Causal Determinism (CD) entails that all of a person’s choices and actions are nomically related to events in the distant past, the approximate, but lawful, consequences of those occurrences. Assuming that history cannot be undone nor those (natural) relations altered, that whatever results from what is inescapable is itself inescapable, and the contrariety of inevitability and freedom, it follows that we are completely devoid of liberty: our choices are not freely made; our actions are not freely performed. Instead of disputing (...) the soundness of this reasoning, some philosophers prefer to maintain that we could yet have a small measure of freedom were CD true of our world: although being unable to choose or act differently, one could at least under normal circumstances truly claim to be acting ‘on one’s own’, beyond the control of ‘outside forces’, in a word, autonomous. They further argue that being free in this sense suffices for moral responsibility. Call their philosophy ‘Autonomy Compatibilism’ (AC). -/- In adopting here reactive attitudes towards an agent, one is choosing to highlight the fact that the individual in question is of sound mind, reasoning and acting free from the interference of others. These facts alone, the adherent of AC claims, justify his stance, despite the necessity of the agent’s choices. Why would we not regard a sane individual who is not being coerced, intimidated, deceived or unduly put upon as in charge of his life so as to be responsible for his activities? -/- The Manipulation Argument (MA) is supposed to cut off this line of retreat. Its authors hold that, were CD true of our world, we would be no more autonomous than a victim of “covert, non-constraining control” (CNC): manipulation whereby one person causes another, through the use of methods such as brainwashing or circumspect operant conditioning, to ‘do his bidding’ without the latter being aware of his subjugation or feeling in any way coerced. Since a CNC victim obviously lacks autonomy, then so must “persons” living in a deterministic universe. Defenders of AC have, then, the following argument with which to contend: -/- 1. Victims of CNC (obviously) lack autonomy. 2. Thus, AC would be true only if some definition of autonomy succeeds in specifying a freedom relevant difference between victims of CNC and agents whose choices/actions are necessary consequences of prior events. 3. There could be no such definition. 4. Therefore, AC must be false. -/- The challenge issued here is clear: find a way to refute the claim that being subject to natural laws would be tantamount to being a victim of CNC, to show that Nature is no manipulator. Moreover, this challenge cannot be met by responding with a Frankfurt case: a situation in which things have been surreptitiously arranged so that an agent is unable to avoid doing something that he manages to do ‘on his own’, thus, being autonomous despite his inability to act otherwise. For, even if CD is not inconsistent with autonomy because it eliminates the ability to do otherwise per se, it may yet entail that no human agent ever does act of his own accord, an implication of which would be a lack of alternatives on anyone’s part. In other words, the fact that causally determined beings could never act differently than they do does is perhaps only symptomatic of the reason why such beings would lack autonomy: forces beyond their control would have dominion over their psychological development. Thus, AC advocates must show that the way that an agent’s character would be shaped, were she (merely) subject to natural laws, would leave unimpaired an ability that CNC would destroy. What follows is a definition of this ability, which I also use to solve the Problem of Freedom and Foreknowledge. (shrink)

The ‘rollback argument,’ pioneered by Peter van Inwagen, purports to show that indeterminism in any form is incompatible with free will. The argument has two major premises: the first claims that certain facts about chances obtain in a certain kind of hypothetical situation, and the second that these facts entail that some actual act is not free. Since the publication of the rollback argument, the second claim has been vehemently debated, but everyone seems to have taken the first (...) claim for granted. Nevertheless, the first claim is totally unjustified. Even if we accept the second claim, therefore, the argument gives us no reason to think that free will and indeterminism are incompatible. Furthermore, seeing where the rollback argument goes wrong illuminates how a certain kind of incompatibilist, the ‘chance-incompatibilist,’ ought to think about free will and chance, and points to a possibility for free will that has remained largely unexplored. (shrink)

This paper examines the view of abilities to act advanced by Kadri Vihvelin in Causes, Laws, and Free Will. Vihvelin argues that (i) abilities of an important kind are “structurally” like dispositions such as fragility; (ii) ascriptions of dispositions can be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals; (iii) ascriptions of abilities of the kind in question can be analyzed similarly; and (iv) we have the free will we think we have by having abilities of this kind and being (...) in circumstances that are propitious for their exercise. I raise doubt about each of these claims. Further, I argue that even if abilities of the kind in question are dispositions, and even if determinism is compatible with our commonly having unexercised abilities of this kind, the compatibility of determinism and free will remains in question. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which demand concern for questions like “What if everybody did that?” Rule consequentialism attempts to incorporate these intuitions by shifting the locus of evaluation from the consequences of acts to those of rules. However, detailed rule-consequentialist theories seem ad hoc or arbitrary compared to act consequentialist ones. We claim that generalizing can be better incorporated into consequentialism (...) by keeping the locus of evaluation on acts but adjusting the decision theory behind act selection. Specifically, we should adjust which types of dependencies the theory takes to be decision-relevant. Using this strategy, we formulate a new theory, generalized act consequentialism, which we argue is more compelling than rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct verdicts. (shrink)

In the Ethics, Spinoza famously rejects freedom of the will. He also offers an error theory for why many believe, falsely, that the will is free. Standard accounts of his arguments for these claims focus on their efficacy against incompatibilist views of free will. For Spinoza, the will cannot be free since it is determined by an infinite chain of external causes. And the pervasive belief in free will arises from a structural limitation of our self-knowledge: (...) because we are aware of our actions but unaware of their causes, we suppose that we alone must be responsible for them. Yet I argue that the standard accounts miss a further element of Spinoza’s arguments that also targets compatibilist views on which free will is consistent with a specific kind of determination—namely, self-determination in accordance with our value judgments. For Spinoza, we are misled not only in supposing that our actions lack external determination but also in thinking that they are determined by our representations of value. In fact, our actions are determined by our appetites, which are blind to our value judgments. And the pervasive belief that our actions are determined by such judgments arises from the projection of value onto the objects we seek. As he denies us free will, then, Spinoza also denies us a capacity central to agency—the capacity to determine our actions in accordance with our ideas of the good. This makes his arguments against free will more consequential, and more radical, than commonly assumed. (shrink)

