In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in reconstructing a Buddhist stance on the free will problem. Since then, Buddhism has been variously described as implicitly hard determinist, paleo-compatibilist, neo-compatibilist and libertarian. Some scholars, however, question the legitimacy of Buddhist free will theorizing, arguing that Buddhism does not share sufficiently many presuppositions required to articulate the problem. This paper argues that, though Buddhist and Western versions of the free will problem (...) are not perfectly isomorphic, a problem analogous to that expressed in Western philosophy emerges within the Buddhist framework. This analogous problem concerns the difficulty of explaining karmic responsibility in a world governed by dependent origination. This paper seeks to reconstruct an approach to free will consistent with Madhyamaka philosophy and, in so doing, to demonstrate that the mutual exclusivity of positions such as hard determinism and libertarianism is, from the Madhyamaka perspective, merely superficial. By building on the perspectivalist theory advanced by Daniel Breyer, it is clear that a Madhyamaka stance on free will demands the wholesale abandonment of perspectives, such that the idea of any one solution as definitive is disavowed. Taken to its logical conclusion, therefore, perspectivalism entails the relative truth of perspectivalism itself. (shrink)

This article examines the free will problem as it arises within Thomas Hobbes' naturalistic science of morals in early modern Europe. It explains that during this period, the problem of moral and legal responsibility became acute as mechanical philosophy was extended to human psychology and as a result human choices were explained in terms of desires and preferences rather than being represented as acts of an autonomous faculty. It describes how Hobbes changed the face of moral (...) philosophy, through his Leviathan, in ways that still structure and resonate within the contemporary debate. (shrink)

Compatibilist libertarianism claims that alternate possibilities for action at the agential level are consistent with determinism at the physical level. Unlike traditional compatibilism about alternate possibilities, involving conditional or dispositional accounts of the ability to act, compatibilist libertarianism offers us unqualified modalities at the agential level, consistent with physical determinism, a potentially big advance. However, I argue that the account runs up against two problems. Firstly, the way in which the agential modalities are generated talks past the worries of the (...) incompatibilist in the traditional free will problem. As such, it fails to dispel the worries that determinism generates for the incompatibilist. Secondly, in spite of the ingenious use of the supervenience thesis and multiple realizability, the position still allows us to generate the old worry that determinism at the physical level would mean no alternate possibilities at the level of agency. In particular, I develop a new example, the ‘atomic slit case’ that demonstrates how physical level information is salient to what is possible at the agential level, motivating incompatibilism. (shrink)

In this Spinozist defence of the educational promotion of students’ autonomy I argue for a deterministic position where freedom of will is deemed unrealistic in the metaphysical sense, but important in the sense that it is an undeniable psychological fact. The paper is structured in three parts. The first part investigates the concept of autonomy from different philosophical points of view, looking especially at how education and autonomy intersect. The second part focuses on explicating the philosophical position of causal (...) determinism and it seeks to open up a way to conceive of education for autonomy without relying on the notion of free will in a metaphysical sense. The concluding part attempts to outline a Spinozistic understanding of education for autonomy where autonomy is grounded in the student's acceptance and understanding of the necessary constraints of natural causation rather than processes of self-causation. (shrink)

