Recent empirical evidence indicates that people tend to believe that they possess indeterminist free will, and people’s experience of choosing and deciding is that they possess such freedom. Some also maintain that people’s belief in indeterminist free will has its source in their experience of choosing and deciding. Yet there seem to be good reasons to resist endorsing. Despite this, I maintain that belief in indeterminist free will really does have its source in experience. I explain how this is so (...) by appeal to the phenomenon of prospection, which is the mental simulation of future possibilities for the purpose of guiding action. Crucially, prospection can be experienced. And because of the way in which prospection models choice, it is easy for agents to experience and to believe that their choice is indeterministic. Yet this belief is not justified; the experience of prospection, and hence of free will as being indeterminist, is actually consistent with determinism. (shrink)

Determinism is frequently understood as implying the possibility of perfect prediction. This possibility then functions as an assumption in the Manipulation Argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. Yet this assumption is mistaken. As a result, arguments that rely on it fail to show that determinism would rule out human free will. We explain why determinism does not imply the possibility of perfect prediction in any world with laws of nature like ours, since it would be impossible for (...) an agent to predict with certainty any future event that is causally influenced by events outside her own backward light cone yet inside the backward light cone of the future event. This is the _light-cone limit_ and it undermines the Manipulation Argument or limits what this argument can tell us about the relevance of determinism to free will. We also respond to objections that the light-cone limit is irrelevant to the Manipulation Argument. (shrink)

Incompatibilists often claim that we experience our agency as incompatible with determinism, while compatibilists challenge this claim. We report a series of experiments that focus on whether the experience of having an ability to do otherwise is taken to be at odds with determinism. We found that participants in our studies described their experience as incompatibilist whether the decision was (i) present-focused or retrospective, (ii) imagined or actual, (iii) morally salient or morally neutral. The only case in which participants did (...) not give incompatibilist judgments was when the question was explicitly about whether one’s ignorance of the future was compatible with determinism. This lends empirical support to claims made by incompatibilists about the experience of agency, while also showing that compatibilist accounts of ability are inadequate to the reported phenomenology. Our results also inform recent debates about the presuppositions of deliberation. (shrink)

The main question that we address in this chapter is what to say about reportedly libertarian experiences of free agency – in other words, experiences of options as being open, and up to oneself to decide among, such that, if they are accurate or veridical, then (at a minimum) indeterminism must be true. A great deal rides on this question. If normal experiences of free agency are libertarian, and if compatibilists cannot explain them away, then all of us may be (...) under systematic illusion at almost every moment of our waking lives. That is, our experiences would be illusory if humans do not in fact satisfy libertarian conditions (e.g., if indeterminism does not occur in the right time or place during decision-making, or we lack agent-causal powers). In some sense, more rides on the question of whether we are agents of the sort that we experience ourselves as being than on the question of whether we have the type of control required for moral responsibility. At worst, we are not responsible in only one sense if we lack what libertarians say we need. Yet even then, we would not be under systematic experiential illusion during most of our waking lives, as we are if our experience is libertarian, yet false. (shrink)

We use recent interventionist theories of causation to develop a compatibilist account of causal sourcehood, which provides a response to Manipulation Arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. Our account explains the difference between manipulation and determinism, against the claim of Manipulation Arguments that there is no relevant difference. Interventionism allows us to see that causal determinism does not mean that variables outside of the agent causally explain her actions better than variables within the agent, whereas the causal (...) source of a manipulated agent’s actions instead lies outside of the agent in the intentions of the manipulator. As a result, determined agents can have free will and be morally responsible in a way that manipulated agents cannot, contrary to what Manipulation Arguments conclude. In this way, our account demonstrates not only how Manipulation Arguments fail but also how compatibilism can be strengthened by means of a plausible account of causal sourcehood. (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)

Standard methods in experimental philosophy have sought to measure folk intuitions using experiments, but certain limitations are inherent in experimental methods. Accordingly, we have designed the Free-Will Intuitions Scale to empirically measure folk intuitions relevant to free-will debates using a different method. This method reveals what folk intuitions are like prior to participants' being put in forced-choice experiments. Our results suggest that a central debate in the experimental philosophy of free will—the “natural” compatibilism debate—is mistaken in assuming that folk intuitions (...) are exclusively either compatibilist or incompatibilist. They also identify a number of important new issues in the empirical study of free-will intuitions. (shrink)

