Free Will, Misc

Many Compatibilists seem to suppose that discover that we lived in a deterministic world would not unseat our confidence that many of our actions are nevertheless free. Here's a short story about such confidence becoming unseated.

The problem of free will has persistently resisted a solution throughout centuries. There is reason to believe that new elements need to be introduced into the analysis in order to make progress. In the present physicalist approach, these elements are emergence and information theory in relation to universal limits set by quantum physics. Furthermore the common, but vague, characterization of free will as "being able to act differently" is, in the spirit of Carnap, rephrased into an explicatum more suitable for (...) formal analysis. It is argued that the mind is an ontologically open system; a causal high-level system, the future of which cannot be reduced to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, not even if it is rendered physically closed. A positive answer to the question of free will is subsequently outlined. (shrink)

Many philosophers nowadays take for granted a causalist view of action explanation, according to which intentional action is a movement caused by mental antecedents. For them, “the possibility of human agency evidently requires that our mental states – our beliefs, desires, and intentions – have causal effects in the physical world: in voluntary actions our beliefs and desires, or intentions and decisions, must somehow cause our limbs to move in appropriate ways” (Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World, Cambridge (MA), (...) MIT Press, 2000 (1998), p. 31). The main question then is not to know whether there is mental causation at all, but how we should account for it. How can the mind move our body? In her 1983 paper, “The Causation of Action”, Elizabeth Anscombe shows how confused this way of putting things is. For her, if intentions or beliefs can indeed be taken to be causes of action, it is not in any metaphysically problematic sense. Seeing this requires us to distinguish clearly two theses: (1) “to be done in execution of a certain intention” is not a causal relation between intention and action; (2) an intention may be said to cause something: but this pertains to a specific kind of causal history, different from that which is uncovered by physical enquiry. First we will show how the metaphysical problem of mental causation arises from a given conception of action. Then we will turn to Anscombe’s arguments in favour of the two aforementioned theses. (shrink)

One of the major challenges in the philosophy of religion is theological fatalism—roughly, the claim that divine omniscience is incompatible with free will. In this article, I present new reasons to be skeptical of what I consider to be the strongest argument for theological fatalism. First, I argue that divine foreknowledge is not necessary for an argument against free will if we take into account divine knowledge of contingent a priori truths. Second, I show that this argument can be generalized (...) so that ordinary human knowledge of contingent a priori truths also leads to an argument against free will. This, I believe, results in an absurd conclusion that is unacceptable to both theists and non-theists. But if there is something wrong with this argument, there is something wrong, too, with the argument for theological fatalism. Although there is a range of possible responses, I suggest that the core issue in all cases is a closure principle—specifically, the principle that ‘no choice about’ is closed under entailment (or strict implication). (shrink)

Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity appears to defend a distinctly existentialist, deontologically-constrained version of consequentialism. On that interpretation, her belief that freedom consists in the real possibilities provided by our concrete situation leads her to reject Kantian autonomy to allow for some consequentialist decisions, while her belief that our situation derives its meaning from freely-chosen projects leads her to limit such choices to their consequences for situated freedom rather than general happiness. However, I will argue that Beauvoir’s view is better understood (...) as a non-deontological, internal critique of consequentialism, rooted in Marx’s historical materialism rather than her existentialist commitments. Beauvoir challenges consequentialism’s tendency to evaluate decision-making over actions, and intended or predicted consequences over actual ones, considering consequences during a limited time-frame despite their variable, contingent future value. In other words, consequentialism is insufficiently consequentialist, a view rooted in historical materialism in two ways. First, her materialist understanding of freedom as situated possibility requires an ethics that prioritizes real rather than projected consequences. Materialist consequentialism acknowledges outcomes are never final and so refuses to assign unambiguous moral value. A decision’s ethical value is preserved only to the degree that the value of its real consequences for existing individuals’ projects is maintained into the indefinite future. Second, her view that value is historical, a human creation based in our actual situation’s contingent utility to our individually chosen projects, denies that any consequence has a fixed value independent of the historical development of humanity as realized through individual choices. Historical-materialist consequentialism demands moral agents retroactively reassess the moral status of every action in order to repair consequences that have, because of changing human purposes, become obstacles to freedom. Together, these historical materialist constraints ground Beauvoir’s demand for an ethics that is ambiguous in principle as well as practice: no decision, action, or consequence has a fixed moral value because consequences are always incomplete and, even when they do not change, the projects that give them value change. While compatible with existentialist conceptions of freedom, responsibility, and authenticity, her ethics does not require such commitments, making it more Marxist than existentialist in character. (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is true, but agents nevertheless possess free will as long as they act from a compatibilist friendly agential structure (i.e., agents want to perform their actions, agents identify with the actions they perform, agents would be responsive to reasons against performing those actions, etc.). The most powerful contemporary objection to compatibilism is the manipulation argument, according to which agents determined to act as they do by the prodding of manipulative neuroscientists are not considered free, (...) so agents determined to act by physical processes operating from the remote past should not be considered free either. One compatibilist response to the manipulation argument is the so-called hard-line reply, according to which compatibilists argue that agents determined by physical processes operating from the remote past are free, so agents determined by manipulative neuroscientists are free as well. In this paper I demonstrate that leading hard-line replies fail, while also introducing a novel argument against the hard-line reply. (shrink)

