Free Will, Misc

The question of whether we have free will is a longstanding philosophical debate that has led to divided fronts and interpretations. The first ambiguity arises due to a misconception about the relation between causal determinism, as formulated in classical physics, and the notion of free will, which, once clarified, undermines not only compatibilism but also naïve formulations of libertarianism. We show that either one maintains a material monistic physical causal determinism and must give up free will, or one must give (...) up determinism and embrace metaphysical ontologies. Moreover, with the advent of modern neuroscientific investigations, the questions surrounding our freedom of choice have received renewed attention but, so far, lead to several inconclusive findings. In fact, the issue is far from settled and no resolution is in sight. We contend that an exclusively third-person approach that abstracts from the deeper complexities of the human psychological nature and resists a first-person inquiry has led to a much too simplistic and superficial understanding of the problem and is affected by fallacious inferences and unwarranted conclusions. Meanwhile, an introspective approach easily reveals that our identity can't be reduced to a single personality whose choice-making is determined by a unique agency and volition. Our nature is much more complex than that. Therefore, every analysis involving propositions about free will requires more careful articulation. One cannot meaningfully answer the question of free will if it is not clear (1) what determinism is in physical sciences, (2) who is supposed to be free from what and (3) what will is. Here, we show that the question regarding free will isn't meaningful in the first place unless cleared from conceptual conflations and that it is unlikely it will ever be answered by a binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ statement. (shrink)

The problem of free will has persistently resisted a solution throughout centuries. There is reason to believe that new elements need to be introduced into the analysis in order to make progress. In the present physicalist approach, these elements are emergence and information theory in relation to universal limits set by quantum physics. Furthermore the common, but vague, characterization of free will as "being able to act differently" is, in the spirit of Carnap, rephrased into an explicatum more suitable for (...) formal analysis. It is argued that the mind is an ontologically open system; a causal high-level system, the future of which cannot be reduced to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, not even if it is rendered physically closed. A positive answer to the question of free will is subsequently outlined. (shrink)

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is traditionally formulated in terms of whether true counterfactuals of freedom about the future (true subjunctive conditionals concerning what someone would freely do in the future if they were in certain circumstances) even partly determine an agent's present moral obligations. But the very assumption that there are true counterfactuals of freedom about the future conflicts with the idea that freedom requires a metaphysically open future. We develop probabilism as a solution to the actualism/possibilism debate, a (...) solution that accommodates an open future requirement for freedom. We argue that probabilism resolves the conflicting intuitions that arise between actualists and possibilists and maintains certain distinct advantages over actualism and possibilism. (shrink)

The Top-Down Argument for the ability to do otherwise aims at stablishing that humans can do otherwise in the sense that is relevant for debates about free will. It consists of two premises: first, we always need to answer the question of whether some phenomenon (such as the ability to do otherwise) exists by consulting our best scientific theories of the domain at issue. Second, our best scientific theories of human action presuppose that humans can do otherwise. This paper argues (...) that this is not enough to establish the conclusion. The Top-Down Argument supports that humans can do otherwise in some sense. But it does not show that humans can do otherwise in the sense that is relevant for debates about free will. The paper then shows that the apparently best way to make the argument valid does not work. (shrink)

Galen Strawson has contrasting attitudes to consciousness and free will. In the case of the former, he says it is a fundamental element of nature whose denial is the “greatest woo-woo of the human mind.” In the case of the latter, by contrast, he says it is not merely non-existent but “provably impossible.” Why the difference? This paper suggests this distinctive pattern of positions is generated by underestimating the world (to adapt a phrase Strawson uses himself in another context). If (...) you underestimate the world, and correlatively overestimate your level of understanding of the world, it is natural to think both that consciousness is fundamental, and that free will is non-existent. If you don’t underestimate the world, on the other hand, a more uniform and attractive treatment of these topics becomes available. (shrink)