The belief that only free will supports assignments of moral responsibility -- deserved praise and blame, punishment and reward, and the expression of reactive attitudes and moral censure -- has fueled most of the historical concern over the existence of free will. Free will's connection to moral responsibility also drives contemporary thinkers as diverse in their substantive positions as Peter Strawson, Thomas Nagel, Peter van Inwagen, Galen Strawson, and Robert Kane. A simple, but powerful, (...) reason for thinking that philosophers are correct in making moral responsibility the prize of the free will problem is this: If we disassociate free will from deserved praise, blame, punishment and reward, reactive attitudes and moral censure, then why care about free will? If free will is not pinned down as that degree of freedom in our choices that we need for moral responsibility, it is difficult to see why anyone would or should care about free will. In this article I argue that some of the most prominent recent writing on free will becomes sidetracked from this key issue. For this reason, a good deal of the literature is so much spilled ink as philosophers misdirect their energies. In section 1 I elaborate just what I believe the key issue in the free will problem is. In section 2 I illustrate what an answer to the key issue requires. In section 3 I suggest motivations for misdirection. In sections 4, 5, and 6 I provide detailed examples of misdirection from compatibilists and libertarians. In sections 7 and 8 I describe some non-misdirected answers to the key question. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this paper I argue that the ‘discovery’ of the problem of causal determinism and freedom of decision in Greek philosophy is the result of a combination and mix-up of Aristotelian and Stoic thought in later antiquity; more precisely, a (mis-)interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of deliberate choice and action in the light of Stoic theory of determinism and moral responsibility. The (con-)fusion originates with the beginnings of Aristotle scholarship, at the latest in the early 2nd century AD. It (...) undergoes several developments, absorbing Epictetan, Middle-Platonist, and Peripatetic ideas; and it leads eventually to a concept of freedom of decision and an exposition of the ‘free-will problem’ in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Fate and in the Mantissa ascribed to him. (shrink)

There is strikingly little agreement across academic fields about the existence of free will, what experimental results show, and even what the term ‘free will’ means. In Lee and Harris’ “A Social Perspective on Debates About Free Will” the authors argue that group identities and their attendant social rewards are part of the problem. As they portray it, “different philosophical stances create social groups and inherent conflict, hindering interdisciplinary intellectual exploration on the question (...) of free will because people incorporate their support for a particular stance into their identity” (ms 1). Lee and Harris’ exciting approach downplays the stated basis of academic disagreements, instead looking to social phenomena to explain why academic theorists adopt their positions. In particular, they argue that (1) philosophical convictions are structured by social group membership, and (2) the way such groups operate disfavors alternative philosophical commitments on free will. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that there is no evidence that Epicurus dealt with the kind of free-will problem he is traditionally associated with; i.e. that he discussed free choice or moral responsibility grounded on free choice, or that the "swerve" was involved in decision processes. Rather, for Epicurus, actions are fully determined by the agent's mental disposition at the outset of the action. Moral responsibility presupposes not free choice but that the person is unforced and (...) causally responsible for the action. This requires the agent's ability to influence causally, on the basis of their beliefs, the development of their behavioral dispositions. The "swerve" was intended to explain the non-necessity of agency without undermining Epicurus' atomistic explanation of the order in the universe, viz. by making the mental dispositions of adults non-necessary. (shrink)

The so-called “problem” of structure and agency is clearly related to the philosophical problem of free will and determinism, yet the central philosophical issues are not well understood by theorists of structure and agency in the social sciences. In this article I draw a map of the available stances on the metaphysics of free will and determinism. With the aid of this map the problem of structure and agency will be seen to (...) dissolve. The problem of structure and agency is sustained by a failure to distinguish between metaphysical and empirical senses of the relation between social structure and individual agency. The ramifications of this distinction are illustrated via a case study of competing explanations of perpetrator behavior in Christopher Browning’s and Daniel Goldhagen’s studies of the German Order Police in the Holocaust. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes changed the face of moral philosophy in ways that still structure and resonate within the contemporary debate. It was Hobbes’s central aim, particularly as expressed in the Leviathan, to make moral philosophy genuinely ‘scientific’, where this term is understood as science had developed and evolved in the first half of the seventeenth century. Specifically, it was Hobbes’s aim to provide a thoroughly naturalistic description of human beings in terms of the basic categories and laws of matter and motion. (...) By analyzing the individual and society in these terms, Hobbes proposed to identify and describe a set of moral laws that are eternal and immutable, and can be known to all those who are capable of reason and science (L, 15.40). Even more ambitiously, it was Hobbes’s further hope that these ‘theorems of moral doctrine’ would be put into practical use by public authorities with a view to maintaining a peaceful, stable social order (L, 31.41). (shrink)

In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the (...) question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy--in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question. (shrink)

