In his epic Paradise Lost, John Milton aims at a philosophically and theologically sound theodicy in order to “justify the ways of God to men”1. Milton’s approach has been criticised for creating an unsolvable tension between God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will and responsibility. The article wants to show that this criticism turns out to be unjustified if the philosophical basis behind the epic is thoroughly examined. Milton draws heavily on St. Augustine’s ontology: Every kind of being depends on (...) its intrinsic goodness insofar as it really is what it is by nature. God himself is the ultimate goodness: Therefore he is not subject to change, but transcends space and time. In his perfection, he cannot lack any kind of knowledge, but knows all things in an atemporal manner, without depriving men and women of their capability of free choice and action, for these are the distinct features that constitute the goodness of human nature. The crucial question of the article is why, according to Augustine and Milton, God’s foreknowledge should not at all be confused with fated determinism. (shrink)

The ‘rollback argument,’ pioneered by Peter van Inwagen, purports to show that indeterminism in any form is incompatible with free will. The argument has two major premises: the first claims that certain facts about chances obtain in a certain kind of hypothetical situation, and the second that these facts entail that some actual act is not free. Since the publication of the rollback argument, the second claim has been vehemently debated, but everyone seems to have taken the first (...) claim for granted. Nevertheless, the first claim is totally unjustified. Even if we accept the second claim, therefore, the argument gives us no reason to think that free will and indeterminism are incompatible. Furthermore, seeing where the rollback argument goes wrong illuminates how a certain kind of incompatibilist, the ‘chance-incompatibilist,’ ought to think about free will and chance, and points to a possibility for free will that has remained largely unexplored. (shrink)

The conventional view of banking crises sees them as an inherent problem of fractional?reserve banking systems. According to this view, government regulation in the form of an alert central bank (acting as a ?lender of last resort"), or deposit insurance, or both is needed to keep isolated bank failures from generating systemwide panic. But this view does not mesh with historical experience, which points to government regulation itself as the most likely cause of banking crises.

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as though they believe in their own (...) free will: they don't feel like automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior? In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere. (shrink)

This paper examines the view of abilities to act advanced by Kadri Vihvelin in Causes, Laws, and Free Will. Vihvelin argues that (i) abilities of an important kind are “structurally” like dispositions such as fragility; (ii) ascriptions of dispositions can be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals; (iii) ascriptions of abilities of the kind in question can be analyzed similarly; and (iv) we have the free will we think we have by having abilities of this kind and being (...) in circumstances that are propitious for their exercise. I raise doubt about each of these claims. Further, I argue that even if abilities of the kind in question are dispositions, and even if determinism is compatible with our commonly having unexercised abilities of this kind, the compatibility of determinism and free will remains in question. (shrink)

This paper argues that Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) do not compromise the agent’s ability to decide otherwise. In his attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, Frankfurt relied on what Austin called the ‘all-in’ sense of ‘can’, and misconstrued the agent’s inability to do otherwise as an all-in can’t. Like the new dispositionalists, I maintain that the agent’s relevant abilities are ‘masked’ rather than lost in Frankfurt cases. The argument from masked abilities, however, is not confined to a compatibilist construal of (...) the relevant abilities. On a libertarian construal, Black deprives Jones of the opportunity to use his two-way power of choice to a different outcome than he actually uses it. I argue that being deprived of this opportunity is immaterial to what free will requires. In the second half of the paper, I relate my approach to the ‘flicker of freedom’ strategy. On closer look, we do find a residual ability that Jones not only possesses but also exercises in cases where Black intervenes. I argue that Jones tries to decide otherwise in these cases, that Black only thwarts the success of Jones’s attempt, and that being snatched from the wheel at the very last moment does not compromise Jones’s free will. (shrink)