В данной работе рассматриваются важнейшие вопросы о коллективном воображаемом и его отношениях с реальностью и истиной. Сначала мы рассмотрим эту тему в концептуальных рамках, а затем проведем соответствующий фактологический анализ наглядных поведенческих реалий. Мы будем опираться не только на методологию, но и, главным образом, на постулаты и положения аналитической философии, которые, безусловно, будут проявляться на протяжении всего исследования и могут быть идентифицированы по признакам, описанным Пересом : Рабосси (1975) отстаивает идею, что аналитическая философия может быть идентифицирована путем рассмотрения некоторых семейных (...) сходств. Он предлагает следующие семейные черты: позитивное отношение к научному знанию; осторожное отношение к метафизике; представление о философии как о концептуальной задаче, в которой в качестве метода используется концептуальный анализ; тесная связь между языком и философией; стремление к аргументированным ответам на философские проблемы; поиск концептуальной ясности. Эти базовые понятия включают в себя культурное, социальное, религиозное, научное, философское, моральное и политическое содержание, принадлежащее каждому и коллективному существованию. В данной статье мы не будем дискутировать и доказывать. Наша цель — не систематическая методология, не критика и не доказательство. Настоящая работа основана на аналитической рефлексии. Мы будем рассуждать как можно более полно и глубоко и излагать результаты своих размышлений. Несмотря на междисциплинарный характер темы и методологическую открытость к принятию вклада из любой области науки, данная работа относится к психологии и онтологии, или, другими словами, к социальной и онтологической психологии. Свободная методология, направляющая такие размышления, охватывает и рассматривает все, что приближается к согласованности с философской и психологической эпистемологией. Эта методология не гонится за доказательствами, а ищет взаимосвязь между существующими доказательствами любой природы и величины, выводя когерентный смысл реальных вещей. (shrink)

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root and why it matters to the contempory debate. I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to knowingly promote invalid arguments, and to equivoate on jargon in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in psuedo-stalemates). I also suggest a new paradigm for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by the use of inadequate classical narratives and jargon. -/- A selection from the publication is available to download here. For full version, please gmail me, username: kristin.mickelson.42 -/- . (shrink)

There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...) how the notion of levels could be relevant to the free will debate. Invariably, however, the focus is on the significance of facts at lower levels. The threats come from below, from fundamental physics or neuroscience. Here, I aim to show how we can frame many interesting concerns about free will in terms of threats from above. After arguing that determination from above is no less threatening, I catalogue such concerns that might constitute threats to our freedom. Doing this not only allows us to show how these concerns relate to those standardly discussed, but it pushes us to expand our conception of freedom. (shrink)

Précis of Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (2022).

This chapter outlines six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, not the least of which is that it’s unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify it. It then sketches a novel non-retributive alternative called the public health-quarantine model. The core idea of the model is that the right to harm in self-defense and defense of others justifies incapacitating the criminally dangerous with the minimum harm required for adequate protection. The model also draws on (...) the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. It is argued that not only does the public health-quarantine model offer a stark contrast to retributivism, it also provides a more humane, holistic, and effective approach to dealing with criminal behavior, one that is superior to both retributivism and other leading non-retributive alternatives. (shrink)

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per (...) se face significant independent moral objections (Pereboom 2014: 153). Despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to respond to criminal behavior—in particular incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alteration of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2013, 2014), taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—which I call the public health-quarantine model (Caruso 2016, 2017a)—provides a framework for justifying quarantine and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other non-retributive alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s quarantine analogy does on its own since it prioritizes prevention and social justice. -/- In Section 1, I begin by (very) briefly summarizing my arguments against free will and basic desert moral responsibility. In Section 2, I then introduce and defend my public health-quarantine model, which is a non-retributive alternative to criminal punishment that prioritizes prevention and social justice. In Sections 3 and 4, I take up and respond to two general objections to the public health-quarantine model. Since objections by Michael Corrado (2016), John Lemos (2016), Saul Smilanksy (2011, 2017), and Victor Tadros (2017) have been addressed in detail elsewhere (see Pereboom 2017a; Pereboom and Caruso 2018), I will here focus on objections that have not yet been addressed. In particular, I will respond to concerns about proportionality, human dignity, and victims’ rights. I will argue that each of these concerns can be met and that in the end the public health-quarantine model offers a superior alternative to retributive punishment and other non-retributive accounts. (shrink)

