Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction
... The difference between the two is that the former (rightly, in my opinion) recognise that if our behaviour is ultimately determined by physical causes alone then this absolves us of any real guilt for wrongdoing, and deprives us of any right for credit for any noble actions we "choose" to perform. The compatibilist thesis, on the other hand, although consisting of a mosaic of different views [47], ultimately just comes down to not caring about our behaviour being determined by physics [46], but caring about preserving, at all cost except rejecting physical causal closure, our familiar, intuitive perception of moral responsibility while deliberately overlooking the fact that this perception is founded on a tacit libertarian free will intuition. ...
... Hard incompatibilists view the epiphenomenalist scenario as advantageous because it would allow us to suppress feelings of anger, indignation, hate etc. towards wrongdoers, since we would know that their behaviour was determined by factors outside of themselves [47,Chapter 11]. However, this argument is not really convincing, as it is clearly only an imaginative stratagem, a contrivance, perhaps well-intended, for preserving one's peace of mind in the face of predicaments by selectively focusing only on the implications of epiphenomenalism on the culpability of other wrongdoers. ...
... This is actually something very likely, as the details and the arguments of the compatibilist-incompatibilist debate reveal much confusion. For example, it is very surprising to me that the "consequence argument", which merely states the obvious, has had a large impact in the debate [47,Chapter 4]. This cannot be explained unless determinism was (and probably still is) misunderstood. ...
The mind is our most intimate and familiar element of reality, yet also the most mysterious. Various schools of thought propose interpretations of the mind that are consistent with their worldview, all of which face some problems. Some of these problems can be characterised as "hard", not in the sense of being difficult to solve (most problems concerning the mind are difficult), but in the sense of being most likely insurmountable: they bring to the surface logical inconsistencies between the reality of the mind as we perceive it and the fundamental metaphysical tenets of that particular worldview, thus putting the latter in danger of being disproven. This essay focuses mainly on the hard problems that the author considers to be of greatest importance for physicalism, the currently prevalent worldview. Nevertheless, some of these hard problems pertain also to other views such as panpsychism. In the author's opinion, the hardest and most profound of these, pertaining equally to physicalism and to panpsychism, is the one discussed in Section 4: the particular subjective first-person viewpoint that defines a particular person can be found nowhere in the universe except in that person itself; all outside entities (physical or mental) are equally neutral towards the "particularity" of that person, which therefore cannot be explained as arising from any combination of such outside elements. Therefore, a person is a simple substance. Other hard problems discussed concern the physical explanation of conscious experiences and the physical explanation of meaning, while their repercussions with respect to free will and ethics are also examined. Although these latter hard problems have already been discussed elsewhere, a somewhat fresh perspective is given here by someone who is not a professional philosopher but a physical scientist.
... McKennna and Pereboom (2016) add to the determinist thesis asserting that it is a general thesis applying to the aspects of the natural order in any way. ...
... Rather, free will is thoroughly examined by neuroscientist and psychologists (Nahmias, 2002;Mele, 2008;McKenna and Pereboom, 2016). The examination by the neuroscientists and psychologist are dominating because they are compelling. ...
The conventional notion of free will does not possess formidable counter
arguments to modern neurobiological investigations proving the implausibility
of free will. The pool of evidence gathered by cognitive neuroscientists makes
strong justifications to truncate the conception of free will. The research of
Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner explicate the physical and cognitive
limitations that makes free will untenable. Their position purports that we are
neurobiologically determined. However, their empirical assessment of free will
misguides their conclusion. Free will as a conceptual problem requires an
assessment beyond the empirical domain. Despite the solid claims from
neurobiological determinism, neurobiological determinism ignores the
metaphysical entailment in action. Hence, it gives an unsatisfactory account for
human action. This leads to my proposal of neurobiological freedom.
... pp. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Поскольку мир, в котором она живет, индетерминистичен, то она может принять любое решение. Представим, что Бог проделывает подобный перезапуск мира 1000 раз подряд. ...
Глава 19 "Свобода воли" из книги Кононова Е. А. "Аналитическая метафизика. Тематический обзор"
... Very importantly, the third thesis of attunement carries the heavier burden of explaining how this approach to motivated behavior overcomes the well-known "luck objection" to libertarian accounts of free will (McKenna & Pereboom, 2016). In our context of discussion, it is the problem of explaining how the material underdetermination of an agent's actions does not entail that her purported autonomously motivated behavior ends-up being really a random o lucky outcome of indeterministic processes. ...