Causal Determinism (CD) entails that all of a person’s choices and actions are nomically related to events in the distant past, the approximate, but lawful, consequences of those occurrences. Assuming that history cannot be undone nor those (natural) relations altered, that whatever results from what is inescapable is itself inescapable, and the contrariety of inevitability and freedom, it follows that we are completely devoid of liberty: our choices are not freely made; our actions are not freely performed. Instead of disputing (...) the soundness of this reasoning, some philosophers prefer to maintain that we could yet have a small measure of freedom were CD true of our world: although being unable to choose or act differently, one could at least under normal circumstances truly claim to be acting ‘on one’s own’, beyond the control of ‘outside forces’, in a word, autonomous. They further argue that being free in this sense suffices for moral responsibility. Call their philosophy ‘Autonomy Compatibilism’ (AC). -/- In adopting here reactive attitudes towards an agent, one is choosing to highlight the fact that the individual in question is of sound mind, reasoning and acting free from the interference of others. These facts alone, the adherent of AC claims, justify his stance, despite the necessity of the agent’s choices. Why would we not regard a sane individual who is not being coerced, intimidated, deceived or unduly put upon as in charge of his life so as to be responsible for his activities? -/- The Manipulation Argument (MA) is supposed to cut off this line of retreat. Its authors hold that, were CD true of our world, we would be no more autonomous than a victim of “covert, non-constraining control” (CNC): manipulation whereby one person causes another, through the use of methods such as brainwashing or circumspect operant conditioning, to ‘do his bidding’ without the latter being aware of his subjugation or feeling in any way coerced. Since a CNC victim obviously lacks autonomy, then so must “persons” living in a deterministic universe. Defenders of AC have, then, the following argument with which to contend: -/- 1. Victims of CNC (obviously) lack autonomy. 2. Thus, AC would be true only if some definition of autonomy succeeds in specifying a freedom relevant difference between victims of CNC and agents whose choices/actions are necessary consequences of prior events. 3. There could be no such definition. 4. Therefore, AC must be false. -/- The challenge issued here is clear: find a way to refute the claim that being subject to natural laws would be tantamount to being a victim of CNC, to show that Nature is no manipulator. Moreover, this challenge cannot be met by responding with a Frankfurt case: a situation in which things have been surreptitiously arranged so that an agent is unable to avoid doing something that he manages to do ‘on his own’, thus, being autonomous despite his inability to act otherwise. For, even if CD is not inconsistent with autonomy because it eliminates the ability to do otherwise per se, it may yet entail that no human agent ever does act of his own accord, an implication of which would be a lack of alternatives on anyone’s part. In other words, the fact that causally determined beings could never act differently than they do does is perhaps only symptomatic of the reason why such beings would lack autonomy: forces beyond their control would have dominion over their psychological development. Thus, AC advocates must show that the way that an agent’s character would be shaped, were she (merely) subject to natural laws, would leave unimpaired an ability that CNC would destroy. What follows is a definition of this ability, which I also use to solve the Problem of Freedom and Foreknowledge. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which demand concern for questions like “What if everybody did that?” Rule consequentialism attempts to incorporate these intuitions by shifting the locus of evaluation from the consequences of acts to those of rules. However, detailed rule-consequentialist theories seem ad hoc or arbitrary compared to act consequentialist ones. We claim that generalizing can be better incorporated into consequentialism (...) by keeping the locus of evaluation on acts but adjusting the decision theory behind act selection. Specifically, we should adjust which types of dependencies the theory takes to be decision-relevant. Using this strategy, we formulate a new theory, generalized act consequentialism, which we argue is more compelling than rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct verdicts. (shrink)

The concept of agency, defined counterfactually as the freedom to 'act otherwise', occupies a central place in much of contemporary social and political theory. In criticizing this concept of agency I deploy what I call an 'immanent critique', focusing upon Bhaskar's 'transcendental realism' and Rorty's anti-realist theory of linguistic contingency. Invoking Wittgenstein's argumentation from On Certainty, I go on to contend that agency and freedom cannot be 'known' in the way that social and political theorists assert. I proceed to criticize (...) Bhaskar's pro vision of transcendental realist foundations for Marxism, and Rorty's use of Wittgenstein. I argue that Bhaskar's conception of social critique and Rorty's defence of 'bourgeois liberal society' are both predicated on a similar notion of individuals' 'private' possession of agency and free choice. (shrink)

Many jurisdictions have put regulatory strategies in place to provide incentives and safeguards to whistleblowers to encourage whistleblowing on corporate wrongdoings. One such strategy is the provision of a financial incentive to the whistleblower if the complaint leads to a successful regulatory enforcement action against the offending organization. We conducted an experiment using professional accountants as participants to examine whether such an incentive encourages potential whistleblowers to report an observed financial reporting fraud to a relevant external authority. We also examine (...) the effect of perceived seriousness of the wrongdoing on accountants’ intention to whistleblow. We find that a financial incentive results in a higher intention to whistleblow to a relevant external authority. We also find that perceptions of the seriousness of the wrongdoing are significantly and positively associated with accountants’ intention to whistleblow to a relevant external authority. We find a significant interaction between the provision of a financial incentive and the perceived seriousness of the wrongdoing on the intention to report the wrongdoing externally. The intention to report the financial reporting fraud externally is higher when the level of perceived seriousness is higher, regardless of the availability of a financial incentive. However, when the perceived level of seriousness is lower, the presence of financial incentive results in a higher intention to report the financial reporting fraud externally. These findings indicate that the impact of a financial incentive on the intention to whistleblow is moderated by perceptions of the seriousness of the wrongdoing. (shrink)

According to prevailing opinion, if a creaturely act is caused by God, then it cannot be free in the libertarian sense. I argue to the contrary. I distinguish intrinsic and extrinsic models of divine causal agency. I then show that, given the extrinsic model, there is no reason one holding that our free acts are caused by God could not also hold a libertarian account of human freedom. It follows that a libertarian account of human freedom is (...) consistent with God’s being the source and cause of all being apart from himself, including the being of free human actions. (shrink)

Technology used in online marketing has advanced to a state where collection, enhancement and aggregation of information are instantaneous. This proliferation of customer information focused technology brings with it a host of issues surrounding customer privacy. This article makes two key contributions to the debate concerning digital privacy. First, we use theories of justice to help understand the way consumers conceive of, and react to, privacy concerns. Specifically, it is argued that an important component of consumers' privacy concerns relates to (...) fairness judgments, which in turn comprise of the two primary components of distributive and procedural justice. Second, we make a number of prescriptions, aimed at both firms and regulators, based on the notion that consumers respond to perceived privacy violations in much the same way they would respond to an unfair exchange. (shrink)