This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a (...) number of skeptical arguments against each. It then outlines an alternative forward-looking account of moral responsibility grounded in non-desert-invoking desiderata such as protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. It concludes by addressing concerns about the practical implications of skepticism about desert-based moral responsibility and explains how optimistic skeptics can preserve most of what we care about when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, morality, and meaning in life. (shrink)

Like most episodes of Black Mirror, “Hang the DJ” raises a host of philosophical questions. While there is much from this episode to explore, this chapter will explore something that has not yet been addressed in other work, namely the connection between “Hang the DJ” and questions about free will and determinism (or indeterminism, as the case may be). This chapter will proceed as follows: first, I will sketch some reasons for thinking that, if determinism is true, then no one (...) has or exercises free will. One type of response to determinism’s threat to free will is to accept the incompatibility of free will and determinism and to maintain that we nevertheless have free will. Theorists who endorse indeterministic accounts of free will are called libertarians in the free will debate (but please do not confuse them with political libertarians). Second, I will explain a bit more of the mechanics of libertarianism. Third, I will discuss an influential challenge to libertarianism that has come to be known as the “rollback argument.” The mechanics of this challenge will resemble the plot twist of “Hang the DJ.” Fourth, and finally, I will explore the episode’s portrayal of the value of undetermined choice. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that the necessity of the present counts against theories of synchronic free will, according to which a person may have free will at a time t0 even once that person has decided at t0 to do something. I defend the theory of diachronic free will against recent critiques drawn from the work of Michael Rota and Katherin Rogers. And I chart some of the implications for the philosophy of religion.

It is a widely held principle that no one is able to do something that would require the past to have been different from how it actually is. This principle of the fixity of the past has been presented in numerous ways, playing a crucial role in arguments for logical and theological fatalism, and for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the ability to do otherwise. I will argue that, assuming bivalence, this principle is in conflict with standard views about (...) knowledge and the semantics for ‘actually’. I also consider many possible responses to the argument. (shrink)

In a recent article, P. Roger Turner and Justin Capes argue that no one is, or ever was, even partly morally responsible for certain world-indexed truths. Here we present our reasons for thinking that their argument is unsound: It depends on the premise that possible worlds are maximally consistent states of affairs, which is, under plausible assumptions concerning states of affairs, demonstrably false. Our argument to show this is based on Bertrand Russell’s original ‘paradox of propositions’. We should then opt (...) for a different approach to explain world-indexed truths whose upshot is that we may be morally responsible for some of them. The result to the effect that there are no maximally consistent states of affairs is independently interesting though, since this notion motivates an account of the nature of possible worlds in the metaphysics of modality. We also register in this article, independently of our response to Turner and Capes, and in the spirit of Russell’s aforementioned paradox and many other versions thereof, a proof of the claim that there is no set of all true propositions one can render false. (shrink)

Girolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and (...) conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several of Cardano’s other works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim. (shrink)

Since Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments in 1979, the study of the will has become a focal point in the cognitive sciences. Just like Libet the scien-tists Daniel Wegner and Thalia Wheatley came to doubt that the will is causally efficacious. In their influential study I Spy from 1999, they created an experi-mental setup to show that agents erroneously experience their actions as caused by their thoughts. Instead, these actions are caused by unconscious neural pro-cesses; the agent’s ‘causal experience of will’ (...) is just an illusion. Both the scien-tific method and the conclusion drawn from the empirical results have already been criticized by philosophers. In this paper, I will analyze the action performed in I Spy and criticize more fundamentally the assumption of a ‘causal experience of will’. I will argue that the I Spy study does not show that the agent’s causal experience of will is illusory, because it does not show that there is a causal ex-perience of will. Against Wegner and Wheatley’s assumption, I will show that it is unlikely that the participants in I Spy experienced their conscious thoughts as causally efficacious for an action, that they did not perform at all. It is more likely, that they experienced their own bodily movement as causally efficacious for a cooperative action, that they did not perform solely by themselves. (shrink)