Some free-will defenses appeal to the intuition that the love of creatures who God causally determined to love him is less valuable than the love of creatures who chose to love God freely, in the libertarian sense. I challenge that intuition directly. I attempt to discredit the intuition in question by demonstrating that no analogies regarding human-related cases can support it. In each case I treat, I argue either that the case is disanalogous to God’s case, or that granting the (...) lover libertarian free will wouldn’t make the love in question more valuable. (shrink)

Galen Strawson has contrasting attitudes to consciousness and free will. In the case of the former, he says it is a fundamental element of nature whose denial is the “greatest woo-woo of the human mind.” In the case of the latter, by contrast, he says it is not merely non-existent but “provably impossible.” Why the difference? This paper suggests this distinctive pattern of positions is generated by underestimating the world (to adapt a phrase Strawson uses himself in another context). If (...) you underestimate the world, and correlatively overestimate your level of understanding of the world, it is natural to think both that consciousness is fundamental, and that free will is non-existent. If you don’t underestimate the world, on the other hand, a more uniform and attractive treatment of these topics becomes available. (shrink)

In this paper—the last of the series—I discuss the second of the two main types of soft-line responses to manipulation cases, which I refer to as bypassing views. These views hold that a large part of the reason that Victim lacks responsibility is because the action issues from attitudes acquired in a way that bypassed Victim's capacities for control over their mental life. After offering a quick gloss, I explain how such views are able to avoid various challenges faced by (...) manipulator-focused views—the subject of part 2—including natural force cases and parallel cases. I then introduce the particular views in more detail. This is followed by discussion of various objections raised against these views, as well as responses given by proponents of bypassing views, and responses they might give. The paper concludes with a general discussion of how the two types of views compare overall, and some of the difficulties in making the overall comparison. (shrink)

This paper responds to Chen Yajun’s critique in “Frankfurt’s Concept of Identification.” Frankfurt is well-known for defining free will as second-order volitions that an agent fully endorses wholeheartedly. Chen, however, argues that Frankfurt’s concept of wholeheartedness is problematic for two reasons. First, it fails to offer a clear endpoint in the appeal to higher-order desires to resolve conflicts among second-order desires. Second, wholeheartedness sets an unreasonably high bar for acting freely, as one can still act freely even in a state (...) of halfheartedness or ambivalence. In response, Chen proposes his theory of weak identification, which he claims has certain advantages over Frankfurt’s view. I argue that Frankfurt can address the issue of arbitrariness and that Chen misinterprets Frankfurt’s concept of wholeheartedness. Furthermore, I argue that Chen’s theory faces significant challenges. (shrink)