In a recent remarkable article, Froese (2023) presents his Irruption Theory to explain how motivations can make a behavioral difference in motivated activity. In this opinion article, we review the main tenets of Froese’s theory, and highlight its difficulty in overcoming the randomness challenge it supposedly solves, that is, the issue of how adaptive behavior can arise in the face of material underdetermination. To advance our understanding of motivated behavior in line with Froese’s approach, we recommend that future work should endorse a multilevel pluralistic approach to causation and explanation in which motivations could genuinely play an irreducible role. Additionally, in line with the life-mind continuity thesis, we suggest that the best place to look for the interplay between motivations and nonmotivational physical, biological, and dynamical factors, may be at the level of the continuous feeling of being an embodied, living organism.
... Desde la filosofía se discuten dos principales posiciones frente al libre albedrío: el compatibilismo y el incompatibilismo. Mientras que la primera postura afirma la compatibilidad entre el determinismo y el libre albedrío, la segunda niega la posibilidad de que, en un universo determinista, o incluso indeterminista, el libre albedrío pueda metafísicamente existir (Muñoz, 2012;Harris, 2012;McKenna y Pereboom, 2016). ...
En este artículo se aborda de manera crítica la conveniencia de crear nuevos neuroderechos humanos para enfrentar el uso de las tecnologías de neuropredicción y de detección de mentiras en materia penal. Sobre dicho punto, se argumenta que los neuroderechos podrían ser conceptualmente problemáticos, u ofrecer una protección menor de la que puede extenderse por mejores interpretaciones de los actuales derechos fundamentales y los principios constitucionales del derecho penal. El artículo finaliza formulando una nueva propuesta crítica para limitar definitivamente los usos indignos de la neurotecnología y plantear la abolición del derecho penal; a esta propuesta la hemos denominado “neuroabolicionismo pe-nal”.
... Hence in agent-causal libertarianism not all physical events that occur in our bodies are physically explainable -physical causal closure does not hold. See [19,Chapter 10] or [27,Section 5.2] for more details. 6 The halting problem is the question of whether a computational algorithm will terminate in a finite number of steps or continue to infinity. ...
In recent literature there has been increased interest in the so-called "paradox of predictability" (PoP) which purportedly shows that a deterministic universe is fundamentally unpredictable, even if its initial state and the laws that govern it are known perfectly. This ostensible conclusion has been used to support compatibilism, the thesis that determinism is compatible with free will: supposedly, the PoP shows that determinism is misunderstood and actually allows freedom, hence also free will. The present paper aims to disprove this conclusion and show that the PoP has absolutely no implication concerning the predictability of deterministic systems and the nature of determinism itself. Hence the PoP is irrelevant to the free will debate. Its paradoxy arises from a confusion between mental and physical notions in its formulation (the PoP tacitly premises a mental arbiter with respect to whom notions such as prediction and signification have meaning) and disappears once it is expressed in purely physical language. Ultimately, the PoP demonstrates not that prediction is impossible under determinism, but merely the obvious fact that it is impossible to predict while simultaneously acting so as to disprove your prediction. The impossibility of self-prediction is also discussed.
... (leeway) 16 CLMPST "Free Will and the Ability to Change Laws of Nature" 2 1 1 (consequence argument) (leeway compatibilist) (leeway) (e.g., Levy and MacKenna, 2009;Beebee, 2013;McKenna and Pereboom, 2016;Berofsky, 2017;Finch, 2017;Timpe, 2017) -17 - ...
Humean compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible with leeway freedom. They refute one of the premises of the consequence argument that we have no choice about the laws of nature, and they do this by arguing that the laws of nature does not prevent us from doing otherwise by necessity since the laws of nature are just regularities. One of the humean compatibilists, Bernald Berofsky, starts off his critique of this premise by pointing out that the standard consequence argument fails to deal with the relationship between the physical and the mental. In order to overcome this deficit, he builds the expanded consequence argument, and argues that even this expanded argument has a corresponding false premise, namely that no matter what we do, the sentences representing the laws of nature are true. At the same time, he accepts two supervenience theses: (i) humean supervenience about laws and (ii) physicalism, especially the thesis that mental properties strongly supervene on physical properties. In this article, I argue that these two theses, together with the reasonable premises and inference rules, entail that no matter what we do, we cannot choose otherwise than we actually do. I conclude that Berofsky's defense of humean compatibilism fails because humean compatibilism would not succeed without abandoning either humean supervenience about laws or physicalism.
