Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Libertarianism and agentive experience.Justin A. Capes - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):33-44.
    Libertarianism about free will conjoins the thesis that free will requires indeterminism with the thesis that we have free will. Here the claim that we have experiential evidence for the libertarian position is assessed. It is argued that, on a straightforward reading, the claim is false, for our experiences as agents don't support the claim that free will requires indeterminism. However, our experiences as agents may still have a role to play in an overall case for libertarianism, insofar as they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Freedom, self-prediction, and the possibility of time travel.Alison Fernandes - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (1):89-108.
    Do time travellers retain their normal freedom and abilities when they travel back in time? Lewis, Horwich and Sider argue that they do. Time-travelling Tim can kill his young grandfather, his younger self, or whomever else he pleases—and so, it seems can reasonably deliberate about whether to do these things. He might not succeed. But he is still just as free as a non-time traveller. I’ll disagree. The freedom of time travellers is limited by a rational constraint. Tim can’t reasonably (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The Boy Who Grew a New Brain: Understanding this Miracle from a Neuro-Quantum Perspective.Contzen Pereira & Jumpal Shashi Kiran Reddy - 2018 - Neuroquantology 16 (7):39-48.
    In this paper, we present a case of a boy – Noah Wall, who till today surprises the world of neuroscience with his will to grow his brain and survive. The case presented in this study sets a stepping stone in understanding the advent of the will to make a choice, from a neuro-quantum mechanics interpretation. We propose that besides our internal states of choices (neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, cell differentiation, etc.) we also relate with external states of choices (love, compassion, empathy, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A Structural Explanation of Injustice in Conversations: It's about Norms.Saray Ayala-López - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):726-748.
    In contrast to individualistic explanations of social injustice that appeal to implicit attitudes, structural explanations are unintuitive: they appeal to entities that lack clear ontological status, and the explanatory mechanism is similarly unclear. This makes structural explanations unappealing. The present work proposes a structural explanation of one type of injustice that happens in conversations, discursive injustice. This proposal meets two goals. First, it satisfactorily accounts for the specific features of this particular kind of injustice; and second, it articulates a structural (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • What kinds of alternative possibilities are required of the folk concept(s) of choice?Jason Shepard & Aneyn O’Grady - 2017 - Consciousness and Cognition 48:138-148.
    Our concept of choice is integral to the way we understand others and ourselves, especially when considering ourselves as free and responsible agents. Despite the importance of this concept, there has been little empirical work on it. In this paper we report four experiments that provide evidence for two concepts of choice—namely, a concept of choice that is operative in the phrase having a choice and another that is operative in the phrase making a choice. The experiments indicate that the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Remaking responsibility: complexity and scattered causes in human agency.Joshua Fost & Coventry Angela - 2013 - In Tangjia Wang (ed.), Proceedings of the 1st International Conference of Philosophy: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow. Global Science and Technology Forum. pp. 91-101.
    Contrary to intuitions that human beings are free to think and act with “buck-stopping” freedom, philosophers since Holbach and Hume have argued that universal causation makes free will nonsensical. Contemporary neuroscience has strengthened their case and begun to reveal subtle and counterintuitive mechanisms in the processes of conscious agency. Although some fear that determinism undermines moral responsibility, the opposite is true: free will, if it existed, would undermine coherent systems of justice. Moreover, deterministic views of human choice clarify the conditions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Is agentive experience compatible with determinism?Oisín Deery - 2015 - Philosophical Explorations 18 (1):2-19.
    Many philosophers think not only that we are free to act otherwise than we do, but also that we experience being free in this way. Terry Horgan argues that such experience is compatibilist: it is accurate even if determinism is true. According to Horgan, when people judge their experience as incompatibilist, they misinterpret it. While Horgan's position is attractive, it incurs significant theoretical costs. I sketch an alternative way to be a compatibilist about experiences of free agency that avoids these (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The Enkratic Requirement.Allen Coates - 2011 - European Journal of Philosophy 21 (2):320-333.