Do we have free will? Understanding free will as the ability to act freely, and free actions as exercises of this ability, I maintain that the default answer to this question is “yes.” I maintain that free actions are a natural kind, by relying on the influential idea that kinds are homeostatic property clusters. The resulting position builds on the view that agents are a natural kind and yields an attractive alternative to recent revisionist accounts of (...) free action. My view also overcomes difficulties confronted by previous views according to which free actions might be a natural kind. On my view, free actions exist and we often act freely, as long as we possess various features that are related in the right sorts of ways to each other and to the world. In turn, we acquire and retain the concept as long as most of us possess enough of those features. (shrink)

The free will problem is defined and three solutions are discussed: no-freedom theory, libertarianism, and compatibilism. Strict determinism is often assumed in arguing for libertarianism or no-freedom theory. It assumes that the history of the universe is fixed, but modern physics admits a certain degree of randomness in the determination of events. However, this is not enough for a compatibilist position—which is favored here—since freedom is not randomness. It is the I that chooses what to do. It is argued (...) that the core of the free will problem is what this I is. A materialist view is favored: The I is an activity of the brain. In addition to absence of external and internal compulsion, freedom involves absence of causal sufficiency of influences acting on the I. A more elaborate compatibilist view is proposed, according to which causal determination is complete when we add events occurring in the I (of which the subject is not conscious). Contrary to what several authors have argued, the onset of the readiness potential before the decision to act is no problem here. The experience of agency is incomplete and fallible, rather than illusory. Some consequences of different views about freedom for the ascription of responsibility are discussed. (shrink)

The thesis of this article is that there has never been any ground for the controversy between the doctrine of free will and determinism, that it is based upon a misapprehension, that the two assertions are entirely consistent, that one of them strictly implies the other, that they have been opposed only because of our natural want of the analytical imagination. In so saying I do not tamper with the meaning of either phrase. That would be unpardonable. I mean (...) free will in the natural and usual sense, in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which for the purposes of the personal and moral life the term is ever employed. I mean it as implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an act has been performed, that one " could have done otherwise " than one did. I mean it as conveying these things also, not in any subtly modified sense but in exactly the sense in which we conceive them in life and in law and in ethics. These two doctrines have been opposed because we have not realised that free will can be analysed without being destroyed, and that determinism is merely a feature of the analysis of it. And if we are tempted to take refuge in the thought of an "ultimate ", an "innermost" liberty that eludes the analysis, then we have implied a deterministic basis and constitution for this liberty as well. For such a basis and constitution lie in the idea of liberty. -/- The thesis is not, like that of Green or Bradley, that the contending opinions are reconciled if we adopt a certain metaphysic of the ego, as that it is timeless, and identifies itself with a desire by a " timeless act". This is to say that the two are irreconcilable, as they are popularly supposed to be, except by a theory that delivers us from the conflict by taking us out of time. Our view on the contrary is that from the natural and temporal point of view itself there never was any need of a reconciliation but only of a comprehension of the meaning of terms. (The metaphysical nature of the self and its identity through time is a problem for all who confront memory, anticipation, etc.; it has no peculiar difficulties arising from the present problem.) -/- I am not maintaining that determinism is true; only that it is true insofar as we have free will. That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, a fact of experience. That broad fact is more assured than any philosophical analysis. It is therefore surer than the deterministic analysis of it, entirely adequate as that in the end appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance. All that is here said is that such absence of determination, if and so far as it exists, is no gain to freedom, but sheer loss of it; no advantage to the moral life, but blank subtraction from it. -- When I speak below of "the indeterminist" I mean the libertarian indeterminist, that is, him who believes in free will and holds that it involves indetermination. (shrink)

Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. This chapter (...) explicates and assesses skeptical, compatibilist, and libertarian approaches to moral luck. First, I argue that what makes the above problems of free will and moral luck distinct is largely their emphasis on different kinds of luck. Second, I describe and evaluate skeptical arguments from constitutive and circumstantial luck that it is impossible to act freely. Third, I explicate and assess various support and implication relationships between various kinds of compatibilism and libertarianism, on the one hand, and causal, constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant moral luck, on the other. (shrink)

Whether we are free agents or not and to what extent depends on factors such as the necessary conditions for free will and our definition of human agency and identity. The present article, apart from possible alternatives and the causality of the agent regarding his actions, addresses the element of inclination as a necessary condition for free will. Therefore, an analysis of these conditions determines that even though in some circumstances the range of alternatives the agent can (...) choose is very limited or the agent chooses an action without having the inclination to choose it; however, this does not make the agent forced; rather, free will has levels and every individual possesses a certain extent of it in different conditions. Just the fact that the ultimate choice is made by the agent himself and has voluntarily performed the act himself ultimately is sufficient for being free. As a result, even though the influence of external factors on human actions cannot be disregarded; however, because the action is ultimately not outside his control, accordingly, there is neither such a thing as a compelled agent and nor are our actions left to luck. The character of the agent that is voluntarily formed through our actions plays a determinant role in our choices and actions due to the epistemic and motivational components they possess. (shrink)

Hawthorne toys with the view that ascriptions of free will are context-sensitive. But the way he formulates the view makes freedom contextualism look like a non-starter. I step into the breach for freedom contextualism. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that freedom contextualism can be motivated on the basis of our ordinary practice of freedom attribution is not ad hoc. The view explains data which cannot be accounted for by an ambiguity hypothesis. On the other (...) hand, I suggest a more plausible freedom contextualist analysis, which emerges naturally once we pair the assumption that freedom requires that the agent could have acted otherwise with a plausible semantics of "can" statements. I'll dub the resulting view Alternate Possibilities Contextualism, or APC, for short. In contrast to Hawthorne's view, APC is well-motivated in its own right, does not beg the question against the incompatibilist and delivers a context parameter which allows for a wide range of context shifts. I conclude that, far from being a non-starter, freedom contextualism sets an agenda worth pursuing. (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)

