Essentially, they reject the 'Principle of Causation' in the context of human behaviour. So, what does that mean? Well, the principle of causation is the widely applied scientific notion that for every event, there must be a cause.
This seems to be the case throughout nature — a plant grows if it is watered, a tree falls over because of the strong wind. The only thing it doesn't apply to, according to libertarianism, is human action.
Which may seem unlikely…or not — it's up to you to decide! Sam Harris, in his book entitled 'Free Will' mentioned in the previous lesson, writes that 'libertarians…imagine that human agency must magically rise above the plane of physical causation. However, having been working in philosophy since graduating from Harvard in with a B.
We can assume he knows what he's talking about. Next, we're going to look at determinism — essentially the opposite of libertarianism. The literature and resources on this are much more expansive, given that the broad assumption is that we have free will — determinists, therefore, have to work a little harder. Whereas libertarians believe that we are completely independent of external forces when acting, determinists argue that we are, in fact completely, well, determined by them.
Whether these forces are our environment, those around us, or unconscious neural activity in the brain — the determinists believe they have all the power. Though the definition of 'free will' itself can sometimes be a bit ambiguous, it is worth pointing out that the most simple and effective in relation to the arguments at hand, is 'the ability to have acted differently.
Similarly, if you were put into the body and mind of another person though this is a rather questionable thought experiment in itself , and if you were experiencing identical conditions to them at that very moment, you would have acted the exact same as they did.
So even though many compatibilists are committed to thinking that the Consequence Argument is unsound, it nevertheless set the agenda for many contemporary compatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility. One compatibilist strategy for responding to the Classical Incompatibilist Argument is to concede that perhaps the Consequence Argument provides us with good reason for thinking that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise while maintaining that such an ability is not necessary for free will.
In other words, the compatibilist might sidestep the issues raised by the Consequence Argument by directly attacking the first premise of the Classical Incompatibilist Argument, which states is if a person acts of her own free will, then she could have done otherwise. This compatibilist response rejects a conception of human agency that locates control in the ability to do otherwise. PAP : A person is morally responsible for what she does do only if she can do otherwise.
Here is a close approximation to the example Frankfurt presented in his original paper:. Jones has resolved to shoot Smith. But Black would prefer that Jones shoot Smith on his own. However, concerned that Jones might waver in his resolve to shoot Smith, Black secretly arranges things so that, if Jones should show any sign at all that he will not shoot Smith something Black has the resources to detect , Black will be able to manipulate Jones in such a way that Jones will shoot Smith.
As things transpire, Jones follows through with his plans and shoots Smith for his own reasons. No one else in any way threatened or coerced Jones, offered Jones a bribe, or even suggested that he shoot Smith. Jones shot Smith under his own steam. Black never intervened. In this example, Jones shot Smith on his own, and did so unencumbered — did so freely. Hence, we have a counterexample to PAP. If determinism threatens free will and moral responsibility, it is not because it is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise.
Even if determinism is incompatible with a sort of freedom involving the ability to do otherwise, it is not the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility. Strawson broke ranks with the classical compatibilists. Strawson developed three distinct arguments for compatibilism, arguments quite different from those the classical compatibilists endorsed. But more valuable than his arguments was his general theory of what moral responsibility is, and hence, what is at stake in arguing about it.
Strawson held that both the incompatibilists and the compatibilists had misconstrued the nature of moral responsibility. Each disputant, Strawson suggested, advanced arguments in support of or against a distorted simulacrum of the real deal. When a perpetrator wrongs a person, she, the wronged party, typically has a personal reactive attitude of resentment. When one is oneself the wronging party, reflecting upon or coming to realize the wrong done to another, the natural reactive attitude is guilt.
Strawson wanted contestants to the free will debate to see more clearly than they had that excusing a person — electing not to hold her blameworthy — involves more than some objective judgment that she did not do such and such, or did not intend so and so, and therefore does not merit some treatment or other. It involves a suspension or withdrawal of certain morally reactive attitudes, attitudes involving emotional responses.