    : Agents are enkratic when they intend to do what they believe they should. That rationality requires you to be enkratic is uncontroversial, yet you may be enkratic in a way that does not exhibit any rationality on your part. Thus, what I call the enkratic requirement demands that you be enkratic in the right way. In particular, I will argue that it demands that you base your belief about what you should do and your intention to do it on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • The Revisionist Turn: A Brief History of Recent Work on Free Will.Manuel Vargas - 2010 - In Jesús H. Aguilar, Andrei A. Buckareff & Keith Frankish (eds.), New waves in philosophy of action. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    I’ve been told that in the good old days of the 1970s, when Quine’s desert landscapes were regarded as ideal real estate and David Lewis and John Rawls had not yet left a legion of influential students rewriting the terrain of metaphysics and ethics respectively, compatibilism was still compatibilism about free will. And, of course, incompatibilism was still incompatibilism about free will. That is, compatibilism was the view that free will was compatible with determinism. Incompatibilism was the view that free (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • From Uncaused Will to Conscious Choice: The Need to Study, Not Speculate About People’s Folk Concept of Free Will.Andrew E. Monroe & Bertram F. Malle - 2010 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2):211-224.
    People’s concept of free will is often assumed to be incompatible with the deterministic, scientific model of the universe. Indeed, many scholars treat the folk concept of free will as assuming a special form of nondeterministic causation, possibly the notion of uncaused causes. However, little work to date has directly probed individuals’ beliefs about what it means to have free will. The present studies sought to reconstruct this folk concept of free will by asking people to define the concept (Study (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   73 citations  
  • Rational Capacities, Resolve, and Weakness of Will.Daniel Cohen & Toby Handfield - 2010 - Mind 119 (476):907 - 932.
    In this paper we present an account of practical rationality and weakness of will in terms of rational capacities. We show how our account rectifies various shortcomings in Michael Smith's related theory. In particular, our account is capable of accommodating cases of weak-willed behaviour that are not `akratic', or otherwise contrary to the agent's better judgement. Our account differs from Smith's primarily by incorporating resolve: a third rational capacity for resolute maintenance of one's intentions. We discuss further two ways to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Time, Flies, and Why We Can't Control the Past.Alison Fernandes - 2023 - In Barry Loewer, Brad Weslake & Eric Winsberg (eds.), The Probability Map of the Universe: Essays on David Albert’s _Time and Chance_. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
    David Albert explains why we can typically influence the future but not the past by appealing to an initial low-entropy state of the universe. And he argues that in the rare cases where we can influence the past, we cannot use this influence to knowingly gain future rewards: so it does not constitute control. I introduce an important new case in which Albert's account implies we can not only influence the past but control it: a case where our actions in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Too many cooks.Alex Horne - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-22.
    The existing literature on the rational underdetermination problem often construes it as one resulting from the ubiquity of objective values. It is therefore sometimes argued that subjectivists need not be troubled by the underdetermination problem. But on closer examination, it turns out, they should. Or so I will argue. The task of the first half of this paper is explaining why. The task of the second half is finding a subjectivist solution the rational underdetermination problem. The basic problem, I argue, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence.Christian Loew - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (3):436-455.
    A certain type of counterfactual is thought to be intimately related to causation, control, and explanation. The time asymmetry of these phenomena therefore plausibly arises from a time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. But why is counterfactual dependence time asymmetric? The most influential account of the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence is David Albert’s account, which posits a new, time-asymmetric fundamental physical law, the so-called “past hypothesis.” Albert argues that the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence arises from holding fixed the past (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Does a Low-Entropy Constraint Prevent Us from Influencing the Past.Mathias Frisch - 2010 - In Gerhard Ernst & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Time, chance and reduction: philosophical aspects of statistical mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13--33.
    David Albert and Barry Loewer have argued that the temporal asymmetry of our concept of causal influence or control is grounded in the statistical mechanical assumption of a low-entropy past. In this paper I critically examine Albert's and Loewer 's accounts.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • Unsettledness and the intentionality of practical decisions.E. J. Coffman - 2022 - Philosophical Explorations 25 (2):220-231.
    Say that a ‘practical decision’ is a momentary intentional mental action of intention formation. According to what I’ll call the ‘Decisional Prior Intention Thesis’, each practical decisio...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Sartre's Theory of Motivation.Daniel Vanello - 2019 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 57 (2):259-278.
    The aim of this article is to offer a novel reconstruction of Sartre's theory of motivation. I argue for four related claims: (a) Sartre's theory of motivation revolves around the Schelerian‐inspired notion of affectivity and the peculiar way affectivity provides us access to evaluative properties of the objects in our environment; (b) according to Sartre, the structure of intentional action, and in particular the act of choice and commitment to projects, is inextricably linked with “affectivity”; (c) the inextricable link between (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Experience and free will.Pakize Arıkan Sandıkçıoğlu - 2016 - Ethos: Dialogues in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9 (2).
