Free Will

Reference in light of Qualia Calculus (QC); Hard Problems in light of QC; The number of qualia in a room in light of QC; verification of 1st-person phenomena; more advanced neurology; 3rd-person and 1st-person aspects of a system; their symmetries; Well-tempered Clavier; the past is not determined; argument for A-theories in light of QC; frames of reference; Standard Model; String Theory; Bach; time; causality; Schrodinger equation; technology; earth; thick present; Zen; the river; free will; materialists in light of QC.

Taking divine omniscience as including temporal omniscience, which means God exists at all times and knows everything, I point out the fallacies in an incompatibilist argument. Syntactically, due to misapplication of the principle of substitutivity, this incompatibilist argument isn’t valid. Semantically, due to cancelation of a supposition on which God’s earlier belief depends, an agent’s alternative action won’t result in falsification of divine belief. Finally, by appealing to an eternalist conception of truth of proposition about the future, I argue that (...) what divine belief entails isn’t the necessity of an agent’s action but the action itself, and put forward a notion of conditional fatalism, which allows for human free will. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, the author dissolves the problem of free will and reconstructs it for pragmatic purposes. The article begins by locating the historical ruptures that have given rise to three different formulations of the problem itself throughout the history of philosophy, then turns to the insights of American Pragmatism for the purposes of rejecting the free will/determinism dualism, reconstructing the problem of free will as the social problem of obstruction, and illustrating why metaphysics as a discipline ought to (...) serve ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article analyzes recent Western interpretations of the Theravāda Buddhist position on free will in order to reveal how differences in worldview and methodology impact claims about agency—exposing assumptions about the meaning of will, cause, and self—and how commonalities across traditions enable us to discover what may be at stake, more generally, in the philosophical problem of free will. Embedded in different ontologies and expressed by disparate means are similar intuitions about consciousness, coercion, and the transformative power of wisdom (...) as well as deeply human concerns about what we can and cannot change and with whom we should or should not find fault. Ultimately, this study of cross-cultural conversations aims to demonstrate how careful attention to assumptions underlying the concepts of will, causation, selfhood, and desert can prove both edifying and liberating. (shrink)

In his Bipartitum in morali philosophia, the Scottish philosopher William of Manderston, a pupil of John Mair, and an Ockhamist philosopher, is quoting a text of Antonin of Padua who distinguishes the factum opened to a juridical qualification from the inner belief, known by God alone. Quoting the same text, the authors of the Malleus maleficarum try hard to distinguish three distinct fields, the inner beliefs which belongs to God, the exterior acts, the facts, which are relevant for the judges, (...) and the third field, which establishes a relation between the fact and the beliefs. This third field is proper to the inquisitors. Against this ethics of imputability, Manderston, relying on Ockham’s ethics, advocates an intentionalist ethics which depends on a sharp separation between interiority and exteriority. The soteriological dimension of the question entirely belongs to the inner life, whereas the exteriority is strictly disciplinary. By his radicality, Manderston appears as a paradigm of the modern dichotomy between conscience and law, Paolo Prodi once pointed out as a cornerstone of the religious modernity. (shrink)

The paper deals with the question of the development of Duns Scotus’ thought on the causes of the will: is the intellect a contributory cause of the choice (as claimed in the writings of the Oxford period), or is it only an occasion for it (as stated in the last works, written in Paris)? The collatio 6, probably discussed in 1301, immediately after the arrival of the Scottish theologian in Paris, still defends the doctrine of the intellect as a contributory (...) cause of the will, and therefore represents the last text preceding the turn of Scotus towards the theory that assigns to the intellect the role of mere causa sine qua non. This theory was widespread in Paris and supported by the Master of Scotus, Gonsalvus of Spain, who probably heavily influenced the doctrinal change of Scotus. (shrink)

Some philosophical-theological conflicts in the topic of A priori science, God's will and omnipotence with the issue of compulsion and human free will are still debated by commentators and experts. Re-reading and analyzing Ibn Sina's opinions about the effect of human will in the cause and effect system of the world and his solution to the paradoxical solution of free will and divine predestination necessitates research on this issue. Ibn Sina explains the system of will and free will as well (...) as the knowledge of God's favor as the best system. According to Ibn Sina, divine destiny is God's general knowledge of the best system, and from this knowledge, possible beings emerge. According to him, based on divine decree, man has a type of will that has been subject to the will and providence of God with the discretion of what the speaking power recognizes as good. Man's free will can realize his desire or practical power -instead of being motivated by lower animal powers such as appetitive or angry powers- in the direction of realizing intellectual forms. It is in obtaining and paying attention to such a possibility that a person is placed on the path of destiny, that is, the granting of free will, in the sense of choosing goodness, beauty, and goodness, through the power of wisdom. From the point of view of Sheikh Al-Raees, human discretion means to be in line with God's will and his providence for the actualization and realization of the best system. This research is done with descriptive-analytical method. (shrink)