Crucially, the indignation is in response to the perceived attitude of ill will or culpable motive in the conduct of the person being held responsible. Hence, Strawson explains, posing the question of whether the entire framework of moral responsibility should be given up as irrational if it were discovered that determinism is true is tantamount to posing the question of whether persons in the interpersonal community — that is, in real life — should forswear having reactive attitudes towards persons who wrong others, and who sometimes do so intentionally.
Strawson invites us to see that the morally reactive attitudes that are the constitutive basis of our moral responsibility practices, as well as the interpersonal relations and expectations that give structure to these attitudes, are deeply interwoven into human life.
These attitudes, relations and expectations are so much an expression of natural, basic features of our social lives — of their emotional textures — that it is practically inconceivable to imagine how they could be given up.
Every resultant compatibilist account in the contemporary literature is shaped in some way by at least one of these influences. This section will focus upon six of the most significant contemporary compatibilist positions. Those wishing to learn about cutting edge work can read the supplement on Compatibilism: The State of the Art. The Consequence Argument section 3. Assuming that determinism is true, it states that:. Compatibilists who accept that alternative possibilities are necessary for moral responsibility must show what is wrong with this powerful argument.
They also should offer some account of what John Martin Fischer has called regulative control —a form of control agents possess when they can bring about X and can refrain from bringing about X — that makes clear how it is possible even at a determined world.
We will first consider three different compatibilist attempts to unseat the Consequence Argument. Then we will consider how some compatibilists, the so-called New Dispositionalists, explain regulative control, that is, how they might explain the freedom to do otherwise in a way that is compatible with causal determinism.
Some compatibilists have argued against the first premise of the Consequence Argument by attempting to show that a person can act in such a way that the past would be different. Consider the difference between a person in the present who has the ability to act in such a way that she alters the past , as opposed to a person who has the ability to act in such a way such that, if she did so act, the past would have been different.
Notice that the former ability is outlandish; it would require magical powers. But the latter ability is, at least by comparison, uncontroversial. It merely indicates that a person who acted a certain way at a certain time possessed abilities to act in various sorts of ways.
Had she exercised one of those abilities, and thereby acted differently, then the past leading up to her action would have been different. Certainly this claim does not mean that if I go to the French Riviera to dance, I will thereby be made richer. It only means that were I to have gone there to tango, I would have to have had a lot more cash beforehand in order to finance my escapades.
Some compatibilists e. But, these compatibilists maintain, the first premise is falsified when interpreted with a milder notion of ability. Other compatibilists have argued against the first premise of the Consequence Argument in a parallel way by attempting to show that a person can act in such a way that a law of nature would not obtain.
As with the distinction drawn regarding ability and the past, consider the difference between a person who has the ability to act in such a way that she violates a law of nature , as opposed to a person at a deterministic world who has the ability to act in such a way that, if she were to so act, some law of nature that does obtain would not. Notice that the former ability would require magical powers. According to the compatibilist, the latter, by contrast, would require nothing outlandish.
It merely tells us that a person who acted a certain way at a certain time possessed abilities to act in various sorts of ways. Had she exercised one of those abilities, and thereby acted differently, then the laws of nature that would have entailed what she did in that hypothetical situation would be different from the actual laws of nature that did entail what she did actually do. This latter ability does not assume that agents are able to violate laws of nature; it just assumes that whatever the laws of nature are at least at deterministic worlds , they must be such as to entail, given the past, what an agent will do.
If an agent acts differently in some possible world than she acts in the actual world, then some other set of laws will be the ones that entail what she does in that world. Some compatibilists most notably Lewis , but see also Graham and Pendergraft , fixing upon ability pertaining to the laws of nature, have argued that incompatibilist defenders of the Consequence Argument rely upon the outlandish notion of ability in the first premise of their argument.
But, these compatibilists maintain, that first premise is falsified when interpreted with an uncontroversial notion of ability. Michael Slote attempted to refute the Consequence Argument by showing that its central inference is invalid. Let us work with the idea of unavoidability. It is unavoidable for me, for instance, that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or that most motor vehicles now run on gasoline. Nothing about my agency — about what I can do — can alter such facts. But notice that in the Consequence Argument unavoidability or power necessity trades between a context in which the notion is appropriately applied, and one in which, according to Slote, it is not.
