10
votes
'Free will' as a 'confused concept': Is Ned Block correct?
Determinism means that every event is completely determined by the previous event.
The negation, indeterminism, therefore means that every event is incompletely determined (=there is probabilistic ...
- 3,888
9
votes
Accepted
Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
Strawson's argument is about ultimate moral responsibility not stritly about free will (although related).
The tricky phrase here is "ultimate". One can argue that free will is not about ...
- 2,948
7
votes
Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
Strawson’s full arguments are more careful and I’m not deeply familiar with them, but in the Studebaker paraphrase you quote, the central paragraph claiming to “logically refute” self-determination/...
- 1,096
6
votes
Philosophers answering "what happens to a society that does not believe in free wıll?"
The only thing I'm well-familiar with in this connection is Kant's claim that we act "under the idea of freedom" no matter what. Unfortunately (or not?), this makes the belief in free will (...
- 22.6k
6
votes
Dennett vs Sapolsky on free will: A clash over different claims?
Great question, well posed.
Dennett is the clearest champion of Compatibilism about free-will. Many scientists take from the fact human actions must be reducible to atoms and the void, that we only ...
- 23.8k
5
votes
Is the debate on free will over?
The idea of the mentioned paradox is not new, online articles discuss this referencing a paper from 1965 by Michael Scriven ("An essential unpredictability in human behaviour.") and is ...
- 7,417
5
votes
'Free will' as a 'confused concept': Is Ned Block correct?
My question is whether Block is right in saying that there is 'something wrong with the concept' merely because it can't be squeezed into determinism or indeterminism. An initial instinct may be that ...
- 3,967
4
votes
Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
[Note: I am revising my entire response but undeleting it just the same, at the site's own behest (I clicked "Add Another Answer" and it was like, "Why not just edit the one you already ...
- 22.6k
4
votes
Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
Strawson's argument is a highly persuasive one, but suffers from the problems I pointed out previously. Proof for the absence of free will? I will revise that answer, to be more explicit to your ...
- 17.4k
4
votes
Philosophers answering "what happens to a society that does not believe in free wıll?"
Free-will is actually more than an illusion (or less), and through this understanding one can self-actualize like never before.
Sam Harris writes a book called Free Will, where he attacks the issue ...
- 159
4
votes
'Free will' as a 'confused concept': Is Ned Block correct?
Free will is the idea that the will of a moral agent is the sole cause of the moral agents actions. This is confused because it arises within the general psychological effort to recognize and identify ...
- 3,208
4
votes
'Free will' as a 'confused concept': Is Ned Block correct?
Block's error is to assert a false dichotomy -- that only randomness and determinism are possible modes of our world.
We know several things -- that classical logic's law of the excluded middle is not ...
- 17.4k
3
votes
Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
Strawson's argument begs the question. To paraphrase it, he assumes that our mental state at one moment mechanistically determines our mental state the next, so if you follow that chain backwards our ...
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3
votes
Philosophers answering "what happens to a society that does not believe in free wıll?"
That means that society does not believe in either non-deterministic incompatibilism (although indeterminism does not entail free will) or compatibilism, then deterministic incompatibilism remains, ...
- 149
3
votes
Accepted
What are the differences between semi-compatibilism and compatibilism?
If I take the following definition as canonical, the answer is clear:
This article [...] considers various strategies
by which critics of [Frankfurt-type] examples have tried to rescue the ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Philosophers answering "what happens to a society that does not believe in free wıll?"
The question of whether (dis)belief in free will and agency affect human behavior has been tackled mainly by scientists and obliquely by some philosophers. Philosophers have mostly been interested in ...
- 2,948
2
votes
Why do modern materialists tend to favor determinism?
Determinism is derived almost directly from assuming causation. Free will is derived from experienced phenomenology. The free will experience contradicts the theory of causation, just as with ...
- 17.4k
2
votes
What would falsify compatibilism?
If one takes compatibilism to mean “both natural determinism and free will are true” then this can be falsified by noting empirical evidence against the assertion of natural determinism. This ...
- 19.8k
2
votes
How far can compatibilism go: God as active creator with perfect foreknowledge and free will
Here I must respectfully disagree with the root of the claim.
Given a God that observes what will be does not inherently remove any element of free will and I can't see how the belief that it does so ...
- 832
2
votes
Accepted
Can you objectively determine if a given system has free will (according to compatibilism)?
The answer to this depends on your definition of "free will." Compatabalism does not define this, other than to state that it can indeed be compatible with the results of a purely physical ...
- 18.8k
2
votes
Can someone explain Compatibilism to me?
Sure. Compatibilism is not that hard to understand if you just start from the basic idea that compatibilists use the term "free will" to mean a different thing than--I think--you are using it.
When ...
- 1,624
2
votes
Why do compatibilists believe that whether we act freely is independent of whether or not determinism is true?
As I understand the principle — and I put it that way because the worldview is not one I share, for logical and philosophical reasons — the compatibalist position relocates 'choice' to be a property ...
- 24.2k
2
votes
Is the debate on free will over?
Problem with the Proof:
Step 2 of the proof ("You do the opposite of what it prints on the paper") assumes that it is possible for you to not do what the computer said. In other words, it ...
- 1,113
2
votes
Is the debate on free will over?
Just as observation: In a purely deterministic universe — one without free will — no one would be able to do the opposite of what the printer said they would do. if people can do the opposite of a ...
- 24.2k
2
votes
Who has defended a non-causal (emanationist) concept of strong emergence, compatible with reductionism?
Weak emergence is the thesis that discussing emergent phenomenon is just a useful shorthand to deal with higher level phenomena that are presumed to be reducible in principle but are not yet reduced. ...
- 17.4k
2
votes
Best arguments against compatibilism?
I will try and get this ball rolling, not to be exhaustive. However, a caveat first: i don't know that we can classify any of the following arguments as "best". For one because there are ...
- 3,294
2
votes
Best arguments against compatibilism?
There's only one really good argument against compatibilism, and it's the claim that there is no free will. The difference between compatibilism and no-free-will is just a disagreement over which ...
- 18.9k
2
votes
Does compatibilism redefine free will?
Van Inwagen's definitions appear to be self-contradictory. If one's actions are determined, then basically by definition one "cannot do otherwise". In determinism, there is a causal network ...
- 17.4k
2
votes
Does compatibilism redefine free will?
Insofar as conceptual analysis/engineering in general is concerned, most or maybe even all strong attempts at such would involve some redefining of terms. If this were not needed to be so, then whence ...
- 22.6k
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