... If they do indeed vary, we can think of this as a reason to loosen what might be held fixed in assessing the truth of such attributions. Consider an example involving language-speaking ability (Lewis 1986; the specific example is from McKenna andPereboom 2016, 74, embellished in Pereboom 2021, 143-44). Mario speaks both Italian and English very well. ...
... We will have to forgo a full explanation of key concepts and to abstain from engaging with the vast literature on free will and its compatibility with determinism. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] The essay will also not examine the empirical evidence about illusions of free will 16 and about the ability to predict a subject's decisions based on brain activity. 17,18 Nor will it address the cultural, historical, and legal aspects of free will. ...
This essay addresses the implications of integrated information theory (IIT) for free will. IIT is a theory of what consciousness is and what it takes to have it. According to IIT, the presence of consciousness is accounted for by a maximum of cause-effect power in the brain. Moreover, the way specific experiences feel is accounted for by how that cause-effect power is structured. If IIT is right, we do have free will in the fundamental sense: we have true alternatives, we make true decisions, and we - not our neurons or atoms - are the true cause of our willed actions and bear true responsibility for them. IIT's argument for true free will hinges on the proper understanding of consciousness as true existence, as captured by its intrinsic powers ontology: what truly exists, in physical terms, are intrinsic entities, and only what truly exists can cause.
... Compatibilism assumes that even if determinism is true, we would still have free will, while incompatibilism, 2 excludes the possibility that free will exists if determinism is assumed to be true. (McKenna and Pereboom, 2016). It is also interesting to note that, within sociology, there is a strong debate around structure versus agency, which could imply that society determines human behavior (Stones, 2015). ...
Penal Neuroabolitionism is a complementary thesis to the sociological abolitionism of Nils Christie, Thomas Mathiesen and Louk Hulsman. This new approach is based on the findings of science, especially neuroscience, to provide new arguments to the abolitionist perspective that criminal law is an illegitimate mechanism of social control. In that sense, it closely approximates neurosociology as a new scope for transdisciplinary social analysis. In this brief opinion, we offer three commentaries for future work: on the neuropsychological effects of prison, on the ability of neuroscience to analyze and prevent criminogenic social factors, and a critical perspective on free will as a narrative to justify criminal law as a mechanism of social control. These considerations invite scholars around the world to study, within the field of neuroscience, the new arguments for penal abolitionism.
Contemporary compatibilists, united in the view that freedom and determinism are compatible, are nevertheless divided. Leeway compatibilists maintain that freedom is characterized by the ability to do otherwise, whereas source compatibilists hold that freedom consists in the actual sequence of events issuing in the action. In this article, I offer a hybrid account drawing on insights from both camps. My account hinges on a distinction between free agency and free action. I suggest that one should employ the leeway model when theorizing about free agency, and the source model when theorizing about free action. This enables compatibilists to resolve an apparent conflict: Frankfurt-style cases suggest that freedom does not require alternative possibilities but this goes strongly against our common-sense conception of freedom. In addition, my account helps compatibilists to gain a more complete and coherent understanding of human freedom.
W artykule przedstawiam i komentuję pięć argumentów przeciwko istnieniu wolnej woli: argument z prawdziwości determinizmu albo indeterminizmu, argument z poten-cjału gotowości, argument z automatyzmu i złudzenia kontroli, argument z causa sui, argument z niewiarygodności libertarianizmu i kompatybilizmu. Argumenty te uznaję za mocne i dające dobre wsparcie sceptycyzmowi w sprawie wolnej woli. Szkicuję też pewną wizję podmiotu działania, w której upatruję szansy na przełamanie tych argumentów. W wizji tej kluczowy jest postulat istnienia nieprzyczynowych relacji między racjami, decyzjami i działaniami, które zarazem uzależniają działania od podmiotu, nie pozostawiając tej sprawy przypadkowi.