It is claimed that these facts are unavoidable for a person, but from this a conclusion is drawn that the very actions a person performs are unavoidable for her. Even if some compatibilist reply proves that the Consequence Argument is unsound, this alone would not amount to a positive argument for compatibilism. It would merely mean that one key argument for the incompatibility of determinism and regulative control is untenable. But that is consistent with the incompatibility of determinism and regulative control.
Indeed, some argue for this incompatibility without relying upon the potentially problematic assumptions about power necessity at work in the Consequence Argument Fischer ; and Ginet , Furthermore, even if the compatibilist could discredit all current arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and regulative control, it still behooves her to offer a positive argument demonstrating the compatibility of determinism and regulative control.
Compatibilists wishing to defend regulative control, such Berofsky , , , Campbell , Nelkin , and Vihvelin , still have their work cut out for them. Recently several compatibilists have offered a positive account of regulative control e. Smith ; and Vihvelin , Call the view these compatibilists advance, the new dispositionalism. In advancing a compatibilist thesis, Vihvelin speaks of the ability to do otherwise and especially choose otherwise in terms of a bundle of dispositions , p.
Likewise, Fara proposes a dispositional analysis of the ability to do otherwise. For Fara, Vihvelin, and Smith, we assess claims about the disposition constitutive of the ability to do otherwise, or the dispositions in the bundle, or the possibilities in the raft, by attending to the intrinsic properties of an agent in virtue of which she acts when she tries Fara , p.
How so? Fara does not say, though it seems likely he would agree to something like the proposals offered by Vihvelin and Smith. Does the agent in an appropriately rich range of such counterfactual conditions wave hello or tell the truth? If she does, then even if in the actual world she does not wave hello or tell the truth, she was able to do so. She had at the time of action the pertinent agential abilities or capacities.
And this is true even if that world is determined see, e. Because there is no basis for contending that when we test the relevant dispositions at other possible worlds, we have to restrict the worlds to ones in which we hold fixed the past and the laws. The new dispositionalism clearly improves upon classical compatibilism. But how does it fare in its own right? Do we have here a compelling positive account of the ability—and so the freedom—to do otherwise that is compatible with determinism?
One slippery matter has to do with the way the relevant worlds are identified in the preceding paragraph. We have to restrict our attention to possible worlds in which the causal base of, or underlying structure for, the ability operates unimpaired.
Some will claim that this restriction is not dialectically innocent. Consider a Frankfurt example section 4. Fara , pp.
They say Jones could have done otherwise, was able to do otherwise, and was free to do otherwise when he shot Smith on his own. Then we will be able to specify a range of true counterfactuals in which an agent had some reason, for instance, to do otherwise, and she did otherwise.
The delicate question here, one which we will not attempt to resolve, is whether in accounting for the freedom to do otherwise the new dispositionalists are entitled to restrict attention only to worlds in which the relevant causal base operates unimpeded.
But in doing so, they only mean to explain the nature of the freedom or control exhibited in how the agent did act—that is, what Fischer has termed her guidance control. In striking contrast to how the new dispositionalists reason, they do not think they are thereby entitled to claim that an agent in a Frankfurt example is free to do otherwise.
So it is possible that what the new dispositionalists have identified with the pertinent counterfactuals they fix upon is not the freedom to do otherwise, but instead, a freedom located in what an agent does do which is a matter of guidance control, not regulative control.
This, at least, is how compatibilists like Fischer and Ravizza would reason. On the back of his rejection of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, Harry Frankfurt developed a compatibilist theory that does not appeal to regulative control in any way.
The key idea is that a person who acts of her own free will acts from desires that are nested within more encompassing elements of her self. On this view, when a freely willing agent acts, her actions emanate from her rather than from something foreign. Frankfurt distinguishes between first-order and second-order desires. This serves as the basis for his hierarchical account of freedom. The latter are desires about desires. Frankfurt also distinguishes between different sorts of second-order desires.
Some are merely desires to have first-order desires, but not that those first-order desires would comprise her will. Frankfurt uses the example of a psychotherapist who wishes to experience a desire for narcotics so as to understand a patient better.
