Greetings to all,
This post is mostly for Dan Reiter and my Dad, but all with an interest in the problems surrounding the question of freewill are welcome to read. The weekend has been long, hard, and absent of any sleep but I must press on until tomorrow night, when I will have completed my philosophy and spanish midterms. There were some interesting developments over the weekend, however, that I have neither the time or energy to explain at this present moment.
So guys, after reading these notes I took on the issue of freewill ask yourself, why did you read it and furthermore, did you have a choice?
ESSAY QUESTION:
What is the problem of freedom? Be sure to define libertarianism and determinism and how a defender of each thesis might attempt to respond to the problem. Is the dualist ontology necessary for the libertarian position to be coherent?
MY ANSWER:
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM:
-poses questions such as “Do we have freewill?” or “Do we make choices?”.
-Reasons for no:
-Fate (people who say everything happens for a reason) and free will are logically incompatible.
-God’s foreknowledge goes against the idea of freewill.
-The idea of instincts: if all our actions are instincts then we have no freewill).
-Natural law: law of causality.
-Genetics and Environment: they have a role in inducing behavior.
DETERMINISM:
- Philosophical thesis that every event is the inevitable result of antecedent causes
-Every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions. So given A, B, and C,
D must happen. Without A, B, and C, D would not have happened.
-Determinism excludes the possibility of freewill
-Attributes our decisions to the laws of Nature, Environment, and Genetics
-Psychological theory-
-Relies on idea that things couldn’t have happened otherwise
-A deterministic statement: “I did that because…” (we say things like this all the time)
-. Determinism is related to fatalism, except that fatalism asserts that human free will won't accomplish anything.
-Materialism, as it pertains to the case for determinism - This is the doctrine that everything is either made only of matter or is ultimately dependent upon matter for its existence and nature.
-Behaviorism: Soft: limits itself to observable human behavior
Hard: says there is nothing beyond human behavior
Skinner: 1950’s. Argued behaviorism was not properly focused on scientific observations. Radical behaviorism: makes inferences based ONLY on what can
be observed.
COMPATABILISM:
-(Soft determinism)
-States freedom and necessity coexist
-“I wanted to do X, and I did X, therefore X was a choice”
-Tries to claim some sort of responsibility of actions where as determinist takes none
-Your character, personality, preferences, and general motivational set may be entirely determined by events for which you are in no way responsible (by your genetic inheritance, upbringing, subsequent experience, and so on). But you do not have to be in control of any of these things in order to have compatibilist freedom.
LIBERTARIANISM:
-(Freewill position)
-Involves Contra Causal Action: there is something about choice that is different from all other happenings in the world
-Includes notion of “could have done otherwise”.
“I did X, but could have done Y. That is what makes X a choice.”
- Some libertarians take the philosophical view that determinism and free will are compatible. They believe the fact that one's choice may be in theory determined or predictable, does not alter the fact that it was a free choice. For example, being able to predict that someone will not cross the street when a car is coming, is not taken to imply the person has no free will. He makes that choice because he wants to live. We may be able to predict that choice, because we know the person enjoys life, but it is still the case that the person chose what he wanted to choose.
Is the dualist ontology necessary for libertarianism to be coherent? (Basically asking, do you have to be a dualist to believe in libertarian freewill?)
n In philosophy, the concept of libertarianism refers to the idea that human free will is a necessary precondition of moral responsibility and, in fact, humans do have this free will. According to the standard libertarian position, human acts cannot be wholly determined by prior states or natural laws. It is granted that such states and laws may have an influence upon human decisions, but nevertheless those decisions are, in principle, not predictable by reference to those states and laws. Thus, determinism (or at least "hard" determinism) is not true and humans have moral responsibility for their actions.
-In its more general form, dualism argues that all substances can be located within a dual system because they must all be mental or material, and neither group is reducible to the other. More specifically, dualism is a theory of mind which argues that mental states and physical states are two completely different and distinct phenomena.
-The dualist has to divorce himself from determinism and external factors (causing all our actions)
-The libertarian has to believe that whatever you do it can not be reduced to some prior cause. However, our choices can NOT be random.
-The study of quantum physics is a great argument AGAINST determinism, since on the micro level thins appear to happen randomly.
The notion of freedom as it pertains to the different views:
DETERMINISM-claims no responsibility since there was no choice. Behaviorism is a deterministic thesis
COMPATABILISM-some responsibility
LIBERTARIANISM-claims responsibility for our ultimate actions, even though some things, such as environment and genetics are beyond our control
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