Contrary to John Bramhall and critics like him, Thomas Hobbes takes the view that no account of liberty or freedom can serve as the relevant basis on which to distinguish moral from nonmoral agents or explains the basis on which an agent becomes subject to law and liable to punishment. The correct compatibilist strategy rests, on Hobbes’s account, with a proper appreciation and description of the contractualist features that shape and structure the moral community. From this perspective human agents may (...) indeed use their liberty to make themselves moral agents. In doing this, however, they are not employing a distinct kind of liberty but rather using a liberty that they share with animals and other nonmoral agents to perform a distinct kind of act (i.e., consent) whereby they become moral agents subject to law and any punishments that are required to enforce it. ____ -/- Originally published in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe - eds. D. Clarke & C. Wilson, OUP 2011 -/- Republished in Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy: Selected Essays - OUP 2021: Paul Russell]. (shrink)

Debate on free will with Christian List, Gregg Caruso, and Cory Clark. The exchange is focused on Christian List's book Why Free Will Is Real.

Sennett (1999) and Pawl & Timpe (2009; 2013) attempt to show how we can praise heavenly agents for things they inevitably do in heaven by appealing to the notion of derivative freedom. Matheson (2017) has criticized this use of derivative freedom. In this essay I show why Matheson's argument is inconclusive but also how the basic point may be strengthened to undermine the use Sennett and Pawl & Timpe make of derivative freedom. I then show why Matheson is mistaken to (...) claim that the value of free choice depends on an agent retaining the ability to change their mind; in so doing I demonstrate that some choices which result in fixed outcomes - a feature of the choices leading to impeccability - can indeed be valuable even if they cannot be undone. (shrink)

This paper considers the analogies and disanalogies between a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about free will and a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about the external world. In the case of free will, I offer the ancient Lazy Argument and an argument of my own, which I call the Agency Argument, as examples of the relevant genre; and in the case of the external world, I consider Moore’s alleged proof of an external world. (...) I draw attention to analogies and disanalogies between the arguments offered in each case in order to suggest that although the Agency Argument shares with its Moorean relative the unfortunate property of being dialectically ineffective against some of those it is mainly hoping to convince, it will not be dialectically ineffective against all of them. It is also argued that the Agency Argument is less vulnerable than Moore’s proof to worries about its justificatory structure. (shrink)

This paper aims to discern the limits of the highly influential Incorporation Thesis to give proper weight to our sensuous side in Kant’s theory of moral action. I first examine the view of the faculties underpinning the theory, which allows me to outline the passage from natural to rational action. This enables me to designate the factors involved in actual human agency and thereby to show that, contrary to what the Incorporation Thesis may tempt one to believe, we do not (...) always act on maxims. The result is a revised and more balanced view of how Kant sees the character of moral life. (shrink)

This book develops an evolutionary account of animal choice and human freedom, thus supplementing the conceptual account of freedom with an explanation how it developed.

The proposal of moral enhancement as a valuable means to face the environmental, technological and social challenges that threaten the future of humanity has been criticized by a number of authors. One of the main criticisms has been that moral enhancement would diminish our freedom. It has been said that moral enhancement would lead enhanced people to lose their ‘freedom to fall’, that is, it would prevent them from being able to decide to carry out some morally bad actions, and (...) the possibility to desire and carry out these bad actions is an essential ingredient of free will, which would thus be limited or destroyed—or so the argument goes. In this paper we offer an answer to this criticism. We contend that a morally enhanced agent could lose the ‘freedom to fall’ without losing her freedom for two reasons. First, because we do not consider that a morally well-educated person, for whom the ‘freedom to fall’ is a remote option, is less free than an evildoer, and there is no reason to suppose that bioenhancement introduces a significant difference here. Second, because richness in the amount of alternative possibilities of action may be restored if the stated loss is compensated with an improvement in sensitivity and lucidity that can lead to seeing new options and nuances in the remaining possible actions. (shrink)

