What Makes Free Will Free: The Impossibility of Predicting Genuine Creativity

Conatus 5 (1):55 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this paper I argue that Mill’s ‘Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity’ regarding the human will and action cannot apply on all cases, and that the human mind has potentially the capacity to create freely a will or action that, no matter what kind of knowledge we possess, cannot be predicted. More precisely, I argue against Mill’s attempt of conjunction between the freedom of the will and the ‘Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity’ while I attempt a comparison with the relevant Kantian approach. I then claim that a will cannot be free and be predicted at the same time, as both the elements of freedom and unpredictability of the will are founded on the very process of its formulation as an outcome of genuine creativity. I, thus, attempt to propose a more substantially free view of free will and action than the ones presented by the prominent conceptions.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 93,891

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Free Will Controversy.Louis De Bello - 1985 - Dissertation, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick
Coercion and the Varieties of Free Action.Peter Baumann - 2003 - Ideas Y Valores 52 (122):31-49.
Free will and control: a noncausal approach.David Palmer - 2021 - Synthese 198 (10):10043-10062.
Chaos and free will.James W. Garson - 1995 - Philosophical Psychology 8 (4):365-74.
Foreknowledge and the Necessity of the Past.Dennis C. Holt - 1976 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (4):721 - 730.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-03-12

Downloads
22 (#698,738)

6 months
9 (#437,668)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Nikos Erinakis
Oxford University

References found in this work

Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will.Timothy O'Connor - 2000 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
Human Freedom and the Self.Roderick Chisholm - 1982 - In Gary Watson (ed.), Free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
The self as a center of narrative gravity.Daniel C. Dennett - 1992 - In Frank S. Kessel, P. M. Cole & D. L. Johnson (eds.), [Book Chapter]. Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 4--237.
On second-order logic.George S. Boolos - 1975 - Journal of Philosophy 72 (16):509-527.
Fatalism.Richard Taylor - 1962 - Philosophical Review 71 (1):56-66.

View all 16 references / Add more references