It is often called “the problem of free will and determinism,” as if the only thing that might challenge free will is determinism and as if determinism is obviously a problem. The traditional debates about free will have proceeded accordingly. Typically, incompatibilists about free will and determinism suggest that their position is intuitive or commonsensical, such that compatibilists have the burden of showing how, despite appearances, the problem of determinism is not really a problem. Compatibilists, in (...) turn, tend to proceed as if showing that determinism is not a problem thereby shows that we have free will, as if determinism is the only thing that might threaten free will. In this chapter, I reject both of these elements of the traditional debate; the question of whether we have free will should neither begin nor end with the so-called problem of determinism. I present and discuss evidence from a variety of studies that suggests that incompatibilism is not particularly intuitive. Most people do not have to be talked out of incompatibilism but rather talked into it. This provides some reasons—though certainly not decisive reasons—to think that compatibilism is true. I conclude by pointing out that, even if compatibilism were true, it would not dissolve the problem of free will, because there are problems other than determinism that need to be confronted—namely, challenges to free will suggested by current and “future science,” including neuroscience and psychology. The threats to free will suggested by these sciences are distinct from the traditional threat of determinism, and they are the ones that “ordinary persons” find intuitively threatening to free will. In fact, I will argue that the reason incompatibilism about free will and determinism appears to be intuitive is that determinism is often and easily misunderstood to involve these distinct threats to free will—threats that suggest that our rational, conscious mental activity is bypassed in the process of our making decisions and coming to act. (shrink)

In her recent book Causation and Free Will, Carolina Sartorio develops a distinctive version of an actual-sequence account of free will, according to which, when agents choose and act freely, their freedom is exclusively grounded in, and supervenes on, the actual causal history of such choices or actions. Against this proposal, I argue for an alternative- possibilities account, according to which agents’ freedom is partly grounded in their ability to choose or act otherwise. Actual-sequence accounts of freedom are (...) motivated by a reflection on so-called Frankfurt cases. Instead, other cases, such as two pairs of examples originally designed by van Inwagen, threaten actual-sequence accounts, including Sartorio’s. On the basis of her view of causation, Sartorio contends, however, that the two members of each pair have different causal histories, so that her view is not undermined by those cases after all. I discuss these test cases further and defend my alternative-possibilities account of freedom. (shrink)

Benjamin Libet’s work paved the way for the neuroscientific study of free will. Other scientists have praised this research as groundbreaking. In philosophy, the reception has been more negative, often even dismissive. First, I will propose a diagnosis of this striking discrepancy. I will suggest that the experiments seem irrelevant, from the perspective of philosophy, due to the way in which they operationalize free will. In particular, I will argue that this operational definition does not capture free (...) will properly and that it is based on a false dichotomy between internal and external causes. However, I will also suggest that this problem could be overcome, as there are no obvious obstacles to an operationalization of free will that is in accord with the philosophical conception of free will. (shrink)

I argue that the empirical literature on priming effects does not warrant nor suggest the conclusion, drawn by prominent psychologists such as J. A. Bargh, that we have no free will or less free will than we might think. I focus on a particular experiment by Bargh – the ‘elderly’ stereotype case in which subjects that have been primed with words that remind them of the stereotype of the elderly walk on average slower out of the experiment’s room (...) than control subjects – and I show that we cannot say that subjects cannot help walking slower or that they are not free in doing do. I then illustrate how these cases can be reconciled and normalized within a Davidsonian theory of action to show that, in walking slower, subjects are acting intentionally. My argument applies across various experiments, including those of goal priming. In the final section I argue that the only cases in which priming effects are efficacious are so-called Buridan cases. (shrink)

Two intuitions lie at the heart of our conception of free will. One intuition locates free will in our ability to deliberate effectively and control our actions accordingly: the ‘Deliberation and Control’ (DC) condition. The other intuition is that free will requires the existence of alternative possibilities for choice: the AP condition. These intuitions seem to conflict when, for instance, we deliberate well to decide what to do, and we do not want it to be possible to (...) act in some other way. I suggest that intuitions about the AP condition arise when we face ‘close calls,’ situations in which, after deliberating, we still do not know what we really want to do. Indeed, several incompatibilists suggest such close calls are necessary for free will. I challenge this suggestion by describing a ‘confident agent’ who, after deliberating, always feels confident about what to do (and can then control her actions accordingly). Because she maximally satisfies the DC condition, she does not face close calls, and the intuition that the AP condition is essential for free will does not seem to apply to her. I conclude that intuitions about the importance of the AP condition rest on our experiences of close calls and arise precisely to the extent that our deliberations fail to arrive at a clear decision. I then raise and respond to several objections to this thought experiment and its relevance to the free will debate. (shrink)

Spontaneous actions are preceded by brain signals that may sometimes be detected hundreds of milliseconds in advance of a subject's conscious intention to act. These signals have been claimed to reflect prior unconscious decisions, raising doubts about the causal role of conscious will. Murakami et al. (2014. Nat Neurosci 17: 1574–1582) have recently argued for a different interpretation. During a task in which rats spontaneously decided when to abort waiting, the authors recorded neurons in the secondary motor cortex. The neural (...) activity and relationship to action timing was parsimoniously explained using an integration-to-bound model, similar to those widely used to account for evidence-based decisions. In this model, the brain accumulates spontaneously occurring inputs voting for or against an action, but only commits to act once a certain threshold is crossed. The model explains how spontaneous decisions can be forecast (partially predicted) by neurons that reflect either the input or output of the integrator. It therefore presents an explicit hypothesis capable of rejecting the claim that such predictive signals imply unconscious decisions. We suggest that these results can inform the current debate on free will but must be considered with caution. (shrink)