Addressing biases in natural-language processing (NLP) systems presents an underappreciated ethical dilemma, which we think underlies recent debates about bias in NLP models. In brief, even if we could eliminate bias from language models or their outputs, we would thereby often withhold descriptively or ethically useful information, despite avoiding perpetuating or amplifying bias. Yet if we do not debias, we can perpetuate or amplify bias, even if we retain relevant descriptively or ethically useful information. Understanding this dilemma provides for a (...) useful way of rethinking the ethics of algorithmic bias in NLP. (shrink)

Libertarians claim that our experience of free choice is indeterministic. They think that, when we choose, our choice feels open in a way that would require indeterminism for the experience to be accurate. This claim then functions as a step in an argument in favour of libertarianism, the view that freedom requires indeterminism and we are free. Since, all else being equal, we should take experience at face value, libertarians argue, we should endorse libertarianism. Compatibilists, who think that freedom is (...) consistent with determinism, respond to this argument in a number of ways, none of which is adequate. This paper defends a stronger compatibilist response. Compatibilists should concede, at least for argument's sake, that our experience of freedom is in a sense libertarian. Yet they should also insist that our experience is in another sense compatibilist. Thus, even if libertarian descriptions of experience are phenomenologically apt, there is still a sense in which the experience might be veridical,.. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that 'moral responsibility' refers to two concepts, not to one. In the first place, we are not ultimately morally responsible or, therefore, unqualifiedly blameworthy, due to the fact that we lack ultimate forms of control. But, second, it is legitimate to consider us to be morally responsible in another sense, and therefore qualifiedly blameworthy, once we have certain forms of control. Consequently, I argue that our normal practice of blaming is unjust, since it requires that (...) we are ultimately morally responsible. I contend that this practice must, on grounds of justice, be tempered by adequate consideration of the fact that we are not ultimately morally responsible. My proposal in this regard is that blaming be replaced by admonishment. (shrink)

Many philosophers think not only that we are free to act otherwise than we do, but also that we experience being free in this way. Terry Horgan argues that such experience is compatibilist: it is accurate even if determinism is true. According to Horgan, when people judge their experience as incompatibilist, they misinterpret it. While Horgan's position is attractive, it incurs significant theoretical costs. I sketch an alternative way to be a compatibilist about experiences of free agency that avoids these (...) costs. In brief, I assume that experiences of freedom have a sort of phenomenal content that is inaccurate if determinism is true, just as many incompatibilists claim. Still, I argue that these experiences also have another sort of phenomenal content that is normally accurate, even assuming determinism. (shrink)

In our paper, “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the question of natural compatibilism” , we seek to advance empirical debates about free will by measuring the relevant folk intuitions using the scale methodology of psychology, as a supplement to standard experimental methods. Stephen Morris raises a number of concerns about our paper. Here, we respond to Morris's concerns.

I focus on token, deterministic causal claims as they feature in causal explanations. Adequately handling absences is difficult for most causal theories, including theories of causal explanation. Yet so is adequately handling cases of late preemption. The best account of absence-causal claims as they appear in causal explanations is Jonathan Schaffer's quaternary, contrastive account. Yet Schaffer's account cannot handle preemption. The account that best handles late preemption is James Woodward's interventionist account. Yet Woodward's account is inadequate when it comes to (...) absences. I propose an account that handles both absences and preemption by transposing Schaffer's account into an interventionist framework. (shrink)

Review of David Hodgson's defense of libertarian free will, from a compatibilist perspective, focusing on methodological issues in debates about free will.

This collection provides a selection of the most essential contributions to the contemporary free will debate. Among the issues discussed and debated are skepticism and naturalism, alternate possibilities, the consequence argument, libertarian metaphysics, illusionism and revisionism, optimism and pessimism, neuroscience and free will, and experimental philosophy.