Free will discourse is primarily centred around the thesis of determinism. Much of the literature takes determinism as its starting premise, assuming it true for the sake of discussion, and then proceeds to present arguments for why, if determinism is true, free will would be either possible or impossible. This is reflected in the theoretical terrain of the debate, with the primary distinction currently being between compatibilists and incompatibilists and not, as one might expect, between free will realists and skeptics. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that there is no reason to accept such a framing. We show that, on the basis of modern physics, there is no good evidence that physical determinism of any variety provides an accurate description of our universe and lots of evidence against such a view. Moreover, we show that this analysis extends equally to the sort of indeterministic worldviews endorsed by many libertarian philosophers and their skeptics, a worldview which we refer to as determinism plus randomness. The papers secondary aim is therefore to present an alternative conception of indeterminism, which is more in line with the empirical evidence from physics. It is this indeterministic worldview, we suggest, that ought to be the central focus of a reframed philosophy of free will.
Christopher Franklin summarizes the standard argument for an agent-causal libertarian account of free will and formulates an alternative, which he calls the ‘It Ain’t Me’ argument. The latter relies on agent-causal libertarianism’s causal non-reductivism. Franklin suggests that agent-causal libertarians should support their position by defending a nonreductive agent-causal account of reasons-responsive agency instead of employing the standard argument. This paper summarizes a proposed agent-causal account of free will; argues for a nonreductive agent-causal account of reasons-responsive agency in doing so; and supports the proposed account with a variant of Franklin’s ‘It Ain’t Me’ argument.
The chemistry of combining the simulation hypothesis (which many believe to be a modern variation of skepticism) and manipulation arguments will be explored for the first time in this paper. I argue: If we take the possibility that we are now in a simulation seriously enough, then contrary to a common intuition, manipulation very likely does not undermine moral responsibility. To this goal, I first defend the structural isomorphism between simulation and manipulation: Provided such isomorphism, either both of them are compatible with moral responsibility, or none of them is. Later, I propose two kinds of reasons – i.e., the simulator-centric reason and the simulatee-centric reason – for why we have (genuine) moral responsibilities even if we are in a simulation. I close by addressing the significance of this paper in accounting for the relevance of artificial intelligence and its philosophy, in helping resolve a long-locked debate over free will, and in offering one reminder for moral responsibility specialists.
Response-dependence about moral responsibility argues that someone is morally responsible if and only if, and because , they're an appropriate target of reactive attitudes. But if we can be partially morally responsible, and if reactive attitudes are too coarse-grained to register small differences in normatively significant features of agents, then response-dependence is false. Shawn Wang dubs this the “Granularity Challenge.” This article rejects the second premise of the Granularity Challenge. Human emotions are fine-grained enough to register small differences in normatively significant features of agents. One illustrative example of this, I argue, is how children gradually emerge as partially responsible agents.
This paper seeks to determine the extent to which individuals with borderline personality disorders can be held morally responsible for a particular subset of their actions: disproportionate anger, aggressions and displays of temper. The rationale for focusing on these aspects lies in their widespread acknowledgment in the literature and their plausible primary association with blame directed at BPD patients. BPD individuals are indeed typically perceived as “difficult patients” (Sulzer 2015:82; Bodner et al. 2011), significantly more so than schizophrenic or depressive patients (Markam 2003). The “responsibility question” for patients with BPD has already been raised (Martin 2010; Zachar and Potter 2009; Bray 2003), but this paper tackles it from a novel perspective. First, I narrow down the category of things for which the responsibility question is specific to individual with BPD. After that, I argue that some of the diagnosis criteria of BPD such as emotional instability or impulsivity might serve as excusing factors targeting the “control condition” on moral responsibility. Second, this paper also considers another widely accepted condition on moral responsibility: the epistemic condition. The view defended in the paper is that the answer to the responsibility question for individuals with BPD, concerning both the control condition and the epistemic condition, hinges on an understanding of their epistemic profile.