In the Ethics, Spinoza famously rejects freedom of the will. He also offers an error theory for why many believe, falsely, that the will is free. Standard accounts of his arguments for these claims focus on their efficacy against incompatibilist views of free will. For Spinoza, the will cannot be free since it is determined by an infinite chain of external causes. And the pervasive belief in free will arises from a structural limitation of our self-knowledge: (...) because we are aware of our actions but unaware of their causes, we suppose that we alone must be responsible for them. Yet I argue that the standard accounts miss a further element of Spinoza’s arguments that also targets compatibilist views on which free will is consistent with a specific kind of determination—namely, self-determination in accordance with our value judgments. For Spinoza, we are misled not only in supposing that our actions lack external determination but also in thinking that they are determined by our representations of value. In fact, our actions are determined by our appetites, which are blind to our value judgments. And the pervasive belief that our actions are determined by such judgments arises from the projection of value onto the objects we seek. As he denies us free will, then, Spinoza also denies us a capacity central to agency—the capacity to determine our actions in accordance with our ideas of the good. This makes his arguments against free will more consequential, and more radical, than commonly assumed. (shrink)

The aim of UK-REACH (“The United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers”) is to understand if, how, and why healthcare workers (HCWs) in the United Kingdom (UK) from ethnic minority groups are at increased risk of poor outcomes from COVID-19. In this article, we present findings from the ethical and legal stream of the study, which undertook qualitative research seeking to understand and address legal, ethical, and social acceptability issues around data protection, privacy, and information (...) governance associated with the linkage of HCWs’ registration data and healthcare data. We interviewed 22 key opinion leaders in healthcare and health research from across the UK in two-to-one semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were coded using qualitative thematic analysis. Participants told us that a significant aspect of Big Data research in public health is varying drivers of mistrust—of the research itself, research staff and funders, and broader concerns of mistrust within participant communities, particularly in the context of COVID-19 and those situated in more marginalised community settings. However, despite the challenges, participants also identified ways in which legally compliant and ethically informed approaches to research can be crafted to mitigate or overcome mistrust and establish greater confidence in Big Data public health research. Overall, our research indicates that a “Big Data Ethics by Design” approach to research in this area can help assure (1) that meaningful community and participant engagement is taking place and that extant challenges are addressed, and (2) that any new challenges or hitherto unknown unknowns can be rapidly and properly considered to ensure potential (but material) harms are identified and minimised where necessary. Our findings indicate such an approach, in turn, will help drive better scientific breakthroughs that translate into medical innovations and effective public health interventions, which benefit the publics studied, including those who are often marginalised in research. (shrink)

Many strategies have been proposed to address the supply of bespoke essays and other assignments by companies often described as ‘Essay Mills’ with the act of supply and use being invariably described as ‘contract cheating’. These proposals increasingly refer to the law as a solution in common with other action. In this article, the lead author revisits work undertaken in 2016 as a result of recent legal and extra-legal developments to assess whether the UK Fraud Act (2006) might now be (...) used to tackle some of the activities of the companies involved, by comparing their common practises, and their Terms and Conditions, with the Act. It was previously found that all sites have disclaimers regarding the use of their products but there were some obvious contradictions in the activities of the sites which undermined those disclaimers, for example plagiarism-free guarantees for the work. In this article, we ask and consider the question whether this is still the case having regard to the impact of a change in the law by the UK supreme court and recent action of the UK Advertising Standards Authority. We also consider whether a call for a new offence to be created which specifically targets the undesirable behaviours of these companies is still justified. (shrink)

Rachlin overlooks that free will determines when and in what direction acts that appear impulsive will occur. Because behavioral patterns continuously evolve, animals are not guaranteed when they will, or how to, maximize larger-later reinforcements. An animal therefore uses self-control to emit free acts to vary behavioral patterns to optimize larger-later rewards.

George Stigler soutenait que l’économiste, quand il prêchait, ne pouvait faire plus que de recommander une éthique de la rationalité instrumentale, ou de la manière intelligente d’accorder les moyens aux fins. Les fins les plus importantes appartiendraient toutes à un maximande unique, la richesse, tempérée par un altruisme de proximité.L’agnosticisme moral radical de Stigler le conduisit à nier toute distinction entre les choix forcés et libres, les actes licites et illicites, le vol et le commerce dans la mesure où ils (...) aboutissaient de manière égale à l’augmentation de l’utilité. En considérant que le concept de coercition était sans fondement, il identifia la liberté avec la richesse. Cet article expose les raisons analytiques pour lesquelles les arguments de Stigler ne sont pas valables.George Stigler held that the economist, when he preached, could do no more than commend an ethic of instrumental rationality, the intelligent fitting of means to ends. The ends that mattered were all included in a single maximand, wealth, tempered by proximity-altruism.Stigler’s radical moral agnosticism led him to deny any distinction between coerced and free choices, licit and illicit acts, robbery and commerce as long as they were equally utilityenhancing. Finding the concept of coercion baseless, he identified liberty with wealth. The paper furnishes analytical reasons why Stigler’s arguments are invalid. (shrink)