There is a well-known moral quandary concerning how to account for the rightness or wrongness of acts that clearly contribute to some morally significant outcome – but which each seem too small, individually, to make any meaningful difference. One consequentialist-friendly response to this problem is to deny that there could ever be a case of this type. This paper pursues this general strategy, but in an unusual way. Existing arguments for the consequentialist-friendly position are sorites-style arguments. Such arguments imagine (...) varying a subject’s predicament bit by bit until it is clear that a relevant difference has been achieved. The arguments offered in this paper are structurally different, and do not rely on any sorites series. For this reason, they are not vulnerable to objections that have been leveled against the sorites-style arguments. (shrink)

Plausibly, agents act freely iff their actions are responses to reasons. But what sort of relationship between reason and action is required for the action to count as a response? The overwhelmingly dominant answer to this question is modalist. It holds that responses are actions that share a modally robust or secure relationship with the relevant reasons. This thesis offers a new alternative answer. It argues that responses are actions that can be explained by reasons in the right way. This (...) explanationist answer comes apart from the modalist answer. For it holds that actions are responses to reasons if they are explained by those reasons even if they don’t share a modally robust relationship. Explanationism thus offers a novel way of vindicating the intuition that alternative possibilities don’t matter to responding to reasons and (consequently) free agency. The key dialectical position the thesis develops is that both modalism and explanationism constitute attempts to capture he core type of relationship encoded by the notion of a response. Responses to reasons, at core, involve a non-accidental relationship between reason and action. We can either understand non-accidentality as a modal phenomenon – as a modally robust tracking between two facts. Or we can understand non-accidentality as an explanatory phenomenon – as a special explanatory relationship between two facts. According to my rival explanationist proposal, two facts share a non-accidental relationship iff we can give a unified explanation of why both obtain. Unified explanations are explanations of why [p&q] that cannot be decomposed into two (or more) separate independent explanations of p and of q. Consequently, according to explanationism about responding to reasons, actions are responses to reasons iff those reasons offer a rational explanation of the action that cannot be decomposed into separate independent components. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that to educate means to control or guide a person’s acting and development. On the other hand, it is often presupposed that the addressees of education must be seen as being endowed with free will. The question raised in this paper is whether these two assumptions are compatible. It might seem that if the learner is free in her will, she cannot be educated; however, if she is successfully educated, then it is doubtful whether (...) she can be seen as free. Inspired by the current philosophical debate on the compatibility of free will and determinism, this paper spells out two versions of this dilemma. The first version relies on the idea that to be free means being the causal source of one’s actions. The second formulation refers to the notion of freedom as the ability to act otherwise than the way one actually acts. The solution to the dilemma that is developed in this paper, however, uses a third concept of free will—to be free means being able to act on reasons. (shrink)

According to intellectualists, the will is a rational inclination towards apprehended goodness. This conception of the will makes its acts intelligible: they are explained by (i) the nature of the will as a rational inclination, and (ii) the judgement of the intellect that moves the will. From this it follows that it is impossible for an agent to will evil as such or for its own sake. In explaining wrongdoing intellectualists cite cognitive error or the disruptive influences of the (...) passions; these considerations, however, seem involuntary and at least partly exculpatory. The intellectualist needs an account that renders wrongful actions intelligible without undermining their status as responsible. I argue that Leibniz has the theoretical tools to provide at least part of an answer to this problem. In sum, an agent is directly responsible for her wrongdoing if the cognitive error or the disruptive influence of the passions that help explain this wrongdoing do not completely undermine her acting freely; an agent is indirectly responsible for her wrongdoing if she is directly responsible for previous actions which partly resulted in her wrongdoing, even if the presence of cognitive error or disruptive influence of the passions completely undermines her acting freely. (shrink)

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating criticism: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing (...) x into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts. (shrink)

Philosophers working in the nascent field of ‘experimental philosophy’ have begun using methods borrowed from psychology to collect data about folk intuitions concerning debates ranging from action theory to ethics to epistemology. In this paper we present the results of our attempts to apply this approach to the free will debate, in which philosophers on opposing sides claim that their view best accounts for and accords with folk intuitions. After discussing the motivation for such research, we describe our methodology (...) of surveying people’s prephilosophical judgments about the freedom and responsibility of agents in deterministic scenarios. In two studies, we found that a majority of participants judged that such agents act of their own free will and are morally responsible for their actions. We then discuss the philosophical implications of our results as well as various difficulties inherent in such research. (shrink)

Largely thanks to Mill’s influence, the suggestion that the state ought to restrict the distribution of misinformation will strike most philosophers as implausible. Two of Mill’s influential assumptions are particularly relevant here: first, that free speech debates should focus on moral considerations such as the harm that certain forms of expression might cause; second, that false information causes minimal harm due to the fact that human beings are psychologically well equipped to distinguish truth and falsehood. However, in addition to (...) our moral obligations, we also have a distinct set of epistemic obligations—and even when a false belief doesn’t harm anyone, it constitutes an epistemically bad outcome. Moreover, Mill was profoundly mistaken about human psychology: human beings are vulnerable to the influence of a wide variety of false claims via a wide variety of psychological mechanisms. Consequently, there is a purely epistemic justification for restricting the distribution of misinformation: because each of us has an individual epistemic obligation to avoid unnecessary exposure to misinformation, and because avoiding such exposure is simply too difficult when acting alone, we all have a shared epistemic obligation to establish laws or regulations restricting the widespread distribution of misinformation. (shrink)