Cosmo-nationalism interrogates the rise of national philosophies and their impact on cosmopolitanism and nationalism. -/- The idea of national philosophy carries in it a strange contradiction. We talk about 'German philosophy' or 'American philosophy'. But philosophy has always pictured itself to be the project of universality. It presents itself as something that takes place outside or beyond the national – detachable from language, culture and history. -/- So why do we assign nationalities to philosophies? Building on Jacques Derrida's unpublished seminars (...) on philosophical nationalism, Oisín Keohane claims that national philosophies are a variant of some form of cosmo-nationalism: a strain of nationalism that uses, rather than opposes, ideas in cosmopolitanism to advance the aims of one nation. -/- Key Features Opens up new exciting areas of exploration between nationalism and cosmopolitanism through the concept of the cosmo-national Examines Derrida’s unpublished seminars on philosophical nationalism, showing him to be much more interested in the intersection of philosophy and the social sciences than previously thought Explores three cases: German Philosophy through Kant and Fichte, French Philosophy through Tocqueville and American Philosophy through Emerson. (shrink)

조작 논증에 따르면, (1) 결정론적인 세계에서 발생하는 일상적인 행위와 일정한 방식으로 조작된 행위 사이에 차이가 없고 (2) 조작된 행위는 자유행위가 아니므로 (3) 따라서 일상적인 행위 역시 자유행위가 아니다. 최근의 논문에서, 디어리와 나미어스(2017)는 조작 논증으로부터 자유의지와 결정론에 대한 양립가능주의를 옹호하기 위해, 개입주의 인과론을 사용하여 인과적 근원의 정의를 제시하고 이를 적용한다. 그 결과는, 조작된 행위의 인과적 근원은 조작자에게 있는 반면, 결정론적 세계에서의 일상적인 행위는 그 인과적 근원이 행위자에게 있다는 것이다. 즉 논증의 전제 (1)이 거짓이다. 제시된 정의는, 주어진 행위에 대한 임의의 실제 원인에 (...) 대해, 그 원인이 강력한 조작자의 조작의 결과이기만 하면 조작자에게 그 행위의 인과적 근원이 있다는 것을 함축한다. 문제는, 이 함축에 따르면, 조작자의 결정을 행위의 인과적 근원으로 받아들이기 어려운 경우가 생긴다는 것이다. 더 나아가 이런 문제가 되는 경우와 D&N이 옹호하고자 하는 양립가능주의 입장이 일관성을 유지할 수 없다. 마지막으로 이러한 비판에 대한 가능한 대응을 제시하고, 이 대응을 받아들이면 전제 (1)을 거부하는 D&N의 입장이 더 이상 유지될 수 없다고 주장한다. (shrink)

The essay replies to comments by Finnis, Gardner and Endicott, on my book, Law as a Moral Idea. It is questioned whether Finnis is right to suggest that governance by law is a requirement of justice. It is suggested that Hart's positivism may have rested upon an unduly private conception of morality. Gardner's suggestion that Law as a Moral Idea falsely manufactures disagreement with Hart is rejected, principally by pointing out that Gardner focuses upon only one issue, where the book (...) already acknowledges that Hart might conceivably agree, and ignores other issues where the disagreement with Hart seems indisputable. In response to Endicott, it is acknowledged that 'politics' could be understood as a moral idea comparable to the idea of 'law', but denied that this robs either thesis of interest. The nature of doctrinal reasoning and law's justificatory force is then discussed. (shrink)

Savīyahʹhā-yi maʻrifatʹāfarīn-i nafs -- Falsafah-yi Ṣadrā -- Falsafahʹī barā-yi zīstan-i safar-i ʻishq.

Here presented are three singular, philosophical perspectives on the Delhi student protests which took place in 2019 and 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic. The writers hail from India, England...

