Freedom and Determinism Determinism: everything that happens is determined by what happened previously. Given the state of the world in the past and the laws of nature, what happens now had to happen and could not have turned out differently. “[for] everything that exists, there are antecedent conditions, known or unknown, given which that thing could not be other than it is.” (Richard Taylor)
“Causal determinism…entails that every bit of human behavior is causally necessitated by events in the past together with natural laws.” (Fischer, 425)
Freedom: the kind of freedom that is required for morality, for our being morally responsible for our actions. The big issue here is whether moral responsibility in this n requires unconditional freedom: being able to do otherwi, everything el being the same.
家常炒饼There are 3 main positions in the free will debate:
约数的定义•Hard Determinism (Spinoza, Jonathan Edwards,
Holbach, Schopenhauer, Freud, Clarence Darrow, B.
F. Skinner, Derk Pereboom) All events are
物业管理企业资质determined, no human action is free; moral
responsibility is a myth.
•Libertarianism Some human actions are free, and
tho that are are not determined (AC; EC is a bit
more complicated) .
Agent causation (AC) theories (Berkeley,
Reid, Kant, C. A. Campbell, Richard
Taylor, Chisholm, William Rowe,
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Timothy O’Connor, Randolph Clarke) Event causation (EC) theories (Robert
Kane, John Searle, Peter van Inwagen,
Robert Nozick)
•Compatibilism Even if all actions are determined,
some are free and some not. Determinism does not
坐月子能吃螃蟹吗rule out freedom and responsibility.
Soft Determinism (Hobbes, Locke, Hume,
Mill, G. E. Moore, A. J. Ayer, W. T.
Stace) Determinism is true, and some
actions are free.
Semicompatibilism (Fischer, Frankfurt)
Determinism might be true; that’s up to
science to decide. But in any ca,
some actions are free.
Incompatibilism and Compatibilism
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Hard determinists and libertarians are both incompatibilists. They both subscribe to the incompatibilist thesis that determinism is incompatible with acting freely.
The Incompatibilist Thesis (IT): If determinism is true, then no human action is free.
Incompatibilists interpret freedom as the liberty of indifference: the power to do something different in exactly the same circumstances.
Compatibilists interpret freedom as the liberty of spontaneity: the power to do as we choo, to act as we will. (More preci definitions will follow.) Compatibilists insist that there is only one kind of causation in the world, event causation. Some (not all) incompatibilists hold that there are two kinds of causation operating in the world: event causation and agent causation. Agent causation is the way in which persons (substances) bring about acts of will without being caud to do so by anything el.
Libertarians are indeterminists, but they insist that there is more to freedom of the will than mere indeterminism (what Taylor calls “simple indeterminism.”
The Hard Determinist Argument
Determinism is true.办公台风水
If determinism is true, then no human action is free.结尾摘抄大全
No human action is free.
The Libertarian Argument
Some human actions are free.
If determinism is true, then no human action is free. Determinism is fal.
A Common Incompatibilist Argument
(A) If determinism is true, then S could not have done otherwi.
(B) If S acts freely, then could have done otherwi. (IT) If determinism is true, then S does not act freely.
If D then not-O
If F, then O
If D, then not-F
(B) is the principle of alternate possibilities (AP): a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwi. (Frankfurt, 486)
Compatibilism: The Simple Conditional Analysis of
Freedom
“By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choo to remain at rest, we may; if we choo to move, we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains.” (Hume’s Enquiry, ction VIII, “Of Liberty and Necessity”)
The Locke/Hume Definition of Acting Freely: S is free with respect to doing X if and only if (1) S can do X is he choos, and (2) S can refrain from doing X if he choos.
Note: if an action satisfies (1) but not (2), Locke says that the action is voluntary but not free. Freedom in the full n requires the ability to do otherwi.
Hume accepts premi B of the incompatibilist argument, but rejects premi A. Hume’s rejection of premi A rests on his simple conditional analysis of “S could have done otherwi.” (Liberty of spontaneity)
The Simple Conditional Analysis of Freedom: “S could have done otherwi” means “S could have done otherwi if S had chon to do otherwi.”