The discussion of free will and determinism is one of the most prominent topics in philosophy, with a long history of debate. Numerous philosophers and theologians have explored this topic from various ideological perspectives, resulting in diverse, often conflicting, interpretations. This discussion resonates with many individuals, as they evaluate their behaviors through these philosophical lenses. In theology, complexities arise due to the necessity for theologians to reconcile their inquiries with their beliefs. According to Christian theology, God is omniscient and has foreknowledge of all human actions. While the concept of free will is defined in various ways, theologians struggle to provide a thorough investigation because of the complexities inherent in the concepts of omniscience and free will. However, William of Ockham, a radical theologian, approached this topic with his logical judgment, offering a significant contribution to the discourse on free will and determinism in Christian theology. His response to Aristotelian teachings on fatalism and future contingents established a stronger foundation for understanding these concepts. In this research, I examine the medieval philosophical views on free will and determinism and how Ockham addressed their contradictions.
Addictions are strong appetites. A compulsion is an overwhelming and intense desire leading to immediate action that seems to crowd out other impulses and mental states since one’s attention is so focused on, say, acquiring and taking a drug. Compulsion in drug addiction is often viewed as resulting from impaired “self-control.” In this chapter, I explore the relationship between the interrelated topics of free will-determinism, addiction, compulsion, and self-control. Having a feeling of compulsion to use drugs is, by itself, irrelevant to whether the related actions are free according to both determinists and compatibilists. Compatibilists, such as Frankfurt, argue that the issue turns more on the presence or absence of certain second-order desires. I raise some questions about this so-called “deep self” compatibilist view, such as whether we should always treat the second-order desires as reflecting one’s true self. It is actually through introspection that we sometimes consciously experience having some kind of “self-control.” There may even be the beginnings of a brain-based account of self-control which can explain how our becoming consciously aware of our compulsions and using executive functions can sometimes lead to controlling addictive cravings.
Anthony Giddens focuses on the relationship between individual identity and modern institutions, arguing that the reflexivity of modernity reaches the very core of the self. The self thus becomes a reflexive project, one that is clearly influenced by institutional changes. Giddens writes:Modern institutional reflexivity, or “the regularized use of knowledge about circumstances of social life as a constitutive element in its organization and transformation”, influences identity by mediating its institutional dimension. This leads to the intertwining of personal and social transformation, with law playing a significant role. Giddens also argues that individual subjectivity conditions one’s identity. In other words, an individual possesses identity precisely through personal relationships with oneself and others, and through the ability to direct one’s own life. He suggests that changes in identity need to be experienced, shaped and sometimes reconstructed through a reflexive process—in which personal and social transformation are intertwined. In my view, this is closely related to the legal sphere and discovering authentic subjectivity through and within modern law. This process is associated with empowering the individual by granting them certain rights, and by assigning them duties and responsibilities for their actions. This means that personal identity is a right that is bound up with being human, as every human being becomes a person from the moment they acquire legal subjectivity.
On Kant's view, we are rational beings who are morally responsible for our actions. The main goal of this paper is to show that this Kantian view of ourselves is not undermined by the Manipulation Argument, which is currently the biggest challenge to compatibilism. To this end, I argue that a Kantian account of freedom offers a new soft‐line reply to this argument. On this Kantian account, moral responsibility requires not only positive freedom but also negative freedom. An agent is free in the positive sense just in case the agent has the rational capacity to act in compliance with moral norms. And an agent lacks negative freedom regarding their actions when these actions are determined by internal or external factors beyond their rational control. Based on this Kantian account, I provide a principled explanation of why there is a significant difference between manipulated actions and merely causally determined actions regarding moral responsibility. In addition, I bring out the distinctive characteristics of my Kantian account further by comparing it with two competing conceptions of freedom: leeway freedom and sourcehood freedom.
In recent literature there has been increased interest in the so-called “paradox of predictability” (PoP) which purportedly shows that a deterministic universe is fundamentally unpredictable, even if its initial state and governing laws are known perfectly. This ostensible conclusion has been used to support compatibilism, the thesis that determinism is compatible with free will: supposedly, the PoP reveals that the nature of determinism is misunderstood and actually allows freedom, hence also free will. The present paper aims to disprove this conclusion and show that the PoP has absolutely no implication concerning the predictability of deterministic systems and the nature of determinism. Its paradoxy arises from a confusion between mental and physical notions in its formulation (the PoP tacitly premises a mental arbiter with respect to whom notions such as prediction and signification have meaning) and disappears once it is expressed in purely physical language. Ultimately, the PoP demonstrates not that prediction is impossible under determinism, but merely the obvious fact that it is impossible to predict while simultaneously acting so as to disprove one’s own prediction. The related issue of the impossibility of self-prediction is also discussed.