Christopher Franklin argues that, despite appearances, everyone thinks that the ability to do otherwise is required for free will and moral responsibility. Moreover, he says that the way to decide which ability to do otherwise is required will involve settling the nature of moral responsibility. In this paper I highlight one point on which those usually called leeway theorists - i.e. those who accept the need for alternatives - agree, in contradistinction to those who deny that the ability to do (...) otherwise is needed for free will. And I explain why it falsifies both of Franklin’s claims. (shrink)

This paper argues for a view of free will that I will call the conceptual impossibility of the truth of free will error theory - the conceptual impossibility thesis. I will argue that given the concept of free will we in fact deploy, it is impossible for our free will judgements - judgements regarding whether some action is free or not - to be systematically false. Since we do judge many of our actions to be free, it follows from the (...) conceptual impossibility thesis that many of our actions are in fact free. Hence it follows that free will error theory - the view that no judgement of the form ‘action A was performed freely’ - is false. I will show taking seriously the conceptual impossibility thesis helps makes good sense of some seemingly inconsistent results in recent experimental philosophy work on determinism and our concept of free will. Further, I will present some reasons why we should expect to find similar results for every other factor we might have thought was important for free will. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to make two general points. First, I claim that the discussions in Repetti (2017) assume different, sometimes conflicting, notions of free will, so the guiding question of the book is not as clear as it could be. Second, according to Buddhist tradition, the path to enlightenment requires rejecting the delusional belief in the existence of a persisting self. I claim that if there is no persisting self, there are no intentional actions; and, if there are (...) no intentional actions, there is no hope for Buddhist enlightenment. Thus, rejecting the allegedly delusional belief in a persisting self has disastrous consequences, both for the existence of intentional action and for Buddhist soteriology. (shrink)

Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. This means that the retributivist position is not reducible (...) to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing guidelines in the U.S. have adopted desert as their distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the “purposes” section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code’s provisions. Indeed, the American Law Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as the official dominate principle for sentencing. And courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of contexts, as with the Supreme Court’s enthroning retributivism as the “primary justification for the death penalty.” While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In the first section, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In the second section, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of criminal punishment. I conclude in the third section by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior. (shrink)

In recent decades, with advances in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences, the idea that patterns of human behavior may ultimately be due to factors beyond our conscious control has increasingly gained traction and renewed interest in the age-old problem of free will. To properly assess what, if anything, these empirical advances can tell us about free will and moral responsibility, we first need to get clear on the following questions: Is consciousness necessary for free will? If so, what role or (...) function must it play? Are agents morally responsible for actions and behaviors that are carried out automatically or without conscious control or guidance? Are they morally responsible for actions, judgments, and attitudes that are the result of implicit biases or situational features of their surroundings of which they are unaware? What about the actions of somnambulists or cases of extreme sleepwalking where consciousness is largely absent? Clarifying the relationship between consciousness and free will is imperative if we want to evaluate the various arguments for and against free will. For example, do compatibilist reasons- responsive and deep self accounts require consciousness? If so, are they threatened by recent developments in the behavior, cognitive, and neurosciences? What about libertarian accounts of free will? What powers, if any, do they impart to consciousness and are they consistent with our best scientific theories about the world? In this survey piece, I will outline and assess several distinct views on the relationship between consciousness and free will. (shrink)

Accounts of heavenly freedom typically attempt to reconcile the claim that the redeemed have free will with the claim that the redeemed cannot sin. In this paper, I first argue that Pawl and Timpe :396–417, 2009) tracing account of heavenly freedom—according to which the redeemed in heaven have only ‘derivative’ free will—is untenable. I then sketch an alternative account of heavenly freedom, one which eschews derivative free will. On this account, the redeemed are able to sin in heaven.