In the accounts we give of one another, claims about our abilities appear to be indispensable. Some abilities are so widespread that many who have them take them for granted, such as the ability to walk, or to write one's name, or to tell a hawk from a handsaw. Others are comparatively rare and notable, such as the ability to hit a Major League fastball, or to compose a symphony, or to tell an elm from a beech. In either case, (...) however, when we ascribe such abilities to one another we have the impression that we are making claims that, whether they are worth saying or not, are at least sometimes true. The impression of truth exerts a pressure towards giving a philosophical theory of ability. It is not an option, at least at the outset, to dismiss all our talk of ability as fiction or outright falsehood. A theory of ability can be reasonably expected to say what it is to have an ability in a way that vindicates the appearance of truth. Such a theory will deserve the name “philosophical” insofar as it gives an account, not of this or that range of abilities, but of abilities generally. (shrink)

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is traditionally formulated in terms of whether true counterfactuals of freedom about the future (true subjunctive conditionals concerning what someone would freely do in the future if they were in certain circumstances) even partly determine an agent's present moral obligations. But the very assumption that there are true counterfactuals of freedom about the future conflicts with the idea that freedom requires a metaphysically open future. We develop probabilism as a solution to the actualism/possibilism debate, a (...) solution that accommodates an open future requirement for freedom. We argue that probabilism resolves the conflicting intuitions that arise between actualists and possibilists and maintains certain distinct advantages over actualism and possibilism. (shrink)

Laplacean Determinism (his so-called demon argument) is the thesis that every event that transpires in a closed universe is a physical event caused (i.e., determined) in full by some earlier event in accord with laws that govern their behavior. On this view, it is possible, in principle, to make perfect predictions of the state of the universe at any time Tn on the basis of complete knowledge of the state of the universe at time T1. Thus, if identity theory, epiphenomenalism (...) or any other instantiation of Laplacean Determinism is correct, mental events such as free will, intention and other forms of mental agency are tricks of the mind, misleading us into believing our volitional concerns have traction in a world ruled entirely by physical circumstance. Not surprisingly, advocates of free will and related acts of human volition have engaged in spirited debate with adherents to Laplacean orthodoxy, the results of which have been far from conclusive. Rather than join these deliberations, I wholly embrace the demon argument and then ask “what are the consequences of this allegiance?” As I hope to show, acceptance of this argument commits one to a belief in the existence of human precognition. This, I suggest, is a consequence that does not fit comfortably within a contemporary scientific worldview. (shrink)

The Top-Down Argument for the ability to do otherwise aims at establishing that humans can do otherwise in the sense that is relevant for debates about free will. It consists of two premises: first, we always need to answer the question of whether some phenomenon (such as the ability to do otherwise) exists by consulting our best scientific theories of the domain at issue. Second, our best scientific theories of human action presuppose that humans can do otherwise. This paper argues (...) that this is not enough to establish the conclusion. The Top-Down Argument supports that humans can do otherwise _in some sense_. But it does not show that humans can do otherwise _in the sense that is relevant for debates about free will_. The paper then shows that the apparently best way to make the argument valid does not work. (shrink)

One of the central problems within the free will debate lies in the apparent incompatibility of an agent's ability to do otherwise and determinism. Recently, compatibilist libertarianism was proposed as an actualist position intended to finally reconcile both. In this article, we argue that in order to maintain consistency, this position must be understood as a variant of classical compatibilism rather than a version of libertarianism. Though this seems to be an undesired consequence for proponents of compatibilist libertarianism, we think (...) that it is not that bad. We show that recent objections to this position can be avoided by embracing its compatibilist nature and argue that a modified version of compatibilist libertarianism might very well be as close to an actualist account of free will in a deterministic world as one can hope for. (shrink)