Compatibilists regard subsumption under certain sorts of deterministic psychological laws as sufficient for free will. As _bona fide_ laws, their existence poses problems for the thesis of the unalterability of laws, a cornerstone of the Consequence Argument against compatibilism. The thesis is challenged, although a final judgment must wait upon resolution of controversies about the nature of laws. Another premise of the Consequence Argument affirms the supervenience of mental states on physical states, a doctrine whose truth would not (...) undermine the autonomy of psychological laws, a condition of free will. Requirements for compatibilist acceptance of physicalism are described. (shrink)

Free will sans metaphysics? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9525-5 Authors Helen Beebee, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

There are generally two controversial issues over Kant's solution to the free will problem. One is over whether he is a compatibilist or an incompatibilist and the other is over whether his solution is a success. In this paper, I will argue, regarding the first controversy, that “compatibilist” and “incompatibilist” are not the right terms to describe Kant for his unique views on freedom and determinism; but that of the two, incompatibilist is the more accurate description. (...) Regarding the second controversy, I will argue that Kant's solution to the free will problem is not a success because his effort in making the effects of freedom part of the field of appearance has made his solution incoherent and ambiguous. Despite this, I argue that Kant's attempt to solve the free will problem is groundbreaking because he at least has separated freedom from the dominance of determinism. (shrink)

The problem of free will arises because of the conflict between two inconsistent impulses, the experience of freedom and the conviction of determinism. Perhaps we can resolve these by examining neurobiological correlates of the experience of freedom. If free will is not to be an illusion, it must have a corresponding neurobiological reality. An explanation of this issue leads us to an account of rationality and the self, as well as how consciousness can move bodies (...) at all. I explore two hypotheses. On the first, freedom is a complete illusion. On the second, it is not an illusion, and there is a corresponding indeterminism at the neurobiological level. This can only occur if there is in fact a quantum mechanical element in the fundamental neurobiology of consciousness. (shrink)

Hyperbolic theories have the fatal flaw that because of their vertical asymptote they predict irresistible choice of immediate rewards, regardless of future contingencies. They work only for simple situations. Theories incorporating intermediate unconscious choices are more flexible, but are neither exponential nor hyperbolic in their predictions. They don't solve the free will paradox, which may be just a consistent illusion.

Thomas Reid developed an important theory of freedom and moral responsibility resting on the concept of agent-causation, by which he meant the power of a rational agent to cause or not cause a volition resulting in an action. He held that this power is limited in that occasions occur when one's emotions or other forces may preclude its exercise. John Martin Fischer has raised an objection – the not enough ‘Oomph’ objection – against any incompatibilist account of freedom and moral (...) responsibility. In this essay I argue that Fischer's not enough ‘Oomph’ objection fails to provide any reasons for rejecting Reid's incompatibilist, agent-causation account of freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Do we really have freedom to act, or are we slaves to our genes, environment or culture? Regular TPM columnist Mathew Iredale gets to grips with one of the most intractable issues in philosophy: the problem of free will. Iredale explores what it is about the free will problem that makes it so hard to resolve and argues that the only acceptable solution to the free will problem must be one that (...) is consistent with what science tells us about the world. It is here, maintains Iredale, that too many works on free will, introductory or otherwise, fall down, by focusing only on how free will relates to determinism. Iredale shows that there are clear areas of scientific research which are directly and significantly relevant to free will in a way that does not involve determinism. Although these areas of scientific research do not allow us to solve the problem, they do allow us to separate the more plausible ideas concerning free will from the less plausible. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that there is no free will problem in forensic psychiatry by showing that free will or its lack is not a criterion for any legal doctrine and it is not an underlying general foundation for legal responsibility doctrines and practices. There is a genuine metaphysical free will problem, but the article explains why it is not relevant to forensic practice. Forensic practitioners are urged to avoid all usage of (...) class='Hi'>free will in their forensic thinking and work product because it is irrelevant and spawns confusion. (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)