The therapist has no wish that this desire be effective in leading her to action , pp. She wants to know what it is like to feel the craving for the drug; she has no wish to take it. On the other hand, other second-order desires that a person has are desires for effective first-order desires, desires that would comprise her will, and would thereby be effective in moving her all the way to action.
For instance, the dieter who is constantly frustrated by her sugar cravings might desire a more effective desire for health, one that would be more effective in guiding her eating habits than it often is. These second-order desires Frankfurt calls second-order volitions.
The dieter in the above example might develop a third-order desire for her second-order desire regarding her desire for health not to play such a dominant role in her daily deliberations.
Other things, she might reason, are of more importance in life than concerning herself with her dietary motivations. Once this conceptual apparatus is in place, Frankfurt contrasts different sorts of addicts to illustrate his concept of free will.
Consider first the unwilling addict , who is someone that has both a first-order desire to take the drug, and a first-order desire not to take the drug. Crucially, however, the unwilling addict also has a second-order volition that her first-order desire to take the drug not be her will.
This is the basis for her unwillingness. Regrettably, her irresistible addictive desire to take the drug constitutes her will. Next, consider the case of the willing addict. The willing addict, like the unwilling addict, has conflicting first-order desires as regards taking the drug to which she is addicted.
But the willing addict, by way of a second-order volition, embraces her addictive first-order desire to take the drug. She wants to be as she is and act as she does. The unwilling addict does not take the drug of her own free will since her will conflicts at a higher level with what she wishes it to be. The willing addict, however, takes the drug of her own free will since her will meshes with what she wishes it to be.
But recall that Frankfurt does not believe that freedom involving alternative possibilities is required for moral responsibility. Frankfurt instead believes that the freedom pertinent to moral responsibility concerns what an agent does do and her actual basis for doing it. The CI states: I must act in such a way that I can will that my maxim should become a universal law.
Maxims which fail to pass the CI do so because they lead to a contradiction or impossibility. Kant believes this imperative stems from the rationality of the will itself, and thus it is necessary regardless of the particular ends of an individual; the CI is an innate constituent of being a rational individual. As a result, failure Hard determinists further argue that if there is no such thing as free will, then there can be no such thing as moral responsibility, for if a man or woman cannot choose to do other than what they have done, there is no way any responsibility can fall on them for their thoughts or actions.
Their actions were simply caused by something else, which was caused by something else, and so on. While the hard determinists provide a valid argument, it is ultimately false. Looking at their first argument, it is easy to see how they believe the premise to be true. After all, anyo According to Strawson, free will is simply not real because that would result in us being truly responsible for our actions as a result of being able to exercise that will. However, the lack of free will thereof means that there is something or someone who has outlined our actions through none of our fault, thus relieving us of that ultimate moral responsibility.
In contrast, if our actions are. Kant goes on to describe two types of commands given by reason: the hypothetical imperative, which dictates a given course of action to reach a specific end; and the categorical imperative, which dictates a course of action that must be followed because of its rightness and necessity.
Otherwise, not only is justice being flaunted, but equality, which Kant sees as the basis of law and order, will not have been served. When selecting a punishment, equality becomes our standard. The purpose of this paper will be to demonstrate how the arguments supporting utilitarianism are no Thus, freewill does not exist.
If you agree with this argument then you are taking the position of incompatibilism. Incompatibilism is the p I believe that no matter which way you look at it if the universe follows the laws of determinism, it may well be determined that I believe the universe follows the laws of free will. If this were the case then it would be theoretically possible to predict the future simply by observing the past and present.
Because nobody can successfully and consistently predict the future, some people believe that this is an argument against determinism. Another common argument is the idea that if you were told what the future had in store for you, you could therefore consciously alter this out come. Some say that we are conditioned from birth with qualities of our personality, social standing and attitudes.
That we do not have free will, our choices shapes up by the world we born in to. Some others believe that we born as a blank paper we could shape by the occasions or choices that we make freely. Those limitations lead us to use free will and make choices freely. In a determined universe, I am the product of all events which I or my ancestors have experienced. I am a unique being and my choices or decisions are the result of who I am!
Thus, I have the principal characteristic of free will even though the universe is determined. In order to exercise our free will, our actions must have the potential to effect the outcome of events.
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