В данной работе рассматриваются важнейшие вопросы о коллективном воображаемом и его отношениях с реальностью и истиной. Сначала мы рассмотрим эту тему в концептуальных рамках, а затем проведем соответствующий фактологический анализ наглядных поведенческих реалий. Мы будем опираться не только на методологию, но и, главным образом, на постулаты и положения аналитической философии, которые, безусловно, будут проявляться на протяжении всего исследования и могут быть идентифицированы по признакам, описанным Пересом : Рабосси (1975) отстаивает идею, что аналитическая философия может быть идентифицирована путем рассмотрения некоторых семейных (...) сходств. Он предлагает следующие семейные черты: позитивное отношение к научному знанию; осторожное отношение к метафизике; представление о философии как о концептуальной задаче, в которой в качестве метода используется концептуальный анализ; тесная связь между языком и философией; стремление к аргументированным ответам на философские проблемы; поиск концептуальной ясности. Эти базовые понятия включают в себя культурное, социальное, религиозное, научное, философское, моральное и политическое содержание, принадлежащее каждому и коллективному существованию. В данной статье мы не будем дискутировать и доказывать. Наша цель — не систематическая методология, не критика и не доказательство. Настоящая работа основана на аналитической рефлексии. Мы будем рассуждать как можно более полно и глубоко и излагать результаты своих размышлений. Несмотря на междисциплинарный характер темы и методологическую открытость к принятию вклада из любой области науки, данная работа относится к психологии и онтологии, или, другими словами, к социальной и онтологической психологии. Свободная методология, направляющая такие размышления, охватывает и рассматривает все, что приближается к согласованности с философской и психологической эпистемологией. Эта методология не гонится за доказательствами, а ищет взаимосвязь между существующими доказательствами любой природы и величины, выводя когерентный смысл реальных вещей. (shrink)

We investigate two formal arguments familiar to free will scholars and central to the work of Peter van Inwagen: the consequence argument (CA) and the Mind argument (MA). While CA is an argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, the version of the Mind argument we consider argues for a tension between free will and in determinism. Together the arguments support the view that no one has free will. Our study and comparison of the arguments show that CA (...) and MA have the same determinism-independent core. This is an odd result, and at the end of the paper we discuss interpretations of these findings. (shrink)

The common thread of Pinocchio’s story is his desire to become a human being. Unlike some creators who approached the adventures of Pinocchio in the context of posthumanism the transhumanism embraces technological progress while strongly defending human rights and individual choice. Pinocchio is aware of his incompleteness: he seeks during the story to become „a real boy.” Human consciousness can refer to things that we do not perceive directly. Pinocchio is a „child” without a mother, created by his father to (...) fill his loneliness. He highlights the current problem of the relationship between man and his creation, out of control. (shrink)

There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...) how the notion of levels could be relevant to the free will debate. Invariably, however, the focus is on the significance of facts at lower levels. The threats come from below, from fundamental physics or neuroscience. Here, I aim to show how we can frame many interesting concerns about free will in terms of threats from above. After arguing that determination from above is no less threatening, I catalogue such concerns that might constitute threats to our freedom. Doing this not only allows us to show how these concerns relate to those standardly discussed, but it pushes us to expand our conception of freedom. (shrink)

The title of the paper is an allusion to Philip K. Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which inspired the movie Blade Runner) and aims, at once, to highlight the (possible) relation between Criminal Law and Artificial Intelligence in its two dimensions of criminal protection (hence the reference to ‘electric crimes’) and criminal liability (hence the reference to the androids’ dreams), within the background problem of knowing whether Artificial Intelligence is truly mind. The purpose of this paper is, (...) precisely, to identify whether there is indeed such relation, in those two dimensions, and making use of a mediating concept, the concept of ‘mind (or ‘mentality’). I argue that Artificial Intelligence “specimens” do not have a mind and, therefore, its protection and regulation by Criminal Law is impaired. I conclude by presenting a choice between a total irrelevance model of Artificial Intelligence to Criminal Law and a model in which Artificial Intelligence emerges as object and subject of Criminal Law by analogy with persons. (shrink)

Précis of Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (2022).

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per (...) se face significant independent moral objections (Pereboom 2014: 153). Despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to respond to criminal behavior—in particular incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alteration of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2013, 2014), taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—which I call the public health-quarantine model (Caruso 2016, 2017a)—provides a framework for justifying quarantine and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other non-retributive alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s quarantine analogy does on its own since it prioritizes prevention and social justice. -/- In Section 1, I begin by (very) briefly summarizing my arguments against free will and basic desert moral responsibility. In Section 2, I then introduce and defend my public health-quarantine model, which is a non-retributive alternative to criminal punishment that prioritizes prevention and social justice. In Sections 3 and 4, I take up and respond to two general objections to the public health-quarantine model. Since objections by Michael Corrado (2016), John Lemos (2016), Saul Smilanksy (2011, 2017), and Victor Tadros (2017) have been addressed in detail elsewhere (see Pereboom 2017a; Pereboom and Caruso 2018), I will here focus on objections that have not yet been addressed. In particular, I will respond to concerns about proportionality, human dignity, and victims’ rights. I will argue that each of these concerns can be met and that in the end the public health-quarantine model offers a superior alternative to retributive punishment and other non-retributive accounts. (shrink)