Fichte’s early review of C. A. L. Creuzer’s neglected and idiosyncratic skeptical book on free will posed a serious challenge to what at the time was emerging as a consensus Kantian position on the role of free choice in the generation of imputable action. Fichte’s review was directed as much against Reinhold’s important letter on freedom of the will as it was against Creuzer himself. In the course of his brief review, Fichte suggests an important recasting (...) of the strategy of the Kantian postulates of rational faith; he poses a dilemma for the Reinholdian understanding of the relationship among an autonomous practical will, a free power of choice, and the actions of natural human organisms; and he hints at a radical reappropriation of the rationalist doctrine of pre-established harmony in re-orienting the search for a defensible reconstruction of a broadly Kantian position on the problem of free will. (shrink)

Hume after arguing for the compatibility of liberty and necessity, a view now known as soft determinism or compatibilism , noted that it is not ‘possible to explain distinctly, how the Deity can be the mediate cause of the actions of sin and moral turpitude’. It seems that Hume is correct if the explanation must show specifically why an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity must permit certain actions that to human reason seem to be unnecessary evils. On the other hand if (...) such specifity is not required, the soft determinist who also happens to be a theist can argue that it is possible that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds even though the reason for any specific apparent evil cannot be known. If seemingly evil choices are free in the soft determinist's sense but determined by an omnipotent and omniscient deity, then either that deity is not omnibenevolent or that deity has determined the world to have the maximum possible goodness through including seemingly evil choices in the scheme of things. Consequently if, as the traditional theist believes, the creator is omnibenevolent as well as omnipotent and omniscient, the occurrence of seemingly evil choices are necessary for maximizing the goodness of the whole. (shrink)

At the end of the 20th century, a discipline of Buddhist ethics was formed in English-speaking countries, within the framework of which a community of closely interacting researchers is engaged in the comprehension and systematization of ethical positions within Buddhism, often resorting to the use of analytical philosophy tools. One of the directions within the discipline of Buddhist ethics is an attempt to embed the ethical content of Buddhism in a contemporary Western European philosophical context and to put before it (...) questions characteristic of Western philosophy, for example, the questions of moral responsibility, free will and determinism. While some researchers believe that Buddhist texts reflect a compatibilist position, others see Buddhist ethical position as resembling incompatibilism. The first problem faced by Buddhist researchers interested in this topic is that Buddhism does not have a concept of “free will” similar to the one that exists in Western philosophy. Nevertheless, contemporary theorists believe that classical Buddhism contains enough material to allow for a conversation about causality and responsibility. The purpose of this research is to substantiate the possibility of discussing free will in the context of the ethics of Buddhism. In order to do this the research examines the key provisions of Buddhist teaching relevant in the context of free will: dependent arising, absence of self and karma. It is noted that one of the reasons for the difference in the conclusions of researchers of Buddhist ethics regarding the issue of free will and moral responsibility in Buddhism are the peculiarities of Theravada and Mahayana and their particular texts different theorists mainly refer to. (shrink)

The problem of free will is associated with a specific and significant kind of control over our actions, which is understood primarily in the sense that we have the freedom to do otherwise or the capacity for self‐determination. Is Buddhism compatible with such a conception of free will? The aim of this article is to address three critical issues concerning the free will problem: (1) what role should accounts of physical and neurobiological (...) processes play in discussions of free will? (2) Is a conception of mental autonomy grounded in practices of meditative cultivation compatible with the three cardinal Buddhist doctrines of momentariness, dependent arising, and no‐self? (3) Are there enough resources in Buddhism, given its antisubstantialist metaphysics, to account for personal agency, self‐control, and moral responsibility? (shrink)

Doing without Free Will: Spinoza and Contemporary Moral Problems introduces Spinoza into the current discussion of the possibility of morality without free will, as it was he who first accomplished such a task. While his contemporaries reacted with shock to his determinist philosophy, today more people are ready to take seriously Spinoza's moral philosophy, which provides a foundation for our understanding of responsibility, akrasia, and moral values without the need for free will.