Replies to commentators Respuestas a los comentarios críticos de Carlos Patarroyo, Mirja Pérez de Calleja y Pablo Rychter.

Précis of El libre albedrío. Un estudio filosófico En este libro nos hemos planteado varios objetivos. En primer lugar, ofrecer al lector una guía o mapa que le oriente en el complejo territorio del debate sobre el libre albedrío. En segundo lugar, abogar por una determinada concepción del libre albedrío, a saber, el libertarismo, frente a otras posibles, en especial el compatibilismo. En tercer lugar, defender la existencia del libre albedrío frente a diversos desafíos, de tipos también diversos, que la (...) ponen en cuestión. (shrink)

En Electromecánicas IV, – Despliegue y activación de un espacio-tiempo barroco, Mónica Salinero socióloga y Renzo Filinich artista, se sumergen en el trabajo de análisis de la obra de Raúl Díaz, “Electromecánicas IV, poniendo en valor la diferencia conceptual y la diversidad del universo latinoamericano como espacio de creación situado. Inspirados en las teorías de Bolivar Echevarria, discuten la complejidad simbólica que rodea a esta experiencia estética, deteniéndose en los valores y funciones que se encuentran dentro del espectro cultural andino (...) que la contiene. El relato persigue desentrañar el armazón de pensamiento que alumbra el proceso de creación, cuando la puesta en marcha de dispositivos obsoletos, se vuelve metáfora de intervención local, sobre una reciclada y reconvertida tradición occidental, que representa la idea de Modernidad barroca. (shrink)

As philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism continue to gain traction, we are likely to see a fundamental shift in the way people think about free will and moral responsibility. Such shifts raise important practical and existential concerns: What if we came to disbelieve in free will? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as some (...) maintain or would it rather have a humanizing effect on our practices and policies, freeing us from the negative effects of belief in free will? In this chapter we consider the practical implications of free will skepticism and argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe. We argue that prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for example, would not be threatened. On treatment of criminals, we argue that although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, preventive detention and rehabilitation programs would still be justified. While we will touch on all these issues below, our focus will be primarily on this last issue. -/- We begin in section I by considering two different routes to free will skepticism. The first denies the causal efficacy of the types of willing required for free will and receives its contemporary impetus from pioneering work in neuroscience by Benjamin Libet, Daniel Wegner, and John-Dylan Haynes. The second, which is more common in the philosophical literature, does not deny the causal efficacy of the will but instead claims that whether this causal efficacy is deterministic or indeterministic, it does not achieve the level of control to count as free will by the standards of the historical debate. We argue that while there are compelling objections to the first route—e.g., Al Mele (2009), Eddy Nahmias (2002, 2011), and Neil Levy (2005)—the second route to free will skepticism remains intact. In section II we argue that free will skepticism allows for a workable morality, and, rather than negatively impacting our personal relationships and meaning in life, may well improve our well-being and our relationships to others since it would tend to eradicate an often destructive form of moral anger. In section III we argue that free will skepticism allows for adequate ways of responding to criminal behavior—in particular, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alternation of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justified and sufficient for good social policy. We present and defend our own preferred model for dealing with dangerous criminals, an incapacitation account built on the right to self-protection analogous to the justification for quarantine (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014a; Caruso 2016a), and we respond to recent objections to it by Michael Corrado and John Lemos. (shrink)