This chapter outlines six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, not the least of which is that it’s unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify it. It then sketches a novel non-retributive alternative called the public health-quarantine model. The core idea of the model is that the right to harm in self-defense and defense of others justifies incapacitating the criminally dangerous with the minimum harm required for adequate protection. The model also draws on (...) the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. It is argued that not only does the public health-quarantine model offer a stark contrast to retributivism, it also provides a more humane, holistic, and effective approach to dealing with criminal behavior, one that is superior to both retributivism and other leading non-retributive alternatives. (shrink)

This chapter outlines six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, not the least of which is that it is unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify it. It then sketches a novel non-retributive alternative called the public health-quarantine model. The core idea of the model is that the right to harm in self-defense and defense of others justifies incapacitating the criminally dangerous with the minimum harm required for adequate protection. The model also draws (...) on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. It is argued that not only does the public health-quarantine model offer a stark contrast to retributivism, but it also provides a more humane, holistic, and effective approach to dealing with criminal behavior, one that is superior to both retributivism and other leading non-retributive alternatives. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Like most episodes of Black Mirror, “Hang the DJ” raises a host of philosophical questions. While there is much from this episode to explore, this chapter will explore something that has not yet been addressed in other work, namely the connection between “Hang the DJ” and questions about free will and determinism (or indeterminism, as the case may be). This chapter will proceed as follows: first, I will sketch some reasons for thinking that, if determinism is true, then no one (...) has or exercises free will. One type of response to determinism’s threat to free will is to accept the incompatibility of free will and determinism and to maintain that we nevertheless have free will. Theorists who endorse indeterministic accounts of free will are called libertarians in the free will debate (but please do not confuse them with political libertarians). Second, I will explain a bit more of the mechanics of libertarianism. Third, I will discuss an influential challenge to libertarianism that has come to be known as the “rollback argument.” The mechanics of this challenge will resemble the plot twist of “Hang the DJ.” Fourth, and finally, I will explore the episode’s portrayal of the value of undetermined choice. (shrink)

P. van Inwagen famously offered three precise versions of the so-called Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. The third of these essentially employs the notion of an agent’s having a choice with respect to a proposition. In this paper, I offer two intuitively attractive accounts of this notion in terms of the explanatory connective ‘because’ and explore the prospects of the third argument once they are in play. Under either account, the argument fails.

This chapter presents four different senses of “voluntary” that might be in play. First, voluntary1 movement contrasts with bodily movement not guided by the person—such as blinking or digesting, which are involuntary1. Second, you might move voluntarily1, and yet make a mistake—you might send an email to the wrong person—you then act involuntarily2. In contrast, voluntary2 action is successful. Third, you might purposely and even successfully do something you didn’t want to do—through the cargo overboard during the storm. In such (...) cases, you act involuntarily3. In contrast, you might act happily, as a volunteer, so to speak. You then act voluntarily3. Finally, sometimes you can be manipulated or deceived into acting as a volunteer—in which case you lack an important form of freedom. We might say that you act involuntarily4. I suggest that the first two senses might be fruitfully studied by neuroscience, while the final sense marks a distinction draw by ethical reflection. (shrink)

It is a widely held principle that no one is able to do something that would require the past to have been different from how it actually is. This principle of the fixity of the past has been presented in numerous ways, playing a crucial role in arguments for logical and theological fatalism, and for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the ability to do otherwise. I will argue that, assuming bivalence, this principle is in conflict with standard views about (...) knowledge and the semantics for ‘actually’. I also consider many possible responses to the argument. (shrink)