    Özgür istencin varlığına ilişkin öne sürülen en önemli argümanlardan biri “özgür istencin doğrudan deneyimi” kavramına dayanır. Birçok düşünüre göre, özgür istenç vardır çünkü doğrudan deneyimlenebilmektedir. Bu argümana karşı koymanın birinci yolu söz konusu deneyimin yanıltıcı olduğunu iddia etmektir. Diğer bir seçenek ise, istençli bir eylemde bulunurken özgür istenç deneyiminin ortaya çıkmadığını iddia etmektir. Bu çalışmada, tek başına bir eylem deneyiminin, özgür istencin varlığı konusunda tarafsız olduğu iddia edilecektir. Buna ek olarak, eylemlere özgür istenç atfetmemizin nedeninin, salt fenomenoloji değil, daha ziyade (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Akrasia and self-control.David Wall - 2009 - Philosophical Explorations 12 (1):69 – 78.
    According to Gary Watson (1977), if we choose not to implement a judgment about what it is best to do then we must have changed that judgment. On those grounds he rejects an otherwise plausible account of akrasia, or weakness of will, that explains it in terms of the relative strengths of the agent's desires to act against and in accordance with their evaluative judgment. However, Watson seems to assume what I call a 'principle of closure of evaluation', a principle (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Distortion and Excluded Middles.Jonathan E. Adler - unknown
    Why is there so much distortion in ordinary, political, social, and ethical argument? Since we have a pervasive interest in reasoning well and corresponding abilities, the extent of distortion invites explanation. The leading candidates are the need to economize, widespread, fallacious heuristics or assumptions, and self-defensive biases. I argue that these are not sufficient. An additional force is the intellectual pressure generated by acceptance of norms of conversation and argument, which exclude ‘middles’ of, prominently, neither accept nor reject. I conjecture (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Why people believe in indeterminist free will.Oisín Deery - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2033-2054.
    Recent empirical evidence indicates that people tend to believe that they possess indeterminist free will, and people’s experience of choosing and deciding is that they possess such freedom. Some also maintain that people’s belief in indeterminist free will has its source in their experience of choosing and deciding. Yet there seem to be good reasons to resist endorsing. Despite this, I maintain that belief in indeterminist free will really does have its source in experience. I explain how this is so (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Making sense of the libertarian’s semantic claim about agential phenomenology.Andrew Sims - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 22 (1):16-32.
    Libertarians about free will sometimes argue for their position on the grounds that our phenomenology of action is such that determinism would need to be false for it to be veridical. Many, however, have thought that it would be impossible for us to have an experience that is in contradiction with determinism, since this would require us to have perceptual experience of metaphysical facts. In this paper I show how the libertarian claim is possible. In particular, if experience depicts the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Determinism, Self-Efficacy, and the Phenomenology of Free Will.Richard Holton - 2009 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (4):412-428.
    Some recent studies have suggested that belief in determinism tends to undermine moral motivation: subjects who are given determinist texts to read become more likely to cheat or engage in vindictive behaviour. One possible explanation is that people are natural incompatibilists, so that convincing them of determinism undermines their belief that they are morally responsible. I suggest a different explanation, and in doing so try to shed some light on the phenomenology of free will. I contend that one aspect of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Uncertainty and the act of making a difficult choice.Jonathan J. Hall - 2023 - Philosophical Explorations 26 (3):368-390.
    A paradigmatic experience of agency is the felt effort associated with the act of making a difficult choice. The challenge of accounting for this experience within a compatibilist framework has been called ‘the agency problem of compatibilism’ (Vierkant, 2022, The Tinkering Mind: Agency, Cognition and the Extended Mind, Oxford University Press, 116). In this paper, I will propose an evolutionarily plausible, actional account of deciding which explains the phenomenology. In summary: The act of making a difficult choice is triggered by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (2 other versions)Activity and Passivity in Reflective Agency.Paul Katsafanas - 2006 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Vol. 3. Oxford University Press. pp. 219.
    Lately, a number of philosophers have argued that agents can be more and less active in the production of their own actions. Some actions—principally reflective, deliberative ones—are said to involve agential activity; other actions—principally unreflective, non-deliberative ones—are said to be brought about in a more passive fashion. In this essay, I critique these claims. I show that philosophers employing the notion of agential activity have relied on one or more of the following claims, which have not been clearly distinguished in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations