This book is the result of a discontent on my part with (r) the super ficial and offhand way many determinists set forth their arguments, without the slightest hint of the difficulties which have been raised against those arguments, and (2) the fact that the chief and best argu ments of the libertarians are scattered allover the literature and are seldom if ever brought together in one package. may be taken as an effort to gather into one place Mostly this (...) work and to express as cogently as possible the arguments for freewill. So far as I know all of the arguments we treat have been made before. Only toward the end of this work do I attempt to elaborate a point not heretofore emphasized. That point is that freedom of the will is a concept intimately entangled with the human power to reason, so that if one of these powers goes, the other must also go. Moreover, both the will and the reason are intimately tied up with our moral sensitivities, so that no one of these phenomena is intelligible without the others. Hints of these ideas abound, of course, in the literature, and the degree of originality claimed is minimal. The interconnections, however, between these three basic concepts of the will, the reason, and the good, are of such great importance and are so usually ignored that I feel our short statement of the situation warrants the reader's sympathetic attention. (shrink)

Philosophers and others have often debated whether we have freewill: i.e. whether (in a sense I shall try to elucidate) our power to choose between X and Y is radically undetermined, so that if we choose X we yet might have chosen Y, and vice versa. My concern is not with that question but with a hypothetical one which arises from it: if we had such freewill, what implications, if any, would, that fact have for the sciences. My (...) argument concentrates on the social sciences, since the phenomena with which they deal inevitably involves human choice. (shrink)

Tribe, David In reviewing Bill Cooke's Wealth of Insights (2011) (AH, Autumn 2012), I said that the age-old debate on freewill versus determinism is 'a major issue for neurophysiology, philosophy, jurisprudence and criminology'. I could have added religion, but here the debate takes on a slightly different form of freewill versus predestination (worth considering later) and appears to have divided on peaceful sectarian lines.

In his unpublished freewill manuscripts, Ralph Cudworth seeks to complete the project that he begins in The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) by arguing for an account of human liberty that avoids the opposing poles of necessitarianism and indifferency. I argue that Cudworth’s account rests upon a crucial distinction between the will and the power of freewill. Whereas we necessarily will the greater apparent good, freewill is a more fundamental power by which we endeavour to (...) discern the greater good before willing to pursue it. Cudworth thus opposes necessitarianism by arguing for a libertarian account of freewill while nonetheless rejecting the indifferentist claim that we can will contrary to the greater apparent good. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1968, examines the complicated issues which surround the problem of freewill. Although it reaches a libertarian conclusion, its focus is largely on other questions. What ultimately is at stake in this debate? What difference would it make whether we had freewill or not? Why must disagreement persist, and why do philosophes each opposed conclusions with such confidence? The answers to these questions open new perspectives.

This reissue was first published in 1978. Anthony Kenny, one of the most distinguished philosophers in England, explores the notion of responsibility and the precise place of the mental element in criminal actions. Bringing the insights of recent philosophy of mind to bear on contemporary developments in criminal law, he writes with the general reader in mind, no specialist training in philosophy being necessary to appreciate his argument. Kenny shows that abstract distinctions drawn by analytic philosophers are relevant to decisions (...) in matters of life and death, and illustrates the philosophical argument throughout by reference to actual legal cases. The topics he covers are of wide general interest and include: mens rea and mental health, strict liability, freedom and determinism, duress and necessity, intoxication and irresistible impulse, intention and purpose, murder and rape, punishment and deterrence, witchcraft and supernatural beliefs. (shrink)

The distinctiveness of this addition to the already vast literature on the freewill controversy is shown by its subtitle. Professor Franklin believes that what is ultimately at stake in the debate is not conceptual clarification, but our fundamental values and conception of man. Paraphrasing Hare: to justify a position completely, we have to give a complete specification of the way of life of which it is a part.

How do our secular reflections on freewill relate to the theological tradition of human freedom and divine grace? I will pursue this question with reference to Kant, who represents a half-way house between Christianity and the atheism of other Enlightenment thinkers. But are those the only two alternatives? I suggest that Kant’s wrestling with the notion of divine grace can draw us all towards recognition of the ultimate mystery of human motivation and behaviour, and our need for forgiveness and (...) hope. (shrink)

Brian Garrett (Analysis (2012), 293–5) comments on McCall's paper (Analysis (2011), 501–6). McCall had claimed that since the truth of true empirical propositions supervenes on, and depends upon, empirical fact, what God knows and does not know also depends upon being, i.e. upon facts. Consequently God's foreknowing what I freely decide to do depends upon what I freely do. Garrett objects that the dependence of truth on being seems to play no essential role in McCall's argument. McCall replies that his (...) argument is an up-to-date version of Luis de Molina's 16th century reconciliation of freewill with omniscience, in which the dependence of God's knowledge on what humans do is crucial. (shrink)

Of all the philosophical challenges to theism in general and Christianity in particular, the one that Christians take most seriously is the Problem of Evil. It is clearly not logically contradictory to hold that there exists a Loving Ultimate Creator; and nevertheless there is a very substantial amount of evil and suffering in the world. But it is certainly problematic. Deeper scientific understandings of physics and evolution shed some light on this. It is also useful to reflect more deeply on (...) the relationships between love, suffering and creativity. (shrink)

I describe recent developments of Conway and Kochen on the physical meaning of freewill and their theorem that the assertion of freewill for human beings, in their specific sense, implies the same for elementary particles. This description is given in simplified metaphorical terms that nonetheless address the key physical axioms and essential analytic content of their argument. I then give points of contact of our metaphor with the full technical analysis of the cited authors and conclude with some (...) associated metaphysical speculations. These include the implications of the freewill theorem for dual aspect theories and, in particular, for process metaphysics. (shrink)