This paper addresses a fundamental question in folk metaphysics: how do we ordinarily view human agency? According to the transcendence account, we view human agency as standing outside of the causal order and imbued with exceptional powers. According to a naturalistic account, we view human agency as subject to the same physical laws as other objects and completely open to scientific investigation. According to exceptionalist naturalism, the truth lies somewhere in between: we view human agency as fitting broadly within the (...) causal order while still being exceptional in important respects. In this paper, I report seven experiments designed to decide between these three competing theories. Across a variety of contexts and types of action, participants agreed that human agents can resist outcomes described as inevitable, guaranteed, and causally determined. Participants viewed non-human animal agents similarly, whereas they viewed computers, robots, and simple inanimate objects differently. At the same time, participants judged that human actions are caused by many things, including psychological, neurological, and social events. Overall, in folk metaphysics, human and non-human animals are viewed as exceptional parts of the natural world. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of Descartes's conception of freedom that resolves an important tension at the heart of his view. It does so by appealing to the important but overlooked distinction between possessing a power, exercising a power, and being in a position to exercise a power.

From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes liberum arbitrium and thus (...) the ability to do otherwise, although the ability to do otherwise applies differently to praise and blame. His argument against intellectual determinism is not straightforward, but we construct it by analogy to his arguments against other deterministic threats. The non-determinism of the intellect’s causality with respect to the will results from his claims that practical reasoning is defeasible and that the reasons for actions are not contrastive reasons. (shrink)

In the current philosophical literature, determinism is rarely defined explicitly. This paper attempts to show that there are in fact many forms of determinism, most of which are familiar, and that these can be differentiated according to their particular components. Recognizing the composite character of determinism is thus central to demarcating its various forms.

This volume collects a set of papers that were presented at a conference on “Big Questions in Free Will,” held at the University of Saint Thomas in October of 2014. It is dedicated to its editor, who passed away shortly after completing the manuscript. I will briefly summarize each of the 11 chapters and then offer a few critical comments.

A critical overview to the bulk of extant Buddhist theories of free will.

Libertarianism appears to be incoherent, because free will appears to be incompatible with indeterminism. In support of this claim, van Inwagen offered an argument that is now known as the “rollback argument”. In a recent reply, Lara Buchak has argued that the underlying thought experiment fails to support the first of two key premises. On her view, this points to an unexplored alternative in the free will debate, which she calls “chance-incompatibilism”. I will argue that the rollback thought experiment does (...) support the second key premise of the argument, and, more importantly, that libertarianism is committed to the first premise for independent reasons concerning the relationship between the normative and causal strength of the agent’s reasons. The upshot will be that chance-incompatibilism is not a promising new alternative in the free will debate, and we will see that the debate around those issues can benefit from more attention to the role of the agent’s reasons for action. (shrink)

Traditional compatibilism about free will is widely considered to be untenable. In particular, the conditional analysis of the ability to do otherwise appears to be subject to clear counterexamples. I will propose a new version of traditional compatibilism that provides a conditional account of both the ability to do otherwise and the ability to choose to do otherwise, and I will argue that this view withstands the standard objections to traditional compatibilism. For this, I will assume with incompatibilists that the (...) mere possession of a general ability to do otherwise is not sufficient for having the ability that is required for free will. This concession distinguishes the view from the traditional conditional analysis and from recent dispositional accounts of the ability to do otherwise, and we will see that this concession enables a straightforward response to the counterexamples. This, in turn, will play a crucial role in my response to the strongest version of the consequence argument for incompatibilism. (shrink)

The so-called theory of karma is one of the distinguishing aspects of Hinduism and other non-Hindu south-Asian traditions. At the same time that the theory can be seen as closely connected with the freedom of will and action that we humans supposedly have, it has many times been said to be determinist and fatalist. The purpose of this paper is to analyze in some deepness the relations that are between the theory of karma on one side and determinism, fatalism and (...) free-will on the other side. In order to do that, I shall use what has been described as the best formal approach we have to indeterminism: branching time theory. More specifically, I shall introduce a branching time semantic framework in which, among other things, statements such as “state of affairs e is a karmic effect of agent a”, “a wills it to be the case that e” and “e is inevitable” could be properly represented. (shrink)