In this paper, I consider various arguments to the effect that natural evils are necessary for there to be created agents with free will of the sort that the traditional free-will defence for the problem of moral evil suggests we enjoy – arguments based on the idea that evil-doing requires the doer to use natural means in their agency. I conclude that, despite prima facie plausibility, these arguments do not, in fact, work. I provide my (...) own argument for there being no possible world in which creatures enjoying this sort of freedom exist yet suffer no natural evil, and conclude that the way is thus open for extending the free-will defence to the problem of natural evil. (shrink)

조작 논증에 따르면, (1) 결정론적인 세계에서 발생하는 일상적인 행위와 일정한 방식으로 조작된 행위 사이에 차이가 없고 (2) 조작된 행위는 자유행위가 아니므로 (3) 따라서 일상적인 행위 역시 자유행위가 아니다. 최근의 논문에서, 디어리와 나미어스(2017)는 조작 논증으로부터 자유의지와 결정론에 대한 양립가능주의를 옹호하기 위해, 개입주의 인과론을 사용하여 인과적 근원의 정의를 제시하고 이를 적용한다. 그 결과는, 조작된 행위의 인과적 근원은 조작자에게 있는 반면, 결정론적 세계에서의 일상적인 행위는 그 인과적 근원이 행위자에게 있다는 것이다. 즉 논증의 전제 (1)이 거짓이다. 제시된 정의는, 주어진 행위에 대한 임의의 실제 원인에 (...) 대해, 그 원인이 강력한 조작자의 조작의 결과이기만 하면 조작자에게 그 행위의 인과적 근원이 있다는 것을 함축한다. 문제는, 이 함축에 따르면, 조작자의 결정을 행위의 인과적 근원으로 받아들이기 어려운 경우가 생긴다는 것이다. 더 나아가 이런 문제가 되는 경우와 D&N이 옹호하고자 하는 양립가능주의 입장이 일관성을 유지할 수 없다. 마지막으로 이러한 비판에 대한 가능한 대응을 제시하고, 이 대응을 받아들이면 전제 (1)을 거부하는 D&N의 입장이 더 이상 유지될 수 없다고 주장한다. (shrink)

This essay begins by dividing the traditional problem of free will and determinism into a “correlation” problem and an “explanation” problem. I then focus on the explanation problem, and argue that a standard form of abductive (i.e. inference to the best-explanation) reasoning may be useful in solving it. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of the abductive approach, I apply it to three standard accounts of free will. While each account implies the same solution (...) to the correlation problem, each implies a unique solution to the explanation problem. For example, all libertarian-friendly accounts of free will imply that it is impossible to act freely when determinism is true. However, only a narrow subset of libertarians have the theoretical resources to defend the incompatibilist claim that deterministic laws (qua being deterministic) undermine free will, while other libertarians must reject this incompatibilist view. -/- [Version: Nov. 12, 2018]. (shrink)

This paper presents what the authors call the ‘divergence problem’ regarding choosing between different future possibilities. As is discussed in the first half, the central issue of the problem is the difficulty of temporally locating the ‘active cause’ on the modal divergent diagram. In the second half of this paper, we discuss the ‘second-person freedom’ which is, strictly, neither compatibilist negative freedom nor incompatibilist positive freedom. The divergence problem leads us to two hypothetical views (i.e. the view (...) of single-line determination and that of one-off chance), and these views bring humans closer to the afree side – i.e. outside of the contrast between being free and being unfree. The afree side is greatly different from the ordinary human side. This paper tries to secure the second-person freedom as a substitute for the ordinary human freedom while preventing the divergence problem from arising. (shrink)

Robert Donoghue ABSTRACT: G.W.F Hegel offers a thorough, complex, and unique theory of free will in the Philosophy of Right. In what follows, I argue that Hegel’s conceptualization of free will makes the mistake of collapsing the possibility of organic freedom into the potential for moral freedom ….

Compatibilists about free will maintain that free will is compatible with determinism, and incompatibilists disagree. Incompatibilist believers in free will have been challenged to solve a problem that luck poses for them—the problem of present luck. This article articulates that challenge and then explores a novel compatibilist view recently proposed by Christian List. It is argued that List’s view, unlike standard compatibilist views, faces a very similar problem about luck.