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root as the classical analytic paradigm declined and why this matters to the contemporary debate. Among other things, I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to promote uncontentiously invalid arguments, and to equivocate in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in pseudo-stalemates). I also suggest a new framework for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by quixotic attempts to redefine classical narratives and jargon so that they adequately describe the dialectical contours of the contemporary free-will debate. In addition, this new framework allows philosophers to start cross-pollinating work on free will and other famous problems of luck and control, e.g. the paradox of moral luck. (To see the distinctions applied to the philosophical problems of causal luck, constitutive luck, and moral luck, please see my essay "Free Will, Self-Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2019) and the case for the internal inconsistency of hard incompatibilism in "Hard Times for Hard Incompatibilism" (manuscript)). -/- . (shrink)

Often we make decisions whose purpose is to reduce the likelihood of our making bad decisions in the future—for example, by turning off my phone to make it more difficult for me to go on Tik Tok during the work day, or staying at home on a Friday instead of going to a party where I know my friends will be drinking to excess. These decisions seem essential, but they raise some philosophical questions. Here is one of them: What is (...) the view that a person takes of her own future when she goes in for this kind of planning? And here is another: How does seeing ourselves as subject to temptation, in the way that this kind of planning presumes, not serve as an invitation to irresolution when tempting situations arise? In this essay, I show how the answers to these questions are mutually illuminating. (shrink)

Vrije wil is een raadselachtig fenomeen. Wij mensen hebben de indruk dat we zelf keuzes maken, maar de wetenschap vertelt een heel ander verhaal: onze handelingen zijn slechts het resultaat van onze persoonlijke eigenschappen, onbewuste associaties en hersenprocessen. Ons bewuste zelf is niets meer dan een passieve toeschouwer. Het is dan ook niet verrassend dat wetenschappelijk onderzoek vaak uitmondt in determinisme of ‘willusionisme’. -/- Maar wat is vrije wil eigenlijk? En wat betekent het om zelf te kiezen? In Mijn intenties (...) en ik verkent Lieke Asma vrije wil en legt ze nauwgezet uit hoe we over de vrijheid van onze eigen keuzes en handelingen moeten nadenken. Wat blijkt? Filosofisch onderzoek en het in ogenschouw nemen van het perspectief van de handelende persoon zijn essentieel voor een goed begrip van vrije wil. (shrink)

Las grandes cuestiones de la metafísica se han tratado con un renovado impulso y orientaciones filosóficas originales en los últimos 50 años; entre estas grandes cuestiones está el problema de Dios, la libertad del hombre y el mal. Esta renovación de la teología filosófica ha cobrado particular protagonismo dentro de la tradición analítica: en círculos académicos internacionales son cada vez más frecuentes las discusiones sobre los atributos divinos y su relación con distintos aspectos de la existencia humana. En este libro (...) se recogen estudios sobre algunas de estas cuestiones, con la intención de presentar algunos de estos planteamientos novedosos al público académico de habla hispana. En concreto los temas que se tratan son tan variados como el origen y los fundamentos teóricos de la teología filosófica analítica, la eternidad y la presciencia de Dios en relación con la libertad humana, la providencia divina, el determinismo teológico, el problema del mal, la acción divina en la naturaleza, etc. Esperamos que este conjunto de ensayos sean la ocasión para fomentar la discusión en torno a estos temas y abrir nuevas perspectivas en el ámbito de la metafísica y la filosofía de la religión. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that the necessity of the present counts against theories of synchronic free will, according to which a person may have free will at a time t0 even once that person has decided at t0 to do something. I defend the theory of diachronic free will against recent critiques drawn from the work of Michael Rota and Katherin Rogers. And I chart some of the implications for the philosophy of religion.