The fungal cell wall is a dynamic structure that protects the cell from changes in osmotic pressure and other environmental stresses, while allowing the fungal cell to interact with its environment. The structure and biosynthesis of a fungal cell wall is unique to the fungi, and is therefore an excellent target for the development of anti‐fungal drugs. The structure of the fungal cell wall and the drugs that target its biosynthesis are reviewed. Based on studies in a number of fungi, (...) the cell wall has been shown to be primarily composed of chitin, glucans, mannans and glycoproteins. The biosynthesis of the various components of the fungal cell wall and the importance of the components in the formation of a functional cell wall, as revealed through mutational analyses, are discussed. There is strong evidence that the chitin, glucans and glycoproteins are covalently cross‐linked together and that the cross‐linking is a dynamic process that occurs extracellularly. BioEssays 28: 799–808, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the views of Robert Kane on the one hand and John Fischer and Mark Ravizza on the other both lead to the following conclusion: we should have very low confidence in our ability to judge that someone is acting freely or in a way for which they can be held responsible. This in turn means, I claim, that these views, in practice, collapse into a sort of hard incompatibilist position, or the position of a (...) free will denier. That would at least be an unintended consequence, and it might be regarded as a virtual reductio. Versions of the objection could likely be made against a number of other accounts of free will, but I will limit my focus to Kane and Fischer. Along the way, by way of response to some possible objections to my argument, I make some comments about epistemic closure principles. (shrink)

‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. It is a topic in metaphysics and ethics as much as in the philosophy of mind. Its central questions are ‘What is it to act (or choose) freely?’, and ‘What is it to be morally responsible for one’s actions (or choices)?’ These two questions are closely connected, for it seems clear that freedom of action is a necessary condition of moral responsibility, (...) even if it is not sufficient. (shrink)

Technology used in online marketing has advanced to a state where collection, enhancement and aggregation of information are instantaneous. This proliferation of customer information focused technology brings with it a host of issues surrounding customer privacy. This article makes two key contributions to the debate concerning digital privacy. First, we use theories of justice to help understand the way consumers conceive of, and react to, privacy concerns. Specifically, it is argued that an important component of consumers’ privacy concerns relates to (...) fairness judgments, which in turn comprise of the two primary components of distributive and procedural justice. Second, we make a number of prescriptions, aimed at both firms and regulators, based on the notion that consumers respond to perceived privacy violations in much the same way they would respond to an unfair exchange. (shrink)

The paper explores the problem of death as a central issue of every eschatology, including the Catholic one. Death as a phenomenon and anthropological fact shapes the beginnings of the Old Testament’ Eschatology, sharpening its statement in the New Testament’ theology crucis. During the history of theology, the theology of death remained within the frame of its interpretation as a consequence of sin and unwanted fate, whereby its positive connection to freedom was left out. Only thanks to some of the (...) contemporary approaches that place death in direct relation to freedom, observing it as a conscious act of an individual, both death and freedom, although at first opposed, become the categories that, theologically observed, transform themselves. In conclusion, the paper attempts to answer the question regarding freedom to die, in the light of some contemporary eschatological debates, and to place the awareness of death in the context of freedom and life, and not as their opposition. (shrink)

In this paper I examine some of the significant moral concerns inherent in cases of treatment refusal involving patients with psychotic disorders. In particular, I explore the relevance of the principle of autonomy in such situations. After exploring the concept of autonomy and explaining its current and historical significance in a health care setting, I argue that because autonomous choice depends for its existence upon certain human functions such as the ability to reason, judge, and assess consequences, patients cannot be (...) said to be making free and autonomous decisions if these capacities are compromised. I contend further that because psychotic disorders have the potential to compromise these functions in the future, it is appropriate, in some limited cases, to coerce patients with psychotic disorders to undergo treatment in order to preserve their future decision-making capacities and to protect their ability to recognize and respect the autonomy of others. (shrink)

Do we have free will? Understanding free will as the ability to act freely, and free actions as exercises of this ability, I maintain that the default answer to this question is “yes.” I maintain that free actions are a natural kind, by relying on the influential idea that kinds are homeostatic property clusters. The resulting position builds on the view that agents are a natural kind and yields an attractive alternative to recent revisionist accounts of (...) free action. My view also overcomes difficulties confronted by previous views according to which free actions might be a natural kind. On my view, free actions exist and we often act freely, as long as we possess various features that are related in the right sorts of ways to each other and to the world. In turn, we acquire and retain the concept as long as most of us possess enough of those features. (shrink)