In this paper we argue that the human form should be seen to exist, in a longitudinal way, throughout the continuum of human growth and development. This entails that the moral value of that form, which we link analytically to the adult, interacting, social and rational being, attaches to all phases of human life to some extent. Having established this we discuss the consequences it has for the moral status of the human embryo. We then apply this argument, and the (...) resulting moral status, to the area of reproductive technology. In doing this we show that there are certain regulations and controls which ought to apply to the use of these infertility treatments. (shrink)

The active transition to digital civilization coincided with the pandemic of the new coronavirus. It can be assumed that it was the pandemic that accelerated this process. In any case, people immediately faced to new phenomena, which can affect both physical and social health. Many phenomena, including both digitalization and pandemic, have not been explained and properly assessed yet. Absence of proper explanation and assessment creates a fertile field for insurance, doubts and mistakes. Therefore at the present time the evaluative (...) and explanatory role of bioethics is invaluable. But a paradoxical situation arises: the more bioethics help is needed, the less attention is paid to its development. The transfer of bioethics study for medical students into a distance format eliminates its communicative meanings and deprives future doctors of the opportunity to develop skills and competencies in medicine. Something must be done in order not to lose the achievements of the national training system in the field of bioethics. Certain suggestions are expressed in the article. (shrink)

From early infancy, structures are created in engaging with the world. Increasingly complex forms of self, other, and world emerge with shared rhythms, affective patterns and interpersonal routines, cultural norms, concepts and symbols, and so on. These open up an increasing number of possibilities for new kinds and levels of engagement and for further developing a world together. However, these same structures, becoming more rigid, salient, and perhaps reified with time, may obscure or obstruct engagement and constrain development. We explore (...) this paradoxical relationship between structure and openness to engagement and attempt to understand the process of formation and change of structures in self and its relations to the world. (shrink)

One feature of socialism that has been little discussed in the recent revival of interest in Marx is the basic form of economic organization that will characterize such a society. Marx's view, to be documented in what follows, is that socialism would not have a market economy. This prediction should be a matter of some embarrassment or consternation to twentieth-century socialists outside of the Soviet bloc who claim a Marxist heritage. Despite the fact that some socialist regimes in the first (...) half of this century did carry out a program of abolishing the market, the abolition of markets is no longer on the agenda for developed and developing countries. On the Left, anyway, some form of market socialism seems to be the preferred alternative; Yugoslavia is often pointed to as an imperfect real world exemplar of what market socialism might be like. (shrink)

La presencia del orden se nos impone con singular insistencia. La reflexión sobre el orden, las posibilidades de su emergencia y las condiciones de su articulación y de su crítica, al igual que de su transgresión o transformación, ha constituido un eje central en el pensamiento filosófico y social continental a lo largo del siglo XX. Los trabajos que aparecen en este libro proceden de pensadores provenientes de Alemania, Francia y México y se proponen contribuir a una reflexión amplia, sistemática (...) y a la vez interdisciplinaria sobre este problema a la vez inquietante e inescapable. (shrink)

From the earliest times, the very existence of Soviet power to combat religion and tirades, along with methods of economic and ideological pressure, actively using legal factors, is a rather strict system. Following the massive unveiling of solidarity and white army officials who were unable to leave the peninsula in November 1920, they began to form in the Crimea various branches of government, including their judicial system, which was published in a new regime of elements of legitimacy. However, the legal (...) system created on the peninsula was annexed to a radical political system, so when there were various problems, they were members of principles of political expediency, not morality and rights. (shrink)

El mérito principal de este libro es la audacia de la perspectiva escogida: la disyuntiva, por decirlo sumariamente, “entre Dios y la nada”. Fiel a ella, y elevándola a condición de eje hermenéutico, Vicente Serrano reconstruye los hitos fundamentales del proceso, atendiendo especialmente al propio Jacobi, pero también a los “grandes” del Idealismo Alemán, así como a Nietzsche, a Heidegger, a Michel Foucault, a las diversas teorizaciones “posmodernas” —o no— de los últimos tiempos. Es posible, en efecto, que haya más (...) teología en la filosofía contemporánea, allí donde su presencia lo es bajo la forma de una abrasadora ausencia, que allí donde se ofrece a rostro abierto… ese es, en cualquier caso, el desafío hermenéutico de este trabajo memorable. Memorable también por su materialismo crítico de fondo. (shrink)