Ferenc Huoranszki argues for two main claims in the ninth chapter of Freedom of the Will: A Conditional Analysis (Huoranszki 2011). First, Huoranszki tries to show that libertarian restrictivism is false because self-determination in the libertarian sense is not necessary for our responsibility, even if motives, reasons or psychological characteristics can influence us relatively strongly to choose one or the other alternative. second, Huoranszki rejects the so-called manipulation argument.1 this is an argument for the conclusion that unless physical indeterminism is (...) true, nobody can be morally responsible because our behavior is never independent enough of our environment. Therefore, according to Huoranszki, neither libertarian self-determination nor physical indeterminism is required for moral responsibility. in my view, Huoranszki’s counterarguments do not defeat libertarian restrictivism. How- ever, they can force philosophers who defend this theory to modify or refine it. i analyze Huoranszki’s arguments against libertarian self-determination in the first part of my paper. in the second part, I briefly argue for one supervenience argument inspired by a similar objection made earlier (bács 2012). According to this modified argument, Huoranszki’s theory about abilities and responsibility would entail that if physical determinism is true then we are responsible for our ordinary actions only because we are able to do miraculous acts as well. if this objection is correct, Huoranszki’s compatibilism is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Many assume that whenever government is entitled to make a law, it is entitled to enforce that law coercively. I argue that the justification of legal authority and the justification of governmental coercion come apart. Both in ideal theory and in actual human societies, governments are sometimes entitled to make laws that they are not entitled to enforce coercively.

The quotational theory of free indirect discourse postulates that pronouns and tenses are systematically unquoted. But where does this unquotation come from? Based on cases of apparent unquotation in direct discourse constructions (including data from Kwaza speakers, Catalan signers, and Dutch children), I suggest a general pragmatic answer: unquotation is essentially a way to resolve a conflict that arises between two opposing constraints. On the one hand, the reporter wants to use indexicals that refer directly to the most salient (...) speech act participants and their surroundings (Attraction). On the other hand, the semantics of direct discourse (formalized here in terms of event modification) entails the reproduction of referring expressions from the original utterance being reported (Verbatim). Unquotation (formalized here also in terms of event modification), allows the reporter to avoid potential conflicts between these constraints. Unquotation in free indirect discourse then comes out as a special case, where the salient source of attraction is the story protagonist and her actions, rather than the reporting narrator and his here and now. (shrink)

Predictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle (FEP)—a nor- mative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., repre- sentational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpre- tations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies (or fails to qualify) as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle (FEP) instrumentally to (...) dis- tinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on organizational, struc- tural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that tradition- ally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demon- strates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what represen- tations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate. (shrink)

This essay presents a point of view for looking at `free will', with the purpose of interpreting where exactly the freedom lies. For, freedom is what we mean by it. It compares the exercise of free will with the making of inferences, which usually is predominantly inductive in nature. The making of inference and the exercise of free will, both draw upon psychological resources that define our ‘selves’. I examine the constitution of the self of an individual, (...) especially the involvement of personal beliefs, personal memories, affects, emotions, and the hugely important psychological value-system, all of which distinguish the self of one individual from that of another. The foundational position that adopted in this essay is that all psychological processes are correlated with corresponding ones involving large scale neural aggregates in the brain, communicating with one another through wavelike modes of excitation and de-excitation. Of central relevance is the value-network around which the affect system is organized, the latter, in turn, being the axis around which is assembled the self, with all its emotional correlates. The self is a complex system. I include a brief outline of what complexity consists of. In reality all systems are complex, for complexity is ubiquitous, and certain parts of nature appear to us to be ‘simple’ only in certain specific contexts. It is in this background that the issue of determinism is viewed in this essay. Instead of looking at determinism as a grand principle entrenched in nature independent of our interpretation of it, I look at our ability to explain and to predict events and phenomena around us, which is made possible by the existence of causal links running in a complex course that set up correlations between diverse parts of nature, in this way putting the stamp of necessity on these events. However, the complexity of systems limits our ability to explain and to predict to within certain horizons defined by contexts. Our ability to explain and predict in matters relating to acts of free will is similarly limited by the operations of the self that remain hidden from our own awareness. The aspects of necessity and determinism appear to us in the form of reason and rationality that explain and predict only within a limited horizon, while the rest depends on the complex operation of self-linked psychological resources, where the latter appear as contingent in the context of the exercise of free will. The hallmark of complex systems is the existence of amplifying factors that operate as destabilizing ones, along with inhibiting or stabilizing factors as well that generally limit the destabilizing influences to local occurrences, while preserving the global integrity of a system. This complex interplay of destabilizing and stabilizing influences lead to the possibility of an enormous number of distinct modes of behavior that appear as emergent phenomena in complex systems. Looking at the particular case of the self of an individual that guide her actions and thoughts, it is the operation of our emotions, built around the psychological value-system, that provide for the amplifying and inhibiting factors mentioned above. The operation of these self-linked factors stamps our actions and thoughts as contingent ones that do not fit with our concepts of reason and rationality. And this is what provides the basis of our idea of free will. Free will is not ‘free’ in virtue of exemption from causal links running through all our self-based processes - ones that remain hidden from our awareness, but is free of what is perceived to be ‘reason and rationality’ based on knowledge and the common pool of beliefs and principles associated with a shared world-view. When we speak of the choice involved in an act of exercise of free will what we actually refer to is the commonly observed fact that various different individuals of a similar disposition respond differently when placed under similar circumstances. In other words, free will is ‘free’ precisely because it is not subject to constraints of a commonly accepted and shared set of principles, beliefs, and values. While it is possible that, in an exercise of free will, the self-linked psychological resources are brought into action when a number of alternatives are presented to the self by the operation of the ingredients of a commonly shared world-view, it seems likely that, that set of alternatives is not of primary relevance in the final response that the mind produces, since the latter is primarily a product of the operation of the self-based psychological resources. What is of greater relevance here is the operation of emotion-driven processes, guided by the psychological value-system based on the activity of the so-called reward-punishment network in the brain. These processes lead the individual to a response that appears to be free from the shackles of determinism precisely because their mechanisms, which are hidden from us, do not conform to commonly accepted and shared rules and principles. In contrast, inductive inference is a process that is based on the ‘cognitive face’ of self, where the self-based psychological resources play a supportive role to the commonly shared world-view of an individual. There is never any freedom from the all-pervading causal links representing correlations among all objects, entities, and events in nature. In the midst of all this, the closest thing to freedom that we can have in our life comes with self-examination and self-improvement. The possibility of self-examination appears in the form of specific conjunctions between our complex self-processes and the ceaseless changes of scenario in our external world. This actually makes the emergent phenomenon of self-examination a matter of chance, but one that keeps on appearing again and again in our life. Once realized, self examination creates possibilities that would not be there in the absence of it, and these possibilities include the enhancement of further self-enrichment and further diversity in the exercise of our free will. (shrink)