In this paper I examine some of the significant moral concerns inherent in cases of treatment refusal involving patients with psychotic disorders. In particular, I explore the relevance of the principle of autonomy in such situations. After exploring the concept of autonomy and explaining its current and historical significance in a health care setting, I argue that because autonomous choice depends for its existence upon certain human functions such as the ability to reason, judge, and assess consequences, patients cannot be (...) said to be making free and autonomous decisions if these capacities are compromised. I contend further that because psychotic disorders have the potential to compromise these functions in the future, it is appropriate, in some limited cases, to coerce patients with psychotic disorders to undergo treatment in order to preserve their future decisionmaking capacities and to protect their ability to recognize and respect the autonomy of others. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the worry that the existence of causal antecedents to your choices means that you are causally compelled to act as you do. It begins with the folk notion of cause, leads the reader through recent developments in the scientific understanding of causal concepts, and argues that those developments undermine the threat from causal antecedents. The discussion is then used as a model for a kind of naturalistic metaphysics that takes its lead from science, letting everyday concepts be (...) shaped and transformed by scientific developments. (shrink)

What is free will? Why is it important? Can the same act be both free and determined? Is free will necessary for moral responsibility? Does anyone have free will, and if not, how is creativity possible and how can anyone be praised or blamed for anything? These are just some of the questions considered by Joseph Keim Campbell in this lively and accessible introduction to the concept of free will. Using a range of engaging examples (...) the book introduces the problems, arguments, and theories surrounding free will. Beginning with a discussion of fatalism and causal determinism, the book goes on to focus on the metaphysics of moral responsibility, free will skepticism, and skepticism about moral responsibility. Campbell shows that no matter how we look at it, free will is problematic. Thankfully there are a plethora of solutions on offer and the best of these are considered in full in the final chapter on contemporary theories of free will. This includes a rigorous account of libertarianism, compatabilism, and naturalism. _Free Will_ is the ideal introduction to the topic and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the importance and relevance of the concept for contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

What is free will? Why is it important? Can the same act be both free and determined? Is free will necessary for moral responsibility? Does anyone have free will, and if not, how is creativity possible and how can anyone be praised or blamed for anything? These are just some of the questions considered by Joseph Keim Campbell in this lively and accessible introduction to the concept of free will. Using a range of engaging examples (...) the book introduces the problems, arguments, and theories surrounding free will. Beginning with a discussion of fatalism and causal determinism, the book goes on to focus on the metaphysics of moral responsibility, free will skepticism, and skepticism about moral responsibility. Campbell shows that no matter how we look at it, free will is problematic. Thankfully there are a plethora of solutions on offer and the best of these are considered in full in the final chapter on contemporary theories of free will. This includes a rigorous account of libertarianism, compatabilism, and naturalism. _Free Will_ is the ideal introduction to the topic and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the importance and relevance of the concept for contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism? Scott Sehon argues that we can make progress on these questions by focusing on an underlying issue: the nature of action explanation. When a person acts, or does something on purpose, we explain the behavior by citing the agent's reasons. The dominant view in philosophy of mind has been to construe such explanations as a species of causal explanation. Sehon proposes and defends a (...) non-causal account of action and agency, according to which reason explanation of human behavior is teleological rather than causal, before applying the teleological account of action to free will and responsibility. He argues that the non-causal compatibilist account works well in practice: it is in accord with our clear intuitions about cases, and it both explains and provides guidance in the cases where our intuitions are murkier. (shrink)

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free (...) will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.). (shrink)

This book defends an event-causal theory of libertarian free will and argues that the belief in such free will plays an important, if not essential, role in supporting certain important values. In the first part of the book, the author argues that possession of libertarian free will is necessary for deserved praise and blame and reward and punishment. He contends that his version of libertarian free will-the indeterministic weightings view- is coherent and can fit with a (...) scientific, naturalistic understanding of human nature. However, the author also notes that we don't have sufficient evidentiary grounds to believe that human beings have this kind of free will. Despite this, he argues there are sufficiently strong value-based/axiological reasons to believe we have such free will and to live an act as if we have it. In the second part of the book, the author makes the case that the belief in such libertarian, desert-grounding free will is very important to defending human dignity in the context of criminal justice, making sense of justified pride and its value, and adding value to our relationships. Free Will's Value will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, action theory, ethics, and the philosophy of law. (shrink)

Can a player be held morally responsible for the choices that she makes within a videogame? Do the moral choices that the player makes reflect in any way on the player’s actual moral sensibilities? Many videogames offer players the options to make numerous choices within the game, including moral choices. But the scope of these choices is quite limited. I attempt to analyze these issues by drawing on philosophical debates about the nature of free will. Many philosophers worry that, (...) if our actions are predetermined, then we cannot be held morally responsible for them. However, Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of free will suggests that an agent can be held morally responsible for actions that she wills, even if the agent is not free to act otherwise. Using Frankfurt’s analysis, I suggest that videogames represent deterministic worlds in which players lack the ability to freely choose what they do, and yet players can be held morally responsible for some of their actions, specifically those actions that the player wants to do. Finally, I offer some speculative comments on how these considerations might impact our understanding of the player’s moral psychology as it relates to the ethics of imagined fictional events. (shrink)

Free-variable semantic tableaux are a well-established technique for first-order theorem proving where free variables act as a meta-linguistic device for tracking the eigenvariables used during proof search. We present the theoretical foundations to extend this technique to propositional modal logics, including non-trivial rigorous proofs of soundness and completeness, and also present various techniques that improve the efficiency of the basic naive method for such tableaux.