In the initial chapter, Cenk Tan scrutinizes Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s
End” as a work of science fantasy, employing the critical framework of (hard)
determinism, free will, and predestination. Tan argues that, positioned as an
advocate of determinism, “Childhood’s End” presents a compelling argument
against the existence of free will. According to Clarke’s narrative, humans
lack the capacity for true free will, and the ability to make choices does not
necessarily affirm the existence of free will. This perspective implies that
individuals are unable to break free from a destructive cycle, conveying a
pessimistic message that suggests people are destined to be perpetually reliant
on determinism.
Los neuroderechos constituyen una innovadora propuesta para crear nuevos derechos humanos que regulen el exacerbado avance de las neurotecnologías. No obstante, el contenido conceptual y la pertinencia legal de estos derechos son objeto de amplio debate actualmente. En este trabajo, tras ofrecer un panorama de las respuestas que los neuroderechos proporcionan al avance neurotecnológico, nos centraremos en el análisis conceptual de la libertad cognitiva, considerada como un prerrequisito para el resto de neuroderechos. El análisis se basará en las dimensiones negativa y positiva de este derecho. En el primer caso, la libertad cognitiva se relaciona estrechamente con la propuesta de un neuroderecho al libre albedrío. En el segundo caso, se relaciona con el acceso a las neurotecnologías de mejora cognitiva.
Frankfurt‐style action cases have been immensely influential in the free will and moral responsibility literatures because they arguably show that an agent can be morally responsible for a behavior despite lacking the ability to do otherwise. However, even among the philosophers who accept Frankfurt‐style action cases, there remains significant disagreement about whether also to accept Frankfurt‐style omission cases – cases in which an agent omits to do something, is unable to do otherwise, and is allegedly morally responsible for that omission. Settling this debate about Frankfurt‐style omission cases is significant because the resolution entails an important fact about moral responsibility: whether there is there a moral asymmetry between actions and omissions with respect to the ability to do otherwise. My proposal is that both Frankfurt‐style action cases and omission cases involve the same type of causal structure: causal preemption. However, the preemptor and the preemptee differ. In action cases, the Frankfurted agent preempts the neuroscientist and is causally and morally responsibility for the effect. In omission cases, Frankfurted agent is neither causally nor morally responsible for the effect. Instead, the neuroscientist preempts the Frankfurted agent. Thus, there are no Frankfurt‐style omission cases.
En este escrito se reseña brevemente el problema de considerar la posibilidad de obrar en contrario como un elemento de la culpabilidad y se propone una interpretación del concepto de libertad compatible con el determinismo y, a su vez, con la responsabilidad penal. Finalmente, se aplican las consideraciones expuestas al análisis de la naturaleza de la disculpa y la ubicación sistemática de la inimputabilidad en la teoría material del delito.
In this paper, I challenge the Consequence Argument for Incompatibilism by arguing that the inference principle it relies upon is not well motivated. The sorts of non‐question‐begging instances that might be offered in support of it fall short.
This paper makes the claim that if Agent Causation Libertarian (free will) is true, we are still not morally responsible for our actions, due to our will existing prior to this.