I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compatible with determinism and not enough on whether free will is compatible with specific causal explanations for our actions, including those offered by empirical psychology. If free will is understood as a set of cognitive and volitional capacities, possessed and exercised to varying degrees, then psychology can inform us about the extent to which humans (as a species and as (...) individuals) possess those capacities and manage to exercise them across various situations. While recent work on the role of consciousness in action has been misinterpreted to suggest its role is illusory, recent work in social psychology presents a more viable challenge to our free will. The extent to which we can act on reasons we would accept or can know why we are doing what we do appears to be much less than we presume. Further work is necessary, of course, and it will need to involve both philosophical analysis and psychological investigation. Questions regarding the nature of human freedom and responsibility clearly require the conceptual resources of philosophy and the empirical resources of psychology. (This chapter was written in 2008 for the never published Oxford Handbook on Philosophy of Psychology.). (shrink)

As it was shown in the Part I of this work, the driving of our life is determined by series of YES/NO - type elemental decision, which is actually the information unit (Bit), so we operate actually in an informational mode. The informational analysis and modeling of consciousness reveals seven informational systems, reflected at the conscious level by the cognitive informational centers suggestively called Iknow (Ik - memory), Iwant (Iw - decision center), Iove (Il-emotions), Iam (Ia-body status), Icreate (Ic-informational genetic (...) transmitter and educator), Icreated (I-cd genetic generator inherited from the parents) and Ibelieve, (Ib - connection to the informational field of the universe). As the mind can operate in a bipolar mode, we dispose of two alternatives to use our free will: in a positive (YES) or negative (NO) mode. Such modes can be applied as a function of the personal criteria, especially that inhered from the family, which are the fundamental ones, but also from that acquired during the life. The persistence to operate in a positive or a negative mode is fundamental for the designing of our personal trajectory and therefore for our destiny. The destiny and the role of our free will in deciding the course of our own life are analyzed therefore with respect to our YES/NO attitude, which is an integrated informational output composed by the contribution of all cognition centers, showing that when this is favorable to the life rules, it is avoided its deterioration determined by a permanently negative attitude and thinking mode. It is shown that our intervention should be directed both to the operating mode but also to the decision criteria, when it is ascertained that they do not correspond to the reality, allowing a favorable adaptation. As parents and therefore as forming and educator of the next generation, an activity specific for the center Ic, it is necessary to observe, discover and encourage the talents and predispositions of their Children, to put them on a privileged way of the destiny, because they will benefit of an advanced informational “budget” with respect to their generation and a certain sort of preparation. The comparative analysis between personal operating mode and the reality for adaptation necessities should guide permanently the selected trajectory way, to include new criteria, to change the older, or to reprogramming the operation mode, with the participation of all centers. The stereotype thinking chains triggered by repetitive negative thoughts acts on the informational system as stressing agents, leading to chronic, sometime serious disorders. Such thinking operation forms should be therefore detected and substituted or eliminated without delay, according to some recommended suggestions. Furthermore, it is shown that a specific self-control of the thoughts as positive or negative information and of the lifestyle, helps the health maintenance and the life prolongation under high qualitative. (shrink)

If God knows everything he must know the future, and if he knows the future he must know the future acts of his creatures. But then his creatures must act as he knows they will act. How then can they be free? This dilemma has a long history in Christian philosophy and is now as hotly disputed as ever. The medieval scholastics were virtually unanimous in claiming both that God is omniscient and that humans have free will, (...) though they disagreed in their accounts of how the two are compatible. With the Reformation the debate became even more lively since there were Protestant philosophers who denied both claims, and many philosophers ever since have either thought it impossible to reconcile them or have thought it possible only because they weaken one or the other. (shrink)

Many find it intuitive that having been manipulated undermines a person's free will. Some have objected to accounts of free will like Harry Frankfurt's (according to which free will depends only on an agent's psychological structure at the time of action) by arguing that it is possible for manipulated agents, who are intuitively unfree, to satisfy Frankfurt's allegedly sufficient conditions for freedom. Drawing resources from Greg Egan's "Reasons to Be Cheerful" as well as from stories of psychologically (...) sophisticated artificial intelligence (such as Isaac Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man"), I rebut this objection to "structuralist" accounts of free will, arguing that the very possibility of free will for persons like us requires that we admit that a person can be free even when lacking control over the character from which she acts. I conclude with some implications for the freedom and personhood of artificial intelligences. (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)

The basic idea of this essay is that it is a mistake to deny the existence of psychological harms or that such harms may justify limiting certain sorts of speech acts in certain sorts of circumstances, but that such circumstances are not part of the paradigmatic college environment.