Resumen El objetivo principal de este artículo es recrear la práctica de la hospitalidad en el contexto de la realidad migratoria actual, con la intención de aportar luz a la manera de gestionar la diversidad, de repensar la formación de identidad, de acercarnos a ciertas dinámicas políticas y últimamente de incentivar procesos de integración y cohesión social, especialmente en la vida de nuestros barrios. Para ello, el autor se adentra en las raíces bíblicas de la hospitalidad, aportando algunas claves para (...) entender esta virtud hoy. En nuestro mundo actual donde parecería ganar terreno la hostilidad sobre la hospitalidad, la práctica de la hospitalidad constituye un auténtico acto de resistencia.The main aim of this article is to recreate the practice of hospitality in the context of the current migratory reality, with the intention of bringing light to the way of managing diversity, of rethinking identity formation, of approaching certain political dynamics and lately to encourage processes of integration and social cohesion, especially in our vulnerable neighborhoods. For this purpose, the author delves into the biblical roots of hospitality, providing some clues to understand this virtue today. In our current world where hostility over hospitality seems to gain ground, the practice of hospitality constitutes a genuine act of resistance. (shrink)

‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. It is a topic in metaphysics and ethics as much as in the philosophy of mind. Its central questions are ‘What is it to act (or choose) freely?’, and ‘What is it to be morally responsible for one’s actions (or choices)?’ These two questions are closely connected, for it seems clear that freedom of action is a necessary condition of moral responsibility, (...) even if it is not sufficient. (shrink)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put (...) constraints on views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

There is a well-known moral quandary concerning how to account for the rightness or wrongness of acts that clearly contribute to some morally significant outcome – but which each seem too small, individually, to make any meaningful difference. One consequentialist-friendly response to this problem is to deny that there could ever be a case of this type. This paper pursues this general strategy, but in an unusual way. Existing arguments for the consequentialist-friendly position are sorites-style arguments. Such arguments imagine (...) varying a subject’s predicament bit by bit until it is clear that a relevant difference has been achieved. The arguments offered in this paper are structurally different, and do not rely on any sorites series. For this reason, they are not vulnerable to objections that have been leveled against the sorites-style arguments. (shrink)

What are the folk-conceptual connections between free will and consciousness? In this paper I present results which indicate that consciousness plays central roles in folk conceptions of free will. When conscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent acted freely. And when unconscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent did not act freely. Further, these studies contribute to recent experimental work on folk philosophical affiliation, which analyzes folk responses to determine whether (...) folk views are consistent with the view that free will and determinism are incompatible (incompatibilism) or with the opposite view (compatibilism). Conscious causation of behavior tends to elicit pro-free will judgments, even when the causation takes place deterministically. Thus, when controlling for consciousness, many folk seem to be compatibilists. However, participants who disagree with the deterministic or cognitive scientific descriptions given of human behavior tend to give incompatibilist responses. (shrink)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put (...) constraints on views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation by Charles C. CamosyRebecca Todd PetersBeyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation Charles C. Camosy Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015. 207Pp. $22.00As the title Beyond the Abortion Wars suggests, Camosy seeks a new way to address abortion in the United States that moves past the binary divisions of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” Based on (...) his read of shifting public opinion, demographics, and interpretations of constitutional law, Camosy bypasses the question of whether our national abortion policy will change (he thinks it will) in order to focus on the question of what the new public policy ought to be (3).Camosy, a Catholic theologian, acknowledges early on that the argument he is putting forth is consistent with defined Catholic doctrine (6). Placing him solidly in the “pro-life” camp, many of the positions he seeks to defend and promote (life begins at conception, women are coerced into abortion, abortion is “tragic,” and most women seek abortion for “convenience”) are hardly new. In fact, his whole framing of the argument falls in line with the increasingly strident “pro-life” approach to abortion, which argues that abortion “hurts” women (112). This strategy developed in the 1990s after the Planned Parenthood vs. Casey decision opened up the possibility for state regulation of abortion and is the predominant rationale behind the recent spate of state regulations following the 2010 midterm elections that swept Republicans into state houses across the country (288 regulations between 2010–15 compared to 292 between 1995–2010). Camosy’s most controversial claim for the pro-life side is likely to be that the use of “indirect abortion” is morally acceptable for “proportionately serious reason(s),” which he identifies as rape and saving the life of the pregnant woman (83). The bill he proposes, the Mother and Prenatal Child Protection Act, allows for “indirect abortion” after a three-day waiting period and with submission of a signed affidavit claiming that the pregnancy is the result of nonconsensual sex. But it also establishes “equal protection of the law for prenatal children” and criminalizes abortion under most circumstances.It is unlikely that many on the pro-choice side will see these concessions as acceptable compromises. It’s a shame that Camosy seeks such an unlikely compromise rather than developing a common ground legislative proposal incorporating the many long-term feminist goals that are actually included in his bill: equal pay for equal work; addressing discrimination against parents (especially women), pregnant women, and new mothers; protection against domestic [End Page 210] violence; parental leave; universal prekindergarten and subsidized child care; and increased measures to collect child support, among others. These could serve as a basis for important legislation that would support pregnant women and their families and might indeed create circumstances in which some would decide to continue their pregnancies. Tellingly, his legislation completely ignores comprehensive sex education and free and unhindered access to all forms of contraception—the two strategies that have historically proven most effective in reducing abortion rates.As a Christian ethicist who is also working on the issue of abortion, I can appreciate that Camosy’s work is informed by his own beliefs and commitments on this issue. I share his desire to find a way forward on the issue of abortion and move beyond the abortion wars. However, I was unsatisfied with Camosy’s paternalistic approach to the issue of abortion and the women who terminate their pregnancies. His repeated assertions that women are coerced into abortion do not reflect the majority of social-scientific studies on the issue; his belief that criminalizing abortion would function to teach people (including these coerced women) that abortion is morally wrong is positively patriarchal; and his judgmental accusation that most women seek abortions for reasons of convenience betrays a deep disregard for women’s safety, economic well-being, and concern for their families, not to mention their health. We clearly have very different definitions of convenience.Rebecca Todd PetersElon UniversityCopyright © 2016 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices: some trivial, others so consequential that they change the course of one's life, or even the course of history. But are these choices really free, or are we compelled to act the way we do by factors beyond our control? Is the feeling that we could have made different decisions just an illusion? And if our choices are not free, is it legitimate to (...) hold people morally responsible for their actions? Pink looks at the fundamental philosophical question of free will, Engaging in discussion of the claim: 'If our actions are causally determined by events beyond our control, that means that we can never act freely, and so can never be held responsible for our actions. (shrink)