Abstract If asked about the Darwinian influence on William James, some might mention his pragmatic position that ideas are “mental modes of adaptation,” and that our stock of ideas evolves to meet our changing needs. However, while this is not obviously wrong, it fails to capture what James deems most important about Darwinian theory: the notion that there are independent cycles of causation in nature. Versions of this idea undergird everything from his campaign against empiricist psychologies to his theories of (...) mind and knowledge to his pluralistic worldview; and all of this together undergirds his attempts to challenge determinism and defend freewill. I begin this paper by arguing that James uses Darwinian thinking to bridge empiricism and rationalism, and that this merger undermines environmental determinism. I then discuss how Darwinism informs his concept of pluralism; how his concept challenges visions of a causally welded “block universe”; and how it also casts doubt on the project of reducing all reality to physical reality, and therewith the wisdom of dismissing consciousness as an inert by-product of physiology. I conclude by considering how Darwinism helps him justify the pragmatic grounds upon which he defends freewill. (shrink)

The discussion below could be extended by pointing out that there is a fifth notion of freedom which refers to what you are free to do within a context of a game, a system of laws, a moral regime etc. This notion of freedom is close to the notion of permission. It is worth noting that the law may forbid something without enforcing that proscription. So many people constantly do what they are not free to do in this sense.

During my childhood I was fascinated by videogames. One game that stands out in my memory is Pacman. It wasn’t the gameplay that interested me so much as the behavior of the ghosts. As you watch them roam around the maze, you get the feeling that they are intelligent. They seem to be making decisions about how best to catch Pacman. But how free are their decisions? One of the interesting things I noticed was that I could play exactly the (...) same game over and over if I moved Pacman in precisely the same way each time. The ghosts always followed the same behavioral pattern and didn’t deviate from that pattern until I changed my pattern. Experimenting with Pacman in this way revealed to me something about the ghosts’ behavior. True, they make decisions, but their decisions are firmly and predictably determined by the way I move around the maze. (shrink)

Historically there have been two main freewill problems, the problem of freedom versus predestination, which is mainly theological, and the problem of freedom versus determinism, which has exercised the minds of many of the great modern philosophers. The latter problem is seldom stated in full detail, for its elements are taken as so obvious that they do not need to be stated. The problem is seen as an attempt to reconcile the belief in human freedom, which is essential if (...) men are to be able to act morally, with determinism, the belief that every event is fully determined in all its details by the sum of its precedent causes. But even the meticulous Moore does not trouble to explore at length what is meant by determinism. He devotes one very short paragraph to the matter, and sums it up immediately afterwards as the view that ‘everything … has a cause’. (shrink)

_Mu__ḥ__ammad Ghazālī (d. 1111) influenced some of the key metaphysical teachings of Shia Safavid philosophers, most prominently, Mullā __Ṣ__adrā Shīrāzī (d. ca. 1636). In this paper, I argue that Mullā __Ṣ__adrā reads Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) through the lens of Mu__ḥ__ammad Ghazālī’s Sufi Ash__ʿ__arism to offer a solution to the problem of freewill in the Islamic context. In his adaptation of causal necessity from Ibn S__ī__n__ā__, Mull__ā_ _Ṣ__adrā argues that “necessity” as a concept is co-extensional with “existence” because in (...) reality all that is the case is necessarily so. On the other hand, all things including voluntary actions and will are only relatively existent since the only independent existence is that of God. I demonstrate that like Ibn Sīnā, Mullā __Ṣ__adrā acknowledges the existence of a causal chain in which all intermediary causes including human freewill have causal power. But, similar to Ghazālī’s account, all human acts including voluntary ones are from God since in Mullā __Ṣ__adrā’s universe freewill is a lower degree of God’s Will. For Mullā __Ṣ__adrā, the acquisition of action by human beings in the case of voluntary actions, a notion that he adopts from Ghazālī, is the same as “acquiring” existence from God’s existence._. (shrink)

A central argument for the view that God's necessary omniscience [( Bgf p )] precludes freewill is unsound, because the necessity of the consequence is not the necessity of the consequent, and nor is Bgf true. God's belief in some particular proposition f about what I will do is not necessary, as I might do something that makes ~ f true. Fischer and Tognazzini claim that this counterargument argument assumes that I must freely do the something that makes f (...) true. But plainly it doesn't. All that it assumes is that I will do the something that makes f true. It makes no difference whether I do that thing unfreely, or "deterministicall". The argument does not assume the existence of a case of freewill in the face of divine foreknowledge, but instead considers the necessity of God's belief in some particular designated proposition f. The argument does not depend, as Fischer and Tognazzini suppose, on whether God's knowledge is a function of the facts (omniscience) or vice versa (infallibility). (shrink)

The relationship between literature and life can be construed as a counterpoint of fate and freewill. Rather than equating fate to the 'hand we are dealt' which is reducible to the social or familial environments into which we are born, this book explores the idea of fate through the books that shape our lives and under whose influence we write. Writing in this sense is seen as beyond its utility of making meaning. It is a way of recovering agency (...) in the face of overwhelming experiences. In juxtaposing factuality and fiction, the author makes a case for a radically empirical approach to human experience. (shrink)

According to Arnauld, if we cannot help acting in some way, that is either (1) because external forces or obstacles leave no alternative, or (2) because we cannot help wanting to act that way; and that may be (2a) because we have absolutely no power to want anything else, or (2b) because the power we have is quite insufficient to overcome the inclination to act that way. This gives three kinds of necessity, corresponding to (1), (2a) and (2b).[.