A style of argument that calls into question our freedom (in the sense that involves freedom to do otherwise) has been around for millennia; it can be traced back to Origen. The argument-form makes use of the crucial idea that the past is over-and-done-with and thus fixed; we cannot now do anything about the distant past (or, for that matter, the recent past)—it is now too late. Peter van Inwagen has presented this argument (what he calls the Consequence Argument) in (...) perhaps its clearest and most forceful way, but debate over the argument has arguably reached a stalemate. -/- Recently, however, Wes Holliday has attempted to break this seeming stalemate by presenting a new argument for the Principle of the Fixity of the Past. Holliday’s argument is subtle and ingenious, and worthy of serious consideration, especially given the promise it holds for genuinely advancing this old debate. In what follows, however, we argue that despite its considerable ingenuity, Holliday’s argument fails to convince, and the stalemate appears to remain. (shrink)

For Alexis de Tocqueville, a faithful son of the Enlightenment, the priority given to the individual in the pursuit of truth represents the starting point of an inexorable march of equality towards individual autonomy. In other words, in agreement with the historicist movements of the 19th Century, Tocqueville interprets history as a dialectical progress: History understood as progress in the Hegelian sense, whose becoming unfolds in virtue of a steady and unalterable progress towards a better society-civilization as a creation of (...) the illustrated man. However, while for Hegel progress obeys a reason understood as self-knowledge, Tocqueville understands it as a balance between antagonisms: liberty-individual-democracy. In other words, the Tocquevillian dualism, expressed in the permanent tension between antagonisms equality vs. freedom, the individual vs the citizen–, leads towards a new class of dialectics of liberty. In this sense, the aforementioned triad represents, precisely, the tension that reveals itself as problematic, given that, ultimately, the elements that compose it arise antithetically. (shrink)

Examines the relevance of empirical studies of responsibility judgments for traditional philosophical concerns about free will and moral responsibility. We argue that experimental philosophy is relevant to the traditional debates, but that setting up experiments and interpreting data in just the right way is no less difficult than negotiating traditional philosophical arguments. Both routes are valuable, but so far neither promises a way to secure significant agreement among the competing parties. To illustrate, we focus on three sorts of issues. For (...) illustration, we discuss an error theory for incompatibilist intuitions proposed by Eddy Nahmias and colleagues, the role that empirical studies might have in the assessment of manipulation arguments for incompatibilism, and the suggestion that empirical studies reveal that core criteria for moral responsibility ought not to be applied invariantly across different sorts of cases. (shrink)

Free will skepticism maintains that what we do, and the way we are, is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense—the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame. In recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers have advanced and defended versions of free will skepticism, including Derk Pereboom (2001, 2014), Galen Strawson (2010), Neil Levy (2011), Bruce Waller (2011, (...) 2015), and myself (Caruso 2012, 2013, forthcoming). Critics, however, often complain that adopting such views would have dire consequences for ourselves, society, morality, meaning, and the law. They fear, for instance, that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility would leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and undermine meaning in life. -/- In response, free will skeptics argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe (see, e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014; Waller 2011, 2015; Caruso 2016, forthcoming). According to optimistic skeptics, prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened. And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, incapacitation and rehabilitation programs would still be justified (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014; Levy 2012; Caruso 2016; Pereboom and Caruso, forthcoming). In this paper, I attempt to extend this general optimism about the practical implications of free will skepticism to the question of creativity. -/- In Section I, I spell out the question of creativity and explain why it’s relevant to the problem of free will. In Section II, I identify three different conceptions of creativity and explain the practical concerns critics have with free will skepticism. In Section III, I distinguish between three different conceptions of moral responsibility and argue that at least two of them are consistent with free will skepticism. I further contend that forward-looking accounts of moral responsibility, which are perfectly consistent with free will skepticism, can justify calling agents to account for immoral behavior as well as providing encouragement for creative activities since these are important for moral and creative formation and development. I conclude in Section IV by arguing that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert would not mean the death of creativity or our sense of achievement since important and realistic conceptions of both remain in place. (shrink)