Consider this scenario: A terrorist just bombed the subway in London, which resulted in the casualties of numerous innocent people. His act can be considered well-planned for he fully knew what consequences his act would bring. If determinism is true, is it possible that the terrorist in question bombed the subway out of free will? An incompatibilist would respond to this question with a resounding “no”. A compatibilist, on the other hand, would answer yes, as long as the terrorist (...) possessed certain psychological characteristics, causal histories, etc. This underlies the basis of disputes between the compatibilists and incompatibilists, who appear to hold opposite views on whether it is possible for someone to act out of free will if determinism is true. However, as I shall discuss in Chapter One, this disagreement is partly a verbal one that stems from the diverse meanings of the term “free will”. This thesis aims to transcend the verbal disagreement and explore where the deeper, more substantial disagreements may lie between compatibilists and incompatibilists. One possible sphere where substantial disagreements between compatibilists and incompatibilists may lie is the content of the ordinary concept of free will, or that of the strongest sense of control condition necessary for securing the ordinary concept of moral responsibility. On this view, the metaphysical question and the conceptual question about free will are inseparable; in order to find out the metaphysical satisfaction conditions of free will, one must first identify the conceptual satisfaction conditions of free will. Further, the latter is reflected in everyday free will/ moral responsibility ascriptions about hypothetical or real scenarios. In Chapter Two, I analyze how the recent experimental philosophy movement bears on this issue. By examining the findings of some current experimental philosophy studies, I argue that neither compatibilism nor incompatibilism can sufficiently capture the ordinary concept of free will or moral responsibility. In the light of my discussions in Chapter Two, I explain in Chapter Three why each of the various traditional accounts of free will cannot independently provide an adequate “package deal” of solutions for the problem of free will. Near the end of the chapter, I propose a pluralistic, agnostic account of free will as an alternative solution. Despite its great instrumental value, experimental philosophy is not widely recognized as a philosophically significant methodology. Hence, Chapter Four is devoted to discussing the actual and potential values of experimental philosophy in the light of its contribution to the free will debate. I conclude that the encounter between the free will debate and the experimental philosophy movement is a fruitful one; the former proves the value of the latter by receiving helpful insights from it. (shrink)

The thesis of this article is that there has never been any ground for the controversy between the doctrine of free will and determinism, that it is based upon a misapprehension, that the two assertions are entirely consistent, that one of them strictly implies the other, that they have been opposed only because of our natural want of the analytical imagination. In so saying I do not tamper with the meaning of either phrase. That would be unpardonable. I mean (...) free will in the natural and usual sense, in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which for the purposes of the personal and moral life the term is ever employed. I mean it as implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an act has been performed, that one " could have done otherwise " than one did. I mean it as conveying these things also, not in any subtly modified sense but in exactly the sense in which we conceive them in life and in law and in ethics. These two doctrines have been opposed because we have not realised that free will can be analysed without being destroyed, and that determinism is merely a feature of the analysis of it. And if we are tempted to take refuge in the thought of an "ultimate ", an "innermost" liberty that eludes the analysis, then we have implied a deterministic basis and constitution for this liberty as well. For such a basis and constitution lie in the idea of liberty. -/- The thesis is not, like that of Green or Bradley, that the contending opinions are reconciled if we adopt a certain metaphysic of the ego, as that it is timeless, and identifies itself with a desire by a " timeless act". This is to say that the two are irreconcilable, as they are popularly supposed to be, except by a theory that delivers us from the conflict by taking us out of time. Our view on the contrary is that from the natural and temporal point of view itself there never was any need of a reconciliation but only of a comprehension of the meaning of terms. (The metaphysical nature of the self and its identity through time is a problem for all who confront memory, anticipation, etc.; it has no peculiar difficulties arising from the present problem.) -/- I am not maintaining that determinism is true; only that it is true insofar as we have free will. That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, a fact of experience. That broad fact is more assured than any philosophical analysis. It is therefore surer than the deterministic analysis of it, entirely adequate as that in the end appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance. All that is here said is that such absence of determination, if and so far as it exists, is no gain to freedom, but sheer loss of it; no advantage to the moral life, but blank subtraction from it. -- When I speak below of "the indeterminist" I mean the libertarian indeterminist, that is, him who believes in free will and holds that it involves indetermination. (shrink)

Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. This chapter (...) explicates and assesses skeptical, compatibilist, and libertarian approaches to moral luck. First, I argue that what makes the above problems of free will and moral luck distinct is largely their emphasis on different kinds of luck. Second, I describe and evaluate skeptical arguments from constitutive and circumstantial luck that it is impossible to act freely. Third, I explicate and assess various support and implication relationships between various kinds of compatibilism and libertarianism, on the one hand, and causal, constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant moral luck, on the other. (shrink)

This article examines what is wrong with some expressive acts, ‘insults’. Their putative wrongfulness is distinguished from the causing of indirect harms, aggregated harms, contextual harms, and damaging misrepresentations. The article clarifies what insults are, making use of work by Neu and Austin, and argues that their wrongfulness cannot lie in the hurt that is caused to those at whom such acts are directed. Rather it must lie in what they seek to do, namely to denigrate the other. (...) The causing of offence is at most evidence that an insult has been communicated; it is not independent grounds of proscription or constraint. The victim of an insult may know that she has been insulted but not accept or agree with the insult, and thereby submit to the insulter. Hence insults need not, as Waldron argues they do, occasion dignitary harms. They do not of themselves subvert their victims' equal moral status. The claim that hateful speech endorses inequality should not be conflated with a claim that such speech directly subverts equality. Thus, ‘wounding words’ should not unduly trouble the liberal defender of free speech either on the grounds of preventing offence or on those of avoiding dignitary harms. (shrink)

Moderate holists like French, Copp :369–388, 2007), Hess, Isaacs and List and Pettit argue that certain collectives qualify as moral agents in their own right, often pointing to the corporation as an example of a collective likely to qualify. A common objection is that corporations cannot qualify as moral agents because they lack free will. The concern is that corporations are effectively puppets, dancing on strings controlled by external forces. The article begins by briefly presenting a novel account of (...) corporate moral agency and then demonstrates that, on this account, qualifying corporations do possess free will. Such entities possess and act from their own “actional springs”, in Haji’s :292–308, 2006) phrase, and from their own reasons-responsive mechanisms. When they do so, they act freely and are morally responsible for what they do. (shrink)

Plausibly, agents act freely iff their actions are responses to reasons. But what sort of relationship between reason and action is required for the action to count as a response? The overwhelmingly dominant answer to this question is modalist. It holds that responses are actions that share a modally robust or secure relationship with the relevant reasons. This thesis offers a new alternative answer. It argues that responses are actions that can be explained by reasons in the right way. This (...) explanationist answer comes apart from the modalist answer. For it holds that actions are responses to reasons if they are explained by those reasons even if they don’t share a modally robust relationship. Explanationism thus offers a novel way of vindicating the intuition that alternative possibilities don’t matter to responding to reasons and (consequently) free agency. The key dialectical position the thesis develops is that both modalism and explanationism constitute attempts to capture he core type of relationship encoded by the notion of a response. Responses to reasons, at core, involve a non-accidental relationship between reason and action. We can either understand non-accidentality as a modal phenomenon – as a modally robust tracking between two facts. Or we can understand non-accidentality as an explanatory phenomenon – as a special explanatory relationship between two facts. According to my rival explanationist proposal, two facts share a non-accidental relationship iff we can give a unified explanation of why both obtain. Unified explanations are explanations of why [p&q] that cannot be decomposed into two (or more) separate independent explanations of p and of q. Consequently, according to explanationism about responding to reasons, actions are responses to reasons iff those reasons offer a rational explanation of the action that cannot be decomposed into separate independent components. (shrink)

The free will problem is defined and three solutions are discussed: no-freedom theory, libertarianism, and compatibilism. Strict determinism is often assumed in arguing for libertarianism or no-freedom theory. It assumes that the history of the universe is fixed, but modern physics admits a certain degree of randomness in the determination of events. However, this is not enough for a compatibilist position—which is favored here—since freedom is not randomness. It is the I that chooses what to do. It is argued (...) that the core of the free will problem is what this I is. A materialist view is favored: The I is an activity of the brain. In addition to absence of external and internal compulsion, freedom involves absence of causal sufficiency of influences acting on the I. A more elaborate compatibilist view is proposed, according to which causal determination is complete when we add events occurring in the I (of which the subject is not conscious). Contrary to what several authors have argued, the onset of the readiness potential before the decision to act is no problem here. The experience of agency is incomplete and fallible, rather than illusory. Some consequences of different views about freedom for the ascription of responsibility are discussed. (shrink)