea-shore?'

but

NOT

'Shall I make a mistake?' or
'Ought I to be wrecked?;

For to be wrecked or make a mistake cannot be part of a conscious choice
or purpose
- cannot, in the logical or conceptual sense of the word.

Ffrom this Hare concludes that we distinguish a "free" from an unfree
doing by the
presence or absence of whatever it is that makes it intelligible to ask
"Shall I climb the mountain?' but not 'Shall I misunderstand you?'".

----

Berlin goes on to consider similar points about 'the grammar of' "prediction" (self-prediction as ungrammatical) by Hampshire.