Much has been made about the ways that implicit biases and other apparently unreflective attitudes can affect our actions and judgments in ways that negatively affect our ability to do right. What has been discussed less is that these attitudes negatively affect our freedom. In this paper, I argue that implicit biases pose a problem for free will. My analysis focuses on the compatibilist notion of free will according to which acting freely consists in acting in accordance with (...) our reflectively endorsed beliefs and desires. Though bias presents a problem for free action, I argue that there are steps agents can take to regain their freedom. One such strategy is for agents to cultivate better self-knowledge of the ways that their freedom depends on the relationship between their conscious and unconscious attitudes, and the way these work together to inform action and judgment. This knowledge can act as an important catalyst for agents to seek out and implement short- and long-term strategies for reducing the influence of bias, and I offer four proposals along these lines. The upshot is that though bias is a powerful influence on our actions, we need not resign ourselves to its negative effects for freedom. (shrink)

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is nothing but the development of an intuition by the subject thus transforming (...) it in words of a language. It is both individual and social. Since human subjects are free and historical, the study of speech acts is hermeneutics, that is, interpreting speech acts with knowing and the human reality. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explain and evaluate, by an analytic method, the conflict between determinism and free will from the viewpoint of two physicalist reductionist philosophers, namely, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Dennett is a compatibilist philosopher who tries to show compatibility between determinism and free will, while Sam Harris is a non-compatibilist philosopher who turns to determinism with the thesis that our thoughts and actions have been pre-determined by the neurobiological events associated with them, and thus, considers (...) free will to be an illusion. Therefore according to him, we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions. However, Dennett tries to establish the existence of free will through the use of concepts like control and deliberation and defends ‘free will worth wanting’. Therefore, if we take the agency of the agent and the absence of determinism as two criteria for free will, Dennett accepts both and Harris denies them; since there is neurobiological determinism, and all of Dennett’s deliberations, etc. are also determined neurobiologically. Between the two conditions of free will, Dennett accepts that the origin of action must be in the agent; however, he refutes the condition of alternate possibilities, establishing his view based on a causal theory. As a Neo-Darwinist, he explains human beings’ physical and mental phenomena based on evolution theory and despite accepting causal determinism, he shows how the agent can still have agency in decisions and actions. As a result, he does not consider determinism to requisite compulsion. In his philosophical system, one can change the future that has not yet taken place. This decision-making regarding the future takes place through the process of deliberation, which has a special place in Dennett’s view. On the other hand, by adhering to Libet’s neurological experiments, Harris refutes both conditions of free will and considers the cause of all human being actions to arise from activities of the brain and concludes that one cannot have any conscious control over one’s actions. As a result, he emerges as a non-compatibilist determinist. In both his works, The Moral Landscape and Free Will, Harris addresses the topic of free will. In Free Will, he criticizes the view of compatibilists like Dennett, who responds to those criticisms in his article, ‘Reflections on Free Will, Review of Sam Harris’ Free Will’. Like Harris, Dennett too addresses free will in his two important books, Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. Following an analysis of the views of Dennett and Harris and explaining the criticisms of the two regarding each other, the present article will show that neither Dennett, considering the rest of the elements of his philosophical views in philosophy of mind and philosophy of action can well justify compatibilism, nor can Harris, considering his neurological approach defend his determinist idea. The conflict that is present in Dennett’s views causes his explanation of the agent being the origin of his action to also be indefensible. Furthermore, due to the incompatibility of the different elements of his view and the vagueness of his idea regarding the effect of unconscious intentions on action, Harris too is placed in a weak position. In contrast to Harris’ supposition, a human is not “a puppet [who] is free as long as he loves his strings”; rather, a human chooses, makes decisions and acts according to his own will. As a result, despite the objections that apply to both philosophers, Dennett’s view is more acceptable than Harris’ in terms of the effort to justify free will; even though neither have been apparently successful in defending their own ideas. (shrink)

Neuroplasticity, the capacity of the brain to induce changes in response to environmental stimuli, entails a continuous rearrangement of the neural network through a complex interaction between genetics and environment. Within this process, the plastic brain uses its internal representations to predict future conditions and proactively proceed to actions. It can be said that plasticity demands a rethinking of the concept of determinism as the process of coming-to-be is directly related to modifications produced by experience. Pure determinism and complete randomness (...) are the two ends of a spectrum of positions relevant to the debate of the existence of free will. However, none conceptually supports free decision-making. How brain activity and the conscious experience of volition are related to one another has been a matter of significant research, with a plethora of findings indicating that early brain signals precede the self-reported time of the decision to act. The meaning of these findings, however, has been debated at both a theoretical and empirical level and the controversy is still ongoing. Consciousness is intertwined with free will along the dimension of time as it would otherwise be purposeless, taking place right at the next moment. Electrical activity of the brain is a measure of neurophysiological function and contributes to the understanding of processes that underlie high-order cognitive functions. A multidisciplinary approach in the study of free will could be designed in a way that philosophical concepts are connected to neural correlates by psychologically functionalizing them in terms of cognitive abilities. Such abilities are at the margins of conscious and nonconscious sensory information and are closely linked to brain processes of executive functions like attentional control and working memory. (shrink)

We take it for granted that commonly we act freely and we are generally morally responsible for what we do when we so act. Can there be such a thing as freely omitting to act, or freely refraining or forbearing, and can we be similarly responsible for omitting, refraining, and forbearing? This paper advances a view of freely omitting to act. In many cases, freedom in omitting cannot come to the same thing as freedom in acting, since in many cases (...) omitting to do a certain thing is not a matter of performing an action of any sort. There are nevertheless important similarities. It is argued, further, that we should view responsibility for omitting to act as capable of being basic or underived, not needing to derive from one’s responsibility for prior actions. Finally, brief consideration is given to a proposal concerning what is required for responsibility for omitting to do a certain thing. (shrink)

Whether an action is morally right depends upon the alternative acts available to the agent. Actualists hold that what an agent would actually do determines her moral obligations. Possibilists hold that what an agent could possibly do determines her moral obligations. Both views face compelling criticisms. Despite the fact that actualist and possibilist assumptions are at the heart of seminal arguments in business ethics, there has been no explicit discussion of actualism and possibilism in the business ethics literature. This (...) paper has two primary goals. First, it aims to rectify this omission by bringing to light the importance of the actualism/possibilism debate for business ethics through questions about the ethics of sweatshops. Second, it aims to make some progress in the sweatshop debate by examining and defending an alternative view, hybridism, and describing the moral and practical implications of hybridism for the sweatshop debate. (shrink)

Should college teachers still teach works with immoral content? What if the works are by deeply immoral thinkers? This guide is intended to help us answer these sorts of pedagogical questions by articulating the pertinent moral issues and then suggesting strategies for navigating them.