In southwest Madagascar a conflict emerges between conservationists trying to protect a coral reef ecosystem and fishery, and local fishing people who subsist on selling octopus, fish and sea cucumber for export. Vezo fishers adapt to environmental changes by targeting fast-growing marine species and by migrating to distant resource frontiers. At the same time, they also participate in conservation initiatives such as periodic closures of designated coral reefs aiming to manage local octopus populations. This chapter asks why the perceptual evidence of ecological processes, which is in principle shared by fishers and conservationists, does not suffice to produce moral agreement or consensus on what one should do about environmental changes. As objects of joint attention, ecological processes and conservation efforts are both subject to divergent interpretations depending on which "worldviews" or "conceptual frameworks" the parties bring to bear on the issues. This chapter argues that while distinguishing between, on the one hand, perceptions of the environment (also referred to as "ecological facts", or "environmental affordances"), and on the other, ethical stances (also referred to as "moral appraisals", or "conceptions of well-being"), makes sense within any particular worldview, it is misleading to equate this distinction with the exclusively modern, science-based, nature-culture dichotomy.KeywordsCoral reefsEnactivismEnvironmental AffordanceMoral relativismNature-culture dualismSmall-scale fisheriesTheories of perceptionVezo people
Because an agent’s constitutive luck may seem to preclude free will, it may seem to preclude moral responsibility. An agent is basically morally responsible for performing action A at time t only if there is another possible world with the same past up to t and the same laws of nature in which the agent does not perform A at t . A compatibilist can solve the constitutive luck problem for moral responsibility without worrying about basic moral responsibility. According to compatibilism, if determinism is true, then agents can be morally responsible for performing actions without being basically morally responsible for performing them. But a libertarian who thinks agents can be basically morally responsible for what they do must explain how basic moral responsibility is possible. ACT-endorsing libertarianism can both solve the constitutive luck problem for moral responsibility and explain how agents can be basically morally responsible for what they do.
C.C.E. Schmid’s doctrine of intelligible fatalism was immensely influential in the immediate reception of Kant’s philosophy. Existing treatments of this doctrine, largely neglected by modern scholarship, echo uncharitable interpretations espoused by Schmid’s contemporaries. I demonstrate that Schmid’s intelligible fatalism is more coherent and philosophically robust than hitherto recognized. I argue for a novel interpretation of Schmid’s account of rational agency, showing that intelligible fatalism is compatible with his conceptions of freedom, obligation, and imputation. Specifically, I argue that the role of consciousness in this account carves out conceptual space for a distinction between the theoretical and the practical that is sufficient to render intelligible fatalism consistent with these conceptions.
This chapter pursues an alternative understanding of freedom in tic disorders, which frames it as the ability to act in accordance with one’s goals and values (or ‘cares and concerns’) in the world. Drawing on the distinction between pre-reflective and reflective consciousness introduced in Chap. 3, I ask what role each plays in this alternative notion of freedom. On the one hand, I argue that being too reflectively conscious of one’s actions can get in the way of acting freely. People with tic disorders are at heightened risk of such ‘hyper-reflexivity’ since symptoms often demand their own and others’ explicit attention and interfere with everyday activities. On the other hand, reflective consciousness can serve a positive therapeutic role in behavioural and acceptance-based interventions for tics. In these approaches, consciously attending to aspects of symptoms – such as the urge to tic – can help individuals manage their symptoms and enhance their sense of agency. While the current therapeutic paradigm remains symptom-centric and focused on reducing tics, the chapter concludes by outlining alternative, strength-based strategies for treating tic disorders which transcend the deficit-model of disease.
This chapter traces how dominant philosophical views of volition and ‘free will’ have shaped the study of tic disorders and Tourette Syndrome (TS). Are primary tics voluntary or involuntary? And is voluntary action affected more broadly by the presence of tics? While responses to these questions vary in the scholarship, most contributions draw on a classic experimental paradigm: That pioneered by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s. I show how Libet’s notion of volition as a conscious ‘veto power’ commonly expressed through motor control has led to the view that tic suppression is paradigmatic of free will in Tourette’s. Alternative views proposed by some authors suggest that actions are voluntary when they are consciously intended, not necessarily inhibited. I show how this latter emphasis on consciousness has re-focused the debate on subjective experience, and particularly on the contested role of premonitory urges and sensory phenomena in TS. By drawing on insights from philosophical phenomenology, I propose that we should reconsider what it means to be conscious of an experience such as an urge to tic, and that doing so promises to advance our understanding of the elusive link between the experience and inhibition of tic disorder symptoms.
Several recent incompatibilist accounts of divine grace and human free will have appealed to the notion of quiescence in an attempt to avoid semi-Pelagianism while retaining the fallen person’s control over coming to faith and thus the agent’s responsibility for failing to come to faith. In this essay I identify three distinct roles that quiescence has been employed to play in the recent literature. I outline how an account of divine grace and human free will may employ quiescence to play one role without playing either of the others. I also note that getting clear about these roles allows us to see that so-called sourcehood accounts of free will do not need to appeal to quiescence to avoid semi-Pelagianism. Far from being a benefit of sourcehood accounts, however, this highlights a serious defect in such accounts; I draw out this defect, developing it into a general argument against sourcehood accounts of free will.
Within the criminal justice system, one of the most prominent justifications for legal punishment is retributivism. The retributive justification of legal punishment maintains that wrongdoers are morally responsible for their actions and deserve to be punished in proportion to their wrongdoing. This book argues against retributivism and develops a viable alternative that is both ethically defensible and practical. Introducing six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, Gregg D. Caruso contends that it is unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify this view of punishment. While a number of alternatives to retributivism exist - including consequentialist deterrence, educational, and communicative theories - they have ethical problems of their own. Moving beyond existing theories, Caruso presents a new non-retributive approach called the public health-quarantine model. In stark contrast to retributivism, the public health-quarantine model provides a more human, holistic, and effective approach to dealing with criminal behavior.
This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a number of skeptical arguments against each. It then outlines an alternative forward-looking account of moral responsibility grounded in non-desert-invoking desiderata such as protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. It concludes by addressing concerns about the practical implications of skepticism about desert-based moral responsibility and explains how optimistic skeptics can preserve most of what we care about when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, morality, and meaning in life.
Nietzsche’s final works are committed to a deterministic ideal of amor fati. While the love of fate is rooted in a feeling of freedom, he is no compatibilist: we do not have the freedom to deeply shape our character or attitudes. We cannot choose to become higher types by truly “giving style” to ourselves. The love of fate is an accident of the physiologically and culturally determined organization of our drives, an order that can, in lucky cases, create the illusion of agency: a feeling of power experienced in action against equal resistances, in turn enabling the affirmation of necessity, of the self as a piece of fate existing only in the whole, freeing higher types from the illusion of any deeper kind of freedom.KeywordsNietzscheFreedomDeterminism
Amor fati
StoicismDrivesResistanceSuffering
This volume unites established authors and rising young voices in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to offer the single most wide-ranging examination of theological determinism-in terms of both authors represented and issues investigated-published to date. Fifteen contributors present discussions about theological (or divine) determinism, the view that God determines everything that occurs in the world. Some authors provide arguments in favor of this position, while others provide considerations against it. Many contributors investigate the relationship between theological determinism and other philosophical issues (the principle of sufficient reason; the compatibility of determinism and free will; moral luck), theological doctrines (creation ex nihilo; divine forgiveness; the inevitability of sin; the unity of Christ's will with God's), or moral attitudes and practices (trusting God; resenting the ill-will of others; resisting evil). This book is essential reading for all those interested in the relationship between theological determinism and philosophical thought.
This Element provides a thorough overview of the free will debate as it currently stands. After distinguishing the main senses of the term 'free will' invoked in that debate, it proceeds to set out the prominent versions of the main positions, libertarianism, compatibilism, and free will skepticism, and then to discuss the main objections to these views. Particular attention is devoted to the controversy concerning whether the ability to do otherwise is required for moral responsibility and whether it is compatible with determinism, and to manipulation arguments against compatibilism. Two areas in which the free will debate has practical implications are discussed in detail, personal relationships and criminal justice.
From an overview of philosophy, it can be said all issues are controversial. An example of this kind of never-ending controversy is the free will debate. The originality of Revisionism proposed by Vargas (2007, 2013) is to establish a position within the debate after having reviewed the terms in which it is discussed. His Revisionism focuses on reviewing how the different philosophical positions of the debate are linked to the intuitions or preconception of common sense. Vargas argues that common sense –as a preconception- has incompatibilistic elements that ought to be accepted when making a diagnosis. However, at a prescriptive level, the theory that ought to be adopted in philosophy is compatibilism. Thereby, Vargas proposes a hybrid Revisionism.By reading Wittgenstein from a neo-Pyrrhonic orientation, I propose to reconsider the role of disagreement in the philosophical debate and the approach to common sense in order to argue that it is a plural set of practices rather than a preconception. These practices determine different contexts for the use of concepts, in which both deterministic and indeterministic positions can make sense. This pluralistic view of common sense also modifies the place of philosophy and the kind of disagreement faced in the debate.
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