In a recent article, P. Roger Turner and Justin Capes argue that no one is, or ever was, even partly morally responsible for certain world-indexed truths. Here we present our reasons for thinking that their argument is unsound: It depends on the premise that possible worlds are maximally consistent states of affairs, which is, under plausible assumptions concerning states of affairs, demonstrably false. Our argument to show this is based on Bertrand Russell’s original ‘paradox of propositions’. We should then opt (...) for a different approach to explain world-indexed truths whose upshot is that we may be morally responsible for some of them. The result to the effect that there are no maximally consistent states of affairs is independently interesting though, since this notion motivates an account of the nature of possible worlds in the metaphysics of modality. We also register in this article, independently of our response to Turner and Capes, and in the spirit of Russell’s aforementioned paradox and many other versions thereof, a proof of the claim that there is no set of all true propositions one can render false. (shrink)

Contrary to Lewis and Vihvelin, I argue that free will in a deterministic world is an ability to break a law of nature or to change the remote past. Even if it were true, as Lewis and Vihvelin think, that an agent who is predetermined to perform a particular act might not break a law or change the remote past by doing otherwise, it would nevertheless be true that he is able to do otherwise only if he is able to (...) break a law or to change the remote past. (shrink)

Girolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and (...) conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several of Cardano’s other works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim. (shrink)

Since Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments in 1979, the study of the will has become a focal point in the cognitive sciences. Just like Libet the scien-tists Daniel Wegner and Thalia Wheatley came to doubt that the will is causally efficacious. In their influential study I Spy from 1999, they created an experi-mental setup to show that agents erroneously experience their actions as caused by their thoughts. Instead, these actions are caused by unconscious neural pro-cesses; the agent’s ‘causal experience of will’ (...) is just an illusion. Both the scien-tific method and the conclusion drawn from the empirical results have already been criticized by philosophers. In this paper, I will analyze the action performed in I Spy and criticize more fundamentally the assumption of a ‘causal experience of will’. I will argue that the I Spy study does not show that the agent’s causal experience of will is illusory, because it does not show that there is a causal ex-perience of will. Against Wegner and Wheatley’s assumption, I will show that it is unlikely that the participants in I Spy experienced their conscious thoughts as causally efficacious for an action, that they did not perform at all. It is more likely, that they experienced their own bodily movement as causally efficacious for a cooperative action, that they did not perform solely by themselves. (shrink)

Contrary to John Bramhall and critics like him, Thomas Hobbes takes the view that no account of liberty or freedom can serve as the relevant basis on which to distinguish moral from nonmoral agents or explains the basis on which an agent becomes subject to law and liable to punishment. The correct compatibilist strategy rests, on Hobbes’s account, with a proper appreciation and description of the contractualist features that shape and structure the moral community. From this perspective human agents may (...) indeed use their liberty to make themselves moral agents. In doing this, however, they are not employing a distinct kind of liberty but rather using a liberty that they share with animals and other nonmoral agents to perform a distinct kind of act (i.e., consent) whereby they become moral agents subject to law and any punishments that are required to enforce it. ____ -/- Originally published in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe - eds. D. Clarke & C. Wilson, OUP 2011 -/- Republished in Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy: Selected Essays - OUP 2021: Paul Russell]. (shrink)

Despite the growing interest in Aristotelian approaches to contemporary philosophy of science, few metaphysicians have engaged directly with the question of how a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of nature might change the landscape for theological discussion concerning theology and naturalism, the place of human beings within nature, or the problem of divine causality. The chapters in this volume are collected into three thematic sections: Naturalism and Nature, Mind and Nature, and God and Nature. By pushing the current boundaries of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics to (...) recover the traditional notion of substantial forms in physics, reframe the principle of proportionality in biology, and restore the hierarchy of being familiar to ancient philosophy, this book advances a metaphysically unified framework that accommodates both scientific and theological knowledge, enriching the interaction between science, philosophy and theology. Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science, natural theology, philosophical theology, and analytic theology. (shrink)

We investigate individual, developmental, and cultural differences in self-control in relation to children's changing belief in “free will” – the possibility of acting against and inhibiting strong desires. In three studies, 4- to 8-year-olds in the U.S., China, Singapore, and Peru (N = 441) answered questions to gauge their belief in free will and completed a series of self-control and inhibitory control tasks. Children across all four cultures showed predictable age-related improvements in self-control, as well as changes in their free (...) will beliefs. Cultural context played a role in the timing of these emerging free will beliefs: Singaporean and Peruvian children's beliefs changed at later ages than Chinese and U.S. children. Critically, culture moderated the link between self-control abilities and free will beliefs: Individual differences in self-control behaviors were linked to individual differences in free will beliefs in U.S. children, but not in children from China, Singapore or Peru. There was also evidence of a causal influence of self-control performance on free will beliefs in our U.S. sample. In Study 2, a randomly assigned group of U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds who failed at two self-control tasks showed reduced belief in free will, but a group of children who completed free will questions first did not show changes to self-control. Together these results suggest that culturally-acquired causal-explanatory frameworks for action, along with observations of one's own abilities, might influence children's emerging understanding of free will. (shrink)