In the recent debate on Christian theism, the position called Open Theism (OT) tries to solve the dilemma of omniscience and human freedom. In OT, the key word of the human-divine relationship is “risk”: in his relationship with us, God is a risk-taker in that he adapts his plan to human decisions and to the situations that arise from them. “Risk” is the fundamental characteristic of any true love relationship. According to OT, God has no exhaustive knowledge of how humans (...) will use their will, and the divine plan for this world is not seen as fixed for eternity. OT distinguishes between meticulous providence and general providence and denies that the former can exist. After illustrating these positions and a particular view of OT called essential kenosis, I highlight some of their weaknesses and conclude by asking whether the concept of mystery (at least in some of its possible interpretations: I outline four “solutions”) can enable a reconciliation between classical theism and OT. By applying an approach to the notion of mystery usually connected to the Trinity, I show that the dilemma of omniscience, human freedom and providence does not compromise the plausibility of theism. (shrink)

In this interview, Robert Sapolsky outlines his view on Free Will and related topics. The discussion anticipates his upcoming book Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will. Various topics are covered at the intersection of neuroscience with philosophy, education, and the criminal justice system.

In “The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction” Robert West highlights a pervasive challenge for more conceptual clarity and consensus within the field of addiction studies. In an attempt to address the challenge I provide the conceptual building blocks or architectonic of a metatheory of addiction, referred to as the Integrated Metatheoretical Model of Addiction (IMMA). The IMMA is not a general theory of addiction, but rather an exploratory attempt at providing the architectonic of an metaparadigmatic heuristic, that (...) may potentially provide the conceptual scaffolding needed for developing a general theory of addiction. (shrink)

This book argues that the sin of the devil compels a view of moral responsibility that undermines concerns about luck. It surveys the biblical account of the primal sin, its major interpretation in the tradition, and navigates that interpretation through objections from the perspective of moral luck.

"Le stade de délabrement auquel est arrivée une civilisation, bâtie par l'homme et contre lui-même, révèle l'imposture d'un système fondé sur l'inversion de l'homme et de la vie. Chacun est désormais amené à redécouvrir, avec sa spécificité d'être humain, un potentiel de création que la croyance à son statut d'esclave le dissuadait de revendiquer. Destin et destinée s'opposent. Version profane de la Providence, le destin, identifié au hasard, à la fatalité, à la nécessité, est inéluctable. La destinée, elle, met en (...) oeuvre les capacités créatrices de l'homme en voie d'humanisation, la faculté de se créer en recréant le monde. À l'encontre des mécanismes du corps fonctionnel et rentabilisé, elle tend à privilégier le corps mû par une énergie vitale qui a été vampirisée pendant des siècles pour être transformée en force de travail. Construire sa destinée concrétise la réalité d'une vie authentique, s'émancipant de l'état de survie où elle végétait. Tout annonce une mutation de civilisation, une société où il nous appartiendra d'éradiquer les comportements prédateurs en établissant la prééminence de la vie et de la conscience humaine.""--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

Ann Whittle offers a fresh approach to questions about whether our actions are free and whether we are morally responsible for them. She argues that the answers to these questions depend on the contexts in which we make claims about our abilities and our control over our actions.

The scope of someone's consent is the range of actions that they permit by giving consent. The Scope of Consent investigates the under-explored question of which normative principle governs the scope of consent. To answer this question, the book's investigation involves taking a stance on what constitutes consent. By appealing to the idea that someone can justify their behaviour by appealing to another person's consent, Dougherty defends the view that consent consists in behaviour that expresses a consent-giver's will for how (...) a consent-receiver behaves. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the scope of consent is determined by certain evidence that bears on the appropriate interpretation of the consent. (shrink)

In Naturally Free Action, Oisin Deery argues that free will exists, where free will is understood as the ability to act freely, and free actions as exercises of that ability. This conclusion is supported by showing how the concept of free will plausibly refers to many actual human behaviors,and how these behaviors count as a natural category or kind. Deery also addresses the role of phenomenology in fixing the reference of the concept, arguing that our phenomenology as of deciding or (...) acting freely is typically accurate, even if determinism is true. The result is a realist, naturalisticframework for theorizing about free will, according to which free will almost certainly exists and we act freely. This verdict mostly sidesteps the compatibility question, which asks whether free will is compatible with determinism. Even so, Deery maintains that the natural-kind view about free willsupports compatibilism and provides compatibilists with an attractive way to be realists about free will. Additionally, the book argues that this view has the resources to respond to recent empirical threats to free will, including those posed by findings about behaviors caused by implicit biases.Finally, Deery demonstrates how the natural-kind view has the resources to address emerging questions about whether artificially intelligent agents might ever act freely or be responsible for their behaviors, and if so in what sense. (shrink)

Fatalism in times of universalized assthetization -- Protestant fatalism: predestination as emancipation -- Ren the fatalist: abolishing (Aristotelian) freedom -- From Kant to Schmid (and back): the end of all things -- Ending with the worst: Hegel and absolute fatalism -- After the end: Freud against the illusion of psychical freedom.