1. Introduction The readiness potential was found to precede voluntary acts by about half a second or more (Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965). Kornhuber (1984) discussed the readiness potential in terms of volition, arguing that it is not the manifestation of an attentional processes. Libet discussed it in relation to consciousness and to free will (Libet et al. 1983a; 1983b; Libet, 1985, 1992, 1993). Libet asked the following questions. Are voluntary acts initiated by a conscious decision to act? (...) Are the physiological facts compatible with the belief that free will determines our voluntary acts? What is the role of consciousness in voluntary action? In this paper I will discuss these questions and the answers that Libet gave to them. (shrink)

Libertarian philosophy asserts that only the initiation of physical force against persons or property, or the threat thereof, is inherently illegitimate. A corollary to this assertion is that all forms of speech, including fraudulent advertising, are not invasive and therefore should be considered legitimate. On the other hand, fraudulent advertising can be viewed as implicit theft under the theory of contract: if a seller accepts money knowing that his product does not have some of its advertised characteristics, he acquires the (...) property title to the customer’s money without voluntary consent, which is theft. The balance between these two logical extensions of property rights—the right of free speech and the right of contract—lies somewhere in the area of communication philosophy, and can be explained through understanding the role of communication in human interactions. Advertising is a form of communication that may convey important information about the conditions of the proposed contract. These conditions are expressed in particular words that may have different meanings in different circumstances. Therefore to determine whether a particular example or “misinterpretation” is mere sophistry or a type of fraud, the judicial system has to approach each issue on a case-by-case basis. The border between legal and illegal should be determined by precedents and by expectations based on commonly accepted definitions of terms—what people commonly understand by the words and other forms of communication they use. (shrink)

I will start my inaugural address by outlining the main argument of my lecture. First, I will identify the phenomenon that philosophers of technology research. This subject matter, in my view, consists not only of ethical issues that disruptive technologies raise but also of the disruption of the world in which we live and act by these technologies. I will illustrate this disruption by reflecting on the convergence of the physical and the virtual in the digital world, which is expected (...) to change the way we live together. I propose that philosophers of technology should research new disruptive technologies and the digital world in which they are embedded in an integrated manner. Subsequently, I will ask how the emergence of digital technologies disrupts the world’s design in the digital age. My hypothesis is that technological innovations themselves constitute the World in a non-anthropocentric and non-determinist manner. To make my case, I will first draw attention to the difference between technology and innovation and propose a philosophy of innovation. This will enable me to consider how innovation processes have an economic, social-political and ontological impact on the world. Based on historical and contemporary examples, I will illustrate the redesign of the world in the digital age. This broader understanding of the impact of digital technologies will subsequently enable me to articulate some of the critical questions I have regarding digitalisation, and how the philosophical tradition can be made fruitful to critically reflect on the elision between the physical and the virtual in the digital age. This criticism informs my engagement with ethical questions in ethics of technology, ELSA (Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects) and Responsible Innovation. As a final step, I open a progressive perspective on the emancipatory potential of disruptive innovations to set the world free. In times of climate change, we are urgently in need of an emancipation of the World. We need to move beyond the classical opposition between technophobia and technophilia and look for innovations that can set the World free and contribute to a sustainable future. I will illustrate the emancipatory potential of disruptive technological innovations by considering the shift from human-centred technology to bio-centred technology in biomimetic design. (shrink)

Suppose a police car gives chase to some violent criminals, putting innocent bystanders at risk. The criminals have not threatened the police in any way; so we would not normally say that the police have been coerced into chasing. Nor are the police merely responding to natural circumstances, so they are not acting under necessity, in the usual sense. The case is different from one in which an ambulance speeds to hospital, putting innocent bystanders at risk, because the reason (...) for the police speeding has to do with the unreasonable behaviour of others. Yet that unreasonable behaviour does not constitute threatening behaviour. How then should we describe what happened? (shrink)

In free speech theory ‘speech’ has to be defined as a special term of art. I argue that much free speech discourse comes with a tacit commitment to a ‘Subtractive Approach’ to defining speech. As an initial default, all communicative acts are assumed to qualify as speech, before exceptions are made to ‘subtract’ those acts that don’t warrant the special legal protections owed to ‘speech’. I examine how different versions of the Subtractive Approach operate, and criticise (...) them in terms of their ability to yield a substantive definition of speech which covers all and only those forms of communicative action that – so our arguments for free speech indicate – really do merit special legal protection. In exploring alternative definitional approaches, I argue that what ultimately compromises definitional adequacy in this arena is a theoretical commitment to the significance of a single unified class of privileged communicative acts. I then propose an approach to free speech theory that eschews this theoretical commitment. (shrink)

Current theories of grammar handle both extraction and anaphorization by introducing variables into syntactic representations. Combinatory categorial grammar eliminates variables corresponding to gaps. Using the combinator W, the paper extends this approach to anaphors, which appear to act as overt bound variables. [Slightly extended version in Bartsch et al 1989.].

Polish translation of "John Searle: From Speech Acts to Social Reality", -/- We provide an overview of Searle's contributions to speech act theory and the ontology of social reality, focusing on his theory of constitutive rules. In early versions of this theory, Searle proposed that all such rules have the form 'X counts as Y in context C' formula – as for example when Barack Obama (X) counts as President of the United States (Y) in the context of US (...) political affairs. Crucially, the X and the Y terms are here identical. A problem arises for this theory for cases involving 'free-standing Y terms', as for example in the case of money in a computerized bank account. Here there is no physical X to which a status function might be attached. We conclude by arguing that Searle's response to this problem creates difficulties for his naturalistic framework. (shrink)