In this review, I discuss recent advances in philosophical and psychological approaches to self-control. The review is divided in 4 parts, in which I discuss: a) different conceptions of self-control; b) standard methods for studying it; c) some models of how self-control is exercised; and d) the connections between self-control and other relevant psychological constructs. The review was originally commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation to provide an informative overview that would knit together different strands of current debates in the (...) field. It is meant to be useful to well-informed audiences, as well as new-comers to the discussion. (shrink)

In an outline of a paper found amongst his philosophical papers and correspondence after his untimely death in 2001—“Nihil Obstat: An Analysis of Ability,” reproduced in this volume—David Lewis sketched a new compatibilist account of abilities, according to which someone is able to A if and only if there is no obstacle to their A-ing, where an obstacle is a ‘robust preventer’ of their A-ing. In this paper, we provide some background context for Lewis’s outline, a section-by-section commentary, and a (...) general discussion of the account’s main features. (shrink)

Debate on free will with Christian List, Gregg Caruso, and Cory Clark. The exchange is focused on Christian List's book Why Free Will Is Real.

Ursula Coope presents a ground-breaking study of the philosophy of the Neoplatonists. She explores their understanding of freedom and responsibility: an entity is free to the extent that it is wholly in control of itself, self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing - which only a non-bodily thing can be.

Bergson argues that there is an incompatibility between free will and determinism: while free will has a dimension of creation, of invention, determinism corresponds to the idea that the future is fixed in advance by laws. In addition, he rejects determinism. According to him, the singularity of our deep-seated psychic states makes that their evolution cannot be governed by laws. However, Bergson does not defend classical indeterminism because it reduces free will to a choice between alternative possibilities, that is to (...) say between pre-fixed futures. Such a conception does not take into account the creative dimension of free will. In fact, Bergson develops an original form of indeterminism based on a certain conception of causation. For determinism and classical indeterminism, causation is always the actualization of a pre-fixed virtual reality. For Bergson, causation can also be a creation, that is, the formation of something which is not pre-fixed. (shrink)

This book explores the conjuncture of human agency and divine volition in the biblical narrative - sometimes referred to as "double causality." A commonly held view has it that the biblical narrative shows human action to be determined by divine will. Yet, when reading the biblical narrative we are inclined to hold the actors accountable for their deeds. The book, then, challenges the common assumptions about the sweeping nature of divine causality in the biblical narrative and seeks to do justice (...) to the roles played by the human actors in the drama. God's causing a person to act in a particular way, as He does when He hardens Pharaoh's heart, is the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, the biblical heroes act on their own; their personal initiatives and strivings are what move the story forward. How does it happen, then, that events, remarkably, conspire to realize God's plan? The study enlists concepts and theories developed within the framework of contemporary analytic philosophy, featured against the background of classical and contemporary bible commentary. In addressing the biblical narrative through these perspectives, this book holds appeal for scholars of a variety of disciplines - bible studies, philosophy, religion and philosophical theology -- as well as for those who simply delight in reading the Bible. (shrink)

Sennett (1999) and Pawl & Timpe (2009; 2013) attempt to show how we can praise heavenly agents for things they inevitably do in heaven by appealing to the notion of derivative freedom. Matheson (2017) has criticized this use of derivative freedom. In this essay I show why Matheson's argument is inconclusive but also how the basic point may be strengthened to undermine the use Sennett and Pawl & Timpe make of derivative freedom. I then show why Matheson is mistaken to (...) claim that the value of free choice depends on an agent retaining the ability to change their mind; in so doing I demonstrate that some choices which result in fixed outcomes - a feature of the choices leading to impeccability - can indeed be valuable even if they cannot be undone. (shrink)