Vagueness of Free Will

Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 15:53-58 (2008)
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Abstract

I aim to bring the idea of “degree of free will or freedom” into philosophical debates on free will by rejecting the formulation, ‘we are either free or not’. This idea is based upon my viewpoint of regarding freedom as a realistic phenomena actually occurring. First of all, I focus on the fact that it is vague whether an agent is free or not. This vagueness is interpreted as ontic vagueness, corresponding with the status of freedom as real. However, Evans’s argument regarding ontic vagueness must be considered as, according to his argument, ontic vagueness about identity and objects are impossible. I indicate that this argument assumes the truth-value gap position in borderline cases, hence we can avoid Evans’s argument by adopting truth-value glut position. Of course, the truth-value glut approach has serious difficulties, but I conclude with sketching out a possibility to develop this approach in the free will debate via the introduction of probabilistic valuation.

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Masaki Ichinose
University of Tokyo

Citations of this work

“Free will” is vague.Santiago Amaya - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):7-21.

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References found in this work

Can there be vague objects?Gareth Evans - 1978 - Analysis 38 (4):208.
Vague Identity and Quantum Indeterminacy.E. J. Lowe - 1994 - Analysis 54 (2):110 - 114.
What is a Contradiction?Patrick Grim - 2004 - In Graham Priest, Jc Beall & Bradley P. Armour-Garb (eds.), The Law of Non-Contradiction : New Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press. pp. 49--72.
Indefiniteness in Identity.John Broome - 1984 - Analysis 44 (1):6 - 12.

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